Chapter Fifteen
rsinoe fled Egypt the next day. Her rebellion quashed, she sought refuge with the few allies who still called her queen. I did not see her again for many years.
With the war won, the hardest part was to come—the rebuilding of Alexandria. I oversaw the construction, starting with the new library.
“It will never be the same,” Archibios said to me.
Dust from the building site filled the air. I held a thin piece of silk across my face to shield me from it.
“No, it will not. The tree of knowledge is gone, its power burned to ash. But from its remains new seeds will grow. They may not be divine, they may not bear fruit, but the legend of the tree will continue on. And with it, the legacy of the library.”
Archibios’s eyes grew wet. “We will regrow the collection, better than before.”
“Julius has already agreed to send in copies of works from Rome. It will take many years, but the library will be great once more.” My words were not just a comfort to the librarian, but to myself.
I needed the reminder of Alexandria’s future, for right now so much of it remained in ruins and rubble.
To the north was the burned harbour, to the east the entrenched streets. In the west, every building was stripped of wood from the pillaging carried out by the traitors. And in the south, drought still laid waste to the farmland.
No matter how much time I spent trying to regain what had been, I knew that the city would never be the same. Like bone that had knitted back together, it would be imperfect, but stronger than before.
I felt myself begin to sway and Archibios was there by my side. He didn’t touch me—to lay hands on a pharaoh without permission was a grave sin—but his hands hovered by my back, to catch me if I fell.
“Pharaoh, are you well?”
I nodded, my eyes closed. “Yes, just exhausted. I spent the night in the new hospital.”
It wasn’t a building yet, just a collection of canopies, but it had already seen a steady stream of visitors.
“You must protect your own health before that of others, Pharaoh. How fares the babe?”
My hands went to my stomach protectively and I smiled. “Due soon.”
“It is good they will be born during peacetime. War is no place for a baby.”
“No, especially one who is the heir of Rome and Egypt.”
Archibios grew pensive, and I could see a question brewing on his lips.
“Ask,” I said. “We have spent too many years together to be shy in the face of curiosity.”
He returned my smile, but he still hesitated. “I…I have heard what the Roman courtiers are saying…that Caesar will not claim your child as his own. That he intends to return to Calpurnia in Rome.”
I sighed. It wasn’t the worst rumour to have reached my ears in recent times, and in some ways, it was a relief to hear of something so tame.
“I care not for the talk of Romans in my court.”
Archibios grimaced at the sharpness of my tone and I continued more gently, “My child is the heir to Rome and Egypt, no matter who claims otherwise. My word is the law.”
I clasped my hands together to stop them trembling. Archibios’s enquiries had triggered my fear that Caesar would yet abandon me.
But then I saw him stride across the courtyard and all worries fled my mind. Dirt and sweat streaked his body from his efforts helping the labourers haul in stone.
He saw me looking and smiled. Caesar was not one to smile quickly or often, but when he did, it was as though the sun shone on my brow.
Ten days after the war was won, he had left Antirhodos in the middle of the night and I had woken up alone, the sheets beside me unslept in.
“Where is he?” I knew I sounded like a desert fox, screeching for my mate. My usual measured disposition was fraught under the strain of the pregnancy.
“No one knows,” Charmion said gently. “He went with a small group of his most trusted soldiers.”
I paced the length of the island, waiting for Caesar to return. My swollen ankles ached, but my anger needed to be exercised.
When I saw his ship on the horizon, I waited by the dock, seething.
“Where did you go?” I said as he disembarked.
“My queen.” He lowered a kiss to my brow and frowned when the creases there did not ease.
“Where did you go?” I repeated.
He smiled faintly, as though he was enjoying the heat of my anger. It only incensed me more.
“Julius, where did you go?”
His soldiers were unloading a crate behind him, and he stepped back so I could see it.
“I went hunting.”
Two honey-coloured lion cubs lay curled up in the corner of a wooden cage. Caesar helped me kneel beside them.
“We found their mother’s body by an oasis. She had given her life defending her cubs from a crocodile. I thought the little ones could be the beginnings of your new menagerie.”
“Julius.” I choked out his name.
“One boy, one girl,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist.
I named them Bastet and Maahes after the cat-headed gods. But they did not go in the menagerie, they stayed beside me.
