The Memoirs of Cleopatra (132 page)

“Yes, that’s right,” Caesarion agreed. “In fact, I must get back to Rhodon now. He let me wander away in the midst of Xerxes’ account.” He turned and walked back up the steps—poor child. Poor man.

Philadelphos was playing with the beached trireme, putting sand crabs on its deck and trying to make them sit at oars. He still tried to get Alexander and Selene to board it; sometimes they humored him and did it. They would sit at the oar-bench and try pulling in unison; the boat usually sank with the unbalanced weight, gurgling to the shallow bottom.

I clung to those precious, private hours, knowing they were numbered.

Some mornings I would come to this spot very early, long before sunrise. My sleep was disturbed now, and I seldom slept the night through. I found that sitting quietly on the steps, watching the light gradually fill the sky and turn the harbor from a dark void into a pearly plate, was balm for my soul. Sometimes I would relive parts of my life, as I wished to recount them in my story that day.

The marble steps, slippery with night mist, would grow warm under me as the dawn came up. Sitting there, seeing the Lighthouse glowing red at the top, as it always had, with an empty horizon beyond it, it was hard to imagine that there was any threat to us. Everything was calm, ordered, functioning smoothly. Thus it had always been, thus it would continue—so it seemed. But preparations had to be made on faith, faith in the end of things as we knew them.

As the first rays of sunlight broke through the soft blanket of clouds in the east, I would go to the Temple of Isis and perform the ancient ritual with her sacred water, opening my day. Then I would linger there with her until I sensed that it was time to begin the demanding round of decisions and duties that would occupy me until Iras drew my curtains at night, when I would supposedly sleep.

I was thus savoring my private hour when I saw a figure walking in the darkness along the sand. Because the eastern harbor is a great arc sweeping from the Lighthouse to the farthest tip of the royal promontory, it is possible at low tide to walk the shoreline all the way from one end to the other. But few ever do, oddly enough.

I looked closer. Then rose, startled. It was Antony. Alive, away from his hermitage! For so long I had steeled myself for the messenger, expecting him at high noon, when the sun beat down pitilessly, or sunset, when things come to their natural close. I had even rehearsed what I would say. And the tomb was ready.

But this—this I had not expected, not rehearsed. “Antony?”

He bounded up the stairs and embraced me. His arms were tight and hard around me.

“My dearest, dearest wife—” The words were rushed, whispered against my ear. He was kissing the side of my face, my neck, as if he dared not kiss my lips.

He was here, alive, whole, warm. But it was frightening; in my determination to be strong, I had already buried him and mourned him. His touch on me seemed unnatural—yet it was only in my imagination that he had ever ceased to live.

“Antony?” I drew away and clutched myself, to escape his embrace. “You are—” I touched the side of my face, where his kiss lingered on the skin. “You are—I thought you had—”

Now he dropped his arms and backed away. “Of course. Forgive me. But I did not ever think to find you here, sitting, waiting—it made me bold. I meant to write, send a proper messenger, but—”

“This is better,” I said. How lucky we were, to have it come about like this. But my head was reeling. “But you must give me time, explain…you said you would never come back. And I had feared, and in my fear—”

“Yes. I know. I understand.” He sat down on the stairs, letting his arms dangle over his knees in that way I remembered so well. Cautiously I sat down beside him.

Silence blanketed us. The only sound was the lapping of the tamed waves within the harbor.

My heart was hammering. I was deliriously happy that he lived, and was sitting here beside me, but now all was in turmoil. Wherever Antony was, turmoil reigned, not the least of it in my heart. Shakily I extended my hand and took his.

“Are you recovered?” I said in a low voice.

“Yes. It just took time. Time, silence, solitude.”

Well I knew what he meant. But silence and solitude were normally things he shunned. He must have been greatly changed by Actium.

“Thanks be to the gods.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek—again, hesitantly. He could feel it, I knew. But I could not help my wariness.

He tightened his hand on mine. “May I return?”

“Your quarters have long been waiting.” I did not see fit to mention the sarcophagus, also waiting. “The children will welcome you warmly.”

“And you? Do you welcome me?”

