It would not be a volume about ancient Egypt without at least one story about Cleopatra. The Cleopatra we all know from history was in fact Cleopatra VII, daughter of Ptolemy Auletes. She ruled alongside her brother, Ptolemy XIII, until he expelled her from Egypt in 48 BC and, like her father, she turned to Rome for help.
Marilyn Todd is best known for her series of audacious historical whodunnits featuring the Roman courtesan Claudia Seferius, who first appeared in I, Claudia (1995).
“So then.”
With two clicks of the imperial fingers, the handmaidens fell back in a wave, but it took an imperial glare before Kames, Head of the Queen’s Bodyguard, retreated his men out of earshot as well. Cleopatra had to lift her head to look into the eyes of her Captain of Archers.
“What are they saying about me this time, Benet? That the Queen speaks nine languages fluently and can’t say no in any one of them?”
Spies, deep undercover, kept her abreast of the scheming and plotting among her so-called trusted Council. Feedback from the common people was no less important.
Benet swallowed his smile. “Nothing of the sort, your Royal Highness. Your people are behind you all the way in –” He paused, ostensibly to adjust his swordbelt. “– In Egypt’s alliance with Rome.”
“Your tact will make you a general some day.”
And a good general at that, Cleopatra decided. Benet was a born tactician, intelligent, brave and not too dishonest. Above all, he was that rarest of breeds, he was loyal.
The eagle of Rome was casting a shadow across virtually the whole of the civilized world. Iberia to Asia Minor, Libya to the Black Sea. Now that Julius Caesar had his sights set on the great prize of Egypt, the pickings were rich for, say, an ambitious young Captain of Archers for whom the matter of allegiance rated low on his list of priorities.
So far, Benet had shown no desire to serve himself above his country. But it would be foolish to take such loyalty for granted . . .
Boom, boom, boom-a-doom-a-dum-dum. The pounding of the drums, soft and insistent, cut short the briefing.
“We’ll talk later,” she told him.
Information could wait.
Mighty Isis could not.
Boom, boom, boom-a-doom-a-dum-dum.
The memory of those lazy drumbeats would stay with Cleopatra for the rest of her life. They encapsulated the point when she walked into the temple a queen – and walked out a goddess.
From this moment on, Cleopatra was to be worshipped as Isis incarnate. It was official. She was now the Great Mother, protectress of the Pharaoh, goddess of healing, fertility and magic. Ah, yes. Never underestimate the power of magic, she thought. Rising from the throne of solid gold as the ceremony drew to its close, Cleopatra felt the brush of the goddess’ wings on her face. And the wings were beating in triumph.
As she made her way across the cool marble floor of the temple, she passed Yntef the shaven-headed high priest, sweating under his leopard skin, his eyes still unfocussed from his recent trance. Renenutet, the priestess of Bast dressed as the cat-headed goddess, made obeisance. As did Tamar, Hathor’s priestess, wearing the ceremonial mask of the cow. Temple musicians lined the aisle, their harps and reed flutes playing the Queen out. The choir sang softly – young women, whose voices had been trained from early childhood to sing as sweetly as the larks which soared above the broad wheatfields of the Nile and lifted the spirits of those who laboured to bring home the harvest.
Glancing back over her shoulder, Cleopatra committed the moment to memory. The temple regalia, the black bowl of divination, the fat sacred cats, the dark ceiling studded with bright silver stars. Flaming torches high on the walls brought brightly painted frescoes to life, made them dance. Acrobats on the north wall, fishermen hauling home their nets on the south, Anubis weighing the heart of Osiris against the ostrich feather of truth on the east. Best of all was the fresh painting on the west wall: Cleopatra as Pharaoh. Let the Council take the bones out of that!
Boom, boom, boom-a-doom-a-dum-dum.
As the mighty cedarwood doors of the temple swung inwards, the Queen suddenly faltered. Priests and priestesses, acolytes, the crowd outside – all would naturally assume she had been blinded by shafts of brilliant white sunshine. They could not possibly know that, for an instant, Cleopatra had forgotten where she was. That, when she stepped into the light, she had been shocked by the alien world into which she had been propelled.
A world which babbled not only too fast, but in Latin.
A world where, in place of the calm, green waters of the life-giving Nile, the Tiber ran, brown and rancid, its lush banks long since vanished under warehouses and wharves. Despite the heat of the sunshine, she shivered. This was a world inhabited by fair-skinned people whose women were chattels, handed over from father to husband without rights, and whose men swaddled themselves in thick woollen togas, even in this merciless heat. There were other differences, too. These barbarians burned their dead. Bent their knee to feeble human gods in devotions which were no better than common horsetrading.
Yet these people ruled the world . . .
It had been easy, while Yntef conducted his ritual divination, the cloudy water swirling in the bowl beneath a film of warm and scented oil, to forget she was no longer in her beloved Alexandria, gazing out from her palace across the Great Sea, feeling its cool breeze brush her lips. Instead Cleopatra was in Rome. A city that, to many, represented the very heart of the enemy . . .
