The Memoirs of Cleopatra (11 page)

We were all in the throne room of the alabaster palace, the one where I had attended on my sisters not so long before; the one with the tortoiseshell doors and gem-encrusted chairs. I was not sitting, but pacing back and forth in front of these men. They were all much bigger than I, and I needed to remember that.

Pothinus was taller than the others; his legs were spindly, but his chest was covered in rolls of fat where muscles should be. With his long nose and sharp, close-set eyes, he reminded me of a sacred ibis, except that he was not in the least sacred.

“Your Majesty,” he intoned, with his child’s voice, which he had trained to be soothing, “if you believe that, you do not understand people. There is no such thing as a surfeit of festivities.”

“And the people are anxious to see you married,” added Theodotos, once my tutor, then passed down to Ptolemy, a giggly little man with a large bald spot that he attempted to disguise by growing long curls he could fluff up over it. He had also taken to wearing a fillet, like a Gymnasion director.

“I cannot imagine why,” I said. “It is not as if anything would change. Ptolemy is not a foreign prince, bringing an alliance with him. And we could hardly have an heir yet.”

“It was your father’s express command!” barked Achillas. He was the Egyptian commander of the army, and came from Upper Egypt, where the soldiers are the best fighters. Dark-skinned and lean, he looked like a tomb painting come to life. I always imagined him wearing the pleated kilt shown in the old paintings; but of course he wore the latest military attire, with bronze breastplate and shin protectors. He had taken a Greek name, like many Egyptians who wish to ingratiate themselves with the powers that be. His real name was probably “Beloved of Amun” or some such.

“And I shall honor it,” I assured him. “I esteem my father. Have I not added the name Cleopatra Philopator, ‘She Who Loves Her Father,’ to my other titles?” I looked up at my three enemies, for such they were.

“Obedience is the best way to honor a parent,” said Pothinus.

“And the best way to honor your Queen,” I reminded them. “You are my subjects as well as Ptolemy’s advisors.”

I myself had no advisors, no older, wiser councillor I could consult. I was surrounded on all sides by enemies; my friends were all younger or less powerful than I. The trio in front of me seemed to grow larger, their penetrating eyes more feral.

They glared at me. “We of course will obey and honor you,” said Achillas, with his flat Egyptian accent. “But you must not neglect your duty to your brother and co-ruler.”

“I shall not,” I assured him.

Ptolemy XIII was guaranteed a place at court and in history. But what of the others? What were Arsinoe and little Ptolemy to do while we ruled? Just wait in the palace—wait their turn? Circle like vultures? I shivered.

“I have no wish for a civil war!” I blurted out. Best to let them know I knew where they were leaning. “But I will rule in my own court, and in my own land!”

If only they were not so much
bigger
than I! Those who denigrate physical strength and power have never had to tilt their heads back to look an enemy in the eyes, or had to drag a stepstool over to peek out a high window.

“The Romans are, as usual, setting us a bad example,” said Achillas with disdain, settling on the first part of my words and ignoring the second. “They are about to embark on another round of civil war, this time between Julius Caesar and Magnus Pompey. If we are very lucky, they will destroy themselves in the process.” He sniffed like a greyhound scenting the wind.

“If Pompey sends an appeal to us, we will have to respond,” I said. He had been my father’s ally and now, if the tables were turned, might require our help. Caesar was responsible for collecting the money Egypt owed to Rome. I hoped he would be defeated. But Egypt would be the poorer even so, because we would have had to help equip Pompey to conquer Caesar. And someone else would just take over Caesar’s debt….

“Why? Egypt is a long way from Rome. We can ignore the appeal,” said Pothinus.

Was
this
the man who thought himself a wise, sophisticated advisor? I had all I could do not to snort in derision. “Like a child pretending he does not hear his mother calling him to bed? No, Pothinus, that is the way of a coward. And Rome, the city, may be far from Alexandria—some twelve hundred miles—but the might of Rome, and Roman armies, is as near as Jerusalem, only three hundred miles away. Remember how quickly Gabinius and his troops arrived? No, we cannot pretend we do not hear when Rome calls. But we can frame our answer to our best advantage.”

“And what might that be?” asked Theodotos. I had almost forgotten he was there, as the presence of the other two overshadowed him.

“That we will comply—later.”

