Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  *

  WE cannot honor my mage with the funeral he deserves and I won’t bury him under a false name in Mauretania. I send him to Egypt. He said he wouldn’t go home without his queen, so I have his sarcophagus filled with my coins—the ones honoring my mother. He was hers before he was mine. Before that, he belonged to Isis and Egypt. So that’s where I send him.

  It costs a small fortune to have him embalmed and carried to Alexandria and ferried up the Nile to the temples of Philae and buried with the other priests of his line. To have his true name carved in such a way as not to attract the notice of mortal men, but to catch the eyes of the gods.

  I worry I have done the wrong thing in telling Juba. The king is colder to our Alexandrian courtiers—especially my favorites, the ones he knows helped me to deceive him—but he does not send them from court or strip them of their positions. He may never trust them again, I think. He may never trust me, but in matters such as these, he should not, because I will never turn over my loved ones to the emperor. Juba will. He has not denied it. He cannot deny it. We will forever be at odds in this. There is no room for compromise. If he’d known about my mage, he would have given him up, and if he even suspected that Helios was still alive, he would betray me to the emperor. I would never forgive Juba for it and I would never forget. It would be the end of this fragile solace we have found in each other.

  And this fragile solace has become so vital to me that I dare not risk it.

  So I content myself to accept my husband’s compassion and mourn my wizard. Though I have sent him to Egypt, some part of him is still here with me on the spot where Amphio has broken ground for the Iseum. I feel my mage and his magic. And it makes me more determined that this temple be worthy of his sacrifice.

  Before the rains come, I go to inspect the work site myself. Watching Amphio order the workmen about their tasks with a testiness I have not seen in him before, I ask, “Has something gone wrong?”

  Amphio holds up his hands. “Nothing I cannot fix, Majesty.”

  “I’m told you’re confiscating tree trunks in bewildering quantities. What’s that siege engine there? A catapult? And why are you ferrying mountains of ash? Explain yourself.”

  In reply, Amphio leans against his measuring stick and scowls. “Do you want me to build your temple or teach you construction?”

  Sweet Isis, if I did not need this man’s talents I would send him packing. I have faced down more impressive Romans in my time. But I cannot banish Amphio. At least, not yet. “Inattention cost me greatly with my last architect. I will not repeat that mistake.”

  “Your last architect was a huckster who told you whatever you wanted to hear. I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear. The ground on the island is not as stable as it should be on the far end.” I groan because this must be the site for my temple. My wizard died to consecrate this spot. It must be here. It must be.

  Amphio condescends to explain to me, “To make it stronger, we use that machine to drive piles of fired olive wood into the ground. It is no catapult, but rather, you may think of it as an enormous hammer …” He loves to make me look foolish and I have given him the opportunity, so I have no one to blame but myself. Chastened, I merely listen. “We drive the piles as close together as we possibly can, then fill the spaces between them with ash. When finished, it will be like solid bedrock.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt that you do.”

  “I don’t like you, Amphio.”

  “I will try not to lose sleep over it, Majesty.”

  Indignation makes me huff but before I can cut him down to size, he adds, “You don’t need to like me. You merely need to have faith in me. Since you believe in an invisible deity, believing in a mortal architect should be easy … and soon the magic of my craft will rise up before your very eyes.”

  *

  THE letter from the King of Pontus arrives before winter; he agrees to accept my niece as his bride. Pythodorida of Tralles, the daughter of an Anatolian Greek financier, will become Queen of Pontus and the Bosporus. She will be the most powerful woman on the Black Sea.

  Juba reads the letter over in his study, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “It’s only a headache,” he says when I press him. “Euphorbus used to give me a tincture …”

  He trails off, grimacing at the mention of my dead mage.

  “Let me call for another physician.”

  He gives a shake of his head. “It is nothing.”

  I worry he will shrug away my attempt to soothe him, but I dare to put my fingers into his hair anyway, gently stroking his scalp. He reaches up for my hands and holds them. “You wrote to the emperor, Selene. Is that how you arranged the marriage for Pythia?”

