I would put these questions to Crinagoras if I had any way of contacting him. Instead, I must wait for the next dancing girl he sends my way. I am forced to rely upon Lady Lasthenia. “Augustus gives him money,” she says, absently tugging on a strand of her hair that looks to have been chewed on the end. Her fingertips are stained with ink, but we do not keep the Pythagorean scholar at court for her noble appearance. “Herod also taxes his citizens heavily.”
“That can’t be it,” I say with a shake of my head, remembering how our Berbers resented the tax. “Not all of it anyway. If his subjects are poor, they cannot pay. What do they grow? What do they make? What do they sell? Dates and wine. They have no metals to speak of. They are a small kingdom; their farms produce far less grain than ours. Yet Herod can afford these great building projects and completes them with great speed and finesse. How is he doing it?”
Chryssa offers her theory. “Spice traders cannot reach imperial markets without going through Judea. He profiteers on access to Rome.”
“Then of course, there is the tomb raiding,” Lady Lasthenia adds, almost absently.
We all stare at her, for it is an outrageous accusation, even against Herod. Truthfully, the way she keeps her gaze low tells me that she is hesitant to level the charge. “It’s rumored that he raided the tombs of his predecessors. King David and King Solomon. Jews in our city say that it was such an abomination against their god that the bodyguards who helped haul the loot away perished in a burst of spontaneous flame.”
“Or Herod killed them to keep them quiet,” I say, though I can never hear about spontaneous flame without remembering my twin’s gift with fire. Sweet Isis, the thought of Helios still wounds me. How I sent him away as if he were only a brother now and not my lover, my love. But this temple will be for him as much as it is for me and for Isis. It will be the way I honor him and what he has given up.
“I might ask what kind of king desecrates the tombs of other kings,” I say, “But then, we are speaking of Herod, a villain such as I have never before imagined.” I will not emulate him. To honor my goddess, I cannot ask the emperor’s help. I will not tax my subjects into impoverishment, I will not extort and bully our traders, and I will not raid the treasure of dead kings. But I will raid the ocean. “We will need more factories to turn the sea snails into purple dye. We’ll make ten times the amount of dye.”
Chryssa considers. “Majesty, if we make ten times the dye, you’ll flood the market and send the price so low that every beggar on the street will be wearing royal colors.”
“Then let it be said that Cleopatra Selene clothed the whole world in purple majesty. I won’t mind as long as we have the money for the Iseum.”
*
I have come to rely upon Juba to poke apart my arguments and reveal their weaknesses, so when I tell him about my intentions for the dye works, I am ready for him to find some flaw in my plan.
Seated amongst inkpots and maps and the pieces of that damned broken water clock that litter his writing table, Juba only waves away my idea and thumbs through sketches of plants that I recognize as having belonged to my mage. “Do you remember the plant I named after my physician?”
“Euphorbian. It can be used as some manner of purgative, as I recall.”
He taps at the sketch of a cactuslike specimen. “It might be a topical cure for snakebite.”
Can he know how such a revelation fills me with bittersweet pain? It was my mage who made me carry a basket of figs to my mother—the basket in which an asp waited to strike her dead. Though I was just a girl, the wizard made a killer of me, and for many years, I resented him. I forgave him long ago. Still, he spent his final days searching out a cure for snakebite …
“Does it work?” I ask.
“We should test it on a condemned prisoner. I might have one in mind.” Then, without warning, Juba roars, “And in the future, you would do well to discourage Isidora from keeping company with the Berber boy!”
I take two steps back, without the faintest idea why he is shouting at me. “What has Ziri done?”
“Not Tala’s boy. The stable boy. Tacfarinas.” Juba growls, snapping the scroll noisily in his lap, urging me to examine the sketch more closely. “Isidora told me that he drew many of these plant sketches. He still draws them for her in your garden where she has a little plot of dirt. I came upon them together and they were holding hands.”
