Daughters of the Nile (11 page)

“Oh, Selene, don’t take offense. I’m not accusing you of immodesty. I remember well that you’re the girl who once said that kissing me was the most shameful thing she’d ever done.”

I wince that he should remember, much less remind me of it. “That was years ago.”

“Have things changed so much since then?”

I have no easy answer for him. My heart belongs to another. But I recall what Julia said about her marriage to Agrippa. He is not the man she wanted, but she’s found ways to content herself. Perhaps I can do the same. I feel myself open to possibility. My husband must sense it, for he shifts on his cushions so that he’s seated beside me. He doesn’t touch me, but lets me accustom myself to his proximity as I’ve seen him do with wild horses. His voice is gentle but intent. “
Have
things changed, Selene?”

“Perhaps . . .”

“Another
perhaps
 . . . but I begin to like that word. It’s a word that leaves room for hope.” My husband is, at heart, a scholar. It’s his nature to test and now he wants to test me. “Shall we experiment with a kiss?”

I stare at his mouth, the curves of which seem deceptively soft. I am afraid to trust them. “This is a silly conversation.”

“It would please me to kiss you. As I am the king, should you not strive to please me in all things?”

He says the last playfully, without any true royal hauteur, and I find myself tempted, but wary. “We have kissed for better reasons, Juba. And I cannot think I’d enjoy being kissed
experimentally
. You’ll study such a kiss and categorize it like the plants you collect. You’ll question the meaning of such a kiss. You’ll want to explore my motives and prevail upon me to name my emotions. Then, when I don’t answer to your satisfaction, you’ll take it into your heart and let it fester.”

“You misjudge me, my lady. Those are the mistakes of a younger man who has not yet accepted that his wife, like the moon that is her namesake, is essentially unknowable. Once, I was determined to solve the riddle of you, but I’m now content to be enchanted by your mystery. For example, there was a time I would’ve peppered you with questions about your magic. I would’ve made a study of it to include in my treatise on cult worship. But I suspect that would offend you, and I very much wish to avoid offending you. So if the cost of a kiss is that I must not question you—”

“Or speak of it,” I caution. “You must never speak of it.”

With victory in sight, he grins. “I won’t question or speak of it unless you do. Though I intend to kiss you so well that you’ll want to boast of it to your ladies.”

How little he knows me, even after all these years. “If it were a kiss well done, I should want to keep it secret, so no one could ever tarnish or take it from me.”

“Well, then,” he says, taking my face in his warm hands. “Here is to silence.”

He tilts my head and gently closes his mouth over mine . . .

. . . and I do not want to tell a soul.

* * *

IN
the days that follow, Juba complains bitterly of the trouble that may come of Julia’s visit, and, in spite of the winter sea, he sends a special military dispatch to Rome requesting advice from the emperor on what we are to do with his wayward daughter.

Nevertheless, our court is gayer for Julia’s presence and my heart is lighter than it has been in years. When the time comes for winter sowing, I take Julia to my nearest plantation, on a gentle slope in the shadow of Mount Chenoua, where rows of bountiful fruit trees blanket the hills. The villa overlooks the blue sea on one side and rolling orchards on the other, its terrace overgrown with vines of ivy and late-blooming hibiscus flowers. I call it the House of Olives, for the fat olives we harvest in these hills make a fragrant oil when pressed. It’s a farm exactly as Cato the Elder described a perfect farm should be, near a well-traveled road, with a vineyard, an irrigated garden, a meadow, and vast grain lands.

When I say as much to Julia, she makes a face. “Why would you spend your time reading Cato? He was such a cranky old man!”

“He was wise in the matter of agriculture,” I argue, though I don’t follow all of Cato’s dictums. Especially not his advice to starve the slaves that work the fields or sell off the old and sickly. Whereas the vast majority of farms in Mauretania are worked by slaves who toil for absent Roman masters, my plantation is worked mostly by sharecroppers. Of course, I’m foolish to take pride in this, because I don’t earn as much as I could . . .

