Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  She grunts in the affirmative. “You gave him to her like a puppy from a cage. How can you complain now that she wants him on her leash?”

  “She must go to a marriage bed far from here.”

  “And you’re going to ask me to go with her,” my Berber woman says, stopping to put a hand on her broad hip as if challenging me to deny it. I cannot deny it. If Dora is to be queen of some foreign land, she must take with her a royal retinue and the preparations for it must be made as soon as possible …

  “I was born a chieftain’s daughter, not a serving woman,” Tala says. “In the hills, I had a house for winter and another house for summer and a tent for when the tribes journeyed into the steppes. I slept in my own bed and set my own table, one carved from wood and polished with wax until it gleamed. I had goats and sheep and a donkey to carry firewood and buckets of water from the wells. I was commanded by no one under my roof—not even my husband. But when he died, my people put me in your household to see what kind of queen we would have. I stayed because you were a spoiled know-nothing who needed me. I took your daughter to my breast because I had milk. For you, I left the ways of my people behind. Now you ask me to leave behind the lands of my ancestors too?”

  I put my hand to my brow both to shield me from the too-bright sun and to hide my shame. “It is too much to ask of you.”

  “Yes, it’s too much to ask,” Tala says gravely. “I wouldn’t go with her because you asked it of me. Or even if you commanded me. But I’ll go with her because deep in my liver where it cannot be cut out of me without killing me, I love your daughter as my own. I won’t let your child go alone somewhere that frightens her any more than I have ever let you do it.”

  Moved, I put my hands to my cheeks and shake my head. “But you have a son too. And a … a man.”

  “Captain Kabyle is a sailor. Surely there will be a harbor in whatever kingdom your daughter marries. And as for my son, I call upon you now for a favor once promised me. Make my son a great man in Mauretania,” she says. “So if ever I return home, I can boast to all the tribeswomen who have mocked my choices. I’ll watch over yours if you watch over mine.”

  I release a violent breath, dizzy with relief and gratitude. This is an easy promise for me to make for it is also a promise I feel in my heart—or in my liver, as the Berbers say.

  *

  WHEN servants try to curl my son’s hair in the fashion appropriate for a Hellenistic prince, he squirms and risks being burned by the iron, so I take it upon myself. As it happens, I have him perched in my lap, a lock of his hair wrapped round the hot tong, when the king pokes his head into the room.

  Usually when the king wishes to tell me something, he sends a messenger or waits for a meal together, so I am immediately wary of whatever it is that might trouble him enough to seek me out.

  “We were away in Rome too long,” Juba says, leaning against the door. “I have just received a letter from the magistrate in Volubilis and I fear the people of that city will not remain pacified without a royal presence there. I must go back. We will have to divide our court again, as we did before.”

  The last time Juba went to govern Volubilis, he was gone for more than a year; we no longer have time to spend so freely. “Must you go?”

  The king shrugs. “I like it no more than you, Selene.”

  “We can go together,” I say. “We can move the whole court to Volubilis.”

  Juba scowls at the idea, for moving a seat of government will be an immensely inconvenient undertaking. But I am suddenly desperate to convince him. “We’ll all go, and it will be a grand adventure. We can show the children the wilds of Mauretania. Ptolemy needs to know the lands over which he will rule …”

  Especially if he is to spend the rest of his youth in Rome.

  Before Juba can protest, I kiss the top of my son’s head and ask, “You’d like to see more of Mauretania, wouldn’t you, Ptolemy? We’ll go west and see all the places Hercules slept. We’ll dig out lungfish from the riverbed for our supper.”

  He is a seven-year-old boy; it is the lungfish that gets his attention. “I can get my own supper? Can we hunt for antelope too?”

  I promise, “If you catch one, you can put the horns over your bed.”

  Ptolemy is almost convinced. “Would I have to go in the carriage or could I ride a horse?”

  “A horse,” Juba vows, smiling down at the boy he put in a saddle almost as soon as he could walk. “You can ride beside me. If you make it all the way to Volubilis without complaining, I’ll give you your very own stallion.”

