“Fortune makes confidence unnecessary, my dear.”
She was not sure when the moment of clarity had arrived. She had not plotted it, exactly. But when she realized that she was securing the Fate of herself and her nation, she was pleased.
Caesar was not Archimedes, her childhood friend, Kinsman, and subject. She could hardly dictate to Julius Caesar where he placed his semen. With Archimedes, she could tell him that she would not produce a royal bastard, and he could agree with her that it was the wrong thing for both herself and for Egypt. He was a bastard himself and he knew the precarious Fate of such children. She could tell Archimedes that he might penetrate her as much as he wished, but he might not deposit his seed inside her body. And Archimedes had been content with the arrangement and had disciplined himself to arrive at the moment just before climax and then quickly withdraw. All men know how to do this, he had told her, but few wish to bother. Few are making love to queens, she retorted. And he agreed.
If fifty-two-year-old Julius Caesar did not know how babies were made, then it was not Kleopatra’s job to tell him. He had had only one daughter, Julia, whom Kleopatra had met while visiting the home of Pompey with her father. Caesar had married Julia off to Pompey to secure the two men’s alliance. But Julia had died trying to give Pompey a son. Kleopatra knew that Caesar had been in Gaul when his daughter had died and that he had regretted not being there at the hour of her passing. Kleopatra told Caesar that she and Julia had become dear friends when she and her father were exiled in Rome, that the older girl had been somewhat of a mentor to the twelve-year-old Kleopatra. In truth, Kleopatra had thought Julia a silly goose and had avoided her company. But it heartened Caesar to listen to an eyewitness to Julia’s happiness with the elder Pompey, who was even older than Caesar, and this was not fable. Julia and Pompey were rarely out of one another’s arms, as nearly as Kleopatra could tell.
She had not yet brought up the subject of another heir. She had never been pregnant, and she did not know the signs. She would send for Charmion as soon as possible; though Charmion had never been pregnant either, she would know precisely what to anticipate and how to tell if one were with child. At present, there was no one in whom Kleopatra might confide. Though her bleeding was only a few days late, her body had begun to stir-not in ways she had heard women speak of, but as if an odd energy had manifested itself and come to mingle with her.
One morning after Caesar left her bedroom, she had the vision. She was accustomed to rising early, meeting with her advisers and her War Council, sending correspondence to foreign leaders to raise an army, and negotiating with governments and independent merchants and importers to keep her retinue and soldiers fed. These days, there was little she might do but lie in bed like a courtesan, imprisoned as she was in her own palace, while in the streets Roman and Alexandrian soldiers engaged in heavy fighting. She would like to have joined them; she had ridden with her troops in the Sinai, leading them to their encampment, making speeches to rally them to her cause. It seemed unnatural that a woman of her temperament should be cut off from the action of battle, from the events that were to determine her own Fate, and yet when Caesar demanded that she stay away from the fighting, she acquiesced-not because she wanted to obey him, but because she suspected that she held within her body the key to their future. Not the future of Egypt or the future of Rome or the future of Kleopatra or Julius Caesar, but the future of the world. And only before this phenomenal goal would she lay down her desire to participate in the war.
She had begun to think of the seed within her as a son, and she hoped she was correct. How much more difficult it would be if she bore Caesar a daughter. Even the Egyptians, who had been governed by women of will, would never accept the daughter of a Roman intruder as their queen. To Rome, the child would be a mere bastard born to a foreign mistress. The girl would not even be a Roman citizen. But a son-Rome might be coerced to change its customs and its laws for a son of Julius Caesar, even if that son was born out of wedlock and even if Caesar was already married to that woman Calpurnia about whom he never talked, whom he had married for political expediency. Divorce was not only recognized but easily attained in Rome. Why, Romans seemed to marry only for political alliance anyway. What was a Roman woman with a few connections in that city compared to the queen of Egypt, the descendant of Alexander the Conqueror, who not only commanded the treasury of her ancestors, but whose country was the door to the countries of the east, the territories Rome had been trying to subdue once and for all for over a century?
