Julia shrugged. “He cries out in his sleep about Cleopatra.”
My mouth fell slightly open. “Does he?”
“Oh yes, he’s so dramatic … is it any wonder that I had to fake a fever to get his attention?”
“Julia, you have everyone afraid that you’ll die.”
“Oh, I bet they are, because if I died, who would marry Marcellus and give my father the grandson he wants?”
“Well, you worried me! How are you doing it? You tricked the physician.”
Julia looked bored. “It’s easy. If I want them to catch me with a fever, I jump up and down until I’m red and sweaty from this heat, then collapse in the bed. Mostly I moan and clutch at my stomach. I have Musa so worried that he said I don’t have to do any chores until the weather turns colder.”
“But why are you doing this?”
“So they’ll call off my wedding, of course!” Julia grasped my hands. “All we need is a little time. Time for Iullus to become a quaestor and prove himself as an elected official. He’s not as good at numbers as I am, but I can help him with his work at the treasury, keeping track of all my father’s gold.”
I put my face in my hands. “Julia, didn’t you hear anything your father said? He wants you to marry one of the Julii and there’s only one left you can marry. Marcellus. I know he isn’t the man you want to be with, but—”
“Are you blind, Selene? Marcellus doesn’t even like girls. He’s a catamite!”
That silenced me. Completely. Utterly. I’d noticed how Virgil doted on Marcellus, of course. Everyone had. But that didn’t mean anything. Now that I thought more carefully, though, I couldn’t ever remember hearing rumors about Marcellus and the slave girls. Or any girls. But a catamite? It was one thing for a Roman man to enjoy the favors of a boy, but quite another to be that boy. “Does your father know?”
“Of course not,” Julia said. “Even I’m not selfish enough to tell him. My father is a hypocritical monster. He’d punish Marcellus for it and it would break Octavia’s heart. What’s more, Livia would use it to her advantage. I don’t want to marry Marcellus, but I don’t want him ruined either. He has a good nature.”
“Then you just have to marry him,” I said glumly. “And ignore the rest. It’s what we told Marcella when she married Agrippa.”
“But I’m not like Marcella. All she really wanted in life was a household of her own, and once she went to live with Agrippa we hardly ever saw her until the house burned down. But you and I are different. I write Greek and I’ve read my father’s speeches. I could improve upon his rhetoric. I could be twice the Roman magistrate that any of the boys are, but he’ll never call upon me for anything but to marry the man of his choice.” I couldn’t argue. It wasn’t arrogance or self-aggrandizement. Everything Julia had said was true. “Neither of us should have to marry anyone we don’t wish to,” she continued. “Unless you want to marry Juba.”
“I don’t,” I insisted.
Julia’s big brown eyes fastened on me like an interrogator. “Don’t lie. You’ve always fancied him.”
Yes, I had fancied Juba. But those feelings had been dashed the day he told me about his part in Egypt’s defeat. “Maybe once, but no more.”
Julia didn’t seem to believe me. “Every girl that looks at Juba must imagine kissing such handsome lips, but even if he were an ugly old scab, you’d still want to marry him now that he’s a king. Have you seen the wedding gifts arriving for you? Jewelry and gowns, braziers and incense … I’m Caesar’s daughter, but all the best gifts are for you. My father has purchased no fewer than twenty slaves to attend you, and that doesn’t even count the ones he’s giving Juba. Some foreign king even sent you a gilded carriage with two snow white stallions to pull it!”
I bit my lower lip not to seem too eager to embrace my new fortune. But Julia’s jealousy was short-lived. “He’s also going to give Chryssa to you. He says that your brother has forfeited his property, but I suppose my father doesn’t know what else to do with her now that she’s a virgin no more.”
I winced to hear of Chryssa so casually disposed of; like a used-up castoff, she would now become mine.
Julia crossed her arms over herself and said, “Selene, the worst part is that I’m going to lose you too. It’s not bad enough that I can’t be with Iullus, but now you’re going to leave for Africa and never come back.”
“I’ll come back,” I promised. “After all, I have family here.”
“Philadelphus isn’t going with you?”
