“Friends?” Livia said, her voice rising in a curious inflection. “Why, I would hope that no one would call me Cleopatra’s enemy.” She put a hand just over her heart. “After all, so many of her enemies have died . . . unexpected deaths.”
Eurydice sighed. Her mother’s reputation was mostly a product of very careful cultivation, though she didn’t for an instant doubt that Cleopatra was capable of killing someone she deemed a threat.
Cleopatra smiled thinly. “I am an enemy towards none who bear me and mine no ill-will,” she said, her voice ringing out clearly. “Isn’t it fortunate that no one here bears me or my children malice, and would never speak a hurtful word about them?”
Eurydice heard Selene squeak, and she looked down in time to see the shining look in her sister’s eyes. “Settle down,” Eurydice murmured softly, her lips barely moving. “People are watching us to see how we react.” They were, too. Curious heads had turned, finding them in the flickering light of the fire and the lamps that hung from every column.
Livia raised her hands, as if in horror. “Malice? What terrible things could possibly be said about your fair and virtuous children, Cleopatra?” The knife-edge in her tone wasn’t even concealed. But then she turned towards the crowd, and let her voice roll out, almost as if she’d been trained in oratory, like a man. “Of course, if our children fall from virtue, it’s not really their fault, is it? The fault lies with us. With their mothers. For failing to educate them properly.” She smiled, a thin-lipped expression, and Eurydice saw Octavia cringe and lower her head further into her hands. “And what failures in virtue we see in Rome today. Even here, in the house of a magistrate, I see moral decay and decline. My dear Octavian planned to put forward a motion to ban the rites of the Bona Dea, do you know that? Oh, how angry I was with him at the time!”
The women all around called out with consternation and anger at her words, but Livia waited for their voices to fall, and then let hers crack like a whip. “I was angry, yes, but looking at Rome today, I see how right he was! Moral lapses everywhere. Adultery and incest. Men embracing disgusting Hellene practices because they can find no moral women to be their wives. Women taking one another to their beds because they cannot control their lusts. You think that I did not see, Portia and Lucina?”
Oh gods, she’s going to name names. Also, I’m not exactly sure that’s why men go to bed together. In fact, I’m quite sure that a lack of moral wives has nothing at all to do with what Alexander would call fun. Eurydice wanted to cover her face, but she didn’t dare. Doing so would look like cowardice, and Livia would have won.
The woman’s voice crackled on now. “Of course,” she went on, her voice almost compassionate now, “as I said before, it’s not all your fault. The fault is with your mothers. With your education, which hasn’t taken morality with proper seriousness in decades. And of course, it all comes down to one thing,” she added, turning and looking back across the table at Cleopatra now, her eyes narrow. “Because for decades, one woman stood as mother to Rome, as her husband stood as father. And what a mother you have been, Cleopatra.” Livia clapped her hands twice, the sound echoing in the sudden, ringing silence. “You ask, Fabia, what it would take to make me friends with her? Let her go back across the sea to her desert kingdom and its perpetual smell of camel dung. Let her take her libidinous children and her pornographic cult of Isis with its debauched rituals, and go. Never again to profane Rome’s holy soil with her footsteps again.”
Fabia had put her shaking hands up over her face, the veils that only a Vestal wore drifting down to offer her further concealment. Eurydice started to push her way through the crowd, but everyone present may as well have turned to stone. I need to get to Mother, she thought, a haze of anger clouding her thoughts. Gods only know what I’ll do when I get there, but I need to stand by her. Offer her whatever support I can in the face of such a vicious attack.
And then Cleopatra laughed, a long, low, rich sound, filled with irony, and she drained the cup in her hand, setting it down on the table. “Ah, Livia,” she said, shaking her head. “You try so hard to be the arbiter of morality. You look at this small, tame gathering of women, most of whom are too afraid of what everyone else might think of them to express even an iota of individuality—a group of women, most of whom do not have their own names, but merely the names of their fathers!—and you see license and debauchery, tearing at the noble edifice of your great Republic. I’m not sure how your dear Octavian thought that these women could manage it. Were they, in his opinion, going to eat up all the virtue, using their vaginas as gaping mouths?” Cleopatra made a little gesture with one hand, like a puppet’s mouth.
