Song Of The Nile Part 27

He couldn't know that I'd resolved to give myself to the emperor and that I needed Augustus alive. There must be more to this conversation between us, but I couldn't bear to have it now. Not now. Not when there were so few precious moments until the sunrise. I clung to him as long as I could, and when he finally readied to leave, he promised, "Sleep a little. I'll come again tonight, when it's dark."

IN the weeks that followed, I lived for nightfall. Helios was the only sun in my sky. I walked about dazed, counting the hours until I could be rid of my servants and make my way to the water's edge. You must understand that Helios was my brother no more-if he'd ever been. He'd grown to be a large man, his hardened body a specimen of devastating masculinity. It was as if he'd been carved like one of those great cult statues, and there wasn't a woman alive who wouldn't have stopped in her tracks for a worshipful glimpse of him. There was no woman he couldn't have seduced-from the lowest slave to the highest queen. For him, they'd have all thrown their bedroom doors wide. But at night, he came for me.

We always made love in twos. The first time, he'd descend upon me like an invading army, yanking at my clothes, tearing the fabric if need be. I never resisted or even feigned struggle, but as swiftly as I'd spread my thighs to welcome him, it never seemed quick enough. His heart thundered in his chest loud enough for me to hear it and he'd clutch at my hips as if he were frantic to feel skin against skin. My own need matched his so precisely that we often cried out together.

Yet it was always the second time that left me annihilated. The second time, sheepish and between kisses, he'd murmur apologies for his barbarism. Then he'd lay me gently on pillows and navigate the sensitive spots of my body without hesitation-as if he'd memorized a secret map of my skin. He knew just where to kiss the places that made me burn. He knew just how to capture me beneath his sweat-slick limbs so that the air ignited in my lungs. Trapped between him and my own desire, I was defenseless. He wielded my arousal against me like a weapon he'd mastered, thrusting, parrying, exhausting me until I begged for quarter. Then and only then, when I was scarcely coherent, he'd bury himself inside me and we'd become one.

There was never a time he didn't make me burn with desire. Never a time he tired before I did. Never a time that he didn't leave me storm swept and shaking. It was an art, what he did to me. A practiced talent. "You've been with other women."

"Yes." He let his broad palm rest on the expanse of my belly. "I wanted to be good at it." He didn't need to say why. He was Antony's son. Antony, as famous a lover as he was a fighter. But when Helios saw my expression, his eyes lowered. "But now, I swear, there will never be another."

Who was I to insist upon fidelity, having married one man and now seducing another? "I can't ask that of you."

"You didn't," Helios said, rough hands kneading the fleshiest parts of me. It didn't matter that I was tall; he was taller. He made me feel delicate in his solid arms, fragile and safe all at once. And though it was selfish and petty, I hated to think he'd made some other woman feel this way too. "I want to know about your lovers. Like this Kandake of Meroe."

I didn't expect him to laugh.

"Don't mock me, Helios. You have no idea how it pained me to hear about her. How she's a fierce fighter, beautiful and-"

"She is beautiful," he said, his golden hair upon my pillow, a playful smile on his lips as if in fond remembrance. "Her spirit is beautiful. Though she lost one eye in battle, she's majestic. A true embodiment of Isis."

These words were soured milk in my belly. "I've changed my mind. I can't bear to hear."

"Selene, she's nearly fifty years old. Devoted to her people, to her son, and to her husband."

Though I'd long since learned to keep blood from rushing to my face, I flushed like an unpracticed girl. "Do you think I'm a fool?"

"You are," he said, forcing me to look at him. "My relations with the Kandake have been entirely chaste, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. You are the magic in my soul that keeps me alive. You are as constant in my heart as the moon in the night. You are my other half and I'll always seek you out somehow, even though it puts you in danger, and that is my shame."

His words melted my anger away and filled my veins with sweet honey. "You should never be ashamed for returning to me. I need to know where you've been and what you've done and where you've triumphed and who has hurt you!"

"Then I'll tell you," he said, soothing me like a falconer smoothes ruffled feathers. "I'll tell you anything."

