Chapter Twenty-Five #2
I waited for Antonius late into the night. When he arrived back from the gymnasium his usually bright eyes were dulled with wine.
“Octavian threatens you,” I said.
For a moment it looked as though he might deny it. But then he nodded.
“But I cannot leave you, not like this,” he said miserably, holding out his arms.
I did not let myself go to him. “You should have told me.”
“What could you have done?”
“Sent you back to Rome,” I said, my voice rising. “Octavian threatens you with war, and you have no armies, no soldiers here. So in truth, Octavian threatens me with war.”
“I would not let him,” Antonius said fiercely.
I went to Antonius’s side and cupped his cheek in my hand. “You would have no choice, my love.”
He tilted his head towards my touch. “I fear I have underestimated his popularity. The Republic rises against me.”
“Reconciliation is the only way.” As much as I wanted Octavian dispatched and all threat to Caesarion’s legitimacy vanquished, I knew that now was not the right time.
“I have thought on this, but there is little I can do from here.”
“And that is why you are going to return to Rome,” I said firmly.
Antonius shook his head, kneeling before me and resting his head on my swollen stomach.
“I will not.”
“You must,” I said. Tears began to seep from my eyes. “And you must marry Octavian’s sister.”
“What?” he exclaimed.
I had thought of the plan that evening. It was the only way to protect Egypt from Octavian’s wrath.
I sense you furrowing your brow, as if to say, “You were the one who forced him into Octavia’s arms?”
Grant me grace. There was little I could control in Rome to guide my own fate. But this I could steer. So, I reached the heartrending conclusion that Antonius must be wed.
“Octavia is recently widowed, is she not?” I pressed.
“Yes, but—”
“Bind yourself to your enemies so you can watch them more closely.”
Antonius was crying now too, his sobs muffled against my flesh. Our flesh, that grew within me.
“I cannot, Cleopatra. I cannot do that.”
I tilted his head upwards, so he could look into my eyes and see the depth of my conviction. “I know what we share; it is blood, it is bone, it is breath.”
These words remain as crisp as a fallen leaf in my memory; even in death they keep their form.
“Nothing can break us,” I continued. “Not even another marriage.”
Antonius stood, colour coming back into his cheeks. “I will go on one condition.”
I laughed. “Not another wager.”
Antonius did not smile. He was watching me intensely. “No wager. Only a promise. Marry me first. Marry me here, beneath the gods of Egypt. Then I will do what must be done in Rome.”
Tears fell down my cheeks once more as I felt my children move beneath my skin under the light of their father’s love.
I nodded and Antonius embraced me.
—
We were wed the next day in the Temple of Isis. We did not announce our union to the world, for what did the world need to know of it?
That morning, I donned my most precious crown.
It bore a likeness to Isis’s golden horns, but in place of the solar disc sat a cluster of pearls.
Beneath it I wore a coiled wig of gold thread, decorated with shells and gold beads.
My dress, I’d had made by Apollodorus. It was voluminous enough to cover my swelling stomach but still cut in the knotted style of the goddess.
As I came out to greet Antonius at the temple, I smiled. He had dressed as Dionysus, with an ivy wreath around his long hair and a panther skin over his shoulders.
He bowed low when he saw me.
“Isis,” he greeted me.
I inclined my head with mock seriousness. “Dionysus.”
He took my hand and pressed it to his lips. “Shall we bind our love beneath the gods?”
Together we kneeled before the statue of Isis and offered her gifts and promises. We sacrificed a goat on the altar, its blood running down the flagstones and dripping into the empty pool that was yet to be completed.
That evening, we made love on the temple steps beneath the stars and moon, and slept beneath the panther skin on the Antirhodos shoreline.
When I awoke, he was gone. In his place he had left the wooden carving of Dionysus.
I held it against my chest and wept.
—
The twins came ten days after he left. Earlier than I had hoped, but the birth was quick.
“A girl and a boy,” Charmion announced.
We held one each and cried, our foreheads touching. “What shall you name them?”
“Cleopatra Selene,” I said, kissing the wet cheeks of the girl before looking to her brother. “And Alexander Helios.”
Charmion smiled. “Noble names.” I opened my arms and she placed Alexander against my other nipple.
I sighed as I felt both babes latch, the golden milk of my breasts filling their small stomachs. My chest ached for Antonius.
“Shall I call the soothsayer?” Charmion said quietly.
I looked down at their little bodies, their skin unblemished. Then I remembered the pain of the needle in Caesarion’s skin and the scream that had shattered my heart.
“No.”
I knew the soothsayer would not find the gods’ mark on them. I had searched for it the moment they had drawn their first breath.
Charmion wiped tears from her cheeks. “They will be enough without the gods’ blessing.”
I nodded. “They will be enough.”
I spent the first three weeks of their life in the birthing rooms, sequestered from daily life. I accepted no visitors except Caesarion, whose smiling face was almost enough to banish all longing for Antonius.
When I rejoined the court and daily life resumed, I received word that Antonius had married Octavia.
I disposed of the letter and thought no more of it. Well, that is what I told Charmion, at least.
I had promised her we would never hide our true selves from the other, but I was ashamed of my envy.
The night I received word, I went to the pond in the north gardens and slipped into the still water as though I might find Antonius there, laughing.
But when I looked at my reflection, I saw only the twisted face of jealousy.
I crept back into the palace dripping pondwater and algae from my hair and did not even wake Charmion to bathe me, instead sleeping in the slime of envy.
This was a pain that only I could know of. And now, I suppose, you.
Skip Notes
* It was Velleius Paterculus who said Fulvia had “nothing of the woman in her except her sex.” For ambition is a manly pursuit, supposedly. Will we ever tire of men defining the parameters of womanhood? I look at the world as you live it, reader, and grow weary.