Kleopatra (41 page)

Auletes sighed, his chest rattling like the annoying toy of a child. He tried to catch his breath, shaking Kleopatra off the
bed with his convulsion, Hekate quickly called to the servants to hold the king upright to expel the poison that had arisen
from his lungs. She took Kleopatra to the foot of the bed and whispered, “Your Majesty, forgive my interference, but I fear
for the life of the king.”

“Hekate, you are family to us. Nothing you do on behalf of my father’s health can be construed as interference. Speak your
mind.”

“The fever has settled on the king’s brain. The Royal Physician says that the king improves, but the medicine woman has told
me that once the brain absorbs the fever, nothing can be done.”

“The physician told me as I entered the room that the king is on the mend.”

“The physician wishes to abdicate responsibility for the king’s illness. Behind his back, the old woman and I have administered
all the remedies known in our family for many hundreds of years, but we have failed him. I wish to die with him, Your Majesty.
What am I, a courtesan, without her king?”

Kleopatra understood the meaning. A middle-age courtesan was admired if she successfully parlayed her love into lifelong financial
security, and despised if she failed to do so. She suspected that Hekate would not have manipulated such an arrangement, believing
it beneath her dignity. “Hekate, has the king not provided for your future?”

“I did not request it,” she said.

“You have been a most loyal and tender friend to my father. Another woman might have abandoned him or ridiculed him for his
recent foolishness. But you have given him love. Whatever the Fate of my father, I promise you a pension for life to supplement
the king’s many gifts to you. If you desire it, I shall arrange for you to return to your family in Mytilene upon the king’s
death.”

“You shall be a queen unlike any other, known to all for your compassion.” The older woman knelt before the girl whom she
had known since before her eleventh birthday.

“Hekate, please,” said Kleopatra, helping the woman to her feet. “The king needs you.”

Hekate returned to her nursing post. Kleopatra took a moment to watch the delicate hand sweep a sage-soaked cloth over the
king’s heavy forehead. The king smiled sweetly like a small boy given an unexpected piece of candy before his dinner.

He closed his eyes and breathed peacefully.

K
leopatra squinted into the rising sun. The farmers who lived in misshapen mud huts along the banks of the Nile had already
hung out their wash, and it fluttered in the torpid morning breeze, the first movement of air she had felt in days. Clusters
of palm trees with fronds like worn-out combs swayed softly against a pearl-blue sky. Papyrus, brown and dry as beavers’ tails,
choked the shoreline. Despite the subtle wind, there was an unearthly stillness to the river at sunrise. Kleopatra was accustomed
to feeling dawn stir the city back to life, and she felt unsettled in this static land where, beyond the verdant stripe that
lined the river, the solemn dunes of the desert lolled toward an eternal horizon.

Though it was barely May, summer had descended upon Egypt, but this year without the spring rain that relieved the relentless
heat of the land. The river looked deadly low. If the rain did not come, if the river did not rise and flood the crops as
it did yearly, there would be famine. Surely the people feared it, and surely they were in no mood to receive the daughter
of the Greek monarch who had appointed the Roman Rabirius—the swine who, two years ago, had raped them of their last good
harvest. Kleopatra added these thoughts to her list of woes, letting the weight of it settle into her viscera along with her
other anxieties.

The royal barge, long, flat, and sleek, sailed at a languid pace through placid waters, but Kleopatra felt the boat’s motion
in the pit of her belly. She had not taken food in two days, and her stomach was empty and queasy all at once. Her hands shook
from the fast; her head felt light, as if it might ascend to the heavens without the rest of her body. Two tall servants stood
beside her shaded chair on the deck, fanning her with feathery plumes, but the heat had penetrated well beyond the skin and
into the very core of her body. No amount of hot breeze would unseat her burden. As the wind teased her face, she wished it
would lift her and carry her away to join her father, who at this moment was probably playing his flute for the gods. She
was certain that her father’s spirit was precisely where it wished to be—free, finally, from the untenable dilemmas of politics;
weightless, at last, no longer bound to soil dominated by Rome.

