Chapter Twenty
aesar once told me he had faced death so many times that it had become a friend to him.
“When she comes for me, I will know her face and kiss her lips like a lover.”
The Death of whom he spoke was the only woman whose tryst with Caesar could ever elicit my jealousy. For she would have him forever, when I would have him for just a few short years.
“The first time I met Death, I was twenty-five years old,” he said. He had been captured by a band of pirates near Pharmacusa.
“I was journeying to Rhodes to study oratory at the feet of Apollonius Molo when they ransacked my ship. They held a blade to my throat and I felt the fingers of Death tighten around my soul.”
“Were you scared?” I asked.
We were lounging in the gardens, my back against Caesar’s chest. I felt his laugh in my ribcage.
“Of course I was. I had been in peril so rarely. Had I been alone, know that I would have soiled my garments.”
“You would not!”
“No,” he admitted, “probably not, but know that I feared for my life.”
“How did you get free?”
“I told them who I was. Even then, I had made a name for myself. They ransomed me twenty talents.”
“Is that all?” I spoke in jest, but he took my words to heart.
“I told them to ransom me fifty at least.”
Bartering with pirates with a knife at his throat. That was the man Caesar was. He knew his worth, and the world was a poorer place without him in it.
It was Antonius who told me of Caesar’s fate. He said not a word, but I could read it on his face. His skin was wan, his eyes wild like those of the horse he had cantered in on.
Ptolemy’s prophecy had come to pass.
The sun lost all its warmth and I began to shiver.
“No,” I said as Antonius slipped from the sweat-covered beast and approached me.
“Pharaoh…” His voice was a shattered thing, barely a rasp.
“No,” I said again. “Do not say it.”
But I knew it in my heart: Caesar had passed to the next realm.
Charmion looked between us, concern weaving her brows together.
“He is gone, Cleopatra.” It was the first time he called me by my name, and not “Isis” or “Pharaoh.” I remember it starkly, for I focused on the shape it made of his mouth—anything to stop thinking on what he was saying. “Killed by conspirators fearful of his power.”
“Julius…” I heard a moan escape from low in my throat, like the sound of a deer struck by an arrow.
“Mama!” I turned. Caesarion held a stick larger than his small body. He thrust it forward as if lunging with a trident. “I’m a gladiator. Can I show Papa?”
My knees struck the ground and I began to sob. Charmion wrapped her arms around my waist but I shrugged her off.
“Take Caesarion away, take him away!” I said. I did not want my son to see me so broken, laid so low.
The cloudless sky pressed upon my back.
How will I ever stand again?
I would have lain there forever; let the worms eat my flesh, and the soil take my waters. Let grass push through my skin, and roots bind my bones.
But Antonius was there, his rough hands picking me up. He cradled me against his chest like a babe, and I let him.
“Show me the way to her chambers?” I heard him ask as if from a vast distance. I was inconsolable, my tears and my breath one and the same.
I felt softness beneath me, but I was overcome with paralysis.
Had I closed my eyes, or were they too swollen to open?
I do not know how much time passed before I eventually fell asleep.
I woke with Caesarion in my arms, my nose pressed to his neck. He smelled of Caesar.
“He would not sleep in his rooms; I did not think you would mind.”
I looked into Charmion’s eyes, which reflected the candle-light. “Tell me it was all a nightmare,” I whispered, pulling Caesarion closer.
“It was not,” she said gently. “I am so sorry.”
She came to me and kissed my forehead. But even she could not soothe my grief.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Half a day.”
“Marcus?”
“He paces the hallways beyond. He has more to tell you.”
“Send for him,” I said.
I did not rise from the bed, I did not arrange my hair. I simply lay there, my hair undone, my kohl smudged from the tears. It was not a great distance from the woman he had first met.
“Pharaoh.” He bowed low upon entering. “I am sorry to add further to your burden, but I have seen Caesar’s will.” He hesitated, his gaze going to the sleeping Caesarion.
“Yes?”
“He did not claim your son as his heir. His great-nephew Octavian has been named.”
I have wondered countless times since whether Caesar knew what he had done. Whether poor administration was to blame, or shrewd politics.
Had he known the war that was to come, would he have done the same?
“Impossible,” I said, too loudly. Caesarion stirred. I laid a hand on his heart, like his father had done just that morning, and he settled again.
“It is true,” Antonius said. “The senate is in turmoil and I cannot guarantee your safety. Your son may be seen as a threat to succession, and I know not who to trust.”
“We must leave Rome,” I surmised.
“Immediately.”
I looked to Charmion and nodded once. She hurried from the room to begin the preparations.
“Why did you not save him?” I asked.
Antonius clenched the hilt of his sword, his knuckles going white. “They lured me away from the senate. If I had been there, I would have fought Caesar’s foes with blade and fist.”
“By your reckoning, they were many?”
He grimaced. “More than there should have been.”
I closed my eyes as tears seeped down my face. “How could this have happened?”
Antonius’s reply was full of anguish. “I do not know.”
Caesarion awoke from his nap and upon seeing my tears began to cry too. The sound appeared to torture Antonius.
“Go,” I said to him.
“Pharaoh, please make haste. You have already stayed too long. It would pain me to see you hurt, and I cannot be here to protect you.”
“Not that having you near helped my husband,” I said, and he flinched as if struck.
“I am sorry,” he said, bowing his head and retreating.
Caesarion clutched my hand and I looked down at the little fingers in my palm.
Within them he held so many of my and Caesar’s hopes for the future.
I was never ambitious in the way Arsinoe was.
I ruled in service to Egypt—who, like the gods above, bound me beyond obligation.
