Song of the Nile (22 page)

“For once, I agree with this savage,” Chryssa said. “Your seclusion makes it easy for the king and his advisers to forget you.”

That’s when she showed me the newly minted coin. Clutching it in my hand, I hurried down the marbled hall, stepping over toolboxes and dodging workmen, until I found Juba in his new study—a room draped with crimson curtains and lit by giant braziers shaped like wheat sheaves. Juba rose with courtly grace to greet me, but I held up the evidence of his true intentions in my hand. “What’s this?”

The king’s smile swelled with pride as the metal caught the light. “It’s the new coinage of the realm. It isn’t the best portraiture of me, but your father’s old gem cutter has promised to make a better likeness next time.”

“Where is my portrait on this coin?” I asked. “Anyone who saw this would think you were sole ruler of Mauretania.”

Juba knitted his brows and a sound of exasperation caught in his throat. “Women don’t belong on coins.” My father had been the first man to ever put a woman on a Roman coin—and he’d done it more than once. He’d made coins for Fulvia, for my mother, and even Octavia. He’d taken the women in his life as partners, not subjects, and it disturbed me that Juba wasn’t that same kind of man. At my obvious distress, Juba adopted a conciliatory tone. “Selene, haven’t we been friendly since Isidora’s birth?”

Yes, we had been friendly. He’d indulged me with lavish gifts of jewelry and perfumes. He’d sat with me in my chambers, helping me to learn Punic and never pressing me for intimacy. I’d begun to think of him as a generous and gentle man again. But all the while, he’d been planning this accursed coin. “Juba, I’m not some kitchen girl to be wooed with sparkling trinkets. I’m a sovereign queen. When we first arrived here, you invoked my name to assure the people that they’d be well governed, but you and your counselors don’t listen to a word I say!”

“I
do
listen to you,” he protested. “This palace and the lighthouse are all being built to your specifications. My counselors agree that you have a good instinct for forming a proper royal court. Confine your interests to such things. Isn’t your mother’s example enough to teach you how disastrous it is when women involve themselves in politics?”

How often must I hear this argument? It seemed that I’d been fighting all my life for my own place. Even when I rushed here clutching this coin in my hand, I was filled with offense for the insult it did
me
. Now my anger went beyond what men were trying to steal from me; I thought of my daughter too. Her future should be shaped not simply by the fact that her grandmother had been an extraordinary woman. If we were ever to return home to Egypt, Isidora needed me to be strong too. “Juba, from this day forward, I’m going to act either in agreement with you or upon my own authority.”

His cheeks reddened. “Such arrogance! Do you think it’s easy to govern a kingdom, Selene? You’re a child; the council won’t work with you.”

“Then I’ll form my own counsel. So don’t be surprised to find a giant Iseum being erected in the middle of the city.” It was a threat without teeth, for the soldiers respected the king’s commands, not mine. But Juba must have feared that I’d persuade others to my cause, because he came out from behind his writing table to confront me.

“If you build such a temple, you’ll start a public quarrel with the man who has given us all this,” he said. “We have to please Augustus. We have to show our
gratitude
.”

And Juba had condemned
me
as the emperor’s whore? Not wanting to have the same argument over and over again, I smiled sweetly. “If he needs a show of gratitude, let’s rename the city. We’ll call it Iol-Caesaria in honor of the emperor.” Or so it would seem. The name also belonged to my murdered brother. I hadn’t been able to give Caesarion a funeral, or to lay his body to rest in the Soma with the other Ptolemies, nor even to place him in my mother’s tomb. I couldn’t perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony to help him breathe again in the afterlife, but I could name this city after him and not even the emperor would object.

“It’s a good idea,” Juba admitted. “
Iol-Caesaria
. Augustus will like that and it will confirm to every other client monarch that we’re a rising power. No Iseums, though, or Augustus will turn Mauretania into another Roman province. Besides, who knows if the natives will accept Isis. She’s a foreign goddess.”

“
We
are foreign and they’ve accepted us,” I said, but that wasn’t wholly true. We’d come to this place with an army of slaves. The members of our court hailed from Rome, Egypt, Greece, and even farther than that. But where were the Berber advisers in our council? Though Tala was reluctant to tell me the complaints of her people, I knew they were growing angry with our high-handedness and it was time that something be done about it.

