Kleopatra (58 page)

“Hail, Queen Kleopatra, daughter of Isis, Lady of the Two Lands of Egypt.”

Caesar stood—a habit, though he remained unconvinced that the girl was not a decoy. She stood, too, but quickly motioned for
him to sit. Surely only a queen would have the guts to do that. He took his chair again, and she addressed him in Latin, not
giving him the opportunity to interrogate her, but telling him the story of how her brother and his courtiers had placed her
under house arrest and forced her to flee Alexandria and go into exile; how her brother’s regents were representative of the
anti-Roman faction in Egypt; how she had always carried out her late father’s policy of friendship with Rome; and how, most
importantly, once restored, she intended to repay the large loan that her father had taken from the Roman moneylender Rabirius,
which she must have guessed was the real reason that Caesar had followed Pompey to Alexandria.

Before Caesar might reply to her speech, the queen said, “Shall we converse in Greek, General? It is a more precise language
for negotiation, don’t you agree?”

“As you wish,” Caesar replied. From there the conversation was held in her native tongue and not his—not that it mattered.
He spoke Greek as if he had been born in Athens. He admired her ploy of simultaneously demonstrating her command of his native
tongue while diminishing it in comparison to the more sophisticated Greek language. There was no pride like that of the Greeks,
and this girl was obviously no exception.

But she had great charm and intelligence, so Caesar pledged her restoration, in accordance with her father’s will and the
nation’s tradition. He would have done so anyway, but now he could do it with pleasure. Not only would it please the young
queen, it would also irritate Pothinus, the dreadful eunuch whom Caesar despised. For Kleopatra’s part, she pledged a great
portion of her treasury that he might take with him back to Rome to satisfy Rabirius. A relief, he assured her, to have that
clacking old duck paid and off his back. Kleopatra laughed, remembering the sight of Rabirius’s great waddling ass as he was
chased out of Alexandria.

“I do hope you are enjoying our city,” Kleopatra said. “Are we occupying you as satisfactorily as you occupy us?”

Caesar felt he had no choice but to laugh. He told the girl about a lecture he had recently attended at the Mouseion, the
center for scholarly learning that he’d heard about all his years. She had studied there herself, she said, and in her exile
what she most had longed for was not her feathery bed nor the kitchen staff of one hundred who prepared for her the finest
meals on earth, but the volumes of books at the Great Library and the visits of scholars, poets, and scientists who engaged
her mind.

Now secure that she was once again at home and in charge, she called for wine, and before he knew it, they were discussing
the philosophy of domination, and he was drunk and praising Posidonius while she disputed every point.

“Posidonius has demonstrated that Rome, by embracing all the peoples of the world, secures all humanity into a commonwealth
under the gods,” Caesar explained. “Through submission, harmony is realized.”

A tiny laugh, almost a giggle, escaped Kleopatra’s lips despite herself. “Does Rome
embrace
, General? Is suffocation not a more appropriate word?” she asked, her eyes wide and twinkling. He did not know if she was
agitating him for the purpose of argument or to arouse him sexually. But with her enchanting voice which sounded almost like
a musical instrument, and the way she moved her body with sensuous fluidity, she was succeeding more at the latter.

It was too much, really, but she said it so charmingly. He could afford to be generous. She was so young, one and twenty she
had said, younger than his Julia would have been had she lived. “Surely the gods were drunk on the day they made an imperious
Greek girl the queen of a filthy rich nation. Surely I must be intoxicated to insure the power of such a girl.”

“The Crown thanks you.”

“As you know, my child, as we have witnessed here in your own land, there must be a master. It’s as simple as that. In accordance
with the laws of the gods and the laws of nature. Otherwise, it’s a muddle. “The strong do as they will while the weak suffer
what they must.’ If I may quote a Greek to a Greek.”

By this time, they were entirely alone. She had long ago dismissed the pirate, and Caesar, his men. They sat facing each other
on two white linen couches with a table of refreshments between them. She regarded Caesar for some time, and he allowed it,
enjoying the flush of color across her high cheekbones and the way flashes of inspiration seemed to leap from her eyes. “Is
it not possible for the two civilized peoples, Greek and Roman, to rule side by side, one race of men of military might in
cooperation with another whose strength lies in the world of the intellect, the world of art, knowledge, and beauty?”

“Possible, but not probable. If given the opportunity, men of means will always seek power and fortune.”

“And women of means as well,” she said.

“Yes, I have not seen that women lack ambition,” he replied. “And if a woman of means has sufficient means, then perhaps many
things are possible.”

“I’m relieved you think so.” She sat back, satisfied, her small hands folded in her lap, a quiet smile on her face as if she
shared some lovely humor with herself alone. Caesar was sure that they had not exactly finished with this line of discussion.
But he wanted, at that moment, to seize her mind in his hands as if it were another territory to be conquered in the name
of Rome and of unity. Yet she was not a woman to be merely taken.
Here was a woman
, he thought,
who if giving herself of her own volition, would give the world.

“But we have parried enough, Your Majesty,” Caesar said, rising. “You’ve vexed an old man quite enough for one day. Now come
to bed. You are under my protection.”

But she did not rise with him. “General, just when I thought your command of Greek was beyond reproach, I find that you make
a linguistic mistake.”

“Caesar does not make linguistic mistakes,” he replied. What now? More argument with this fetching creature? Was she determined
to try his patience?

“You said,
come
to bed, when surely you meant
go
to bed.”

Again, she looked at him as if she were either laughing at him or trying to seduce him. How could he, a man of fifty-two who
had had hundreds of lovers, not rapidly discern which?

“No, dear girl. You know what I meant. I always make myself perfectly clear.”

