Cleopatra Occult (11 page)

A servant rushed in holding a box. Ptolemy yelled at the servant, “Open it! Open it now for all Rome to see!”

The servant tripped on his own sandals and the box fell to the marble floor and broke open. A man’s head rolled out.

Mark yelled when he saw the face. “Pompey!”

Ptolemy explained, “Pompey had said there would be a great surprise to whomever opened his pewter puzzle box. He said it contained a surprise for the Romans who would be so bold to open it. I don’t know about such a box so I used this one.
Surprise
!”

Mark gasped. “It was a curse! It was a curse!”

Ptolemy was confused by Mark’s reaction. “I couldn’t even find a puzzle box to fit his head. This is just a box. I wanted Rome to have a nice boxed surprise anyway…” 

“Pompey the Great!”

Ptolemy pointed at it. “He’s not great. He’s your sworn enemy!”

Mark fell to his knees before the head of Pompey. “No! This is a great insult against the gods! All the gods of Rome will cry out in horror!”

Ptolemy yelled, “He was Caesar’s enemy!”

“Oooh what an insult. Pompey the Great came to Egypt seeking protection. You only pretended to provide sanctuary but then did this in hopes of winning favor with Caesar. Your hospitality is terrible! Oh what a great sin. His vengeance will sink many ships! His vengeance will be as powerful as a volcano! So great is this sin!”

“Caesar will be pleased. Admit it.”

Mark let out a moan. “Where is the rest of his body?”

The young pharaoh stammered incoherently.

Mark said, “Find it! I’m disgusted. He was a great man. He was a great foe. He was a foe whose death shall be shouted from the rooftops. Pompey the Great is dead, the greatest warrior for the Republic of Rome for as long as it stood! He was a noble Roman citizen and he will not be treated this way by the savage pagans of this backward land. This land is not Rome’s court of law. Only Rome could judge him.” Mark grabbed Ptolemy by his purple robe, pulled him off the throne, pulled him out of his robe and threw him to the floor. “I order that Pompey’s body be found and given a proper Roman funeral! And may everyone in Alexandria cry in mourning! Let them all give public sacrifices to the gods to pray forgiveness for this bad treatment of a Roman citizen! Hospitality has been insulted! Rome has been insulted! Let everyone cry that Caesar’s greatest enemy is dead!”

Ptolemy shook. “Forgive me, I thought it’d give Caesar pleasure. I only meant to please Rome. I only want to please Rome!”

“You’re too young to please anyone. In ten years I’ll see if you’re ready to please Rome. Until then you’ll go to the border of Persia, with Rome’s army, and fight the Persians. You’ll learn to live and fight as a Roman!”

Ptolemy got back up off the floor. “But… but… I’ll certainly be abused, disparaged and even put where the most harm may befall me if I’m in the midst of the soldiers of Rome.”

Mark threw the robe back into his face. “An occupational hazard when you are king.”

Ptolemy quickly put his robe back on. “I will be abused! I’ll be raped! I’ll be put on the front lines!”

Mark chuckled. “You have such an imagination. You’ll go and you’ll grow up—I swear by my sword. And don’t be afraid of the Romans. They’re very professional. The Persians on the other hand are a commendable foe. If they can’t be crushed by Rome then they deserve the highest respect.”

“Why respect your foe?”

Mark shouted angrily as if it was obvious, “So that we don’t insult the gods of war, so the gods won’t drive us mad from war! Have you learned nothing of the gods of war? Have you learned nothing from
The Iliad
?”

The young pharaoh slumped. “When do I leave?”

“Quietly. Orderly. When Cleopatra has had time to install her court again.” He looked around the throne room. “I’ve already sent word to her army in Syria.”

Ptolemy asked, “How could she raise her own army anywhere? They can’t possibly believe she’s really Isis over there.”

Mark stated, “The queen knows her Plato. He said that we are twice armed if we fight with faith. She has them believing in a lot.”

“But… that she’s really actually genuinely Isis?”

