Cleopatra's Moon

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  We leaned against the side of a brick building, gasping for breath. I grabbed Ptolly. “You are my hero!” I said, holding him tight to kiss his sweaty head. He broke away, grinning crookedly and acting out the kick with great energy. “Thank you,” I mouthed silently at Alexandros, for I knew it was his kick that had disabled my attacker.

  “Stupid man!” Ptolly cried.

  “Quiet, Ptolly!” Alexandros hissed. “He may still come after us.”

  That sobered us up.

  “What do we do now?” Alexandros asked, looking around. “If the crowds catch sight of us …”

  “We need to blend in,” I said. “And we need to get away from here.”

  We moved farther away from the parade route, weaving through refuse-strewn winding streets and alleys.

  Ptolly spied a public fountain. “Water!” he cried, and raced headlong toward it.

  Alexandros cursed under his breath as we both followed. Ptolly fairly threw himself into the fountain’s wide basin, taking huge gulps, not even bothering to cup his hands but nearly immersing his face in the pooled water, like a dog. When he raised his dripping head, I smiled.

  “Ptolly, you are a genius!” I cried after taking big gulps of the warm, metallic-tasting water myself.

  He looked confused. I dunked my hand into the fountain and washed the remaining traces of kohl off his scrunched-up face. Alexandros and I scrubbed our faces too. I unwound my hair, grateful for once for the heavy ceremonial wig that may have saved my life. Both boys ripped off their jeweled broad collars, and Alexandros hid them under some trash in the street.

  “We need to look more Roman,” he said.

  Ptolly pointed to his kilt. “Well, I’m not walking around naked, you know!”

  Alexandros smiled. “Trust me, none of us want to see that either. We have to somehow get tunics,” he said, looking at my pleated dress. It was covered in sludge and had been ripped in the back, but at least in its sweat and filth, it did not look so Egyptian anymore. I kicked off my gilded sandals. The boys’ leather sandals could still pass.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Grab the broad collars. We can sell the jewels.”

  “Good thinking,” Alexandros said. He pulled them out from beneath the trash and rolled them up, trying to hide the glimmer of the jewels. We wound our way through the garbage-strewn alleys, avoiding the mangy, bone-thin dogs that stared at us as we passed. Thanks to the broiling heat and the celebrations at the Forum Romanum, we saw few other people.

  “I think we’re headed toward the Subura,” I said a little worriedly. Tata had mentioned this place — a busy, vicious, crowded, filthy area of town that was much like our Rhakotis district in Alexandria. I looked up as we walked in the shade of a crumbling tenement. Roman insulae, apartment buildings famous for their height and shoddy workmanship, regularly crashed to the ground. Almost every week, it seemed, we heard of yet another insulae tragedy in the Subura. I breathed easier when we were no longer near them.

  “I’m hungry,” Ptolly announced, grabbing his belly.

  “Me too,” Alexandros and I said at the same time. We had not eaten since before dawn.

  I smelled frying sausages and my mouth watered. “That way.” I pointed in the direction of the smell.

  Alexandros shook his head. “We do not have any money. We cannot risk drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “But I’m hungry!” whined Ptolly. He turned in the direction of the food stalls anyway.

  “Stop!” Alexandros ordered.

  “You can’t make me!” Ptolly cried, and took off at a run.

  We followed Ptolly as he ran, dodging past the occasional staggering drunk. He stopped in front of a vendor squatting over a cooking fire in front of his stall, shaking a pan full of sizzling, popping sausages.

  “That smells good!” Ptolly said to the cook, whose face was blackened from the cooking fires of his trade.

  The man ignored him.

  “Can I have some?”

  “You got denarii?”

  Ptolly shook his head.

  “Then be gone,” said the man.

  Alexandros grabbed Ptolly’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “No!” Ptolly cried. “I am hungry!”

  “You don’t look starved,” the man said.

  Alexandros sighed. He pulled out one of the broad collars, snapped off a lapis lazuli jewel in the form of a scarab, and held it out to the man. “We don’t have money, but we can trade for this jewel.”