I shook my head. “Eventually. Not now. He’s too sick.”
She had the grace to look guilty for only pretending to be ill with fever while my little brother truly suffered. “Can’t you heal him, with your powers? I heard what happened at the Temple of Isis the day our betrothals were announced. Everyone is talking about it. You bled, but crocodiles defended you, and you made a barren woman fertile by placing your hands on her.”
“Is that what they’re saying?” I asked, closing my eyes as if I could recapture the feeling of Isis flowing through me. “I felt I could make her fertile, but I don’t know if I did. I can’t explain it, but I don’t know how to heal anyone.”
Julia sighed. “I want to believe in your Isis the way you do, but what use is magic if you can’t fix anyone?”
What use indeed?
LEAVING Julia’s room, I was distracted. I almost walked right into the salon but stopped when I heard Livia’s voice. “Please adopt my sons,” she was saying. “Adopt Marcellus too, if you must. Don’t rely upon these marriages. Will you let everything depend on the fate of one frail girl?”
I hovered outside the doorway where I couldn’t be seen, but I heard the emperor’s reply. “Julia will be fine. How many times did they say that I’d die of my frail constitution, and yet I’ve outlived all of my family but my sister.”
“Perhaps Julia will recover, but if she doesn’t, then where will we be?”
I wished I could have seen the emperor’s expression when he snapped, “It is not my fault that you’re barren!” I held my breath. When Livia didn’t reply, the emperor moderated his tone. “I decided to marry you when you were still Nero’s wife, heavily pregnant with his child. I thought it was sure proof of your fertility, but, oh, how the gods laugh. I suppose it isn’t your fault. You’ve provided for me in all ways but giving me an heir. It’s just the way of it.”
“It doesn’t change the situation,” Livia said quietly. “Wouldn’t the Republic feel more secure knowing that you had heirs before the worst should befall you? You have no idea what it was like when we thought you were dying in Spain. The chaos, the fear, the insecurity.”
“Let Rome be insecure,” the emperor spat out. “Let the people worry about what will happen without me. Antony’s partisans are still scurrying about the city. Even the senators dare to criticize me. Let them see how indispensable I am. Perhaps, someday, I’ll just walk away and watch them all come crawling back.”
I listened to hear Livia’s reply, but instead I heard the distinct scrape of caligae boots in the hall. Soldiers were coming. I withdrew from the doorway and started to retreat. Then I saw that it was Agrippa and an escort of guards. He was grim-faced. “I have news for the emperor!” he bellowed. “You’ll want to hear this too.”
He caught my arm in his viselike grip and yanked me with him into the salon. Livia rose to her feet, and Agrippa made a smart salute. “Hail, Caesar!”
“What is it?” the emperor asked irritably.
“I’ve received word from Cornelius Gallus.” I knew this man was the Prefect of Egypt; the news couldn’t be good. “Alexandria is holding, but Thebes is in open revolt,” Agrippa continued. “The Thebans have declared Alexander Helios king and pharaoh.”
The room spun before my eyes. Not even Livia’s potent glare could break through the dizziness and I was suddenly grateful for the balance Agrippa’s hold on me afforded. It was the worst imaginable news. Helios. Helios. What had he done?
Th
irty-three
ONE of my brothers lay dying of fever and the other would soon be crushed by all the might of Rome’s legions. The weight of that reality might have sent me to my knees if Agrippa hadn’t been holding me by the arm. Nonetheless, I wrenched away from him. “Let me go, you ineffectual baboon! How all Rome must be laughing; the Hero of Actium brought low by a boy.”
“She’s right,” the emperor said with an impatience rarely directed at his lieutenant. “The fires convinced you the boy was in Rome. Now you say he’s in Egypt starting rebellion? Which is it? Does Gallus say?”
Failure made Agrippa’s shoulders sag. “No one knows. Perhaps not even the Egyptians themselves. According to the messages, he hasn’t declared himself king. Rather, the mob has declared him so.”
