Cleopatra's Moon (17 page)

“There you are!” said a bent old man, his head covered in a shawl in the way of augurs. “How did the scam go?”

I gaped at the man.

“I told you he’d fall for it,” came the cackling voice. “Now, how many sausages did you save me?”

“N-none,” Alexandros said.

“None? You ungrateful little brats!” The old man held a scroll over our heads and threatened to beat us with it. We cowered in confusion.
He turned to the robber. “They were supposed to save me two sausages! Do you believe their selfishness? Do you know how long it takes me to make that paste look like real jewels?”

The robber’s knife wavered. “They aren’t real?”

The old man snorted. “Gah! Are you as stupid as the sausage-man? What are the chances that filthy children from the Subura would be walking around with real jewels from Egypt? But that is what I count on! People’s greed always blinds them to the obvious.”

“
Cacat
,” the robber said under his breath, lowering his knife. With an irritated growl, he stalked away in search of better prey.

“Come quick,” the old man said, straightening up and not sounding so old anymore. We followed him to a dirty brick building. The man looked around before opening a door. I tried to get a clearer look at his face but could not.

“Wait!” I whispered to my brothers. What if this was a trap? Alexandros read my expression and hesitated too, but Ptolly dashed in after the man. I groaned.

“Ptolly,” I hissed, following him. “Wait!”

The man took the veil off his head and handed me back the armband. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Do not come any farther inside. You must wash first.”

Alexandros and I exchanged looks. We tried to make out our surroundings as our eyes adjusted to the dark interior. “Should we run?” I whispered. “No!” Ptolly said. “He told us to wait here.”

“But we do not know who he is or whether he is bad too,” Alexandros said.

“Oh.” Ptolly’s eyes grew big.

Before we could decide what to do, the man returned with two bowls of water and a couple of towels. “You must wash your hands and your face of the impurities,” he said.

“What impurities?” I asked.

“You ate the pork sausages, yes?” We nodded. “Then wash the grease off your hands and faces!” Surprised, we did as we were told. He handed us the clean towels. “Good, good,” he said. “Let me get rid of this impure water and then I will take you to the rabbi.”

Alexandros and I looked at each other again. We were in a synagogue?

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Ben Harabim,” said the man. He had a mass of black curls and a long, uncombed beard, though we could tell now that he was not old at all.

“How did you know we needed help?” asked Ptolly.

He shrugged. “
Hashem
speaks, and I listen.”

“Your god
spoke
to you?” Ptolly asked, surprised.

The man laughed good-naturedly. “
Hashem
speaks in many ways. I listen to my heart, for that is often the way
Hashem
speaks.”

“And what did your heart tell you?” asked Alexandros.

“That you are lost children in over your heads in a dangerous part of town.”

“Well, your god spoke the truth, then!” Ptolly said.

The man chuckled. “Come, follow me.” We followed the man through a small airless room into another smaller airless room.

“Rabbi,” he said to a middle-aged man bent over a scroll. “These children are lost and need our help….”

“
Hashem
preserve us,” said a shaky voice from the side of the room. “I know these children!”

We looked at the bent old man who had spoken.

“
Aba
, do you recognize these children?” the rabbi asked, putting down his scroll.

“My son, you know I never forget a face!” the old man said. He examined us carefully. “I prayed they spared you and that it was not another bunch of lies,” he mumbled. He looked at Ptolly and said more loudly, “You, I do not know.”

“I do not know you either!” Ptolly said. “What is this place?”

“You are in a
bet ha-midrash
, the place of learning in a Hebrew temple.”

“A synagogue?” Ptolly asked.

“Very good,” said the old man. “How did you know?”

“That man who helped us called him ‘rabbi,’“ Ptolly said, pointing to the bearded man, who seemed a younger, more vibrant version of the old man. “Are you a rabbi too? Many of our people in Alexandria are Jewish.”

The man laughed and clapped his hands. “It is true, then? You are the Royal Children of Egypt?”