The chubby boy king burst into his sister’s chamber. Though it was early morning, he was dressed in formal robes and wearing
his crown. Kleopatra barely had a moment to pull the cover over her naked breasts. Caesar sat up quickly, the dagger under
his pillow already in his hand.

“What are you doing here?” the young king screamed, his bulbous lips quaking as he yelled at his sister. “How did you get
here?”

Caesar’s soldiers followed the boy into the room; trailing them, Arsinoe, her panther eyes darting from Kleopatra to her lover.
How old must the girl be now? Sixteen? She was the image of her treasonous, dead mother, Thea, only with marble green eyes
instead of Thea’s conniving brown ones. Arsinoe smirked but said nothing. She took her brother by the arm.

“Are you some kind of fiend or apparition? The entire city is on guard against you. How did you get into the palace, you ghost?”

Kleopatra did not answer but waited for Caesar to speak. Though he had just restored her to her own throne, he was dictator
of Rome and she, at his mercy. At least for the moment.

“My good King Ptolemy,” Caesar began, tossing the dagger aside, “I promised to repair relations between you and your sister
and I have done so.”

Caesar’s men, ready to seize the boy, looked to their commander, but he waved them away from Ptolemy’s benign presence.

“But I don’t want to reconcile with her,” the boy answered, pointing to Kleopatra, who tried to retain as much dignity as
a naked young woman in a roomful of strangers might. “She’s a monster! Has she poisoned you against us? Has she?”

“Come now, there is no need for this kind of upset,” Caesar said. “Let us set a meeting for later in the day—perhaps some
reasonable hour after breakfast—and I shall enlighten you and your regents as to the terms.”

Caesar’s calm voice settling over the room evaporated the anger Ptolemy had released into the air. But the boy king did not
relent. “What do you think you’re doing?” he stammered at Kleopatra.

“Is this how you welcome your sister back to Alexandria?” Kleopatra asked, trying to imitate Caesar’s mellow tone. “I have
not seen you for the better part of two years, my brother. How you’ve grown.” He had not. He was no taller, as far as Kleopatra
could discern, but had expanded horizontally, reminding her of the girth her late father had acquired in his last years.

Caesar leaned toward the boy. “You know the terms of your father’s will. You and Kleopatra are to rule jointly. It isn’t for
you to question. You shouldn’t have run her out of the country in the first place.”

“Run her out? She sneaked away like a common thief and raised an army against me.’” he sputtered.

Laughable
, Kleopatra thought. She would not put one ounce of her energy into bolstering such a fool before the Roman general, before
the Alexandrian population, or even before the gods themselves.

“That’s all over now, and I insist that you make up. It’s all been decided. No need to create another dispute when harmony
is so easily attained.” Caesar smiled at Arsinoe. “Is that not what the philosophers tell us, young lady? You have your brother’s
ear. You must counsel him to be reasonable. You do not wish him to get himself hurt.”

“No, General. I do not.” Arsinoe folded her arms, making a bridge under her voluptuous breasts and chilling Kleopatra with
her glazed stare. It seemed to her that Arsinoe had been assessing the situation and had come to some dark private conclusion.
“Shall we go, Brother?”

The boy grimaced at Kleopatra, but let himself be guided away by his sister; more regal than he would ever be, she held his
elbow and led him out of the room as if he were entirely blind.

Kleopatra let out a sigh and fell back on her pillow, grateful to have awakened in her own bed, no matter what the circumstances,
after two years of exile. She had not slept, really slept, in months and months, and even last night she and Caesar were awake
almost until dawn negotiating and making love. Fortunately, her energy for both of those activities was of the torrential
sort. She had had years of practice for the former, both in her father’s government and in exile, where resources were limited.
The latter, she was accustomed to with a man half Caesar’s age, so that the passions of this older man, so distant, so polite,
hardly troubled her at all. She thought of Archimedes—cousin, lover, comrade—still in exile, of his eyes as deep and dark
as Nile silt, of his strong square shoulders, of the way he lost himself in a private frenzy after he had done with pleasing
her, of the way his cries while making love seemed like prayers to some taunting goddess, and she ached with her betrayal.
But what choice did she have? For here was Julius Caesar, undisputed Master of the World, who had made it safe for her to
be in this room once more, where the sounds and smells of the sea rolled into her window. How many times had she wondered
if she would ever set foot upon Egyptian soil again, much less sleep in her own goose down bed? She had made a cold-blooded
choice, but she had made the correct one.
In matters of state let your blood run cold.
Her most trusted adviser, Hephaestion, whom she had left back in the Sinai with Archimedes, had drilled those words into
her head for so many years now that she chanted them to herself day and night. She must have no regrets.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts. One of Caesar’s men entered, not the least bit embarrassed to disturb the morning
intimacy between his commander and the queen of Egypt. How often did his men come upon such a scene? she wondered.

“Sir, so sorry to disturb you, but the boy king is speaking to an assembly of malcontents at the palace gates. He’s torn off
his crown and thrown it into the crowd. He is shouting all sorts of insults about the queen. He’s getting them all whipped
up out there. Shall we remove him?”

“No, no,” Caesar said wearily. “Give us a moment. I’ll fetch him myself and bring him in.”

“We can handle it, sir,” said the soldier.

“Yes, yes, but I’ve got a way with him,” said Caesar. “Besides, I shall make a little speech to the mob. I’ll tell them their
queen is back, and that Caesar shall ensure peace in their kingdom.”

“Have the wine sellers discount their wares to the crowd,” Kleopatra suggested, remembering her father’s old ploy for placating
his people.

“Excellent,” Caesar replied.

“As you wish,” the soldier said. Bowing courteously to Kleopatra but not meeting her eyes, he left.