The last several days had been unreal, time she floated through by steeling herself against the tide of sorrow and panic that
descended upon her at Auletes’ death. She could not reveal the slightest weakness, the smallest insecurity, the tiniest inkling
that all was not well within the palace. When a stray emotion threatened to surface, she tensed her body fiercely to scare
the grief or the fear away. She had yet to catch a full breath since the moment she was informed of the king’s demise, and
now her body was exhausted and her mind relentless.

On that evening, she had dressed hurriedly and run to her father’s chamber, Charmion ahead of her lighting the hall with a
heavy oil lamp. The first thing she heard was a low, murmuring sob. Hekate was on her knees at the bedside, gently beating
her breasts with her fists, crying an almost inaudible lament. The king’s eyes were closed, his face at rest, his hair slightly
damp. He looked as if he had just expended himself in one of his licentious pleasures and slept the deep and remorseless sleep
of the hedonist. His tranquil face was in odd juxtaposition with the angry stare of the Ptolemaic eagle above him. Kleopatra
moved toward her father, but was stopped by the large hand of Hephaestion upon her shoulder. “We must talk,” he said.

“My father is dead,” she said angrily, shocked that he would choose the hour of her grief to address official matters.

“Yes, I am sorry. Tonight, before I rest, if I rest, I shall pray to the gods for his soul. But at present, the dangers to
you and to the kingdom do not allow us to express the normal emotions.” The eunuch’s voice was filled with the authority that
Kleopatra did not, at this moment, possess. Her source of authority lay dead, his burly arms folded across his stomach. Kleopatra
wanted to go to him, unfurl his arms, and curl inside the woolly shelter of his chest as she had done as a child. Just once,
just one more time before he was gone forever.

“Please listen to me before something of irretrievable harm is done,” Hephaestion said, breaking protocol and taking her firmly
by the shoulders with his hands. “Your life depends on it. You are not two months a queen. The coins announcing joint rule
with your father have not yet reached the provinces. You have no official support outside your father’s status as king.”

Kleopatra stood silent, unprepared for both the death of her father and for the news that she was queen in name only. She
had spent her life preparing to embrace power, but her will and vitality seemed to have disappeared along with the spirit
of her father. How easy it had been to assume power when her father was alive, when the force of his years and his title and
his heritage were pushing her on. How would she manage alone? Where was Archimedes? Hammonius? Why did they not come to her
now when she needed them most? She longed to cry upon the shoulder of a Kinsman, but the only person before her now was this
inscrutable eunuch demanding her attention.

“We are going to pretend that your father lives,” he said to her astonishment. She looked again at her father’s body. “You
must stifle every emotion and carry out this ruse.”

Kleopatra listened as the eunuch informed her that she was not going to mourn the death of her father, but rather, was going
on a crucial diplomatic mission. He had already arranged for her to leave the next morning for Hermonthis in Thebes. Buchis,
the sacred bull at the temple of Amon-Ra, had died, and a new bull was to be installed in the holy place. Kleopatra did not
speak, but looked skeptically into Hephaestion’s genial brown eyes for any sign of treachery.

“To the Egyptians, the bull is the living soul of the god. He is the symbol of the Thebiad region. He is not a Greek deity
like the Apis bull at the temple of Sarapis, but a god of the native people from ancient times. He is a reminder to them of
the days when all men feared even the name of Pharaoh. By leading the procession, you will secure the loyalty of the priests
and the politicians of the Thebiad. While you are gone, I will open discussions with those who wield power in the city.”

“Are these sinister methods really necessary?” asked Kleopatra. Was Hephaestion succumbing to the eunuch’s archetypal delight
with intrigue? “Or are you trying to get rid of me for your own purposes?”

