Cleopatra's Moon (27 page)

Octavianus’s freedman Thyrsus found me by the rain pool in Octavia’s
peristylum
, where I had gone to try to make sense of the day’s events. “Caesar has been looking for you. He awaits you in his study,” he said. “You must come now — I will escort you.”

“I know where his
tablinum
is,” I said as we reached Octavianus’s house.

“He is not in the downstairs
tablinum
. He is in Syracuse.”

“Excuse me?”

“That is what he calls his private study upstairs,” he explained. “Come. It will be easier if I announce you.”

I followed him up the airless, dark stairwell, forcing myself to keep my breathing steady. I would not show fear, no matter what Octavianus said or claimed he knew.

“Selene is here to see you, sire,” Thyrsus said after knocking on the small wooden door.

“Bring her in.”

I entered a small, sweltering room covered in frescoes featuring theater actors in exaggerated grotesque masks. The heavy black and red paint of the mural’s background made the room seem even smaller. The room reeked of stale sweat and sour wine and the slightly oily, charred scent of writing ink made from lampblack.

“You may leave,” Octavianus said to Thyrsus, but his man hesitated, looking anxiously at me.

“Bring some wine,” Octavianus ordered. After Thyrsus left, he turned to me and inspected me slowly. “Tell me, have you spoken with your brother today?”

“No.” I had looked for him after I had returned from the Subura, but he was nowhere to be found. Neither was Julia.

He grunted. His unsettling gray eyes bore into mine as if he could read my thoughts. I kept my face impassive, remembering Mother’s skill at this game.

“What do you know about Cornelius Gallus?” he asked.

“Who?”

He smiled dangerously. “You are too smart to play dumb, Selene. Tell me what you know.”

“I know that you left him in charge of Egypt,” I said. “Anything else?”

“My nurse has heard some gossip.”

“And what would that gossip be?”

“That he has died.”

“Ah. Do you know
how
he died?” he asked, putting the tips of his fingers together to create a triangle with his hands.

“Suicide.”

He stared at me and let the silence drag on. Sweat trickled down my spine.

“Not quite. It seems my good friend Cornelius decided that he deserved more power and recognition than I had allotted him,” he said in a quiet tone. “The fool.

“So,” he continued, “I had him executed.”

I drew in a breath. He smirked. “Of course, the official version is that he ‘fell on his sword.’ Either way, thanks to his inept stupidity, I now claim all his holdings too. Worked out quite nicely for me, don’t you think?”

I suppressed a shudder. Octavianus stood up and circled me. Too close. Why was he so close? Every inch of me wanted to recoil in disgust, but I concentrated on steadying my breathing. The man lived on others’ fear. I would not feed him.

“My agents tell me someone from my household may have been involved in this grab for Egypt,” he said softly as he walked behind me. “Your brother says he knew nothing about it. I believe him.”

He circled back to stand just inches from my face. “And do you know why I believe your bastard brother? Because of the two,
you’re
the one foolish enough to try to defy me.”

I carefully arranged my expression into a look of innocent confusion. “I do not understand what you mean….”

He chuckled, and it was as if low-growling Amut the Destroyer had entered the room. He moved closer still to me, so that I had to use every ounce of self-control not to wince away from him.

“Your wine, sire,” Thyrsus announced, stepping in.

Octavianus stepped back. “Thank you. You may leave now.”

Thyrsus hesitated. “Sire,
Domina
asks for your presence in her —”

He snorted. “Go.”

Thyrsus left, looking back at me. Octavianus grasped the neck of the wine decanter and poured himself a cup. “Would you like some?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.

“No. Thank you.”

He came close again, and I could smell the sharp tang of wine on his breath. “I will discover the truth,” he said. “But in the meantime, I have decided to marry you off and remove you from my premises.”

“What?” My heart thudded. Like every paterfamilias, Octavianus had complete power over me in this regard. “But … but you changed the law to move up the age of marriage for girls to eighteen! I am only —”

“Oh, I know what I’ve been saying. But those laws don’t apply to you, as you are not a true daughter of Rome.” He took a sip of wine, then licked his lips. “There are some senators’ sons who have indicated interest, but I would not subject them to you. You would eat them alive. So I will marry you to someone who would eat
you
alive first — Placus Munius Corbulo. The Elder.”

I gasped. Corbulo was the wrinkled, bald, tottering man I had seen in the garden with him so long ago. He had to be almost sixty!

“A despicable old leech, but he is filthy rich and he has expressed an interest in tasting Egypt,” he said with a narrowed-eye smile. “Honestly,
I don’t know how his other wives stood him, but they all died mysteriously after marrying him anyway.”

