Cleopatra's Moon

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  “No harm done, little one, thank the gods. I would never have hurt you,” he said, misunderstanding the reason for my tears. “But never, ever sneak up on me again.”

  “I did not know you would be here, Tata,” I said. “I … I sometimes visit Mother when I do not sleep.”

  He turned to her, his eyebrows up, a crooked smile forming on his lips. “I thought you told me you never had any visitors at night,” Tata said.

  “I don’t,” Mother said coldly, which confused me. Did I not regularly visit her in the deep-dark? “Our new young queen of Crete and Cyrenaica is a true daughter of the moon,” she continued. “She does not like to sleep.”

  He chuckled. “Just like someone else I know.”

  To my surprise, Mother did not smile back at Tata. Most people could not resist his famous sideways grin.

  “Now tell me, what did you overhear?” Tata asked me.

  “That you do not like that little verpa Octavianus,” I answered.

  Father burst into laughter. “Yes, by the gods, that’s exactly right! Henceforth, he shall be dubbed ‘that-little-verpa-Octavianus’ in all our conversations.”

  Now Mother smiled. Somehow, the tension had broken. I grinned, relishing the idea that I could make my giant of a father laugh and bring a smile to my mother’s beautiful mouth. I was not sure what I had said that delighted them so — only that I wanted to do it again. And soon. Father grabbed the sides of my face with his big square hands and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Cleopatra Selene,” Mother said, and I turned to look at her. She was standing by the door. I had not heard or seen her move. “It is time for you to go back to your rooms.”

  I did not want to go. I wanted to stay in my tata’s lap. So I leaned my head onto his shoulder and wound my arms around his neck.

  Father rubbed my back. “Ah, the gods truly have no mercy, giving me two Cleopatras I cannot resist.” He ruffled my hair. “However, it is very late. It is time for you to go back to your bed.”

  “No, wait,” I cried, remembering why I had come in the first place. “I have a question.”

  “You may ask it,” Mother said.

  I pointed to Father’s ring and looked up at her. “Why did you give everyone Eye of Horus jewels but me?”

  “That’s the question that has kept you up this night?” Tata asked with a laugh.

  I did not like him laughing. This was serious. I slid off his lap and crossed my arms to show my disapproval.

  “Well, wife. How will you answer?” Tata asked with a smile in his voice.

  Mother was not smiling. I felt pinned to the floor as she looked at me with what I called her Horus stare. Her intensity made it seem as if Sekhmet herself, the lion-headed goddess, growled in warning at me.

  “Do not presume to ask the reason for anything I do, daughter,” Mother finally said, so quietly I almost wasn’t sure she had spoken at first.

  My stomach clenched in fear. How had I angered her? What had I asked that I was not supposed to?

  Tata reached over me to pour more wine into his goblet. “Did you receive a different amulet?” he asked.

  I nodded. I had forgotten that Mother had given me a golden scarab pendant with an emerald in the center. I had not worn it because Zosima had been instructed to dress me in silver, not gold. Also, I had not liked how it felt around my neck. I looked down, slightly ashamed at how greedy I must have seemed. But how could I explain that it wasn’t that I wanted more jewels? I just wanted to know that I mattered to Mother as much as my brothers.

  Tata took the ring off his finger and held it out to me, as if for examination. The very heft of the hieroglyphic-covered band suggested it had special power. I had never before seen pearls used to depict the center of the eye like that.

  “The pearl is dull,” I murmured into the tense silence. I knew that Romans considered pearls the most precious of all gemstones.

  “That is no pearl.” Tata laughed. “It’s bone. Human bone from one of Egypt’s ancient enemies. From even before Cheops built his Great Pyramid.”

  A chill tingled up my spine. A human bone meant powerful magic.

  “Yes, it’s very sacred, according to your mother’s strange-smelling priests,” Tata continued. “Lots of protection.”

  “Protection from what?” I asked, confused by Tata’s irreverent tone.

