Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  But Julia shakes her head. “Agrippa doesn’t trust him. He’s heard that Maecenas once advised the emperor either to offer me to Agrippa as a bride or to kill him.”

  That’s true. I was there. But I do not confirm it.

  Julia continues, “So there is only one man upon which both Augustus and Agrippa agree might make peace between them. That is Juba.”

  My mouth goes dry as it all falls into place. “Yet you said nothing, all this time?”

  “The seas don’t open until the month sacred to Mars, so what would be the point of upsetting you when there is nothing to be done about it until springtime?”

  I want to shake her. Not only for keeping this news from Juba, but for the news I am afraid she is still keeping from me. In my mind’s eye, I see the cobras rise from a basket of figs, but I force myself to ask, “What aren’t you saying? What is to be done, Julia?”

  “I carry a summons, Selene. My father commands you and Juba to return to Rome.”

  *

  I won’t go, I tell myself. When the sea opens and the ships make ready to sail for Rome, I’ll delay. I’ll plead illness. I’ll plead madness if I must. But I won’t return to Rome. I won’t return to the emperor’s side. I will not be his mistress. I will not play that game again. Never again.

  So I say nothing. I don’t tell my husband of the message that Julia carries from the emperor. Not when the nights are cold and the sea is rough and we are cut off from the rest of the world. Not when I can lose myself in the daily rhythm of our lives and believe the world we’re building here for ourselves can remain untouched.

  There will be time enough to tell my husband before the sailing season, so we go on with the Saturnalia. In token of the holiday, I give Juba a bust in the likeness of his father, the Numidian king—something rare that I acquired at great expense. I take pride in this gift, because I don’t think my husband has ever even seen a portrait of his father before.

  But I worry when Juba unveils it and stares so long at the marbled face. My husband swallows, as if searching the stone replica of his father’s image for some reflection of himself. “Now I see why, when I was a child in Rome, I was mocked as the son of a hirsute barbarian. Quite a beard …”

  “I think he was handsome. Don’t you like it?”

  Juba clears his throat. “Thank you for such a thoughtful gift, Selene. It’s only that I don’t know where I can keep it.”

  I think I understand. We’re both the children of Rome’s enemies. Like my mother, his father battled Rome and lost. All our lives, we’ve been forced to renounce our parents. To dishonor their memories with silence, if not denunciation. If my husband should give a place of distinction in our palace to this bust of his father, the infamous Berber rebel, it might be taken amiss by his master in Rome. It might be taken as a symbol that we sympathize with our subjects who would drive the Romans out. But I didn’t make this gift with any political purpose in mind … or so I told myself at the time. “Keep it in your bedchamber, where only you can see it. No one can fault you for a private sentimentality.”

  Juba strokes his chin. “If that’s true, it strikes me as odd, for it’s our private sentimentalities that pose the most danger, don’t you think?” I have the strangest sense that this is a veiled barb aimed at me. And when I meet his gaze, I realize that he already knows what I’ve been keeping from him. He points to a roll of vellum lying half-opened on his writing table. “Julia delivered the official summons this morning. Sealed with the emperor’s signet ring.”

  At a loss for what else I might say or do, I drift to the table, examining the sphinx, the emperor’s personal symbol, pressed deeply into the red wax. Written in the most formal language, the summons gives no hint of the emperor’s state of mind. Whether he is furious or indifferent to us, we might never know from reading this. It says only that the Ludi Seculares will be held in July. It’s to be a grand ceremony to announce a new age. And we’re required to return to Rome to reaffirm our loyalty along with the other client kings and queens.

  “Go without me,” I say, my voice hoarse with distress.

  “You know that is not possible, Selene.”

  “There’s no reason for me to be there except that he commands it.”

  “That is reason enough.” He rummages on his writing table for a coin that he holds out on his palm. In the world of sovereigns, coins are the surest messengers, and there, engraved on the metal, is the true reason the emperor wants me in Rome. The front of the coin reflects the face of Augustus in profile, but it’s the back that is of most interest to me. A star. A comet. Just like the one that was said to mark Julius Caesar’s ascension to godhood and the one that was said to herald my birth.