I struggled to keep my face blank. I would not give him the outraged reaction he sought. I concentrated on the twisted face of the tragedy mask painted on the wall — the open mouth, frozen in silent horror.

“I leave for Spain in two days,” he said. “But rest assured I shall pursue the matter while I am gone. I am sure Corbulo will be more than amenable to the arrangement, and I, for one, will enjoy watching you live the life of a miserable Roman matron. For as long as you survive, anyway.” He smiled at me. “Seems somehow fitting, doesn’t it? Your mother destroyed a good Roman marriage, so we will arrange a good Roman marriage that will destroy
you
.”

He took a gulp of wine and brushed his wet lips with the back of his hand. “You may leave now.”

My feet skittered on the wooden steps leading down from his private study. I wanted to run, to get away from Rome and Octavianus as far and as fast as possible. I thought about stealing away to the Temple in Capua, but I knew he would find me there, and I could not risk hurting any more innocent devotees of the Goddess. What would he do to the priestess if he knew of her involvement? Gods! I would have to avoid her to keep her safe!

But I had to do something, go somewhere. Could I somehow make it to Ostia and onto a ship to Egypt? Or Africa? Anywhere but Rome! I could not bear the idea of being first used, then killed, by some arrogant Roman! Old feelings of despair and rage circled up my throat as I faced the utter powerlessness of my situation.

I went in search of Alexandros. If Octavianus was going to marry me off, what would he do with him? I stopped at the courtyard fountain, trying to calm myself. Octavianus’s people would be watching me carefully now. I did not want anyone reporting how seriously he had disturbed me.

Julia emerged from the direction of the gardens. “Oh, hello, sister,” she called, a flushed smile on her face, but she did not stop. She merely grinned at me and sauntered away. I put my hands under one of the fountain’s dolphin spouts, trying to rinse away the memory of Octavianus’s threat.

“Did you know Octavianus was looking for you earlier?” Alexandros asked.

I jumped. “Gods, you scared me!”

A small leaf hung by the stem on the dark curls at the base of his neck. He had emerged from the same thicket Julia had just walked out of. I groaned. “Brother, shouldn’t you and Julia be more careful? Or are you
trying
to get caught and then killed?”

Alexandros shrugged. “Julia enjoys taking risks. What can I say? And it is not as if I am going to refuse her.”

“Oh, Isis! Please tell me you aren’t actually sleeping together!”

Alexandros did not respond.

I closed my eyes. “He will kill us both now.”

“He doesn’t know,” Alexandros said. “And he’s leaving for Spain, so we are safe.”

“Are you … are you
mad
? The slaves and servants must know. They know everything! It is a matter of time before word gets to him. And what if she gets pregnant?”

“We are careful.” Alexandros dipped his hands in the fountain’s basin. “Besides, I don’t care anymore,” he muttered, sounding despondent.

“Why? Have you finally fallen in love with her?”

He laughed bitterly. I stared at him, confused. I had been so wrapped up with my plans for Egypt and Gallus, I had barely paid attention to my twin. My stomach clenched. What was going on?

“Tell me,” I said.

“Surely you heard the news too,” he said.

“What news?”

“Iotape.”

I looked at him blankly. Then I remembered the beautiful little girl my brother had been betrothed to in Alexandria, she of the shining black eyes and silken hair.

“What about her?”

“She has married King Mithridates of Commagene,” he said. “My betrothed married someone else.”

“But … but …” I did not know what to say. Had he held on to the hope that they would somehow marry, even after all these years?

Alexandros swallowed hard, and he kept his eyes on his fingers under the water. “One of the slaves here is from Medea. He helped me get letters to her and delivered letters from her to me. We have never forgotten each other. We were going to find a way to be reunited. We were going to disappear and live a simple life together….” He trailed off, his voice thick with suppressed emotion.

I’d had no idea that my brother held on to the hope that one day, he and his childhood love would be reunited. While I had been pining for Egypt, he had been pining for Iotape. Alexandros cupped his hands and brought the cool water to his lips.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“My letters must have been discovered. I had not heard from her in some time. The slave from Medea told me today that her family forced an early marriage.” Alexandros rubbed his wet palms over his closed eyes. “So you see,” he added wearily, “I don’t care what happens now. Let him discover us and kill me. I will just wait for Iotape on the other side.”

“Alexandros, please don’t talk like that.”

He sat on the side of the fountain. “What is left for us, sister? Why are the gods torturing us like this? Perhaps they really did want the end of all the Ptolemies and we are just postponing the inevitable.”

“You can’t give up!”

“And do what? We have outlasted the goodwill Octavianus needed by keeping us alive. He can marry you off to someone, but not me. No Roman girl would have me. So what am I going to do, trail after you
when he marries you to some fat old Roman? Live with you as a hanger-on, without
dignitas
, without independence?”

