Daughters of the Nile (67 page)

I let him scream at me. I let him shake me. I do not care if I fly apart. I only care that now he does believe me. He does. “You suspect someone?”

Juba grinds his teeth together. “I don’t know who. I don’t know anything. I only know that I was not with our son when he died. I was not with Ptolemy that day. I gave him that stallion—that ferocious stallion. Yet I imagined I had some more important business. I left him alone. So blame me.
Damn it
, blame me.”

He stands there, bracing for the mortal blow of my accusation. Welcoming it, I think, like a gladiator who is done with life. But I would not willingly wound him, and the bitterness leaches out of my pores. “Yes, you gave him that stallion, Juba. And so much more. You gave him a father to admire, a father who showered him with love. Juba, you did not leave Ptolemy and he was not
alone
. I will not blame you. I will never blame you . . .”

His hands tighten painfully on my wrists, then he tries to thrust me away. “I will blame myself for all my life . . . so leave me be.”

He is a vigorous man, kept fit by horse riding and practice at arms. His body is stronger than mine, but I do not
let
him thrust me away. I grab his arms and cling to him. “For the love of Isis, I don’t want to leave you. I want to hold you and be held by you. I know I don’t deserve it, but I want to grieve with you and share with you whatever comes of this day.”

He shakes his head, as if it were too late. As if the bridge between us is broken and there is no way back. He tries again to push me away, but I won’t let him go. I know Juba and what he does with his pain. If history is any guide, he will soon gallop off to the wilderness to make his maps or write his books. Perhaps he will take some pretty Greek
hetaera
with him. It will be as it was when we were first married, still strangers to each other, pried apart by our own disappointments. It will be as if Ptolemy had never been born.

That, I cannot bear, so when he turns from me again, I grasp him round the waist, fighting Juba as I have never fought anyone. I don’t use my magic. I use my arms, my legs, my whole body. My fingers clutch at his clothes, my nails dig into his skin. Anything to keep him here with me.

“Selene!” he cries. “Let go.”

“I
won’t
,” I say, my voice breaking. I hold on as if my life depended on it, and his too. “I won’t let you go. Not this time.”

His attempts to escape me become more violent and I am sure he bruises me in his desperate attempt to get away. But I don’t let go. We grapple and he becomes breathless with his efforts to dislodge me. I am tall, like my father, and I make of myself a deadweight. My gown tears in our struggle and we tumble down to the earth. We hit the ground so hard the breath explodes from my lungs, but still, I don’t let go of him.

Then, there is surrender.

All at once, I feel him shudder in my arms, for I am drawing the grief out of him. It starts as a moan, then dissolves into a keening wail. He chokes with sobs, his whole body quaking with despair. He is drowning in it. And instead of pushing me away, he clutches at me, his fingers digging into my back. I let him soak my hair with his tears, here in the field where the grasses shield us from the world.

I kiss him. Soft kisses to start, on his head, on his shaking shoulders, on his tear-soaked beard. Then our lips meet in shared anguish, touching off a desperate hunger to feel something, anything but pain. We kiss again, longer, harder, my face in his dirtied hands.

Then, by silent assent, our kisses become something else, more frenzied and hungry. His hands are on my face, in my hair, on my breasts. And my hands are on him too, yanking his tunic up. Grief has stripped us of all grandeur. Here on this field, with my back on the earth, I am humbled. I am no goddess and he is no god. I am no queen and he is no king. He is only a man and I am only a woman.

We make love. And I realize that it
is
love.

How have I denied it so long?

I want him. I need him. This time, I give myself to him completely. And when we are both spent, I whisper the truth against the salty sweat of his neck. “I love you.”

Heaving with ragged breaths, he murmurs, “Don’t say it, now. I cannot believe it, now.”

He rolls off me and we stare up into the glow of the afternoon sun. His hand tangles in my hair. I breathe in the warm desert scent of him.

“All my life I have dreaded for you to see me this way,” Juba whispers, as if afraid his voice might carry on the shimmering sea of grass.

How strange that he should dread for me to see this side of him, when it is precisely the unexpected rawness of him that I am drawn to. “Why should you fear such a thing?”

