The Memoirs of Cleopatra (129 page)

What would I ever do without Olympos? “You know what they say,” I said. “Never play the same trick twice. That’s too much like the rug.” I paused. “No, I have a new scene in mind. But I need your help. I want the best poison you can procure.”

The smile faded from his face. “You want to poison him?”

“No. Not him.”

I had never seen Olympos taken entirely by surprise, naked emotions playing on his face. I saw it now. “No!” he said. “No, I can’t believe you would ask that of me.” He jumped to his feet.

“Dear friend—” I rose, too.

“No! I said no!” Horror and anger were fighting within him. “I cannot!”

“If you cannot, who will?” I asked. “I am afraid it may prove necessary, and then I will be driven to—to ugly measures, unless you help me.”

“I cannot use my skills that way,” he said. “And even if I could, I could never aid you in—You are my friend, my lifetime companion, dearer to me than—than—”

“All the more reason why you should spare me suffering! Or do you want me tortured? Taken to Rome and killed there? Or forced to use knives or swords? Oh, pity my situation!” Now I felt trapped. I had betrayed my intentions to him without obtaining any help with them.

“The Cleopatra I know would face her enemies, not avoid them.”

“Oh, that I intend to do,” I assured him, for it was true. “All that diplomacy, charm, sacrifice may win for me, I will venture. But if they fail, I need to know that I will not be humiliated or tortured. I need to know I control my own last fate.”

“This is premature. After all, Octavian is in Rome. Everything is quiet. Wait and see.”

Why could he not understand? “We know what is coming,” I said. “We must prepare.”

He looked at me acutely. “You said diplomacy, charm, sacrifice. Just what do you have in mind?”

“I will flatter Octavian, surrender my crown to him, ask him only to pass the throne on to my son. That’s diplomacy. I will hide my treasures, threaten to destroy them unless he agrees. Already I am gathering them into one spot, where I can set fire to them. That’s sacrifice. And then, when I finally see him, I will remind him of Caesar’s love for me, his respect. He will not dare to insult his ‘father’s wife.’ That’s charm.” That was my tentative plan. I had no wish to die. But I was ready to. That was the difference.

“What if, when he sees you, he responds to your…charm in some other way, and demands some demonstration of it?”

I had thought of that. It was unlikely; enemies do not usually arouse lust. But conquerors routinely took women as part of their victory. And to take Antony’s woman would be the final triumph over his foe, the greatest insult he could tender.

The thought was repugnant; I did not know if I could bear it, not even for Egypt, not even for Caesarion. The poison would be far better. But that might have to be afterwards; in fact, it would be obligatory afterward.

“I would get drunk first,” I said. “And I assume you would have no scruples about providing me something to add to the wine to wipe out all my memory afterward.”

I suppose that was the answer he wanted. It showed I wanted to live. Let him think it—as long as he got the poison!

“You stop at nothing,” he said, with grudging admiration.

“I am desperate,” I told him. “Don’t fail me!”

“I didn’t save you when the twins were born, only to murder you ten years later.” He shook his head. “I won’t get poison.”

“Then you are crueler than Octavian!” Well, I would manage without him. I would think of a way. But I still needed some other assurances from him. “I want you to promise something else, then.”

“Not until I hear it first.” He crossed his arms across his chest.

“I want you to take the two copies of my life story out of Alexandria. Put one in the base of the great statue of Isis in her temple at Philae; take the other to Meroe, and the Kandake.”

“Meroe! You want me to go all the way to Meroe?” His voice rose in protest.

“I think, after Octavian arrives, you will feel the need to travel.” I smiled at him. “Do you promise? It is all I ask.”

“All? Do you know how
far
it is?”

“Yes. I have been there, remember? You will be glad enough to leave Alexandria for a year or so. And when you return, Octavian will be gone.”

“And you? Where will you be?” He was still suspicious.

“Taken off to Rome, since you will have it so,” I said. No use to discuss it further now. “Do you promise to take the scrolls?”

He sighed. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“No, do you
promise?
Do I have your word?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can trust it, I know.”

The year rolled relentlessly on, sliding into the darkest time. It was no darker outside than in my mind, where hate, fear, worry battered my heart. I continued training Caesarion, showing him the archives, the inventories, and trying to teach him the valuable arts of ruling: how to select administrators, how to compose correspondence that achieved one’s aims, how to reward good servants and discern cheating ones. I spent hours with Alexander and Selene, telling them stories of Antony, lest they forget their father. I gave them the medals, recounting the battles where they were earned. I included Antyllus, in some ways the neediest of them all. He had come alone to Alexandria, a stranger, to take his place with unknown half-siblings. He had no mother, and had been taken from the house of his stepmother. I ached for him, the ache made worse by picturing Caesarion soon in his place. No father, no mother, no stepfather…well, at least Antyllus knew Octavian, I thought grimly. Surely Octavian would take him in and treat him kindly. My littlest, my last baby, now five years old, I played games with, enjoying his quick laughter, his chubby hands, his lack of questions that I found too painful to answer.

