Chapter Sixteen
did not let anyone care for Caesarion for three days. I had the wet nurses dismissed and reduced my servants to just Charmion and Eiras.
They thought I suffered a malady of the mind, especially when I insisted on being the only one to change the linens he soiled. But I could not let the others realise he was unblemished, unchosen by the gods.
“Blessed by Horus,” I announced the night I executed the soothsayer. The lie was easy, as it felt so close to the truth. My affinity to Isis made the connection so simple—Horus was her son, and together they were the quintessential duo of myth and legend. No one could question my divinity now.
But I knew the lie was not sustainable. On the fourth night after his birth, I sent Charmion and Eiras to the kitchens to retrieve a complex list of food I requested. Caesar was at the gymnasium and would be occupied until much later in the night.
As soon as I was alone, I slipped away down the hidden tunnel in my bedchamber.
Earlier that year, during the battle for the city, Charmion and I had stolen away in the night and docked a small boat at the end of the tunnel.
It had exhausted both our bodies, but the foresight—born of fear for our lives at the time—was serendipitous now.
I placed Caesarion in the hull of the boat, cradled in his blankets. He slept peacefully, his lips twitching in dreams.
Weakened as I still was from labour, it was harder to push the boat out alone, but the incoming tide buoyed its weight as it reached the shoreline, and I was able to embark in the shallows.
Once I arrived at the new city harbour, I knew where I was going. I had made my enquiries at the hospital the day before.
I shuffled through the streets, my medicine bag bouncing against my hip, Caesarion cradled against my chest.
“Three houses south of the market…” I whispered to myself.
When I arrived, there was no light coming from the entranceway and I cursed.
“Who calls on the gods at my door?”
I started at the sound of the man’s voice. It disturbed Caesarion’s sleep and he grumbled. I clutched him tighter, swaying my arms to and fro.
“Are you Khufu?” I asked the shadow beneath the doorframe.
He lit a torch, lighting his profile, and I swallowed a gasp. His entire face was marked with ink. Down one cheek was a series of hieroglyphics, across his brow a solar constellation.
“What might you need with Khufu?” He set his jaw and I noted the falcon that flew across his neck.
I reached into my pocket and withdrew a bag of coins. “I have a request for you.”
He eyed me before letting me into his home. “It is late at night to be walking the streets with so many coins.”
I felt the hairs on my arm bristle, but when I looked at him, his expression held no malice. In fact, he watched me with curiously kind eyes, which only sharpened after I made my request.
“The eye of Horus? On the babe’s leg?”
“Yes, the coins are not bronze,” I said, pushing the pouch across the table.
He looked at the sleeping Caesarion, who I laid next to the payment. “It will hurt.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
I will never forget the moment my son’s eyes flew open in pain. I had only caught glimpses of his eyes beneath the swollen eyelids of birth, but they grew wide now, larger than I’d ever seen them. And though no tears came, he screamed, his face growing red.
For the first time I felt the tether Charmion had spoken of before. I felt his pain like it was my own, and I wept for the both of us.
The ink work took longer than I had hoped, each prick of the needle an agony that became scored into my mind. But it sealed his fate better than my lie could.
And when the final dot was preserved in skin, I gathered him up and held him to my breast.
“I am so sorry,” I whispered against his hair, curling just like his father’s. “I am so sorry, my son.”
Love had blossomed from this moment of pain, and I could not imagine a life as precious as the one I held in my arms.
Khufu collected up the coins. The task had left him haggard. But there was one more needle yet to come.
I reached into my bag, pulling out my parting gift.
“Thank you, Khufu. May the gods bless you in the afterlife.”
After my cowardice with the soothsayer, I had prepared better this time.
I could leave no footprints leading to my deceit.
The needle I pressed into Khufu’s skin was laced with a concoction of poisons: a dose of distilled wolfsbane sap, lethal enough to kill by sunrise, and opium, to send him into an easy sleep before transitioning to death, for I was not without mercy.
I did not think of Khufu’s death as murder: it was necessary to secure the succession for Caesarion.
I would like to say that I weighed up the deaths that would have occurred in a dispute for the throne and sought the less bloodied path, but I did not.
Though I prevented a civil war with Khufu’s sacrifice, I would have cut down a hundred men. A thousand.
