The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George

audience.
    “You have been found guilty of treason, of usurping the throne in the absence of your rightful King,” intoned Pothinus, one of the King’s ministers, a young eunuch. His voice had the timbre of a child’s but the carrying power of an adult’s. “For this you must pay the penalty, and die.”
    “Have you any words?” asked the King. It was a formality only. Did he truly wish to hear any?
    “Slave of the Romans!” she cried. “There they sit!” She jerked her head toward Gabinius and Antonius and Rabirius, the moneylender who had financed the campaign. “There they sit, never to be dislodged from Egypt! Who, then, is the traitor to this country, Father?”
    “Enough!” said Pothinus. “This will be your last breath!” He motioned to the soldier who was to strangle her. The man stepped up behind her. His forearms were the size of most men’s thighs.
    Berenice was standing rigid, waiting. She closed her eyes as he brought his hands around her throat, then clasped them with a jerk. For what seemed a very long time she was obviously holding her breath, but then suddenly her body rebelled and she began twisting, trying to loosen his grip. Her hands were helplessly tied behind her, and there was little she could do. The soldier finally lifted her up by her neck and held her there as the life was snuffed out in her and her body at last stopped twitching. Her feet hung down straight from the ankles; one of her sandals fell off, making a loud plop in the still air. I saw that her face had turned a hideous dark color, and I looked away. Then I heard a noise of tramping feet, and saw her being loaded onto a litter and carried away. One of her feet—the one without a sandal—dragged along the ground; if she had been living it would have distressed her. But now she did not mind.
    Father’s face had lost its color, although he did not betray any open emotion. Next to him Gabinius had winced, and Antonius had looked away. Soldiers preferred battlefield killing to this formal, ritualized death. On either side of me sat my remaining siblings, taking in this cautionary lesson. Arsinoe had given a sharp gasp when the executioner stepped forward. The two boys—six and four—squirmed in unison. Even they understood that this was not a game, that Berenice would not jump up off the litter. We all saw, and learned, different things that day.
    As I watched the hideous ritual, I knew that she had bequeathed something to me, something she had not exactly intended. From her I knew now that a woman could rule alone—a strong woman, that is. The earlier Ptolemaic queens had come to power through their marriages, but Berenice had proved that a woman could seize her own power, and only afterward choose the man. Or choose no man at all, should she prefer that.
    Then, I was acutely aware that Roman troops had brought about this restoration, and that Roman troops were for hire for the promise of Ptolemaic money. Their forces, our money: a formidable combination. And last, in spite of the hatred of the Romans as a political fact, individual Romans were not demons. In fact, they could be quite attractive. Gabinius and this Antonius were personable, pleasant, and well mannered. All the pat jokes about Romans being barbarians—I remembered what I had believed about them before the Pompey dinner—were simply not true.
    And there was something else, something I had glimpsed in all this: The Romans were divided among themselves. One group was against restoring Father, another for it. One set of rules forbade it, but a clever rewording got around that. Everything in Rome was not set in stone, and perhaps one side could be used to counteract another….
    These were ideas, formless at the time, but just beginning to reveal themselves to me. The Romans were not merely a force against which we were helpless, but were torn by factions and rivalries of their own, which could be turned to our advantage. I saw that our adversary had holes