Kleopatra (5 page)

Kleopatra caught the Roman sneaking a coy smile at her when the king was not looking. She liked having his attention and smiled
back. He was robust like all prosperous Romans and wore the thin purple stripe of the equestrian class on his toga. Not a
patrician, Auletes had said, but just as rich. Like the rest of his countrymen, his demeanor at a foreign court, though solicitous,
had the usual underlying Roman superiority.

“My daughter is most anxious to hear your tales of vanquishing the slave Spartacus,” said the king in a merry tone.

“Your Majesty, I come on urgent business that must be discussed before we engage in pleasurable storytelling.”

“Oh yes, my advisers have briefed me on your request to abolish the import duties on cinnamon. I am certain we can work out
a reasonable and mutually beneficial arrangement,” replied Auletes.

“Sire, I have in my breast pocket a letter to you from Pompey.”

“From the great general himself?” asked the king, sitting straighter in his throne.

“I have just seen Pompey in Judaea. He is at war with the Jews and requests that you demonstrate your friendship by sending
him the supplies and soldiers he requires to subdue that stubborn nation of rebels.” The Roman handed the king a letter, which
Auletes read to himself. Kleopatra noticed that Thea was squeezing her earlobe repeatedly, a habit she had when she was anxious.
The king and queen had already fought much over Auletes’ friendship with Pompey after Auletes had given a banquet in Pompey’s
honor the year before. Auletes had fretted over every detail of the meal, demanding that each of the one thousand guests’
gold cups be replaced with a fresh vessel at all seven courses. “How can you celebrate his victory over Syria?” Thea had demanded.
“Over our own blood?”

“So that he will think twice about spilling
our
blood, my dear queen, yours and mine and that of our precious children,” the king had replied.

Auletes folded the letter in his hand. “Nurturing my friendship with Pompey the Great is of utmost importance to me. You may
reply that I am sending immediately the amount he requests in gold and an army of eight thousand.”

“But my dear,” Thea began, her face at once full of apology and demand, “should we not consider the ramifications from our
own citizens before we leap to aid our friend Pompey? This is a sensitive issue. The Palestine was once an Egyptian territory.
You see, sir,” she said, turning to the Roman, “the Alexandrians have dreadful ways of showing displeasure with the ruling
family. A riot, a knife across the throat when one least expects it. I am sure you understand that we must act with their
good opinion in mind.”

Kleopatra rocked in her seat until she could no longer keep quiet. Who did Thea think she was to openly contradict her father?
She knew it was not her place to speak, but she would defend her father anyway. “Madam, Pompey is the most important man in
the world. Isn’t it an honor that he wants Father to be his friend?”

“At least one person in my family understands both politics and friendship,” said the king, looking accusingly at Thea and
Meleager. “Even a nine-year-old sees that one must show allegiance to the man who subdued the pirates of the Mediterranean
and vanquished the mighty king Mithridates of Pontus.”

The Roman saluted the king. “That is what Pompey so hoped, Your Majesty. That the great King Ptolemy would acknowledge his
many services to the nations of the Mediterranean and would repay him with a pledge of support.”

Kleopatra knew how much her father worried about what the Romans thought of him. She wanted her father to bask in the praise
of the great man Pompey without further interference from the pompous eunuch and her ignorant stepmother. Before Meleager
or Thea could rebuke him, she said, “Now, sir, will you
please
tell us the story of Spartacus? Were you really there? Did you see him? Did you meet him?”

“Yes, yes, let us proceed with the story of the wicked slave,” said the king. “Tell us, good man, what did he look like?”

The Roman, too, seemed anxious to end the business at hand while he still had the king’s guarantee. He stood and breathed
deeply, the air pulling him to his full height. “Spartacus was tall. Strong. Proud. An Ionian, some say. Others say he was
a Thracian, and others, a Macedonian.”

Kleopatra beamed. “Father, might Spartacus have been our cousin?”

