Daughters of the Nile (66 page)

The emissary steps closer, his sandals sweeping softly on the marble floor. “The emperor hesitates to act against Herod on King Archelaus’s word alone. But if the emperor were to hear censure of Herod from voices he trusts and esteems, we believe he will strip Herod of his throne.”

Juba’s head snaps up as if he finds it surprising that news of our fall from favor has not spread to all corners of the empire. “Caesar is not interested in anything we might have to say about this matter. Your king would have a better chance of success if he were to sail to Judea himself and steal his daughter away in the dead of night. We can offer no help to you whatsoever.”

It is a flat and impolitic dismissal; there is nothing I can do to take the sting out of it for the Cappadocian emissary, who stiffly backs out of the room with a frosty farewell. If we had not already made an enemy of Archelaus by breaking the betrothal, we will surely have made one of him when he hears how his emissary was treated in our court. And yet my concern is for Juba. I reach for his hand, but my husband flinches away and I am reminded of how much he hates me.

* * *

I
make a gift of ivory to the Cappadocian emissary to make amends for my husband’s harsh refusal, but I cannot think of what else I might do. That night, turning the problem over in my mind, I cannot sleep. In my aimlessness, I drift to the empty room where my son once slept. I touch the wooden chest at the foot of his bed. I sigh softly as my fingers find the indentation left by the hair-curling iron I once flung away because my son was so excited to run to his father’s arms.

The memory rips through me, bittersweet. I light the tiny lamp beside his empty bed. Then I climb in and press my cheek to his pillow, hoping to catch a scent of my boy and remember how preciously he tucked his little fists beneath his chin. By day he was as fierce as a Berber warrior, but at night, what a sweet babe he was . . .

Thinking I am alone, I am startled by something cold and wet against my hand and look down to see the nose of my son’s dog.
How soft her ears are
, I think as I stroke her big ugly head. Luna climbs up into the bed next to me and I stroke her, wondering if she too is searching for my son. She was there with him at the end, barking and barking. She might have abandoned him to the fire, running away in fear as the horses did. But she stayed with him, a loyal hound indeed.

Luna’s silver paws have healed up nicely, but she is shy of flame now, her eyes wary when I lift the lamp to get a closer look at Isidora’s handiwork. “Poor dog. You will never forget and neither will I.”

My son did not die in a bed, in the arms of his mother. He died near this dog, and I want to be near him. I whisper my son’s name and offer the bewildered animal the comfort that I cannot give to Ptolemy. I stroke her, searching the warmth of her coat, reaching for any tendril of connection to my son’s spirit.

All at once, the hound lifts her head in alertness at a noise at the door and I glance up to see Juba there. We have startled the king as much as he has startled us, and he gruffly asks, “What are you doing here with Ptolemy’s dog?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Were we all drawn here by the same impulse?”

My husband has grown a beard—a thing that bewilders me, given his sensitivity to being mocked as the son of a hirsute barbarian king. He is generally fastidious about keeping his cheek clean-shaven as a Roman would, so this beard, like everything else about him tonight, is a sign of his desperate grief.

“I’ll go,” Juba says, turning to retreat.

“Wait, Juba, please . . .” But when he stops, I don’t know what to say. I want to rush to him. I want to grab his hands and fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness. It would not matter, though, for I cannot forgive myself. I think to suggest he divorce me and take a new wife who can give him children of his own, but where would that leave my daughter? So I only ask, “Will you write to Herod? Perhaps you can persuade him—”

“Herod will not rest until his sons are dead.”

What horrible irony that we would give anything to have our son back and Herod is still trying to kill his. “Won’t you try?”

Juba scowls. “There is enough to be done in Mauretania. There are trade agreements to be reached, letters to dictate, military posts to be built, and justice to dispense.”

He wants to retreat to his study into a pile of scrolls. He wants court cases in quick succession. He wants to send advisers scurrying to gather more information on this problem or that. He wants to work with a feverish determination that will hold the grief at bay. I know, because I have done it too. “Not even the greatest king can send sadness into exile . . .”

My husband swallows at the word
exile
, glancing around our son’s empty room. “I am mindful that our court is watching us, Selene. They worry what is to become of our kingdom, and I can’t let them see that I am not even king enough to care.”

“You care, Juba. It’s only that you can’t feel it now. You are numb—”

“I am everything but numb, Selene! By the gods, I
wish
I were numb. What a relief it would be not to have to hide the truth.”

It is the first time in months that he has spoken to me beyond that which was necessary. I take it for a fissure in the wall he has built to keep me out, so I screw up my courage and say, “You needn’t hide your grief from me.”

“No. To you, I am entirely exposed. But what does it matter? Ptolemy is dead and buried. No prayers or pleading or tears will change that. So what are we to say or do with so many eyes upon us?”

We both live public lives. We have always been watched and studied. But whereas I have embraced the attention, Juba has shied away from it more than once. Maybe he was right to. Perhaps running away is the only thing that helps. “We can go where we’re not watched.”

“And where would that be? There is no such place.”

“I know a place . . . and I will take you there, if you will let me.”

Forty

THE KINGDOM OF MAURETANIA

SUMMER 9
B.C.

IN
silence we ride up into the wheat fields that blanket the hills with their tall golden stalks, each head swollen with seeds. It is not a far ride to my plantation, where the blossoms of the olive trees have begun to give way to the growing fruit. My groundskeeper has already cut chunks from the wheat fields to test the crop for harvest. Some of this scythed wheat has been bundled into tawny sheaves to dry under the bright summer sky, and hope steals into my heart . . .

