The Memoirs of Cleopatra (61 page)

“Mardian mentioned, almost offhandedly, that you do attempt to predict what will happen to you—that you have books of prophecy, and expect a deliverer, or a messiah. What is that?”

He looked almost embarrassed. “The sacred writings of one people are apt to provoke ridicule when recited to an unbeliever.”

“No, I truly want to know. To what was he referring?”

“Over the ages our beliefs have changed,” he said. “We never believed in an afterlife—we had our own version of Hades,
Sheol
, a dark place where shades wander. Nor did we think of the ages as a story, marching forward to some preordained end. But some of our newer writings have begun to see life as continuing after death, of the soul’s survival—and the body’s, too—and events proceeding to some great change. The agent of this change will be the Messiah.”

“But who
is
this Messiah? Is he a king? A priest?”

“It depends on which prophecy you read. Zechariah, one of our prophets, speaks of two messiahs—one a priest, and one a prince from the line of our great King David. Daniel calls him the Son of Man, and says there is only one.”

“But what does he
do
?”

“He ushers in the new age, one way or another.”

“What new age?” I asked.

“An age of purging, of judgment, followed by a golden age of peace and prosperity.”

Peace and prosperity. That was what we had in Egypt now—if Rome would allow us to keep it. “That is what I wish for my people, and my land.” I looked at him sharply. “Do you believe these prophecies?”

He smiled. “I do not trouble myself with them. I have found that if you have urgent daily business to take care of, the dreams of what may happen seem to recede. I don’t
disbelieve
them, I simply have no need of them. They do not answer any lack in my own life.”

“There are also prophecies about a woman savior,” I told him.

He grinned at me. “Ah. So now I see. You are wondering if you are she, and unaware of it?”

“No, but I wonder if any of the people see me as that.”

He thought for a moment. “It is possible. But you would have to study those writings for yourself. I am not familiar with them.”

I sighed. “They are scattered writings. I know one is called the Oracle of the Mad Praetor, another the Oracle of Hystaspes, and there’s something called the Potter’s Oracle. Then there are many uttered by different sibyls. I shall have to have them copied at the Library and study them.”

“If you look hard enough, you are sure to see yourself in them,” he warned. “That is the way of prophecies. They expand and contract and always fit the situation at hand. Like fortune-tellers and astrologers.”

“You don’t believe in them either?”

“That they may have some knowledge, yes. That it can be partial, and deliberately mislead you, makes them dangerous. That is why our God has forbidden us to have anything to do with them. Moses told us that God said, ‘Do not practice divination or sorcery. Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritualists, for you will be defiled by them.’ ”

I thought of all the astrologers and fortune-tellers attached to my court. It was a good thing I was not bound to follow this Moses. Then I had a sudden remembrance. “Is not Moses the one who led you out of Egypt? Someone told me he had absolutely forbidden you to return. So why are all the Jews of Alexandria here? It seems you obey about the astrologers, but not about Egypt.”

He laughed. “Now, if I wanted to be difficult, like some of our legalists, I could argue that Alexandria is not ‘in Egypt’—she is called
Alexandria ad Aegyptum:
Alexandria-by-Egypt. But I find such arguments tiresome and cloyingly clever. The true answer is that we disobeyed, as we have a habit of doing.”

I laughed. “Like all subjects,” I said. “I must count myself lucky that my subjects have not been as rebellious as your people.”

“Indeed.” He bowed. “Your Majesty—”

“Yes, I know. It is late, and I have kept you too long. A poor reward for your diligence in coming to me after hours. Pray, go now.”

Clearly relieved, he took his leave. After he was gone, I stood for a long time at the window, gazing out at my sleeping city.
Was
there anything to these prophecies? What did they say?

As I lay down and rested at last, I knew he was right: the idea of them was dangerously seductive…both for the ruler and the people. But I still wanted to see them.

Day followed day in the splendor of high summer, and I gradually mastered all the accounts, ledgers, and reports that had accumulated awaiting my return. It was the Egyptian month of Epeiph, and the month of Quintilis, now officially called Julius, in the Roman calendar.

From what my informers told me—for by this time I had established a few listening posts in Rome—Brutus was incensed. He was especially infuriated because, while he himself had to stay away from Rome for his own safety, the
Ludi Apollinares
, games that he as praetor was required to sponsor, were going take place right in the middle of this newly named month. The honors would accrue to Caesar, but the cost would be borne by Brutus.

Then I heard that Octavian, as if to snub Brutus’s efforts, was holding games right afterward to celebrate Caesar’s victories—the
Ludi Victoriae Caesaris—
and he was doing it at his own expense, to show his “father’s” love for his people. He was also demonstrating his own loyalty, since the officials in charge of putting them on were too cowardly to dare.

But before any reports came to me about either set of games, I had yet another misfortune. I lost the child I was carrying, the last legacy from Caesar.

In its particulars, it was like the birth of Caesarion, only the child was too small to live—it was only halfway to its time of normal birth. I was forced to lie abed, dosed with pennyroyal and draughts of red wine. It was not my body that needed cosseting, however, but my spirits.