  This is too exciting for Ptolemy to endure in the cage of my arms. He springs up to embrace his father, forcing me to fling the iron away before we are both burned. “Ptolemy!”

  But I cannot be angry.

  The king ruffles Ptolemy’s hair, ruining my handiwork. “Run, boy, before she catches you and makes you into a pretty Greek.” Once my son has scampered off, my husband asks, “Are you satisfied? We’ll never hear the end of it now if we don’t find antelope.”

  “You’re the one who promised him a stallion,” I say, fetching the hot iron, where I see it has dented the wooden chest at the foot of Ptolemy’s bed and scorched the floor. “I will never understand why everyone in this kingdom is so smitten with horses. I’ve always preferred cats.”

  Threading an arm about my waist, my husband says, “You are part cat, Selene. Aloof, mercurial … You really mean to go with me to Volubilis?”

  To hear him so hopeful makes me ache inside. Chryssa will be outraged to be left behind again, to look after my interests here. But I can endure her censure in exchange for Juba’s smile. “Yes. I want us all to be together … until we can’t be.”

  *

  IT will be a journey of two weeks, half at sea and half overland, into the fertile plains of Mauretania. We go first to Tingis, our Roman colony near the Pillars of Hercules, where the strait is so narrow that on the sunny day we make landfall, we can see Spain across the waters. The Romans receive us with unexpected enthusiasm now that Juba is the patron of the colony, and we are tourists for a day in Tingis, walking the beaches and learning of its history from our guide.

  Dora shrugs off her brother’s attempts to play with her in the surf, too grown-up now, she says, to walk barefoot in the sand. But when I remove my sandals and run with Ptolemy, letting the sea foam tickle my toes and leaving footprints in my wake, Isidora relents. The king joins in and we spend an hour heaping up piles of sand to build a little city in miniature, with walls, a lighthouse, and a temple too. Hopefully Amphio’s version of my temple will be stronger than the one I make, as my sand temple collapses under the weight of the dome I try to shape.

  “This is as far west as Hercules ever traveled,” the king explains to my children, both of whom are descended from the great hero. “In penance for a great crime, he was ordered to do labors. His tenth was to capture the cattle of Geryon, a monster who once lived here.”

  With our entourage, all of whom are now happy sightseers, we climb into the cave of Hercules, the very spot where the hero is said to have slept. I marvel at the hissing sea spray beneath. Ptolemy, Ziri, Tacfarinas, and the other boys climb on the wet rocks where the sea rushes in, and I fear they’re going to be swept away. I call down to Ptolemy to be careful, and he calls back up to me, “What was the great crime of Hercules?”

  “He committed murder in a fit of rage,” I answer.

  Later, back on the beach, Isidora asks, “Why didn’t you tell him Hercules murdered his children?”

  “I would rather little Ptolemy did not know such horrible things. Truthfully, I wish you did not know either.”

  Dora leans forward over the frothing water, thoughtful. “What could drive a man to such derangement?”

  Fixing her hairnet—for she has let it slip—I blame it away on the gods. “Hera cursed Hercules so that when he looked at his children, he thought they were the children of his enemy. He didn’t believe his children were his own.”

&nb
sp; “Does it matter so very much?” Dora asks.

  I glance at Juba where he walks with his son on the beach, hand in hand. “To some men more than others.”

  I can imagine the sad solitude of Hercules brooding here alone in his cave. But I cannot imagine how he might have ever found redemption. If I lost my children, I would wander the world like a destructive madwoman, like Demeter did when she lost Persephone. And in truth, if I lose my children to the emperor’s plans, I may end up doing just that …

  *

  WE go next to Lixus, a city nestled in a forest of cork oak trees so old that they saw the Carthaginians rise and fall. It is here they say that Hercules found the Garden of the Hesperides, where a bite of a golden apple conveys everlasting life. I cannot blame my husband for sending search parties into the hills to find this mythical orchard, because I too want every moment we have together to last forever. Every laugh of my children. Every sun-soaked step they take at my side. Every story my husband tells them, each word precious to me.

