Kleopatra by Karen Essex Read Free Book Online Page B

indulgent, strange. “
I
shall not speak against the Crown, princess.
History
may substantiate, however, that in recent years the Ptolemy kings have been rather more stout of body than of heart. Yet
     incestuous marriage has not diminished the caliber of the female. Without fail, each generation has produced a Ptolemaic queen
     of extraordinary intelligence.”
    The princess stopped pacing, pointing her knife at the tutor. “You sound as if you are speaking of farm animals. You had better
     remember that the women in my family are queens of an ancient dynasty. Men do not breed us as they breed hunting dogs.”
    He might have been angry at the haughty girl, but he was aware that it was he who had instilled in her this pride and arrogance.
     “Princess Berenike, forgive me for my indelicacy.”
    “You do not have to be delicate with me, Tutor,” she said, still brandishing the knife at him. “But you do have to remember
     to whom you speak.”
    Berenike whisked the front panel of her dress aside, exposing the leather garter on her thigh. She placed the knife back in
     its sheath and sat on a divan, ceremoniously smoothing her gown over her legs. Meleager produced a long scroll that seemed
     to have the weight of a saber.
    “Oh, not more family history. Must we incessantly resurrect the dead? Why am I not free to spend the day hunting?” Berenike
     asked, contrite.
    Meleager continued to unroll the large document, struggling without his scribe present to help. It would not do to have an
     interloper today. He stretched the papyrus lengthwise to reveal an illustrated chart of the Ptolemy dynasty, with small, painstaking
     portraits of each royal in the family tree. He braced it on a wooden stand, which held taut.
    “You will enjoy today’s lesson. We are going to study the female line.”
    Berenike settled into her seat. “Then let us pay attention to the interesting ones, and leave out the fools who fell to the
     poison of courtiers.”
    A rap at the door interrupted the tutorial. The small princess entered, trailed by Charmion. “The princess Kleopatra joins
     her sister for the lesson,” she said formally to the eunuch, escorting the princess to her seat. Charmion and Meleager bowed
     stiffly to each other.
    “Stay with me,” Kleopatra urged her governess. She was never more nervous than in the company of her sister.
    “Why must you always be a disagreeable baby?” asked Berenike.
    “I am not a baby,” she replied vehemently. “I am merely smaller than you, and I shall speak to Father about this.”
    “The world awaits his response to your complaint,” Berenike said dryly.
    Charmion exited promptly, and Kleopatra, though still afraid, summoned into her face as much spite as she could. She saw the
     outline of the sheath under her sister’s dress and wondered if Berenike would dare murder her, and if so, would the eunuch
     move to prevent it? But presently, Berenike suffered more from ennui than from anger.
    “Our tutor is giving the history of the Macedonian queen,” she said. “Which we must learn in the unlikely event that father
     does not lose the throne, and I actually
become
a Macedonian queen. Proceed,” she commanded the eunuch.
    Meleager took a breath. “We are going to begin with Olympias, the mother of Alexander.”
    “Everyone feared Olympias,” interjected Berenike. “She wore wild snakes in her hair!”
    “Yes, supposedly in tribute to Dionysus. In fact, she wished to frighten her husband, Philip of Macedonia, a devout polygamist
     who married indiscriminately for political alliance and bred bastards with every barbarian wife he took.”
    Meleager explained that Olympias’s main objective was to see that her favorite son, Alexander, became king. “The Macedonian
     court was an unruly place, and there was a lot of competition. Philip had an older wife, Eurydice, an Illyrian warrior woman.”
     The eunuch pointed to Philip’s senior wife on the dynastic tree. “She and her