Kleopatra (19 page)

Slowly, the desert girl’s right hand disappeared into the hidden breast pocket in her garment. Kleopatra thought Mohama was
trying to clutch her dying heart.

It was then that the princess saw the glint of the curved metal blade as it caught a late afternoon insinuation of sunlight.
She watched Mohama move in the slow motion of a dream. With a magician’s hand, she flipped the knife, reached behind herself,
and in a great, deliberate, precise stroke, slit her captor’s body from his thigh, through his pelvis, and up to his gut.

Kleopatra looked from the implacable face of Mohama to the face of her victim in time to see him register an almost imperceptible
look of surprise, a faint recognition that his fate had been decided. A dark stream of his life’s liquid gushed at once onto
his white clothing. Surprised, unaware of his assailant, he let go of the girl and looked down to see what had caused the
sudden agony. Using his bleeding body as a springboard, Mohama threw herself away from him into the arms of Demonsthenes,
who pulled her onto the platform and into safety.

The man fell backward, screaming. He touched his hands to his blood and then raised the red palms to the sky. The crowd, suddenly
quiet, looked among their own ranks for the culprit, while Demonsthenes lifted the bolt of the double doors that led to the
kitchens and hustled the two girls through.

K
leopatra followed Mohama up the servants’ stairs at the rear of the palace, her feet throbbing with every step. She stared
at the back of Mohama’s dress, soaked in blood, clinging to her backside. The interior of the palace was remarkably calm.
There was no committee representing the king proclaiming gladness at their safety, no one into whose arms she might have jumped.
Kleopatra wondered if they had even been missed.

Inside the chamber, the rigid face of Charmion greeted them. “Bathe and dress,” she said quietly. “The king will see you after
he is finished meeting with his advisers.”

“Is my father safe?” asked the princess.

“At present, it appears so.”

Kleopatra allowed herself to be stripped and washed by silent slaves, dressed, and brought before her father. Without saying
a word, he planted a hard slap on Mohama’s brown face, leaving red streaks where his fingers made contact. Kleopatra observed
her own silence and wondered why she did not speak out for her bodyguard. She heard with distant ears the even-toned explanation
of Mohama, whose hands did not even touch the swelling scarlet on her face. She watched as if she were a stranger to herself
and to the others as her father threw his hands up, letting remorseful tears of anxiety and relief roll down his chubby cheeks.

She lay for two days alone in her bed, refusing the food brought to her, even when Charmion tried to spoon-feed it to her
tightly closed mouth. From her bedroom window she heard more shouts coming from the streets, this time in Greek. The clash
of swords, the low hum of confrontation, lasted all day long.

“It is the Greeks this time. Our own people,” Charmion explained. “A meddlesome philosopher named Dio has organized them against
your father. They are upset by the death of the king of Cyprus and the Roman annexation of that Egyptian territory. They fear
Egypt is next. They are calling for your father to abdicate.”

It was too much for the sick girl to think about. She knew a philosopher at the Mouseion named Dio, a verbose Sophist who
spouted aphorisms at the lazy young boys in his tutelage. Kleopatra simply nodded and fell back into her deep slumber. What
had become of Mohama she did not know and did not ask. Perhaps the king had given the girl a more important assignment.

On the third day, Charmion brought the news that Auletes would travel to Rome to demand something in return for the six thousand
talents he had paid Julius Caesar. He was going to request a show of military support from Rome or else ask that his money
be returned.

The princess sat up for the first time in days. “Is my father abdicating? Who will govern in his place?”

“He is leaving the queen to keep the throne, with Meleager and Demetrius as her appointed Regency Council.”

“He is leaving us here to die,” the princess said, suddenly queasy. Would her father sacrifice all of them, his wife and five
children, to his ambitions?

“Nonsense. You talk like a child. If the entire Royal Family goes to Rome, the king will have abdicated, or so it would appear
to the people. Your father has arrived at the most intelligent solution to his troubles. The people will not move against
the Royal Family if they know they are going to face a Roman legion.”

Kleopatra said nothing.
He has sacrificed his family like lambs to slaughter
. She counted herself among her father’s victims.

Without warning, her stomach collapsed. It was as if she had been stabbed in the gut, as if someone not present had pushed
the knife. There was a word for that kind of magic, though she could not think clearly enough to remember it. Had someone
put a curse on her? Motionless, she absorbed the pain in her innards. When she could move, she ran from the bed clutching
her middle section, and vomited before she reached the door. Then she saw nothing but black and was not even aware when she
crumpled like a rag doll and hit the tile floor.

Out of the dark void came the cold, yellow stare of her sister Berenike, dressed in warrior’s clothing, holding an ancient
sword above her head. Beside her, the short, combustible six-year-old Arsinoe, a breastplate over her chest and armed with
a knife. Berenike ripped her own dress open, revealing only one large Amazonian breast. The other had disappeared and with
it the nipple, replaced by a jagged scar. Berenike was poking her sword at Arsinoe, toying with her like she was a puppy,
but Arsinoe only laughed, holding her arms out as if praising the gods. Kleopatra looked into the child’s luminous eyes. Berenike
put the point of her sword into the soft spot on the girl’s throat and pushed. The child did not move. Blood poured from her
neck. Still smiling, bleeding from the throat, Arsinoe looked down. At her feet, dead, lay Kleopatra.

When Kleopatra came to, she was sobbing and Charmion was helping her back onto the bed.

“I shall summon the doctor,” Charmion said, her chilly hand on Kleopatra’s hot forehead.

“No. Please.” Kleopatra rubbed her eyes, trying to make sense of the vision. “This is not a problem for a doctor, but a holy
man or a magician or perhaps a philosopher. Or a soldier or a spy.”