  “Death at the hands of an evil enemy,” Tata said, lounging back against the curved arm of the couch and yawning. He closed his eyes. “But I have no enemies that powerful.”

  “But … do you have an evil enemy, Tata?” Did my brothers? Was I in danger too? “Who is it?”

  Tata opened one eye to peer at me.

  “That-little-verpa-Octavianus,” he said with an edge. “Your mother seems to fear him more than she has faith in me.”

  “Marcus …,” Mother warned in a low voice.

  Tata sat up quickly, as if he had received a jolt of energy. He reached for his cup and drained it. “But you, my little one, like my queen, are protected by different magic.”

  “Marcus …,” Mother repeated, crossing her arms.

  “You probably received an emerald amulet. Yes, I am right, I can tell by your face. See, the emerald enhances Venus’s gifts. Oh, excuse me, little Greekling — Aphrodite’s gifts. Your feminine charms. That’s your mother’s special magic. And so she shares it with you.”

  I did not understand what Tata said or meant, but I felt the tension vibrating between them like heat waves in front of the Great Sphinx. The silence continued. I found myself sincerely wishing that I had never noticed the Horus amulets.

  “Little Moon,” Mother finally said, “call for Katep. You must return to your rooms.”

  I paused, knowing that Katep was not waiting for me outside. And since she had seemed so upset that Tata had dismissed our guards, I did not want to remind her of this.

  “Rufus!” Father suddenly bellowed, and I jumped. “Escort the Princess back to her rooms. And bring more wine on your way back!”

  I followed the soldier into the darkened hall, the sound of his hobnailed boots echoing in the tense silence behind me.

  By the next morning, Katep and all of Mother’s guards were back at their regular posts.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the Nineteenth Year of My Mother’s Reign

  In My Ninth Year (32 BCE)

  The dissolution of our world began in earnest with these three words: “I divorce you.”

  The king of Egypt himself, my brother Caesarion, came to tell us the news. He found us on the grounds connecting the palace and the Great Library, setting up for a game of trigon. A girl named Euginia — the daughter of Mother’s finance minister — had already taken her position as one of the pilecripi, our ball chasers and scorekeepers. Euginia was not bad at the game, and she and I often tossed the trigon ball to each other when the boys went off by themselves. I had hoped to convince Alexandros that she should be our third player.

  But, as always, Alexandros wanted Iotape. I squinted as I stared at her across the playing area. Strong ocean breezes lifted and then dropped her silken coverings so that she looked like an exotic bird flapping her wings. How could she possibly play draped in so much fabric? I tossed and caught the painted leather ball in my palm as Alexandros again went over the rules with his sweet but, I feared, dull-witted “beloved.”

  “Solvete,” Caesarion called to us as he approached. A retinue of advisers and guards flanked the young king. “I will have a word with you both.” Caesarion often spoke to us in Latin instead of the court’s usual Greek. He had always done so to honor his tata and because, he claimed, the world was Roman now, and the sooner we mastered the finer points of its language, the better.

  Caesarion, at almost fifteen, had his father’s wiry frame and keen, intelligent eyes. I always thought he looked like a younger version of the statue Mother had erected of her first husband in the Caesarium. Only with more hair.

  “Play with us first, brother!” I called.r />
  Caesarion paused. “I believe I will. I cannot remember the last time I played,” he said, stepping onto Alexandros’s point in the triangle.

  “Where am I supposed to play, then?” Alexandros called.

  “Tell Iotape to step back,” he said. “You will take her position.”

  Iotape, who was learning Greek and not Latin, did not move at the command from the king of Egypt. Alexandros spoke softly to her in their strange little mix of Persian and Greek. She slid away, blushing.

  I grinned at Caesarion and threw the ball as hard as I could. He caught it with his left hand, his painted eyebrows rising at the sting in his palm. He quickly moved the ball to his right hand.

  “Well, little sister,” he said. “I see now how this is going to go.”

  He never broke eye contact with me but hurled the ball to Alexandros. “Ha!” my twin muttered, shooting it to me in almost the same movement. “You’re going to have to do better than that!”

