Daughters of the Nile (46 page)

We speak of days long past, when we lived together as children in Octavia’s house, in fear of her wrath. We remember the wall that separated us then. How we were forced to whisper to each other at night through a hole left by a loose brick. Then I must tell him about our wizard and how he died. I tell him about Bast too. I can see these things hurt him to hear, but combat has hardened him. Helios does not sob like I do. And he is reluctant to tell me of his travels, his ships, and his wars. I fear it is because he must be fighting Romans, stealing from them when he can. “Helios, I cannot bear for you to have become a pirate.”

“Don’t you know what I am?” he asks.

But when I shake my head, he only reassures me with irritating vagueness. “I am no pirate.”

Perhaps he lies to me. I do not mind. I do not mind if all of this is a lie. Every precious moment is a reprieve from the world outside. “How long will you stay with me?”

“I am always with you, Selene. I am always where you need me . . .”

Now, that
is
a lie. It is the kind of lie we tell when people are torn from us, never to be reunited. The kind of lie that is meant to lessen the blow. But nothing will ever blunt the pain of our separation for me. “How long will you stay in Rome?”

“How long will
you
stay?” he asks with a note of frustration. “You swore that you would break free of the emperor, but here you are.”

“I have broken free of him. I’ve made myself as free as I can while protecting my family. I swore it to Isis and I swore it to you and I swore it to myself. I’m doing all that I can to keep that vow. Do not take me to task. Only tell me how long we have together . . .”

He sighs, shaking his head with resignation. “Until moonrise. Should I stay much longer, I will be too tempted to burn Rome to the ground, and I imagine you are still against that plan.”

My smile is bittersweet. “Yes, I am against it. It was our father’s city and Octavia’s too. It is a city that receives my children warmly now.”

My smile fades at his anguished expression and the defeated slope of his shoulders. “When last I saw you, there was only the girl.”

Nodding, I look away. “Now I have a son too. Juba’s son.”

Helios exhales sharply. As if he knew already, but hearing it again from me opens a new wound. Then he braces himself for another. “You are content, then, with Juba?”

I do not know how to answer. What I feel for Juba is not contentment. Neither is it what I feel now for Helios. This reckless passion that causes my heart to beat so wildly. This desperate longing. This pure love that has endured between us from the womb to this very moment. This love between two children of prophecy who came together on an altar as a young god and goddess. This perfect divine harmony between me and my twin.

And so I wish I could tell Helios that it is only friendship that Juba and I share. But that too would be a lie, and Helios would know it. He would see it. He would feel it. Swallowing hard over the lump in my throat, I can only say, “Juba has given me a family. He has given me a son and my daughter a future. Together, we are rebuilding the House of Ptolemy.”

Helios bows his head, and I see that even this gentle answer has cut him to the quick, but he says, “Good. That is good. That is what I wanted for you and for Cleopatra Isidora.”

He speaks her name with such reverence that it breaks my heart. “She is nearly grown now, a girl of twelve. If you could see her—” Here I break off, because he is not her father and he cannot see her. Even if Helios was the one who gave life to her, and not the emperor. Even if Helios was the only thing that kept me from swallowing poisons to rid myself of her when she was still in my womb. Still, he is not her father. It is Juba who claimed my daughter. Juba who taught her about elephants and monkeys and the bounty of our kingdom. Juba who carried her upon his shoulders. Juba who protects her. No other man ever has. “Helios, has there been no woman, no children, no home for you?”

“Only you,” he says hoarsely. “There will never be another. Your happiness is my happiness. The life you live, I live too. The rest is denied me, so you must live well for us both.”

I do not like these haunting words, for I cannot imagine loving a man as unselfishly as this man has loved me. “I think you are telling me that you are not real.”

“I am as real as you are . . .”

