Kleopatra (8 page)

So costumed, she stood next to her father on a stallion-drawn chariot of gold inlaid with jewels and ivory. Auletes had had
a charioteer install a second, smaller set of rings next to his so that his little daughter could brace herself against his
large frame. He allowed her to drive with him, teaching her how to keep on her feet in the chariot rings, how to lean into
the sudden jerking movements to maintain her balance, how to relax her body and submit to the fierce jolts of the carriage.
Holding her breath, leaning against her father, Kleopatra would force her eyes open against the winds, willing her intestines
not to rise up and betray her, while all around her the landscape trembled as if an angry god had called up an earthquake.
Out of the tremors she would feel a thrilling shudder rise up from the lower part of her body, slinking along her backbone
like a viper, and exploding in her head. “Do not resist,” her father would say to her. “Only those who resist fall.” She had
yet to be thrown.

The horses danced nervously in place, shifting their weight from one hoof to the next, but Kleopatra would not stumble now,
while the chariot was not even in motion, and while she and her father were observed by their most illustrious subjects. In
full view of his people, Auletes stood tall in the capacious purple robes of the god that rippled in the morning breeze. The
Royal Hairdresser had manufactured for the occasion a wig made of the lengthy blond curls of Greek youths, shorn as a sacrifice
to Dionysus. The fair hairpiece sat upon Auletes’ head, incongruous with his woolly black eyebrows. Crowned with an ivy wreath,
he held a gilded
thrysus
, the fennel-stalk wand that the god used as a scepter, dramatically in his hand. He stuck his eagle-beak nose into the air,
allowing the curls to fall down his back like a haughty young maiden, while an artist sketched his profile for the coinage
he would issue with himself presented as the god.

“I shall have them do a statue, too,” he said to his daughter. “I shall have myself preserved for all time as I am today.”

“It is time to mount the elephant, Your Majesty,” a satyr announced to the king. Kleopatra could not help but notice that
his pointy ears were crooked, causing him to look slightly ridiculous. The king’s footmen rushed to assist his descent from
the chariot, but for the benefit of his audience he pushed them away with his royal foot and alighted unaided with astonishing
grace for such a stout man. He reached his arms out to his daughter, who leapt into them.

“Enough of that,” said Charmion, whisking her away from her father. “You would not see your next birthday if you were left
to your own devices.”

“You are like a skittish cat, Charmion,” Kleopatra said as she straightened her robes. “You have no love of physical exertion.
You are a mind without a body.”

“I am a mind who wishes to keep its body.”

Kleopatra ignored Charmion’s cautious advice whenever possible. “Today I wish that I could be omniscient like the gods, for
I want to be in all places at once. Oh, it is terrible to be in the parade, when all I want to do is see it!”

“You have been warned about the dangers today. Do not move from my side. You can see most of it from here,” said Charmion
sternly.

“I cannot. I am too short.” Why was she not tall like Berenike, who had inherited her father’s height but her mother’s face?
Kleopatra was stuck with those traits in reverse. It wasn’t fair. “Let us promenade the Grand Pavilion while we have time.
That’s where all the important people are!”

“No. You will just lose yourself in the crowd, and I shall be to blame when the Procession begins and your float is empty.”

“Please, Charmion. I promise to hold your hand and be very, very good.”

The Grand Pavilion umbraged Auletes’ most significant subjects and eminent foreign visitors under a tent of tautly woven deep
crimson linen, held high above the crowd by tall Ionic columns. Just being inside its luxury made Kleopatra feel important.
Statuary of gold, bronze, and marble—gods from every nation east and west, and her own deified Ptolemaic ancestors—lined the
boundaries of the tent, as if every deus in the universe sanctified the event. The princess studied the scrupulously groomed
guests, who struck calculated poses as they talked among themselves. Women, laughing, threw their heads back, flaunting necklaces
of creamy pearls or startling red garnets, or sometimes simply their gorgeous powdered necks. Kohl-rimmed eyes fluttered about
like nervous insect wings; quivering crimsoned lips heightened the meaning of the spoken word. Kleopatra dropped Charmion’s
hand and threw her head back trying to mimic their sensual ways, but it made her neck hurt.

