Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  Iullus does not want to hear me. “A child needs an inheritance more than he needs love.”

  “Oh? How have you enjoyed your inheritance, Iullus Antonius?”

  He doesn’t answer but I can’t hold him any longer.

  Twenty-seven

  ROME

  AUTUMN 12 B.C.

  ON the evening of Julia’s wedding, she sits like a queen amidst a hive of slaves. Phoebe plaits her hair, another slave anoints her feet, and a third paints her lips red. All the while, the emperor’s daughter stares into a polished mirror with dead eyes.

  Julia has asked me to serve as the pronuba, the matron of honor. I don’t know if she asks it of me because she needs me at her side or because I am the only friend she has who has not yet been divorced or widowed. Either way, I sit by a basket of flowers and try to choose some for her wreath. “Octavia sends her regrets,” I say, separating out the yellow blossoms from the red. “She is too ill to attend your wedding.”

  Julia shrugs. “It’s a good excuse. Perhaps I should have thought of it.”

  “Her illness is no excuse. She isn’t well. Neither is Iullus Antonius.”

  At this, Julia sighs, waving the slaves away until we are alone with her flowers, her flame-colored veil, and the gown we will fasten with a belt of gold and rubies, shaped into a symbolic knot of Hercules. But if I think she means to address what I have said, I am wrong. Instead, she says, “I have decided to give Phoebe her freedom while she is still young enough to enjoy it. I hope she does something utterly irresponsible with it like spend all her fortune on a chariot race or take up as a scandalous stage actress like Cytheris.”

  “Julia—”

  “Do you think I should sell the villa? I want there to be at least one thing that Agrippa touched that Tiberius will not be able to take.”

  I don’t answer, but thread together the flowers for her bridal wreath. By custom, she should do it, but she has no interest and there are more important matters to discuss than her slave and her villa. “Iullus says you won’t see him.”

  Now Julia’s temper flares. “Of course I won’t see him! You know why. Of all people, you know.”

  It would endanger him, certainly, but given what I think he means to do, I’d rather she take the risk. I know her life will be made more difficult if she must look into the eyes of the man she loves on the very day she must marry another, but I’m frightened for Iullus. “Don’t you worry what he will do for honor, Julia? If you have some message, I’ll carry it to him.”

  She shakes her head, tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. “There is nothing I can say. Do I ask him to absolve me? For that matter, should I kneel in front of Agrippa’s death mask and beg his forgiveness too?”

  “There is nothing for either of them to forgive,” I insist. “You’re doing what you must for your children. It isn’t forever. Soon your sons will be grown and—”

  “Tell Iullus that whatever we shared was long ago. It was a girlish caprice on my part and he must forget it. He must forget, because I feel nothing for him.”

  I give a sad shake of my head. “I’m not going to tell him such a cruel lie.”

  She fingers her garnet ear bobs, which hang down like two fat drops of blood, and when she speaks again, she nearly spits the words. “Why not? He ought to know the truth, which is that my father is right about me. I’ve always been an unfaithful whore.”

  The vehemence with which she accuses herself startles me and I set the bridal wreath aside. “That’s another lie.”

  “Oh, it’s true. I was unfaithful to my first husband more times than I can count. When I ought to have been coaxing Marcellus to make a child, to continue the line of the Julii, I bedded Iullus like a common strumpet. We did it everywhere, you know. Even in your house, in that dark corner behind your statue of Hercules!”

  It does not shock me. “Marcellus gave you leave.”

  Julia fists her gown as if she might tear it. “Yes and I justified it because I was in love. I told myself that Iullus was my true husband, so there was no betrayal … until I married Agrippa. Almost ten years I was the wife of that hulking, lowborn, grouchy old general, and I learned to love him too, in my way. Iullus and Agrippa. I loved them both and therefore betrayed them both.”

  It is too near a thing to my own private guilt for me to offer any sensible reply. Then Julia bursts into sudden laughter. “My father has put me on a silver denarius. He is on one side of it. I am on the other, as a goddess. Which one does he choose for me? The virgin huntress, Diana with a quiver of arrows. It’s perfectly hilarious, isn’t it?”