Berenike grimaced, her first animated expression of the morning; Thea and Meleager laughed condescendingly. Kleopatra was
wounded by their insincere tone, by their derision at her mistake, and she despised them the more. “Spartacus was no ordinary
slave,” she shouted much too loudly, sinking into her throne.

The Roman rescued her from embarrassment, sweeping his toga into his left arm, leaving his right to gesture, telling the story
as if to her alone. “We had the rebel slave army outnumbered ten to one, trapped in the mountains of Lucania. Crassus demanded
surrender, but the thieves came crashing through our lines, ready to fight and to die like gladiators.

“It was then that I spotted him—as tall as a Titan, and as bold as Poseidon. With a chest like the side of a cliff and an
arm like Zeus,” he said. “The demon had two of my young officers pinned against a rock. He pushed one of them into the other
and slew the both of them with a single thrust of his sword.”

The princess held her breath while he continued.

“Three of my men attacked him, striking him in the chest, slashing his knees. But the monster began to fight
again
, flashing his sword about though he could hardly move from his spot.” The Roman lifted one side of his toga daintily to reveal
a jagged scar on his thigh, a white lightning bolt against his weathered skin. “He cut me here,” he said indignantly.

Fueled by the memory, he delivered an impassioned finale to his story: how brave Spartacus refused to give up, still swinging
his sword at the men,
still
drawing noble Roman blood; how a Roman centurion of superior size and strength, with a final, mortal blow, spilled the slave’s
entrails, slicing him from chest to groin. The Roman made an imaginary slash in the air and then raised his arm as if saluting
Kleopatra with a sword. “That, my princess, was the end of your Spartacus.”

Kleopatra released her breath. Silence in the room. Thea signaled for a slave to fan her. Auletes sighed. Berenike squirmed
in her seat, unimpressed. No one spoke.

“Say it again!” squealed Kleopatra, jumping out of her throne and knocking her crown askew against the cobra above her.

Charmion, stiff-backed, motioned for Kleopatra to take her seat. It was one thing for a princess to indulge in the grotesque
imagery of Homer, but quite another to listen to specious stories told by these unreliable visitors who embellished the slave
leader’s capacities. “Sir, I thought that no one knew the identity of the slave, that his men never gave him up, even in death,”
Charmion said.

“My dear young woman, of course they denied that he was Spartacus. But we knew better. His powers gave him away,” he said,
clearly perturbed to be questioned.

Kleopatra waited impatiently for a turn to talk. “Father, please may our guest tell the story again? Please?” she implored.

With a nod from the king, the Roman reenacted the scene, this time playing all the parts—the centurions, the slain boys, Spartacus—dying
dramatically at the princess’s feet, his large body spread over a mosaic of Dionysus entering Thebes disguised as a mortal.

“I should like to have known Spartacus,” Kleopatra said to Auletes while slaves helped the guest to his feet and straightened
his garments. He was offered a bowl of wine, which he greedily consumed.

“Is that so, my princess?”

“Yes.” She was serious as only a young child can be, wrinkling her brow with the sincerity of her thought. “I would have taught
him to be more sensible. Didn’t he know that he shouldn’t defy Rome?”

Berenike, quiet for so long, suddenly sat up in her chair, snapping at her sister. “Why not? What is wrong with defying Rome?”

“Because he got caught and died. That’s why not,” Kleopatra retorted. “No one may defy Rome. That’s what Father says.”

“Perhaps freedom is a greater condition than life itself,” said Thea. “I know I have always thought as much.” She looked pointedly
at the king.

“These are questions for the philosophers, my dears. I shall have to send all of you to the Mouseion to study with the rest
of the scholars,” the king said, wishing to change the course of the discussion. “As you are so fond of Spartacus, tell us
what would you have done with the slave if he had turned his lion’s courage against
this
throne?”

“I would have done just as the Romans did,” Kleopatra replied to Auletes’ satisfaction, though privately she was thinking
that she and Spartacus might have fallen in love and started their own country. “It would be my duty.”

The king posed the same question to Berenike. “And you, daughter?”

