Song of the Nile (52 page)

“There are people who depend on me. Given the way I feel about you, it doesn’t seem possible, but I don’t belong only to you—or even only to myself.”

“You don’t belong to Octavian either. You owe him nothing more.”

How like Helios to know what no one else did. That in spite of my hatred for the emperor, I’d always felt grateful for his mercy. In his debt. When he made me a queen, I felt that was part of his largesse too. When he told me that he had every right to take my body—that it was no more than he had paid for, hadn’t some part of me believed it? “If I have his son, Helios, he’ll belong to
me
.”

“This conversation isn’t done,” he said, but dawn, accursed dawn, was here, and I had to let him go.

NOT since old King Aegeus saw the black sails of his son Theseus’s ships and threw himself into the sea has anyone reacted to the sight of sails with such despair as I did now. The vision of the emperor’s flagship, emblazoned in red and gold, made my hands tighten on the terrace rail for balance. The whole world had tilted, realigned itself, and put me at its middle.

I wouldn’t have been the only one to have realized it. Out there, somewhere on that sea, with all the other merchant ships, was Helios. Squinting into the sun, I surveyed the horizon for a glimpse of his ship, but in the bustle of the harbor only the Roman flotilla announced itself like the trumpet of a new god. Then the whole island erupted at once, word passed from merchant to servant, from slave to master, from soldier to commander, “Augustus has returned! Make ready!”

I hurried back to my chambers to check my hair, my face, my jewelry.
How had my mother rushed to greet her Romans?
I wondered. Or had she tarried, waiting in the palace, forcing them to come to
her
. . . but this wasn’t Egypt. This wasn’t even Mauretania. The gown I chose was a bright saffron that set off my features dramatically. I opted for a bun at the nape of my neck, studded with pearls, and just over the white peak of my diadem, the front of my coiffure raised like the
uraeus
of Egypt. Finally, I grabbed up Isidora and was borne to the docks, where the gathering crowd chanted, “Triumphator! Io Triumphe!”

This was entirely inappropriate. Augustus hadn’t defeated any new foe in battle. The Senate hadn’t voted a Triumph for him, and this was certainly not its appointed day. Moreover, we weren’t in Rome, and oh, the calamity my father had suffered when
he
dared to celebrate his victories in Egypt instead of Rome!

From between the parted curtains of my litter, I glimpsed Augustus on the deck of his ship. He was in his military cuirass, one arm upraised in a pose that has now become famous in so many of his statues, all of which depict a more flattering, never-aging version of the man.
He looks as satisfied as Apollo
, I thought, giving Isidora’s little hand a squeeze. Then we stepped out of the litter to greet him.

But he didn’t come ashore; his ship remained far out in the sparkling sea. A small group of his soldiers rowed in. Iullus was with them, and when my Roman half brother approached me, his prominent chin jutted proudly beneath his helmet as if he’d conquered Parthia himself. He snapped his feet together and executed a curt bow. “Queen Cleopatra Selene, Augustus requires your presence aboard his flagship.”

A trill of fear echoed in my ears. “For what purpose?”

“I didn’t question him, Majesty,” he said, offering his arm with great formality.

Myriad possibilities swarmed my mind, stinging flies all. The emperor would have some dramatic gesture planned. He might make me Queen of Egypt here and now. It had all been settled aboard ships at Actium, so perhaps it was only right to do it this way. Why couldn’t I be glad of it? Why should I dread the very thing I’d struggled all my life to reclaim? Why should I, on the brink of victory, turn away my prize? Perhaps it was some wary instinct that warned me of the emperor’s treachery. Perhaps, just as he’d made an end to my father’s forces in Actium, he would now make an end to me.

No
. I could defend myself and Isidora with my magic. And even if I couldn’t, some deeper part of me understood that he would never kill me. The emperor might torment me every day for the rest of my life, but he would want me alive.

I fixed my most gracious smile upon my face and allowed myself to be brought aboard the emperor’s craft. He greeted us with all the correct and public decorum one might expect. He looked unchanged by battle, for there had been none. Still, I couldn’t help but be affected by the stance he took, the hard, shrewd aura of command that surrounded him now. He drew me aside into the awning erected to protect him from the heat. “Queen Cleopatra Selene, I return to you triumphant. The whole world has surrendered to me.”

