Cleopatra: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

OF THE WAYS OF CHARMION; AND OF THE CROWNING OF HARMACHIS AS THE KING OF
LOVE

On the following day I received the writing of my appointment as
Astrologer and Magician-in-Chief to the Queen, with the pay and
perquisites of that office, which were not small. Rooms were given me
in the palace, also, through which I passed at night to the high
watch-tower, whence I looked on the stars and drew their auguries. For
at this time Cleopatra was much troubled about matters political, and
not knowing how the great struggle among the Roman factions would end,
but being very desirous to side with the strongest, she took constant
counsel with me as to the warnings of the stars. These I read to her
in such manner as best seemed to fit the high interest of my ends. For
Antony, the Roman Triumvir, was now in Asia Minor, and, rumour ran, very
wroth because it had been told him that Cleopatra was hostile to the
Triumvirate, in that her General, Serapion, had aided Cassius. But
Cleopatra protested loudly to me and others that Serapion had acted
against her will. Yet Charmion told me that, as with Allienus, it was
because of a prophecy of Dioscorides the unlucky that the Queen herself
had secretly ordered Serapion so to do. Still, this did not save
Serapion, for to prove to Antony that she was innocent she dragged the
General from the sanctuary and slew him. Woe be to those who carry
out the will of tyrants if the scale should rise against them! And so
Serapion perished.

Meanwhile all things went well with us, for the minds of Cleopatra and
those about her were so set upon affairs abroad that neither she nor
they thought of revolt at home. But day by day our party gathered
strength in the cities of Egypt, and even in Alexandria, which is to
Egypt as another land, all things being foreign there. Day by day, those
who doubted were won over and sworn to the cause by that oath which
cannot be broken, and our plans of action more firmly laid. And every
other day I went forth from the palace to take counsel with my uncle
Sepa, and there at his house met the Nobles and the great priests who
were for the party of Khem.

I saw much of Cleopatra, the Queen, and I was ever more astonished at
the wealth and splendour of her mind, that for richness and variety
was as a woven cloth of gold throwing back all lights from its changing
face. She feared me somewhat, and therefore wished to make a friend of
me, asking me of many matters that seemed to be beyond the province of
my office. I saw much of the Lady Charmion also--indeed, she was ever at
my side, so that I scarce knew when she came and when she went. For she
would draw nigh with that soft step of hers, and I would turn to find
her at hand and watching me beneath the long lashes of her downcast
eyes. There was no service that was too hard for her, and no task too
long; for day and night she laboured for me and for our cause.

But when I thanked her for her loyalty, and said it should be had in
mind in that time which was at hand, she stamped her foot, and pouted
with her lips, like an angry child, saying that, among all the things
which I had learned, this had I not learned--that Love's service asked
no payment, and was its own guerdon. And I, being innocent in such
matters, and, foolish that I was, holding the ways of women as of small
account, read her sayings in the sense that her services to the cause
of Khem, which she loved, brought with them their own reward. But when
I praised so fine a spirit, she burst into angry tears and left me
wondering. For I knew nothing of the trouble at her heart. I knew not
then that, unsought, this woman had given me her love, and that she was
rent and torn by pangs of passion fixed like arrows in her breast. I did
not know--how should I know it, who never looked upon her otherwise than
as an instrument of our joint and holy cause? Her beauty never stirred
me--no, not even when she leaned over me and breathed upon my hair, I
never thought of it otherwise than as a man thinks of the beauty of a
statue. What had I to do with such delights, I who was sworn to Isis
and dedicate to the cause of Egypt? O ye Gods, bear me witness that I am
innocent of this thing which was the source of all my woe and the woe of
Khem!

