I knew him too well to believe that. “He’s afraid. Dictator for life is the authority they offered Julius Caesar before they plunged their knives into him. Augustus either fears he’s being offered a death sentence or he simply wants to be seen to refuse so that no one can accuse him of ambition.”
Julia bit her lower lip. “He is afraid. Without Agrippa here to protect him, he’s vulnerable.” Which made all of us vulnerable. How must my mother have felt here in Rome with little Caesarion in her arms, wondering if her Caesar would triumph or fall? I thanked Isis for the thousandth time that I’d never claimed my child was the emperor’s, or Isidora’s fortunes would be tied to his even more surely than mine were.
“How can you both be so cynical about Augustus?” Iullus asked.
I’ d learned from long experience that arguing with men who admired the emperor was fruitless, so I didn’t bother. Julia and I knew the truth of it. This was the emperor’s mad gambit. It was risky. It could all go wrong. The mob could tear him limb from limb, or the senators might turn their knives on him, then come to murder his family. We’d be next, my daughter and me. I was trapped in this dangerous situation, in this hateful city! As I paced, Iullus tried to comfort us, but some curious activity on the Tiber caught my attention.
I went to the balcony, where I looked down at teams of oxen on the towpaths alongside the river, hauling barges through the frigid water. It was an otherwise ordinary sight, but people flocked to the shore, swarming the bridges, pushing and shoving their way. That’s when I recognized the cargo. Grain sacks. Heaps and heaps of them, all stamped not with the emblems of Egypt—but of Mauretania. My Mauretania!
Twenty-one
SOMEHOW, Euphronius had done it. Perhaps he’d enchanted the sailors or bankrupted the treasury to bribe them. Either way, I was sure that it had cost us dearly. I stood watching barge after barge make its way up the Tiber. A man climbed atop the sacks of grain and lifted one hand in the direction of my house. He might’ve said anything in that moment, and the people would have cheered, but he cried, “Thank the Queen of Mauretania!”
I stood dressed only in a gown of mourning. I wore neither a diadem nor a circlet crown upon my head. My lack of queenly adornment seemed to win the crowd. This year had been one of grief and misery; they knew that I’d lost a brother and shared in their pain. “All hail to the queen!” someone cried. “All hail, to the good Queen Cleopatra!”
The crowd roared their approval and my guards pushed their way out onto the balcony. It seemed as if my entire household rushed out with them—only Julia and Iullus remained in the house. The people continued to cheer. “Thank Selene of Mauretania, blessed of Isis! Thank Selene of Egypt, last of the Ptolemies!”
“Not the last,” I murmured. “Not the last of the Ptolemies.”
Crinagoras rubbed his hands together against the chill. “Majesty, have you learned nothing about the allure of tragedy? Let them forget Princess Isidora for the moment. Let them think you’re the last of a noble line. It’s the sorrow of your story that’ll win their love and send you back to Egypt.”
He spoke openly this way because my aims were no secret to any of my courtiers, many of whom seemed more ambitious for my success than I was. “Who is that man standing atop the grain, proclaiming my largesse?”
“It’s Captain Kabyle!” Until that moment, I’d never believed the stories about Cupid and his bow, but watching the flush that stained Tala’s cheeks, no one could doubt that the Berber woman been pierced by an arrow of desire. Given that he’d just delivered food to a starving city, I wanted to kiss the captain myself, but Tala was breathless. Had she conceived her affection for the man on our journey from Mauretania?
Not wanting to question her, I said, “Tala, go down to the river and tell Captain Kabyle that I’ll receive him and hear what news he brings from King Juba.”
But moments after Tala rushed away, I received a summons from the emperor.
THE Temple of Apollo was a magnificent structure, a monument to the emperor’s victory over my parents. Each sculpture wrought with symbolism, every gilded adornment chosen with care, every cornice framing priceless artwork. Not for his own glory, Augustus would say, but for the glory of Apollo. As I passed through the giant bronze doors, which were carved in relief with the story of proud Niobe and all her slaughtered children, I shivered. As far as the emperor knew, all of my mother’s children had been struck down too. All except me.
