Song Of The Nile Part 22

"I couldn't have defied you. You never forbade me to go."

He crossed his arms over himself, as if he felt a sudden draft. "I've spent the last year plotting all the ways I could make you suffer , but I only wanted to see you again. Agrippa is right. You've ensorcelled me."

"Is that what you wish, Caesar? For me to bewitch you?"

He swallowed and looked away. "I should never have summoned you to this island."

"Then why did you? Why am I here?" I lowered my arm, letting him approach, and his clammy hands fastened on my shoulders. Pushing down the revulsion, I reminded myself that he could only touch my flesh, never more than that.

"I don't know, Selene. I don't know why you're here. Are you a test from the G.o.ds? I didn't wish you into existence. You were just there in Egypt when the fighting was done. You and your brothers. What was I to do with you?"

My stomach rolled and heaved, but I showed none of it. "Are these questions meant to seduce me?"

He snorted. "You accuse me of seduction?"

"Am I only dreaming your hands on me again?"

"Ohhhh." His was a growl of anger. "Who has a better right to you?"

I braved his temper with a determined stare. "The man to whom I give myself freely. Are you going to be that one man? For you must know that no other man has ever touched me."

I'd learned how to play the emperor's game, but he hadn't apprehended mine. He jerked back in surprise. "Is that true?"

It wasn't difficult to lie to him. "Once claimed by Caesar, how could I lower myself to bed with a lesser man?"

Such a blatant appeal to his vanity might have roused his suspicion, but this rationale was easier for him to believe than a sudden l.u.s.t. That I'd conceived a pa.s.sion for him out of my own arrogance was something far more plausible. He stared, his mouth working slowly. "You and your d.a.m.nable Ptolemaic pride!"

"You want your own Cleopatra," I said, struggling not to choke on my words. "Well, I want my Caesar. I'll either be as pure as a Vestal or I'll be the mother of Caesar's son."

I'd named his dearest desire and he groaned as if wounded. He pulled me against him, taking in the scent of my hair. He clutched at me, murmuring, "I didn't know how you'd come to me, but I knew you'd come. I thought you might disgrace yourself by flaunting our daughter. Yet you knew to come to me in secret."

"What's between us isn't for the eyes of the world," I said, knowing he took s.e.xual satisfaction in clandestine, guilt-ridden, and shameful things.

He reached to yank up my gown, and I caught his hands. "What game now, Selene?"

"Not tonight." For he'd promised me nothing. My mother had been a gambler and Julius Caesar may have let the dice fly high, but I was the emperor's apprentice. I always proceeded with caution. "Tonight I offer you a kiss."

He recoiled as if the act were some sort of Eastern perversion, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd never kissed a woman before. He grabbed at my gown and I feared what would happen next. Would he throw me down again? Would I be forced to use my heka to stop him? Both possibilities seemed frighteningly likely. What myth played out in his head? Was he Aeneas, resisting Dido for the good of Rome, Mark Antony falling prey to a corrupt Queen Cleopatra, or a new creature altogether?

He stared and I wet my lips, sensing the tide was turning in my favor. Navigating some sea change with an instinct as old as womankind, I sensed that I was surrendering and conquering at once. He felt it too, and bent to kiss me. I squeezed my eyes shut when his thin lips found mine. The bitter salt of them was horrifically familiar. So much worse than I imagined. Not like the kiss I'd shared with Juba. This kiss was revolting for the memories it awakened, but I let it go on until he murmured, "What kind of G.o.ddess comes to me?"

"I'm a Child of Isis and will be the Queen of Egypt."

All at once, he let me go. He pushed me away as if his fingers were singed by touching me. He retreated several steps behind the table. We were both quiet and my knees went to jelly. Then, as I'd seen him do a hundred times before, he brought his emotions to an unnatural calm. "You may be a Child of Isis, but I am Caesar. I have other choices in allies. I must yet be convinced that you're capable of politicking upon a world stage."

Thirty.