“Yes,” I said, “but who are —”

“Gods!” muttered Alexandros. He turned to me. “Don’t you remember when Euphronius took us to the Jewish Quarter to learn from the rabbi there?” He nodded as if to say,
I think that’s him
.

“But that was so long ago!” A lifetime. And I could not, for the life of me, remember his name. My heart raced at the improbability of seeing him again. Was this the work of Isis? What if this sweet-looking old man was one of the agents Amunet had told me to watch for? After all, he had been in Alexandria and was now in Rome, just like us. And … and it would be a better cover to have us work through a follower of the Hebrew religion than a follower of Isis, wouldn’t it?

“Tell me,” the old man asked. “How is my old friend Euphronius doing?”

Alexandros and I exchanged looks. In truth, we did not know. We feared he had been crucified with all the others.

“Ah,” the old man said wearily. “I am so very sorry.”

“But what are you doing in Rome?” I asked.

“I insisted my father leave Alexandria and come to live with me here,” said the younger rabbi. “When we heard … when Antonius was defeated at Actium, I worried for
Aba’s
safety in such unsettled times.”

“I did not want to leave,” grumbled the old man. “I do not like this Rome….”

“So you have no message from the Lady Amunet’s agents?” I asked. “No instructions for us?”

Alexandros looked at me. We hadn’t talked much about what Amunet had said or her plans for us. Whenever I tried, he grew angry, calling me foolish for thinking we could ever survive defying Rome. When plans were underway, I hoped, he would feel differently.

The old rabbi shrugged. “I know no Lady Amunet or her agents, as you put it.”

“She was the High Priestess of Isis in Alexandria,” I said.

Again he shook his head. “Oh, but how I do miss our lovely city,” he sighed. “In Alexandria, there was beauty and learning and tolerance. Here, I see ugly buildings and people who want only to watch the bloody gladiatorial games.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “Where are the libraries? Where are the scholars, the poets? This is a place of brutes and beasts, not brains.”

The younger rabbi sighed. He had likely heard this complaint many times.

Disappointment tightened my throat. This sweet old man was not one of the priestess’s people. He too came here against his will.

“Did you know,” the old rabbi said to Ptolly, “it was your ancestor whom we may thank for helping our people survive outside our homeland? For it was upon his insistence that the blessed Torah was translated into Greek.”

“The Septuagint,” Alexandros and I said at once, remembering our lessons.

“Precisely!” said the elder rabbi.

“‘Of the seventy’?” Ptolly asked. “What does that mean? What are you talking about?”

“It means, little Ptolemy,” the elder rabbi said, “that your ancestor took seventy-two rabbis, put them in separate rooms, and told them not to come out until they had translated the Torah from Hebrew into Greek. Then they all had to agree on the final translation. Which is, I must tell you, a miracle in itself — that seventy-two rabbis agreed on anything!”

The old man smiled, and I remembered his warmth when we visited the Jewish Quarter so long ago. It seemed as if that day happened to a different person, to a Cleopatra Selene that I did not know and would hardly recognize. “You will see,” he continued. “It is because of the wisdom of the Ptolemies our tradition will survive.”

It felt so good to hear someone say something positive about my heritage and family that I found myself welling up with tears of gratitude.

“
Aba
, things will get better here in Rome now that Caesar is back. You will see. Caesar brings peace and wealth with him.”

“Alexandria’s wealth!” the elder rabbi and I snapped in unison. His eyes twinkled as he smiled at me.

“But I am confused,” said Ben Harabim, glancing at the younger rabbi, then back at us. “Why … How could the Royal Children of Egypt be lost
here
in the Subura?”

“They were going to strangle us!” Ptolly announced.

“What?” the three men cried in surprise.

“They marched us in his Triumph today, then they brought us to the
Tullianum
, to the executioner,” I said.

The younger rabbi puffed out his cheeks. “Ben Harabim, have you brought into this House of God, Enemies of Rome?”

