Daughters of the Nile (49 page)

“Really,
men
! Where do they get these ideas?” my daughter asks. And when we have her laughing at this silliness, I take her aside and tell her what it means to be a woman. What it means to be a royal princess. And all that the emperor would have of her.

“He is thinking grandly of your future,” I say, forcing a smile.

“Must I leave Mauretania?” she asks, her voice swelling.

The question nearly breaks my resolve, but if I do not make myself serene, I will frighten her. If I am not strong, how can she be? So I swallow a gulp of air and smile even wider. “Yes, but you will come to love a new kingdom just as you love this one. You will marry a prince or perhaps even a king.”

Her soft hands tremble in mine like captured birds. “I don’t want to marry a prince or even a king. I don’t want to marry a stranger. If I must marry . . . if I must marry, I would marry . . .”

She is on the edge of confiding something, but draws back.

How astonishing.

My daughter has had little cause in her life to hide things from me. She has never been one to lie about her misdeeds. Always, I have tried to be the person in whom she might confide. But I realize, for the first time, that she
has
become a woman. It is not the blood that made her so. It is a secret. A secret she is keeping, even from me. How is it that Juba stumbled upon it first? “Isidora, you are a royal princess. Your Berber boy can be nothing to you.”

The sudden stain of red on her cheeks pains me. Oh, my poor girl. I have warned her, more than once, about overfamiliarity with our subjects, but her heart is too big. Taking her into my arms, I hold her close and stroke her hair. “We are Ptolemies. I think we are not meant for private passions . . . we are meant for
more
, and it is very hard. I know. But you will become a great queen like Pythia.”

Isidora’s eyes slide from mine. “I’ve never seen it that way. When the waters shimmer for me and flow into the future, always I see myself here in Mauretania.”

What she says ought to comfort me—for if she sees truly, it means Mauretania will not lose her. But I remember when my little brother Philadelphus told me that he would always stay in Rome, he meant that he would be buried there. “You don’t know what you see, Isidora. You’re too young to try to see into the future.”

“I have always done it and I am not so young,” she says, tilting her chin at me in sudden defiance. “Sometimes, I see a wide river with currents that churn up mud. In the water, in the brown and green and white rapids, I see things that haven’t happened yet. If I’m a woman now, I should learn how to understand these visions. You should teach me.”

“I cannot teach you to read the Rivers of Time. It was never within my gift. Moreover, I have only ever seen it as a burden to those who
do
have that gift. It might be better that you did not learn any magic at all.”

“
Heka
flows into me whenever we go to a place of worship,” she says, trying to show me how much she already knows. “It flows into me and makes me see more clearly, though it makes me feel so very ill. Do you know why?”

So she has been keeping more than one secret.

“That is the
heka
sickness you speak of,” I explain. More than once, I have fallen victim to it. Never have I forgotten the day I nearly lost myself in the magic of the sirocco. There are mortal dangers too. Already Augustus has made plain his intention to use my daughter by marrying her off. How else might he exploit her if he knew that I’m not the only sorceress in his power? “It’s dangerous to work magic, Dora. But more dangerous by far to look into the Rivers of Time. That magic cost our family everything. Do you understand me?”

She straightens, a perfect imitation of my most regal posture. “If it’s dangerous, then isn’t it better that I learn from you how not to fall ill from
heka
sickness? Isn’t it better to learn from you than from a stranger in some foreign court where I must rule as queen?”

I recognize that stubborn set of her jaw. Whatever else she may be, my daughter is a Ptolemy. She has always known what she wanted and I cannot say she is wrong to want it. Two years, I remind myself. Less than two years now. There is no time to wait for anything.

In surrender, I rise from my couch. I take her to my iron-banded strongbox, unlocking it to show her my precious treasures. I show her silvered stars that were gifted to me by a Syrian magi. I show her the pearls that once belonged to my mother, but now belong to me—a long-ago gift from the emperor himself. And then I show her the golden serpent bracelet that my mother wanted me to have.

Sliding it up my arm until it coils tightly against my bare skin, I explain, “My mother had the gift of sight, as you do. She saw that one possible future was one in which she would have a daughter. One in which her daughter would bring her a snake with which to end her life. Because she saw it, she entrusted this bracelet to a friend and told him to tell her daughter it was not her fault. Because she saw into the Rivers of Time, she was able to reach back for me and offer me this comfort. But it is the only good thing to come of her sight.”

I don’t think Dora is old enough to possibly understand the significance of what I am telling her, but I was just her age when this serpent was given to me. My daughter tucks errant strands of golden hair behind her ears, and says, “How strange that my grandmother gave you a snake and you gave me one too.”

I tilt my head, then I remember. “What happened to your Asclepian snake?”

“It hunts in your gardens and sleeps in the tree by my room. When I am troubled, I listen for anything it might whisper to me. It was born in the temple and it knows things that physicians know.”

This would be useful, but I still do not like the thought of my daughter keeping company with serpents. Alexander the Great’s mother slept with snakes and used them to work her own magic, but it is not a magic I understand. And what I do not understand, I have good reason to fear.

Nevertheless, I move aside a length of cloth and draw from my strongbox a precious amulet. A collar of gold. “Before my mother died, she gave me the jade frog amulet that I wear. I am never without it. She gave my brother, Philadelphus, this collar of gold. He wore it until . . .” Here I pause, remembering my little brother on his deathbed, and I do not think I can continue.

Dora lays her hand atop mine. “Until?”