I loved those beasts dearly. Rearing them helped to heal the wounds the war had caused. There was a simple pleasure in feeding a hungry cub and being loved by it in return: Caesar gave me that gift, and I would forever treasure it.
Now I turned to Archibios, feeling more energised.
“The court needs to be purged of blasphemers. Please, report to me if anyone says such things. In rebuilding Alexandria I intend to do more than just repair the city, I wish to reform the ruling class. Be they Roman, Greek or Egyptian, if they reside in my land, they will respect me and my unborn child.”
—
My child did not remain unborn for much longer. Under the black sky of a new moon, Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar, fifteenth of his name—known to you and me as Caesarion—came screaming into the world. A battle cry for a battle won, after a day and half a night of labour.
Charmion placed him into my arms.
“Is he not perfect? Is he not a child in the gods’ eyes?”
I looked at his swollen face, marked with my blood and fluid, and wondered where Charmion’s sanity had gone.
“He is…wet,” I said weakly.
It is fair to say, I did not love my son from his first breath. How could I? I did not yet know him. I could not predict the insightful, empathetic boy he would become. Nor could I foretell the love that would one day fill my heart to near bursting.
Charmion removed him from my chest and returned with him wrapped in linen. Tears pooled in her eyes as I took him gingerly from her.
“Put him to the breast,” she said, her voice full of wonderment.
I did as she bade, and she cheered when he suckled.
“It feels strange,” I said. “As if he pulls on my very soul.”
She misunderstood me, thinking I spoke on something deeper than mere discomfort. “He is a part of you now, tethered to your essence.”
I nodded, as if that was what I meant. “Have you called on the soothsayer? We must announce his patron.”
Charmion exchanged a look with Eiras, who stood at the foot of the birthing bed. I had avoided looking there, my gaze skimming over the bloodied and soiled sheets.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up as much as my weak limbs would allow. The babe came off the breast and I impatiently pressed him back on.
“Nothing; the soothsayer has been called,” Charmion said in calming tones. “Rest now, I will awaken you when she arrives.”
I nodded and sank back down on the bed. “Take him,” I said, handing Caesarion to the wet nurse to feed.
But as I closed my eyes, there was a voice at the door. “I must see her, you cannot forbid me from entering.”
“Charmion,” I said, “cover me in the leopard skin. Eiras, press my brow with some scented water.” My handmaids made haste, preparing me as best they could for Caesar’s entrance.
“Pass me the babe,” I ordered. He cried as he was removed from the nursemaid’s teat, his eyes scrunched and his lips puckered.
“Hush, little one,” Charmion said, and he quietened at her voice.
“He may enter,” I said to the guards at my door.
The consul of Rome had never looked so distraught. It seemed as though he had not slept in the day we’d been apart. As soon as my labour had begun, I’d sequestered myself away from him, lest his anxiety hamper my progress.
“Cleopatra—” He spotted our son.
“A boy,” I confirmed.
It was the first and last time I ever saw Caesar weep. “My Venus and Cupid. You are the gods of my heart.”
I did not mind that he likened me to his false god. Isis’s power was vast and had many faces, so when he spoke of Venus, I heard my goddess’s name.
He took the babe from my arms and pressed him against his forehead, wetting the boy’s cheeks with his tears.
“He is bigger than my Julia was,” he whispered. “When your guards would not let me in…” The pain of what might have been had hollowed out the skin beneath his eyes.
I held out my hand to him and he grasped it, keeping Ptolemy cradled to his chest with the other. “I am well,” I reassured him, “and so is our son.”
“Our son,” he said with bewilderment. “Caesarion. You will be the ruler of both Egypt and Rome one day.”
His words had the ring of prophecy, but we all know that did not come to pass.
—
Charmion woke me at sundown when the soothsayer arrived.
“She is in the antechamber—shall I let her through?”
My body ached, but I knew how important the soothsayer’s verdict would be.
“Attend me.”
Charmion helped me to stand. My dress clung to the sticky blood between my legs. “Pass me a robe, and my crown. Where is Caesarion?”
I was still Queen first, mother second.
“He’s here, Pharaoh.” The nursemaid had a quiet voice, and it grated on me immediately. She lurked in an alcove, my son in her arms.
