He slept. His body lay stretched on the bed, a linen sheet draped over his back as if he were just dozing from the baths. The Amun robe lay somewhere on the floor, discarded after it had served its purpose. I could tell from his breathing that he was asleep, his broad back moving slowly up and down, exposed to a dagger should I have one hidden. Pompey had been killed by the treachery of a Ptolemy, and yet here Caesar lay, sleeping peacefully at the mercy of another one. But he had gauged me right; not only would I never harm him, but I would kill anyone who tried to. I sat up for a long time in the bed, just watching him, listening to him breathe and move in his sleep.
I felt profoundly bound to him. The lovemaking over, my heart beating only at a normal pace, the heat of the moment replaced by cool watchfulness, I saw him not as an abstract Roman, or even as the famous conqueror Caesar, but as a lone man, an exile like myself. In the faint lamplight I could make out the lines on his back, the little bumps where his spinal cord lay like a rope under his flesh, even some scars. He had had a hard life the last few years; months of being out in the field, leading half-starving soldiers to attack his once brother-in-law, now his foe. No rest, no safety, betrayed by the very city he had won victories for, having to risk his life just to have his rights recognized ... he had said that only his troops had kept him from being sacrificed by the Senate, when all was said and done. A weary man, an unappreciated man ... an exile, like me. But he had ended my exile. I wished to do the same for him--if there was any way I could.
The enormity of what I had just done began to sink in. I had blithely handed him--the famous seasoned voluptuary!--my virginity. Did he even value it? Why had I done it? I tried to ask myself these questions, as if they mattered. They ought to matter. The "sacrifice" had been unnecessary--he had said he would take my side regardless. My coming to him in the rug had already won him over; it was I who insisted on sealing the bargain further by making him my lover. And now ... I was supposed to be weeping with shame and loss, but instead I was feeling this unbearable, improbable happiness. It, and he, were so altogether different from what I had imagined.
I remembered the first time I had ever heard his name, in connection with Father's debts and annexing Egypt. He had been Consul then--it was even before he had gone to Gaul. I had imagined him to be coarse, grasping, greedy, red-faced, and loud, growing more so as the years went on, so that by this time he would be almost a swine, in spite of his rapacious appetite for stolen artworks. I thought his bed behavior (one could not call it lovemaking) would be brutish and rough, like the field soldier he was. No one had prepared me for this vital yet oddly courteous and elegant man. And certainly no one had prepared me to find in his words and beliefs an echo of my own values and very self. We were alike, in our deepest substance, even though we were born years apart and on different sides of the sea, and of different peoples. He was much more my brother than were my real brothers.
And no one had prepared me to feel so fiercely loyal to him, so instantly bound to him. And as for the lovemaking ... I was eager for more of it. I would refuse him nothing; I did not even want to.
I was supremely happy, perhaps the first time in my life I had ever been so. I laid my head down across his back and closed my eyes, letting his breathing lull me into a state where I could float and savor that peaceful happiness.
I must have slept, because when I opened my eyes it was quite light and he was up and looking out the window. He had already put his tunic on, but was still barefoot. I slipped out of bed and came up behind him, putting my arms around him. "You have stolen from my bed," I said.
"Lest I should be chained there by my own desire in the daylight," he said, turning to me. The eastern light showed his face, with lines around the eyes but otherwise taut and healthy.
"Is that wrong?" I asked. I knew already that being together in the daytime would be entirely different.
"It is most un-Roman," he said with a laugh. "Don't you know that such things are done only by the degenerate people of the east? But then, of course, you are of the east!"
"How could anything Caesar does be un-Roman?"
"There are those who like to prescribe Roman behavior. One must be careful not to run afoul of them, when their opinion still counts." He gave his half-smile. "But later. . . well, one must admit their standards are questionable. They say adultery is permissible, but only in the dark!"
"Who are these Romans?" I was curious.
"Oh, Cicero, Cato, Brutus . . . but there is no reason for you to be concerned about their murmurings."
"Nor you, while you are here." I took his hand. But I could see his thoughts were already on the business of the day ahead. I dropped it and let him go to the other side of the room, where his clothes lay abandoned. He quickly put them back on. I marveled at how fast a soldier can dress himself.
"I had arranged for your br--" he started to say, when there was a knock at the door. "Enter!" he bellowed.
The doors were flung open, and in stepped Ptolemy and Pothinus. Now I suddenly understood why Caesar was up and dressed, and why I was not. I had nothing on but a sheet that I had wound around myself. That was how he had wanted it.
The visitors gasped. Ptolemy looked as though he were going to cry, and Pothinus, for once, was speechless. He bobbed his ibis-head up and down over his obese body. He stared at me, at the royal bed with its sheets and pillows still in disarray, and then at Caesar, smiling and self-possessed. He understood.
"It isn't fair!" shrieked Ptolemy. "It isn't fair! What's she doing here, how did she get here, it isn't fair, it isn't fair!" He turned and ran from the chamber.
"Great Caesar," began Pothinus in a shaky, high voice, "we are most surprised by the presence of--"
"Stop that boy!" barked Caesar to his guards, who had crept up outside the doors during the night. "Stop him before he gets outside."