In some fit of madness, I cry, “If you are real, then come away with me! We are leaving soon for Mauretania. I can make a place for you. You can serve in the guard or—” I break off, knowing that I’m a desperate fool to even suggest it; it isn’t workable. What if my husband were to catch a glimpse of Helios? He would know him. What would he do? My twin is an outlaw, an enemy of the emperor. Juba’s loyalty to Augustus has always been stronger than anything else. It would be a terrible risk and, perhaps, a cruelty to make Juba choose between loyalty and love.

As I am now being forced to choose between them.

I want to trace the beautiful outlines of Helios’s lips. I want to thread my fingers through his curls and pull him to me in a kiss. I want to lose myself in the warm circle of his arms. I want to recapture the love that was ours on the Isle of Samos. It is still a temptation. It is a temptation so strong that I feel my chest pried apart by the swelling ache of my heart. I want another stolen night with Helios. A lifetime of them.

But perhaps that was a different lifetime . . .

If I were free to run away, I would follow Helios into snowy mountains, into the sands of the desert, into the foam of the sea. For I love Helios. I love him still and always. But there is no place for us save this one; a secret sanctuary where no one must ever find us together. And when he reaches his hands for my body, to embrace me as a lover, to take me here in a temple, as he has done before . . . I remember that I am not free.

Other bonds now hold my heart. I remember too the questions Juba whispered to me in the dark.

Will he take you from me?

I answered honestly then, for I will never leave my kingdom or my children. And I will never leave Juba. Helios does not ask it of me, but when he tilts my chin to him, hunger in his eyes, I must answer a different question.

Will you dishonor me with him?

My twin has lost everything. I cannot bear for him to think that he has lost me too. But I don’t know how to do this again. How can I make love to him again and let him go? How will I remember it if I do? My lovemaking with Helios has always before been untainted, a thing of beauty and secret sustenance. I never felt shame for it because he is my brother nor for any other reason.

But this time I would feel shame.

I would despair of betraying Juba this way, even as I despair now of betraying Helios. Taking my twin’s hands in mine, I stop them from undressing me, though it pains me more than I ever thought it could. I sob with the effort to deny my own desire and his, and because my heart is torn in two, every explanation I try to give tastes false on my tongue.

Anguish howls through the hollows of my soul when Helios nods his head in surrender. “It’s all right. I don’t need to make love to you to be inside you. I don’t need to lay a hand on you to touch you. But I will never so much as brush my lips against yours without your leave.”

There is something about what he says, about everything he has said, that makes me question what River of Time I am swimming in. He is here with me now, but I do not know if he is here in the mortal world or in the divine. We are in a temple, and I might have summoned him with my grief. I fear it is a thing I must never do again, whether he is real or imagined. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to love you and say good-bye to you, over and over, never knowing if I will see you again.”

At this, he presses a kiss into my palm. “We will always see each other again. I taught you once that under your skin, between your bones, there’s space for other, more fluid things. Like blood. Like
heka
. Like fire and wind . . . and
love
. So long as you live, I live. We were born together. We will die together. And I will always seek you out . . .”

* * *

I
have lost Helios. Again. And this time, forever, I think. In spite of his promises, I think I will never see his face again. Never hear the comforting rumble of his voice. Never hold his hands in mine. He is gone. All gone. And I let him go without giving him every part of myself that I could.

I hate myself for it, even if I would have hated myself if I had done otherwise.

Once, I could return to Juba from another man’s bed and feel no remorse. No longer. But I am so wrecked by the loss of Helios that I shy away from my husband’s touch in an inconsolable fog, unable to concentrate on anything.

Unable to endure public scrutiny after the loss of
his
sibling, the emperor has withdrawn to our house across the Tiber, where citizens are not free to approach him. In the days following Octavia’s funeral, the emperor spends his evenings by a warm fire in our study, cloistered with Juba, reminiscing or making battle plans or whatever else it is the two of them discuss when I am not in the room.

We indulge the emperor as our guest—what other choice do we have?—but he notices our servants packing our trunks and readying for our springtime journey. And when I come upon him in the dining room, he insists, “You and Juba cannot leave me now, when I am utterly abandoned.”

