Full Circle (53 page)

She did not return until the afternoon had changed into the cool shades of evening, and the birds sang in the lemon trees.
Night came by the time Iras and I curled up in our cubicle in one bed, the sharp smell of meat roasted with coriander drifting
in through the curtain door. Iras went straight to sleep, as she often did, but I was restless. I untangled myself from Iras’
sleep weight, and went outside to sit with the women in the cool night air. Asetnefer sat alone by the fountain, her lovely
head bent to the water as though something troubled her.

I came and stood beside her, saying nothing.

“You were born here,” she said quietly, “on a night like this. A spring night, with the harvest coming in and all the land
green, which is the gift of the Nile, the gift of Isis.”

“I know,” I said, having heard this story before, but not impatient with it.

“He is your father too,” she said, and for a moment I did not know who she meant. “Ptolemy Auletes. Pharaoh. Just as he is
Iras’ father. You are sisters in blood and bone as well as milk sisters.”

“I knew that too,” I said, though I hadn’t given much thought to my father. I had always known Iras was my real sister. To
be told it as a great truth was no surprise.

“That makes her your sister too. Cleopatra. Born under the same stars, the scholars would say.”

I digested this a minute. I supposed I didn’t mind another sister. She had seemed like she could be as much fun as Iras, and
if she was a goddess on earth, she was really a very small goddess.

“You will start lessons with her tomorrow,” Asetnefer said. “You and Iras both. You will go to the palace library after breakfast.”
She looked at me sideways now, and I wondered what she saw. “Cleopatra is to have a tutor, and it is better if she has companions
in her studies. She is too much alone, and her half-sister Arsinoe is barely two and much too young to begin reading and learning
mathematics. You and Iras have been given to her to be her companions, to belong to her.”

“Given by whom?” I asked.

“By your father,” she said, “Pharaoh Ptolemy Auletes.”