Authors: Emily Holleman
She hoped her threat sounded convincing—it yielded the desired effect. Seleucus’s lips parted and a touch of fear flickered in his eyes.
Good.
And then he chuckled. “I’ve rarely met a woman who matched your feistiness. I’ll grant you that.”
“You should have tried that tactic earlier. No woman is immune to flattery. But the time is long over for such tricks.”
Loudly, she crossed to her dressing table, praying that her maids would hurry in. Before she’d wed, any sound of stirring would bring them rushing to her door, but these days the girls hung back. It was as though they wished to punish her. Even they couldn’t be so daft as to think she took pleasure here.
“My love,” he called out. He wouldn’t let up the game, no matter how many times she brushed away his words. “There’s no need for this coldness. We’re of a blood, you and I. A great and gloried blood. And we have long years before us. In time, I’ll father many children upon you. Some tenderness might be welcome. I fear we’ve begun on an unlucky foot.”
Berenice bit her lip, hard. What kind of fool did he take her for? “How easily these sweet words come to you this morning. Last night you’d little enough concern for tenderness. Yet now that I’ve reminded you of your position, you’re full of kindly urges. A strange coincidence, isn’t it?”
“A man unfamiliar with our situation might hear a threat in that, but as we both know, I’ve six thousand men at my command who’d fight for me if I come to any harm.”
Berenice squinted at this man, her husband, until his features grew as sharp as her childhood sight would have rendered them. She wanted to see whether he was formidable, if any true strength lurked behind his blows and bluster. She suspected not; he seemed to be formed of little more than charms and artifice, the sort that might fool his soldiers but not her.
“No, I don’t know that,” she said slowly. “For once you’re dead—should someone wish you dead—your men will have no reason to fight. What hope do they have of retaking the lands that Rome has seized from them without the great Seleucus, descendant of both the House of Ptolemy and Seleucus, the incomparable Salt-Fish Seller? You die, and their hopes of victory die too. They’ll diminish, and return, and serve Rome. Younger brothers with no heirs are little use to anyone dead.”
Her taunts finally roused him: Seleucus stood, his member shrunken in the morning light. Trembling with anger, he slipped his tunic over his naked form.
Rid of her husband, Berenice returned to bed and sealed her eyes against the sun. She hoped she might steal a few moments of slumber now, but sleep refused to come. Everywhere she turned reeked of him. The stale stench of drink and sweat hung over her skin and bedclothes alike. Soon she gave up and rose again. This time, the servants scampered in at the first falls of her feet.
Bathed, dressed, and scented with so many perfumes that her head had begun to spin, Berenice descended the slick onyx steps that led from her apartments to the court below. When her father had ruled, he’d insisted that all the columns be hewn from purple marble, as though the very color might imbue the royal apartments with power. She’d always thought that the rich hues clashed with the lotus flowers that emerged from each capital in dull gold relief. To complete the misshapen idyll, the walls were plastered with her father’s preferred images of Dionysus—the flame-haired god riding naked upon his leopard’s back and leaning on a satyr’s shoulder—which almost made her wonder whether the Piper had chosen violet because it reminded him of wine. But that had been the way with everything her father built: one symbol jumbled atop the next, with little consideration for the whole.
She quickened her pace as she passed by the last of the god’s revelries. With any luck, she might reach the great atrium before Seleucus. Now that her moments of ruling alone were in short supply, she cherished them all the more, even on mere matters of resolving tax complaints. The threat of losing any stitch of her authority made her cling to it all the more tightly. Besides, taxes were needed to raise armies, whether to fight for Cyprus or to defend Alexandria.
As she crossed the blue wave mosaics of the great courtyard’s central path, Berenice nearly broke into a run. She was so distracted by her thoughts that she didn’t notice the small body hurtling toward her.
One of her guards did and seized Arsinoe’s arm so hard that the child shrieked like some harpy of legend.
“They wouldn’t let me see you,” the girl gasped, flailing against the soldier’s hands.
