Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

High drama and ancient history combine in this novel of the early life of Egypt's infamous queen, at once a beautiful seductress, brilliant politician, and the most powerful ruler of her time.

Release date: May 5, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 402

Sample

There was something about the air in Alexandria. It was said that the sea-god, Poseidon, who lived near the Isle of the Pharos,
blew a divine whisper over the town. Depending on his mood, he sent various sorts of weather. In the winter, the air might
be arid and unforgiving, so dry that it left old men gasping for breath and wishing for the balmy ether of spring. In the
summer, it hung over the city like a sea-damp gum. Sometimes it was but a carrier of flies and dust, and sometimes the harsh
winds of the African desert merely returned the sea-god’s breeze to its watery birthplace. But this morning, in spring disposition,
the god murmured a smooth rhythm toward the jewel-by-the-sea, teasing its way to the land, lifting the tender smell of honeysuckle
from the vine, and filling the air with essences of lemon, camphor, and jasmine.


In the center of town, at the intersection of the Street of the Soma and the Canopic Way, sat the crystal coffin of the city’s
founder, Alexander the Great. The Macedonian king had lain in his final resting place more than two hundred years, his youthful
mummy preserved against time so that all might pay tribute to his genius. Sometimes, the Egyptians would pull their sons away
from the coffin of the great warrior, forbidding them to say the prayer of Alexander’s cult taught in all schools, and scolding
them for their allegiance to foreign blood. But the dead Greek had envisioned this paradise, outlining in chalk the symmetrical
grid of streets. He had built the Heptastadion, the causeway that reached through the waters of the glimmering sea like a
long, greedy tongue, separating the Great Harbor from the Harbor of Safe Return. Alexander’s successors, the big-nosed Greek
Ptolemy and his children, had erected the Pharos Lighthouse, where the eternal flame burned in its upper tower like the scepter
of a fire god, guiding ships safely into the low, rocky harbor. They built the great Library that housed all the world’s knowledge,
the columned promenades that lined the paved limestone streets and shaded the pedestrians, and the city’s many theaters, where
anyone—Greek, Egyptian, Jew—could see a comedy, a tragedy, or a special oration. All in Greek, to be sure, but every educated
Egyptian spoke the language of the conqueror, though the favor was not returned.


The city was still a paradise, even if the once-great Ptolemies had degenerated into a new species—walrus-size monsters as
large as any creatures in the zoo, with appetites just as greedy. Sycophants who happily bled the Egyptian treasury to appease
the new Masters of the World, the Romans. Every few years, it was necessary for the Egyptian mob to assassinate at least one
Ptolemy, just to remind them that time brings down all races.


But on a day like today, where lovers nestled in shady groves of the Park of Pan, and stalky spring blooms jutted into a gaudy
lapis sky; where falls of white bougainvillea toppled from balconies like rivers of milk, it was easy to forget that the House
of Ptolemy was not what it used to be. Today, the god’s sweet sigh brought everyone into the streets to enjoy the parks and
promenades and open air bazaars. Today, everyone smiled as they inhaled the sea-god’s whisper. They did not care if it was
Greek air, Egyptian air, African air, or Roman air. It had no national character. It simply filled their lungs and made them
happy.




The Royal Family, whose ancestors had made the city great, saw none of this. The palace compound by the sea was a lone respite
from the city’s gaiety, its shutters closed tight against the delicious air and the extravagant day. Workers went about their
chores in silence, heads bowed like fearful worshippers. A thick haze of incense hung about the ceilings of the cavernous
rooms. All happiness had been shut out; the queen was ill, and the most famous physicians in the civilized world proclaimed
that she would not get better.


Kleopatra watched from her vantage point on the floor as the shimmering doors opened and the king rushed the blind Armenian
healer into her mother’s bedchamber. The girl’s eyes, sometimes brown but today green like baby peppercorns, widened as they
met the milk-white craters under the holy man’s brow. With tattered garments hanging about him like feathers, he hobbled toward
the child on what appeared to be two crooked sticks of kindling. Kleopatra leapt out of the way, barely escaping a swat in
the head from his saddlebags. She climbed onto the divan where her sister, Berenike, and her half sister, Thea, sat locked
in a silent embrace. Though neither moved, Kleopatra felt their flesh harden as she scampered to the end of the sofa and perched
herself on its arm.


