The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George

‘we.’ ”
    He had caught me. “Yes,” I admitted. “I would like to be like Alexander. I suppose you would say a woman is an even more unlikely Alexander than a eunuch. And you would be right. But I can attempt to be like him in character. And sometimes he seems more alive to me than to the people walking around the palace grounds.”
    Alexander lay silent and golden in his coffin while our words flew back and forth over his head.
    “Yes! To me also!” Mardian said. “He helps me to bear it all. When I’m teased or taunted, I just tell myself, ‘Tomorrow you can take it all to Alexander.’ ” He looked a little embarrassed that he would admit such a thing.
    “Tell me where you live in the Royal Quarters,” I asked. “Perhaps I can visit you there.” I had almost forgotten I had considered him a pest only a few minutes ago.
    “I am in the big building directly across from the Temple of Isis, the one that overlooks the eastern sea.”
    I knew it well: it was a busy place, with a school for scribes as well as the archives for war records.
    “Are there others—” I wanted to say “like you,” but I hesitated.
    “No, I’m the only eunuch in my study group,” he answered cheerfully. “There are about fifteen of us. Our mathematics tutor, Demetrius, is a eunuch; for the rest, we have a grammatician from Athens and a rhetorician from Chios.”
    “So do we,” I said, making a face. “Our rhetorician is named Theodotos, and I hate him! He’s sneaky and mean—like a snake.”
    “Snakes aren’t sneaky, and they certainly aren’t mean,” said Mardian gravely. He looked offended.
    “What do you mean?” Everyone knew that snakes had that nature, even if the cobra-goddess Wadjyt protected the Pharaohs and rulers of Egypt, and the royal crown showed her with hood spread.
    “I have studied snakes,” he said. “They are different from what the snake-charmers want you to think. You should see my animals; I have several pens of them near the stables. And I built a big enclosure for my snakes.”
    “What other animals do you keep?” My curiosity was stirred.
    “I had an ostrich for a while,” he said. “It grew too big for me. So now I have only small animals—lizards and tortoises and hedgehogs. I’d like to get a baby crocodile.”
    “I’d like to see your menagerie, Mardian,” I said. And we left Alexander, not having paid much attention to him on this visit.

5
    It was not many days before I found myself drawn to where Mardian took his lessons, and found him and his schoolmates with their tutor. My arrival caused much stirring and curiosity, but the lesson—on geometry, an Alexandrian specialty—continued. I waited, watching, from the back. There were mainly boys there, but I saw five or six girls, and then—I recognized Olympos.
    He was hunched over his paper, concentrating on it so hard that it seemed it might take fire from his scrutiny. He was bigger now, and he had lost whatever roundness had still been in his limbs and shoulders when I met him at that memorable banquet…was it five years ago already? Now his face was very lean, making his riveting eyes even more noticeable. He must be fourteen now, at least.
    When the class was over, I waited for Mardian to greet me. But he ignored me and continued talking to one of his companions. Finally I went over to him and said, “Are you ashamed to know me, Mardian?”
    He looked terrified. “No, no, Princess!” His companion withdrew as quickly as possible. “I did not wish to presume—to make any claims of knowing you, since it was only by accident that our paths crossed. It would have been impudent—”
    “Nonsense!” I said, while knowing that others in my position might well have seen things that way. A chance meeting did not constitute a friendship. “Are we not brothers in Alexander?” Even as I said it, I realized that brothers was an odd word to use, when neither of us was male in the physical sense. Still, brothers meant