Cleopatra's Vendetta

Chapter 9

Alexandria, Egypt

The 10th day of Mesori, the fourth month of the Season of the Harvest

(August 10, 30 BC)

Born a goddess, she would die a prisoner. On the frankincense-imbued balcony, Cleopatra VII Philopator smiled ruefully at the irony as she paced back and forth, watching for her faithful spy. The man was tasked with bringing her what she needed to end her life and exact her revenge. The weight of her legacy rested on his narrow shoulders now.

She stopped pacing. Her hands clenched the railing until she thought the stout wood might break. Neither immortality nor freedom was to be hers any longer. Night was falling on the day, her reign, and her life. It was time to die.

An emotional pain unlike any she’d ever known ripped through her. As if punctuating her distress, guards marched below her balcony, their leather boots slapping the paving stones with a noise like palms striking her proud cheeks.

She doubled over and put her hands to her knees.

It was all Octavian’s fault. She wished she could have him impaled, as she’d had other treasonous villains.

Octavian. Julius Caesar’s heir. Her nemesis.

Last fall, he’d defeated her and Marcus Antonius, her lover, in a horrid naval battle at Actium. Afterward, she and her love had fled here to Alexandria. Back in her palace, it soon became clear that no allies were coming to their aid. She’d had nearly a year to prepare for Octavian’s inevitable invasion, and now it was upon her.

This elaborate two-story building attached to her balcony had been designed as a last holdout on a spit of sandy beach near the palace, but as soon as troops entered the city, she and her two loyal maids, Iras and Charmion, were put under house arrest inside. The space still held the subtle scent of the cedar and cinnamon oils she’d used to prepare her lover’s body for burial. A single tear dropped from the corner of her black-rimmed eye, causing the dust between her feet to explode upward in a violent puff.

She straightened and stared out beyond the balcony, into the vermillion sunset, imagining different places in the imperial city where she could gut Octavian with her own knife. She knew the layout of the streets well, as the city had been hers for twenty-two years. With its fragrant spice stands, baths, synagogues, libraries, gymnasium, and famed lighthouse, it was the most magnificent metropolis in the world. Within the limestone city walls were two Isis temples, including one she’d commissioned herself. Ambushing and killing him there would be appropriate, she mused. The rectangular Serapeum, another splendid temple, was outfitted with gold-leaf, silver, and bronze, and looked over the shadowed city from its artificial hill in the Greek quarter.

Ambushing and killing him there would be appropriateThis sultry city put the bastard’s rat-infested town to shame.

Except the people of Rome had fallen for Octavian’s propaganda. And it had cost her the war.

Despite succeeding at so much, she’d failed to keep her children and country safe from the insatiable Romans. The red-tiled homes and businesses were no longer hers, and although she’d tried to bargain for her children’s right to rule, she doubted they would live to see another summer, especially Caesarion, her firstborn, who’d been dispatched up the Nile with chests full of gold.

An insistent knock came at the door to her bed chamber. A guard announced that a farmer had brought figs.

She turned and left the balcony, moving to the candlelit foyer where her best spy stood on the tiled mosaic. The clever man had passed by her window unnoticed and managed to talk his way past the guards. Slightly less than standard height and weight, he had a way of blending in, no matter the situation. Today he wore a commoner’s tunic. She glanced at him and he nodded imperceptibly. Satisfaction spiked through her veins.

Yesterday evening, she’d received word from a young aristocrat that Octavian was going to head back to Rome with her in three days. If she allowed him to return her to the city she’d enjoyed with Julius Caesar, she’d be paraded through the streets wearing golden shackles and nothing else. After years of fighting Octavian’s lies, she would not give her enemy the final satisfaction of humiliating her, so this last, desperate plan had been set in motion.

After the guard closed the door, the spy handed his basket to Iras, who began removing the false bottom. Inside was a young asp, which Charmion pushed to the side so Iras could extract the other, special item. The asp hissed in annoyance.

As far back as Egyptian history recorded, the rearing cobra was a sign of royalty and divine authority, perhaps because Isis had used a snake to win the throne for her husband, Osiris. The creatures also rid the storehouses of the mice that fed on precious grain. Cleopatra’s grandmother had kept asps to terrify her enemies. Royal tombs were protected by cobras, who would spit poison at robbers. The snake in the basket would serve a similar purpose.

She huffed out a breath in irritation that the Romans had turned the snake into a symbol of evil.

Her spy prostrated himself before her. “My queen,” he whispered.