A thousand times have I seen the children together in the gardens, grabbing each other round the waist, clasping hands as they run, for Isidora is much younger, in her way, than I was at the same age. “They are happy to be reunited after our trip to Rome. I am sure it was done in innocence.”
The king does not look at me. “No boy his age takes any girl’s hand in innocence. He is no fit companion for a princess. He is a Numidian barbarian.”
“As are you by blood.”
That finally provokes him to look at me. “And you have made clear for the entirety of our marriage that I am not worthy to touch the hand of a Ptolemaic princess. Consider me convinced. Isidora needs more supervision. She should be accompanied everywhere, and if Tala cannot do it, then you must see it done by … by eunuchs.”
“Shall we import some from the East? I’m sure our stiff-necked Romans would take delight in the sight of perfumed eunuchs whispering in the ear of their princess.” When I see that he is not amused, I sigh. “Dora takes pity on Tacfarinas, nothing more. Whatever you imagine you saw in the garden was kindness to a boy with a wretched past.”
The king’s frown deepens. “Selene, I imagined nothing. Isidora is thirteen years old; it is long past time you speak to her about what will be expected of her.”
This sobers me. Two years I bought for her. Time is racing by and I am no closer to a solution. Always I have imagined that I would have my daughter with me; that when I am gone, she will wear my crown and carry on my legacy as another Ptolemaic queen in a long, proud line of them. I have taught her to love Mauretania as I love it. But the emperor seems intent on marrying her to a foreign king.
In his way, I think Augustus is trying to do well by her, but he has given us precious few names of potential suitors, and I will not accept Herod or his sons. Taking a deep breath, I say, “If I plead with him, Augustus would approve Ptolemy for her.”
Juba tilts his head back with an air of frustration. “Not this again.”
“I don’t like the idea either, but between us we are both orphans without relation. They call me the last of the Ptolemies and we have only two children by blood; we cannot afford to send either of them away.”
The king stands abruptly. “My son will never marry his sister, Selene. Such an abomination will never happen, here.”
Abomination. Again, he wounds me. “My ancestors are not the only royals to marry brother to sister. The Seleucids—”
“Stop,” Juba says, one finger pointed at me.
“In Pontus and Commagene and—”
“I have heard it all before in our council chamber. Our advisers say no man becomes Pharaoh but through Pharaoh’s daughter. They say royalty must imitate the gods. They say it is done for the sake of stability. They say that a pure bloodline frustrates the ambitions of rapacious men. I don’t care. I know that our Easterners expect us to marry our son and daughter to each other, but this is not Egypt, and our courtiers will have to learn to live with disappointment just as I have learned to live with their resentment.”
“Have you considered what it means to marry a Ptolemaic princess to a foreign king? Any man my daughter marries can lay claim to Egypt and Cyrenaica and Numidia and Mauretania. All North Africa. You do not realize it, because you do not aspire to be a ruthless conqueror, but Augustus realizes it and that is why he has approved so few names. He knows, as I know, that any child Isidora bears may serve as an excuse for war—as an excuse to take or destroy everything we have built.”
“That is not the way of the world anymore, Selene,” my husband says, with wide-eyed optimism. “No ki
ngdom dares to move against another in violation of Rome’s will. That is why we serve Augustus, is it not? He forces the peace.”
“It is better to guard against disaster instead of hoping it never comes to pass.”
Juba rubs at his face. “Selene. Enough. Not long after our wedding night, you held me at knifepoint and vowed that you would see me dead if I forced you to bed. I believed you as you must believe me now. You will need to see me dead before I allow our son and daughter to marry. It will not happen while I draw breath. So make your choice. Pick up a knife or surrender this perverse idea.”
It is, I suppose, a testament to how things have improved between us that taking up a knife is never a serious consideration. “Must you be quite so dramatic? I only want my daughter to wear my crown here in Mauretania, where she is beloved. I am grasping for something that will allow me to keep my daughter and prevent her from being ripped from her home, the way I was ripped from mine.”