All eyes were upon the Egyptian Queen as she descended the temple steps. Precious stones had been woven into her heavy plaited wig. Amethysts, emeralds, sapphires and pearls, every facet reflecting back sunlight. Bangles and bracelets encircled ankles and arms. Each finger was adorned by a ring, as was each toe, and round her neck hung a shining pectoral of gold. There were times, and this was one of them, when Cleopatra could barely hold herself upright with the weight of the metal but, far from home, her people needed the reassurance of the pomp and the ceremony.
In short, they needed someone to look up to.
Someone to believe in, in these turbulent times.
At the foot of the steps, she held up a hand to stall her bodyguard and beckoned over her Captain of Archers. “You were about to tell me, Benet, what the people of Alexandria really feel about Cleopatra’s liaison with the Roman dictator. Do they fear I am selling them out?”
Benet had still not grown accustomed to his Queen’s forthright manner. It sat strangely at odds with the long-winded words of her political advisers, and he often wondered how she juggled court etiquette with her compulsion to drive straight to the core.
“Far from it,” he replied quietly.
Across the flagged courtyard, shaded with acacias and sacred sycamore trees, Kames scowled his resentment at a mere captain’s confidence with the young Queen.
“When Julius Caesar stormed the palace in Alexandria three years ago,” Benet said, “your Majesty’s people saw hope die in the dust of his four thousand troops.”
“Go on,” Cleopatra urged.
She was not blind to Kames’ scowls. Benet indeed walked a tightrope, but not in the way Kames imagined. Noble from birth, as with everyone else in authority – Kames, included – the Captain of Archers was blessed with the common touch. An ability to tap into the Alexandrians’ innermost feelings, secure their trust, assure them their confidences would not be betrayed. Perhaps, she reflected idly, this was because precious little of her own, highly interbred Macedonian blood ran through Benet’s veins. Benet was a true-born Egyptian.
“By the time Rome trampled the city,” he said, “our own Regency had betrayed its people twice over. First, with the coup which exiled your Majesty in Syria. Then by taking a stand against Rome, a force they could not hope to beat, instead of entering into negotiations. As a result, Egypt believed itself yoked to Rome’s plough with no chance of salvation – until, oh munificent Ra! – the Queen smuggles herself to Caesar wrapped in a rug, and overnight the balance of power swings again!”
It hung unsaid that Julius Caesar imagined that, in Cleopatra, he would be manipulating a soft, sweet puppet queen . . .
“From the moment your son was born, your Majesty, the people have embraced Caesarion as Egypt’s heir. Nothing, I promise, has changed in the ten months you have been absent.”
Cleopatra darted a glance across to the boy who lay cradled in his nurse’s arms, his rosebud lips slightly parted in sleep. Caesarion. Little Caesar. She smiled fondly. Who would suspect the child’s exquisite public behaviour owed more to a splash of poppy juice on a sweetmeat than a well-trained royal disposition? Caesarion was a lusty two-year-old, with a lusty two-year-old’s energy and a lusty two-year-old’s lungs. His mother had no intention of curbing either. That boy was the future Pharaoh and his spirit would never be tamed. Indomitable through inheritance, that spirit would soar. Higher than his father’s eagle it would rise. And the breadth of its shadow would be unsurpassed . . .
“You wouldn’t lie to me, Benet?”
Why should the common masses back her, when half her Council rejected Caesarion’s claim to royal blood and believed the Queen wielded far too much power as it was. Power, which should rightly be theirs –
The Captain of Archers looked deep into her eyes. “I would never lie to you, your Royal Highness.”
He knew full well that the 18-year-old chit who had mounted the throne on Ptolemy’s death had not proved the pliable young thing these shadowy figures had hoped. A truth the Roman Dictator had yet to discover . . .
“Good.” She flashed Benet a wicked grin. “Because the last man who betrayed me died the Death of One Thousand Cuts, the first slicing off his treacherous tongue.”
His eyes smiled. “A point I shall bear in mind in the future – Holy Ra!”
Cleopatra’s head turned in the direction his and 50 others were turned. For once, she was unable to control her gasp of surprise. Renenutet, still wearing the silver mask of the cat, was standing, arms outstretched, on the roof of the House of Scribes. Her pleated linen gown billowed softly round her ankles in the sticky breeze.
“Renenutet!” The high priest’s voice carried its full weight of authority. “Renenutet, in the name of Isis, I command you –”
The screams cut him off.
For a few ghastly seconds, Renenutet seemed to hang in the air. A white pleated cloud frozen against a backdrop of azure.
Then the billowing gown disappeared –
Kames was the first to react. In an instant, his soldiers had surrounded their Queen, tried to hustle her through the nearest doorway for safety.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “It’s not me that needs helping, it’s Renenutet. Kames, take some men and see if you can do anything for her. Benet. Go with him, if you will.”
The Captain of Archers met her eye and nodded in mute understanding. If Renenutet’s fall had proved fatal, it was from him that she wanted to hear it.
As the soldiers trotted off, their bronze helmets and greaves jangling, Cleopatra’s instinct was for her child.
“Take Caesarion home,” she instructed his nurse.
She must remove him at once from this tainted scene.
It would not do to have Pharaoh run from a crisis. Even if he was only a babe and fast asleep!
“Tuck this into his clothing instead.”
