Kleopatra (44 page)

Kleopatra wondered at this Egyptian logic, hoping that hunger and fatigue had not made her lose command of the language. In
many nations a queen may be a ruler, but only in Egypt could a queen be a king. In some parts of this strange land, would
they call her King Kleopatra?

Without speaking, Redjedet departed, leaving Kleopatra alone. She hurried down the tight corridor, its sweating stone walls
threatening to scrape her elbows, until she followed the priestess into a room that was no larger than a tomb.

Redjedet lowered herself to the floor, holding her candle against a faded painting beneath their feet. Kleopatra stepped aside
in order to view its entirety. The cow-goddess, Hathor, suckled a pharaoh, who received Divine Powers through her milk, while
the vulture-goddess, Nekhbet, and the cobra-goddess, Buto, watched. The pharaoh wore a long beard and the double crown, red
and white, of the Two Lands.

“I do wish I could decipher the old Egyptian letters,” said Kleopatra.

“Some say it is enough that you speak to us in our tongue,” the young woman said, giving no indication that she consented
to the opinion.

“The inscription says ‘Hatshepsut is the Future of Egypt,’” Redjedet explained. “‘No one rebels against me. All foreign lands
are my subjects. Everywhere Egypt bows her head to the King.’”

In one portrait, Hatshepsut was wearing a royal woman’s clothing; in the others, the traditional costume of the pharaoh. “Was
Hatshepsut not a man?” Kleopatra asked.

“I have heard the Greeks say as much. King Hatshepsut was a woman who ruled the Two Lands. It is said that she married Pharaoh
when she was twelve years old. When he died, she became king. Egypt needs
kings
,“ Redjedet repeated impatiently. “That is why Hatshepsut appears as king in the paintings. In Egypt, there is no queen. There
is only Pharaoh’s Consort. Queen is a Greek word.”

“You are certain of this? That Hatshepsut was a female?” Kleopatra asked skeptically.

“The reign of Hatshepsut was predicted in an oracle made in this very chamber when she was a young girl. It says in the inscription
that on the third day of his festival, Amon himself here proclaimed that Princess Hatshepsut would become the ruler of Upper
and Lower Egypt. Hatshepsut had the approval of the gods. Only then did she have the approval of the priests of Egypt.”

Kleopatra stared at the strange symbols, trying to make sense of their lines and figures. Did the priestess not understand
the message she was sending to the queen? That Egyptians, not once but several times, had readily accepted a woman as Pharaoh,
without the sanction of a male partner. Was Redjedet aware that for centuries the Ptolemies had followed the Egyptian ways,
or what they had assumed had always been the Egyptian ways? Kleopatra wondered if Ptolemy the Savior—unable to communicate
directly with the Egyptians—had misinterpreted Egyptian custom. More likely, Kleopatra suddenly realized, he had interpreted
the Egyptian customs to suit the ways of the Greek monarchy, in which women, no matter what their royal lineage, were always
dependent upon a male consort.

“And you say these pharaohs, these
kings
at one time or another ruled Egypt alone?” Kleopatra asked again, not wishing to reveal her own intentions, but wishing for
the priestess to clarify the issue.

“That is why they are kings. Egypt must never be without Pharaoh, or the gods will not be pleased.” The priestess looked up
at Kleopatra. The candle lit her face from below, making deep shadows beneath her eyes. “Pharaoh may not please the
people
,“ she said. “But Pharaoh must please the gods. We are here only a short time. The gods are forever.”

Redjedet stood, but did not release Kleopatra from her stare. I am being challenged, Kleopatra thought, but I do not know
how or why. Is she telling me that the Egyptians will accept me as Pharaoh? Kleopatra stared back at the formidable creature,
whose black eyes were as beautiful and as inscrutable as those of Nefertiti. She may not be any older than I am, Kleopatra
guessed, but she has exemplary self-possession. The kind of self-assurance it would take to capture the loyalty of the people
of the Thebiad and use it to her benefit back in Alexandria; the kind of composure Kleopatra would need to wrest power from
her brothers’ cunning courtier. The kind of strength she would need to rule a nation on her own.