“But I was only trying to help these lost children….”

“It was a mistake, a misunderstanding,” Alexandros said. “We were supposed to go back to Octavianus’s house on the Palatine.”

“Some mistake,” the younger rabbi said. He sighed. “We cannot harbor Rome’s enemies here. We must not anger the Romans or bring any attention to ourselves.”

“Pssstah,” the old man said. “I will not allow such cowardice.” He turned to his son and said in Hebrew, “Is it better to live by the Torah or only read it?”

“You must understand,” the younger rabbi said, flushing, “during these years of civil war, the Romans … Sometimes people look for someone to blame, someone to take their frustrations out on. So. We will help. We just cannot harbor you here.”

“Well, that is good, because I do not want to be here,” Ptolly whined. “I want to go home!”

I was so surprised by the word “home” that I must have repeated it without realizing it. Ptolly turned to me, a tantrum brewing on his flushed face. “Yes! Home! With Tonia and Marcellus and Octavia and the rest of my family.”

Octavianus’s complex on the Palatine was not, and would never be, “home.” Nor would anyone in Octavianus’s household ever be “family” to me.

“Come here,” the old rabbi said to Ptolly. “Do you know the story of Jonah and the whale?”

Ptolly shook his head. “Who is Jonah?”

As his father distracted Ptolly, the younger rabbi turned to us. “Is there someone at the Palatine whom you can trust?”

“Octavia,” I said.

“Juba,” Alexandros said almost in the same moment. My brother turned to me. “Octavia is probably sitting beside her brother at the celebration feast,” he pointed out. “Juba is the better choice to get us out of the Subura right now.”

“Good,” the rabbi said. “Now, how would I get word to him?”

“Wait,” I cried, remembering what the soldier had said in the
Tullianum
. “Maybe we shouldn’t go back. The soldier said that Livia gave the orders for our execution.”

“No, he did not!” Alexandros said with a shocked expression. “The executioner insisted he had never gotten the orders and that he would not have done it anyway. It was a
mistake
. That is all.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the young rabbi interrupted me, looking directly at Alexandros. “How do we reach this Juba?”

Alexandros and the rabbi continued talking. I looked down, confused. I knew the soldier said it was at “Caesar’s lady’s” command. What other “lady” would want us dead but the wife of the man who hated us? And if it had worked, it would’ve been brilliant, as all of Rome would have witnessed that Octavianus was in the Triumph and Livia in the grandstands, neither one personally responsible. Our deaths would have been excused as an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Ben Harabim left to locate Juba. I looked over at Ptolly. He had crumpled against the old rabbi, fast asleep. The old man put his crooked, spotted hand gently on Ptolly’s head and recited a Hebrew blessing. I remembered how Mother had prayed over Ptolly the night before she died, and the longing for her touch sank so deep, my bones ached with it.

“Come,” the younger rabbi said, lifting Ptolly from his father’s lap. “You all must rest.”

I turned to the elder rabbi. “Thank you,” I said to the old man, feeling my throat tighten again. “Euphronius would have been very grateful for your kindness to us.”

“Pssstah,” the old rabbi said again with a smile. “It is I who am grateful to Euphronius.
Hashem
works in mysterious ways, for it must have been His will that brought you here to us this day.”

I remembered, then, how he had tried to explain the Hebrew concept of “free will” to me so long ago. I understood it no better now, for how could something be both “God’s will” and our own “free will” at the same time? And if his was the kind of god that “willed” us to be paraded in humiliation and then almost executed, I could confidently say that I wanted no part of him. Isis would help me. I just needed to be patient.

We were left alone to wait in one of the side rooms of the
bet ha-midrash
. “We should run away now, while we can, before we’re taken back to the compound,” I whispered to Alexandros. “I swear to you, it was Livia who ordered our deaths. We would be
fools
to go back.”

