Page 3 of Cleopatra

3

SERVILIA

Y ou know the name Cleopatra, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of me. I’m one of the women at the edge of the history, brushed to the side much as the slaves sweep away dust and debris. I have had two husbands and in time I grew fond of each of them. I bore them children and tended to their houses and slaves. If there was not love between us, then there was at least affection, if not heat then warmth. I was not unhappy. Many women have worse husbands and more of them. I had only two, neither unpleasant nor unkind. One could say that I was in fact fortunate and, truly, I felt that luck and gave thanks to the gods. But I am more than the men I married and the children whom I bore. And, if you listen a while, you’ll understand how I am part of Cleopatra’s story too. Our lives are threaded together, at first by shared love and later by death. All these things happened so long ago that almost everyone else has forgotten my part. But I’m skipping ahead – it’s a habit when one gets old, everything happens at once, time is kneaded and folded in on itself like soft dough.

Let me turn the scroll back a length, to the end of Cleopatra’s first visit here in Rome. I was glad to see the Egyptians go, a departing storm of chaos, money and death. For months, the entire city of Rome had been drunk on Egyptian gold. Citizens and senators walked out into the streets and held out their hands as though to catch raindrops and gold fell into their palms. Their greed triggered a kind of madness, blinding them to the murder and mutilations that followed in the Pharaoh’s wake. Even weeks after the foreigners left, we were still finding corpses in Rome. It was easy enough for the citizens to turn a blind eye for none of the dead were Romans, merely Egyptians sent by Berenice, daughter of the Pharaoh, to plead her case in the senate. Berenice dispatched men to argue on her behalf but she sent scholars and politicians, not warriors, and their sharp wit was no match for the sharp swords of the thugs and mercenaries belonging to King Auletes. Not a single one of Berenice’s men lived to plead a single word in Rome. Slaves discovered a dozen bodies on the road into the city, throats slit, wounds scabbed with flies. Others were stabbed or strangled and tossed into the Tiber, the corpses catching on the bridges and silting up the flow. A few of Berenice’s men succeeded in reaching the city and toasted their safe arrival with wine. That toast was their last, the carafe laced with poison. Everyone whispered that it was the Pharaoh who had ordered these killings. They might have been right. But I wonder whether it was Cleopatra. They always say that poison is a woman’s preferred choice.

The first time we met she was just a girl, or perhaps I ought to say woman, for she was only a little younger than I was when I married my first husband, somewhere around thirteen or fourteen. She was small and thin, but with black hair and eyes and the promise of prettiness to come. But, while everyone laughed about the fat Pharaoh, her father, few seemed to notice the clever, dark-eyed girl at his side. I did.

During her visit to Rome with her father, I watched her for a while at public gatherings over the weeks, before finally speaking to her at my brother Cato’s house. Cato wished me to talk to Cleopatra. He had prepared his own speech for me to give. I listened politely, allowing him to assume that I would repeat his opinions. I was fond of my brother, but also aware of his intractability. He assumed that his opinion was so persuasive that I could never think otherwise. I allowed him to believe this – and then took my own way. I had my own reasons for wanting the Egyptians to return quickly to Alexandria, and without Roman soldiers. Pompey wanted to give Auletes his legions and be paid the wealth of Egypt in return. My hatred of Pompey was deeper than Hades, and whatever Pompey desired, I was determined he should not get.

There was a time, long ago, before Cleopatra was even born, that Rome seemed to grow tyrants like a hydra sprouts new heads; as soon as one foul oppressor was removed, another grew in his place. The worst of these hydra was Pompey. When my first husband Brutus left Rome to join the rebellion in the name of the republic, he fought against Pompey and tyranny. Sometimes now I can hardly recall Brutus’s face. Yet, I can still hear his voice, his certainty and affection when he spoke of the sanctity of the Roman republic. He never spoke of me with the same passion. Over dinner, between sips of wine, he liked to recount the legend of the first Brutus who had killed the last king of Rome, another monster. He believed he shared more than just a name with that Brutus, but blood and honour too, and it was his destiny to fell tyrants.

My husband was gone for months, and the household continued without him in much the same manner. We weren’t relieved or cheered by his absence for he was no despot, but our union was one of polite companionship rather than easy or deep affection. I recognised him as a good man, decent and earnest if a little dull – a man whose anecdotes never seemed to lead to a punchline and yet were oft repeated. Mostly I was occupied with my son Brutus, and content to devote myself to him and his education. At ten, my boy was bright, interested and interesting. As a baby, I adored him and was frightened by him in equal measure. He was too small and too fragile. I hung his crib with amulets, death was black-eyed and hungry for infants, and I endlessly pressed the slaves to be careful with him. But as he grew into his busy boyhood, stout and pink-cheeked, I relaxed and enjoyed him. We were happy, the war was far off and distant, and while it was dangerous in Rome I did not fear for myself or my boy. We lived quietly, rarely ventured out, and I persuaded myself that we were safe, that nothing needed to change.