“Should the little princess be present?” the Chief Surgeon asked the nurse, acting as if the child could not understand what
he said. “The situation is grave.”


Kleopatra’s mother, Queen Kleopatra V Tryphaena, sister and wife to the king, lay listless on the bed, gripped by a strange
fever of the joints. Frantic to keep his post, the Chief Surgeon had recruited physicians of great renown from Athens and
Rhodes. The queen had been sweated, bled, cooled with rags, massaged with aromatic oils, pumped with herbs, fed, starved,
and prayed over, but the fever won every battle.


“The child is headstrong,” whispered the nurse. “No one wishes to hear her incessant screaming when her will is challenged.
She is a headache. She is three years old and she cannot speak even one sentence of passable Greek.” They must have thought
she could not hear as well. Kleopatra jutted her bottom teeth as she did whenever she was angry.


“She is very small for her age. Perhaps she is slow to learn,” the physician pronounced, making Berenike laugh. The eight-year-old
sneered at Kleopatra, who glared back. “Her presence is always disruptive. I shall take it up with the king.”


The king—fat, melancholy, and agonizing over his wife’s mysterious illness—paid no attention to the physician. “The child
is exercising the royal will,” the king replied, his glazed, bulbous eyes staring at nothing. “Let her remain. She is my small
piece of joy.”


Kleopatra glowered victoriously at her sister, who kicked at her with a strong brown leg. Thea hugged Berenike tighter, stroking
her long coppery mane, settling her. The physician shrugged. Kleopatra’s father, King Ptolemy XII Auletes, had already sent
five doctors into exile. Others he simply abused for not curing his wife. If Kleopatra’s presence amused him, then all the
better. Perhaps no one would be slapped or dismissed or become the target of his verbal spew that day. He was a king famous
for his volatile temper. His subjects called him Auletes the Flute Player or Nothos the Bastard, depending on their mood and
mercurial allegiance to him. He preferred Auletes, of course, and adopted it as his nickname. Like his subjects’ loyalty,
his temper was notoriously changeable. But no one doubted that the king loved his sister-wife. It was said that theirs was
the first love match in the dynasty in two hundred years. The queen’s illness only heightened his choleric disposition.


The tonsured priest praying over the queen raised his slick head, astonished to see that the blind healer was to be given
access to the patient. With the attending physicians, he stood stationary, a human shield against the execrable creature.


“Move aside, fools,” said the king, thrusting his capacious royal body through the cluster hovering about the queen’s bed.
“This man is here to compensate for your ineptitude.”


“But Your Majesty,” protested the priest. “What unholy presence might this conjurer evoke?”

“Strip this idiot of the priest’s robe and send him to the mines,” the king said calmly, almost lightly, to one of his bodyguards.
The priest fell to his knees, his face on the floor, murmuring low incantations to the cold, deaf surface. Satisfied with
the effect of his threat, the king winked at Kleopatra, whose glowing child eyes smiled back at her father’s weary ones.


Kleopatra wanted the healer to hurry his magic. She longed to see the queen once again sit up, put on her makeup and shiny
robes, and take her place beside the king in the Royal Reception Room where the three princesses were allowed to sit from
time to time while their parents entertained visitors from faraway places. Though Kleopatra saw her mother only at these occasions,
she was awed by her ethereal beauty and by the songs she played on the lyre. Fair and delicate, Tryphaena was not a real person
like herself or her father or her sisters, but one of the Muses come down to earth to make them smile.


Out of the healer’s saddlebags came small statues of naked deities: one headless, one with fearsome eyes and a hawk nose,
one with a crooked phallus. Kleopatra strained to hear the unimaginable secrets he whispered to them as he removed them from
the bag. From the bottom of his sorcerer’s well he produced a thick cluster of herbs, weeds, leaves, and roots, bound together
into a ratty tangle, and called for someone to light it with fire from one of the queen’s oil lamps.


