Song of the Nile (42 page)

“Is that what you wish, Caesar? For me to bewitch you?”

He swallowed and looked away. “I should never have summoned you to this island.”

“Then why did you? Why am I here?” I lowered my arm, letting him approach, and his clammy hands fastened on my shoulders. Pushing down the revulsion, I reminded myself that he could only touch my flesh, never more than that.

“I don’t know, Selene. I don’t know why you’re here. Are you a test from the gods? I didn’t wish you into existence. You were just there in Egypt when the fighting was done. You and your brothers. What was I to do with you?”

My stomach rolled and heaved, but I showed none of it. “Are these questions meant to seduce me?”

He snorted. “
You
accuse
me
of seduction?”

“Am I only dreaming your hands on me again?”

“Ohhhh.” His was a growl of anger. “Who has a better right to you?”

I braved his temper with a determined stare. “The man to whom I give myself freely. Are you going to be that
one
man? For you must know that no other man has ever touched me.”

I’d learned how to play the emperor’s game, but he hadn’t apprehended mine. He jerked back in surprise. “Is that true?”

It wasn’t difficult to lie to him. “Once claimed by Caesar, how could I lower myself to bed with a lesser man?”

Such a blatant appeal to his vanity might have roused his suspicion, but this rationale was easier for him to believe than a sudden lust. That I’d conceived a passion for him out of my own arrogance was something far more plausible. He stared, his mouth working slowly. “You and your damnable Ptolemaic pride!”

“You want your own Cleopatra,” I said, struggling not to choke on my words. “Well, I want my Caesar. I’ll either be as pure as a Vestal or I’ll be the mother of Caesar’s son.”

I’d named his dearest desire and he groaned as if wounded. He pulled me against him, taking in the scent of my hair. He clutched at me, murmuring, “I didn’t know
how
you’d come to me, but I knew you’d come. I thought you might disgrace yourself by flaunting our daughter. Yet you knew to come to me in secret.”

“What’s between us isn’t for the eyes of the world,” I said, knowing he took sexual satisfaction in clandestine, guilt-ridden, and shameful things.

He reached to yank up my gown, and I caught his hands. “What game now, Selene?”

“Not tonight.” For he’d promised me nothing. My mother had been a gambler and Julius Caesar may have let the dice fly high, but I was the
emperor’s
apprentice.
I
always proceeded with caution. “Tonight I offer you a kiss.”

He recoiled as if the act were some sort of Eastern perversion, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d never kissed a woman before. He grabbed at my gown and I feared what would happen next. Would he throw me down again? Would I be forced to use my
heka
to stop him? Both possibilities seemed frighteningly likely. What myth played out in his head? Was he Aeneas, resisting Dido for the good of Rome, Mark Antony falling prey to a corrupt Queen Cleopatra, or a new creature altogether?

He stared and I wet my lips, sensing the tide was turning in my favor. Navigating some sea change with an instinct as old as womankind, I sensed that I was surrendering and conquering at once. He felt it too, and bent to kiss me. I squeezed my eyes shut when his thin lips found mine. The bitter salt of them was horrifically familiar. So much worse than I imagined. Not like the kiss I’d shared with Juba.
This
kiss was revolting for the memories it awakened, but I let it go on until he murmured, “What kind of goddess comes to me?”

“I’m a Child of Isis and will be the Queen of Egypt.”

All at once, he let me go. He
pushed
me away as if his fingers were singed by touching me. He retreated several steps behind the table. We were both quiet and my knees went to jelly. Then, as I’d seen him do a hundred times before, he brought his emotions to an unnatural calm. “You may be a Child of Isis, but I am Caesar. I have other choices in allies. I must yet be convinced that you’re capable of politicking upon a world stage.”

Thirty

CHRYSSA washed the cosmetics from my face, brushed my hair, and helped me into my sleeping gown. I didn’t go to bed but knelt beside a strongbox in which I kept expensive gifts and coins. Throwing the top back on its iron hinges, I dug out a small package at the bottom and untied the cords. Inside was a little girl’s gown, dirtied and stained brown with old blood. A slave girl had once tried to take it from me and I’d slapped her away. Chryssa had been that slave girl, and when our eyes met, hers glistened with tears.

