Daughters of the Nile (57 page)

His hands drift down the front of my gown and his lips whisper against my neck. “Oh?”

“It is a silly thing,” I say, suddenly embarrassed. “Nothing as lovely as this cameo. Nothing grand or expensive . . . except for the box.”

“With such an introduction, how can I resist? Show me.”

I lead him to the study, where I pull back a curtain to present a strongbox with my Ptolemy Eagle laid in gold over a silver thunderbolt, much like the one that held my mother’s crown and scepter. This one holds nothing so grand, and when I open it, I explain its humble contents. “A veil, to remind you of our dancing in Volubilis. Whorled snail shells we collected on the beach near the cave of Hercules. A golden apple, for our time together in Lixus . . .”

These and other trinkets I have collected in remembrance, but now I worry he will find them to be strangely sentimental. Given the tilt of his head, I think he does. “What is this?” he asks, reaching inside. “A braid of hair?”

“Yes. I cut mine and Isidora’s and Ptolemy’s and braided the hair together so that you might have it if you should ever need reminding of us . . .”

He brings the braid of black and brown and golden hair to his nose, inhaling deeply of its scent before lifting his eyes to mine. “Selene, I shall keep this box of treasures and value it more than a chest of gold, but know that I never need reminding of you or the children. We’re here in Rome because Isidora is to marry and Ptolemy is to have his education. It is only a change for us, not a good-bye.”

I kiss him so that he cannot see how much it pains me to know he is wrong . . .

* * *

IT
is night when Augustus summons me.

“I’ll go with you,” Tala says, hastily wrapping an indigo blue shawl over her dark hair. But I know she dreads to go out into the cold night, and her teeth already chatter with anticipation. “Nothing good happens at this hour, Majesty. Especially not here, in this city of schemers and cutthroats.”

Nevertheless, I must go. And I must go alone. I tell myself that it is better that Augustus has summoned me upon his return to the city. It means that I do not have to wake the king. It means less of an affront to my husband’s royal dignity and mine. And it means that whatever happens will not happen in the house where my children sleep.

So I fasten my new fur cloak on my shoulders, the weight of it giving more gravity to my steps. I look in on Isidora before I go, comforted to find her bundled beneath a woven blanket, her flaxen hair fanned out on her pillow. Ptolemy too is tucked safely into his bed, faithful Memnon outside his door.

I do not visit the king’s chambers, however. If Juba were awake, I could not face him.

Instead, I follow the emperor’s praetorians.

I think they will escort me up the Palatine Hill to the emperor’s residence. Instead, they take me to the Campus Martius, the site of the new altar, lit by torches and the full moon. Passing into the enclosure, I encounter the square, squat
Ara Pacis
. The emperor’s monument is more modest than I would have guessed. The steps are not very many, nor very steep. It isn’t until I’m halfway up that I see the detail, the Greek key pattern that separates each panel, and above it, a story of Rome and a story of the emperor’s ambitions.

To my right, a colorful frieze of pious Aeneas, the emperor’s hero, his head partially covered with his toga, pouring out a libation, always ready to sacrifice to the gods. With him, his son Julus, from whom the
Julii
claim to descend. To my left, a depiction of Romulus and Remus, twin princes, sons of Mars, thrown into the Tiber River to drown, then rescued by a she-wolf.

To enter the
Ara Pacis
, one must pass between both these foundation stories, these reminders with which Augustus irrevocably ties himself to Rome’s greatest heroes.

These are legends, but a man of flesh and blood waits inside. Augustus stands upon the raised podium before the altar table. He is alone. Solemn. Pensive. “Just the queen,” he says to his guards and they withdraw.

Anxiously, I dip low in deference to him. “I bid you glad homecoming, Caesar.”

He takes my hand as I alight the last few steps, and in spite of the chill, his skin is warm, his palm sweaty beneath mine. That is curious, for I have ever known the emperor to be a man who runs cold. “Ah, Cleopatra. I have been waiting a long time for this reunion.”

“Only two years. Not long at all.”

Augustus swallows, as if overcome. “Much longer than that, as I am about to show you.”

He leads me into his monument, the thing of himself he expects to endure. The interior is open to the night sky and the moon glows down on a riot of color. Blue Corinthian capitals bend to fit inside each corner. The carved walls boast of green palmettes, yellow festoons, and red garlands. There are also ritual cups and platters, fruits and ribbons and bovine skulls. As I catalog the various patterns and symbols, the emperor watches every flick of my eyes, desperate for my reaction.

I consider carefully before I give it. There is no
heka
here. Not yet. But I can well imagine that there will be. This will be a sacred place of gladness. Of thanksgiving. Of goodwill and gratitude for the Golden Age.

All my life I’ve watched the emperor tear things down, and finally, he is proudest of what he is building. I am stung with jealousy . . . but also deeply moved. “It is lovely,” I admit. “It is beautiful beyond what I might have imagined . . .”

He preens, running a reverent hand over the altar stone. “This is where the Vestals will make a yearly sacrifice for peace.”

“To do it, they must turn their backs on the field of Mars,” I notice. “To make peace, they must turn their backs on war. Very clever.”

He smiles like a man who knows a secret. “But the artistry, the true artistry, is on the outside. Come. Walk with me, Selene.”

Back down the stairs we go, hand in hand, into the moonlit night. He leads me past Romulus and Remus to the north wall where a grand procession is carved in high relief. It features senators and other important personages carrying laurel branches. In the carving, two senators stop to talk to each other, so lifelike that I might almost stop and lean in to overhear. It’s a strange piece, as if the artist had frozen a real moment in time and reproduced it with all its flaws.

