Song of the Nile (15 page)

TO my surprise, it was Tala who objected most strenuously to my leaving. As the winds blew harder, the blue-hued woman said, “Foolish! When sand comes, you’ll be stranded. No servants to cater to you. Sirocco cares nothing for royalty. Will swallow up even spoiled little queen.”

Even Lady Octavia would have put Tala out into the street for speaking with such disrespect, but I’d let no one distract me from what I felt compelled to do. When Tala saw I was determined, she sighed and put her hand over her belly. “I take you as far as temple, then I turn back.”

“I have guards to take me,” I said, motioning to the assembling group of soldiers wearing plumed helmets and scarlet capes.

“
Roman
guards,” she snorted, pulling a veil over her face. “I am
Amazigh
. I know this storm.”

We rode camels to the temple because camels were the animals best suited to survive a full-bore sandstorm and would provide shelter if we were caught in one. I clung to the animal’s hump as it swayed in its graceless gait, not liking the scratch of its fur, not daring to complain. My cloak flapped wildly behind me as I leaned into the wind, which howled down every alleyway like some ancient demon, and by the time I rushed up the steps of the temple into the relative shelter of the outer chamber, I was breathless. In the lamplight, Tala said, “I leave bedding. Sealed jars of olives and dates. Fresh water too.” Then she handed me a stoppered bottle of olive oil. “Put it in nose and in mouth, to keep moist.”

“Thank you, Tala. You may go now before the storm gets worse.”

Her jewelry jingled as she turned to leave, but then she stopped at the doors. “Maybe Romans gave us brave queen. Good for
Amazigh
. We’ll see.”

THE inner chamber of the temple was dark, but I wasn’t afraid, because Tanit—this Punic version of my goddess—was a mistress of the night. My footsteps fell softly upon the stone floor to a simple pallet with some blankets, but I didn’t lie down.
Heka
drew me to the altar. Magic hummed in the stonework of the stelae and danced in a fountain that flowed over a ledge and dropped in a sheet to a murky pool below. The water tumbled, frothing over itself, misting the air beneath the candlelit statue of the goddess. She was a maiden beauty with a garland at her neck and a bed of flowers at her feet. She was foreign but familiar, and I let out a sigh of exultation.

The goddess had been waiting here for me and I waded into the pool so she might embrace me as her daughter. If there were crocodiles or sacred animals, I didn’t fear them. Mere weeks had passed since the emperor put his filthy hands upon me, and as the water floated my gown up around my waist, I lolled there in the water, half awake, half asleep. I closed my eyes, feeling weightless, safe as I was in the womb. I rested my head on the ledge of the pool, breathing sweet air through my veil.

My goddess had suffered. Her brother-husband had been murdered by the dark god Set, his body mutilated. She’d wandered the world, gathering the pieces, using her magic to put him back together and bring him to life again. Somehow, I must do the same for Helios. The spell Isis cast, a simple prayer, was one I murmured now.

“I call you to me.
I call you by the breath of your body.
I call you by the truth of your soul.
I call you by the spark of your mind.
I call you by the light of your spirit.”

In the corners of the temple, little clouds of sand seeped through the stonework, snuffing a few candles out. It became darker, and I was so sleepy. So very tired. So completely exhausted with grief. I closed my eyes and must have slept. Berber women believed that whatever they dreamed in such sanctuaries would come true.

I dreamed that I wasn’t alone.

I couldn’t hear my own breath over the rush of the waterfall, but somehow I heard
his
. I opened my eyes and let them drift to each alcove, searching the shadows. Behind a pillar, I made out the shape of a young man. He emerged through the cascade of water, like a curtain pushed aside. Even with the spray of water in my eyes, I would have known him in any temple, in any part of the world, in any lifetime. “Helios,” I whispered and rushed to him, throwing my arms about his neck. He crushed me against him and I recognized his scent—the sea-swept notes that were his and mine alike. He felt solid, but when he didn’t speak I knew he was only a spirit body, my Osiris, from the realm of the dead. His hands pushed back the wet hair from my face. Our eyes met, and everything I wanted to say flowed out of me in a rush of tears. “How could you leave me?”