“What an odd choice of words—much too pale. I have been—bereft without you.” I paused. “I was missing the spirit of my life,” I finally said. It was impossible to put into words. Without him, vitality had fled. I leaned over and kissed him, allowing myself to feel it at last.

“There is no point in dying before one’s time,” he said. “And that is what I have done. Now I lament the lost months!”

“You could not help it.” When we are felled, we are felled. But if we rise to our feet in a little while, we can count ourselves lucky.

“May we go inside?” he asked politely. “I would like to return before the palace starts bustling.”

I stood up, drawing him with me. “Of course.”

Together we climbed the steps to the still-sleeping palace. The corridors were empty, the wall torches still sputtered in their sockets, doors stood shut.

Antony stole into his quarters and then looked at them in surprise. “Like an old friend, they look different to me now,” he said. He had not been here since Actium.

I drew back the curtains to his inner room, revealing the couches, the table, the bed where I had passed long, yearning hours thinking of him—hours that I would never tell him about. “I think you will find it all in order,” I said crisply, as if I had not seen it, either.

He walked around wonderstruck, touching this surface and that. Finally he turned to me and said, “O my heart!” and held out his arms.

I flung myself into them, treasuring their embrace. All my mourning, all my acceptance, must now be flung to the winds, unneeded. He had come back, and come back as he had once been.

“My lost friend,” I whispered.

“Why ‘friend’? Are we not still husband and wife?” He shook his head. “Or have you divorced me?” From the plaintive tone, I realized he feared it had happened. He kissed me fervently as if to convince me to stay with him.

I tried to assure him. “I’m not a Roman,” I said. “I don’t divorce with every whim or change in fortune. It’s just that…I feared I was a widow, not a wife.”

He gave a shuddering sigh of relief. “You are still—we are still—”

“But you must give me time—” My words were muffled by an onslaught of frenzied kissing. He was like a starving man, and I could hardly fend him off. The celibate life in his hermitage had not agreed with his nature, that was evident.

“Antony, please stop!” I was insistent. What I meant—but could not say—was that I was almost afraid for him to touch me, as if I did not want to open all those feelings again. For I had conquered them, and if this was just a brief interlude, then…I could not bear to go through it all again.

He let go of me. “Forgive me,” he said. “I seem to have forgotten my manners; living alone has that effect.” He was trying to make light of it, but I could tell that he was hurt.

He could not expect me to adjust instantly to every whirl in his behavior—first the withdrawal, then the two unannounced returns, next…another disappearance? It was too painful; I must protect myself in some way, at least at this moment.

“It’s not a matter of forgiving you,” I finally said. I must choose my words carefully. He would be vulnerable to misinterpreting them. “There is nothing to forgive. I was so grieved when you were gone from me; I was so afraid that you would never return. All I prayed for was that one day you would be standing here again, in your rooms, with me. But…in some ways you seem more like a stranger to me now than you did at Tarsus! What I have gone through in these last few months, what you have gone through…it separates us. We will have to hear one another’s stories, learn what has happened to each other….”

“Don’t you want me back?” he cried.

Was he going to rush off again? Zeus forbid! “Yes! Yes!” I assured him. I could sense that he was confused about where he belonged. But surely he had not expected to walk back into the world he had fled from? It had changed mightily in those months; while he had brooded, Egypt and I had been busy dealing with Octavian and the aftermath of Actium.

But now was a quiet time, a good time for his return. And for our reunion.

“Yes, yes,” I repeated. “I want you back more than anything in the world.” And it was true.

My mother had been taken from me, and never returned. Caesar, too. It is not often that the dead come back to us, and I rejoiced. I must never let him know that I had counted him so completely among the lost.

As in a dream, when we revisit places we thought never to see again, Antony and I sat high on silvered chairs of state, the waves of people spread out as far as we could see on all sides, until they merged into the very sea itself. Overhead the sky was a deep, ringing blue, and the stately buildings of Alexandria as white as the clouds floating benevolently over them.

I am five, watching the state procession of my father, the Dionysus-cart creaking along past the Library…I am eighteen, celebrating my own accession, riding through the white streets, crowds lining it, wild, curious eyes staring…I am twenty-five, following the bier bearing Ptolemy with the high, wailing cries of mourners…I am thirty-five, watching Antony parade through the streets with his mock Triumph, Armenian prisoners walking behind, and again, another celebration, Alexandria festooned and scrubbed, when Antony decorated me and our heirs with all the realms of the east.

