In Thrall To The Enemy Commander

Wen paused. The Queen must have heard her heated words with Clodius that morning.

‘A priestess once told me that there is power in words,’ Wen said. ‘She taught me how to use them.’

Cleopatra looked up from her mirror and turned to face Wen. ‘Then your priestess must have had some training in the rhetorical arts.’

Yes, Goddess. She was the High Priestess of Hathor. She was extremely learned. That is what Wen wanted to say, but she could not, because she had not been questioned directly. No matter what happens, you must never address the Queen directly. You must wait until she speaks to you. That was Sol’s advice and she meant to heed it.

‘Here it is, my Queen,’ said Iras, holding up Wen’s old hemp tunic.

‘It will be a brilliant disguise,’ said the Queen. ‘Do you not think so, Wen?’

I have been questioned directly, thought Wen. I may respond freely. ‘I—do not think so, my Queen. I think Pharaoh Ptolemy’s guards will be more likely to stop and question a beggar, and less likely to believe her.’

Cleopatra shot Iras a look and Iras gave a resigned nod. ‘She speaks wisely, Goddess. Let us think of a different disguise.’

‘I have it!’ burst Charmion. ‘We shall disguise her as a man.’

‘But look at her,’ said Iras. ‘She is too small to pass for a man and too womanly to pass for a boy.’

Wen had an idea. She knew that she was not supposed to address the Queen directly, but she also knew that their lives were at risk. She dared to speak. ‘The Queen could wear a hetaira’s robe,’ she whispered. ‘It would cover her completely. Only her eyes would be visible.’

Wen waited to be scolded for her insolence. ‘It is impossible,’ Iras said, shaking her head in disagreement.

‘No Queen of Egypt would ever debase herself in the costume of a Greek harlot,’ added Charmion.

But Cleopatra was nodding her head in a kind of wonder. ‘It is a brilliant idea,’ she said softly.

Iras and Charmion stood in stunned silence. ‘But it would debase you, my Thea,’ said Iras.

Charmion buried her face in her hands.

‘Do not fear, sisters,’ the Queen said. ‘It is only a Janus face that I will wear. Besides, the garment is beyond modest. It will cover everything but my eyes. It will be as if I am wearing a carpet!’

The Queen crossed to Charmion and wiped the tears that were now rolling down her handmaiden’s cheek. ‘Do not despair, my dearest Charmion,’ she said. ‘I would never bow before any Roman, as my father once did. I will pretend debasement, but I will never suffer it. I am descended from Alexander the Great, after all! Do not fear for my honour. My honour is Egypt’s honour. I will keep it, or I will die.’

The Queen’s three attendants stood silent—a Greek, a Nubian and an Egyptian—their hearts humming with pride. This was no spoiled young princess, playing at politics. This was a woman on a mission. This was a queen. Their Queen.

They were so enthralled by Cleopatra’s speech that none of them noticed the visitor standing outside the tent. ‘Veniam in me,’ he said, begging their pardons, his large naked chest shading the entrance. In one hand, he held his fishing rod. In another, he held a fish the size of a cat.

‘An omen!’ exclaimed Charmion.

‘It will make a fine meal,’ said Cleopatra, her gaze paralyzed by the sight of Clodius’s chest. ‘Wen, please accept the fish and tell Clodius that we are pleased.’

Wen swallowed her misgivings and thanked Clodius in Latin. She took the fish into her grasp along with a small blade from the cooking chest and stepped outside the tent. Clodius followed after her.

‘Would you like me to end its life?’ he asked, gripping the hilt of his pugio dagger.

‘That is not necessary,’ she said as she wrestled with the writhing creature. The last thing she wanted was to be indebted to the Roman for anything.

‘Are you able to do it?’

‘Of course I am able,’ she told him. ‘Am I not a woman?’

‘Yes, and I am a man and thus you are naturally inferior to me,’ he paused, regarding her frown. ‘In strength, I mean.’

Once again, he had given away his true feelings and they maddened her. ‘If you will forgive me, I must fulfil the command of the most powerful woman in the world.’