“The queen has more important matters to attend,” the guard told her gruffly.
It was true. Seleucus had, Berenice hoped, returned to his own chambers, but he wouldn’t sleep forever. And she needed to milk every moment in his absence. Each decision that she made without his hovering reminded Alexandria that power rested with her alone.
“Arsinoe, he’s right,” she chided. “Wait until next I summon you.”
As Berenice turned away, the girl, her sister, cried out, “Wait, my queen. I beg you. There’s something I must tell you. At once.”
The child had certainly inherited their father’s flair for the dramatic. And Berenice was about to send her off, but then her eye caught on something strange. The girl had a scabbed cut across her cheek, and her wrist was bound as though the bone had snapped. No wonder she’d shrieked so loudly when the guard grabbed her.
“What happened here?” Berenice took Arsinoe’s bandaged arm in her hand. The girl flinched but didn’t weep.
“Please,” she begged. “Just let me speak to you alone. I’ll be quick. I promise.”
That was curious. Her sister had never demanded anything of her before. And so Berenice had Arsinoe escorted to her apartments. Though the child eyed the guards suspiciously, Berenice didn’t dismiss them. She didn’t want them to think that she catered too extravagantly to the girl’s whims.
“Tell me now, and quickly, Arsinoe,” Berenice said once they’d both settled in her small antechamber. “What’s the meaning of this display?”
A strange story poured from the girl’s lips. She’d been playing behind a stone of sorts, it seemed, when she’d overheard Nereus talking to some Seleucid. Arsinoe had always struck her as a smart child, a survivor, but Berenice still couldn’t understand what had brought her little sister rushing to her side. The girl should know better; she’d been raised in court, after all. An irksome thought entered Berenice’s mind: maybe Tryphaena had been right. Perhaps her affection for the child had made her too careless with her favors toward her sister.
“And then,” the breathless girl went on, “the Seleucid called Nereus a fool for giving up when they were so close to getting what they wanted, when her son was already on the throne.”
That sounded peculiar. Maybe Arsinoe had heard something worth repeating after all. “Whose son?”
“Selene’s,” her sister replied, earnest and exasperated, as though she’d explained it a thousand times before.
“And what happened next?” Berenice asked, urging her on. “How did Nereus respond?” Some small part of her was almost impressed that Nereus had tricked her, at his age—that he had the energy, the fortitude, to pull the wool over her eyes. To fight for something against all hope of triumph. There was a twisted sort of honor in that.
“He said he wasn’t old or weak but he was sure that Seleucus was nothing like his mother.” Arsinoe raced through these words as well. Now that she was finished, she took a deep breath and looked utterly pleased with herself.
Berenice studied her sister with fresh eyes. What else did this child overhear, this girl with such open rein over the palace? “Did you learn anything else? Any indication of what treachery they plan next?”
Arsinoe furrowed her brow and thought for a moment, but then she shook her head. “They found me after that.” The girl gnawed angrily at her swollen lip, so fiercely that Berenice feared she might draw blood. “And so I didn’t hear anymore. But I thought—I thought you should know.”
“You were right to tell me, sister.” Berenice smiled. After all, each was the only family the other had left. “I’ll take your words to heart.”
Arsinoe glanced back when she reached the chamber door. There, framed by the golden latticework of vines, she dug her heels into the stone, flouting the guard who tried to hurry her along.
“So you’ll kill him, then?” she asked, bright and hopeful, as though she were requesting a new trinket. In that brief moment, her sister reminded Berenice strangely of Tryphaena.
She laughed. “You’re too young to be so bloodthirsty.”
But the question weighed on Berenice all throughout the petitioners’ pleas, and the bureaucrats’ presentations about the new taxes to be levied for the army. She studied Nereus with care, but the old man betrayed no hint of nerves as he questioned each plan and how many talents it would draw.