“Child, you are ill and delirious. I am taking no chances with you. Particularly in light of recent events.”

“If you call a doctor, I shall kill myself,” Kleopatra said vehemently, sitting up and grabbing Charmion’s dress. “I do not
like to quarrel with you, Charmion, because I love you, but I do not like your interfering ways.”

“It is my duty to interfere when your judgment is bad,” she said, not backing down.

Kleopatra did not argue, but folded her arms. “What did Socrates say about Knowledge?”

Charmion stared at her as if afraid she had lost her mind entirely. “This is no time to make a philosophical dialogue. You
are ill.”

“Please, Charmion. I am trying to explain myself. Think back to your own lessons. What was the philosopher’s position on Knowledge?”

Charmion did not like to be challenged. “He said that Knowledge was a property of the Immortal Soul. That Knowledge is not
taught, but remembered. That the process of knowing was but remembering what the soul already knows. Is that the answer you
seek? And if it is, then what has Socrates to do with vomiting?”

“Listen to me, and please do not look at me as if I were merely a child. I know that I am a child, but some things I simply
know.”

“And what do you know this time?” Charmion was not practiced at hiding exasperation.

“I know that I must not stay in Alexandria. I know that if I remain after my father leaves, I will die.”

“You are talking craziness, Kleopatra. If you want to make a trip to Rome, you might ask your father without all these dramatics.”

“I can’t explain it, Charmion. It’s like languages. I cannot tell you how I understand the foreign tongues. I only know that
when I hear them, it is as if I am remembering a far-off lesson, another life, something.”

“I believe you are delirious.”

Kleopatra sat on her knees on the bed. “You must listen to me. Without my father’s protection, I am not safe here. When we
went into the Delta to hunt, the king got very drunk one night and I made him say in front of Berenike that Thea took Berenike’s
rightful place as his co-regent. You should have seen the look on Berenike’s face. As soon as Auletes is out of the way, she
will be out for the throne.”

“You are unwell. You are submitting to the fantasies caused by fever. I am calling the physician.” Charmion gave Kleopatra
a look of pity and turned around to leave.

“No. I forbid you to walk out the door.”

Charmion, imperious, acquiescing, lowered herself to sit on the bed next to the princess, her spine stark and straight like
a reed of bamboo.

“As soon as you told me my father was going to Rome, something came over me. It was like a vision, and as soon as I had it,
I became ill. It was as if I saw my Fate, and it was so horrible that I had to expunge it by throwing up.”

“And what is that Fate?”

“That Berenike is going to kill me.”

Charmion changed Kleopatra’s clothes and washed out her mouth with a sweet-tasting liquid. She wiped her face with a cool
cloth, rebound her hair, took her hand, and led her out of the Inner Palace. They walked across the courtyard and through
the formal gardens to the edge of the compound, where they boarded a small rowboat to the island Antirhodos, where the old
ladies of the court resided. Kleopatra took in the fresh marine air, grateful that the waters were calm. She kept her eyes
on the oar as the rower dipped it into the pale velvet sea, wondering what Charmion was up to. Kleopatra did not know these
old women. They disapproved of Thea, and so annoyed Auletes that he kept them lavishly sequestered on the island in a sumptuous
old building, where they could complain of nothing but their inability to meddle in affairs of state and the personal doings
of the royals.

The ladies’ quarters were thrown into confusion by the unexpected visit. Each wrinkled face fussed over Kleopatra, allowing
how much of her mother’s charm and beauty peeked from her eleven-year-old eyes. They stroked her cheeks, petted her hair,
demanded kisses, and took her from one lap to the next as if she were a little baby. She supposed that to women so old, she
appeared no different from an infant.

“The child fears for her life,” Charmion said, finally announcing their business. “She received a warning from the philosopher
Socrates in a vision. What can you tell us?”

“The philosopher! He comes to us all the time in our dreams,” said a tiny lady. Her shriveled arms and humped back made her
look like a little mouse hunched over a crumb of cheese.

“He does not like the ways of the world,” said another ominously. “He warns us of catastrophes to come.”

“The philosopher is a very busy spirit,” said Charmion. “But if you are in regular communication with him, perhaps you may
properly interpret the meaning of the princess’s vision.”

The old ladies prepared for the princess a large cup of thick, murky tea, served hot and steaming and in a giant cup that
she had to hold with both hands. It was not the kind of thing she felt like drinking on a day when her stomach had already
turned against her.

“This smells more like the potion that
killed
Socrates,” Kleopatra said, wrinkling her nose.

But the ladies insisted, so she drained the liquid and found its taste not so offensive. When she finished, one by one, the
crones passed the cup, each cautiously examining the remains at the bottom. With each passing of the cup, the faces grew more
grave. It was generally agreed that the straggling tea leaves displayed a situation of impending doom.

“You must go far away, child. Nothing good will come of your life if you remain in Alexandria past the feast day of the corn
goddess,” said an old brown-faced woman whose sad, chicken eyes were outlined with far too much kohl. “I was your mother’s
favorite great-aunt. You must trust me.”

“But she is a child, and this is her home,” said Charmion. “What am I to do? Send her away in secret to a place where others
will care for her?”

“If you love her, see to it,” said the great-aunt.

“My father is to make a voyage to Rome next week. Will I be safe if I accompany him?” asked Kleopatra.

The ladies huddled their faces over the cup once more. After staring, muttering, and much shaking of the head, they unanimously
agreed that the princess could, should, must, go to Rome.

Kleopatra gave a triumphant look to Charmion. Promising the old ladies lavish gifts from that strange city, the seat of the
world’s government, she took leave of them.

In the evening, the girl defied the king’s prissy Royal Attendants and burst in on Auletes taking his meal with his mistress
Hekate.