Kleopatra (2 page)

“Move aside, fools,” said the king, thrusting his capacious royal body through the cluster hovering about the queen’s bed.
“This man is here to compensate for your ineptitude.”

“But Your Majesty,” protested the priest. “What unholy presence might this conjurer evoke?”

“Strip this idiot of the priest’s robe and send him to the mines,” the king said calmly, almost lightly, to one of his bodyguards.
The priest fell to his knees, his face on the floor, murmuring low incantations to the cold, deaf surface. Satisfied with
the effect of his threat, the king winked at Kleopatra, whose glowing child eyes smiled back at her father’s weary ones.

Kleopatra wanted the healer to hurry his magic. She longed to see the queen once again sit up, put on her makeup and shiny
robes, and take her place beside the king in the Royal Reception Room where the three princesses were allowed to sit from
time to time while their parents entertained visitors from faraway places. Though Kleopatra saw her mother only at these occasions,
she was awed by her ethereal beauty and by the songs she played on the lyre. Fair and delicate, Tryphaena was not a real person
like herself or her father or her sisters, but one of the Muses come down to earth to make them smile.

Out of the healer’s saddlebags came small statues of naked deities: one headless, one with fearsome eyes and a hawk nose,
one with a crooked phallus. Kleopatra strained to hear the unimaginable secrets he whispered to them as he removed them from
the bag. From the bottom of his sorcerer’s well he produced a thick cluster of herbs, weeds, leaves, and roots, bound together
into a ratty tangle, and called for someone to light it with fire from one of the queen’s oil lamps.

“Mithra, Baal-Hadad, and Asherah who slew and resurrected him.” The healer raised the torch, summoning the terrible gods of
the east. Mithra, Mithra! Kleopatra prayed silently with him as he danced about the bed drawing circles in the air with his
smoke stick. “Mother Astarte who creates and destroys. Kybele, goddess of all that is, was, and ever shall be,” he invoked.

Suddenly he bent over as if in great pain, spewing guttural noises, thrashing in the air, warring with the unseen forces of
the queen’s illness. He carried on this way for what seemed to Kleopatra like a very long time. Then he raised his arms, ran
to the bed, and passed out cold over the queen’s delirious body. Kleopatra willed with all her might that the queen would
open her eyes, but Tryphaena, lovely features bathed in the sweat of her fevers, did not flinch.

The king hung his great head as the servants carried the healer from the room. He called for his flute and began to play,
offering a desolate melody to the gods in a final bargain to save his wife. Kleopatra wanted to be near him so she crawled
to his feet, chasing with her fingers a bright green cricket. The king paused, and Kleopatra hoped he would pick her up. But
she realized that he was waiting for the faint strings of the queen’s song. They had played music together, he on the flute,
she on the lyre, and often passed evenings in this pursuit. When his duet partner failed to move, he began to play once more.

One by one, the old women of the court, relatives whom Auletes sheltered in their dotage, came to keep vigil for the queen.
With piteous eyes, they patted Kleopatra’s hair, commenting on its lovely sable color, or kissed her forehead as they passed
her. She knew that her father did not want the old ladies in the room. Auletes housed the dowagers in the family palace on
the island of Antirhodos, so that they had to commit to a boat ride before they could interfere in his affairs. But they could
not be kept from the chamber of the dying queen, where they burned herbs and incense and appealed in prayer to Isis, Mother
of Creation, Mother of God. Four solemn-faced red-robed priestesses of the goddess came to inspire and anoint the ladies of
prayer while the doctors applied compresses to the queen’s hot brow and listened to her fevered murmuring.

“Lady of Compassion,” cried the women in craggy aged voices. “Lady of Healing. Lady who eases our suffering.” As the queen’s
condition worsened, they made frightful appeals to the goddess’s dark side, scaring the small princess, who clutched at her
father’s ankle with each rancorous invocation.

“Devourer of men.”

“Goddess of the Slaughter.”

“Lady of Thunder.”

“Destroyer of the souls of men.”

“Destroy the Fates that conspire to seize the life of our queen and sister.”

The Chief Surgeon wiped his hands on his apron. The king put down his instrument. Kleopatra stared at the sandaled feet of
the two giants above her, wondering how toes got so big and skin so crusty.

“The queen’s blood is poisoned by the high temperatures in her body,” the Chief Surgeon said, more confident of his position
since the foreigner’s magic had failed.

The doctor’s assistants walked solemnly from Tryphaena’s bed carrying pots of contaminated rags, brown with sweat and dried
blood. The surgeon motioned for them to show the contents to the king. Kleopatra got to her knees, sneaking a look at the
putrid blood-brown cloths. How could such ugliness come from her beautiful mother?

Trying to avoid the king’s face, the Chief Surgeon looked to the ground, where he saw the little princess staring at his large
feet. “I have bled her as much as I dare, Your Majesty. I cannot remove the fever. It is up to the gods now when and if we
shall lose the queen.”

The ladies fell into supplication. “O merciful Lady, Divine One, mightier than the eight gods of Hermopolis. Source of All
Life. Source of All Healing. Do not take our queen Tryphaena.” Despite their age, they beat their chests unmercifully, fists
thumping hollow, sunken breasts.

Kleopatra waited for her father to dole out a punishment to the Chief Surgeon like he did the others. The doctor dropped to
his knees and, with the impetuousness of a young lover, kissed Auletes’ ringed hand. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, if I have
failed you. I would happily pay for the queen’s life with mine.” Auletes did not respond.