But my brother knew all the secret passageways in the palace, and before they could even locate him, he had run out into the forecourt and then almost to the fence separating the palace grounds from the rest of the city. A large crowd was always there, and today was no exception. I watched from the chamber window as he rushed toward the people, yanked off his royal coronet, threw it to the ground, and burst into a howl of tears.
"I've been betrayed!" he yelped. "Betrayed, betrayed!" Then followed a paroxysm of weeping.
Two burly Roman soldiers, the sun glinting off the brass on their breastplate straps, ran out of the palace after him, grabbed him from behind, and dragged him back into the palace.
My blood felt chilled. I had just had an unrehearsed--and therefore all the more revealing--demonstration of who held the real power here. Common Roman soldiers had laid hands on the King of Egypt, and treated him like any naughty village boy. I must not lose Caesar's favor, lest they do the same to me.
Behind me, Pothinus was still trying to talk. "Forgive him, he is . . . unpracticed in ruling," he whined. "He cannot hide his feelings."
Caesar was standing, one lean arm resting on the back of a chair. He had not bothered to go over to the window to see what would happen to Ptolemy. He knew what would happen. He just looked at Pothinus, and it appeared that he was not going to bother to answer him.
"Shall I decide to allow him to be your co-regent, most exalted Queen?" he asked, in that deadly quiet public voice I was becoming accustomed to. But it was not the voice he used in the dark of the night. "I prefer not," I said.
"But your father's will wished it so," Caesar persisted. Was he teasing me? What did he mean to do? "And did you not take as your title 'Cleopatra, the Goddess Who Loves Her Father'? Then, of course, you should honor his wishes. Would you care to proceed with the marriage to Ptolemy?"
The thought of yoking myself to him in any way was politically repellent; yet that was nothing compared to the possibility of his ever touching me as Caesar had. "I could not bear it," I said.
Ptolemy was led in, crying and scowling. The two soldiers supported him by his bony little shoulders.<
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"Ah! The bridegroom himself!" said Caesar. "Come, dry your tears. It is not fit to weep on your wedding day."
His tears dried up in surprise. "Wh-what?" he sniffled.
"It is my judgment, as executor of the late King's will, that we must abide by the terms of it. You will marry your sister Cleopatra and reign as joint monarchs in time-honored fashion."
He couldn't be doing this! How could I have trusted him, or hoped for justice from him? Had all my impressions of him been wrong? Now it seemed he was as devious and cruel as the rest of his countrymen. I was stunned.
"And then, together, you will raise the money you owe me. As you may recall, I have assumed responsibility for collecting what the late King still owed the Roman Republic." He nodded matter-of-factly.
That man! So he was just greedy, after all. "You cannot be both judge and beneficiary," I said coldly. "Choose which way you will be satisfied--either as high judge or as debt collector."
He shot a look at me. His eyes were flat and betrayed not anger but resolution. "I will be satisfied both ways, as it pleases me. So make yourselves ready for your marriage, under whatever form you choose, and then we shall have our reconciliation banquet." He waved his hand at Pothinus. "Prepare for it. It should be a huge fete, held in--what was that hall with the gold rafters and the porphyry columns?--and serving at least two hundred guests. Do all the things you Alexandrians excel in. Dancing girls. Acrobats. Magic tricks. Gold plate. Rose petals on the floor. You know what better than I. Yes, the people must see that we all embrace and love one another."
They stood as if they had been mummified, as stiff and wrapped as Osiris.
"Well?" said Caesar. "I have told you what you must do."
The mummies bent their heads and withdrew.
I whirled around to Caesar. "How could you? I thought we were allies!" I was intelligent enough not to scream, You even called yourself my husband! Had he forgotten that? But I knew Caesar did not forget.
I felt angry, betrayed, seething. I had had only hours to bask in the momentous thing that had happened in the night, and already it was gone. And for what? So I could be made a new sort of prisoner?
Sternly I took myself in hand, one part of my mind speaking to the other. You came from Ashkelon, risking your life to gain an audience with Caesar, I reminded myself. And you succeeded. You had a private interview with him, and he agreed to set you back on the throne and enforce his will on your brother and his band of pathetic advisors. They seemed so wily and formidable, but now that Caesar is here, they are swept aside like schoolboys. They are nothing. I have got what I came for--political security. If I wanted more than that after meeting him, then I was a fool.
Caesar was standing, leaning on the handles of the chair, his head bent. I saw that the top of his head was balding. Amun in the daylight was no god. And I no goddess, just a woman who wanted a man in the oldest of all ways, but it was new to me.
"And so we are," he said.
It took me a second to realize what he was answering--my secret cry, as well as my spoken words. "Then make me sole Queen!" I said. "Why must I tolerate him?"
"It is not for long," he said. "But for now it must serve."
"Why?" I cried.
He looked at me, a long, searching look. "Cleopatra--how I love the way that name sounds on my tongue!--you know why. And you know that legalities must be followed, if only to be discarded later."
"So there must be this public reconciliation?" I knew I sounded as pouty as Ptolemy, but I could not help it.