I had never thought how all of this was for him. Nor considered how his future was even more limited than mine.

“Alexandros, please don’t give up. I … I have a plan!”

He gave me a rueful look.

“With Marcellus,” I said.

“What can he do?”

“He is interested in me.”

“Cleopatra Selene, he is interested in anything that moves.”

“Still. Perhaps I can convince him to —”

“To do what, sister? Haven’t you learned not to trust anybody from the House of Octavii yet?”

“But if there’s a chance … if there is something I can do to convince him to support us in going back to Egypt …”

“So you are going to seduce the successor to the most powerful man in Rome on the
offhand
chance that he
might
help us return to Egypt?”

I crossed my arms. When he put it that way, it sounded both tawdry and hopeless.

“Mother tried that already. And look where it got her,” Alexandros sneered, walking away from me. Then, over his shoulder: “And us.”

The golden fabric sluiced down my body like water, smooth and shiny, settling into Egyptian pleats under my breasts.
This touched her body once
, I thought as I slid my hand down Mother’s dress, which Zosima had saved for me in secret so long ago.

Zosima combed out my hair and I closed my eyes, thinking of Alexandros. It seemed preposterous to me that he could have thought he would one day reunite with Iotape. And yet, he reacted to my plans with Marcellus with the same sense of disbelief. Was he right? Was I fooling myself?

I shook my head, causing Zosima to make an irritated noise as the comb lost its grip on my hair. This was different. Unlike Mother, I would be creating a base of support from
within
Rome, not just from the outside in Egypt. With Marcellus, I had a real opportunity to change the course of our future, of Egypt’s future. I would be a fool if I didn’t seize it.

And if I wanted others to think of me as a potential queen of Egypt, I needed to start looking and acting like one, which was why I was taking such care with my appearance. Octavianus’s farewell banquet seemed as good a time as any to begin. After all, even if my Egyptian dress irritated him, he could do nothing about it. He would leave for Spain before sunrise.

Zosima arranged my curls on the top of my head, leaving only a tendril or two at my neck. She wound golden ribbons in my hair and hung a small pair of Mother’s emeralds in my ears.

“Paint me with kohl,” I directed.

She paused. “Are you sure?”

I looked at her. She did not ask again.

After the kohl dried, Zosima rummaged through our old chest and lifted a small alabaster vial. “Ah,” she said. “Here it is.”

“What is that?” I asked.

She took a small brush and dipped it into the jar. “Powder of gold.”

“What?”

“The priests saved it for the most sacred ceremonies honoring Ra. It gives the god’s own protection, as if the light of the sun glowed from your skin.”

I closed my eyes as she brushed the powder across my cheeks, between my breasts, in the hollow of my neck, on my shoulders. I shivered, imagining the soft kisses of Juba’s mouth in those places…. My eyes flew open. No.
Marcellus’s
mouth. Marcellus.

Marcellus was my future, not Juba, I reminded myself. As much as it pained me to refuse his offer, I
had
to follow through with my plans for Egypt. Mother, I knew, would have done the same.

I waited until the very last moment to enter the
tridinium
, after everyone had been seated and the lamps lit. I walked in with my head held high. I did not say anything. I did not have to. All conversation hushed as I took my seat, joining my twin on the outer end of the circle. I glanced at the center couch. Octavianus scanned me from head to toe. Livia had one eyebrow up. Octavia paled.

Despite the fact that I had wanted to draw attention to myself as a princess of Egypt, I wavered in the face of Octavia’s discomfort. She did not like discord. I gave her a small smile of apology.

On the ends of the most important couch sat Octavianus’s close friends — Agrippa, Maecenas, Virgil, and Horace. Agrippa scowled as usual, but Maecenas’s eyes glittered when he looked at me. Virgil seemed more interested in Octavianus’s response and watched him instead. Horace grinned and winked at me.

I reclined slowly, then smiled. “Please accept my apologies for my tardiness,” I said.

“You look like a … like a queen!” Tonia said with excitement. I smiled at her even as I felt the pang I usually did when I looked into her rounded, pretty face. Ptolly would have been close to twelve years old too.

Julia, sitting with Marcellus and Juba, narrowed her eyes at me but then smirked. She liked being the center of attention, but she liked disturbing her father even more. And she could see that I had done just that. Juba’s expression was unreadable. But then I let my gaze wander to Marcellus and saw that he was devouring me with his eyes. When they met mine, he treated me to one of his slow, sensuous smiles.

“To what do we owe this magnificent apparition?” he asked.

I shrugged, allowing the silky fabric to slide down my shoulder ever so slightly.

