Page 78 of Cleopatra

Two honey-coloured lion cubs lay curled up in the corner of a wooden cage. Caesar helped me kneel beside them.

“We found their mother’s body by an oasis. She had given her life defending her cubs from a crocodile. I thought the little ones could be the beginnings of your new menagerie.”

“Julius.” I choked out his name.

“One boy, one girl,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist.

I named them Bastet and Maahes after the cat-headed gods. But they did not go in the menagerie, they stayed beside me.

I loved those beasts dearly. Rearing them helped to heal the wounds the war had caused. There was a simple pleasure in feeding a hungry cub and being loved by it in return: Caesar gave me that gift, and I would forever treasure it.

Now I turned to Archibios, feeling more energised. “The court needs to be purged of blasphemers. Please, report to me if anyone says such things. In rebuilding Alexandria I intend to do more than just repair the city, I wish to reform the ruling class. Be they Roman, Greek or Egyptian, if they reside in my land, they will respect me and my unborn child.”

—

My child did not remain unborn for much longer. Under the black sky of a new moon, Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar, fifteenth of his name—known to you and me as Caesarion—came screaming into the world. A battle cry for a battle won, after a day and half a night of labour.

Charmion placed him into my arms.

“Is he not perfect? Is he not a child in the gods’ eyes?”

I looked at his swollen face, marked with my blood and fluid, and wondered where Charmion’s sanity had gone.

“He is…wet,” I said weakly.

It is fair to say, I did not love my son from his first breath. How could I? I did not yet know him. I could not predict the insightful, empathetic boy he would become. Nor could I foretell the love that would one day fill my heart to near bursting.

Charmion removed him from my chest and returned with him wrapped in linen. Tears pooled in her eyes as I took him gingerly from her.

“Put him to the breast,” she said, her voice full of wonderment.

I did as she bade, and she cheered when he suckled.

“It feels strange,” I said. “As if he pulls on my very soul.”

She misunderstood me, thinking I spoke on something deeper than mere discomfort. “He is a part of you now, tethered to your essence.”

I nodded, as if that was what I meant. “Have you called on the soothsayer? We must announce his patron.”

Charmion exchanged a look with Eiras, who stood at the foot of the birthing bed. I had avoided looking there, my gaze skimming over the bloodied and soiled sheets.

“What is it?” I asked, sitting up as much as my weak limbs would allow. The babe came off the breast and I impatiently pressed him back on.

“Nothing; the soothsayer has been called,” Charmion said in calming tones. “Rest now, I will awaken you when she arrives.”

I nodded and sank back down on the bed. “Take him,” I said, handing Caesarion to the wet nurse to feed.

But as I closed my eyes, there was a voice at the door. “I must see her, you cannot forbid me from entering.”

“Charmion,” I said, “cover me in the leopard skin. Eiras, press my brow with some scented water.” My handmaids made haste, preparing me as best they could for Caesar’s entrance.

“Pass me the babe,” I ordered. He cried as he was removed from the nursemaid’s teat, his eyes scrunched and his lips puckered.

“Hush, little one,” Charmion said, and he quietened at her voice.

“He may enter,” I said to the guards at my door.

The consul of Rome had never looked so distraught. It seemed as though he had not slept in the day we’d been apart. As soon as my labour had begun, I’d sequestered myself away from him, lest his anxiety hamper my progress.