Mark chuckled. “I hear they believe that she’s not only Isis but also Baset.”

Ptolemy made a mocking face. “The stupid Egyptian cat goddess? They think she’s a cat?”

Mark did a sexy little dance. “The mysterious black cat who is the great hunter by moonlight, and gives protection, joy, dance, music and love. Love! The men believe they will live with their beautiful queen in the afterlife for all eternity… in one great bed!”

“My sister is like a cat only in that she expects to be pampered. She thinks this is all here for her. She thinks she’s queen no matter where she is.”

“Like a cat, knowing her, when she returns to the palace it will be an entrance worthy of her even if she’s the only one about. She does know how to make entrances no matter what.” Mark smiled.

Ptolemy raised his voice. “She is not a cat! Enough of her. She walks like a crocodile. She has short fat legs and it makes her only able to stumble from this to that! She is atrocious!”

Mark Antony stormed out with all the bluster of storming in. After Mark was gone, Sorceress Thrace stepped up beside her king.

Ptolemy calmed. He said to her, “We’ll make sure my evil sister doesn’t have the ability to restore her court. No matter how she escaped death before, she mustn’t again! Do something now!”

Sorceress Thrace said, “I am one step ahead of Rome, but… you must not risk insulting Rome again. The head of Pompey the Great was blunder enough for one day.”

“He was a Roman. Rome only cares about Romans, especially the nobility. I should have thought.”

His witch asked, “Indeed, what made you blunder so. Who put the idea in your head to kill him and present a head, like that?”

Ptolemy looked at her. “
You
did.”

“I did not.”

“Oh that’s right. It came to me in a dream, so the idea was all mine.”

Sorceress Thrace frowned. “Not so fast. What dream? You cannot trust dreams in a world full of ghosts and witches.”

Ptolemy rubbed his nose. “Oh that’s right. It was just stupid fantasy. In a dream a woman with snakes for hair rose out of a clay pot and told me it’d make Caesar very happy. And it was one of those crappy pots made out of ropes of clay coiled up.” He put his nose in the air. “I should have known to ignore it all from that.”

Sorceress Thrace scoffed. “You had a dream of Medusa? You
are
lost in fantasy. You have to know the difference between reality and bedtime stories, if you are to be a wise pharaoh.”

He raised a fist to her.

She bowed.  

He retorted, “Never mind all that now! Cleopatra is still all mine!”

“And mine, too. Whatever tricks she thinks she has, I will find them out.” The bald witch grinned and tapped the side of her nose.  

He asked her, “How will you stop my sister now? She has great magic and the favor of all the gods; Egyptian, Roman and Greek. She has Caesar.”

Sorceress Thrace held out her arms. “I shall have to circumvent all the gods of all the farms and cities, then.”

“Where else is there?”

Sorceress Thrace answered, “In the
wild
places we will find our answer. As wild as the mountain bird nest of the phoenix!”

~

Outside on the steps of the Palace of Alexandria, facing the seaside market plaza, Octavian stood with Phaedra. He said to her, “I’ll leave you with my ugly centurion while I visit with the pharaoh.”

“An
ugly
centurion?”

Octavian grinned ominously. “Then I won’t have to feel jealous thoughts about you while I visit with little Ptolemy.”

Phaedra looked out over the busy plaza. “It looks so exciting. I’ve never seen such a big market like this before… and by the sea! Big, big, everything here is so big! Is it dangerous?”

“Nope. Make yourself at home, the market here works just like in Rome. Here’s some denarius.” He handed her ten silver coins. “Buy a treat for me too. Just keep your centurion at the edge of the plaza at all times if you should go beyond it so I can find you again when I’m done.”

“Why would I leave the plaza? By the gods why would I leave the centurion at the edge?”  

Octavian explained, “There’s a library just up the shore from the market if you’re so curious about that. It’s big too. It’s much bigger than the usual temple library. It’s a library to science. The libraries in Rome are better though, of course. This city is an unorganized mess.”

She agreed with him that Rome is always best.