"Yes," he said briskly. "You and Ptolemy will be proclaimed joint monarchs, the army can be demobilized, Pothinus can be disposed of--" He stopped as if he had just remembered an insignificant fact. "Did I tell you I banished Theodotos? That was his reward from me."
Banished . . . swept away ... in the twinkling of an eye. . . . Yes, he did swat people as I had swatted the fly in my tent. And he did not even get a mess on his shoe. Just a wave of his hand and the person disappeared. Forever.
I laughed out loud with joy.
"Now, that's my Cleopatra!" He crossed the room swiftly and took me in his arms. "And no--Ptolemy will never be your true husband. I am he. As I promised." He kissed me, bending down to reach me. "We are alike, you and I," he said in so low a voice I could barely hear the words. "I know it; I can feel it. At last I have found someone who is exactly like me. I do not think I ever want to part from you. We are two halves of a pomegranate, and each section fits perfectly together."
I clung to him. I believed his words, because I wanted to, and thought I understood their true meaning.
The banquet was in readiness. Pothinus had followed Caesar's orders, and had prepared a feast for all the court dignitaries: the chief scribes and librarians, the state treasurer, the priests of Serapis and Isis, the commander of the Household Guard, the envoys and courtiers, the most celebrated court physicians, poets, rhetoricians, scientists, and scholars. The gold-covered rafters indeed gleamed their distinctive mellow sheen in the lamplight, and the floor was covered in rose petals brought by sea from Cyrene, where the best roses grow. Wherever you stepped, the drowsy sweet scent was released in the crushing underfoot.
I had gritted my teeth and allowed an abbreviated wedding ceremony to take place in the upper chambers of the palace, on the roof where the sea wind whips in. Ptolemy and I had gone through some words that officially linked us in marriage, in a formula invented by the palace. We were witnessed by Caesar, Pothinus, Arsinoe, and the younger Ptolemy. I mumbled the words, hoping thereby to make them invalid. As soon as it was over, I hurried away to dress myself for the banquet.
Now Caesar could never accuse me of not doing my part, I thought. The loathsome thing is done.
Charmian was still in the palace, waiting faithfully. I had not realized how much I missed her until I saw her familiar face, and heard her humming as she folded silk mantles and tunics in the room that held my wardrobe.
"Your Majesty!" she cried, a thousand questions on her face.
"Charmian! Oh, Charmian!" I said, rushing toward her.
She continued staring, suppressing a laugh, and then I looked down at the dusty gown I still wore.
"I have had no opportunity to change my escape clothes," I said. "I came by boat yesterday, and gained secret entrance to the palace."
"Everyone knows," she said. "It is said--but oh! how thankful I am that you are here, and safe! The last few months have been dreadful. They have strutted and swaggered all over Alexandria, the happy trio with their puppet, and proclaimed you dead."
"They are no longer a trio, but a duo," I said.
"Caesar has--?" The question hung in the air.
"Banished Theodotos," I said. "He will not trouble us again."
"And you have seen Caesar?" she asked delicately.
"As 'everyone knows,' " I said, quoting her, "I had myself smuggled into his chambers inside a rug."
She burst out laughing. "He must have been shocked!"
"He did not show it," I said. "And now--oh, but it is too long to tell. Later. Now I need to be dressed as a queen, for the banquet that is being staged below. Make me beautiful enough to give a kingdom to."
Make me beautiful enough to love, I meant. But with Caesar, it was always kingdoms and crowns and possessions. Love, if it came at all, must follow only in their wake.
And now I stood at the entrance to the great ceremonial hall, my back against the cool panels of ebony. I was so weighed down with pearls from the Red Sea that I felt enveloped in a glow of moonlight. They were woven skillfully in my hair by Charmian, and draped over my neck, and the largest and most prized of all hung from my ears, swaying whenever I moved my head. I was swathed in Sidonian silk that was almost transparent, and swirled around me like a mist. On my feet were sandals of braided silvered leather. I stood still and breathed deeply, and as I did so I could smell the lotus scent Charmian had rubbed in the bends of my elbows and in the spot on my neck where the vein throbbed. All day long
my body had felt different, serving to remind me that what had happened was real--and irreversible.
Musicians, grouped in a corner, gently strummed the strings of their lyres and piped soft melodies on their flutes. The sound echoed against the polished stone walls.
The tramp of boots. Soldiers were coming. The Household Troops, or Caesar's? I watched as uniformed men entered from the entrance on the far side of the hall. I recognized the Roman cloaks and spears.
In the middle of them was Caesar. But he had chosen to wear the costume of a Consul of Rome--a white toga with a broad purple band at the hem-- rather than that of a general. He must have just spent time with the barber, for his face was shiny and freshly shaven, and his hair trimmed. To me he was as stunning as Apollo, though I could see he was not young, not large, and weighted down by the world he carried with him.
Let me help you carry it, I thought suddenly. It is too heavy for one man.
They approached me, and Caesar stepped forward. I saw him staring at me, and knew that in his eyes I must appear transformed, an altogether different creature from the dispossessed one he had met in secret.