Page 82 of Cleopatra

For the first time I felt the tether Charmion had spoken of before. I felt his pain like it was my own, and I wept for the both of us.

The ink work took longer than I had hoped, each prick of the needle an agony that became scored into my mind. But it sealed his fate better than my lie could.

And when the final dot was preserved in skin, I gathered him up and held him to my breast.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered against his hair, curling just like his father’s. “I am so sorry, my son.”

Love had blossomed from this moment of pain, and I could not imagine a life as precious as the one I held in my arms.

Khufu collected up the coins. The task had left him haggard. But there was one more needle yet to come.

I reached into my bag, pulling out my parting gift.

“Thank you, Khufu. May the gods bless you in the afterlife.”

After my cowardice with the soothsayer, I had prepared better this time. I could leave no footprints leading to my deceit. The needle I pressed into Khufu’s skin was laced with a concoction of poisons: a dose of distilled wolfsbane sap, lethal enough to kill by sunrise, and opium, to send him into an easy sleep before transitioning to death, for I was not without mercy.

I did not think of Khufu’s death as murder: it was necessary to secure the succession for Caesarion. I would like to say that I weighed up the deaths that would have occurred in a dispute for the throne and sought the less bloodied path, but I did not. Though I prevented a civil war with Khufu’s sacrifice, I would have cut down a hundred men. A thousand.

Khufu’s eyes widened, then rolled backwards as the opium took effect. He slumped to his knees and fell forwards, expelling the air in his lungs with a huff. I watched him gasping on the floor with a curious detachment.

I felt no guilt for taking his life. No shame had stayed my hand. His death was survival. For me, for my son, for Egypt. Before, I told you I was a queen first and a mother second. Now, I was simply a queen who was a mother. The throne had not become secondary—for I was Egypt—but my child had become Egypt too. He and I were one.

I left the coins for Khufu’s family to find.

—

When I returned to my rooms that night, Charmion was waiting.

“I sent Eiras away, it is just us,” she said quietly.

“Does she know I left the palace?”

“No, she knows nothing of the tunnel.” The look she gave me was sad and distant. “I would not betray your secrets, Cleo.”

I couldn’t meet her gaze. I knew it was a mercy that she didn’t ask where I had gone. She didn’t want to hear my lie, though I had formulated it: I went to show my son the city. Charmion knew everything about me; there was no secret I had that wasn’t hers too. But I could not tell her the truth of this. I was too humiliated that the gods had condemned my child so.

What had I done to anger the pantheon? Why was my son the first Ptolemy not to be blessed?

I rubbed the mark at my own neck. It wasn’t the exact hue of Caesarion’s, which had a slight blueness to it from the pigment in the ink. But no one will notice the difference, I assured myself.

The skin on Caesarion’s leg was hot beneath my touch. I pressed a kiss to his brow and prayed he would forgive me: let time heal this wound and banish this memory.

I turned to Charmion. “In seven days, we prepare a feast in Caesarion’s honour. In Horus’s honour. Send missives to the court.” Long enough for the ink to scab and heal.

Caesar entered as I spoke. “A feast, Cleopatra?”

Charmion bowed, all informality gone in the presence of the consul.

“Yes, I think it is time that our son is properly celebrated,” I said. I pulled my clothing tighter around me, hoping he did not notice its simplicity. But his eyes were for his son alone.

“Does that mean you will now allow other people to hold him?” he asked.

I laughed, though he expressed no mirth. “By all means.”

Caesar seemed relieved, and I wondered how much he had been discussing my recent temperament with Charmion and Eiras.

I held out Caesarion to him and he lifted the babe from me, cradling him in his arms.