“Exactly the answer you have returned to us about the marriage!” snapped Pothinus. “It fools no one!”

“It is not meant to fool anyone,” I said, as grandly as possible. “There are true delays and diplomatic delays and obstructionist delays; there are as many types of delays as there are situations. Surely you don’t mean to imply that your request that I marry my brother forthwith is the same as a command from the Romans?”

“It is not a
command—
” began Achillas.

“This is a quibbling about words.” I cut him off. “You have made a request. I have refused it at present. That is enough. You may leave me now.”

Their faces dark with anger, they bent low and backed out of the chamber.

They had forced me to be curt with them. I sensed that the time of niceties was already past.

I also sensed that I must set about finding myself devoted supporters.

There were many small details to attend to, the sort of details that one can easily mistake for true action and important decisions. (Yet a leader must never lose grasp of them. So many things a leader must do, and be. No wonder most fail.) The King’s quarters, the most beautiful in the whole palace grounds, stood empty. I had shied away from occupying them, but now I realized that was foolish. Why not honor my father by living there? Who else was entitled to do so? In the alabaster palace, on the entire upper floor, the King’s apartments stretched from the northwest tip of the Lochias promontory, looking across the turquoise waters of the harbor to the Lighthouse, to the southeast, looking out over the open ocean. Breezes blew constantly from one open window across to another, keeping the onyx floors deliciously cool, like the flavored ices we ate in summer. Light played about all day, crossing the floor as the sun made his way from one window to the next, turning the entire apartments into one big sundial. At night the moon did the same. The sound of the sea was so satisfying that one hated to call musicians to compete with its distinctive voice. The royal apartments seemed a magic dwelling place in the air.

As I walked through them, considering what to order or change for myself, I was struck by my father’s mania for collecting. He had beds made of ebony from Africa and inlaid with ivory from Punt; handworked metal tables from Damascus; embroidered cushions from Syria; woven carpets from India, and silk hangings from the far east. There were painted Greek vases and candelabra of Nubian silver and water clocks from Rome. From Egypt herself he had carvings of the gods, done in basalt and porphyry, and fine vessels of multicolored glass, a specialty of Alexandria. Entering his quarters was like entering a bazaar of the world, one where no ordinary merchants traded, but only artists. The transparent white silk window hangings billowed and flapped in the soft breeze, as if trying to shed different lights on the wares for me to appreciate them fully.

His wardrobe room was as large as a normal palace audience chamber, and crammed full of robes and mantles, sandals and cloaks. I smiled, remembering how he had loved to dress for ceremonial occasions. His wardrobe, however, unlike his water clocks, could not be transferred to me. As I was staring at it, I became aware that someone else was in the room behind me. I whirled around and recognized a familiar face: one of the servants of the inner chamber, a woman.

“I did not see you,” I said. “What is your name?”

“Charmian, Your Majesty,” she said. She had a very deep, husky voice. “Forgive me. I did not mean to startle you.”

“You were keeper of the King’s wardrobe?”

“Yes. An enjoyable task.” She smiled. She had a very winning smile. I also noticed that she had a distinct Macedonian accent.

“Are you Macedonian?” I asked. She had the coloring for it: tawny hair and smoky gray eyes.

“I am. I was brought here to serve His Majesty after his stay in Athens.” There was a discreet pause. We both knew why the King had been in Athens; he was on his way to Rome after being deposed. “It was said that our families are distantly related.”

I liked this Charmian, or else I was merely fascinated by her voice and bearing. It would take a little while for me to figure out which. “Would you like to return to Athens, or would you prefer to stay here and serve me as wardrobe mistress?”

I was in sore need of one. My childhood nurse had no knowledge of clothing, beyond knowing that milk removed scorches, and that salt should be sprinkled on red wine stains as soon as possible.

She gave a wide smile. “If you would deem me worthy, I would be happy beyond measure to stay with you.”

“Worthy? Anyone who could select and oversee all
this
”—I gestured to the glittering piles of brocade and silks—“certainly can oversee whatever I will have. But what shall be done with it all?”

“I would advise putting all this away until the day when you have a son who will wear them.”

“That will be such a long time that they will be quite out of style.”

“Things of this quality will not go out of style quickly.” That deep, intimate voice…it wrapped itself around her words, cradling them.

