Kleopatra (39 page)

With a resolute gait, she strode into the office of the Prime Minister, waving at him to sit when he rose to attend to her,
and dropped carelessly on his sofa. “My father is debauching himself again with a boy from the gymnasium. I did not think
it a good time to bother him with our concerns.”

Hephaestion smiled. He was a handsome forty-year-old eunuch who dressed conservatively and moved with the slow, tranquil pace
of a priest. It had taken Kleopatra many months to learn to trust him. She had found his manner of silently observing her
disquieting. But after he had watched her conduct herself in the arduous two years after she and Auletes had returned from
exile, he came to her one day and said, “Surely you realize that none of the king’s advisers any longer seek his opinion.
If you wish, I will henceforth direct all matters of state to you.” Kleopatra had been stunned at his candor and merely stared
at him. “You do realize you are running the kingdom?” he had asked, his sincere brown eyes defying her to disagree.

“Yes, I realize that,” she had replied. “I did not know whether
you
realized it as well.”

“Very good,” he had said, pleased with her answer.

“But what of my father? Do we ignore him now and treat him as a senile old man?”

“No,” the eunuch had replied almost tenderly. “We furnish him with all the respect of his office and his age. You must always
remain loyal to your father and treat him with dignity and warmth.

“But, Princess Kleopatra, when you make decisions regarding matters of state, I advise you to let your blood run cold.”

Now the eunuch smiled at Kleopatra’s report of Auletes’ excesses. “At least he is not vexed with worry as we are. I rather
envy him. He is clearly not a bitter man.”

“When you are an old man, you, too, shall be allowed to wallow in depravity, but at present, I require your good mind,” Kleopatra
answered. She appreciated his humor but was too occupied to acknowledge it. “Let us face the facts: My father is a spent man.
He has worn himself out trying to hold on to the throne and trying to appease all parties. He only wishes now for a bit of
pleasure in his dotage. Though he says his doctors tell a different story, I know he is not well. His days are numbered,”
she said, numb to her own words.

“I concur with your assessment,” said Hephaestion. “But it does not alter the situation.”

“Read it to me again,” she said.

The eunuch retrieved a small scroll from his desk. He opened it.

My Dear King Ptolemy, I hope you nave forgotten neither your old friend and benefactor nor your outstanding debt to me. I
have taken the matter up with my colleague Julius Caesar. As you may have heard, Caesar has finished his governorship in Gaul
and will soon return in glorious victory to Rome. I have sent him notice of the aforementioned matter. He is reviewing it
and will shortly make a decision as to what action may be required to collect the unpaid funds. I trust that you will send
a substantial portion of the money owed immediately. My attempts to help you have cost me dearly. I look forward to your expedient
response, Yours, C. Rabirius

“Concise and to the point, I would say,” said Hephaestion. “Pay up or face the most feared man in Rome.”

“What of Caesar? Why should he collect the debt for Rabirius?”

“Why? For a portion of the money. Your Highness, Caesar is a dangerous man, a renegade. His men are excited from their recent
victories and believe themselves invincible. Your father’s man Pompey also has a huge army he might raise at any time. I believe
these men will soon clash and one will emerge as king.”

“And if that happens?” asked Kleopatra.

“Allow me to pose this question: Who will help us if Caesar defeats Pompey? We have done nothing to cultivate Caesar. Everyone
knows Auletes is Pompey’s ally. What will become of Egypt if Caesar and Pompey come to blows and Caesar prevails? It is hardly
an impossible scenario. All Rome fears it. What will Caesar do with Pompey’s friends and allies, particularly those who, like
your father, owe thousands of talents to the Roman moneylenders? It is not pleasant to contemplate.”

“So what must we do?”

“We do not have control of the treasury, so we must go to your father and convince him to send a portion of the money owed
to Rabirius. We don’t want Caesar coming here and taking the money by force.”

“Where do you propose we get this money?” she asked. “Those who are against my father will rise up again if we raise taxes.”

