Talbot Mundy

Queen Cleopatra

Warsaw 2018

Contents

CHAPTER I “A king’s ship! But which king’s?”

CHAPTER II “Queen? Which queen?”

CHAPTER III “Halt in the name of Ptolemy!”

CHAPTER IV “I will make you admiral of all my fleet.”

CHAPTER V “Brave Words, Royal Egypt! But the Romans have a god named Mars.”

CHAPTER VI “Romans! The Romans are coming!”

CHAPTER VII “I take only Destiny for granted.”

CHAPTER VIII “A phoenix hatches only in the hot flame.”

CHAPTER IX “Did I summon you from straw-roofed villages to tell me how to govern?”

CHAPTER X “A Galilee for Egypt?”

CHAPTER XI “What can a woman do nobly and well except to bring forth children?”

CHAPTER XII “Let Lollianè earn her laurels.”

CHAPTER XIII “Vale, Imperator!”

CHAPTER XIV “Truly there is nothing for us Romans left to do but to yield to Caesar.”

CHAPTER XV “Mice crowding a hole in a corn-bin!”

CHAPTER XVI “I am Egypt.”

CHAPTER XVII “Who that is born in a womb is not a member of a mystery?”

CHAPTER XVIII “I will settle the succession to the throne this morning.”

CHAPTER XIX “Royal Egypt—Pharaoh of the Upper and the Lower Nile!”

CHAPTER XX “Egypt—could you make Rome wise?”

CHAPTER XXI “Kneel. Look upward.”

CHAPTER XXII “And this I learned from the Lord Achillas’ barber.”

CHAPTER XXIII “There is only one offense that men find unforgivable.”

CHAPTER XXIV “My soul is a woman’S—yours a man’s; and war is not my business.”

CHAPTER XXV “The Thirty-Seventh Legion at full strength—two-thirds of the men seasick.”

CHAPTER XXVI “You have made your own choice. You must take the consequences.”

CHAPTER XXVII “Tell me the secret of Caesar’S strength, for he is stronger than I.”

CHAPTER XXVIII “We will never see the old Apollodorus back.”

CHAPTER XXIX “Who hath regarded a horse, and the soul of the song that resides in him?”

CHAPTER XXX “Caesar—were you afraid to cross the Rubicon?”

CHAPTER XXXI “There is a gentleness that no amount of force of any kind can penetrate or conquer.”

CHAPTER XXXII “Death I have always thought to be the end of joy and sorrow.”

CHAPTER XXXIII “But you keep your word, Tros?”

CHAPTER XXXIV “Eastward! Turn eastward!”

CHAPTER XXXV “Whoever sticks a head into Caesar’s net is Caesar’s victim.”

CHAPTER XXXVI “Who is the ruler of Rome?”

CHAPTER XXXVII Caesar—Imperial Caesar—a god upon Earth.

CHAPTER XXXVIII “Oh, I know Antony.”

CHAPTER XXXIX “Be silent, Tros!”

CHAPTER XL “Silence at last? Praise Zeus!”

CHAPTER XLI “Caesar, beware the Ides of March!”

CHAPTER XLII “ROW—Row, you lubbers, and take Egypt home again!”

CHAPTER I. “A king’s ship! But which king’s?”

How often and with how great a longing I have tried to read the heavens! Yet the sea is nearer; can I understand that? Land is underfoot; about me is a host of other men; and I myself am nearest to myself of all things. If I find it difficult to know myself and to discover what my next act ought to be, is there a likelihood that I can read another’s heart or know the meaning of the sky? I doubt–I welcome doubt when men say this or that of any one except themselves. And when they speak about themselves, however solemnly, I wonder whether they know any more of them than I of me.
–Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

CLEOPATRA yawned. The rising sun, with a hint in its hue of the heat it had left behind in Asia, began brightening the gilt and marble coloring of the harbor water, streaking it with silver, making spots of gorgeous color where the seaweed and the scum and flotsam drifted. Through the windows, the masts of a hundred ships appeared like pen-strokes in the haze. Three crows came and perched on the marble balcony rail, alert and impudent, as Cleopatra jumped from her bed and came out under the awning, stretching herself.

