Page 45 of Cleopatra

“Pharaoh,” Nilah said gently. “It is a very different thing leaving the palace than entering it. Especially now, with the soldiers that prowl the city.”

She was right.

“Oh, what folly this plan was,” I said with a sad laugh. “Charmion will die because of it.”

“Perhaps not,” Apollodorus said. “I often journey to the palace to deliver cloth. I have attended your court many times while fitting drapes and so was able to recognise you the night you came here. Your brother has ordered a new carpet for the throne room. It would be no trouble to have you accompany me as an apprentice.”

“Truly? You would do this for me?” I asked.

Nilah was frowning. She must have known it was a risk, for if we were caught, they’d both be dead.

“You saved my life,” Apollodorus said. “You are my pharaoh. Let me do this small thing for you.”

I offered my hand to Nilah. “I will not ask this of him without your blessing.”

Nilah took my hand and bowed her head. “Without you, he would not have survived another night. You have my blessing.”

“So, how shall this be done?” I said.

Nilah looked me up and down. “First, we get you out of that dress.”

—

My shoulders burned as I rowed the small boat across the port to the palace. My muscles ached with the unfamiliar exercise but I found the rhythm soothing. Apollodorus tried to insist on taking the oars, but if we were to commit to the guise of apprentice and teacher, I knew my role would be that of an oarsman.

Antirhodos was ahead of me, the white columns of the palace dancing upon the horizon. But it wasn’t home that held my attention, it was the Alexandrian harbour sprawled across the shoreline. I had never seen so many ships moored there. Roman red flags swayed in the breeze, and their ships were larger than any others in the harbour. Then there were the vessels of the mercenaries my brother had called to his aid. They were of all shapes and sizes, stretching across the port for as far as I could see.

There will be a war here.

I had not thought through what Caesar’s help would mean. Pothinus, and therefore Theos, would not concede. It would be them or me. Either way, death would have its fill.

“Pharaoh, approach the east of the island,” Apollodorus said.

“But the harbour is to the west.”

“Not for the servants—we are required to dock on the eastern shore of Antirhodos.”

“Oh,” I said. “Please, you must stop calling me Pharaoh, you may find yourself returning to it in the presence of others.”

Apollodorus looked stricken. “What should I call you?”

“Selene. It is the only name you would know me by if you hadn’t been so sharp.”

I beached the little boat on the sandbank to the west of the island. A retinue of soldiers had watched us approach the palace and so were ready to question us as our feet struck land.

“State your business,” the commander said.

Apollodorus gestured to the rolled-up carpets in the hull of the boat. “I come to install new furnishings as decreed by the Pharaoh.”

The commander nodded, recognising him. “You may deliver your wares.” His gaze passed over me, dressed as I was in the simple brown robes of an apprentice.

Together Apollodorus and I carried the carpet through corridors of the palace I had rarely seen.

“Do you know where Caesar is staying?” I asked the weaver. Sweat trickled down my back. Though the carpet wasn’t large, it was heavy and it burdened my already fatigued arms.

“Yes, Phar—Selene, he resides in…the Queen’s old chambers.”

Of course Pothinus had stationed Caesar in my royal rooms. I laughed bitterly. “They seek to insult me, but they have given me a way to secure an audience with Caesar.”