CHRYSSA washed the cosmetics from my face, brushed my hair, and helped me into my sleeping gown. I didn't go to bed but knelt beside a strongbox in which I kept expensive gifts and coins. Throwing the top back on its iron hinges, I dug out a small package at the bottom and untied the cords. Inside was a little girl's gown, dirtied and stained brown with old blood. A slave girl had once tried to take it from me and I'd slapped her away. Chryssa had been that slave girl, and when our eyes met, hers glistened with tears.

I'd always kept the dress. Hidden beneath a mattress or buried at the bottom of my traveling satchels, it'd been a talisman of the wounds in me no one could see. A tangible reminder of the dark memories in my khaibit that held my rage. "I have to get free of this," I said, fingering the cloth. "The hatred. Do you know how deeply I hate him? How long I've kept it hidden?" We'd each been taken to the emperor's bed, but we never spoke of it. Now I would. "He wants a son from me," I said flatly.

She made a strangled sound. "Tonight . . . ?"

"No," I whispered. "It seems that we both require certain proofs from one another."

THE next day, I called upon an unsuspecting King Iamblichus in his apartments. Crinagoras announced me with all my t.i.tles, real and honorary: "Queen Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania, of Cyrenaica, Libya and Numidia, Princess of Egypt, and the eighth Cleopatra of the ill.u.s.trious House Ptolemy."

"I'm glad that you've come," the King of Emesa said, but the lines around his eyes told me otherwise. He'd thought better of asking after the remains of his dead uncle. Or perhaps he worried that I'd come to ask him to join some intrigue or to support my claim to Egypt. Perhaps Nicholas of Damascus, on Herod's behalf, had already been here to blacken my name.

In spite of the chilly reception, I went directly to the issue. "I've come with a gift," I said, and Chryssa came forward to place the package on the low table between the king and me. "This is the gown I wore on the occasion of Octavian's Triumph . . ." My voice quavered and I was tempted to s.n.a.t.c.h the dress back, so precious was it to me. Instead, I forced myself to say, "The bloodstains are all that remain of your uncle, Alexander of Emesa. I hope that you can use this to help him find his final rest." The king stared at me as if he thought I were lying. Then he unwound the twine on the package and examined the old, tattered cloth. I felt suddenly, unbearably, foolish. "I know it must seem macabre . . ."

King Iamblichus brushed the fabric, his eyes filled with an emotion that may have been outrage. He snapped his gaze to mine and pointed one shaky finger at me, as if in accusation. "It's true what they say about you. You are a holy person. This is a sacred thing you've done, one that will bind our families together in friendship."

I exhaled, fearing to speak, swallowing back emotion as I realized that a burden had been lifted from me. One less dead spirit to haunt me. One less broken piece of my life that I must mend. Perhaps, having let go of the dress, I could release the sorrow and hatred too.

IN the weeks that followed, I wasn't alone with Augustus again. The business of the empire beckoned and he made me wait. This came as no surprise to me. When the emperor wanted something, he made a slow and unrelenting advance. So when he gifted me with caged songbirds, I understood that it was more than a token of his favor. It was a message, that even my bold offer couldn't distract him from the work at hand. Nor could I fly free.

His latest preoccupation was the news from Rome. As Augustus had refused to be elected to the office of consul, the people refused to elect anyone else. Whether this was driven by popular will or by fawning allies, I couldn't say. Casting about for someone else capable of feeding them, the Romans granted Agrippa independent imperium. I shuddered when I heard this, for it meant that Agrippa was now a virtual coemperor. He had his own lictors and had redoubled efforts to purge Rome of Isiacs. Agrippa forbade the worship of Isis not just within the pomerium but anywhere in the city, and he actively hunted down Isiacs for punishment, claiming that this was necessary to put down an insurrection.

It was everything I'd tried to prevent and yet had somehow brought about. All these years, Agrippa had contented himself to be second man in Rome. No longer. Now he was making audacious moves fueled, at least in part, by his enmity for me. And I had no idea how to stop it short of my campaign to take back my mother's throne.