“Charmian!” she called. “Oh, Charmian!”

Charmian entered through the Persian curtains at the rear of the room, wearing one of the new-fashioned Indian cotton dresses with a pale blue fringe that well offset her coppery golden hair. For a while the two gazed seaward, arms about each other’s shoulders. Then:

“I had a dream,” said Cleopatra, half closing her eyes to recall it. “This palace was mine, and I could see all Egypt. It was mine, too. Somebody–I don’t know who–had banished Ptolemy and Arsinoe with all their brood of eunuchs. He had given me the reins, and he was watching me. He wasn’t a god, and he wasn’t Apollodorus, or Diomedes, or Olympus. It was a true dream, not a nightmare.”

She spoke Greek with the broad Macedonian vowel sounds and the eclectic choice of words of an accomplished linguist.

“Any fool can die,” she went on. “I am not afraid of their poisons and daggers.”

“Then what do you fear?” asked Charmian.

“To die at the wrong moment.”

Seven more crows joined the three on the railing.

“They are talking again of making you marry Ptolemy,” said Charmian. “They held a conference last night that did not break up until an hour or two ago.”

“Who told you?”

“Lollianè. She had it from Apollodorus. He had it from Theodotus, who told Apollodorus to tell you.”

“So it comes from my brother’s tutor, does it? Well, do you see those crows?” said Cleopatra. “I would rather trust them than Theodotus. What else did they say at the conference? Have they any news?”

“None–only yesterday’s, that Pompey has defeated Caius Julius Caesar. That puts them in a quandary, because you lent Pompey fifty ships, which should make Pompey your friend. And Rome’s treasury must be empty. Pompey will have no other way of rewarding his legions than to swoop down and seize the wealth of Egypt. He will probably support you. That was what the talk was all about. There was nothing else to discuss, with that dread hanging over them. So they decided the best thing to do is to carry out your father’s will in every detail, marry you to Ptolemy, and make it difficult for Pompey to befriend you without recognizing your brother and, of course, themselves.”

“What they do to my dead body, only their own vileness may dictate,” said Cleopatra. “While I live it is mine and it is I who dispose of it. No. Not to the highest bidder, Charmian. Strange how you virgins think of nothing but the highest bidder! My brain and my body are all that I have to fight with, but they are good weapons.”

Charmian nodded. “But they say,” she went on, “that, as far as the law is concerned, the marriage could be effected without your being present. There is ample precedent. Some contended last night that a brother and sister marriage is a good thing, because inbreeding tends to fix the type of royalty. The priests say the ancient Egyptians practiced it.”

“This is modern Egypt,” Cleopatra answered. “You speak, Charmian, as if you agree with them.”

“No. I am reporting to you. And they say, if you refuse, they may marry Arsinoe to Ptolemy, put them on the throne together and repudiate you.”

Charmian followed Cleopatra’s gaze seaward. There were a thousand sounds; all Alexandria was stirring. Not two hundred paces from the palace windows melons were being unloaded from a barge to an accompanying thwacking of an overseer’s stick reminding a slave-gang that the night was over. Beyond the wharves and the crisscrossed spars and masts the calkers’ hammers had begun. The guard changed at the gate below; the clang of arms resounded, followed by the retreating tramp of the men who had been relieved.

But sound travels strangely over water, and particularly when the sea is still, with that oily sheen on it that foretells beat. Totally distinct from all the other sounds, seeming to come now from this direction, now from that, there was a pulsation, suggesting a hint of martial music.

“A ship, I suppose,” remarked Charmian after a long pause.

“Do you think they are making that noise to their gods?” suggested Cleopatra. “What extraordinary gods the sailors worship! If I were a god, and sailors made that noise to me, I would send a tempest!”