I’d always kept the dress. Hidden beneath a mattress or buried at the bottom of my traveling satchels, it’d been a talisman of the wounds in me no one could see. A tangible reminder of the dark memories in my
khaibit
that held my rage. “I have to get free of this,” I said, fingering the cloth. “The hatred. Do you know how deeply I hate him? How long I’ve kept it hidden?” We’d each been taken to the emperor’s bed, but we never spoke of it. Now I would. “He wants a son from me,” I said flatly.

She made a strangled sound. “Tonight . . . ?”

“No,” I whispered. “It seems that we both require certain proofs from one another.”

THE next day, I called upon an unsuspecting King Iamblichus in his apartments. Crinagoras announced me with all my titles, real and honorary: “Queen Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania, of Cyrenaica, Libya and Numidia, Princess of Egypt, and the eighth Cleopatra of the illustrious House Ptolemy.”

“I’m glad that you’ve come,” the King of Emesa said, but the lines around his eyes told me otherwise. He’d thought better of asking after the remains of his dead uncle. Or perhaps he worried that I’d come to ask him to join some intrigue or to support my claim to Egypt. Perhaps Nicholas of Damascus, on Herod’s behalf, had already been here to blacken my name.

In spite of the chilly reception, I went directly to the issue. “I’ve come with a gift,” I said, and Chryssa came forward to place the package on the low table between the king and me. “This is the gown I wore on the occasion of Octavian’s Triumph . . .” My voice quavered and I was tempted to snatch the dress back, so precious was it to me. Instead, I forced myself to say, “The bloodstains are all that remain of your uncle, Alexander of Emesa. I hope that you can use this to help him find his final rest.” The king stared at me as if he thought I were lying. Then he unwound the twine on the package and examined the old, tattered cloth. I felt suddenly, unbearably, foolish. “I know it must seem macabre . . .”

King Iamblichus brushed the fabric, his eyes filled with an emotion that may have been outrage. He snapped his gaze to mine and pointed one shaky finger at me, as if in accusation. “It’s true what they say about you. You
are
a holy person. This is a sacred thing you’ve done, one that will bind our families together in friendship.”

I exhaled, fearing to speak, swallowing back emotion as I realized that a burden had been lifted from me. One less dead spirit to haunt me. One less broken piece of my life that I must mend. Perhaps, having let go of the dress, I could release the sorrow and hatred too.

IN the weeks that followed, I wasn’t alone with Augustus again. The business of the empire beckoned and he made me wait. This came as no surprise to me. When the emperor wanted something, he made a slow and unrelenting advance. So when he gifted me with caged songbirds, I understood that it was more than a token of his favor. It was a message, that even my bold offer couldn’t distract him from the work at hand. Nor could I fly free.

His latest preoccupation was the news from Rome. As Augustus had refused to be elected to the office of
consul
, the people refused to elect anyone else. Whether this was driven by popular will or by fawning allies, I couldn’t say. Casting about for someone else capable of feeding them, the Romans granted Agrippa
independent imperium
. I shuddered when I heard this, for it meant that Agrippa was now a virtual coemperor. He had his own
lictors
and had redoubled efforts to purge Rome of Isiacs. Agrippa forbade the worship of Isis not just within the
pomerium
but anywhere in the city, and he actively hunted down Isiacs for punishment, claiming that this was necessary to put down an insurrection.

It was everything I’d tried to prevent and yet had somehow brought about. All these years, Agrippa had contented himself to be second man in Rome. No longer. Now he was making audacious moves fueled, at least in part, by his enmity for me. And I had no idea how to stop it short of my campaign to take back my mother’s throne.

Each day, on some pretext, I went down the stepped streets to the harbor in the hopes of news from Egypt or a delegation from Meroë. Each day, I was disappointed. My ship, with its beautiful purple sails, was at anchor, and I struggled against my instinct to climb aboard and sail away. Always, my ambition won out. I’d come for power, and this island was now the center of the world. There was nowhere else I should be.

For allies, I could count upon many of the Eastern kings, but it wasn’t only royalty who offered their support. I also received a most unexpected visit from the very wealthy widow of a Greek magnate, wife of the late Pythodoros of Tralles. The heavyset woman claimed to be my half sister and when she introduced herself as Antonia, Chryssa murmured, “Not
another
Antonia. Just how many children did your father have?”

