Daughters of the Nile (53 page)

Impatient, Juba says, “Go on . . .”

Crinagoras sprawls insolently upon the couch, accepting wine and honey cakes from our servants. “You must know, of course, that Herod is still determined to kill his sons, so he arrested and tortured the court eunuchs until he obtained incriminating evidence. I took it upon myself to send word to King Archelaus that his daughter’s life was in danger, and he came straightaway to Judea. The King of Cappadocia was forced to pretend he was so angry on Herod’s behalf that he wanted to kill his own daughter and son-in-law with his bare hands. Through careful questions—which I helped him practice beforehand—he let Herod eventually convince him of their innocence.”

“Clever,” I say. “But strange.”

Juba is appalled. “Then Herod is
truly
mad.”

“He was always mad,” I reply. “We are all simply so accustomed to madness that we no longer recognize it. Now, Crinagoras, tell us the rest. How did Herod fall from favor in Rome?”

My poet smirks. “I’m getting there . . . I urged King Archelaus to stay in Judea and pretend at friendship with Herod, who was keen to start a war with the Nabateans. We convinced Herod that he should attack without securing permission from Rome. Was he not a sovereign king? Would Caesar make King Juba and Queen Selene ask permission if Mauretania fell under attack? Nay, we said. Was Herod any lesser king?”

I lean forward, disturbed. “Did people die for this?”

“Herod would have attacked anyway, Majesty, and he would have received the permission he sought. But in this, he fell victim to his own vanity. Now Augustus is furious with Herod for taking unauthorized military action.”

When my mother plotted our escape after Actium, it was the Nabateans who burned her ships, and in so doing, condemned us to our fate. I decide that my poet’s strategy is fair vengeance. “You’re sure Augustus is angry with Herod?”

“Caesar refuses to receive any of Herod’s ambassadors and has sent a letter revoking Herod’s permission to call himself
philokaiser
. There is some question of whether Herod even remains a friend and ally of Rome.”

My eyes widen with great satisfaction. Herod will not be trusted with even a portion of my ancestral kingdoms now, and we need not fear that Isidora will be sent to Judea. The only way the news could be better is if Herod had been stripped of his throne. “He
is
ruined!”

“So it seems, thanks to a little help from your poet.”

“Oh, Crinagoras, you will be rewarded handsomely!”

“Not handsomely enough, I’m sure—especially since it is not a service I can perform twice. When King Herod learns that I’ve returned to your court, he’ll realize he was deceived.”

“I hope he does,” I say smugly. Because Herod is
finished
. The thought that I had anything to do with his downfall is a cause for celebration and I say so. Then I send my poet off to be pampered by slaves, as he complains of aches and pains and trials and tribulations endured to reach this backwater city in the wilderness.

My mood is buoyant and when I rise from my couch, I nearly dance in a circle.

“You’re fetching when you gloat,” Juba remarks idly, his stare traveling up my legs.

“I can’t help gloating. That Herod has finally made such a spectacular mistake is sweet news . . . better than a mouthful of ripe
cherries
.”

It is all sweetness here and I thank Isis for it every day.

* * *

UPON
our leave-taking, the elders of the city present me with a glorious gift. It is a giant platter carved in intricate detail by the finest silversmith in Mauretania. It is an extraordinary portrait of me draped in an elephant headdress, like a fearsome Carthaginian queen. In my arm, I hold a cornucopia filled with the bounty of Mauretania topped with the crescent moon that is my namesake. There is a sistrum rattle, to represent Isis. A
kithara
harp like the one I sometimes play. And a lion and a lioness to represent my children. I am moved by the beauty of the piece, but startled beyond words to find a representation of
Helios
too.

Who could know me so well, as to put all these things of meaning upon one portrait? “Don’t you like the gift?” the king asks, as I stare. “You are beginning to worry them.” Trying to speak over emotions that swell in my throat, I find that I cannot and the king frowns. “Now you are beginning to worry
me
.”

It must have been Juba who told them what to carve. He chose things that brought me joy. Symbols of what means the most to me. Of what I am. Of what I want to be. Only someone who loved me could choose a gift like this for me.

Sweet Isis
, my husband loves me.