In the next hours, we exchanged five years' worth of tales. I told him of how I'd helped poison the emperor against the first Gallus. He told me of Arabia, where he led the second Gallus into a trap. I learned of Helios's ships-yes, he'd had more than one. And I traced each scar on his body and listened to him tell me how he got it. When he was done, I told him about Mauretania-about the crops and the lavender, the harbor and the lighthouse, and about the wondrous purple that the royals all clamored to have. I told him about the crocodiles and my visit to the river. And even about the tomb I'd built for him. The only thing I didn't tell him was about my bargain with the emperor, and whenever his questions tread too closely to that subject, I distracted him with tales of Isidora. Her first steps. Her first words. "I want to see her tomorrow," he said. "Take her to the market. I'll watch for her from afar."

THAT day, in the market, I feared to look up into the crowd. Were I to somehow find Helios in daylight and lock eyes with him again, it would remind my servants of the day I leapt out of the litter and raved like a madwoman, so I instructed Tala to take the children amidst the merchant awnings and let my daughter spend what she would on any trinkets that pleased her.

While the common folk fawned over my little princess, I remained in my litter with a package newly arrived from Mauretania. It bore a wax seal pressed with a lion signet, the mark Juba had taken as his own. After all my complaints about the scarcity of word from Mauretania, now I didn't want to break the seal. Juba and Augustus were a world away, but Helios was here, with me. My skin still tingled from his touch, and the tender places he'd left sore now ached so pleasantly I might have sighed or laughed or even sang with the joy of it. And I did not care for Augustus or Juba or what either of them represented.

But I did care about Mauretania. I broke the seal. Inside was a letter all smudged and wrinkled as if it'd been worked beneath perspiring hands or spotted with a pale wine. Selene, it began. So it was to be informal.

Selene, I write to you from Spain where I have joined with Agrippa and received an appointment as a duovir in Gades. We've received word that Lucius Cornelius Balbus has crushed the Garamantes and been hailed as imperator. He's asked to be granted a Triumph in Rome. No mercy was given to the combatants. Perhaps this will be a lesson to our own rebellious tribesmen, the Gaetulians, who show little respect to our throne since your departure.

Of course, I write as if this were still of some consequence to you. I blame myself for your leave-taking. But whatever holds you on that island is illusion. What you want cannot be. It is not real, whereas you and Isidora are very much real and very much alive. I had hoped the anniversary coin I struck would prove to you that I would care for and protect you both, so what compels you to place yourself and the little princess in such peril? You throw away what you have to grasp hold of what you cannot. Is this the way of the Ptolemies?

I crumpled the paper. The nerve of the man to write these things to me! Juba, who could not be bothered to rule Mauretania, was now across the strait in Spain as a duovir, an honorary magistrate? If I could have reached him, I might have struck him. The show of Roman might against the Garamantes would do nothing but stir up rebellion amongst our fiercely independent tribesmen. And he had the temerity to lecture me about illusion?

His bitterness and condemnation astonished me. As if I hadn't been summoned by the emperor. As if I hadn't been commanded to stay here in case the emperor wished to use my powers against his enemies. I had no choice! Then, calming myself, I muttered at the absurdity of a man like Lucius Cornelius Balbus holding a Triumph. I knew Augustus. He was the imperator, the emperor. He would never sanction another of equal status. How would they dare arrange such a thing so hastily while he was away? I sensed Agrippa's hands on this . . .

I read the last lines of Juba's letter again, still seething. You throw away what you have to grasp hold of what you cannot. Is this the way of the Ptolemies? Perhaps it was. I didn't care. Helios was here and would come again to me, this very night.

"Look!" Isidora cried, waving a little wooden tiger in my direction. "It's like the ones the Indians brought in the cage. I want a lion and a falcon too."

"Let her buy what she wants," I told Tala, who surrendered the coin. "She is a Ptolemy. She can have anything she wants."

"DID you see her?" I asked Helios when he came to me that night.

He nodded, as if he scarcely trusted himself to speak, and a needle of doubt pierced me. Helios was quiet. Somber. With a brooding expression that left me half to wonder if he was going to build some cabin by the sea and waste away. In silence, we listened to the waves as I wondered if he saw the emperor's features on Isidora's face where I could never see them. "Aren't you going to say something about her? Can you not love my daughter because-"

"Not love her?" He rounded on me, his voice rising. "She's a miracle! "

I knew she was a miracle and not simply in the sense that every mother knows her child is a gift. Isidora represented the survival of the Ptolemies. She embodied my desperate attempts to preserve our dynasty and all the dreams my mother had ever dreamed. And yet miracle that she was, she seemed to have put Helios in agony. "I only meant to ease your pain. I didn't think that seeing her would make it worse."

