I shake my head violently. “No. You don’t understand at all if you think Livia and I loathe each other because we are strong-willed. There is a long trail of dead men and boys in her wake. I cannot prove it. I have never been able to prove it … but she is a poisoner more dangerous than the emperor himself.”
“That is a vicious rumor,” Juba says, as if he thought better of me than to spread it. “One that might well be hurled at Isidora one day for her love of plants and potions.”
My fists clench because in this one thing, I am utterly certain. “I know Livia works in poisons because she tried to give me one.” I remember what she said the morning after the emperor forced me to his bed.
I’ve provided you with an honorable exit. It won’t be as dramatic as your mother’s end, but unless you have the power to conjure up Egyptian cobras, a goblet of poisoned wine will suffice.
When I tell him, Juba narrows his eyes. “Did you drink it?”
“Is that what you think I should have done for your honor and mine?” I ask, fury rising inside me. “All this time, you have been wishing that I took my own life …”
“No,” he snaps, taking me hard by the arm. “No, Selene. I ask because I want to know how you are so certain the wine was poisoned.”
Damn him, examining my claim like a tutor before a classroom. Demanding proofs that I cannot give, but which I know in my heart, in the deepest part of my heart, are true. “You think I imagined the danger?”
He gives a long-suffering sigh. “I think you have seen so much death in your time that you are overvigilant against every possible threat. You have lost so much that it has made you paranoid, prone to hover over your children and live in constant terror for them. If everything you’ve said is true, people will gossip about your surrendered virtue and mock me, but they’ll assume Ptolemy is just one more of the many children on that monument and they will put it from their minds.”
I want it to be as simple as that. I desperately want it to be. “So we should do nothing. We should pretend as if it is nothing. Will you still see it the same way when Augustus insists on keeping me and Ptolemy here in Rome?”
The king grimaces. “I’ll speak to Caesar about this. It is a conversation long overdue.”
This answer, given so seriously, makes my stomach churn. “You don’t believe anything I’ve said, do you? Because if you did believe me, you would know to fear for your life in having such a conversation. I have told you everything and still you don’t believe me …”
“Have you told me everything? Tell me there are no more lies. No more secrets between us. No more fugitives hiding in my court. Tell me that I know everything now.”
I have told him everything that is mine to tell. I have told him every part of the story … except for those having to do with Helios. I cannot tell him that. If I tell him Helios is alive, he will reveal it to the emperor. And if he should try to persuade me that Helios is dead, another thing I have only imagined, it will break me.
At my hesitation, Juba takes me by the shoulders. “What else?”
My voice quavers. “You will not thank me for telling you …”
“Tell me, damn you!”
We are at the edge and neither of us can back away. If I tell him, we will fall. If I refuse to tell him, we will fall. We will fall and we will not survive it.
“Selene, you tell me or Augustus can keep you for all I care.”
This threat makes me want to shout at him that it can be over, then. That if he is willing to abandon me to the emperor, again, then I do not want him. But I would be lying. I do want him. I fear that I have fallen in love with him. I fear that I love him desperately and that he is breaking my heart. “Juba, can’t you see that for you, I am stripped bare of everything but this one secret? It is not a danger to you. It is not a danger to our children. It is not a danger to our kingdom.”
I hear him swallow. Then he asks, “Are you my wife or no?”
I don’t understand what he means by this question. I answer it with the truth as I know it. “I have been your wife since the night we conceived our son. Not before then. Not the day you married me. Not the years after. You were no husband to me then either, but I swear to you by Isis and everything I hold sacred that when I returned to you from the Isle of Samos, I became your wife. We made a family and a marriage beyond what was written in the contract.”
“Has that marriage no value to you?”
“You know it does. Let me have this one mystery. Don’t make me tell you. I ask for nothing else. Because if I tell you, you will betray me and none of it will have any value at all …”
He snorts. “So I am to trust in you while you put no trust in me.”