  We kept the ball spinning in a triangle, trying to outwit one another with feints and tricks with our eyes, where one looked to one person but threw it to the other. I had long ago learned the secret to not fall for such tricks: I did not watch my brothers’ eyes or even their feet. The only thing that existed was the spinning ball.

  I hurled the ball to Caesarion harder than Achilles throwing his spear, and the sphere bounced off his wrist. The ball hit the ground with a heavy thump.

  “My point!” I whooped, dancing. “I have beaten the king of Egypt!”

  “One point does not an entire game make, sister,” Caesarion called.

  I pranced and skipped toward him. “You lost, I won! I’m a better trigon player!”

  To my surprise, Caesarion lowered his head and roared, “There is no teasing the king. You will pay!” My heart stopped in fear until I saw his face split into a grin as he sprinted toward me.

  I yelped and took off across the green. But Caesarion caught me quickly. “That is it!” he said as he trapped me in his arms. “Throw her to the snakes!”

  I yelled, “No! No!” in mock horror as he spun me. “I surrender! I surrender!” I cried at last. “Let me go.”

  “Ha! I do not trust you.”

  “Brother, you insult me.”

  “There is no insulting She Whose Bite Is Sharper than a Serpent’s.”

  “I promise,” I said. “You can trust me.”

  Caesarion made a snorting noise — quite un-kinglike, I thought — and released me. I stepped back with my hands up. “See?”

  “Come, I must speak with you and Alexandros,” he said, cocking his head toward my twin and Iotape and moving toward them.

  “Only if you give me a ride!” I said, launching myself onto his back with a harpy cackle.

  “Eheu!” he grunted when I landed on him, but he did not throw me off. I slid down his back when we reached Alexandros and Iotape. “You are getting too big for me to give you a ride,” Caesarion complained.

  “What was the news you wanted to share with us, brother?” Alexandros asked.

  Caesarion’s face — which moments ago had been open and light — suddenly closed. “We received word that your father’s divorce from his Roman wife is now official.”

  Alexandros and I looked at each other and then back at Caesarion. We knew Tata had a Roman wife — whom he’d married for political reasons — and that he also hadn’t seen her in years. She was meaningless! “That is it? That was what brought you out here?” I asked.

  Caesarion shook his head. “Walk with me,” he said, heading toward the colonnade of painted lotus columns leading to the Great Library. He signaled for his entourage to stay back as they shooed Euginia and the other children away.

  “Isn’t Tata’s divorce a mere formality at this point?” Alexandros asked. “After all, Tata and Mother have been together many years.”

  “I’m afraid it is a little more complicated than that,” Caesarion said. “You know that Tata married Octavia to cement a peace treaty with her brother Octavianus, yes?”

  We nodded.

  “Well, by casting her away, he casts away the treaty too.”

  My stomach clenched. A broken peace treaty was never a good thing.

  “But divorce is common in Rome, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Caesarion said. “But in this case, it has deep ramifications. Octavianus is using it as an excuse to declare war.”

  “But why would Octavianus declare war on Tata for that?” I cried.

  “He has not declared war on your father,” the young king of Egypt continued, scowling. “He has declared war on Mother. On Egypt. On us. Do you understand?”

  I froze, my mouth hanging open. Alexandros’s head whipped toward him. “But Egypt is a loyal Friend and Ally to Rome,” he cried. “How can Rome declare war on Egypt? We supply their grain, we fund their campaigns in the East….”

  “And we do not even have a standing army of any strength,” I added. “This is outrageous! They cannot declare war on an ally that has no way to protect itself!”

  “Octavianus has, in truth, started a civil war with your father — a war between two Romans for sole control of the Roman empire,” explained Caesarion. “But he is making it look like it’s all Mother’s fault, making us — making her — the enemy.”

  “But that makes no sense …,” I cried.