“Now we come to the truth,” he says, softening a bit, reaching to stroke my arm. “Isidora will never be taken from our home as a prisoner, Selene. She will never walk in chains. She will merely marry beneath her, and it has not turned out so badly for you, has it?”
He’s trying to charm me and it is working. “That’s not the point.”
“I know. You want to maintain your dynasty in the way it was—so that your children can return to Egypt. But Isidora cannot marry Ptolemy and there is no one else of suitable rank. Isidora will wear a crown, Selene, but it cannot be yours. The sooner you prepare her for it, the better.”
*
I tell her in the early summer, on the day of her first moon’s blood. My daughter is not shocked or frightened by her menstrual bleeding. She understands the breeding of animals and knows she can now bear a child. Nevertheless, we take Isidora to my chambers and my ladies make much of the occasion. Tala and I teach her to use rags to soak the blood. We tell her to give no credence to the superstitions that in a bleeding woman’s presence, bees will die, dogs will go rabid, seeds become sterile, plants will dry up, and fruit will rot on any tree she sits under.
“Really, men! Where do they get these ideas?” my daughter asks. And when we have her laughing at this silliness, I take her aside and tell her what it means to be a woman. What it means to be a royal princess. And all that the emperor would have of her.
“He is thinking grandly of your future,” I say, forcing a smile.
“Must I leave Mauretania?” she asks, her voice swelling.
The question nearly breaks my resolve, but if I do not make myself serene, I will frighten her. If I am not strong, how can she be? So I swallow a gulp of air and smile even wider. “Yes, but you will come to love a new kingdom just as you love this one. You will marry a prince or perhaps even a king.”
Her soft hands tremble in mine like captured birds. “I don’t want to marry a prince or even a king. I don’t want to marry a stranger. If I must marry … if I must marry, I would marry …”
She is on the edge of confiding something, but draws back.
How astonishing.
My daughter has had little cause in her life to hide things from me. She has never been one to lie about her misdeeds. Always, I have tried to be the person in whom she might confide. But I realize, for the first time, that she has become a woman. It is not the blood that made her so. It is a secret. A secret she is keeping, even from me. How is it that Juba stumbled upon it first? “Isidora, you are a royal princess. Your Berber boy can be nothing to you.”
The sudden stain of red on her cheeks pains me. Oh, my poor girl. I have warned her, more than once, about overfamiliarity with our subjects, but her heart is too big. Taking her into my arms, I hold her close and stroke her hair. “We are Ptolemies. I think we are not meant for private passions … we are meant for more, and it is very hard. I know. But you will become a great queen like Pythia.”
Isidora’s eyes slide from mine. “I’ve never seen it that way. When the waters shimmer for me and flow into the future, always I see myself here in Mauretania.”
What she says ought to comfort me—for if she sees truly, it means Mauretania will not lose her. But I remember when my little brother Philadelphus told me that he would always stay in Rome, he meant that he would be buried there. “You don’t know what you see, Isidora. You’re too young to try to see into the future.”
“I have always done it and I am not so young,” she says, tilting her chin at me in sudden defiance. “Sometimes, I see a wide river with currents that churn up mud. In the water, in the brown and green and white rapids, I see things that haven’t happened yet. If I’m a woman now, I should learn how to understand these visions. You should teach me.”
“I cannot teach you to read the Rivers of Time. It was never within my gift. Moreover, I have only ever seen it as a burden to those who do have that gift. It might be better that you did not learn any magic at all.”
“Heka flows into me whenever we go to a place of worship,” she says, trying to show me how much she already knows. “It flows into me and makes me see more clearly, though it makes me feel so very ill. Do you know why?”
So she has been keeping more than one secret.
“That is the heka sickness you speak of,” I explain. More than once, I have fallen victim to it. Never have I forgotten the day I nearly lost myself in the magic of the sirocco. There are mortal dangers too. Already Augustus has made plain his intention to use my daughter by marrying her off. How else might he exploit her if he knew that I’m not the only sorceress in his power? “It’s dangerous to work magic, Dora. But more dangerous by far to look into the Rivers of Time. That magic cost our family everything. Do you understand me?”
