Daughters of the Nile (37 page)

Drusus gets away with it, as he gets away with everything, because he is charming and because his sentiments are always proper Roman sentiments, which no man who wishes to remain in public esteem can contradict. “Of course,” the emperor says, hiding a sneer behind a gulp of wine. “This is how I mourn.”

In truth, none of us here have any reason to mourn Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. A party to the Second Triumvirate, he was the least of the three. His relative ineptitude—and his priestly title—kept him alive as an example of the emperor’s supposed mercy. And yet I wonder, “How did he die?”

The emperor spears a chunk of smoked lamprey on the end of his knife and brings it to his lips with relish. “Who knows? Why should you care?”

It does not matter, I suppose. The long exile of Lepidus is at an end. Whether it ended with murder or illness or accident, that chapter is closed. Augustus is already the highest governing authority in the empire; now he will have complete dominion over religious matters as well. “I will stand for the vacated office of Pontifex Maximus,” the emperor declares, as if anyone would oppose him. And on the sixth day of the month dedicated to Mars, the emperor is elected by popular acclaim.

With this power, the emperor will now select all priests and give them their offices as a sign of imperial favor. But no priest of Isis is a member of the priestly college and he will not appoint one. So it is all meaningless pageantry to me.

Amongst the emperor’s first act as Pontifex Maximus is to seize the Sibylline Books, those ancient prophecies that have guided Rome since before it was a Republic, and which gave the people belief in holy twins who would bring them a Golden Age. He says that it is to safeguard them, and he moves them to a vault in the Temple of Apollo that he has built atop the Palatine Hill.

Then he purges them of everything he deems suspect or inconvenient. All the verses that speak of a savior who will come out of Egypt, all the visions of a fiery sun god who will burn Rome, all the prophecies that made my twin brother such a danger to the emperor’s regime, all gone.

He will make it as if Alexander Helios never existed . . . and that I was never anything more than a captive treated generously by the true savior. Augustus is the chosen one, the messiah, and now, as Pontifex Maximus, imbued with the solemnity of a holy father who must guide the Roman state. It’s the role of his lifetime, and I cannot think how the play might have ended any other way.

But as in all the best plays, tragedy is always the partner of triumph, so I am eager for my family to exit the stage. We’ve been away from Mauretania for nearly a year and the longer we remain within the emperor’s circle, the more it poisons my heart.

Twenty-three

ON
the Ides of March, we leave for the port of Ostia. The children ride with me in a four-wheeled
carpentum
with gilded sides and thick purple drapes to keep the cool mist of morning at bay. But no sooner do we set out upon the road than hard-riding imperial troops force us to give way, sending us into a ditch.

The wheel cracks with a thunderous sound and the entire
carpentum
lists to one side. Inside, we all fall against one another. Bracing my children with my arms, I hear them both howl, with fright or excitement or both. As it happens, we are only jostled, not harmed. Once reassured of this fact, I climb out, prepared to hurl abuse at the ranking Roman officer, but see only a cloud of dust in his wake.

My husband’s furious stallion paws at the ground, anxious to ride after the rude cavalrymen, and my husband seems much of the same temperament. When his eyes fall upon our mud-spattered children and the wreck of my carriage, he shouts, “I will have that officer’s name and the skin off his back!”

I don’t have the slightest urge to dissuade him from his wrath when the sour-faced coachman explains that the carriage cannot be fixed without a new wheel and axle. As he and the other men in our retinue try to haul it out of the ditch, another cadre of grim-faced soldiers ride past us the other way. They do not even stop when Juba hails them, as if a royal banner gave them not the slightest pause.

It’s curious, because my husband has long served in the military; he has some semblance of rank and status. Whatever the business of these men, it is more urgent than their fear of reprimand.

Anything that causes soldiers to fly down the road arouses my instinct to flee. But Juba says, “Something is amiss, Selene. Let’s turn back.”

“Our place is in Mauretania,” I say, trying to remind Juba that our business in Rome is done. He has grown too accustomed to being at the emperor’s right hand. I must break him of this. He must remember that he is a king. “Our kingdom awaits us . . .”

My husband stares back over his shoulder at Rome. “I am going up the Palatine for answers.”

“Our ship is waiting for us in Ostia. Whatever the news, it will reach us eventually!”

Juba’s voice takes on a firm tone of command. “Selene, you can’t really mean to leave without knowing what we might face . . . What happens in Rome matters everywhere.”

It is a winning argument. He is right. Mauretania is our kingdom, but part of the Roman Empire too. So I let Tala see the children back to our house on the Tiber and I go with the king.

We find a great throng of people at the gates to the imperial compound, all of whom are being denied admission by the praetorians, but we are allowed to pass inside, where we find the imperial slaves fearful, some of them crying.

“What is happening?” Juba asks. “Where is the emperor?”

“Gone,” someone replies. “He went to Agrippa in Campagna.”

Confused, I say, “But Agrippa is in Pannonia with Julia . . .”

Juba sets off up the stairs, two at a time, in search of Tiberius or Iullus. Meanwhile, I search out Octavia and find her standing in the middle of her corridor staring at nothing, as if she does not hear the wailing slaves. She is holding a scrap of paper in one hand, crumpling it in her fist. Like the statues that adorn each alcove, she is perfectly still. Her expression is beyond bleak—all light in her eyes extinguished.

“Octavia, what has happened?” She does not answer me. She doesn’t move at all, as if she’d turned into one of the pillars that must bear up under the weight of the roof. And I want to shake her. “Tell me!”

Finally, she says, “Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa is dead.”

With those words, the whole world shifts beneath my feet. I’m sure I’ve misheard. After all, what could fell such a colossus? “Do you mean that he’s been wounded in battle?”

