Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [18]
As she touched the ash, her mind filled with a strange and roaring sequence of images: galleys saluting Rome, herself naked and sleeping in bed, the buckles of Antony’s armor as they were fastened, the sword he used to stab himself, the lighthouse shining pale in the sky, her own face, blurry and bloodless, grief-stricken. She heaved with suppressed sobs, but they let her hold him only for a moment.
A stone-faced centurion, a former soldier of Antony’s, took the ashes from her and placed them in a silver box, one Cleopatra recognized as having commissioned herself. Isis and Dionysus decorated its sides. She’d had it made as a wedding gift for Antony, and in her foolishness, ordered that the gods depicted on it have human faces. Dionysus had a cleft chin, and Isis a crown of cobras. Their hands were twined together, the marriage of Cleopatra’s gods and Antony’s.
She was no god. Why had she been so stupid as to declare herself one? All of this, everything, was her fault. She’d started things in motion and now she’d lost control. Her life was a cart careening down a hillside, horses shrieking and stumbling, unable to stop themselves from falling.
The box would be taken back to the mausoleum. The murderers would bury Antony in Egypt. They’d given her that much at least. The proper ceremonies, the rituals. Antony’s wishes would be granted. He’d renounced his Roman rites and declared himself a citizen of her country. As long as his ashes remained in Egypt, she hoped his soul would eventually travel to the Duat. Cleopatra would not be there to meet him.
She thought of him wandering alone through the caverns of the dead, making his way toward the Beautiful West without her. They’d planned their lives and deaths so carefully, and now it was all for naught.
She lived.
Still, with these ceremonies, he belonged to this country. Or so Cleopatra hoped. She realized that she knew nothing now, nothing true, nothing solid. Not since the thing that had happened in the mausoleum. Who knew which Underworld would claim him, or what the gods would do with him once they had him? Who knew whom she’d offended?
She watched as they marched away with the box that contained Antony. Too quickly, the legionaries were out of sight, and she was left in the dark with the guards to take her back to the palace.
The Romans kept her caged in her own bedchamber, where she awaited the emperor’s summons.
Outside the room, sentries trod the marble, their steps echoing through Cleopatra’s mind. Her luxurious bedding had been stripped from the bed for fear she’d use it to strangle herself. All that was left was a bare pallet, but it didn’t matter. She’d neither slept nor eaten since Antony’s death.
Her mind seeped with an unpredictable darkness. Was it madness? Had she imagined everything that happened in the mausoleum? She saw herself in a horrible flash, a soiled linen shift, muddied feet, tangled hair, wandering the roads, collapsing, her flesh picked over by vultures, yet still living, a shrieking husk. This would be her legacy, not her years of rule, of preserving the city from the Romans, not her pure love of Antony.
The Mad Queen Cleopatra.
She unwrapped her robes and ran her fingers over her skin to confirm what she already knew. Smooth. No evidence of the knife that had penetrated just below the ribs. She was chilled, and she shook as though fevered, but her body, at least, was unwounded. She could not say the same for her soul.
Something, everything, was terribly wrong. She could feel it, but she could not find it.
All night, she lay wide-eyed in her chamber, every sound magnified, the darkness dazzling.
At dawn on the sixth day after Antony’s death, she opened the shutters to watch the sunrise, once her particular pleasure. She sought to comfort herself with ritual, standing in the window, watching the indigo sky turn pale gold, but as the sun broke over the edge of the world and touched her face, she felt a searing pain. She gasped and leapt back from the window, her skin burning.