*
THAT night, the king comes to dine in my chambers but we leave our meal untouched. In the light of the moon, he draws me into his arms and kisses me. I return his kisses with eagerness, dizzied by the scent of cinnamon on his skin. When he touches me, I touch him too.
There is a moment that he hesitates. A moment in which I am afraid he will ask a question I cannot answer or say something to pull me from this blissful, mindless pleasure. But I think he must know that the price for this pleasure is silence, because he stops only long enough to blow out the lamp so that what we do we may do in darkness.
Sixteen
IOL-CAESARIA, THE KINGDOM OF MAURETANIA
SPRING 16 B.C.
IT is easier this time. When I last ruled Iol-Caesaria in the king’s absence, I was only seventeen years old. Then, I arrogantly assumed I knew best until I came up against my own ignorance of the day-to-day administration of a kingdom. Since then, I have learned a great deal about governing, and, perhaps more importantly, I am no longer easily questioned or dismissed.
There are, to be sure, a few men on our council who bristle at a woman’s authority. Some who attempt to bully me. But it is the ninth year of my reign. The king’s explicit command that I am to be obeyed, paired with my own independent stature, renders such men a mere inconvenience.
Truthfully, I am also more patient. Once, keen to prove my worth as Cleopatra’s daughter and a queen in my own right, I took umbrage at every offense. Now, placidly seated on my pearled throne wearing my gold crown and purple cloak, I happily indulge the long haranguing lectures of our most bombastic Roman advisers.
Then I do as I like.
When I am not tending to the business of the realm, I am worrying.
I worry always for Helios, never knowing where he is or whom he is fighting or what danger he faces. But my beloved twin is a child of Isis with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals. With a back as broad as a bull, Helios is stronger than ten men put together, a demon with a sword in one hand and fire in the other. He has made himself into the legend Horus the Avenger.
My husband is no legend, but a mortal man, so my worry for Juba is more acute. Juba is neither a hardened fugitive nor accustomed to fighting. Yes, he has experience as a cavalry officer, having fought beside Augustus in Spain, but I am fretful every day that we do not hear word of the king’s expedition. And Juba is gone two months before we receive our first report from Volubilis.
The king writes that his soldiers captured the men responsible for murdering our magistrate, and that he presided over the trial, condemned the guilty men, then had them stripped naked and crucified alongside the road. I shudder to read this. Crucifixion is a lingering public death meant to humiliate and intimidate. It is not a death for warriors. It is a death for slaves and lowly criminals … which is why the king chose it. These men must not be lionized by other tribesmen; their rebellion must not spread. Of course, any pity I may have had for these crucified men swiftly diminishes upon reading a second message telling how armed rebels descended from the mountains one night to attack my husband where he made camp. Juba and his men were able to repel the attack without serious injury, but it is an act of untold brazenness to attack the king!
How can this be happening all because of a census? Everywhere in the civilized world people know they must be counted and pay taxes or make tribute. Berbers say they do not want Roman soldiers ruling over them. Well, if that is so, then they must allow their sons to enroll in Mauretanian legions. Berbers say they want to remain an independent kingdom. Well, if that is so, then they must contribute to our enterprise. I would say as much to Maysar, but my Berber chieftain is with the king, serving as his emissary at my behest. And with sullen sighs, Chryssa makes plain that she is not at all pleased about it, given that she is now expecting their first child.
*
THE emperor’s answer to my coin comes in equal parts seductive, grandiose, and appalling.
Augustus has had himself named Pharaoh of Egypt.
I despair to hear such news from Lady Lasthenia, but do not doubt her. Her society of Pythagoreans comprises a formidable network throughout the world and my disheveled scholar is usually the first to know everything. Here, it is to my advantage, even if what I am hearing horrifies me.
Pharaoh. A title passed down from antiquity to Alexander himself, then conveyed upon my ancestors. It was my mother’s title. Perhaps I never deserved for it to pass to me, but it should have gone to Helios, who fought for Egypt when I could not. And for all I know, he is still fighting …
Putting my face in my hands, I take a moment to compose myself. Then Lady Lasthenia and I walk together amongst my withered cherry trees, none of which have acclimated well to our hot climate.