  I don’t laugh, but Julia cannot seem to stop. “It looks nothing like me, but I suppose it is the wage I’ve earned. Tonight, my stepbrother is going to make me his wife. Though I gag at the thought of him on top of me, I’m sure I’ll learn to love him too. Because, as I said, my father has just the right idea about me after all. I will prostitute myself cheaply!”

  Perhaps it’s what she must tell herself, the story she must believe in order to do this. If this is the armor she needs to marry Tiberius, I ought not strip it from her. But I know Julia is every bit as virtuous as anyone could wish her to be, for there is no one in all the empire with a more steadfast or stout heart.

  *

  LET no one say that Julia does not try to be a wife to Tiberius. She makes herself pretty, charming, and amiable. It is Tiberius who broods with weepy eyes when the wedding vows are exchanged in torchlight. Several times I catch him searching the crowd as if to find the wife he divorced and discarded, but Vipsania is gone.

  In the weeks that follow, Julia is kind to Tiberius. She tries to amuse him with talk of philosophy and recitations of poetry. She takes his little son, for whom Tiberius has the utmost affection, to her hearth and her heart. In short, Julia throws herself into the role her father has chosen for her and utters not one word against the sour-faced husband she’s been saddled with this time.

  Anything Tiberius asks of her, she does. Anything that interests him, she takes notice of. Anything that pleases him, she pretends is a pleasure to her as well. I worry that Julia was not built for duty; surely this pretense will break her. Yet she shows no signs of distress when she pays a call to us at the house where Octavia remains confined to her sickbed.

  To celebrate the Saturnalia, Julia comes with a train of slaves bearing candles, fruits, pastries, and sweet-smelling incense. She sits with us, cheerfully sharing gossip until poor Octavia cannot keep her eyes open. I tuck the blankets under Octavia’s chin, then see Julia out. We are nearly to the door when we cross paths with Iullus Antonius in the atrium, his arm draped in a purple-bordered toga, the mark of his senatorial rank. His formal clothing is a choice out of step with the holiday, during which the men of Rome customarily wear colorful dinner clothes in the style of the Greeks. But then again, I suppose Iullus feels as if he has not much to celebrate …

  Julia and Iullus stop and stare, drawing closer, close enough to touch, forgetting my presence entirely. She is bundled against the cold in a fur-lined cloak pulled up around her head like a veil. Her lower lip trembling, she whispers, “Io Saturnalia, Iullus.”

  He reaches for her, as if to cup her cold cheek with his hand, but she stops him in one deft motion, laying her palm on his forearm with the utmost politeness. She gives him a smile filled with apology, forgiveness, and infinite loving grace. Then she kisses his cheek in farewell, moves around him, and takes her leave. As she goes, his big shoulders sag; he deflates before my eyes like an emptied wineskin. I hurt so badly for him that my own knees threaten to buckle.

  And that is the first time I truly know that Julia is stronger than any of us.

  Turning to my half brother, I ask, “Did you mean it when you told the emperor that if allowed to defend Julia and her children, it would be your honor and only ambition?”

  “You know I did.”

  “Well, you cannot defend her if you are dead.”

  He shuts his eyes tight. “Will you never mi
nd your own affairs?”

  “Julia needs you now more than ever. If you love her, you will protect her even without the reward of having her for a bride.”

  “Just how am I to do that when I have been left so powerless?”

  I tell him, very seriously, “You must become powerful, Iullus. You must reconcile with the emperor; it should not be difficult because he enjoys having you close at hand to abuse. He is an old man in ill health. He cannot live forever. And when he dies, Julia and her sons will be at Livia’s mercy, so you must be ready.”

