On the headland of Lochias, where it pushed towards the overlapping
promontory of Pharos, stood the palace and gardens of the Ptolemies.
The great lighthouse on the opposite shore glowed across the strait,
and in the deep waters between were planted a number of islets, like
gigantic stepping-stones, their intervals closed with booms and
chains. These, and the arms of land, enlocked the harbour of
Alexandria, all round whose mighty circumference the city flamed like
a belt of fire, impassable, magnificent. It was thirty years before
the birth of Christ, and the battle of Actium had been fought and, for
all that it meant to Egypt and the world, lost. Cleopatra was doomed,
and Magdalen, perhaps, conceived.
Mark Antony, desperate, though infatuated still, had come out of his
retirement on Pharos, whither he had retreated to brood over his
leman’s treachery. The two were reconciled in a way, and sought
perpetually to drown in revelry the horror of an impending judgment.
The beautiful queen, last expression of a monstrous demonism, its heir
and epitome, had no instinct at the last but to gore the world that
crushed her--to glut herself with blood and suffering. In these final
days her inhumanity surpassed itself. And crowned Antony, glooming in
his purple and diamonds, watched and was silent.
One night they sat at supper in the Palace, a fierce nucleus, where
enthroned, to all the blazing splendour of the hall. It was so alight
with torches that the marble columns on which those hung aloft looked,
in their deep reflections in the pavement, as if they were rooted in
hell fire. Not a sleek Nubian crossing the floor with a golden dish in
his hands but had his “fellow in the cellarage” keeping step with him,
like a devil reversed and busy in that under inferno. There were far
faint cries in the air--of a doomed city, of some nearer
anguish--punctuating the throb and swoon of harps. The swaying of
peacock fans in soft undulating arms stirred the floating incense,
lest the rank breath of torture should enter and overpower it. There
was not a man or woman there whose heart, for all the sensuous
glamour, was void of fear--unless it were, perhaps, the Decurion
Dentatus. He was young, cold, beautiful as Antinous--a Græco-Roman of
the heroic type--and he loved his master Antony.
A Hebe, sweet in years and looks, filled the wine cups of the King and
Queen. Antony, lifting his, hesitated on the draught. His eyes,
already inflamed, sought his partner’s, half covertly, half
challengingly. Cleopatra laughed, and putting her glass to her full
lips, drank. She followed a formula in doing so, conceding it
agreeably to the very madness of his passion. He was haunted, since
his defeat, with the thought that she would poison him to save
herself. And yet he loved her. It was not the first or the last time
in the history of worship that the supreme egotism had evoked the
supreme adoration.
Presently, amidst some amorous fondlings, the Queen took the lily
chaplet from her hair and shredded a petal or two from it into her
lord’s wine.
“Do you the same by mine, my soul,” she whispered, “and let us drink
the very perfume of each other’s wit.”
His eyes burning, he lifted the wreath from his brow and obeyed,
dropping a flower into her cup. As he raised his own to drink, she
stopped him, coaxed the vessel from his hand, and calling the little
Hebe to her, bade her take it.
“Thou art fair,” she said. “My lord pledges thee. Drink to his passing
fancy.”
Like one of those woodland growths which, being torn, flush a faint,
slow sapphire through all their tender flesh, the child’s face, as she
stood, seemed to sicken to the hue of death. She shuddered; her limbs
began to fail her.
“Drink!” said Cleopatra, rising in her place with a smile. “Drink,
child--for thine own sake.”
Better swift death than nameless torture. The poor slave drained the
cup, and, casting it, with a scream, from her, dropped upon the
pavement, a glittering, voluble shadow, writhing to its own
reflection.
Antony had risen, the company with him--speechless all, breathing out
the long minutes of the tragedy. It amounted to no more than this,
that the child had been so young and lovely--and that now she was
spoiled.
At the end, the Queen, scornful, magnificent, turned her burning eyes
on her lover’s face. There was a look in its ruined strength which
made her pause a moment.
“Read there, sweet lord,” she said, “the groundlessness, the
unworthiness of thy suspicions. Were my love false, what precautions
of thine could avail against my wit and will to end thee?”
He turned, still without a word, and, the light glinting a moment on
his grizzling hair and fuddled, frowning eyes, passed from the
banquet.
Then, coming down into the hall, Cleopatra, with a wave of her hand,
dismissed the company, the slaves, the musicians--all without
exception, save the Decurion Dentatus, whom she called to her.