  The man looked at the twinkling, brilliant blue in Alexandros’s hand for a long moment, then up to his face. “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

  “Found it.”

  The man narrowed his eyes.

  “Somebody ripped it off the neck of an Egyptian prisoner during the Triumph, and I grabbed it before anyone else could,” Alexandros lied.

  The man seemed to be considering it.

  “Everybody loves Egyptian jewelry now,” I added. “You should be able to sell that for a good amount. Way more than what those cost you,” I said, pointing to the sausages.

  “Fine,” the man said. “One for each of you.”

  Ptolly clapped his hands. But Alexandros acted outraged. “Three sausages? Forget it. We’ll go across the road.”

  “Five,” the man said, straightening up. “Six. And bread for each of us from that basket.”

  “Fine,” the vendor said. “Just give it to me.”

  The exchange was made. We walked away, devouring the sausages, licking the grease from our fingers and tearing off huge chunks of stale, coarse barley bread with our teeth.

  “I’m impressed,” I said to Alexandros. “I did not know you knew how to bargain.”

  “Sometimes I follow Tiberius to the markets. I’ve learned from the master, as he abuses everyone he comes across.”

  “This is the best sausage I’ve ever had in my whole entire life!” Ptolly said with his sideways grin. I could not argue, though I felt a pang of worry. Ptolly’s eyes seemed overbright, his pupils dilated. We needed to find safety and shelter, but where? Soon it would grow dark, and I knew that I did not want to be anywhere near the Subura then.

  A mild panic overcame me. As royal children we’d always had a cadre of servants taking care of our every need. I had not the slightest inkling of how to do anything for my brothers or myself.

  “Cleopatra Selene,” Alexandros said under his breath. “We forgot about your armband. Take it off.”

  I looked at the golden snake coiled around my upper right arm. The light glinted off its emerald eyes, the same eyes that had watched Mother die. Hiding it seemed prudent. But when the soldier tackled me, I had fallen on that arm and shoulder. The skin under the band was already purple and swollen. With a hissing breath, I pulled it off.

  “I’ll take that,” came a voice from behind us, and we jumped. The threat came from a skinny, scruffy man in a dirty brown tunic.

  “No you won’t,” Alexandros told him. “It’s ours!”

  “I heard what you told the sausage-seller,” the man said, casually pointing behind him with a knife. “I want all the jewels.”

  “Well, you can’t have them!” Ptolly cried. “We are tired of you Romans taking everything we have.”

  “Hand it over,” the man said, ignoring Ptolly and showing us the knife again.

  I stared at him, trying to decide whether he really would attack us if we refused. I clutched the armband hard between my fingers, but to my surprise, somebody else ripped it from me.

  “There you are!” said a bent old man, his head covered in a shawl in the way of augurs. “How did the scam go?”

  I gaped at the man.

  “I told you he’d fall for it,” came the cackling voice. “Now, how many sausages did you save me?”

  “N-none,” Alexandros said.

  “None? You ungrateful little brats!” The old man held a scroll over our heads and threatened to beat us with it. We cowered in confusion. He turned to the robber. “They were suppose
d to save me two sausages! Do you believe their selfishness? Do you know how long it takes me to make that paste look like real jewels?”

  The robber’s knife wavered. “They aren’t real?”

  The old man snorted. “Gah! Are you as stupid as the sausage-man? What are the chances that filthy children from the Subura would be walking around with real jewels from Egypt? But that is what I count on! People’s greed always blinds them to the obvious.”

  “Cacat,” the robber said under his breath, lowering his knife. With an irritated growl, he stalked away in search of better prey.

  “Come quick,” the old man said, straightening up and not sounding so old anymore. We followed him to a dirty brick building. The man looked around before opening a door. I tried to get a clearer look at his face but could not.

  “Wait!” I whispered to my brothers. What if this was a trap? Alexandros read my expression and hesitated too, but Ptolly dashed in after the man. I groaned.

