Chapter Three #2
“And the shortfall from the taxes you take from your people, where does that go?” I asked the governor.
He looked abashed. “The vineyards require maintenance, Pharaoh.”
His coffers, then.
“I had believed your father’s word would hold true in the afterlife. If this is not so, then I will be happy to—”
“No,” I said, my breath fluttering in my chest. I would not go back on my father’s word. I couldn’t; it was sacrilege. “Let my father’s arrangement stand.”
I waved a shaking hand at Pothinus and he led the governor away.
When I brought my cup to my lips, I found the wine tasted more sour than it had before.
“How many others had arrangements with my father?” I asked Pothinus coolly when he returned.
Pothinus’s expression did not change as he listed five more instances of undocumented dealings with my father. I listened, identifying each of the governors dining at the table below me. All were indulging themselves heartily in food and drink.
Food and drink they had bartered with to tighten their fists around their coin. My coin. But if the corruption had been sanctioned by my father, who was I to question it?
Pothinus saw me looking. “Shall I bring them up to the dais?”
“No. I think I will excuse myself for some fresh air.”
I had hoped to leave unnoticed, but when I stood from my chair, the whole room stood with me. I had had little enough freedom as a pharaoh’s daughter, but now as Pharaoh I was shackled to the land and people in a way I was unaccustomed to.
A cadre of guards followed me as I walked through the dining hall. Governors fell prostrate at my feet as I passed.
I fixed my eyes on the strip of night sky I could see through the doorway. I did not stop walking until the sea breeze tousled the gold beads on my dress, making them chime.
“Leave me a moment,” I said to the guards at my back.
Ahmose, the leader of my personal guard, stepped forward. “But Pharaoh—”
“I will be fine,” I reassured him. “I know you cannot leave me entirely, but please watch me from the palace doors. Let me pretend that I am alone.”
Ahmose’s eyes softened. He had been by my side since we were both young. My father had personally selected him from the gymnasium after he’d seen him win a wrestling tournament.
“As you wish, Pharaoh.” He thrust a fist in the air and the rest of the guards stepped back in unison. He nodded once in my direction before turning on his heel and leading them away.
I removed my woven sandals and sank my toes deep into the sand, looking across the ocean where the reflection of Alexandria shimmered on the waves.
“I do not know how to rule,” I admitted.
The ocean offered no judgement.
I knew some aspects of how to rule; my schooling had barely digressed from trade, taxes and agriculture. But I had very little skill in diplomacy.
I was wretched. “How am I to reign in your shadow, Father? Without a gift from Isis to aid me?”
A sound startled me and I turned, expecting it to be one of the palace cats. But the mewl had come from a woman. She clutched a hand to her mouth before sinking into the sand at my feet.
“Pharaoh, my apologies, I was just taking some air before my next performance. I did not realise you were here.”
It was the lyre player.
“Rise, musician.” I was irritated that my meditations had been interrupted, and worried about how much she had heard.
“Allow me to retreat and leave you to your solitude.”
I was about to agree when a thought occurred to me. “You are from Thebes, correct?”
“Yes, Pharaoh.” She had got to her feet as commanded but would not meet my eye, her dark hair covering most of her face.
“The governor, does he manage the city well?”
She hesitated, then said in a rush, “Very well, Pharaoh. Very well indeed.”
“Speak plain. My reports only tell me so much.”
She parted her hair and finally looked at me. I expected her gaze to be as timid as her demeanour, but her eyes were dark with fury. And I was about to learn the cause.
“He has increased taxes every akhet season for the last five years. Famine spreads across the land. Your people are dying, Pharaoh.”
I flinched.
My coin, but also my people.
“Thank you for your honesty, lyre player. Please, let my scribes know you have spoken to me. You may return to my court at any time. You are a courtier now.”
Her eyes widened and she lowered herself to the ground once more.
I thought I would never get used to the excessive bowing. But, of course, I did.
“Pharaoh, if it is not too presumptuous, allow me to say one more thing,” she said.
“Speak.”
“Do not chase shadows. Make your own light.”
So she had heard me after all. Her sage words stayed with me after she had gone.
I would never be my father, who led with charm. My talents lay elsewhere. I could not deny my father’s faults, though they were harder to see when my grief was still so fresh.
But if I were to lead Egypt, I had to do it my way.
And I had to lead Egypt. For I loved her.
You speak of my many lovers but few of you acknowledge my first, and perhaps my only true love.
Egypt.
When I was a child, my father took me out on a small rowing boat.
It was a series of unusual occurrences; first to have a pharaoh conduct such manual labour, and second for me to be alone with my father.