“Look,” exclaimed Charmian, “there goes the harbor master.”

“Ready to sell the port to the first strong bidder, or to plunder the first weak one,” Cleopatra commented without changing her expression or her tone of voice, but rather as if she were memorizing facts for future reference.

The great marble watch-tower on the Isle of Pharos–like a gleaming phantom nearly five hundred feet tall–was just beginning to be visible as the sun sucked up the mist. A stumpy ship, as big but not so graceful as Cleopatra’s royal barge, possessed of prodigious overhangs that made her pitch to the slightest swell, got up anchor with a deal of shouting and made toward the harbor mouth. The oars hit the water unevenly–sulkily–as if the gang were half awake. As sharp as the crack of trodden seaweed came the whip on naked shoulders, and the ship veered off her course a moment when the slaves quickened the time unevenly; then, having eaten enough punishment, they swung together and the harbor master’s wake became a thing of reasonable dignity.

More leisurely, but with almost as much shouting, two long war-ships, each with two banks of oars, cast off their warps and followed, keeping their distance, line abreast, as if they preferred to look at what the mist might bring forth before deciding what to do. They had no beaks and they hardly resembled war-ships, except for groups of archers standing near the bow; and they had the same long overhangs as the harbor master’s craft, that possibly were good for estuary work but that suggested neither comfort nor safety when driving into long seas. Their oars thumped rhythmically, but the noise did not obliterate that other, approaching sound.

Suddenly Cleopatra caught her breath, for never educated Greek lived who did not thrill to the challenge of beauty.

A light air from the westward lifted the gossamer curtain of mist and the sun blazed on a golden prow, shaped like a serpent that raised its glittering head against a purple sail. A ship whose sides were all vermilion, except where white foam boiling from her bow uncovered flashes of gleaming metal below the water-line, came head-on toward the harbor mouth, her long oars sparkling as they smote the blue seas into swirling streaks of green and white.

“Oh!” Cleopatra gasped. “Oh! Any life is worth living when things like this happen!”

Armed men were in the ship’s bow–great men in helmets. Under the curve of the enormous purple fore-sail could be seen the figure of the helmsman leaning his weight against the steering oar, with a bigger man, the captain of the ship, beside him. Aloft, perched high on the foremast was a cup-shaped nest that shone as if built of bronze, the heads of men protruding over its brim.

“Surely no Roman ship! No Roman has such taste as that! A king’s ship! But which king’s?”

Cleopatra’s eyes were glittering. Whatever was royal and brave thrilled her to the point where emotion, ceasing, became contact with the gods. She seemed something more than woman in that moment.

From behind her, through the wide opening between room and balcony, six women came and stood with fruit and cakes on silver dishes and milk in an alabaster goblet.

They tried to call her attention but she dismissed them with a gesture–then changed her mind suddenly and seized two handfuls of the cakes, which she threw to the crows. She watched the birds pounce and fly away, and for about two minutes after that her attention was divided between the oncoming ship and one crow that devoured its cake on a near-by roof. The bird opened its beak wide, fluttered and fell dead.

“Whose ship?” Cleopatra repeated. Charmian did not answer.

The long ship swerved until the after-sail came into full view and the rowers’ beads all along one side were visible. And now the noise explained itself–cymbals, drums and harps under the break of the bow, where the big man on the poop could see them and set the time with a staff that he held in his right hand.

“Sixty oars to a bank, and three banks!” Cleopatra said, counting. “And, oh, they move like music! Charmian, did you ever see such grandeur expressed in anything? Whose ship can it be?”

Charmian turned her head, but checked herself in mid-speech, pointing:

“Was that dead bird there just now?” she demanded.

“No. Let one of the women pack it in a box and send it to Potheinos with my salutation. Bid him and Ptolemy his master eat it. Bid Lollianè deliver the message–they won’t dare to harm her–not just yet; they think Apollodorus loves her. That is not yet true–not yet. Then send Diomedes to me–I must find out whose ship that is.”

