Song of the Nile (53 page)

Digging into a small pouch on a table, he pulled out a coin and pressed it into my hand. A gift from Herod? I shuddered to think what I might see. Wetting my dry lips, I turned my palm and opened it. What I saw was a shocking surprise but not so pleasant as the one I’d experienced in seeing Juba’s coin.

What must Nicholas of Damascus have reported to Herod to make him mint such a coin? This coin celebrated Kore. A veiled representation of the goddess with some of my features, for I was the New Kore. Herod had always scented the winds of political change and calibrated his moves to survive the oncoming storms. The Judean king who was my enemy had studiously avoided human imagery on his money until now, out of fear that his Jewish subjects would protest. Herod could say that it was meant only to commemorate his new city of Sebaste. That it was meant to glorify Augustus on the occasion of his impending initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. But for Herod to take such a risk as to honor me and my goddess, even in her Greek guise, he must have believed that it was in his interest to swallow his hatred and ally with me.

The very idea of such an alliance was repugnant. Apparently, I’d finally mastered all the lessons the emperor had to teach me. I’d turned my friends into enemies and my enemies into friends.
Change your mind,
Helios had said. Now I shook my head, trying to dislodge his words from my thoughts.

Augustus took the coin from my cold fingers. “You fear another civil war, Selene. But I say, let it come. For once, like my father, the divine Julius, I’ll let the dice fly high!”

It was with the darkest, most treacherous satisfaction that I realized I was destroying him. As a girl, I’d sworn to become whatever I must become to fight the emperor. When he raped me, I vowed that I would make him rue the day. Now I could make good on those promises. He wanted to believe that having negotiated a settlement with Parthia, he could now do
anything
, but I knew better. By divorcing Livia and marrying me, he’d lose his allies. He’d open himself up to the very same charges the assassins made against Julius Caesar. And I, if I was willing to eschew my mantle of respectability, if I behaved high-handedly, demanding not just Egypt but Judea as well, and all the territories my mother had claimed, I could reignite the flames that brought down my father.

Laughing, I turned my eyes to the emperor with a sense of mad power. I had his life in my hands. Not just his life but his reputation. His legacy. His entire empire. I could
ruin
him . . . as long as I was willing to destroy myself in the process. So long as he was alive and obsessed with me, I could have
anything
from him. Even his downfall.

I could have my mother’s kingdom and all her glory. Nay, more than that. I could have anything but my heart’s desire. Of what consequence was it, then, that I loved another man or loathed this one? For so many years my
khaibit
held my ugliest thoughts, my deepest pain, kept them safely away from me. Now my
khaibit
flew free. It ruled me like an avenging specter and I said, “Let it all be done as you wish, Caesar.”

Thirty-seven

ATHENS, GREECE
SUMMER 19 B. C .

THE first thing I saw in Athens was the first thing anyone sees—the Parthenon, that most perfect building, high above the city. There it was, that temple to the city’s patron goddess, shining white in the sun like an ethereal palace against the blue sky. “Is that Mount Olympus?” little Isidora asked, staring up at the fortified acropolis.

“Maybe it is,” I admitted, more than a bit thunderstruck.

The city couldn’t have greeted Zeus himself with more enthusiasm. Athens is very old, and very flat, so the claustrophobic aspect of a roaring crowd wasn’t even alleviated by hills or high spots upon which the people could view our procession. Instead, the press of humanity mingled with the blare of trumpets, the cheers, and the flower petals that rained down before us. The ground itself trembled beneath marching feet and the roar of the chariot wheels. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the clasp of my golden manacles at my wrists, the tight collar at my throat pulling me forward. But this was no Triumph and I was no prisoner. My daughter wasn’t chained to a wax effigy of me all covered in spit, enduring the venomous curses of her enemies. She was at my side, a celebrated little princess, and I blinked back tears. I could give her this. I could give her all this.

Or I could smash everything.

“You
are
the darling of the Hellenes,” the emperor said, for no secret was made of the people’s adoration. I was the last Ptolemaic queen, Cleopatra’s daughter, the pride of Greece. And if they guessed that I had seduced the emperor away from his wife, what of it? They would be proud of my wit, of my ambition.

