Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  *

  IN the morning an imperial flagship bears down on our harbor. Its red and gold banners lead our spotters to believe the vessel belongs to Rome’s most formidable military leader, the emperor’s son-in-law, Agrippa. My nerves are still raw from yesterday’s encounter with the snakes. Now Admiral Agrippa’s ship is on our coast and I can think of no good reason for it.

  Perhaps the snakes were a warning after all.

  I hurry to find the king. He is already at the gate, ready to mount his horse, and I call after him, “Did you know Agrippa was coming? Did he send a herald ahead of him?”

  Juba doesn’t share my distress; or at least, if he does, he hides it well. “No. Perhaps he means his visit to be a pleasant surprise.”

  I doubt this very much. The admiral, whose warships sent my mother’s fleet and all her dreams to the bottom of the sea, often surprises, but never pleasantly. He loathed my mother as a wicked seductress and he loathes me too because he believes the same of me. Agrippa is not a man to take respite on my balmy shores; he would never come here except on official business.

  Perhaps the emperor has sent him to punish us. Then a worse thought occurs to me. Once, when the emperor fell ill, he gave Agrippa his signet ring and named him successor. What if the emperor has finally been bested by one of his many ailments? What if the emperor is dead and Agrippa is now master of Rome?

  If so, he has come either to secure our fealty or to invade our shores. He would need no army to conquer us. More than half our soldiers are Roman and would heed his commands before ours. We may rule here, Juba and I, but we’re still subjects of the empire. So if Agrippa has come to strip us of our thrones—or even our lives—there’s little to be done about it now. There are precious few places in the world that anyone can run for safety from Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.

  Seeking calm, I remind myself yet again that I am my own safe harbor. I’ve learned to harness the heka that swirls in my blood—the ancient Egyptian magic that is my birthright. I’ve used the winds that answer my fingertips to defend myself before; I can do it now. “How shall we greet Agrippa?”

  “I’ve ordered ready a feast of welcome,” my husband says. “There’s no time to assemble a royal procession. We’ll eschew formality and greet him as a friend.”

  In this, I follow Juba’s lead. He knows Agrippa well; he’s served with him both in military campaigns and in the administration of Spain. With shaky fingers, I remove my royal diadem, the emblem of my status as queen, and I leave my purple cloak behind. I would do this for no other Roman save the emperor himself, and oh, how I resent it.

  “Be of good cheer, Selene,” the king says. “Perhaps his wife will be with him.”

  That would cheer me, and when we go down to the docks, I’m encouraged by the sight of a lady’s embroidered palanquin on the deck of the imperial ship. It must belong to Julia, because I doubt Agrippa has ever traveled by litter a day in his life. He’s a man who strides, marches, gallops, or sails. He’s not a man to be carried anywhere. I’m ready to meet him, whatever his intent, but when the plank comes down, only feminine figures swathed in expensive cloth and extravagant jewels emerge from the ship.

  And then I see my dear friend.

  Julia forgoes the palanquin and walks down the plank in the center of her women. I must hold myself back from crying out her name in gladness. Chryssa, however, shows none of my reserve. From her place behind me at my right shoulder, I hear my freedwoman gasp. “Phoebe! My sister Phoebe is with Lady Julia.”

  Chryssa has not seen her sister since the days they were slaves together in Rome, so I release my freedwoman from any duty of decorum. “Go,” I tell her, and Chryssa hurries down the length of the docks, her sandals clopping as she runs to embrace her sister with wild enthusiasm and tears.

  While they embrace, the emperor’s daughter approaches me, flanked by her ladies and an escort of guards. “Lady Julia.” I smile, my arms outstretched. “We welcome you to Mauretania.”

  From beneath the veil of a bright saffron palla, Julia’s mischievous little mouth breaks into a wide grin. “Always a proud Ptolemy, aren’t you? So free to use the royal we, even with me.”

  I had only intended to include Juba in my welcome, but before I can defend myself, Julia squeezes me tight, pushing the air from my lungs. My Macedonian guards grunt in dismay and, in the aftermath of the hug, I strive for a dignified posture, which makes Julia laugh. “Do you feel the swell of my belly?” she asks, smoothing her gown tight over her abdomen so we can see the small bump. “I think I’m with child again, but it isn’t contagious.” Then she hugs me again. “Oh, I’ve missed you, Selene. More than I can say.”