Mardian appeared one day, looking unusually glum. He had received a message.

I sighed. “What is it?” One bad thing followed another, like the waves rolling in relentlessly, smashing against the breakwaters. There was now no news that could be good; there was only bad and worse. And the worst: that Antony had…

“The ships,” he said, handing me the letter. “Malchus.”

I had thought I was past disappointment, but reading that Malchus had ordered my ships burnt was crushing. And he had waited until they had been laboriously hauled across the sands and safely launched in the Red Sea before descending on them and torching them.

“O ye gods!” I cried. “Now all my enemies rise up!” Malchus had harbored a grudge against me ever since I had taken his bitumen rights.

“Now that Didius is…has…” Mardian coughed delicately.

Quintus Didius, the Syrian governor, had gone over to Octavian a month ago, with his three legions.

“What about him?” I asked.

“To prove his new loyalty, he has unleashed Malchus on you. Malchus could not have struck without his permission.”

“Of course not.” So the ships were gone. No escape by way of that route. I was inured to it now, to all these losses and setbacks. My only goal was to keep going, and hope for a miracle to reverse the incoming tide. Octavian
was
mortal. There were still shipwrecks, fevers, accidents…. All it would take was one. And that was in the hands of the gods, and they were more likely to grant it if they applauded our resolute efforts here below. No one, man or god, likes a quitter. And so I soldiered on, alone.

There was only one place left that promised me solace. Antony’s vacant rooms were a palace of torment; the children’s quarters, with their high, resounding noises of life, were only a spur reminding me of the solemn charge with which I was entrusted; Mardian’s reports of Egypt’s prosperity were almost galling; and Olympos and I now played a game of cat-and-mouse about my intentions.

As I went out into the city, I could not help assessing what the Alexandrians—volatile, pleasure-loving, and yes, superficial—would be capable of withstanding. A siege? Doubtful. Bombardment? No. And certainly not for the sake of a disgraced Roman general. For me? Perhaps. They watched me carefully as I was carried through the streets in my litter, their dark eyes glittering. They were assessing me as I was them.

Octavian made deals. He would offer them terms to preserve their glorious city; and there was part of me that was grateful, knowing my city would live on somehow, surviving me.

The white tomb of Alexander beckoned, as it had to me all those years ago. In the glistening building that housed his remains—cool in its passageway under the dome—sounds were hushed and the light that penetrated was scattered and gentle. The utter stillness was what struck me now, whereas when I was a child it was the gleaming gold, the sword, the breastplate. Now I realized that I could never grasp what death truly meant, how it could change movement into absolute stillness and rigidity, but that if Alexander, that most restless of men, could lie so still…

Instead of comfort, it was horror. I would never go there again, and I emerged blinking into the sunlight, craving any movement I saw—the scurrying of a lizard, which now had power Alexander had lost forever; the waving of a workman’s hand; the stumbling of a donkey on the pavement. I entered my litter, and felt the thudding of the footfalls of my bearers, alive, moving….

Only in the Temple of Isis, on the eastern side of the palace promontory, where the sound of the sea echoes through the hall like the noise inside a fragile seashell held up to the ear, was there any peace for me. From the portico I could see the shining aquamarine water with its decorative white froth trimming the waves like lace. The crying of the wind, imitated by the seagulls, seemed to be calling to me. Inside the shaded hall, the statue of Isis, as white as new-cut ivory, stood inviting me to draw near.

There, at the feet of the goddess, the only mother I had ever really known, I could rest my head and lay aside my pretense. She saw everything, she knew everything, and I could trust her: things we long for in our earthly companions.

O Isis! My mother! I feel myself to be a child, lost and alone….

Long ago my mother had vanished into that beguiling tender blue of the harbor, resigning me to Isis’s care.

I am small, very small. I only come up to the statue’s base, and I reach out and touch it, my fat little hands curling with sorrow, offering a sad bunch of wildflowers to the goddess, terrified of her. “This is your mother now,” the old nurse says, but she is white and remote, and I can barely see her face. I want my own mother’s face back, her high coloring, her red lips, her greenish eyes. I put out my hand again and see, overlaying it, my mother’s hand, her slender fingers flailing in the water and disappearing.

