Pharaoh

  “How easy for you to say, Hammonius, when the world itself is your home, when you have freedom, money, and love in your life, and no one save the queen of Egypt to report to,” Kleopatra had admonished the big bear of a man in her service. Why did men think women were so unlike themselves?

  Servilia was still on the subject of her necklace. “The Gauls may be savages, but they certainly know how to work a piece of gold. Never have I seen such fine hammering.” She traced her middle finger around the square’s perimeter as she dared to eye the queen, who regarded her back. “Calpurnia does not care to wear gold,” Servilia said. “But Your Majesty obviously has a great appreciation for a fine piece of jewelry, if I may say so. You must encourage Caesar to show you his collection from the tribes of Gallia Belgica. The earrings alone are a phenomenon. You must ask Caesar to make a gift to you. They would be so lovely on Your Majesty’s delicate lobes.”

  “I wonder how they would compare to the treasures of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs which are in the Royal Vaults,” Kleopatra said dis-missively To whom did this conniver think she spoke? And yet Servilia was hardly content with female intrigues. The tentacles of her influence had no boundaries. In the middle of a discussion with an old woman about the splendid olives sold on Velabrum Street in the Aventine Hill, she interrupted a discussion between Caesar and Brutus, the latter pleading a case for Cassius, who reclined on a couch at the opposite side of the room with a snarl on his face. “I don’t know why you keep passing over him for key appointments,” she said, poking her head between the two men and raising a brow toward Cassius. “He is married to my Tertia now and he is family, Julius. Where is that famous forgiveness of yours, my dear? He has apologized. What more does he have to do to prove himself?”

  He might wipe the arrogant look off his face and be civil, Kleopatra thought, but she said nothing, astonished at Servilia’s insolence. Kleopatra’s opinion of Roman women had not changed in the ten years since she had last visited the city. Either they were overly bound to duty and knew no life outside the small domestic circle in which they reared their children and bolstered their men for the rigors of public life, or they were domineering and determined usurpers of power. She wondered on which side of the fence she would have fallen if she had been born an ordinary Roman girl, and she feared she knew.

  Servilia was whispering to Caesar, “You so favor Marcus Lepidus, and I understand it is because he is rich, darling. I don’t fault you. He’s my son-in-law, too. But you are positively hurting Cassius’s feelings and turning him away from you again.” She turned to Brutus. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

  Brutus tilted his head to the right and back again in agreement with his mother. “I have said my piece on his behalf, Mother, but Caesar is Caesar and not to be commanded.”

  “Perhaps not by you, dear,” she answered, looking directly at Kleopatra. “But a woman has her ways.”

  “For our Royal Guest of Honor, whose great ancestor founded her magnificent city after a dream vision from the blind poet he so loved.” Hermogenes the singer bowed to the queen, his springy curls toppling forward. He thrust his head and hair back dramatically and began his song. Kleopatra relaxed to the lovely lilt of his tenor voice singing Hecuba’s sorrowful lament as she awoke after the fall of Troy, wondering if the ignorant women of Rome even knew that he had referred to Alexander, who was guided by Homer in a dream to the pastoral seaside fishing village where he set down the perimeters of what was now Alexandria. The singer’s sweet notes were accompanied only by the delicate strings of a lyre, the instrument Kleopatra’s mother, who died when Kleopatra was so young that she could only conjure her music in fantasy, was said to have plucked ever so gently. Thank the gods for good Greek music that stopped the venomous chatter of these Roman mouths, the words whose poison competed for space with their food and wine. Did they not know that her command of their language was as good as their own? That she understood every subtle insinuation made about herself and Caesar? The songs were a glorious respite, even though the Romans ate noisily through the performance, paying no heed to the singer’s grace and nuance. But the queen smiled broadly at him, motioning one of her servants to send him a message that she would receive him at a later date and gift him with a special treat from Egypt.

