Page 134 of Cleopatra

Six, I thought to myself. Do not forget the Cleopatra who was born blessed for the afterlife.

The hakawati leaned forward, riling the crowd. “Who is it that I speak of?”

“Cleopatra!”

“A queen of gold, a queen of poison. A mother of bastard children…” Enraged, I thought of Helios and Selene asleep on the boat, innocent of the slander spoken of them this night.

My children were the quickest path to my anger. In that way, the asp and I were alike. For I would bite the hand that sought to strike them down without remorse and without mercy. I had little of either left in me.

I pushed forward through the crowd until I could see the hakawati. I wanted to know him in order to condemn him. He stood on an upturned crate, his tattered clothing held together with one hand to hide his nakedness. At his feet lay a wooden chalice where he collected coins. There were few in there, but every time my name was chanted, I saw him thrust it out towards the crowd.

“Exotic queen, salacious queen. Pharaoh of what might have been, if she had closed her legs and her bed. She may have been queen of us instead! Who is it that I speak of?”

The hakawati met my eyes, waiting for me to lead the chant. But when my lips did not move, he turned to the next person along, who shouted my name like a call to arms.

I could have gone back to the boat and commanded my guards to cut his head from his neck. Or better still, I could use the ivory dagger between my breasts and kill him myself. But my fury was dissipating as quickly as it had come.

This was the first time I had come face to face with my legend. She had my outline, but I did not recognise her face. I knew Octavian’s propaganda had been vast, but to hear it here, spoken in Arabic, was distressing.

History is a disease. It masquerades as truth, but no one can replicate a moment in words alone. In Egypt we didn’t try. History and stories were synonymous—like our art, they were reflections of sentiment rather than lauded as fact.

But Octavian had created me in the way of Romans. Their histories were a tool to teach and deter. The Roman obsession with oratory meant that few tales escaped the manipulation of the speaker. Never trust the story, only the storyteller.

And so a new version of Cleopatra was born—the me of myth and lore.

I speak now not to you, but to her.

You have been dragged through ink and song. Your ears bleed from the echo of your name that thunders across time. Your eyes are hollow, for they have been imagined and reimagined until they can no longer see.

Rest now. Let yourself disappear from the consciousness of others. I give you your freedom in these two words: I exist. I exist. I exist.

Like the quiet hiss of a snake. I exist.

I left without killing the hakawati. The act would do nothing but prove his narrative. And I had other blood to shed that night.

I crossed the bridge that led to the palace complex, which lay on an island in the centre of the river. The stone structure was lit by torches, and it cut an impressive sight against the night sky.

“Announce yourself!” a guard called out in Latin.

“My name is Selene,” I said, stepping into the firelight. The guards raised their spears at my approach.

“What do you want?”

“The triumvir, Antonius, sent for me.”

“And who are you to him?”

His wife.

“A healer—he will know of me.”

The guards spoke between themselves in Arabic, assuming I could not speak the common tongue of Syria.

“He said not to be disturbed,” one said.

“But if he sent for her…”

“It is late at night to have called on a healer.”