Even a man such as this can be blinded by love…
She’d heard rumors of his affair with Selene, but she’d never put much stock in them. Perhaps that wasn’t fair. Nereus, too, had been young once. And foolish to this day.
It was Pieton, not the old man, who later sought her out in her antechamber. As the eunuch ran his finger over the amber tortoiseshell inlay of her father’s desk, he looked rather more self-satisfied than usual. He smiled from ear to ear.
“You seem to be in a cheerful mood for someone who has spent the day listening to whining peasants and nagging officials,” Berenice teased.
“The great glue that holds our kingdom together,” he said with his lopsided grin. “Although I do admit I’ve had some news that might lift even your spirits.”
Berenice wondered what could lift her spirits. News of more coin to pay another ten thousand Galatian recruits? Word that Rome had fallen to the Gauls? Neither prospect seemed likely.
“I doubt that,” she answered.
“I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises today.” Pieton paused grandly for effect. “Your father sails to Ephesus.”
“To—to Ephesus?” Berenice stammered. That did surprise her. “What business can he have there?”
“I imagine he has the business of licking his wounds. His friends don’t yield such great power in Rome after all. The Senate denied his claim. They’ll loan him no men to retake Alexandria.”
Her mind stumbled. Her father had failed in Rome. This was victory. It wasn’t the magnificent triumph she’d dreamt of, but it was welcome just the same. Her father’s loss would spare her troops—it would even give her a second opportunity to secure Cyprus. The Piper would not return at the head of a Roman horde; he’d sail to Ephesus and wither away his remaining years, praying that Artemis might deliver him to the throne. “And without Dio, or any other convincing? What swayed their minds?”
“Rome has, to our advantage, spread herself too thin,” the eunuch mused. “I imagine it’s all those costly foreign wars. She’s overextended in the East. And the Gauls stir up trouble along her borders. The days are gone when she could afford to lend men to every king who bends a knee and weeps.”
For once, Fortune, that capricious goddess, was smiling on Berenice. She was almost afraid to hear more, for fear that on closer inspection it would all wither away to dust.
“Who else knows of this?”
“No one, my queen. My source is speedy and tight-lipped and already en route to Athens. Shall I make the preparations, then, for a feast to celebrate your triumph?” His eyes tested her.
She saw what the eunuch was poking at. He knew her far too well. Her father’s defeat could spare her more than armies: it could spare her Seleucus. She would no longer have to endure his cruelties, his drunken weight bearing down on her. If she wanted, she could have him killed. The thought made her shiver. She’d held lives in her grasp before, surely, but not ones that were so closely intertwined with her own.
He’d been cruel to her, rough with his hands and his words, but many men did the same. Did that mean he deserved death? He had his charms and uses. And in her softer moments, she even hoped he felt toward her some shadow of tenderness. Perhaps she was thinking of it the wrong way around. Perhaps it was more important to ask, Did he deserve life?
She’d been reared among men like Seleucus, men who thought the world owed them merely for the twig between their legs. Her father had been such a man, and he’d nearly drunk his kingdom to the ground. Her brothers, babes though they were now, would grow up to be such men. And what sort of world had they brought forth through their misplaced confidence? One that was ruled in all but name by Rome. Her husband and his ilk had already received far more than they deserved.
“No preparations just yet,” Berenice told the eunuch. “Let’s keep this happy news between us two.”
Pieton bowed his head low before her, his loose curls flapping over his eyes. “I thought as much, but I must warn you, my queen: take care. The palace has ears. And when things such as this must be done, they should be done quickly, and with discretion.”
Suddenly, she became acutely aware of the sound of her own heart thudding in her chest, as though Pieton’s plea for prudence had somehow sealed her husband’s death. She could not turn from her choice now.
“So it will be done as I do all things.” Berenice nodded. As Pieton turned to leave, she felt the uncontrollable urge to call him back. The moment between them had passed too quickly, and she wanted—no, needed—his comfort.
“One more thing, Pieton,” she cried out, against her better judgment.