My courtiers followed me to Athens, and at night we stayed as the guests of a very rich government official. When the roosters crowed the morning, the priests of Athens shouted their invitation to join in the Mysteries. Ours was a great procession, not just the emperor and his secretaries and soldiers and attendants but a whole great horde of religious pilgrims, who seemed delighted to embark on this journey with such great personages. Anyone who spoke Greek could participate in the rites—men, women, and even slaves. And so the proclamation was spread by the heralds calling all who were pure of soul, who’d lived a life of justice and righteousness, and did not have blood-guilt on their hands.

Augustus surely didn’t fit this description, and neither did I,
khaibit
-ruled creature I’d become. Yet this pageant had been arranged for our convenience, so we prepared to go from Athens to the sacred spot in Eleusis where the goddess Demeter was said to have mourned for her daughter, Kore. Many of my courtiers, including Lady Lasthenia, had decided to be initiated with the rest. But whereas they all walked the fifteen miles from Athens to Eleusis, we rode in a carriage, the emperor and I. He sat in quiet contemplation beside me until at last, his whisper cut through the silence. “This is a new beginning for me. I shall be a different kind of ruler, Selene. A different sort of man.”

“May the goddess will it,” I said, closing my eyes. It was all a dream, yet I wasn’t asleep. I floated somehow apart, observing on high, the performance of myself.

The next morning, we were awakened by a call to the sea. I left Isidora with Tala, and then with the rest of the initiates, the emperor and I dressed in plain garments. A rough-hewn tunic for him, no doubt woven by Livia. For me, a simple white
chiton
that fell to my ankles and fastened at my waist with a thin leather cord. We both carried piglets in our arms, animals meant for tribute to the temples. As my feet found purchase in the sand and the surf lifted my dress to my knees, I thought that once again I’d come to the goddess to be purified. But even with the emperor’s gaze on me, I could never feel the water on my skin and not think of Helios.

I remembered how he first bathed me. The way his palms spanned the expanse of my hips, how his lips tasted like the sea. After, with squealing piglets running at our feet as we dried ourselves in the sun, we made ready to return to Athens. This travel between the two cities was to bring us closer to the travails of Demeter, who had walked the world to find her lost daughter. Closer to Isis, who had searched far and wide for her lost Osiris. That night was a night of fasting, and I curled round the hunger in my belly, embracing the emptiness.

On the fifth day, with saffron ribbons tied at our wrists, we passed over the narrow bridge that would take us back to Eleusis, and jesters hurled insults to amuse the crowd. When it was dark, the women carried candles and danced while I prepared myself for the role of a temple prostitute. You may think I use this phrase with derision or scorn, but all the stories of goddesses were now coming together in mine.

On the sixth day, when the stars came out, I was weak with hunger. Humbled. When I felt the grief of my goddess in my throat, when my own eyes were filled with tears for her, I thought,
Isis must have a throne. I must restore her to Egypt . . .
But somehow, my thoughts were of a
new
temple. A giant Iseum that I wished to build in Mauretania, with pools filled with Nile water and sacred crocodiles. My thoughts weren’t of Egypt but Mauretania, and I cursed my guilty heart for it.

Late that night, we were sent scrambling through the dark, torches in hand, jostling against one another. As queen, I’d seldom felt the touch of commoners against me, but now I was carried along with the tumultuous flow of the crowd as the priests brought out the sacred
kykeon
. It was a mysterious mixture of meal and pennyroyal, but when a cup was poured for me I tasted something else that sent my mind swirling into a
heka
-infused abyss. For a moment, I sensed Helios here in the crowd and squinted my eyes for a flash of that golden hair.

The night was alive with shrieks and dancing, of celebration in the forest. Of life and death, and an awareness that there
was
life after death. I had always come to the goddess sober and clear-eyed, but that wasn’t the tradition in Athens so I sipped again from my cup. The emperor drank deeply from his, swallowing it all at once, while the others cried out like maenads in a Bacchic frenzy. The light of the torches danced before my eyes, and the trees themselves loomed like the bony hands of Set reaching for me all the way from the desert.

A gong rang in the night and Augustus grabbed my wrists, crying, “Now!”

