Page 9 of Cleopatra
9
CLEOPATRA
T he guards scour the city for Ptolemy, but his allies Achillas and Pothinus remain in the palace. I wonder that they don’t leave, slink out into the night to keep guard over their prince, but they choose to stay here to watch us. We’re enemies walled up together, scheming for death. I was safer in the desert, where I only needed to fear the heat and the black cobras sliding on their bellies outside my tent through the dark.
In the palace the air hums with fear like a rush of bees. In fact, even the bees themselves seem unsettled, swarming from their hives in the gardens and hanging in a writhing black knot on the gatepost to the temple as servants try to drive them back into their hives with smoking heaps of dung. Everyone watches and suspects everyone else of dissembling. The eunuchs are the poison from whence the sickness flows like pus from a wound. They mouth allegiance to Caesar and pretend that Ptolemy is inflaming the city according to his own whim, but we all know this is a lie. We perform in an absurd pageant where they snivel apologies to Caesar, and we pretend to believe them, while they sneer and conspire behind our backs. They have my brother well hidden in the city, the bellows to the rioters’ flames, as they remain here listening, watching, plotting, waiting to murder us.
As we lie in bed, I warn Caesar that their viciousness is sneaky. ‘They came for your old friend and foe Pompey with a knife, but their methods are not always so direct. They will poison you with kisses. I’ve seen the ash that tarnishes their souls. Their consciences were removed with their testicles.’
He studies my face carefully and listens but does not reply. I can only hope he pays heed to my warnings.
‘When will your legions arrive?’ I ask.
‘That’s the will of the gods,’ he replies. ‘We must pray for favourable winds.’
‘My army is coming closer. They’ll wait beyond the confines of the city. They will join your legions,’ I say.
He brushes my knuckles against his lips.
In the morning, when I wake he is gone. I sit in bed alone, until Charmian knocks on the door calling my name, and a moment later it flies open and two children come tearing in. My sister Arsinoe stops short, hanging back, suddenly shy. I almost don’t recognise her, she’s grown tall in the months since I left, a sapling sprouted, long and lean. But then she smiles, and it’s the same lopsided grin I know and love. I hold my arms open. She hurls herself into them. A moment later, the boy lands on my bed, flinging his arms around me. My youngest brother, Tol. He smells of soap and honey. I’m touched by the warmth of his greeting. He grins at me, and worms his tongue through the gap in his teeth.
‘I lost a tooth,’ he says proudly. ‘I didn’t cry.’
‘Yes, you did,’ says Arsinoe. ‘You cried like the baby you are.’ With that, Tol jumps to his feet and yanks my sister’s braid until she yelps and slaps him hard across his cheek, leaving a crimson star. I grab her wrists and slide in between them both, dodging the raining blows.
‘Peace! Both of you. We have other enemies, there’s no need to fight with one another.’
They eye each other with hostility across the battleground of the bed. Arsinoe sighs and slumps onto the cushions.
‘I missed you, Cleo. I was afraid.’
I pull her close, feel the downy softness of her skin. I shouldn’t have left her here.
‘I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m here now. I won’t let anything happen,’ I murmur into her hair.
I hope this is true. I can hardly protect myself.
‘I don’t need you. You left me,’ she says, defiant and brimming with reproach and shoving me away. ‘I have Thoth.’
For a moment, I think she’s talking about the god himself and then she gives a low whistle and there’s the sound of wings beating against air and a large falcon sweeps across the ceiling as if one of the frescoed birds has sprung to life and then dives onto her outstretched arm, which I now notice is sheathed with a stout leather wristband, studded with golden rivets. From its perch on her arm, the falcon stares at me with flat ambivalence but imperiously permits Arsinoe to stroke his feathers as she feeds him scraps of meat from a little bag at her waist. Tol squats on his heels and studies them both, frowning.
‘I want a bird to hunt with. I’m a boy, it isn’t fair.’
‘Your being a boy has nothing to do with it. You must show you’re enough of a man, as your sister is enough of a woman to have a bird. I will bring you a falcon, but you must train it properly, like your sister has.’
