Daughters of the Nile (45 page)

I know that serpents are a symbol of eternal life. They have appeared in my visions. Miraculously come to life on the riverbanks when I have worked the magic of my goddess. I ought not fear them, but it seems that my dread of snakes gets worse with age, not better. And in this room there are so many of them that I can scarcely breathe. There are at least twenty serpents slithering over one another on the floor. Maybe thirty. I lose count in my terror. I tighten my grip around my daughter’s hand, fearing she will rush to these creatures as she once rushed to a lion.

“He’s not here,” she whispers. “My snake isn’t here.”

Thank Isis for that! “Why do you keep them?” I ask of the priest.

“These are the sacred red-eyed snakes,” he explains. “They have no venom and their skin, sloughed off, helps with regeneration. Do you seek a remedy, Majesty?”

“Something for the Lady Octavia, perhaps.”

I buy a tincture. Then I take my disappointed daughter out of the temple and hurry to the bridge that will lead us home. But as we are leaving the sacred aisle, Dora suddenly reaches into the foliage. Before I even know what she is doing, she has drawn a live serpent from the brush. One glimpse at that forked tongue and I shriek. Memnon must think we are being murdered, for he draws his sword, but Dora lets the serpent coil around her wrist. “Mama, it’s not dangerous. It has no fangs.”

She is wrong. It does have fangs. Tiny ones, but the snake makes no move to strike her. Memnon seems prepared to lop off the snake’s head at my command, but while I clutch at my pearls he says, “Majesty, it is just the same as the snakes in the temple. See the red eyes?”

I do. The priests said this kind of serpent held no venom. It must be a very young snake, because it is so small that Dora can hold it in one hand as it loops around her fingers. “This is the snake that whispers to me,” she insists.

My teeth grind together as my stubborn desire for her to be a normal girl must give way to the truth of her gifts. “What does it say to you?”

She tilts her head thoughtfully. “I think it says it will help me become what I must be.”

She wants to keep it. Of course she does. Because it is not enough that at home, in Mauretania, she has a menagerie of animals including a Barbary macaque that Juba brought home for her from one of his expeditions. Now she must have the serpent too, and I cannot deny her because she too is a child of Isis, and though her magic is nothing I understand, it is real.

* * *

ALAS,
my daughter was right about Octavia. Her hair begins to come out in great clumps. When she sleeps, it becomes more difficult to wake her. For the first time, she complains of the pain. To relieve it, Musa gives her a tonic, explaining to my curious daughter that it is a brew of henbane and poppy syrup. The Antonias do not like the way this concoction makes their mother murmur strange things, but if she must leave us for the afterworld, I am grateful for anything that will ease her way there.

In February, the day of the Lupercalia, Octavia nags her daughters to leave her bedside and go down to the forum and put themselves in the way of the young men who lash at the crowds with thongs of goat hide. It is a fertility ritual and Octavia insists that we must all have more children—especially me. Can she know how much I want another child? Does she know that I have tried and failed? To make light of it, I ask, “Will you never stop trying to make me into a respectable Roman matron?”

“Will you never forgive me for it?”

She wants my forgiveness when she has forgiven me everything, even that I am Cleopatra’s daughter? Emotion swells painfully in my chest and I wish I had never spoken a harsh word to her my whole life long. “Octavia, there is no room between us for resentments.”

She softly caresses my cheek with her gnarled fingers, which still have about them the earthy scent of bread. I remember when her hands were sturdy and strong. I remember when she towered over me and it pains me to see her so delicate and frail. I press my lips to her shaky hand, trying to say with a kiss what I cannot say with words, and her eyes go misty.

“Your father once ran in the Lupercalia,” she rasps. “In the year your mother came to Rome. How young and magnificent he was . . . bare-chested, clad only in goatskin. Along the route every girl crowded close, hoping he would single her out and strike her with his strip of hide. He passed me by, but then, catching my eye, he circled back again to strike me. Right here,” she says, taking her trembling hand from my cheek to lay it over her chest, her breast, her heart. “It worked too. Because he gave me three daughters. The Antonias . . . and you, Selene.”

Her love for him has become love for me, and I am humbled in the face of it. Overcome.

But it is not my father’s name Octavia says when she is restless in her sleep. It is her son Marcellus she calls for. Sometimes Agrippa too. And, at the end . . . Isis. “Tell me of your winged goddess,” she whispers, dosed so heavily on Musa’s potion that her pupils are wide. The first time I spoke of my goddess in her presence, she flew into a rage. But that was long ago. Long before she saw me bleed, the words of the goddess carved into my palms. Long before she took Philadelphus to her bosom, and witnessed his gift of sight. Long before she asked me to pray to my goddess to spare her son’s life.

My goddess does not guard against death, though; she conquers it. Isis ensures that death is not the end of all things. And so, here under the emperor’s roof, I tell Octavia all I know of my goddess. Mother. Magician. Goddess of Women. Queen of the Dead.

My half sisters too, in hushed whispers, invoke my forbidden goddess, for I taught them how, years ago. We gather round Octavia’s bed with our sacred amulets. Antonia with a tiny
ankh
, the symbol of eternal life. Minora with a bead carved like a scarab beetle, the symbol of transformation. And me with the jade frog round my neck that reads
I am the Resurrection
.

We are with Lady Octavia until her final moments. Then she asks for her brother, the emperor, and he comes to her bedside. He shuts the door on us, so I do not know what passes between them. I do not hear Octavia’s last words. I only hear the world as it is without her, more hollow and silent by far.

Never again will anyone mother me. I won’t be scolded for dallying, I won’t be lectured on the proper way to raise my children, I won’t be tut-tutted for my clothes or for my foreign ways. I will not be worried after in the way Octavia worried after me. I will not be loved the way she loved me.