  I’ve missed her too. She was my first friend, our bond forged in childhood, when we were both at the mercy of her father’s temper. We have always been a mismatched pair, her wit and high-spiritedness pulling against my more serious, cautious nature. Our reunion makes my heart fill close to bursting. “I’m overjoyed to see you, Julia. Truly, I am!”

  My husband adds his greeting. “We’re honored by your visit and offer felicitations if, indeed, you are to give your husband a second child.”

  “A third,” Julia corrects him, pointedly. “Don’t forget my little Julilla because she’s a girl.”

  The king smiles. “I beg your pardon. I too have a daughter and take great joy in her.”

  Isidora is not his daughter, but he’s claimed her as such, so I do not so much as glance at him when he says this. Instead, I snap my fingers at a servant. “Princess Isidora will be pleased to have new playmates. We’ll have the nursery made ready for your children, Julia.”

  “Oh, Selene, there’s no need,” she says. “My children are with Agrippa. Why, I practically need Agrippa’s permission even to hold them. Now, are we going to stand on the docks all day or are you going to show me this magnificent palace of yours?”

  Bewildered, my wary eyes drift to the ship. “Shouldn’t we wait for your husband?”

  Julia laughs in a way that makes me extremely nervous. “It would be a long wait since I left him across the narrow strait.”

  I blink. “You left Agrippa?”

  “Oh, yes, though I doubt he knows it yet. He’s returning to Rome by way of Gaul to meet with officials along the way. He sent me by ship, but I decided upon a change in travel plans. And why not? I wanted to pay a visit to my dearest friend.”

  Instantly, a sweat breaks out on Juba’s brow. “Are you saying your husband has no idea as to your whereabouts, Lady Julia?”

  She smiles brightly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Isn’t it marvelous? This way, he won’t even have to worry. Well, then. Are you going to refuse to receive the emperor’s daughter, King Juba, or will you turn me away?”

  Stunned, my husband snaps his mouth shut. I’m similarly unsettled. I admire Julia’s nerve, but resent that she’s trapped us. We cannot refuse to receive her, yet to welcome her is to shelter her in this rebellion against her husband, and can only invite his wrath.

  The king speaks gruffly. “Lady Julia, in loyalty to your father we offer you our hospitality. However, this is not how a Roman matron should behave.” Julia’s women gasp at the king’s rebuke and even our courtiers go wide-eyed. But my husband has good reason to be angry. Julia’s visit will draw the emperor’s attention; she’s endangered our peaceful existence here. “It is no true friendship that you show my wife in coming here without your husband’s leave. And once you’re delivered of his baby, I hope Agrippa beats you like the spoiled child you are.”

  Without further warning, the king turns on his heel. No one can stop him. Given that Julia has fled here like a fugitive, he’s not obligated to show her courtesy. Still, Julia’s ladies titter and our courtiers murmur to one another, unsure how to behave. That the king turned his back on the emperor’s daughter will cause gossip; perhaps he means it to. This way he can say that he didn’t encourage her.

  But as the king retreats, his guards trailing after him, Julia snorts with
laughter. “Oh, look. I’ve created a scene.”

  *

  JULIA is suitably impressed with my marble porticoes, vast mosaics, and sparkling fountains that shoot so high they cool the air with mist. She wades knee-deep through the sea of lavender bushes in my gardens. The shrubs are a greenish grey now, but will bloom purple come springtime. When I tell her this, Julia closes her eyes a moment as if imagining. “Oh, Selene, this is as beautiful as my father’s palace in Capri and lovelier than Livia’s manor house, with all her white hens.”

  “Let’s not spoil our visit with talk of your horrid stepmother,” I say, for we’ve both been victims of the wicked machinations behind Livia’s deceptively placid smile.

  If there is any person in the world who loathes the emperor’s wife as much as I do, it’s Julia, so she shrugs. “As you wish.” Then she motions for me to walk with her, far ahead of our ladies. “Isn’t it strange to be followed by attendants all the time? We should dismiss them and run wild together, as we did when we were girls in Rome.”

