Queen of Kings (5 page)

“Carry me to Cleopatra,” he ordered, and when he noted the hesitation on the men's faces, he used a stronger voice. “You will take me to the queen. This will be your last duty in my service. Perform it well.”

They dressed the wound as best they could, covered Antony to protect him from the eyes of enemies, and then lifted the pallet carefully onto their shoulders, and proceeded into the street.

The mattress was a boat, and there was a stormy sea beneath him. Antony laid his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. The lighthouse rose into his vision, smooth and white, a perfect thing. He'd lived on Pharos island for a time, in a small house away from the city, at the foot of the great stone tower. It was just after his return from Actium, when his sorrow at his own betrayals was too much to bear in company.

At the top of the tower, so high it could scarcely be seen, a golden statue of Zeus glittered in the sun. Antony smiled, seeing it still shining there even as he passed through the city, a witness to his own funerary procession.

The only sounds he'd heard while he stayed in that house were those of waves crashing up against the shore. There was no Rome, no legions, no love. He'd never felt so peaceful. He might have stayed forever in that little house, like a philosopher in his cave, but he craved company, drink, and jokes, and he dreamed of his wife. He walked back across the causeway and found everything at the palace as though he'd never left. Back into her arms he went then, and back to them he would go now. If he had died for her, let her see it done. Let there be an end.

An Egyptian soldier, drunken and disheveled, bowed his head as Antony was carried past, thinking him dead already.

“Is it the king you carry?” the soldier asked Antony's men.

“It is Mark Antony,” they answered.

“You carry the king of Egypt, the honored husband of our queen,” the soldier said.

Beneath his covering, Antony's lips curved into a painful smile. He'd never imagined that he would die a king.

T
he boy darted back through Alexandria, singing to himself. He'd delivered his message to Mark Antony and seen the great man in person. He was still heroic to look at, despite the dirt of battle upon him. His dark hair was iced with silver. The boy had seen it in the dim light of the building. But his arms were still ropy with muscle, and his chest was wide and armored.

One day, perhaps, the boy would grow up to be a warrior, and if he did, he hoped he would be tall and strong like Mark Antony. The great soldier looked down upon the boy, and the boy saw that he controlled the sun and the moon. He patted the boy's shoulder. His body still vibrated with the honor.

By the time he reached the boundary of the city, the Gate of the Sun was open, and the boy skittered through it, toward the Roman camp. A tall, broad-chested man emerged from the tent and looked at him carefully, his lips tight.

“Did you see him?” he asked the boy.

“I did,” the boy said proudly.

“You're certain?”

“It was Antony,” the boy insisted. “He fell to his knees when I told him the queen was dead.”

The man shook his head, and the boy wondered if he was angry. He turned and led the boy back to the tent where he'd first received his assignment.

A slight, light-haired man sitting on a three-legged stool waited there. He appraised the boy with pale gray eyes.

“Your messenger has returned,” the boy's guide said tersely. “I would not have had it done this way. Antony was outnumbered. It was only a matter of time.”

The gray-eyed man lifted his chin and shot a fierce look at his general. “Do you question my honor, Agrippa?”

Agrippa did not answer. He looked steadily at his cohort for a moment and then turned on his heel and left the tent. The boy nervously watched him go.

“I did not ask for your advice,” the boy's benefactor called after Agrippa.

His expression changed as he looked at the boy. “You've delivered my message to Antony?”

The boy blushed with pleasure at having completed his mission successfully.

“It is done,” he said.

“Good,” said the man, and winced slightly. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Good.”

T
here was a sharp clattering from above, rocks being thrown against the window bars. Cleopatra jolted up from where she was kneeling, the knife still clutched in her hand. Who was coming for her? Antony? Or Octavian?

Charmian ran down the stairs, her face pale.

“Your husband is here,” she whispered, her voice panicky. “His men have brought him.”

Brought
him? What sort of phrase was this? He'd lead his men, not be led. And why did he not come through the passage?