Then this spirit I’d conjured did speak. “I’m sorry,” Helios rasped. “Sorrier than you’ll ever know.”

“You swore to me that you’d take me to Egypt, that you’d never let me be married off, that you’d always defend me. That you’d always, always, defend me. But I had to defend everyone. You, Philadelphus, Egypt . . . and I didn’t know what to do.”

I regretted saying these things because they seemed to pain him more than they did me. He shuddered, every part of him sagging with defeat and sorrow. “I’m so sorry, Selene. So sorry.”

“The emperor hurt me,” I whispered.

His shoulders rose again and he gripped my arms. “What did he do to you?”

At last the truth escaped me. “He raped me.”

There it was. I’d spoken it aloud, and in the speaking, made it real. I’d given voice to the filth and shame and now I was fragile. I’d been called a whore and a seductress and a schemer, and borne it. If Helios doubted me, even this spirit version of him, it would break me. I’d shatter into a thousand pieces and no one and nothing would ever be able to make me whole. But Helios offered no recriminations. Instead, he cried out in rage. Then his voice dropped low and deadly. “I’ll kill him. I’ll make him pay for this as he’s never paid for anything else in his life. If I could reach Octavian tonight, he wouldn’t live to see the sunrise. I’ve made other promises to you, Selene, but this one I’ll keep. By Isis, I vow to you, that I’ll kill—”

“Don’t,” I whispered quickly. “Don’t promise violence in a temple. Not even if you aren’t real.”

“I’m real enough . . .”

“You can’t be. They told me that you were dead!”

He lowered his head. “Better that I were.”

“If you’re better off dead, then I am too,” I told him, hot tears scalding my cheeks. “We’ve always been together and I can’t be alive without you. I can’t do anything without you. I can’t even get clean . . .”

“You
are
clean,” Helios said, pale eyes squinting.

“No.” I shook with each sob, my shoulders heaving. “Since that night, I’ve scrubbed my skin raw, but I can’t wash him away.”

Helios looked stricken, his throat working as he fought back tears of his own. He pressed his forehead to mine and we stood like that, breathing each other’s breath, until he said, “I’ll wash him away for you.” Making a cup of his hands he scooped up water from the pool, then let it trickle down my neck. He did it again. Then he poured water over each shoulder, as if in sacred ritual. It must have been, for I felt the magic wash over us. Here in this temple, I heard the chants of the priests and the sounds of rattles from eras gone by. Here a thousand women had brought their sacrifices and a thousand candles had been lit. I didn’t recognize the chants or understand their words, but like me, they’d all come here in human frailty and need.

Pain was a universal language.

Together we knelt and my gown floated on the water ghostly white. Helios washed my shoulders, my arms, and my trembling belly. He
bathed
me. He went on and on, slowly and methodically. He ran his hands through my hair, combing his fingers through it, thumbs massaging my scalp. And stroke by stroke, drop by drop, the salt water of my tears mingled with the sacred water until I was wrung out, rinsed away of pain. I hadn’t been able to do it alone, but with Helios all things were possible. In the water, the flow of
heka
rushed up from the floor, spreading like warm honey in my veins. With my fingers still tangled with his, I pressed them against a supporting pillar. The paint in this temple had faded but the magic inside it hadn’t.
Heka
flowed through our fingers so strongly, I could taste the green malachite on my tongue. “Can’t you feel that?” I asked. “Years of sorrows and worship, magic stored here for us to use. It was here waiting to bring us together.”

This sharing of
heka
was intimate and Helios seemed surprised by the intensity of it, dipping his head. “Selene . . .” His voice was tortured. “You’re too close to me.”

“How can I be too close?” I asked, tasting the tears of generations. “Like the sun and the moon, we were always meant to be in the same sky.”

“Selene,” he said again, as if it hurt him to speak my name. That’s when I realized that he
wanted
me. Perhaps he’d always wanted me. Not abstractly, as a king who wants a queen, but with burgeoning, potent sexual desire. He shied away, as if ashamed. He shouldn’t have been. For hundreds of years my family had practiced brother-sister marriage like the Egyptian pharaohs before us. The Romans judged it a wicked thing for a man to take his sister as a wife, but Helios wasn’t a man and I didn’t come to him as a woman or as a sister.