When we married, he only wanted me as he imagined a wife must be. No man could have loved me and refused to believe that the emperor raped me. No man who loved me would have accused me of inviting it. But the man Juba has become . . . that man loves me. And what if I love him too?

Overwhelmed with emotion, I reach for his hand, asking myself that very question. What if I love him? And yet, it is a question I must not answer, because it will all come to nothing if I am forced to stay in Rome at the emperor’s side . . . and I have found no plan, no scheme, to avoid it.

* * *

EVERYTHING
begins to go wrong the day we return to our royal harbor city on the sea. We pass through the gates of Iol-Caesaria in time for the summer wheat harvest, when every road in the city is clogged with people and donkeys and wagons bearing sacks of grain.

When we enter our grand palace, Ptolemy shows off his antelope horns and lets out a whoop at the soldiers who hail him as a returning prince. But my daughter seems dispirited. She complains of the summer heat, even though the ocean breeze sweeps across my wide walkways. She refuses to take our homecoming supper with our courtiers, and hides away in her room.

Worried that she has fallen ill, I call her name at the door. She does not answer. When I knock, she does not open it. When I try to push the door open, I find it barred. I cannot imagine any good circumstance in which my daughter might bar the door against me. For a brief moment, I wonder if she has locked herself in with the stable boy. So I pound on the door, vowing that I will bash it in if she will not admit me. What I fear, of course, is that she
can’t
admit me. That something terrible has happened.

“Guards!” I cry.

That is when Isidora finally opens the door, her eyes bloodshot, her hand trembling. By the gods, she
is
ill. She is so ill she can barely stand. She sways on her feet, and I see the whites of her eyes before she collapses into my arms. Iacentus helps me carry her to the bed. It is only then that I smell the magic, sweet and smoky, floating in the hazy air of her bedchambers. Her divination bowl is tipped upon the floor, Nile water wetting the tiles, and I watch in dread as her snake slithers through the puddle and disappears under her bed.

So my daughter has been felled by
heka
sickness. I do not know whether to be furious or relieved. “Fetch some cold water and a cloth,” I command one of the slaves gawping at us from the doorway.

Dora moans again but doesn’t open her eyes until the candle has almost burned away. She wakes to find me wiping the sweat from her brow, and she lowers her eyes, abashed. “I just wanted to know what lay ahead for me in Rome. What sort of husband I might have . . .”

I do not shout, though I want to. “Nevertheless, we agreed you would not try to read the Rivers of Time without me. I knew you were too young to understand the dangers of that particular magic and now you have proven it.”

“If I’m old enough to be a wife, I’m old enough to be a sorceress,” she insists. “You can’t control everyone and everything, Mother.”

Well, that much is true, I conclude. But I have learned to master everything over which I have authority, and as long as my daughter remains with me, that includes her. “I
will
have your obedience.”

Her eyes do not drop in surrender the way they should. “You should be encouraging me to read the Rivers of Time. I could use my gifts to warn you and Papa of dangers or foretell opportunities . . .”

I am too hot with temper now for this to persuade me. “My mother, my brother, and my mage could read the future and it did no good for any of them. It did harm. No, Isidora. I am done with this now and so are you.”

She narrows her gaze. “You just don’t want me to know the truth. When I see into the Rivers of Time, don’t you think I see what you could do?”

She has never spoken to me with such disrespect, but I keep my voice even. “You have no idea what I can do.”

“I know you can break Papa’s heart!”

It is too much. I have let her have her way too many times. “You don’t understand your visions and you are forbidden from this magic. If you disobey me, I will keep you from the stables. Oh, yes, I know you like to go to the stables. I know
whom
it is you go to see. So do not test me.”

* * *

“I
won’t do it,” Isidora announces flatly, several days later.

“Wear the white one, then,” I say, exasperated with her. I am accustomed to being obeyed by my subjects in the smallest thing. How is it that my daughter becomes more willful by the day? “Wear what you want to the council chambers. Only stop dawdling.”

Taking a big breath, she turns to face me. “I’m not talking about the
chiton
I will wear.”

Are we to argue about magic again? I give her such a withering look that it should cow her. I am her queen and more importantly, I am her mother. At the moment, however, she seems not to care about either of those things.

