When Louise left the bedchamber and entered the covered arcade to deliver the mammoth scroll to Cleopatra, the first thing that hit her was the intense heat. It felt as if she were baking in an oven. It had to be over a hundred degrees! Way over, she thought, wiping a torrent of sweat already running down her face. She glanced down and discovered the back of her hand was covered with smudged red rouge and greasy black eyeliner. She didn’t even want to know what Charmian’s makeup was looking like right now.
The air wasn’t like Connecticut in August, though. It was a dry heat, with no humidity, like being in a sauna… or a desert. No humidity means no frizzies! Louise thought, instinctively reaching up to her head and accidentally pulling off a bob-length wig. Wait, where was her hair? She dropped the scroll on the floor and frantically felt the top of her prickly head, which was shaved close to the scalp. Charmian was bald! Startled, Louise quickly put the dark braided wig back in place and nervously looked around to see if anyone had seen her gaffe. Luckily, no one had. She tried to check out her reflection in the polished marble wall and could barely make out a blurry version of her familiar face under a wig that was completely askew. She hastily adjusted her way-off-center part, picked up the scroll, and kept walking.
If she was with Cleopatra, then she was probably in Egypt, Louise deduced, halfway around the world and a few thousand years from her real life. Whoa. It was an exhilarating and terrifying realization. She had definitely never been this far from home before.
The scale of the palace was enormous, and Louise hobbled past an endless series of rooms connected by shaded open-air walkways, trying not to drop the cumbersome scroll along the way. She tottered down a magnificent hallway past a grand bubbling fountain with real brightly colored fish swimming in the blue-and-green-tiled basin, pausing to catch her breath and admire the intricate tile mosaics of lions on the floor, and the detailed hieroglyphic battle scenes carved into the limestone walls. She was a bit intimidated by the immense height of the towering Corinthian columns lining the walkway, but she laughed out loud as a monkey scurried past her and agilely climbed up a wide limestone pillar as though it were a tree. Exotic birds with electric blue and yellow feathers flew through the halls, singing and chirping as they darted from one lush green courtyard to another. It was like walking into the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but, judging by the wildlife, it was real.
Following Livia’s hurried instructions, Louise took a right at the end of the walkway and stepped through an arched cedar doorway into what looked like the royal library. She found Cleopatra, who Louise now guessed was roughly seventeen years old, sitting with her legs crossed on a low bench with a bright teal cushion in the middle of a school lesson. She had taken off her red cape and was wearing a matching scarlet-colored Greek-style flowing silk gown and intently listening while a tall, slender man read a passage aloud to her from a six-foot-long scroll. Strangely enough, the teacher was also wearing eye makeup and rouge and a long white robe. This must have been Pothinus. The scroll was so unwieldy it needed to be held by two male servants, who were wearing simple white sarongs and not much else. Apparently in this pre-iPad era, reading a book was a three-person job!
A diagram of a family tree of the different gods and goddesses was tacked onto the wall. The god Amun was noted at the top, and others with crocodile heads and mummy bodies continued below. Also hung on the wall were some extremely complicated-looking mathematical equations, the Greek alphabet, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. There were stacks of rolled-up papyrus scrolls stored in cubbyholes on the far wall, and Louise couldn’t help but compare it in her mind with her own classroom with its whiteboards and bookshelves. These scrolls were a lot different from the paper-bag-covered schoolbooks she was used to lugging around all day.
Once inside, Louise happily dropped The Odyssey, and it proceeded to unroll before her like a red carpet, dramatically announcing her arrival. Cleopatra shot Louise an intensely annoyed look, and Louise’s palms were instantly clammy with sweat. Oops, another glamorous entrance!
Three handmaidens stood to one side, wearing a rainbow of brightly colored linen tunics and fanning the seated Cleopatra with large ostrich and peacock feathers. When Louise walked a little farther in, she was handed an oversize plume as well. The tutor stopped midsentence, and the two bare-chested servants hastily collected the scroll Louise had so gracefully delivered. Pothinus then began to read from that one instead.
Following the lead of the other handmaidens, Louise started to fan Cleopatra as best she could. It was a lot of work! After what felt like an hour but was probably only five minutes, Louise was sweating profusely and worrying that, with her luck, the green-and-purple peacock feather, which now felt as if it weighed as much as a brick, would slip out of her damp palms and land smack on Cleopatra’s head.
Nevertheless, despite the manual labor, Louise couldn’t help but ogle Cleopatra’s outfit. She wore fabulous green-jeweled leather gladiator sandals, a much fancier version of the plain brown pair Louise was wearing, adorned with what must have been real sparkling emeralds! Even Christian Louboutin would have been jealous of those bedazzled shoes.
Louise could see by the entranced look on her face that Cleopatra was obsessed with Homer, and she wondered if he was like the J. K. Rowling of ancient times. Unlike what she had observed of Marie Antoinette, who struggled with reading and writing and didn’t seem to take much interest at all in her studies, Louise could already tell that Cleopatra was incredibly smart and seriously into her schoolwork.