Though it was a temple, it was also a massive governmental office. Amidst scrolls and various secretaries who hurried to do his bidding, Augustus was to be found in an antechamber not far from where he’d later lock up what remained of the Sibylline Books after he’d purged them of prophecies he feared. When I reached the entryway, his lictors tilted their ceremonial axes to either side of the entryway to let me pass. Alone behind closed doors, the emperor lowered his hood and pinned me in place with his icy eyes. “I suppose you expect me to thank you for your shipment of grain. It’s changed the mood in the city. A nice bit of sorcery . . .”
I thought he’d be glad, but I detected an edge in his voice. Was he actually displeased while all the city rejoiced? “It wasn’t sorcery, Caesar. I simply sent word when you were too ill to do it yourself.”
He pushed papers across the table in annoyance. “You conjured grain out of the air.”
“I conjured grain from Mauretania, where farmers worked the land and Isis rewarded them with a harvest, so that a fleet of sailors could risk their lives to bring it across the winter sea.”
“No,” he said. “There was magic in how it happened. The crowd threatened to burn down the Curia until I promised to take control of the grain. Mere hours later, your sacks of grain were ferried up the river.”
I realized he was displeased, as if he suspected me of something. “It was fortuitous timing.”
“Fortuitous?” he snapped. “Do you know what my enemies say? They say I feigned my illness and engineered the famine. They say that your fortuitously timed shipment was positioned to make me look like a savior.”
I myself might have wondered if he’d purposefully brought this famine down upon Rome, but there were some things not even Augustus could control. Something else had him agitated, and I couldn’t guess at what. “It’s the fate of a ruler to do good for his subjects and be ill spoken of by them in return,” I said, quoting Alexander. “Our enemies will always have something to say against us, Caesar. The important thing is that the hungry have a little more food.”
He tilted his head, appraising me. “Do you know what I think? I think you held the grain back to please me. To glorify me. Is that what you did?”
I’d never hold back food from starving people, but that wasn’t the answer he wanted. “I might have done it had it occurred to me. I’ll find a thousand ways to glorify you if only you restore me to my mother’s kingdom.”
“I can’t,” he said, simply. “There’s war in Egypt.”
I was taken entirely off guard. “War? In Egypt?”
“The Kushites took advantage of Gallus’s disastrous campaign in Arabia.” He leaned forward, so wasted by his recent fever that his gaunt face took on a serpentine edge. “The temples at Aswan have been captured by a Kushite force from Meroë.”
I blinked. I couldn’t help it. Meroë was to the southern border of Egypt, a land of ebony people who shared many of our customs and gods, but they’d been friendly during my mother’s reign. “Why should they attack Egypt?”
The emperor steepled fingers beneath his chin. “The Kandake of Meroë claims she’s a pharaoh. She’s seized the temples in the name of Isis. She’s routed Roman forces.”
Impossible. I hadn’t believed any force in the world could rout the Romans, and yet, somehow, this queen had done what I couldn’t! “I never thought . . .”
“There are rumors that the Kandake is served by a fearsome wizard who can throw fire with his bare hands. Do you know what the small people call this mage? They call him Horus the Avenger
.”
Oh heart, be still. Helios. This was his doing. I’d thought the Romans were invincible; Helios had himself said that he couldn’t beat them, not with swords or magic. But he’d done it again. He’d routed them and I hoped that my exultation wouldn’t show. All the lies I’d ever told, all the practice I’d had at hiding my true feelings, every lesson in deception I’d ever learned had all been to prepare me for this moment. I forced every muscle of my face to an appearance of bewilderment. Not so much as a tremor shook my innocent facade. “Horus the Avenger? This legend often rises up in Egypt. It’s an imaginary hope.”
The emperor’s quiet rage would have sent a shiver through me if I hadn’t been prepared for it. “Those weren’t imaginary wounds my soldiers suffered. I wonder . . .” The emperor’s eyes scrutinized me. He was a shrewd judge of character and he was judging me now, but I was nothing if not a fine actress.