  Iullus holds up a hand to silence me but I will not be silenced. I have given it much thought, and I have made a plan. “You must make yourself a lion in the Senate, Iullus. You must reach out to our father’s old allies and woo them. You must make common cause with the richest men in Rome and everywhere else. You must seek office. Even if it means virtually nothing to be a Consul of Rome anymore, it will raise your stature and be followed by a proconsular command in the provinces, where you can raise legions for any war to come …”

  Years ago, he would not have hesitated to go to Augustus and reveal everything that I said, casting me in the worst possible light. The fire in his eyes tonight, though, tells me that he will not. And so I stoke the flame. “Many men die for honor, Iullus. Be one of the few who live for it.”

  *

  WE try to hush the children when they run riot through the snow-dusted courtyard so that Octavia can get her rest, but she says that she likes to hear her grandchildren at play.

  “You’re too hard on the children, Minora!” Octavia scolds, coughing into her kerchief.

  At this rebuke, my exasperated half sister turns to me. “Strange how she would have shouted at us to stop dallying and make ourselves useful when we were their age.”

  I laugh both because it is true and because Octavia is regaining her health. Though it is a frigid January day, she asks to be carried into the dining room to share our meal, and though she cannot hold a cup without spilling it, she does eat. We will see her through this winter, I think, and then she will recover. She will champion her grandchildren. It is all decided for my generation, but these children are the future of the empire. Livia be damned!

  My son and the boys of the imperial family are a merry band of mischief-makers who love nothing so much as rough-play, but Dora is no longer content to rule over a fiefdom of infants and toddlers. At twelve, she is caught between a child and a woman and when I see her staring pensively into the rose water with which the slaves bathe our feet, I tilt her chin up. “Perhaps it’s time you had some special gowns made for you with pretty embroidery.”

  “I will only get them dirty and you will scold me for it.” Dora sniffs, for she has never found a plant she did not want to dig up nor a filthy wounded animal she did not want to clasp to her breast.

  “Yes, I will scold you and embarrass you and demand of you things that you cannot give, but that is the way of it between mothers and daughters. It will give you something to talk about with your brother when I am in my dotage and the two of you have no one else but each other to complain to about all of my faults.”

  Dora smiles at my teasing. “We won’t complain.”

  “You will, but before then, we’ll go to the market and shop for cloth together, shall we?”

  Her pink smile falters. “Shouldn’t you stay with Lady Octavia?”

  “Musa says she is getting better.”

  Dora shakes her head, just once, a golden curl falling over her eyes. “No, Mama. The snake on Tiber Island has whispered to me that she will get no better.”

  *

  THE snake on Tiber Island is wound round the staff of Asclepius in his temple of healing. It is not a real snake but a sculpture, and I bring my daughter there to prove it. As we make our way through the throngs of sick who have come for cures, Dora shows no fear of the old broken slaves, dressed in rags, huddled on pallets, coughing blood into their hands.

  She wishes for me to give them coins and I send my guards to do so, along with a generous donation to the temple itself, but Isidora is not to be so easily convinced that her whispering snake is not on this island.

  “Do you keep serpents here?” she asks one of the priests.

  He surprises me by saying, “Many, Princess Isidora. Would you like to see them?”

  She insists, and because I took her here in my ignorance, I am now bound to follow the priest as he leads us into an antechamber. At the sight of the courtyard where the slithering creatures bask in the light, coiled upon rocks and under brush that has been arranged for their comfort, I break into a cold and clammy sweat.

  I know that serpents are a symbol of eternal life. They have appeared in my visions. Miraculously come to life on the riverbanks when I have worked the magic of my goddess. I ought not fear them, but it seems that my dread of snakes gets worse with age, not better. And in this room there are so many of them that I can scarcely breathe. There are at least twenty serpents slithering over one another on the floor. Maybe thirty. I lose count in my terror. I tighten my grip around my daughter’s hand, fearing she will rush to these creatures as she once rushed to a lion.

  “He’s not here,” she whispers. “My snake isn’t here.”

  Thank Isis for that! “Why do you keep them?” I ask of the priest.

  “These are the sacred red-eyed snakes,” he explains. “They have no venom and their skin, sloughed off, helps with regeneration. Do you seek a remedy, Majesty?”

  “Something for the Lady Octavia, perhaps.”