‘Really?’ He stares at me, shiny with delight, big-eyed.
Laughing at his happiness, I nod. I will find the best falcon trainers in Egypt to coach him. I had not realised the simple joy to be found in pleasing these children.
‘We can only hunt with him in the palace grounds. It’s boring,’ Arsinoe grumbles. ‘We used to hunt in the desert and in the fields.’
I want to laugh that the civil war is a mere inconvenience to them, an interruption to their games. Yet, I am glad. My childhood was so brief and theirs will be too. I must ensure it isn’t brutal.
‘Then, it’s good that the palace grounds are large,’ I say. ‘And perhaps, you must learn to hunt him along the corridors. Set free a mouse for him to chase and devour.’
Arsinoe frowns. ‘I’m forbidden. He terrifies the slaves and the courtiers when he flies above their heads.’
I smile and shrug. ‘Then, let them be terrified. You are a princess. You must learn to be pitiless.’
Arsinoe grins at me, thrilled. Even though I long to linger with the children, have sport with Arsinoe’s falcon, I need to send out my other birds to listen. I send them back with their slaves to their lessons, while I dispatch Charmian, Iras and Apollodorus to attend to the muttering of the slaves and servants in the palace. They will hear the rustle of more whispers than any Roman, and I can only hope that they will uncover any scheme to kill us.
‘I have spies everywhere. From the kitchen porters to the eunuchs’ own slaves,’ Apollodorus says. ‘Achillas and Pothinus are feared but not loved. My best spy is the palace barber, a man who doesn’t speak – dumb since birth – but he hears everything and those whose beards he trims often mistake his silence for a simple nature.’
I know of the man. He tends to the eunuchs’ bodies every day, keeping them smooth. I’m intrigued. I’d thought they were hairless through nature, but it seems it’s partly the barber’s doing. I pity him his task – although I suppose that at least he does not have to pluck their balls.
Already the grain and fruit that enters the palace is mouldy, while the meat is green and rotting. At dinner in the hall surveyed by the shining gods we’re served wizened food on golden platters. Caesar loses his temper and confronts Pothinus. ‘Are you incapable of finding fresh food in all of Egypt? Is this simple task beyond your power?’
Pothinus bows and snivels, smirking. We know he controls the grain warehouses and all routes into the palace.
‘Oh great and worthy Caesar, I fear that you must learn to like it. This is the only food we poor Egyptians have. And it is being given to you and your four thousand legionaries without cost. And we Alexandrians have a saying: a man who does not pay must accept with grace what is given.’
Caesar hears both the slur and the threat – he has few legionaries with him, and the eunuch general knows it. Caesar has enough only to protect his position in the palace, not to control the wealth of Egypt or the port. He doesn’t reply and reins in his temper. But his anger is cold and palpable, I hear it like a hornet buzz. Pothinus will pay dearly for his easy insults later. Caesar is a wounded beast whose might will return with the thousands more legionaries sailing towards us from Italy.
To me, the question is who will kill whom first between Caesar or Pothinus. Caesar clearly wonders the same as he has two slaves test his food and won’t allow me to eat from the same dishes as him in case they are poisoned – ‘They shall not murder us both with a single bite.’ I’m more afraid that we’ll die from consuming rotting, foul food rather than any drops of venom. Iras tastes mine. I watch her with terror and would rather not eat at all if it were possible. I have never had less appetite.
