The Memoirs of Cleopatra Part 118

Of course I had others, but these were among my finest. And they were going to Octavian.

Would he be tempted to try them on? Late at night, would he leave the box carelessly in his room, and then, when no one was looking, lift the diadem out and set it on his high forehead? I imagined that he would find the gold chilly at first, but be amazed at how fast it warms, next to the skin. It is easy to become accustomed to. Oh, very easy, even for a dedicated Republican.

How ironic, what a joke of the G.o.ds, if he should end up going the way of Antony after all. The best way to conquer an enemy is not to crush him but to corrupt him.

"But too late for us," I said to myself, stroking the diadem. Even if Octavian turned into a replica of Antony, and came at last to understand what had happened here in the east and how it had happened, it did us no good.

"Madam?" asked Charmian.

"Nothing. I was only bidding these farewell." I touched them again. "I was trying to imagine what it would be like to receive them." I hoped they would have the intended--though unlikely--effect. They gleamed conspiratorially, like winking eyes.

Reluctantly I folded the silk over them, covering their beauty. I drew the lid down, then locked it with the gold-and-emerald lock, with a Hercules knot design, that my goldsmith had made to fit the latch. "A knot he must untie," I said. I thought his self-importance would cause him to compare it to the Gordian one that Alexander had severed to obtain his eastern realms. But perhaps I gave him too much credit. Imagination was not his leading trait.

There was a formal letter to go along with it, resigning my throne and its insignia into his hands, if he would please to bestow them on my son as King of Egypt--"a t.i.tle you have already granted him," I reminded him. I said that I came from a long and honorable line of kings, related to Alexander himself, and that we knew Egypt and had ruled it well, and he could find no abler governors to continue in this line. I pledged my son's loyalty, and pointed out that he had taken no part in the fighting at Actium.

"Although you have declared war on me and p.r.o.nounced me your enemy, my son has remained aloof from our quarrels, and will serve you faithfully," I a.s.sured him. "From his earliest days I have trained him for ruling, and you can find no better or more dedicated"--my hand had almost rebelled against writing--"servant to your wishes." But it had to be. I had to say it. "Remember his youth, and your own in the day when Caesar fell. Just as'Caesar knew your promise, so you should be able to discern it in this worthy young man. Do not punish him for my own deeds, for they are a thing apart." There was more in this vein. I never apologized for my own actions, but emphasized that they were mine and mine alone. I hated people who pretended they had not done what everyone knew they had, or that it was somehow not their fault, or that they had been forced to it. I knew Octavian would, too. Hence no apology. I thought the letter struck a good middle ground between pride and submission.

"Thank you, Charmian and Iras," I told them. "Would you be so kind as to send for Caesarion?"

I wanted him to see the treasure, and read the letter before it was sent. He must know everything.

He was not interested in opening the box, but read the letter carefully. He rolled it up again and put it in the ivory tube that would serve as its envelope. "Are you sure you wish to do this?" he asked. "This is so--unlike you."

"What do you mean?"

"Just to surrender them, and sound so final about it."

"Ah. It is the only way to avoid its being truly final," I said. "If I wait until he demands them, then--if he takes them himself, he will never release his grasp on them."

He frowned, wrinkling his brow in a way that was most endearing. "Do you honestly think these will ever be bestowed on me by his his hands?" hands?"

"It may be possible," I said. "It depends entirely on how he achieves his goal of conquering Egypt. If it is too difficult, it may put him in a bad mood!" I laughed. "Or, on the other hand, it may give him pause and impress on him the wisdom of keeping a native dynasty on the throne. There are too many unknowns now. But one thing I do know: You must prepare to leave Egypt." When he opened his mouth to protest, I said, "You promised! When I promised not to--" I would remind him sternly of our bargain.

"Yes, yes," he said. "But later. Not yet--"

I shook my head. "It must be soon. You will have to travel down the Nile as far as Coptos, a ten-day journey. Then make the desert crossing to Berenice, on the Red Sea--"

"What, in the heat of summer? You are joking!"

"No, it is necessary. You must be in Berenice by early July in order to take a ship to India during the monsoon, the only time ships can sail east. There you will wait, in safety, until all this is--over. If Octavian confirms you, then you can return. If not, then I will have the consolation of knowing that you have slipped from his grasp. No matter what he does to the rest of us, he cannot touch you!"

"Do you honestly think I can ever draw a happy breath, knowing my whole family has perished, and I survive, a miserable exile?" He looked insulted.

