Song of the Nile (20 page)

Brushing his horse, a task he should have entrusted to a groom, Juba shrugged his shoulders. “What purpose would my anger serve? I’d prepared myself for it.” It was the reaction that I’d hoped for, but now I wished he’d throw a fit of rage and fling ugly words and accusations. His quiet acceptance of my condition made me feel strangely objectified, as if I were merely a horse who had been ill bred this season but might foal offspring of a more desirable pedigree next time. “Allow that Alexandrian physician, what is his name? Euphorbus? Let him tend to you.”

“I don’t care for him,” I said, not wanting to argue about the old mage. “A midwife will suffice.”

Juba went on, my opinion of no consequence. “Euphorbus is a learned fellow of excellent temperament. He’s been helping to identify plants for me. He’ll deliver you of a healthy child.”

“The child will need a proper nursery,” I said. “We’ll have to displace some of the servants.”

“I have a better idea.” Juba rubbed the horse’s muzzle. “This place is falling apart. We need a new palace. We might as well start building one now. I don’t suppose you have any suggestions for it . . .”

I was surprised at how this eased my despair. “Can we build it on the shoreline overlooking the harbor? It should have a view of an enormous lighthouse on that island, like the Pharos in Egypt!”

“I don’t see why not, but remember that this city is to be like Ostia—a trade port for shippers and grain merchants.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be a cultural center too. How much grain comes through Alexandria? Yet she’s the finest royal city in the world. Besides, Iol is beautiful. At least, we can
make
it beautiful.” I wanted to make a fine royal city but not simply because of my Ptolemaic ambition. Iol.
Return of the Sun
. I wanted this city to be a monument to that.

SERVANTS placed brass pots underneath holes in our leaky roof to catch the rainwater, while Juba and I sat cloistered with our architects, planning a new palace. I’d sketched what I remembered of my mother’s royal enclosure and what I didn’t remember, my Alexandrian courtiers described in detail. Juba did nothing to curtail my desire to replicate the palace in Alexandria. In fact, the time we spent together with our architects was unexpectedly pleasant. Juba could be good company and had an eye for expensive things. Hours passed in excited discussion of our plans without my remembering to be angry with him.

Augustus had made us rich, so we spared no expense. We wanted green diorite columns polished to a high sheen and agreed that some columns should be carved like women, caryatids like in Delphi and Athens. It was Juba’s idea to order pale Luna marble from Italy, white and silvery, but my innovation to accent it with a yellow marble from quarries in Numidia.
Moonlight and Sunshine
, I mused, my twin brother never far from my thoughts.

Between rainstorms, I shopped in the market, where Berbers haggled over baskets overflowing with nuts and olives and the fleece of shorn sheep. I purchased new tapestries to hang on the walls, lamps and couches too. My ladies pointed to my enthusiasm for a more comfortable home as evidence of my readiness for motherhood. Only Chryssa seemed to know how much I dreaded the coming of this child. If I knew Helios to be the father, perhaps I’d have taken some comfort in it, but fortunate happenstances were rare in my life. Swelling so fat and miserable could only be the result of the emperor’s doings.

Everyone whispered about the good fortune of the young king to have already sired a child. Juba took in due course the ribald jests about his virility, and when we were seen in public, I always behaved as if we were happy. In truth, I was only fifteen years old and the prospect of a child clinging to me for its every need struck me near dumb with terror. Tala assured me that motherhood would come naturally, but what if I was one of those
unnatural
women who couldn’t care for her own child?

The Berbers gossiped that I’d give birth in summer, in the month named after Julius Caesar, a prospect I found detestable, and my resentment seemed to swallow me whole. A time came when only Crinagoras could cheer me. The Greeks loved his cutting wit. The Romans enjoyed his verse. The Berbers admired his spirit and applauded wildly when he told the story of how their young queen defeated the sirocco. The incorrigible jester flattered, fawned, and amused even me on my darkest days.

One afternoon, Crinagoras announced, “Majesty, I’ve decided to compose a poem comparing you to Kore, the maiden daughter of Demeter. The Romans call her Proserpina.”