  “Ptolly,” I hissed, following him. “Wait!”

  The man took the veil off his head and handed me back the armband. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Do not come any farther inside. You must wash first.”

  Alexandros and I exchanged looks. We tried to make out our surroundings as our eyes adjusted to the dark interior. “Should we run?” I whispered. “No!” Ptolly said. “He told us to wait here.”

  “But we do not know who he is or whether he is bad too,” Alexandros said.

  “Oh.” Ptolly’s eyes grew big.

  Before we could decide what to do, the man returned with two bowls of water and a couple of towels. “You must wash your hands and your face of the impurities,” he said.

  “What impurities?” I asked.

  “You ate the pork sausages, yes?” We nodded. “Then wash the grease off your hands and faces!” Surprised, we did as we were told. He handed us the clean towels. “Good, good,” he said. “Let me get rid of this impure water and then I will take you to the rabbi.”

  Alexandros and I looked at each other again. We were in a synagogue?

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name is Ben Harabim,” said the man. He had a mass of black curls and a long, uncombed beard, though we could tell now that he was not old at all.

  “How did you know we needed help?” asked Ptolly.

  He shrugged. “Hashem speaks, and I listen.”

  “Your god spoke to you?” Ptolly asked, surprised.

  The man laughed good-naturedly. “Hashem speaks in many ways. I listen to my heart, for that is often the way Hashem speaks.”

  “And what did your heart tell you?” asked Alexandros.

  “That you are lost children in over your heads in a dangerous part of town.”

  “Well, your god spoke the truth, then!” Ptolly said.

  The man chuckled. “Come, follow me.” We followed the man through a small airless room into another smaller airless room.

  “Rabbi,” he said to a middle-aged man bent over a scroll. “These children are lost and need our help….”

  “Hashem preserve us,” said a shaky voice from the side of the room. “I know these children!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  We looked at the bent old man who had spoken.

  “Aba, do you recognize these children?” the rabbi asked, putting down his scroll.

  “My son, you know I never forget a face!” the old man said. He examined us carefully. “I prayed they spared you and that it was not another bunch of lies,” he mumbled. He looked at Ptolly and said more loudly, “You, I do not know.”

  “I do not know you either!” Ptolly said. “What is this place?”

  “You are in a bet ha-midrash, the place of learning in a Hebrew temple.”

  “A synagogue?” Ptolly asked.

  “Very good,” said the old man. “How did you know?”

  “That man who helped us called him ‘rabbi,’“ Ptolly said, pointing to the bearded man, who seemed a younger, more vibrant version of the old man. “Are you a rabbi too? Many of our people in Alexandria are Jewish.”

  The man laughed and clapped his hands. “It is true, then? You are the Royal Children of Egypt?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but who are —”

  “Gods!” muttered Alexandros. He turned to me. “Don’t you remember when Euphronius took us to the Jewish Quarter to learn from the rabbi there?” He nodded as if to say, I think that’s him.

  “But that was so long ago!” A lifetime. And I could not, for the life of me, remember his name. My heart raced at the improbability of seeing him again. Was this the work of Isis? What if this sweet-looking old man was one of the agents Amunet had told me to watch for? After all, he had been in Alexandria and was now in Rome, just like us. And … and it would be a better cover to have us work through a follower of the Hebrew religion than a follower of Isis, wouldn’t it?

  “Tell me,” the old man asked. “How is my old friend Euphronius doing?”

  Alexandros and I exchanged looks. In truth, we did not know. We feared he had been crucified with all the others.

  “Ah,” the old man said wearily. “I am so very sorry.”

  “But what are you doing in Rome?” I asked.

  “I insisted my father leave Alexandria and come to live with me here,” said the younger rabbi. “When we heard … when Antonius was defeated at Actium, I worried for Aba’s safety in such unsettled times.”

  “I did not want to leave,” grumbled the old man. “I do not like this Rome….”

  “So you have no message from the Lady Amunet’s agents?” I asked. “No instructions for us?”

