Song of the Nile (19 page)

But perhaps I could turn this situation to my advantage. “I’d like to build a temple to Isis.”

“Selene!” His teeth snapped together. “You know that isn’t possible. Your goddess is out of favor with Augustus. He’ll take offense. Put that thought out of your head.”

I would never put that thought out of my head, but I could see that I wouldn’t be able to change his mind. At least not now. He and the emperor had used me as a game piece since I was a child; well, I had a game of my own and there were several moves to make. “Then I want to build a mausoleum.” It was the task that Helios set for me.
The Romans think I’m dead. Make them believe it. Build a tomb. Mourn for me.
“You said that I could bury Helios in our tradition. Let me carve the name of Alexander Helios in stone, so that the gods might remember him.”

Juba’s eyes softened such that I knew he wouldn’t refuse, and in the morning he sent architects to meet with me. Their sketches lacked artistry, so I described the kind of tomb I wanted to memorialize my twin. Circular in foundation, with an Ionic facade and a stepped cone like a pyramid on top. Very much like my mother’s tomb and not dissimilar to the one that Augustus built for himself. The architects seemed stunned by the scope of it. “I studied under Vitruvius himself,” one of them said, puffing out his chest. “So I know it can be done. But this would be something on a much grander scale than we’d envisioned for . . . for . . .”

They wouldn’t even say my twin’s name. No one would. Helios was neither a traitor nor a hero. His rebellion never mentioned. His fate, not even whispered. Helios had simply vanished from the house of Augustus. He was being
erased
, which was, in itself, a death of part of his Egyptian soul.

When Juba saw the plans, I thought he’d complain of the expense, but he gave his full-throated support. “We’ll make it a royal mausoleum. It’ll make a fine statement about our dynastic plans; it’ll give the people a sense of our permanence here.”

So he believed that I meant to stay here with him. That I’d live and die here in Mauretania. That my mummy would be sealed in this mausoleum. But the remains of my twin wouldn’t rest in this tomb, and neither would mine. Isis willing, I meant to return to Egypt, no matter the cost.

IT was a strange thing to see Memnon and his men snap to attention outside my rooms. Holding round Macedonian shields, each painted red and adorned with my initials, these guards were a fearsome-looking lot, all awaiting my command. “I want to be alone at night,” I said to Memnon, remembering the way Livia had come to fetch me in the dark and how I’d awakened the next morning to find her offering me poisoned wine. “Can you prevent anyone from coming into my rooms at night? Even the king . . .”

It was a peculiarity; it wasn’t done. Wealthy persons of any station were attended in the night by slaves and servants who slept in niches and on bedding on the floor. What’s more, I was a married woman. The king would be expected to visit my bedchambers. My desire for privacy at night, one that I would cling to all my life, was a suspicious thing, so I was grateful when Memnon nodded his understanding without judgment or dispute. “As you wish, Majesty.”

Winter in Mauretania was pleasant. The evenings were cool enough to warrant a fire, but the days were warm unless it was raining. For my part, I didn’t much mind the rain, for it reminded me of the season of inundation in Egypt. Just as Helios had bathed me in the Temple of Tanit, these rains washed the world clean. For my subjects, they also meant the difference between a full belly and starvation. Without the rain, the grain wouldn’t come.

Since winter storms rendered the sea too dangerous for travel, we received few guests and there was time for personal indulgence. I chose planting urns to grace the grounds of my twin’s empty tomb and Tala spent her days weaving a beautiful rug. The Berbers were skilled in such things, so it surprised me to see her struggle at the loom. I’d spent the better part of four years toiling in the sewing room with Livia, Octavia, Julia, and the rest of the Roman girls, so I lent my hand to the task. “Try it like this,” I said, and all the women startled at the sight of their queen taking up weaving work.

Tala seemed more than startled and actually pushed my hands away. “
I
must do it.”

“It’s their way of grieving,” Chryssa explained. “Berber widows must make something to remember their beloved husbands and shun the company of men until it’s finished.”

I too was making a memorial to my beloved so my hands fell away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Tala nodded, grunting. “You’re still strangers here. Ignorant.”

Chryssa sniffed. “At least we’re not
blue
.”