  I buy a tincture. Then I take my disappointed daughter out of the temple and hurry to the bridge that will lead us home. But as we are leaving the sacred aisle, Dora suddenly reaches into the foliage. Before I even know what she is doing, she has drawn a live serpent from the brush. One glimpse at that forked tongue and I shriek. Memnon must think we are being murdered, for he draws his sword, but Dora lets the serpent coil around her wrist. “Mama, it’s not dangerous. It has no fangs.”

  She is wrong. It does have fangs. Tiny ones, but the snake makes no move to strike her. Memnon seems prepared to lop off the snake’s head at my command, but while I clutch at my pearls he says, “Majesty, it is just the same as the snakes in the temple. See the red eyes?”

  I do. The priests said this kind of serpent held no venom. It must be a very young snake, because it is so small that Dora can hold it in one hand as it loops around her fingers. “This is the snake that whispers to me,” she insists.

  My teeth grind together as my stubborn desire for her to be a normal girl must give way to the truth of her gifts. “What does it say to you?”

  She tilts her head thoughtfully. “I think it says it will help me become what I must be.”

  She wants to keep it. Of course she does. Because it is not enough that at home, in Mauretania, she has a menagerie of animals including a Barbary macaque that Juba brought home for her from one of his expeditions. Now she must have the serpent too, and I cannot deny her because she too is a child of Isis, and though her magic is nothing I understand, it is real.

  *

  ALAS, my daughter was right about Octavia. Her hair begins to come out in great clumps. When she sleeps, it becomes more difficult to wake her. For the first time, she complains of the pain. To relieve it, Musa gives her a tonic, explaining to my curious daughter that it is a brew of henbane and poppy syrup. The Antonias do not like the way this concoction makes their mother murmur strange things, but if she must leave us for the afterworld, I am grateful for anything that will ease her way there.

  In February, the day of the Lupercalia, Octavia nags her daughters to leave her bedside and go down to the forum and put themselves in the way of the young men who lash at the crowds with thongs of goat hide. It is a fertility ritual and Octavia insists that we must all have more children—especially me. Can she know how much I want another child? Does she know that I have tried and failed? To make light of it, I ask, “Will you never stop trying to make me into a respectable Roman ma
tron?”

  “Will you never forgive me for it?”

  She wants my forgiveness when she has forgiven me everything, even that I am Cleopatra’s daughter? Emotion swells painfully in my chest and I wish I had never spoken a harsh word to her my whole life long. “Octavia, there is no room between us for resentments.”

  She softly caresses my cheek with her gnarled fingers, which still have about them the earthy scent of bread. I remember when her hands were sturdy and strong. I remember when she towered over me and it pains me to see her so delicate and frail. I press my lips to her shaky hand, trying to say with a kiss what I cannot say with words, and her eyes go misty.

  “Your father once ran in the Lupercalia,” she rasps. “In the year your mother came to Rome. How young and magnificent he was … bare-chested, clad only in goatskin. Along the route every girl crowded close, hoping he would single her out and strike her with his strip of hide. He passed me by, but then, catching my eye, he circled back again to strike me. Right here,” she says, taking her trembling hand from my cheek to lay it over her chest, her breast, her heart. “It worked too. Because he gave me three daughters. The Antonias … and you, Selene.”

  Her love for him has become love for me, and I am humbled in the face of it. Overcome.

  But it is not my father’s name Octavia says when she is restless in her sleep. It is her son Marcellus she calls for. Sometimes Agrippa too. And, at the end … Isis. “Tell me of your winged goddess,” she whispers, dosed so heavily on Musa’s potion that her pupils are wide. The first time I spoke of my goddess in her presence, she flew into a rage. But that was long ago. Long before she saw me bleed, the words of the goddess carved into my palms. Long before she took Philadelphus to her bosom, and witnessed his gift of sight. Long before she asked me to pray to my goddess to spare her son’s life.

  My goddess does not guard against death, though; she conquers it. Isis ensures that death is not the end of all things. And so, here under the emperor’s roof, I tell Octavia all I know of my goddess. Mother. Magician. Goddess of Women. Queen of the Dead.