  Iras had knotted Kleopatra’s hair too tightly, and she longed to let it down to make her headache go away. There would be no escape, however, until late into the evening, after everyone was sloppily drunk enough to have their servants cart them away. After two blissful songs, Hermogenes was dismissed by the long arm of Cicero, which looked to Kleopatra like an old lizard, his five insistent fingers forming a craggy snout. Cicero reached into the deep folds of his tunic and pulled out a document. He was going to read his own work to the guests. She had suffered this indulgent Roman custom as a girl of twelve, but back then she had been allowed to fall lazily asleep against her father’s grand belly. Now, as queen and guest of honor, she would have no such privilege. Cicero had a long, pointy face and a nose to match. At perhaps sixty years of age, he was thin, and like many intellectuals, lacked any indication of physical vitality-that is, until he spoke.

  He began: “My friends, Your Majesty, Great Caesar, honored guests, I would like to read from a philosophical dialogue I started to compose at my beloved home in Tuscany. In my bereavement at the death of my daughter, only philosophy has given me comfort.”

  Eyes immediately turned to Publilia, who reclined on Cicero’s couch in his absence, twirling a lock of her hair. If she caught the slight to herself, she gave no indication.

  He continued: “And so I have set upon the task of exalting the worth of that great discipline in daily life, and the further task of proving that the wise man is always happy. I dedicate this work to my dear friend and protégé, Marcus Brutus, who is a kindred soul in the pursuit of a virtuous life.”

  He unrolled his paper and read, holding it as far from his eyes as his long arms could reach. “Would obscurity or unpopularity prevent the wise man from being happy? No, I say. We must ask ourselves whether the popular affection and glory we so long to win are not more burden than pleasure. It is imperative to understand that popular glory is not worth coveting, and that true dignity is in knowing that the true glory is in not having any glory!

  “As the musician does not adjust his melody for the taste of the multitude, then why should the wise man follow the pleasure of the crowd? Surely it is the height of foolishness to attach importance to the opinion of the masses when one looks down upon them as uneducated workers. The truly wise thing is to despise all our banal ambitions, all honors bestowed upon us by the crowd. The trouble is that we never do manage to do so until it is too late, until we have good reason to regret that we had not looked down upon them before! For one avoids troubles if one refuses to have anything to do with the common herd.”

  Kleopatra watched Caesar during the reading. How pointed did Cicero have to be before Caesar interrupted him? Why should he tolerate-smile through-this criticism of his populist leanings in his own home? At his triumph, Caesar had given three hundred twenty thousand citizens one hundred denarii, ten pecks of corn, and six pints of oil each-acts of extraordinary generosity for which the people loved him. Hammonius had described the looks of gratitude on their faces as Caesar made his speech about sharing the glory and the riches of the empire with ordinary citizens. How dare this man criticize his actions?

  Kleopatra scanned the faces of the guests, who were smiling placidly while they ate Caesar’s food and drank his wine and accepted gifts from his mistress and ally. Brutus listened intently to Cicero, as if he had never heard such wisdom uttered from human lips; Servilia struggled with a partially cooked egg; Cassius-if Kleopatra was correct- listened not at all but eyed Brutus’s pretty wife, Porcia; and the rest continued with their dinners. Not one objection was raised, not even by the host himself. He just grinned ironically at Cicero as if the orator were reciting a dialogue on the treatment of farm animals.

  Cic
ero had now leapt to the subject of the miseries of exile, another implicit criticism of Caesar, who he blamed for keeping him eleven months at Brundisium after the war in Greece.

  “Besides, one can hardly give credence to the opinion of a community which drives good and wise men away,” he was saying as Kleopatra sat on her hands to control herself. Her stomach churned at Cicero’s attack and Caesar’s lackadaisical attitude. Did no one understand? Or did all understand, and were taking pleasure in this insult to the man who had shown himself to be their better? Kleopatra suspected the latter. Were they testing at this close range the mercy and forgiveness of Caesar? Were she in command, she would call in Caesar’s guard who sat eating directly outside the tent and have each guest systematically slain.