"She looked at me," he finally said. "I was so far away. She shouldn't have even glanced in my direction, but she did. She looked up from her wooden toys, stared through the crowd, and found my eyes. It was like looking into a River of Time. Like everything I'd ever done or wanted to do or dreamed is all inside of her. And she'll never know me. She'll never know me."

I wanted to promise him that I'd tell her tales of Horus the Avenger. That one day, when the world was different, we could all be together. Maybe I could make it so. Even if the emperor returned from Parthia victorious, even if I gave him a son and he made me his wife, he couldn't live forever. Helios and I were young, we were- I froze at the sound of rustling in the shrubbery and Helios had the presence of mind to crouch low. A small sword was in his hand as swiftly as if he'd conjured it, and the quick spark of heka snapped in the air to his command. Dear Isis, I didn't know whether to hope our intruder was Memnon or not, given Helios's deadly intent. To be caught here, even by my own guards, alone with a man . . . Just then, Helios loosened the grip on his weapon. "Is that Bast?" he asked, a small smile upon his lips as the cat pushed leaves aside to emerge with glowing eyes.

"Wretched cat!" I said, gasping for breath. I'd gone weak all over with relief.

Helios stooped to pick the cat up, and she knew him, purring in his hands. "Not such a sleek huntress anymore, are you?"

"She's old and pampered and well fed," I a.s.sured him, grateful that Bast was one courtier who could keep our secrets.

TWO pieces of news arrived almost simultaneously. The first was a missive from Rome stating that Lucius Cornelius Balbus would celebrate his Triumph. The second missive was from Armenia, stating that the Parthians had negotiated for their kidnapped prince. They agreed to return the lost battle standards and what captured Roman prisoners they still held.

Augustus had done it. Once again, he'd prevailed. And he'd done it without Agrippa. He'd done it without me. It must be some trick, some charade, some farce, I thought while the island celebrated around me. "Oh, Virgil, how I envy you." Crinagoras laughed. "The poetry you'll write in honor of this New Alexander who needs not even command his armies in battle to return with victory!"

Virgil smiled. "We'll have to make much of this if we're to compete with Agrippa's b.l.o.o.d.y slaughter in Spain. He's all but extincted the Cantabri tribes, something the citizens will admire. They aren't accustomed to celebrating such an occasion as the emperor's latest victory. Maecenas will want to mint coins, showing the king of the Parthians kneeling in supplication to Rome."

I pressed my lips together. "Won't that offend Phraates and start the war up again?"

"Augustus has been generous," Lady Lasthenia replied. "He gave the Parths back their prince and made gifts to the king. An Italian girl he admired. An acknowledgment of his territorial boundaries and hegemony over Armenia. It's a good bargain."

A good bargain, indeed. What wouldn't I give to have Isidora back in my arms if someone kidnapped her? The thought agitated me such that I needed to remind myself of my good fortune. I wouldn't be needed to work magic for war. Augustus hadn't won a military victory for himself, but in retaking those battle standards, he could claim to have restored Roman honor. Only one question plagued me. "When will he return?"

"There are still matters to resolve," Lady Lasthenia said. "A few weeks? A month at the outside."

Thirty-six.

I prayed that my idyllic nights with Helios would stretch on forever. Let a storm delay Augustus's triumphant return. Let him stop in some city to be feted and worshipped as a G.o.d. My distress about the emperor's return must have been obvious, because even Circe felt the need to rea.s.sure me. "Majesty, you must have taken my advice to heart. No one will ever doubt your love for Augustus. Every day now, you're flushed, like a lily about to bloom."

Yes, I thought. But I blossomed only when the moon was high in the sky and my lover came to me. Afterward, I folded in upon myself as if to protect the sacred places where he'd explored me. Everything he touched became sacred. The oil lamp he'd snuffed out. The pillow upon which he'd rested his head. Even the ashes of the fires he lit on the beach to keep us warm. I was in love-yes, I was finally bold enough to name it to myself. This was nothing I could hide within the dark shadow of my soul with the rage and the hatred and the grief. It was an emotion stronger than all my artifice, and I laughed at the thought that even my own courtiers were convinced by it. They might tell Augustus how I asked after him every day, how I so carefully dressed as if to welcome him home. How I sat in dreamy contemplation, my cheeks pink with pa.s.sion. And I didn't care. I didn't care! These days of happiness were mine to treasure, even if they must soon come to an end.

