Sekhmet’s Choice

My earliest memories are of running for my life through the narrow, garbage clogged alleys of the Subura. Rome is a dirty, violent city, and the Subura is the dirtiest, most violent neighborhood it has to offer. Life is cheap there, where its main thoroughfare, the Clivus Suburanus, runs through the natural valley between the Viminal and Esquiline hills.

Unattended children, and sometimes even unwary adults, are in constant danger of being snatched right off the streets, beaten insensible and sold by the many slave dealers. Anyone unwise enough to travel the streets without bodyguards or at night is asking to be attacked, robbed, and left to die.

My kind are more likely to be torn apart by the packs of feral dogs that roam everywhere, if we don’t end up in someone’s stew pot first.

I am called Sekhmet by humans. I do not reveal the secret name given me at birth by my own people. I am of the Folk, and of the clan of Cat, we who must walk nine paths, and live nine times upon the earth.

I have no memory of my mother, or of any siblings, if I had them. My Roman existence was brutish, and not likely to last for many summers. I ate whenever and whatever I could, which was not often and not much. I had quickly learned enough tricks to outfight anything my size, and enough common sense to outrun anything bigger.

Today my life is far different from what I experienced that first summer of my second Life-Walk, as a scrawny, scrappy, street-wise Roman cat, whose coat of sooty black stayed encrusted most of the time by the filth of the streets. Thankfully, that memory is fading.

The Clan of Man, I had learned, were among all the Clans of the Folk the most untrustworthy. They are apt to cruelty, and are best avoided at all costs. No help of any kind was to be expected from that quarter.

That those humans I saw did not necessarily represent their Clan, was a fact I had yet to learn. The street gangs, slavers, harlots, and cutpurses with whom I shared my world did not impress me in the slightest.

I had no name in my first summer, other than my Clan name, and it I would never reveal to creatures such as these. Most often I was simply called “Cattus”, or sometimes “Vermes”, (vermin) by those less favorably disposed toward me.

Such was my life and existence upon the earth, until the day when, fleeing from dogs down a street of shops, I darted beneath a rumbling cart and was kicked by the donkey who pulled it. I did not quite lose awareness, but was stunned badly enough that the carter who drove the conveyance was able to jump down and grab me.

I should have fought, but I was just too groggy. He wrapped me securely in a sack of coarse cloth, with just my head showing. My limbs were so pinned that there was no chance to struggle.

I remember thinking that I was surely destined for his stew pot, and would feed his wife and brats that evening. Life can be short in the Subura of Rome, and its ending ugly.

For now though, I was still alive. Where life remains, there is always hope. Everyone born here learns that very quickly, or else falls into the blackness of despair and dies.

Even if one is bound up in sackcloth and put into a cart full of clay pots and straw, that hope still remains. I resolved to wait for my chance and be ready when it came.

I couldn’t see anything over the board sides of the cart, and its juddering and bouncing over the cobblestones of the street made my poor, kicked and bloody head hurt abominably.

Surprisingly, the carter noted my discomfort, and stopped long enough to scoop up some of the straw that padded the clay pots and push it beneath me. That helped, but not nearly enough. Those inclined to make light of being kicked by a donkey are welcome to try it.

I tested my bonds by tightening and relaxing my muscles, but they were not the smallest bit loosened. I was in for the ride, then, whatever its destination. I consoled myself that whatever place that might be, was unlikely to be worse than that which I had just left.

I did lose consciousness then, for some unaccountable period of time. When I returned to myself, my bonds were gone, but neither was I free.

Now I seemed to be within a covered woven basket, and what little light I could see between its papyrus reeds told me it was now evening. I immediately tested the cover, but it seemed to be bound on by a knotted rope, beyond my power to get loose.

I couldn’t tell where I was, but it was far quieter than the street I’d left behind. My aching head gave silent thanks for that welcome detail. The air also smelled immeasurably sweeter here. The man and his donkey cart had taken me out of the city, then.