“They wouldn’t dare without assurances that he was en route to Egypt,” the emperor said, eyes accusatory. “Think, will you? The boy has gone to Egypt to take his throne. Antony’s partisans and the Isiacs are burning the city and maybe our fleets to prevent our following him. Send word to Gallus to march on Thebes. Round up the Isiacs in Rome. Crucify them all and put an end to this cult.”
It was all slipping out of my hands, beyond my control. As emotion swelled in my breast, the amulet around my neck grew warm. Even my arms started to tingle. Then the air seemed tinged with a dark perfume, metallic, like the scent of a sword being pounded in a forge. The taste of it was in my throat as I confronted the emperor. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt the Isiacs, you liar.”
Livia, who had thus far stood mutely, slapped me across the face. One of my hands came up to my cheek where she’d struck me and the other rose up like a shield. The sting of the blow spread across my skin. Anger blinded me. Rage had been building in me for so long; I suddenly felt my shadow-self unleashed.
As Livia raised her hand for a second strike, I said, “Don’t you ever touch me again!”
Heka flowed from the inside of my elbow where it swirled around my birthmark like the pen of a scribe, tracing the pattern of a sail. Then it flowed out of my fingertips in a torrent. I felt undone by it, overwhelmed by the potency of magic that flowed through me.
Wind blew from my hand.
I didn’t know how I did it or how to control it. It was unlike any natural wind. It was a gale force. A chair blew across the room and tilted against the far wall, balancing on two legs before crashing to the floor. Then a crushing wall of air burst out of my body and slammed into Livia, knocking her to the ground.
For a moment, the world stood still. I heard my breath, staccato gasps. The shuttered door slammed open and shut, reminding me of that long-ago day when they told me Caesarion was dead.
I felt the emperor’s gray eyes on me as tendrils of my hair whipped up around my face. Agrippa stared agape while Livia panted where she lay splayed on the floor, her nostrils flaring, her expression twisted with fear. Her lips were a thin, mean gash. “You are a witch.”
The great weariness I usually felt after my hands bled was coming to me now, the expenditure of heka costing me dear. Nausea rose in me and my knees threatened to buckle, but though my limbs were leaden, I turned and simply walked out.
When guards tried to stop me, I lifted hands and blew them away.
I’D never sought sanctuary in a foreign temple, but I was inescapably drawn to the Temple of Venus Genetrix. It was the temple of the Julii, where it had all started. Trembling with heka sickness, I passed through the pillars and walked up the staircase into the shadowed antechamber. Someone should have stopped me, but perhaps no one dared. In the face of the winds still harkening to my fingertips, the attending priests fled.
And then I was alone.
I ignored the lavish artwork. I barely noticed the engraved gemstones and pearl encrusted breastplate brought all the way from Britannia. My eyes were only for Venus, who was beautifully indecent, carved so that one rounded breast was bared, its nipple puckered taut. The rest of her was covered in a transparent fabric that made obvious even the erotic folds between her legs. She was scandalous and lovely; she was everything about a woman the Romans wished to cover up.
In one hand, Venus held an apple. It was, perhaps, the apple of the Iliad, the apple Paris had awarded her when he chose the fairest goddess, but it looked to me more like the beckoning fruit of knowledge that Isis offered to all. I still remembered the words Isis carved on my arms all those years ago: The Athenians call me Athena. The Cyprians and Romans know me as Venus … I am one goddess. I am all goddesses.
Looking at Venus now, I decided it was true.
My eyes danced to the alcove below where two smaller statues stood. One portrayed Julius Caesar and—more important to me—the other was a gilded statue of my mother. She wasn’t here portrayed as the Whore of the Nile, naked and clutching snakes to her breast like her wax effigy in Octavian’s Triumph. No, here my mother was as she was in life and my throat tightened at the memory of her.
I’d never seen my mother’s face as young as it was on this statue and I realized she’d been not much older than me when she faced civil war and the annexation of Egypt. She’d not been much older than me when she played this same, very dangerous game with the Romans.
I marveled at the knot of Isis between her breasts, the serpent bracelet carved upon her arm and the slight swell of her stomach. And there, atop her shoulder, was a little boy. Caesarion. He was posed like Cupid clinging to Venus, the clearest statement Julius Caesar could’ve made that my mother was the mother of his son.
