Children of Tiber and Nile (The Rise of Caesarion's Rome Book 2)

by Deborah Davitt

  “Say that while looking into her eyes,” Tiberius told him shortly. “Right after she’s told you she’d never get in the way, and that’s why she never said anything.”

  Ah, fuck, Alexander thought, feeling as if someone had punched him in the liver. He hunched over the railing himself now, most of his good mood having evaporated completely. “I’ll . . . fix it,” he muttered after a moment. “I’ll explain to her. . .” Shit. Shit. How do I explain it to her in a way that she can understand? “That the kind of love I feel for you, and you for me, isn’t the same,” he finally muttered, grateful for the babbling of the fountains below. “That it’s about fighting together. Overcoming together. Surviving together.” He gave Tiberius a sidelong glance. “And fun.” He paused.

  Tiberius stood up now. Shook his head. “If you can make her understand that, you’ve got a better career ahead of you than Cicero,” he told Alexander tiredly. “I already told her that I see a future in her. I don’t know if that meant anything to her. She’s tired. And so am I.” He looked away. “I’m going to visit Agrippa tomorrow and terminate my betrothal to Vipsania,” he went on tersely. “No matter if your sister accepts me or not, it’s the honorable thing to do. And something I should have done years ago.” His voice was taut over those last few words.

  No one expects a man stuck in a betrothal for ten damned years before his prospective wife is old enough to wed to be faithful! Alexander wanted to shout. There are ideals, yes, and then there is reality, and you hold yourself to impossibly high expectations—half of which were fostered by fucking Octavian, the world’s biggest hypocrite! “And then?” Alexander said warily.

  “I have the very difficult task of convincing your sister that I am capable of loving her for who she is, and not just as a shadow of you. Which I hope is true, because she damned well deserves someone who does.” Tiberius turned away. “Right now, I’m going to go home, find a jar of wine, and hope it takes me to Hypnos’ realm. Because I have no idea how I’m going to sleep tonight.”

  Alexander covered his eyes for a moment. Was it only ten hours ago that we used the word love to each other for the first time? This is my fault. If I hadn’t said anything about Selene, thinking it would solve all our problems none of this would have happened. Antyllus would have come, made his address, and Tiberius and I would have . . . well, kept on doing what we’d been doing. Until I married Octavia, and then there’d be nothing.

  When Tiberius’ self-loathing was at its zenith, Alexander usually told his friend to stay the night. It usually didn’t even involve sex on nights like these. It meant playing dice, sparring, drinking—anything that could, would, and did get Ti’s mind off of honor and duty and his perceived failures in both. And if they fell asleep in the same bed, it meant that Ti had actually fallen asleep. The worst of the self-loathing spells had faded years ago, but this one looked bad. “Do I need to take your knife away from you?” Alexander asked, not joking.

  “I’m not going to fall on it,” Tiberius told him quietly, his back still turned. “Not tonight, anyway. Perhaps there’s a reason I saw Mars’ face so clearly, and Antyllus saw Venus’. Perhaps that was the message I should have taken to heart years ago. I’m for war, not for love.”

  “She hasn’t said no yet,” Alexander pointed out sharply. And damn it, I love you, too.

  “Good night, Alexander. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Alexander watched his friend descend the stairs, and heard the front door of the villa open, and then shut behind him. How in Dis’ name do I make any of this right?

  Chapter IV: Changing Tides

  Ianuarius 3, 20 AC

  Eurydice told the servants to let Selene sleep in the next morning, inwardly raging at their mother for the interference, necessary or not, in all their lives. She and Caesarion had retired very late themselves. She’d slipped the Magi bracelet off her wrist for the first time in close to three years, and placed it on the table beside the bed. And they’d simply lain there, neither of them able to get in the mood for love. They’d been so careful, for so long, to avoid conception, that even starting the process now seemed terrifying.

  “Don’t tell anyone about this,” Caesarion had muttered, rolling to his back and putting a forearm over his eyes. “It would destroy all confidence the Roman people have in my manhood and vigor.”