Caesar and I no longer sleep at night, even surrounded by guards it’s too dangerous. Instead we rest at odd hours, the rags of time. I see assassins and cut-throats hiding in every shadow, and they steal out from the underworld to pursue me through my dreams. Perhaps that is why Caesar hardly seems to sleep at all, napping on a sofa, his hand always on the sword at his hip, eyelids fluttering. The strange restless cycle of sleeping in snatches during the day and sitting awake through the night makes the days flow together in a dreamlike state. Sometimes I’m not entirely sure if I’m waking or sleeping, I seem to exist in a weird half-light, a liminal place between dawn and dusk. Caesar however is used to this peculiar existence, it’s his campaign practice, and while he’s many things: consul, senator, general, most of all he’s a soldier. This is merely a campaign directed and fought from a palace instead of a mountainside, river bank or ditch. I can see him hunker down inside himself, find comfort in the ritual, where for me there is only strangeness. The unease binds us together. I begin to find that I do not dislike him for a bedfellow. He is clever and amusing and hides his viciousness beneath his skin. I know it is there, but I show him no fear. He doesn’t want that from me. The assassins who want to harm us are the mere pickpockets of death, filchers of the occasional soul, while Caesar is a true ally of Osiris. He has peopled the underworld with battalions of souls for the death gods to weigh.
Caesar has a shrine to Venus placed in the corner of the room where we pretend to sleep, but next to it I have one for Isis and Osiris carried in and adorned with flowers and offerings of gold and myrrh and blood. Caesar makes no objection, and we blend our gods and our blessings. Privately, I trust in my own gods for Rome’s Venus is too tender, while Isis is a sorcerer married to death himself, whom she resurrects with her own magic. And yet on the altar side-by-side I can see Venus and Isis are sister-gods. Perhaps the brew Isis uses to resurrect her brother-husband is bound with love.
Caesar and I are united by our shared danger and stranded here in the palace now become an island we cannot leave, we turn to one another. After we have lain together we rest naked beside one another and he strokes the outline of my lips and cheek with an idle finger. Instead of murmuring sweet nothings, he asks me about the grain stores and the number of ships in the Egyptian navy, the position of my troops and the reliability of my spies. I tell him everything where our interests are allied, but I am silent or deflect where there are details that he doesn’t need to know. Sensing my holding back, he studies me with intent, but asks no further, knowing why I will not tell him.
I am never safe, not even as I lie in Caesar’s arms. There are many kinds of poison, some are dispensed through words not herbs. In the morning a slave announces that Achillas wishes to speak to us, and Caesar waves him inside. The dictator’s personal guards slide in behind the eunuch. Caesar and I sit together on the sofa, his arms are around me, and I’m sprawled half across him in a state of undress as we quietly discuss the position of the scant Roman troops – not for us the empty nothings of ordinary lovers. We fall silent as Achillas enters and stands in the doorway, his face dripping with feigned concern. A slave is by his side holding a poultice on a tray.
‘I took the liberty of preparing this strengthening mixture myself. You smear it across your belly and it will nourish the child,’ says the eunuch with a bow.
Caesar glances at me with surprise, wondering if I am already with child and haven’t told him.
‘My womb is empty,’ I say to Caesar, ignoring the eunuch.
Achillas feigns wonder and pretends consolation. ‘We all heard what the soothsayer foretold. It will happen with another moon.’
The slave steps forward and holds out her tray. I take no notice of her. Achillas knows I would never touch food nor any other potion he’s prepared and so this is not an attempt to poison me through my mouth or skin. But there is harm intended, I’m certain.
‘Or perhaps the time was not yet fruitful when you began lying together,’ he says.
His words are a liberty and intrusion, even though a queen’s body is never her own. But there is something else in his tone – a note of triumph. He knows something. I glance again at the slave’s tray, and notice that beside the mortar holding the poultice are tiny folded pieces of cloth, round and edged with gold. They look dirty, despite having been washed, and then I realise the stain isn’t dirt but blood. My blood. These are exactly like the cloths I slid inside myself to absorb my monthly courses when I first lay with Caesar. Perhaps they are the same – I don’t know how Achillas found them. It does not matter, for I understand his intention is to rattle me, he seeks to set Caesar against me. I conceal my unease and glance at Caesar, who just looks impatient at the interruption.
‘Too much blood can impede the flowering of the child. Perhaps this was the cause of the queen’s empty womb,’ says Achillas, looking at me. ‘Did you bleed profusely when you first lay with Caesar?’