Each day, on some pretext, I went down the stepped streets to the harbor in the hopes of news from Egypt or a delegation from Meroe. Each day, I was disappointed. My ship, with its beautiful purple sails, was at anchor, and I struggled against my instinct to climb aboard and sail away. Always, my ambition won out. I'd come for power, and this island was now the center of the world. There was nowhere else I should be.

For allies, I could count upon many of the Eastern kings, but it wasn't only royalty who offered their support. I also received a most unexpected visit from the very wealthy widow of a Greek magnate, wife of the late Pythodoros of Tralles. The heavyset woman claimed to be my half sister and when she introduced herself as Antonia, Chryssa murmured, "Not another Antonia. Just how many children did your father have?"

I elbowed Chryssa sharply, then smiled at my guest. "I'm at a terrible disadvantage, Lady Antonia. I'm afraid I hadn't known of your existence . . ."

The wealthy widow was at least thirty years old and she wore a jeweled ring on every finger of every hand, an ostentation that would have marked her as my father's daughter even without the family resemblance. She also had a booming laugh. "You've never heard of me because I'm pitied in Rome. Poor Antonia, married off to some foreigner, they say. I'm told Octavian, that limp little p.r.i.c.k, used my marriage as another way to prove that our father had quite lost his mind."

The vulgar way in which she insulted the emperor left me speechless. When I struggled for reply, she only laughed louder. "Don't fret, little sister. I've come to tell you that you have a friend in me. You seem rich enough, but one can never have enough money, and I have more gold than I can count. I pledge to use it to put you back on the throne of Egypt."

Chryssa made a noise, a grunt of suspicion, but I tried to be gracious. "Lady Antonia, you needn't feel obliged to empty your treasury because we share blood."

"Call me Hybrida, after my mother," the fleshy woman said. "In truth, my offer has only a little to do with our shared blood. Though I'm the daughter of a Roman triumvir and richer than Midas, Roman society shuns me. They think I'm tainted. I can find no good husband for my daughter, Pythodorida. I believe her marriage prospects would improve if we were to move to Alexandria and join your court as kinswomen to the Queen of Egypt."

If I were in Hybrida's position, the same thoughts would have occurred to me. It was entirely sensible. Moreover, her frankness appealed to me. "We welcome your friendship, Lady Hybrida. And I applaud your ambitions for your daughter, who is, if nothing else, my niece, a kinswoman to the Queen of Mauretania."

Hybrida spent the rest of the afternoon regaling me with tales of my father. Because she was older, she remembered him as none of my other half siblings did, and her stories were a gift to me that I treasured. As it turned out, my niece Pythodorida was a charming little thing-a few years older than Isidora-but the two girls enjoyed one another's company. It gladdened my heart that my daughter should have a cousin to play with, and I imagined the two of them growing up together in my mother's palace in Alexandria. If I needed another reason to win back Egypt, this reminded me how many other people depended upon me to do it.

A few days after Hybrida's visit, two hulking slaves whose muscles had been oiled to a high sheen knocked upon my chamber door. They presented me with a chest of priceless frankincense and myrrh, a gift from the emperor. I used it as an excuse to call upon him where he was closeted with Maecenas, Tiberius, and a number of other officials whose names I no longer recall. Strabo was on duty, which was fortunate, because the emperor's praetorian had become accustomed to admitting me without question. When I thanked Augustus for the expensive gifts, the emperor didn't even glance up from the pile of papyrus and vellum and other sc.r.a.ps of paper. "I'm glad the gifts pleased you, Queen Selene. Now please absent yourself, as I'm busy."

"Perhaps I can help," I said, slipping into a chair. "I can translate in several languages."

If he planned to banish me, the emperor forgot it when whatever he read sent him into a scarlet rage. "Opportunistic cur!" Augustus tossed the letter to the middle of the table and announced, "Agrippa has divorced Marcella. He's divorced my niece. Without any good cause. Without leave from me!"