Unwilling to let him think me ignorant, I said, “I’ve also heard her called Persephone.” I reached for a fig. Since my mother’s death, I had a loathing for figs, but now, big with child, I couldn’t eat enough of them. Something satisfied me about the texture of the sweet fruit, the seeds against my teeth. I craved them night and day. “If you’re going to make a goddess of me, why not Isis?”

He sliced open a pomegranate with relish. “Because I write whatever inspires me and no person of civilized tastes questions my genius.”

Though he had a boyish nature, Crinagoras had lived a very full life. He’d served as an ambassador in Rome when Julius Caesar wooed my mother. He was acquainted with every king from Mauretania to Parthia, not to mention most of the Roman generals since Pompey. He wasn’t as afraid of powerful people as he should have been, and I was still too young to appreciate how valuable that made him. “I’m quite civilized,” I said, reclining against an embroidered pillow. “I’m a Ptolemy.”

Crinagoras grinned. “But have you been initiated into the Mysteries at Eleusis?”

He knew how to prick at my pride. Every two years, pilgrims from all over the world set sail for Athens to honor Demeter and Kore. Even Isiacs honored the festival, for it was said to have originated from an Egyptian rite. “Some day, perhaps I shall become an initiate, but none of this explains why you’re inspired to compare me to Kore.”

“Doesn’t it?” Crinagoras asked, popping a handful of pomegranate seeds into his mouth and sucking at their red juice. “Kore was the maiden goddess who was kidnapped by Hades and dragged down into the underworld, bringing such grief to her mother that the earth plunged into winter. She’s the youthful incarnation of your Isis. Like Kore, isn’t Isis wed to the lord of the dead? Doesn’t Isis possess the magic to bring forth our souls into salvation and to rise from the underworld to make all the crops grow?”

He was a cynic, so I couldn’t tell if he was mocking my faith, but this syncretism, the merging of goddesses, was nothing new. Isis had a thousand names and I’d just found her in the guise of Carthaginian Tanit. Still, I found myself arguing, “Isn’t Isis more like Demeter, the mother goddess who searches the world for her lost loved one?”

“They’re aspects of the same,” Crinagoras said, as if he were a great authority. “You’re not yet known for being more than Cleopatra’s daughter, a child stolen from Egypt. So I’ll compare you to Kore, kidnapped and held prisoner in the underworld of Rome while famine looms—”

“You don’t dare!” I cried, knowing full well how it might offend the Romans to hear Augustus compared to Hades. It was also far too close to the truth. Kore had been raped by Hades, who offered her seeds of pomegranate, the fruit of fertility, so he’d always have a hold on her ever after. Though Kore returned in springtime to her mother’s realm, she was never free of the lord of the underworld. Just as I would never be free of Augustus. As this child grew inside me, our lives entwined, and nothing would change that now. Like Kore, I had eaten the pomegranate seeds.

THE baby wasn’t the only thing moving inside me. In my blood, the sirocco still swirled restlessly. I knew that I should learn how to use my magic, but I was too mistrustful of Euphronius. Though workers erected a tomb to Helios, I wouldn’t accept that he was dead, and I refused to have the old wizard near enough to tell me otherwise. To take my mind off my woes, I busied myself overseeing the work of the stonemasons and tile layers in the new palace. The architects liked my aesthetic sensibilities, though I’d become aware that people would flatter me because I was queen. I approved plans for a columned entrance and an enormous fountain in the main hall. A large garden too, with grape arbors and a sea of lavender.

When springtime came it was safe for travel again and every manner of fortune seeker flocked to Mauretania. With them came an infusion of gold and gossip. We learned that King Herod vowed to build a new city in the East simply to keep us from attracting the finest engineers to Mauretania. We also learned that under the most mysterious circumstances, Cornelius Gallus, the Prefect of Egypt, had been recalled to Rome and forced to commit suicide.

I didn’t smile at this news, though it had been exactly what I’d hoped for. Had the emperor ordered his death because of my letter? If so, it had been appallingly easy to convince Augustus to kill on my behalf. Gallus deserved to pay with his life for what he’d done to Thebes, but I was shaken by my own capacity for vengeance, and my realization that Augustus was still my own deadliest weapon.