The blood that now flows is to my cheeks for I’m angry and a little afraid. Before I can speak, Caesar snaps at him. ‘Enough! For a eunuch you are well informed on the getting of children. Yet, your information is all reading and no experience.’
‘It’s indeed fortunate that I like to read,’ says Achillas, unruffled.
Soon after, he leaves the room with a pert little bow, accompanied by the slave who sets down her tray upon the table and scurries out behind him.
Caesar and I talk some more, discussing how best to guard the harbour, and the rapid emptying of the palace food stores. Yet, he does not touch me again, no longer casually drapes his arm about my shoulder nor brushes my cheek with his knuckles. Slaves bring us food, and then, after we’ve eaten, I wait for Caesar to kiss me and signal that he wants to lie with me. Instead he remains seated on the sofa, at a little distance from me – never has an arm’s breadth of fabric felt so wide. He’s quiet for a while, the only sound is the tap-tapping of his fingers on the seat. At last he clears his throat and says, ‘I’ve heard all sorts of stories travelling. From Cyprus to Athens the world is full of fears and hopes. One learns which hold some truth and clever magic, and which to disregard. Kiss a mule to cure your cold. Caesar does not kiss an ass.’
I make myself smile at his joke.
Caesar continues. ‘But I would not let my soldiers march for three days after the augur saw a flock of sparrows fly to our left.’
‘An ill omen indeed,’ I agree.
‘And if a woman lies with a man when she’s bleeding it can be fatal to the man. Or, it can be if the sun and moon are in conjunction.’
I don’t answer or look at him. Does he believe that I put him in danger when we first lay together? From his voice, I can’t tell if he supposes this to be true or is recollecting some rustic belief that he disregards. He’s unreadable – an engraved tomb rubbed clean by time and sand. But what is clear to me is that Achillas and his insinuations are a danger to me and my relationship with Caesar.
For a day and a night, Caesar is absent from my bed and I’m needled with worry. My life and my power rests on his favour. I require his partiality and resent it all at once. I’m careful, however. I mustn’t seem too eager or contrite. I light candles to Isis and – in deference to him – to Venus, his family goddess. The politics of Rome and Egypt has contracted to this bed, the desires and whims of one man. While I wait, I call Charmian and Apollodorus, and ask them to bring the children to me. They come in the evening, landing on top of me as is their wont, talking over one another in their eagerness to tell me what they’ve learned in the day’s lessons. Dusk begins to fall as we talk, and the door to the chamber opens. Caesar stands in the doorway. I don’t acknowledge him, but pretend to listen only to the children, even though in truth I can no longer attend to a word either of them is saying. Seeing me occupied, he comes into the room, dismisses his guards and quietly sits on a sofa, watching us. He likes children and surveys us with indulgence. He says nothing, only watches as we talk. Tol tears around the room with a toy horse in one fist and a soldier in the other. Arsinoe holds out her wrist for her falcon, but it perches imperiously on the horn of a sculpture of Isis, and ignores her for a minute before returning to her glove.
‘You need to train him to come to you quicker,’ I say, as the bird flies again, squitting messily on a sculpture of Artemis. ‘Fortunately the goddess of the hunt won’t take offence. She’s indulgent towards all her hunters, even the winged ones. But, I was more careful with my training.’
‘You had a falcon, Cleo?’ asks Arsinoe.
‘When I was a girl. He was a gift from Charmian.’
As we talk, Caesar leans back, listening. I stretch out and fiddle with Arsinoe’s braids, twisting them between my fingertips.
‘Charmian bought the falcon from a market stall, trading him for one of the tiny golden vipers pinned in her ear, unable to bear the noise of him screaming in his cage. He called to the sky he couldn’t touch.’
‘Did you love him?’ asks Arsinoe.
‘From the moment Charmian gave him to me, scraggy and hooded.’
‘I love Thoth,’ says Arsinoe, staring with reverence at her bird.