“Because I am exposed. I never wanted you to realize that I am an empty man, a paper king. Without Ptolemy, I am of even less substance. A man without weight. A man without family . . .”

“No, Juba. No.” I feel his pain as my pain. That is how I know it is love between us. For all that I have repudiated it, it is there. Juba has not always loved me well or faithfully, but he has loved me with a long and patient constancy that has outlasted even the resentments of my hard heart. And I love him. I love him so much it aches beneath my breastbone. I must find a way to convince him. If only I knew the words . . .

“You are not empty, Juba. You are filled with patience, foresight, and resolve. I would live all the rest of my days with you, and when I am dead, I would be buried with you in the mausoleum on the hill. I would be your family. I
am
your family, if you will let me be.”

He gives a sad smile, as if he dares not hope for it. “But it is only the three of us now.”

In my life, I have played many grand roles. Isis, Kore, Cleopatra, Dido, Demeter, and more. All of them queens or goddesses. But here, now, with Juba, I am only an ordinary woman. It is this ordinariness that offers us a chance at more than we have ever had before. I decide, then and there, to embrace it. “We will make it enough. We’ll find a way to need no one else, Juba. We’ll find a way.”

* * *

I
think it’s true what I said that day in his arms, smeared with tears and sweat and dirt, my skin sticky and itching from the crushed grasses that made our bed. Together, we are enough. But sometimes the gods see beyond the truth and bless us with gifts we did not think to ask for.

I did not use my magic in the field with Juba. I did not invite my goddess into me. Yet in the hottest days of summer, when farmers bring in the last of the grain harvest, I feel the spark of
heka
in my womb. Barren so long, I tell myself it is nothing. It is a vain hope in all this sadness and I cannot afford another disappointment. But I am craving figs. Fresh figs. Dried figs. Fig sauce. Any kind of fig. I ask for figs in the morning and before I go to bed, telling myself all the while that I am a half-wit.

I am thirty years old. What barren woman my age suddenly bears fruit?

Then, one day, my daughter asks me if I know that I am with child. “You are swollen at the breasts,” Isidora says. “Your hand keeps drifting to rub your lower back and you do not sit as long in council before you excuse yourself to pass water.”

Everything she says is true. There are other signs too. I cannot remember the day of my last moon’s blood. My nipples have darkened. I feel heavier upon the earth. Perhaps it is possible. My mother was thirty-two when she birthed her last child. Octavia was thirty-three.

Am I not as strong as either of them?

My hands go to my cheeks with excitement.

Sweet Isi
s, I am going to have a baby!

The sheer force of such unexpected joy brings a smile—a thing itself that makes me feel so ashamed that I cover my mouth. What if someone should see me smile and think I have forgotten poor Ptolemy? How can I smile when I have lost my child? What will I tell Juba?

It is better to wait to tell until I am sure. After all, we are both so fragile. In the daytime, the king and I are gentle with each other. At night, we hold the grief at bay, as if we have both discovered in each other’s bodies the only elixir for our pain. Our lovemaking has an urgency to it. It is still, for both of us, a desperate thing. But I have kept enough secrets from my husband for one lifetime. So I decide to tell him when he comes to me in bed that night.

After he is spent, I draw the long fingers of his hand over my belly and whisper, “I am with child.”

Still breathing hard from our exertions, Juba shakes sweat-damp hair from his eyes. “What?”

I tell him again. “We’re going to have a baby . . .”

This time he blinks, his lashes tickling my cheek.
“What?”

He nearly makes me laugh. “A baby, Juba. We’re having a baby.”

Abruptly, he sits up, fingers still splayed over my womb.

Discomforted by his stare, I ask, “Must I say it again?”

“You had better.”

“I am with child.”

His brows furrow. “But I thought—”

“We were wrong.”

Now he shakes his head in denial. “You can’t be sure of this . . .”

“I am. I am a vessel of Isis. These things are in my gift.”

It is meant only to be a proud boast, but his expression darkens. “Your last birth went hard, Selene. Euphorbus said you ought not risk another child.”

“I’ve had years to regain my strength and, in any case, it’s done. It’s too late to worry now.”