He means Octavia, of course. If he can grieve—if he is human enough for that—he is grieving for his sister. She was the moral center of his family. Like a Vestal Virgin, she tended the fire at the heart and hearth of the
Julii
. Now the fire has gone out and his inner circle has narrowed again. Octavia was always his true dynastic partner. The only person who knew him since childhood and still loved him. And I cannot help but think that if he were Egyptian, he might have married Octavia. Perhaps he would have been a better man if he had married his sister, who encouraged his good qualities, instead of Livia, who has helped goad him to every evil. Had he married Octavia, the whole twisted mess he’s made of his family might never have come to pass. But of course, he is Roman and would think taking his sister to wed more depraved than all his other wicked deeds . . .

Now he is isolated, unsure of whom to trust, and aware that Livia holds unspeakable sway. He cannot harm her without unleashing her sons, both of whom are woven so tightly into his family and his structure of power that he cannot shake them.

And so, bereft, the emperor leans upon me and my husband. He asks me to play my
kithara
harp for him as I once did to nurse him back to health. He makes himself at home on my terraces, indulging in the little game my children have made of throwing stones at the Tiber River. He plays ball with Ptolemy in my courtyard and he gifts Isidora with a golden bangle studded with amethysts and emeralds that he looted from Greece.

When we’re alone, taking a meal of peeled grapes and olive paste on warmed bread, I warn him that the bangle is too expensive a gift, for my daughter is prone to mislay jewelry and only recently lost a ring while planting seedlings in a pot garden outside her rooms. But the emperor waves this away. “Let her be careless with such riches, for they are a fraction of what I want to give her. If you would only give me a little more time, you will see how I intend to honor you and our children.”

That he clings to this dangerous fantasy that my children are his, that
I
am his and there is some future for us together, hardens me against his attempts to play upon my sympathies. That he dares speak it aloud here, in my home, where servants might hear, hardens me even more. “My kingdom needs me, Caesar. You do not. You’re wealthy and powerful beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. You’re worshipped throughout the empire as a living god. Everything is as you would have it.”

“Nothing is as I would have it, and you know that.”

Remembering all that Octavia sacrificed, and all that I have sacrificed, and all that Helios has sacrificed, I say, “We chose our path.”

He must hear my bitterness, because he turns on me and bellows, “If you leave me, you leave without my son!”

The room goes cold, or perhaps it is only that my blood drains away from my limbs to pool inside a heart swollen with rage. I’ve always known that I would kill to protect my children. A metallic tang coats my tongue as dark magic bubbles up inside. I taste iron. I taste blood. I swallow them back long enough to say, “Ptolemy is only six years old. He needs his mother. He needs to learn the kingdom he’ll inherit. He’s been too long from Mauretania.”

“I’d give him more than a frontier kingdom. I’d give him
much
more.”

Juba warned me I would be tempted. I’ve given up my own ambitions for Egypt, but I cannot help but hope my children will return one day. That they will rule all North Africa as their ancestors did. Yet seeing Helios again has reminded me that I know better than to make bargains. “When my son comes of age, give him what you will, Caesar. Until then, he must stay with me.”

* * *

I
am appalled when my husband does not agree. Later that night, amidst piles of scrolls and trinkets he has collected for the journey home, he says, “Let Ptolemy stay in Rome to befriend Gaius and Lucius; let him become their indispensable companion. This way, when those boys are old enough to wield true power, they’ll look upon our son with favor.”

From a couch near a cage filled with songbirds, I shoot to my feet to confront him. “Foster our son under Livia’s care? Never even think it!”

Juba tries to persuade me with cool reason. “Do you want the Romans to think of our son as a barbarian? They need to think of him as a kinsman. You’re quick to point out he’s the grandson of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Should we give him less of an advantage than Herod has given his own sons?”

But in this matter, I cannot be reasoned with. “Herod’s sons were nearly killed for their father’s jealousy.”

“They were saved because Augustus knew them. Because the Romans knew them. That’s what saved their lives. That is
all
that saved their lives, Selene. It’s an important lesson for us.”