Daughters of the Nile (34 page)

“Why?” I ask, in amazement.

“To needle him, of course. He insisted we must have a sweaty gymnasium in the house where he can apply his fitness regimen in private. So, in retaliation, I made a guest room for you and turned it into a veritable shrine to Isis. You’re painted there as her priestess, wearing a high crown and feeding two majestic lions from a libation bowl to represent each of your children.”

“Julia!”

“Well, I meant them to be lions, but the artist made them look rather more like panthers . . .”

“You painted me?” I ask, breathless at her nerve. “You painted
me
as a priestess of Isis, in
Agrippa’s
house? You’ve lost your wits!”

“Oh, there are so many rooms for him to ramble about in, he hasn’t even discovered it. He noticed all the scantily clad women on my bedroom walls, though, in every sort of nude pose and carnal embrace. Nymphs, dancing girls, and seductive sirens . . .” Here, she trails off with glittering eyes, trying to hold back laughter. “He says that they make him feel so unvirtuous that after he climbs off me he has to punish himself with a cold bath!”

Julia howls at Agrippa’s expense and I clap my hands over my mouth, unsuccessfully stifling a laugh. We are still laughing about it, weeks later, when preparing for the wedding. While I brush Pythia’s thick hair, Julia strokes the saffron bridal veil and asks, “Do you know how children are made, dear?”

“Julia!” I cry.

“
What?
Surely she ought to know more than we did at her age. I can assure you, Livia told me nothing useful whatsoever on the morning of my first wedding. You don’t want your niece to be ignorant, do you?”

“I’m not ignorant of how children are made,” Pythia says stoutly.

“She’s seen horses bred,” I explain. “She’s been raised in a court filled with debauched Alexandrians. I have not stifled her and kept her chained to a loom.”

Julia tilts her head, with a mock-gesture of dismissal. “Oh, well, then. If she has seen horses, she must know everything, though I daresay her expectations may be disappointed in terms of girth and vigor . . .”

This time I glare. “Julia!”

“Oh, fine! I’m going,” she says, leaving us to ourselves at the dressing table. I stand there, overwhelmed with the need to brush Pythia’s thick dark hair, which is even blacker than mine. The feel of it in my fingers calls up some memory from long ago and I realize that I’m thinking of Octavia on my own wedding day. “Julia can be vulgar, but . . . if there is anything you would know, Pythia, I would tell you . . .”

Pythia blushes, either shy or mortified. “There is nothing.”

“Don’t think your new husband is permitted to hurt you simply because he’s king,” I say, stroking the brush through her hair. “Remind him that you are the granddaughter of Mark Antony. Make clear from the start what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t. Bargain if you must, but remember that you’re not chattel and don’t be ashamed, because what happens between a husband and wife is sacred to Isis.”

“Of course,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut as if
willing
me to stop talking.

Once her hair is brushed smooth and glossy, I use the traditional spear-shaped comb to divide it into the fashion of a Roman bride. “You know that I would go with you to Pontus if I could.”

This finally gets her to smile. “But then everyone would bow to you and not to me.”

I smile too because I see that I have no cause to worry she might let anyone bully her. Then she surprises me by asking, “Will you give me your blessing to style myself in the Ptolemaic fashion as Queen Pythodorida
Philometor
, the mother-loving? For Isis, for my mother . . . and for you.”

My heart swells so that it’s hard to speak. “I would be honored, Pythia. So honored.”

* * *

THE
wedding is accomplished under a full moon and the breakfast banquet the next morning is extravagant. The King of Pontus has us dine on sweetmeats, sausages stewed with plums and pomegranate seeds, delicate cheeses and honeycombs, saffron cakes, and stuffed capons. Every course is served upon trays of silver and gold. I am especially impressed with an array of grilled fish glistening upon a special serving platter in which peppery
garum
sauce flows over them from the spurting mouths of sea dragons.

I steal glances at Pythia, who sits beside her groom, smiling shyly at him. That gladdens my heart. Then the conversation turns to the Olympic Games, which are again imperiled. There is an expectation, of course, that I will be the one to save them. An expectation I must frustrate, given that my coffers are strained by the construction of my Iseum. But when pressed on the matter, I cannot admit that our wealth is finite, so I am left to argue that the responsibility ought to be shared.

