Lily of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

I couldn’t contain myself. “Is Augustus …”

  “He’s on his way home, with my mother,” Tiberius replied, and he wasn’t wrong. When the emperor finally returned to Rome—which had been transformed into a more modern city thanks to Agrippa’s building projects and Numidian marble—he claimed to have dealt the Cantabri a decisive defeat. But he never did celebrate a Triumph. Perhaps his illness had made him too weak to drag conquered peoples behind his chariot in chains, or perhaps he knew that more than a few people in Rome had celebrated his death. Restoring himself to power swiftly, he paid large amounts of money to appease the citizens and ensure their loyalty. To ensure stability of the city, he replaced the tresviri capitales with an urban cohort and guarded himself and the imperial family with a praetorian guard that was loyal to him and him alone.

  It was a testament to the effectiveness of the praetorians that Helios stopped talking about escape. In truth, as the chaos of the emperor’s return swirled around us, Helios stopped talking almost entirely. It was as if my sense of malaise and helplessness had infected him too, both of us paralyzed as Augustus efficiently and ruthlessly killed or exiled enemies who had revealed themselves during his health crisis and persecuted Isiacs and friends of my father.

  And when Helios wondered aloud if Euphronius was dead, part of the purges, our last hope lost, my tongue swelled with silent deceit inside my mouth. I told myself that I’d made the prudent choice in not running away with Euphronius, but I couldn’t tell my brothers that I’d seen him because they would never forgive me. I couldn’t tell anyone; it was a dark secret held between me and Bast, and I knew I’d lost a great deal in keeping that secret.

  In the year that followed, I returned to Rome with the rest of the family and became someone I barely recognized. I didn’t pray. I smothered my thoughts of magic. I became accustomed to the noise of Rome. My naturally gregarious nature gave way to introspection and melancholy. I lost my taste for food and cried easily—not only because I was thirteen. It was because my khaibit, the shadow soul that held my darkness, now felt bigger than the rest of me.

  ONE morning Helios removed the brick. “Selene—”

  Since my first menses, I’d been binding my breasts, trying to look the part of a little girl. Helios had startled me, caught me in the middle of dressing, so I spun to shield myself from his eyes. I wasn’t sure he’d seen, but embarrassment pricked at my skin. When I finished, I crept beneath my desk to face him and saw that his cheeks were flushed too.

  “What were you doing?” Helios asked.

  Perhaps if I’d been in Egypt, I would’ve been straightforward about my body’s changes. But we were in Rome and the constant stream of shame had begun to soak into me. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  An awkward silence passed between us. My hastily fastened gown had come open and Helios was gawking. “Is it a bandage?”

  “No,” I said quickly. Mortified to see the visible bumps of my nipples beneath the fabric, I wrapped my arms around myself and my stomach tingled with an unfamiliar, sickly sweet sensation. It was pleasant but somehow made me want to run away. Redness crept from Helios’s cheeks to the tips of his ears. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came. “What did you want to tell me?” I finally forced myself to ask.

  Helios stared as if he wasn’t sure what language I was speaking. “I … I’m going to the port at Ostia. Agrippa has business there and has offered to take me with him.” I was instantly wary of intrigue. What purpose would Agrippa have for taking my brother anywhere, if not to dispose of him? But Helios was enthusiastic. “Agrippa said he’d take me to inspect the ships in the harbor—bigger ones than can come up the Tiber.”

  “Why would Agrippa take you?” I asked suspiciously.

  “He’s taking Marcellus, Drusus, and Tiberius too, but he said that Iullus and I could join him, so I’m going.”

  We might have friends in Rome, old partisans of my father who would make life difficult if the emperor harmed us, but what friends did we have in Ostia? Who would call foul if a boy slipped and fell into the harbor? “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I have to go,” Helios said. “Ships from Egypt come into Ostia every day. I might hear news from Alexandria or be able to send messages to our people, to let them know that we haven’t abandoned them. I may be able to find out what happened to Euphronius.”

  I wondered what happened to the wizard too. That summer in the country, when morning dawned outside Livia’s villa and we hadn’t come, had he been angry with me? Had he understood? Or had he given up on us the way I’d given up on Isis?