  Juba holds it up in the light. “He has minted this coin to commemorate the forthcoming Ludi Seculares, in which he will proclaim himself the promised savior. And he cannot be believed by the people unless his claim is acknowledged by Cleopatra’s daughter.”

  The inelegant sound I make is a ghastly mixture of shock, disgust, and outrage. Why, this revelation is only further reason for me to stay away. “Let them believe what they will!”

  “Selene—”

  “Do you remember that once, the emperor summoned me, and you pleaded with me not to go? You told me to delay. You told me to lie and say the message didn’t reach me, or that it reached me too late to brave the journey over the winter sea. You said I should defy him. That I, alone, could defy him.”

  “Did I?” he asks, careful not to meet my gaze. “I must have been quite drunk.”

  “It was not wine that made you say it. You offered to help me then, so why not now?”

  “Because there is no point.” My husband’s eyes settle again upon the bust of his father, still half in its wrappings, and he whispers, “Do you see this man, Selene? King Juba, the First of his name. I never knew him. He’s only stone to me. Only dust. He’s dead. He died while I was still an infant. He wasn’t the man who hired my tutors and made certain of my education. He wasn’t the man who defended me in my youth. He didn’t teach me political strategy or take me with him on military campaigns. The man who did all that was Augustus Caesar. Always Caesar. The only thing I have from the man in this bust is my name. If this is the man you want me to be … I fear I will always disappoint you.”

  I flinch, for I know well what it is to be held up to the example of a parent and be found wanting. “Never would I put such a burden on you—”

  “Then don’t hold him out as an example to me! Don’t ask me to put a statue of him in my bedchambers, where I must see his face every morning upon waking. Put out of your mind that I’m a notorious rebel, ready to throw off the yoke of Roman power.”

  Heat comes to my cheeks as I realize he suspects me of trying to undermine his Roman sensibilities and I cannot say he’s wrong.

  “I will not defy Caesar,” Juba continues. “The idea that I should prove disloyal to him in any way is a horror to me. I will not send him a refusal or seek to humiliate him or assert our independence. We must go to Rome and you know this.”

  What I know is that my husband will always choose the emperor over me. The reminder of it stings like a lash across my cheek, and I begin to regret all those kisses that tasted like hope and happiness. My voice trembles with anger when I say, “Go to Augustus in Rome, then. Run to your master when he whistles. But I won’t go with you, and you know better than to think you can drag me there.”

  Some husbands would bend a disobedient wife to their will. Some wives would submit. But I won’t be bent and my will is stronger than his. Storming out of his study, I slam every door on my way to my chambers. There I stay, in spite of all my husband’s entreaties.

  It isn’t Juba who persuades me. It’s Julia. Coming to my sitting room, and pretending to admire some of the Berber green and red pottery on display, she says, “Oh, be reasonable, Selene. Don’t you want to see Octavia? I’m told she doesn’t leave the house often these days, but she’ll cross the Tiber for you. Do y
ou still own that house overlooking the river?”

  “Yes, though it’s been empty some years now,” I say, annoyed by her transparent attempts to manipulate me with the mention of my stepmother.

  “Marvelous. We’ll throw our banquets there. I’ll invite the youngest and most brilliant people in Rome. Everyone who is anyone important will want to come to pay a call upon the Queen of Mauretania.”

  “I care nothing about banquets or brilliant people in Rome.”

  “What of your sisters, then? Why, you and me and the Antonias haven’t been together since …” She breaks off for we both remember when we were last together. It was just before the fever that took Marcellus and killed my little brother. “Antonia Major is finally with child,” Julia continues. “It will ease her fears about childbirth to have her sister near.”

  “She has other sisters.”

  “Marcella, you mean.” Julia’s expression sours as if she’s bitten a wormy apple. “That’s another reason you must come back with me to Rome. I’ll need you to stand between us, so that I don’t claw her face.”

  I sigh. If there were ever a puppet to circumstance, it is Marcella. I’d wager all I own that she played no part in the scandalous marriage arrangements that led to Julia’s unhappiness. “You can’t blame Marcella for your troubles.”