It is impossible to describe the utter stench of a city like Rome to anyone fortunate enough to have never known it. Rotting garbage competed with human waste in a miasma that physically assaulted the senses.

There were of course, public latrines that connected with the sewer system, but in a district like that where I was born, humans were as likely as animals to relieve themselves wherever they might be at the time.

Corpses of deceased animals, dogs and even the occasional horse, might lie where they fell for days, before anyone bothered to drag them away.

All of that was gone, as the cart that bore me away rumbled along the paving stones of one of the roads the soldiers of the Roman Republic had built in every direction from their city. I did not miss it at all.

When the light that made its way into my prison had nearly gone, the cart halted and I heard its owner unhitching the donkey, presumably to allow it to graze, hobbled by the verge of the road.

I heard flint striking steel, and soon began to smell the smoke of a fire. My basket prison was then lifted down from the cart and set before the crackling flames. The warmth felt good, and the absence of the jolting and bouncing of the road felt even better.

The carter began to untie the hempen rope that held fast the basket’s cover, and pried it open the space of a paw’s width. I tensed my muscles to spring against it and make my escape, but he apparently knew something of cats.

Before I could leap, he had pushed a coarse cloth soaked in water and a bit of smoked meat through the gap, and slapped the cover back into place.

“Next time,” I said to myself. “Next time you may not be so ready, and I shall leave you!”

For now I gratefully lapped the water that ran from the sodden cloth, and nibbled at the meat. That the human provided food and water argued that I was not as likely to become food myself, in the near future. “Very well,” I thought, for those who are given time may bide their time, until opportunities arise.

I passed the night thus, mewed up in my prison of papyrus reeds, by the fire of the carter, or potter, or whatever the man might be. His road camp, beside a Roman Via leading to an unknown destination, was actually about as comfortable as any place I might have been able to sleep in Rome, if truth be told. Hope does remain.

At dawn the man fed me again, set me back into the cart, and hitched up his donkey.

He then spoke the first words I had heard him say: “Well, skinny she-cat, you seem to have survived your knock on the head. I think I may have a place for you that might be safer than where you were. We’ll stop there today, and see if they’ve need of my wares.”

I made no sign that I comprehended. We of the Clan of Cat learn early not to reveal how much of human verbiage we understand. It is often easier to outwit someone from a position of seeming ignorance. The Clan of Man is gullible, if nothing else.

By early afternoon, we had reached a group of lavish country villas situated in some low hills, and it was at the kitchen service entrance of one of these that we halted. There the potter, for that is what he was, jumped down. “Hail, the villa!” he called.

A round red face above a servant’s tunic and an apron showed in the doorway. “Hail and well met, Potter,” came the answer. “What does your cart contain besides your fat behind, today?”

“Fine glazed tableware, double fired. Fine enough to grace the table of the Consul himself.”

“Well now, that remains to be seen!” The conversation was ritual, the opening steps in a game of move and countermove between buyer and seller that had not changed a whit in centuries.

“And what of the Great Ptolemy’s board? Have you anything fit for that? Cook has need of decanters for wine and oil, and some mixing bowls for the wine. Perhaps a dipping bowl, if you’ve anything in there worth dipping into,” and here the slave chuckled at his own jest.

“Come and see, then!” The ritual continued, through the selection of goods, the naming of a starting price, the initial outraged histrionics. A quarter of a long summer hour later, they finally ran out of breath, and settled at a price of one Denarius, three Sesterces, for a half dozen vessels, with a terracotta lamp in the Syrian style thrown in.

These were carried inside by other menials, as the first one continued his chat with the potter.

“And what have you in the basket, good potter?” the slave asked, his curiosity finally piqued enough to overcome his patience.

“A young cat who ran afoul of my donkey’s hooves. She’ll be a handsome beastie, once cleaned and fed properly for a week or two. It was my thought she might please your Domina, the Princess.”

“She may well, if anything can! And if not, we need a good ratter in any case.” Here the potter lifted my basket from the cart and handed it to the slave, who took it and me into the overheated and steamy kitchen, as the potter waved farewell.