“Strip him of his blankets, the soothsayer will want to see him in his nakedness,” I instructed.
Once I was dressed and my son was not, I welcomed the soothsayer into my rooms.
She was younger than I expected. Naturally beautiful, with dark eyes and full lips that turned down at the corners, giving her an air of exquisite melancholy.
She wore her hair in a side-lock style, entirely shaven except for the knot on the side of her head.
The undyed linen of her robes was twisted across her chest and her brow was marked in kohl with the sigil of Ptah—the god of creation.
“Pharaoh.” She bowed low. “My regards on the birth of your son. May the gods bless him.”
“Please, come and greet him.” I indicated for the wet nurse to bring him forward.
I watched as she handed over my son to the soothsayer, who began to examine him. My mouth was dry, my breath shallow.
Let it be a bountiful god, like Geb, or Re.
The soothsayer’s eyes narrowed as she searched for the birthmark that tied my son to his deity. She lifted his legs, turned him on his bottom, checked his palms and behind his ears.
My heart began to pound against my chest as her eyes met mine. She shook her head once.
“Empty the room,” I said quietly. When no one moved, I said it again. “Empty the room!”
Charmion began to herd the servants and the handmaidens out of the birthing chamber.
“Even you, Charmion.”
The look she gave me would have fractured my heart if it were not already breaking.
When the room was empty of everyone but the soothsayer and my son, I turned to her.
“Tell me,” I said.
Her lips trembled as she spoke. “Your son is not marked by the gods.”
“It cannot be.”
“Search his body for yourself—there is no sigil.”
She placed Caesarion back in my arms and I searched his skin for any sign of a blemish. But as Charmion had said, he was perfect.
“What does this mean?” I whispered. Though the room was empty, I was still terrified of this reaching unfriendly ears.
The soothsayer’s brows knitted together. “Forgive me, my queen—is he truly of your blood?”
I felt a flash of rage. “He is my blood.” I tugged on the tie of my robe, letting it open so she could see the blood that soaked through between my legs.
“I do not wish to anger you, but I had to be sure.”
“Then what is it? What is wrong with him?”
She smiled gently. “I do not think anything is ever truly wrong with a babe fresh from the womb.”
I heard my voice rise in pitch, akin to the sound Qar made when he swooped on his prey. “Then why is he not marked?”
“The gods have not granted him the divinity of your forebears. Perhaps you have angered them?”
Guilt churned like bile in my stomach and I found myself spluttering. “Angered the gods? I have fought, I have bled, I have done everything I could to protect the people of Egypt.”
To my shame I began to cry, loud keening sobs that shook my body and made Caesarion scream.
“Please, take him,” I cried, and the soothsayer took him from my arms so I could collect myself.
When I could breathe steadily once more, I had already formed a plan. I would not be a victim to further conjecture about my reign, nor would I subject my son to it in the future.
My hand went to the knife at my throat and I released the dagger from the leather sheath.
“Place the babe on the bed,” I said. If the soothsayer heard any warning in my voice, she didn’t show it.
When Caesarion was safe, I lunged, panic fortifying my weakened state.
The blade was at her throat before the soothsayer realised her death was near.
“Pharaoh, I will not speak on what happened here today, on the word of my god Ptah, let it be so,” she said. Her voice shook.
So, too, did my resolve.
“You swear it?”
“I do.” Her throat bobbed beneath my blade.
“Go, then,” I said, cursing my own weakness.
When she had left the room, I picked up Caesarion and wrapped him against my chest inside my robe. I then called for the new commander of my royal guard, Seti.
“Pharaoh?” he enquired.
“Follow the soothsayer. And execute her.”
You know I have killed many people, by order or by my hand. But the soothsayer is one I shall always regret. I never even knew her name.
I thought I was protecting my son, securing his future as heir. For no ruler of Egypt without divine protection would be accepted by the people.
Do you remember my noble endeavours to better Egypt?
I hadn’t wanted to be queen, but I had resolved to do more than the kings and queens of the past. I barely recognised that earnest woman who had rid the courts of corruption.
Now that I was a mother, I wanted the throne for one purpose—to give it to Caesarion.
It might be that this sense of entitlement is what poisoned the hearts of so many of my ancestors, but even if I had had the discernment to see it, I would have done nothing differently.
I wanted it for my son alone.