Farewell, and farewell, I thought, holding tightly to the pendant around my neck. Now there will never be a new thing between us; our life together is frozen in the past.

Gone, gone, and gone, I repeated to myself, lying on the bed, and each word was like a hammer on my soul. Gone forever.

Everyone was very kind, hovering around me. Charmian and Iras anticipated my every wish, Mardian came with jokes and riddles, Ptolemy wrote some stories that he insisted on reading to me, and Epaphroditus had some of his scriptures copied out for me. They all dealt with loss and fortitude.

I particularly liked one that went, “Thus saith the Lord, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel, weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, for they were not.”
For they were not…
sad words, sad thought, true thought.

The nights were hot, my chamber stifling. They moved my bed out onto the terrace, where sea breezes blew and I could see the stars. I would lie and look up at the blue-black bowl that arched over me, thinking of the Egyptian belief that each night the goddess Nut, stretched across the sky from east to west, swallowed the sun, which traversed her body to be reborn each dawn. She was always depicted in gold, lying across a deep, rich, blue sky.

It was artistic fancy. The stars were not gold, they were a cold, fiery white, and the sky was inky. And the nights I lay outside, the moon was dark as well.

Then the anticipated rising of Sirius, the star that had been below the horizon for seventy days, took place. A brilliant spot of light, it signaled the first day of the new year and announced that, far away to the south, the Nile too would begin to rise. The year was cycling, moving relentlessly on.

I could hear, far below me and outside the palace grounds, the shouts of excitement as Sirius was sighted, and the noisy celebrations began. Even to the Alexandrians, the rising of the Nile was life-bringing, as it was necessary to produce the grain the city exported.

How bright the light of the Lighthouse was tonight! They must have stoked it up with extra fuel—how long a trail the flames were making! Then I suddenly saw that it was not the Pharos at all, but something else behind it, something in the sky.

I flung off my light coverlet and went to the edge of the roof, changing my angle of vision. Yes…it was a brilliant light, hanging all by itself in the sky, low, so that it was almost even with the top of the Pharos. But it was not a star—it had a long tail.

A comet! There was a comet in the sky!

I had never seen a comet, but I somehow knew that was what it was. It was beautiful, unique. The tail trailed off in little twinkles that looked like glowing sparks; the head hovered protectively like the hood of a divine cobra.

At once a strange sensation passed through me, a jolt of recognition. It was Caesar, taking his place in the heavens, among the gods. And also, at this very time, rising to show me that he would never leave me, would always be with his true wife and fellow divinity, and take my part from heaven. He would not suffer our son to be kept from his inheritance. He would fight for it with me, more powerful now in the heavens than ever he was on earth, where he was hemmed in by little men and his own mortality.

I heard his voice in my ear, softer even than a whisper—or was it merely inside my own head?—saying that all would be well, but I must stop this mourning, I must rise from the sickbed and be the Cleopatra he admired for her strength and ingenuity. That was the true Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt and wife of Caesar, not this weak creature weeping and lamenting and languishing.

You must bear losses like a soldier
, the voice told me,
bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward. That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong
.

The comet blazed, commanding my attention, saying,
Take heed!

And I said, “Yes, I do,” and felt joy for the first time since his death—or rather, as I knew it now to be, his departure.

I lay back down and watched the comet, closing my eyes and letting it hang over me all night.

Far away in Rome, unknown to me at the time, Octavian also saw the comet, which appeared just as he was holding his Caesarean games between July twentieth and thirtieth. It caused a sensation among the populace, who also interpreted it as I had: They knew it was Caesar, being accepted into the panoply of gods.

Octavian at once announced his “father’s” divinity, and affixed the supernatural star to the brow of Caesar’s statues and declared that henceforth all coins would depict Caesar wearing his celestial star.

And, also unknown to me at the time, Octavian took the comet to be a summons to himself, announcing his destiny and calling on him never to rest until he had avenged Caesar’s murder.

Both of us called to arms by Caesar that night—both of us wishing to avenge him and complete his work—both of us needing to destroy the other to do so. Caesar had two sons, but there could be only one heir. Caesar had a vision of his future world empire—but was it to be centered in Rome or Alexandria? Would it be western or eastern in location and spirit? And who would preside over it?

The astrologers were abuzz with excitement about the comet, which remained in the sky for many days, and held nightly gatherings in the Museion to study it. From as far away as Parthia astronomers and astrologers came—they were honored with the title
magi
, or wise men—to meet with their fellow scholars. Once again Alexandria was the center of intellectual excitement, and I took great pride in that. I met with them myself one evening, asking them to draw up some astrological charts for Caesarion and Ptolemy and me.

They were gathered in the circular marble hall of the building, in its very center. Most of them wore Greek dress, but the foreigners wore their long embroidered robes and two Egyptians from Upper Egypt wore the ancient costume of the Nile.