"You will not be a 'miserable exile,' but the son of the great Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Wherever you go, you will be honored. I am making arrangements even now with the ruler of Bharukaccha in India to receive you. Not such a bad life. Remember, Octavian is sixteen years older than you, and his health has always been poor. A bone sliver caught in the throat, a slight cold that settles on his lungs, a small riding accident, can change things in the twinkling of an eye. And he has no son, nor is likely to have one--his marriage to Livia is as barren as an Aegean rock. Live, and wait." I patted his cheek. "They say India is a pleasant land of colors and scents. I have always wished to see it myself."

He crossed his arms sulkily. "I don't imagine I will be paying much attention to the colors and scents," he said stubbornly.

"They are supposed to be overwhelming," I said. "And if a seventeen-year-old does not respond to the calling of his eyes and nose, then he is a poor creature! I will tell you what I have learned: The young are meant to bear sorrow lightly, and all their senses conspire to help them." I took his hand. "You must never forget us--not me, not Antony, not Alexander or Selene or Philadelphos--but if you can sing, savor fine food, and feel your heart stop at the sight of an exquisite work of art, we will live on in you. That is all I ask."

"I do not understand."

"You will." Now I touched his fine, silky hair. "That I promise you."

Abruptly I turned away, acting very busy, picking up the letter. "So? You will be ready. Next month it must be." It was already April. "Before that, we will have a final, important ceremony. But more of that later." I could not continue the conversation; he had to leave before I betrayed how hard it was for me. "Perhaps you should compose a letter of your own to Octavian." Let him leave,'now. "Go."

He bent over and kissed my cheek. "Very well, Mother."

After I heard his footsteps fading away, I bent over the box and wept; tears fell into the intricate workmanship. But gold was impervious to salt, and it would never show.

Sending him away was going to be the hardest part of it all, knowing I would never see him again--and that I would break my promise to him, making him keep his side of our bargain while I did not. But it was a duty of queenship, and someday he would understand. I had spoken the truth just now.

The wide harbor now wore its tenderest colors--its frothy blues and its shadowy greens, its milky-white foam. No wonder we think that Venus was born of seafoam, for it is so ethereal it is hard to believe we can actually wade into it and dip our hands in it. With the children I often came down the wide palace steps leading into the water, at our private place where the sandy bottom was shallow, and they could collect starfish and anemones. The dolphins were back with the spring, sporting themselves, showing their sleek backs.

As a child I had spent hours here, but like many things of childhood-- tiny coral bracelets, ill.u.s.trated stories, baby-sized pillows--I had set it aside in my mind and forgotten it. Also like many of those things, it did not deserve to be forgotten. I found my hours here with my own children to be deeply restorative, a refuge where time suspended itself and was measured only by the height of the sun. We wore floppy-brimmed hats to protect us from sunburn, and built miniature forts out of sand and sh.e.l.ls. Their most ambitious creation was a model of the Lighthouse; Alexander wanted it to be as tall as he, but it crumbled every time it got shoulder-high.

"The amount of water in the sand must be perfect," Caesarion would say, sometimes coming to watch the progress but never partic.i.p.ating; he considered himself much too dignified. "If it is too much, the sand can't bear weight. But if it is too little, the sun will dry the bottom out before the top is finished, and it will collapse."

The impatient Alexander would smack it and knock it flat in frustration. "If you know so much, why don't you make one yourself?" he would insist.

"He doesn't want to get his fine tunic mussed," Selene said. "He is much too grown-up for playing in the sand." She c.o.c.ked her head and looked at him, squinting. "Isn't that right?"

The twins were almost ten now, just on the brink of leaving childhood themselves. Perhaps that was why they enjoyed it so.

"He hasn't time." I defended him. "He is learning many tasks." And my heart was heavy with it. In addition to his usual lessons with his tutor, Rhodon, he was having to master all the things I would have him take away inside his head--things to learn that normally would have been spread out over several years.

"Yes, that's right," Caesarion agreed. "In fact, I must get back to Rhodon now. He let me wander away in the midst of Xerxes' account." He turned and walked back up the steps--poor child. Poor man.

Philadelphos was playing with the beached trireme, putting sand crabs on its deck and trying to make them sit at oars. He still tried to get Alexander and Selene to board it; sometimes they humored him and did it. They would sit at the oar-bench and try pulling in unison; the boat usually sank with the unbalanced weight, gurgling to the shallow bottom.

I clung to those precious, private hours, knowing they were numbered.

Some mornings I would come to this spot very early, long before sunrise. My sleep was disturbed now, and I seldom slept the night through. I found that sitting quietly on the steps, watching the light gradually fill the sky and turn the harbor from a dark void into a pearly plate, was balm for my soul. Sometimes I would relive parts of my life, as I wished to recount them in my story that day.