Alexandria was the largest and most organized walled city in the world. It was laid out in a grid. Much of the city broke up into ethnic neighborhoods that were prosperous and had their own temples. The dominant Greek neighborhood was at the sea for the most monumental structures of the palace, forum, temples to Greek gods, library, public theater, public gymnasium, and tomb of Alexander the Great.

He continued, “Alexandria is the only thing civilized this side of the sea, I suppose, so I should remember to appreciate it more for what it is.” He glared north to the sea, past the market plaza, to the harbor that was capable of holding twenty-four hundred ships at once. On a small nearby island, the lighthouse was over four hundred feet tall so could easily be seen from where they were.

When Alexander the Great founded Alexandria it was a small port town called Rhakotis. He wanted to use it for strategic military reasons because it faced the Mediterranean Sea, a link to his many empires. He didn’t care about a town, beyond the harbor. The first Ptolemy decided to make it a Greek city to rival Athens. He especially wanted a library that would rival the great Library of Athens.

Phaedra asked, “Anybody can walk into the library?”

Octavian looked fierce. “If they think you’re from Rome they better let you walk all over it, anywhere on the grounds, and do as you damn well please over there. If anybody questions you anywhere, tell them you’ll report it to your host, Octavian, and they’ll bow fast enough to crack their skulls.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to all that.”

He grinned. “It never gets old seeing people bow so fast.”

Phaedra said she’d prefer to see the market. A centurion was assigned to her who had a bad scar across his nose. A slave woman was also sent along. Phaedra walked from the palace steps to the market plaza that was set out in straight rows. She asked the maidservant, “I wonder where the interesting things are?”

The maidservant shrugged.

Phaedra pushed up on her rolled hair. “Just keep an eye out for my hairpins. I feel like I’m ready to fall apart. This land is so strange yet everything has been built to look familiar. Do you see that too?”

The maidservant nodded.

“But here, as I see everything so grand, organized and busy, I feel it all falling apart. I wonder why I feel that. I have such a feeling of danger.”

The centurion assured her she was safe with him.     

Phaedra viewed many piles of fish and vegetables. She finally saw six Egyptian men walking together. She could tell they were Egyptian by their brown skin that was dark enough to protect from the desert sun and light enough to contrast their black eye makeup. After three other Egyptian men passed by, ten minutes later, she commented to her maidservant, “They are as rare here as the streets of Rome. Those men have such beautiful eyes. But I suppose if they have to wear eye makeup like that then the women won’t want to sleep with the men who don’t look good in it. Babies with ugly eyes won’t get born. After thousands of years of eyes-for-makeup, only the most beautiful eyes are left. In Rome the women only look at thick arms and so we have so many ugly faces there.”

The maidservant busted into laughter.

Phaedra wandered to a tent full of crates. It sold scrolls. A Nubian man with a long white beard asked, “Do you study witchcraft?”

Phaedra was surprised. “How could you tell? I’m just an amateur, of course.”

“There is something wild about you.”

Phaedra blushed. “Oh my Pegasus. No, no. No, I’m from Rome. And I went to a temple school that was very official. My witchcraft is just a small curiosity outside of that.” 

“Many Roman ladies these days are amateurs in the occult arts.”

“Yes, that’s true. It’s a fashion. Have you ever been to Rome? It’s so crowded. The streets are so narrow. They have tried to put too many buildings within its walls. Someday they will be as tall as your lighthouse. I’m so nervous being so far from Rome. It’s nice to talk to someone who is so nice. I didn’t know what to expect…”

He interrupted her nervous chattering, gesturing to a box, “I have a collection of the latest in Egyptian spells.”

“How can they be new?”

“Not new to time but new to this city.”

Phaedra asked how.

He grinned seductively and pointed opposite the waterfront. “I look south up the river for the ancient wisdom. Most people here in this city look north to the sea to bring them their new scrolls. The library is on the coast so that all ships entering the harbor can be searched. Every book is taken to the library where it’s decided whether to give it back or confiscate it and replace it with a copy.”