Cleopatra Occult (7 page)

A man without a nose said, “I was told to make my face magic with cosmetics. I have always been wearing makeup, everybody does every single day, and this rot happened to me just the same. The paint is not magic! The paint does not stop infection! Our painted eyes are not a prayer to the sun god. It is all an empty show! Paint is superficial!”

The blind woman called out again, “Help us!”

Cleopatra answered, “The leprosy is not one thing. Take those who caught their disease from the shadows and put them in the sun. Take those who caught their disease from the sun and put them in the shadows. Then they’ll have a chance.”

The man without a nose yelled, “We will still be rejected by the gods! Egyptians see beauty as a religious sign of holiness. The beauty and religion is superficial, both! Holiness cannot be seen with the eyes! The makeup everybody wears is not magic! The beauty it creates has no meaning other than to our own lust for flesh! People have turned lust into religion!”

Cleopatra answered, “I did not make eyes. I did not make the thousands of years that tell the same religious tales of holiness and beauty. The sun god shines light on all so we may see and judge.” She took a step back. “Isis forgives. That is all that matters after the years of life have left us all old and ugly. In the end… if we have grown old enough… all we want is forgiveness, not beauty and holiness.”

The blind woman asked, “Will my eyes grow back?”

Cleopatra reminded her, “You already have a second sight. You saw me.”

“I only see ghosts.”

Not in any mood to figure her out, Cleopatra loudly blessed them so they could all hear, then she hurried away. She felt confused. 

She walked for another hour until she heard a dog growling. She detected it coming from under the sand ahead. A werewolf broke out of a dune and raced to her on all fours, snapping his teeth. She wondered where she could kick at it to cause damage. When he came near, he stopped and stood upright. Cleopatra took a deep breath and said to the wild man, “You harm me not. Is it because you recognize Isis within me?”

He shook his head. “I’m the way I am because I was cursed by Anubis. The god caught me robbing a tomb.” He sniffed at the air between the two of them. “And yet I have not killed you.”

Cleopatra gave a nervous nod. “The god has forbidden you from eating queens?”

He scratched at his ear. “No. I’m repelled from destroying tombs from now on. And I kill and eat those who have also robbed tombs.”

Cleopatra smiled in relief. “Perhaps I’ve never robbed a tomb.”

The werewolf growled, then accused, “Yes you have!”

“What do you accuse me of?”

The werewolf explained, “Anubis guards all of the dead and he sees all. I see all… when it’s about tombs. I saw what you did! You stole a golden cat from the golden tomb!”

Cleopatra took a step backwards. “What? That? Of Alexander the Great? That was years ago.”

The werewolf growled at her. “Tomb robber!”

“I am queen! And I wanted it!”

“Tomb robber!”

Cleopatra stood firm. “The tomb has plenty of things. The tomb still has plenty of cats. One cat made of gold will not be missed. The tomb is always open for my family to visit. I had every right to be there. I saw it and fancied it and I took it! I am queen!”

“Tomb robber! Anubis will not have the final word on what you have done! Athena will! You robbed the tomb of a Greek!”

Cleopatra became nervous. “How could Athena curse me?”

“The golden cat is her idol now. Where the golden cat is, Athena will stay!”

“The golden cat is safe in my palace—the Palace of Alexandria. Athena is always safe in Alexandria. It will always be a Greek city, as Greek as Athens. That is not a curse. That is a blessing!”

The werewolf howled. “Woe to Alexandria. Athena will be driven out with fire! But she lives on in the golden cat! The city burns but the golden cat of Athena hides in the deep places and lives on! Verily I say to you, it shall come to pass! The curse will not fall upon your head but the head of your witch.”

Cleopatra looked around to see if a witch had magically joined her but she was still alone with the werewolf. She wrung her hands. “And I live on! Why haven’t you ripped me to shreds straightaway if you’re so terrible? If
I’m
so terrible!”

He shook his head, baffled. “I cannot desecrate tombs.”

