The Memoirs of Cleopatra Read online

  “Everything is here.” Apollonius gestured proudly. These manuscripts were his children. “The multi-scrolled works are all in these baskets on the floor, with their labels on the basket handles.”

  Pompey was clearly impressed. “The organization is an inspiration to those of us who have archives and records of our own to manage,” he said.

  The Romans busied themselves unrolling scrolls; the resulting noise gave me the opportunity to whisper to the all-knowing Olympos, “What is all this business about a will that gives Rome rights to Egypt? I wanted to hear about it last night, but you were talking too much!”

  Now let him tell me, if he could.

  “Oh.” Olympos thought for a moment. Then he whispered back, “Your great uncle Alexander the Tenth made a will that gave Egypt to Rome. So the Romans claim! But no one is sure whether he really did, or, if he did, whether it was legal or not.”

  “Why can’t they just read it and decide?” That seemed the easiest way to find out.

  “It seems to have mysteriously disappeared,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “How convenient!”

  For us, or for them? I wondered.

  Suddenly the scroll-noises around us ceased, and so must our conversation.

  Leaving the Library, we gave the Romans a quick look at the enormous Gymnasion, where our athletes trained. And finally, to the Lighthouse.

  “Welcome!” The master of the Lighthouse was standing in the wide doorway, waiting for us. “King Ptolemy, Princess Cleopatra, come and show the Imperator Pompey what your glorious ancestor, Ptolemy Philadelphos, built over two hundred years ago.”

  Once inside, he indicated the enormous store of fuel; it looked like a mountain and took up the entire room.

  “The light must burn night and day, and to do that it consumes wood, dung, paper, charcoal—anything that will catch fire. We store all our supply here, and then it is hauled up, four hundred feet, in these baskets.” He bade us follow him to a central well, where dangling ropes disappeared upward into what seemed the sky itself.

  “Stairs go up around the perimeter,” he said.

  “Can’t we ride up in the baskets?” asked Olympos.

  “No,” said the Lighthouse master. “For you would emerge right next to the fire; and if you did not, still I would not entrust the pride of Egypt and Rome to a fraying rope.”

  It would be a long trudge to the top. There were windows all along the ascent, and as we wound around and around, I saw the harbor growing smaller and the boats beginning to look like the toy ones children sailed in lotus ponds. The higher we got, the more I could see of flat Alexandria stretching out behind the harbor; finally, near the top, I could see past the Hippodrome on the outskirts of the city and almost all the way east to the pleasure-city of Canopus, where that branch of the Nile ended.

  I had aching legs and was short of breath when we finally rounded the last turn of the stairs and emerged at the top.

  The beacon-master waited, framed by his fire. It roared behind him, curling up like the snakes in Medusa’s hair, and the sound of the sucking fire, combined with the wind outside, made a fearful howl. Behind it I could see something shimmering and wavering, and then a slave, clad in wet leather, appeared. He was turning the polished bronze mirror-shield that slid in a groove around the fire’s perimeter, so that it could be reflected and seen far out to sea. The shield would also catch and throw back the sun’s rays at the same time, adding to the brightness. It was said that the fire-beacon could be seen as far out as thirty miles, but that from that distance it twinkled like a star and could easily be mistaken for one.

  The fire was a monster, hardly to be contained. Only then did I notice that the beacon-master was wearing thick leather armor, and had a helmet tucked under his arm—obviously removed in honor of us—that had an iron mesh veil for the face. He knew his monster, and would dress to protect himself. In spite of the heat, the high wind blowing in would keep him from becoming faint.

  “I heard there was a glass lens here,” said Olympos.

  “How could there be? The heat would melt the glass,” said Pompey.

  “We tried to make one, once,” said the beacon-master. “But we could not cast a piece of glass large enough to serve our purpose. It would be an excellent idea, though. If we could magnify the light we have, we would not need such a large fire. And no, the heat would not melt the glass, unless it was thrust right into the flames.”

