Lily of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  “Don’t frighten the children,” the Prince of Emesa said.

  “They should be frightened,” Diodromes replied. “Behold the legions as they form up! That is Roman might. They march before us merely to show the mob our disgrace before choking the life out of us.”

  Philadelphus began to sob.

  “Don’t listen to him,” I said to Philadelphus.

  I tried to think only of breathing as the legionnaires filed into the city. One by one, elements of the parade disappeared into those gates, but the crowd was waiting for us—for Octavian and his captives.

  The musicians built suspense for the great moment. Horses rode past us, kicking up clouds of dust and obscuring our view as the chariot began to roll forward. As we marched into Rome, the roar of the crowd hit us almost as strongly as the stench. Perhaps it was the crush of people lined up along the narrow streets or the musk of exotic animals on display. Or perhaps it was the squat buildings, piled on top of one another so tightly as to blot out the sun.

  My eyes darted left, then right. Everywhere I looked were middling structures. Some were even made of gray mud and brick. Awnings and arches attempted to beautify the parade, but having lived my entire life in the marble city of Alexandria, I could only see these efforts as a veneer to cover the squalor.

  I glanced at Helios whose eyes were also wide in amazement. This could not be our father’s beloved Rome, for in our eyes, this was nothing but an overcrowded encampment of barbarians! People stood on rooftops; they hung out of windows. They screamed and cheered Octavian and threw flowers in his path. “Hail, Conqueror!”

  Then, as my mother’s wax statue came into view, the cheers turned to jeers—the sound of adulation abruptly veering into menacing contempt. “Serpent of the Nile!” someone screamed. “Villainess! Harlot! Whore!”

  Shrieks reached such a fever pitch that a horse startled and reared, nearly trampling us. The Prince of Emesa yanked the chains to pull my brothers and me out of the way.

  Everywhere were screaming faces. They spat at my mother’s statue, they reviled her, they threw rocks, and then their eyes came to us. I realized then why the collar around my neck was so tight and high. It was so that I couldn’t look away.

  This was another kind of funeral for my mother, dark and twisted. Where I’d been embraced by the love of the Alexandrian crowds, I now felt strangled by the oppressive hatred of the Roman mob. “Spawn of the Egyptian monster! My son died because of your mother,” one woman shrieked at me. A stone hit my arm with a sharp sting, and I hissed at the pain.

  “I want to see you die!” a man yelled at my twin. “To see you roasted! To see you flayed after you’re flogged!”

  Helios merely tightened his lips to show his contempt. My twin seemed so noble and brave then, unsullied and defiant, that it gave me courage.

  “Is it right to condemn Cleopatra’s children?” a Roman shouted above the frenzy. He was older, with a craggy face, someone who might have known my father. But he was shouted down.

  Shouts, trumpets, and cymbals blurred together into a maddening mixture of hatred that Isis herself would have wept to see. From their cries, one would think my brothers and I had sprung spontaneously from my mother’s womb. One might watch this spectacle and not realize that my father had played any part in the war; his partisans were nowhere to be seen. Whether Octavian had killed them all or banished them, I didn’t know. Perhaps they stayed silent for fear of their lives.

  Euphronius taught us that some Romans worshipped Isis and that even before my birth, the Isiac faith was spreading throughout the world. But if there were Isiacs in the crowd, they too were silent, either biding their time, or indifferent to our plight, their faith having died with my mother.

  Her wax figure was on display not as a holy figure but as a naked whore. Perhaps that was to cast doubt on Caesarion’s parentage. Or ours, for we too were half Roman. This fact the Romans did not want to remember, and today neither did I.

  “Io Triumphe!” the warriors shouted to Octavian, but no manner of insult was too low to hurl at my mother’s statue or her children. I was glad she’d died rather than face this. Glad!

  Egyptians believed that pharaohs faced terrors at each gate of the afterlife, and I felt kinship with those pharaohs now. As people spit on me, swore at me, and cursed my name—wishing me dead and my brothers alongside me—I hardened my heart. I was a queen, a daughter of Isis, from the line of Alexander the Great. I was from a clean city of white marble and culture. If I would die here in Rome, I would not die a cowering child. The merciless summer sun burned my fair skin, the hours of marching leaving me thirsty and tired, but I would not cry.