  Perhaps she remembers a different childhood than I do. “We never ran wild. We only dreamed of doing so.”

  “Well, we can do as we like now. I’m the wife of Agrippa and the daughter of the emperor. People bend themselves in half trying to please me, for they know that when I return home, I’ll be First Woman in Rome.”

  “Then why didn’t you? Return to Rome, I mean?”

  “I wanted to see you,” she replies, affectionately leaning her shoulder against mine as we walk. “I didn’t think I’d have another chance. And now you’re stuck with me. Even if my husband is enraged by my visit, he won’t want me risking the baby with a trip over the winter’s sea just to return to him. So you and I have our freedom. We can have our dream. At least until springtime.”

  I should scold her. I should convince her to cross the narrow strait at once and return to Spain, where her husband’s soldiers can escort her overland back to Rome. But all I can think is that I’ll have her until springtime. She’ll be here for the rains. She’ll see the rich earth of my kingdom turned under the plow during the sowing season. She’ll celebrate the Saturnalia with us. I’ll have her until springtime, and I mean to enjoy every moment before we’re brought to account by the men who rule our lives.

  *

  THE next day, we celebrate a wedding.

  Though Chryssa is as haughty a Greek as any freed slave might be, she’s consented to marry Maysar of the Gaetulian tribes, a Berber chieftain who has advised us since the earliest days of our reign. To anyone who objects to the match, I point out that it was the practice of Alexander the Great to have his generals intermarry with his Persian subjects, and my freedwoman is the closest thing I have to a general.

  This makes my courtiers laugh but also serves to remind them of the Hellenistic precept of harmonia under which I intend to bring together our diverse and quarreling peoples with all their various languages and peculiar customs. In that respect, Chryssa and Maysar serve as a fine example. In Greek tradition, my freedwoman has cut a lock of her hair and burnt it in offering. But as a bride of a Berber, she’s allowed her hands to be tattooed with henna. And when she speaks her vows beneath the canopied tent, she pledges not her heart, but her liver, where the tribesmen believe true love resides.

  Julia giggles at this, whispering in my ear, “I pledge in friendship to you, my bladder … or would you prefer a knucklebone?”

  I jab the sharp point of my elbow into Julia’s ribs so hard she yelps. It shocks me to realize how badly I want her to approve of my Berbers; if she discounts them as barbarians, I know that our friendship will suffer. But perhaps I need not have worried. When a chorus of Berber women sing, undulating to wild drumbeats, Julia’s eyes sparkle with enchantment. The tribal rhythms are exotic, unique to Mauretania, but the emperor’s daughter claps her hands and dances as if she has known them all her life.

  As girls, we weren’t allowed to dance. Octavia and Livia were of the opinion that dancing was for drunkards and whores. But here, no one stops Julia from doing anything she wants to do, and so she dances until she’s dizzied.

  Collapsing onto a couch beside me, she holds her belly with one hand, reaching with the other to sample a chickpea salad with barley, mint, and olive oil. Folding the mixture into a piece of flatbread, she motions with her chin to the bride. “I hope you won’t regret giving Chryssa her freedom. I’m afraid you’ll lose her now.”

  With these words, she sends a twinge of anxiety through me. As my agent here in Mauretania, Chryssa has become a great lady of commerce, accustomed to bartering and bickering with shippers and bankers and tradesmen. She presides over royal monopolies. Citrus-wood furniture, amber, copper, and purple dye. Were she not a woman, she’d have command of the kingdom’s treasury too. But more importantly, Chryssa has been with me since I was a child. Alone amongst my intimates, my freedwoman knows the truth of what the emperor did to me.

  Now Chryssa sits beside her new husband, playfully stroking his beard, and I’m irritated that Julia should make me feel anything but happy for her. “Why should I lose Chryssa? As my freedwoman, she still serves me well …”

  Julia takes a gulp of unwatered wine. “You’ll lose her because she’s besotted with her groom. There’s no room in a heart for two.”

  Can that be true? Already I love my infant son and my daughter more than my own life. My heart has room for more … but Chryssa isn’t bound to me by blood, and the thought of losing her nearly spoils my celebratory mood.