How strange a thing is this love of woman, that is so small in its
beginning and in its ends so great! See, at the first it is as the
little spring of water welling from a mountain's heart. And at the last
what is it? It is a mighty river that floats argosies of joy and makes
wide lands to smile. Or, perchance, it is a torrent to wash in a flood
of ruin across the fields of Hope, bursting in the barriers of design,
and bringing to tumbled nothingness the tenement of man's purity and the
temples of his faith. For when the Invisible conceived the order of the
universe He set this seed of woman's love within its plan, that by its
most unequal growth is doomed to bring about equality of law. For now
it lifts the low to heights untold, and now it brings the noble to the
level of the dust. And thus, while Woman, that great surprise of nature,
is, Good and Evil can never grow apart. For still She stands, and, blind
with love, shoots the shuttle of our fate, and pours sweet water into
the cup of bitterness, and poisons the wholesome breath of life with the
doom of her desire. Turn this way and turn that, She is at hand to meet
thee. Her weakness is thy strength, her might is thy undoing. Of her
thou art, to her thou goest. She is thy slave, yet holds thee captive;
at her touch honour withers, locks open, and barriers fall. She is
infinite as ocean, she is variable as heaven, and her name is the
Unforeseen. Man, strive not to escape from Woman and the love of
woman; for, fly where thou wilt, She is yet thy fate, and whate'er thou
buildest thou buildest it for her!

And thus it came to pass that I, Harmachis, who had put such matters far
from me, was yet doomed to fall by the thing I held of no account. For,
see, this Charmion: she loved me--why, I know not. Of her own thought
she learned to love me, and of her love came what shall be told. But I,
knowing naught, treated her like a sister, walking as it were hand in
hand with her towards our common end.

And so the time passed on, till, at length, all things were made ready.

It was the night before the night when the blow should fall, and there
were revellings in the palace. That very day I had seen Sepa, and with
him the captains of a band of five hundred men, who should burst into
the palace at midnight on the morrow, when I had slain Cleopatra the
Queen, and put the Roman and the Gallic legionaries to the sword. That
very day I had suborned the Captain Paulus who, since I drew him through
the gates, was my will's slave. Half by fear and half by promises of
great reward I had prevailed upon him, for the watch was his, to unbar
that small gate which faces to the East at the signal on the morrow
night.

All was made ready--the flower of Freedom that had been five-and-twenty
years in growth was on the point of bloom. Armed companies were
gathering in every city from Abu to Athu, and spies looked out from
their walls, awaiting the coming of the messenger who should bring
tidings that Cleopatra was no more and that Harmachis, the royal
Egyptian, had seized the throne.

All was prepared, triumph hung in my hand as a ripe fruit to the hand of
the plucker. Yet as I sat at the royal feast my heart was heavy, and a
shadow of coming woe lay cold within my mind. I sat there in a place
of honour, near the majesty of Cleopatra, and looked down the lines of
guests, bright with gems and garlanded with flowers, marking those whom
I had doomed to die. There before me lay Cleopatra in all her beauty,
which thrilled the beholder as he is thrilled by the rushing of the
midnight gale, or by the sight of stormy waters. I gazed on her as she
touched her lips with wine and toyed with the chaplet of roses on her
brow, thinking of the dagger beneath my robe that I had sworn to bury in
her breast. Again, and yet again, I gazed and strove to hate her,
strove to rejoice that she must die--and could not. There, too, behind
her--watching me now, as ever, with her deep-fringed eyes--was the
lovely Lady Charmion. Who, to look at her innocent face, would believe
that she was the setter of that snare in which the Queen who loved her
should miserably perish? Who would dream that the secret of so much
death was locked in her girlish breast? I gazed, and grew sick at heart
because I must anoint my throne with blood, and by evil sweep away the
evil of the land. At that hour I wished, indeed, that I was nothing
but some humble husbandman, who in its season grows and in its season
garners the golden grain! Alas! the seed that I had been doomed to sow
was the seed of Death, and now I must reap the red fruit of the harvest!