  Alexandros looked at me. We hadn’t talked much about what Amunet had said or her plans for us. Whenever I tried, he grew angry, calling me foolish for thinking we could ever survive defying Rome. When plans were underway, I hoped, he would feel differently.

  The old rabbi shrugged. “I know no Lady Amunet or her agents, as you put it.”

  “She was the High Priestess of Isis in Alexandria,” I said.

  Again he shook his head. “Oh, but how I do miss our lovely city,” he sighed. “In Alexandria, there was beauty and learning and tolerance. Here, I see ugly buildings and people who want only to watch the bloody gladiatorial games.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “Where are the libraries? Where are the scholars, the poets? This is a place of brutes and beasts, not brains.”

  The younger rabbi sighed. He had likely heard this complaint many times.

  Disappointment tightened my throat. This sweet old man was not one of the priestess’s people. He too came here against his will.

  “Did you know,” the old rabbi said to Ptolly, “it was your ancestor whom we may thank for helping our people survive outside our homeland? For it was upon his insistence that the blessed Torah was translated into Greek.”

  “The Septuagint,” Alexandros and I said at once, remembering our lessons.

  “Precisely!” said the elder rabbi.

  “‘Of the seventy’?” Ptolly asked. “What does that mean? What are you talking about?”

  “It means, little Ptolemy,” the elder rabbi said, “that your ancestor took seventy-two rabbis, put them in separate rooms, and told them not to come out until they had translated the Torah from Hebrew into Greek. Then they all had to agree on the final translation. Which is, I must tell you, a miracle in itself — that seventy-two rabbis agreed on anything!”

  The old man smiled, and I remembered his warmth when we visited the Jewish Quarter so long ago. It seemed as if that day happened to a different person, to a Cleopatra Selene that I did not know and would hardly recognize. “You will see,” he continued. “It is because of the wisdom of the Ptolemies our tradition will survive.”

  It felt so good to hear someone say something positive about my heritage and family that I found myself welling up with tears of gratitude.

  “Aba, things will get better here in Rome now that Caesar is back. You will see. Caesar brings peace and wealth with him
.”

  “Alexandria’s wealth!” the elder rabbi and I snapped in unison. His eyes twinkled as he smiled at me.

  “But I am confused,” said Ben Harabim, glancing at the younger rabbi, then back at us. “Why … How could the Royal Children of Egypt be lost here in the Subura?”

  “They were going to strangle us!” Ptolly announced.

  “What?” the three men cried in surprise.

  “They marched us in his Triumph today, then they brought us to the Tullianum, to the executioner,” I said.

  The younger rabbi puffed out his cheeks. “Ben Harabim, have you brought into this House of God, Enemies of Rome?”

  “But I was only trying to help these lost children….”

  “It was a mistake, a misunderstanding,” Alexandros said. “We were supposed to go back to Octavianus’s house on the Palatine.”

  “Some mistake,” the younger rabbi said. He sighed. “We cannot harbor Rome’s enemies here. We must not anger the Romans or bring any attention to ourselves.”

  “Pssstah,” the old man said. “I will not allow such cowardice.” He turned to his son and said in Hebrew, “Is it better to live by the Torah or only read it?”

  “You must understand,” the younger rabbi said, flushing, “during these years of civil war, the Romans … Sometimes people look for someone to blame, someone to take their frustrations out on. So. We will help. We just cannot harbor you here.”

  “Well, that is good, because I do not want to be here,” Ptolly whined. “I want to go home!”

  I was so surprised by the word “home” that I must have repeated it without realizing it. Ptolly turned to me, a tantrum brewing on his flushed face. “Yes! Home! With Tonia and Marcellus and Octavia and the rest of my family.”

  Octavianus’s complex on the Palatine was not, and would never be, “home.” Nor would anyone in Octavianus’s household ever be “family” to me.

  “Come here,” the old rabbi said to Ptolly. “Do you know the story of Jonah and the whale?”