Cleopatra's Moon

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  I wore a gown of gold as I glided away from him. “A queen must sacrifice her personal desires for the good of her people,” I said to no one in particular. I had heard Mother say so many times.

  I was in the woods. Marcellus called to me. He was sitting on a tree stump, wearing the bright white toga I had seen him in the morning I’d left for the Temple. “Come here,” he called. I looked down and found a shining bronze mirror in my hand. I held it out to his face. His reflection blinded us both. I dropped the mirror, though I never heard it hit the ground.

  “I desire you,” he said, standing so close I could feel his breath on my hair. “What do you desire?”

  “Sovereignty,” I murmured.

  “No,” he said, surprised. “You must desire me!”

  I looked up at him. “I desire power over the house of Octavianus.”

  “I will give you anything you want,” Marcellus said. “Beginning with me.”

  “I want Egypt,” I said.

  The Goddess’s laughter wound around me like a gentle breeze, low and knowing. I turned around, confused. Where was the Goddess? I could hear her, but I could not see her.

  “I want what my mother wanted!” I announced to her, to Marcellus, to the air. Mother wanted independence for Egypt. She knew we could not fight Rome — who could? — and sought to ally herself instead. Why couldn’t I do the same?

  “You must choose,” the Goddess whispered.

  Choose what?

  “Selene!” Marcellus whispered, smiling. I had forgotten he was there. “Come with me.”

  “Cleopatra Selene,” someone else whispered — Juba. “You must make a choice,” the Goddess said.

  “Is that my only choice — to choose between men?” I asked. “I want what Mother had!”

  “Your mother chose two men,” she said with light laughter.

  “No! She chose independence for her country. She chose power and freedom,” I yelled.

  Almost as if in response, a pulsating energy moved up from the ground into my bare feet. It thrummed up my body and radiated out in a bright light, first from my toes, then my fingertips, then the top of my head.

  “I choose power,” I said. “I choose freedom.”

  “Yesssssss,” the Goddess answered in the breeze. “That is all one can ever choose.”

  My eyes snapped open. A cold floor. A blurry vision of swaying chanters. Flickering flames. The smell of sharp, cloying incense and human sweat. A priest stood over me and read from the Book of the Dead, beseeching the gods on my behalf:

  Let no evil come to me from you.

  Declare me right and true in the presence of Osiris,

  Because I have done what is right and true in Egypt.

  “Anubis calls,” someone whispered. Arms grabbed me. Others wrapped me in thick red cloth, blinding me, binding me. I could not breathe. Bodies held me down.

  “You must die before you can be reborn,” the priestess breathed into my ear. Someone covered my nose and mouth. Were the embalmers, the Priests of Anubis, mummifying me alive? I bucked and arched. Rage, terror, as my body fought. Air, give me air! Why were they killing me? I thrashed, every inch of my being screaming for air. Whirring spots of light exploded behind my eyes.

  I floated. Stillness, in between Time. No breath, no life, no sound. A sea of nothing.

  “Welcome, Little Moon,” a woman said.

  “Mother!” I rejoiced, trying to turn toward her but moving as if trapped in liquid amber. Mother!

  She was in the golden dress of Isis, the one she wore on the day of her death. “I am the Mother of All,” she said, and she transformed into the True Goddess, Isis, with her raiment of glittering stars and a golden disk on her head. I threw myself at her feet, a movement that took a lifetime.

  “Let me stay with you, please,” I begged. “Do not send me back.”

  “But I am with you always,” the Goddess of All said.

  “No, you left me!” I cried.

  “Stand, child!”

  I stood, quivering with fear. Had I angered her? I could feel her moving away from me like a toy boat on the Nile floating out of my reach. “Wait! I will do whatever you want. Just stay with me,” I begged.

  “I am always with you,” she whispered into the nothingness. “You chose power. Where does it live?”

