Page 66 of Cleopatra

I hoped they had avoided the fire. And I hoped they had not.

The devastation in the city was worse than I could have imagined. Early on in the campaign, Theos and Arsinoe’s army had laced the conduit system with seawater, poisoning the waterways of the Roman encampment. Caesar had ordered new wells to be dug along the entrenchments, adding further destruction to the city’s streets.

Though the buildings were mainly stone, the fire had spread to the rare pockets of habitation where wood and paper were abundant. Like the library.

I ran through the streets in the opposite direction of the fleeing citizens. I had to see the damage for myself.

As I neared the library, my heart sank. The stone was blackened from the fire that raged within. Flames licked alongside the windows and hallways, consuming the papyrus like an agent of Apep.

I dashed forward, intent on seeing how the tree of knowledge fared, but Charmion held me back.

“Cleo, no. If you go in, you will die.”

“But Charmion, the books, the scrolls. The tree.” My voice cracked.

Charmion held on to my arm. “I am not letting go of you.”

I knew it was suicide, and perhaps that was what I sought. I pulled out of her grip and ran forward until I stood between the columns of the entranceway. I could just make out the tree of knowledge, its wondrous branches glowing red and amber. Still beautiful despite the fire that ravaged it.

The fire was so hot I felt a flush run along my skin and sweat bead my brow. If I stepped forward just a little more, I’d feel it burn. The wind shifted direction and it was then that I saw it: the last flower to bloom on the tree of knowledge.

Each petal unfurled slowly, the scrolls unravelling as quickly as they burned. I watched as the flower turned to ash, its knowledge never to be known.

I closed my eyes to the destruction, the glow of the tree remaining on my eyelids. I imagined it was the moonlight, and not flames, that lit the petals.

When the scroll had landed upon my brow when I was a babe, my mother had beamed as bright as the moon to see her daughter blessed so. She had raised me up in her arms, praising the goddess Seshat. My lips whispered the words now. “Hail, all-knowing goddess of words and ink, patron of mathematics and astrology. Thank you for your inner sight. May your power live on.”

Charmion dragged me back from the heat of the flame. And I let her. The tree had given me its greatest gift—a chance to view its beauty once more.

We walked slowly through the city back to the rowing boat. Dawn had broken across the land, touching its light with a pink glow. I did not feel like talking and Charmion knew this without asking. We each harboured our own grief.

Ahmose’s passing had affected Charmion deeply. In the days after his death, I had opened my arms and bed to her. I knew how passion could ease the pain of loss; I myself had called upon many of my servants to attend me in the days after my father entered the field of reeds. But Charmion’s appetite had stilled, and she wished only to be held close when she awoke from nightmares crying.

Sometimes I would cry with her. For Ahmose, for my mother, for my siblings.

I reached for her hand. “We will heal.”

The look she gave me was haunted. “The land will.”

“We will too, Charmion. There will come a time when the ground in the necropolis will be so still that flowers will bloom.”

That time never came.

Charmion stopped in her tracks. “Do you hear that?”

We were nearly at the shore and I was weary. The palace felt a long distance away, and I was anxious to begin the journey.

“Hear what?”

She didn’t need to answer, because then I heard him.

“The false queen has aligned with Caesar and agreed to make Egypt a Roman province. They burn Egypt, to build it again in the likeness of Rome. She makes a mockery of Sōter.” He spoke in stilted Egyptian, as if he read the phonetics from a scroll. But I would still be able to recognise his voice anywhere. Pothinus.

I followed the sound until I saw him standing on the remains of a destroyed building. His audience was a group of fishermen, about to begin their daily catch.

He didn’t look up as Charmion and I joined the crowd.

“Queen Arsinoe and King Ptolemy fight for the rights of all Alexandrians.”