“Caesar, I’m not surprised that Roman soldiers made up stories to explain their defeat. Haven’t they always done so? Your forces suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a woman. Is it possible the Kandake has a magician who fights for her? Yes. Did falconeyed Horus drop from the sky to smite Roman soldiers? I think not.”
He ground his teeth. “Her warriors cut off the head of a bronze statue that had been erected in my likeness.”
So Augustus had put a statue of himself in the holy precinct of Isis? I imagined Helios swinging his sword, decapitating a statue of the emperor, then burying it somewhere in the sands. My twin had pushed the Romans from the sacred temples and he’d done it with this foreign queen, this Kandake, and not with me. Still, I betrayed nothing. “What can the Kushites want?”
“I think you know what they want, Selene. I want you to tell me why they captured the Isle of Philae. There’s nothing there. No stronghold. No lands to settle. The temple treasures have already been seized. Why would the Kandake attack us here?”
“Because it’s the holiest place for Isiacs,” I said, emboldened by the idea that Helios might yet wrest Egypt away from the Romans. “They’re making war for religious reasons and you have only yourself to blame. All through the empire, the Romans let people worship whatever god or goddess they wish. Yet you’ve singled out Isis for unique suppression—”
“Did she not single me out?” He pressed his hands to the table. “Or did you lie when you said that Isis cursed me? Why shouldn’t I retaliate?”
“Retaliate against a goddess? Hubris is a Greek idea, but I thought even Romans understood it.”
His lips thinned at my boldness. “If the followers of Isis were content to make sacrifices at her altar, I’d have no cause to complain, but the priests are influential with the people. They involve themselves in politics. They speak out against war and slavery and the proper relations of the sexes. Isis worship undermines the state and leads the small people to think that they have as much worth as those who rule over them.”
I couldn’t deny this, for I’d heard such sermons. “So you’ll suffer because you think yourself too great to bend to the will of a goddess?”
“Perhaps it pleases you to see me suffer, Selene.” He stood, very composed. Very angry. “I remember that on the edge of death, I asked for your forgiveness. You wouldn’t give it.”
Some of my smugness drained away. “Why should Caesar need my forgiveness?”
“I don’t need it,” he said with a curl of his lips. “I wanted it and you refused me.”
Augustus always wants what he cannot have. When had this interview slipped from my control? The emperor’s fascination with me was all that kept my daughter safe, and I must foster it. “Caesar, if I withheld my forgiveness, it’s only because I didn’t want to give you an excuse to die.”
“You say this because you want to be Queen of Egypt. Not because you care for me.” He said the last petulantly, like a spoiled child.
I swallowed, reaching out for him. “My mother forgave Caesar many things. For burning her books, for his dalliance with Queen Eunoe. How could she not forgive him? Don’t I walk in her footsteps ?”
“You swore to be my Cleopatra,” he muttered. “You vowed it.”
I might’ve known that my kithara harp wouldn’t satisfy him. “How have I failed you?”
He came round the table, drawing so close that his breath warmed my shoulder. “You know exactly how you’ve failed me. You gave me only a girl. Not a son. Not the heir that I need.”
The words he’d whispered came back in rush. Hateful words. Vile words. Sickening words about how I was his Egyptian whore and would bear his child. Had I sat by his bedside, nursing him back to health, only so that he could be the same monster as before? I straightened to my full height and I was now taller than most women. “Did you think you could force yourself upon me and stand to gain from it? Isis would never allow it.”
Color returned to his face, as if this old game between us invigorated him, and he reached to brush hair back from my cheek. When I turned away, he caught my pearl earring and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he asked the question that seems so inevitable now but which shook me to my foundations. “What if you came to me willingly, Selene? Could you give me a son?”
The suffocating weight of his proposal settled over the room and my mouth went dry. It made me want to retch. In his death throes, Philadelphus had murmured something about the son I might bear. Could he have seen this in the Rivers of Time? I’d endured much for the sake of my brothers and to defend my faith. But to give myself to the man who raped me? There were no words for such an abomination. “You’re a Roman,” I said hoarsely. “You make too much of your need for a son of your own bloodline. You can simply adopt the way Caesar adopted you.”