I lay my palms flat to his chest, beseechingly. “I am no good at trust. Or honesty. Or laying myself bare. But I am trying, Juba. I am trusting you with my son’s life. With my life. With all my secrets save one. I have put myself in your hands. Can it be enough?”
“I don’t know,” he says harshly.
It is not the answer I hoped for. “You don’t know?”
“That is what I said. I don’t know. You’ve had two years to consider, Selene; I will need more than just one night.”
Thirty-six
ROME
JANUARY 30, 9 B.C.
IN the wee hours of the morning on the day the Ara Pacis is to be unveiled, I dream of mobs swarming my house, intent upon tearing me and my children from our beds and dragging us through the street. I do not want to go. While Tala natters on with the mistress of my wardrobe about what I should wear for such an occasion, I lie back down again in my bed, grateful for the Roman design of the house that keeps away sunlight. My daughter peeks into my chambers to ask, “Aren’t you feeling well, Mother? I can make you a tincture before we go …”
Though my head is pounding, I say, “I just need a moment to myself.”
She squints. “Perhaps your humors are imbalanced.”
“Perhaps I like them that way.”
She laughs and I am glad, because I regret my sniping tone. My daughter is only trying to tend to me. It may be the last time she ever does. Soon she will be the Queen of Cappadocia. And before that, she will see me carved on the emperor’s altar. Others may not see, but my daughter always sees. So I force myself to get up.
My hair is styled in the knotted coiffure made popular by Octavia and I don only small pearl earrings for adornment. For garments, I wear a modest blue tunica with yellow fringe, covered by a matching shawl and my fur cloak.
I will need the fur-lined cloak, for it shall be a very cold January day. It is made all the colder by my husband, whose crisp civility belies the storm inside him. The slaves must sense it, because they jump to his commands, preparing him for the day as if he were about to ride into battle. The king has not a spare word for me and I do not press him.
And as we go out into the winter afternoon, I stare out over the other side of the river, where the crowds assemble for the dedication. I know the difference between the normal clamor of the city and voices that are gathered together in anger, echoing off wood and brick and marble. I listen closely, my ears searching out for the slightest sound of jeering or discontent, but I hear none.
When we reach the site of the dedication, the crowds part for our royal entourage, but we do not hurry to take our customary place closest to the imperial family. Juba and I hold back and linger with the other notables in Rome, many of whom blow warm air into their hands and eye the sky for bad bird omens that may send us all home.
We endure speeches, rituals, gift giving, and pomp. Augustus is both solemn and proud to show off his new gift to Rome, and the people murmur and point at this symbol or that while I hold my breath.
They are most interested in the red granite obelisk that he stole from my mother’s Egypt and the bronze lines in the travertine pavement that mark the degrees of the solar year. Henceforth, on the emperor’s birthday in September, the shadow of the obelisk will fall upon the center of the altar of
peace. He has made of it the gnomon of a sundial. With this bit of artistry, he is saying he was born to bring peace. He is saying that he is the savior. Augustus has made himself a sun god at last and obliterated the memory of Alexander Helios …
Clutching my son against me, I take great pains not to look in the emperor’s direction when he is hailed again and again. It is Livia I watch. I watch for every false smile and every twitch of her predatory eyes. Perhaps she has prepared herself. She is surrounded by her kinsmen. One can’t turn a full circle in the crowds today without seeing a Claudian of one stripe or another. Every man, woman, and child with a claim to the Claudian name has crawled up out of their holes to find favor in Augustus’s regime.
Livia has accomplished for her family what I could not accomplish for my own—a feat that deserves my grudging admiration. The emperor’s wife seems untroubled by my presence and, in fact, utterly unaware of me. It is a pretense, I know, but is it because she is afraid of her husband’s plans or because I am now so beneath her?
Who does the emperor lie to, I wonder? Livia or me? Who sees the true face of Augustus?
Maybe none of us do.