She handed his nurse the amulet Renenutet had given her earlier.
“The sacred amulet of Isis,” the priestess had hissed, her voice barely recognizable under the silver cat mask.
Flushed with the priesthood’s recognition of the Queen as Isis incarnate, the public attestation of their powerful support, Cleopatra had barely glanced at the tiny object when Renenutet pressed it into her palm.
“Set with carnelian,” she’d whispered, “washed in a tincture of ankhamu flowers, fashioned from the trunk of a sacred sycamore tree.”
This had been at the very start of today’s ceremony, at the moment the priestess was supposed to pay homage to her Queen and nothing else. To cover the delay, Renenutet pretended to disengage the panther tail which hung at her waist from Cleopatra’s gold belt, as though the two had become somehow entangled.
“Isis is the goddess from whom all being arose,” she murmured, her eyes glittering behind the metal mask. “From her feathers came light. From the brush of her wings came the air. She is the Enchantress, the Speaker of Spells, who protecteth the living and extendeth her protection even beyond, unto eternity.”
Oh, Renenutet. You should have kept the amulet, Cleopatra thought, picturing the nightmare vision of Renenutet frozen in space. You should have kept the amulet to protect your own soul from self-destruction.
“Let the wings of Isis cover you instead, little Caesar,” she whispered, stroking her son’s soft, dark hair. She bent to kiss his cool, dry forehead and wondered how long the effects of the poppy juice would last. As she straightened, Kames and Benet came striding across the shaded courtyard, their white kilts swinging in unison. Their expressions said it all.
“I deeply regret, the priestess Renenutet has already begun her long journey to the West,” Benet said softly.
The two men knelt beside the Pool of Purification and allowed the priests to splash their eyes with sacred water to wash away the contamination of having gazed upon a corpse. Cleopatra felt no disrespect. To have deferred the task would have been to taint the Queen with their polluted sight.
Poor Renenutet, she thought. A suicide. Whose imperfect soul was destined to wander the dark paths of the Underworld for ever. “I suppose we shall never know what drove her to take such drastic action,” she added sadly.
“On the contrary,” Benet said. “I know exactly what drove the poor woman across the Far Horizon.”
He hesitated. Pursed his lips.
“Someone else’s hands,” he said quietly. “Renenutet, I regret to inform you, was murdered.”
Whether for business or pleasure, the Field of Mars on which the temple complex stood was arguably one of the busiest places in Rome outside the Forum. Sited on a bend in the Tiber, it was home to seven other temples, as well as a whole host of public baths, theatres, race courses and libraries, offering works of art to admire, tombs to revere, groves to picnic in, trees for the children to climb, steps on which bearded philosophers could debate the meaning of life and open spaces for athletics. The air was never silent. Until now. Snake charmers stopped playing their flutes. Beggars’ bowls ceased to rattle. Pedlars stopped hawking. Only the jackdaws continued to chatter.
As the Dictator’s concubine, ensconced in the very villa from which his lawful wife had been evicted, Cleopatra was accustomed to being gawped at by the populace. Suddenly, like wasps to honey, they swarmed to the scene of the drama, but their interest, thank Horus, lay not in the dead priestess, rather in the bejewelled Egyptian whore. Cleopatra could handle that standing on her head. No person, living or dead, had ever witnessed a crack in her armour. They certainly would not do so today.
However! As the consort of the most powerful man in the Roman Republic, she was also expecting a different kind of attention. Any minute, Caesar’s legionaries would arrive.
She turned to Kames. “I assume from your contemptuous tutting that you disagree with Benet’s conclusion?”
“Your Majesty, we all saw what happened,” Kames replied. “There was no one else or we’d have seen them. With respect, that roof’s flatter than the sole of my boot.”
The Queen turned to her young Captain of Archers and raised one finely plucked eyebrow in query.
Benet inhaled. Released his breath slowly. “Because of the angle at which the body was lying, because of where it was lying, close to the wall, because the blood which had dried round the head wound doesn’t correspond with the copious amount of fresh blood inside her mask – all that adds up to only one thing. Renenutet was murdered.”
Kames’ bluster was shot out of the water. At last, he understood what the Queen saw in Benet. Drawing himself up to his full height, he cleared his throat and squared his shoulders.
“Benet’s deductions are correct,” he admitted. “Renenutet leapt off with arms outstretched, yet the body was found with one arm pinned beneath it. Likewise, when a person jumps they make a trajectory.”
“A trajectory?” she queried.
“Imagine throwing a javelin or spear from that roof, your Highness. This is the same principle. The body lands at the end of that arc. Renenutet, as Benet said, lies close in.”
Kames dropped to his knees, his forehead touching the ground.
“Your Majesty, as a soldier I should have recognized the signs –”
How fortunate, Cleopatra thought, to have two such pillars to lean on. Benet, alert to nuances, unafraid to put forward an unpalatable theory. Kames, man enough to admit his mistakes. Or clever enough to know he could no longer get away with the suicide theory . . .?
“Don’t whip yourself, Kames,” she said, bidding him rise. “You fell into the same trap we all did. You took Renenutet’s death at face value.”