It should not surprise me that Augustus should want this title. Hasn’t he wanted all the others? Perhaps he thinks he needs it if he is to be the savior all the world wants him to be. The savior who is prophesied to come out of Egypt. But why now? I fear he has done it now because of me. With my coin I honored my mother, Cleopatra VII, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, forcing him to conquer her all over again. When I find my voice, I ask, “The emperor will go to Memphis to be anointed?”
“No,” Lady Lasthenia replies. “But he had his likeness carved at Dendera.”
“Not Dendera!” This will break my mage’s heart. It is already breaking mine. “Did he tear down the temple walls or merely erase my mother’s name there? Tell me.”
Always cool-tempered, Lady Lasthenia lowers her voice in response to my outburst. “Neither, Majesty. He had himself carved near to her.”
My hand presses flat to my chest in surprise. “Do you mean to say that Augustus had his image carved there with my mother’s?”
“Yes, Majesty. According to my sources.”
Moments pass in which I try to order my words into coherence. Augustus is a genius and a madman, and in this I think he is both. He has ensured that his name will be entwined with my mother’s long after the papyrus scrolls of history turn to dust. Perhaps this is his way of making things right. His way of honoring Isis as he promised to do on that night when we sacrificed together in asking the great mother of the world to cleanse us of our sins and to give birth to a new age.
Were it not for my Ptolemaic pride, perhaps I would see this as a gesture of his true greatness. His willingness to preserve my mother’s legacy along with his own. His willingness to honor the ways of Egypt and give her the pharaoh that she needs. I sacrificed my hatreds to help make him a better ruler, and perhaps he is becoming one …
So why does this dig at me like a nettle beneath my skin? Why do I suspect there is, still, some game behind this and that he is waiting for my next move?
Pharaoh.
He’s taken my mother’s kingdom, her children, her crown, and her title. Now he has proclaimed himself her heir. Just as I am her heir. Just as my children are her heirs … and I am more aware than ever that he can make them his heirs too, these children of mine that he believes are his own …
To My Friend, the Most Royal Queen of Mauretania,
Rome is so very dull without you. Thank heavens I will be leaving it soon! Though it is against custom for a wife to accompany a governor on his travels, I’ve persuaded Agrippa that petty little rules like that apply only to ordinary people.
Meanwhile, Livia’s sons have been sent to subdue rebels in the Alps. It seems like dreary enough work for a competent soldier like Tiberius, but I fear young Drusus is not likely to distinguish himself in battle. Though his mother has the temperament of a gorgon, he was always good-natured. I can scarcely believe how quickly time has passed that the boy we grew up with is now old enough to fight.
Oh, well. I suppose that’s what all boys do.
Anyway, since Drusus and Minora are soon to marry, for the sake of your half sister, I will make a little offering at a shrine for his protection. I would hate to think of Drusus stuck with some barbarian’s spear atop a frozen mountain.
&
nbsp; Especially since I shall soon be enjoying the balmy weather of Greece!
Speaking of Greece, have you heard that this Olympic Games may be the last? Somehow, they have run out of money, and are too proud to ask my father for more than he has already given. They prefer to think of the games as the province of Hellenes, I suppose, and since you are the most prominent Hellene I know, you can probably expect a request for an outrageous sum.
Julia’s warning still leaves me utterly unprepared for the plea that comes from Greece. Were my husband here to see it, he would sneer at the sum. I too am overwhelmed by the expense, but where can Hellenism find a champion if not in Cleopatra’s daughter? My ancestors would never allow the Olympic Games to perish and neither can I. I am Mauretanian now, not a barbarian, after all.
I pledge nearly all the profits of my new amber lake to the games, though it pains me to do so because I fear it leaves me with too little in my treasury to woo a renowned architect when he arrives with letters of recommendation and an ambitious plan for my temple. “Do you know him?” I ask my mage. “This Necho of Alexandria?”