My husband and I stand side by side, keeping our children close. Juba performs the role that is required of him, but has no talent for this sort of playacting. His laugh is bitter and his only words to me a sharp rebuke. “Stop holding the boy round the neck or you’ll suffocate him.”
Ptolemy, who is keen for his independence when other boys are watching, is grateful when I loosen my hold on him at the king’s command. And my son’s eagerness to squirm away makes me feel even more of a fool. I don’t know what it is that I was expecting under the bright sun on this crisp afternoon. Did I think people would gasp at the scandal? Did I think senators would come rushing at us with daggers? From the street in front of the altar, a few women impolitely point at me and whisper behind their hands. Perhaps they have always done it, but today I notice, and it is very hard to pretend that I do not. But I am jumping at shadows, I think. All along I have condemned the emperor and Herod as paranoid and mad, but now I wonder if that is what I have become. What they have turned me into. It is a humiliating thought …
We stay only as long as propriety requires.
That night mobs do not swarm my house. From the city across the river, we hear only the sounds of merriment, late into the evening. No furious senators send letters of rebuke. Indeed, we hear no complaint from any quarter. Can I have been too proud to admit that I am of no threat to anyone?
I am just a client queen from a kingdom at the far edge of civilization and my son is only the Prince of Mauretania, not the next Pharaoh, nor the next Emperor of Rome. There is no danger to my son because I am the only one gullible enough to believe a thing Augustus says …
In the morning, Ptolemy insists he must visit the stables and work with his prize stallion, practicing his drills for the Trojan Games, and I cannot deny him. I cannot go on fearing every phantom shadow and see danger lurking everywhere. My son must be known to the Romans and respected. If Ptolemy is to rule over anything, I cannot hold him back. Juba is right. Perhaps he has always been right about everything.
*
ON the day Julia distributes salt and olive oil to the poor, she insists I go with her. Most charity in Rome is done with great fanfare and accompanied by a lasting monument, but she prefers spontaneity. Unfortunately, her spontaneity takes us into the Suburra, a run-down neighborhood of questionable safety. “Did you ever suspect Livia’s son would turn out to be such a bloody-minded imbecile?”
With a wary eye on the ruffians in the street, I ask, “What has Tiberius done now?”
“Not Tiberius,” Julia says with exasperation. “My husband is just a miserable lump. I’m talking about Drusus. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard how our new consul is preparing for his return to Germania, vowing to win the noblest spoils by hunting down a tribal chieftain and bringing back his armor!”
“It’s just talk,” I say dismissively, for the spoila optima is the highest honor a Roman general can achieve, considered greater even than the military Triumphs that the emperor has denied him. “Drusus says it to excite his soldiers.”
“Oh, no, Selene.” Julia shifts in the litter, jostling it so that I must grip the edge not to be tossed out. “I’ve heard tales of Drusus rushing onto the battlefield ahead of his armies, chasing great big fur-clad warlords through German forests and thickets. He’s going to get himself killed. The only good news is that Livia is beside herself, wondering how she could have possibly raised a man who champions the Republic.”
I doubt Livia is truly vexed. For it is the same old strategy of putting a brother in each camp. Drusus agitates for a return to the Republic so that the emperor cannot pass his powers down to his heirs. But Tiberius is the stepfather to those heirs, and if Augustus dies before his grandsons reach majority, then Tiberius will take power with or without a Republic.
Either way, the Claudians win.
Julia continues, “If Agrippa never celebrated a Triumphal parade and was never given the honors of a Triumphator, why should Drusus get them? He thinks he can call the emperor’s bluff and force my father to allow it. That’s what an idealistic fool Drusus is.”
Either that, or he’s more ambitious than I ever gave him credit for. Noble Drusus. Always affable. Always ready with a kind word. He is so unlike every other member of his family that it has never occurred to me he might be the best politician of them all.