“What are you doing?” rumbled a person I took to be the Cook. “A scrawny cat won’t flavor the Master’s soup!”

Betrayal! So I was destined for the pot after all! I prepared myself to fight, as someone began to untie the rope from my prison. When a gap showed between the basket and its cover, I sprang against the top with all of my strength.

It flew from the grasp of the slave who’d loosed it, and I leapt out and charged for the door, but another human blocked it, and with his boot flung me back into the room.

I was soon trapped in a corner, hissing and spitting as three members of the treacherous and dishonest Clan of Man advanced on me. I resolved that I would at least sell my life dearly. I would not go down easily, or without drawing blood.

“What have you done?” shrieked a shrill, childish female voice. “Cease immediately on pain of death! Harm that animal, and I shall have you crucified!”

The three kitchen slaves sprang away from me as if I had been a lion.

“No Domina!” one of the slaves denied tremulously. “No harm was meant! I swear it by Jupiter and Mars!” While he was thus diverting attention, all three retreated as far from me as they could get, without coming within arm’s reach of the young girl who had entered from the inner courtyard.

“It is a gift, Domina, from a peddler to you,” cried he who had dickered with the potter.

“Then get away from her!”

At this command the three unfortunate servants looked about themselves rather wild-eyed, as they considered how they might take themselves farther from me than they already were.

It was, though I did not as yet know her, my first experience of Cleopatra VII, called Thea Philopator, Beloved of Horus and Ra, Ruler of the Nile, and of Upper and Lower Egypt, Queen.

Cleopatra was at that moment not yet Queen, although the Roman slaves who served her in the villa had learned to react as though she were. She was the eleven year old precocious daughter of King Ptolemy XII, him who was called “The Flautist”, currently in exile in a rented Roman villa in the Alban hills southeast of Rome.

As I was later to learn, the Ptolemaic Dynasty was the most dysfunctional of all families. The King’s present discomfiture was due to an Alexandrian revolt, which had allowed his daughter Berenice to steal her father’s throne and have him and her sister Cleopatra chased from the country. Nor was it the first such instance.

Three years hence, he would return the favor; Berenice however, would not survive his return. The ways of royalty are not those of the common folk.

Cleopatra herself now glided in most regal fashion across the terracotta tiled floor of the muggy kitchen, to the corner where I stood with arched back. My needle teeth were still bared, in full defensive posture.

Her clear topaz gaze rested on me for a long moment, while the course of my future life was decided. I felt myself relax, my rage fading. This was a different sort of human. I began to breathe deeply again.

“You shall be called ‘Sekhmet’,” she finally said. Her voice, when not shrieking, was soft but imbued with authority. “I had thought of ‘Bastet’, but no, you are the warrior goddess.

“You will be my companion, and eat from my table. You will accompany me wherever I go, and share my bed. When my father, Great Ptolemy, reclaims his throne in Egypt, you too shall come.

“All this is yours, you of the nine Life-Walks before the face of Ra, if you choose to accept it. However, the choice remains yours. If you wish to return to what you have here, you may also choose that.”

Here she stepped aside, and waved airily toward the open door, a clear question in her gesture and expression. “Yes? No?”

I have never, in all the summers that have since passed, been able to say why, but in that moment of changing life, I made no move at all toward that door to freedom. None. I never even considered it. Nor did my gaze drop from those eyes of sky-hued topaz.

Instead I thought, “‘Sekhmet’: the female, lion-headed, warrior deity of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, leader of the Pharaohs in war. I can accept a name like that.”

The moment passed; my choice was made.

Cleopatra turned back to the scullery slaves. “Bathe her. Groom her. Dress her wound. Her paws are raw; oil them. And burn some incense. She smells of Rome.

“When all is done, take her to my maidservant, Eiras. I will inform her you are to be expected.” Then she was gone.

She was, in that moment of time, the most stunning human child I had ever seen, or ever hope to see. She was of ethereal beauty, though it would be hard to define exactly how she accomplished it.