So now I had the beginning of my staff. I would appoint Mardian to my household as chief scribe and administrator. I had seen little of him in the past year, but whenever we met, our friendship was still strong. And Olympos, who was now studying medicine at the Museion, would serve as my physician. I knew I could trust him not to poison me! But I needed a soldier, a strong, trained military man, to counterbalance Achillas, and I knew no one like that. I had at my disposal the Macedonian Household Troops who guarded the palace grounds, but the three Roman legions—composed mainly of huge barbarians from Gaul and Germany—had a Roman commander, and the Egyptian army was under Achillas’s control. Even if the Macedonians proved to be completely on my side, they were outnumbered by the legions and the native Egyptians. I would have to see what fate provided for me.

Long ago, Egypt had been protected by its deserts on the east and west. We had lain in our Nile valley out of reach of the rest of the world. But Bedouins on camels had breached our western frontiers, and armies could march overland, through Syria, to our eastern borders now. We were part of the larger world, and what happened elsewhere affected us directly. Thus the first crisis of my reign came not from something in Egypt, but from the happenings in other countries.

To be brief: the Parthians (O Isis! How I was to learn to hate that word! The Parthians have been the scourge of all my hopes!) had troubled the Roman province of Syria, and the new Roman governor there, Calpurnius Bibulus, wanted the Roman legions back to aid in his revenge attack on the Parthians. He sent his two sons to command the troops and lead them out of Egypt. The soldiers, who had settled down, did not want to leave, and so they set upon the governor’s sons and, far from obeying them, killed them.

Like foolish rebels everywhere, who do not think beyond the deed of rebellion itself, the troops were jubilant. The city of Alexandria rejoiced along with them, for any defiance of Rome sent them into fits of excitement. And Pothinus and his henchmen were pleased beyond measure. A blow had been struck against Rome! Never mind that this was the simple murder of helpless envoys.

I called a meeting in the royal council chambers. I was seated in the Queen’s chair of honor when the Regency Council filed in, pushing Ptolemy like a hostage.

“My brother may take his seat here, beside me,” I said, indicating the other royal chair. Let him separate himself from them, for once! “The rest of you, sit here.” There was a bench, albeit a richly gilded one, for all of them, including Mardian.

“You know what I have called this council for,” I said. Outside, the day was glorious, brilliant and sparkling. The fleet was bobbing up and down in the harbor. “The Roman governor of Syria has had his sons murdered by the very troops they were sent to command.”

“We didn’t do it!” crowed Ptolemy. “It was done by Roman troops! It’s not our fault!”

Pothinus gave a smug nod.

“Is this how you advise your Prince?” I asked. “His youth excuses him, but if you truly believe that, you are a child yourself and have no business serving on any council, even one to ration donkey dung!” I watched the smile drain from his face. Good.

“The troops do not want to leave Egypt,” said Pothinus. “They have settled here, married, have children.”

“In other words, they are no longer soldiers but civilians?” I asked. “Then we shall not miss them if they go, for they can no longer serve their purpose. We hardly want more civilians. We have a million in the city.” I looked at all of them. Now was the time to make things clear. “The murderers must be apprehended and turned over to Bibulus.”

“No!” cried Theodotos. “That is acknowledging him our master! We are a sovereign state!”

“Sovereign states,
real
ones, not pretend ones, observe civilized laws. It is not a sign of weakness, but of strength, to be able to control our own people and, when mistakes are made, to offer to set them right.”

“The truth,” sneered Pothinus, “is that you are afraid of the Romans! So you cower before them and degrade yourself.”

How dare he speak thus? Degrade myself! “It is you who degrades Egypt by advocating lawless and insulting behavior,” I finally said. “I see you have scant love of your country.”

“I love Egypt more than you can ever understand!” he insisted.

“Then do as you are ordered,” I said. “Discover the murderers. Bring them to me. If you have no appetite for sending them to Bibulus, let me do it.” I looked over at my brother. “Have you anything to say?”

He shook his head.

“Good. Then carry out my instructions, Pothinus.”

The tall eunuch sat as stiff as a stone statue in a temple.

After the council had departed, I found myself limp. I knew I was doing the honorable thing, but was it politically wise? I would alienate the Alexandrians. Yet to insult the Romans was to court worse danger; they never forgot a slight or a defeat. I had been caught, like a creature exposed on an open field, with no cover.

