Chapter One #2
I was little more than eight years old when she spoke those words to me. A man lay dying at my feet, his blood pooling between my small toes. I wriggled them, watching the blood ripple. I remember thinking how plain the knife at his throat was, no gold or silver embellishments.
My thoughts were those of an eight-year-old: If I were to kill myself, I’d be sure to do it with something finer than copper.
Though, as you know, it was poison in the end.
“Why did he kill himself, Mama?” I asked as the guards removed the servant’s body from the throne room.
She stood next to me, the hem of her priest robe now soiled with blood.
The eyes she turned to me were sorrowful, like those of the heifers blessed by the goddess Hathor.
“He could fathom no greater honour than serving a pharaoh’s daughter.
There was nothing else to accomplish in this life that could eclipse it. ”
He was the first servant to end their life after speaking with me.
And in a few decades, Charmion would be the last.
I turned to the messenger, shaking away thoughts of my mother and death. “What has happened that I am needed in the palace so urgently?”
He quivered and didn’t immediately answer. When he eventually mustered the strength to speak, his voice was a croak. “Your father. He has departed this life into the next.”
Charmion’s quick inhalation sounded like the hiss of a snake. I didn’t hear anything after that.
My eyes stung with the cinder of grief. Each breath came slow and laboured as if smoke choked my throat.
Father is dead.
Though I had known this was coming, nothing prepares you for the loss of all the unclaimed moments yet to pass.
I lifted my gaze to the top of the lighthouse, where a statue of my ancestor crested the cylindrical tower just below the furnace.
The lifeless eyes of Ptolemy I, the founder of my dynasty, stared back at me.
Sōter, he was called—saviour. Hundreds of years separated the two of us, and there was little to be seen of me in his Macedonian features.
His chiselled alabaster chin dipped towards the mainland, looking over the empire he had come to rule.
“Sōter, welcome my father to the field of reeds,” I murmured quietly to myself.
Heavy tears blurred his image into that of my father. His brow became wider, his jaw softer. Even his stomach grew prouder.
My father had been prone to indulgence. His love of festivities was one of the many things that set us apart. I saw the frivolities of my status as a burden, he saw them as a joy.
“We must live like gods to honour the gods, daughter,” he would rumble. “It reminds our people that we reign above them. You will understand more when you are Pharaoh.”
Pharaoh. It had been a far-off thing to conceive of back then. Now, the title set my heart stuttering behind my ribs.
Sōter’s face wavered once more before my unshed tears. The alabaster distorted until I looked into one of the many faces of my dreams.
Is this a premonition of the future?
I tried to parse the vision I was seeing: Was she wise? Was she merciless?
I had not the plays and sonnets and books that told me of my future demise. Though worry not, a demise you will still have.
I had the one thing we all have: time. And only that would reveal to me the pharaoh I was to become.
—
During our descent from the lighthouse, the sun had set. The god Re’s journey through the clouds had tarnished the sky from gold to a deep orange.
I picked my way down the cragged shoreline where the waves lapped at the rocks.
“What are you doing?” Charmion asked.
“It’s quicker to swim to the palace from here. I cannot waste time taking a litter across the Heptastadion.”
“Cleo.” It was the nickname Charmion only used beneath the softness of our sheets.
“Cleopatra,” I corrected her with irritation. Glory of thy father.
As I began to remove my clothing, I wondered if I was quite fulfilling my name’s meaning in that moment.
Charmion sighed behind me before her fingers joined mine at the knot of my dress. She rested her hand there for a moment as she said, “All will be well. Osiris will grant him passage to the next realm.”
I felt some of the tension inside me loosen slightly as the layers of my clothing fell to the ground like petals. Charmion soothed me in a way that no other person could.
I turned and reached for her cheek. “I know, because you are by my side.”
Charmion leaned into my touch and brought three fingers up to her lips in turn. “One for the past and the happy years well spent, one for the present and the patience we extend, one for the future and the love that never ends.”
She recited the prayer we had composed as children. I felt the words give me strength.
We had been each other’s first lover, and for years that was all we were. But then our love shifted, it grew outward, beyond our bodies into something more potent than the ecstasy of pleasure. Our friendship was celestial, greater than the two parts of us.
I turned away from her. I now wore nothing but my diadem, a single gold band that met in the middle of my forehead to form a rearing cobra. Charmion reached to remove it and I shook my head. “Secure it with my braids. When I arrive, they must see me as Queen.”