She loved me even though I was a sullen and resentful child. Even though I reminded her so very much of my mother and gave her every reason to despise me. So if ever the emperor’s sister won a victory over my mother, it was this: I loved Octavia too, and I loved her longer.

Octavia mothered me for almost twenty years. For almost twenty years, I basked in her praise and shrank from her disapproval. Almost twenty years, she has been the touchstone of my life. Now she is dead and
Isis
is the only mother I will ever know again.

Twenty-eight

SOMEONE
has been here before me. Behind the bent bars of the locked temple gates, I find that someone has swept up the crumbled stone, the desiccated plants, and the crocodile bones. Inside the inner sanctuary of the Temple to Isis where once my blood blossomed into flowers, I find an array of melted candles upon the cracked altar. Though the statue of Isis is weather-beaten and unadorned—no priests have dressed her or fastened jewels upon her ears—the marble has been scrubbed clean of paint and the moss that once grew in the neglected folds of the white stone.

As always, the smile of my goddess, compassionate and mysterious, warms me against the cold. The hum of
heka
in the stonework tells me a secret—that she has been worshipped against the emperor’s command. She is still worshipped here in Rome. Now she is more beloved here than ever before and no chained gates can stop it.

“Wait outside,” I tell Memnon. “I want to be alone.”

He leaves me, but I am not alone. I have been drawn by an instinct in my sadness over the loss of Octavia. I need the comfort of my goddess. I need some sign that Isis will champion Octavia in the afterworld. I need to find the strength not to cry every time someone mentions Octavia’s name.

But not only that. I feel that I have been drawn here by a prayer. That I have been called here . . . and in my weeping, I hear an echo that makes my heart begin to thud in my chest.

I do not need my eyes to see him in the shadow at the farthest reach of the temple. The scent of him is too familiar. The rush of his breath, the slight thump of
heka
in his blood that pulls me to him. I sense him with every part of me. With every fiber of my being. I know my twin as I know myself.

And that is my undoing.

Can it be possible that, at long last, my beloved twin has come for me? When Helios emerges from the shadows, I drink him in, drowning in equal parts elation and despair. The weathered lines of his face are deeper with age. The size of him is still impressive. Helios is as big a man as our father ever was. His hair, darker now than it was in his youth, is still a lion’s mane of thick tawny curls.

He holds out to me a warrior’s hand, then squints as I shrink back. “Don’t you know me, Selene?”

“Of course I know you,” I whisper through lips gone dry and cold. “But you cannot be here. You cannot have found me here, in the middle of Rome.”

“Where else would I find you on the day of Octavia’s funeral? Will you not take my hand?”

“No,” I say in anguished disbelief, steadying myself against a pillar for fear my knees will buckle. “Because it will not be real. You are in Africa. You are fighting with the Garamantes.
Horus the Avenger
, they call you. When I heard it, I knew that you were alive. I knew you were still alive in this world with me. Still
real
. But if you are here. If you are here now . . .”

He steps forward and captures my hand. His is as warm and alive as any hand I have ever known. His fingers are leathery as they tangle with my own and my hand seems tiny in his calloused palm. It is the calloused palm I have always sought during my darkest hours. “We are one
akh
, Selene. We’ll always find each other.”

That is true. He is part of me and I am part of him. But have I dreamed him up, summoned his spirit to comfort me? For the first time, I wonder—truly wonder. “You cannot be here . . .”

“But I am.”

I shake my head so hard it dizzies me. “No. On the Isle of Samos, I was the only one to see you. No one
else
sees you.”

Helios frowns at my ravings, adjusting his sword belt and stiffening his spine. “Shall we go out together into the street and be seen together?”

It is no serious question. We could never be seen together without risking our lives. Trembling at the nearness of him, at the unbearable nearness of him, I whisper, “Seven years we have been apart. I never thought to see you again. Why now?”

He brings my fingers to his lips, kissing them softly. “News of Octavia’s death brings me here. When I learned of it, I knew you would suffer. My ship was not far, so I came for you.”

“You never cared for Octavia.”

“But you spoke well of her . . . in spite of all.”

My beloved speaks in sympathy but I hear only reproach. “Yes, in spite of all, I cared for Octavia. I still do. I cannot hate the whole world and prosper in it!”

He allows me this outburst of grief, nuzzling my fingers against his stubbled cheek. By the gods, the feel of it makes me a girl again. I am lost in the sensation . . .

“But you
are
prospering, aren’t you, Selene?”

“Yes,” I say, as if it were a guilty confession. “Again, in spite of all.”

Helios stares at me hard. “I wanted you to prosper. I wanted you to succeed where I failed. There is no world for me if you are not in it, carrying our name, caring for her . . .”

Does he speak of Isis or my daughter? I cannot think clearly. And looking into the verdant depths of his eyes, I can barely stand. Perhaps he senses the shaking of my knees, because Helios ducks away, spreading his scarlet cloak at the base of the statue, giving me a place to sit before I fall. Then, with his hand upraised, he uses his
heka
to make fire leap into the brazier and set all the candles ablaze.

In the firelight, we stare at each other anew. With my fingers, I trace the lines of his face, looking for new scars. And he—he stares at me with a longing that echoes deep in my soul.

“
Sweet Isis
, how I have missed you,” I cry.

I still remember the taste of his kiss. The feel of his body as it moved with mine. And now, the scent of him, the warmth of his caress, brings the memory back to me so vividly that I am moved to tears. I cry for myself, for him, for our family, for Octavia . . . all my griefs mingle together. While I cry, he holds me, stroking my hair, my cheek, pulling me tight against his broad chest. “Hush. I am here, now.”