Kleopatra by Karen Essex Read Free Book Online Page A

but were not deprived of their strength. On the contrary, in times of both war and hunting, they still
     preserved in their souls a spirit of rivalry. Cyrus found the same qualities in the eunuchs who served him in battle and at
     court. Unencumbered by the sentimental attachment to either wife or offspring, the eunuch was free to offer unqualified fidelity
     to his master. So what if the eunuch lacked the ideal manly musculature? As Cyrus said, on the battlefield, steel makes the
     weak equal to the strong. There were many battlefields in Alexandria, and many different kinds of metal. Meleager had chosen
     the object of his fierce loyalty. He was armed with knowledge and ready for battle.
    Pity the fools who were deceived by the eunuchs’
lack
. Meleager lacked nothing. He wore extravagant jewels bestowed upon him by the royals for his service. He lived in lavish
     apartments adjacent to the Inner Palace. His view of the harbor was dazzling, his cooks second only to the queen’s. Curiosity-seekers
     of both sexes admired and courted him for his boyish good looks, for his sophistication, and for his access to the Royal Family.
     Mature ladies of the court came to his apartments at night complaining that they no longer cared for vigorous intercourse
     but sought more delicate pleasures. Virile and beautiful youths who trained for the Royal Macedonian Household Troops requested
     audiences to ask his advice on how to behave in the presence of the king and often ended up in his bed. Even members of the
     king’s Order of the First Kinsmen dined with him, discussing protocol and policy, and then sealed the friendship in an evening
     of sexual delight. He experienced passion and he could give pleasure, even if he could not impregnate.
    Meleager had no legitimate claim upon the elongated, regal young girl who paced his room in anger, yet he knew in his heart
     that she belonged to him in the same way that he belonged to the Mother Goddess. The goddess had selected him for service
     to this girl whom she had favored to rule Egypt. He could not attach himself to the girl as a lover, for the female Ptolemies
     usually remained chaste until marriage. He could not claim her as a husband, for he possessed no royal blood with which he
     might petition for her hand. But he knew that Berenike was the true queen of Egypt, that her beautiful stepmother had less
     claim to the throne than she, and that by Thea’s treachery in seducing the king, she had intercepted Berenike’s rightful position
     as Auletes’ co-regent. These things he knew because the goddess had revealed them to him, her servant. But he could not reveal
     them to the girl because she had attached herself to Thea in childhood and remained blind to her duplicity. Instead, he pretended
     the same loyalty to the queen in order to stay intimate with the princess. One day, he would reveal to her the goddess’s will.

    “My father is a fool,” said Berenike, pacing. She removed her dagger from its sheath and sliced the air in crisscross motions
     as she stalked the chamber. “An overblown, Roman-loving fool.” Her long dress, open at the sides, followed her, outlining
     the burgeoning woman’s form. The eunuch felt a stirring in his bereft lower region. Already she was taller than Thea, though
     not as beautiful in the feminine way. Her eyes were bright, angry, vigilant. Her teeth and lips were too large on her young
     face, Meleager observed, but in years to come, when the rest of her caught up with her features, they would serve her handsomely.
    “Your father is king,” Meleager replied evenly. It would not do to say disparaging things against the monarch, however impeachable
     his policies.
    “The men in our family are fat and stupid. They say it is because we marry our brothers and that the intermarriage has ruined
     the men. My father is evidence of this, do you not think?”
    It was true; for the last many generations, the Ptolemies had produced idiot men, obese,