Once Charmion had finished weaving my hair around my diadem, I instructed her to make her way to the palace. Though she too could swim—we’d run off enough times to the Nile for her to learn—I knew she didn’t like it.
“I will not leave you—”
“Go,” I commanded. Then, more quietly, I said, “This is my favourite dress, I do not want the seawater to harm its fibres.”
Charmion’s lashes fluttered. She heard the lie and saw the mercy in it. “I will be sure to have it washed and ready for you later tonight.”
Her shadow stretched across the shoreline as she walked away. The further she got, the hotter my breath felt in my mouth, until I shouted, “I-I can’t do it, I can’t be queen!”
“You can!” she called back.
Dread curdled my stomach. “Do you remember when Father asked me to lead the Ptolemaia procession?” I said. It had been the first festival after I turned fourteen and Father had wished to present me as the future Pharaoh of Egypt.
“I remember.”
“Do you? Do you recall how I tripped and fell in front of the whole of Alexandria? All I had to do was lead the dancers. And I couldn’t even do that.”
“Walking does prove difficult for some people.”
“This isn’t funny, Charmion. I was never a good pharaoh’s daughter—how can I expect to be a good pharaoh?”
Charmion pointed to the ground. “Look.”
I followed her line of sight.
There, scattered between rocks and sand, were the throwing sticks.
“You won after all,” she said, smiling.
The odds had been so small. But by the angle at which the sticks had fallen, I knew she was right. The gods had guided my hand.
The dread within my belly eased.
“A Ptolemy never loses,” I repeated softly. This time the words held hope.
“I will see you at the palace,” Charmion said.
I turned back to the ocean with triumph in my heart.
The water was warm and refreshing as I lowered myself into the churning waves. It was late shemu season and the air was hot and dry. Though I preferred the rain and milder weather of akhet, I was glad for the warmth now.
My braids floated on the surface of the water for a moment as I dipped beneath the froth of waves.
I opened my eyes. The seawater was clear, despite the swirling currents.
I wondered what it must be like to be able to breathe beneath the water like my younger brother.
Blessed by the god Sobek, Lord of the Waters, he had received his gift as a babe.
At first his nursemaid had screamed as his fat little legs kicked him out of her grip and into the depth of the baths.
Guards were called, which in turn drew my and Charmion’s own curiosity. I still remember the envy that coursed through my veins at his laughing face as he surfaced, perfectly fine. My father had called for three days of feasting.
The goddess Isis was yet to awaken my gift. Some thought it would never arrive. Others whispered that it was too weak to show. That I was tainted, unworthy of the throne.
I did not require a very great power. My own father’s blessing had been modest. As an acolyte to the god Ihy, he could play any instrument with flawless beauty. His preference had been the flute.
My lungs began to burn, and I kicked myself back to the surface. I reached my arms out in quick, even strokes, parting the waves with my hands.
Now I will never hear Father’s sweet music again.
The waves licked at my tears, but I didn’t stop swimming until I reached the shoreline of the palace.
When my feet struck sand, I stood.
The beach soon turned to the white tiled ground of Antirhodos. The small island looked out over the city of Alexandria to the south and the harbour to the west.
The isle boasted its own necropolis, menagerie, cistern and cultivated gardens. It was a city that I called my home, but it didn’t seem large to me. I had stood upon every rock and climbed every tree. There was no place on this earth that I loved more.
Antirhodos was too beautiful to survive the test of time; unlike my myth, which is a gnarly thing.
I heard it said that all the birds from the island flew away the day before the earthquake struck the palace.
But that happened many hundreds of years from now. Long after I had died.
On the pathway beside me, two servants had wrapped cloth around the bark of a palm tree and were swaying the trunk back and forth. Another was collecting the dates that fell into a woven basket.
They stopped as they saw me, clad in nothing but my crown.
All will be well. Charmion’s words came to me, and I straightened.
There was a thud as the basket fell to the ground and the servants threw themselves down beside the spilled dates.
I cleared my throat to ensure it rang out without a warble. “Lower.”
The servants pressed themselves further into the dirt. I reached for one of the strewn fruits and chewed on it slowly. My hand was still wet from the seawater, seasoning the sweetness of the date.
“Have a basket of these sent to my rooms,” I said with the same tenor of authority.
“Yes, Pharaoh’s Daughter,” the three said in unison.
“Just Pharaoh,” I corrected them.
I wiped the sticky residue of the date on the cloth that still bound the trunk of the palm tree. My hands trembled like I had seen my father’s do when he had used his godtouched power.
I had no such divinity surging through me. But I did have power of my own.
And now was the time to wield it.