THE winter solstice had come again and the whole world was celebrating. In Greece it would be the Haloa, to honor the return of Demeter’s lost daughter. In Egypt, they feasted for Isis and the Nativity of Horus. Though I’d been born on the solstice and proclaimed one of the holy twins, harbingers of a Golden Age, I knew better than to celebrate my sixteenth birthday with an Isiac pageant. Juba wasn’t wrong when he told me that building an Iseum would insult Augustus, but Isis was a patient goddess. She’d hidden from Set until her child was strong enough. Isis would wait for me too.

In Rome, they celebrated the Saturnalia, so we’d celebrate that here in Mauretania too. I hoped it might provide a note of commonality. The Berber goddess Tanit had taken a sun god as her consort and because this sun god carried with him a sheaf of wheat and looked grandfatherly, the Romans reinterpreted Ba’al Hammon as their Saturn. With this in mind, I invited not just every prominent Roman family in the city to our banquet but also the Berber chieftains and their wives.

Our Saturnalia would be my first great entertainment as queen, the first thing I arranged on my own, without Juba’s approval. I fretted, afraid to misstep. If I entertained too lavishly, the Romans would condemn me as a hedonist. On the other hand, if I erred on the side of frugality, my guests might take insult. I decided upon a middle course; I let Chryssa manage the funds for the banquet, and we decorated the new hall with pine wreaths and golden curtains. From the tribes of the Atlas Mountains, Tala purchased thick woven Berber rugs, dyed in beautiful shades of indigo. Silver plates and goblets graced every setting, and much to Chryssa’s dismay, I decided that we’d send this silver home as a gift with each guest. She was only slightly mollified by my decision to serve Mauretanian wine from native grapes. Though the Romans complained it wasn’t as fine as other vintages, it certainly wasn’t as expensive.

That night, Chryssa helped me into a blue gown of transparent Coan cloth, wrapping it around my body many times so as to make some attempt at modesty. I liked the way it made my green eyes even greener, how lightly the gossamer fabric rested upon my skin, soft as Helios’s caresses had once been. And I reminded myself that a woman should be able to dress as she liked without a man hurting her . . .

“You almost make me pine for a child,” Chryssa said, cinching the gown. “Look what it’s done for your figure.”

I made a face. My hips had widened and my breasts were larger, but I didn’t like the tiny lines pregnancy had left on my belly. What’s more, while my mother had been a petite woman, I was growing tall like my father. I worried I’d become an unfeminine giantess. “
Sweet Isis
, listen to it rain,” I said, stealing a glance at the terrace, where fat drops of water splattered the marble and made the bushes shake. “Do you think anyone will even come?”

Chryssa sniffed. “They’ll all come. Every Roman plantation owner looking for favor will attend. Every artist seeking your patronage, and every hungry mouth that salivates for the wagonloads of oysters and mussels near the kitchens. Did we really need twelve different fish dishes to celebrate the new harbor?”

Of course we did. I looked to Tala. “Will the tribal chiefs come?”

Smoothing down my daughter’s unruly curls, the Berber said, “Yes, but I hope you have enough couches and cushions, for they’ll bring all their wives, and some of them have more than one. They’ll bring their daughters too, who may offer themselves as concubines to the king.”

I felt no twinge of jealousy upon hearing this. No matter how gently Juba wooed me, I hadn’t invited him into my bed. The truth is that I couldn’t imagine ever willingly joining with another man, skin to skin. Helios had made me into a goddess. In Juba’s arms, I didn’t ever want to be anything less. So if some other girl could divert the king’s attention from me, I told myself I’d be grateful.

When we swept into the banquet hall, servants were already passing great platters of fishes and amphorae of warmed wine to our damp but spirited guests. The majordomo announced us and the crowd rose to its feet, giving a collective sigh of satisfaction at the sight of my golden-haired baby girl. They raised cups to the king, cups to the gods, and some of them even raised cups to me. Then the musicians took up their tunes and someone shouted, “Io Saturnalia!”

The night seemed sure to be a great success, with revelry and feasting. The women danced, weaving patterns with their hennatattooed hands, jerking to drumbeats with zest. In Rome, men and women mingled freely during the Saturnalia. The custom seemed perfectly amenable to some of the tribesmen, but others kept their women at the back of the room. I thought to join these veiled and cloistered women, to encourage them, when I spotted the Mauri and the Gaetulians standing opposite a group of Roman settlers amongst whom Lucius Cornelius Balbus stood out in a magnificent burnoose and blue paint upon his face. With a wide, silly grin, he said to the Berber chieftains, “See, I look like you now. So we too are
brothers
and you shouldn’t trespass on my lands.”

