Page 27 of Cleopatra

27

CLEOPATRA

S ervilia comes to the villa and hurries inside, surrounded by guards. Outside the mob screams for my blood. A simple disguise would no longer be enough to fool them. There’s no restraint in their rage: all they understand is that Caesar is dead and the world broken open. They will kill us if they find us. My fear is only for my boy. I do not care for my own flesh.

We huddle together, making our plans with Servilia.

‘They will drink themselves into a stupor by dawn. It will be quieter then. The soldiers will patrol, and that is the safest time for you to leave. You’ll take my litter, not your own. No one will molest you, if they believe you are me,’ she says. ‘They saw me enter, and they will not know that it is you who leaves in my stead.’

I turn quickly to Charmian. ‘We leave everything behind. Nothing matters.’

I arrived here as queen with hundreds of slaves and a retinue of wagons and treasure, and I leave with nothing, I must shed it all to escape. Even my name. I will put it on again when we reach Egypt.

None of us sleeps. We wait, listening, watching till dawn. The first light sneaks across the sky, bleeding into the light of the fires in the streets. I rise from my seat and signal to the others. It’s time. The villa is abandoned, half packed, ready to be picked through and pilfered after we flee. I care for none of it; not the inlaid furniture or jewels or carpets or rare wines. Only us. Charmian, and me and my boy. My brother Tol will ride in a separate litter with his own guard, all painted with Servilia’s insignia. Caesarion is furious to be woken, in the night, plucked rudely from his cradle, but he settles again in the litter beside me, sleeping unaware of the danger. We are tucked up in Servilia’s litter, and she sends us out surrounded by her slaves, all clearly wearing her insignia. Caesarion snuggles into my lap, and I play with the golden hoard of his curls.

‘Take them out of the city, the shortest route. Be gone before dawn breaks,’ she orders.

Charmian frowns, tries to argue with me again. ‘My queen, you and Caesarion should not travel together, in one litter.’

I understand her fear – that if we are discovered, the mob will drag us out and kill us both. I shake my head in refusal. If we die, we die together.

As we are carried away, I sense Servilia watching us from an upper window. We shall not meet again.

The streets of Rome are mostly empty, the citizens huddle in their houses, afraid. Under the blankets in the litter, I echo their fear. I hardly breathe. It takes too long to pass through the city. We avoid the main thoroughfares, but we don’t want the narrowest backstreets where we could be trapped, unmasked. I stroke Caesarion’s hair, willing him to sleep. We travel to the rhythm of the jogging slaves. Terror nudges me until I can’t see, and my vision is smudged. We stop suddenly and, thrust forward. Caesarion wakes and begins to cry. I hush him but he won’t be quietened.

‘Who is it that you carry?’ demands a voice. ‘Who ventures out now?’

I daren’t look and see, not even a peep.

‘Servilia of the Servilii, as you can see,’ declares a guard, one of Servilia’s own men. ‘Move or we will walk over you.’

Caesarion begins to wail and tug at the curtain.

‘Servilia has no babe in arms,’ says the voice. ‘Let me see who it is you carry.’

‘Move away. You do not sully the litter of a matron of Rome with your unclean hands unless you want to lose them.’

I gesture to Charmian to hold Caesarion firmly, and, my hands shaking, I take a bottle from round my neck and, forcing Caesarion’s mouth open with my fingers, I shake in a few drops from the bottle. In a few seconds he quietens, goes limp. I hope I have given him the right amount, only enough to make him sleep.

‘Move aside!’ yells the guard.

Clearly, the challenger has chosen to step aside, for I feel the pace pick up and we rush forward. I curl up around my boy. He whimpers in his sleep.

*

Time passes in spurts. It rushes then stills. We travel through the city gates. I exhale and Charmian smiles at me, squeezes my hand. My fear makes me impatient and snappish. I am cramped and sore and we are jostled and shaken. The light bleeds around the edges of the horizon, reds smeared across the sky. We are not safe. Not yet. We travel on and on. To my relief, Caesarion wakes, but relief is short-lived. Soon my head throbs with his crying and the effort of holding him, stopping him from grabbing the curtains and trying to climb out. Nausea builds in my stomach, acid and sour, and my legs and arms are numb. The slaves slow and stall some distance beyond the city gates, unable to carry us any further.

We are handed down from the litter, and now climb into a waiting cart. It’s no luxurious wagon but a covered cart pulled by horses. Caesarion is scarlet with rage and tries to refuse to get inside, longing to run around and play, but is lifted up unceremoniously by a slave. I am sweaty and dry-mouthed. A pain twists low in my belly, I give a sudden cry.

‘Are you well, my queen?’ asks Charmian.

I wave away her concerns. The truth is that I cannot tell. I cannot see for fear, and there is a coldness deep within me.

We do not stop until we are hours away from the city. The light has changed to that of late afternoon. We stink of horses and sweat. The wagon pauses near the banks of a river, and the horses are unhitched to drink.

I wade out into the shallows. I need to wash, to cleanse myself. As the water tickles my ankles, I feel blood trickling down my thighs. There is a fist of pain. I double over and vomit into the river.