  “The next section of the dialogue is a discussion of how even the blind should be happy,” Cicero said, unrolling yet one more page.

  Kleopatra thought that that would be the perfect moment to tie his hands, shut his mouth, and put his eyes out. The Romans may like spectacle, but they could not compete with authentic Greek theatricality. She was angry, true, but also deeply worried. Caesar had no qualms about sweeping across continents, conquering tribes and lands, but he did not move to put these insolent Romans in their place in his own home. She would interrogate him afterward on his motivation, or lack of it. She hoped he would send Calpurnia back to town and spend the night at the villa; in fact, she would insist upon it. Mercifully, none of the diners would sleep at the villa, since it was fully occupied by Kleopatra’s party.

  Kleopatra could not breathe. She felt suffocated, as if the heavy red billows of the tent above were pregnant with some kind of fire water that would soon be dropped on her. If one sat long enough in an enclosed space with Romans, the collective smell of the urine-based stain remover used on everyone’s clothing eventually took its toll on one’s senses. Though they seemed immune to it, and though they covered it with expensive oils and perfumes, Kleopatra’s sensitive nose easily detected it. She knew she would have to pay a price for her exit in the middle of Cicero’s reading, but she could sit no longer. She raised a finger in the direction of Charmion, who stood immediately. “I need air,” she said to no one in particular.

  Outside, the dusk had taken on a spectral glow. The clouds’ flaming centers burned through the deep blue of the twilight sky. It looked to Kleopatra as if something was being born, some new star in a far-off sky cracking through the vapors and entering the universe.

  “You are ill?” Charmion put her hand on Kleopatra’s forehead to check for fever as she had done since the queen was a small child.

  “Please undo my hair, Charmion. It is like a band of torture around my brain.”

  “I am going to flog that chattering eunuch,” Charmion replied, removing the pins that held Kleopatra’s thick brown hair in its tight bun at the nape of her neck. She had kept her coiffures simple in Rome, though the wealthier local women seemed to favor as many hair ornaments as an Egyptian prostitute. Kleopatra thought they might be disappointed at her sleek elegance, as if they expected her to wear ceremonial robes every day. She closed her eyes and let her head rest against Charmion’s belly while Charmion rubbed her temples.

  “Pardon me!”

  Porcia had left the banquet and stood embarrassed before the queen. “I did not see your lady exit with you,” she said. “You looked ill, Your Majesty, and I thought you might need assistance.”

  The young woman was probably Kleopatra’s age, with light mushroom brown eyes and olive skin. Her eyebrows were dark and dramatic, like the wings of a hawk. Kleopatra looked for signs of her father, Cato, in her face, but Cato had been an old and weathered man when Kleopatra met him twelve years ago. Porcia was a beauty, but with a furrowed, serious brow that eliminated any appearance of coyness about her looks. Kleopatra had heard that she was scholarly like her husband, Brutus.

  “That is very kind of you, madam,” Kleopatra answered. “Please sit with me for a minute. I am glad we will have this moment to speak, just the two of us. I wish to express my sorrow over the death of your father. When my own father was at the worst of his troubles, the senator made an extremely generous offer to help him. My father was gratified to have been treated so well by such a highly respected Roman of his rank.”

  “It is very gracious of you to remember him, Your Majesty. Would you believe that you were also spoken of in the house of Cato?”

  “How so?” Kleopatra could only imagine what Cato had to say about her liaison with Caesar.

  “When my father returned from his duties in Cyprus, he told all his children of the small princess from Egypt who spoke many languages and acted as her father’s diplomat, though she was still a child. He used you to shame us over our lessons!”

  “And were you inspired to try harder?”

  “No, Your Majesty, we were inclined to give up altogether in the face of your many accomplishments. My father was a man of impossible idealism and virtue. I don’t believe I ever pleased him.”

  “Surely your marriage pleased him?”

  Porcia said nothing. She looked at her feet, at Kleopatra’s feet, and then met the queen’s eyes. “I know that my father was instrumental in the death of your uncle, the king of Cyprus.”