“Will you pray with me before the statue of our Lady, Redjedet?”

“The one who serves the goddess also must serve the queen,” she said coldly, quietly, her first concession to Kleopatra’s
position.

Kleopatra and Redjedet knelt before the smiling goddess, the Lady of Compassion. Redjedet lowered her head but watched Kleopatra
from the corner of her eye.

“I am praying for the abundance and happiness of the Egyptian people,” Kleopatra said. Redjedet turned away, unbelieving,
and Kleopatra looked into the tilted eyes of the goddess. Straining her neck, she waited until the goddess seemed to invite
her prayer, until she was swallowed into the deity’s enormous eyes.

“Do not forget to pray for your own family,” Redjedet said caustically, erasing any advancement Kleopatra hoped she had made
with either the priestess or the goddess.

She felt anger rise, but held her temper. “In my mind and in my prayers, the people of Egypt and my family are one and the
same,” she replied. She sat back on her heels, turning to the young woman. “I want you to understand what I am saying to you,
and I want you to spread the word to whomever you think must hear it. If I have the support of the people of the Thebiad,
I promise you, with the goddess as our witness, that I will never act in conflict with that fact. The Egyptian temples shall
profit from my rule all the days of my life. So help me Isis.”

“As the Romans have profited from the reign of your father and his father and his father?”

Kleopatra had to force back the desire to call for her guard and to have this young insurgent arrested and flogged for insubordination.
She summoned as much control as she could on an empty stomach, with nothing filling her insides but anger and fear. Trembling,
she kept her voice very low. “If not for my father and his father and his father, you would be nothing but the toy of a Roman
soldier’s lusts. Only by my father’s design can you still call yourself an Egyptian and not a Roman’s slave. But we are not
talking of my father, who is presently very ill. I am speaking of myself, and of my assurances of prosperity to those who
demonstrate their loyalty to me.”

“Well then, so be it,” Redjedet huffed, with so little conviction that Kleopatra knew she would spend the rest of the night
wondering whether she was heard and understood, or whether she would be slain in her sleep.

The Sacred Vessel of Ra was not a slim wooden riverboat, but a golden snake; the bow, his glimmering cobra head, the stern,
a sleek, pointy tail. The low arcing belly of the asp sank into the water, which this morning was a dark orange. The serpent’s
eyes were giant orbs of silver-veined turquoise that focused warily ahead on the shiver of amber that the boat cast through
the river at sunrise. Oarsmen were already aboard, as was the bull, Buchis, chosen for the unusual black spots dappling his
white back, his horns dipped in gold to attract the sun. He was restrained in his pen by leather straps, but he stood still,
his big brown eyes facing the opposite shore as if he anticipated the sight of his new home.

The queen had been awakened long before dawn from her few moments of rest. Sleepless, famished, Kleopatra was sure her body
had begun to feast upon itself; her already slight frame had dwindled, and as she waited for her dress, she ran her hands
against the hollow of her abdomen, feeling a new sharpness to her ribs.

Now on the deck of the vessel, she awaited the full sunrise, the holy time when she would preside over the crossing of the
river. The oarsmen dipped the long golden paddles into the water. Slowly drifting into the Nile, the vessel began its voyage
down the river to the small city of Hermonthis, home of the Bucheum. The bull was behind the queen, and she was flanked by
the high priest of the temple on one side and by Redjedet on the other, their shaven heads floating through the morning mist
like stellar orbs. Neither holy person looked in the direction of the queen but stared ahead at the river as if their glaring
eyes lit the path of the boat.