Hobnail boots echoed on the Via Triumphalis, the rhythmic clink-clink-clink of scale armour, the jangle of bronze medallions as the legionaries drew closer. Grief and shock would no doubt set in later, but Pharaoh was raised to consider emotions an indulgence – never more so in a crisis. As the centurion halted his troops, Cleopatra summarized the points in her mind.
The priestess Renenutet had been murdered.
Renenutet . . . priestess of Bast.
Bast . . . the gentle daughter of Isis.
Isis . . . . . . . . . Protectress of the Pharaoh.
Cleopatra steepled her fingers. More crimes than murder had been committed today. Sacrilege, for one. The sanctuary of the Great Goddess had been defiled by the spilling of blood. Furthermore, the outrage of Bast had been invoked by the assault on her priestess.
But, worse than that, by embroiling the Queen in this apparent suicide, someone had tried to pull the wool over Cleopatra’s almond eyes.
And that was their biggest mistake.
In retrospect, she should have realized Caesar would not let it go at a lowly centurion.
Cleopatra studied the corded muscles of the man dismounting from his pure white stallion, noted the purple stripe on his tunic which pronounced him patrician. He had a strong face, a handsome face, and in spite of herself a shiver of desire rippled the length of her backbone. Contrary to rumours put about by certain viziers, the Queen had only ever taken one lover, and that had been a matter of expediency. The gods do not bestow virginity for it to be taken lightly. The night she had had herself smuggled through enemy lines in a rug, knowing that if she was discovered her own kinsmen would cut her throat like a dog, was the night she had given herself to the Roman Dictator.
Fast-track negotiations, some might say.
The Regency had usurped the throne. Cleopatra was in exile, Alexandria was in the hands of the rioters, the palace in the hands of the Romans. To survive, she had had to act fast. Her first move was to throw her army of Syrian mercenaries behind Caesar. Afterwards –? Well, what greater assurance of Egypt’s allegiance than the Queen’s precious virginity?
Men. Such fools, she thought. In seducing the young Cleopatra, Caesar believed he was annexing the rich lands of the Nile through the back door, a mission he could not hope to accomplish by force. But with his entrenched Roman attitudes towards women, he had not stopped to contemplate the alternative. That she might be using him . . .
Within days, Cleopatra achieved her first goal. She conceived. In the simple act of giving him an heir, something Caesar was sorely lacking, the tables turned. By the time Caesarion was of an age to rule, his father would be dead. And Rome would be annexed to Egypt, not the other way around!
In a journey which had taken her from royal princess to queen to pharaoh to goddess, Cleopatra quite literally held the power of the world in her hands.
The power felt good.
Nothing – and no one – would be allowed to change that.
Which wasn’t to say her blood could not be stirred by a lopsided smile here or a bunched muscle there! Benet, although he did not know it, was one such contender. The patrician dismounting from his stallion, another.
“Your Highness,” he murmured, making obeisance Egyptian fashion.
“It is good to see you again, Mark Antony.”
Nothing would come of these flirtations, of course. Cleopatra was neither stupid nor reckless – she had Caesar in the palm of her hand, and with it the eagle of Rome. But Caesar was old, he was bald and, let’s be frank, when it came to the art of love, his was more a quick sketch than an intricate fresco. Other décor could still be admired.
“Caesar salutes you,” he said, rising, “and offers his escort to the Queen, that she may return to the villa without incurring unwarranted scrutiny or gossip.”
The weight of so much gold jewellery was exhausting her, the heat from the wig almost unbearable. But when Cleopatra smiled at Mark Antony, you would think she had just risen from her bath, calm and refreshed.
“The Queen sends her grateful thanks to the mighty Caesar,” she replied.
Heavenly Horus, she would need all her diplomatic skills here! Strictly speaking, she was a foreigner on Roman soil, subject to Roman law. If the most powerful man on earth decreed she must leave the Field of Mars, then leave she must and in the three years they’d been lovers Cleopatra had never gone head-to-head against the Dictator’s wishes. Let him think he was in control. Illusion was everything.
“But the Queen has no desire to impinge upon Caesar’s generosity,” she told Mark Antony. “The Queen shall be remaining at the temple.”
The tall patrician blinked. “Is that wise, your Majesty?” Likewise, only a fool would go against Cleopatra’s wishes. Julius Caesar would not wish to lose his hold on the Nile’s treasures just because some clot upset his mistress!
“Wise is a contentious word, Mark Antony.”
She linked her arm through his and led him to the shade of the Pool of Peace, where papyrus plants swayed in the hot, sultry breeze. The silvery sound of sistrums filled the air and fragrant incense filtered out from the temple.
“Was it wise of the Queen,” she asked, as handmaidens fluttered up with plates of fresh fruit, “to devalue Egypt’s currency by one third in order to keep export sales strong? Or a gamble which happened to pay off? Was it wise of her to have her portrait stamped on our coinage, to prove to the world that Egypt’s economy was stable in the hands of a woman? Or was it nothing more than female vanity?”
Cleopatra dabbled her hands in the cool, clear water.
“For that matter, was it wise of the Queen to muster an army of mercenaries to fight her own brother? Or simply the banner-waving of a power-mad female with no hope of success?”