He frowned and she took the opportunity to rush past him towards a cluster of nearby boulders. Her effort was for naught, however, for she sensed him watching her backside as she walked. A quick glance behind her confirmed her suspicion and she threw him a scowl. He returned the look with a sheepish grin and settled himself on a rock.

She kept walking, searching for a suitable place to dispatch the fish. Finding nothing, she was forced to double back around to the cluster of rocks where Clodius sat. She placed the slithery fish on a rock not paces from him. He folded his hands in his lap and smiled at her, as if he had just taken his seat at the theatre.

Good, she thought with satisfaction. Let him observe how skilfully I wield a knife.

She steadied the poor, magnificent creature upon the rock, then dispatched it with a quick thrust of her blade. Titus’s eyes were riveted upon her, so she lifted her knife and severed the fish’s head in a show of strength. It was not an easy thing to do, though she tried to make it appear easy.

When she looked up again, he was still watching her closely, as if she were territory he planned to conquer. She returned his gaze in defiance. I am in service to Queen Cleopatra, she reminded herself. You cannot harm me.

On impulse, she made a swift cut up the fish’s belly and pulled out a long strand of its innards. With the innards in one hand and the bloodied knife in the other, she stood and faced the Roman. ‘Is this what you want?’ she shouted. She held up her handful of innards. ‘This is what I do to my enemies!’

* * *

As she held the entrails aloft, he suffered a spasm of laughter so profound that the only way to conceal it was to feign a series of violent coughs. If the entrails had belonged to an enemy, she might have been terrifying. As it was, the only thing he feared was that he might burst some internal part of him in his convulsions, or perhaps even die of laughter.

Her boldness was so unexpected—like a splash of seawater upon his face. The slave Spartacus would have liked her for his army, he thought, for she seemed to care not whom she threatened. Women the world over had always seemed to appreciate Titus, but not this little pigeon.

Still, the more she rebuffed him, the more he seemed to want her. He wanted to link her gory hands with his. He wanted to look into her doubting eyes. He wanted to plant a kiss on her sweet, pursing lips. It was an altogether ridiculous notion, made more ridiculous by his awareness that he vexed her mightily.

Titus watched with rapt attention as she gathered small pieces of driftwood, then set to work whittling them with her knife. Her skewers complete, she deftly filleted the fish into eight equal portions and skewered them, then absently wiped the knife on the skirt of her tunic.

She paused, dipping her gaze to the place where she had wiped the knife. Titus watched an expression of horror spread across her face with the realisation that she had stained the fine garment.

She cast him a narrow-eyed glare then, as if she blamed him for the mistake. Then she hurled the knife into the sand in an adorable huff. He chuckled once more as she dashed to the ocean where she began a Herculean effort to scrub out the stain.

For the first time, he observed her naked legs. She had unknowingly lifted her skirt to above her knees, giving him a tantalising view of them and a dark suggestion of what lay just beyond. His desire stirred. He felt like Odysseus in the presence of Calypso. He could not take his eyes off her dripping legs. He wondered how they might feel wrapped about his middle.

He ran his fingers through his hair. He needed to find some occupation, lest his dignitas be lost on this very beach. The sun flashed off the knife where she had thrown it down and an idea came to him.

He walked up the beach to the place beneath a palm where he had laid his tunic. He settled himself in the palm’s shade, watching as Wen returned to the Queen’s tent. He found a small bone and had soon honed it well enough to serve as a needle with which to weave palm fibres. He became so absorbed in his task that he did not notice her until he spied her bare feet stepping beneath the shade in which he sat.

* * *

‘The Queen requests your presence once again,’ she announced with a sigh.

‘Well, that is a relief,’ he mocked. ‘I feared that you had come to sever my head!’

‘The Queen wishes to ask you a question.’

‘Let me guess, the Queen will ask me a question, then you will disembowel me and read the answer in the shape of my innards.’ It was all he could do to keep from laughing at his own cleverness.