I sit in the shallows, ungainly, nesting on a crock of pebbles. Charmian comes and sits beside me, the water marbling pink with my blood.

‘I didn’t know,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

I don’t speak. I don’t need to. We lie together side-by-side in the water, as the stream washes away this part of me and Caesar. The pain is acute, but I can bear it. I must bear it, for we have far to go. I bite my lip, clenching my fingers and toes.

‘Tell me you won’t leave me again,’ I say.

‘Never,’ she replies. ‘I’m yours.’ She opens her arms. ‘Lie back. Let me hold you,’ she says.

I wriggle back and lie in her arms. I feel the small, hard curve of her own swelling belly. She strokes my face and my hair. I close my eyes and let myself cry.

She talks to me softly as she washes away my tears. ‘I had a dream. Our children were playing together. My daughter, Caesarion and the spirit of this child. But there were other children too.’

‘Yours?’

‘No, yours. Not yet. But one day.’

I believe her. I consider everything she’s given up to be with me. I gave her freedom but she chose me anyway. She came back to me for love. This pain in my belly isn’t mine alone, for we are together. We will survive and find our way back to Alexandria.

The water sluices away the blood. I rest in her arms and do not move, allowing it to clean me. The coolness of the water soothes the pulsing ache. I don’t know how long I lie there. Minutes. Hours. She just sits with me, holding me in her arms.

Some time later, I notice a little upstream Caesarion squatting in the water, peering at a fish. Love rises in me, a spinning coin. It’s time. I rinse away the last of the blood from my thighs and stand, a little unsteady.

‘Come,’ I say, heading back to the wagon. ‘We have far to go.’

Caesarion reaches for one hand and Charmian takes the other.

As we walk, I think of Servilia. I did not thank her. But I suspect she does not want my gratitude. Charmian stoops and picks up my son. We go back to the wagon together, my family.

Now I sit in the gardens of the palace. Home in Alexandria. In the distance the sea glints silver and green, above the gulls circle, sailing through the sky on great white wings. The air is perfumed with the scent of date palms and salt. The light here is blue, and heat rasps my skin, and I watch as Caesarion plays on a blanket with his nurse and Charmian, indulged by both. She is heavy with her child, he will be born any day now. Perhaps one day his father will visit. But I will be as a parent to the boy. I look at my friend and my son and smile, dazed with love. Charmian rises with some difficulty and, puffing, settles on the cushion beside me. I stroke her hair.

‘I came back to you because I belong to you and also to this,’ she says softly. ‘The Nile flows through my blood. I am a creature of the court, not a farmer’s wife. I cannot be other than I am.’

I kiss her forehead. ‘And I love you as you are. Rest now,’ I say.

She closes her eyes. And, as she sleeps, I take out my pen and resume my account. This is peace. Rome leaves us be, for now at least. The empire is too busy eating its own tail to bother with us at the far edges. Yet I know it hasn’t forgotten me or Egypt, merely turned its head away for a moment. My sister is a prisoner in Rome, alive but safely far away from me. This calm is only a lull but I savour it all the same. Happiness is fleeting, and I grab it with my fingers as it slips through them like sand.

I know what they say about me in Rome. Already, my enemies chisel away my name where they find it. They want to erase all parts of me, have my body and my name sink back into the dust. Yet their words are more brutal than their tools for if it was up to them, they would seal me inside a history that never was. I worry that one day, their prattling, strumpet Cleopatra will step forward shrieking, my own self lost. Their voices are so loud that it seems even to me that my memories are only dreams and shadows. The world is stuffed with my enemies and rivals, who only see me through the veil of their own dislike and the misleading dazzle of their ambition. But I’ve told you my story and you know that I am not who they say. You hear my own history even as they race to erase and deface me. Don’t listen to them, for who knows the truth better than me? For I am Cleopatra.

I heard that Brutus lives, and despite all he has done, the havoc and misery he has wreaked, I am glad for his mother’s sake. I look at my son on the blanket, playing with his blocks, piling them up and shrieking with rage as they tumble, and I both feel it is impossible that he could ever grow into such a man, capable of such harm, and know that he could.

Servilia and I were joined for a moment, connected by our love for one man, and then by fear and loss. Without Caesar, there is no conduit between us. Yet, I think of her sometimes, the mother who saved her son and mine.

Charmian murmurs in her sleep beside me and I swat away a mosquito from her cheek. Rome might plot against me in deeds and whispers, but I have friends. I am loved, as a queen, a goddess and as a mother and friend. I will rule Egypt and defend my throne for all of us against the mighty tyranny of Rome. My voice is loud, I shout across the endless dunes and I will be heard.

Perhaps you are reading my account now in the great library at Alexandria, amongst the scrolls where I liked to sit as a girl. I don’t know what happens next or how my part will end. I am only determined that my name will live on. And you know now the woman to whom it belonged. And, as you read, do not picture me crowded with jewels, bracelets jammed along my arms. I hope that you see me instead in the library seated on a low cushion, a scroll tucked in one hand, my finger twisting in my hair as I read, lips moving, a concentrated furrow on my brow, Charmian at my side. I will place this account there, waiting for those, like you, who want to find me.