The boy would be the unity of east and west, of Caesar and Kleopatra, of the three hundred dynastic years of the Ptolemaic empire and the sweeping landscape of the Roman conquests. In his small and fragile body would run the bloodlines of Venus on his father’s side, and of Dionysus and Isis on his mother’s. Of Alexander the Great and his mother, Olympias, who wore snakes in her hair and put terror in the hearts of men. Of King Philip of Macedonia, one of the great warriors of the Greek world. Of Ptolemy the Savior, first Macedonian pharaoh of Egypt, and Julius Caesar, conqueror of Gaul, Britannia, and Spain, and dictator of Rome. These would be just a few of the boy’s ancestors. Their legacies would collect in his small body, nurture him into manhood, and then reveal themselves in his ability to rule the world in peace and harmony. The boy would put an end to Greek and Roman rivalry, for in him, the very highest and best of those cultures would make itself manifest. He would be the first of a new race of men, a hero, a new kind of Titan. The people ruled by his father and those ruled by his mother would unite in a joint government that would go beyond the limits of either republic or monarchy. It would complete the vision of Alexander, who did not live to see his dreams come to fruition. The locus of the new ruler’s power would be Egypt, the land whose fertile soil fed half the world, whose civilization had achieved greatness thousands of years before either Rome or Greece was born.
Kleopatra remembered the dream she had had long ago. She was walking in the forest when she came upon Alexander, who was hunting the lion with his legendary Kinsmen, including the founder of Kleopatra’s dynasty, Ptolemy, the great king’s companion, general, and historian. Ptolemy shot Kleopatra with an arrow that, instead of killing her, turned her into an eagle-the symbol of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The palace crones had interpreted the dream to mean that Kleopatra would one day rise to become queen. But that was merely one level of its meaning. Now she understood the complete message. Alexander had chosen her, his spiritual daughter, to carry out his vision. He had subdued the bellicose Greeks into one nation. Then he had ridden across Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, and into that strange and impenetrable land called India. Wherever he went, he was welcomed. What other man or god in history was hailed by the very people he conquered? It was because Alexander did not bring hardship upon his conquered people, but rather alleviated it. He brought a vision of harmony and unity even if he used military might to do so. Did he not love all the peoples and religions of the world? Did he once impose his Greek gods on any nation or tribe of men? But, depressed over the death of his beloved Hephaestion, he had let himself get weak with fever and drink and died on the road to Babylon. Now-some two hundred fifty years later- Kleopatra would carry out his ambitions. As soon as she was able to leave the palace, she would visit his tomb and tell him what she planned to do.
She had watched her father grow old and feeble in his efforts to negotiate with Rome, to appease Rome’s appetites for Egypt’s money and resources. She had vowed before the goddess that she would not repeat the pattern that put him in his tomb. And now she had the solution. She need not appease Rome. She would give birth to a new kind of Roman. And if she and Caesar could have one child, why could they not have many, one to preside over every nation of the world? She was young and in optimum health, and he, old as he was and engaged in military actions the day long, still came back to the palace every night and made love to her.
Kleopatra put her hand over her belly. It was no larger than it had been a month ago, but now
she felt a new energy stirring inside. Her hand tingled as she stroked the smooth skin. The muscles were so firm that she worried that her womb would be too tough to house a tender baby. Would they give way when the child started to grow inside her? She would rub creams and ointments into her skin and coax the muscles to stretch as much as they could to make room for the child, the new emperor.
Kleopatra lay back down on her bed, reconciled to spending the day indoors. It seemed to her that protecting herself from falling off her horse in the heat of a battle, or from the knife of one of her brother’s assassins, was the very least she could do while the future of the world nestled quietly inside her womb.