Shocked gasps of absolute horror around Eurydice, and at least two strangled laughs that escalated into tipsy titters. And as Livia opened her mouth to reply, Cleopatra waved a finger at her like a mother at an erring toddler. “Now, now,” she cooed, but the ice in her eyes was a nearly palpable thing. “You had your say. Now let me have mine, dear. Where was I? Oh yes. You look around and see debauchery. I see a terrified and squabbling mass of chickens, each of them pecking out each others’ eyes in a vain attempt to reach a single golden kernel of corn in the farmyard.” Cleopatra gestured, and the crowd’s laughter died. “Why do I say that?” A pause. “In some of the lands south of Egypt,” she said, conversationally now, “there is a custom. Before a young woman blooms, the women of her own tribe take her aside, and with sharp stone tools, or maybe a bronze knife, they cut her. Here.” Cleopatra lowered her hand to her groin. “They take away the thing that you women of Rome, even with no man around to hear, dare not even call by a euphemism tonight. They cut away the seat of pleasure. The myrtle, gift of Venus and of Isis.” The forbidden word practically crackled in the air, and the Vestal threw up her hands, trying to stop Cleopatra’s words. “The landica—oh yes, you cringe, all of you. You don’t have your own names. You dare not name parts of your own bodies. You gather here one night of the year to drink wine that you dare not call wine. Even in this holy rite, this ceremony dedicated to the feminine divine that exists in all of us, you don’t just let the men of your society control you.” Cleopatra’s voice held contempt now. “You’re complicit in it. You take the knife to each other, and your daughters. And I won’t apologize for refusing to do the same.” She smiled at Livia now, seeming to show more teeth than a crocodile. “I’m here, dear Livia. And I’m never going away. And when the gods finally have their chance to weigh your wretched heart against a feather, I know that you will fail their test.”
Fabia wrung her hands now, yet her cracked old voice still managed to rise above the indignation of the crowd—first at being called immoral by Livia, and then at being called cowards by Cleopatra—”Ladies, please, I beg of you! This is a holy day! Cleopatra, my dear, you are Egyptian. You cannot understand.” The voices of the crowd died, letting the Vestal be heard more clearly. “The wine is milk because that is what we, as mothers, give to our children from our bodies, as the goddess gives it to us, this one night a year. And the wine-jug is a honey-pot, because, as everyone knows, bees are abstinent, virtuous females. They will surely desert a household in which adultery has taken place. This is a rite of sisterhood,” the Vestal emphasized as Eurydice finally managed to make her way closer to the front, Selene trailing behind her. “A chance for all the patrician women of Rome to come together, and feel the bonds between them—”
And that was when Eurydice couldn’t choke back her own laughter any longer. She’d tried to hold it in, out of respect for the Vestal’s age and position, but that last was simply too much. Fabia looked deeply offended as Eurydice finally made her way to the front row, and demanded, “Child, do you have any reason to interrupt me?”
It was the child that did it. The Vestal might be rightly affronted, but she also had no right to address Eurydice in that fashion. Eurydice shook her head, still chuckling under her breath, and looked straight at her mother, and then at Selene. “Sisterhood?” Eurydice said, her vo
ice shaking a little. And then, having opened her mouth in public, in front of all those eyes, it felt like falling off a cliff and realizing that she already knew how to fly. Freedom. Pure and simple. I’ll say what I think, and to Dis with all of you. “Perhaps that’s what the ritual was originally intended for, back in the earliest days of Rome. Oh, and let me say, dear Livia, that I find it fascinating that a man like your late husband, who had such reverence for the roots of our civilization, who wanted to reinstate the morality of the grand old days of the Republic, still felt such an urge to pick and choose which rituals would be carried forward, and which would be banned. If the old rites were what made us virtuous, shouldn’t they all be carried forward, without exception?” Eurydice snorted outright, still feeling that delicious freedom. As if she were banking in the sky, riding the mind of a hawk, nothing but miles of wind beneath her feet.
