Kleopatra Read Free

will never know her,” cried Berenike, who was precisely the age at which the queen should have begun to take an interest
     in her, though it was unlikely that this would ever have happened. Before she took ill, Tryphaena had spent her days playing
     music, reading books, and having earnest debates with the Sophists. Berenike liked to hunt small prey with her bow, wrestle
     with her pack of dogs, and chase the little slave brats through the courtyard with her sling.
    Thea did not join in Berenike’s activities, but was an enthusiastic audience for Berenike’s feats, applauding any new progress
     she made with her weapons. Berenike dreamed of a day when she would be plucked from the nursery to have special audiences
     with her mother and show her how she could already hit the center of a target. But she had not had a conversation with her
     mother in more than two months, and her memory of the queen had already begun to dim.
    Thea mouthed words of consolation, but she was not thinking about her mother or her stepsister. Thea pondered her own Fate.
     She was not the daughter of the king. She was not in line for the throne. Once her mother died, she would be sent to one of
     the outer palaces to live with the meddling old women who wailed in the queen’s chamber, until someone in the king’s service
     suggested a marriage to a house in a foreign land. Or until she was sent back to the court of her dead father in Syria, a
     country now occupied by Tigranes of Armenia, who was at war with the Romans. If the Romans won, which they always did, she
     might be thrown to one of them as a trinket, a small toy to quench their lusts. That was what she heard the brutal Romans
     demanded in victory, even from women of royal blood. No, there was nowhere for her to go.
    “Ramses looks terribly lonely,” said Thea. Berenike’s favorite hound sulked in a corner. “I think he is crying for you.” Thea
     deposited Berenike on the floor next to her dog. She walked straight to the stupefied king and took his hand. “Come, Father,”
     she said. Kleopatra tried to hold on to her father’s woolly leg, but he slipped from her grip, leaving her little hands empty.
    To the astonishment of the ladies, Thea led the king from his post at the queen Tryphaena’s bed. Undaunted by the disapproving
     stares of the wrinkled, fierce dowagers, she steered Auletes through their circle of worship and down the stairs to the level
     of the palace that housed his private quarters. She took him into his favorite room, the hunting room, and in a voice that
     she had never before heard come from her body, ordered his attendants to go away. They skittered to all corners of the palace
     to report what was happening.
    Kleopatra sat alone on the floor, screaming words that she thought would make her father return. “Stop your gibberish,” yelled
     Berenike. “No one knows what you are saying, you idiot.” But Kleopatra could not stop, could not quiet the desire to bring
     her father back, to curl into his big firm belly. Berenike stood over her little sister, her long legs tall as smooth young
     trees. She crushed the cricket beneath her sandal, leaving Kleopatra to stare at the insect’s smashed remains.

    Thea sat the king down upon the wide, soft pallet of his kills. She said, “I am a woman now, Father. Let me take away your
     pain.” She opened the front of her white chiton and let it slide off her shoulders. The king looked into the wide eyes, identical
     to those of her mother, his wife, and then to the pair of dark nipples that crowned his stepdaughter’s breasts. So like the
     queen’s, but somehow more tangible than Tryphaena’s lovely mounds, somehow more conducive to a large pair of rapacious hands
     upon them. He pulled the trembling girl onto his lap and closed his eyes, letting the heat of her lips dissipate any thoughts
     that might invade this god-sent moment of solace.
    The next morning, the king ordered breakfast for two. Thea lay