Still, I defend myself by saying, “I read Cato as I read everything on agriculture, because your father has set me the task of feeding the Roman Empire.”

“Is that all?” Julia laughs, climbing the summit of the hill and shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. “All he needs from me are grandsons. I’d chide you for exaggerating your importance but apparently you keep a goddess at your beck and call, whereas none of the gods have ever taken any interest in my desires . . . Your plowman’s team of oxen seems to be mired in a patch of mud. We ought to call for your overseer.”

“The overseer here is an old man; he won’t be of much help, but I know that plowman. Let’s go down and help him.”

Julia is aghast. “You and I?”

“And our guards,” I say, smiling at the cohort of Macedonian soldiers who accompany me always. “I keep trying to convince Memnon that when he’s ready to retire his sword, he ought to serve as overseer here. Now is your chance to prove you can do a good job, Memnon.”

Only because I’ve addressed him directly does he speak. “Majesty, a Macedonian guard is never without his sword.” But because I’ve pricked his pride with the hint that he may be nearing the age at which he cannot hold a shield, Memnon goes first down the hill into the field to help the plowman.

The rest of us follow. On our way, I stoop down and gather a handful of dirt. “It isn’t as black as the river-brought soil in Egypt,” I tell Julia. “But it’s good earth that surrenders to the plow after the rains. I grow wheat on it, and in the less choice fields, I grow barley.”

Julia backs up for higher ground. “You’re dirtying the embroidered hem of your
chiton
. It will never come clean.”

“I have others.” Lifting my skirts to the knee, I walk out into the field, where my guards help guide the team of oxen out of a shallow depression where the rain water has turned the soil to mud.

Huffing with indignation, Julia follows me, and we circle round the powerful haunches of the oxen that toil here in my fields. Both great beasts turn their horned heads. As we pass closely near the sweating animals, I whisper to her, “This always sets Memnon’s nerves on edge.”

As if on cue, poor Memnon barks at me to get back from the animals for my safety, but we ignore him and I give a little wave to the plowman, who bows deeply. “Your Majesty . . .”

“Last season he taught me to drive the plow,” I say.

Julia’s eyes go round with delight. “You’ve driven these animals? With your own hands?”

“Not by myself, of course,” I say. “But I have done it.”

“I want to learn!”

“Julia, you can’t. You ought not exert yourself when pregnant.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, for she takes it as a dare. “I am not
very
pregnant. Not even five months gone, I would guess, though I seem to be showing earlier and earlier with each child. At any rate, it’s your doing that I’ve come down into this field to dirty my gown and fill my nostrils with the scent of manure. I might as well learn something.”

She reaches for the handles of the plow while I try to warn her off. “Julia, you’d be surprised how much strength and steadiness it takes to keep the furrows straight.”

In spite of my warning, Julia’s hands both wrap round the wood, her knuckles tight as she marvels at the whole contraption. Then the oxen lurch forward. When the plow begins to move, Julia’s sandals wobble on the broken ground of the furrow. I reach to steady her, but my interference throws her off balance.

I stagger to catch her before she falls, but lose my own footing in a long slide that takes us both down with a dramatic splash in the mud. Julia wails and I am horrified. “Julia! Are you hurt?”

She looks up, her face a mask of dirt, her hair in filthy strands, one hand on her pregnant belly. “I think—I think I’m unharmed . . . just
filthy
.”

She begins to laugh, relieved, but when I join her she shrieks at me, “Why are
you
laughing? This is your fault, you cow!” With that, she launches a fistful of sticky earth that spatters my cheek and clings to my face. Howling, I crawl to her for vengeance, intending to shove her back down in the dirt, but I’m doubled over with laughter as she kicks at me, shouting, “You horrid Egyptian cow!”