Charmian crossed the bedroom to the door and the moment she opened it a man of over fifty years of age strode in as if he had been waiting to be summoned. His sinews resembled molded metal. His skin, except where the scars were ill-concealed by artificial stain, had been burned brass-color by the sun. His shaved upper lip was straight and quarrelsome and a curled, short, black beard stuck forward pugnaciously under it. He wore the Grecian military kilt, that came not more than mid-way down his thighs, and kept one hand on the bronze hilt of a Damascus sword, whose scabbard was embossed with portraits of the legendary heroes.

He was in no wise disconcerted by a nearly naked queen, he also being Greek. He saluted with an air of veteran fidelity, then peered under his right hand seaward, his eyes narrowing to slits because of the strong glare on the water.

“Whose ship, Diomedes?”

“Tros! By Osiris, Tros! May all the gods regard his impudence!”

His voice was as harsh as shaken iron, and it made Cleopatra smile.

The long ship, having rounded the Pharos, well within the harbor now, bore down on the harbor master’s sluggish craft without again changing course or checking speed. The wind had ceased to fill the sails, but the beat of the martial music quickened and the long oars flashed response–vermilion blades a-plunge in jade-green, leaving egg-white foam on royal blue–until, urged by sudden panic and the whip, the harbor master’s crew went to work frantically to row their craft out of the way. She of the purple sails boiled on without changing her course by a hair’s breadth, straight for a point midway between the war-ships, leaving the scandalized harbor master pitching and rocking in her wake.

And then another marvel, heightened by the drifting mist that had again obscured the Pharos; suddenly she brailed those purple sails, as swiftly as they take in awnings when the first rain of a season bursts on pleasure gardens. At a clanging signal from the cymbals and the harps, she swung, with starboard oars aback and port oars pulling short swift strokes that hardly buried the vermilion blades, turning in her own length. And there she lay, broadside to the war-ships’ bows, her golden serpent grinning at them, and her four great catapults drawn taut by unseen mechanism.

Cleopatra caught her breath again. “Tros of Samothrace?” She laughed, with a half-note of excitement peculiar to her. “I remember him well. He came to my father’s court and said the world was round. I stood behind the curtain, and they punished me afterward for saying I agreed with him. My father agreed with him, too, being drunk, and not afraid when he was drunk; but the priests said such mysteries were not good for people to know, and they tried to have Tros imprisoned, but Olympus warned him, and my father gave him some money, being drunk again, so that he might go away and prove what shape the world is.”

“Olympus should have minded his own business!” said Diomedes, thrusting his beard forward, scowling.

Seeing he was not looking at her, Cleopatra smiled, and one of her women, believing the smile auspicious, came forward with slippers and a thin robe of silk, embroidered with Persian roses.

Charmian returned and stood beside her.

“Do you think there will be a battle?” Charmian asked. “Oh, you virgins,” remarked Cleopatra. “Virgins think of nothing but extremes–no middle course!”

Diomedes uttered a brassy cackle of a laugh. “They say of Tros, he never fights if he can get what he wants by running,” he remarked; but it was not quite clear whether he approved of that or not.

He of Samothrace, it seemed, had no intention of beginning the hostilities. The cymbals clanged again. The oar-blades on the port side all flashed forward to the limit of their scope and hung there, ready to snatch and swing the ship entirely round.

“I wonder what he wants,” said Cleopatra.

“Water–food–fuel–medicine–fresh fruit–news–information–any of the things that mariners put into port for,” Diomedes answered. “Crews go sick and mutiny unless they are allowed on shore at intervals. Or perhaps he brings news of Roman doings–Aries! The clumsy, mud-begotten fellaheen! I am ashamed! By Alexander’s right hand, if we had a man like Tros, and one such ship, we could defy your brother’s mongrels–and Rome–and–”

“All the world, if only Tros would admit the world is flat!” laughed Cleopatra.

Diomedes scowled, He did not like irreverence.

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