Cleopatra’s Daughter

bloodshed. We could reign as Hercules and Isis.”

The man holding my arm chuckled softly, and my mother’s eyes flicked to him.

“You are asking Agrippa to betray Octavian,” he said. “You might as well ask the sea to stop meeting the shore.”

Agrippa clenched the hilt of his sword. “She is desperate, and doesn’t know what she’s saying. Stay here with the treasure, Juba—”

“Juba.” My mother said his name with as much loathing as one word could carry. “I know you.” She stepped forward, and Juba unhanded me. But there was nowhere for me to run. The mausoleum was surrounded by Octavian’s soldiers. I stood next to Alexander as our mother advanced on the man who wore his black hair longer than any Roman. “Your mother was a Greek, and your father lost his Kingdom to Julius Caesar. And now look.” Her gaze shifted from his leather cuirass to his double-edged sword. “You’ve become a Roman. How proud that would have made them.”

Juba clenched his jaw. “If I were you, I’d save my speeches for Octavian.”

“So why isn’t he here?” she demanded. “Where is this mighty conqueror of queens?”

“Perhaps he’s looking over his new palace,” Juba said, and the suggestion robbed my mother of her confidence. She turned to Agrippa.

“Don’t take me to him.”

“There is no other choice.”

“What about my husband?” She drew his gaze toward the top of the stairs, where my father’s body lay illuminated by the afternoon sun.

Agrippa frowned, perhaps since the Romans did not recognize our parents’ marriage. “He will be given a burial that befits a consul.”

“Here? In my mausoleum?”

Agrippa nodded. “If that’s what you wish.”

“And my children?”

“They will be coming with you.”

“But what … what about Caesarion?”

I saw the look that Agrippa passed to Juba, and I felt a tightening in my chest.

“You may ask Caesar yourself what will become of him.”

CHAPTER TWO

MY MOTHER paced her room. She had changed from her blood-stained gown into one of purple and gold, colors that would remind Octavian that she was still Queen of Egypt. But even the new pearl necklace at her throat didn’t disguise the fact that she was a prisoner. The red plumes on the helmets of the Roman soldiers waved in the breeze outside every window, and when my mother had tried to open the door to her chamber, soldiers were posted there, as well.

We were hostages in our own palace. The halls that had rung with my father’s songs now echoed with the gruff commands of hurried men. And the courtyards, where evening was beginning to fall, were no longer filled with servants’ chatter. There would be no more dinners on candlelit barges, and never again would I sit on my father’s lap while he recounted the story of his triumphant march through Ephesus. I pressed closer to Alexander and Ptolemy on my mother’s bed.

“Why is he waiting?” My mother paced the room, back and forth, until it made me sick to watch her. “I want to know what’s happening outside!”

Charmion and Iras implored her to sit down. In their plain white tunics, huddled on my mother’s long blue couch, they reminded me of geese. Geese who don’t know that they’ve been penned for slaughter. Why else would Octavian be keeping us under guard? “He’s going to kill us,” I whispered. “I don’t think he’s ever going to set us free.”

There was a knock, and my mother froze. She crossed the room and opened the door. “What?” She looked at the faces of the three men. “Where is he?”

But Alexander scrambled from the bed. “It’s him!” He pointed at the man who was standing between Juba and Agrippa.

My mother stepped back. The blond man with gray eyes wore only a simple toga virilis. Although extra leather had been added to his sandals in order to increase his height, he was nothing like the man my father had been. He was thin, fragile, as unmemorable as one of the thousands of white shells that washed up daily along the shore. But what other man would be wearing the signet ring of Julius Caesar? “Then you are Octavian?” She spoke to him in Greek. It was the language she’d been born to, the language of official correspondence in Egypt.

“Don’t you know any Latin?” Juba demanded.

“Of course.” My mother smiled. “If that’s what he prefers.” But I knew what she was thinking. Alexandria possessed the largest library in the world, a library even larger than Pergamon’s, and now it would all belong to a man who didn’t even speak Greek.

“So you are Octavian?” she repeated in Latin.

The smallest of the three stepped forward. “Yes. And I presume you are Queen Kleopatra.”

“That all depends,” she said as she sat down. “Am I still the queen?”

Although Juba smiled, Octavian’s lips only thinned. “For now. Shall I sit?”

My mother held out her hand toward the blue silk couch with Iras and Charmion. Immediately they stood and joined my brothers and me on the bed. But not once did Octavian’s gaze flicker in our direction. He had eyes only for my mother, as if he suspected she might grow wings like those on her headdress and take flight. He seated himself while the other men remained standing. “I hear you have tried to seduce my general.”

My mother threw Agrippa a venomous look, but didn’t deny it.

“I’m not surprised. It worked on my uncle. Then on Marc Antony. But Agrippa is a different kind of man.”

Everyone in the room looked to the general, and although the power of kings rested on his shoulders, he glanced away.

“There is no one more modest or loyal than Agrippa. He would never betray me,” Octavian said. “Neither would Prince Juba. I suppose you know that his father was King of Numidia once. But when he lost the battle against Julius Caesar, he gave his youngest son to Rome and then took his own life.”

My mother’s back straightened. “Is that your way of telling me I shall lose my throne?”

Octavian was silent.

“What about Caesarion?”

“I am afraid your son will not be able to take the throne either,” he said simply.

Some of the color drained from her face. “Why?”

“Because Caesarion is dead. And so is Antyllus.”

My mother gripped the arms of her chair, and I covered my mouth with my hands.

“However,” Octavian added, “I will allow them a burial with Marc Antony in the mausoleum that you have prepared.”

“Caesarion!” my mother cried, while Octavian turned his eyes away. “Not Caesarion!” Her favorite. Her beloved. There was heartbreak, and betrayal, and a mother’s deep anguish in her voice, and that was when I knew the evocatio had worked. The gods had really abandoned Egypt for Rome. I wept into my hands, and my mother tore madly at her clothes.

“Stop her!” Octavian rose angrily.

Agrippa held her arms, but my mother shook her head wildly. “He was your brother!” she shouted. “The child of Julius Caesar. Do you understand what you’ve done? You’ve murdered your own brother!”

“And you murdered your own sister,” Octavian replied coolly.

My mother lashed out with her feet, but Octavian easily avoided her wrath.

“In three days, I will sail with you and your children to Rome, where you will take part in my Triumph.”

“I will never be paraded through the streets of Rome!”