Cleopatra put her hands on her hips. “I am not a tomb.”  

The werewolf put his front claws out to feel at the air. “Yes! You are a tomb! How can this be? A queen has become an entire tomb!”

Cleopatra became indignant. “You blaspheme! You are a blasphemous depraved creature of the wild!”

“You are a tomb and there is decay within!” 

“Isis is a woman! A woman is not
ever
a tomb! Isis is eternal!”

“Tomb robber! Tomb! Tomb robber! Tomb!”

Cleopatra scoffed. “Your magic is flummoxed. I have just been in the company of a great high priestess in a secret temple, and I’m Isis on earth who has made stars fly across the desert to expedite my rescue from a terrible witch, and I’ve walked across the otherworld and ignored the lofty bones of the dead. You’re a confused lost dog. Be gone and pray that Anubis corrects his error and makes you a dog that can hunt again.”

The werewolf howled in frustration then ran back to the sand dune and buried himself again.

Cleopatra traversed on to the town of Suez where she’d collect her ten loyal guards.

~

As Cleopatra and her ten Suez guards traveled west across the desert towards Alexandria, a sandstorm hit. The moment it waned, they all fell deep into dry quicksand. Cleopatra was the only one able to scramble free and not be buried alive but she lost her sandals, headscarf and camel.

When she walked into the next town with her head uncovered, a slave trader saw her as a runaway slave. Despite her expert kicking skills, Cleopatra was seized, bound, and sent to Rome on a slave ship.

~

On the Mediterranean Sea, while Mark Antony and Phaedra were their first day into the voyage, Phaedra anxiously turned her bracelets, as she asked, “Where does all this furniture come from anyway? How does someone suddenly get all this? It looks like you robbed a whole house.”

He laughed as if that was a joke.

“I mean,
emptied
a house. I’m sure it was all very proper.”

Mark said, “We did. Somebody did. I wonder whose house this all once belonged to.”

“Why would you have all the stuff of somebody’s house?”

“Somebody got on the wrong side of Caesar and put their family in ruin. That’s the fastest way to lose everything in life, including your life. Now sit and try to say calm before you fall overboard.”

“I wouldn’t want that, this boat is the only solid ground I have right now.” Phaedra shook a pewter box that could have once contained jewelry. It did not rattle. “I wonder what a box like this was for. There’s nothing in it that I can tell.”

“You seem so nervous that I feel you’re going to break all this furniture before we even get there.”

She stopped shaking the box. “It has a
P
on it. I wonder what family went to doom with the name that starts with
P.
Do you know anybody like that, who met with doom?”

Mark jumped up. “Pompey? Could this all be Pompey’s?” Mark fell to his knees. “Oh I’m not worthy to deal in cargo so precious.”

“Pompey the great warrior?”

Mark got back up. “Yes, that one. But he finally got on the wrong side of Caesar and now he’s on the run and his house is for sale. Octavian is heartless so I’m sure he was the first one there to kill the children and clear out the furniture. I was just thinking about Pompey. I think about him too much. I think about him with a heavy heart.”

Phaedra recollected, “In the forum, we always wanted to hear news of his victories
.
Pompey was a thrilling military leader. It was disturbing to hear that he’d suddenly become our enemy and was on the run. But the old days are over. Times have changed.”

Mark sadly nodded. “I feel guilty and I swear by my sword I didn’t even do anything to him, myself. But he’s in my mind like one of the gods.” Mark took the pewter box from Phaedra. “I wonder how this opens. No key. It must be a secret. A secret button somewhere on it. A puzzle box.” He pushed on the sides until the top popped open. Torn bits of paper blew out and swirled high into the sky.

Phaedra looked up. “I wonder what that once said. Now we’ll never know. I wonder if it was a great secret.”

Mark also watched the paper blow into the clear sky. “That wind! Did you see how that wind blew?”

She looked around. “What about it?”