The Saturnalia was a festival of pranks and tomfoolery, so Balbus’s mockery wasn’t out of place, but as I floated toward the knot of men I could see that the tribesmen weren’t amused. One of them addressed Balbus hotly and I recognized him as Tala’s brother, Maysar. “When did they become
your
lands?” he demanded.

“When your old king bequeathed his kingdom to Rome,” Balbus replied.

“Then learn our ways like a good steward,” Maysar argued. “We graze our animals on the lowlands—”

“You graze them in
my
fields where
my
slaves are trying to grow crops!”

“After the harvest, what fool objects?” Maysar asked, an enormous sword swaying at his belt. “When we take our animals to the highlands, the farmers are free to grow whatever they want. Farmers sell us grain, we sell them meat, and everyone is happy. We’ve been doing this long before any Roman stepped foot here.”

Seeing that Juba was locked in conversation with the aqueduct engineers and didn’t sense the trouble, I hurried between the men just in time to stop a red-faced Balbus from making some blustery retort. At my approach, he checked himself and made a correct bow, which every Roman considered a trial. The Berbers also bowed, the tinkling of their jewelry a pleasant sound as they rose back up again. “I’m so honored that you all came to celebrate the Saturnalia,” I said, and knowing that Tala’s brother had lost his wife to illness, I reached for his hands. “Maysar, I hope we can share in your joy for the new year as we shared your sorrows in the one past.” In Egypt, where it was forbidden for strangers to touch the royal family, no queen would do this. But the Berbers might not come to love me if I held myself apart and I wanted them to love me. I needed them to love me. I’d learned from Cleopatra, Antony, and Augustus; I knew how important it was.

Maysar clasped my hands briefly, his eyes dropping in grief, and then he pressed the palm of his hand over his heart. “Come celebrate with us, Majesty.”

I sat with the Berbers, listening to their stories. They were very polite and fiercely independent and generous with their praise when they learned that they were to keep their silver plate as a gift. Still, I sensed in them a tension that not even the rain or the freely flowing wine could dilute. It all came to a head when talk turned to the Garamantes. Balbus’s nose was redder than usual and I suspected he was deep into his wine. “Mauretania must raise troops to fight,” he said to Juba. “We can squeeze the Garamantes raiders between our soldiers and the ones in Africa Nova.”

“We?” Maysar interrupted. “Will your sons fight or do you mean that the sons of Berbers should fight?”

The Romans prided themselves on enrolling their own sons in the legions, so I didn’t think it was a fair critique. Moreover, we’d need to raise native Mauretanian troops, Garamantes or no; we couldn’t rely upon Roman legions forever.

“Afraid of fighting, are you?” Balbus asked hotly. “The Garamantes refuse to acknowledge Juba as king. Your own brother-in-law was killed during a raid. If you don’t want war with them, you’re a coward.”

“Coward?” Maysar was on his feet, and several other men rose with him. Then everyone started to speak at once and I had trouble following the argument.

“We avenged my tribesmen, then made peace—”

“You have no authority to make agreements—”

“The Garamantes aren’t trustworthy—”

“Enough!” Juba shouted. My husband so seldom raised his voice that it silenced the room. Then the king waited for all eyes to settle upon him as he took a sip of wine to fortify himself. “We’re building a kingdom. If there is to be Mauretanian independence, we must negotiate peace together, and if that fails, we must fight together too. Berbers and Romans, together.”

This didn’t go down easy. The chieftains grumbled their dissent, but Maysar suggested, “King Juba, son of Juba, perhaps we can send an envoy to the Garamantes to negotiate peace. I will go.”

“It’s too late,” Juba said flatly. “The Garamantes have killed Roman citizens. They must pay for it in blood.”

These weren’t Juba’s words, I knew. He was repeating something he must have heard from Balbus or one of the veterans, or perhaps even from one of the dispatches he received from Rome. Worse, I didn’t know that he was wrong. I doubted that my mother would have dealt peacefully with raiders. War was an evil but perhaps, sometimes, a necessary one.