Alexandria, handmaiden of all this, now stands by once more to watch and applaud as we enact the last ritual, the coming-of-age of both Caesarion and Antyllus. Caesarion is to be enrolled in the Greek Ephebic College for military and civic training, and proclaimed a man, while Antyllus is to assume the
toga virilis
, the mark of a Roman adult.

No expense was spared. After all, what was the one thing we still had in abundance? Hope might have fled, soldiers might have deserted, ships might have burnt, but money, courage, and defiance—those we still had. Antony and I had agonized over whether it was wise to elevate the boys to adulthood. Which would assure their survival best? Antony felt that Octavian was more likely to spare minors, but I pointed out that it was too late for that. We had taken up arms in the name of Caesarion’s rights, and Octavian would never overlook that. As for Antyllus, the notorious will had named him Antony’s personal heir, and now he would suffer all the punishments for it. At least as adults they would command the respect and attention they were due, rather than “disappearing” as children often did.

“They will have to be formally charged and dealt with,” I said. “There must be a record of the doings. But Caesarion will be safe and out of Egypt, and Antyllus will have committed no crime beyond being your heir. And since Octavian actually knows Antyllus, he will most likely spare him. Proclaiming them adults offers them the best chance, and also offers partisans the opportunity to champion them.” It all sounded very sensible, but it could so easily go the other way. Were we dooming them instead of saving them?

“Perhaps it will be Alexander who is made King,” Antony said. “That would get around all the difficulties of the older boys.”

I laughed. His optimism was touching. “Do you honestly think Octavian would place your son on the throne of Egypt? Reward you, in effect? You must be dreaming. He is not known for his bigheartedness.” I shook my head. “If my children were pure Ptolemies, it might be different. As it is, it is their Roman blood that causes the trouble.”

Antony nodded. “And to think they are all cousins—and cousins to Octavian.”

“That is what makes them dangerous to one another,” I said.

So we had arranged the ceremonies, the day when Caesarion would ride in his chariot through the streets of the city, wearing his royal robes, clutching the scroll and medals admitting him to the Ephebic College, and then present himself to me for a public declaration. Antyllus, though only fourteen, qualified for elevation into adulthood as well.

I was proud to show myself to the city and put an end to wild rumors about my health, my appearance, my state of mind. And I was grateful for Antony to have the chance to do likewise.

He seemed to have recovered from the nadir of Actium and the humiliation by Gallus and the trumpets. It told me that perhaps the cruelest thing about a very high, visible position was that one could never withdraw to let nature perform her healing, but must remain chained and hoisted up to public view. If only Caesar, after Spain, had had the luxury of those months of Antony’s! He, too, might have regained his balance and peace of mind. But enough of that, I told myself sternly.

Now Antony and I sat side by side, wearing our best ceremonial attire, watching our eldest children—by other mates—come into their own. The children we had made together were seated behind us. I wondered what future awaited them. Perhaps Antony was right, and they would win out in the end. They would have the magic of our names but not the stink of our opprobrium, and their very youth and innocence could preserve them. I had thought of sending Alexander and Selene to Media, where Alexander’s betrothed waited. But I did not know. I just did not know….

A blare of trumpets told us that the procession was drawing near. We sat up straighter and prepared to welcome our sons to the platform. Around the side of the Gymnasion the glittering chariots wheeled, and a burst of cheers exploded on the air.

How tall they stood! How proud, how impervious to any blows! Flowers flew through the air, pelting them with approval and admiration.

Remember it always, my son
, I prayed silently.
Hear those cries, see the faces, taste the joy of total acceptance, most intoxicating of wine. It does not stay
.

The chariots approached, and at the foot of the platform they drew up abreast, then stopped. The boys—men now—stepped out and mounted the platform where we awaited them, as proud parents as any farmer or fisherman whose son first takes the plow or the net.

Caesarion stood beside me, taller than I, infinitely lovely and promising, at the very brink and threshold of his own life apart from mine. What he would be, he himself must now unfold.