I shuddered, thinking that he meant to lay me down here on the earth, where the whole world might witness our joining. But as the emperor pulled me to the temple, I was dizzied and dropped my cup, its sacred fluid soaking the ground. “The hierophant invokes the goddess,” the emperor said. “Tonight I shall take the place of the hierophant and you shall take the place of the high priestess. We’ll join together in the anteroom of the temple for the sacred marriage.”

Just then, I saw Caesarion in the crowd and gave a startled cry. I saw Philadelphus. Then my mother. My father too. And poor Antyllus, or was it Iullus? No.
Antyllus
, for here, we’d parted the veil between this life and the next. These were all my beloved dead. Isis was here, her magic was here, and now we could glimpse her as the queen of the underworld.

I confess that I don’t recall how we came away from the crowd. I found myself in the stillness of the temple, adorned in flower garlands, my knees upon a glorious bed of silken sheets, piled high with cushions, the scent of frankincense in the air. Above us was the statue of the goddess. Demeter. Kore. Tanit. Isis. All the same. I knew her, and it comforted me, for I’d made love in a temple before.

“I have something for you,” Augustus said, laying a wooden chest beside us. Gracing the top of the box was a golden Ptolemy Eagle laid over a silver bolt of lightning. The box itself was studded with carnelian and a broken lock dangled from its fastening. “Open it.”

Dizzied by the
kykeon
, it took me several tries to pull the latch and reveal the contents. There, upon a pillow of purple, was my mother’s beaded diadem and gem-encrusted scepter glowing with golden magnificence. These were the insignias of her rule; she’d surrendered them to the emperor before she died in the hopes that he would spare her children and her kingdom.

“Queen of Egypt,” Augustus said, reverently placing the crown upon my head. It was happening as Philadelphus had foreseen it. No rumbling mountain has ever quaked as I did in that moment. I couldn’t speak, overcome by the enormity of it. My mouth went dry and I lost all possession of myself. I couldn’t even hold the scepter when he placed it in my trembling hands. It fell to the bed, and when I stooped to retrieve it a keening sound escaped me. My mother’s golden scepter . . . I must hold it. I must wrap my fingers where hers had been and never let it go.

“You
are
a goddess,” the emperor rasped, stroking my shoulders. “I’ve come to do you homage. I’m the god come to meet you.”

I could think only of the scepter, but when I reached for it he pushed the box from the bed and it landed on the floor with a clatter.
The scepter
. I must have the scepter. Why could I not stop my mind from spinning long enough to find it, to seize it? Forcing my eyes open in the flickering light, I saw scraggly hairs above the line of the emperor’s ribs. When had he become undressed? His nakedness moved nothing in me. He didn’t look like a god; he looked as he did when he swam in the pools or played ball with the boys in the yard in Rome.

But his eyes weren’t his own. Those chilly gray depths were unfocused, his jaw lax. The emperor pulled me down with him. How small and spindly he seemed. When my hands came to rest on his shoulders, I thought I might crush him. He seemed just a man. Just a man who wanted a son. It was that simple, natural human desire that made me reach for the belt of my gown and loosen it. This time, I wouldn’t be held down and forced. This time, I’d come to him, like the primordial sky spreads herself over the earth. I didn’t recoil as his hands roamed freely over my body. I must have stroked him, for I found him erect in my hand. I had put the whole of myself into my
khaibit
and watched now only from a shadow.

“I’ll give you a son,” I whispered, inviting the goddess into me, feeling the
heka
swirl warm round my womb. Outside we heard shrieks and howls, the cymbal and drums, and strange noises, unreal. The sounds of the underworld. Like the goddess, I would bring life from death. I was the Resurrection, was I not?

So insensible was Augustus under the influence of the
kykeon
that as I crawled over him he snorted with pleasure as if he thought himself already inside me. “Yes, yes. Such exquisite pleasure!” He rubbed against me, an obscene motion, and I felt a spurt of seed. Whether it was the whole of his orgasm or only a prelude, I couldn’t tell because the gong outside rang again, then again, only to be followed by a bang. It was an impossibly large crash that even in our various states of undressed ecstasy, we couldn’t ignore. Was it a door being slammed open?