If there is any place where my little family and I might find respite, it will be here, at the House of Olives. I have happy memories of this place. Of Julia and I rolling around in the muck, flinging dirt at each other. Of teasing Memnon that he ought to retire here. Of my children learning to press oil and hiding behind vats in the fermenting yard. Of my husband asking questions of our sharecroppers, always keen to learn something new . . .

But that was Juba as he was before. Always inquisitive and interested. With the death of his son, the light has gone from his eyes. He has withdrawn so far into himself that he does not even bother to return the greetings of our housekeeper, who welcomes us with a promise of spicy sausages, eggs, fresh-baked bread, and a hot mint tisane.

When my daughter and I settle into our rooms upstairs, Isidora lingers by the window, asking, “Where is Papa going?”

I look out to see my husband walking through the olive orchard. “I’m sure he has gone to speak to one of the plowmen,” I say, so as not to alarm her. But
I
am alarmed because Juba is without his guards.

Bidding my daughter to go down for a plate of the housekeeper’s rustic fare, I seek out Iacentus in the yard. “Why aren’t you with the king?”

“He commanded us to stay behind, Majesty. He wants to be alone.”

Yes, Juba wants to be alone. That’s why we came here, isn’t it? I don’t know why I should feel so unsettled. My husband is not likely to meet with danger on a farm . . . unless that danger is from himself. I try to shake away that fear, telling myself it is only because I lost both my mother and father to suicide that such thoughts occur to me. Knowing my husband’s temperament, Juba is more likely to simply walk off into the wilderness.

But then I remember Iullus and what he contemplated in the face of the emperor’s disfavor . . .

I try to shrug off these worries and follow the scent of sausage roasting in the kitchen, but Luna starts barking. Perhaps she only barks at the cows being led into the barn but the sound makes me remember. I remember how she barked when my son lay trampled in the dirt. How she barked when Drusus came to call upon me at my house. Her bark brings back to me the darkest moment of my life and panic overtakes me.

Gathering my skirts in my hands, I start out after the king. He is at the edge of the olive orchard now, crossing the road into the wheat fields, and if I do not catch up with him, he will disappear in the sea of grain. “Juba!” I call after him, but he does not turn. Walking faster, I hurry past the water well, past the wagon filled with manure, past servants hauling buckets of water. I call again, but the king does not answer.

He only walks faster, as if to escape me.

I pick up my pace, wading into the field after him, calling his name, until I am running after him, the wheat stalks slashing at my face and scraping my limbs. “Juba!”

All at once, he whirls on me. “What do you
want
?”

I hold my ribs, breathless with fear and exertion. The blood is pounding in my ears, and I am too afraid to say what I really want. “I only want to know where you are going.”

“
Away
,” he says, taking a sword from his belt to chop his way through the grasses as if it will speed his progress away from me. Stubbornly, I follow him, even though I know I should leave my husband to grieve.

Farther and farther we go into the grain field, until I am as lost in the world as I am in my soul. Julia once wrote that the loss of a child will smash even a marriage of the strongest of foundations. The foundations of my marriage were like Necho’s sunbaked bricks, likely to crumble away under any weight at all. If my husband hates me, it is no more than I deserve. All these years, I have taken for granted his affection and now it is gone. Still, I need to reassure myself that my fears are unfounded. “Why do you have a sword, Juba? What are you going to do?”

This stops him. He turns to look at me, sweat dripping from his fine dark brow. “Are you worried I am such an incompetent fool that I might cut myself?” When I press my lips together, he must see what I fear, because he blinks. We stand there, staring at each other as if over an abyss, and his eyes go hard. “No, Selene. Though I want nothing more than to lie down in the earth and die, that is no way out for a king. There is no way out for me.”

I exhale, glad that he knows it. Grateful beyond measure that I am the fool. And yet I cannot be glad that he is in such pain he would wish for death. He has never known grief like this before; he has never lost anyone that he loved so deeply. Being well practiced at mourning has not blunted the pain for me, but Juba has not even that pitiful defense. And I have done this to him. I could not have known where my choices would lead when I was only a girl, playing with Augustus for the world. I didn’t know that someday I would have a new family to be harmed by the decisions I made. But does that excuse me?

As Juba begins walking again, I cry, “I would do anything to take it back! To make it all different. I am sorry. I am so sorry—”

Juba rounds on me with bloodshot eyes. “You
apologize
to me? You stand there, seeking forgiveness?”

Forgiveness would be far too much to ask, so I say, “I only need you to know of my regrets, but that is a selfish urge too. If you wish to be alone, if you cannot bear to look at me . . . I’ll leave you and Isidora here and return to the palace. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

“I want you to blame me!” he roars. “Why don’t you say it, Selene? I know you must think it. You must think it every moment of every day. Say that it’s my fault our son is dead.”

I am so stunned that I nearly stumble. The sweat pools in my palms and I stare at him, trying to understand. Can it be that what I have seen when he looks at me with those bleak eyes is not hatred but guilt?
Sweet Isis
, does he believe I would lay our son’s death at his feet, as I laid the baby there at his birth? There are so very many people I have condemned, myself most of all, but I have never held my husband responsible. “How could I blame you?”

I reach out for him, but he catches me by both wrists. Then the calm, reasoned shell of the king cracks open to reveal the raw man inside. He shouts in my face, “I was the one who insisted we foster him in Rome! You never wanted him to go. You told me the truth about Caesar’s obsession. You warned me again and again that our son would be in danger. You begged me to believe you. You
begged
me, but I wouldn’t listen.”