Cleopatra (Rosewood River #6)

Prologue

You know my name, but you do not know me.

Your poets have sung about my tainted crown, your bards have spoken on my infinite variety.

For millennia you have tried to pull straight the threads of my life to see the tapestry whole. But those threads are unruly, curling away from you to obscure the truth.

Besides, I have ever favoured carpets over tapestries, as you well know.

You have tried to parse the tones of my skin and sift through the crimson rubies of my blood, upon which you weighed my worth.

There are those of you who seek my bones. But my roots lie deep beneath the dirt and soil of every woman who has drawn breath.

Like the blue veins that flutter under the translucent skin of your wrist, I am the Nile of your body and the surging waters of your heart.

I was a pharaoh once, a wife twice, a mother more than thrice.

I have ever been what people sought to find. Some called me Queen, lover, Mama. Others called me witch, villain, whore. Each archetype is a brick that has raised me up like the great pyramids, further and further away from my humanity until I have become nothing more than a myth.

It is hard to know me at such a great distance.

My image shimmers behind the sand-filled haze of Egypt’s sunset. Am I a mirage? Or the water you seek?

You know my name, but you do not know me.

I am Cleopatra. This is not the story of how I died.

But how I lived.