The day started warm and pleasant, no different from any other. The slaves were pinning up laundered linens amongst the lavender to be scented by the breeze as they dried. The cook was fussing that the fish that had been delivered wasn’t fresh, the sound of his complaints spilling out across the gardens. I listened to the hum of the bees in the honeysuckle outside the window as I tallied accounts. Then, the messenger arrived. He sauntered into the triclinium where I sat, with the barest effort at politeness, the slave who’d opened the door to him trailing behind, upset that he’d been unable to announce him. The visitor was bearded and dirty from some days upon the road and smelled accordingly. I did not rise and greet him, his rudeness made him forfeit such civilities.

‘I am sent by Pompey,’ he announced, self-satisfied and preening.

My husband was fighting against Pompey and his allies, and I could not at first understand why his enemy would send a messenger to me, at my house.

‘Praise Mars, the war is done. The great Pompey is victorious,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘Your husband and his fellow rebels surrendered.’

Fear rose in my throat, bitter as gall.

‘And how fares my husband?’ I asked.

‘Dead.’

The bees buzzed and hummed, their sound pulsing in my head.

‘How did he die?’

‘On the great Pompey’s command. He died by the sword.’

‘During the battle?’

‘After. On Pompey’s orders,’ he repeated, his tone crowing and without an inch of pity.

‘Afterwards? He had surrendered?’ I asked, the villainy that had taken place now slowly clarifying.

‘Yes,’ said the messenger, only now displaying a touch of unease.

‘Where is his body?’

‘Disposed of. Burned.’

I saw now that he carried the ashes of my husband in an urn, tucked under his arm like a flowerpot. I turned from him in contempt. I would not let him see that I was saddened and disgusted. My face was not his to read.

I left the room and went outside. Brutus was playing in the garden, and I walked along the paths, calling for him. After a minute, I found him and watched as he ran towards me, his cheeks flushed with exertion. Knowing what I must do, the pain I must now inflict, my stomach filled with dread, and my mouth dried. I crouched down, and placing my hands gently on his shoulders, I explained that there was a man come from Pompey with news and he must be very brave.

‘Is my father dead?’ he asked, looking steadily into my eyes.

My voice caught in my throat, and it took me two attempts to answer.

‘He is with his ancestors,’ I replied.

Brutus made no answer and did not cry. As we made our way slowly back to the house, he remained silent. He walked beside me and I saw him straighten, discard the stick with which he’d been playing as he discarded the last vestiges of his childhood. In truth, I never saw him play again. When we reached the house, the messenger was waiting for us outside on the loggia. Roses, lavender and jasmine were strewn all about him in the beds, and the prettiness of the scene and the sweet fragrance warred with the horror that he now forced upon us. Brutus looked up and down at the messenger still clutching the pot of ashes, and he grew very still. He did not weep or shout, but asked very softly, ‘That is all that remains of my father?’

‘I am so very sorry, my love,’ I replied, speaking before the messenger had time to heap on yet more insult and pain.

Brutus’s face did not change. He only asked, ‘Who has done this thing?’

‘Pompey,’ said the messenger quickly, before I could reply. And then, with phlegm and excitement, he began to recount the details of the murder. How Brutus’s father had surrendered, realising victory was impossible. How Pompey had accepted, and then, had him murdered anyway. Perhaps on seeing how my son listened so quietly, the horror and disgust showing on his face, the man began to deflate like a pig’s bladder as he told his tale. If perhaps it had sounded glorious in his mind as he rehearsed it, now it was grubby and foul.

‘This was a crime. Unworthy of a Roman,’ I said at last when he was done.

That night I sat with Brutus until he fell asleep. He was so quiet, but his face was painted with grief and rage. It was the face of a boy, but the expression of a man. When at last he was asleep, I quietly crept out into the garden. It was oddly bright, lit by the full-face moon. I muttered a prayer to Diana, asking her to watch over me and my son, now that we were alone. I picked handfuls of herbs that I’d tended and grown myself, then fetched a cup of wine and the best of the nuts from the larder and walked to the shrine in the midst of the garden dedicated to Mars. I placed my offering before the shrine and lit a candle.

‘I ask Mars the avenger to enact vengeance upon Gnaeus Pompey. May he suffer and bleed, be cursed and betrayed. May his corpse weep from the banks of the Styx at its lack of funeral. May Pompey be denied the rites and privileges in death that he denied my husband. Let his corpse be burned before a death mask can be cast, so that he is denied a place in his atrium with his ancestors and his spirit rove the earth, restless and without peace.’

My voice shook as I cursed and made my appeal to Mars. There was no sound in the darkness, but Diana in the guise of the moon far above watched me and bore witness.

And yet, to my surprise, I found another reason to help Cleopatra other than my hatred of Pompey. The more I watched her, the more she interested me. I realised that I did not want to see this girl beggared to Rome. Not that my words made any difference. When they left Italy, it was with four Roman legions. Four legions that would come in time to cost her the whole of Egypt. Once Rome takes an interest and a chit is opened, like a racketeer Rome will not stop until the client is bled dry.

I did as Cleopatra suggested, offering prayers not only to Mars and Diana, reminding them that they had not yet delivered me vengeance upon Pompey for my husband’s death, but also adding prayers to Osiris and Isis. I did not mind which of the gods enacted my revenge. Whenever I murmured those prayers, I thought of Cleopatra. She would not have waited for the gods. Her sister Berenice died on their return to Alexandria. I do not know the manner of her death, only that she disappeared, silently sliding out of history and this world.