I elbowed Chryssa sharply, then smiled at my guest. “I’m at a terrible disadvantage, Lady Antonia. I’m afraid I hadn’t known of your existence . . .”

The wealthy widow was at least thirty years old and she wore a jeweled ring on every finger of every hand, an ostentation that would have marked her as my father’s daughter even without the family resemblance. She also had a booming laugh. “You’ve never heard of me because I’m pitied in Rome.
Poor Antonia, married off to some foreigner
, they say. I’m told Octavian, that limp little prick, used my marriage as another way to prove that our father had quite lost his mind.”

The vulgar way in which she insulted the emperor left me speechless. When I struggled for reply, she only laughed louder. “Don’t fret, little sister. I’ve come to tell you that you have a friend in me. You seem rich enough, but one can never have enough money, and I have more gold than I can count. I pledge to use it to put you back on the throne of Egypt.”

Chryssa made a noise, a grunt of suspicion, but I tried to be gracious. “Lady Antonia, you needn’t feel obliged to empty your treasury because we share blood.”

“Call me Hybrida, after my mother,” the fleshy woman said. “In truth, my offer has only a little to do with our shared blood. Though I’m the daughter of a Roman triumvir and richer than Midas, Roman society shuns me. They think I’m tainted. I can find no good husband for my daughter, Pythodorida. I believe her marriage prospects would improve if we were to move to Alexandria and join your court as kinswomen to the Queen of Egypt.”

If I were in Hybrida’s position, the same thoughts would have occurred to me. It was entirely sensible. Moreover, her frankness appealed to me. “We welcome your friendship, Lady Hybrida. And I applaud your ambitions for your daughter, who is, if nothing else, my niece, a kinswoman to the Queen of
Mauretania
.”

Hybrida spent the rest of the afternoon regaling me with tales of my father. Because she was older, she remembered him as none of my other half siblings did, and her stories were a gift to me that I treasured. As it turned out, my niece Pythodorida was a charming little thing—a few years older than Isidora—but the two girls enjoyed one another’s company. It gladdened my heart that my daughter should have a cousin to play with, and I imagined the two of them growing up together in my mother’s palace in Alexandria. If I needed another reason to win back Egypt, this reminded me how many other people depended upon me to do it.

A few days after Hybrida’s visit, two hulking slaves whose muscles had been oiled to a high sheen knocked upon my chamber door. They presented me with a chest of priceless frankincense and myrrh, a gift from the emperor. I used it as an excuse to call upon him where he was closeted with Maecenas, Tiberius, and a number of other officials whose names I no longer recall. Strabo was on duty, which was fortunate, because the emperor’s praetorian had become accustomed to admitting me without question. When I thanked Augustus for the expensive gifts, the emperor didn’t even glance up from the pile of papyrus and vellum and other scraps of paper. “I’m glad the gifts pleased you, Queen Selene. Now please absent yourself, as I’m busy.”

“Perhaps I can help,” I said, slipping into a chair. “I can translate in several languages.”

If he planned to banish me, the emperor forgot it when whatever he read sent him into a scarlet rage. “Opportunistic cur!” Augustus tossed the letter to the middle of the table and announced, “Agrippa has divorced Marcella. He’s divorced my niece. Without any good cause. Without leave from me!”

I was very glad that I was already sitting down. “
Divorced
her . . .” It had to be some cruel hoax. We’d just seen them together. What could biddable Marcella have possibly done to make Agrippa abandon her? No, it was nothing Marcella had done, I realized. It was what the emperor and I had done. What we might still do. What we
planned
to do. Recent Roman history was filled with episodes of colleagues falling out and fighting wars for supremacy. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Octavian, and Antony—that wasn’t even the complete list. Now history was folding back upon itself. When my father divorced Octavia, it had led to war. Agrippa’s divorce of Marcella might start the fighting again.

It was like one of the ingenious grappling hooks Agrippa had invented for sea battles. He shot this insult across the bow and now it would dig in. It was a rebellion that couldn’t be ignored or cut away. Augustus knew it too. “There’s more. Having divorced my niece, Agrippa now wishes to marry my
daughter
.”