I lowered my lashes. “As do my daughter and I, Caesar.”

A degenerate expression of pleasure spread over his features such that I wished Isidora weren’t staring up at him with her steady gaze. Augustus tilted his head back and made a sound not unlike carnal release, and for a moment I wondered if the force of his obsession shook the ship. The deck lurched beneath my feet, and I heard the commands below to the rowers.

“Why are we moving?” Isidora asked, ignoring the squeeze of my hand that should have silenced her.

Augustus smiled. “We’re en route to Athens, my dear child. I stopped here only to retrieve you.”

Seldom did I allow a gasp of surprise to escape my lips, but now I did as the ship steered for open water.
Sweet Isis
, where was Helios? Was it not bad enough that my twin may have watched me board the emperor’s vessel? Must he now also watch me sail away without a word? I wondered if, like my father chased after my mother’s ship at Actium, Helios would rush after me. I prayed that he didn’t! I needed to get word to him. I needed to return to the Isle of Samos, just long enough to somehow leave a message. “Caesar, what of my clothing, my servants, my guards, my courtiers, and my
ship
?”

“They’ll all follow,” Augustus said, taking a seat upon his folding curule chair as if he intended to dispense judgment, or perhaps he now found it more comfortable than all other chairs. “And if they don’t follow, what need have you for them? I can afford you with anything you desire . . .”

He was carrying me off! He’d tricked me into boarding this ship and now I was being born away as a captive again. “But surely we can go back, long enough for you to fetch Terentilla, and Virgil. He traveled all this way to greet you—”

“My poet can travel a little farther, to Athens. Come, Selene, let’s play a game. Why would I take you to Athens?”

To make me miserable,
I thought.
To tear me away from Helios and my happy stolen nights. To ruin me. To again strip from me all that I have and drag me behind some chariot in chains!
These fears weren’t mature or reasoned but came from the desperate part of me I thought I’d cut away. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Yes, you do,” the emperor said. “What begins in Athens?”

I made my heart match the slow and steady drumbeat of the rowers and commanded myself not to fly to the rail with my daughter and leap into the water to escape. Augustus looked at me expectantly, as if I should enjoy this game, as if my distress were a puzzle to him.
What begins in Athens? Think. Think. Think!
Athens was one of the oldest cities in the world, home of the Parthenon, of democracy . . . “The Panathenaic Games?”

How irritated my unsuccessful guess made him. “What else?”

“I don’t . . . Forgive me, I’m so overcome with joy at your return I can’t think clearly.”

He stood and offered me his hand. “Come.” I took it, understanding that I must leave Isidora behind. I tried to tell her with my eyes that she must be very well behaved and wait right where I left her, and this helped to steady me as he led me into the dimly lit berth that was his own. I didn’t know what he would do then. Rush upon me? Grab me in his bony little hands and trail his curiously cold kisses down my neck? Instead, he pulled back a draping and revealed the tattered battle standards of Roman legions.

I’d known that he recovered them; all the world knew. But somehow I hadn’t expected him to keep them so near. And oh, Helios might condemn me for it, but I felt a certain reverence for these Roman symbols too. I went to my father’s—I recognized their insignias. These sticks of his legions, the loss of which had been his descent, his end. These standards that had been borne by men who fought for him, who had died for him, and had known him at his best. There
was
something sacred in them and Augustus laid his hand upon the battle standards, worshipfully. “My enemies will put out that I’m a coward, that I resorted to trickery, but I’ve conquered Parthia without blood. Is it not a fine thing that I’ve done?”

“Yes,” I admitted, surprised to hear the emotion in my voice. “It may be the finest thing you’ve
ever
done.”

“Worthy even of you, my arrogant little Ptolemy?”

I didn’t want to say it, not with my skin still tender from Helios’s touch. It broke my heart to say it, but show me any woman who says she feels no compulsion to surrender to a man who has just prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and I’ll show you a liar. “Worthy even of the Queen of Egypt.”

“Ah,” he said, moving behind me so that my shoulder blades came to rest upon the hard and unyielding surface of his breastplate. “That is what you want, still?”

