0316382981 (32 page)

“And that was why he was such a coward,” he sneered. “Because he didn’t want to mar his lovely face.”

“Perhaps. But now you’re saying he was a coward
because
he was handsome. So, yes, his beauty mattered greatly. You’ve proved my point.” She slapped her hand against the table with satisfaction, but when she looked to Alexander for a concession, he was bristling with anger.

“Why are you defending them?” he shouted. He was almost shaking with fury. His eyes flickered at the two girls, dull in their silence.

“You’re just upset because your beauty doesn’t matter,” Arsinoe taunted. A passion had possessed her. A need to drive him from her, fully and truly. Ganymedes had practically admitted that there was no means to stop her dreams from coming true. The closer she was to Alexander, the greater the risk. The more likely she’d be to suck the life lingering in his corpse, just as she had in her sleep. The thought haunted her morning and night—and her only recourse was to cut Alexander away. “Because your blood doesn’t matter,” she went on. “And your wife’s beauty won’t matter, because she’ll be nothing. Just like you.”

Alexander knocked his chair back hard as he stood, silver clattering on stone. “And of course yours does.” His voice barely reached a whisper, but Arsinoe caught every last syllable. “Your beauty matters very, very much. Because you’re nothing like Berenice. It’s the best quality you’ve got—the only quality you’ve got. So you’ll need to make use of it.”

He stormed from the table and out of the reading room. Neither girl met Arsinoe’s eye, and she did not speak. Too much rage roiled in her gut—against Alexander, against her false friends and her false self. She loathed all of them—and Ganymedes for forcing her into lying confidences, for bringing her these useless girls.

It was Aspasia who broke the tension. She squeezed Arsinoe’s hand as she passed by to right the toppled seat.

When the eunuch returned, he set fresh scrolls on the table, and made no comment on the taut mood of the three girls. “It’s a pity that Alexander has disappeared,” he said wryly as he stretched open his papyrus. “Today we’ll return to a particular favorite of his:
The Odyssey.
”

That was welcome news, at least—a distraction. Arsinoe much preferred Homer’s epic to Plato’s dialogues, though she knew better than to say it. The eunuch would only chide her for not appreciating philosophy.

“Any child of six knows
The Odyssey,
” Hypatia whined. She never liked much of anything, Arsinoe knew. She was always saying how learning was a waste of time. “What more can we learn from it?”

“What more can three girls of ten learn from the most renowned of poets?” asked Ganymedes. “I’m not certain, Hypatia, but I imagine you’ll find something. Why don’t you begin our recitation? We’re reading from your very favorite book, the one about the Cyclops’s cave. You may start: ‘Lurching up, he lunged out with his hands toward my men.’”

The fair girl grimaced. “‘Lurching up, he lunged out with his hands toward my men and snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground.’” She paused to collect herself, her face contorted in disgust. “‘He knocked them dead like pups—their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor…’”

The child’s voice trailed off, trembling, even as the eunuch urged her on. Arsinoe felt strangely grateful for the corpses she’d seen strewn about the palace. Words of horror didn’t unnerve her, not when she’d seen true horrors before her eyes. Hypatia reminded her of how she must have been, before she’d become Antigone, before she’d chosen Berenice and death. Arsinoe grew sick, suddenly, of watching Ganymedes toy with her friend, and so she cut in instead: “‘And ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, left no scrap, devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all.’”

“You needn’t show off your learning, Arsinoe,” the eunuch scolded. “It’s not a pleasant quality.” It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t showing off, and Ganymedes knew that.

“
She
doesn’t want to recite it. Can’t you see you’re frightening her?” Arsinoe regretted her last words at once. They sounded more like an insult than a defense, though she hadn’t meant them to. Hypatia colored in shame. Aspasia twisted her quill over her scroll, shrinking smaller and smaller with each twirl.

The eunuch smirked. “Aspasia, can you continue? Or does Arsinoe need to steal your words as well? You may begin again after the Cyclops, now gorged on Odysseus’s men, has fallen asleep.”

Arsinoe’s dark-haired friend didn’t even glance in her direction. She straightened her back and pronounced each word with exaggerated care. “‘And I with my fighting heart, I thought at first to steal up to him, draw the sharp sword at my hip and stab his chest where the midriff packs the liver—I groped for the fatal spot but a fresh thought held me back. There at a stroke we’d finish off ourselves as well—how could
we
with our bare hands heave back that slab he set to block his cavern’s gaping maw? So we lay there groaning, waiting Dawn’s first light.’”
^*

“Well read, Aspasia.”

Arsinoe eyed the eunuch. He wasn’t liberal with his praises. Not without a purpose.

“Now, why doesn’t Odysseus attack the Cyclops? The creature killed his men, after all, in a way that our dear Hypatia finds particularly distasteful.”

From the corner of her eye, Arsinoe stole a look at the fair-haired girl. She was taking the mocking rather well, everything considered. At least, she didn’t look as though she would weep.

“He’s scared,” Aspasia replied. “And he doesn’t see the purpose. He would’ve been trapped if he killed the Cyclops then. He would have died.”

Arsinoe bristled at the words. Aspasia didn’t understand at all.

“He wasn’t scared,” Arsinoe cut in. “He was clever.” She retained her child’s admiration for this Odysseus. Even if her wily hero turned cold and cruel in the plays of Euripides, here, in the epic poem of old, he was no monster. “He
does
avenge his friends, for in the end he blinds the Cyclops and leaves him for dead.”

“And how does that choice work out for Odysseus, Arsinoe? That decision to blind the Cyclops—his great vengeance on behalf of his friends?”