Arsinoe lacked Berenike’s height, which was a problem. Berenike had been as tall as most men, if not taller, and she had not had these infernal large breasts that were good for keeping the attentions of men but got in the way of shooting. Still, when Arsinoe pulled back the bow, its string cutting through the leather glove and into her fingers, she saw the target as if it were the only object in the world. In that moment she was not a human at all but an isosceles triangle of bow, arrow, and princess, with the arrow in a straight line to infinity-only infinity was cut short by the black target before her. She released, falling forward slightly, easily hitting her mark. It would have been easier if she did not have to hold her bow six inches from her chest, diminishing the strength with which she fired. But she had slapped her right breast many a time to the point of bruising, and she did not want to suffer the injury again. It was not form that mattered in the end, but the completion of one’s intention.
Ganymedes handed her another arrow. He was slim for a eunuch, probably because he had trained in the military from early boyhood and kept up a strict regimen of swordsmanship and exercise at the gymnasium. He was young still, perhaps thirty, and he wore his hair long and curly like the Greek boys of earlier times whose lovers immortalized them in statuary. He had no facial hair save eyebrows, and was fair enough to be called effeminate. To assume that his character followed suit would have been an unfortunate mistake.
Arsinoe thought him rather beautiful, far more attractive than her pudgy brother. Every night that horrible creature, the image of their late father, came to her room, and she rolled up her nightshirt and let him suck her nipples and rub against her until he spilled his filthy seed all over her thighs. Then he would fall asleep and she would clean her legs and pray to the gods to kill him, until, mumbling prayers to the underworld, she drifted off into fitful dreams. But he was king, and if he were to die a sudden and mysterious death, the little one would probably be no better. Arsinoe prayed that Ptolemy the Younger would stay long in the nursery, that she would not have to let more than one brother at a time suckle her breasts and feel between her thighs. There was no ridding herself of either of them, at least not yet. Berenike would have slain the elder one in his sleep or castrated him, dealing with the consequences later, but Berenike had been executed because of such impul sive moves. At least now Pothinus was dead, and if Arsinoe decided that she could no longer bear her brother’s nocturnal visits or his silly outbursts in which he pretended to rule the nation, the absence of the eunuch would make it easier to get rid of the boy king. As it was, the boy’s outrage over the execution kept him ranting without cessation, and though he was slightly less interested in making Arsinoe play with his penis, he still relied on her day and night to be the audience to his tirades.
Kleopatra was her biggest problem. But by bedding down with the old Roman general, something she had probably dreamed about since girlhood, her older sister was sabotaging herself and committing political suicide, thus creating one less impediment to Arsinoe’s rule. The mob would undoubtedly drag Kleopatra out of the palace and slay her in the streets. She had been a Roman-lover like their father since she was a small child. When she was away with the now-dead king in Rome, bribing those monsters to put them back on the throne, Arsinoe and Berenike would make puppets out of their images, shooting them with arrows until it looked like the Parthian army had come through and emptied their whole pouches into the effigies. Then the two princesses would fall on the grass and laugh until they were sick to their stomachs. Berenike would wait until Arsinoe had no breath left in her body. Then she would cover her with kisses and touch her in all the secret and wonderful places that their idiot brother seemed incapable of finding. Arsinoe would lie in reverie until Berenike got bored and went to her grown-up women. She missed Berenike terribly, though she would like to do those same things now with a man. Not someone disgusting like her brother or the eunuch or the elderly Caesar, but one of the young soldiers who stood guard over the royals, one who had a lean, strong body and handsome eyes. She saw no chance of this at present. She was closely watched day and night. Even in the future, when she would finally escape to head her army, she would still be expected to remain chaste until she chose a husband. It would have to be that way to preserve the monarchy, unless she, too, chose to sell herself out to another creepy Roman with lupine teeth. She had spurned the advances of the snake, General Achillas, though he was handsome almost beyond compare. When he approached her and suggested an alliance based on sex in exchange for his protection, she felt the spirit of Berenike rise up inside her and she slapped him across the face. “I shall leave you to your brother’s charms, then,” he replied, and she knew that if she did not act first, he would eventually make her pay for what she had done. So she made a plan.
