Page 62 of Cleopatra

I thought of Arsinoe then. Oh, sister, had you been in a cage for too long?

“You care for many things, Pharaoh.”

Does Caesar mock me now? But no, he watched me with curiosity. “It is my duty to care for many things.” Even if sometimes I felt that I did not have the capacity to hold so much feeling in my chest.

Caesar moved closer to me. “Let me ease some of the burden. I will do what must be done.”

He meant kill the lions. But I wasn’t ready yet.

“The cages were empty for many years before I was born,” I told him. “Father cared not for animals, and so as a child I became queen of this small area.”

“Small? My kingdom in the Suburra could fit into it ten times over.”

“I thought Rome was a great republic, not a kingdom,” I teased.

He shook his head. “The Republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality.” Dangerous words, but only the lions were our witnesses.

“And you its king?”

His lips parted as if to say “yes,” but then he shook his head. “I was only king in Suburra.”

He took me to the Suburra neighbourhood once, years later. His childhood home was wretched and abandoned, much like the district it stood in. He wasn’t ashamed to cry when he looked upon it: “My mother would be heartbroken to see it. This was my schoolroom.” He pointed to a broken window, beyond which I could just make out a shelf of dusty books.

“She was the one who schooled you?”

“Yes,” he said, an old grief crossing his features. “She taught me everything: philosophy, Latin, astronomy. But most of all she taught me dignity.”

Dignity was the trait Caesar valued most. His eventual assassination would be the greatest humiliation. He would have preferred to die by his own blade over that of a traitor’s.

“Et tu, Brute?” But it didn’t happen like that.

Forgive me; the lines between the past, present and future have blurred over time. Let me return to the menagerie.

“What news from your scouts this morning?” I said to Caesar. He leaned his elbows on the stone wall of the lions’ enclosure, his profile in shadow.

“The false pharaohs have amassed twenty-two ships, but half of them are still being repaired in the harbour.”

Arsinoe and Theos were recruiting more and more Alexandrians as the siege wore on. Their rumour-mongers were swaying the tide of the war to their favour.

“They have the skills of the fishermen, so it will not be long before those ships are seaworthy,” I remarked.

“It is time to strike,” he said slowly, knowing his words themselves would be a blow.

Without the full force of our allies, we were limited with what offensive tactics we could use.

Fire, Caesar had said, day after day. But I was reticent to light the spark of violence. Until that moment we had been reactive only—they were my younger siblings, and I could not shake the memories of their youthful faces from my mind.

I had been with Arsinoe when she had walked for the first time, her fat little legs tottering behind me as she chased me through the vineyard. As for Theos, I had been at his birth. My father had sent me to attend my mother in the birthing chamber. I had been excited until I realised the toll it would take on her. I would forever remember the relief on my mother’s face, her contortions finally ceasing as his body slipped from hers.

“How many men will you send?” I asked.

“Ten or fifteen. They will travel without uniform, under the light of the moon.”

“My brother and sister, do we know where they reside?”

“We believe they are camped beyond the city, but we cannot be sure. There is a possibility they are aboard one of their allies’ ships.”

If I gave the order, they might die. But as I looked at the emaciated lions, I realised there was no world in which we all survived.