Of course, his revenge against Poseidon’s son brought Poseidon’s curse, which tossed her hero and his men across the sea for ten long years. She chewed her lip. She saw that she’d set the argument on a faulty truss. Helpless, she replied, “In the end, Odysseus returns to Ithaca.”

“And in what manner does he return to Ithaca?”

Arsinoe dodged. “Disguised as a beggar.”

“Let me be more exact: how many of his men return with him?”

Arsinoe said nothing. Odysseus returned alone.

“None, Arsinoe. None. After years of trials and torments, after his men are eaten and transfigured and drowned to a one, your great Odysseus, your man of twists and turns, returns to Ithaca. Alone. Because his actions have brought the death of every single one of his companions.”

The eunuch’s words chilled her. The thought of all her companions dead. But she’d sent Alexander away. That would be enough to protect him. It had to be.

After the lesson ended, her two playmates hurried off, bidding quick farewells, too eager to escape to mind courtesies. Arsinoe made no move to leave. Instead, she helped Ganymedes clear away the scrolls and quills in silence. The other girls would be wary of her for a while now, especially Hypatia, whose listlessness had turned to fury as Ganymedes railed on.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass Hypatia,” she said at last. “I wanted to help her.”

“I know you did,” the eunuch replied. “But our intentions aren’t always understood. Sometimes the best way to help someone is to let her wrestle on her own.”

“I wanted to protect her,” Arsinoe whispered in a small voice. “As Cleopatra used to protect me.”

Ganymedes looked at her with the same sad eyes she’d seen in the library storehouse. “We can’t always protect the ones we love.”

She didn’t dare argue. What if he proved her wrong?

Her tutor patted her hand gently. “My dear, you have a kind heart. Too kind, perhaps. I worry for you.”

“Then perhaps your heart is too kind too.”

The eunuch smiled. “Perhaps it is. Here. I even have a present for you.”

“Another friend?” she quipped.

“Of a sort.” Ganymedes’s eyes shifted along the walls. He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small linen bundle. “Be careful.”

Eager, Arsinoe lifted one corner. She choked back a gasp at what she saw: a small blade sheathed in leather.

“Hide it,” the eunuch warned. “And teach yourself to use it.”

That night and many nights that followed, Arsinoe lay awake. She waited until Myrrine’s lamp flickered out in the antechamber and her nurse’s snores reverberated through the air. Then, when she was sure she was alone—or as alone as she ever hoped to be—she coaxed light into her oil lamp and fetched the knife from among her silks. She liked the weight of it in her hand, and the way its silver licked up the flame. Even the lightest press of her fingers drew a sweet drop of blood, rich and vibrant and red. And then she’d suck the salty venom from her veins. One day soon, she’d learn how to wield the blade.

Elder

T
he handwringer standing before her marked the first. Every inch of him—from his sinuous trousers to the sleeves of his billowing tunic—was sheathed in silk, which appeared distinctly ill suited to the Egyptian heat. No doubt the attire was meant to impress her with its opulence, but Berenice would have been more inclined toward him if he didn’t keep reaching for his handkerchief to wipe the pooling sweat from his brow. On the whole, he cut a nervous figure rather than an intimidating one. As he recited his plea, he appeared to have little notion of what to do with his voice or feet or hands—save, of course, to use the last to mop the accumulating moisture from his face.

Though Berenice hated to admit it, she felt unprepared as well. She hadn’t expected a wooer to come so soon—she’d hoped to solidify her plans for Cyprus first—but she imagined that this Mithradates of Parthia had his own reasons for haste. His bloodthirsty brother Orodes, as she understood it, had driven him from his home, and now he searched frantically for his own army to seize back those lands. How satisfying to sit on the other end of such a negotiation.

“My queen,” he began, for the second time. He was a twitchy sort of man—the opposite of Seleucus, who’d been defined by his cruel confidence. From the look of this one, Berenice would guess that he had a few years on her—perhaps five, no more than ten. And he’d spent his time far less wisely than she. He’d lost a kingdom; she had won one. “My queen, I beg to present you a gift, a token of my esteem.”

He gestured almost wildly to his men gathered by the entrance arches of the atrium. They looked as surprised as she at their master’s command, and when at last two stumbled forward heaving an ivory chest between them, one slipped on the great mosaic paw of Dionysus’s leopard, tumbling forward and nearly losing hold of the load. She should be more indulgent. Seleucus had brought no gifts that she could recall. If she’d asked, he would have told her his cock was gift enough.

“Go on, open it,” she told the hapless servants. Perhaps Orodes had held on to the better ones. The more practiced of the pair, the one who hadn’t nearly spoiled his master’s offering, a drab creature of indeterminate years, squinted at her, uncomprehending. She tried again, switching from Greek to Persian. “Open it.”

That he seemed to understand, and he gestured to his larger, clumsier comrade to lift the lid. Silks, rich and colorful, spilled from the cedar. Berenice’s eyes caught on a lilac garment, a chiton embroidered with gold stitching to form an intricate border of lotus blossoms along the neckline and shoulder. She saw beneath it—the drabber slave sifted through the violets and crimsons and teals—jewels as well: a golden diadem set with ruby and turquoise. These silks were dear gifts—far dearer even than the gold that lay beneath—but useless to her. She didn’t need adornments; she needed men, men to expand her kingdom and guard her throne. And this wooer carried too many battles of his own.

Mithradates smiled. “From India and beyond.” He ran his greedy eyes over the gifts, as though they still belonged to him. “When we are wed and retake my father’s kingdom, we’ll control all trade between those far-off eastern lands and Rome.”