I shot Chryssa a glare, but Tala barely glanced up from her work. “
Indigo
. Like my gown. We spread dye paste on fabric, then pound with stones until it shines like metal. Powder comes off on skin and stains. Is sign of status.”

Chryssa laughed. “A high price to pay for status. You’re
blue!
”

“I wouldn’t laugh,” I said. “If Tyrian purple stained, royalty would still pay a fortune for it.”

ONE sunny winter afternoon, I accompanied the surveyors to the site of the mausoleum. It would have been more comfortable to make the trip in a litter, carried by the matched slaves we’d brought with us for just such a purpose. But whereas oiled slaves dressed in leopard skins inspired envy and respect in Rome, such a sight seemed to engender hostility amongst the native Mauretanians. For that reason, I chose a carriage, which jostled Chryssa and me together as we traversed the mostly unpaved roads. Euphronius trailed behind us on foot, though I hadn’t invited him. “Why does he follow me like some beaten dog?”

“What else has he to do?” Chryssa asked. “He’s a priest of Isis in a land that doesn’t worship her, going by a name that isn’t his own, serving a queen who won’t even speak to him.”

“I might’ve known you’d take the wizard’s part,” I said, lips pressed tight in irritation.

She glanced up at me from beneath fair eyelashes. “You make no secret of the fact that he’s out of favor. It rouses suspicion.”

I pretended as if her words were of no import, but it’s always a slave who knows best how to pierce her mistress with self-doubt. Our carriage stopped below a hilltop upon which there were foundations of some older structure—perhaps some long-abandoned project of past kings. While the surveyors stretched ropes over the hard earth and tied them to pegs, I noticed Euphronius walking strange patterns through the grass. I’d seen him do this when I was young but didn’t realize he was working a spell until I felt a slight tug of
heka
pull me toward him.

I didn’t want to speak to him, but my curiosity overcame my resentment. I stepped over fragrant rosemary bushes to come to his side and asked, “What are you doing?”

He bowed deeply, his eyes alight. “Majesty, I’m searching for evil spells that might have been laid in this place . . .”

“Do
I
have the power to do this?” I wondered aloud.

He nodded, leaning against his divination stick, the serpentine eyes of which seemed to taunt me. “In Egypt you’d be able to do this and much more. Yet another reason we must see you safely home, Princess. Here, I don’t know the limits of your powers or mine.”

I bit my lower lip, admitting, “I don’t know how to control my powers
anywhere
. Whenever I use them, the
heka
sickness comes, except for the last time, when I took a storm into me.”

“There’s no price to be paid for taking
heka
into you, but to let it out in a rush? It’ll ravage you.
Heka
flows into your body and wants to remain there. When you release it to work magic, it carves its way out.”

“It carves itself... in my flesh?” I wondered. “In blood and symbols?”

“When the goddess wills it,” Euphronius said, seeming to measure the shadow of his staff. “Even if you can’t see the wounds, the magic does cut you. You must give it a channel to flow away.”

I resented taking instruction from him, but the old mage was my only link to the lost magic of Egypt. Given what little I knew, his words made some sense. “And my amulet. It isn’t the source of magic . . .”

“Your frog amulet gives shape to your
heka
and serves to help you control it, but you could wield magic without it.”

“Will you show me? I want to draw a light breeze.”

He surprised me by asking, “To what end? Majesty, the
heka
you draw from the temples is left there by people who seek salvation. The magic is born of their hopes, their fears, their tears. Every bit too precious for experiment.”

I didn’t want to be lectured. Not by him. “Then how can I learn?”

“Why not commune with this spot? Make sure this is a good place to build a tomb. Let the hill speak to you. If there are curses upon this place, you’ll know it. Kneel down.” The Romans builders were too busy exploring the foundations to pay much attention to me, so I gathered my skirts and lowered to the ground. “Now,” the old man said. “Press your hands to the earth and push a bit of the
heka
inside you into the soil, then draw it back in again. Let it flow through you, but hold yourself aloof, and when it grows too intense, push the rest into your amulet.”