  A rock caught Philadelphus under the eye, and it bled. Then Philadelphus’s legs gave out and the Prince of Emesa lifted him up.

  “I thank you for this kindness,” I said, trying to make my voice heard over the laughter of the crowd as dancers whirled past. “Thank you also for the loyalty you showed my mother and father.”

  Our eyes met. “My loyalty has always been to you and your brother,” the prince replied.

  “King Caesarion is grateful.”

  “Not that brother,” he said. “You and your holy twin.”

  I did not know how to reply to this. I wasn’t even sure that it was truly what he said. I was lost in pain and terror now. I no longer heard the obscene epithets that the crowd spat at me; they became just so much noise. A shocked exhaustion made it easier to ignore the ache in my feet.

  At last the procession slowed as the chariot reached the Capitoline Temple. The cries of “Io Triumphe!” began to subside. Helios held out his hand to me and I took it—a loving gesture amidst infinite enmity.

  Then everything stopped.

  Octavian the Conqueror stepped out of his jeweled chariot and ascended the steps in purple splendor, and the crowd hushed. Before the statue of Jupiter, the Triumpher finally humbled himself, surrendering his laurel crown and scepter. Then Octavian lifted the knife above one of the sacrificial bulls, letting it hover over the doomed beast. With a swift and efficient stroke, the Triumpher cut the bull’s throat.

  “So too with the captives!” the crowd cheered as the animal collapsed in death, a spray of blood showering the sacred altar, and flowing into the ready drains.

  Soldiers grabbed hold of Philadelphus and yanked Helios and me up the temple stairs to face the man who held our fate in his hands. At last, Octavian deigned to look upon the children of those he destroyed.

  The crowd seemed to hold its collective breath as we finally came face to face with our conqueror. I met Octavian’s eyes and couldn’t have been more unprepared for what I saw.

  My mother had been a woman teeming with energy and boundless stamina. My father had been a broad-shouldered giant whose physicality intimidated his enemies, and whose charm won him friends. I had grown up knowing that my parents were the most powerful people in the world and had imagined Octavian must have been a colossus of a man to have conquered them.

  Instead, Octavian was slight of build and pale beneath the crimson paint upon his face. His hands were fragile, his neck was thin—everything about him was small in comparison to the soldiers I had known. My lips parted in surprise, and I wondered if there had been some mistake. After all, how much more like a ruler Admiral Agrippa appeared to be.

  Yet, when I looked at Octavian, I was caught by the snare of his eyes. In the narrowness of his gray stare was a wintry ruthlessness that marked him for who he was. There was a chill in everything about him—frigidity even in the way he moved—and it made me tremble.

  Octavian inspected us as the crowd waited. He took my chin between his thumb and index finger, turning my face first to one side and to the next, as far as the metal collar would allow. His touch sent an icy prickle down my spine. His finger traced down my neck onto the jade frog amulet I wore and he eyed the inscription. “What does this say?” he asked, his voice soft and slightly nasal in quality.

  “I am the Resurrection,” I whispe
red, not thinking to lie.

  Octavian lifted a brow. “Is that so?”

  I couldn’t find voice to answer. The knife was still in his hand, still dripping with the blood of his sacrifice.

  “The whore’s spawn is the image of her mother,” he said.

  “She’s also the child of Lord Antony!” the Prince of Emesa dared to shout. “She’s also Roman. Forget that at your peril.”

  I would always wonder what force of loyalty or faith drove the prince’s defiance—for it cost him his life. Octavian made a single gesture, and with the efficiency for which Romans were famous, the guards plunged a ceremonial ax into the prince’s chest.

  Like the sacrificial bull, so too did the Prince of Emesa collapse on the temple steps. Philadelphus shrieked and my mouth fell open in a silent scream as the blood spattered my gown. The dying man’s head hit the marble with a hollow sound, then his mouth frothed with bloody saliva. Hot blood poured out of him over my sandals. His wound pulsed, his chest split in gory shining halves. Then I saw the life drain from his eyes and the Prince of Emesa was no more.