"Why, Harmachis, what ails thee?" said Cleopatra, smiling her slow
smile. "Has the golden skein of stars got tangled, my astronomer? or
dost thou plan some new feat of magic? Say what is it that thou dost so
poorly grace our feast? Nay, now, did I not know, having made inquiry,
that things so low as we poor women are far beneath thy gaze, why, I
should swear that Eros had found thee out, Harmachis!"

"Nay, that I am spared, O Queen," I answered. "The servant of the stars
marks not the smaller light of woman's eyes, and therein is he happy!"

Cleopatra leaned herself towards me, looking on me long and steadily in
such fashion that, despite my will, the blood fluttered at my heart.

"Boast not, thou proud Egyptian," she said in a low voice which none but
I and Charmion could hear, "lest perchance thou dost tempt me to match
my magic against thine. What woman can forgive that a man should push
us by as things of no account? It is an insult to our sex which Nature's
self abhors," and she leaned back again and laughed most musically. But,
glancing up, I saw Charmion, her teeth on her lip and an angry frown
upon her brow.

"Pardon, royal Egypt," I answered coldly, but with such wit as I could
summon, "before the Queen of Heaven even stars grow pale!" This I said
of the moon, which is the sign of the Holy Mother whom Cleopatra dared
to rival, naming herself Isis come to earth.

"Happily said," she answered, clapping her white hands. "Why, here's an
astronomer who has wit and can shape a compliment! Nay, such a wonder
must not pass unnoted, lest the Gods resent it. Charmion, take this
rose-chaplet from my hair and set it upon the learned brow of our
Harmachis. He shall be crowned _King of Love_, whether he will it or
not."

Charmion lifted the chaplet from Cleopatra's brows and, bearing it to
where I was, with a smile set it upon my head yet warm and fragrant from
the Queen's hair, but so roughly that she pained me somewhat. She
did this because she was wroth, although she smiled with her lips and
whispered, "An omen, royal Harmachis." For though she was so very much
a woman, yet, when she was angered or suffered jealousy, Charmion had a
childish way.

Having thus fixed the chaplet, she curtsied low before me, and with the
softest tone of mockery named me, in the Greek tongue, "Harmachis, King
of Love." Then Cleopatra laughed and pledged me as "King of Love," and
so did all the company, finding the jest a merry one. For in Alexandria
they love not those who live straitly and turn aside from women.

But I sat there, a smile upon my lips, and black wrath in my heart. For,
knowing who and what I was, it irked me to think myself a jest for the
frivolous nobles and light beauties of Cleopatra's Court. But I was
chiefly angered against Charmion, because she laughed the loudest, and I
did not then know that laughter and bitterness are often the veils with
which a sore heart wraps its weakness from the world. "An omen" she said
it was--that crown of flowers--and so it proved indeed. For I was fated
to barter the Double Diadem of the Upper and the Lower Land for a wreath
of passion's roses that fade before they fully bloom, and Pharaoh's
ivory bed of state for the pillow of a faithless woman's breast.

"_King of Love!_" they crowned me in their mockery; ay, and King of
Shame! And I, with the perfumed roses on my brow--I, by descent and
ordination the Pharaoh of Egypt--thought of the imperishable halls
of Abouthis and of that other crowning which on the morrow should be
consummate.

But still smiling, I pledged them back, and answered with a jest. For
rising, I bowed before Cleopatra and craved leave to go. "Venus," I
said, speaking of the planet that we know as Donaou in the morning and
Bonou in the evening, "was in the ascendant. Therefore, as new-crowned
King of Love, I must now pass to do my homage to its Queen." For these
barbarians name Venus Queen of Love.

And so amidst their laughter I withdraw to my watch-tower, and, dashing
that shameful chaplet down amidst the instruments of my craft, made
pretence to note the rolling of the stars. There I waited, thinking on
many things that were to be, until Charmion should come with the last
lists of the doomed and the messages of my uncle Sepa, whom she had seen
that evening.

At length the door opened softly, and she came jewelled and clad in her
white robes, as she had left the feast.

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