The murderers—three very ordinary-looking men—were rounded up and sent to Bibulus to answer to him. The Roman magistrate surprised us by acting in strictest legality. Although his sons had been killed, he said, Roman law forbade his dealing with the murderers; it was rightly a matter for the Senate to judge. He himself would not take direct vengeance on them.

O Roman law! If ever I saw the murderers of my children, I would forget all about the law, except the eternal one of vengeance for a dead child—the prerogative of a mother. Laws can go only so far, and at the crucial moment they fail us. They are a poor substitute for justice. The Greek gods know more about that than the Roman law.

The Bibulus affair turned the people against me so certainly that I could almost believe Pothinus had engineered it. (I know this was not true, but, Isis, why did the gods favor him?) There was murmuring about “the lover of the Romans,” “the Roman slave,” and how I was truly my father’s daughter. They had ousted him from the throne for groveling before Rome, and I was the same. Away with her!

It did not help that, shortly after this, the son of Pompey came to Egypt to request troops and provisions for the coming clash with Caesar. We had to yield them, and so the troops ended up serving Rome after all. Sixty ships were dispatched, along with hundreds of soldiers. Pompey and his followers had been ejected from Italy by this Caesar, who had defied the Roman Senate and acted as if he commanded his own destiny. It was said he was lucky above all men; it was also said that his main weapon was speed, for he could appear at a site before his enemies realized he had even started out. They said he covered a hundred miles a day, making lightninglike strikes.

I must here refute a piece of Roman propaganda, heaped on me with all the rest of Octavian’s later abuse: that the younger Pompey and I became lovers on his visit to Alexandria. I met him, I entertained him at banquets, and showed him the city with pride, but he never even touched my hand. To do so would have violated every principle of protocol. I was a virgin, and as protective of my chastity as Athena. Besides, he was not very attractive!

The other thing that worked against me at the time was the Nile himself. At the last flooding he had not risen up to the level required, and so a famine was inevitable. Scientists had worked out a table of the exact degree the Nile must rise to guarantee crops, and the levels below that they called “the cubits of death.” In that year, the great river’s level fell within that death range.

The gods send the waters, or withhold them, but the rulers are blamed. I gave orders for the grain from the previous season’s harvest to be rationed, but what happened is what always happens: there was not enough, although profiteers somehow managed to get their own supply. People were starving. In Alexandria, the riots began. In the countryside, there were threats of uprisings. The farther one went up the Nile into Upper Egypt, the greater the disaffection of the people. Being so distant, they had never really been welded to the Ptolemaic state, and now they were starting to pull away.

At about this time the sacred bull of Hermonthis died, and the installation of his successor was to take place. This was an elaborate ceremony in which the new sacred bull must be escorted on the Nile to his holy precinct. Pharaohs had taken part in the water procession in times past, but no Ptolemy had ever done so. Hermonthis was one of the hotbeds of disaffection, a few miles upstream from Thebes. I thought it would be politically wise to partake of the ceremony. It would remove me from the intrigues of the palace for a while, and strengthen my position by allowing me to cultivate support in a dangerous area.

Accordingly I set out in the royal barge. I looked forward to the journey, expected to take about ten days.

I sat in the shelter at the stem of the barge, protected by awnings, and watched my countryside slide by. I saw how low the Nile was as we plied our way upriver, past the pyramids, past Memphis, its white wall gleaming in the noonday sun, past green fields studded with palm trees, banks lined with red-black earth, donkeys and waterwheels and houses of mud brick. The strip of land near the river was always the same; what changed was the background. The desert was sometimes golden and sandy behind it, other times an ashy white, bleached wilderness, other times rocky cliffs. The size of the ribbon of green waxed and waned, from less than a mile to almost ten, but always it stopped somewhere within eyesight and the desert took over.

When the sun set, a red ball sinking into the diminished Nile and making him run red, light did not linger. Night came swiftly, a black, inky night with a million stars. Silence reigned, brooding over the desert just beyond us. It got cold, even in high summer.

We passed the ruins of a stone city about three days’ sail past Memphis, and I asked our captain what it was. “The city of the heretic Pharaoh, may his name be lost forever,” he muttered.

