Kleopatra (43 page)

“Rise,” she said. She asked one of her attendants to take the necklace and to place it around her neck.

The priest met her eyes. Nothing subservient in the man despite the fact that he had been on his knees before her. “Your Majesty
speaks the language of the people?” he asked, wrinkling his polished forehead. “Is this true, or is it the god’s magic?”

Or is it a Greek’s deception? That’s what he wants to ask, she speculated. Did I learn a few words to be polite, or to deceive
them into thinking I could speak the language?

“I am the queen of Egypt, am I not?” she retorted, perfectly imitating his inflection. She smiled at her own ability to replicate
another’s accent, even in foreign languages. She was pleased that she had spent so much time cultivating this particular talent.
Not one of her ancestors had done this thing, not Ptolemy the Savior, not his visionary son Philadelphus, not any of their
brilliant, power-loving wives, not even Alexander, who brought the nation of Egypt and much of the rest of the world to its
knees. Kleopatra let herself absorb the thought just as she let the sound of her voice uttering perfectly formed Egyptian
words sink into the consciousness of the people on the dock. They had long ago made up their minds about their Greek oppressors,
had long ago learned to hate them, to sabotage them whenever possible, to identify the lot of them as insatiable leeches plumping
their bodies and their treasury with the blood of the native people. But her command of their language gave her a power that
her ancestors had never possessed—the power to surprise them, the power to woo them. Hadn’t she spent years and years alongside
the Egyptians in the palace, listening to their talk, learning the contents of their minds? As ill-prepared as she felt for
the death of her father, and for this voyage into Egypt’s hot, mystifying interior, she realized that she was more prepared
to face the Egyptian people than they were to face her, for she was a new breed of Greek queen.

She took her time to speak again, and when she did, she lifted her voice a little, trying to project to the crowd while conveying
a levity, an irony that she knew they did not anticipate and would not know how to interpret. Finally, she said, “Naturally,
I speak Egyptian. I would think it odd if I did not speak the language of
my
people.”

If there was power in knowledge, there was even more power in surprise. A collective gasp escaped the mouths of her audience,
though no one was bold enough to look at the queen but one old crone, skin like hide, with a straw doll hanging from her neck,
who was startled enough to look up and into her eyes. Before she could help herself, she blessed the queen with an ancient,
toothless smile.

The temple of Amon-Ra was two miles down the river from Karnak in the ancient Theban site that the poet Homer called the hundred-gated
city. And so it must have been in those long-gone days, Kleopatra reflected as she caught her first sight of the tall columns
of the temple in the high, hot early afternoon sun. Their giant diagonal shadows struck a hard geometry across the massive
courtyard, where temple sweepers in white turbans looked insect-size against the mammoth, painted pylons. Statues of long-dead
pharaohs lined the many entrances of the holy place, their implacable eyes looking west toward the rocky cliffs of the desert.
The temple was not twenty yards from the dock, so that as soon as Kleopatra stepped off the boat she was immediately in the
sharp shade of these dead monarchs, dwarfed in the pool of their huge outline.

“All of these are Ramses the Great,” said the Greek adviser, sweeping his arm. “Or so it is believed. When he became Pharaoh,
he erased the names on his predecessors’ monuments and replaced them with his own. Almost every statue in Egypt proclaims
to be Ramses. And who is to argue with these great slabs of stone?”

Kleopatra was to spend the rest of the day at this temple, under-going a series of rituals of prepare for the ceremony of
escorting Buchis fourteen miles downriver to his home and eternal resting place, the Bucheum. She would sleep that night within
the forbidden walls of the shrine to Isis—forbidden to all who were neither clergy nor royalty. A great honor, she was assured
by the adviser, only given to the highest of holy persons and deified royalty. Oh yes, very important to stay the night in
the shrine, echoed the priestess who greeted them. She asked Kleopatra to dismiss her small entourage, for they were not allowed
within the temple walls. Reluctantly, Kleopatra said good-bye to her party, including the gray adviser. The priestess and
her attendants escorted the queen inside the shrine, whisking her past an enormous sacrificial slab, upon which she could
not help but envision her own neck being slit during the night—a delicate Greek prize offered to the mighty Egyptian god.

The southern temple of Amon, she was told, was the temple of love. Originally dedicated to Amon-Min, the fertility god, the
walls of its inner chambers showed the god in all his manly glory, possessed of an enormous, alert phallus. In ancient times,
Amon-Ra used to sail down the river in his Sacred Vessel to this temple to be reunited with his harem, whereupon he would
impregnate a goodly number of his women. In more recent times, this ritual was reenacted during the Opet festival, which followed
the annual flooding of the river, when Osiris was reunited with his sister-wife, Isis. The statue of the god was taken from
his shrine at Karnak and placed in a golden boat. After the short voyage to his southern home, he would rest with Isis in
her shrine for fifteen love-drenched days before returning upriver.

Kleopatra was charmed by the rituals of the Egyptian religion, but she was so hungry that she could not focus on the details
of the stories. She hoped that she would soon be offered a refreshment; instead, the tour continued into the sanctuary of
the Sacred Boat of Amon, a chapel built by Alexander to honor his newly adopted divine father, with wall paintings of the
Greek king honoring the Egyptian gods. Finally Kleopatra was taken into the Birth Room, where the reigning pharaoh who built
it had depicted himself as an infant with Isis as his midwife. Brusquely, the priestess called for the purification rites
to begin, which included mandatory fasting until the ceremony of the bull was concluded.

Lightheaded and nauseous, Kleopatra knelt for hours on the thinnest of cushions in the dank air of the inner temple, while
the holy men and women read from the sacred books. Every time she sat back on her ankles to give her wretched knees a rest,
the presiding priestess, now adorned in a ceremonial wig—a fountain of snaking black curls—gave her an admonishing look, as
if to defy her earlier victory with the people on the dock; as if to say to her that she had a long way to go to reach the
heart of this country.