“Mithra, Baal-Hadad, and Asherah who slew and resurrected him.” The healer raised the torch, summoning the terrible gods of
the east. Mithra, Mithra! Kleopatra prayed silently with him as he danced about the bed drawing circles in the air with his
smoke stick. “Mother Astarte who creates and destroys. Kybele, goddess of all that is, was, and ever shall be,” he invoked.


Suddenly he bent over as if in great pain, spewing guttural noises, thrashing in the air, warring with the unseen forces of
the queen’s illness. He carried on this way for what seemed to Kleopatra like a very long time. Then he raised his arms, ran
to the bed, and passed out cold over the queen’s delirious body. Kleopatra willed with all her might that the queen would
open her eyes, but Tryphaena, lovely features bathed in the sweat of her fevers, did not flinch.


The king hung his great head as the servants carried the healer from the room. He called for his flute and began to play,
offering a desolate melody to the gods in a final bargain to save his wife. Kleopatra wanted to be near him so she crawled
to his feet, chasing with her fingers a bright green cricket. The king paused, and Kleopatra hoped he would pick her up. But
she realized that he was waiting for the faint strings of the queen’s song. They had played music together, he on the flute,
she on the lyre, and often passed evenings in this pursuit. When his duet partner failed to move, he began to play once more.


One by one, the old women of the court, relatives whom Auletes sheltered in their dotage, came to keep vigil for the queen.
With piteous eyes, they patted Kleopatra’s hair, commenting on its lovely sable color, or kissed her forehead as they passed
her. She knew that her father did not want the old ladies in the room. Auletes housed the dowagers in the family palace on
the island of Antirhodos, so that they had to commit to a boat ride before they could interfere in his affairs. But they could
not be kept from the chamber of the dying queen, where they burned herbs and incense and appealed in prayer to Isis, Mother
of Creation, Mother of God. Four solemn-faced red-robed priestesses of the goddess came to inspire and anoint the ladies of
prayer while the doctors applied compresses to the queen’s hot brow and listened to her fevered murmuring.


“Lady of Compassion,” cried the women in craggy aged voices. “Lady of Healing. Lady who eases our suffering.” As the queen’s
condition worsened, they made frightful appeals to the goddess’s dark side, scaring the small princess, who clutched at her
father’s ankle with each rancorous invocation.


“Devourer of men.”

“Goddess of the Slaughter.”

“Lady of Thunder.”

“Destroyer of the souls of men.”

“Destroy the Fates that conspire to seize the life of our queen and sister.”

The Chief Surgeon wiped his hands on his apron. The king put down his instrument. Kleopatra stared at the sandaled feet of
the two giants above her, wondering how toes got so big and skin so crusty.


“The queen’s blood is poisoned by the high temperatures in her body,” the Chief Surgeon said, more confident of his position
since the foreigner’s magic had failed.


The doctor’s assistants walked solemnly from Tryphaena’s bed carrying pots of contaminated rags, brown with sweat and dried
blood. The surgeon motioned for them to show the contents to the king. Kleopatra got to her knees, sneaking a look at the
putrid blood-brown cloths. How could such ugliness come from her beautiful mother?


Trying to avoid the king’s face, the Chief Surgeon looked to the ground, where he saw the little princess staring at his large
feet. “I have bled her as much as I dare, Your Majesty. I cannot remove the fever. It is up to the gods now when and if we
shall lose the queen.”


The ladies fell into supplication. “O merciful Lady, Divine One, mightier than the eight gods of Hermopolis. Source of All
Life. Source of All Healing. Do not take our queen Tryphaena.” Despite their age, they beat their chests unmercifully, fists
thumping hollow, sunken breasts.


Kleopatra waited for her father to dole out a punishment to the Chief Surgeon like he did the others. The doctor dropped to
his knees and, with the impetuousness of a young lover, kissed Auletes’ ringed hand. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, if I have
failed you. I would happily pay for the queen’s life with mine.” Auletes did not respond.