I remember how I removed my falcon’s hood for the first time, how, like a lover, I drank in the bill sharp as a knife blade, the yellow talons bright as sunshine, the berry-black eyes. I owned many creatures and people, and yet the loyalty of my falcon I had to earn. I turn to Arsinoe.
‘I spent many months coaxing my bird. Just as you teach Thoth. I trained him to fly and to return to me, to land on my glove as I held out a scrap of crocodile meat. In time, all his kills belonged to me.’
‘Thoth won’t give them up to me,’ says Arsinoe, and I can tell she’s reluctantly impressed at my skill.
‘Not yet. Patience. Practice.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘He was smaller than Thoth here. He had stippled feathers like the sand marked by the retreating tide. He slept on a golden perch above my bed. I had no need of a cage, you see, as he would never leave me. I never chained him.’
‘Never?’
I shake my head and Arsinoe stares at me with big eyes, and even Tol has stopped jumping around and sits listening. Caesar smiles at us from across the room. It’s a strangely familial scene. I carry on.
‘He slept next to me in his hood. I had a new one made and decorated with the white and red crown of Horus. He’d claw and nip at anyone who reached for him other than me. They say that birds are stupid—’
‘People are stupid,’ says Arsinoe, indignant.
‘Indeed. For they say birds lack the loyalty of dogs or the cleverness of a cat, but my falcon was loyal and clever.’
‘Like mine.’
‘Of course. Little Horus sensed my moods. If I felt irritable or low, he would fly to my shoulder and rest there, and if that failed, he would hunt for a mouse or snake, and instead of consuming his prize, drop it on my lap.’
‘Yuck,’ says Tol, wrinkling his nose.
‘But a gift is precious when it means something to the giver. They feel its loss but give it anyway. That is a true gift. And my falcon’s bloody offerings meant more to me than any jewelled presents given by supplicants at court.’
‘You trained him well. Your bird was a good servant,’ said Arsinoe.
I shrug and continue. ‘I didn’t think of him as my bird but as my friend. Everywhere we went, little Horus followed. Even our father was charmed by him. He used to wonder aloud if he was indeed the manifestation of Horus himself. People began to bring the falcon offerings of small animals as sacrifices, in hope of good fortune in return.’
I glance at Charmian, then carry on with my story.
‘Charmian says this is where the trouble started – that Ptolemy and his eunuchs could not stomach that a bird was being held in higher regard than them. Their hatred festered like an untreated sore in the heat. Little Horus hated them too. He would ignore any morsel they proffered, no matter how succulent. And, when flying back to my glove, he would skim the top of Pothinus’s bald head with his talons, forcing the eunuch to duck, and if he was too slow, Little Horus would slice open his scalp, shrieking with triumph. The entire court laughed to watch the eunuch squirm and shout and bleed.’
The two children giggle as they picture the scene.
‘Oh, I wish I could have seen,’ says Arsinoe. ‘It sounds so funny.’
‘It was, but humiliating your enemies can be dangerous.’
The children wriggle closer to me, even the falcon seems alert and listening.
‘You see, one morning after a year, I woke to find him missing from his perch. As I looked up, I couldn’t see his hooded face, only the empty gold branch. I scrambled out of bed and found him collapsed on the floor. He was in a puddle of blood, his hood cut from his head.’
Arsinoe gasps in horror, reaches for her own bird.
‘As I picked him up, he twitched in my hands, his glorious talons snatching at the air. Blood foamed in his beak. As he writhed, he’d plucked out his own eye with his toe.’
The children recoil.
‘I held him tight, kissed the soft feathers on the top of his head and then I wrung his neck.’
I can sense Caesar’s approval. That I did not flinch from what needed to be done.
‘He went limp. I sat with him in my lap, his blood and spray of shit spattering my dress. He was surprisingly light in death, as though Anubis had taken his substance along with his life. He had no visible wound, other than his missing eye and that he’d mutilated himself.’
‘What killed him?’ asked Arsinoe, her voice hushed.
‘Well, I searched around the room and noticed his bowl of water. It was red and brackish. At first, I thought it was stained with his blood. But then, when I sniffed it, the water smelled strange and bitter.’