“That may be true. But whom would you rather confront? The opponents of Auletes or the ten-legion army of Julius Caesar?”

“We will never really appease Rome, will we?” she asked. She had vowed that she would find a way out of this, had promised
the lady Artemis, spilt the blood of the lamb, and made her covenant with the unseen powers of the earth and sky that this
would not be her Fate, this fretting and groveling over the demands of Rome. But how to avoid it? Roman boots had trampled
over half the earth. Why should Egypt be any different?

“Your Highness, I do not mean to induce melancholia. I believe the native people will support whatever you do. The king has
made many improvements in the country since his reinstatement.”

“They always support us until we take food from their mouths,” she answered curtly, fuming over the memory of Rabirius’s tyranny
over Alexandria, his long curls matted with pomade, his feet turning outward like a duck when he walked. He cut an altogether
ridiculous figure for one who had caused so much harm.

Even worse than Rabirius’s drain on the treasury was Gabinius’s legacy to Alexandria. After Berenike’s trial and execution,
Gabinius had gone back to Rome, leaving behind his army of mercenaries, allegedly to protect the king, but really to protect
the interests of Rabirius. Undeterred by the reestablishment of the king’s authority, the Gabinian soldiers went on looting
the town at will. The men made Alexandria their personal whorehouse, raping the native women wherever and whenever they pleased.
When threatened with punishment, they simply laughed and replied that
they
were now the law. For six months they had conducted a reign of terror over the city.

“I am utterly beholden to Rabirius, that miserable scrod,” the king would grumble, searching for a solution. “And Gabinius,
the pirate, whose army of cutthroats will be at me if I move against Rabirius. What can I do? Without those two criminals,
I would never have been able to return home, and they are never going to let me forget it.”

To appease Gabinius and Rabirius, Auletes had been forced to appoint Rabirius to the high position of Minister of Finance,
giving him access to Egypt’s revenues and her treasury. In return, Rabirius used Egypt as his playground and her resources
as his toys.

It was the then sixteen-year-old Kleopatra who finally outsmarted them. She was not about to be intimidated by the preening
fool, the man Cicero once disparaged in a speech as a “thieving dance-boy in hair curlers.” She had Auletes put Rabirius on
watch. They discovered that he had lowered the wages of the workers in every government-owned factory and kept the remainder
of the money for himself. He stole the workers’ share of the goods and loaded it on ships sent back daily to Rome. He had
become the most despised man in Egypt. But he was still a friend of Julius Caesar, and he still had the support of the Gabinian
soldiers.

One day in her bath, Kleopatra had an epiphany. Suddenly, she was furious at the dashing cavalry officer who had made such
an impact on her. All at once, the plan by which Antony had used her father and her country unfolded. He had promised Gabinius’s
army wealth if they crossed the desert. He took the credit and the glory for leading them into a victory. Undoubtedly, he
also took a large sum of money from Gabinius for his services. And then he absented himself to make it possible for the soldiers
to steal whatever they pleased.

So that is his game
, thought the princess. She felt humiliated that she had been taken in by his good looks and seductive ways. She and her father
and the mission to restore him were no more to Antony than to any other Roman—an opportunity to line their pockets with Egyptian
gold.

She arrived in her father’s office barely dry. “Father, you are going to secure the loyalty of the Gabinians.”

“But how?” asked the king, wearing his most bemused, defeated expression.

“How do the Romans secure their soldiers? They give them land and money. You must give each man a parcel of land, the size
according to his rank and his record. And you must encourage them to stop raping our women by giving them permission to marry
them. If you provide what the Roman generals provide, they will be beholden to you as they are to their own commanders. For
all the boasting of the loyalty of Roman soldiers, they are bought and paid for like any other men.”

“My child, you are an oracle,” said the king.

The Gabinians readily accepted the king’s offer of housing and money, and several announced their desire to be married to
women of the city, both Egyptian and Greek. Like all other immigrants since Alexandria’s inception, they, too, were eager
to be seduced and assimilated into her promise.