  “And who would I tell?” Eurydice had asked, curling into his side, staring at the wall and watching the flickering light of the oil lamp beside the bed cast shadows there. “The sister who wept herself to sleep down the hall, or the brother who’s probably still awake and reading over the reports of his agents?”

  A little light humor to try to cover their mutual deep unease. He’d rolled to his side then, pulling her tightly into him. “The dream still says an eagle first?” Caesarion asked, his voice uneasy.

  “Always,” she replied, closing her eyes as her throat ached. “At least we know that since we’re god-born, our children won’t have any physical curses.”

  He’d sighed. “Small comfort.”

  “And we need to go to Egypt anyway. There’s no more putting it off.”

  “I know.”

  And still they’d lain there, unmoving, and finally found sleep only just before dawn.

  At dawn, with the servants busily baking bread, Eurydice stepped out the front door of the villa, holding in her hands several offerings. Today was the first day of the festival of the Compitalia, the days on which the lares of every household were honored, as well as the manes. At every crossroad in Rome, offerings were made by neighborhood elders. Bread and cakes and other good things. And outside every Roman house in the sprawling empire, owners and slaves alike placed offerings just outside their doors.

  Lengths of braided rope hung down from the roof of the portico, and Eurydice carefully looped them into nooses, wrapping each around a little poppet. She’d made them by hand to resemble each of the patrician residents currently in the villa. This one had Caesarion’s red eyes embroidered on the cloth face, and his short-cropped dark hair. A little purple toga swathed its body. This one had her own golden eyes and longer hair . . . and a red stola, as she usually chose to wear these days. This one for Alexander. That one for Selene. And even one for Octavia.

  The servants and slaves left their own offerings, usually cruder ones made of wadded cotton. All would be left here for several days, so that Mania, goddess of the underworld’s spirits—not to be confused with Proserpina—properly propitiated, would accept the poppets in place of the mortal residents.

  You know that she isn’t particularly interested in your spirits, Flaminia, one of the household lares, told Eurydice, swarming up one of the marble pillars like a cat climbing a tree. Her tail lashed, and she hissed a little at a passing breeze.

  “I’m aware,” Eurydice replied, smiling faintly. “But I’m sure she likes having her name remembered just as much as you do.”

  The tiny house-spirit dropped to the ground and raced after some insect that had dared to threaten the doorway of the villa. You will be leaving us soon? Flaminia asked, her voice sad. Eurydice took it as a matter of faith that the house-spirits knew everything. She’d once suggested to Alexander that people who neglected their lares, might therefore have bribable, disloyal spirits who might be willing to turn over information for the cost of a loaf of saffron-tinged bread.

  The look on her brother’s face had been indescribable. And after he stopped laughing, Alexander had asked her, merrily, how that would work, since to his knowledge, she and Caesarion were the only people who could see the lares in Rome.

  Eurydice was working on that part of the problem. As best she could, anyway. For the moment, she inclined her head to Flaminia gravely. “Probably for some time,” Eurydice said, watching as the butler opened the shutters of the front rooms, giving her a glance askance for talking to what, for him, looked like empty air. “I don’t suppose I could take some of you with me to Egypt.”

  Oh no. We’re bound to
this place. I could never travel so far away. Besides, the spirits of Egypt would be cross if I went to their lands and took away from their sacrifices. Flaminia pouted. I’d like to, but I’m just not strong enough to fight off all of them when they come around to scratch at my eyes.

  “When Caesarion builds the larger villa on the Palatine, could you be bound there? I would quite miss all of you, if you weren’t the spirits of whatever house we happened to live in.” Eurydice held out her hand, and a different spirit landed in it—this one a bright yellow spark of light that buzzed like a bee, but had no actual shape that she’d ever seen.

  Now that we could manage, Flaminia replied more positively. We like you. You always remember our cake at dinner, and the little sacrifices through the week. When you and your Eagle go off to war, the servants usually forget. That, with a pout. Your sister remembers, but she won’t be here soon, either.