“He wore it until the night he died. He said that you should have it. He
saw
that you should have it.” Her eyes light up with wonder at this revelation, but I caution her. “I will give you this amulet to wear and I will teach you how to use it to channel your
heka
so it does not overwhelm you. Every day, after you’ve completed your other studies, you and I will practice magic together. But only if you vow to me that you will never try to look into the Rivers of Time unless I am with you. Do you agree?”

She pretends to agree and I pretend to believe her. Then I fasten the chain around her neck and hold her tightly, knowing, just as my mother knew, we are nearly out of time.

Thirty

“TEN
denarii,” says the merchant.

“Three,” insists Tala, using her height and stature to intimidate all those who crowd round us in the marketplace. She never leaves her room without donning every piece of jewelry she owns, and her tinkling silver makes her more impressive.

“But the queen agreed to
ten
,” the merchant says, holding up the painted pot that I mean to send Julia as a gift.

“Because the queen doesn’t know you’re a cheat,” Tala accuses, pointing out flaws in the workmanship I do not see. I would rather pay more than the pot is worth, but then I remember the expense of my temple and I let Tala haggle.

In the crowd, my subjects press close, grabbing for my hands, trying to touch my gown, my hair, anything within reach. Memnon hates that I allow this, and he uses a brawny arm to shove back anyone who lingers too long. When my Berber woman returns to my side, triumphantly holding the colorfully painted pot aloft, we walk ahead of the other ladies, Memnon opening a path for us ahead. “Tala, did you know about my daughter’s fondness for Tacfarinas?”

She grunts in the affirmative. “You gave him to her like a puppy from a cage. How can you complain now that she wants him on her leash?”

“She must go to a marriage bed far from here.”

“And you’re going to ask me to go with her,” my Berber woman says, stopping to put a hand on her broad hip as if challenging me to deny it. I cannot deny it. If Dora is to be queen of some foreign land, she must take with her a royal retinue and the preparations for it must be made as soon as possible . . .

“I was born a chieftain’s daughter, not a serving woman,” Tala says. “In the hills, I had a house for winter and another house for summer and a tent for when the tribes journeyed into the steppes. I slept in my own bed and set my own table, one carved from wood and polished with wax until it gleamed. I had goats and sheep and a donkey to carry firewood and buckets of water from the wells. I was commanded by no one under my roof—not even my husband. But when he died, my people put me in your household to see what kind of queen we would have. I stayed because you were a spoiled know-nothing who needed me. I took your daughter to my breast because I had milk. For you, I left the ways of my people behind. Now you ask me to leave behind the lands of my ancestors too?”

I put my hand to my brow both to shield me from the too-bright sun and to hide my shame. “It is too much to ask of you.”

“Yes, it’s too much to ask,” Tala says gravely. “I wouldn’t go with her because you
asked
it of me. Or even if you commanded me. But I’ll go with her because deep in my liver where it cannot be cut out of me without killing me, I love your daughter as my own. I won’t let your child go alone somewhere that frightens her any more than I have ever let you do it.”

Moved, I put my hands to my cheeks and shake my head. “But you have a son too. And a . . . a man.”

“Captain Kabyle is a sailor. Surely there will be a harbor in whatever kingdom your daughter marries. And as for my son, I call upon you now for a favor once promised me. Make my son a great man in Mauretania,” she says. “So if ever I return home, I can boast to all the tribeswomen who have mocked my choices. I’ll watch over yours if you watch over mine.”

I release a violent breath, dizzy with relief and gratitude. This is an easy promise for me to make for it is also a promise I feel in my heart—or in my liver, as the Berbers say.

* * *

WHEN
servants try to curl my son’s hair in the fashion appropriate for a Hellenistic prince, he squirms and risks being burned by the iron, so I take it upon myself. As it happens, I have him perched in my lap, a lock of his hair wrapped round the hot tong, when the king pokes his head into the room.

Usually when the king wishes to tell me something, he sends a messenger or waits for a meal together, so I am immediately wary of whatever it is that might trouble him enough to seek me out.

“We were away in Rome too long,” Juba says, leaning against the door. “I have just received a letter from the magistrate in Volubilis and I fear the people of that city will not remain pacified without a royal presence there. I must go back. We will have to divide our court again, as we did before.”

The last time Juba went to govern Volubilis, he was gone for more than a year; we no longer have time to spend so freely. “Must you go?”

The king shrugs. “I like it no more than you, Selene.”

“We can go together,” I say. “We can move the whole court to Volubilis.”

Juba scowls at the idea, for moving a seat of government will be an immensely inconvenient undertaking. But I am suddenly desperate to convince him. “We’ll all go, and it will be a grand adventure. We can show the children the wilds of Mauretania. Ptolemy needs to know the lands over which he will rule . . .”

Especially if he is to spend the rest of his youth in Rome.

Before Juba can protest, I kiss the top of my son’s head and ask, “You’d like to see more of Mauretania, wouldn’t you, Ptolemy? We’ll go west and see all the places Hercules slept. We’ll dig out lungfish from the riverbed for our supper.”

He is a seven-year-old boy; it is the lungfish that gets his attention. “I can get my own supper? Can we hunt for antelope too?”

I promise, “If you catch one, you can put the horns over your bed.”

Ptolemy is almost convinced. “Would I have to go in the carriage or could I ride a horse?”

“A horse,” Juba vows, smiling down at the boy he put in a saddle almost as soon as he could walk. “You can ride beside me. If you make it all the way to Volubilis without complaining, I’ll give you your very own stallion.”

This is too exciting for Ptolemy to endure in the cage of my arms. He springs up to embrace his father, forcing me to fling the iron away before we are both burned. “Ptolemy!”