  I stood at the gate, watching the road long after Agrippa and the boys had disappeared from sight until Julia tried to draw me away. “How can you be so glum, Selene? We’ll have a whole week without boys to boss us around!”

  The anxiety of being separated from Helios was too great for me to laugh. Being apart from Helios, even for a few days, seemed unnatural. You must understand that I’d loved all my brothers. Caesarion, Antyllus, and Philadelphus too. So I knew the deep and sometimes exasperating way a sister loves a brother.

  But my connection to Helios was something different. Helios was my twin in this life, but I’d always felt certain he’d been with me before. We came into this world together and had never been separated. We sometimes even shared the same dreams. Perhaps once, in Egypt, when we were little children, we’d only been siblings. But when Caesarion died, Helios and I became something else entirely. He wasn’t my brother anymore. Not truly. He was my king. He was my other half. Being without him made me feel as if I’d been cleaved in two, and I told Julia so.

  She just sighed at me. “I don’t know if I can stand a week of both you and Chryssa brooding just because Helios is gone. I think she’s half in love with him. Your brother spoils that slave girl.”

  She was right, of course. Though Chryssa had been raised to do domestic work for Livia, Helios wasn’t the most exacting master and almost never treated her like a slave. Instead, he let Chryssa study with the rest of us. Juba objected, naturally, but the emperor surprised us all by approving of my brother’s choice, saying, “Helios is wise to want an educated servant. What other use is there for a Greek slave?”

  In truth, Chryssa was a quick wit. She was better with numbers than any of us. But I resented her. Perhaps it was the way she was always at my brother’s elbow, her eyes wide with devotion. Even Iullus sometimes remarked on her eager attention to her master and Marcellus would laugh.

  I was brought back from these thoughts by Julia yanking on my arm, trying to get me to let go of the gate. “You should feel sorry for the boys gone on a trip while we get to stay here and glory in the sameness of it all. We’ll make a game of it. We can try to live yesterday over again today, exactly the same, to avoid bad luck, just like some people did when they fixed the calendar.” She started walking backward, laughing all the while.

  I wanted to laugh with her; her laugh was lively, vibrant, and warm. Unfortunately she could also be self-absorbed and impatient, so when she saw I couldn’t be comforted, she skipped away, leaving me alone.

  At long last, I pried myself away from the gate and went looking for Juba. A part of me believed the answers to all that vexed me could be found within a scroll, if only I looked hard enough. Accordingly, I’d been studying every school of philosophical thought from Roman Stoicism to Greek Epicureanism. I studied mathematics and astronomy too. Now I needed something new to distract me.

  Juba was in the courtyard; it was early spring, and the sun made his skin glow tawny and tan. “Come join me, Selene! I was thinking of writing a poem for you.”

  “For me?” I asked, blushing furiously. Marcellus and Tiberius had come home with scars from Spain, but Juba returned much the same as he’d left. Perhaps the muscles on his arms were harder, and when I looked at him, I sometimes thought of the nude Greek statues where the carved stomach gave way to a phallus beneath, but such thoughts were scandalous and I pushed them away. I’d once hop
ed that Juba was an Isiac, that he could help my brother and me escape. I now knew better, but I still considered him a friend. Or perhaps it was just that sometimes, when he looked at me, my skin tingled. I liked the slope of his shoulders and his elegant hands. So smooth and tan. And I remembered the way he’d once kissed my fingertips. I’d relived that moment more than once and thought I might swoon if he did it again, but then I thought of Helios and the danger he might be in, and it sobered me. “I didn’t know you were a poet, Juba.”

  Juba smiled. “Everyone thinks themselves an artist this year. Virgil has taken a special interest in Marcellus, and Iullus has been studying with Horace. He’s written a few love poems. Even the emperor has begun writing the story of Ajax in Greek. He’s been working on it all morning.”