She straightens, a perfect imitation of my most regal posture. “If it’s dangerous, then isn’t it better that I learn from you how not to fall ill from heka sickness? Isn’t it better to learn from you than from a stranger in some foreign court where I must rule as queen?”
I recognize that stubborn set of her jaw. Whatever else she may be, my daughter is a Ptolemy. She has always known what she wanted and I cannot say she is wrong to want it. Two years, I remind myself. Less than two years now. There is no time to wait for anything.
In surrender, I rise from my couch. I take her to my iron-banded strongbox, unlocking it to show her my precious treasures. I show her silvered stars that were gifted to me by a Syrian magi. I show her the pearls that once belonged to my mother, but now belong to me—a long-ago gift from the emperor himself. And then I show her the golden serpent bracelet that my mother wanted me to have.
Sliding it up my arm until it coils tightly against my bare skin, I explain, “My mother had the gift of sight, as you do. She saw that one possible future was one in which she would have a daughter. One in which her daughter would bring her a snake with which to end her life. Because she saw it, she entrusted this bracelet to a friend and told him to tell her daughter it was not her fault. Because she saw into the Rivers of Time, she was able to reach back for me and offer me this comfort. But it is the only good thing to come of her sight.”
I don’t think Dora is old enough to possibly understand the significance of what I am telling her, but I was just her age when this serpent was given to me. My daughter tucks errant strands of golden hair behind her ears, and says, “How strange that my grandmother gave you a snake and you gave me one too.”
I tilt my head, then I remember. “What happened to your Asclepian snake?”
“It hunts in your gardens and sleeps in the tree by my room. When I am troubled, I listen for anything it might whisper to me. It was born in the temple and it knows things that physicians know.”
This would be useful, but I still do not like the thought of my daughter keeping company with serpents. Alexander the Great’s mother slept with snakes and used them to work her own magic, but it is not a magic I understand. And what I do not understand, I have good reason to fear.
Nevertheless, I move aside a length of clot
h and draw from my strongbox a precious amulet. A collar of gold. “Before my mother died, she gave me the jade frog amulet that I wear. I am never without it. She gave my brother, Philadelphus, this collar of gold. He wore it until …” Here I pause, remembering my little brother on his deathbed, and I do not think I can continue.
Dora lays her hand atop mine. “Until?”
“He wore it until the night he died. He said that you should have it. He saw that you should have it.” Her eyes light up with wonder at this revelation, but I caution her. “I will give you this amulet to wear and I will teach you how to use it to channel your heka so it does not overwhelm you. Every day, after you’ve completed your other studies, you and I will practice magic together. But only if you vow to me that you will never try to look into the Rivers of Time unless I am with you. Do you agree?”
She pretends to agree and I pretend to believe her. Then I fasten the chain around her neck and hold her tightly, knowing, just as my mother knew, we are nearly out of time.
Thirty
“TEN denarii,” says the merchant.
“Three,” insists Tala, using her height and stature to intimidate all those who crowd round us in the marketplace. She never leaves her room without donning every piece of jewelry she owns, and her tinkling silver makes her more impressive.
“But the queen agreed to ten,” the merchant says, holding up the painted pot that I mean to send Julia as a gift.
“Because the queen doesn’t know you’re a cheat,” Tala accuses, pointing out flaws in the workmanship I do not see. I would rather pay more than the pot is worth, but then I remember the expense of my temple and I let Tala haggle.
In the crowd, my subjects press close, grabbing for my hands, trying to touch my gown, my hair, anything within reach. Memnon hates that I allow this, and he uses a brawny arm to shove back anyone who lingers too long. When my Berber woman returns to my side, triumphantly holding the colorfully painted pot aloft, we walk ahead of the other ladies, Memnon opening a path for us ahead. “Tala, did you know about my daughter’s fondness for Tacfarinas?”
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