Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [47]
A man approached her, his eyes gleaming for gold, and she withdrew it into her cloak.
“You will take me to Thebes,” she told him. “Immediately. There will be more when we arrive.”
She saw him smirk at his fellows, telling them wordlessly that he’d love to take a woman aboard his vessel. To Thebes? Hardly. Thebes was days away. They’d have to proceed east along the Mediterranean, to the Canopic branch of the Nile. He’d take her a few miles down the river and see how long it took her to spread her legs.
Every man in the bar had similar ideas; she could hear them echoing.
She strode across the dock and leapt into the small, wooden vessel, accompanied by the captain and his single crewman.
The moonlight soothed her injured skin, healing the remainder of the wounds of the earlier sun. She put her face up toward the stars and felt their cool radiance as the ship set off. A cat wound itself around the rigging and stalked toward her, purring as it approached. She stroked its golden head and looked into its clear, yellow eyes. It gave a small cry and leapt into her arms.
Within moments, she’d settled herself into the vessel, though she could not afford to sleep as deeply as she had before her burial. With the dawn, she would conceal herself belowdecks, wrapped in her cloak. The vessel was sun-tight enough to suit her, and she would know if the men sought to harm her there. The motion of the water rocked her to sleep, and she dropped into blackness, losing track of time and place, dreaming of the Underworld, of Antony taking the form of a falcon and soaring up into the light, of the Beautiful West stretching before her.
All ships searched by order of the Emperor!”
The shouts woke Cleopatra from dreams of heaven, tears running down her cheeks, and she nearly cried out. She pressed her back against the ship’s side, panicked. They were looking for her. They’d stretched a chain across the Nile to block the passage of any vessel.
There were several dozen soldiers on the shore, all armed. Battlehardened, for the most part, but young and excitable. Romans. She kept herself still.
“Are there passengers aboard this vessel?”
The captain of her ship answered in the affirmative. “A woman, traveling alone.”
“Have her show herself,” one of the legionaries commanded.
The other soldiers laughed raucously.
“Have her show everything!” one yelled. “By order of himself, the Emperor of the World!”
“Lady?” the crewman asked, pulling aside the curtain Cleopatra had drawn to protect herself from prying eyes.
There was no one there.
The legionaries searched the ship but found only a tangle of linen, a rough cloak, and a small silver box of what seemed to be dust.
Beneath the water, the queen of Egypt waited for them to depart.
Her hair streamed in the current as she laid the flat of her hand against the hull of the ship, feeling the smooth grain of the wood. Soon enough, she told herself, she would be back on board with Antony’s ashes. She did not like leaving them, but she had no other option. She’d slipped into the river as the soldiers came toward her hiding place.
All around her, fish coursed through the water, their mouths gaping as they consumed tiny living things. She could feel each of their bodies, their scales shifting as they moved, their gills opening and closing silently. She could feel the crocodiles as well, slithering from the banks and melting themselves deep into the teeming waters. A yellow eye opened beside her, and she felt the corrosive friction of the beast’s skin against her thigh.
She’d slipped into the dirty water only out of desperation, used to the pure, rain-filled cisterns beneath the city of Alexandria, but now she stretched in pleasure. She had not recognized the life that filled the Nile, the tiny creatures and the large, the plants and sands and scents of faraway places. She began to silently raise her head above the level of the water to take a breath, but the boat rocked with legionaries boarding it, and the wooden hull struck her skull. She was driven