“He never made it to battle,” she replies, her voice stony and remote. “Agrippa started for Pannonia but immediately fell ill. Julia convinced him to withdraw to Campagna to get well, but there he died.”

Octavia is looking at me but I don’t think she sees me. She’s seeing beyond me into a world without Agrippa. Into a world where all our planning, all our sacrifices might be for naught. My hands go to my face. “No, not Agrippa. Except for his sore feet, he’s never been ill a day in his life . . .”

“It must have been the plague,” she hisses, the first sign of any emotion. “We should’ve known when we learned about the death of Lepidus, but we celebrated. Now the gods have their justice for our hubris. Plague is racing up the coast and it’s taken Agrippa.”

The suddenness of it leaves me confused. That and the fact that Agrippa was not on the coast when he took ill. He and Julia were on their way to Pannonia, in the other direction. I saw them go! “How can you be sure?”

“The emperor received word that Agrippa was ill—so ill that he might not survive. So he hurried to Agrippa’s deathbed to be by his old friend’s side, to inhale his last breath, as the
paterfamilias
. But he was too late. Too late. He writes to say that Agrippa is dead.”

Agrippa was the ruin of my family and my nemesis, but he was also a bulwark against utter political calamity. Now I know why military dispatches were sent with such haste that we were forced from the road. The emperor may have resented him, but Agrippa was the empire’s most able general. Without him, the legions are likely in chaos.

“Agrippa is dead,” Octavia says again, her lips trembling on his name. I hurt for her. She loved Agrippa so much that she gave him up. She gave him her own daughter Marcella in marriage and when that was not enough, she saw to it that he married Julia. Then she did everything in her power to ensure that Agrippa’s children would rule the empire.

My hand goes to my throat, thinking of Julia now. That my dear friend should be widowed again is a travesty; I cannot even imagine the horror of her position, holding vigil over a dead husband in the midst of a plague. Perhaps Julia has her little daughters with her, but what of her sons? “Gaius and Lucius . . . where are they?”

Octavia closes her eyes. “They must be with Livia.”

Cold seeps into my body from the floor. I’ve always had a preternatural ability to sense the likely political ramifications of an event. It is what has allowed me to survive and to spar on the political stage with the emperor himself. Even in my state of shock it takes me just a moment to work out that with Agrippa dead, only two small boys stand between Livia and everything she’s ever wanted.

I run. I don’t stop for my ladies; they are forced to chase after me. Breathless, I burst into Livia’s house and search for her. With a sense of dread, I find her in the kitchen hovering over four-year-old Lucius with a silver spoon in hand. Instinctively, I lunge forward, knocking the spoon away and sending it to the floor with a clatter.

Livia barks in outrage. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What are
you
doing?” I demand, grasping Lucius by the shoulders with one arm and catching Gaius with my other. In my protective embrace, Gaius squirms and Lucius begins to wail.

The emperor’s wife glowers at me. “Let them go. Look how you’ve upset my sons!”

“They’re not your sons. They’re Julia’s.”

Now seven-year-old Gaius begins to cry too, struggling to get away from me. And I realize that though these two boys have been at the center of my hopes, I’m frightening them. They aren’t frightened of Livia; they’re frightened of
me
. Fortunately, Livia is also frightened of me and keeps her distance. “They haven’t been Julia’s sons since the day the emperor adopted them. They are my husband’s sons, which makes them mine.”

“Am I to believe that you’re such a loving mother that you regularly take time from your day to feed them from your own hand?” I remember two other boys who were once in her care. Marcellus and Philadelphus, who both died of a mysterious fever. Did she feed them too? “Why don’t you take a taste from that bowl?”

Livia sniffs. “I don’t care for porridge. Why don’t you?”

Wrestling Gaius into submission, I grind out, “Eat the porridge, you poisonous bitch.”

Livia gives a tight smile, but she isn’t one of my subjects. Unless I assault her here and now, she can defy me with relative impunity. So she toys with the bowl, lifting it halfway to her lips. “I cannot decide if it would satisfy me more to prove you wrong or to leave you always wondering . . . the latter, I suppose.” She dumps the porridge into the slop pot, where rotting remains of previous meals make a noxious stew. “I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.”

I should force her down onto her hands and knees and make her gulp from that bucket. Failing that, I should take it to test on some creature . . . but what proof would it be from a slop pot? Not knowing whether or not Julia’s sons have been told about Agrippa’s death—I give her a warning look, holding the boys tight. “I’m taking them with me.”

“Do you think the praetorians would allow you to take a step out of the gate?”

“I’m not afraid of the praetorians.”

This is not entirely true, but it convinces her, which is the important thing. “Maybe not, but you fear Augustus, and he will not thank you for kidnapping his sons. Some might even see it as a move to eliminate your own bastard’s rivals.”

These words are cold water flung into my face. That she would accuse me of doing harm to Julia’s children and call my son a bastard—that she should dare to even mention it in the presence of servants and my breathless ladies who hover in the doorway—is a testament to her own guilt. Still, she is not wrong that there are rumors about me and mine . . .

“Selene?” Juba pushes past the servants, making his way into the kitchen. His bewildered glance darts to the howling boys, their faces streaked with tears. “You’ve told them?”

“No,” I say. “Not yet. Where is the emperor?”

“He is on his way back to Rome,” my husband replies. “We’ll wait for him.”

I do not argue. We cannot possibly leave Rome now. Especially not now, not with Livia poised to murder Julia’s sons. My voice
trembles
with fury. “As it happens, Lady Livia is most concerned after the health of these children. Should they catch a fever in the next few days, for example, or take a tumble down the stairs . . . should they so much as sniffle . . . she knows it would grieve the emperor and how great a risk such a circumstance might pose to her own health.”