“I should have spared the Greek slave Spartacus and crucified the Romans,” she smirked.

The king’s black eyes shot out like locusts. “You are banished to your chamber, Princess Berenike, for insubordination before
the crown and for insulting our exalted Roman guest.” Kleopatra was grateful that the king’s anger was not directed at her.
His thick lips were thrust forward as if to entrap invisible food. “You shall not be fed for two days. Now leave.” To Meleager:
“Go with her, Tutor, and bid her to mind her foul tongue.”

Berenike marched from the room, leaving the Roman guest unacknowledged, and ignoring the peeved eunuch trailing her steps.
Secretly, Kleopatra was full of glee. She made a private prayer to the goddess that Auletes would marry Berenike to a very
ugly foreigner, who would force her to put away her weapons, bear his children, and learn one of the many languages she considered
beneath her.

“You will excuse the child,” Auletes said apologetically. “She is quite contrary. I fear she suffers from a mental disorder.”

“A spirited girl,” commented the Roman in his best Greek. “Very grand. Very beautiful, if I may be so bold, Your Royal Grace.”

Auletes regarded his guest for an uncomfortably long time. “Are you a man who hears the call of the Muses?”

The Roman stared at him quizzically, as if challenged by a clever teacher in an oral exam. “The Muses, Sire?”

“Like Hesiod, I am haunted by those beguiling ladies. Euterpe in particular. The goddess of the flute stalks me, even in my
dreams, beckoning me out of my night reverie and into her spell. She is merciless in her pursuit. I am her slave.” Auletes
sighed dramatically, dropping his great head and folding his hands on his lap. His dark curls fell forward. He threw them
back with his hand and continued. “Terpsichore, yes, she too has me in the grip of her enchantment. I am a dancer, you know.
A king over men by birth, an artist by nature. A constant conundrum. All aspects demand. All must be satiated.”

The Roman had heard the king was a lunatic, a sissy who played songs and danced, but he had no idea that he would have to
bear witness to the spectacle.

“I wonder, would you like to hear me play the flute?” Auletes asked the guest coyly, as if introducing the concept of sexual
intercourse to a virgin.

“Oh, yes, Father!” Kleopatra interjected, clasping her small hands together. “Please play for us!”

“It is time for your lessons, Kleopatra. Meleager shall be waiting for you,” said Thea, not looking at the princess but shooting
a luminous smile in the direction of the guest, blinding him with the white perfection of her twenty-one-year-old teeth and
the ripe succulence of her reddened lips.

“Your Excellency is a most gifted musician,” Thea continued, causing her husband to blush. Causing the
king
, Auletes, to blush, and taking away the attention of the princess’s new Roman friend. She is a menace to my happiness, Kleopatra
thought, and I have no power to make her go away.

“My dear, you are too kind,” replied Auletes. They had rehearsed the scene before countless visitors of the past. Modestly,
he added, “My family indulges me.”

“Should not Kleopatra join her sister and Meleager?” Thea asked of Charmion. “The children have overstayed their time at court
this morning.”

Before Charmion could reply, Kleopatra said, “Madam, is it not equally a lesson to be in the company of a gentleman who is
friend and kinsman to the great men of Rome?”

The king smiled at his daughter. “The child has a point,” he said to Thea. “Meleager sings hymns of praise to the dead. Our
new friend has active commerce with the living.”

A small victory, the princess thought. Small, but each one significant.

A slave carried in Auletes’ flute, an ebony cylinder with ivory inlays and golden keys, holding it like a sacramental relic.
The king addressed his Muse. “Cruel lady, Divine Grace, whimsical One, bless me with your gifts so that I may please my god,
the Lord Dionysus, with my song.” Auletes placed a hand tenderly over his heart. He closed his eyes and recited the details
of his vision. “Ah, there she is, dancing before my eyes ever so delicately, luring me into her spell. Always she threatens
escape! Inconstant lover! Stay, Lady. Do not flee. Linger with me a while so that I may pay tribute to the god and entertain
our guest.”