  After two days of leisure, we are ready to make our way inland to Volubilis. “War elephants?” I ask, disarmed by the intent gaze of the great creatures who are to accompany us. Clothed in wrinkled gray skin, with big rounded ears and fearsome tusks that extend to a sharp point, the elephants do not look at all tame. We stand on the road, our baggage train assembling under the hot sun, accompanied by soldiers and every manner of official we might find useful.

  In the chaos of travelers, pack animals, and the flies that plague us, only Maysar seems to hear my distress. “We do not plan to use them for battle,” the Berber chieftain says. “But if we want people to remember that our king is a Berber king, we must remind them that he is Juba son of Juba, who rode in battle against Romans with elephants carrying turrets on their backs.”

  This was not a winning war strategy for Juba’s father, but it would be churlish of me to point it out. Elephants have been a symbol of royalty and power since Alexander’s time. Even before Hannibal so famously took elephants across the Alps to attack Rome, my Ptolemaic ancestors tamed them for war making too. So I attempt to get into the spirit of the thing. “Well, then, how do I mount one?”

  From horseback, wearing the flowing burnoose in the tradition of our tribesmen, Juba turns to us. “The queen is not going to ride an elephant into the city. When we get there, I will ride an elephant and lead the others through the gates, and she will follow in a carpentum.”

  I do not think he intends to offend me, but he does. “I am not a woman in your baggage train, King Juba. I am as royal a queen as you are king. There is no reason I should not ride at your side atop an elephant.”

  Juba snorts. “Only the best reason: You’re a dreadful rider. You can barely stay astride a horse. What will become of your royal dignity—not to mention your royal bones—should you fall from an elephant and snap your neck?”

  “Oh … I had not considered that possibility.” Still, I am a little aggrieved. “But if you are riding into Volubilis on an elephant, so am I.”

  “You are an audacious woman,” the king says with an exasperated shake of his head. “Set a better example for your daughter, Queen Selene.”

  “I intend to,” I call after him.

  As he rides off, I grin because I know he is not angry. In fact, I do not think I have ever seen the king so happy. He is a man who loves to learn and it does not matter if learning comes to him in the form of a scroll or an expedition into wild lands. Having us here with him for each new discovery seems to bring him great joy.

  I feel it too.

  Our baggage train stretches at least a mile as we snake our way through the tall grasses with our slaves and servants, our sack-laden camels, the wagonloads of provisions pulled by donkeys, our horse-mounted soldiers, and our war elephants. By day we travel like the nomads, crossing the steppes alongside herds of goats and sheep. At night, we burn fragrant sagebrush and juniper to keep warm. I love the shimmering grasses of our fertile coastal plain. And we do see antelope. However, when Ptolemy breaks away from our group to ride one down, I begin to regret encouraging him to such adventure.

  “Ptolemy is fearless!” Juba exclaims that night in my tent, taking a simple meal of dried fruit and nuts, served with thick slices of cheese.

  Because we are alone, I reply, “Yes, he is fearless. Which makes me all the more afraid for him.”

  Propped up on embroidered pillows, the king takes a handful of raisins, then says, “It’s a mother’s way. I know how afraid you are to send him to Rome, but you must make peace with it.”

  “I can’t. If there is any way we can keep him, we must.”

  He dismisses my plea out of hand. “It will do him good to live apart from us. To live in a place where his mother and father are not the highest authority in the land. He will learn to see things differently.”

  I will never leave my son alone in the viper’s nest that is Rome. I will never abandon Ptolemy to the emperor as my mother was forced to abandon me. I will never leave my son undefended against Livia. If Ptolemy must live in Rome, then I must live there with him. This would be my decision whether it was the emperor’s desire or not. Perhaps it would comfort the father in Juba to know that I will be there to keep his son safe, but it will not comfort the husband in him.

  If I cannot think of another way, we will be parted. And when that happens, Juba will have his memories of me and little else. So I resolve to give him the best of me now. “You said once to Herod that if you had natural children by other women you did not know of them.”