“Tell me what the matter is!” Cleopatra snapped, gripping the girl roughly by the shoulders.

“They've carried him here on a stretcher. He's covered.”

Cleopatra was already running up the stairs to the window, her heart pounding in terror. This was her fault. She should never have let him go back to battle. She'd known better, after what she'd witnessed at the window the night before. Antony's gods had left the city, declaring the war a loss. There'd been an invisible celebration as Dionysus departed through the center of Alexandria, his procession unseen but raucous with trumpets and harps, the beat of dancing steps, drums, and trills.

In the room behind her, Antony had stretched out his arms to her.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked.

“Looking at the moon,” she said. “Full and golden. A good omen.” She did not say for whom.

“We will win this war,” she told him, thinking of Sekhmet, imagining herself more powerful than any omen. “We will win this war.”

“Come back to me,” her husband replied, getting up from the bed as if to see for himself what drew her attention, but she pushed him back. They made love as though time had stopped, as though they had no battles to prepare for, no danger in the morning, no end to nights like these.

Cleopatra had sent her beloved out into battle unprotected and now she was paying for her arrogance.

She threw open the barred shutter, her body leaning out the window, a target for any archer. Antony's personal guard was below. She knew the men well. And there, on a litter, covered in a cloth—

Cleopatra felt herself swaying. There was a bloodstain on the sheet, the crimson spreading on the ivory ground.

The leader of the guard looked up at the queen. Cleopatra could see the grief on his face.

“There was a false message,” he said. “He believed you killed yourself, and he sought to join you.”

“Is he dead?” she whispered, scarcely able to make the words leave her lips.

Antony's hand rose to push aside the cloth that covered his face and chest.

“Not yet,” Antony said. His face was gray with suffering, his hand bloodied where it pressed the wound.

Cleopatra clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. How could this have happened? Had she followed her original plan, had she not stayed, thinking to tame the gods, she should have been beside him shipboard, the green and silver sea, the coast of India, their children safe in their beds belowdecks.

“I come to die with you,” Antony said. “Will you have me?”

Sobbing, she threw down the rope and let his men rig him in it. She and her handmaidens pulled him up to the window, the wound in her hand opening again as she held the fibers. She watched his face as he rose toward her, feeling every pain he did. He would not cry out in front of his men. By the time she had him in the mausoleum, her garments were covered in blood. Her limbs felt dipped in wax, slowed and numb.

“Antony,” she murmured, stroking his face, his chest, his arms. She knew every part of him. The old war wounds, white stripes in his sundark flesh, and this new wound, still gaping. His eyes focused on her suddenly.

“Why did you betray me?” he whispered. “I would have done anything for you.”

“What are you saying?” she cried, but he was not listening.

“Wine,” he called.

He was too weak to lift the cup. She held it to his lips, hoping to ease his pain.

“You must not die without me,” she told him, but he looked at her, unseeing. Never, in all the years she'd known him, had he looked through her. She was always his focus, and when his gaze landed on her, she felt her skin warm, as though she walked through a ray of light sent from Ra himself.

“I will see you again,” Antony said, and smiled.

Then he was still.

Everything
was still, the air, the smoke of the incense, Cleopatra's own heartbeat. The maids stood, wide-eyed, watching for a breath, and none came.

A tear fell from Cleopatra's face to Antony's, and she watched as it rolled down his skin. The bloodstain on his tunic spread, larger and larger, and he did not move.

A scream rose up in Cleopatra's throat.

“You will not die without me!” Her throat convulsed with sobs, and she doubled over, holding him tightly, her hands gripping his bloody tunic. Her body shook, every place he had touched her, every place he had kissed her.

This could not be the end of their story.

Running feet and shouting outside the building, swords clashing, Antony's men engaging with Octavian's. They were coming for her.

She staggered up from Antony's side and ran into the sacred circle, her hands dripping with his blood. She'd made the paste of honey and ash, added the lion's fur and cobra's skin. Now the potion awaited the final ingredient.