  Was she testing me? I wanted to get my answer right. I thought back to my choice in the earlier vision. Marcellus and Juba were there. Was I supposed to choose the power represented by either of them? Was I supposed to do what Mother did and align with Rome through its leaders?

  “Where, child, does your power reside?” the Great Mother prompted again.

  “With Marcellus?” I asked. Is that why she put him in my vision?

  “Where …,” she whispered again.

  And then I understood. “In you!” I cried, desperate to give her the answer she sought. “The power is in you! In my True Mother. In the Goddess. I surrender it all to you!”

  But she was already gone, the echo of her sigh falling around me like mist.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  When I awoke, I lay on my side, curled and naked like a newborn, wrapped in a blanket of the softest linen. My eyes fluttered open. I was in the sanctuary of the Great Goddess, at the foot of her immense painted marble statue. I stared up into her open arms, her head slightly bent with a smile of welcoming. Someone had placed a brilliant blue mantle over the statue’s head, covering her hair. Roses covered her feet, rich, sweet, mysterious.

  Isetnofret, the Lady of Isis, stood in front of the statue and drew her arms up toward the Goddess. “Take to your bosom these Initiates who now devote their lives to you, O Great Mother. You allowed them a sip from the cup of death and blessed their return. They are reborn in the light, born again into their new lives under your care.”

  I belong to the Goddess now, I thought. Then I smiled. I always had.

  After prayers of gratitude for surviving our journey and donning the saffron tunics of the newly initiated, we feasted and celebrated with the other devotees of the Goddess in a banquet room overflowing with food. I lounged with the other initiates, the three of us smiling shyly at one another.

  “Come with us,” Isetnofret said into my ear. I followed her into a room curtained off from the banqueting hall, where a small group of shaven-headed priests and long-haired priestesses waited. She posted a guard to ensure our privacy.

  The head priestess turned to me. “Tell me what vision the Goddess sent you, what she said to you.”

  “She asked me to choose,” I said hesitatingly.

  “And what did you choose?” Isetnofret asked.

  “Power,” I said. “I chose power.”

  A slow smile broke across the priestess’s face. “Very good.” She exchanged looks with the others.

  “Why?” I asked. “What does it mean?”

  “It means the Goddess has blessed our plans,” she said. “The people of Isis suffer in the Land of Kemet, for ma’at has been disrupted. We finally have a plan to reinstate you on the throne. And now we know the Goddess approves.”

  “How? How will we get Egypt back?”

  “Cornelius Gallus,” she said.

  I shook my head, not understanding. Isetnofret began to pace. “He is the low-ranking officer Caesar left in charge of Egypt. He has been showing a certain restlessness for more control over what Caesar bids him manage. The priests of Egypt have approached him about returning ma’at to the land. He is open to our plans.”

  “What plans?”

  “To marry you. You would rule beside him as the great queen you were destined to be.”

  I sucked in a breath. “But … but the Goddess did not show me Cornelius Gallus….” She showed me Juba and Marcellus, but no one else. And she did not show me Egypt, I realized suddenly.

  “The Goddess is not always literal, but she makes her intentions clear. She wants you to have power. We needed confirmation, and we got it.”

  A thrill surged up my spin
e. “But marrying Gallus — how would that balance ma’at if Rome still rules?”

  “Rome rules because of its mighty military. But it does not know how to rule the Ancient Lands.”

  “Octavianus would never allow it,” I said. “He would declare another war on me and our people!”

  “Octavianus is preparing to go to Spain within the next three months,” Isetnofret said, “where rebelling tribes are destabilizing Rome’s control again. A well-timed rebellion in Alexandria would leave him too stretched, too weak, to do anything about it. And since Egypt controls the grain that feeds Rome, we have only to remind him of his dependence on the bounty of the Mother Goddess.”

  “But if I rule as queen, then Cornelius Gallus would be considered king. And no Roman would ever allow another Roman to take that title.”

