Chapter Thirteen
harmion and I rowed to the mainland just before dawn. The smoke was so thick we had to cover our mouths with cloth dipped in river-water.
The fire still raged as we passed the great harbour. The burned shells of the Alexandrian fleet smouldered in the lightening sky.
I heard Arsinoe screaming in my mind as her skin bubbled and blistered. Theos, too, his blood-curdling cries making me wince and cover my ears.
“What is wrong?” Charmion asked as the little rowing boat nudged onto the beach.
“Arsinoe and Mikro Theos.” Saying their names was enough. She knew I mourned them.
I hoped they had avoided the fire. And I hoped they had not.
The devastation in the city was worse than I could have imagined.
Early on in the campaign, Theos and Arsinoe’s army had laced the conduit system with seawater, poisoning the waterways of the Roman encampment.
Caesar had ordered new wells to be dug along the entrenchments, adding further destruction to the city’s streets.
Though the buildings were mainly stone, the fire had spread to the rare pockets of habitation where wood and paper were abundant. Like the library.
I ran through the streets in the opposite direction of the fleeing citizens. I had to see the damage for myself.
As I neared the library, my heart sank. The stone was blackened from the fire that raged within. Flames licked alongside the windows and hallways, consuming the papyrus like an agent of Apep.
I dashed forward, intent on seeing how the tree of knowledge fared, but Charmion held me back.
“Cleo, no. If you go in, you will die.”
“But Charmion, the books, the scrolls. The tree.” My voice cracked.
Charmion held on to my arm. “I am not letting go of you.”
I knew it was suicide, and perhaps that was what I sought. I pulled out of her grip and ran forward until I stood between the columns of the entranceway. I could just make out the tree of knowledge, its wondrous branches glowing red and amber. Still beautiful despite the fire that ravaged it.
The fire was so hot I felt a flush run along my skin and sweat bead my brow. If I stepped forward just a little more, I’d feel it burn. The wind shifted direction and it was then that I saw it: the last flower to bloom on the tree of knowledge.
Each petal unfurled slowly, the scrolls unravelling as quickly as they burned. I watched as the flower turned to ash, its knowledge never to be known.
I closed my eyes to the destruction, the glow of the tree remaining on my eyelids. I imagined it was the moonlight, and not flames, that lit the petals.
When the scroll had landed upon my brow when I was a babe, my mother had beamed as bright as the moon to see her daughter blessed so.
She had raised me up in her arms, praising the goddess Seshat.
My lips whispered the words now. “Hail, all-knowing goddess of words and ink, patron of mathematics and astrology. Thank you for your inner sight. May your power live on.”
Charmion dragged me back from the heat of the flame. And I let her. The tree had given me its greatest gift—a chance to view its beauty once more.
We walked slowly through the city back to the rowing boat. Dawn had broken across the land, touching its light with a pink glow. I did not feel like talking and Charmion knew this without asking. We each harboured our own grief.
Ahmose’s passing had affected Charmion deeply.
In the days after his death, I had opened my arms and bed to her.
I knew how passion could ease the pain of loss; I myself had called upon many of my servants to attend me in the days after my father entered the field of reeds.
But Charmion’s appetite had stilled, and she wished only to be held close when she awoke from nightmares crying.
Sometimes I would cry with her. For Ahmose, for my mother, for my siblings.
I reached for her hand. “We will heal.”
The look she gave me was haunted. “The land will.”
“We will too, Charmion. There will come a time when the ground in the necropolis will be so still that flowers will bloom.”
That time never came.
Charmion stopped in her tracks. “Do you hear that?”
We were nearly at the shore and I was weary. The palace felt a long distance away, and I was anxious to begin the journey.
“Hear what?”
She didn’t need to answer, because then I heard him.
“The false queen has aligned with Caesar and agreed to make Egypt a Roman province. They burn Egypt, to build it again in the likeness of Rome. She makes a mockery of Sōter.” He spoke in stilted Egyptian, as if he read the phonetics from a scroll.
But I would still be able to recognise his voice anywhere. Pothinus.
I followed the sound until I saw him standing on the remains of a destroyed building. His audience was a group of fishermen, about to begin their daily catch.
He didn’t look up as Charmion and I joined the crowd.
“Queen Arsinoe and King Ptolemy fight for the rights of all Alexandrians.”
So, they live. My relief was brief.