I laugh harder, trying to grasp her legs so she can’t peg me with the hard sole of her sandal. Julia hoots, tears of laughter streaking her dirty face as we wrestle. Our poor guards think we’ve gone mad.

But we cannot seem to stop. My sides hurt from laughing, but every time I relent and try to help her up from the ground, Julia drags me back down and I am helpless to do anything but lie on the earth with her and laugh.

* * *

“THE
emperor’s daughter is a menace,” Juba announces. He has caught me out in my rooms after my bath and now scolds me like a misbehaving child. “When the seas open again, we will have trouble as you have not imagined. We can only hope Agrippa hauls her away over his shoulder kicking and screaming . . .”

“The plowing was my fault, I assure you.”

“You’ve too much pride to lower yourself in such a way,” he insists. “Or you’ve changed very much, indeed.”

“I told you that I’ve changed.”

He comes closer and I see that he’s not as angry as he pretends. “I will say of the mud, however, that if you’re an example of its merits as a beauty treatment, I very much approve.”

His unexpected flirtation makes me smile. “Ouch! My face hurts from laughing too much today.”

“I never thought to hear you say such a thing, Selene,” he says, cradling my cheek in his palm, taking advantage of the new liberties I’ve granted him. In truth, I never thought to hear myself say such a thing. In my life, I’ve rarely laughed with abandon. Never kissed without consequence. Tragedy, sadness, and bitter rage have had the care of my soul.

I’m not sure I would recognize happiness.

But when my husband kisses me, I wonder if perhaps this is it. Here, so far from Rome, we may have found some happiness. It is not love, but it may be happiness. It may only be a happiness born of the things we do not ask of each other and the faults we overlook. It may be a happiness born of concessions, silence, and secrets. But if we
are
happy, it is such a precious and fragile thing that I must cherish and defend it against whatever may come with the arrival of spring.

Seven

WE
welcome our son’s first Saturnalia with much merriment. At six months old, our little prince’s skin is as pale and translucent as alabaster. He now sits up on his own and makes a game of peeking between his fingers. He knows his name too. When I call him
Ptolemy
, he turns to look, and his eyes, like Juba’s, are an earthy amber brown.

To celebrate the season, Juba orders fresh pine cut from the forest to be made into fragrant wreaths for every door in the palace. We also use the resin to flavor our wine. Our halls are festooned with garlands and the trees on the grounds have been ornamented with little stars made of hammered silver. I take Dora and Pythia to my private altar to Isis. There I teach the girls to burn frankincense in her honor and we burn so much that fragrant blue clouds of it drift throughout the palace.

It’s all very costly, but one cannot be stingy with the gods . . .

This year we’ll celebrate more than just the Roman Saturn, whom the Berbers call Ba’al Hammon. My Alexandrians will also celebrate the birth of Isis’s son, Horus, who himself is a sun god. Some will honor the Haloea in honor of Demeter or the Brumalia for Dionysus. It’s hard to know which tradition they’ll embrace, for some Alexandrians consider themselves first Greek. Others Egyptian. Perhaps it is a vain hope, but I want them to consider themselves Mauretanians, now.

One rainy afternoon I find Julia in the receiving hall surrounded by baskets of candles and ribbons and pastries. With the children of my palace, she kneels on the floor, the center of attention. Dora is with her, leaning against Julia’s pregnant belly as the emperor’s daughter teaches her to tie a bow onto a sprig of evergreen. Dora smiles, and with her lovely little face so near to Julia’s, in profile, they look like sisters. The thought wounds me. My daughter. My dearest friend. I cannot bear to think that the emperor is a common thread between them, so I tell myself they’re bound by no one and nothing but me. “What are you up to, Julia?”

All the children bow to me as they are accustomed, given that I’m their queen, and this delights Julia. “Why, I’m telling your little subjects all about our days together in Rome. Do you remember how we used to make gifts for the street children on the Saturnalia? How we tied candles and bundles of spices or pastries onto evergreen boughs until our fingers were numb from the cold?”