  “It seems to me,” said Olympos, “that if we had a lens, we could use sunlight instead of a fire.”

  “Good enough in the daytime, Olympos,” said his father, “but what of the nighttime?”

  Everyone laughed, but Olympos persisted. “Ships don’t sail at night.”

  “But they sail in cloudy weather,” Meleagros said. “And get caught in storms. Your sun-lens would fail then.”

  Ships…sailing…the thought of being on the water was unnerving for me. Just walking across the seawall toward the Lighthouse today had been difficult. I hated the water, because of that stabbing memory of the boat, and my mother. But I was forced to live by water, and look at it every day. I had yet to learn to swim, and I avoided boats whenever possible. Even the little lotus pools in the palace seemed threatening to me. I dreaded being called a coward, should anyone notice how I avoided the water.

  “Your city is fair,” said Pompey, turning slowly to see the entire panorama. “White…fair…cool and cultured…”

  “No one could love it as we do,” I said suddenly. I knew they were the right words, exactly the right words. “We will guard it for you, and it will always be waiting for you.”

  He looked down at me and smiled. “I know you will, Princess,” he said. “It is safe in your hands.”

  Was it then I felt—or discovered—the strange power I have in personal encounters? I do not do anything extraordinary, I say no special words, but I seem to have the ability to win people to my side, to disarm them. I do not know how. And it works only in person. In letters I have no special magic. Let me see someone, talk to him—or her—and I have persuasive powers I cannot explain. It must be something granted me by Isis herself, who has ever been my guardian. And she alone knows how I have tried to use her gift to bend the world to my vision and spare Egypt from Roman destruction.

  Mercifully, the Romans departed the next day, but not before extracting more money and aid from Father for their campaigns. But they were gone, gone, gone…and Egypt had been spared. Pompey and his retinue sailed away, to grapple with politics in Rome. I hoped never to see him, or another Roman, again.

  But it seemed our fate was inextricably entwined with that of Rome. Three years later, a visiting Roman accidentally killed a cat—an animal sacred to Egyptians. The population of Alexandria rioted, and tried to murder the Roman. The city was in a tumult; it was all our guards could do to protect him and quell the mob. All we would need was such an incident to invite Roman intervention, which was always a threat.

  During those years my two youngest brothers made their appearance. Both were named Ptolemy; if the women in our family have few names to choose from, the men have even fewer. There were eighteen years between Older Cleopatra and Older Ptolemy, and the same number between Berenice and Younger Ptolemy. Were they supposed to marry each other? Strange thought.

  As Isis, most Egyptian of gods, married her brother Osiris, so in the process of becoming Egyptian—that is, becoming the ruling house of Egypt, although by lineage we were pure Macedonian Greek—we Ptolemies adopted some ancient Egyptian customs that others found shocking. One was brother-sister marriage, as the Pharaohs had done earlier. Thus my mother and father were actually half-siblings, and I was forced in turn to marry my brothers—although it was a marriage in form only.

  Perhaps it was time we searched in other royal houses for our mates. The age difference in this generation was too great for us to continue our former practice.

  Then my whole world changed, and again, it was because of the Romans. Father had finally
succeeded in getting the questionable will set aside and himself recognized as undisputed King by Rome. It had cost him six thousand talents, or the entire revenue of Egypt for one year. He had had to pay it to the three unofficial, but actual, rulers in Rome—Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. In exchange, they had acknowledged him as King, and conferred upon Egypt the formal title Socius Atque Amicus Populi Romani, Friend and Ally of the Roman People. That meant they recognized us as a sovereign state, one whose boundaries they would respect. The price of this respect was very high. But not paying it was higher still, as my uncle found out.