  “True, but Gallus is prepared to claim that he marries you merely to satisfy the priests and the religious classes. As long as he doesn’t name himself king, he breaks no Roman law.” Isetnofret smiled. “And as soon as it is clear that our plans are stable and there will be no war, we would eliminate Gallus.”

  Murder him? My shock must have shown on my face, for Isetnofret touched my shoulder and said, “Do not worry. It would not be by your hand.”

  Gods, but the murder would be in my name, on my behalf! I thought of the rumors and accusations I had heard about Mother in Rome — that she’d had my aunt Arsinoe killed, that she had killed her younger brother too. I always dismissed them out of hand, but suddenly it did not seem so unimaginable. If someone dared take Egypt away from Mother, she would not have hesitated to act in defense of her crown.

  Yet Mother never betrayed her Roman husbands. She understood that alliance was the answer. Perhaps Isetnofret did not realize how impossible it would be to do anything without a Roman consort. Besides, murdering a Roman citizen would create a backlash big enough to threaten my rule. No, there would be no murder in my name. When the time came, I would stay their hand. They would see the wisdom of it. I would make them.

  I set my jaw and nodded at the priestess.

  “The Goddess has spoken,” Isetnofret said. “In my visions, she calls you ‘Queen.’ Do you see? And now your journey with her confirms it.”

  The prospect of going home, of stepping into the legacy and the life destined for me … A calm peace settled over me. This was the will of the Goddess. I smiled up at Isetnofret.

  She grinned back. “We prepare for revolution.”

  When I returned to Octavianus’s complex, I rushed to find Alexandros. The priestess had warned me not to talk to him in detail about our plans — indeed she warned me not talk to him about them at all — but I did not like keeping something so big from my twin. Besides, he might become inspired enough to undergo the rites himself at the next full moon.

  Alexandros was in the main garden on a bench under one of the shade trees. At my approach he slammed shut a wax tablet he had been writing on.

  “By the Eye of Ra, brother!” I exclaimed, grinning. “One would think you were writing to a secret beloved, the way you closed that!”

  “I am doing nothing of the sort,” he replied testily. But the flush that crept up his neck reminded me of his mysterious lover in the woods.

  “So who were you kissing in the woods last week?”

  He scowled. “You said you knew!”

  “Well, I had thought it was Marcellus, but Marcellus denies it.”

  “Marcellus!” he nearly barked. “Why would you think that?”

  “I saw blond curls and I thought I heard a male voice … never mind. Just tell me who it was!”

  He stood up. “Oh, gods! You told him about seeing us? Now he will wonder too. Julia will kill me!”

  “Julia?” I squeaked. “You were with Julia?”

  “Not so loud,” Alexandros said as he sat back down.

  “But why Julia of all people? Are you looking to get us killed?”

  “She has pursued me,” he said defiantly.

  “Well, of course she has! Nothing would make her father angrier than to see his daughter with the son of the queen of Egypt! She lives to spite him. Are you mad?”

  Alexandros shrugged. “Maybe so. But you are mad for bringing it up to Marcellus. He is too close to Octavianus to trust. For anything.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I will tell her we need to stop. She will see the sense in it.”

  I was going to berate him for his poor judgment, but a new thought gave me pause. “Brother, do you — do you love her?”

  A look of bewildered horror moved over his face. “You do not know me at all if you think I could,” he said in a low tone as he got up to leave.

  “Wait!” I grabbed his arm. “Don’t you want to know about the Mysteries? Don’t you want to know about the Goddess’s plan to return us to our rightful throne?” I whispered.

  He pulled his arm away from me. “I want nothing the Goddess pretends to offer. She has failed us too many times.”

  Once again, he stalked away from me in a rage over the Goddess. I touched two fingers to my heart in the sign of protection against evil as I watched him go.

  Later that afternoon, I went to Livia’s tablinum. Although I had plenty to read from Isetnofret, my restlessness after talking to Alexandros made it hard to concentrate, and scanning scrolls always calmed me. Even so, my stomach flip-flopped with worry. What would Octavianus do if he found out about my brother and Julia? Why had the Goddess not called him?