And as Livia’s mouth fell open, Eurydice turned back to the chief Vestal, and went on, almost gently, “You mouth the words, Fabia. I’m sorry, but that’s all you do. You don’t even understand what they mean. In thirty years as a Vestal, you’ve never once understood that if Roma is Amor, and Amor is love, then Roma is Venus. Our mother. Mother of the Julii and mother of all Rome. You celebrate a feast for the goddess of love as our mother, as Venus Genetrix, but you can’t say her name. Instead of celebrating her with myrtle, as my mother said, we won’t even look at her face on this night as the mother of love and passion—the love and passion that led to the birth of the child, and the maiden becoming the mother. And may the gods forbid we inform the men of her real name. Whatever would they do, if they knew the name of their mother, and the name of the city that they love and protect and cherish, were the same? Do we think they’d suddenly cease to love the city? Do we think they’ll suddenly rape their mother?” She spread her hands, gently ridiculing the mysteries and the fears. “No, it’s because for one night, you want to feel her power within you. But you fear it. Temper it. Dilute it. Efface it. How you must disappoint her.”
“How dare you—” Fabia’s voice was choked and hoarse at this blasphemy.
“I dare because she appeared to me. Called me god-born of her own line, as well as god-born of Isis and Horus. I dare because I have looked on the face of my divine mother and the face of my mortal one, and I love and honor them both.” Eurydice had no idea where these words flowed from, but they sounded good, so she rode them as she rode her hawks. “You spoke of sisterhood, Fabia. The only sisterhood I’ve experienced here tonight came from my own sister, Selene, who showed me that she has a kind, compassionate, and giving heart.” She left her hands at her sides, but lifted her chin now, turning to face the crowd of shocked faces behind her. “I rode with the legions for the past nine months,” Eurydice said with careful deliberation. “I’ve stood inside a wall made of steel and men’s wills as they tried to hold off death. I could feel the bond of brotherhood between them, though I knew that I could never share in it. The bond that ties them together is made of blood and pain, and knits them together so tightly that it would take a god to part them.” She swallowed. “Each of you has stood inside that same circle of steel and will since you were born,” Eurydice went on. “It’s just that the circle’s moved outwards over the years. And now it’s so far distant, that you don’t know what it feels like to see death just over the shoulder of the man with the spear in front of you. Oh, your sons and husbands and brothers go away to war, and some of them come back. Changed, and you don’t understand where the boy you knew went. Or why he’s so tightly bound to the other men. It’s because they’re brothers. And not one of you understands that bond, because none of you are sisters. No amount of pig’s blood or wine will make you so, either.” She stared at them all, feeling a shard of hate pass through her heart, just for an instant. And then she let it go. “I strongly recommend going home tonight and praying to Venus for love, compassion, and wholeness of heart. I think our mother might be inclined to hear you. On this, the day in which we’re supposed to find her in ourselves.”
She turned back to Cleopatra, and inclined her head very slightly. “Mother.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Selene, I’m sorry to cut short the fun, but I really do have a great deal of work to do tomorrow. Organizing games and reading dispatches don’t just accomplish themselves. Fetch Octavia—oh, dear, poor thing, you did throw up after all? Well, the servants should have rags and some tepid water by the litters. You’ll be fine in the morning, I swear.”
She probably would have been offended by the way the crowd of women recoiled to let her through, but then again, most of the evening, they’d been maintaining a distance of at least five feet from her at all times, anyway. I’ve offended them. Oh, well. They were offended by my mere presence. At least this way, they heard my words. And gods know, they offend me.
Outside, she helped bundle Octavia into the litter, hearing the girl mutter, “Oh, gods, I’m so ashamed—”
“You had too much to drink,” Eurydice told her briskly. “Next time, you’ll know better. From what I’ve been reading in the herbiaries, it takes far more of most medicines to give a man ease, than it takes for a woman. And the same thing applies to poisons—it takes a larger dose to kill a man than a woman. Simply because they outweigh us, by and large. Lesson to be learned—don’t think that you can drink like a man. Go at it slowly and find your own limits.”