“I won’t be packed off and sent away like some chest of jewels, delivered to a foreign king as a bride. I don’t want to leave Mauretania. It isn’t right to force me. It isn’t.”

There she stands, flushed with righteous anger, her arms folded tight against her chest, and what am I to say? I was fortunate in the match the emperor made for me. Will she be as fortunate? “This is the way it is for women. Wherever would you get the idea you should have any choice in the matter?”

Her eyes blaze. “From the example of my grandmother.”

So she
has
been listening to me when I speak of our heritage—when I speak of the women in our line . . . I might say to myself that my mother chose her husbands. She chose Caesar. She chose Antony. But were they choices? Both men were a means to keep Egypt. “Your grandmother always chose the good of her kingdom, Isidora. As you must. You’re a princess and you have a duty.”

“I never asked for this duty.”

I should have her on her knees begging forgiveness for such ingratitude, but because she’s my daughter, I calm myself. “Nonetheless, the emperor commands that you be married. There is nothing we can do to change that.”

“Then curse the emperor!”

Catching her by the elbow, I hiss. “You must never let anyone hear you say such a thing.”

“Why? Will he take your crown? That’s all you care about. Only your kingdom and your crown. Not me or my happiness. I know what my duty is, and I’ll do it, but you don’t even care how much it hurts me!”

To hear such words from her. If she had slapped me, it would not sting as much. I want to grab her and shake her, but I have never laid hands on her in anger before. “How wrong you are.”

“I love Tacfarinas and it doesn’t matter to you at all.”

“Of course it doesn’t. You are a Ptolemaic princess and he is a common tribesman. But for my interference, he would be a slave. Don’t make me regret saving him from dying in a cage like the dogs he bedded with.”

“So now he’s a
dog
,” she says, skewering me with contempt-filled eyes.

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant and I hate you for it!”

The word
hate
knifes into me. I am smote to the heart. Still, even in my agony, some small part of me is gratified by her show of temper. Never did I want her to be a vicious and vengeful girl, but I take some small pride in the fact that she should stand up for herself . . . even against me. “You may hate me,” I say, a tremor in my voice, “but I love you more than any crown. More than any private passion or ambition. I have sacrificed for you more than you will ever know.”

“I don’t want to know. I don’t care. The emperor may send me away, but I’ll never . . . I’ll never . . .” Whatever she was going to say is drowned by tearful sobs. And when I try to wrap my arms around her, she wrenches away.

* * *

FEELING
miserably sorry for myself, I sulk in my gardens, hiding in a sea of lavender. Unfortunately, my freedwoman knows exactly where to find me. “Good news, Majesty. Captain Kabyle has found islands off the west coast that were used by the Carthaginians to make dye. They’re still equipped with vats. They’re even called the Purple Isles. We’ll reopen them immediately.”

This
is
good news, for we have already opened five new dye factories and we are already in need of more. Still, I cannot even smile.

“It’s what we hoped for, Majesty. We can now afford to double the workforce on your Iseum. The walls of the inner sanctum are up. Amphio has recruited some of the finest sculptors . . . Why aren’t you pleased?”

Because I was a fool for thinking the Iseum would be complete before I left Mauretania. Amphio warned me he’d need ten years—did I think he could complete it in two? I would have liked to see it finished before the emperor took me captive again, but perhaps that is only a vanity on my part. In the end, it is Isis who must look upon this temple with pleasure . . . not me.

Chryssa stoops in front of my bench to look me in the eye. “Has someone died?”

Thinking to explain my devastation, I tell her about Isidora.

She doesn’t seem to understand. “Oh, I’m certain the princess means nothing by it. It’s what children say to their mothers. Surely you remember what it was to be a girl her age.”

“When I was a girl her age, I didn’t have a mother to hate.” Then I blush with shame. That is not true, is it? I did have a mother and I did hate her, for a time. For too long a time, I blamed my mother for dying. For leaving us. For risking our lives for what murky visions she saw in the Rivers of Time. Then there was Octavia. How I resented her. How I fought against her every kindness. I blamed Isis too. For her remote mystery. For not saving us from the emperor . . .