“Cousin, you are glorious in red. Heavenly, some might say,” said a wry young voice. Kleopatra snapped her head upright to
see her cousin Archimedes, nineteen years old, riding a black horse decorated in the purple and gold colors of the king’s
Brotherhood.

“Cousin! Could it be true, or have you stolen that horse?” the princess asked, praying he had not seen her at her play.

“This very morning a messenger came to my mother’s house to inform me that on this day I was to be inducted into the Order
of the Brotherhood of the King. Cousin, I am a Kinsman!”

“My father has always held you most dear,” Kleopatra said. Archimedes’ mother was Auletes’ second cousin; his father, unknown.
Auletes retained a soft spot in his heart for any and all bastards. Sometimes Kleopatra fantasized that her father was also
the mysterious father of Archimedes. She loved her handsome cousin and wished with all her heart that he was her brother,
for then they could marry.

“Report to me, Cousin, what is at the head of the Procession, for I cannot see it all,” requested the princess.

“Magnificence and mayhem, my dear. The Marshals are dressed as Silenoi in cloaks of crimson and purple, draped in vines. They
are wearing white sandals that all the ladies say will be filthy by the end of the day. And they are led by a particularly
handsome military man who is far too young to be a general. The ladies are wondering who got him the appointment.”

“How do you know so much about what the ladies say, Cousin?”

“Because where the ladies are, Archimedes aims to be,” he replied.

“Never mind the ladies. What am I missing at the front of the Procession?”

“Satyrs and Maenads, six hundred in all, each carrying a sacred object. Very splendid. The Satyrs are smeared with purple
and vermilion dyes, and they have put mud and leaves and moss into their hair, which they have grown wild for the event. The
barbers in every quarter are starving, my dear.”

Archimedes never failed to delight his cousin. “What else? What else?”

“Goat ears and tails adorn heads and behinds. Asses dressed like asses. These fellows are taking their roles as Dionysians
very seriously. They are all quite drunk and already chasing the Maenads, who are also drunk. I predict fornicating in the
streets by noon.”

“Oh, I wish I could see it all,” said Kleopatra, feeling very wicked. “I wish, I wish, I wish.”

“The wishes of the throne are a Kinsman’s command,” said Archimedes. He swooped down and offered Kleopatra an arm to mount
his horse. She looked around for Charmion, but only saw the back of her head as she engaged in gossip with one of the chatty
ladies-in-waiting. Riding sidesaddle and not caring a bit about wrinkling her red robe, she hung on to the steed’s mane as
Archimedes negotiated his way through the throng.

“I wish I had bigger eyes so that I could see it all at once,” she said. The more she tried to take it all in, the more it
amplified, spreading out before and behind and all around her. But Archimedes had removed his attention to three tall girls,
bare-breasted but for the ropes of braided gold necklaces that dipped into their cleavage. They stood at the head of twelve
columns of golden-winged, well-muscled young women costumed as Nike, the girlish goddess of victory.

“Do you recognize those three in the front of the line? They are my father’s concubines,” Kleopatra said, pointing rudely
at the girls.

“How nice it must be to be a king,” Archimedes said, his eyes riveted to the red-haired girl in the middle, who at that moment
lifted her mane off her neck, making a tunnel for the breeze and raising her left breast ever so slightly higher than her
right. Her ringlets fell behind her like a tree shaking its autumn leaves.

“Oh, they fought fiercely with one another for the honor of leading the Nikes. My father finally gave in and let all three
have the privilege.”

“A wise man,” sighed the young Kinsman.

