Cleopatra Dismounts, page 12
I wondered how old he was. And if he had a brother among those crucified by my Caesar. With my limited years I found it hard to assess the age of others, but the age of this pirate was particularly elusive. Two long scars cut across his face, his wrestler’s body was dismayingly strong, and his thick, bushy beard seemed a stranger to a comb. I was not the only one. None of us could guess his age. From childhood on, he had been nurtured on violence; the measure of his years was not ours.
On one of his visits I said to him, “You’re a fish. You’ve been hooked by those you planned to hook.”
My comment unnerved him. He responded by running his knife blade over the tip of his tongue and drawing blood.
“Me, a fish?” he said, widening the wound in his tongue as he spoke. “Nobody hooks me except me.”
I was on the point of rebuking him. What was the idea behind hurting himself? But I caught his eye and his violent mood checked me. It was obvious that he had stuck the point of knife into his tongue to calm himself down. My words had touch a nerve I could not imagine.
“I didn’t intend to upset you; it was just a—” I swallowed the word “joke.”
The ageless pirate jumped back aboard his own ship with a cheetah’s agility.
Apart from that one incident, the pirates labored to make our trip a pleasant one. They even pitched in with goodwill to help ready us for our arrival.
In less time than we had calculated, we skirted the dangerous shoals ahead and the beautiful harbor of Cilicia, Tarsus, lay in sight, its quayside crowded with speedy vessels. Seen from the sea, Tarsus was a stirring sight. For a moment I credited the legend that here had landed a feather from the wing of Pegasus, after it was broken by Perseus.
Once more I requested the treatment proper to an heir apparent, and once more I received it.
As the governor of Cilicia came toward my ship on board his small vessel, our guards, I mean the pirates, covered us with an enormous cloth that we had sewn together from our own garments. When he was within feet of us, they suddenly pulled aside the cloth and astonished him with the same scene that had dazzled them. The musicians played, this time not dance tunes, but music that accorded with the solemnity of our tableau vivant. Then the pirates pulled the cloth over their own bodies and one after the other, they popped up their heads to represent the many-headed hydra.
After listening to the speech Apollodorus and I had prepared for the occasion, the governor invited the child Isis to his palace, unaware it was a child, reverencing her like Isis herself. I saw my maids beaming with delight, and my noble and faithful Charmian happy as could be.
The Cilicians were going through a serious crisis. Not long before, they had been masters of the Mediterranean, so much so that both merchant ships and those of the Roman state preferred to travel in stormy weather, storms being less perilous than pirates. To combat them, Caesar had given Pompey unprecedented resources. The Senate designated him sole general, selected from the consuls, with supreme command from the pillars of Hercules to Syria and the Pontus, and all territories twenty leagues inland. He had an army of a size never seen before. He had the authority to appoint twenty-five lieutenants, all with praetorial rank and powers, and two treasurers with the rights of quaestors, and under them he had marshaled 120,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, and 500 ships. It stands to reason that he had already routed a great number of the Cilicians’ allies. The Cilicians themselves were untouched; on perceiving the threat of the Roman attack, they had lived up to their reputation as formidable adversaries and shut up their women, children, and treasures in the castles of the Taurus.
I arrived at a court where there was not a single woman, and I ate my meals from wooden plates. The court was composed of adventurers and desperadoes from all nations, of licensed mercenaries, citizens exiled from the destroyed cities of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, runaways and outlaws from towns everywhere. They had holed up here originally because the magnificent forests of Cilicia afforded them excellent timber to construct ships, but over the course of time the governor of Cilicia proved himself the best kind of governor pirates could hope for, by his dash, his cunning, his bravery, his astonishing strategic ability, his coolness in crisis, his sense of justice, and his inveterate hatred of Romans. I should never have left that place. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here on the brink of death, trapped where I don’t deserve to be, before a mean-spirited and graceless enemy. If Caesar had defeated me! If Antony had! If Pompey had! That I could take. But this, never. I cannot continue with my story. Cleopatra’s time has come.