The marble steps, slippery with night mist, would grow warm under me as the dawn came up. Sitting there, seeing the Lighthouse glowing red at the top, as it always had, with an empty horizon beyond it, it was hard to imagine that there was any threat to us. Everything was calm, ordered, functioning smoothly. Thus it had always been, thus it would continue--so it seemed. But preparations had to be made on faith, faith in the end of things as we knew them.

As the first rays of sunlight broke through the soft blanket of clouds in the east, I would go to the Temple of Isis and perform the ancient ritual with her sacred water, opening my day. Then I would linger there with her until I sensed that it was time to begin the demanding round of decisions and duties that would occupy me until Iras drew my curtains at night, when I would supposedly sleep.

I was thus savoring my private hour when I saw a figure walking in the darkness along the sand. Because the eastern harbor is a great arc sweeping from the Lighthouse to the farthest tip of the royal promontory, it is possible at low tide to walk the sh.o.r.eline all the way from one end to the other. But few ever do, oddly enough.

I looked closer. Then rose, startled. It was Antony. Alive, away from his hermitage! For so long I had steeled myself for the messenger, expecting him at high noon, when the sun beat down pitilessly, or sunset, when things come to their natural close. I had even rehea.r.s.ed what I would say. And the tomb was ready.

But this--this I had not expected, not rehea.r.s.ed. "Antony?"

He bounded up the stairs and embraced me. His arms were tight and hard around me.

"My dearest, dearest wife--" The words were rushed, whispered against my ear. He was kissing the side of my face, my neck, as if he dared not kiss my lips.

He was here, alive, whole, warm. But it was frightening; in my determination to be strong, I had already buried him and mourned him. His touch on me seemed unnatural--yet it was only in my imagination that he had ever ceased to live.

"Antony?" I drew away and clutched myself, to escape his embrace. "You are--" I touched the side of my face, where his kiss lingered on the skin. "You are--I thought you had--"

Now he dropped his arms and backed away. "Of course. Forgive me. But I did not ever think to find you here, sitting, waiting--it made me bold. I meant to write, send a proper messenger, but--"

"This is better," I said. How lucky we were, to have it come about like this. But my head was reeling. "But you must give me time, explain . . . you said you would never come back. And I had feared, and in my fear--"

"Yes. I know. I understand." He sat down on the stairs, letting his arms dangle over his knees in that way I remembered so well. Cautiously I sat down beside him.

Silence blanketed us. The only sound was the lapping of the tamed waves within the harbor.

My heart was hammering. I was deliriously happy that he lived, and was sitting here beside me, but now all was in turmoil. Wherever Antony was, turmoil reigned, not the least of it in my heart. Shakily I extended my hand and took his.

"Are you recovered?" I said in a low voice.

"Yes. It just took time. Time, silence, solitude."

Well I knew what he meant. But silence and solitude were normally things he shunned. He must have been greatly changed by Actium.

"Thanks be to the G.o.ds." I leaned over and kissed his cheek--again, hesitantly. He could feel it, I knew. But I could not help my wariness.

He tightened his hand on mine. "May I return?"

"Your quarters have long been waiting." I did not see fit to mention the sarcophagus, also waiting. "The children will welcome you warmly."

"And you? Do you welcome me?"

"What an odd choice of words--much too pale. I have been--bereft without you." I paused. "I was missing the spirit of my life," I finally said. It was impossible to put into words. Without him, vitality had fled. I leaned over and kissed him, allowing myself to feel it at last.

"There is no point in dying before one's time," he said. "And that is what I have done. Now I lament the lost months!"

"You could not help it." When we are felled, we are felled. But if we rise to our feet in a little while, we can count ourselves lucky.

"May we go inside?" he asked politely. "I would like to return before the palace starts bustling."

I stood up, drawing him with me. "Of course."

Together we climbed the steps to the still-sleeping palace. The corridors were empty, the wall torches still sputtered in their sockets, doors stood shut.

Antony stole into his quarters and then looked at them in surprise. "Like an old friend, they look different to me now," he said. He had not been here since Actium.

I drew back the curtains to his inner room, revealing the couches, the table, the bed where I had pa.s.sed long, yearning hours thinking of him-- hours that I would never tell him about. "I think you will find it all in order," I said crisply, as if I had not seen it, either.

He walked around wonderstruck, touching this surface and that. Finally he turned to me and said, "O my heart!" and held out his arms.

I flung myself into them, treasuring their embrace. All my mourning, all my acceptance, must now be flung to the winds, unneeded. He had come back, and come back as he had once been.

"My lost friend," I whispered.

"Why 'friend'? Are we not still husband and wife?" He shook his head. "Or have you divorced me?" From the plaintive tone, I realized he feared it had happened. He kissed me fervently as if to convince me to stay with him.