  The king’s fist closes around the raisins and he glances up at me. “Has this been troubling you?”

  I hesitate, weighing my words, wondering how I once thought myself so clever with them. “I have not been able to give you another child and … I know there have been women. If there are children, you should have them with you. If you brought them to court, I would receive them warmly.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “And their mothers?”

  “I would pretend not to hate them.”

  At that, the king laughs, which is not the reaction I was hoping for.

  Taking a deep breath, I cling to my dignity. “Have I not treated Lady Circe well?”

  The king throws his head back on the pillows. “Too well, I think. Don’t fret. There are no such children, Selene.”

  He thinks this will reassure me, but it saddens me, for his sake. “Are you quite certain?”

  “Reasonably certain. But, if there were such children, I would not want you to receive their mothers warmly.”

  Confused, I slant him a glance. “You would prefer jealousy and backstabbing harem politics?”

  “Unquestionably. It would please me to see you fly into a jealous rage.”

  I fold my arms over myself because I believe he is mocking me. “That is not how a queen behaves.” It would also be the height of hypocrisy on my part.

  “But if you were not a queen—”

  “I have always been a queen.”

  “But if you were not a queen, and simply a woman in my baggage train, then how would you behave?”

  “Any way you wished me to, for you are still king in that scenario.”

  I do not mean it as flirtation, but it comes out that way. Heat flashes in his eyes, and he tugs me down onto the pillows with him. “You would not have me unless I was still a king with a baggage train. Even if you were a louse-ridden peasant, you would be hard to impress.” As he teases me, he caresses the length of my arm, pleasure humming in his throat. “But if I should take a woman when we get to Volubilis …”

  “I would unleash a crocodile in your bed to eat you both.”

  The sentiment delights him. He laughs, bends his head to me, and crushes me with a kiss that lasts until morning.

  In the end, Juba teaches me to ride an elephant. The trainers pick the most docile one, a cow who kneels on command. As it happens, there is no ladylike way in which to mount an elephant, but the king pulls me up into a saddle made of soft
woolen blankets so that I may become accustomed to the creature.

  In the saddle with Juba, holding tight to the rope, I am more afraid of falling than I am of this gray giant whose bulk could crush us in an instant, so I am grateful when the king’s arms come around me to keep me steady.

  Having spent years exploring our kingdom, Juba tells me, “Elephants touch to greet one another. They wrap their trunks together and stroke one another’s faces. And when they die, they bury one another.”

  “How extraordinary.”

  “Even more extraordinary is that their families are led by the females.”

  “What clever creatures.”

  I feel him smirk against my hair, but the king holds me fast. Hour by hour, plodding step by step, I become more sure of him and slowly let go of the ropes …

  *

  HOW many times have I made a grand procession into a city? The first time, it was as the emperor’s chained prisoner, dragged behind his chariot into Rome. The second time was in Athens, where I rode beside the emperor in his chariot, amidst rumors that he had taken me as his mistress. This time I am no one’s prisoner and no man’s mistress. This time, in the fifteenth year of my reign, wearing a pearled crown and a gown made of cloth of gold, I ride a monstrous creature into a city over which I am queen.

  Our elephants have been painted in pigments of turquoise, ochre, and carnelian. Their massive heads have been draped in decorative enameled shields that extend partway down their long trunks. They trumpet for us when our heralds blow their horns, and I ride at the king’s side into the gates of Volubilis.

  It has the desired effect. Startled citizens throng into the streets, some shrieking with excitement, others silent in awe. But oh, the noise we make. The trumpeting of elephants and the stamping of their feet, the clash of cymbals, the rumble of our carriages and wagons, and the thunder of horse hooves on the pavement. When the crowd roars—in approval or dismay, I cannot quite tell—I fear our elephants will startle or stampede. It also occurs to me that the king and I are quite vulnerable to arrows here, so high and conspicuous. But I am a Ptolemy. I have never feared my people and I never will. Our goal here, as everywhere in the kingdom, is harmonia.