  It also makes me petty. “Save room for the lungfish, Julia,” I say, knowing they have a disagreeably strong taste. “They burrow into the soil and can live for quite a long time breathing air instead of water. The Berbers capture and store them, mud and all, so that we can eat fresh fish even when the streambeds dry out.”

  Julia eagerly takes some from a passing silver tray. I think she’ll gag on it, but she chews with relish, her lips shining with oil. “I predict that I’m to become very fat during my stay and not only because I’m eating for two!” Just then, her eyes dart to where my eleven-year-old niece sits near the king, and asks, “That can’t be your daughter, so grown up already?”

  “No. My Isidora is abed this hour. That girl is Pythodorida of Tralles, my half sister’s daughter.”

  Curiosity sparks in Julia’s eyes. “Another half sister?”

  “My father’s daughter,” I explain, remembering when I first met my half sister on the Isle of Samos, where, in endless captivity, I awaited the emperor’s pleasure. “Lady Antonia, or Hybrida, as we called her, after her mother.”

  Julia sighs dramatically. “How is it that I am an only child whereas you need both hands to count all your siblings?”

  “I suppose it’s because my father was notoriously fond of women, whereas yours …” I trail off, looking away and hoping it’s true that Julia is an only child. I have always hoped that my daughter was conceived in love during the storm that once brought Helios and I together and not when the emperor forced himself upon me. I don’t want to believe, or give Julia any reason to suspect, that my daughter could be her sister. And I’m relieved when she doesn’t press me to finish the statement.

  “I’d like to meet this Hybrida,” Julia decides.

  “Sadly, you cannot. She came with me from Greece but fell ill and died last winter. We found her in bed, curled round my old cat, Bast. They were both gone. I like to think that Bast helped her at the end, like a protectress in the night.”

  “Oh,” Julia says with a sympathetic shake of her head. “I am sorry. It was a bad year. We lost Virgil too so suddenly …”

  The emperor’s poet died of fever, but his death didn’t seem sudden to me. Even though Virgil penned vile propaganda against my dead parents, he was my friend, and when last I saw him, he seemed a broken man. He swore to me that his Aeneid would be burned when he died, but when he fell ill in Brundisium, Augustus acted swiftly to seize Virgil’s work before it could be destroyed. In the end, the emperor lost h
is poet, but not his poem. Already, the wretched Aeneid is the most famous story since Homer’s epics. In spite of this, I raise a cup in honor of Virgil and we drink.

  “To Virgil,” Julia agrees. “And to your sister … you must have been very fond of her to let her daughter wear royal purple.”

  “Quite fond. When she fell ill, I swore to her that I’d bring up Pythia as my own.”

  About to take another gulp of her wine, Julia stops and gives me a long, hard look. “Are you establishing a little embassy of royal orphans, like Octavia did when we were young?”

  “I could do worse than to emulate her. Your aunt was kind to me—even if I didn’t recognize it for kindness at the time. There was no reason she needed to gather up all my father’s orphaned children …”

  “Except for all the usual political reasons,” Julia says drily. “My virtuous, venerated aunt has a warm heart, but never forget that she arranged my first marriage to ensure that her son would be the next emperor—”

  “You loved Marcellus,” I counter, unwilling to hear a new version of a sad story.

  Julia admits it with a shrug. “I did. We were good companions. We let each other love freely. But don’t pretend I have no cause to resent Octavia. When Marcellus left me a widow, she sold me to Admiral Agrippa.”

  “Octavia did not sell you.”

  “Not for money. For the wages of spite.”

  It’s a simplification of a very complicated dynastic game and Julia blames the wrong person for her woes. Or perhaps she understands my role in it, and I stand accused. I argue, “Would you have rather been married to one of the Claudian brothers? Because that’s what would have happened if Octavia hadn’t given her blessing to your match with Agrippa. Your father would’ve married you off to one of Livia’s sons and then your malignant stepmother would have had us all entirely in her power.”

  “I would rather not have married at all,” Julia says, leaning back with a sly smile. “Here in Mauretania I have a taste of what that’s like. You must show me everything. I want to swim in the sea and picnic in the hills. I want to trade for silver jewelry in your market and buy some of these magnificent woven carpets. I want to make an offering in a temple to strange gods and tour your purple-dye factory. I want to see a lion and ride a camel. No, an elephant!”