Egypt was my keeper, as I was hers, and I could not deny my son the same privilege.
A Roman and an Egyptian. A king of two realms.
“He will rule better than both of us,” Caesar had foretold.
Then why did you omit him from your will, Julius?
Grief fortified my resolve. “I won’t give up, you know,” I called after Antonius, who looked back at me as he reached the doorway. I continued, “Caesarion is the heir of Julius and I will not let history forget it.”
Antonius nodded once. “Fear not—no son of Caesar will be lost to time.”
And then he left me to my grief.
—
The next morning we left Caesar’s estate for the last time. As we made our way across the city to the harbour, we passed another litter—a rarity so early in the morning.
The two transits crossed paths and I peered into the window of the other.
The woman inside was veiled, but she parted the silk to look at me as we passed. Time stood still as I looked into the red-rimmed eyes of Calpurnia.
Caesar’s wife and I had orbited each other but had never met. She resided in a different villa on the opposite side of the city. I thought little of her, and I presume she thought little of me.
History will claim we hated each other, envied one another. But in that moment I saw nothing beyond a woman hurting. A kindred spirit.
She nodded to me, and I to her. That simple gesture lifted the haze of grief and I could see more clearly.
I thought of her often after that. It comforted me to know someone else had loved him, treasured him, as I had.
—
The journey back to Egypt was dire. I was afflicted by seasickness from the violence of the storms that plagued us, and no amount of mint could subdue it. Heartbreak also stole my sleep, and by the time we reached the shores of Egypt, I was a mere outline of my former self.
I became short-tempered with everyone, but with Ptolemy most of all.
Where grief had made a shadow of me, guilt had claimed my brother.
I cannot fathom the burden of knowing a death before it happens. I never asked Ptolemy how many times it had happened to him. I had only witnessed it rarely, and even then, only cared if it affected those I knew.
But in my current condition I was not able to empathise. Instead, I chose to deepen his guilt by focusing on the flaws in his gift.
“What use is your power that it is so weak as not to warn you in the days prior? Does your god not favour you as he should?” I said to him, my mouth twisted in frustration. I had been drinking Roman wine, as it had proved to be the only way sleep found me.
“My gift does not work like that, sister,” he replied, like he had every other time I’d sought to apply blame. Though my brother was now fifteen, I found I still barely knew him. After Theos’s death I had put distance between us, rarely engaging him outside of formal requirements.
“What use is your gift, then?” I stood, swaying a little as I left the dining table.
I found myself in my rooms shortly after.
“Cleo, would you like to say goodnight to Caesarion?” Charmion asked by the door.
I shook my head. In the last few weeks, I had found it too difficult to look into Caesarion’s eyes. They resembled Caesar’s.
And so the days dragged on. I never resumed going to the hospital to help heal the sick and I never left the palace, my grief the only company I desired.
—
“Sister?” Ptolemy called out. I was lounging on my balcony, a bottle of palm wine on a table next to me, despite it being early morning.
“What is it?” I laid bare my resentment towards him in every look, in every word.
“I have a headache—might you have a remedy?”
I did not get up from my seat; instead I pointed to my medicine bag, which had remained untouched for some time.
“Brew some willow bark in hot water,” I said, my words slurring slightly.
I heard him rummage in the vials and jars of medicines before retreating. I closed my eyes and thought of him no more.
“Cleo, Cleo, wake up.” Charmion was shaking me awake.
“What is it?” I said groggily, but my mind cleared as I read the horror in her face.
“It’s Ptolemy,” she said, her voice clotted with unshed tears.
I gathered up my skirts and strode through the palace until I reached Ptolemy’s chamber. He lay slumped across his bed, the shattered pottery of a broken cup on the floor.
I checked his chest for breath, but there was none.
“What happened?” I spoke with numb lips.
It was one of his servants who answered. “He asked me for hot water, Pharaoh, to mix with some herbs. When I returned to collect the finished cup, he was gone.” The servant quivered, holding in the sobs that threatened to overcome him.
I recognised the jar of herbs set on the table beside his bed. My mouth went dry when I saw what I had written on the label.
“Wolfsbane.”
Poison.
My stomach lurched and I turned away from the body of my brother. Bile rose up in my throat. Servants attempted to catch the vomit but it was too late. It splashed across the tiles, coating my feet in sour wine.
“He came to me and asked for a cure for his headache,” I said.
Like Theos before him, there had been no deep love between us, but he had still been of my blood. And I of his. I felt his death like a spear to my guts, deep enough to cause irrevocable damage.
There would be no healing from this.
I was destined to see each of my siblings suffer in turn. Ptolemy was just a boy, not many years older than Caesarion. The thought made my stomach heave again, but there was nothing left.
“I am empty,” I said, not really knowing what I referred to. For I was hollowed of all.
I had endured many things during my life, but Ptolemy’s death pushed me beyond my limits. Death courted me time and time again, but I was an unwilling consort.
The mark on my neck prickled, reminding me of my patron goddess.
Why do you neglect me so?
“Call the priests to prepare his body,” I said quietly before I left the room.
I cannot tell you if Ptolemy intended to die this day. Perhaps he had awoken that morning with his god’s voice calling to him—beckoning him to his kingdom. Or did he go ignorantly to Anubis’s side?
I tortured myself for many years that I had said “wolfsbane” instead of “willow bark” that fateful day. The other likelihood is that he misheard me and reached for the poison.
Or perhaps the most horrific scenario of all: my treatment of Ptolemy had driven him to seek the beyond.
But wherever the path began, the destination was the same.
My brother was dead, and I reigned alone once more.