  “There you are!”

  “Marcellus!” I said. “You scared me.”

  “Why did you not come see me the minute you came home?” he asked teasingly.

  “What did you do to your hair?” I cried. His blond curls were gone, shorn close to his head in the Roman military fashion.

  He rubbed his hands over his scalp, more brown than blond now. “Well, I cannot have someone I care about confusing my curls with those of a girl’s, now can I?”

  I reddened.

  “You don’t like it?” he asked.

  “But your beautiful curls!”

  He laughed. “Yes, Mother is furious with me too. But I have sacrificed them at the altar of the household gods, which has appeased her.”

  The haircut made him look older and more serious, but at the same time, even more handsome. I stared at the strong planes of his face, the blue eyes that seemed even bluer now, the full, sumptuous mouth. He must have noticed me looking at his lips, for he smiled slowly.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, quickly turning my attention back to the pigeonhole stacks of scrolls.

  “Looking for you,” he said. “I saw Juba, so I knew you were back.”

  “I thought you said it would be better if we acted as if what took place between us never happened,” I said.

  “Ah! So that’s what has upset you.”

  I shook my head. Now that my focus was on getting Egypt back through Gallus, I could not afford to risk anything with Marcellus. Better to stop it now. “I am not upset,” I said, crouching to look at the scrolls on the lower shelves.

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.” He came closer. Despite myself, I could feel my heart rate quicken. Why did I respond to him this way?

  I stood. “Nothing in particular.”

  “Come here,” he said, taking my hand lightly by the fingertips. I followed him to a corner of the small study where a row of shelves blocked us from view of the doorway. He turned to me with half-lidded eyes and his signature sensuous smile.

  “This is a bad idea,” I said.

  “No it isn’t,” he whispered, moving closer. “I have missed you.”

  He wound an arm around my waist and pulled me into a kiss. I shivered at the feel of his lips, confused by the disparity between what my thoughts said — Do not do this; cannot risk plans for Egypt — and how my body responded to his touch.

  I put my hands on his chest. “Marcellus, please.”

  He chuckled in my ear after kissing my throat. “I can feel your hear
tbeat. Your body does not lie.”

  “My heart races because I am scared,” I said, trying to convince myself that it was true.

  He pulled back. “Scared?” His tone sounded surprised. “Why would I scare you? I will not force you to do anything you do not desire.”

  “Do you know what Octavianus would do if he knew his Golden Boy and the daughter of his enemy were together? He would kill me! He’s wanted to all these years, and this would be the perfect excuse….” I closed my eyes, thinking of what he would do to Alexandros too if he found out about him and Julia.

  “Caesar doesn’t have to know.”

  I held my hands firm on his chest. “No.”

  “Is it someone else? Did Juba steal you away on your trip?”

  I laughed. “Gods, no!” Why would he think that? I remembered then what Juba had said about Marcellus — that it was my reticence he found so compelling. I had become a challenge, a sort of test of his irresistibility. I moved away. I did not want to be a casualty of his narcissism.

  He touched my arm. “You have the loveliest skin,” he murmured. “Like honey in sunlight.”

  “I really must get back to my reading,” I said, turning my back to him in dismissal.

  But instead of leaving, he put his hands on my waist and pressed his body against me from behind. The contact so surprised me, I gasped. He chuckled low against my ear, and I closed my eyes.

  “Why do you fight me?” he whispered.

  I pulled away again. “Juba said you only found me interesting because you have not yet conquered me — and that you will forget me as soon as you do.”

  “Sounds like someone is jealous.”

  “He is not jealous! He still thinks of me as a child.”

  Marcellus watched my mouth. “Then he is a fool,” he murmured.

  I turned toward the door, but he reached for my wrist. “Wait. Need I remind you that Caesar is grooming me as his heir?”

  I laughed. “Oh, and is that supposed to make me fall into your arms?”

  He shrugged and grinned. “Only if you find power seductive.”