  “Remind me of that when we see her,” Julia says, taking my hand in hers. “It’s one thing to hear of her marriage to Iullus … another to lay eyes on them together as man and wife. I won’t be able to bear it without you.”

  “Enough, Julia. That’s your world, not mine.”

  I don’t expect to see the hurt in her eyes. “You would truly let me go to Rome without you, given what I face?”

  Guilt twists in my belly, but she doesn’t know the risk I’d be taking to be at her side. “None of us know what you face.”

  She stares at me, the giddy light in her eyes winking into blackness. “In Rome, my husband and my father will be locked in whatever confrontation they’ve dreamed up for each other. It may come to civil war. War, again, and every Roman and every kingdom in the empire will be forced to choose a side. That’s why Juba must make peace between them. And you must be there to help him because you’re a symbol of the last war. I know it. My father knows it. And you know it.”

  With clear eyes, I return to my husband’s study that night. Surrounded by scrolls, he wistfully dips a pen into ink but doesn’t set it to paper. We’re quiet as my fingers trail over all the comforts he’s gathered here. Paintings of old friends he hasn’t spoken to in years. A collection of letters from faraway companions he may never see again. A water clock that keeps breaking, but which he will not replace. The silence between us stretches out uncomfortably.

  At last he breaks it. “Well?”

  “I will go with you to Rome.”

  He nods once, then returns to his writing.

  The next morning, Juba appoints minor officials to look after his interests while we’re in Rome and I choose Chryssa to look after mine. Already the disgruntled men in my kingdom say about Chryssa what they cannot safely say about me. That she is an unnatural woman who meddles in matters of state when she should be bearing children and tending to her home. But, like me, she has made this kingdom a calling, and I think Julia was mistaken … a heart can make room for many loves.

  Still, the appointment does not please her. “What can the emperor want from you now?” she asks. “Why won’t he leave you alone?”

  “This visit to Rome has little to do with me,” I lie, because I cannot bear for even Chryssa to know the truth; that I am still the emperor’s possession to toy with. “All the client kings and queens must go to Rome. The city will be filled with royalty. I’ll be only one more queen in a sea of them.”

  But she is not fooled. “And I am a blue-painted Pict from Britannia.”

  Eight

  THE PORT OF OSTIA

  SPRING 17 B.C.

  WE sail to Italy in ships laden with a cargo of ivory, wooden furniture, pungent fish sauce, and exotic animal hides—all of which are sold by our agents before they’re even unloaded from the holds. Other royal embassies have arrived from the East, and we quickly fall into the company of the Cappadocians, King Archelaus and his daughter, Princess Glaphyra.

  We must all bear the indignity of being summoned to the emperor to account for ourselves like wayward legates. We all owe our positions to Augustus, and if he wishes to parade royalty before the humblest citizens in Rome, we will all march to his tune. Climbing into wood-paneled carriages with gilded wheels and cushioned benches, we start our painfully slow progress from Ostia to Rome.

  Normally, it is an easy day’s travel, but with the crowds on the road, I fear that we won’t arrive by nightfall. And not an hour into our journey, we come upon King Iamblichus of Emesa, who hails us. Then our followers swell in number so that our combined royal caravan goes even slower, now taking up a long stretch of the road with our supply carts and guards and retainers.

  It’s a veritable reunion of my closest royal allies—all of whom once tried to persuade Augustus that I should take my mother’s place as the Queen of Egypt—and I’m glad to see my friends again. But whereas I was the darling of Greece, Julia is the darling of Rome. The common people wave and cheer her. Maybe they love her because she’ll soon be a mother three times over. Maybe they love her because she’s young and beautiful and vivacious. Whatever the reason, they do love her and I’m glad to see her glow under their adoration, acutely aware that my own status is increasingly entwined with hers. I’m accustomed to being loved or hated for the sake of my parents; it’s an entirely new thing to be looked upon with favor because Julia keeps me as her closest companion.