I tried to a.s.sure him. "I'm not a Roman," I said. "I don't divorce with every whim or change in fortune. It's just that... I feared I was a widow, not a wife."

He gave a shuddering sigh of relief. "You are still--we are still--"

"But you must give me time--" My words were m.u.f.fled by an onslaught of frenzied kissing. He was like a starving man, and I could hardly fend him off. The celibate life in his hermitage had not agreed with his nature, that was evident.

"Antony, please stop!" I was insistent. What I meant--but could not say-- was that I was almost afraid for him to touch me, as if I did not want to open all those feelings again. For I had conquered them, and if this was just a brief interlude, then ... I could not bear to go through it all again.

He let go of me. "Forgive me," he said. "I seem to have forgotten my manners; living alone has that effect." He was trying to make light of it, but I could tell that he was hurt.

He could not expect me to adjust instantly to every whirl in his behavior-- first the withdrawal, then the two unannounced returns, next. . . another disappearance? It was too painful; I must protect myself in some way, at least at this moment.

"It's not a matter of forgiving you," I finally said. I must choose my words carefully. He would be vulnerable to misinterpreting them. "There is nothing to forgive. I was so grieved when you were gone from me; I was so afraid that you would never return. All I prayed for was that one day you would be standing here again, in your rooms, with me. But... in some ways you seem more like a stranger to me now than you did at Tarsus! What I have gone through in these last few months, what you have gone through ... it separates us. We will have to hear one another's stories, learn what has happened to each other. . . ."

"Don't you want me back?" he cried.

Was he going to rush off again? Zeus forbid! "Yes! Yes!" I a.s.sured him. I could sense that he was confused about where he belonged. But surely he had not expected to walk back into the world he had fled from? It had changed mightily in those months; while he had brooded, Egypt and I had been busy dealing with Octavian and the aftermath of Actium.

But now was a quiet time, a good time for his return. And for our reunion.

"Yes, yes," I repeated. "I want you back more than anything in the world." And it was true.

My mother had been taken from me, and never returned. Caesar, too. It is not often that the dead come back to us, and I rejoiced. I must never let him know that I had counted him so completely among the lost.

Chapter 80.

As in a dream, when we revisit places we thought never to see again, Antony and I sat high on silvered chairs of state, the waves of people spread out as far as we could see on all sides, until they merged into the very sea itself. Overhead the sky was a deep, ringing blue, and the stately buildings of Alexandria as white as the clouds floating benevolently over them.

I am five, watching the state procession of my father, the Dionysus-cart creaking along past the Library ... I am eighteen, celebrating my own accession, riding through the white streets, crowds lining it, wild, curious eyes staring ... I am twenty-five, following the bier bearing Ptolemy with the high, wailing cries of mourners ... I am thirty-five, watching Antony parade through the streets with his mock Triumph, Armenian prisoners walking behind, and again, another celebration, Alexandria festooned and scrubbed, when Antony decorated me and our heirs with all the realms of the east.

Alexandria, handmaiden of all this, now stands by once more to watch and applaud as we enact the last ritual, the coming-of-age of both Caesarion and Antyllus. Caesarion is to be enrolled in the Greek Ephebic College for military and civic training, and proclaimed a man, while Antyllus is to a.s.sume the toga toga viriliSy viriliSy the mark of a Roman adult. the mark of a Roman adult.

No expense was spared. After all, what was the one thing we still had in abundance? Hope might have fled, soldiers might have deserted, ships might have burnt, but money, courage, and defiance--those we still had. Antony and I had agonized over whether it was wise to elevate the boys to adulthood. Which would a.s.sure their survival best? Antony felt that Octavian was more likely to spare minors, but I pointed out that it was too late for that. We had taken up arms in the name of Caesarion's rights, and Octavian would never overlook that. As for Antyllus, the notorious will had named him Antony's personal heir, and now he would suffer all the punishments for it. At least as adults they would command the respect and attention they were due, rather than "disappearing" as children often did.

"They will have to be formally charged and dealt with," I said. "There must be a record of the doings. But Caesarion will be safe and out of Egypt, and Antyllus will have committed no crime beyond being your heir. And since Octavian actually knows Antyllus, he will most likely spare him. Proclaiming them adults offers them the best chance, and also offers partisans the opportunity to champion them." It all sounded very sensible, but it could so easily go the other way. Were we dooming them instead of saving them?

"Perhaps it will be Alexander who is made King," Antony said. "That would get around all the difficulties of the older boys."

I laughed. His optimism was touching. "Do you honestly think Octavian would place your son on the throne of Egypt? Reward you, in effect? You must be dreaming. He is not known for his bigheartedness." I shook my head. "If my children were pure Ptolemies, it might be different. As it is, it is their Roman blood that causes the trouble."