  The crowd cheered their approval as if they were watching a play.

  In that instant everything that had been holding me together unwound. My mother had been wrong. There was nothing beautiful in death, after all. No, the face of the dead man held gray lifelessness. He was as lifeless as my mother’s wax statue.

  Octavian lifted the knife toward Helios and I screamed, “No, please!”

  “Don’t beg,” Helios hissed at me.

  Win or Die was the Ptolemy motto, but I wanted desperately to live. Where were our friends? They were all dead or left behind in Alexandria. Where was Caesarion and the army he would raise to smite these barbarians? For that matter where was Isis? If she lived inside of us, what would happen to her if we died?

  My mother taught us not to cry in front of strangers, but if Octavian wanted my tears, he’d have them. I dropped to my knees before the murderer of my kin, crying, “Mercy! The children of the Roman triumvir Mark Antony ask for mercy.”

  If the plea had come from my brothers, perhaps the mob would have reacted differently, but they saw nothing disgraceful about this plea from a girl. It earned their sympathy, and as I knelt in blood before Octavian, a pitying wail went up from the crowd.

  The corners of Octavian’s mouth twitched into a smile.

  Just then, as if she’d been positioned for the occasion, a matron draped primly in a brown gown and matching shawl stepped out onto the temple stairs. She was an earthy-looking woman, but to me, she was an incarnation of Isis, a goddess of salvation when she said, “Caesar, forgive an unworthy woman for her insolence, but I too beg that you show your great clemency to these poor helpless children.”

  Octavian’s voice rang theatrically in answer. “My sister, you ask for clemency on behalf of these bastards? You must know that they’re the children of the Egyptian whore who stole noble Antony from you and from Rome!”

  When the woman spoke again, she also shouted. “Lord Antony would have stayed loyal to Rome were he not drugged by Cleopatra’s Eastern potions and wicked religion. As Antony’s true Roman wife, I ask mercy for these children. I’ll raise them as my own. I’ll be as loyal to Antony’s memory as he should have been to Rome.”

  I glanced up only long enough to see Octavian smile, like the master of a play he’d written and performed himself to perfection. But the blood between my fingers, soaking through the fabric of my gown was very real.

  At last, Octavian said, “My sister, I will grant your wish.”

  “Caesar spares the children!” a herald echoed.

  The mingled scent of laurel and blood filtered toward my senses. I trembled uncontrollably and my vision faded. I was only vaguely aware of the other captives being dragged away.

  Rome hated me and I hated Rome, but I would live. We would live. That was all that mattered.

  Five

  WHISPERS tugged at my consciousness, but I tried to ignore them. I was dreaming of Caesarion and how he must, even now, be sailing across the seas with his army to rescue us. I dreamed too of the time Caesarion taught Helios and me to ride a horse. He helped us charm the animal with an apple, and every time we fell off he picked us up and made us try again. He told me that if I was ever to be his queen and Helios his fiercest warrior, we must be brave and learn to ride at his side. But we never asked what would happen if Caesarion fell …

  The happy dream was receding, leaving me with a deep sense of longing.

  “Is she awake yet?” someone whispered.

  “Let her sleep,” a man replied.

  I was being watched, and the indignity of it made me reluctant to open my eyes. Still, if I opened my eyes, I might find myself back home in Alexandria and the memory of Octavian’s Triumph just a nightmare.

  I sat up to find Roman children crowding the doorway. When they saw me awake, a hush fell. I was sticky with dried blood and dirt. Where the manacles had been, bruises ringed each of my wrists, tender and swollen; Octavian’s Triumph had been no nightmare.

  “Aqua,” I whispered. Water. It hurt my throat to speak even that one Latin word through parched lips.

  A handsome young man with desert skin came forward. “Greetings, Selene. I’m Gaius Julius Juba, a friend of Caesar’s.”

  As if I cared who he was. All I cared about was the wooden cup that he held to my lips. I was so thirsty that I gulped until my stomach lurched. Then, afraid I would vomit, I shoved the cup away and panted. I must have seemed like an animal to them. I felt like one.