“I know of him and I know the names of the men who vouch for him in his letters.” My mage says all this stiffly, for he still sees for me a different destiny, and even now, he will not surrender to defeat. “But it is not too late to turn your attention to a worthier project, Majesty. You have learned small magics from me in Mauretania, but think of what I could teach you in Egypt and how great your powers might be there. With your hands alone you might summon such winds to bury legions in the sand!”
I remember a time when Augustus wanted me to do just that. It was then, and is still, beyond my imagination, not to mention outside my reach. “You still dream of me battling the Romans, Euphronius? As my twin summoned such fires that he burned Roman legions into dust? Or did he lose that battle?” I do not ask it to be cruel; I have forgiven the wizard his part in luring my twin into a battle that lost him everything. Even, as the world believes, his very life. I ask only because the old man needs to be reminded that I have no desire to bury armies in the sand. More war is not what I want. “This is my kingdom now and you must accept it.”
“But there is another path to Egypt now, Majesty. Augustus calls himself Pharaoh, but he does not name Livia the Queen of Egypt nor does he have children by her to put onto the throne after him …”
I have not told my wizard that the emperor believes himself to be the father of my children because I feared his mind would turn in this direction. Still, I think he knows. Perhaps he saw it in the Rivers of Time before his magic slipped away from him. “You have seen my children on the throne of Egypt?”
“Once,” he answers. “Long ago.”
I should not have asked. Curse him for putting this new hope in my breast! It is now more difficult to beat down my ambitions, to deny the legacy of my Ptolemaic blood. I told Juba that I choose Mauretania and I have. For me. For myself. But can I deny my children what is theirs by right?
Simple practicality hardens me. “My son is not even two years old and my daughter only a girl of seven. There will be time enough to think of their future.”
“Easier said by a queen of your years than a wrinkled mage nearing the end of his.”
I will not hear talk of that. My mage has been with me in one way or another since the day I was born and I cannot imagine a time without him. And he will have to make common cause with me on this Iseum. I tell him as much, and set him the task of persuading Necho of Alexandria to work for a lower fee than he might normally command.
In this, my mage is successful. But there are still other details to work out. Necho chooses a site in the Greek quarter of the city, high on a hill. My freedwoman tugs at her silver earring when she hears the plan. “Brick walls?”
“They will be faced with marble,” Necho explains in the council chambers, spreading his sketches upon a table, the legs of which have been carved into gilded sheaves of grain. “It will save the kingdom a great expense.”
A healthy consideration for the cost is certainly the way to please Chryssa, but I have other concerns. “Will brick walls be strong enough to hold up a magnificent dome?”
“Majesty, not even the emperor’s architect objects to brick walls,” my new architect says. “Vitruvius himself points out that brick is used in temples throughout Greece. We need not waste time quarrying and cutting stone. Brick will allow us to begin without delay. I am told that your amphitheater is nearly completed and we will have an army of slaves to put to work.”
At this, my freedwoman scowls. My mage does not look pleased either. I am equally unsettled.
Though slavery is a way of life everywhere in the empire, it is a complicated matter in Mauretania where my Berbers call themselves the Amazigh. Free people. They resent the idea of captive men toiling in the blazing sun. We came here at the command of the emperor with shiploads of slaves. More arrive every day to work the giant plantations owned by Roman senators who administer their lands from far away. I cannot rid my kingdom of slavery. I cannot even rid the palace of it, should I desire to do so. Juba owns thousands of slaves and many of them serve at my pleasure. But I have heard priests and priestesses of Isis speak against slavery. “Can we afford to hire tribesmen and freedmen?” I ask.
“Your amber would have gone a long ways toward funding that,” Chryssa says, though, as a Greek, she knows full well why I pledged it to the Olympic Games. When I make no reply, she takes a deep breath through flared nostrils. “I will find the money,” she says, and I do not ask how.
Then my new architect goes down to one knee before me in submission, praising my intention to give my goddess a throne. “Together we will honor Isis as is befitting, Daughter of the Moon.”