They agree, of course. The kings of Pontus, Cappadocia, Emesa, Cilicia, Commagene, and so on. They all nod their heads and make vague promises about the gold they will contribute, but they do so with sidelong glances at my husband as if they blame him for my reluctance.

Only a barbarian king would allow the oldest traditions of the Hellenes to perish. That is what their courtiers whisper snidely behind their napkins. But Juba either does not notice or does not care, for we are in favor with the emperor and perhaps that is all the prestige that either of us needs.

Alas, my niece’s wedding is destined to be overshadowed by the impending return of the emperor. As the day of his return approaches, everyone in the city seems to become more and more agitated. Poor Iullus makes elaborate preparations for all the Senate to greet the emperor before he reaches the city gates. He stockpiles flower petals in urns to be rained down on his hero upon entering Rome and positions runners at mileposts.

He would have done better to position a trumpeter in my atrium . . .

I know to expect him this time, in the dead of night. And on the day his heralds announce his imminent arrival, I dress for the occasion, garbed in a modest white
chiton
bordered with a blue wave pattern at the ankle and with my hair held tightly in place with sharp hairpins. I intend to wait in the
tabulinum
, passing the time reading Sallust’s history of the Jugurthine War—the war Rome fought against my husband’s Berber kinsman. But when I pull aside the curtain in the entryway, I find the king already sitting there. “Why are you awake at this hour, Juba?”

“The same reason you are.”

My hands go to my cheeks. “You shouldn’t wait with me.”

“You shouldn’t wait at all. If Caesar comes tonight, I’ll greet him.”

“What good do you think that will do?”

Juba looks me straight in the eye. “It will shame him.”

“No,” I say with a shake of my head, hating to be the one who must speak hard truths to him. “He will shame you. He will command you to fetch your wife for him. He will stand here and command you, a king in his own hall, to leave us. And you will obey.”

My husband flinches. “You think me such a damnable coward . . .”

“No more of a coward than I am. Juba, you will obey because pride—your pride and mine—is not worth the price to be paid if we defy him. Pride is very costly. It would cost us both much less if you simply went back to bed.”

He knows this. He has always known it. That is why he has always let the emperor have his way. It is why
I
have so often let the emperor have his way. That weakness in Juba is a mirror of mine. But tonight, he argues. “You ask me to pretend not to know Caesar is beneath my roof, carrying on with my wife as he once did with the wife of Maecenas.”

I burn to be compared to my predecessor, the emperor’s shameless mistress, Terentilla, but try hard to remember that this is no easier for my husband than it is for me. “Augustus will not put hands on me. I’ll receive him with refreshments and good cheer. I’ll listen to him complain about how the gods taunt him, how Fate denies him what he most desires, how he has sacrificed all for Rome. Then I’ll say whatever words are necessary.”

“
Whatever words are necessary
,” the king repeats slowly.

“If he comes tonight, it’s because he sees in me and the children a fantasy. He is nearing his fiftieth birthday and he wants to believe what every man wants to believe at the end of his life: that he leaves behind a son to carry on after him. But it is
only
a fantasy. No harm can come of it now. You have nothing to fear.”

My husband’s fingers go to his temples, rubbing there as he contemplates what I’ve said. At last, he surrenders and rises to go. Before he does, he turns. “I am not afraid of the emperor’s fantasies, Selene. I am afraid of yours.”

I do not tell him what I am afraid of. I am afraid the emperor will take one look at my son, who looks more like Juba now than he did as a babe, and know the truth. I am afraid the emperor will fly into such a rage that he tries to murder my family in their beds. Never will I let him do it—I would kill him first—but either way, I am afraid blood will be spilled.

Memnon hears the rattle of the chain at the gate before I do and pokes his head round the corner to warn me. I put down my scroll and go out into the atrium, where the emperor is unfastening a decorative cuirass that weighs heavily on his shoulders. He lets it fall to my tile floor with a clatter, dropping a parade helmet there too. Almost four years have passed since I saw him last, and the years have not been kind to him. His hair is whiter. His skin is pallid and looser, his arms thinner than before. But those accursed eyes of his are just as penetrating as they have ever been.