  Having taxed my husband’s patience to the limit over the matter of the mage, I dare not dissemble now. “Yes. I knew if the emperor took an interest, the King of Pontus would not refuse her.”

  “The emperor has never cared about your niece before. Never gave her a thought. A letter from you and all is changed …”

  “He wants the wedding to be celebrated in Rome.”

  “Ah, the price!” Juba says, bitterly.

  Taking a deep breath, I say, “I’m sorry. I sent the letter before the mage died … before you and I … The point is, I’ll never again do such a thing without consulting you.”

  “Of course you will. You always do what you think is best.” I hear frustration in his voice, but maybe a tiny bit of admiration too. “And I suppose I cannot condemn you for it without being held to account for all the things I do without consulting you …”

  It’s no easy thing to share a kingdom. My mother didn’t like sharing hers. For most of her life, she was glad to rule alone. But my husband has taken large steps to close the distance between us; it would be dishonorable not to meet him partway. “Juba, I am truly sorry. I will try to do better. I’m sure you doubt it now, but I hate to be the cause of your anger. And I don’t want to go to Rome. Help me think of some way—”

  “I’m not angry, Selene,” he says, surprising me by kissing my palm. “We must return to Rome anyway, wedding or no.”

  That’s when he shows me another letter, this one from my Roman half brother, who has been elected praetor for this year. In September, Iullus will host a celebration for the emperor’s fiftieth birthday. Other client kings and queens will go and if we are not amongst them, it will not only offend the emperor, but cast a pall on what ought to be my half brother’s moment. Iullus is older, more experienced—and I think smarter—than either of Livia’s sons, but he has been passed over for duties that would win him prestige and power in Rome. Augustus has transformed him into a glorified errand-boy. But what I see written in a torrent of invisible ink is that he hopes to prove his love and loyalty to the emperor. Two gifts Augustus will never accept from him.

  Iullus has always done everything the emperor has ever asked of him, but he is Antony’s son; nothing he does will ever be enough. Nevertheless, the emperor expects a triumphant homecoming from Gaul, and we have been—quite effectively—called back to Rome.

  Twenty-one

  ROME

  SPRING 13 B.C.

  AT sixteen, my niece is a dark beauty, eager for marriage. Meanwhile, my fair-haired daughter is nearly eleven now, the same age I was when I first came to Rome. And my son is an exuberant five-year-old who hates when the servants use irons to curl his hair in the Greek style.

  I am glad to show my children Rome, this time. It isn’t Alexandria, but neither is it a city of brick and mud. I cannot help but admire the way Augustus has transformed the center of the world into a showcase of marble. Of course, my enjoyment of the city is made possible by the fact that the emperor is absent from it.

  The emperor is still in Gaul with his wife and her sons, which means that the only real enemy I have in the city is Admiral Agrippa, just arriving from the East with a grand contingent. Traveling with him is my niece’s bridegroom, King Polemon of Pontus,
and I cringe at the sight of the man. He is as old as I expected. I did not, however, expect to find his face scarred by a sword slash. The scar does not make him grotesque, but it gives him a hard, mean look, and the thought of his hands on Pythia makes me want to bundle her up and flee back to Mauretania.

  Fortunately, Pythia does not seem frightened by the appearance of her betrothed. While watching his processional into Rome, she only touches her cheek in the place where the old king is scarred. “Do you think it hurts him? Should I gift him some of Dora’s willow powder for the pain?”

  “What powder?” I ask, glancing at my daughter in the crowd assembled to welcome Agrippa back to the city.

  “I found it in the physician’s room before you emptied it,” Dora says matter-of-factly. “Euphorbus taught me how I could use it for my animals when they get sick. He taught me about all his plants, so I did not think he would mind if I took some after he died.”

  Should I scold her when the gift of his knowledge is her birthright? No, I cannot. Now that he is dead, she will never know how much more the mage would have done for her than teach her about his plants, and this thought makes me sad.