  That Iullus would be writing about love surprised me, but that the emperor was writing surprised me even more. After all, the emperor didn’t consider himself a great intellect—relying more on his animal cunning. He’d been raised from humble beginnings and had never mastered Greek. As if we’d conjured him up by speaking of him, the emperor strolled through the courtyard just then wearing his ridiculous broad-brimmed hat. He breathed in and seemed terribly satisfied. “I’m feeling much better these days. Can you smell that, Juba? It’s going to rain!”

  The emperor was never in so good a mood as when it rained, for rain was a grand excuse to avoid the sun. No one avoided the sun more than the emperor because his physician had assured him that it aggravated the blotches on his skin. He held his hat with one hand while tapping a tablet against his leg with the other.

  “How goes it with your Ajax epic?” Juba asked, cheerfully.

  “A tragedy, Juba,” the emperor said, screwing his face into a mask of mock grief. “It seems Ajax fell on his sponge.”

  He flipped the tablet open so we could see it sponged clean. Juba laughed at his jest. The emperor was not, after all, a man incapable of wit or charm. He could be generous, and there were even days that I could see hints of greatness. He genuinely believed his own propaganda—that he was the benevolent father figure to the orphans he’d gathered together. So when I didn’t laugh at his joke, he adopted the tone of a kindly paterfamilias. “Selene, why the long face?”

  I looked up at the darkening sky. “If it rains, Helios’s trip to Ostia might take even longer.”

  “No worries there. Agrippa consulted the augurs this morning and the omens looked good.”

  I forced myself to smile, but I knew the emperor was skeptical about mystical divinations. He sometimes mocked the idea that anyone could read omens. Even so, he was careful to observe all public religious ceremonies. It wasn’t because he was a pious man—he simply didn’t like taking unnecessary chances. In that, perhaps we weren’t so very different. “Come, Selene, play your kithara for me today,” the emperor said. “It will cheer you up, and I know you want to please me.”

  That much was true. The night I’d forsaken Euphronius, I made pleasing the emperor my only choice.

  SEVERAL days later, Helios returned from his trip, and I was so relieved I actually whooped with joy. I threw my arms around him, and he spun me so that my sandals brushed the carefully manicured grasses by the walkway. Helios had gifts for us. A basket of pomegranates for Philadelphus and a new gown for me, made of blue and green diaphanous silk. He even brought back ribbons for Bast to play with.

  All the young men of the family had enjoyed their trip to Ostia with Agrippa, but Helios didn’t share any of his stories until we were alone. “I’ve bad news from Egypt,” he whispered from his side of the wall between our rooms. “Isis has abandoned Africa. Since our mother’s funeral, the Nile hasn’t risen above the cubits of death. Without a pharaoh, it won’t rise.”

  My mother had stored grain in case of just such an emergency, but it wouldn’t last. There’d be famine, and because Egypt fed the world, her famine would cause suffering everywhere. “What will the Roman governor do?”

  “The Romans know nothing about Egypt!” Helios raged.

  Philadelphus hushed him. “Be quieter or they’ll hear you outside.”

  Helios lowered his voice but was no less passionate. “The Romans think they can manage Alexandria, but what of the Upper Kingdom? Did you know that when the emperor was in Egypt, he refused to visit the Apis Bull at Memphis? He said he was accustomed to worshipping gods—not cattle.”

  I gaped at the emperor’s irreverence. “He said that?”

  “The Romans have contempt for all the old religions.” Helios tapped the loose brick against his stone floor with agitation. “I wrote a message on papyrus for them to take back to Alexandria, but Agrippa caught me and threw it in the harbor without even reading it.”

  My heart leapt to my throat. “You’re lucky he didn’t read it!”

  Helios snorted. “As if Agrippa knows how to read.”

  “Agrippa may seem simple,” I protested, “but there’s a genius about him and not just with his military tactics. Have you seen his projects? The roads, the aqueducts, and the buildings! He can most certainly read. What if he’d showed your note to the emperor?”

  “Then Augustus would be shocked to find out how much I hate him.” My twin’s uncharacteristic sarcasm gave away the true depths of his upset. “Selene, Egypt is dying. The Isiacs aren’t even allowed to celebrate the Navigium Isidis anymore here in Rome. Our faith is in danger and you and I haven’t even learned to master the powers that we have.”

