Song of the Nile (35 page)

When all this was sorted out, I found myself alone in the receiving room with Lady Circe. Quite suddenly, she sputtered with tinkling laughter. “Juba says you’re a temptress who guards her chastity at knifepoint. I thought you’d be a pitiless Artemis, but you’re just a tall, gangly girl!”

It was brazen of her to speak this way to me; I nearly slapped her. “And you’re just King Herod’s spy.”

Circe gave a little shrug of her pretty shoulders. “Herod said that he’d pay me as long as I pleased King Juba. Now that your husband has sent me away, I’m without a contract.”

So, Juba had
sent her away
. Why was I glad to hear it? With Juba, I never understood myself. “I’m sure there are other wealthy clients for you. Especially in the East. Far away from here.”

Circe smirked. “The wealthiest is currently amusing himself with Terentilla. Is the wife of Maecenas as pretty as they say? Do you think I could compete with her for the emperor’s attention?”

Greek
hetaeras
were more than simple prostitutes. As educated women of high status, they were allowed access to the most powerful men. It didn’t surprise me that she knew about the emperor’s affair with Terentilla. I said only, “You aim high.”

“So do you,” she said, and this
did
surprise me. I wondered how much she really knew. Did she receive her information from Herod? If so, how would he know anything about me? Then I remembered his sons, Alexander and Aristobulus. Livia had favored them and they were still in Rome even now.

Circe took one of the incense burners from my table and sniffed at it. “I think we could learn much from one another.”

“I’m a royal queen. There’s nothing for me to learn from a prostitute who befriends King Herod.”

At that, her mask of unaffected glamour fell away. “I’m no friend to King Herod. I
hate
Herod. He’s mad and I don’t want to return to his service. I’d rather stay here in Iol-Caesaria.”

I was shocked at her nerve. “So that you can reconcile with King Juba when he returns?”

She laughed. “Your husband is an agreeable lover, but like all men, he likes a challenge. Unfortunately, there’s little challenge for him in a woman whose companionship can be purchased.”

I was astonished at her candor, if it
was
candor and not some ruse. “If not for Juba, why would you want to stay in Mauretania? Go home to Greece.”

“I’ve reached the level of wealth and prominence to which the greatest
hetaeras
aspire but also the age at which we must compensate for fading beauty. There’s a fortune to be made here in Mauretania.”

“I think you mistake me,” I said, snatching the incense dish from her hands. “I won’t suffer a spy. The moment I catch you corresponding with Herod, I’ll have you put to death. Don’t think I can’t do it. Even if my husband returns to defend you, I’ll make sure some tragic accident befalls you.”

She looked into my eyes as if measuring me, but I’d been measured before. There was a catch in her breath, and then I heard her swallow. “Majesty, I vow never to correspond with King Herod and to make myself useful if you’ll only allow me to stay.”

I wanted her gone, but how would it look if I banished
all
Juba’s favorites? Besides, I’d learned from the tension between Augustus and Agrippa that it wasn’t always better to have your detractors in some remote part of the world, outside of your reach. At least here in Mauretania, I held power over the
hetaera
. “You may stay, but you will be watched.”

FOR weeks I’d dreaded the angry letter from Augustus that I’d thought inevitable. I had run from him. He’d be furious. But I should have remembered that Augustus burned cold. Now I worried at his silence. I sent grain, emptying our warehouses and filling the hulls of ships bound for Rome, but still he said nothing. Perhaps he knew—as I knew—that famine still lingered, and if we didn’t have spectacular rains, our next harvest would be a disaster. Adding to my worries, Lucius Cornelius Balbus sold me all of his holdings in Mauretania and accepted a military appointment in the province of Africa Nova. I feared that I’d been prideful and mistaken to make him leave. Thankfully, the exorbitant profit he’d made in our exchange seemed to have sweetened his disposition considerably, and he gave me lengthy advice on how best to profit from his plantations. Still, the king would likely be livid that I’d driven away his most able soldier . . . if Juba ever returned, that is.