Under the blazing lights the two stood together, and the body of the
dead girl lay at their feet. The Queen pointed to it. Her arm and hand
were of faultless beauty. She was thirty-eight, but with all the bloom
and fullness of just-ripened womanhood. Years had not set one streak
of alloy in the treasure of her golden hair, or clouded the azure of
her eyes, or done more than perfect in her the natural weapons of the
sorceress. She might have been the Decurion’s sister, so like he was
to her in grace and Grecian fairness.
She fixed him with her eyes.
“I marked thee, Decurion,” she said--“and not for the first time. Thy
looks defied me, thine eyes condemned. What--did you dare! And thy lip
curled when Antony yielded me the cup. Answer why, so thou wouldst
not----”
He stayed her fearlessly:
“Because I love him.”
“What, then?” she said, wondering.
“Could he not see, as we all saw,” he answered, “that thou hadst
poisoned it? For his wit’s sake I would have had him comprehend; for
his nobility’s sake I would have had him refuse thee the cup; for his
soul’s sake I would have had him drink from it himself, and die, and
be free.”
“Free? From what?”
“From his thrall.”
“What callest thou that?”
“The Curse of Antony.”
“Meaning Cleopatra?”
“Meaning thee, O Queen!”
She laughed. She did not strike his mouth, as was her first mad
impulse.
“Darest thou?” she breathed again; then stared into his eyes in pure
amazement. Was he not the first man who had ever spoken to her thus?
“Well, thou lovest him,” she said presently, with a deep sigh--“and I,
too, in my poor way. It shall be a contest of loves between us.”
She gazed a moment unmoved on the little distorted body at her feet,
glanced mockingly at the Decurion, and, turning, left him lost in
wonderment.
He never saw her again until near the end. She was occupied in the
meanwhile in building herself an unsurpassable mausoleum, and in
testing on the bodies of slaves the effects of various poisons.
Foreseeing the worst, and prepared for it, she would yet woo Death
like a voluptuary, and borrow rapture of his embrace. Yet so far the
test had failed her; and not from any inhumanity; for indeed she would
have kissed in ecstasy that slave who suffered nothing in obliging
her. But one and all they would persist most perversely in dying in
extreme agony.
And then one day she sent for the Decurion Dentatus, who, in the thick
of the general treachery, was among the few noble who stood by their
leader. It was when Octavius was at Pelusium, and the fate of
Alexandria appeared sealed.
The soldier was brought in to the Queen where she lay in a private
chamber of her Palace. Two faithful women attended upon their
mistress; an enamelled casket lying on a table near by was half buried
under scented blossoms. Cleopatra fanned herself languidly; a luminous
green scarab burned on her forehead between the wings of golden hair;
the gauzy film which enwrapped her deepened to a tender flush over
hips and bosom. Yet in her eyes some shadow of a mortal fear belied
the sensuous abandonment of her attitude.
“The contest of our loves, Decurion,” she said. “Art thou prepared to
wage it?”
He looked at her steadfastly, and answered, “Yes, Queen.”
“To free thy master,” she said, “from this curse? Wilt thou teach me
how to die?”
“Aye, gladly,” he said.
She pointed to the casket. “It lies therein--the means. Open and
handle it. It is said its sting benumbs--puts Death asleep. So thou
diest sweetly, I am thy slave and grave-fellow.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he strode to the casket, and unfastened
and raised the lid. Within, upon a mat of green leaves, lay coiled a
thick emblazoned worm, all bronzed and gold--a poisonous horned viper.
He grasped and held it aloft; received the stabbing tooth, once,
twice, in his arm; flung the reptile back into its box and closed the
lid.
After long waiting, he was down upon his knees, pallid but triumphant.
“Sufferest thou?” she demanded.
“But too much bliss,” he answered faintly. “I swoon from it.”
He crawled towards her, but sank on the way and died, forcing a smile
to his agonised lips.
Then, when it was over, she rose in great emotion, and looked down
upon the body.
“I have conquered all others,” she said. “Thou conquerest me. Greater
than mine is thy love.” She turned to her trembling women. “Keep the
worm safe.” And then she kneeled and, bending, kissed the dead man’s
lips. “Take me for thy slave, Dentatus,” she whispered, “in the
shadows to come. Not Antony, not another, but thou alone.”