  The man named Juba said, “Minora, go tell your mother that she’s awake.”

  The smallest girl bobbed her head and ran off while more faces blurred before my eyes. “Where are my brothers?”

  “They’re both getting cleaned up,” Juba said, and I noticed now that his features were regal, almost too perfect, like a Greek statue. He smelled of sand and cinnamon, like home, like Egypt, but his garb was Roman. “We’re going to have our afternoon meal.”

  Was it afternoon, then? I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and there were no windows in the room. I reached again for the water and took a tentative sip while I surveyed the sparse chamber. I was on a sleeping couch with pretty ivory feet—a much simpler and more uncomfortable bed than I was used to. There was also a bronze-studded wooden chest, a carved cedar chair, and a low desk that could also serve as a dressing table. The floor wasn’t marble but a patchwork of decorative tile, and instead of a brightly hewn tapestry on the wall, the plaster was painted with a mural. “Are we in the slave quarters?”

  “Of course not.” Juba chuckled. “Don’t be such a spoiled little princess. Lady Octavia’s home is modest but lovely. This is your new room.”

  I could scarcely believe him.

  “Yes,” said an older boy from the doorway. He was a youth of not more than fourteen, with a little bit of down upon his chin. “Welcome to the lamentable embassy of royal orphans.”

  Seeing this boy, I drew a sharp breath and dropped the cup. Water spilled in my lap but I didn’t care. Perhaps I was still dreaming, but I knew my brother’s face. “Antyllus! But Mother said you’d been murdered …”

  “I’m not Antyllus.” The boy smirked, and my heart broke again. “I’m Iullus, the son of Antony and his second wife, Fulvia.”

  I reeled in confusion, straightening painfully. All the adults in my life seemed to have been married many times, and I had never dwelled on the consequences of that fact before now. “Antyllus was your brother too, then?”

  “Of course,” Iullus replied. “Which makes me your half brother. Or perhaps of no relation to you whatsoever if the rumors about your mother’s promiscuity are true.”

  I blinked at his taunt and the cruel surprise of seeing it fall from a mouth whose shape was so beloved to me. “But you look so much like Antyllus.”

  “I just told you why,” he said, as if I were very stupid.

  “But why don’t I know you?” I asked. “Why d
idn’t you come to live with us like Antyllus?”

  Iullus’s eyes darkened in a way that reminded me of our father’s blackest moods. “I suppose that in all the chaos, I was somehow left behind.”

  Juba interrupted my stunned silence. “Selene, when your father broke with Rome, Iullus was still very young. The emperor kept Iullus here but let Antyllus go to your father. You must understand now that he was wise to do so.”

  Oh, I understood. Octavian had kept Iullus hostage, to use against my father during the war. Now Iullus was an orphan, just like me. I stared at him, an uncomfortable swelling in my heart. In spite of my new half brother’s dark gaze, I wanted to reach out to him. Did he hate Octavian and the Romans for what they’d done? I dared not ask in front of all the others.

  Juba picked up the cup. “Soon you’ll be reunited with the rest of your siblings and meet the other children of the imperial family. You’ll soon have lots of friends here to play with.”

  I didn’t want to play, nor was I even sure I remembered how. All I wanted was to see Helios and Philadelphus, but Juba seemed to mistake my silence for encouragement. “There’s Julia, Tiberius and Drusus, Marcellus, the two Antonias, Marcella and Iullus, whom you’ve just met.”

  “The two Antonias?” I asked, bewildered by all the names.

  The littlest girl had returned, and I hadn’t noticed. She squealed excitedly. “I’m one of the Antonias! Antonia Minor, but they call me Minora and you’re my sister.”

  As the little girl made this announcement, a woman appeared in the crowded doorway. She wore homespun clothes that were unfit even for Egyptian merchants and kept her hair in a severe style without adornment. I recognized her from the steps of the Temple of Jupiter where she’d asked the emperor to spare our lives. “You shouldn’t have let them gawk at her, Juba.”

  “I know you,” I whispered.

  She smiled warmly. “I’m Lady Octavia, dear. I’m your late father’s wife.”