As for the Greek
hetaera
, Memnon reported back to me on all her doings. She didn’t take a new client, but I couldn’t count that against her. As the king’s acknowledged mistress, there was no other man in Mauretania willing to claim her. Besides, she seemed like a vain woman, unlikely to accept
less
than a king for a lover now. Instead, she made a business of teaching Greek and earned a reputation as a talented grammarian. She was charming, made friends easily with the Alexandrians, and I found myself studying her. She wasn’t the beauty I originally supposed, but skillful cosmetics enhanced her best features. She carried herself
as if
she were a great beauty, and the act made people believe. She’d said that we could learn from one another, and I began to suspect that was true.

Meanwhile, in Juba’s absence, it became easy to believe that Mauretania was my kingdom alone. Juba’s Roman advisers treated me with a new deference. Work on the amphitheater ceased. Work on a theater commenced and I put Maysar in charge of the project even though the Berber chieftain protested that he wasn’t a builder. To convince him, I said, “You’re the only one I can trust to take into account the concerns of my subjects and not simply knock everything down in Roman fashion.”

He gave a wolfish grin at my praise. “This will be costly. I’ll need the help of someone with a keen sense of finance. Perhaps you can lend me the services of your freedwoman, Cleopatra Antonianus.”

“Chryssa?”
Perhaps a swarthy desert warrior like Maysar was incapable of embarrassment. He showed me a flash of teeth and I realized that he fancied her! First Julia and Iullus. Then Tala and her ship’s captain. Now Chryssa and the widowed Berber chieftain. It seemed as if all my intimates were involved in amorous affairs whereas I . . . Oh, yes. I was
pitiless Artemis, guarding her chastity at knifepoint.
It wasn’t the worst thing that could be said of me. My mother’s reputation for promiscuity had been her undoing. Perhaps I’d do well to follow the example of Artemis and surround myself with loyal maidens, forgetting men altogether.

BY summer, my daughter was talking in complete sentences. Not just incoherent baby babble but real expressions of wants and needs. Tala taught her some Berber words too. She’d become the delight of my life and the adored princess of my court. Beekeepers gifted her with honeycombs. Cooks gave her pastries hot from the kitchens. Dairy maids let her sip the cream from their buckets. I indulged her in everything.

Though the Berbers didn’t count the years of their birth and seemed to have some superstition against doing so, on the occasion of Isidora’s second birthday, I hosted athletic games in her honor. Memnon wasn’t in his prime anymore, but the captain of my Macedonian guard was still strong, and his tolerance for pain allowed him to prevail over a younger opponent in the wrestling event. With his sinewy muscles oiled and gleaming in the sun, Memnon beamed with pride when I awarded him the victor’s wreath. And I thought to myself,
He must have looked at my mother this way. He sees in me a true Ptolemaic queen and I must never disappoint him.

I hosted games for the Berbers too—contests for the finest woven textiles, competitions for the best-looking camel, and equestrian events in which they proved their superb horsemanship. The winning stallion might have been sacrificed if this were Rome, for their October Horse was always given to the gods, but my daughter’s birthday games were bloodless. Greeks, Romans, Alexandrians, and Berbers had all competed and now shared fond memories. I took it as proof that we had no need of gladiator games!

After the final wreath was awarded to the last winner, I saw to it that trays of saffron-sprinkled cakes were adorned with edible blossoms from the garden. I hired a group of minstrels to make music and invited the young children of all my courtiers to spend that summer day at play. While the children splashed in the shallow palace pools, I sipped at watered wine that had been chilled with snow from the Atlas Mountains. My ladies and I lounged beneath an enormous canopy of ostrich feathers to protect us from the summer sun. It was hot. Too hot. Summer scorched the land, and if the rains did not come early this year, we’d have famine even in Mauretania. This weighed on my mind as I read a missive from Julia:

To My Friend, the Most Royal Queen of Mauretania,

Even though you are a wretched friend to leave me without so much as a good-bye, I hope this letter finds you well. I suppose you abandoned Rome just in time, because the city is a nest of vipers all hissing and striking at one another. Some blame everything upon my father, who they still say means to do away with the Republic. Others say that it’s because we’ve offended Isis. Since you’re so well loved in Rome, the Isiacs are emboldened. They demand that their temples be restored and claim that it’s the evil of slavery that has turned the city into a mob of idlers on the dole. They risk much in light of my father’s hostility. He won’t hear their grievances—as if Isis had herself personally offended him. Or perhaps you have.

Your sudden departure from Rome seems to have vexed him even more than it has vexed me. The Antonias and I have faithfully performed the rites for Philadelphus that you taught us, but none of us can pretend to understand why you’d run off in the middle of the night. I can only surmise that Livia must have said or done something to make you go. With Octavia broken by grief, Livia has all the power again, but if only you’d waited, you could’ve enjoyed Rome without her. When my father refused the consulship, he left the city. He’s gone east—to reconcile with Agrippa, I think—and has decided to winter on the Isle of Samos in Greece. Livia went with him. Tiberius too. Also, Maecenas and his wife. Their departure makes Rome a less disagreeable place for me, but I worry that I’ve been left behind yet again. How is it my father is master of an empire and I’ve never been farther away from Rome than the Isle of Capri?

Marcellus and I used to talk of how we’d travel, but now Octavia would have me mourn the rest of my life. Even so, I’d prefer it to marrying Tiberius. How grimly he climbs the ladder to power just for his mother’s approval. He hasn’t yet realized that no one can ever please Livia. Not truly.

Julia’s letter went on to detail her exploits with Ovid and the other young aristocrats of her social circle, but she never mentioned Iullus—not even to reassure me that my half brother was still alive and well—which is how I knew that their love affair continued. Julia gave the impression of being careless, but what she cared about most, she guarded.

I looked up to hear Isidora cry with gladness, clapping her hands when presented with a basket of mewling kittens. “Baby Basts!” My daughter laughed the way Philadelphus had laughed, with unreserved joy. In my rooms, at the bottom of an iron-banded strongbox, his amulet rested beneath my other treasures and I remembered how he’d wanted her to have it. Perhaps, someday . . .

Setting Julia’s letter aside, I turned to Juba’s writings with surprising enthusiasm. My husband appeared to be making a complete accounting of this part of the world. His words brought a new landscape to life for me. He claimed to have found the source of the Nile; he said it flowed underground for several miles in the desert before reappearing again. I devoured every detail as he described finding the flora and fauna of Egypt here in Mauretania. This was as much a surprise to me as my own delight in Juba’s prose. Every time I thought I understood the man, I discovered a new side of him. In person, he could be bloodless. Pedantic. Suffocating and frustrating and lacking all vision. But his writing voice was somehow more passionate than the one I heard when he spoke. And when I finished reading the last scroll, I longed for more.

When I looked up, my daughter was covered in kittens, squirming things that snuffled under her chin and made her giggle. As if to express her regal indifference to these interloping youngsters, Bast curled up by my feet, tucking her paws under and purring. I wondered, fleetingly, traitorously, what it might be like to give up all my other ambitions and embrace moments like these.

Chryssa ducked under the ostrich feathers to join me. “That’s a strange smile you wear, Majesty. I think it’s happiness. It becomes you.”

Happiness
. A word that all but forced the lips into a delighted shape to speak aloud. It spoke of pleasures, of blissful decadence, both of which were easily found in Mauretania. No sooner had I taken the word into myself and considered it, than guilt consumed me. By what right had I survived to feel such a thing? What would my mother, my father, and all my dead brothers think of me relaxing here in the sun while they languished in the shadows of the underworld ? “It can’t be right to enjoy happiness when so many suffer.”