Octavia managed to lift her head. “Are you calling wine a poison? The . . . gift of Bacchus?”
Eurydice shook her head. “No, dear. Most medicines that are useful in moderate doses can kill with an overdose, or so I read. Wine’s no different from any other gift of the soil.” She patted the girl’s shoulder. “In you go, and for the gods’ sakes, if the swaying of the litter proves too much for you, lean over the edge before you vomit again. The servants don’t want to clean that up, I’m sure, and Selene doesn’t need it all over her—ah, well. There you go. Get it all out now.” She stepped back prudently and lightly rubbed Octavia’s shoulders as everything else the girl had eaten at the ritual came up in the street. Selene made a disgusted noise and settled into her litter, pulling a blanket over herself.
“It could have been you, little one,” Eurydice reminded Selene.
“I know,” Selene replied, sounding resigned. “Can we just go home now?”
“Believe me, sister, I didn’t want to come here to begin with. But at least Mother and Livia made the evening far more entertaining than it usually is.”
Selene sounded disheartened. “It’s usually worse?”
Eurydice couldn’t help but notice the fascinated stares of the male servants and Praetorians. “Yes. Usually it’s even duller. And that’s with Mother having been forced to hold it these past eighteen years. Last year, one of the Vestals actually dozed off after the sacrifice. Someone had to poke her awake before her veils fell in the gravy.”
Selene doubled over with laughter in the litter, and even Octavia managed a weak smile as she settled in now, beside her. “See?” Eurydice said, forcing a smile for their benefit. “You’re feeling better already.” She looked at the bearers. “Try to carry them gently,” she told the men. “I’m sure you’ve all been there yourselves.”
“Usually, it’s the morning after, domina, when the real regret settles in,” one of them muttered quietly.
“See, Octavia? You have that to look forward to as well!” Eurydice pulled the curtains down over their faces, and shook her head as the litter-bearers trotted off. Behind her, her own bearers pulled back the curtains of her litter, and she shook her head again. “No,” she told them firmly. “Lurio? Unless you can produce a horse with a saddle for me in the next five minutes, I will be walking home. I’ve suffered enough tonight.”
Her Praetorian looked as if he’d swallowed his teeth for a moment. “Domina—”
“Lurio, I have ridden through the city with my brothers before. I have ridden across Hispania twice. I have a full escort of guards. Find me a horse, or we’re all walking.”
Eurydice rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t sure where this part of her spirit had been hiding all her life. It might all go away again in the morning, once this day of freedom from the usual rules dies with the dawn. But I rather hope it doesn’t. Freedom is far more intoxicating than wine. I should have explained that better to Octavia.
He saluted. “Yes, domina.”
And thus, she left the damnable litter behind, and arrived at the Julii villa on horseback, passing her sister’s litter along the way. The few people out in the street at this hour ducked out of the way of the trotting horses, and she knew that she got more than a few curious stares as she and her escort passed. But the trip took a third of the time, and best of all, her head didn’t ache when she got where she was going.
Still, one tiny niggle of concern reared its head. Maybe I’m not acting like myself, because I’m not myself. This might not just be a cup of strong wine and anger. There could be another explanation.
Stripping off her palla and handing it to the butler, she asked where Caesarion was, and then set off to join him in his study. A quick tap at the door yielded his immediate, “Enter!” and she stepped through, catching his smile as he looked up and spotted her. “Back so soon?”
“It was even more horrible than usual. Mother and Livia got into it. And after four hours of being entirely shunned, I was tired of them all, and gave them a piece of my mind.” She moved forward, warming her hands over the brazier near his desk. And gave voice to her darkest dread. “Is it possible, brother, that when you use a life to return someone from death, that a piece of the person used becomes . . . stuck in the person you return from the Styx?”
He dropped his pen and stood, moving around the desk to take her hands in his, his face immediately concerned. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
Ave, Caesarion Page 59