Julia peeks out the curtains at the rough crowd that has started to follow us. “It’s a dangerous pretension. You ought to speak to your sister about her husband.”
“I’m done meddling in Roman affairs.”
At this, Julia rolls her eyes. “You’re so very sour today! Well, if you aren’t going to help me save Rome from the idiotic heroics of her generals, the least you can do is make yourself useful handing out salt and oil to the poor.”
“Why can’t you have slaves hand it out?”
Julia twists her finger into a lock of hair, dyed purple today to cover the gray … speaking of pretension. “Because I’m a woman of the people!”
“Well, I’m a Ptolemaic queen.”
“Exactly. And your presence increases my stature,” Julia replies, her eyes narrowing a little too shrewdly for my taste. “After all, you’re a goddess on my father’s monument whereas I am depicted as a mere mortal woman.”
Acid burns in my belly, tempting me to deny the accusation. I would deny it, if I were speaking to anyone else. “It doesn’t look very much like me, does it? I swear to you, the Tellus panel wasn’t my idea. I didn’t ask it of him.”
“Of course you didn’t. What could you stand to gain from my father making a fool of himself?” Her voice is light with amusement, but it must be the very question she’s been asking herself.
What do I stand to gain?
If the emperor’s obsession with my son is real and not the pretense Juba thinks it is, then it comes at the expense of Julia’s sons. I want Julia to be the First Woman in Rome. I want her sons to fulfill their promise and have all that she would wish for them. But I want a brilliant future for my children too. That is the weakness in me the emperor has preyed upon, and I am frightened that Julia might sense it.
I ask, “What did Livia say about the Ara Pacis?”
“Do you think Livia would say anything to me about it?”
“Tiberius, then.”
“My husband is even less likely to share. You know he despises me.”
“No one could despise you.”
She gives a dismissive flick of her fingers. “Tiberius does.”
“That’s unfair. You’ve done nothing but reconcile yourself to being his wife.”
Her shoulders droop. “Maybe if our son had lived, things would have been different …”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching for her hand.
She lets me take it, her eyes wistful. “You wouldn’t think it, but Tiberius is very sentimental.
His grief for that baby was wild and without reason. He wished the child was never born, so he wouldn’t have felt the pain. And of course it is my fault the child was born. Livia has him convinced that I’ve always had designs on him. Even when I was married to Agrippa. So Tiberius fancies me a temptress and dares not even look at me.”
I am altogether too well acquainted with the way men will blame their own lustful desires upon the women who aroused them. I am also aware of how difficult it is to have a husband who will not look at you. “Perhaps time will change him.”
Julia gives a toss of her dyed hair. “Let him despise me. I don’t care. I don’t even care what my father thinks of me. I have my own partisans now. Soldiers who would fight for me as Agrippa’s widow. Men who report to me on the doings of everyone from my father to the lowest senator. I mean for my sons to rule this empire, Selene, even if I never have an easy night’s sleep until it comes to pass.”
*
THE emperor’s daughter arranges for my husband and me to interview an imperial shipbuilder who used to serve Admiral Agrippa. We need such a man to take a position in our court. Nevertheless, Juba insists that he has urgent business elsewhere. Given my husband’s brusqueness, I suspect the urgency is simply to avoid me.
My son is also up and away into the bright February morning, eager to return to the stables. At least Ptolemy lets me kiss his cherub cheeks before he goes, a thing I treasure because I do not know how much longer it will be before he won’t accept cuddles and cosseting without embarrassment.
Once he’s gone I rummage through the scrolls in the cubbies that line the wall in our study for something that will make me seem less than hopelessly ignorant on the matter of shipbuilding. In the end, I give up. When the shipbuilder comes, I quickly offer the man a position; if he was good enough for Agrippa, he is good enough for me.
Wanting to give my husband no reason to be more displeased with me than he already is, I carefully slide Juba’s dusty old scrolls back into their holders. That’s when I hear Dora scream.
Daughters of the Nile Page 43