Song of the Nile (48 page)

“Good. I’ll either call for you to serve on the battlefield or return to you victorious, Queen Cleopatra Selene. Either way, there shall then be a reckoning between us.”

With that and a red swirl of his cape, he took his leave of me.

Thirty-four

ISLE OF SAMOS, GREECE
SPRING 19 B. C .

AT the edge of the sand, I watched the emperor’s ship go. I’d come to this island for Egypt—I might well come away with the world. I might have
everything
. My daughter, a queen of Egypt. My son, the Emperor of Rome. That had been my mother’s dream when she came to this island. She’d given me her
ba
and so now it must be my dream too. It wasn’t my
only
dream, though.

There were darker ones that called to me like a siren from the sea. I’d made myself endure the emperor’s groping. Reveled even, in the way I forced him to his knees. I’d made him
desperate
to have me. So desperate that he might well make me his wife. It would be a stunning triumph, one that repaid Livia for her crimes against me and mine. So why did I wish to throw myself beneath the waves?

Mine was a dark, soul-spearing despair, like a bony hand closing upon my throat. Did I need to breathe? My expressions were carefully composed works of art. My blood now stilled and slowed at my command. For my survival and my ambitions, I’d mastered myself. When Augustus returned to me, he would find a body flushed with arousal for him. A body that molded itself to his comfort, just like his gilded chair.

At this thought, my chest rose, fell, then did not rise again. How heavy my limbs felt without breath. How long was it before sound rushed in upon me with a strange quality and numbness crept into my extremities? I stood there, swaying, my white gown flapping in the wind, until I became aware of something soft against my thigh. I looked down to see Isidora clutching at my leg, her warm cheek pressed against me . . . In her strange blue eyes, all possibilities unfolded and I sputtered for air.

MY father was a man who allowed the darkness to crowd him in. One extreme or the other—wild parties or hermetic seclusion, raucous laughter or bitter recriminations. My mother, by contrast, kept the darkness at bay by never allowing herself to be idle. In this, I followed her example. When I wasn’t writing correspondence, I enrolled in a series of lectures at the Pythagorean School. I purchased art from traveling merchants and entertained aboard my ship. I even prepared for my reign as Egypt’s queen. When my mother was defeated, the emperor had issued a coin depicting the crocodile of Egypt in chains. My first coin as Queen of Egypt would show an unchained crocodile, a signal to the world that I was free. That Egypt was free. This and other plans I made as winter became spring and the whole world awaited news from Parthia.

“How much longer do you think we must wait?” Tala asked, feeding seeds to my little caged birds. “The sea is open once again, and our good captain grows restless.”

“
Our
captain, is he?” I asked with an arched brow.

“He’s loyal to my queen,” she said, then grinned a little. “But she’s not the only moon in his sky.”

“Will you marry?” I wondered aloud.

Tala sobered, shaking her head. “To be a sailor’s wife is a misery. You never know where he is, when he’ll return, or what battles he must fight on the sea. To be tied to such a man is to have a phantom husband, only real for those few nights he returns.”

“Aren’t those few nights better than none at all?”

Tala shrugged. “I loved a husband and lost him. I grieved him and wove in his honor. I have my son now, my Ziri, and no other man can have my whole heart.”

Long after Tala drifted away, I watched the songbirds in their cage, thinking of what she’d said. I too loved a husband and lost him, though we never spoke vows. I’d loved Helios and I’d loved Egypt, and no other man and no other land could have my whole heart. Wasn’t it better to forget about Mauretania and its rains, to forget about Juba and the coin he’d made with my face on it?

I
must
forget.

Visitors crowded the Isle of Samos to gloat in the aftermath of the emperor’s defeat or to celebrate his victory, whichever might come. Thankfully, most of the guests called upon Maecenas and Terentilla at their exquisitely luxurious villa. There was
one
visitor I was happy to see at my gate, however. “Virgil!” I cried, eschewing all formality when the poet presented himself. “How unlike you to travel so far.”

