Pharaoh Read Online Free

patience?
    “You said,
come
to bed, when surely you meant
go
to bed.” Again, she looked at him as if she was either laughing at him or trying to seduce him. How could he, a man of fifty-two
     who had had hundreds of lovers, not rapidly discern which?
    “No, dear girl. You know what I meant. I always make myself perfectly clear.”

    The chubby boy king burst into his sister’s chamber. Though it was early morning, he was dressed in formal robes and wearing
     his crown. Kleopatra barely had a moment to pull the cover over her naked breasts. Caesar sat up quickly, the dagger under
     his pillow already in his hand.
    “What are you doing here?” the young king screamed, his bulbous lips quaking. “How did you get here?”
    Caesar’s soldiers followed the boy into the room; trailing them, Arsinoe, her panther eyes darting from Kleopatra to her lover.
     How old must the girl be now? Sixteen? She was the image of her treasonous, dead mother, Thea, only with marble green eyes
     instead of Thea’s conniving brown ones. Arsinoe smirked but said nothing. She took her brother by the arm.
    “Are you some kind of fiend or apparition? The entire city is on guard against you. How did you get into the palace, you ghost?”
    Kleopatra did not answer but waited for Caesar to speak. Though he had just restored her to her own throne, he was dictator
     of Rome, and she at his mercy. At least for the moment.
    “My good King Ptolemy,” Caesar began, tossing the dagger aside, “I promised to repair relations between you and your sister,
     and I have done so.”
    Caesar’s men, ready to seize the boy, looked to their commander, but he waved them away.
    “But I don’t want to reconcile with her,” the boy answered, pointing to Kleopatra, who tried to retain as much dignity as
     a naked young woman in a roomful of strangers might. “She’s a monster! Has she poisoned you against us? Has she?”
    “Come now, there is no need for this kind of upset,” Caesar said. “Let us set a meeting for later in the day-perhaps some
     reasonable hour after breakfast-and I shall enlighten you and your regents as to the terms.”
    Caesar’s calm voice settling over the room evaporated the anger Ptolemy had released into the air. But the boy king did not
     relent. “What do you think you’re doing?” he stammered at Kleopatra.
    “Is this how you welcome your sister back to Alexandria?” Kleopatra asked, trying to imitate Caesar’s mellow tone. “I have
     not seen you for the better part of two years, my brother. How you’ve grown.” Though he was no taller, as far as Kleopatra
     could discern, he had expanded horizontally, reminding her of the girth her late father had acquired in his last years.
    Caesar leaned toward the boy. “You know the terms of your father’s will. You and Kleopatra are to rule jointly It isn’t for
     you to question. You shouldn’t have run her out of the country in the first place.”
    “Run her out? She sneaked away like a common thief and raised an army against me!” he sputtered.
    Laughable, Kleopatra thought. She would not put one ounce of her energy into bolstering such a fool before the Roman general,
     before the Alexandrian people, or even before the gods themselves.
    “That’s all over now, and I insist that you make up. It’s all been decided. No need to create another dispute when harmony
     is so easily attained.” Caesar smiled at Arsinoe. “Is that not what the philosophers tell us, young lady? You have your brother’s
     ear. You must counsel him to be reasonable. You do not wish him to get himself hurt.”
    “No, General. I do not.” Arsinoe folded her arms, making a bridge under her voluptuous breasts and chilling Kleopatra with
     her glazed stare. It seemed to her that Arsinoe had been assessing the situation and had come to some dark private conclusion.
     “Shall we go, Brother?”
    The boy grimaced at Kleopatra, but let himself be guided away by his sister; more regal than he would