I scowled and whispered to Charmion, “Arsinoe and Ptolemy wage war for money and status.”
Pothinus continued, “Cleopatra only fights for the man in her bed. She is a whore.”
The word struck me like a dagger to the chest. I gasped.
I felt Charmion’s hand slipping into mine and I tightened my grip, grounding myself in the feel of her skin.
It may surprise you that this was the first time I had been called such a name—especially as your historians continue to use it so wantonly. And though I could not deny the feelings Caesar stirred within me, it incensed me that my relationship to him was being used to degrade and diminish me.
But women have ever been defined by their affiliation with men. It is hard to stand alone, to be scrutinised without the pollution of our sexual affairs.
“They will do anything to lure in more recruits,” I said through my teeth.
“Yes,” Charmion agreed.
“Julius will hear of this.”
“Stand against her carnal desires and stand for Egypt!” Pothinus shouted. I wondered if Arsinoe was the author of the words he recited.
There was movement in the ruins behind him, and Pothinus turned in time to be tackled by a cloaked figure. The two of them went down heavily. I saw the glint of a sword, then a spray of blood.
The gathering was too shocked to react immediately. Despite the bloodshed and skirmishes that happened daily, there was something so sudden about Pothinus’s assassination that we were all stunned into silence.
As the assassin fled, pandemonium struck. Some of the fishermen lunged after the assailant. Others ran to the eunuch’s side.
I remained still.
“We need to leave, now.” Charmion dragged me through the streets back to where we had stashed the rowing boat.
“I cannot believe Pothinus is dead. It must have been one of Caesar’s men,” she said breathlessly as she pushed the boat out.
My lips remained closed. For I had recognised the gladius blade and the hand that had wielded it.
—
I strode into Caesar’s chambers without announcing myself.
“Cleopatra?” He sat up as if he had awoken from a deep slumber. His torso was bare. I did not let it distract me.
“It was you.”
For a moment he looked like he was about to deny it. An expression of manufactured confusion crossed his features. His sword leaned against the wall in the corner. I removed it from its sheath. The hilt was still warm from his grip, and Pothinus’s blood had not yet dried on the blade.
“You followed me.”
He sighed and pulled the covers from the bed. He wore a simple white loincloth. My gaze lingered by the contours of his hip bones, where material met muscle.
With gentle hands he took the sword from me and placed it into the waistband of his loincloth. I imagined it was my hand and felt my skin grow hot. If Caesar noticed, he took it for anger.
“It wasn’t my intention to execute Pothinus, just an added benefit of my trip.”
“I told you not to come.”
“You expect me to allow you to walk into danger so readily?” He had drawn himself up, his muscles tightening, his jaw locking. Here was Caesar the soldier. Commanding, unyielding, insufferable.
And altogether intoxicating.
“Allow?” I said incredulously.
“You asked the impossible of me.” His anger was quiet. Simmering. I relished it.
“I ask nothing of you.”
He stepped towards me, until I could feel the heat of him. “Nothing?”
If I had been bolder, I would have told him all the things I wanted from him. But my courage only matured with time, and as it was, I could only say: “No.”
His hand reached up to the nape of my neck, his touch tender. Where his fingers lingered, my skin turned warm.
“Of all the things I would ask of you.” His eyes moved to my lips and I found my breath stuttering in my chest.
“Such as?” I whispered.
“A kiss, if you would grant it.”
My hands went to either side of his jaw, where the roughness of his beard met the olive of his skin. I leaned forward until we were a hair’s breadth apart.
I could feel his breath on my face, shallow, hot. His eyes bored into mine, dark, pleading.
The distance closed between us. I could not tell you if it was him or me who made the irrevocable move. It was impossible to separate the need from the person.
The kiss was gentle at first. Our lips parted, each of us savouring the other. But then it deepened and our bodies pressed together.
I sense your thoughts: What of Calpurnia, his wife? Rome was a distant land, made even more distant by the immediate danger we lived in. We knew not if we would survive this war. Besides, it was his marriage to thwart, not mine—take your judgement and your questions to his grave instead.
His hands moved from my neck to the coils of my hair. I nipped at his lower lip and a sound, more animal than human, emanated from his throat.
Cleopatra only fights for the man in her bed. She is a whore.
I broke away from the kiss.
“My queen?” Caesar said. He stepped back into the space I had created between us, his hands held out to mine.