Akhenaten! I knew a little about him, about his breaking with the old gods and attempting to found a new religion based on a worship of Aten as the one god. The priests of Amun at Thebes had made short work of him. We were gliding past all that remained of his life and work. I was profoundly thankful that my dynasty had never attempted to quash any religion. No, we threw ourselves into them all with relish! The Ptolemies, and my father in particular, had been avid builders of temples in Upper Egypt in the old style. As a result, our temples were the most beautiful still standing in the land—Edfu, Esna, and Kom Ombo were famous now. A little way past the ill-fated Pharaoh’s city we passed the Hatnub alabaster quarries on the eastern bank, where so many of our perfume and ointment jars have their origin.

Two days later we passed the town of Ptolemais. It was founded by the first Ptolemy; almost four hundred miles from Alexandria, it was the last Greek city outpost on the Nile. From here on, the foreign influence faded away.

On the ninth day of our journey, the Nile took a sudden bend and we were sailing due east. Near the very elbow of the bend, at Dendera, we passed the Temple of Hathor, the goddess of love. It was a very recent one, with new sections having been built by my father. I could see it from the water, its carved columns visible above its brown mud-brick guard wall. I wished I had time to stop and visit it.

Directly across, at the exact place where the river turns back west, was the town of Coptos. I was familiar with it because it was an important trade route. At this spot, where the Nile comes closest to the Red Sea, camel caravans set out to the ports, to fetch goods from Punt and Arabia. My father had been very interested in this trade route; he believed that Egypt should be looking farther east, to India, for her trading partners, leaving the Mediterranean to Rome.

The earlier Ptolemies had founded a number of cities up and down the coast of the Red Sea, naming them after their queens: Cleopatris, Arsinoe, Berenice. Berenice, the one farthest south, was the point at which the elephants captured in Africa were ferried. Lately the elephant trade had fallen by the wayside. They were no longer the novelty in warfare that they once had been. Julius Caesar had perfected the technique of routing them, and now they had lost their superior value as a weapon of terror.

Julius Caesar…I wondered about him. As a soldier, he seemed formidable and infinitely resourceful. The business with the elephants—why had no one before him exploited their weak points so effectively? The animals are easy to stampede: If they are frightened by a volley of stones and missiles, they turn and run over their own troops. For centuries elephants were coveted as war machines. Yet Caesar had lately rendered them almost obsolete. How could Pompey stand up against him? I wished we had not had to take sides. It boded ill for Egypt.

A day’s sail farther took us to Thebes, with its massive temples. This was the stronghold of Old Egypt, and here the priests of the temples of Amun still wielded great power among the people. The fourth Ptolemy had been faced with a rival native dynasty from this area, and so preoccupied was he with putting an end to it that he lost most of Egypt’s overseas territory—territory never regained.

The priests and their retinues lined the steps at the waterside, and I could hear their sour, dirgelike holy music as they greeted us in passing. Gigantic temples reared behind them, dwarfing them. The smell of incense wafted over the water.

Across from Thebes itself lay the desolate, baking cliffs and valleys where the royal tombs were sculpted out of living rock. Here Queen Hatshepshut had set up her mortuary temple, a long, horizontal series of terraces and chambers built into the hard, bone-dry cliffs. Now her myrrh trees and fountains had turned to dust. Not far away were the great mortuary temples of Ramses II and Ramses III, as well as the Colossi of Amenophis III, seated statues over sixty feet high. But the priests, paid to perform rites forever in the temple, were as dead as their masters. The rites were forgotten, and only the stones remained. The temples, bones of that belief, lay radiating heat under the desert sun.

A little farther, and Hermonthis, our destination, appeared on the western bank of the Nile. It was a small town, with little there except the Bucheum Temple and its enclosure where the sacred bull, believed to be incarnated by Amun, resided. Under the temple are long catacombs where the mummified bulls were entombed.

The people lined the riverbanks, and the priests, with their shaven heads and white linen robes, stood ready to receive us. There was intent curiosity on all their faces.
Is this really the Queen?
they thought.
May we approach? Is she truly a goddess?

In that instant I was profoundly glad I had come all this way to be welcomed unequivocally at last. Let my brother stay behind in Alexandria, where we were treated as all too human—and disposable. I felt a soaring joy and release, as if I could breathe for the first time in my life.