Cleopatra VII, of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, was of medium height and build for a girl of eleven summers, with the blue-black curling tresses common to the Hellenes. Her face was a pleasant oval; her skin of that creamy, perfect complexion sometimes seen in those from the north of Macedonia or Thrace.

Lovely, I thought, but apt to burn in the sun, although one of her station was unlikely to see direct sunlight save as a matter of choice; slaves with parasols would prevent that.

She wore a diaphanous, high-waisted gown of lavender silk, through which showed an underdress of snowy whiteness. On her small feet were slippers of soft kid skin. She smelled of amaryllis and larkspur, and every eye followed her wherever she walked. Such was my new human companion, and though I little liked the term, Mistress.

If one must serve a Mistress, I could not have chosen better than Cleopatra, I decided, as the slaves began to approach me once more, this time with great trepidation. I could indeed serve such a one.

I suffered the bathing with as good a grace as I was able to manage. I detest having water on me, but I was grateful to have the last, filthy remnants of Rome washed away. The grooming was much more pleasant, being done with boar-bristle brushes, after I had been toweled dry.

My street-roughened paws were rubbed with olive oil, and a small plaster was applied to the wound on my head where I had been kicked by the donkey.

I was beginning to be cautiously optimistic about the whole affair. I somewhat revised my opinion, if not of the Clan of Man in general, then certainly of some of the humans present in this residence.

I can tolerate their kind, so long as they show proper deference. All but him who had booted me back from the door; his pocked face I marked well in my mind, for future retribution. My kind long remember affronts.

I was then carried reverently across the inner courtyard, with its peristyle garden and chuckling fountain, and into the villa itself. We passed through a wide atrium past an impluvium pool, and from there into a suite of lavish rooms. These were filled with the scent of women and their accesories.

Here we were confronted by two young female servants, much of an age with Cleopatra herself. One was dark and the other fair, both attractive, and dressed in rather finer clothing that that worn by the kitchen staff. The slave who bore me was denied entrance, of which action I heartily approved.

I was transferred into the custody of the fair haired maidservant, whom I later learned answered to the name “Eiras”. The dark one was “Charmian”. These had clearly been instructed in the proper manner in which to treat with members of the Clan of Cat.

They cooed and admired me for a few moments, then Eiras set me upon an embroidered cushion which, along with dishes of food and water, had been placed on the mosaic floor, beside an ornate couch. I sniffed: the food was braised poultry, sprinkled with lemon, still warm.

I could live with the choice I’d made. I hoped Princess Cleopatra could. In that moment, the thought of failing to measure up to her expectations of me was hateful, not even to be considered.

I dined and then rested, watching the two young girls who served the Princess from the corners of my eyes. With practiced motions, they were preparing a change of clothing.

A basin of water, a beaker of scented Roman soap, and towels were also made ready. Charmian brought a silver censer, and placed a pinch of golden frankincense upon its live embers.

Soon Cleopatra swept into the room and they undressed her, washed her, and dressed her again in the fresh garments, without either of them missing a move. Her lavender silk gown became a pale blue one, with an underdress of royal purple. The slippers on her feet were exchanged for others of dark blue velvet.

She bent to inspect me and stroke my fur for a few moments, then straightened and turned to Eiras. “Did Sekhmet take to the fowl?”

“She did, Highness. She ate all, and licked the bowl.”

“Good. I must go to Father’s study. I want to listen while he speaks with that egotist, Pompey. When I return, I shall want my Hebrew scrolls. Tutor says my sentence structure is still faulty.”

With that she glided out of her rooms again, and the girls busied themselves with fresh chores, leaving me to my own devices. One dusted and oiled furniture of polished wood, while the other hung bedding from the broad windows to be aired.

I closed my eyes to feign a catnap, the better to hear and scent my surroundings. Those unaware that they are observed are prone to revealing more than they intend, I’ve found. The meal and the peace of the Princess’ chambers overcame me though, and I fell asleep.