“The emperor commanded me to be here when he returns,” he said. Three years of grief had robbed him of his vigor so that his smile was barely visible beneath heavily lidded eyes. “I accused Crinagoras of flattery when I read his verse about you, but to see you now, Cleopatra Selene . . . you’ve become all your mother could’ve wished.”

I wanted very badly to believe that. “That’s kind of you to say and I’m so pleased to see you. You must tell me of Lady Julia. How fares her son?”

“Little Gaius is sickly and small, but he still lives.”

Be glad or damn your soul
, I told myself. “There must be something I can do for Julia, some gift I can send her.”

“I doubt she’d receive it,” Virgil said. “You should know that she’s been forbidden to write to you. Agrippa believes that you’ve been a corrupting influence. He packed her off to Gaul to join him and his legions, and allows nothing to pass into her hands that hasn’t been seen by him first.”

Oh, Agrippa could be so arbitrary and unreasonable! My heart ached for my friend. Why hadn’t I pushed the emperor to kill the man when I had the chance? That Agrippa wasn’t truly a bad man, but a misguided one, should have no place in my decisions; sentimentality didn’t suit rulers. Such concerns were not for poets, however, so I said only, “How fares this grand
Aeneid
, which will declare Augustus our savior, our messiah, the bringer of the Golden Age?”

He knew how I felt about his work. “Oh, Gracious Majesty, please don’t take me to task again . . .”

The days when I’d been young and idealistic enough to protest the emperor’s propaganda seemed long past. Virgil would write the story and now it seemed that I would do everything in my power to make it true. “I only ask that you not use your work to vilify African queens.”

“Ah, you are no Dido of Carthage.” Virgil laughed. “You’re beloved in Rome, in spite of your sorcery. They call you a goddess of grain, a maiden and mother. You’re no temptress to lure good men from their duty and you have no fear of comparison in my work.”

Even Virgil didn’t know me. He knew only the masks that I wore. “Is the poem finished?”

“No, which vexes the emperor. He’s given me a deadline and I fear that meeting it may kill me.” Now he leaned forward to whisper. “But you needn’t worry. I’ve instructed my slaves to burn the rotted thing when I perish.”

“Burn the
Aeneid
?” I sputtered.

“It isn’t very good,” Virgil said, though I thought he was wrong. “And I don’t expect to live long.”

I frowned, examining his pallor, looking for telltale signs of fever. “Are you unwell?”

His smile was tight. “Not with anything but a longing to be with a young man who is lost to me.”

I should have chided him for this morbidity, but it resonated too closely with my own.

CIRCE licked her lower lip as she gazed through the gauzy curtains of our enormous litter. “Gods be good, Hercules has returned to walk amongst the mortals. That man must be a rower to have arms like that.”

She always noticed handsome men so I paid no attention until Lady Lasthenia also leaned out to look. “With those scars? I think he must be a gladiator! A most dangerous man.”

Hybrida sighed. “I’d happily risk that danger to press up against him.”

Now I too lifted myself off the cushions, straining to see. In truth, I never knew if the man my eyes fastened upon was the same one my ladies had singled out for admiration. The man that captured
my
attention hefted a wooden chest onto his shoulders, the glistening muscles of his back rippling with the effort. He was broad as a bull, and as he turned, I glimpsed a flash of golden hair. Our eyes met and the whole world went still.

Helios
. I wanted to call out his name, but the breath went out of me. If I hadn’t known him soul to soul, I might never have recognized him, for there were no traces left of the fair-skinned prince with whom I’d shared a childhood. Beneath that tawny mane of hair, the boyish softness in his face had burned away. He was all man now, sweating in the sun like a dock laborer and not a prince of Egypt.

“Stop the litter!” My shout caught the bearers midstride so there was a great deal of confusion as they attempted to bring the massive carrier to a halt. I didn’t wait, but leapt out. The moment my sandals struck the ground Memnon announced, “All hail, Queen Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania!” Beggars surged forth with outstretched hands and merchants crowded round with baskets of trinkets, amphorae of wine, and carts filled with fleece; I couldn’t get past. Had there ever been a moment I wished more to be unimportant and obscure?

