The Egyptian Royals Collection

by Michelle Moran

  “Just fine.”

  But even if Gaia survived, she would likely end up in a lupanar, abused from the time she was old enough to speak. My mother had told me there were men who liked girls too young to understand what was happening to them. Tears rolled down Horatia’s cheeks, and Julia whispered, “Isn’t there someone who can adopt her?”

  “How could I arrange it without Pollio knowing?”

  The midwife pulled her cloak over the child, and I turned away from the terrible scene. While Horatia and Julia wept, I made my way slowly down the stairs. In the triclinium, the harpist was still playing, and Pollio was raising a cup of wine in toast.

  “What happened?” Alexander asked.

  “It’s a girl,” I told him.

  Marcellus frowned. “Was she deformed?”

  “No. Pollio wanted a son, so he ordered that she be put out.”

  “As a foundling?” he cried.

  I nodded.

  Octavia rose from her couch and came over to me. “Where is Horatia?” she asked quietly.

  I told her the story, even the part about the two hundred denarii and the Columna Lactaria. When I was finished, her face was hard.

  “What do you think will happen to her?” I asked.

  “The infant or Horatia?”

  “Both,” I said.

  Octavia drew a heavy breath. “If they survive, they will live the rest of their lives in terrible sadness.” She walked back to the table where Octavian was reclining between his wife and Terentilla, then whispered something into his ear. He glanced briefly at me, then rose from the couch.

  “What is this?” Pollio exclaimed. “The dessert has not even come.”

  Octavian’s voice was clipped. “I hear that your wife has given birth,” he said. “It would be rude of me to stay, when you belong with her.”

  Pollio’s fat mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

  “Marcellus,” Octavian said sharply, “go and find Julia.”

  Pollio looked around him. “But we cannot let Saturnalia be interrupted by women’s matters.”

  “The children of Rome matter to everyone,” Octavian said coldly. “Even foolish men like you.”

  Several dozen guests remained in the triclinium, but everyone who had come with Octavian prepared to leave.

  “Congratulations,” Agrippa said, not knowing what had happened in the upstairs rooms.

  Pollio’s face took on the color of unbaked dough. He led us through the atrium to the carriages outside. “Are you certain?” he protested. “It’s cold. Perhaps you would like to stay the night!”

  Octavia turned and said quietly, “I’m sure your daughter would have liked to stay the night as well. When you shiver, remember how cold it is in the dump.”

  On the ride back to the Palatine, I thought of Horatia’s daughter freezing beneath the Columna Lactaria while the rest of Rome drank wine beside crackling fires and ate roasted meats. And once all of his guests left, Pollio would probably climb under the covers next to his wife, demanding her attention even as her breasts leaked milk through her bindings. The thought made me wince, and while Julia wept softly, Alexander and Marcellus exchanged doleful looks.

  When we reached Octavia’s villa, Juba excused himself, but Agrippa and Octavian remained, settling with the rest of us in the warmth of the library, where Vitruvius’s plans were spread across the tables. No one said anything, until Julia broke the silence.

  “What about a home for foundlings?” she asked.

  Marcellus looked up from his place near the brazier, and Alexander caught my eye.

  “A place where mothers can leave their infants and they can be adopted by freedwomen and citizens,” she said. “Selene has drawn sketches of what such a house might look like.”

  “And how would that help Rome?” Octavian demanded.

  “We would be saving lives. Roman lives,” Julia protested.

  “And increasing the number of mouths on the dole,” Livia retorted.

  “Not if citizens were to adopt the infants!”

  “And who would want to do that?” Livia asked. “When a woman is barren, she takes a child from a slave. Why would she need a dirty foundling?”

  Octavia recoiled. “I doubt that there was anything dirty about Horatia’s child.”

  “How do you know? Did you see it? The child was probably deformed.”