“Perhaps she is celebrating that you are leaving for Spain too,” Julia said to him.

I tried to swallow my surprise. “You are?”

Marcellus nodded and sipped his wine. “I was going to go next month, but Caesar wants me to join him now.” He looked at Juba. “Juba is going as well.”

“Why such short notice?” Alexandros asked. “What has happened?”

“Caesar wants to test my mettle on the battlefield a bit, I think,” Marcellus said, grinning at Octavianus. “A good officer must always be ready to act on a moment’s notice. And Juba, you requested to join us on this leg too, did you not?”

Juba nodded.

“I fear someone has broken his heart,” Marcellus continued. “Why else would our resident scholar actively pursue military engagement?”

Juba worked his jaw, ignoring Marcellus. I concentrated on keeping my face impassive.

Julia couldn’t resist. “Who, Juba? Who broke your heart?”

“He won’t say,” Marcellus said, “but Lucius Clovius saw him meeting his mysterious lady-love a few days ago in the Subura!” Clovius was the officer sent to catch the “traitor” from the complex.

“The Subura!” Octavia gasped. “Juba!”

Juba stared daggers at Marcellus.

“Our friend seems to have lost his sense of humor,” Marcellus said. “And he will not divulge the identity of his mystery girl. Clovius said
that she seemed vaguely familiar and guessed that she was a noblewoman in disguise so she could sneak away from her husband.”

Octavianus groaned. “Why is it every time I try to pass laws to improve the morality of our great Republic, someone from my own family does something to undermine me? Juba, please remember that under my proposed laws, if the husband catches you, the paterfamilias will have the right to kill you and pay no penalty!”

It’s a good thing Rome didn’t have those laws when you had an affair with Livia
, I thought. He stole Livia away from her first husband while she was pregnant with Drusus. But I kept my mouth shut. Given his threat to marry me to Corbulo, I did not need to antagonize Octavianus any more than necessary.

“The lady in question is not married,” Juba said.

“Then what is the problem?” Octavia asked with genuine concern. “And why were you meeting her in the Subura, of all places?” She paused, her eyes growing wider. “Oh, please do not tell me that Marcellus’s friend is wrong and she really is a plebian, Juba! You
cannot
mix with the lower classes!”

“I really don’t wish to discuss this right now,” Juba said.

“Well, nothing like fighting barbarians to shake you out of your lovesickness,” Marcellus said. “We should see plenty of action, should we not?”

The conversation turned to the war. During dinner, I tried to assess how Marcellus’s quick departure affected my plans. I had hoped to continue the slow seduction to tie him to me. But he was going to Iberia! And now so was Juba.

Octavianus focused on the poet Virgil. “So,
amicus
,” he said. “How goes the epic poem I have commissioned?”

“What epic poem?” Julia asked, sounding pouty as she plucked a flamingo tongue steamed in vine leaves from a plate held by a slave. “I did not know anything about this.”

“Well, little empress,” Maecenas said, “our gifted poet is writing an epic of Rome’s history to rival Homer himself.”

I tried not to snort. No Roman could ever match the genius of our Homer.

“Tell me how it goes, Virgil,” Octavianus repeated, turning back to the poet.

Virgil, a quiet, slim man in his early forties, shook his head.

“Oh, do not be shy,” Maecenas said, popping a tiny roasted dormouse whole into his mouth and crunching the tiny bones with relish. “It will be brilliant like all your works.” He gave me a sly look as he licked the honey off his fingers. “In fact, he has been editing the section in which the hero Aeneas chooses duty to Rome over the love of a beautiful queen.”

Octavianus smirked. “Yes, the story of Dido. A reminder that bedding a foreign queen brings nothing but destruction to good Romans, and that our Aeneas made the choice Antonius should have made — to honor his duty to Rome and leave his whore queen to her own devices.”

Was he so obsessed with maligning Mother that he would commission an epic poem as a thinly disguised insult to her?

I felt someone looking at me. Marcellus. I lowered my eyes and smiled coyly, glancing away so as not to draw attention to our flirtation. I caught Octavia’s eye, and for a moment her face was twisted with such venomous hatred I blinked in surprise. But when I looked again, she had composed herself. What offensive thing had Maecenas said this time? Neither Livia nor Octavia, I knew, held the rich, effeminate Etruscan in high regard.

I turned back to Marcellus to see if he had caught the small drama between his mother and his uncle’s closest associate. But it appeared as if he had never taken his eyes off me. Looking through my lashes, I smiled again.

“I am not very hungry,” Juba said, standing abruptly. “Please forgive my rudeness, but I must prepare for my sudden departure.”

With that, he left the
triclinium
.

“Poor Juba,” Marcellus said, smiling. “He really does have it bad.”