  “I don’t want to bleed in hieroglyphics. It’s not a power, and if you’re talking about heka, well, I don’t want to learn it.” I’d put all of that behind me the night I took off my amulet.

  “Then I’ll learn for the both of us, but either way, we can’t just sit here and let Octavian use us.”

  “What else can we do?” I asked.

  “I’ve told you countless times,” Helios said. “Let’s escape. Let’s find out what happened to Euphronius.”

  I shook my head vehemently to cover my guilty secret. I wanted to say, I’ve seen Euphronius and I couldn’t run. He came for us once and it was the end of my faith. But instead I said, “How can you even think that after all these years Euphronius is still in the city? It’s done, Helios. It’s over. I’m not going to help you look for him, and don’t go dragging Philadelphus into it either. Do you remember all those pretty stories you told me about how you’d bring me back to Egypt? Those were just stories. The only way to help Egypt is to make friends and allies in Rome, which is exactly what I plan to do.”

  Eighteen

  FOR my brothers and me, seasons passed quickly without the familiar cycle of the Nile to mark time for us. Another birthday came and went. I didn’t see Euphronius again and no more bloody messages carved themselves into my hands; I felt cut off from all that we’d known and forced myself to believe I must be Roman now. It’s what Juba had done as an exiled princeling and he believed his efforts would see him back home one day. I wanted to believe the same held for my brothers and me.

  By the time I was fourteen, I understood the actors and the stage that was set for me to play my part. I had only to choose the right moment for my entrance. That moment came on a warm spring day during an afternoon meal. It was the emperor’s habit to quiz the boys with questions about military matters, but today his question was of a more peaceful nature. “Marcellus, the harbor in Alexandria is too crowded. There’s no room for expansion, and our goods are getting bottled up in Egypt. What would you recommend?”

  Marcellus had been caught chewing and was, therefore, unable to answer. “Anyone?” the emperor asked. “Iullus, can you say what you’d recommend regarding the overcrowding of the harbor in Alexandria?”

  Our half brother gladly jumped into the fray. “I’d burn down the old unusable facilities to make room for expansion.”

  I cast a dark look at Iullus. “Burning things isn’t always the answer!”

  All eyes turned to me. I was supposed to be silent, but they were discussing the fate of Egypt. My hands
felt shaky as I said, “I’d build a new port in another region of Africa entirely.”

  None of the other girls of the household would have been so bold. Julia coughed. Livia scowled, cutting a sliver of cheese for her bread, and Octavia said, “It’s impolite to speak out of turn, Selene. No one asked you.”

  Still, Juba cast me an encouraging glance and the emperor leaned forward in his seat, his brow arched curiously. “Where would you build the new port, Selene?”

  “In Mauretania,” I said. “In West Africa.”

  “That’s too far,” Julia piped up, suddenly emboldened.

  I didn’t wish to contradict her, but I had to. “Mauretania is far from Alexandria, but only a week’s travel from Rome—perhaps less than that with a fast ship and good weather. A Mauretanian port would receive goods from Spain. It’d also bring prosperity to the downtrodden peoples of that region.”

  The emperor’s mouth tightened. “I believe you mean rebellious peoples of that region, Selene. Since old King Bocchus died without an heir, the area has been utterly ungoverned.”

  Rome had overextended herself and that had contributed to the rebelliousness, but I was sure I was right. “In Africa, many people worship Isis. The right person could bring them together under a common faith.”

  By the right person, I meant a Ptolemy. My ancestors excelled at taking patches of deserted sand and turning them into places the world held in awe. Everything in my blood cried out to leap at any chance to build and create. The emperor tapped his plate. “Helios, do you agree with your sister?”

  My twin tried to school his features into neutrality, but he’d never been gifted with artifice. He cared deeply about the issue, yet he said only, “I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “Well, give it some thought,” the emperor snapped.

  I glared at my twin; he glared right back. Helios, who loved all things nautical, knew better than I did where a port should be. He’d most certainly given it thought, but he refused to share those thoughts with the emperor.