  My sadness is banished, however, when I am reunited with Julia. The emperor’s daughter doesn’t wait for me to call on her. She comes straightaway to my house and throws her arms around my neck, nearly dragging me down under the weight of her enthusiasm. “We will have your niece’s wedding at my newly refurbished villa. We’re neighbors now, here on this side of the Tiber!”

  In spite of the treaty between them, Agrippa will not sleep under the emperor’s roof as he once did. I cannot be sorry for it, because it means that Julia and I can visit away from the Palatine Hill, where we have always been subject to the utmost scrutiny and censure. And surely she will meet with censure for her wild appearance. “Julia, is that a wig or … is your hair blue?”

  The emperor’s daughter laughs. “I dyed it with woad to hide that my hair is going gray. I am only twenty-five. I refuse to look like a crone before my time.”

  “Well, the color is very … dramatic!”

  “You should approve. I took the idea from your blue Berbers. Consider it a tribute.”

  “I will, then,” I say, clasping her hands as we sit together in my gardens on a bench by a little fountain. How glad I am to see her! “I cannot thank you enough for your efforts on Pythia’s behalf.”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” she says with a wave of her bejeweled hand. “Agrippa is keen to please me these days. I gave him another daughter when all he needs is sons, but he seems quite taken with little Agrippina. She has his stern bearing already—a little Athena in the making—and Agrippa no longer considers me the worst mother in the world. Wait until you see how he indulged me with the villa. It is a sprawling stucco monstrosity on the outside, but I’ve painted the interior walls with exotic scenes from Egypt!”

  “Why?” I ask, in amazement.

  “To needle him, of course. He insisted we must have a sweaty gymnasium in the house where he can apply his fitness regimen in private. So, in retaliation, I made a guest room for you and turned it into a veritable shrine to Isis. You’re painted there as her priestess, wearing a high crown and feeding two majestic lions from a libation bowl to represent each of your children.”

  “Julia!”

  “Well, I meant them to be lions, but the artist made them look rather more like panthers …”

  “You painted me?” I ask, breathless at her nerve. “You painted me as a priestess of Isis, in Agrippa’s house? You’ve lost your wits!”

  “Oh, there are so many rooms for him to ramble about in, he hasn’t even discovered it. He noticed all the scantily clad women on my bedroom walls, though, in every sort of nude pose and carnal embrace. Nymphs, dancing girls, and seductive sirens …” Here, she trails off with glittering eyes, trying to hold back laughter. “He says that they make him feel so unvirtuous that after he climbs off me he has to punish himself with a cold bath!”

  Julia howls at Agrippa’s expense and I clap my hands over my mouth, unsuccessfully stifling a laugh. We are still laughing about it, weeks later, when preparing for the wedding. While I brush Pythia’s thick hair, Julia strokes the saffron bridal veil and asks, “Do you know how children are made, dear?”

  “Julia!” I cry.

  “What? Surely she ought to know more than we did at her age. I can assure you, Livia told me nothing useful whatsoever on the morning of my first wedding. You don’t want your niece to be ignorant, do you?”

  “I’m not ignorant of how children are made,” Pythia says stoutly.

  “She’s seen horses bred,” I explain. “She’s been raised in a court filled with debauched Alexandrians. I have not stifled her and kept her chained to a loom.”

  Julia tilts her head, with a mock-gesture of dismissal. “Oh, well, then. If she has seen horses, she must know everything, though I daresay her expectations may be disappointed in terms of girth and vigor …”

  This time I glare. “Julia!”

  “Oh, fine! I’m going,” she says, leaving us to ourselves at the dressing table. I stand there, overwhelmed with the need to brush Pythia’s thick dark hair, which is even blacker than mine. The feel of it in my fingers calls up some memory from long ago and I realize that I’m thinking of Octavia on my own wedding day. “Julia can be vulgar, but … if there is anything you would know, Pythia, I would tell you …”

  Pythia blushes, either shy or mortified. “There is nothing.”

  “Don’t think your new husband is permitted to hurt you simply because he’s king,” I say, stroking the brush through her hair. “Remind him that you are the granddaughter of Mark Antony. Make clear from the start what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t. Bargain if you must, but remember that you’re not chattel and don’t be ashamed, because what happens between a husband and wife is sacred to Isis.”