  “It was perfectly healthy!” Julia exclaimed. “I was there and so was Selene.” She turned to her father. “If there was a foundling house—”

  “It would be too costly,” Octavian overruled her. “There is a Columna Lactaria for a reason, and the plebs are satisfied. We do enough by paying nutrices to suckle infants.”

  “But most of them die!” Julia cried.

  “Then that is the will of the gods.”

  She looked at me, but I knew better than to speak.

  “You do enough for these people,” Livia assured Octavian. “Free grain, free baths, even men who fight fires and patrol the Subura watching for crime. How much are you supposed to give?”

  “As much as possible,” Octavia said.

  “Then why don’t you fund this foundling house?” she demanded.

  “If my brother thought it was a good idea, I would.”

  Everyone in the library looked to Octavian, who was shaking despite the warmth in the room. “My wife is right. We do enough.”

  Julia’s eyes shone with tears, and I saw Marcellus pat her knee tenderly.

  “And Horatia’s child?” Julia whispered.

  “It was a girl,” Octavian said simply. “The incident was an unlucky beginning to Saturnalia. But I plan to end this night with good news.”

  I couldn’t imagine what kind of news could dispel the unhappiness that had settled over the library, but when Octavian looked to Agrippa, his general announced, “I am getting married.”

  Julia gasped, and I wondered if she feared that she might be the bride. “To whom?” she ventured.

  “My daughter Claudia,” Octavia said.

  “My sister?” Marcellus exclaimed. He looked at his mother. “How come I didn’t know about this?”

  Octavia smiled primly. “Well, now you do.”

  For the rest of Saturnalia, Julia kept a vigil for Horatia’s daughter, going every day to the Columna Lactaria to search for her. For seven days we battled the wind and rain, holding each other on the slick cobblestones while Juba and the Praetorian shone the light of their bronze lanterns on the empty streets. But on the eighth day, Gallia demanded to know what Julia would do if she found the infant.

  “I would bring her home!”

  “What? To your father’s villa?” Marcellus asked. “Be sensible, Julia. Someone has taken her.”

  “But who?” she shouted, and her voice echoed across the icy courtyard. The marketplace was closed for the last day of Saturnalia, and anyone with good judgment was at home, hunched in front of a brazier, cooking lamb in the kitchens and drinking hot wine.

  “It might have been a well-meaning citizen,” Alexander said.

  “But what if it was the owner of a lupanar?”

  “Well, there’s no way of knowing which it is,” Juba said. “No one’s going to return her now.”

  Julia stared at the column where thousands of women had left their infants over the years. The courtyard was silent.

  “The rain is about to come,” Juba remarked.

  We followed him back to the waiting carriage, and inside, Julia fretted over the night we had visited Pollio. “I should have taken Gaia from the midwife.”

  “And what would you have done with her, Domina?”

  “Found her a home!”

  “With whom?” Marcellus asked. “Where?”

  Julia looked at Juba. “What do you think has happened to her?” I knew why she was asking him. Of everyone in the carriage, he would give the answer that would come closest to the truth.

  “A freedman found her and took her home.”

  “But how do you know?
”

  “Because no patricians live near the markets or would ever want to be caught there at night.”

  “But what if it was a freedman with a lupanar?”

  “Don’t you think it’s more likely that men of that sort were indoors, celebrating the first night of Saturnalia?” he asked. “Not standing in an abandoned marketplace waiting for foundlings, when those can be had any other day of the week.”

  This settled Julia’s mind a little. But even when Alexander and I turned twelve on the first day of the New Year, she was quiet during Octavia’s celebration of our dies natalis.

  “Tomorrow,” Octavia offered her kindly, “why don’t you come and help me prepare for Claudia’s wedding?”

  Julia looked up from the crackling brazier, where cinnamon sticks burned among the charcoal to scent the triclinium. “What about your slaves?”

  “Oh, they can do the tedious work. The cleaning, the cooking. But who will help me with the tunic and veil? There are only two weeks before my daughters come home from Pompeii and Claudia marries.”