The doctor seemed surprised that he had been sentenced neither to death nor to exile. He recovered his dignity with a nervous
cough. “I must supervise the chemistry for the queen’s sedatives. Her Majesty must be made comfortable on her journey to meet
the gods.” With a hasty prayer, the doctor excused himself.


Auletes remained standing, slumped, bewildered, unattended. Kleopatra picked up the cricket and offered it to her father.
A sad giant, he shook his head and closed his eyes. Kleopatra settled between his feet, sheltering the cricket with her hands,
thwarting its escape.




Fifteen-year-old Thea, the queen Tryphaena’s daughter from her first marriage to a Syrian prince, held Berenike in her lap,
her cat eyes darting from the little princess on the floor to the king. Kleopatra shuddered. Thea was the image of her mother,
but a darker, shadow side. Her black hair fell extravagantly down the length of her back, for she did not yet bind it into
the tight knot favored by adult women. Her white, even teeth were perfectly set against her burnished complexion. She had
inherited the queen’s aquiline nose and triangle-shaped face, but her features were sharper and more acute than her mother’s
gentler angles. Her contrasts heightened her conspicuous beauty, whereas Tryphaena’s softer attributes meshed into a timid
gracefulness. Tryphaena, even when in perfect health, looked like an immortal creature merely visiting the harsh world of
the living; Thea was clearly designed to live in the earthy, physical world. Though her time had not yet come, her body was
developed and at odds with her childish clothes and undressed hair. Her young charms were bursting through the last vestiges
of childhood, which she was ready to shed like a snake discards last season’s skin.


Thea held Berenike tight, leaving Kleopatra to wonder what it felt like in that closed circle. “I will always take care of
you, darling,” she said into the child’s ear. Thea’s words were a song to Berenike, who adored her older half sister; her
promises, a salve to Berenike’s wounds.


“Now I will never know her,” cried Berenike, who was precisely the age at which the queen should have begun to take an interest
in her, though it was unlikely that this would ever have happened. Before she took ill, Tryphaena had spent her days playing
music, reading books, and having earnest debates with the Sophists. Berenike liked to hunt small prey with her bow, wrestle
with her pack of dogs, and chase the little slave brats through the courtyard with her sling.


Thea did not join in Berenike’s activities, but was an enthusiastic audience for Berenike’s feats, applauding any new progress
she made with her weapons. Berenike dreamed of a day when she would be plucked from the nursery to have special audiences
with her mother and show her how she could already hit the center of a target. But she had not had a conversation with her
mother in more than two months, and her memory of the queen had already begun to dim.


Thea mouthed words of consolation, but she was not thinking about her mother or her stepsister. Thea pondered her own Fate.
She was not the daughter of the king. She was not in line for the throne. Once her mother died, she would be sent to one of
the outer palaces to live with the meddling old women who wailed in the queen’s chamber, until someone in the king’s service
suggested a marriage to a house in a foreign land. Or until she was sent back to the court of her dead father in Syria, a
country now occupied by Tigranes of Armenia, who was at war with the Romans. If the Romans won, which they always did, she
might be thrown to one of them as a trinket, a small toy to quench their lusts. That was what she heard the brutal Romans
demanded in victory, even from women of royal blood. No, there was nowhere for her to go.


“Ramses looks terribly lonely,” said Thea. Berenike’s favorite hound sulked in a corner. “I think he is crying for you.” Thea
deposited Berenike on the floor next to her dog. She walked straight to the stupefied king and took his hand. “Come, Father,”
she said. Kleopatra tried to hold on to her father’s woolly leg, but he slipped from her grip, leaving her little hands empty.


To the astonishment of the ladies, Thea led the king from his post at the queen Tryphaena’s bed. Undaunted by the disapproving
stares of the wrinkled, fierce dowagers, she steered Auletes through their circle of worship and down the stairs to the level
of the palace that housed his private quarters. She took him into his favorite room, the hunting room, and in a voice that
she had never before heard come from her body, ordered his attendants to go away. They skittered to all corners of the palace
to report what was happening.