  My father had a brother, also known as Ptolemy (how monotonous), who ruled in Cyprus. Once we had controlled vast areas of land, but we had been losing them steadily for generations. Some thirty years earlier, yet another Ptolemy, a cousin—with less fight in him than we had—had willed the province of Cyrenaica, which included Cyprus as well as the African coastal land, to Rome. After his death, Rome took it, but left Cyprus, part of the territory, still in the hands of our cousins. So my uncle Ptolemy still ruled there, until the Romans decided to annex it anyway. He did not have enough money to dissuade them, and was powerless to stave them off. They offered him the high priesthood in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus—a sort of honorable retirement—but he preferred suicide.

  We were greatly saddened by this, but the people of Alexandria turned against Father because of it. They were angry about the huge payments to Rome anyway, and what they saw as my father’s lack of support for his brother infuriated them. They seemed to feel that he could have rescued him somehow, although what he could have done is a mystery. Was he supposed to take on the Roman legions? It was hopeless; but perhaps it was touching that the Alexandrians ascribed more power to us than we actually had.

  But Father had to flee! His own people drove him from the throne, sending him to Rome, as a beggar. He came to my rooms the night he fled, his eyes wild and his manner distracted.

  “At midnight I leave,” he said. “I hope to return in two months, with legions to back me up.”

  How could he leave? Who would govern Egypt? As if he read my mind, he said, “My ministers will oversee the government. And I will not be gone long—just long enough to secure the military aid I need.”

  “But…if the Romans come here with troops, will they ever leave?” By now I had studied enough to know that when the Romans were called in to “help,” they stayed.

  “I have no choice,” he said, miserably. “What else can I do? They are bound to back me up—they have to, if they ever want to collect their bribe money!” Now he laughed bitterly. “They have quite a vested interest in keeping me on the throne.”

  This was awful, awful. I felt shame flooding me. But was my uncle’s suicide preferable? What vicious, degrading choices the Romans forced on us!

  “May all the gods go with you,” I wished Father. “May they watch over you.”

  And thus he departed, making his way to Rome to beg for protection and restoration.

  4

  Alexander the Great became my friend while my father was away. Strange that a mummy can be one’s friend, but I was desperate. I was eleven years old, and as the days passed and Father did not return, I began to fear for him and for Egypt.

  Day after day I would descend into the crypt beneath the gleaming white marble dome of the Soma, and gaze upon the Conqueror where he lay in his alabaster coffin. Each day it was the same: As I reached the bottom of the stairs and could see him, the flickering candles set all around made this seem, for a moment, like the night sky, turned upside down. And in the midst of the stars, like the sun itself, lay Alexander of Macedon. I would approach slowly, and then when I reached him I would stare long and hard.

  He didn’t look alive—I must say that straightway. He looked like a painted statue, and his features were rigid. He was wearing a polished breastplate, but no helmet, and his golden hair had not faded. His hands were crossed on his breast.

  “O Alexander,” I would murmur, “please look down on your earthly descendant and relative. We are the last of your empire to survive, we Ptolemies in Egypt. All the rest have been swallowed up by Rome. And even now my father is there, begging them to keep him on his throne. We have become renters of our own kingdom, our own throne, with Rome as our landlord!

  “What must you think of this, Mighty Alexander? Help us! Help us to extricate ourselves! Do not let us go down into those Roman maws!”

  Of course he never answered; he just lay there serenely. Still, being in his presence brought me comfort. He had existed, and had faced great problems too, and had overcome them.

  Coming back out into the dazzling sunlight always felt strange, the journey from the land of the dead back to the living. The tomb sat at the crossroads of our city where the wide Canopian Way, running the whole length of the city from east to west, intersected the street of the Soma as it ran from the south lake of Mareotis to the sea in the north. Always when I looked down that wide white street, with its marble colonnades stretching as far as the eye could see, I knew it could not be given up—that whatever Father had to do to keep it, that was what he must do.

  In his absence, the people continued to cry out against him. How could he stand by and see Cyprus taken away? What sort of weakling was he?

  It was all his fault—the helpless, pitiful king, the one they called Auletes because he was so fond of flute-playing and music. Once it had been an affectionate name, bestowed with indulgent love; now it became a slur.