“Caesar,” I say, dipping low and humble in greeting.

To my surprise, my humility does not seem to please him. “Is that how you greet your Pharaoh?”

Pharaoh
. How he needles me! My mother was Pharaoh. My brothers ought to have been. I do not care what the terrified priests of Egypt say, this man will never be the true Pharaoh of Egypt. Nevertheless, I bow. “All hail, God-King.”

Augustus arches a brow. “If I did not know better, I would say you were mocking me. What new divine powers do I have now as Pharaoh, do you suppose?”

“I could not guess, Caesar.”

“
Pharaoh
.”

He wants to make me say it. “I could not guess,
Pharaoh
.”

“Can’t you?” he asks, coming closer. “I have power over the wind. I have power to commune with other gods. I have power over all the magic and spells you know, because I have power over you, my Cleopatra. Is it not said by the Egyptians that a man cannot become Pharaoh until he has wed Pharaoh’s daughter? I made you my bride during the Mysteries at Eleusis. And here you are, still mine.”

He wants to set a tone for our reunion, I see. “You have come a long way. Won’t you join me for some refreshment?”

Alas, the emperor has not returned from the provinces in the middle of the night for wine and olives and cheese. “Take me to see the boy,” he says, shivering against the night air.

“My son is abed, asleep.”

“All the better,” he replies. “Take me to him.”

What if I don’t? If I refuse, maybe it will put an end to this farce. But maybe it will prolong it . . .

My son does not even stir when we creep into his room. Ptolemy has decided he is too old to sleep with his Berber nursemaid but we keep a lamp by his bedside because he is still afraid of the dark. He sleeps with both little hands curled up beneath his dimpled chin and I gently stroke the dark curtain of infuriatingly straight hair from his brow.

Augustus sighs, leaning over my son’s bed, staring at his face as he once stared at mine. Then all at once, he draws his fist against his lips. “By the gods! What have you done, woman?”

My blood goes to water. When my son was still a babe in his cradle, the emperor was sure of his patrimony. But now? What does he see, looking at my precious boy? I see Juba in his features, but there, by his mouth and eyes, I see my older brother Caesarion too. I do not know which resemblance the emperor will latch onto, and I cannot speak.

I am too afraid to speak.

“My Cleopatra.” The emperor exhales, eyes bright and manic. “Look what you have wrought. Look at this fine little prince you have given me . . .”

I say nothing, grinding my teeth against delusions that would be pathetically comedic were they not the key to our survival. Augustus cannot live forever, I tell myself. He will leave this empire behind for a younger man, or perhaps one in better health. Agrippa or his sons will rule Rome. When that happens, I will be left with only the protection of my magic. But for now, we are all at the emperor’s mercy.

So I say nothing.

The emperor’s eyes soften as they rest upon my son. “He has the blood of Alexander, the blood of Aeneas, and the name of a dynasty that goes back hundreds of years. No one will ever dismiss him as unworthy . . . and that will make him a better ruler, Selene. The things I have done that haunt me still are things I would never have done if I did not have to fight for my name . . .”

I do not know if this is true or not, and there is an argument to be made that men who must fight for power learn better how to use it. But the emperor is lost in his own thoughts and he says, “You’ve made me want to do better, Selene. I want to rule more justly, so that when our boy grows to manhood, he may take pride in me as a father.”

An unexpected tenderness at the sincerity of his words tries to steal into me. “What child of yours would not take pride in you?”

It is too flip an answer. It wounds him. The emperor was vulnerable for a moment, but now he hardens again, demanding of me, “Should our son not have a
bulla
like a true Roman boy?”

He speaks of the protective amulets worn round children’s necks. But if I were to give Ptolemy such an amulet, it would be an Egyptian one, such as my mother gave to me and my brothers before she died. I still wear mine, the jade frog at my throat. But I have another. The collar of gold worn by my little brother, Ptolemy Philadelphus. I should give it to my son, who is named in his honor. I can, even at this moment, imagine it glittering on his neck, a tribute to his true heritage.