My eyes searched the crowd, desperate for another glimpse of my twin, but he’d disappeared, as if he’d never been there at all. I trembled all over and my entourage stared at me as if I’d gone mad. Perhaps I had. Lady Lasthenia tried to draw me back inside the litter. “Majesty, the heat—”

“That man. I must find that man,” I sputtered. Only after Memnon promised to make inquiries did I curse myself for a reckless fool. If Helios was here on the Isle of Samos—and how could he be?—calling attention to him put him in jeopardy. And yet, and yet . . . the need to find him was sharp and urgent. Unrelenting.

We returned to the emperor’s villa and I paced my rooms,
waiting
. It can’t have been more than a few hours before Memnon returned, but it seemed as if I aged years in that time. “Majesty, there is no man on the island that meets the description you gave,” he said, concern etched onto his scarred face. “Your ladies say he had dark hair, but you say he was golden. The only fair-haired man the merchants can think of is a mercenary man, a ship’s captain.”

“What ship?” I whispered, knowing that I sounded half deranged. “Where is the ship? Where is it now?”

“Anchored offshore . . . Is this man some kind of danger to you?”

“No,” I said, my throat closing, and because I was too shaken to concoct a better lie, I said, “I thought he may have been from Mauretania, come with news.”

Memnon didn’t question me further; he had a tendency to accept everything I said without reservation, a quality in a guard both valuable and alarming. I dismissed him and the rest of my servants too. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.

Helios
. The presence of him like a whisper, luring me to stumble across him, as if I might open the patio doors to the terrace and find him sitting there. On my secluded beach, I held my hand over my brow, squinting against the sun as I considered each of the boats at anchor, wondering which one might be his and whether or not he was staring back. Caught in some kind of madness now, walking back and forth in the surf, letting it wet the hem of my gown, my mind raced through possibilities. Had he come to find me? Ought I be seen in public where he might approach me? I’d decided upon that course, climbed the stairs up from the beach, when I heard a song, a prayer.

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.

There. One ship anchored not far offshore, ghostly on the horizon, bobbing in the sea as if it was waiting for me . . . as if
he
waited for me. I needed to go to that ship, but how? I could call the winds to my hands, but I couldn’t fly across the water. I could ask my own ship’s captain to take me out to sea, but this would be noticed and remarked upon—witnessed by a crew loyal to me, but insensible to the danger of this thing I would ask them to do.

I stared until the sun set and the moon was full and low in the sky, its silver light illuminating the mast of that ship. My hands clenched and unclenched as I felt the pull of
heka
drawing me to the ocean. As the waves lapped at my feet, I was at last seized with an inspiration that overcame all reason. I’d
swim
to the ship. Yes, why not? It was the only way I might go anywhere without an armed and gossiping retinue of attendants. Casting my shoes aside and hoisting my gown up, I walked into the water. The sea foam hissed around my waist before I plunged all the way in. I worked my arms, my legs, going with the current. It seemed easy, effortless. Euphoric, even.

I kept swimming until the first telltale signs of fatigue made themselves known in my arms. What if I tired? No, there was no room for exhaustion now. Not after all these years of separation. I don’t know how long I swam. My arms and legs churned in the water until I felt myself being tugged by some treacherous current. Salt water flooded my mouth and I spit it out again, realizing that my arms and legs burned. This had been an impetuous thing I’d done. A desperate thing. A thing lacking in all sanity. But then, how many times since coming to the Isle of Samos had I been tempted to throw myself beneath the waves? Speckles danced before my eyes and, exhausted, I let myself drift in the bright moonlight, rising upon each wave, sinking back down again. Had it been this way for Philadelphus, I wondered? What if I were caught in a current and dragged out to sea? Would I even care?

Her mother chose an asp
, they would say.
But Selene chose the sea.

I slipped beneath the surface of the black water once, twice, three times, closing my eyes. Then I thought of my daughter.
I’ll never leave you
, I’d promised her. But hadn’t Helios and I made promises to one another too? I broke the surface for a gasp of air, unsure if I drew breath in this life or the next.