  “Oh, no. It’s quite brilliant, really. Octavianus will have to tax his people to the breaking point to fund the war. Romans would not allow it — indeed, they would throw him from the Tarpeian Rock if he told them it was in the service of fighting their beloved Marcus Antonius. But Romans would not object to taxing themselves into poverty if it meant saving themselves and their favorite general from the clutches of the ‘evil’ queen of Egypt.”

  I made an outraged noise, but Caesarion continued. “He is twisting the minds of the Romans at the same time that he dismisses me as the true son of Caesar. Octavianus claims Mother has bewitched your father. That she has him under such a spell, he can’t be held responsible for any of his actions or decisions. That she is using your father to take over in Rome.”

  “And Romans believe these Iies against a loyal client kingdom?” I cried.

  “It is hard for me to understand how they do not see right through him. But we must take the declaration seriously and prepare accordingly.”

  Dumbfounded, I said nothing more. We stopped under the striped canopy of the royal entrance to the Library. Attendants came running, bowing first to Caesarion, then to us. One bore a golden vessel with warm lotus-perfumed water to rinse our hands and feet; another took our cloaks and anything else we did not wish to carry.

  As we entered the light-filled atrium, white-robed, white-sandaled scholars bustled by, bowing absentmindedly in our direction. The march of all our attendants echoed loudly on the worn marble floors.

  “Where are we going, brother?” I asked, looking up into Caesarion’s serious face.

  “I am going into the military history section of the Library,” he said, stopping in front of the statue of Alexander the Great that graced its entrance. “You are going back to your lessons.”

  “No, I want to stay with you,” I said. “I will be quiet, I promise.”

  Caesarion shook his head. “War is not a game for children,” he said. “You must allow the adults to handle it without distractions.”

  Adults? He had not even had his manhood ceremony yet! I stared openmouthed at my brother. But before I could respond, he added, “Go play, Little Moon. We shall keep Egypt safe for you.” And turned away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Our litter slowed as we moved through the Royal Palace’s main gates and into the busy streets of Alexandria. Crowds parted before us, but to my surprise, we did not hear the chorus of benedictions and blessings that normally rained down upon us. All of Alexandria, it seemed, had grown tense over Octavianus’s absurd declaration of war. I noticed that we had a larger guard than usual, all with drawn swords as they marched in fro
nt of, beside, and behind our litter.

  Despite the tension that seemed to permeate the city, I was excited. I always loved it when we went out among our people. That day, we were headed toward the Jewish Quarter with our tutor, Euphronius.

  “You must understand the lives and hearts of all your people,” he had lectured before we set off. “And so, today we meet with a rabbi who will explain the tenets of the Hebrew religion.”

  We had never actually been to this part of Alexandria, and I found the transition into the neighborhood fascinating. In general, even the poorest Alexandrians loved the bright colors of Egypt — saffron, turquoise, red, and blue. But when we entered the Jewish Quarter we saw only tunics and cloaks of dull browns and grays. Also, the Jews did not bow to us, throw flowers, or beg for benedictions like most of our people. Instead, they studiously ignored us. I did not think much about it until Iotape pointed it out.

  “They do not honor you,” she said in her singsong, accented Greek. “Why is that?”

  “The religion of the Hebrews,” Euphronius explained, “prohibits them from worshipping idols, which they extend to mean the worship of kings.”

  I sat up in surprise. “Do you mean to say, they do not acknowledge Mother as their queen and Caesarion as their king?”

  “They claim their god forbids it,” Euphronius said. “The Jews of Alexandria are a learned bunch, but their faith is a curious one, which involves believing in only a single male god who is often quite jealous and angry.”

  “But why does Mother allow it?” I asked. “I don’t care what they believe. They should bow to her.”

  “I did not say that they do not honor the queen. They do — in their own way. And so you must learn from the queen’s wisdom. She does not force them to act against their faith, thus earning their devotion and allegiance….”

  “Not to mention their taxes,” quipped Alexandros.

  “Yes, which is what makes her such a brilliant administrator,” Euphronius added. “The queen is a true philosopher-king in the spirit with which Aristotle tried to imbue your ancestor Alexander the Great.”