“What a time my father had deciding what necklace, what bracelet, what ring, would be worn by which of those girls,” Kleopatra
said, feeling very sly and like a grown person, tattling on the king’s silliness. She let her voice assume the same inflection
and furtive intonation the ladies of the court used in their gossip.

“They are terribly winsome,” said Archimedes wistfully. “I should like to see them beg.”

“Let us move on,” said Kleopatra, annoyed that her cousin would not take his beautiful brown eyes off of the auburn-haired
siren. When he made no motion to move, Kleopatra kicked the side of his horse.

“You are not at your most regal, Cousin,” Archimedes snapped, trotting past the nymphs. “You’d better behave. The holy ones
are looking.”

The princess sat up tall on the horse and gave her most solemn demeanor to the priests and priestesses of Dionysus who filled
the next cart, their white robes billowing lazily against their rigid bodies like makeshift sails. They were guarded by snarly-haired
Maenads brandishing hissing snakes with wild, dancing tails.

The crowd fell silent as the Maenads passed, not from fear of them, but because of what followed—a golden phallus two hundred
feet tall, crowned with a shimmering nine-foot star, a meteor in slow motion shooting into the air. It rested on a cart pulled
by dozens of men, but the awestruck faces of the crowd turned slowly as if on an axis, following the missile until it moved
past them. Boys dressed as Priapus, impish offspring of Dionysus and Aphrodite, scampered in its wake, balancing plaster phalluses
as tall as their torsos between their legs and pointing them merrily at maidens.

“Have you seen enough?” Archimedes asked. “Charmion is probably summoning the guard. I shall spend my first night as a Kinsman
in prison.”

“In that case I shall see to it that you receive generous portions of gruel while you are incarcerated,” offered Kleopatra,
turning her eyes upward and staring at him out of their corners as she saw Auletes’ mistresses do when they wanted something.

“You are very magnanimous, Kleopatra,” he said. He smacked his horse particularly hard, and laughed at his cousin when she
had to grab his vest so that she did not fall.

The eunuch Meleager had paid fastidious attention to the historical accuracy of every detail of the Procession, but in these
more modern and enlightened times, he wondered if the effect of all this ostentation was not a bit lugubrious. Would the spectacle
evoke the desired response of increased approval of the Royals? Or might it produce the opposite effect—a joke the gods often
played on careful, man-made plans. The choreographer of this opus let it all pass before him as if a dream: Barefoot Ethiopian
chiefs carrying elephant tusks and logs of ebony; a thousand camels from Arab lands with saddlebags of saffron and orris;
aviaries of peacocks, pheasants, and other resplendent African birds all floated past his eyes like phantasms in a keen night
vision. Albino leopards. Giraffes. A rhinoceros, or was it two? Meleager felt like the steward on that great ark from the
Jewish holy books; was there any beast of the earth that he had not seen today?

How could one fourteen-year-old princess make her mark amid all of this? And on the masses, intoxicated to sloppiness with
pageantry and wine? It was his own fault; he insisted on having the wine flow freely into the streets for one and all. When
Auletes had balked at the cost of getting the population of the city good and drunk, Meleager had asked, Is it not appropriate
for the New Dionysus to gift his worshippers with his favorite drink?

Now Meleager watched as six hundred slaves coaxed along the unwieldy wine barge. The vessel carried thirty thousand gallons
of that blessed drink in a drum of lion skins stretched to maximum strain around a circle of metal spikes. What an engineering
feat it had been to get it just right. Despite his worries, he could not help but feel some pride. The men and women, forty
in all, who stood inside the drum, laboriously stomped and jigged over the grapes while the scarlet liquid gushed into the
street. It was an illusion that they caused the flow, of course, but it was a nice touch. As soon as the flood began, the
dignified spectators in the Grand Pavilion became as greedy and anxious as any thirsty peasant. Several wine enthusiasts broke
the ranks of the slaves to fill their conical leather flasks, big enough to hold ample drink to weather the long nights of
the coming winter.