Then I see Julia carved on that wall, and realize that the artist
has
captured a moment; this is the processional from years before, the happy thanksgiving celebration we shared to consecrate this ground. Oh, how I remember that day. Agrippa and Octavia were still with us then, and Julia was smiling, as she is in the carving, trailed by her children. Gaius, Lucius, and little Julilla, and baby Agrippina too. My heart warms at the portrait of Julia’s brood, then my throat tightens as I see my beloved Octavia, illuminated by moonlight.

The emperor’s sister is brought to life here, where all the gods and all the generations might see her holding two laurel branches in her hand.
Sweet Isis
, how I have missed her. Would that I could reach out and touch Octavia’s cheek and find it warm. But if I were to reach out, the illusion would break apart like a reflection on the water. That’s what this monument is—a glimpse into the past, as if it were a River of Time flowing the other way.

“Come,” Augustus says when I linger too long in loving memory. “There is more.”

We turn the corner, where I see Roma wearing a battle helmet, sitting atop a pile of captured war trophies in victory. We have come to the street entrance where the people will see the monument in its splendor, and the emperor’s hand clutches mine so hard that I’m forced to look up into his eyes, which are smoky gray. He has always been ice, but tonight I see the spark of something in him. “Look, Selene. Up and to your left.”

I do as he says.

To my surprise, green eyes, just like mine, capture my gaze. I am looking at a face like my own, more feminine, more idealized, her hair wavy instead of curled in the Greek style. But the nose, straight and long like mine. Her expression intense, like mine. The breasts, round and full like mine. Perhaps my eyes play tricks on me, perhaps I’m a vain woman to see my own features, but then I see the winds . . .

. . . and my heart begins to pound.

This is no simple portrait of me, the Queen of Mauretania, on his monument. This is something else. Something grander. Something
unimaginable
. It is an earth mother, two babes in her arms, one of them offering a pomegranate. A goddess flanked by the
aurae
, nymphs of the breezes, one atop a swan and the other on the back of some manner of serpent. The
aurae
attend her. They are in her power. Just as my winds obey me.

He has made me into a goddess in the heart of Rome.

My hand trembles in his; the other covers my mouth to hold back a sob of awe. Staring, dumbfounded, I soak in every detail. With only stones as her throne, this goddess dwarfs a bull and a lamb at her feet. Fruit spills from her lap. Grapes and acorns. Tall grasses and reeds recall Egypt to mind. And there, by an overturned urn, is a heron. A
heron
. Sacred in Heliopolis, a city named for the sun, like my twin . . .

I cannot move. I cannot breathe. I cannot tear my eyes away. The trembling moves up my hand into my arm until it overcomes me and I shiver from head to toe. Cold bites at my nose, at my cheeks, at the tips of my ears, but it all fades to numbness.

“Who is this goddess?” I murmur.

“Does it matter? She is
Tellus
, the very earth itself. She is
Venus
, my ancestress. She is
Pax
, the peace we have wrought. She is
Isis
. She is
you
.”

I shake my head, unwilling to believe that he’s done something so reverent and momentous and marvelous for me. I am shocked. I am wonderstruck. I am overcome with sentimentality. With this monument, he has finally touched me where his hands could never reach . . .

Myriad emotions wrestle free of my heart, causing tears to spill over my lashes. Tears of joy. Tears of awe. Tears of fear. “Why have you done this?”

“It’s no golden statue in my family temple,” the emperor replies, his throat bobbing, evidence that he too feels deeply. “But it is no less a statement of who you are to me. The fertile earth, the mother of my children, the goddess who has guided me to this Golden Age.”

This monument has been years in the making. Longer than just the two it took to build it.
Years
he has planned this gesture. It is part of his grand delusion, so it ought not pull at my heart like it does. I don’t want to be touched by it, but I am, oh,
I am
. Stupefied, I let him tilt my chin and in an instant we’re back on the Isle of Samos, and he’s offering me the world. “I do honor you, Selene. Can you see that now?”

“Yes,” I whisper, enthralled by its beauty. “Yes, I do see it, Caesar.”

“And we are bound, do you see that too? We have always been bound.”

First by tragedy and treachery and violation. But now this monument, this
Ara Pacis
, will bind us together in a new way as long as it stands.

He has bound us together with peace, forever.

This thought is both dark and light, like this night, glinting silver beneath the moon. Never before has my mind been so clouded, so murky and confused. I am a queen. I am Cleopatra’s daughter. I am the chosen child of Isis. I am worthy of this monument. I have
earned
this man’s reverence, time and time again. It is only right that I should have some part on this altar to peace. It is only right that I be remembered for the thing I was born to bring about . . .

And yet, it sends shivers down my spine. I am a Ptolemy and I am proud. But I am also a survivor, and some ominous voice, deep within, cries out to be wary. Perhaps Romans will look upon this frieze and not recognize me in it; it isn’t a Roman likeness, warts and all. It’s a perfected vision of me. Perhaps people will pass it by and think only of whatever goddess pleases them best. Venus. Ceres. Tellus. Isis. It may be that the name
Cleopatra Selene
will not enter their minds. But when they see the winds . . .

“Caesar, what will they think you mean by this?”

“Ah, my Cleopatra. Let me show you what I mean by it.”

Thirty-five

I
stumble along beside him in a daze. Now we come to the wall of the monument where the carved processional continues and I see a likeness of Augustus. He is carved surrounded by the priests, wearing their distinctive leather caps with the strange pikes, and his
lictors
with their bundled rods and axes. In the carving, he holds up a wand of augury, as if he can foretell the future of Rome.

My eyes stop at the portrait of Agrippa. The admiral is a ghost on this panel, like Octavia. I’m gladdened to see him as he was. Big and strong, decidedly awkward in ceremony, his head covered. As he was in life, he stands at a position of most prominence near the emperor. And just behind him, holding the hem of his toga, is a little face that steals my breath.