Daughters of the Nile (52 page)

He stiffens as if I have commanded him to suicide. “A Macedonian guard is never without his sword, Majesty.
Never
.”

So Juba’s new scheme will not go easy, I think. Memnon’s honor will never endure his being set aside. I will have to divine a new duty for him, special and urgent, that I can entrust only to him.

* * *

SOMETHING
about Volubilis changes me.

I am not the darling of the Hellenes here, always required to serve as the example of fine Greek culture. Neither am I an exotic magician. To the contrary, the Berber natives are accustomed to wisewomen and tell stories of Juba’s grandfather, King Masinissa, whose mother was a sorceress.

There are fewer Romans here, and because I am not challenged, there is no need to fight for my place as queen. Indeed, my worries about our safety here are put at ease when the native Berbers capture and turn over the rebel who delivered the box of scorpions.

Normally, I am keen to see terrible justice done to anyone who tries to harm me and mine, but I leave this to Juba because he asks it of me and because I wish to do as he asks. Somehow, I find myself able to be a different kind of woman here. A softer kind of woman. The kind of woman who obeys the king and does not resent giving him his way.

And every day Juba does not abuse my deference to him, I find myself more eager to oblige. I resolve never to refuse him when he desires me. Two years, I remind myself. Much less than that now. That is all the time we have together. And I want another child.

More importantly, I want to give Juba another child. One the emperor can never claim as his own.

If the emperor has me and Ptolemy at his side, he will forgive Juba for touching me. I will
make
him forgive it. So whenever the king comes to my bedchambers, I set aside my fears and call upon the magic that makes me fertile. But every time, my goddess denies me. And it is with the greatest bitterness I begin to fear that my womb is barren after all.

We do not let the people forget our entrance into the city. Juba has a coin struck with elephants to remind them. The coins are put into wide circulation by means of gifts and grants to the tribes who come down from the mountains to treat with the city elders. We keep busy repairing crumbling buildings, cleaning out faulty drainage, commissioning new roads and marketplaces and artwork for the public buildings.

And Juba wants to build a wall. “Strabo writes from your niece’s court that the King of the Bosporus constructed a wall nearly three hundred and sixty stadia in length to protect against attacks from nomads . . .”

“Sometimes a wall keeps attackers out,” I say, “but it can also be used to trap people inside. Is that not how Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix?”

My words give Juba pause, as I mean them to. He has been in a quiet fury since the day Memnon was stung by scorpions, and even after dispensing with the culprit, he has behaved more like a general plotting a campaign against barbarians than a king seeking to civilize them. I don’t blame him. I know it’s the Roman way to respond to every setback with a fortress or catapult. It’s what he’s been taught. But my husband is as responsible as anyone for teaching me that when there is no defense left, you must resort to diplomacy.

During the winter solstice, we recognize the Berber sun god Ba’al Hammon and their moon goddess Tanit. I host a banquet for every prominent Berber family in the city. It may be too much to ask the proud, horse-mounted tribesmen to forget that we are foreigners, but I think their women can be won over. My daughter and I approach these women during the celebration with our hands tattooed in henna, Berber designs bold on our skin. We speak to them in their own tongue, and when they do their tribal dance with drums, a line of chiseled men facing a line of colorfully dressed women, we join them.

We start the dance veiled as a symbol of our isolation and need for enlightenment, but the veils are abandoned when the dancer feels the spirit of the movements has captured her. We throw our hands to the north, south, east, west. Then we reach for the heavens and for the earth. A gesture to the past behind us and to the future before us. It is a dance of abandon and blessing—and I feel the
heka
rise in me as I flick it from my fingertips, always from the liver, where true emotions reside.

Then begin the gyrations and the tosses of head that make a music of tinkling silver jewelry worn by every Berber woman of status. I dance, though I do not know all the steps. I dance until my feet hurt. I dance until the sweat wets my hair and soaks my gown to the small of my back. I dance in firelight until I cannot dance anymore.

I collapse on a couch with the king, who makes eyes at me as if he wants me alone. But everyone else’s eyes are on my daughter, whose very fair coloring is a curiosity here in the hills. She is not Berber by blood, but she knows their dances, their stories, their crafts, and the meaning of their symbols. Tala has made her a Berber in a way I can never be.

They watch my daughter because she is the granddaughter of Cleopatra. They watch her because she is the princess and because she is beautiful. But they also watch her because they seem to know that she is theirs. One Berber boy in particular has reason to think she belongs to him, for while the rest of the people watch Isidora,
she
is watching Tacfarinas, flashing her eyes at the stable boy every time she claps her hands or tosses her golden hair. And I worry at the kind of magic she is working now and if it will be her downfall.

* * *

THE
children grow so swiftly.

My daughter has become a young beauty. The sullen Tacfarinas has sprouted up in height such that he towers over the others. He will be a big man, I think. One with powerful arms. And already, the hint of a beard makes itself known like the soft fuzz of a peach on his upper lip.

Tala’s son is now a boy of fourteen, and while he eschews the Roman custom of wearing the
toga virilis
as a mark of manhood, he insists on a new name. When he was born, his mother called him Ziri, the Berber word for moonlight. Now the charming little name has become an embarrassment to him and he insists on being called Mazippa, after his father, a Berber of the Mauri tribe, who died before he was born.