I was very glad that I was already sitting down. "Divorced her . . ." It had to be some cruel hoax. We'd just seen them together. What could biddable Marcella have possibly done to make Agrippa abandon her? No, it was nothing Marcella had done, I realized. It was what the emperor and I had done. What we might still do. What we planned to do. Recent Roman history was filled with episodes of colleagues falling out and fighting wars for supremacy. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Octavian, and Antony-that wasn't even the complete list. Now history was folding back upon itself. When my father divorced Octavia, it had led to war. Agrippa's divorce of Marcella might start the fighting again.

It was like one of the ingenious grappling hooks Agrippa had invented for sea battles. He shot this insult across the bow and now it would dig in. It was a rebellion that couldn't be ignored or cut away. Augustus knew it too. "There's more. Having divorced my niece, Agrippa now wishes to marry my daughter."

Aghast, I nearly shot out of my chair. This was Agrippa's counteroffer. Augustus could save face by marrying his rebellious general even more closely into his family. By giving Julia to Agrippa, he would be declaring the old soldier his heir. It would seem as if the whole thing-even the divorce-had been the emperor's own idea. It was brilliant. I would never, never underestimate Agrippa again.

"The admiral aims too high!" Tiberius cried.

No higher than you, I thought. Livia had planted the idea that Tiberius was a viable candidate for Julia's hand. That he could inherit the empire. Neither of them had counted upon Agrippa's ambitions. Nor had I. But perhaps wily Maecenas had seen it coming, because he leaned back, adjusting a gold ring upon his finger, and said, "Augustus, I think you must allow it."

"Why must I?" the emperor asked. "Agrippa is my creature. I've made him everything he is."

"It's because you've made Agrippa so great," Maecenas said. "You must now either kill him or let him marry your daughter."

Augustus circled the table, catching us all in the eye of his storm. That's when he noticed me sitting there. "And you, Selene, what do you advise? You know the women of my family."

I sickened at the idea that somewhere in Rome, my dearest friend sat unaware that her future was being decided right here in this room. Clever, beautiful, warmhearted Julia. The last time I'd seen her, she was more in love with Iullus than ever before. Agrippa would never stand for it. He would make her life a misery. What was I to say? Was I to encourage the emperor to murder or to war?

You should kill Agrippa. The words were in my mouth but wouldn't pa.s.s my lips. The admiral stood in my way and I should be glad to be rid of him, but I couldn't make myself say it. "Shame on Agrippa. Find a way to tell him no. Julia isn't a war prize to be pa.s.sed out to your victorious general. She wasn't born to give you an heir. She's a grown woman with desires of her own."

These bold words should never have been spoken in front of these men, but now I couldn't take them back, and Augustus stared pointedly. "Tell me, Selene, about these desires my daughter has."

Julia's secrets weren't mine to tell, and I shrugged, knowing it would make no difference in the outcome anyway. "She desires to be consulted in matters of her own future."

The emperor shook his head, then read Agrippa's letter again. "Apparently, my sister supports the idea. Why would Octavia be well disposed to this match between Agrippa and my daughter if it means that her own daughter must be divorced and discarded?"

To spite Livia, I thought. Octavia swore that she'd never allow the emperor's wife to profit from Marcellus's death. This was one way to keep Livia's sons from climbing any higher. "Why don't you ask your daughter what she wants?"

Augustus wiped at his face with his hand. "Selene, it doesn't matter what Julia wants if her happiness leads to war. We must all make sacrifices for the greater good. Don't you agree?" How could I argue? If I'd made only the choices that would lead to my own personal happiness, I wouldn't be here at all. "Maecenas is right," Augustus said, his mind made up. "I've let Agrippa rise too high. I must either destroy him or let him marry Julia. Or both."