There was always someone with us: a soldier, a scribe, Charmion.
But that day he requested my presence alone.
He rowed us east, to the delta.
I looked back at the city through the glittering sea spray—the gift of the Nile.
Words written some three hundred and fifty years prior by Herodotus, known only to the foolish among you as “the father of history.” History is not fathered, it is cultivated, ever-growing, ever-changing, and most importantly it is pruned and trimmed by those who uncover it from the shade.
Though I handled them with less reverence than your contemporaries, I had read Herodotus’s words, and I spoke them now.
“A gift, yes, but a responsibility also,” my father replied. He pointed to the sea beneath us. “This is where the Nile meets the sea. Can you see the two currents? One blue, one brown?”
I had never seen anything like it and was mesmerised by the dancing eddies of the fresh water swirling commingled with the ocean. I didn’t notice the blade until it cut through my wrist.
I jerked back, frightened. For as I said before, my father’s charm came hand in hand with his cruelty.
But when I looked down, I saw the cut was shallow.
“Add your blood to the water, let Egypt know who will come to lead her,” he commanded.
I trailed my hand in the ocean and felt the sting of the salt water in my wound and the silt of the Nile on my skin.
“When it is your turn to lead, blood will know blood,” he said.
Now, though it had been many years, this memory came back to me with clarity.
I walked to the water’s edge and touched my hand to its surface.
“Blood will know blood.”
—
I sent a message to the kitchens before returning to the dining hall.
The governors partook of my hospitality until dawn.
When the feast ended, my brother and I walked through the hall arm in arm, the servants following in a procession.
The beaded tails stitched onto the backs of their skirts twirled as they walked.
They howled and raised their hands to the sky as I had instructed them to.
I should have been proud of the sight, but I felt as though the glittering eyes behind the copper masks judged me harshly.
I could not pick out Charmion among the twisting limbs.
Theos leaned heavily against my shoulder. It had been a long night for both of us.
“Stop here a moment, brother,” I said as we drew level with the Governor of Thebes.
At my indication, three labourers brought in a crate of wine, still in clay pots. They set them at the governor’s feet.
“Pharaoh?” he asked.
“This is the last of your wine from the palace storeroom. I expect your taxes to be adjusted accordingly. And, Governor: stabilise your city. If I hear of another increase in taxes, I will personally see that you are removed from your position.”
I tugged on my brother’s arm to guide him on. Though the governor’s shocked expression was satisfying, I had exerted all my courage and felt my knees begin to falter. It was time for bed.
“Pharaoh, that was ill-advised,” Pothinus whispered to my left. “You have made an enemy here tonight.”
“I will not stand for corruption, Pothinus. Egypt is my country to rule.”
The lyre player caught my gaze on my way out of the door, and I saw her eyes shimmer with tears.
“I may have made an enemy, but I have also gained more allies. The story will spread tonight, and the other governors whose taxes have been lacking will rectify the issue—lest they suffer the same embarrassment. A success, I think.”
I did not wait for the eunuch to reply before turning towards the sleeping quarters of the palace.
The servants accompanied my brother and me all the way to the doors of our chambers. Before dismissing them, I said, “Thank you for your service tonight. As a boon for all you have given to me and my father before me, keep the masks as a token of my gratitude.”
There were gasps. The copper and lapis were enough for each of them to live comfortably for a few years at least.
“Tonight, I wished to honour my father. But I am not him. I do not wish for the pageantry of this evening to be repeated. Honour and dignity can be held in both hands.”
Oh, so righteous I was back then. In the years to follow, I came to recognise that spectacle was political. It became a tool in a chest of few tricks that I could rely upon. But I wasn’t always that way. That is why I preserve my original intentions here, noble as they were.
I bade goodnight to my brother before entering my bedchamber.
“That was well done,” Charmion said, following me in.
I embraced her. “I know who I want to be now.”
“And who is that?”
“Not my father’s daughter. But me. Cleopatra,” I said. “Though Pothinus will think me half-witted when he wakes to find the servants have fled.”
“I do not think they will leave. You have earned their loyalty.”
The next day I would discover she was right. Many of the servants who’d received bounty that day stayed for the entirety of my reign. Some even refused to leave when Octavian ransacked the palace. They died along with me. Loyalty is a revered virtue of the dead.
“They’ll tell stories of you in years to come,” Charmion continued.
Centuries. Millennia.
“I hope so.”
I did not understand what it was I wished for. I hoped to become a legend, but I forgot what all stories must have: a monster.
I could not have known that monster would be me.