His expression clouds over. “It is not too late. There are herbs women take to stop a child from growing. I’ve heard of them from soldiers, and Isidora would know them too.”

Is he suggesting that I rid myself of this child? Does he think I would be the cause of another death? I am a mother lioness in fury, ready to tear and shred, but then Juba says, “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

Quieting my anger, I let myself understand the import of his words. I let myself understand that he would sacrifice a legacy, a child, and his responsibility as a king. He would sacrifice it all for me. He is my king. My husband. My love. “We are going to have a baby, Juba. I am not afraid.”

He
is
afraid, but a hint of a smile works its way onto his face. And now we have a secret that we share together.

* * *

“HOW
did he die?” I demand of the Roman soldier who delivers the news.

The soldier is a leathery veteran with a jagged scar from lip to ear. I’ve little doubt that he’s lost comrades in the field before. Yet he is fractured, his eyes shining with tears. “It was a fall.”

“A
fall
?” I ask, my voice echoing down from my throne. “How should such a great warrior die from a fall?”

“He fell from a horse and was trampled and crushed under the creature’s weight,” the soldier chokes out, unable to disguise his distress even before our assembled councilors. “His leg was shattered and the wound festered.”

The crowd gives a collective gasp at such a painful, ignominious death. Some make sacred signs to ward off evil, but I am calm and clear-eyed with my son’s faithful hound at my feet. “
Trampled
, you say? His bones shattered . . .”

These words fall from my lips with bitter satisfaction, though I do my best to disguise it. Is it only tragic coincidence that Drusus, the brightest star of the
Claudii,
should perish by the same means that took my boy? No, I do not believe it is coincidence. It
cannot
be only happenstance that such a fate should befall Livia’s son while new life grows inside me.

Then the soldier says, “It was sorcery that did him in.”

The hall goes silent, every eye trained upon this messenger, who sucks in his lower lip, then blows it out again, as if summoning his courage to speak of magic in the presence of Cleopatra’s daughter. “The night before battle, our poor general was awakened by an apparition. A woman of superhuman size commanded him to depart and foretold that the end of his life was near. We retreated for the Rhine, but ill omens followed us. Children weren’t allowed on our march, but two boys were seen in camp. One with straight dark hair, the other with golden curls . . . both riding fine royal mounts. Then we heard a woman keening for her lost child, but when we searched for her, we could not find her.”

Two spirit boys on horseback. One dark. One golden.

Ptolemy . . . and Helios.

It was my keening, wailing curse that killed Drusus, and all the soldiers heard it.

It was Drusus, then, who murdered my child. And this vengeance upon him is the work of my goddess. I give silent praise to Isis for it. Always, Isis hears me. Always, she is my fiercest champion. And I must be hers. That is why I cannot allow myself to take pleasure in her wrathful justice. Instead, I let her soften my heart and remember his wife and all those for whom this news will bring the greatest sorrow. “What of my half sister, Antonia Minor?”

“Safe in Rome, Majesty,” the soldier reports, wiping at his eyes with his brawny forearm. “It was his brother who fetched our brave commander home. When Tiberius finally heard of the accident he rode two hundred miles in a single day and night to be at his brother’s side.”

If true, such an incredible feat would be an unsurpassed speed record. To ride so far in one day he would have to waste horse after horse . . .

“By the time Tiberius reached the fortress,” the soldier continues, “Drusus had taken with fever. Tiberius held our poor general’s hand on his deathbed.”

I try not to begrudge my enemy the love of his brother in his dying moments, but then I remember Ptolemy’s broken body in the dirt and my heart hardens again.

The soldier goes on, “So great was the esteem of Drusus even amongst his enemies that the Germans agreed to a truce so that his body might be carried on the shoulders of his men. Then, once they reached the Rhine, his
lictors
broke their ceremonial axes and accompanied his body back to Rome. All the way, Tiberius walked, on foot, in front of his brother’s funeral carriage.”

Tiberius
walked
all the way back to Rome? Such an ostentatious display of piety might be thought a cynical ploy, but I can well imagine doing such a thing for my dead brothers, had I been allowed to. Of course, I was not . . .