And so I sign the order in Greek as my mother once signed hers.
Ginesthoi.
Make it so.
*
“WHY are there crickets in my hall?”
I ask this standing in the threshold of the schoolroom where a horde of insects chirp and hop across my feet. Our lady grammarian has a Berber boy by the hair. Tala’s boy, Ziri, is too red-faced with laughter to even notice that his tutor is reaching for a leather strap. And meanwhile, his partner in crime, the boy we saved from the cage, is emptying another clay pot of crickets onto the floor, to the shrieks and laughter of the other children—even my Dora and Pythia too.
No learning can take place in this chaos, so I clap my hands together at the children. “Go capture those crickets before they get all over the palace. Go now!”
At my command, the children jump up from their benches and Ziri uses the distraction of my presence to wriggle out of Lady Circe’s arms. She cries after the boys with uncharacteristic shrillness, “Run, then, you little brats! When I catch you, I’ll strip the hide off your backs.”
“You don’t actually whip them, do you?”
Her answer is laced with indignity. “Of course I do. It is the only thing the little savages understand.”
By this, she means the Berber children. Lady Circe is a well-educated Hellene whose salon has become a popular place for our most arrogant Greek philosophers to gather and sneer at those beneath them. Lady Circe has never approved of the king’s insistence that all the children of our court take their education alongside our own children, whether they be Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or Berber.
But in this, Juba and I are in complete agreement. Even the emperor, for all that I loathe him, provided the boys and girls in his household with an excellent education. We can do no less. These children are more than just children. They are all that I have to rebuild my family’s fallen dynasty so that I may not be the last of the Ptolemies …
“How well is my daughter taking to her studies?”
“Princess Isidora has a natural talent for language. Her other tutors say she has a mind for philosophy, mathematics, and science.”
This pleases me. It pleases me too much. “Are you saying this because she is my daughter or because it’s true?”
Lady Circe smiles, her voice smooth silk. “Who would dare lie to you, Majesty? But do not think it is all good news. Your niece is not quite as gifted. Answers do not come easily to Pythodorida … she struggles at her studies. But Pythodorida works hard for the answers, Majesty. In this, she is a good example for your daughter, who must learn that not everything will come easily to her.”
I do not treat my children as little adults, as queens and kings from the cradle. I coddle them as I was never coddled. This is not the way of the Ptolemies or the Greeks or the Romans. But I know how adversity can shape a child for the worse. I shield my children from everything, because I was shielded from nothing. And I do not need to justify myself to Lady Circe. “What of the other children? Are the Berber boys always so disruptive?”
“Tala’s boy shows promise, but Tacfarinas …” She sighs. “Let him go back to hauling firewood for the lighthouse. He is no good for anything else. He will never appreciate what you have done for him, Majesty. He steals wax tablets from the other children. He breaks inkpots. He looks for ways to create mayhem. The only way to make that boy behave is to bloody him.”
I have seen him bloodied before, and so I say, “No, I will not have it. I don’t want the children beaten.”
“You risk a reputation for softheartedness, Majesty. Strapping the children will do them no real harm. Trust me when I say that I’ve met grown men who would pay for such treatment.”
Though she amuses me with such talk, I raise an imperious eyebrow. “Which reminds me that you ought take a new name as yours calls to mind a profession you’ve left behind.”
The retired hetaera who was once both my husband’s lover and Herod’s spy smiles indulgently. “It is a profession I may need to take up again if you don’t allow me to discipline my students. I propose a bargain. If you allow me to thrash those boys, I’ll change my name to anything you think appropriate.”
One glance at her leather strap and I’m reminded of a beautiful golden-haired boy who was beaten for his insolence in the emperor’s home. My beloved twin, whose flesh was rent for protecting our family honor. A youth who promised that he would always, always defend me and that I would be his queen. She cannot know the things that haunt me, so I only say, “Keep your name, then, Circe, and I will bear up under my reputation for softheartedness somehow.”
Daughters of the Nile Page 19