  “I’ll remind the servants why it’s important.” Eurydice ran a hand along the hanging ‘corpses’ of the household, setting them to swinging, and glanced across the plaza, where the matron of another house was in the middle of the self-same task. “I promise.”

  Thank you. We’re most grateful.

  At that point, her tasks complete, Eurydice called for a horse; she was currently the only Roman woman alive who was permitted to ride one, and could leave her house more or less at will, though she always left word where she was going.

  Caesarion’s work in the Senate on the subject of women and their freedoms had run into opposition from the Octavianites, who wanted to hold to Octavian’s requirement that a woman needed to have borne three children to a marriage enacted in a temple to be able to own property and travel without a male escort at all times—or, if a widow, to live in a household of her own. The entire affair had bogged down over the requirement of children.

  Caesarion and the Julii faction had demanded to know what the difference between a woman of forty with two children and a girl who’d borne twins and then a single child between the ages of fifteen and eighteen was. Or for that matter, a woman of sixty who’d taken the oath of a Vestal, been permitted to own property in that time, but who’d outlived her oath, and now, after thirty years of perfect probity, now once more required a male ‘guardian’ just to manage the property that she’d previously managed for thirty years. And the Octavianites had countered that non-citizen men who joined the ranks of the legion to earn the rights of citizenship did so for sixteen and twenty year terms, per Caesarion’s own laws. And that a woman couldn’t just be given those rights; they had to earn them, just as the non-citizen men did. Through providing more Romans citizens.

  The fact that a Roman woman could produce more Roman citizens—male children, anyway—but not have all the rights of a Roman citizen didn’t appear to be a contradiction to the Octavianite faction’s collective mind. And to the question of “and if a woman does ‘earn her rights by having three children, do her rights automatically pass on to her girl children?” their answer was a resounding no.

  Eurydice did her best to smile at the various Octavianite leaders when social gatherings made contact with them unavoidable. Unaccountably, they all seemed to have enormous difficulty meeting her hawk-gold stare. Particularly when she decided not to blink for a while. She also pointedly wore the parazonium knife Caesarion had given her on all public occasions. Women couldn’t bear military arms, by tradition, and the parazonium in particular was a symbol of authority over armed men. Not quite imperium, which was the right to levy armies, but the right to command. Caesarion had put his own knife in her hand as a symbol of her ability to command the Sixteenth Legion, the Accipitris. They’d taken their name from her own unique nickname—Accipitra. The hawk. Women weren’t usually accorded cognomens of their own, but she’d paid for hers in her own blood.

  Anyone who wanted to debate whether or not she should wear that knife, Caesarion usually directed to look at every monument to Roma. On which the goddess who embodied Rome’s spirit—and whom Eurydice suspected was a veiled version of Venus—wore the same exact parazonium, belted at her hip, in spite of the flowing lines of her stola.

  The core of the Sixteenth remained the two thousand legionnaires formerly in the service of the Tillii family, whose lives she’d saved in Hispania. The additional four thousand men and auxiliaries, she’d recruited herself in the past three years, at her own expense, though their salaries were paid out of the state budget, as all legionnaire’s pay now came. The hike in taxes to pay for a state-run army, instead of an army paid for by this patrician or that one had occasioned quite a bit of grumbling when their father had instituted it some eighteen years ago, but it was now a simple fact of life.

  The Sixteenth still had a formal legate—Lucius Cornelius Balbus, a man past fifty, who’d won renown in her father’s civil wars, and then had gone off to be proconsul in Africa for a number of years. He handled all day-to-day affairs, tactics, and military decisions. But the legionnaires were hers. Much to his initial disgruntlement. He was, after all, the only non-Roman ever accorded a triumph, and for his pains, he’d been placed in command of a legion, mostly manned by former traitors, which answered to a woman. He’d considered it all quite humiliating at first. Then he’d listened to the stories of the survivors, and gotten quite a bit more intrigued.