Khufu’s eyes widened, then rolled backwards as the opium took effect. He slumped to his knees and fell forwards, expelling the air in his lungs with a huff. I watched him gasping on the floor with a curious detachment.
I felt no guilt for taking his life. No shame had stayed my hand.
His death was survival. For me, for my son, for Egypt.
Before, I told you I was a queen first and a mother second.
Now, I was simply a queen who was a mother.
The throne had not become secondary—for I was Egypt—but my child had become Egypt too. He and I were one.
I left the coins for Khufu’s family to find.
—
When I returned to my rooms that night, Charmion was waiting.
“I sent Eiras away, it is just us,” she said quietly.
“Does she know I left the palace?”
“No, she knows nothing of the tunnel.” The look she gave me was sad and distant. “I would not betray your secrets, Cleo.”
I couldn’t meet her gaze. I knew it was a mercy that she didn’t ask where I had gone.
She didn’t want to hear my lie, though I had formulated it: I went to show my son the city.
Charmion knew everything about me; there was no secret I had that wasn’t hers too.
But I could not tell her the truth of this.
I was too humiliated that the gods had condemned my child so.
What had I done to anger the pantheon? Why was my son the first Ptolemy not to be blessed?
I rubbed the mark at my own neck. It wasn’t the exact hue of Caesarion’s, which had a slight blueness to it from the pigment in the ink. But no one will notice the difference, I assured myself.
The skin on Caesarion’s leg was hot beneath my touch. I pressed a kiss to his brow and prayed he would forgive me: let time heal this wound and banish this memory.
I turned to Charmion. “In seven days, we prepare a feast in Caesarion’s honour. In Horus’s honour. Send missives to the court.” Long enough for the ink to scab and heal.
Caesar entered as I spoke. “A feast, Cleopatra?”
Charmion bowed, all informality gone in the presence of the consul.
“Yes, I think it is time that our son is properly celebrated,” I said. I pulled my clothing tighter around me, hoping he did not notice its simplicity. But his eyes were for his son alone.
“Does that mean you will now allow other people to hold him?” he asked.
I laughed, though he expressed no mirth. “By all means.”
Caesar seemed relieved, and I wondered how much he had been discussing my recent temperament with Charmion and Eiras.
I held out Caesarion to him and he lifted the babe from me, cradling him in his arms.
His smile was radiant as he looked down at our son. “Your mother says we must celebrate you, and I think that is a fine idea.”
“I will begin the preparations, Pharaoh,” Charmion said. Pharaoh, not Cleo.
“Charmion…” I started, but my handmaiden swept away before I could finish.
I could call her back with a word, but our trust was built as a bridge—she saw me beyond my title, and I saw her beyond hers.
And for the first time, cracks were forming.
—
The feast drew in all the nobility of Egypt, and some allies from neighbouring countries.
The celebration was a political one, a strategy to strengthen my rule. It allowed me to reinforce my image of Isis and Horus while also fortifying a united front between my brother and me.
The kitchens roasted twelve boars for the occasion, and Caesar had sent for several casks of palm wine. A sistrum player chimed a steady melody as courtiers engaged in games of senet and dice.
I watched the festivities from the comfort of my throne, my son laid across my lap.
Bastet and Maahes lay by my feet, already grown to the size of large goats.
The cubs wore lapis-studded collars that matched the beaded hem of my own dress, and Caesarion was also lavishly adorned: a small circlet lay upon his head, with golden falcon wings coming together above his brow.
The linen draped over him was parted to reveal the slip of skin where ink had marked him with the eye of Horus. We were the very image of the gods.
Courtiers greeted us both and laid gifts at our feet throughout the evening. Ptolemy, sitting beside me, complained that he had yet to receive any.
“It is Caesarion’s night, brother,” I reminded him. “But you may choose any gift you desire from the offerings on the morrow. Your nephew is too young to know.” This cheered him.
I was determined to keep my youngest brother happy and placid in his role as a figurehead, after I had failed with Theos. I tried not to think of my brother, deep beneath the waters of the bay.
I was glad of the distraction when a governor approached the dais.
I recognised but couldn’t quite place him.
He bowed low, his long hair fanning out around him. “Pharaoh. My name is Governor Serapion from Memphis. I had the pleasure of joining you for dinner during your tour to Hermonthis.”