“Gentlemen, I am surprised that you are not outside studying the comet and the heavens directly,” I told them. Rolls of charts were spread out on folding tables, along with mathematical books.

“Some of us are,” said Hephaestion, our leading astronomer. “The viewing platform on the roof is very crowded. The rest of us are working on the charts down here, amending them.”

“Had you predicted this comet?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted. “No, it was a complete surprise.”

That strengthened the proof that this was no ordinary comet, but a supernatural appearance. “What is your conclusion about it?”

“It is miraculous,” he said. “It must portend some event of great importance. The birth of a child, perhaps, who will fulfill one of the many prophecies?”

No, that was not it. Caesarion had already been born, and the next baby lost. Even Octavian—should he fancy the comet was for him—was already eighteen. Could it be interpreted by him—erroneously, of course—as marking his taking Caesar’s place in Rome? “No, that cannot be,” I said impatiently. “More likely it announces the world upheaval that started with Caesar’s death.”

He nodded in assent, just to be polite. I looked over at all the scholars pouring over their charts and arguing. “Can you deliver these horoscopes to the palace within three days?” I asked, presenting him with the data. I was most anxious to peek behind the workings of fate and see what was ahead.

Again, he bowed politely.

When the horoscopes were duly presented, I discovered that even though the astrologers had used the most ambiguous and soothing language, the stars were not kind to Ptolemy. As for Caesarion and myself, our destinies were intertwined, taking strength from each other. The fulsome prediction for me was that I would die as I wished, and live eternally. The words shimmered—did it mean “die as I would like to die, in the manner in which I would like to,” or did it mean “die because I would wish to”? Astrologers! But as for Ptolemy—I saw now that I would have to take him to Upper Egypt for the winter, if he had any hopes of recovery.

“But I don’t
want
to go,” he protested, when I told him. “I want to stay here. There is nothing up there—nothing but palm trees, mud huts, and crocodiles!”

Yes, plenty of crocodiles. Reports had just come in that there seemed to be a plague of them. Suddenly the Nile above Thebes was swarming with them, and so many crocodiles were basking on the sandbanks that it looked like a forest of wrinkled logs spread out on each side.

“Upper Egypt is very beautiful,” I said, remembering my voyages there. I had found it peaceful and lulling. “I will come with you, help settle you. We will stop at the shrine of Kom Ombo and pray to the crocodile deity there to call back his plague of crocodiles. And you shall see Philae, the most beautiful temple of Egypt, set on an island in the Nile.”

He made a face. “I don’t care about that! I want to stay here and help design the play-trireme they are making for Caesarion!”

“I will have them wait until you return,” I assured him. “Caesarion is too small to go out alone in it yet.”

For the first part of our journey, he was sulky. He did not wish to watch as the Nile and the land slid past us, but I paid careful attention to the condition of the irrigation ditches and dikes, especially in the Delta, which depended on irrigation. The waters had not started rising down here yet—it took almost twenty days before the flood reached us from the First Cataract.

In spite of his fierce words, Ptolemy lay listlessly under a canopy, scowling and coughing. He was clearly miserable.

We passed the pyramids, and he scarcely looked up at them. We passed by Memphis, passed the Moeris Oasis, passed Ptolemais, the last Greek outpost on the Nile. The river began to swell with the inundation. We had come to it, rather than waiting for it to come to us in Alexandria.

The river widened into a lake, and still we sailed onward, past Dendera with its Temple of Hathor, then past Thebes with its enormous Temple of Amun and its outsized statues of Ramses seated before his mortuary temple. The bleak hills where the dead Pharaohs held court in their rock-hewn chambers stretched far away from our line of vision.

Suddenly the river began to boil with the shapes of crocodiles. Everywhere I looked, there were the ripples in the water where a scaled back would break the surface; there were churning pockets in the reeds. Along the mudbanks they were lined up, some yawning and exposing gleaming curved teeth. They thrashed their tails slowly, and wiggled in the mud to settle themselves.

“Look!” I said, shaking Ptolemy, who was dozing in the midday heat. “Have you ever seen so many?”

He opened his eyes groggily, but they widened at the sight. “Great Serapis!” he exclaimed. “All the crocodiles in the whole world must be collected here!”

In fascination we watched while a dog came down to drink at a place on the bank that looked deserted. He approached warily, but thirst was his master and he had to drink. Gingerly he lowered his muzzle down to the surface of the empty-seeming water. He had barely touched it when an enormous shape rose up and snatched him, so quickly that my eye could barely follow the motion. A crocodile had been waiting, submerged.

The water frothed and the dog, yelping, shot above it, held in the grip of a crocodile jaw the size of a plow. The crocodile plunged him beneath the water and held him there until he drowned. Then the outsized jaw surfaced, its maw open, gulping down globs of flesh that had been alive only moments before. Blood spread out over the water and a flotilla of crocodiles rushed toward it, attacking the first crocodile and trying to wrench his meal from his jaws. Limbs and scaled tails lashed in the bloody water.