Diomedes the Informer
Almost, almost, almost . . . she almost spoke the way I have written, those were almost her words, or they would have been if Cleopatra had not spoken very different ones. They are not exactly out of tune with her. At least they approximate her tone, and if maybe I shifted them around, if I tossed them into a saucepan and stirred them, as though concocting a potion, they would not be too far from the ones Cleopatra uttered that day. But this is not the time for saucepans and these were not her actual words. I have to confess it. If I acted like a Roman slave in my first effort, in this second I have only my own defects to lay the blame on: my mental laziness, my pettiness, my clumsy tongue that forces me to make her speak in this misleading fashion . . . Face the truth and call me what I am, lazy, insignificant, gauche, but also add that I am pigheaded, because I am going to try for yet a third time. This will be my final attempt. I tense my bow. My arrow cannot miss its target. This time there will be no mistakes, though I am a veritable seedbed of errors. Because here I am not going to leave evidence of my own imaginings. I simply want to reproduce her words. I do not wish to die in the condition of a liar. Come on, Diomedes! Stop dithering! Concentrate, remember! So listen now: thus spake Cleopatra, bathed in the blood of Antony, to give testimony of her passage through life:
The Queen Dismounts with a Single Leap
The queen dismounts with a single leap. All her company does the same. They glide to the ground, abandoning their mounts.
—Virgil
We reached the gates of Pelusium before nightfall. We did not rein in our mounts even when the fortress came in sight. Still faithful, the city embraced us, set there, well-weaponed and flying its blood-red flags, in the desert zone that acted as a second wall of defense.
It was ten months since the intrigues of my husband’s and brother’s Ruling Council had driven me to lay my traps, devices that had won me the popular voice of Egypt. Like all good weapons, it was two-edged; I used it both to promote myself and to expel the troops of Gabirius and the rest of the Roman leeches. Regardless of the veracity of the propaganda I spread far and wide, I managed to gain the favor of the fickle mob but at the same time brought on myself the enraged displeasure of my brother’s minions, who clung to him to suck out the riches of the Nile, for as long as they could avoid my eagle-eyed supervision and the enmity of Gabirius’s men.
The legionaries that Aulus Gabirius had left in Egypt to protect the throne of the reinstated Auletes had enjoyed five years of the easy life of Egypt. My lasting seduction of Upper Egypt and my momentary and partial appeasement of Alexandria sat badly with their airy pretensions to imperial status. It was the visit of Gnaius Pompey that broke the spell I had cast over the city. He had come to ask for help in the civil war against Caesar. Along with Ptolemy’s Ruling Council, we sat down behind closed doors and deliberated on whether to help him or not. While we were meeting, the young Ptolemy fell asleep from all the wine they had poured into him, polluting my air with all kinds of gastric discharges. As had happened with Auletes my father under different circumstances, the wretches had bloated the boy-king physically and mentally, flattering and corrupting him, poisoning his mind with frequent stories of how I was refusing to let him exercise his powers as commander in chief and husband.
Despite our deliberations we reached no easy accord. The only thing that passed off with moderate ease was Ptolemy’s falling asleep, but finally we reached the conclusion it would be wise to help Pompey. We would send out with all speed sixty ships and the soldiers of Gabirius. But exactly how many of them? Potinus and Achilles, the boy-king’s key advisors, wanted to keep the number laughably small. Given a choice, they would have sent none. They had secret links with the restless legionaries, by now half-Roman, half-Alexandrian, and counted on their support, based as it was on their joint hatred of Cleopatra. Protarcus, my chief minister, handled the matter adroitly. We sent ships and food supplies, along with five hundred of the finest men of Gabirius, those who would obey Achilles without discussion.
The Ruling Council and the Court of Ptolemy broadcast this support to the four winds, attributing it solely to me, inflating the numbers and setting the people of Alexandria against me. Their slanders painted me as a Rome-loving traitor to Egypt, terming me a liar because, they claimed, I said one thing and did another. My earlier wooing of Alexandria was made to work against me.