  “The king took his life of his own volition,” Kleopatra said. “There is no need to apologize.”

  “But my father’s presence in his country drove him to the act. Or that is what I have been told. I am certain this caused great grief to his brother, your father.”

  “Yes, it was the catalyst for a rebellion in our city. Our subjects were furious that my father could not help his brother. But what could he do? Still, I remind you that the senator did offer us his assistance. We hold no grudge against him or against his memory.” Kleopatra remembered the humiliating circumstances under which her father had met with Cato. The old man, though forthright and seeming to want to help, had forced the king to come to his private quarters-humiliating enough- and then received him while he sat on his toilet, plagued with dysentery. How close the king’s men had come to slaying him on the spot and putting him out of his misery. And what misery they would have saved Caesar if they had done just that. But here was this sincere creature apologizing for her dead father’s notoriously inflexible ways.

  “That is gracious and kind, and the gods will bless you for your generosity,” Porcia said. “It unburdens me to know that there is no animosity against my father’s soul from you or from the late king.”

  “But this is the way it must be,” Kleopatra said. “There are those who would blame our host-my friend and ally and benefactor-for the death of your father. And you seem not to hold him in dishonor.”

  “Your Majesty, if Caesar were a less generous and merciful man, I would be a widow and my children fatherless. My father was not a man to kowtow to anyone or anything, neither a regime nor a man. He knew that in committing suicide, he would deny Caesar the pleasure of giving mercy. He took his life for his own reasons and according to his own plans. I revered him in life and will honor his memory. But what can I say of Caesar? Despite their philosophical differences, he is like a father to my husband.”

  “And your husband? He is genuinely reconciled with his spiritual father?” And if so, why is he so thick with Cicero, and why does he lis ten to Cicero’s insults against Caesar with a whimsical smile on his face instead of taking up a sword as a real son would do?

  “He has never lost his boyhood affection for Caesar. I have counseled him to concentrate on their common interests and history, and not their differences.”

  “How like a philosopher you are, yourself, madam,” Kleopatra said. “Would that you had spoken tonight instead of the orator.”

  “No, that is far too illustrious a compliment. I have simply learned to adjust to the price of politics and war, Your Majesty,” Porcia answered. “It is a woman’s burden to suffer the machinations and destructions of men.”

  Yes, Kleopatra thought. For a woman not born a queen, for w
omen who hold no power of their own, that is precisely their Fate.

  Kleopatra peeked out the small square window of her chamber, watching as Caesar gave Calpurnia a chaste kiss before letting the footman put her into her buggy. The two treated one another formally, more like nephew and matron aunt than husband and wife. Kleopatra supposed the lack of collective time spent together made them little more than strangers, or perhaps polite but distant business partners. She did not enjoy thinking of the impediments to her own happiness with Caesar. His wife. Her brother-husband, the craven thirteen-year-old under watch in Alexandria. Roman law. They were obstacles, to be sure. But obstacles could be removed.

  The last of the carriages took off into the night, the bright torches of a bodyguard on horse lighting their way, making a tunnel of flames through the thick darkness. Kleopatra felt momentary relief, and then remembered that her evening was hardly over. She met Caesar in the corridor, a tiny candle burning in her hand.

  “Let us gaze upon our Little Caesar,” she said. She realized that she could not rest at night until she saw that her son was safely asleep, especially in this house where so many of Caesar’s enemies had just dined. Though no one mentioned the child-out of deference to Calpurnia, she supposed-everyone knew that his mother had brought him to Rome, and that he carried Caesar’s name with Caesar’s consent. Surely they did not think she had named him Caesar out of mere respect for a political alliance. But she and Caesar had decided that they would make no formal announcement about their son, at least until he could obtain a quick and blameless divorce. “How about adultery?” Kleopatra had once asked him. “That seems to be a popular factor in Roman divorce.” “I already used that one once,” he had replied, referring to his second wife, who had been caught in flagrante delicto with his friend Clodius. “Besides, no one would believe it of Calpurnia.”