“Life, I agree, is entirely a matter of perspective,” he said, a twinkle lighting his eyes. “Which is precisely why I am now offering my services to escort you personally to the safety of Caesar’s villa.”
Cleopatra bit into a peach. “Your concern is touching, Mark Antony. Unfortunately, it would be disrespectful for me to leave until the rites are over.”
When the Roman general smiled, the lines round his eyes fell into deep crinkles. “The ceremony finished an hour ago,” he pointed out, selecting a cherry.
“To honour Isis, yes, but we have yet to venerate the cobra goddess and sing the hymn to Nut,” she replied, and watched as he bought himself time by slicing an apple.
Mark Antony had not bought the lie. True, he was ignorant of the rites conducted here, but he was keenly aware that a surprisingly large number of Roman women made devotions at this shrine. Isis had become popular in Rome, more so since the Queen’s arrival last September, when additional aspects had been added. Bast, for instance. Hathor the cow. Plus numerous other female deities who, together, presided over motherhood and love, beauty and healing, all the issues important to women, Roman or otherwise.
Mark Antony might not know the details. But he knew, dammit, when a ceremony was over and done with. Selecting a date, the Roman general changed tack.
“Listen to the baying crowd,” he said. “Perhaps the Queen does not appreciate how much resentment her royal presence causes in the city . . .?”
“The Queen knows exactly how Republicans view the concubine and her bastard son,” she said tartly. “Keep the mistress – flaunt her, even – is the general consensus. After all, the Queen of Egypt is a prize for Caesar to parade, is she not? Just don’t play house with the whore.”
Another lie. Marital scandal was a minor issue, the cause of gossip rather than resentment. The real fear among the Senate – Mark Anthony included – was for the future of their hard-won Republic. They suspected Cleopatra of dripping poison in the Dictator’s ear every night to serve her own ends.
They were not wrong.
Come next March – no later than April – she would have Julius Caesar declare himself King of Rome, with herself crowned as Queen. Upon his death (and who knows how quickly that might come to pass) Caesarion would inherit the title.
Then all of Rome’s dominions would belong to Egypt –
The scent of the oil of marjoram drenching her wig wafted in the sultry air. The gems glistened like raindrops.
“As to the mood of the crowd, my answer is this,” she said carefully. “Rome likes its spectacles. I say, let the people enjoy this one.”
Renenutet was murdered on the sacred soil of Isis wearing the insignia of Bast. Now that Cleopatra was to be venerated as Isis, this comprised a triple sacrilege and the perpetrator must be punished. Pharaoh could not simply walk away this afternoon. It was her duty to stay and see justice served. In any case, she thought sadly, she owed it to Renenutet to find her killer. Renenutet should not journey into the West without the feather of truth on her shoulder. The journey was long enough as it was.
She held out a small, sandalled foot.
The sparring light in the general’s eyes died. She inched her foot out further. His expression darkened. There was no mistaking the Queen’s message.
Or defying it . . .
As Mark Antony knelt to kiss the royal toe, anger and outrage pulsated from every Roman pore. He! an aristocrat! a general! one of the world’s greatest power brokers! had been . . . dismissed! There was a very different glint in his eye as he rose.
She watched him stride away, barking orders to the centurion to keep the crowd back. One day, she reflected, this man would return for more of the same. His type always did.
And Cleopatra would be waiting.
Inside the sanctuary, prayers were being said for Renenutet’s journey into the Afterlife. Yntef, Tamar and the rest of the attendants had lost no time in shaving their eyebrows. They would have done this had just a temple cat died, much less one of Bast’s holy disciples.
The atmosphere inside the sanctuary pulsed with emotion.
Cleopatra glanced at the sky. The sticky, midsummer heat could not last and the first rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. Excellent. She would be able to interpret the storm as Bast’s anger made manifest. Thunder would be the cat goddess’ growling, lightning her ferocious spitting. Magic and superstition played a pivotal role in Egyptian life. Only a fool would fail to capitalize.
“Benet. Kames.” She beckoned them over. “No one is to suspect this was not a straightforward suicide.” If the Romans sniffed murder, this would become a civil investigation. Much better to keep these things in-house. “We will deal with this quietly, between the three of us. Do either of you have any clues as to who killed her?”
“None,” Benet admitted. “But we know Renenutet was killed inside the temple.”
Cleopatra’s eyes flashed. Was there no end to the insult? “How can you be sure?”
“There is only one place on this site where people must bare their feet, even your Majesty. Inside the sanctuary. Renenutet was barefoot.”
Cleopatra picked up a sloe-eyed kitten mewing at her feet. The kitten began to rattle like a chariot over cobblestones, snuggling its head into her collarbone.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Dried blood around the head wound suggests Renenutet died an hour before the simulated suicide –”
“How do you know?”
“Dead bodies don’t bleed,” Kames explained. “The blood was probably that of a chicken’s, poured into the mask at the last moment to make it look fresh. Also, her skin was cool.”
Slowly, Cleopatra laid down the kitten. If Renenutet had spoken to her at the beginning of the ceremony, when she passed across the amulet, but had been dead for some time after Benet examined the body, there was only one conclusion. She died during the ritual. Meaning the killer had contrived to use the Queen of Egypt as his alibi.