Pothinus paused and pointed at his only pupil, signaling that it was now Cleopatra’s turn to recite part of the epic poem, which she did by heart. Her reading voice was beautiful, almost musical, and Louise found herself standing transfixed, mesmerized by the young queen’s oratory skills. The handmaiden next to Louise shot her a searing look and nudged her to stop staring and keep fanning.
For the next part of her lesson, Cleopatra began practicing her hieroglyphics with a sharpened quill pen and black ink on a sheet of blank papyrus. It seemed much rougher and more fibrous than the loose-leaf paper Louise was used to taking her class notes or, more likely, doodling on. How long did these lessons last? Louise wondered, instinctively looking up on the wall for a clock that obviously wouldn’t be there. They probably told time on sundials or some other ancient system. The school day was starting to feel as endlessly dull as it was at Fairview, and Cleopatra didn’t even have other students or friends to distract her. Of course, Cleopatra seemed to be able to focus for a lot longer than the hyper kids in her classes. Louise had to admit she was excited to see that the legendary Queen of the Nile was actually kind of… a geek.
“Excuse me, I must interrupt. King Ptolemy will be arriving shortly,” a man wearing a long purple robe boomed at the entrance to the library, abruptly cutting off the lesson. Louise welcomed the interruption. Pothinus had roughly the same amount of inflection as Miss Morris, droning on about Alexander the Great and all of his military conquests, blah blah blah. She straightened up, smoothed out her dress, and hoped her wig was securely in place as her head was definitely sweating. Her wrist was starting to cramp up, too, from all that fanning, and she wanted to look somewhat presentable—she was about to meet the King of Egypt!
Louise was totally shocked, then, to see that King Ptolemy, who was carried into the room on a golden throne by four muscular servants in loincloths, was actually a chubby young boy, probably no more than ten years old. She bit her lip so she wouldn’t giggle and completely give herself away as everyone stood as still and solemn as statues; no one else in the study was even smiling. It seemed a totally ridiculous and over-the-top way for a kid to travel from room to room. Couldn’t he walk? The young boy was regally draped in a leopard-skin mantle clasped at the neck with a giant ruby brooch, and he wore a black braided wig under a golden crown that was too big for his small head. He was scowling and petting a sleek black cat curled up asleep in his lap. Apparently it was okay for a king to pet the f
our-legged deity, just not Louise.
“Hello, little brother. What brings you to this part of the palace?” Cleopatra asked sharply, obviously not happy to see him.
“I was so terribly bored. Let’s do something fun,” he answered in a high-pitched and already grating voice. The cat on his lap opened one eye and gave a wide yawn.
“You do know that I must study. And I strongly recommend you do the same,” she said firmly.
He shrugged. “I don’t feel like it. It’s too hot to study.” Ptolemy seemed whiny and irritating, like a typical little brother. Not that Louise knew much about that. She was an only child, but Brooke’s younger brother, Julian, was constantly getting on their nerves and always bothering them whenever they hung out at the Pattersons’ house, much to her friend’s annoyance.
“Well, you can be ignorant if you like, but I must keep studying, as I haven’t even started practicing my Latin yet,” Cleopatra declared, shooing him out of the library with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“But you are always working. Why don’t you want to play a game with me? Father is dead, so he can’t make us study anymore.”
“Exactly,” Cleopatra replied. “Now we must take over his responsibilities. Have you even attempted to learn Egyptian yet? As Greeks, we must try especially hard to assimilate with our subjects.”
The rulers of Egypt were… Greek? Weird, Louise thought. We must not have gotten to that part in the movie yet.
Ptolemy rolled his eyes at her as he motioned to his stone-faced handlers to get moving. “Suit yourself. Perhaps Arsinoe will be more fun,” he said haughtily, and was immediately carried out of the room on his portable throne.
Without any clocks, Louise could only guesstimate how long Cleopatra’s school day actually was, but it felt like at least ten hours. She could hardly feel her hands from all the fanning, her left leg was starting to tingle with pins and needles, and she had to keep shifting her weight so her foot wouldn’t fall completely asleep. It was a small miracle she didn’t just topple right over. She had one precariously close call when the tip of her fan tickled the top of Cleopatra’s forehead. The queen had swatted it away like an errant mosquito, but the girl next to Louise gave her a sharp poke in the ribs, and she quickly straightened up. They were allowed a few small breaks for water and fruit, but they never left the royal study all day. For each snack break, Livia would walk in with a platter of grapes or almonds and before leaving the room would pop one in her mouth. Louise looked on wide-eyed, convinced that Cleopatra would reprimand Livia for eating her food first, but she never did. It was the strangest thing.
When Cleopatra finally got up from her cushioned seat and put on her red silk cape, signaling the end of class, Louise let out an audible sigh of relief. She really hoped today was Friday, or however they told time in these days, otherwise this was going to be a really long week! And she thought sitting through Miss Morris’s forty-minute history class was torture. At least she could sit!
As Cleopatra exited the room, the other handmaidens motioned that Charmian should follow her. Apparently Louise’s new job was not to let the queen out of her sight. Louise trailed a few feet behind down the wide-open hallway, occasionally dodging a low-flying parakeet, unsure of what exactly she was supposed to be doing. A musician playing a wooden flute pranced along the walkway with the young queen, providing a musical accompaniment for her trip from school, like an old-fashioned iPod. Louise noticed that there were stern-looking guards with sheathed swords standing at attention at various doorways they passed.