By putting this statue of my mother here, Caesar had proclaimed us family—Ptolemies and Julians, Romans and Egyptians, men and women. I knelt before my mother’s statue and pressed my cheek to her knees as I had when I was a girl. I regretted that I’d once judged her. I hadn’t wanted to look like her, hadn’t wanted to carry her burdens, and hadn’t wanted to feel her spirit inside me. But that had all changed and come full circle now, and I was grateful for these quiet moments with her.
When I heard the slow footsteps behind me, I wasn’t surprised; I’d known the emperor would come for me. I turned to see that he was dressed for battle and his lictors flanked him, as if they thought I posed a grave danger. They’d seen me lift my hands and call forth the wind. They’d seen me make toy soldiers of the guards who tried to restrain me. They’d seen that I was capable of more than just bleeding. The emperor had seen it too and I wondered, Was he afraid of me now?
From where I knelt, I let a small smile play at my lips. As if he knew I was mocking him for a coward, he dismissed his guards. Then we were alone.
“My family temple?” His voice filled the quiet chamber. “A strange choice.”
“It’s my family too,” I said.
“Get up, Selene,” the emperor commanded.
“Why? What more could you want from me?”
His footsteps echoed as he crossed the temple. Then I saw him screw up his courage as he took me by the arms and pulled me to my feet. He forced me to look at him, and there I saw a strange triumph and thrill. “I want a great deal more from you.”
I remembered the way he’d grabbed me in his study, trying to reach through to my mother, but this was different. This time he was actually seeing me and his eyes were filled with avarice. His hold on me was almost a caress. “You have powers you never told me about. Powers that are mine to harness. That’s what I want from you, amongst other things.”
“What other things?”
“You’ll marry Juba.”
“I’ve already said I would.”
“You’ll also denounce your brother as a traitor.”
I stiffened defiantly. “That I won’t do.”
He smiled a malicious smile. “We had a bargain, Selene.”
“Which you’ve broken numerous times,” I reminded him.
He shrugged. “What Caesar gives, Caesar can take away.”
“Why do you need me to denounce Helios? Why isn’t King Juba’s word enough? Why should the Senate need to hear from me?”
I
could see from the amusement in his eyes that my taunting didn’t anger him. He was in the game, encouraging my next move. “Because I want them to hear it from you.”
No. It was because he wanted me to be like the treacherous Danaids that he’d put around his Temple of Apollo. When we saw those statues, Helios had said that all Rome wondered which of us held the dagger. The emperor thought it was me. But he couldn’t make me plunge it into Helios’s heart.
“What if I refuse? What if I refuse this marriage? What if I say that I hope Helios raises an army to smash Rome, for it will be no less than you deserve? Will you capture me? Will you march me behind your chariot again? I’d be your easiest conquest. A battle won in a temple. You wouldn’t even need Agrippa. It’d be the first battle you won for yourself.”
The emperor slowly released me and took a step back. He adjusted the belt of his uniform. Every gesture he made was a dare. “Or I could set you free, Selene. I could send you to Egypt to come to your brother’s aid.”
I wasn’t so foolish as to mistake this as a genuine offer. It would give me only the freedom to bring ruination to Africa. More loot for Roman Triumphs. More victories for Octavian. More misery and bloodshed. “Have you no message for the Senate?” he asked.
I stared at him. He stared back, but I didn’t shrink from it. Did he take me still for that scared little girl who cowered before him and begged for her life? “Oh, Great Caesar,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “If I’m to be your puppet, why not simply tell me what to say?”
“Not my puppet,” the emperor said very slowly. “My Cleopatra.”
My mouth was too dry to spit at him. “I hate you.”
“You wish you hated me. But you’re just like me, Selene. You quest for power. It’s in your Ptolemy blood. You gave me your allegiance and your loyalty. You said you were Cleopatra’s daughter and mine. Now we’ll see.”
He was mad. Obsessed. It was the only advantage I held.
“I can’t help you kill Helios,” I said. “I won’t.”
Lily of the Nile Page 32