Another mistake.
Beside the Pool of Peace, with butterflies and bees swarming round the fragrant flowers in the urns and thunderclaps booming ever closer, Cleopatra’s memory travelled backwards in time.
It returned her to the soaring temple. Closing her eyes, she saw its star-studded ceiling, just as she had seen it earlier, the dynamic wall paintings flickering beneath the flaming torches. In her mind she once more inhaled the sacred incense, a rich blend of frankincense and myrrh, cedar and gum arabic, juniper, cinnamon and sweet flag. Her ears replayed the lazy beat of the drums – boom, boom, boom-a-doom-a-dum-dum. She was mounting the dais again, only everything now moved in slow motion.
“Homage to thee, Isis,” the choir sang, “whose names are manifold and whose forms are holy. Gracious is thy face.”
At the time, Cleopatra had hardly listened, concerned only that she had won over so powerful a body as the priesthood. With their support, the vipers in her Council could scheme until the sun set in the North and still not get their hands on the throne.
“You are the north wind that bloweth in our nostrils. Your word is truth.”
Beside the pool, Cleopatra’s head pounded. From the heat, from the weight of the gold, from the hot heavy wig. From wondering how on earth Renenutet could have been killed beneath her very nose. She concentrated on re-living the ceremony . . .
“O, Isis of a thousand names, who watcheth over us.”
The nightingales had finished their chant. Silence had descended over the sanctuary. The flames on the torches had been dimmed. From a side door, a score of acolytes entered, each carrying a small gilded cage in reverent, outstretched hands. Gliding in long pleated skirts, they mounted the steps of the platform. The cages were lined up, side by side on the floor, the eyes of the occupants flashing like fire in the gloom. With a synchronized click, the catches were sprung and twenty temple cats tumbled on to the dais in honour of Bast. Renenutet, Cleopatra remembered, had gone forwards to feed them.
She recalled, too, how Renenutet and Tamar assisted the High Priest in his divination. Supporting him when he fell into his trance. At his side when he pronounced how beneficent Anubis had shown him how the heart of the Pharaoh was happy, how the heart of Osiris was glad, and how the two halves of Egypt would always be one.
“May Isis embrace you in her peace, Yntef,” Cleopatra had replied solemnly, using the ankh to make the ritual gesture over his head. “For the ka of her High Priest is holy and Anubis has shown him the truth. The heart of Isis is full of joy at her servant’s devotion.”
Translation: Yntef would be richly rewarded for throwing his support behind the throne.
She pursed her lips in concentration. Remembering how Yntef, unsteady still from his trance, had been helped away by Tamar as Renenutet bestowed upon the imperial wig the sacred crown of Isis, the solar disc cradled between the twin horns of the moon. The priestess’ breathing beneath the replica mask had been laboured, Cleopatra recalled. But she was certainly very much alive –
“Your Majesty?” Benet’s shadow fell over the pool.
“Ah, Benet, just the man!” The royal headache had vanished. The gold weighed as a pectoral of feathers round her neck, the plaited wig a gossamer veil.
“Have you worked out how the trick was done?”
The Captain of Archers returned the smile. “I have indeed, your Royal Highness.”
“Good,” she said. “Because if you can tell me how, I can tell you where and when.”
Between them, it should tell her who.
The how had been ingenious. The trick as audacious as Cleopatra had ever known.
“The key,” Benet explained, “is a metal spike hammered into the brickwork at the junction of the wall of the House of Scribes and its flat roof. Wrapped round the spike were these.” He held out a few coarse fibres of hemp from a rope.
An elaborate pantomime had been staged, he explained, which hinged upon no lesser person than the Queen of Egypt witnessing what was supposed to have been a dramatic suicide. Renenutet on the roof, her arms outstretched. Renenutet jumping to her death.
The killer, though, had reckoned without Benet.
Benet was the Queen’s spy and spies never take one damn thing at face value.
“The murder was carefully planned,” he told her. “During the ceremony, that spike was hammered into the brickwork and a short piece of rope attached to it, with a noose at one end.”
Cleopatra’s heart twisted. When that first lazy drumbeat began, Renenutet had no idea her thread of life had less than an hour to unravel. Except . . . the priestess of Bast had sensed danger! It had been with force and urgency that the sacred amulet of Isis had been pressed into the Queen’s hand. At the time, Cleopatra dismissed it as a token of Renenutet’s acceptance of herself as Queen of Earth and Heaven. She should have realized. No priestess, especially one of Renenutet’s standing, would need to pretend her sacred panther’s tail had become entangled, had the gift been open and above board! Renenutet had passed the amulet in secret.
“Now I shall tell you when and where Renenutet was killed,” she said.
After she passed Cleopatra the amulet, the ceremony had continued as scheduled. The choir extolled the virtues of Isis (in other words a public proclamation of the priesthood’s support), then the lights dimmed.
That was the moment Renenutet’s thread was severed.
As she slipped out of the sanctuary to fetch the procession from the Sacred Cattery, two people were waiting. As one snatched off the silver mask, the other threw a sheet over her head.