The doctor seemed surprised that he had been sentenced neither to death nor to exile. He recovered his dignity with a nervous
cough. “I must supervise the chemistry for the queen’s sedatives. Her Majesty must be made comfortable on her journey to meet
the gods.” With a hasty prayer, the doctor excused himself.

Auletes remained standing, slumped, bewildered, unattended. Kleopatra picked up the cricket and offered it to her father.
A sad giant, he shook his head and closed his eyes. Kleopatra settled between his feet, sheltering the cricket with her hands,
thwarting its escape.

Fifteen-year-old Thea, the queen Tryphaena’s daughter from her first marriage to a Syrian prince, held Berenike in her lap,
her cat eyes darting from the little princess on the floor to the king. Kleopatra shuddered. Thea was the image of her mother,
but a darker, shadow side. Her black hair fell extravagantly down the length of her back, for she did not yet bind it into
the tight knot favored by adult women. Her white, even teeth were perfectly set against her burnished complexion. She had
inherited the queen’s aquiline nose and triangle-shaped face, but her features were sharper and more acute than her mother’s
gentler angles. Her contrasts heightened her conspicuous beauty, whereas Tryphaena’s softer attributes meshed into a timid
gracefulness. Tryphaena, even when in perfect health, looked like an immortal creature merely visiting the harsh world of
the living; Thea was clearly designed to live in the earthy, physical world. Though her time had not yet come, her body was
developed and at odds with her childish clothes and undressed hair. Her young charms were bursting through the last vestiges
of childhood, which she was ready to shed like a snake discards last season’s skin.

Thea held Berenike tight, leaving Kleopatra to wonder what it felt like in that closed circle. “I will always take care of
you, darling,” she said into the child’s ear. Thea’s words were a song to Berenike, who adored her older half sister; her
promises, a salve to Berenike’s wounds.

“Now I will never know her,” cried Berenike, who was precisely the age at which the queen should have begun to take an interest
in her, though it was unlikely that this would ever have happened. Before she took ill, Tryphaena had spent her days playing
music, reading books, and having earnest debates with the Sophists. Berenike liked to hunt small prey with her bow, wrestle
with her pack of dogs, and chase the little slave brats through the courtyard with her sling.

Thea did not join in Berenike’s activities, but was an enthusiastic audience for Berenike’s feats, applauding any new progress
she made with her weapons. Berenike dreamed of a day when she would be plucked from the nursery to have special audiences
with her mother and show her how she could already hit the center of a target. But she had not had a conversation with her
mother in more than two months, and her memory of the queen had already begun to dim.

Thea mouthed words of consolation, but she was not thinking about her mother or her stepsister. Thea pondered her own Fate.
She was not the daughter of the king. She was not in line for the throne. Once her mother died, she would be sent to one of
the outer palaces to live with the meddling old women who wailed in the queen’s chamber, until someone in the king’s service
suggested a marriage to a house in a foreign land. Or until she was sent back to the court of her dead father in Syria, a
country now occupied by Tigranes of Armenia, who was at war with the Romans. If the Romans won, which they always did, she
might be thrown to one of them as a trinket, a small toy to quench their lusts. That was what she heard the brutal Romans
demanded in victory, even from women of royal blood. No, there was nowhere for her to go.

“Ramses looks terribly lonely,” said Thea. Berenike’s favorite hound sulked in a corner. “I think he is crying for you.” Thea
deposited Berenike on the floor next to her dog. She walked straight to the stupefied king and took his hand. “Come, Father,”
she said. Kleopatra tried to hold on to her father’s woolly leg, but he slipped from her grip, leaving her little hands empty.

To the astonishment of the ladies, Thea led the king from his post at the queen Tryphaena’s bed. Undaunted by the disapproving
stares of the wrinkled, fierce dowagers, she steered Auletes through their circle of worship and down the stairs to the level
of the palace that housed his private quarters. She took him into his favorite room, the hunting room, and in a voice that
she had never before heard come from her body, ordered his attendants to go away. They skittered to all corners of the palace
to report what was happening.

Kleopatra sat alone on the floor, screaming words that she thought would make her father return. “Stop your gibberish,” yelled
Berenike. “No one knows what you are saying, you idiot.” But Kleopatra could not stop, could not quiet the desire to bring
her father back, to curl into his big firm belly. Berenike stood over her little sister, her long legs tall as smooth young
trees. She crushed the cricket beneath her sandal, leaving Kleopatra to stare at the insect’s smashed remains.

Thea sat the king down upon the wide, soft pallet of his kills. She said, “I am a woman now, Father. Let me take away your
pain.” She opened the front of her white chiton and let it slide off her shoulders. The king looked into the wide eyes, identical
to those of her mother, his wife, and then to the pair of dark nipples that crowned his stepdaughter’s breasts. So like the
queen’s, but somehow more tangible than Tryphaena’s lovely mounds, somehow more conducive to a large pair of rapacious hands
upon them. He pulled the trembling girl onto his lap and closed his eyes, letting the heat of her lips dissipate any thoughts
that might invade this god-sent moment of solace.

The next morning, the king ordered breakfast for two. Thea lay upon a mattress of animal skins—lion, boar, leopard, bear,
and softest of all, panther—lost in the luxurious pile and thick musk smell enveloping her. The king had risen and gone to
his bath. She imagined herself Aphrodite after she had lain upon a bearskin with the mortal Anchises in his herdsman’s hut
while bees circled their bodies, though it was thoughts that buzzed about Thea’s head. The day before she had wondered in
agony about the destiny the Fates had assigned to her; today she was the lover of the king.