  As our journey progresses, my baby boy fusses in my arms. Fortunately, my daughter and my niece keep each other busy with little games, the rules of which only they know. And on the road, the gossip is all good. We hear that there’s been a grand reunion between the emperor and Agrippa, their friendship renewed after such a long separation. Everyone we encounter, from fishmongers to mule drivers, tells us the upcoming celebrations shall commemorate the close partnership between the emperor and his son-in-law.

  But mine is an ear trained to hear falsehood; I notice the tension in the voices of soldiers newly returned from Gaul. The stories of harmony between Augustus and Agrippa are too bright, too optimistic. We even hear rumor that Agrippa’s self-imposed exile six years before was not any true break in his alliance with the emperor, but only a ruse by which the Parthians were lured into peace.

  I know this is a lie. And because it is a lie, we cannot trust the rest.

  Julia must know it too. With each new cheerful rumor, her rosebud lips draw tighter together.

  When we stop to water the horses, we’re nearly mobbed by curious travelers. An elderly woman thrusts forward a basket of herbs, crying, “To help with the pains of childbirth!”

  Julia’s slave girl, Phoebe, takes the basket, and the emperor’s daughter says, “I’m no stranger to such pains but I welcome a respite from them. Have you any other advice to offer a good daughter of Rome?”

  The woman goes pink with pleasure at being asked and dispenses wisdom about how to steep the herbs in boiling water and the best way to discipline a wayward child. “May the gods bless you, Lady Julia. You’re no dried-up old stick living high on the Palatine.”

  The implied resentment for the emperor’s wife is music to my ears. It probably pleases Julia as well, but she’s wise enough to take no notice of it. “What welcome will I find in Rome, good matron? Is it true that my father and my husband are fast friends?”

  At last we’ve come upon someone who is unwilling to lie. “You poor thing,” the woman says. “Torn between a father and a husband. You’ve some mending work to do if you will keep them at peace. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa keeps the company of his own soldiers, and I fear that soon every man in Rome will again be forced to choose a side.”

  Julia nods gravely, sending the
woman on her way with a few coins. None of us speak about what we’ve heard; we all know the decisions we may have to make if Agrippa and Augustus end their partnership and battle each other for power. Instead, we speak of the upcoming ceremonies, advertised by heralds at milestones here and wide as a spectacle that comes every 110 years, a thing no living man has seen before and will never see again.

  Princess Glaphyra asks, “Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could find someone who attended the last Ludi Seculares?”

  “Impossible,” I say. “To remember the spectacle, the man would need to have lived longer than one hundred and ten years, and the gods will not allow any mortal so many years.”

  “Unless you worship the Hebrew god,” Glaphyra argues. “In their book, men live to be hundreds of years old. Perhaps King Herod will outlive us all.”

  Her father, the Cappadocian king, scowls at her. “I shouldn’t have let my daughter learn to read.”

  “Oh, Papa!” Glaphyra titters. “Don’t you want me to learn the beliefs of the Jews? You can hardly marry me to one of Herod’s sons and not expect me to wonder if there is more to Judaism than avoiding pork and shellfish.”

  I’m aghast, and not only because I’m sensitive to the mockery of religion. It is Glaphyra’s marriage plans that set my nerves on edge. My mother’s old rival Herod has always shadowed my life. Once he tried to convince Augustus to kill my brothers and me. And though I’ve never met the man, I count him as an enemy and am alarmed by the way he is growing in power and influence. “I’m afraid news reaches us slowly in Mauretania,” I say. “Who arranged this portentous marriage?”

  “Herod approached us,” the Cappadocian king replies, taking no notice of the edge in my question. “As he received permission from Augustus, I could not refuse the honor.”

  This tells me nothing and everything.

  King Archelaus goes on, “Besides, it’s a good match. Herod’s son has a better claim to the throne than his father.”

  This much is true. Herod is king only because he married the princess of the Hasmonean dynasty. Herod’s sons have royal blood through their mother, not their father. Aware that Princess Glaphyra is awaiting my congratulations, I say, “I’m sure Princess Glaphyra will bring the light of Hellenism to the Judean court. May she shine like a burning lamp in the dark.”