I cry to the goddess,
I am yours—take me, too, I want to go with her
. But the goddess draws me up, takes my chin, whispers,
Child, my child, death is not for you. You are mine, and will be my hands and eyes, my executor, my incarnation—forever and ever
.

I had forgotten, my memories perhaps sealed by her power—until now. As I stand in her shadow, it all returns, only now I am taller, my hands—slender and ringed now, like my mother’s—reaching to the goddess’s knees, my mother’s face faded beyond recall, Isis and her serene beauty the only mother I know.

What would you have me do? I ask her. Only you can guide me. Shall I resist? Am I to die soon? What of my children? Where will they go, what will you do with them?

O Isis—you who control fate, you who open and close the doors of our journey, tell me whence I go, where and why. Tell me. I am ready to hear.

And, faint as the sea-whisper, the murmur of the tides lapping at the base of the temple, I hear the sound of doom:
Only a little while more, a little distance yet to go, and bravely borne, and you may lie down beside me
.

Beside her. My mausoleum was beside the Temple of Isis, with an adjoining passageway. So.

As long as men come to worship me, as long as women come to pay homage, to lay flowers and wash with the sacred water, so long will they pass your earthly remains and honor you, too. You, my true daughter, will be part of me and those who love me, until the crack at the end of the world—the end of our world….

It is over, then? It does not seem possible, but it is only the statues who abide forever. Even Alexander lies as still as dust under his canopy, and he was younger than I.

But only six years younger! I am thirty-nine! Too young; it has gone too fast, far too fast to be over!

Octavian—Octavian is also six years younger than I, exactly Alexander’s age; no, not quite yet, not until next September will he attain Alexander’s age. And then…

Is it to be then? I asked Isis. Is it to be then, but not before?

And she told me,
Yes. Then
.

But I wanted to change it,
would
change it. Was it truly written, or could it be rescinded? If the gods admired or applauded our efforts, did they not have the power to change even what is written? They had pitied Psyche, and her great struggle earned her a place on Mount Olympus, a drink of ambrosia converting her with a sip from mortal to immortal. And Hercules…his labors had made him a god after all.

Only those who struggle are worthy of a reprieve. And so I had learned nothing, except what was waiting to be changed by my own determination. How easy to submit, how great the reward for resisting! Thus the gods encourage us to rebel, by their own inconsistency and approval of our daring.

“They told me I would find you here.”

I barely heard the voice; it was low and came from the portico. I turned to see a black outline, someone standing, leaning an arm against the column, black against white.

“Who intrudes upon me?” I demanded. I wanted no human beings in this sacred space.

He removed his hand from the column and walked toward me, still just a black bulk, moving deliberately, slowly….

“You do not recognize me?” Antony’s voice framed the words in sorrow and disappointment.

He was alive! He was here, refuting death itself! I ran to him and flung my arms around his neck, which I had thought never to do again.

The black-sailed ship…the sarcophagus…the speechless funeral…all the tormenting images I had wrestled with gone, shriveled like the wraiths of imagination they were. His breath was warm, his flesh solid—this was no ghost.

“O thanks! Thanks be to all the gods!” I cried. He, too, had defied their orders, and now he lived and was here. He had turned his back on the Roman dictum.

“I had to see you again,” he said. “I could not leave with our parting as it was.”

He bent down and kissed me, holding me to him fiercely. My soul sang at his touch, at his restoration.

“I cannot hold you close enough,” I said. Above us Isis looked down, her face expressionless.

We would return to the palace. He would see the children. How happy he would make them! They would not face the loss I had, that hot, still day in the harbor. I would tell him of all the preparations, the news.

“And now I can bear it,” he said, pulling away from me. “To have parted properly is fitting.”

“I do not understand.” Surely he had not come all this way to…I turned and looked at Isis. Was all this her will, a cruel trick?

“I will live here, but not with you,” he said. “I am no fit company, no longer worthy to reside in the palace. I will dwell in solitude, in a small house—the meaner the better—on the harbor, awaiting the inevitable approach of…the victor.”

“But—” I searched for words. This fit no pattern. It made no sense, answered no requirement of honor. “Surely you have some other purpose! Why did you return, then?”

“I told you—to see you.”

“But you will cause me great pain. How can I live in the palace, alone, knowing you are in the city, refusing to come to me? And the children! How can you explain—how can I explain—to Alexander and Selene that their father is here, but will not see them? They are frightened, confused! They need you!” What madness had entered him?