  Surrounded by ten Praetorians on horseback—former members of the Tenth Legion, who’d been moved to permanent body-guard and household guard status after twenty years of service, and who hadn’t elected to retire—Eurydice rode out of Rome, towards the winter encampment of the Sixteenth. Her men were all already in the practice yards when she arrived, despite the early hour, and she heard a few of them shout, “Accipitra!” as she passed—something that still had the power to daze her. Not only was it her cognomen, a name that she’d earned in blood, but it was also her Name. The name that the gods themselves knew her by. And now, all of Rome knew it, too.

  She waved, acknowledging the occasional cheers of greeting, but didn’t slow her pace through the camp, until she reached the headquarters building. Which had another building beside it, which was considered so secret that on joining the Sixteenth, every man took an oath before the Eagle of the Legion, and swore by Dis and the Styx not to reveal its presence or purpose.

  This building was her goal. For inside, was a small library and a series of classrooms and studies. All with tile walls and stone floors—the better for preventing the spread of fire. “Good morning, domina,” Ianthe said as Eurydice entered, leaving her escort outside with the chill air that had stung her cheeks on the ride over. The Hellene woman turned from the hearth at which she was stirring some sort of herbal brew in a cauldron. Even after three years in Rome, this priestess of Hecate still preferred an undyed peplos to a tunic and stola, though she’d draped a shawl around her shoulders as a concession to the chill. “Here to inspect our progress?”

  “That, among other things,” Eurydice said, smiling. “Is that tea, or something I really shouldn’t sample?”

  “I don’t recommend it,” Ianthe murmured, her dark eyes wide. “Silphium. The most valuable plant in the world. The Carthaginians knew of its efficacy, but believed that it could not be cultivated outside of Africa. It has nearly been driven to extinction, domina. But a few devotees of my lady have kept caches of its seeds, and have managed to cultivate it carefully and slowly, in fields where no men tread.”

  Eurydice’s eyebrows rose. “What does it do?” she asked, cautiously sniffing at the brew. “Is it a poison?”

  Ianthe shook her head. “No. Like the greens of wild carrots, or catmint brewed in wine, it . . . brings the menstrual flow.” She paused. “Even if you happen to be with child, very shortly, you will not be. That is the reason why it was so highly valued in trade from Cyrenaica. Too many people find themselves with infants they can’t feed. Better to prevent them from being born, than watch them scream with hunger, and die of it.” She stirred the brew again. “Remember the smell, my lady,” Ianthe enjoined her. “
It’s highly distinctive, because the most efficacious part of the plant is its resin. Little can cover its odor, but few people recognize the scent anymore. And though it is rare and costly, hands with the right amount of coin can still purchase it. And people threatened by the birth of a child to, say, an Empress?” Ianthe’s smile was chill. “Might pay dearly to have such a thing added to your cup.”

  “Wouldn’t the protective spirits bound to me recognize it?” Eurydice asked, glancing down at one of the rings she wore.

  “It won’t harm you at all. A spirit could miss its presence quite easily.” Ianthe gestured. “Call them. Let them taste of it, so that they can recognize its essence.”

  After Eurydice had done precisely that, several others joined them in the main room with its warm hearth. She recognized them all, of course. Seleukos, a physician formerly with the Fifth Legion, had been included in this small organization at Caesarion’s request, for his medical knowledge was exceptional. He was, in fact, writing an encyclopedia of medical terms, illnesses, current wound treatments, and herbal remedies—assisted ably by Ianthe in the area of curatives, poisons, and antidotes. As such, when he’d been transferred to the Sixteenth, another man of the Fifth had come with him, a very senior centurion who was his particular friend . . . who’d suffered a severe head wound some five years ago, which Caesarion had cured.

  Everything comes around, Eurydice thought, nodding now to Kheiron, a sorcerer-philosopher from Crete, and Zaracas, a Carthaginian who spent most of his time thinking about atoms, and having arguments in his head with long-dead Aristotle. “How goes our census?” Eurydice asked, warming her hands around a cup of safer mint tea, this one poured by Seleukos. “Do we have any new recruits?”