Kleopatra sat alone on the floor, screaming words that she thought would make her father return. “Stop your gibberish,” yelled
Berenike. “No one knows what you are saying, you idiot.” But Kleopatra could not stop, could not quiet the desire to bring
her father back, to curl into his big firm belly. Berenike stood over her little sister, her long legs tall as smooth young
trees. She crushed the cricket beneath her sandal, leaving Kleopatra to stare at the insect’s smashed remains.




Thea sat the king down upon the wide, soft pallet of his kills. She said, “I am a woman now, Father. Let me take away your
pain.” She opened the front of her white chiton and let it slide off her shoulders. The king looked into the wide eyes, identical
to those of her mother, his wife, and then to the pair of dark nipples that crowned his stepdaughter’s breasts. So like the
queen’s, but somehow more tangible than Tryphaena’s lovely mounds, somehow more conducive to a large pair of rapacious hands
upon them. He pulled the trembling girl onto his lap and closed his eyes, letting the heat of her lips dissipate any thoughts
that might invade this god-sent moment of solace.


The next morning, the king ordered breakfast for two. Thea lay upon a mattress of animal skins—lion, boar, leopard, bear,
and softest of all, panther—lost in the luxurious pile and thick musk smell enveloping her. The king had risen and gone to
his bath. She imagined herself Aphrodite after she had lain upon a bearskin with the mortal Anchises in his herdsman’s hut
while bees circled their bodies, though it was thoughts that buzzed about Thea’s head. The day before she had wondered in
agony about the destiny the Fates had assigned to her; today she was the lover of the king.


The first time, when wordlessly he mounted her, she believed he would snuff the life out of her with the pressure of his august
stomach spreading over her small body. In the morning, she took him by surprise, mounting him despite the burning soreness
she felt and making vigorous love to him before he could do the same to her. It was a trick she had learned from her mother.
One day she had heard the gentle Tryphaena whisper about the problem of Auletes’ formidable size to her lady in attendance,
whereupon the lady imparted her best advice to the queen. Before he wakes, take the king’s member into your mouth and ensure
its sturdiness. Then mount him quickly and he will submit to you in the upper position and not wish to roll you to the bottom.
Like Thea, Tryphaena was petite and did not enjoy her time under the girth of the king.


What must the talk be upstairs? And why should it matter? She had ensured her good fortune. She had made herself useful, replacing
her mother in the eyes of the king, causing him no inconvenience upon the death of his wife. She was certain her position
at court was secured.


A council of crones, the meddlesome great-aunts of the queen Tryphaena, awaited Thea in the late afternoon as she, disheveled,
exited the hunting room. They demanded, in the fearless way of women past the years of femininity, what business Thea conducted
with her mother’s husband.


“I am comforting the king,” she replied sanctimoniously, brushing them aside and walking haughtily down the hall.

“Performing a duty of state, dear?” one of the ladies said sarcastically as Thea passed.

“Is there blood on the king’s sleeping skins, dear?” taunted another.

“She is ruined now. The daughter of Kleopatra Tryphaena, a king’s whore.”

“Her mother’s husband’s whore.”

“The state’s concubine. Send her to the courtesan quarters for costume.”

“A disgrace. No one will have her now.”

They waited for Thea to turn to them, to answer their accusations, to seek their help for her folly. But she continued to
ignore them and walk down the hall.


“Your mother is dead. She died one hour ago.”

Still she walked on. The women stared at Thea’s long black mane swaying saucily as the girl marched away from their derision,
into her future. Deflated by her dismissal, they gingerly knocked on the door to deliver the news of the queen’s death to
the king.




“You must call me Mother now, Kleopatra,” Thea announced to the small princess. The child watched as the Royal Seamstress
slipped a deep blue gown over Berenike’s head. Heavy with jewels, the garment fell over the girl, its gems against the plush
fabric like shining stars on a clear winter night.


“My mother is dead,” replied Kleopatra in very precise Greek. “She died five months ago. She is buried in the royal catacombs
near the temple of Isis.”