“What odds her skull was crushed by her own metal mask?” Cleopatra said. “The sheet would contain any splatters of blood.”
The killers had no time to waste cleaning floors. One was already clad in ritual robes. All she had to do was don Renenutet’s mask and run swiftly to the Sacred Cattery. Only a few seconds would have been lost and while she was fetching the feline procession, her accomplice carried the body away, arranging it beneath the House of Scribes.
“She?” Benet queried.
“Definitely,” Cleopatra confirmed. “The killer had to impersonate Renenutet for the remainder of the ceremony. Only a servant of Bast could possibly have known the routine.”
In due course, when the temple cats had been released from their cages on the dais and the lights went up again, who would suspect that Bast’s representative was not Renenutet? It was only, thinking back, that Cleopatra remembered how laboured the priestess’ breathing had been when she lowered the horned headdress on the royal wig. The killer’s hands had shaken slightly as well, she recalled. Not from the heat or exertion. But from nervousness!
“Afterwards,” Benet said, “the impersonator climbed up on the roof. She slipped the noose from the rope round her ankle. Waited until her Majesty was looking. And jumped.”
No wonder Renenutet seemed to hang in the sky, Cleopatra thought. That was precisely what had happened. The rope suspended the killer in mid air. Dangling like a fish on a line.
“The accomplice at the upstairs window in the House of Scribes threw another noose around her wrist,” Benet said, “cut the rope around her ankle and hauled her inside. Then they filled the cat mask with animal blood and stuffed it on Renenutet’s head. Plenty of time before anyone else arrived at the scene.”
For several moments, Cleopatra listened to the thunder, watched jagged spears of lightning cut through the charcoal sky. Lost in contemplation, she did not even notice as the first heavy drops of rain fell. Finally, she summoned the Head of her Bodyguard and together all three withdrew into the shelter of the painted portico.
“Kames, I want you to observe the priestesses of Bast and, discreetly, mark you, isolate the one with rope burns on her wrist and ankle. I suspect they are covered by bandages.”
Cleopatra almost regretted doubting the head of her bodyguard’s loyalty. Then again, to make assumptions about even her most trustworthy cohorts was to open herself up to danger.
“Her accomplice will be a priest or a scribe,” she added. “Someone with regular access to both buildings, strong enough to heave corpses around and he’ll probably have a bloodstained sheet beneath his bed.”
The killers would not have expected events to move so swiftly. They would not have needed to take extra precautions at this stage.
In less than an hour, Kames returned. “A novice priestess called Berenice and her lover, Ity, have been quietly removed from their duties,” he said. “Shall I send them to the Royal Torturer for confession?”
Cleopatra shook her head. “Have your men smuggle them out of the temple, take them into the hills. Oh, and Kames.”
“Your Majesty.”
“Be sure they bury the bodies deep.” As he left, she turned to her Captain of Archers. “Benet, I want you to remove a few handfuls of silver from the Temple Treasury, also a small but precious statuette. Have it put about that Berenice and Ity stole them and ran off.”
Caesar might not agree, but this temple was every bit a part of Egypt as Alexandria itself. Pharaoh’s justice would be served – only today it would be served in secret. Only a few hand-picked soldiers would ever know Berenice and Ity had killed Renenutet, and she imagined the ill-fated lovers would be regretting the deed long before Kames’ men had finished with them.
“Why?” Benet asked. “Why did they kill Renenutet?”
Cleopatra glanced across at her son, struggling out of his drugged sleep, and pictured the amulet tucked inside his clothing. An amulet set with carnelians, washed in the tincture of ankhamu flowers and fashioned from the trunk of a sacred sycamore tree . . .
“I doubt we shall ever know, Benet,” she said, tapping him cheerfully on the arm. “Now, off you go and rob the Treasury, there’s a good boy.”
She snapped her fingers and two handmaidens scampered forwards. “Fetch my litter,” she ordered. “We shall return to Caesar’s villa.”
I do believe Mark Antony has stood in the pouring rain for long enough.
Five days afterwards, Cleopatra was seated next to Caesar as guest of honour at the games inaugurated to commemorate Rome’s victories in Gaul. As befitting the Queen of the Upper and Lower Nile, she wore a gown shot with silver threads, a headdress set with amethysts and enough gold jewellery to turn Midas green with envy. The one hundred thousand Romans crammed into the surrounding tiers ought not to be disappointed, she thought happily.
Syrian lions roared from the pits. Baited bulls bellowed, bears snarled, wolves howled, elephants trumpeted their rage. First in the arena, a half-starved tiger, to be pitted against a trident and net. The human did not stand a chance. After that, beast fight followed beast fight in rapid succession, and Cleopatra’s gorge rose at the senseless shedding of blood, the death of so many splendid specimens.
Then it was the turn of the gladiators, their swords and lances gleaming in the sun. She watched, impassive, as steel clashed against steel. Blood spurted, bodies writhed, heels kicked up clouds of sand as Roman fought Roman to the death. From the corner of her almond eye, Cleopatra watched Caesar size up the crowd. How much did they back him? he was wondering. How far they would follow him? Would they accept a monarchy in place of their hard-earned Republic?