“Always,” I said with a lift of my chin. “At last, you’re in a position to give it to me.”

“And I shall.” Three dizzying words. “Give me a son, Selene.”

Lady Circe had known what I hadn’t. What he’d done in Parthia, I could admire. The thought that perhaps he would become a more peaceful ruler was a hope I could reward and nurture. And though every moment I’d spent with Helios turned this into treachery, I reached for the clasp of my bright saffron gown. “No, don’t take it off.” Augustus stopped me, his hand closing upon mine. “I like this color on you. It’s the color a Roman bride wears and I’d like for you to wear it the day we make our son.”

My heart leapt to my throat. “Is that not today?”

He eyed me smugly. “You said that you’d give me an heir, not a bastard. So, first, I must take you as my bride . . .”

My throat seemed to swell shut. Though it had been my own suggestion, I’d never wanted to be his bride. I’d only thrown up that condition to delay his passions and to ensure that he could not promise me Egypt and then go back on his word. To ensure that whatever censure and scandal touched me would touch him too, in equal measure. “How can I be a true wife to you?”

“Ah, my African queen, my sorceress and temptress . . . I’ll take you in a ceremonial rite that will appease your vanity and your religious fervor too. I’ve made arrangements for us to go to Eleusis, where we’ll be initiated.”

What begins in Athens?
The Eleusinian Mysteries. This was his grand dramatic gesture. “But it isn’t the season—”

“They’ll
make
it the season. As I’ve said, the whole world now surrenders to me. Even Demeter and Kore . . . That is what they call you now, don’t they? The New Kore? Another name for your Isis. You warned me once that my name would fade to dust if I denied her. Well, in this ritual, I will acknowledge her. In her Greek guise, I will honor her before all the world. Isn’t it appropriate that I take you as my own during this initiation?” It seemed as if sawdust had filled my mouth. When I could make no reply, he continued, “Back in Rome, I’ve ordered that they prepare for a great celebration of the Mother Goddess. The Secular Games come about every hundred and ten years, so this too is out of season, but my astronomers have found a way to argue otherwise.”

I didn’t know if he’d done all this to please me or to help lift the curse that Isis had laid upon him, but these were well-calculated moves in every respect. I felt shamefully dispirited, as if I’d never wanted him to be true to his word, as if I’d never wanted to be Queen of Egypt. Had I secretly hoped to fail? To break faith with my dead family and turn away from the legacy that they’d fought and died for?

Augustus saw my hesitation and said, very simply, “Once my son is safely born, I intend to divorce Livia.”

It was the last thing I expected; I choked on my reply. “You’ll make an enemy of the Claudians!”

“They’re nothing to me now,” he said, with a note in his voice that alarmed me.

The Romans always claimed that the East changed their generals. That the luxury, the indulgences, the older practicalities, and the corruption and religion and complicated cultures all warped simpler Roman virtues, twisting men into something other than they were. Now I wondered if it were true. All the East might glory in a battle won without bloodshed, but how would the emperor’s victory be perceived in Rome? “Y-you will cause great offense . . .”

“I don’t care. I’m the one who should be offended. A Triumph was allowed for Lucius Cornelius Balbus though he fought with legions I gave him. These kinds of insults must be met with confidence.” I actually feared for Balbus at that moment. For Balbus and Agrippa and Livia and all those who stood in the way of anything Augustus wanted for himself. “Your marriage to Juba must be annulled. I’ll not let the world think I’m taking
the leavings
of a king. I’ll have it known that you’re
mine
. That you’ve always been
only mine
.”

“Then you would make my daughter a bastard,” I said, stomach roiling.

“As your father did to you. It hasn’t hurt your prospects, has it? You stand poised to rule at my side.”

Here it was then, the world glittering at my feet. To grasp it, all I had to do was abandon and betray everyone who had ever loved me. Were the emperor to divorce Livia and marry me, it would hurt nearly everyone . . . “You will turn Agrippa against us
completely
.”

“If he lives long enough,” Augustus said. He meant to make Julia a widow for the second time. “And he’s not my only ally. I’m told you like coins. Consider this one. A gift from Herod in contemplation of what comes next.”