Or both. I should have thought of that, but the emperor's mind always worked faster when it came to treachery. A marriage to Julia would advance Agrippa politically, but it would also tie his hands. The admiral couldn't divorce or offend Julia without giving the emperor an excuse to destroy him.

Having secured the emperor's permission, Agrippa wasted no time. Before winter we learned of two weddings in Rome. In a hastily arranged ceremony, Agrippa married Julia and in the most perverse twist I could imagine, the discarded wife, Marcella, was married off to Julia's secret lover.

WAITING for the delegation from Meroe, months pa.s.sed. At the back of the emperor's magnificent villa on the Isle of Samos, I'd been apportioned my own private beach, accessible only from the terrace outside of my rooms, closed off from outsiders by tall green hedges and a rock wall. It was the perfect place to avoid Livia.

While I stretched out beneath a palm tree, Isidora splashed in the ocean with Tala's boy. The winter sun on my arms and legs was warm, not hot, and my ladies and I could be at our ease, but I was restless. In Mauretania, there'd be a hundred pet.i.tions to read, a thousand decisions to make. It wasn't in my nature to be at leisure and I worried that precious few messages came to me from Mauretania. As I brooded upon this regrettable fact, Isidora squatted in the surf, using her hair ornament to dig into the wet sand, the Isle of Samos itself a canvas for her imagination. "She's going to lose that expensive silver circlet," Chryssa warned. "Surely your mother didn't allow you to run loose like a wildling child!"

I don't think my mother ever allowed me to be a child at all. Playful by nature, my father had indulged us, but all my mother's amus.e.m.e.nts had some political purpose. Everything in her life was calculated to Egypt's advantage-every burst of laughter and perhaps even every sigh of pleasure. I was becoming just like her, but I didn't want Isidora to become just like me. "Let her play."

That evening the delegation from Meroe finally arrived. Wild with antic.i.p.ation, every sense heightened with hope that Helios might be with the delegation, I berated servants who weren't swift enough to make ready. On the emperor's behalf, I went to greet the Meroites, my litter accompanied by torchbearers and a small cavalcade of mounted guards, commanded by Tiberius. So anxious was I to see this Kandake of Meroe that my first steps upon the creaking wooden dock were unsteady, and not even a deep breath of night air could calm me. Pearls and jewels and purple cloak all weighed me down, but the dazzle of my finery was swallowed in the dim light. I'd come all this way for a chance to reunite with my twin and wondered if he'd know me in the dark.

As they disembarked from the ship, I saw that Meroe's emissaries were few in number. All men with long limbs displaying every manner of decoration in the old Egyptian style. Thick gold bracelets at their wrists. Jeweled trinkets on their strong ankles. Carnelian amulets about their necks. Lines of kohl and blue azurite around their eyes. They looked as if they'd stepped off the wall of an Egyptian tomb, but they weren't a honey brown like native Egyptians. Their skin was dark. Luxurious. Black as night. No pale Macedonian Greek could have hidden himself amongst them and I didn't sense Helios near.

Though I should have felt nothing but relief that my twin hadn't been foolish enough to come to this island with his warrior queen, I despaired. That gaping maw of misery gnashed in the pit of my stomach. I was so stricken that it took me a moment to realize Tiberius had introduced me in surprisingly majestic terms, using the full panoply of my t.i.tles. I'd have thought he ridiculed me, but Livia's eldest son didn't have any sense of humor, not even a cruel one.

The Kandake's amba.s.sador said, "Greetings, Queen Cleopatra Selene. We come on behalf of Queen Amanirenas, the Kandake of Meroe, Priestess of Isis and Pharaoh of the Kus.h.i.tes." He'd been chosen as a diplomat, I thought, because he spoke pa.s.sable Greek.

That wasn't the language I wanted to use. I addressed him in Egyptian. "And we," I began, using the royal we, "were sent by Augustus to encourage you to make a peace treaty. We can tell you from personal experience that it's the more customary practice of the Romans to invade places, steal everything, enslave the populace, and expand the boundaries of the empire so that a general can be granted a giant victory parade. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to negotiate, since Romans don't normally offer terms."