Sweaty and starving, Kleopatra was relieved when the priestess announced that it was time to bathe in the holy waters. Wrapped
in linen, she was taken to a small pond in a dark room in the temple, where she glided gratefully into the granite bath, only
to realize that the waters were not warmed, but kept chilly and still by the stone. Faint, she suppressed the desire to call
for help. It would not do to let them know her limitations. She wondered if the Egyptians were taking the opportunity to torture
her, to make her pay a singular price for the occupation of many generations of her family; for the luxuries of the Ptolemies
extracted from the stooped backs and empty pockets of the native people.

At the end of the long day, Kleopatra was anxious for sleep, which she thought would come easily despite the day’s travails.
She announced that she would prefer to spend the night with her staff aboard the barge, but the priestess explained that sleeping
in the shrine of Isis—so that the goddess might inspire her dreams—was the most important element in the rigorous purification
rites. The priestess silently guided her to a small cell with a mattress on the floor and a shrine to the Lady Isis at the
foot of the bed. Kleopatra took one look at the makeshift bed and winced at the bedding, longing for her capacious bed at
home, stuffed with the softest feathers of young geese. With barely a nod in her direction, the priestess closed the door,
leaving her alone in the darkness.

Nothing to distract me from the goddess
, she thought as she lay down. Except the worry that one of the Egyptian clergy might sneak in and kill her in her sleep,
ridding their nation of at least one Ptolemy. She tried to cast the sinister thought aside, but as soon as she got comfortable,
the linen shift began to make her backside itch. She decided to ignore the sensation, but every time consciousness threatened
to slip away into night’s mysteries, either the lumpiness of the mattress or the harshness of the nightgown, or the precariousness
of her political position, brought her back to her waking mind. She knew full well the softness of fine Egyptian cotton, the
firmer caresses of carefully woven linens upon the skin of the body. Why were they making her sleep in this agonizing garment?

Craving sleep, yet knowing it would not come, she rose, opening the door slowly, quietly, cognizant of the smallest creak
breaking the silence of the sleeping priestesses in their cubicles. Barefoot, Kleopatra went to the goddess’s altar. The room
was still lit, torches casting a numinous glow in the quiet night. She took a tall candle from the altar and decided to investigate
the older parts of the shrine that she had not yet seen. Down a narrow corridor, cold tiles casting a chill into her bare
feet, she slipped through an opening and into the shadows. Holding the candle up to the wall, she found herself in a dead
stare with a pair of furious eyes. She jumped back, and the candle lit the rest of the stone tableaux. Like a spirit, a woman’s
figure floated above hundreds of drowning men, heads bobbing frantically above the waves hoping for a reprieve from the female
terror lurking above.

A tall shadow rose on the mural in front of her. She let out a small cry, but could not make herself turn around.

“Lady Kleopatra?” came the disapproving voice. Kleopatra turned to find the youthful priestess staring at her with folded
arms. “Can you not sleep without the presence of your retinue? I am sorry to have caused you anguish.” The formal cadence
of her speech palliated any nuances of sarcasm, but Kleopatra gleaned the insubordination and wondered how one so young had
the courage to so address a queen.

“The Divine Lady did not allow sleep,” the queen said with controlled flippancy. “Perhaps she wished to inspire my waking
mind and not my dreams. I would like to ask you some questions about the temple. What is your name?”

“I am Redjedet, named after the glorious queen who gave birth to triplet kings.” Redjedet’s bald head gleamed against her
candle as she made a patronizing bow. Earlier, in her wig of elaborate black curls, she looked older and very beautiful. Now,
unadorned by hair, the strong lines of her face, the broad nose, triangular cheekbones, and eyebrows like black arrows made
Kleopatra think of Mohama, though the young woman was not so tall. Her square shoulders, though, and her tawny luminous skin,
made her seem more substantial than her modest height.

“These murals are astonishingly beautiful,” Kleopatra said, wondering if the priestess shared a touch of Mohama’s warmer qualities.
“What is their meaning?”

“They were carried here by ferry from the temples of the old city of Amarna, which was long ago swallowed into the desert.
They are portraits of queens who ruled the Two Lands of Egypt. Like yourself, they also served the goddess, and so have been
preserved in her shrine.

“Who is this ferocious one?” Kleopatra inquired, looking back into the angry eyes on the wall.

“Beautiful Queen Nitocris, wife of a pharaoh who was murdered by traitors. She built an underground banquet room and invited
the murderers to feast. Then she opened secret flood gates and let the waters of the Nile drown them.” Nitocris’s head was
thrown back, eyes wide with madness and vengeance as she watched her enemies perish in rushing waters.

Kleopatra walked deeper into the dark room, her candle illuminating a different pair of eyes, black, serene, inexorable.

“The great Nefertiti performing Pharaoh’s duties,” Redjedet said. Nefertiti wore the
uraeus
on her forehead, the cobra that was the sign of her pharaonic powers, ready to strike her enemies. Bare-breasted, scimitar
drawn, she held an enemy by the hair, prepared to decapitate him. “The time depicts her life after his death, when she alone
was king.”

When she alone was king? Kleopatra paused. It was not possible for an Egyptian queen to rule without a male consort. That
is why she and all her ancestresses had to marry their own brothers, in imitation of the Egyptian ways.

“Why do you call the queen a king, Redjedet?”

The priestess looked quizzically at the queen, as if impatient with her ignorance. “When the Lady on this wall ruled the Two
Lands, there was no king. The king was dead. She had to be king. Egypt needs kings. Egypt needs Pharaoh,” she said pointedly.