Mark was baffled. “Did you see that? The paper blew straight up and never came back.” He looked at the ship’s sails that begun to wiggle oddly.

She asked, “Does the wind matter more than what spell might have been written on that paper?”

He feared it could.

Phaedra grew overwrought, “It could have been a message. Whatever was on the paper could have been important. I wonder why it was torn into pieces. That made the message a puzzle, too.”

Mark kept his eyes on the sky.

Phaedra cried, “I’ll worry sick until I have solid ground under my feet again. I’m not accustomed to this bobbing about at sea!”

He scolded, “Sit down!”

“I feel like I must flee!”

“There’s nowhere to go!”

The hemp cloth sails loudly flapped until the worried sailors took them down. Within a half hour, a violent storm raced across the sea and sunk the overloaded ship. Mark and Phaedra floated north again, separated, he on an upturned table and she in a large chest. They landed far from each other on beaches in Sicily.

~

In Rome, Cleopatra was stripped naked and put on a crowded platform for the slave buyers to inspect. She wore a large sign over her front that advertised that she could read, write, knew religions, geography and history. It admitted that she knew nothing about cooking. Nobody bothered lifting the sign to see her breasts or genitals—she was already too old to be a prostitute. Since she was so old for a slave she was made to wear a cap that signaled that she came with no guarantee to live beyond six months. Most slaves didn’t live older than nineteen years of age.

Cleopatra entered into a conversation with a nobleman and wife who thought she looked smart because she was listed as Greek. She was interviewed, “Say something about Plato and Socrates… that they have in common?”

Cleopatra answered, “They are dead.”

“Do you know who the ruler is?”

“Caesar.”

The conversation escalated into a heated quarrel when they entered the topic of foreign civil wars, so she was seen as highly skilled. She was bought to be a teacher for their urban house. She would educate not only the noble family’s children, but also the many slave children to increase their value for resale.

The two-story house had few outside windows so it was mostly lit from roof openings in the center of the building, over pools to collect rainwater. After pointing out the place on the mosaic floor where she was to sleep at night, the head servant told Cleopatra, “You’ll teach until one hour before meals. Then you’ll help in the kitchen.”

Cleopatra thought to say, “Kitchens are not for queens.” But what Cleopatra said, instead, was, “I don’t cook.”

The head servant maintained, “The cooks will tell you what they need. You will assist them.”

In the walled garden the children noisily played until they saw her arrive, walking amongst the statues like a queen. An older gardener walked up to her. “So you’re a teacher? What makes you able to say you are a teacher? Do you even know who rules Rome?”

“Caesar.”

“And what can you possibly know to tell any of us about this Caesar?”

She coldly answered, “Cleopatra had to fill in information on his map of Libya.”

The gardener looked ignorant.

She continued, “Caesar’s map of Egypt was almost as meager. Caesar told Cleopatra that maps were only to show Rome what it wants to see. That was part of an ongoing joke she had with him about Rome being so obstinate, as the republic transforms into his empire. Only she could provoke him because she knew how to do it in a manner that made him laugh at it. Caesar laughs when Cleopatra is deprecatory and regales, in the same breath. Excuse me now, the pupils are waiting. I see you have weeds to pull in the garden before you can say you’re a gardener.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Those aren’t all basil plants. Look closer. Learn to differentiate.” She turned from him and grandly stood before her pupils of various ages, and pronounced, “Greeks rule Egypt and Cleopatra is the queen, a pureblood Ptolemy. The first Ptolemy was Alexander the Great’s closest general, so he was given Egypt at his death. No family has ever ruled anywhere in the world with such flair. Cleopatra will continue the family and will always win the civil wars and foreign wars. And, of course, she will be made stronger because of the might of Rome. Rome will allow her to conquer her idiotic brother, who is not fit to rule because he is stupid. Cleopatra is best because she is Isis. Isis is the universal mother of us all, no matter what name is given to her.
Isis
is her Greek name but she was first known to the Egyptians as
Aset
which means
queen of the throne
.”