I’d said the calling prayer. I’d drawn him back from the underworld just as Isis had called back her brother-husband. In this sacred space, he was a youthful god and I was a maiden goddess. He was the husband that had been promised me in my dreams. The one who would take the hurts and soothe them, the one who would take what was broken in me and make me whole. It wasn’t Juba. Helios was the lover who sang to me. It was his face I dared not name, even to myself. My skin glowed like the pale moon and reflected silvery off the face of the goddess above us. I was the goddess and he was the golden god that overflows the Nile’s banks, cleansing the earth, filling the cracks in the soil with the seed of life.

I kissed him and he startled when our lips sealed together in soft reverence. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tasted the salt on his skin. I ran my fingers through his leonine hair and realized he was vulnerable to me. His body fell easy prey to my touch. I could take him as my lover or cast him away. It was my choice.
Mine
. And I chose him.

Ten

I was clean.

He’d made love to me upon a flower-strewn altar. He’d stroked me softly, worshipfully, as if only my skin could offer him salvation. He didn’t curse me or demand that I love him. He didn’t have to. Every tremulous touch had brought me closer to wholeness. Trembling hands washed away cruel ones. Sweet, tentative kisses drowned unrelenting dark memories.

After, I awakened to a crash in the outer chamber—maybe an urn or potted plant that couldn’t withstand the storm. The winds were still blowing. I squinted into the dimness, coughing in the dusty air. Someone had wrapped me in a blanket and I clutched it. Helios was here. More worldly, less perfect. Still here. With a tunic wrapped around his waist and a cloth over his mouth, he crouched over an oil lamp, using his fingers to give rise to a flame. My eyes widened in amazement when I felt a strange pull in the
heka
and realized that he was
using
it to make fire. “How are you doing that?” I asked.

He glanced up, then held his arm out to show me his birthmark, the one shaped like a cobra, the
ureas
, the spitter of fire. “I can take flames into me or let them out. You can do the same with wind.”

My own birthmark was shaped like a sail, and I stroked it now, fascinated by each freckle. “Does that mean . . . Is this storm my doing?”

“I don’t know. Fire seeks me out. It may be the same for you with wind.” He came to my side with a skein of water and brought it to my dry lips. I drank eagerly, realizing only now that my throat was parched. I should have used the oil the way Tala told me to, but from the moment I’d entered this temple, nothing had seemed real. That was all changing now.

During our lovemaking, I hadn’t noticed the bandage wrapped round his ribs. But then spirits and gods couldn’t be wounded. So he was no shadow or double. “You didn’t die at Thebes . . .”

“I should have,” he said, bracing his back against the stone wall. “There weren’t many survivors, but what few there were, my men and I evacuated to Hermonthis.” It was strange to hear him talk of
his men
, as if he were a military commander like Agrippa. As much as I’d changed in the time since we’d been apart, Helios had changed even more. He looked like a young fighter, one of the boys they enrolled in the legions. “Magic and faith can’t win wars, you said, Selene. Only soldiers can. You were right and I was wrong about everything . . .”

After the Battle of Actium, in defeat, my father had brooded in a cabin by the water and when he finally emerged there was a hollowness to him. Some kind of death before death. I’d never thought to see such a thing again, but when I looked at my twin now, I glimpsed that same abyss and knew I wasn’t the only one who’d come to this temple all broken inside. “What happened to you, Helios?”

I reached to inspect his wound and he pulled away. “It’s nothing. A glancing blow.” He unstopped an amphora of olives and the two of us ate in silence. When he finally spoke again, he said, “I learned of your marriage . . .”

I flinched, staring down at my betrothal ring. “I didn’t want to marry Juba. It’s no true marriage.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Selene. I didn’t come here to accuse you.”

“Then why did you come?” I asked, still half certain that I’d conjured him.

“I had to see you one last time.”

I hated the sound of that. “How would you know to find me in this temple? How could you know that I’d come?”

“When I heard of your marriage to Juba, I knew you’d make landfall in Mauretania. Once I arrived, I passed this crumbling little temple and knew you’d find it too . . .”