In the way of young men his age, Tala’s son bristles when anyone but Dora calls him by his given name, but I am glad of his bourgeoning pridefulness because I have plans for him. Grazing lands must become plantations. We must have grain. But there is no reason whatsoever that the greatest landholders in Mauretania should all be Roman. And so I encourage Ziri—or rather, Mazippa—to learn the skills needed to manage a great estate.
Make my son a great man in Mauretania
, Tala said to me, but the boy will have to do some of his own making . . .

My little Ptolemy is growing big too. In the spring, he celebrates his eighth birthday with a hunting trip and returns with the head of an antelope, which he proudly presents to me. Trying not to retch at the sight of the bloody thing, I praise him lavishly and announce that we will have roasted antelope for our feast. Alas, I do too good a job at disguising my distaste because Ptolemy says, “I know you said I could mount the horns over my bed, but if you want them, Mother, I would give them to you.”

“I would not dream of stealing your prize, my generous little prince!”

“You would not be the first to try,” he says, boasting about how raiders from the hills tried to chase the boys from their prey. “They fled when they saw our royal banner, though.”

The story makes me wilt with fear. Only a stern lecture from Juba about how boys must become men keeps me from forbidding such hunting trips in the future. Instead, I use my terror for an opportunity, confessing to Memnon that I can trust no one but him to watch over my little prince in this wilderness city, where raiders and assassins appear from the mists.

I work myself into such a state that Memnon promises to take up his post outside my son’s door, and I feel I have done well. Though Ptolemy is no easy child to manage, the burden on Memnon will be less. He will not be required to stand at attention for hours at official events or march in my processions. He can bark at my son and make him obey rather than chase after me and suffer my imperious ways.

So I resign myself into the custody of my husband’s new commander of the palace guard, the young praetorian Iacentus, whose ambition and keen sense of authority has him establish a rotation of professional soldiers around the royal family in the model of the emperor’s elite guard.

To My Friend, the Most Royal Queen of Mauretania,

How I hate Aquileia! It is as cursed as everything else that Tiberius and I share. My new husband and I made a son here in the shadow of the Alps. (Do not be shocked; there is nothing else to do here where the nights are so dreary, the wine hardly passable, and no decent poet can be found.)

Alas, our poor little baby did not live to see winter.

Livia says we must not grieve in an excessive or unseemly way. Our son was only a few days old when we lost him and, according to her, hardly a real person at all. But I tell you, Selene, I have never been so sad. I am so sad over the death of my babe that I think I am ill. I have no other explanation for what’s wrong with me. I take pleasure in nothing. Wine tastes sour. Jewels do not sparkle. Fires do not warm me.

Phoebe tells me shared grief should draw a husband and wife together. Nevertheless, I am certain that I am done with this farce and that Tiberius is done with me. There are some rifts between husband and wife that can never be mended. I think the loss of a child will smash even the strongest of foundations, and our foundations were made of clay.

Do you know that when last we were in Rome, my husband saw his former wife? Tiberius was so overcome with regrets for having divorced her that he followed Vipsania through the streets calling after her with apologies and tears in his eyes. You would think such a thing would be a humiliation to me, but it only makes me sadder.

Unfortunately, the story so enraged my father that he sent Vipsania away, where Tiberius cannot see her again. No matter what I say, my husband is convinced it was my doing. Now we cannot stand the sight of each other, so I am returning to Rome where I am loved by the people, where I can watch over my children and my interests.

Especially now that Livia’s youngest son has become a Republican.

Can you believe it? Fair Drusus, who owes nearly all his success to the fact that he is the stepson of the emperor, now argues that my father should renounce his authority and give power back to the Senate. Drusus makes no secret of his sentiments. Everyone knows it. Even my father knows. Tiberius showed my father one of his brother’s letters to warn that the emperor must pay respect to the more democratic institutions of Rome or there may be rebellion.

Yes, those Claudian brothers, such champions of the people!

I might admire it if I didn’t know it would be at the expense of my sons and of the plebs, who have been lifted out of poverty by my father’s governance. No one believes that these Republican sentiments are anything other than an excuse for Rome’s nobles to dominate and impoverish the people while warlords make war again . . . Why, not even Iullus Antonius believes it, and he has the most to gain, for he has surprised us all by standing for consul this year and being elected to the post.

Reading what I have written here, I realize this is a wretched letter. I should burn it at once if only I did not think you would take some pleasure in learning that Herod is ruined . . .

Thirty-two

HEROD
is ruined. I learn it not just from Julia’s letter but from all the other messages that trickle in, reminding us that there is still a world outside our idyll here in Volubilis.

Herod has made so many enemies that everyone seems eager to tell us about his fall, but the most vivid account comes from Crinagoras, who arrives to tell us in person. Puffed up with self-importance and pride, my poet-turned-spy appears before us sunburned and complaining of the journey, spouting verses about how he would rather have been born a shepherd than to ever have dipped his oars in the bitter brine of the Aegean.

We receive him gladly in a private room overlooking the olive orchards, and I am nearly as grateful to be reunited with my poet as I am to hear the news. Luckily, he is eager to tell us everything. “The Judean court is not a happy one. Everyone is always suspected . . .”

“But not you?” I ask.

Crinagoras, who had been admiring his reflection in a silver tray, huffs with indignation. “Not me, of course. I promise you, Herod was entirely taken in. I was the milking goat from which he eagerly sucked every milky drop of gossip. Herod was all too pleased to offer patronage.
He
never doubted that my greatness would reflect well on him.”