The heavy crown of Isis—a silver sphere cradled by the bronze horns of Hathor, the cow-goddess—pressed against Kleopatra’s
wig, giving her a headache. She had to strain her neck muscles to prevent the horns from going askew. Surely, she thought,
it would take the divine powers of a goddess to tolerate this headdress every day. She stood deadly still, focusing on her
posture just as Charmion had taught her to do as a child, until finally the snake glided round a gentle bend in the river,
revealing the small cluster of buildings that was Hermonthis. Both the eastern and western banks of the river seemed to have
a strange foliage cluttering their shores. Kleopatra had never seen anything like this white flowering brush that relentlessly
covered the rich dark lining of the slow-moving river. It was as if she were entering a new country, where nature yielded
an unfamiliar bounty.

As the forms on the banks became clearer, her knees weakened and her already shallow breath caught in her throat. No one had
prepared her for the multitudes that were present for the ceremony. No foreign species of tree choked the banks, but thousands
of people, dressed in their finest white garments, laundered into stark whiteness for the event. Where in this desolate land—uninhabitable
but for the fertile strip of life along the banks of the river—had this magnificent assembly come from? Kleopatra wished to
be joyous but could not repress the thought that her small escort, following the snake boat in the royal barge, would be defenseless
against the crowd should they turn against her. She remembered Redjedet’s comment about the Romans prospering from her ancestors’
rule. Not so long ago, Kleopatra had been stranded outside the palace gates listening to the Egyptians call Auletes a Roman-lover.
She had watched a Roman sacrificed at their hands. She tried not to think of the lifeless face, of the limp body of the Roman
Celsius, dead in his own courtyard after killing a cat—a foreigner’s gaffe that had so inflamed Egyptian ire. But the man’s
image kept coming back to her, along with her father’s serene death countenance. Auletes would be of no help to her now. No
one could help her now. She, alone, was queen.

The inflexible Redjedet registered no surprise at the great crowd that covered everywhere there was space to stand. The priest
also did not alter his expression. Their lack of response made Kleopatra shiver.

As the boat sailed closer to the crowd, Kleopatra was relieved to see the uniforms of Greek military governors from the neighboring
states, as well as local Egyptian authorities and the banners of Temple Councils from every
nome
representing their districts—though in this part of Egypt, nationality was no guarantee of loyalty. The officials filled
special tiered seats that were set up on either side of the river so they could watch the bull-god cross the water to his
hallowed destination. Sitting cross-legged or squatting in front of the bleachers were the peasant farmers who had been given
a morning’s reprieve from working the land.

“We anticipated a count of thirty thousand,” the priest whispered into Kleopatra’s ear as the boat slowly turned, heading
straight for the Bucheum. “But I believe there are even more.”

Surely I will not be attacked on this sacred day in front of so many witnesses, Kleopatra thought, holding her breath, searching
the face of the priest for any sign of betrayal. But he merely looked ahead, letting the sun warm his leathery brown skin.
She eyed Redjedet’s red robe, wondering if its ample drapes sheathed a secret knife that might be used against her. She looked
again at the multitude—thirty thousand people who despised the Greek tyrants—and fell against the priest’s arm. “Are you ill,
Your Majesty?” he asked.

“No, it is merely that I did not sleep well,” she replied, with more composure than she thought possible.

The small brown priest was not much taller than the queen. He took her arm and leaned very close to her. “The point is not
to sleep, Your Highness,” he said in Egyptian. “The temple is the place where Pharaoh comes to be united with Ka, his divine
spirit—the spirit that gives him Divine Right to rule. If the union is successful, no sleep is necessary.” He turned away
from the queen, letting his profile soak up the warmth of the sun god emanating from the east, closing his eyes, ending any
possibility of conversation.

What was she to think now? She had been put to the test, and she had no way to gauge whether or not she had passed. If Kleopatra
had been united with Ka during the night, the spirit had left no evidence. She was exhausted, empty, and terrified. Her stomach
ached, her head felt as if a pair of invisible hands was squeezing her at the forehead and the nape of the neck, and her limbs
were limp and useless. She could barely hold herself upright. She joined the high priest and Redjedet by turning her own face
upward into the rays of the sun god, praying that she, too, would be blessed by his heat. She could think of no source of
power to call upon but the Divine Lady, the Lady of One Thousand Names.
Take away my fears
, she prayed.