She knelt, her knees cold against the stone of the floor. She threw back her head and sang the spell, her voice rattling the air itself, calling out to the heavens, her hands steady now as she held the agate goblet filled with her own blood.

The warning of the Egyptian scholar appeared in her mind, and she shook her head frantically to rid herself of it. Nothing was forbidden. Nothing. This was her love.

Though this goddess was meant for vengeance, today she would be called to raise the dead as well.

Cleopatra drew a shuddering breath and performed the final step of the spell, pouring the blood of kings over the bared teeth of the icon. She watched as the red dripped down into the icon's throat.

There was a rushing sound. Time spun around her like a sirocco, a searing, razing thing. The air charged with sparks, and the edges of the treasure glowed out of the darkness.

In the darkness, there were soft steps on the stone.

Cleopatra turned, and the goddess was upon her, tremendous. She shone in the endless night of the sealed chamber with the fire of the sun, her head that of a lioness crowned with a twisting, living cobra, and her body that of a woman, her arms decked in jewels, her fingers ending in talons. Her gown, tight to her form, was bloodred with rosettas over each breast, and the fur of her throat and face was golden.

She rose to the ceiling, and beside her all the glow of Egypt's treasure was overshadowed. She was the daughter of Ra, Nicolaus had told Cleopatra, created from the sun god's fiery eye. Her heat shimmered in the air.

“Sekhmet,” Cleopatra whispered, and the goddess roared, the sound rattling the coins and echoing from the walls of the mausoleum.

Where were Cleopatra's servants? Fallen against the stairs, sleeping as if drugged, guarding the room from intruders. How could they sleep in the presence of this?

Antony slept as well, his skin pale and cold. Dead. A pang of grief stabbed through the queen's chest, a sudden sense of doom. This was the end of everything, and she'd brought it on herself by thinking she could have everything and pay no price.

“Bring him back,” she ordered Sekhmet. Her fears did not matter. “Bring him back to me. Help me to avenge this.”

Cleopatra lifted her crown from her head. Egypt would belong to the old gods again. Farewell to Isis, farewell to the Greeks and the Romans. She would give the country back to its beginnings, to its lions and crocodiles, to its jackals and falcons and cobras.

The goddess gazed at her, a flicker of amusement in her wide, yellow eyes.

Not enough,
she said, or didn't say. It was known. More would be required. The heart's blood of the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra knew suddenly. That would be the sacrifice required to bring him back from the Duat, Egypt's Underworld.

“Take what you wish,” Cleopatra said, throwing her arms out from her sides, offering her throat, her breasts, and her wrists. She'd survived worse than this. She was surviving it now.

The goddess leapt over the treasure, her teeth bared, her talons extended, and her skin began to shine with the pitiless glare of the noontime sun. Her fingers and limbs smoked, blurring with heat, and Cleopatra steeled herself for the agony that was to come. A burning brand, a sizzling impact, she thought. But this was not to be.

Sekhmet transformed. A tremendous serpent coiled before the queen. It looked deep into Cleopatra, assessing her weaknesses.

Cleopatra was grateful. Serpents were the sacred creatures of her line. They were beautiful things, snakes, and this one was no exception. Its scales were gilded emeralds, the eyes cruel rubies.

Cleopatra glimpsed a flash of diamond fangs as the goddess struck her throat. Still no pain. Only a sense of time stopping, a spinning, the sound of air rushing past. Then her neck burned with a pain that was not pain but a brilliant heat. An overpowering sweetness swept over her.

Cleopatra discovered that her feet were no longer touching the floor. Her body—she felt such tenderness for it now, for this fragile, mortal body—hung from the serpent's teeth, and as though from miles away, she watched her own skin pale. Her fingers clenched and then released. Her vision filled with the places beyond the night sky, the blue-white shine of the edge of the moon. She was dying, and yet she cared nothing about it, nothing about anything that had ever happened or that would happen in the future.