When I woke once more, Cleopatra was seated in a chair by the light of her window, a scroll in the Jewish style held in her hands, while others lay at her feet. She recited words and sentences in the guttural Hebrew tongue, while an elderly Greek man, I was later to know as her private tutor Sosigenes, stood listening to her lessons.

I was familiar with this human language, many of the Jews of Palestina being resident in the Suburan slums I had left behind. Along with Latin and Greek, it was a common language of commerce in Rome.

I thought the Princess’ accent was quite good, her grammar satisfactory. I was to learn that it was but one of the six languages spoken by my Mistress.

Lessons completed, Sosigenes bowed and withdrew, smiling his approval, while the two maidservants gathered up the scrolls. Sosigenes I liked immediately. Cleopatra clearly considered him more trusted friend than slave, and I could see why.

Charmian and Eiras once again assisted Princess Cleopatra to wash and change her clothing, this time to a gown of pale pink silk and an underdress of a darker pink, respectively. Her slippers were replaced by others of leather, dyed dark red. Her raven’s wing hair was piled high in the latest Roman fashion, and attar of roses was dabbed in strategic places about her body.

“Come, Sekhmet,” she said softly. “The family will dine together in the triclinium.” I rose, stretched, and attended her, as she swept regally from her private chambers, once more crossing the marble floor of the atrium, and entered a large triclinium dining area.

In passing, I noted from the light that came through the roof opening above the atrium’s pool that it was now evening again. I had rested far longer than I’d intended.

The triclinium was arranged in the Roman fashion, rather than the Egyptian, I saw. The King, and a Roman male in a Senator’s bordered toga, and buckled red shoes, reclined on upholstered couches of saffron silk, while a chair of polished wood had been placed for Cleopatra’s use. An evening meal was arrayed on a low table, together with wine and a bowl in which it might be diluted with water.

A comfortable cushion, of the same saffron color as the couches, lay on the floor beside the chair, clearly with me mind. I lay down upon it as regally as I could, as the Princess settled in her chair with a sighing of silk. One must keep up appearances.

I knew from my Mistress’ earlier conversation with Eiras that the dinner guest was none other than Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Roman General and Senator.

“Egotist”, she had called him. It showed in his expression. In his view, the Royalty of Egypt were to be humored, if there was gain in it, but they were not the equal of any Roman Citizen.

“Very well,” I thought to myself, and marked him well. Perhaps an ally, but never a friend. He was far too concentrated upon his own ambitions to be anyone’s friend.

It may well be an error to call such as him a part of the same Clan which gave rise to my Mistress. Their desires and motivations are too far apart.

Cleopatra, with her usual grace, greeted Pompey with appropriate cordiality, and her father somewhat more warmly. Then, with her own hands, she took food from the family table, and placing it in a delicate porcelain dish, set it before me.

I was to dine upon savory baked fish, I saw. It was very fine.

The conversation was kept banal, Cleopatra being present. I knew that as dictated by Roman custom, she would, as a female, be expected to retire when she had eaten. Then the real business of the evening would be conducted by the men, over wine considerably less well watered than that which had accompanied the meal.

I made up my mind to return surreptitiously, if I was able. I comprehend much more of the Clan of Man’s talk than they suspect, and I wanted to form my own impressions.

It is most likely just as well, that they do not realize how much my kind do perceive. They would never believe that we are on the whole uninterested in their machinations. I concerned myself, only so far as they might affect my new Mistress and my life with her; the rest was beneath me.

As I was already aware from what little had passed at dinner, King Ptolemy’s Egyptian homecoming was being negotiated. They never even noticed that a skinny black she-cat had crept back in and concealed herself beneath the table, there to listen intently.

As I had suspected, Ptolemy’s return to his throne would be delayed somewhat longer than he wished. Rome is an uncertain ally, when her own interests are not directly served. No legions would conduct Great Ptolemy home, this season or the next.

So much the august Pompey made clear, though with winks and smiles, he also communicated the possibility of a suitable bribe being considered. His kind always place their own advancement above every other interest.