“Charmian,” Cleopatra called over her shoulder, “find my husband for me. I have an urgent matter that we must discuss.”
Ugh, why did Charmian have to play such an active role? She wished she could just disappear into the background like the other servants, or walk around eating grapes all day like Livia. “Find who?” Louise asked, confused. She tried to think back to what she’d learned from the movie but could only remember the fabulous costumes. Typical!
“King Ptolemy, of course. Charmian, do you have heatstroke?”
“The king? But I thought he was your brother?” Louise couldn’t help but ask.
Cleopatra abruptly stopped walking, and Louise almost ran smack into her. She turned around, her face clouded. “That he is. In the name of Isis, I will not tolerate this insolence! Summon my brother to my chambers immediately.”
“What? Never mind, of course, Your Highness,” Louise replied, flustered. She hurried off in the opposite direction, her leather sandals nearly slipping on the slick marble tiles. Is this normal for ancient times? Her younger brother is also… her husband? Could that be any grosser?
And how was she supposed to find Ptolemy in this enormous and completely unfamiliar estate? She needed to get directions, stat. Louise stopped to ask one of the scary-looking guardsmen, who directed her to cross the courtyard, walk up a flight of stairs, through the throne room, down a spiral staircase, beyond the garden… and then her mind couldn’t absorb another detail. Louise repeated it over and over in her head so she wouldn’t forget. A GPS would have been a lot more helpful. According to her mother, thanks to her iPhone, she had never developed a sense of direction.
Finally she arrived at the door of the king’s quarters, which were guarded by four extremely large and heavily armed watchmen. Ptolemy was meeting with his advisers. It looked strange to see a boy of ten and barely four feet tall giving orders to three grown men, one of whom was dressed in a full suit of body armor.
The moment Charmian was announced at the doorway, the men immediately stopped their conversation midsentence, leaving a chilling silence. “Speak. What do you want?” Ptolemy asked suspiciously. “Can you not see that we are in the middle of important royal business?”
“Your Majesty, Queen Cleopatra would like to see you in her chambers,” Louise responded shyly. Ptolemy’s squinty brown eyes narrowed into two angry slits. She awkwardly curtseyed as she had seen them do in some period movie, praying it was the right period, before excusing herself from the room as quickly as she could. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was, but something about the hushed meeting she had just interrupted gave her the creeps.
Once she had gotten far enough away, Louise decided to take the scenic route back, mainly because she was completely lost. At least it gave her a good opportunity to explore her new home, which was beyond extravagant. Red-and-orange Oriental carpets lined the wide hallways, which were flanked with granite and marble statues of sphinxes. Many of the walls were decorated with pigment-painted scenes of gods and pharaohs standing stiffly in profile, occasionally depicting a human body but with an animal head, some carrying spears or musical instruments. Low couches draped in deep maroon-and-gold tapestry fabrics were sporadically placed throughout the palace and gave Louise a place to rest for a second and take in all of the amazing ancient artwork. She was starting to be overcome with that sleepy feeling she got whenever her parents stayed too long at a museum, as though taking in so much beauty was exhausting.
Interestingly enough, it seemed that as a handmaiden Louise could walk anywhere in the ginormous palace with never-ending wings and rooms and courtyards. It was as if she weren’t even there—as if she were practically invisible. If Charmian were a spy, she would be in a good position to get the inside scoop. The halls were bustling with servants, armed guards, and toga-clad messengers who all seemed in a hurry to get somewhere and brushed by Louise without a backward glance. No one stopped her or asked her where she was going as she ran her hand over the cool limestone and marble walls while looking up at the tall, vaulted ceiling encrusted with jewels and gold, ebony, and tortoiseshell. It was beyond even the excesses of the palace of Versailles. There must have been hundreds of rooms all filled with ceramic pottery, plush ottomans and high-back armchairs upholstered in purple and red fabric, and exotic, spotted animal pelts covering the floors. Louise hoped Charmian wasn’t responsible for cleaning all the guest rooms, too—that could take weeks!
“What do you do all day?” Louise finally asked. It seemed as if this girl just lounged around eating the queen’s food and looked on while Louise and the other servants did all the work.
“Why, I am the royal taster,” Livia replied in a serious tone.
“You mean you taste if the food is good?” Louise asked enviously. Next to being a designer’s assistant, this girl pretty much had her dream assignment.
“In a way, I suppose I do,” she replied, giving Louise a curious look.
“Can we switch jobs?” Louise asked. “I have a very refined palate,” she added, thinking of all the new foods she was trying now that her father was cooking all her meals back home.
“I wish,” Livia said wistfully. “But of course it is not our decision.”
“Of course,” Louise replied grumpily. She had lost a serious amount of decision-making ability on this particular journey, she thought as she swept the oversize feather duster across a massive vase filled with dozens of fragrant, fresh red roses.
The Time-Traveling Fashionista and Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile Page 6