Hephaestion dismissed the accusation by refusing to address it. “Your sister Arsinoe and the two boys are in the thrall of
the eunuch Pothinus. Do not be fooled by his ridiculous, garish exterior. He is as conniving a creature as we’ve seen at this
court. I have been watching him for years, and he knows it. He intends to rise to power through your sister and brothers,
which of course calls for your demise. The moment he knows your father is dead, he will begin a campaign against you.”

Kleopatra cursed herself. How had she become so vulnerable? How had she imagined she would retain power after her father’s
death? By magic? Had she been so busy with her duties that she had failed to keep an eye on her siblings? She still considered
them children—surely not allies, but hardly formidable enough to be dangerous. At least not yet.

“Your brother is ten years old, and when he becomes your co-regent, Pothinus and others of his choosing will govern as his
Regency Council. He is a boy and they can have their way with him. You are of age, and may make decisions by yourself. With
you out of the way, they could have eight years of uninterrupted power. You are the only challenge to their authority. They
know you have run the kingdom in the last months, and they fear you.

“But if you are strong, if you demonstrate that you have the loyalty of those who served your father, they will have to respect
your position.”

“How can we keep my father’s death a secret?”

“I have instructed the doctors to declare him quarantined,” said Hephaestion. “They are issuing a Royal Order that no one
be allowed into the chambers of the king except themselves, who bring food and medicines.”

Two physicians entered the room waving smoking incense burners, releasing an acrid, wicked scent. Kleopatra covered her nose
and mouth with her hand. “Why this horrible smell?”

“To deter the curious,” Hephaestion said, a tiny smile cracking the tension in his face. While Kleopatra took short, shallow
breaths, Hephaestion explained that an expert embalmer was on his way from the Necropolis. Should anyone burst into the room,
the king would have a lifelike appearance. Pothinus and the nurses of the children were being informed that deadly diseases
lurked in the room. At the sacrifice for the king’s health in the morning, the priests would predict horrific fates—instantaneous
disappearance of the tongue or untimely death by plague—to those who intruded upon the king.

“How can I leave the city at this time? Is it safe?” She had learned to trust Hephaestion without question; intuition, her
best adviser, had told her to do so. Now, panicked, feeling as if the very floor under her feet might at any moment give way
and betray her, intuition vanished, leaving a vacuum quickly filled by insecurity and a desperate, futile desire to change
the unfolding events.

“You must go. You will be the first Greek monarch to perform this ceremony in the three hundred years your family has occupied
Egypt. Can you think of a better way to consolidate support among the native people? Must I remind you of the very words you
uttered to move your father to act? The Egyptians honor those who honor their gods.”

Without spending a decent expanse of time at her father’s side while his spirit escaped his body, without repeating the proper
prayers or incantations for the dead, without shedding a tear for her king and father, Kleopatra left his chamber to prepare
for her voyage.

The royal barge sailed deeper into the mysterious land of Upper Egypt, so far away from the Greek city of Alexandria that
most considered it another country. Auletes, like most of his dynasty, was often called King Ptolemy of Alexandria and the
Two Lands of Egypt. And that was how he had viewed himself—an Alexandrian first and foremost. Yet here was Kleopatra, sailing
farther and farther from Hellenism and into the strange country that she hoped would accept her as queen. She stuck her index
finger under her dark black wig and scratched her sweaty scalp. She wore the robes of the goddess Isis, the deity with whom
the Egyptians associated their royal women. Her sleek linen dress was long and knotted at the breast, with tiered, draping
folds. The wig’s two long curls snaked down either side of her face. She prayed that she looked dignified and grand, and not
like the ordinary Egyptian girl she passed for in the days when she used to run wild in the marketplace. In the morning, without
her cosmetics, she still looked so young. She hoped that her heavy face paint, the goddess’s elegant robe, and the gold filigree
bracelets lining her arms would prevent her girlish face from betraying her. My power is yet so fragile that it must be painted
on, she thought.