“My final journey must begin,” she said, also in a hushed tone. “Stand and tell me news before I depart. What about the pamphlets in Rome?”

The leaflets Octavian and his cursed minions, the Sons of Adam, had distributed in that backward town defamed her. She—Queen of Kings, Mother of Kings, the Youngest Goddess—had been accused of having power from Hades, of being a living pestilence and a bloodthirsty harlot who desired to rule Rome.

The spy sprung to his feet, his face struggling not to betray the deep loyalty she knew he felt for her, his queen. He said, “The false stories continue. And a sculpture of Marcus Antonius oozes blood.”

“In Greece?”

“I’m sorry to report the enemy has toppled the statues of you and Antonius in the Acropolis and replaced them with two-headed serpents.”

Those lies, false signs, and underhanded machinations had caused many to defect from Antonius to the younger Octavian, and had altered the balance of the fighting.

In reality, she knew the conflict she and Octavian waged was the continuation of a two-thousand-year-old war, but that didn’t lessen the sting of defeat. A pulse in her temple throbbed. Anger. Frustration. No. It was rage she felt. She’d hoped her ascent to power would turn the tide. But it hadn’t. Even with her Roman friends and lovers she’d been unable to stem the flow. The Sons of Adam and their ideas had flooded the land like the waters of the Nile. Slow but inexorable. She’d been impotent in the face of their movement and the thought of their victory nearly blew the striped cloth off her head.

rageShe looked into the spy’s amber eyes. “And what of your most sacred mission?”

A smile lit his features. “I finally found their stronghold!”

Wanting to cut the head off Octavian’s vile insect, she’d had spies seeking the location of his cult for years. Every bit of information she’d collected had gone into her gold journal, already consigned to its own hiding place thanks to this worthy man.

“Is it an island?” she asked.

“Yes, but not where we thought.”

“Where then?”

He told her.

She closed her eyes, savoring the long-sought victory. Octavian’s supporters had showed themselves to be well-trained, even if the morose little man wore lifts in his shoes.

“My queen?” he asked.

She opened her eyes and graced him with a full smile. When he looked away, embarrassed by her favor, she tugged on his chin so he would focus. “Evade any followers, no matter the time or cost, and go to where you hid the cache for me. Make a map of their location on an onyx writing tablet and put it on the dais. Seal the location as we discussed.”

He stood up straighter. “I promise.”

She hoped his pledge and skills would be enough. “Then travel to a distant city to buy your coffin before you join me in the afterlife. Maybe Tripoli or Cyrene.”

A light filled his eyes. “I may join you?”

“Yes. You’ve served me well. Give these to your family beforehand.” She handed him two gold coins made in her image that she’d secreted away, along with a heart scarab amulet to ease his journey through the underworld. “Now go.”

He bowed a final time before leaving.

Motioning for the guards to wait, she took a deep breath and moved to a desk of Lebanese cedar inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Setting her royal seal to a pre-written letter, she handed the missive to one of the sentries. It was addressed to Octavian. He would read it and know she was dead. Things must move quickly now.

The guards bolted the door. The rough sound acted like an alarm, causing her maids to spring into action. The women dressed her a final time.

As the clothing ritual wore on, Cleopatra considered the good news from her spy. This last stratagem had the potential to rewrite her legacy. Revealing the island location of the Sons of Adam would cost them dearly. Her other possible revenge would be found in the Vault of Sacred Objects, where he would hide the onyx map among the treasure she’d accumulated in response to hundreds of years of propaganda and destruction by the cult. During her reign, she’d used love and tenderness to fill the vault, and it was a sight to behold.

The maids administered their last rites, and then used her makeup and hairpins to add the requested sign on her forearm. She thought of a favorite quote from Homer, “She was smiling through her tears” and wished she could find humor at outwitting Octavian in the end. Instead, she laid back upon the golden lion-pawed couch, holding her pharaonic blue-copper-banded ivory crook and flail in a death grip.

couldWithin minutes, she’d join her love, Marcus Antonius, in a solar bark on the journey to the underworld and everlasting life. She wished her children safety and joy.

The solid-gold lion heads at the corners of the couch sheltered her as the poison painlessly crept through her senses. Soon, ecstasy filled her spine and she began to let go by focusing on the top of her head, as she’d been taught by the priests. Memories of her time came and went. Her last vision was of her gold journal.

Hidden from even the most determined grave robbers, she hoped her heirs would appreciate what she’d stashed, but worried that Octavian and his men would find a way to thwart even this last campaign.

Would the Sons of Adam, and their evil, finally be destroyed?