  So through the miserable month of January, while ice still covered the fountains and Octavian wrapped himself in furs, Julia helped Octavia prepare. On the way to and from the ludus, she told us about the jewels Claudia would be wearing, what her sandals would look like, and how her carriage would be decorated for her trip to Rome. But when I asked her why Octavia’s eldest daughters were living so far away, she looked from me to Alexander and hesitated.

  “You can tell them,” Tiberius said on our way back from the ludus. “It’s not as though it’s their fault.”

  Julia nodded uncertainly. “Octavia had to give them away in order to marry Antony. Then, when Antony left her, Claudia and Marcella chose to remain with their aunt in Pompeii.”

  I was quiet for a moment. After all of the unhappiness my mother and father had brought into her life, it was surprising that Octavia treated us with any kindness at all.

  My brother shook his head. “I have no idea why your mother treats us so well.”

  “She loves children,” Marcellus said simply. “Wait until you meet my older sisters. We’re all very similar.”

  “You mean they gamble?” Tiberius asked.

  “He means they’re both blond with blue eyes,” Julia said, ignoring Tiberius’s quip. “They’re his only full sisters.” She turned to me and added brightly, “You should help us with the planning.”

  “Oh yes,” Marcellus said. “It’s so much fun. Much better than watching the races, which is what we could be doing.”

  Julia swatted him. “Alexander enjoys it.”

  “Because he likes you girls. I can’t stand all the talk of hairnets and paint.”

  “Come help us,” she begged me. “Vitruvius doesn’t need you every day.”

  “He probably doesn’t need me at all.”

  “Nonsense,” my brother said as we walked. Across the courtyard, Gallia and Juba were waiting for us, bundled into their warmest winter cloaks. “Just yesterday,” Alexander boasted, “he told her that when the weather turns, he’ll be taking her with him on his inspections.”

  “A girl?” Tiberius cried.

  “What does that matter?” Julia retorted.

  “What business does a girl have with construction? Look at her! She can’t even lift a brick.”

  “I can take measurements,” I said sharply. “And I can sketch a design for the flooring or the rooftop better than any of Vitruvius’s old men.”

  Tiberius laughed. “So what is Vitruvius going to do? Introduce you as his apprentice?”

  “I’ll be going in the mornings before the builders get to work.”

  He smiled. “So he is ashamed.”

  “Leave her alone,” Marcellus warned.

  “Does that mean you won’t help us?” Julia pouted.

  “Yes,” I said firmly.

  By the time we arrived home on the Palatine, half a dozen litters crowded the portico of Octavia’s villa.

  “The priestesses are here,” Gallia warned. “Be silent when you enter.”

  Juba and Tiberius followed us into the atrium, where the priestesses of Juno had arranged themselves around a brazier. Octavia held an unfurled scroll above the flames, while Agrippa fanned the fire with his hand.

  “What are they doing?” I whispered.

  Julia leaned over so that her lips were at my ear. “The scroll Octavia is holding is a calendar. When the priestesses decide there has been enough smoke, they will interpret the burn marks and determine which days are dies nefasti.”

  I drew away from her. “Bad-luck days?”

  “March, May, and all of June are unsuitable for weddings. So are the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides of any month, and any day following those. And no one can be married on the day of any religious festival.”

  “Is it really bad luck?”

  She rolled her eyes. We listened as the priestesses chanted to Juno, the goddess of motherhood and marriage. Octavian, holding a wax tablet and a stylus, stood next to his sister. He was wearing a heavy fur cloak that was too big around his shoulders. I could see that he was bitterly cold, keeping away from the open roof, where rain was falling into the icy pool. His face had turned as white as his cloak, and the only color to be seen in it was the gray of his eyes.

  “That is enough,” one of the priestesses said.

  Octavia immediately withdrew the calendar, and the priestess who had spoken held it up to the dim light from above. The other women stopped chanting, and the only sound was the patter of rain.

  “Not February second,” she said.