The remaining soldiers of Gabirius greedily stoked the fires of revolt. This was exactly what they had been waiting for. If their Roman leanings had predisposed them against me when I preached against the scandalous bloodletting of their fellow countrymen, they had declared themselves my open enemies since the first days of my mandate, over their bitter dispute with Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus. It occurred at the time the Parthians routed the troops of Crassus, who had then been assassinated. Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus had just been appointed governor of Syria. The Parthians were poised to swoop down over the frontier and he had only a handful of men to defend it. There were no reinforcements in Syria. Bibulus sent his two sons to Egypt, to recruit, in the name of Imperial Rome, the urgently needed soldiers of Gabirius.
They were two remarkable youngsters, only a couple of years older than Ptolemy. What a difference! Ptolemy was incapable of deciding between two figs. I don’t exaggerate. One day he hurled himself to the floor in a tantrum of despair after his servants had removed the tray of figs he had been unable to select from, despite a whole morning’s pondering. But the sons of Bibulus were as decisive as lightning. While Ptolemy was prematurely jaded, these boys with their avid curiosity were interested in whatever was happening. If Ptolemy had difficulty in marshaling his thoughts on the simplest of topics, the boys applied their minds to any problem with astonishing effectiveness. Where Ptolemy was fat, they were needle-thin. If Ptolemy chortled with laughter at the scurrilous jokes of the eunuchs, the boys controlled themselves and brought smiles to the faces of others with their tales of life in Syria that poked fun at Romans and Seleucids alike. They confided to Olympus, my doctor, that their father’s surgeon was such a medical genius that he applied poultices to the humps of the first camels he saw. One of my cats, they nicknamed “Syrian-slayer” and when I asked why, they answered, “Syrians are so chickenhearted that even the mildest-mannered cat is enough to scare them all to death.”
I was happy to let them have Gabirius’s men, for they were only a nuisance to me. I acted alone at this point, because the Ruling Council of Ptolemy had not yet started to function, or rather dysfunction. It suited me to put distance between me and those soldiers. After staying with me and reaching this favorable conclusion, the sons of Bibulus went over to the barracks of the soldiers to give them their marching orders.
These troops of Gabirius, once legionaries but now mercenaries, felt no urge to go chasing Parthians. Married to Alexandrian women and made affluent by the outlandish generosity of my father, they had become habituated to a life of ease, to the facile, gossipy, unrivaled pleasures of Alexandria. Instead of being willing to appreciate the true caliber of Bibulus’s sons, and carrying out orders duly given them in the name of Rome, they turned treasonously on the two boys and without giving them a chance to defend themselves, murdered them.
That act was not merely military disobedience. It was a slap in the face of Cleopatra. I could not let it pass. The queen of Egypt herself had sent them the sons of Bibulus. The order was tantamount to a decree from me; the young men were my personal friends. The murder demanded that the throne of the Lagids pay them back in full for their cruelty and insubordination. I imprisoned the killers of the boys, two Romans rapidly gone to seed in easygoing Alexandria, as fat as Ptolemy himself, continually drunk, stinking of rotten meat, rendered so impotent by food and drink that the best they could do was to molest little girls, or fall asleep before they were buggered by handsome male dancers, the kinaidos. Egypt’s life of luxury and self-indulgence had returned these Romans to their cradles. These depraved creatures, sucking on alcohol instead of mother’s milk, had grown enraged at the fine spirits of these two youngsters and somewhere in their greasy softness had found enough energy to kill them. Pale from sleeping day and night, they grasped daggers in their puffy fists and slaughtered the two birdlike boys. In the words of Cleisthenes, the court poet:
Two baby birds were sleeping.
Two drunken thugs came creeping
And stabbed them in their nest.
Two daggers without feeling
Two guileless fates were sealing.
The worst had slain the best.
Tell me why, ye gods above,
Such metals felt no hint of love,
Though forged at Hate’s behest?