Later that night I pondered everything I had seen and heard during my first day as the young Princess’ companion. I lay wakeful upon the foot of Cleopatra’s bed, while Charmian and Eiras occupied low cots arranged along the walls of her sleeping chamber.

The warm, scented breeze of Italy lifted the silken curtains of the windows as I thought of the position and name I had taken as my own. Did I love Cleopatra, most beautiful daughter of an ancient and storied land?

Yes, I did. I could not help but admit it, even then. I was irrevocably “Sekhmet”, now and forever more. I would measure up to the name, this I vowed.

Did I love her enough to give up my life, if that were required of me? It was a new life that she’d freely given me… I thought long on this and other matters, there in the darkness, until sleep claimed me.

Less than a week later, that question would be settled to the satisfaction of all concerned, and for all time.

Italian brigands entered Great Ptolemy’s villa by dark of night. All lights had been extinguished and the household was asleep. Whether they intended robbery, assassination, or kidnapping was never known.

It became my business when one of them found his way into my Mistress’ sleeping chamber. I awakened instantly in the faint moonlight, without knowing why. Perhaps the warrior goddess for whom I am named aided me. If so, I honor her.

When I heard a shoe scuff softly against the tiles of the floor, all became immediately clear in my mind. In an instant of time, I evaluated the sound and scent, and knew that this was no household member on any legitimate errand.

With a snarl, I launched myself like a ballista bolt from the foot of the bed, striking him in the upper chest with all claws extended. His stinking clothes told me I was correct, and I fastened my teeth in the flesh of his throat, as he fell back with a wild cry.

He tore me free of him almost immediately, and flung me away, but the damage was done. The maidservants were roused by the noise and were both upon him like leopards, in the space of a pared moment: Eiras with a little silver dagger and Charmian with a kitchen knife.

Cleopatra was now screaming for the menservants, and I had leapt up from where I had fallen to rejoin the battle, but there was little need. The two twelve year old ladies’ maids, with their little blades and their kittenish ferocity, had somehow, impossibly, finished the intruder.

More shouts rang through the villa, as his two companions were discovered and dealt with almost as quickly. The scream of the one I had bitten, and the shrieks of the girls as they attacked him, had raised the entire household. Lamps began to flare in the darkness, and the affair was over as quickly as it had begun.

The King himself burst into the chamber with a short sword in his hand, very nearly tripping over the deceased brigand. His eyes widened as he took in the entire scene: the intruder on the floor; the blood-spattered maidservants; his daughter sitting upright in her bed; myself, still bristling and spitting, in case the dead should somehow rise again.

Astonishment filled his face as he raised the lamp in his other hand high, the better to see it all. Moments passed, and servants came in behind him. All halted in their tracks at the sight before them. Finally Ptolemy was able to speak.

“Charmian, Eiras, you shall be rewarded. Tomorrow I shall inscribe documents granting your freedom.”

“It is not necessary, Majesty,” Charmian answered after a moment, and Eiras nodded her agreement. “There is nowhere else for us to go, and we wish only to serve our Mistress. We have been at her side since we were all children together.”

“Children younger still,” I thought to myself. But children or no, these two were certainly suitable to help me guard the Princess.

“Besides,” Eiras said, gesturing toward me. “It was Sekhmet’s doing. She attacked him and woke us.”

“It is true, Father,” Cleopatra spoke at last. “Sekhmet leapt up and bit him before anyone else could react. We would all of us be dead, if she had not waked everyone, and bought time for my maidservants to defend me.”

“We shall speak of this again when morning has come,” Great Ptolemy declared, gazing at the two girls. “You, and my daughter’s small new friend with you, have rendered great service to my House. For now, I want this filth dragged outside where it belongs.” He indicated the dead, and menservants stepped forward to obey. “Then let us all return to our repose, if such can be, after these events.”

The house did not magically become quiet as we all returned to our beds, but it did settle into an uneasy calm. I hopped up once more to my place upon Cleopatra’s bed, praising deities both Egyptian and Roman that my Mistress had avoided harm.