I took his hand and held it high, aloft. I felt the weight of my crown and headdress, bearing down upon me. Before me the multitude spread out.

“My people,” I said, and my voice, trained as well as Antony’s, rang out. “Today you have a man, a King in Egypt, to lead you. Hearken to him!”

Then I turned to look at Caesarion, my firstborn, my pride, seeing on his face all the high solemnity and mystery of this day. My own life fell away like the lighthouse the children had made, and it seemed but so much sand. Here was my achievement, here was my legacy. And Caesar’s.

Afterward we retired to the palace for a banquet. Always there must be a banquet, although I do not know why. I suppose our mortal natures need to feast and raise cups in jubilation.

Now we were seated at a long table—no Roman reclining today—and Caesarion took the place of honor, while Antony and I flanked him, Antyllus beside Antony.

Caesarion was still wearing his celebratory crown, his fine features flattered by it. What a king he would make. I was not being sentimental, but my eyes were keen discerners of what really was. Somehow, in the dim hours between dusk and dawn in the palace as it then was, Caesar and I had created a rare creature, and all by accident, all unknowing. Such is fate.

My voice would tremble; I could not trust it. And so I silently raised my cup and drank to him, to my jewel, my achievement.

“My boys, you acquitted yourselves well today,” said Antony loudly. “Mark you, I do not expect to lose games to you anytime soon, regardless of your new status.”

I was drinking from an agate cup, one that had been in our family for generations. I let my lips linger over its rim, which seemed to impart a very smoothness to the wine. Still I could not trust myself to speak, but I hoped that would soon pass. I did not like being mute.

The feast continued. I could report every dish, every comment. But time is becoming a very short commodity with me now. I still have gold, but time…no time. Octavian has snatched that from me. And so I must leave the dinner, which was set such a short time ago. A short time…a lifetime.

The sea was calm, that peculiar Alexandrian blue-green, the one hue not captured in any gem; turquoise is too opaque, aquamarine too pallid, lapis too thick and stubbornly dark. But the reply did not come by sea. As befitted its message, the letter from Octavian slithered in unobtrusively by land. I received it, delivered by a regular messenger: a high insult.

I kept rereading it. His boldness was head-spinning. So I was to sacrifice Antony…and for what? He had not specified. “You shall find us most reasonable.” It meant nothing. And he was astute enough never to commit anything to paper that could come back to haunt him or nip at his heels.

I noted that he had not returned the crown and scepter. He was probably stroking them this very minute, cooing to them! And the “we”! He was royal already, I noted.

Antony’s head. Did he think I would station a servant behind the curtains, drawing his breath slowly, ready to strike after we had finished making love, ending Antony’s life as he drowsed off? Did he think I would kiss him, caress his hair, welcome him, planning his murder immediately thereafter?

Oh, Octavian, I thought, you have believed all the evil you have put abroad about me!
The evil Queen, slave to her ambition: Cleopatra! Cleopatra, most vile!

When Antony came into my room that night, I could not help thinking: that head. To strike off that head…what an ugly, squalid offer Octavian had made, treating that noble head like meat in a market stall. Had all the glory melted down to such vulgarity?

The end was here, and nothing remained to us but to meet it with honor. How does one throw open the doors to the enemy, with honor? I did not know. It was not written. I must discover it.

That dear head, more precious than all kingdoms; that head which had given me freedom and bliss—I would fight to my last breath to preserve it. Octavian was dead wrong in his supposition. Perhaps he was equally wrong in his other suppositions. I could only pray so.

The days crept by, each one perfect and bracing. Every morning was a shining bead of dew, clear and pure and untroubled; the white noons were filled with purpose and motion; the evenings, with dark, wine-colored clouds playing in the fading sky, as the stars behind them came out, as always. As always…it went on as always, and only by the sheerest act of imagination could we force ourselves to believe a threat hovered somewhere just over the horizon, beyond our sight.

The end was supposed to be accompanied by the flash and smoke of battle, or the rattling cough of old age, or even the spots of plague. It was not supposed to come into a perfect world, a world so beguiling, so sweet, so quiet. Perhaps this was the final enemy to be confronted: this false sense of safety.