Page 131 of Cleopatra

I inclined my head with mock seriousness. “Dionysus.”

He took my hand and pressed it to his lips. “Shall we bind our love beneath the gods?”

Together we kneeled before the statue of Isis and offered her gifts and promises. We sacrificed a goat on the altar, its blood running down the flagstones and dripping into the empty pool that was yet to be completed.

That evening, we made love on the temple steps beneath the stars and moon, and slept beneath the panther skin on the Antirhodos shoreline.

When I awoke, he was gone. In his place he had left the wooden carving of Dionysus.

I held it against my chest and wept.

—

The twins came ten days after he left. Earlier than I had hoped, but the birth was quick.

“A girl and a boy,” Charmion announced.

We held one each and cried, our foreheads touching. “What shall you name them?”

“Cleopatra Selene,” I said, kissing the wet cheeks of the girl before looking to her brother. “And Alexander Helios.”

Charmion smiled. “Noble names.” I opened my arms and she placed Alexander against my other nipple.

I sighed as I felt both babes latch, the golden milk of my breasts filling their small stomachs. My chest ached for Antonius.

“Shall I call the soothsayer?” Charmion said quietly.

I looked down at their little bodies, their skin unblemished. Then I remembered the pain of the needle in Caesarion’s skin and the scream that had shattered my heart.

“No.”

I knew the soothsayer would not find the gods’ mark on them. I had searched for it the moment they had drawn their first breath.

Charmion wiped tears from her cheeks. “They will be enough without the gods’ blessing.”

I nodded. “They will be enough.”

I spent the first three weeks of their life in the birthing rooms, sequestered from daily life. I accepted no visitors except Caesarion, whose smiling face was almost enough to banish all longing for Antonius.

When I rejoined the court and daily life resumed, I received word that Antonius had married Octavia.

I disposed of the letter and thought no more of it. Well, that is what I told Charmion, at least.

I had promised her we would never hide our true selves from the other, but I was ashamed of my envy. The night I received word, I went to the pond in the north gardens and slipped into the still water as though I might find Antonius there, laughing. But when I looked at my reflection, I saw only the twisted face of jealousy. I crept back into the palace dripping pondwater and algae from my hair and did not even wake Charmion to bathe me, instead sleeping in the slime of envy. This was a pain that only I could know of. And now, I suppose, you.

Skip Notes

* It was Velleius Paterculus who said Fulvia had “nothing of the woman in her except her sex.” For ambition is a manly pursuit, supposedly. Will we ever tire of men defining the parameters of womanhood? I look at the world as you live it, reader, and grow weary.

Chapter Twenty-Six

36 BCE

hat can I tell you of the next few years? Your historians had little to say of that time. But I did much good.

I opened three more hospitals across the major cities of Egypt. I constructed temples to Isis in Hermonthis and circulated my book of remedies up and down the Nile. I patronised more scholars to fill the new library with their work and improved political alliances with our neighbouring countries. My coffers and grain stores were full, as was my heart.

I raised my children as Antonius raised his—a daughter, Antonia, born of Octavia. He had told me of the news in a letter. I had burned the pages and then sent for a man and a woman to share my bed.