The amba.s.sador grinned, agile in switching to the Egyptian tongue. "The Romans don't normally find themselves fought to a standstill either."

So, they were proud, these Meroites. I had nothing else to say.

In my chambers that night, I let my fingers play over the oil lamp, flirting with the flame. Chryssa watched me. "That seemed a rather feeble effort at diplomacy, Majesty."

"What do you expect from me? If I mean to help Helios, I doubt very much he wants me to negotiate on behalf of the Romans."

She glanced at me sharply, alarmed. Her voice lowered to a whisper. "After all these years, you cannot still think he lives."

I didn't answer. I knew Helios was still alive, but perhaps it was a secret best kept by me alone.

IF the emperor required proof that I was capable of politicking on a world stage, I'd given him no evidence of it. That the delegation from Meroe included neither Helios nor his warrior queen had rocked me; I'd allowed my bitterness to show, and by the next morning I knew I must make up for a poor first impression.

I invited the amba.s.sador to call upon me aboard my ship. Captain Kabyle was charming and gracious to the Meroites, and the Kandake's amba.s.sador lunched with me on the deck beneath my purple sails. The ship was the only place on the island that belonged to me, where I could be reasonably certain that no spies would report our conversation. "Amba.s.sador, I'd like very much to know about your Kandake."

The amba.s.sador smiled, brilliant white teeth against his ebony lips. "Our pharaoh is the most beautiful woman yet born. Blessed of the G.o.ds. She doesn't bow to the Romans or to any man. A fierce fighter, radiant of spirit and beloved of our people."

I put down my spoon, suddenly quite without appet.i.te. Would it have been better to hear that she was ugly and hated? "And the Kandake thinks she can beat the Romans? Drive them from Egypt?"

"I've heard tale of you, Queen Selene, so you'll hear only the truth. The Kandake didn't fight this war to conquer Egypt. Like you, the Kandake considers herself to be a daughter of Isis."

Perhaps a truer daughter than I had been. "So, she wants the temples."

"She makes war to protect the temples, but our mother Isis doesn't like war. As Pharaoh of Meroe, she speaks to the G.o.ds. Horus told her to make peace. He also told her that you would be here and that you'd do everything in your power to see this war end to our advantage."

I hoped the sound of waves below disguised the fluttering of my heart. "Horus told her?"

"He comes to the Kandake as a young man with golden hair and eyes as green as the Nile. A young warrior who wields a sword with ten times the strength of any other man. A desert soldier who shares the privations of men under his command. He fought beside us in battle and the men all love him. The women too."

I closed my eyes as if the sun reflecting off the water were too bright, but it was only to hide the searing longing inside . . . "The Romans will want to know where to find him, this Horus the Avenger. Will you tell me where he is?"

"Where Horus is now, I cannot guess."

"He's left Meroe?" My voice rose in pitch. "He's left the Kandake?"

"He's with us always in spirit, Majesty, but G.o.ds go where they're needed."

I was crestfallen. For almost four years now, I'd yearned for Helios. Now he was gone again like a shadow. Still, he'd somehow guessed that I would be here. He'd promised the Kandake that I'd help her, and I would. I said, "When the negotiations begin, remember that Rome is poised to make war on Parthia. Augustus is capable of fighting more than one war at a time, but the battles aren't finished in Spain either. Roman generals celebrate as if they've returned victorious over the Cantabri tribes, but then have to fight again. The Cantabri don't stay conquered."

"None of us do," the amba.s.sador said softly. "Every great power eventually tumbles down."

Once, I'd said something similar to Maysar. I had believed it then. Now, I was less certain. "I fear that Rome is like Augustus, always at the edge of death, coming back stronger. You have an ally in me, even if it may not seem that way. The mask I wear for the Romans isn't a true reflection of my heart."

I only hoped that I hadn't worn the mask so long that I forgot my own face.