“I am no longer Antony,” he said. “It is better that they do not see me. Let them remember me as I was. Let them cherish the medals—mementos of a great soldier! Not this man—not this man!” He extended his arms, brushing them down over his chest, then holding them out in resignation.

“You are their father!” I said sternly. “Children care less about medals and honor than you imagine. They crave only the life and presence of their father or mother.” My mother, sinking beneath the waves, abandoning me…but she had not done it on purpose. “You are cruel!” When he still stood unmoving, I cried, “The gods will punish you for this! Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable! You couldn’t help Actium, but this is your own doing! And you will pay for it!”

He was not to return to the palace, but turn his back on it and on us, letting his quarters remain empty…never to act as husband and father again.

“Antony died at Actium.” His voice was low.

“What is standing here, then?” He looked real enough to me.

“A shadow, a dark double.”

“Then let it come to us.”

“It is not worth the having,” he said.

“If this unfeeling man is the remnant of Antony, then you have spoken true!” I cried. “This is not Antony, who was above all kind and generous! This is more like Octavian! Has he taken you over? Hardened you into a version of himself?”

“Let me depart in peace!” he said. “Remember me as I was!”

“It is impossible. Whatever our last glimpse of someone, that remains with us. Oh, Antony—” I held out my arms to him. “Come back with me. Let us stand together, wring some last pleasure and victory from our days—”

But he had turned away, his cape trailing out behind him, descending the temple steps.

I bent my head over the base of Isis’s statue and wept. He had invaded my interview with the goddess, returned from the dead, teasingly, only to depart.

What shall I do? What shall I do? I implored her.

Let him go
, she answered.
Now there is only you. You, and I. I will not flee, or fail to uphold you in your need. Give yourself to me. Your need of mortals is over
.

It was sunset before I left the temple; the rose reflection of the red glow on the horizon coated the columns, threw slanting rays across the floor, bathed Isis’s face in living hues. The tide had receded, and ugly black rocks revealed themselves, nibbled by the waves.

I was exhausted, as if I had fought a mighty battle. I dreaded returning to the palace, to all the questions and scrutiny, but unlike Antony, I would make myself face them.

My arms ached from the brief embrace, bringing forgotten sensations back to me. The feel of his lips on mine—now I must forget them again, and forget them in anger and disappointment. Better for me was the parting in Paraetonium! I hated him for this surprise, this titillation. And I could never forgive him for wounding his children so. Even the Roman way would have left me with more respect for him! Then I would have been sorrowed; now I was shocked and betrayed.

Heart, we must forget him utterly! I told myself sternly as I marched back to the palace. How to face Mardian and tell him…?

I need not have worried. It was Mardian who had spoken to him, had told him where to find me. He was waiting anxiously.

“Did he…?”

“Yes!” I cried, anger and sorrow struggling like gladiators within me.

“And where…?”

“He has gone off to—I know not where! He says he will live alone—not coming to the palace. Oh, Mardian!” I embraced his comforting bulk. Dear Mardian, my stalwart, ever-constant friend.

“He is a broken man,” he said. “Don’t judge him too harshly.”

“But the children! How can he—?”

“He is ashamed to face them.” He guided me back into his most private room. “He has had another blow.”

“What?”

“He did not tell you?”

“No. He said nothing, just a sort of formal farewell.”

“Ah.” Mardian gestured for me to seat myself on one of his soft couches.

As I did so, sinking into the welter of pillows, I felt profound relief. I had been standing for hours. “What has happened to him?” I cared terribly. I wanted to protect him against any more lashes.

Mardian picked up a slender glass pitcher and, without asking, poured out a sweet drink of honey and fresh-pressed grape juice for us. He handed me a goblet, and I took it gladly. “Scarpus arrived a few hours ago,” he said. “It seems that Gallus and his men finally reached Cyrenaica, where Scarpus’s former legions were waiting for them. They joined forces, and Antony decided to go to the camp and make a personal appeal to his former soldiers there. He would stand outside the gates and address them.”

No! What a humiliation! But that he would undertake it showed he was not beaten yet.

“But what happened?”

“Scarpus was standing with him, and as he told it—it was pitiful. Every time Antony raised his voice to speak—and you know how he has trained it to carry great distances—Gallus gave the order for the trumpets to sound and drown him out. It went on and on like that for hours. Finally the day ended, and Antony had to depart unheard.”

An actual shaft of pain shot through me. Enough, enough! I begged Isis. Lay no more upon him!

“And then he came here,” I said.

“Apparently so.”

This last blow must have unhinged him. He could only crawl here in shame—like a dog seeking a safe place to lie down and die. Oh, if only I had known this when he was standing before me!