And yes, I firmly decided, I did indeed love my Mistress, the Princess Cleopatra, enough to give my life for her. There upon the foot of her bed, I swore, by Sekhmet my namesake, that no harm would ever again come near her, unless I already lay dead in her defense.

Sekhmet had made her choice, with no regrets, and no second thoughts.

There were indeed rewards given and accepted the next day, though Eiras and Charmian continued to refuse their freedom.

They were each presented with an exquisite Egyptian necklace, formed of jointed golden plates, each with a glowing lapis lazuli set in its center, and a gold ankh pendant at the throat. I suspected there were whole cities upon the earth that did not contain so much gold as one of them.

I was gifted with a smaller version, made with the same materials and flawless workmanship, but of a size that could serve as a decorative collar for me. Great Ptolemy himself bent to arrange it about my neck. Being a perceptive folk, the humans of Egypt count the Clan of Cat as divine. For such jewelry to be made for us and worn is not unusual, there.

There was also an investigation that day. Great Ptolemy’s rage was incandescent. That criminal intruders, whatever their true purpose might have been, could have come into his home, and entered the very sleeping chamber of his young daughter, was not a thing he was prepared to excuse.

It was perhaps fortunate for the villains themselves, that none of the three survived their encounters with the loyal servants. Their endings would have been particularly ugly, had they been apprehended alive.

Valid information was scarce, with no one left living to be interrogated. However, it was at length discovered that their initial entry had been made by means of the same kitchen service entrance through which I myself had first come into the villa. From the kitchen, the brigands had crossed the peristyle garden and entered the villa itself.

The most interesting bit of news was that the door in question had been left unbarred overnight, possibly deliberately. This was directly against standing orders, which were well known to all the household servants.

One of the kitchen slaves I had met on my first day lost his life for that oversight, if oversight it was. His ending was indeed ugly, and witnessed by me. I did not lament his death, for it was he who had kicked me back from the door. One reaps what one sows, as the Jews of Palestina would say.

One lasting positive effect of the incident was that a young Greek, with two campaigns worth of experience as a legionary of Rome, was hired specifically to guard the Princess and her maidservants, and became a permanent member of the household. His name was Apollodorus, and he was as good and honest a human as was ever likely to be found.

I liked him intensely, and classed him in my mind with old Sosigenes the tutor. Even the Clan of Man has its shining examples.

Three more summers were to pass in our rented villa, before Ptolemy and his household could make their way back to the land where he was King. They were good summers for me, a time in which the slums of my birth faded into the mists of remembrance.

My Mistress matured with astonishing rapidity, from an ethereally beautiful child, to a young woman of even more startling beauty, who carried her royalty with the grace of one born to it. I began to imagine her seated upon a golden throne, with the crook and flail of Egypt crossed before her breast, and all that ancient land kneeling at her feet.

I was correct indeed about the egotistical Pompeius Magnus, for no aid ever came from that quarter. He could never be convinced that his own ambitions would be sufficiently served to actually commit to facilitating our return.

All these great, clattering, august Romans render down into the same broth in the end: much pomp and trumpeting and preening before the masses, which is in the end, undone by their own folly.

It was the rather more obscure Proconsul of Rome’s Syrian Province, one Aulus Gabinius, whose greedy hand finally reached out to grasp whatever inducement King Ptolemy paid him. I suspect it was his very obscurity that made his recruitment possible. Pompey hadn’t actually needed the bribes Ptolemy offered. Gabinius did.

Thus did the Roman Provincial Legions of Syria march into Alexandria to prepare the King’s way back onto his throne, the august Gabinius riding at their head, with his bribe in his purse.

Thus also, after three years of Italian exile, was the Princess Cleopatra carried aboard ship in her silk-curtained litter, bound across the Middle Sea for Alexandria, to the royal life which was her due. Charmian and Eiras, good Apollodorus and old Sosigenes the teacher, all accompanied her on foot.

I rode in my Mistress’ lap, as was my due, and left the slums of Rome far, far behind me. Sekhmet had made her choice.

END