‘Did you cry?’ asked Tol.
‘No, of course not. I was a princess.’
Arsinoe nods gravely. As I’ve been talking, two slaves have come in, and they linger, waiting to lead the children off for their meal. I gesture to the slaves to take them.
‘Go, both of you. Eat, we’ll talk more tomorrow.’
Muttering with reluctance, they trail out after the slaves. Caesar comes and sits beside me, our knees still not quite touching.
‘You did not weep for your bird? I wept for Pompey. My enemy and my friend. It’s not feeble to cry.’
‘You are a man. And not any man, you are Caesar. You and I have different eyes upon us.’ I try to smile but find I cannot. ‘So, no, I shed no tears. I buried my bird and swore revenge. I knew they had killed him, Pothinus and Achillas. They had not done it because the bird humiliated them nor out of jealousy. They had done it simply because I loved the bird and to destroy it gave them pleasure.’
Charmian watches me steadily and says nothing.
Caesar pulls me closer and kisses me. I’m flushed with relief at his affection, and then, to my surprise, desire. He notices, pleased.
‘Come here, madam, I shall ply you with kisses,’ he says.
Tonight I unfurl like a new leaf in the warmth of his curiosity, the fervour of his interest. I’m relieved that Achillas’s insinuations have not damaged me too heavily in Caesar’s eyes. He asks endless questions, not about the campaign, but rather about my girlhood. I find myself recounting my childhood and confiding stories about my father, whom I know Caesar viewed with scorn, but he does not snigger when I describe how I cared for him. My eyes get hot when I talk about how I made my father laugh, and Caesar takes my hand with something not unlike tenderness and presses it to his lips. I could almost be tricked into believing his attention, kindness. Caesar does not love me, for this thing between us is not love, and yet somehow I sense that I am already precious to him. I fascinate him like a puzzle box or new species of hunting dog he has not glimpsed before and is reluctant to surrender to its kennel master. He wants to keep me close and play with me, ply me with sweet wine and questions.
Outside the palace the rioters are busy. The night air is full of the stink of burning wood and plaster, the shouts and smoke carried on the wind instead of salt and the scent of the sea. I live on pins, and yet with him here beside me, the threat of war and the chaos seems strangely distant, as though we are on a ship, watching the world burn from the prow.
He sprinkles kisses and caresses all along the soft skin of my wrists to my ear, and tickles behind my knees with his tongue and smiles to see me gasp.
‘I am your friend,’ I whisper. ‘I am Rome’s friend.’
‘I know,’ he answers, sliding his hands into my hair. ‘My sweet queen. Venus herself would blush to see a bride so lovely.’
I don’t want to be plied with compliments and fattened with sweet nothings. Those empty words are for other women. My fortune is tied to his like a child to its nursemaid’s apron strings. I begrudge it and yet for now there is no other way.
‘I am Egypt’s daughter. Her only Pharaoh and queen. Tell me, I am her only one. Her only child.’
‘Most lovely goddess,’ he murmurs, leaning in closer and kissing me again, not hearing the sharpness in my voice. I long to shove away his mouth. I don’t want more kisses, however tender, I want only to draw from his lips promises and assurances of my position, how I shall rule alone, that he does not support Ptolemy’s claim, but he slides his tongue into my mouth to stop my questions.
Although I find that I do like him, much more than I expected, I never forget for a moment even amid my new unforced joys how crucial it is that he likes me, prefers me to my brother. I must draw out his affection and fascination for me like blood from a wound. Everything I have depends on his regard for me. As I lick a trail from his lips to his naval and attend to his pleasures, my skin prickles with resentment.
I find myself considering his other lovers. I know there have been countless women. We are connected, unknowingly, slave girls, Roman matrons, foreigners, senators’ wives and queens; we are almost bedfellows. Do the other women feel like me? This need to offer themselves in exchange for his favour? I wonder how it must be to have a choice, to have the power to select my lover, not out of design or necessity but simply desire or love.