Several ducks flew overhead and the blinding sun turned them to dark dots against the blue sky. I blinked my eyes shut, feeling the tingle of
heka
at my fingertips. The scent of grass was in my nostrils. The salt of the sea upon my tongue. I heard the gulls call to one another, and the rustle of stub-tailed monkeys playing on the far side of the hill. The soil beneath my fingers wasn’t like the silken desert sand. Not like the black earth of Egypt either. It was something else entirely. I thought about all my wishes for Mauretania, my hopes for its people, and made a narrow channel through which my
heka
could flow.

“Yes,” Euphronius said, and when my
heka
touched the hill it met no resistance. No hostility. No evil spirits or curses or enchantments. If anything, the soil welcomed me and drew me closer. “No, not so much, Majesty. Not so much!”

I pulled up, breaking the connection to the earth, clutching at my amulet to take the excess of magic. Then my eyes flew wide. All around me the grass had grown taller, greener, with red flowers woven into its verdant fabric. Caper blossoms opened in all their showy glory. From the tree above, olives burst forth, having ripened from purple to black. The surveyors dropped their tools and Chryssa ran to us, sighing with wonder at the grass that grew taller with her every step. It was the cusp of winter, but the hill had responded to me as if I were the incarnation of springtime. “Was that supposed to happen?” I murmured.

Stunned, Euphronius drew his white cowl over his head. “Not unless . . . Majesty, I believe that you must be with child.”

Thirteen

RETURNING to my rooms, I called for the midwife. She put her hands on my belly and sniffed at my breath and asked me about my last moon’s blood. I could tell her nothing with certainty. My last menses came before my wedding. Before the emperor violated me. Before I’d found my lover in the sirocco. Months ago, I told her. Maybe two. No more than three. I couldn’t remember!

She departed, saying it was too early to tell. But I knew. I
knew!
And it was a calamity. I wanted to believe that what quickened inside me was a gift from Helios . . . that, like Isis revived Osiris, I’d brought Helios back from death in the guise of a babe. But it might well have been the emperor who fathered a child upon me and I shuddered at the very idea that something grew inside, unwanted, a threat to my life. How I regretted taunting Juba about the possibility of carrying the emperor’s child. Had I tempted cruel fate by speaking the words aloud? Remembering Tala’s ordeal, I wished it away a thousand times! Even if I survived the birth of this child, it would be a living reminder of all that the emperor had done to me and mine. I told myself that I’d never hold against a child the sins of its father, but what if I looked upon an innocent little face and felt nothing but loathing?

With reluctance, I sent for Euphronius and said, “I don’t want a child. As a priest of Isis you know the herbs I must take.”

“Princess, tread carefully,” the old man warned. “What would happen to you if it were discovered you tried to rid yourself of... a royal heir?”

His slight hesitation made me gasp. He was still a mage. Did he know that the child wasn’t Juba’s? Did he guess at what the emperor had done to me? What if, in the Rivers of Time, he’d seen Helios and me upon a flower-bedecked altar? No, if he’d seen that, surely he wouldn’t persist in telling me that my twin was only a ghost. “Royal heir or no, I don’t want it!”

“Princess,” Euphronius cooed. “There’s risk in the herbs that would rid you of the child. Are there so many Ptolemies left in the world that we can do without one more? With the death of our beloved Helios—”

“Get out!” I couldn’t bear that he should speak his name and tell me he was dead. Again. “Get out, get out, get out!”

WINTER rains flooded the streets with mud and sometimes forced construction to a standstill. No messages or dispatches arrived from Rome. We were effectively trapped here in this new land—as trapped as I was inside a body that was changing every day. Tenderness swelled in my breasts and the nipples darkened. My skin burned hot even when others complained of a light chill. My frog amulet, which had so often lain at the base of my throat, lifeless and inert, now gleamed green with expectation. “When will you tell the king that you’re with child?” Chryssa asked.

Since the night I’d threatened him with a table knife, matters between Juba and me had been frosty, so I waited until February, when the Romans would be celebrating the Lupercalia, to tell him. I went to the stables, where the king had just returned from a ride on one of his favorite Barbary steeds, and let the words tumble out in a rush. I thought he’d quip something dark and bitter. That he might comment on how pleased Augustus would be. Juba only nodded and, for a moment, I wondered if he’d even heard me. “Are you angry?” I asked, wary of the king’s equanimity.