Page 127 of Cleopatra

Shemu season was spent tangled in each other’s arms on the banks of the Siwa Oasis. Home to the Oracle of Amun, Siwa was a holy place, closer to the pantheon than Alexandria was.

One night we made love beneath the olive groves, and as the day became night, we watched stars cast streaks of light across the sky.

“Do you think there is another love like ours?” Antonius asked me.

I understood his meaning: a scalding, breathless sort of love.

“No; the world could not contain such love twice over.”

“I think so too.”

If love were a well, then both Caesar’s and Antonius’s love was deep, but where Caesar’s water had been sweet and refreshing, Antonius’s was hot and addictive.

There was a movement in the bushes and I sat up, expecting a desert fox or some such. But as the shadow stretched upwards, I saw the silhouette of a cobra outlined by moonlight.

She even dared to gaze with face serene upon her fallen palace

courageous, too, to handle poisonous asps

that she might draw black venom to her heart,

waxing bolder as she resolved to die.

Such pitiless, pretty words from Horace. Why must the gentle cobra bear such malice? She who protects her young, a sacred mother blessed by Isis. Let this creature live without blame.

“The serpent rears to kill,” Antonius whispered fiercely beside me, and the snake’s eyes turned to him.

“No, she blesses us only.”

“Your god?” Antonius asked.

As she lazily turned her bejewelled gaze back to me, I said, “She is no one’s god but her own.”

Before I had finished speaking, the snake lunged forward until there was but a handspan between us. I heard Antonius inhale sharply behind me. But I did not share his fear.

The cobra’s tongue darted out, tasting the air, and I saw a glimpse of her fangs.

We regarded each other, each destined to play a part in the other’s legend. Both perceived as monsters instead of mothers.

Though I had been naked for half the night, for the first time I felt truly stripped bare. It was not a premonition, as I was not poisoned by snake’s venom, this night or any other, but perhaps a warning. She sensed a change in me.

A sound of a bird in the distance startled us both, breaking the spell between us. I watched the asp disappear back into the undergrowth with a touch of sorrow in my heart.

A warning indeed. What happened that night changed my future more than I could have known.

—

A handful of days later, I suffered cramps in the belly and eased them with a morning bath in the freshwater springs.

“I have heard talk from Rome,” Charmion said as she rubbed a cloth against my back. The waters were a cool respite from the heat of shemu season. The sun was rising behind the sand dunes that surrounded the lush oasis. And as the breeze swept through my hair, it brought with it flecks of the sparkling desert.

Egypt, how I love your breath, seasoned sweet with sand and sea.

“You know how word travels far quicker through servants than through missives,” Charmion continued.

“Yes, what do the servants gossip on now? For I can tell by your tone it is not pleasant.”

Charmion went quiet and I splashed her with water; such was Antonius’s effect on me, I had remembered how to be merry.