“I mean to rule more than Rome. War with Parthia nips at my heels and Alexander’s name still strikes fear into their hearts. You alone can give me a son that joins the blood of the Caesars with Alexander’s divine ichor.”
Perhaps this was what my father had asked of my mother too. Perhaps it was the reason that my mother named my twin Alexander Helios. I always thought of my mother and the emperor as two very different kinds of people, but maybe they’d always been very much alike. And maybe I wasn’t enough like either of them.
“You want Egypt,” the emperor said flatly. “Well, I want you to give me a son.”
Twenty-two
MY mother had known when to retreat and where to regroup her strength. As a young queen, betrayed by her mentors and driven from her throne, she fled to the city of Ashkelon to gather an army. I was seventeen now. I didn’t have an army, but I was no less under siege. I too would flee, for the emperor had confessed to me a crucial bit of information: The Romans in Egypt were under attack. Helios might win our throne without my having to surrender to the emperor’s twisted desires. I went straight to my house across the Tiber, sweeping through the atrium and throwing open the doors to the receiving room. The ship’s captain was waiting and dipped low in a bow to me. “Majesty.”
I had quite forgotten I’d sent Tala to retrieve him. He expected pleasantries, no doubt. Perhaps a well-deserved thanks and a decent night’s sleep. I would disappoint him. “Captain, I want to return to Mauretania tonight.”
Captain Kabyle’s smile faltered. “It’s better to wait until March—”
I couldn’t wait until March. I couldn’t wait even one more day. “We need to leave now. You’ve seen me call the winds to my command. There’ll be no danger to us so long as I’m aboard your ship.”
He puffed up, affronted. “I fought winter storms to bring grain to Rome without any such assurance of safety. It’s not a lack of courage that gives me pause. What of your retinue? Your baggage? Does it not take time—”
“I must leave tonight!” I wound my fingers in my pearls. “Can the arrangements be made?”
His brow furrowed. “We can be to Ostia by morning, certainly, but it may take a day to round up my lads and set sail again.”
Tala’s tattooed hands clasped the high arm of
a couch. “Are we in danger, Majesty?”
I gave the only explanation I could. “There’s war in Egypt. As Cleopatra’s daughter, I don’t want to be in Rome for the inevitable recriminations.” Thereafter, I alerted the servants and made quick decisions about what to leave behind. I’d abandon the statuary and the furnishings. I’d abandon all of it but for the cat. As servants hurried to gather the barest necessities, Tala and the others complained that many of my retainers weren’t ready to travel. My mime wasn’t even in the city, as I’d granted Ecloga permission to visit a school in Baiae. If we set out tonight, we’d have to leave her behind. The mime wasn’t the only one, but like an animal cornered in the arena, I tore into anyone who tried to delay my escape. “Then I’ll do without them!”
Crinagoras lifted a wry eyebrow. “Why, you half persuade me to stay in Rome.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, for I didn’t need more enemies. “If you aren’t ready to travel, you can follow on another ship, at my expense, but I must go.”
My power, my only refuge, was in Mauretania.
I sent no word to Augustus because any pretext I made for my swift departure would have been insultingly flimsy. He’d be furious, but his hold over me had loosened the moment Philadelphus breathed his last. Augustus could no longer threaten my little brother to make me obey and I wouldn’t let him use my daughter. Besides, if Egypt threw off Rome’s yoke, I didn’t want to be a hostage to compel their surrender. These are the things I told myself only after our frantic night escape from Rome. Only after we reached the port of Ostia, once the sails had been hoisted, did my blind animal instinct to flee abate.
It was the salt spray on my cheeks that awakened me to the reality of what I’d done. The emperor told me he wanted to get a son on me and I’d run from him. It was my first true rebellion. I wasn’t afraid of the repercussions; he couldn’t afford to preoccupy himself with punishing me. Not when his power was uncertain, while Egypt was under invasion and tensions were mounting with Parthia. A calculating man like Augustus wouldn’t jeopardize everything for the sake of spite. He needed grain, so he needed me. He needed a stable and prosperous Mauretania at his back, a place where he could settle his veterans as he’d promised, so as to maintain the support of his legions. For once, I understood my own power.
Song of the Nile Page 24