As always, Cleopatra pretended not to care. She slipped her small hand into Caesar’s. Showed the people – and the Senate – that it was Caesar she loved. Only Caesar . . .
To the backdrop of trumpets, attendants dressed as gods of the Underworld hauled the mangled corpses away in chains, threw fresh sand over the blood. The crowd was insatiable. Stamping their feet, they bayed for the next treat, the despatching of murderers and rapists by wild animals.
There seemed to be some activity at one of the gates. Guards conferred hastily. Glanced at the Queen. Conferred again. Then one of them made a decision. Marching over to Cleopatra, he pressed his clenched fist to his breast in salute.
“One of the prisoners insists there has been a mistake, my lady. We don’t believe this is the case, but – well, he is Egyptian and swears your Majesty will vouch for him.”
“Bring him over,” she said, in her perfect Latin.
Two guards frogmarched the prisoner across. One eye was closed, his body bruised where he’d put up a fight.
“Your Highness,” he gabbled, “tell them they’ve got the wrong man. Last night some thugs set upon me and the next thing I know, I’m here. In a cage full of murderers awaiting execution.”
Whatever did you expect? she wondered silently. You plant seeds of dissension in the minds of two idealistic young lovers and incite them to murder Renenutet under the Queen’s nose. She leaned closer, pretending to examine his features. Features that fully expected to kill, get away with it – and then be shown the Queen’s mercy.
“I have never seen this man before in my life,” she told the guard.
“But your Majesty –! It’s me, Yntef! Your High Priest.”
Cleopatra smiled pityingly at Caesar. “My High Priest is on a boat bound for Alexandria,” she murmured. “To take up his new promotion.”
Let’s face it, one shaven-headed Egyptian looks the same as another to a disinterested Roman. Only the temple servants would know that Yntef had been replaced. And even they would not know the reason . . .
She watched impassively as Yntef was dragged away, protesting at the top of his voice. The crowd loved it. They would love it more, she thought, if they knew the full story.
Her mind travelled back to the beginning.
Coincidence that it was here, in Rome, that the priesthood chose to throw their support behind Cleopatra? Hardly. Had this happened in Egypt, that would have been different. But it all took place in the back of beyond, and why?
Because the priesthood did not back Cleopatra at all.
That most powerful of organizations had thrown its weight behind the traitors within her own Council. Oh, yes. The bastards planned to have her assassinated in Rome, knowing damn well the finger of blame would point to the Senate, who hated Cleopatra with a vengeance.
Just before the ceremony, Renenutet must have discovered Yntef’s treachery. That was the reason she pressed the amulet into her hands. Set with Isis’ sacred carnelians, washed in a tincture of the goddess’s consecrated ankhamu flowers and fashioned out of the trunk of her sacred sycamore tree, no object was more holy, more sanctified, more precious in Renenutet’s eyes than that which invoked the Great Mother’s protection.
The amulet had been the warning. That was why she’d passed it in secret. But that loyalty cost Renenutet her life.
Yntef knew she was on to him. Enlisting the help of two sympathizers to the cause (heaven knows how many more vipers there were in the nest, but Benet’s skills would root them out and Kames’ men would do the rest), the High Priest was forced to eliminate Renenutet in a way that would not arouse suspicion. Set some distance from the temple, the House of Scribes allowed ample time for his accomplices to stage their pantomime then pretend to come rushing up with the others.
Once Cleopatra realized who had killed the priestess of Bast, the motive behind the murder was obvious. Yntef would have known if anyone other than Renenutet had been holding him as he came out of his trance. That meant Yntef was in on it.
Oh, dear Yntef. All those hymns and blessings and public acceptance of the Queen as Isis incarnate, how they backfired. You see, it’s all very well to pretend the priesthood backs Cleopatra – provided Cleopatra is dead. Now they’ve made their support public, the priesthood has no choice but to stand by their decision. The die has been cast. The Queen wins. Best of all, Yntef’s failure will have created division among the priesthood and the Council in a way that Cleopatra could only ever have dreamed of. Each would now suspect the others of selling them out. Trust among the conspirators would crumble like sand.
Instinctively, her hand reached for the amulet round her neck. In bestowing Isis’s protection, Renenutet had saved the Queen’s life at the expense of her own, but she would not go unrewarded. Plans for a sumptuous tomb were already being drawn by the Queen’s Architect.
The rewards also extended to the spiritual plane.
Two of Renenutet’s killers lay in unmarked graves, where, without proper burial rites, their souls were doomed to wander the Halls of the Lost for eternity. Now the third member of the trio was poised to look retribution square in the face. Kames’ men had done well in delivering him to the Roman arena.
With a snarl, a panther bounded into the arena.
Bribes had ensured the beast had been tormented with prods, whips and firebrands, and it had also been starved and denied water. Yntef screamed. Behind her, the crowd cheered and stomped on the wooden boards of the amphitheatre, unaware of what Yntef was seeing.
The figure of Bast incarnate. Leaping to avenge her devoted disciple.
As the panther sat back and licked its bloody lips, Cleopatra felt a brush of soft, white feathers against her cheek. Once again, the wings of Isis were beating in victory.