Alas! how could that cruel steel
No touch of tender mercy feel
For two such chicks at rest?
It was not up to Egypt to judge them. To do so would be to admit such scum belonged with us. To remove any doubt that they were Romans, I had them sent to Bibulus. Then the legionaries, I need hardly say, exploded with rage and accused me of being a “Roman lackey” because of my actions.
But I have wandered off topic again, led astray by the mention of Gabirius and his soldiers. Let me get back to the fury that was felt in Alexandria when the Ruling Council broadcast my support of Pompey. I had hoped to find a chance to ingratiate myself with Egypt when the sacred bull, Bakis, adored as the living soul of Ammon Ra, died in Hermonthis. I intended to take the new Bakis to the temple, to accompany it in person down the Nile, to attend the ceremony, and thereby win for myself some popularity with the people.
“The Queen, mistress of the Two Lands, the goddess who loves her father, rowed the boat of Ammon and took it to Hermonthis to place the bull, Bakis, in its temple.” So said the inscription in the chapel of Bakis. “The Queen Cleopatra is our monarch, she is our absolute sovereign, she holds dominion over Upper and Lower Egypt. The bull Bakis accompanied Isis as she rowed the Nile.”
My plan at first silenced the hostile talk against Cleopatra. The impressive royal barge traversed the Nile, inspiring confidence with its show of gold and purple. Ahead lay Thebes where the people adored me. But behind my back, Alexandria, spurred on by the Ruling Council, deposed me.
I ruled from Upper Egypt, preparing my land army with the same zeal and care I had earlier bestowed on my fleet. Alexandria had robbed me of the name of queen; now we would force it back into their mouths by a pincer-movement from land and sea.
The Ruling Council sent an ambassador to my court to sue for peace. Ptolemy, they claimed, wanted to fulfill the wishes of our father. They invited me to return to Alexandria, offering me a share of the throne they themselves had stolen from me, and protested their undying loyalty, complaining about the instability of the mob, as if they had not: stoked the fires of its rage.
We were divided in our opinions about how to react. It was an act of treasonous perfidy, a plan to lure me back and assassinate me, said the High Priest Psheneriptah, the Master of the Hunt, the Lord High Steward, and my doctor Olympus. My chief minister Protarcus and I thought otherwise. The fact was that the Ruling Council was scared; it had lost control of Egypt. For the second year in a row the harvest had been disastrous, hunger was fomenting rebellion in Alexandria, but not against Cleopatra—against the Lagids, the court, the merchants, the landowners, the craftsmen, and the Jews. Now they were faced with my pincer attack.
My decision overruled the High Priest. We undertook the return to Alexandria. On the royal boats would travel my court and my bodyguards. (These were not the four hundred Gauls that Antony would one day present me with.) The army would follow us by land to protect us against possible betrayal. With three hundred men, we figured, we could hold out until the rest of my troops reinforced us.
When our boats arrived at Heliopolis, at the delta of the Nile, spies informed me that we were walking into a trap, that the royal army was readying itself to attack us as we landed. The High Priest had been right. They intended to block any retreat to Pelusium, for the numerous cavalry of Ptolemy was on the point of attacking ours, while its rearguard was waiting for our boats. We landed safely and immediately fled on horseback, galloping through the night without sleeping, stopping only to change mounts and grab a mouthful of food, on toward Ascalon, the Philistine city we had protected from the ravenous greed of the king of Judaea. In its recent issue of coins, it declared its allegiance to me, placing the image of Cleopatra on both faces. Messenger pigeons flew off to warn my army of the impending arrival of Ptolemy’s troops and of our change of destination, and to advise our allies in Ascalon of our arrival.
The garrison from Pelusium joined up with us in the desert. They could protect us from a surprise attack, though the risk of one was minimal, since we had spent two full days in the saddle. Even so, I refused to relax. It was midnight and royal tents had been prepared to receive me, with a banquet on the point of being served. But I rejected any rest. I wanted, before all else, to get behind the walls of Pelusium or, better still, sail for Ascalon.