  The drunken little flute-player…filthy weakling…effeminate musician, reeling in wine…these were all the names I heard as I passed through the streets of Alexandria on my way back and forth to the Soma. Once the people had enjoyed the festivals of Dionysus he provided for them, but now they derided him for the very same. They had drunk his wine readily enough themselves, but their memories were short. Those who say I do not know what the jeering crowd at Rome would be like are wrong. I know jeering crowds.

  It was always a relief to be admitted back into the palace grounds. (Would Alexander have felt relief? Would he be ashamed of me that I did?) Inside the Palace, peace and respect were always shown—outwardly, at least. Always, that is, until the day I returned from Alexander’s side and found that a revolution had taken place.

  Everything looked the same. There was nothing to make me suspect that anything had changed: The gardeners were busy at their tasks, watering and pruning; the servants were washing the marble steps of the main building, the one with the audience chamber and banquet hall, with slow, languid movements. I passed by on my way back to the smaller building where we royal children lived, when suddenly a tall guard yelled “Halt!” at me. His voice was rough and peremptory. He stood blocking the entrance to my quarters, scowling.

  I recognized him; he was one whose guarding had always been somewhat careless. Now he glared at me. No one had ever spoken to me like that.

  “You may not enter!” he barked.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Was there some danger in there? A fire? Or even an animal on the loose? Perhaps one of my sister’s pet panthers had slipped its leash and run away.

  “Until your loyalty is ascertained, I have orders to detain you. And where have you been? No one could find you.” He made a step toward me. But he dared not actually touch me; no one was allowed to lay hands on a member of the royal family.

  “My loyalty? My loyalty to whom? To what?” This was very odd. “I have been at the tomb of Alexander, which I have always been free to visit.” Even as I said it, I realized I could not prove it, as I always went alone.

  “Your loyalty to the new rulers,” he said smartly.

  New rulers? Had the Romans seized power, then? Had warships landed? Troops invaded? But there had been no tumult or fighting in the streets, and—I quickly glanced toward the harbor—no foreign ships there.

  “I don’t understand,” I said simply. I did not know what else to say. But I felt a great fear for Father.

  “The daught
ers of the former King have been elevated to sovereignty,” he said. “Come and do homage. Their Majesties are waiting.”

  My sisters! My sisters, taking advantage of Father’s absence and his unpopularity, had seized power. Now I also felt fear for myself. They could do away with me, with Arsinoe and the boys, and there was no one to prevent them. It could all be done swiftly, this morning, before word got out in the city. It was an old family custom of the Ptolemies—murder of rivals, siblings, mother, father, children.

  “So you refuse!” he said, taking another step toward me, reaching for his sword. He might have been instructed to strike me down if I showed the slightest hesitation. Or perhaps he might just strike me anyway—after all, there were no witnesses. I looked quickly and saw the servants still scrubbing the steps. Whatever they observed, they would keep to themselves. There would be no help from them.

  “No—” How long did I stand there, thinking? It seemed many moments, but that was impossible. I prayed quickly to Isis, to help me. “No, no, I do not. I am their obedient sister, now as always.”

  “Then prove it.” He motioned to another guard to take his place while he marched me toward the main building—again, not actually touching me, but walking so close beside me it was even more threatening. I tried not to betray my fear.

  I was taken to one of the larger rooms of the palace, a room that my sisters evidently felt befitted their new status, as our father had held his audiences here. I stood before the outer doors, which were ornamented with tortoiseshell from India and studded with emeralds, but today their magnificence was lost on me. Slowly the doors swung open and I was admitted to the chamber, where the ceilings were fretted and inlaid with gold. At the far end sat Cleopatra and Berenice, on chairs encrusted with gems. They were consciously seated in the same pose as Pharaohs in carvings.

  To me they did not look at all like queens or Pharaohs, but only my two older sisters, as always.