Shortly thereafter, the factory workers rose up against Rabirius and ran him out of town. Kleopatra would never forget Rabirius
bursting into the Royal Reception Room—pomaded hair stringy around his fat, wet face, his ridiculous painted robe stained
with perspiration—begging for protection from “the filthy Egyptians.” They had greeted him at the gate of the linen factory
where he had come to pilfer a portion of the goods; armed with knives and clubs, they attacked him. “I was hit on the shoulder
with a terrible stick by a dirty little man,” Rabirius had exclaimed, “and I have bruises. Bruises!” Kleopatra had giggled
when he lifted his short robe to reveal an ugly purple knot on his thigh, stifling her laughter when Hephaestion calmly offered
to shelter Rabirius in the jail until he could escape Egypt on the next boat to Rome. Without alternative refuge, Rabirius
had reluctantly agreed to live in prison for several days. The last Kleopatra saw of him was his fat bottom swaying contemptuously
as he lumbered out of the room.

Though the menace himself was gone, Rabirius’s legacy remained. Hephaestion collected reports from each of the forty-two metropoli:
Every state in the nation had been ravaged by the years of revolt and the recent visit of the Roman army. The young men are
dead from the war, the eunuch explained. Taxes continually rise to pay the debt to Rome, and the food and merchandise produced
have been stolen either by the army or by Rabirius. With implacable calm, Hephaestion informed the king that while his restoration
had stopped the war, it hardly had benefited the people.

“Why do you trouble me with these things at a time when I should be merry?” The king scowled, his lower lip puffy like the
underside of a caterpillar.

While Auletes pouted, Kleopatra absorbed the realization that her father’s kingdom would have to be won not just once but
time and again. With the optimism of a child, the king was always satisfied with small gains, as if history had not imprinted
upon him the lessons of his own experiences; as if the Romans would forgive such a substantial debt. As if his own subjects
did not despise him and would suddenly stop searching for any reason to send him off into exile again. Next time, she might
not be so lucky. She might be murdered in the palace, left behind by her father to face the mob, or even be asked by the leaders
of the city’s tribes to betray her father, at which point she would become their puppet queen until they could rid themselves
of her, too.

Kleopatra persuaded her father that he must act quickly to solidify his claims on the throne by restoring the temples and
monuments of the gods that were pillaged by the Roman soldiers and by Rabirius. She told him firmly, reciting to him as if
he were a little boy, the same words he had spoken to her in her youth: The Egyptians honor those who honor their gods.

“But I have just returned to my kingdom,” he had said. “Must I leave it so quickly?”

“Father, all of Egypt is your kingdom,” Kleopatra had replied, and then handed him an itinerary carefully made by Hephaestion.
The king was to travel down the Nile, leaving behind hefty donations to the temples as a reminder of his beneficence.

While Auletes was away on his mission, she and Hephaestion came up with a number of ways to compensate for the iniquities
visited upon the people by Rabirius. The farmers were to receive a more favorable division of their corn crop; the duty on
Lycian honey, adored by Egyptians and Greeks alike, was lowered from fifty percent to twenty-five; conditions were improved
for the workers in the Nubian gold mines. Kleopatra and Hephaestion worked many long days and nights to bring to fruition
these improvements. The strategy had been impeccable. The priests at Karnak, a powerful political force in Middle Egypt, had
expressed their gratitude by commissioning native artists to depict Auletes in Pharaoh’s dress vanquishing his enemies.

Now, for the first time in many years, an air of calm rested over both the city of Alexandria and the country of Egypt. Rabirius
had been prosecuted in a Roman court and fined for his excesses in Auletes’ kingdom and for illegally holding office in a
foreign government. Yet the parasite was still trying to collect his blood money.

“Well?” Hephaestion’s modulated but firm appeal interrupted her contemplation. Kleopatra suddenly felt as old as her father
and just as worn. The enormity of their problem settled over her like a shroud. “Let us request a formal meeting with the
king. We can do nothing in this matter without his permission.”