Alexandros flicked his eyes at Ptolly, who was twitching in his sleep on a musty, stained rush mat on the floor. We squatted like slaves next to him. “And do what? How long do you think we would survive out there?” Alexandros asked, gesturing to the Subura. “I’d rather be held in the bosom of my enemy and know what to expect than be murdered or attacked by some filthy, drunken Roman. Worse, slave traders could snatch us and … and separate us, selling us to gods-know-where. No. We cannot risk it.”

He was right. It was common knowledge that unaccompanied children in Rome — especially in the Subura — were often kidnapped and sold to slave traders. The Romans called the child-stealers
retiarii
, after the gladiators who fought with nets, because they were so skilled at sweeping the streets of unwanted children.

I shuddered at the thought of being separated from my brothers, let alone being sold. Yet I also felt the frustration of our coddled upbringing. We had no talent for surviving the streets of Rome. Alexandros was right. With Octavia and Juba standing between us and Livia and Octavianus, our best chance of survival was amidst our enemy.

Because of the chaos of the revelry all over the city, Juba didn’t come for us until nearly sunrise the next day. He was outraged at the “misunderstanding” of our almost-execution and swept us home in a litter surrounded by guards.

Zosima nearly wept with relief when she saw us. An exhausted-looking Octavia looked dazed beside her. Zosima threw her arms around me, and I couldn’t help but gasp at the pain in my shoulder.

“What happened, child? Are you injured?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, but all the air left my lungs when I spied someone watching us from inside the atrium. Gods, Livia! How furious she must be that her plan for getting rid of us had failed! What would she do to us now?

“Cleopatra Selene?” Zosima asked.

“I fell,” I mumbled.

“The mean man tackled her!” Ptolly cried. “And I kicked him in the head!”

“What?” Zosima and Juba said at the same time. “Who …”

“The man that was going to make her not a virgin so they could execute her!” he said. “But I stopped him!” He reenacted the kick with gusto. “I rescued us!”

At everybody’s look of horror, I added, “That’s right, Ptolly. You and Alexandros stopped him from hurting me, and we escaped.”

I looked toward the atrium again. Livia was gone.

“Oh, you were so brave,” Octavia said to Ptolly, tears streaming down her face. She knelt. “The gods have spoken. They have saved you for me, my little Marcus.”

Little Marcus
? I stared openmouthed as Ptolly threw himself into her open arms. She held him tight. “My little Marcus,” she kept murmuring. “I am so sorry.”

Ptolly snuggled into her embraces like a kitten searching for its mother’s teat. “My poor, poor darling.” Octavia sniffed. She picked him up and walked toward her rooms, murmuring honey in his ear.

“Come,” Zosima whispered to Alexandros and me as she led us back to our quarters. “Let us get you cleaned up.”

That night, all I could think about was Ptolly. Would he have nightmares after our horrible experience in the Triumph? Did Alexandros know how to comfort him? In the deep-dark, I rose and snuck into their
cubiculum
to check on him. To my dismay, I found Ptolly’s sleeping mat empty.

I pushed Alexandros’s shoulder. “Wake up! Where is Ptolly? Where is he?”

Alexandros was always difficult to rouse in the night. “Wha …?”

“Ptolly! Where is he?”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “… Octavia.”

“What?”

“Said he might get scared … better for ‘Li’l Marcus’ … stay with her.”

“Little Marcus” again? Why was she suddenly calling him by Tata’s name? And why would Ptolly sleep in Octavia’s room like a baby when he said he was too big to sleep with me in my
cubiculum
?

The thought that took my breath away, though, was this:
She was stealing him from me
. I knew that made no sense — I did not “own” my little brother — but my heart felt otherwise.

I stood frozen in my brothers’ dark room for a long time, for when I left to return to my own, the sky was purple in the predawn light. I walked slowly across the grounds, struggling to understand my enormous sense of unease and loss. How many ways did the gods have, I wondered, for taking from me the people I loved?