It was the morning of the wedding. The black robes of mourning for Tryphaena, worn a shockingly short time, were to be aced
by ceremonial gowns so rich they were considered part of the treasury. Locked away in the national costume dock, they had
been retrieved, refurbished, and altered very quickly for the occasion.


Kleopatra was next to be fitted—a prospect she did not like. The miniature gown of heavy linen embroidered with golden threads
rested on the mannequin, looking weighty and dangerous.


“Dear little Kleopatra,” said Thea, kneeling to the child’s level, conjuring with great effort her most solicitous voice.
“Do help your mother out on her wedding day and do as you are told.”


“My mother is dead. I saw her body.”

Berenike rolled her eyes. Thea widened her patient smile. The Royal Seamstress winced, but did not remove her eyes from the
garment she pinned at Berenike’s side.


“Our sister is our mother now,” Berenike declared, admiring herself in the mirror. “It is very simple, Kleopatra. Thea is
to marry our father. When I was small, Thea and I used to pretend that she was the mother and I was her baby. Our pretend
game has now come true.”


“The aunties say it’s all wrong. They say mother hasn’t been dead long enough for father to marry,” Kleopatra said, parroting
what had been said in vicious, hushed tones, knowing she was not supposed to repeat it. “They say that mother is cursing Thea
for doing this.”


“Do they?” shrieked Thea. “What do they know, those old hags? Are you going to listen to them, or to your mother?”

“You are our sister. Our mother is dead,” Kleopatra insisted.

“I am going to put an arrow through you, Kleopatra, if you do not stop saying that,” said Berenike, lifting the sleeve of
her gown and showing Kleopatra the muscles in her upper arm. “And you know I can do it. I am an Amazon princess and you are
just a little four-year-old girl.”


Kleopatra glared at the taller girl. Berenike was one to be feared. She had read the ancient accounts of the Amazons’ training
practices with her tutor, Meleager, who indulged her fascination, as it was the only way he could persuade her to read Greek.
Convinced that she was descended from these mighty warrior women, Berenike put herself through the same rigors—shooting, riding,
swordsmanship—and now she was as lean and muscled as any of the palace boys she challenged to wrestling matches.


“I have taken our mother’s name, Kleopatra,” Thea said insistently. “Henceforth, I am Kleopatra VI Tryphaena and I am your
mother.”


“You are Thea,” Kleopatra countered, though this time in the Syrian tongue, a language Thea had heard in her childhood, but
which she had long ago forgotten.


“Don’t you do that!” Thea ordered. “You will speak to me in Greek or you will be silent.”

Pleased that she had frustrated Thea, Kleopatra let loose a stream of dialogue in Syrian, all insulting, all aimed at Thea’s
face.


“Shut up, shut up!” yelled Thea. “Why do you speak these foreign tongues? What is wrong with you?”

Kleopatra smiled innocently. She did not understand how she knew the dialects; they were like magical gifts bequeathed to
her during her sleep. Regardless of the language, Kleopatra looked into the eyes of the speaker and understood the meaning
of the words. She was three years and a half before she spoke at all, but by the time she was two months shy of her fourth
birthday, she was able to mimic full sentences in Egyptian, Syrian, Ethiopian, Troglodyte, Numidian, and Arabic—the languages
of the international cast of slaves and attendants in the palace. She did not adopt the heavily accented Macedonian Greek
of her family; rather, she imitated the more refined speech of the scholars who visited her father. Word of her linguistic
gifts had spread throughout the city like an outbreak of typhoid, and she knew it, taking pleasure in the fact that her sisters,
who had thought her dim, were now made to hear others speak of her with awe.


“You are jealous,” said Kleopatra quietly. “Because I am special and you are not.”

“How are you special, you odd creature?” Thea seethed through her small teeth.

“I am the first of the Ptolemies to speak the language of the Egyptian people. The first in almost three hundred years to
speak anything but Greek. That’s what the Egyptians say. That I am an oracle.” She saw Thea’s mounting anger so she added,
“Anyone can speak Greek.”


Kleopatra heard e