She would choose the next king-not one of her brothers, not a conniving military man like Achillas who sought only power, but some beautiful Greek prince like Seleucus, the handsome Graeco-Syrian whom Berenike had chosen and who had died in battle against the Romans. Together, and in memory of Berenike and all that she stood for, he and Arsinoe would break this ridiculous custom of brother-and-sister marriages that kept the entire world laughing at them and their bizarre ways. Kleopatra only thought she was exercising her will and having it her own way. She was merely a Roman’s whore, and if that’s not how she saw herself, then she was not being realistic. Arsinoe would be different.
Arsinoe placed the proffered arrow into her bow and pulled back with all her might until her arm quivered. The eunuch came behind her and placed his arms over hers as if helping with her form. He took the weight of the stance from her, and she felt herself relax, only to tense again from having a beautiful man, even if he was a castrated one, embracing her from behind. He whispered, “The uniform of one of the Roman pipe-boys will be in the trunk in your chamber. At the hour of midnight, put it on and be prepared to leave.” Arsinoe’s bow arm started to shake again. “You will not be alone,” he said. She felt him pull her arm back until it hurt.
“Release,” he ordered, and the two of them let go at the same moment and hit their mark.
Kleopatra watched the spider’s tiny jaws devour the leg of some long-dead insect. She could not discern what the thing had been, so crumpled and distorted were its small remains. She had never observed a spider’s activities from this angle at this proximity, and she found herself mesmerized by the creature’s persistent, rhythmic chewing. She was grateful for her acute eyesight. The spider was perched upon his elongated legs, negotiating his bulbous body this way and that so that his repast need not be disturbed when the dead thing shifted. He would not know impatience, Kleopatra thought, admiring the way he kept coming at his prey one way and another without any acknowledgment of discouragement or fatigue.
Caesar’s long legs were stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles. Ptolemy the Elder sat opposite him, twisting a fold of his linen robe with both his hands. Kleopatra completed the triangle, sitting adjacent to the two men, continuing to watch the spider gobble his victim on the corner of her brother’s chair while he sat unaware of the arachnid’s valiant efforts inches from his arm.
The war-for now they were clearly at war, but with and against whom was still slightly unclear-had gone on for weeks, with Caesar waiting patiently for reinforcements to arrive. He was certain th
at he would not be disappointed, despite some messages from Rome’s eastern client kingdoms that few Roman troops could be spared because the Parthians would not let up in their attacks on Syria. Their best hope for reinforcements lay with Antipater of Judaea. “Pompey had such trouble with those Jewish warriors,” Caesar had said earlier that morning. “They resisted him and frustrated him terribly. He repaid them by forcing them to side with him and against me in this recent war. I believe they will not let me down this time. After all, they do need to make amends.”
“I wonder if they are a different race from the Jews with whom we have lived in peace here in Alexandria for so many hundreds of years,” she had asked, amazed at her arch tone. “They are almost thirty percent of our population. Perhaps we know better how to embrace. And to think we have done so without the wisdom of your Posidonius.”
Caesar did not argue with her; he never did. She could not bait him into a good Greek-style dialogue. He treated her as if she were a precocious child whose sarcasm amused him in his dotage. That’s one way of diminishing my power over him, she thought. She knew that despite the fact that he did not exhibit the typical male ferocity in bed, he took great pleasure in coming to her every night for lovemaking, which was followed by a long conversation until they fell asleep, naked, she on her back, he curled about her, his breath on her forehead like a soft wind.
They were able to spend lengthy amounts of time together because General Achillas had kept with his strategy of enforcing the siege on the palace quarter, attacking Caesar’s troops if they attempted to venture beyond the barricades. It was only a matter of time before he ordered an attack on the palace itself The only thing preventing this, Caesar concluded, was the fact that the king was held hostage.