I only regretted that it changed nothing; the emperor simply sent another Gallus to rule over Egypt—this time, Gaius Aelius Gallus. I learned this from Julia, who wrote,
I weep for your loss, Selene. We hear rumor that Helios was killed in Thebes, but my father denies it, saying only that your twin must have perished in a sea crossing. I think he’s content to let your brother’s name pass unmarred so that no taint of treason touches you.

I doubted that. Augustus didn’t want Helios to be a rallying cry and so wouldn’t acknowledge him as a foe.

Julia also wrote that her husband had been elected
aedile
for the coming year—a public administrator responsible for games and public works. It was a position Marcellus was too young to occupy, so I assumed that Augustus had rigged the election in favor of his heir or that Lady Octavia had convinced him to do so. Julia also told me that while the youngest of the Antonias wished to remain unwed until she was older, my eldest Roman half sister Antonia had been married off to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. I saw Lady Octavia’s hand in that marriage arrangement too. As First Woman in Rome, she could arrange the finest marriages for the children in her household. It must have vexed the emperor’s wife and I worried that Livia would find some new way of taking revenge.

Julia ended her letter by saying,
My father hasn’t been himself since you left; everyone has noticed it. He complains of every manner of ailment.
It was too much to hope that the emperor suffered from an attack of conscience, and heavy with child, I couldn’t find it within myself to feel sorry for him.

At last, a letter came from Philadelphus, the papyrus stained as if by tears. When I read how he grieved for Helios, I was deeply troubled. Philadelphus saw clearly into the Rivers of Time, didn’t he? He must know that Helios was alive. Was this tearful letter for the benefit of the Romans? Yes, that must be it. No letter from Philadelphus would reach my hands without being seen by a dozen of the emperor’s toadies. I could almost imagine the wily Maecenas reading it forward and back, looking for a cipher . . . but what if Philadelphus truly grieved? I called for Euphronius. “Do you know some spell to send a secret message to Philadelphus?”

“If I did, I’d have used it by now,” the old mage said.

I sighed, flinging the letter down. “I keep making the same mistake of thinking you’ll be of some use to me.”

“WHY can’t you forgive him?” Chryssa asked once Euphronius had gone.

I turned to her, my palms outstretched. “How can you wonder? I once thought him wise, but now I know he’s a charlatan. Look at what his false visions have wrought. You know what he’s done to Helios. What happened in Thebes is his fault. I won’t let him fill my head with false hope and foolish plans.”

“I’m the one who made it possible for Helios to escape the emperor,” Chryssa reminded me. “I showed him the tunnels underneath the Palatine. If you blame Euphronius, you ought to blame me too. You
did
blame me. So why forgive me and not a holy man?”

“Because you’re a slave. You weren’t free to do anything other than what Helios told you to.”

“Is that what you think?” Chryssa was good at disguising her emotions, but a flick of her eyes showed me that I’d deeply offended her. I’d trivialized her love, loyalty, and the risks she’d taken for my brothers and me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She turned away to fold my linens. “You’re a queen and sacred to Isis. You’ve no need to apologize to a mere slave.”

“You’re no mere slave.” We’d suffered much together. Our bond was deeper than I’d been willing to admit to myself before now. “I know that Helios would probably have run away from Rome without anyone else’s help . . .”

“Then why can’t you forgive the mage?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling an old familiar emotion coil inside my belly. It was the wound at my core, spilling forth a toxin that ate me from the inside. “Maybe it isn’t just because of Helios or Thebes or all the disappointments. Maybe it’s also because when I was a little girl, he made me carry a basket of figs into my mother’s tomb.” This was known only to my brothers, our wizard, and me. I’d never confessed this secret to anyone else, and my hands trembled to tell the tale. “There was a serpent inside that basket. A deadly asp, I think. Maybe a magical one. It killed her. Euphronius made an unwitting killer of me. And I couldn’t save her . . .”

Chryssa put down the linens and covered my trembling hands with hers. “No one could save her.”

I can
, I thought. My mother gave up her life so that my brothers and I might rule Egypt in her stead. If I could make her dream reality, then my mother would never die. Not truly. Perhaps I could never put the lid back on that basket, but I could make true the last words she ever spoke.
In the Nile of Eternity, I shall live forever.