  Octavian scribbled something with his stylus, and I noticed that the polished ivory brace on his right hand now extended all the way up his arm.

  “Is your father well?” Alexander whispered to Julia.

  She nodded. “He is like this every winter.”

  Even on the worst days in Alexandria, I had never seen my father look so weak.

  “Not February tenth,” the priestess said.

  Octavian made another mark on his tablet.

  “The best day in February will be the twelfth.”

  Octavian looked up from his tablet. “The day before Lupercalia?” he challenged.

  The priestess would have responded, but suddenly lightning cracked through the sky and thunder shook the walls of the atrium.

  “The augurs!” Octavian shouted. “Go to the collegium and bring the augurs!”

  Alexander turned to Marcellus. “What’s happening?”

  “Thunder,” he replied fearfully. “It’s a terrible omen.”

  Lightning flashed again, and the thunder clapped, bringing with it a fresh torrent of rain. Octavia said curtly, “Get to the library!”

  We crowded into the library, where Juba helped Octavia light the oil lamps until the paneled room glowed a burnished orange. The priestesses huddled together near the brazier, but it was the woman who had spoken who looked the most fearful. If the augurs came and declared that the gods were upset with her pronouncement, it might mean any number of terrible things for her.

  “What does this portend?” Octavian asked. He was looking at Juba, who had taken a seat next to the brazier. Outside, rain poured into the fountains and pool.

  “We should wait for the augurs,” Juba said.

  I was close enough to hear Tiberius whisper to Juba, “You don’t really believe it means anything? It’s the precursor of rain. That’s it!”

  “The augurs are coming,” Juba said firmly.

  “But you don’t believe them! Tell the truth. Even Cicero mocked the augurs.”

  “And Cicero ended his days with his head on the rostrum,” Juba said forcefully.

  Some of the priestesses whimpered, and an uneasy silence fell over the library. I imagined the augurs tucked in comfortably on their couches, buried beneath heavy piles of blankets until a slave summoned them into the rain and wind. What sort of mood would they be in when they arrived? Angry enough to condemn a priestess of Juno?


  When a slave appeared at the door, everyone sat up. “They’re here, Domine.”

  Octavian rose. “Bring them in!” He looked at Agrippa. “Nothing must go wrong with this marriage. It must be blessed by all of the gods.”

  The first augur who entered looked eager to please. He shepherded the others inside the crowded library, and addressed his first question to Octavian. “We are humbled to be of service, Caesar. Is it the thunder that brings us here today?”

  The priestess of Juno explained what had happened, and Octavian added, “As soon as she made the pronouncement, it came. There had been no thunder the entire morning. For days, there hasn’t been any lightning.”

  “And where did the lightning come from?” the augur asked.

  “The east,” Juba said.

  Octavian frowned. “I didn’t see that.”

  “Because you were writing. I was watching the skies.”

  The first augur lifted his arms. “Then it is a sign of blessing!”

  Octavia placed her hand on her heart, and her brother persisted, “Even though the chosen day is the day before Lupercalia?”

  A second augur nodded. “The gods have spoken.”

  Tiberius gave Juba a triumphant glance, but Juba was too polite to respond with anything but a curt nod. He’s lying, I thought. He doesn’t believe in this and just wants it to be done. No one can know whether it came from the east or the west. But no one said anything, and Agrippa’s wedding date was set for the twelfth day of February.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  February 12, 28 BC

  CLAUDIA STOOD in the middle of her mother’s chamber while a dozen slaves rushed around, plaiting her hair into six even braids and fastening her crimson veil with flowers. She was giddy and shy, always blushing and surprisingly naïve for a nineteen-year-old woman. Perhaps because her skin was so light, every passing emotion colored her face a curious shade of pink. It would begin in her cheeks, then spread to her nose, her ears, and finally her neck. I noticed that Marcella had the same coloring, as if her face were an open scroll waiting to be read.

  “The Romans certainly do things differently than the Egyptians,” Alexander remarked.