  “Of course,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut as if willing me to stop talking.

  Once her hair is brushed smooth and glossy, I use the traditional spear-shaped comb to divide it into the fashion of a Roman bride. “You know that I would go with you to Pontus if I could.”

  This finally gets her to smile. “But then everyone would bow to you and not to me.”

  I smile too because I see that I have no cause to worry she might let anyone bully her. Then she surprises me by asking, “Will you give me your blessing to style myself in the Ptolemaic fashion as Queen Pythodorida Philometor, the mother-loving? For Isis, for my mother … and for you.”

  My heart swells so that it’s hard to speak. “I would be honored, Pythia. So honored.”

  *

  THE wedding is accomplished under a full moon and the breakfast banquet the next morning is extravagant. The King of Pontus has us dine on sweetmeats, sausages stewed with plums and pomegranate seeds, delicate cheeses and honeycombs, saffron cakes, and stuffed capons. Every course is served upon trays of silver and gold. I am especially impressed with an array of grilled fish glistening upon a special serving platter in which peppery garum sauce flows over them from the spurting mouths of sea dragons.

  I steal glances at Pythia, who sits beside her groom, smiling shyly at him. That gladdens my heart. Then the conversation turns to the Olympic Games, which are again imperiled. There is an expectation, of course, that I will be the one to save them. An expectation I must frustrate, given that my coffers are strained by the construction of my Iseum. But when pressed on the matter, I cannot admit that our wealth is finite, so I am left to argue that the responsibility ought to be shared.

  They agree, of course. The kings of Pontus, Cappadocia, Emesa, Cilicia, Commagene, and so on. They all nod their heads and make vague promises about the gold they will contribute, but they do so with sidelong glances at my husband as if they blame him for my reluctance.

  Only a barbarian king would allow the oldest traditions of the Hellenes to perish. That is what their courtiers whisper snidely behind their napkins. But Juba either does n
ot notice or does not care, for we are in favor with the emperor and perhaps that is all the prestige that either of us needs.

  Alas, my niece’s wedding is destined to be overshadowed by the impending return of the emperor. As the day of his return approaches, everyone in the city seems to become more and more agitated. Poor Iullus makes elaborate preparations for all the Senate to greet the emperor before he reaches the city gates. He stockpiles flower petals in urns to be rained down on his hero upon entering Rome and positions runners at mileposts.

  He would have done better to position a trumpeter in my atrium …

  I know to expect him this time, in the dead of night. And on the day his heralds announce his imminent arrival, I dress for the occasion, garbed in a modest white chiton bordered with a blue wave pattern at the ankle and with my hair held tightly in place with sharp hairpins. I intend to wait in the tabulinum, passing the time reading Sallust’s history of the Jugurthine War—the war Rome fought against my husband’s Berber kinsman. But when I pull aside the curtain in the entryway, I find the king already sitting there. “Why are you awake at this hour, Juba?”

  “The same reason you are.”

  My hands go to my cheeks. “You shouldn’t wait with me.”

  “You shouldn’t wait at all. If Caesar comes tonight, I’ll greet him.”

  “What good do you think that will do?”

  Juba looks me straight in the eye. “It will shame him.”

  “No,” I say with a shake of my head, hating to be the one who must speak hard truths to him. “He will shame you. He will command you to fetch your wife for him. He will stand here and command you, a king in his own hall, to leave us. And you will obey.”

  My husband flinches. “You think me such a damnable coward …”

  “No more of a coward than I am. Juba, you will obey because pride—your pride and mine—is not worth the price to be paid if we defy him. Pride is very costly. It would cost us both much less if you simply went back to bed.”

  He knows this. He has always known it. That is why he has always let the emperor have his way. It is why I have so often let the emperor have his way. That weakness in Juba is a mirror of mine. But tonight, he argues. “You ask me to pretend not to know Caesar is beneath my roof, carrying on with my wife as he once did with the wife of Maecenas.”