That night, Helios stroked the purple silk of my cloak, our makeshift bed on the sand. "Have you any idea how many ships I could buy with this?" he asked.

The nights were warmer now, and I liked the smell of his sweat on me. "Take it. Sell it. Do with it as you will. I deny you nothing."

He tugged me closer and the waves tickled our bare toes. "Even a talented pirate would have to explain how he acquired a cloak like that one, Selene, and I'm not a talented pirate."

"Good," I said burrowing my nose beneath his chin. "Because I'm training a fleet to capture pirates off the coast of Mauretania. At least, I ordered such a thing be done." Juba's new authority in Spain may well have been part of that effort, but it was now all very far away across the sea.

Helios nuzzled against my hair. "You must be something to see. Commanding that this or that be done. Hearing pet.i.tioners. Presiding over a council. It's a proud thing to be a queen's lover."

I'd always wondered what my mother must have felt like to carry on an affair with men even before she'd taken them to wed. I wished it was in me not to care what anyone might think, but I couldn't stop fretting. "What must your sailors think of your latenight liaisons?"

"They think it's none of their concern," Helios said. "They also know that I'd cut the tongue out of any man foolish enough to speak about my doings. I love you, Selene. I would die for you. Or kill for you. For you or for Isidora. You must know it."

"Let there be no talk of dying," I whispered. "Or killing."

Helios paused. "You say this, but what if you're with child? I must kill Augustus before he-"

"I'm not with child," I said, suddenly guilty for the way I'd used my heka to close my womb to him. "The G.o.ddess must be inside me for that to happen now, but here, with you, I wanted to be mortal."

Helios sat up, drawing me with him. "She was inside you the night I came to you in the storm . . ."

"Yes. I think Isidora is yours. I wanted her to be yours. To keep some part of you with me always."

"When I kill Augustus, Isidora can know of me. It'll be safe to tell her, then."

"What she'll know," I said, blinking back sudden tears, "is the world that we make for her. Which is why you can't kill the emperor."

Helios growled his frustration. "How can you still defend him?"

"I'm not defending him. I only ask you to consider what you hope to accomplish. Do you think killing him will free Egypt?"

"It will free you."

I reached out and touched his face. "Do you think I haven't wished him dead a thousand times? Do you think I've never been tempted to poison his food or slip a dagger between his ribs or use my winds to blow him into the sea? Helios, when he lay dying of fever in Rome, it would've been so easy to smother him while he slept."

"So why didn't you?"

"Because Rome isn't one man. Because we didn't lose Egypt in one battle. Because when we were born, people looked to us to bring them a Golden Age and I don't want to bring them war and chaos and pain! Especially not when I can get back everything we've lost by giving Augustus what he wants."

Helios's gaze snapped to me and the fire crackled. "What have you promised him?"

This moment was infinitely worse than I had imagined it would be. "A son."

Those eyes of his were as eternal as the Nile and now they narrowed with anger. I thought he'd rage at me, but he didn't. He didn't reel back in fury or call me a harlot or accuse me of treachery or infidelity or otherwise decry my lack of morals. Instead, Helios took me by the arms and steadied me as if forbidding a small child from dangerous play. "You can't do that."

"I have to."

"No," he said.

"You didn't forbid me from Juba's bed."

He looked away, as if slapped. "But you didn't go, did you?"

"I might have, were the circ.u.mstances different." What was one more ugly confession now, added to all the rest? I'd tell him that Juba was a decent man. A man who wanted to be a good husband. A good father to a child he knew wasn't his own. A man who had begged me, pleaded with me, not to go. And that I felt something stir inside me at Juba's kiss.

Before I could tell him any of this, Helios said, "I'd rather you did go to Juba. If he gives you some small happiness, then return to him. Become his wife in truth if you must. If it will keep you from this folly with the emperor."

I cried out, my nails digging into his arms. "If you loved me, you'd never say such a thing."

"I say it because I love you. I could haul you over my shoulder and carry you away, right now. I could take you. Were it not for Isidora I would take you but she deserves more. If you came with me, it would be an end to everything our parents wanted for us and perhaps an end to Isis too."

All this was true. I couldn't go with him. As long as Augustus breathed, as long as Rome stood, we couldn't be together. Still, his heartbeat had been next to mine in the womb, and I would listen for it my whole life. "But I love you."

Love. We'd both spoken of it now. We both felt it. We both knew how real and dangerous it was. We knew better than anyone. Our mother and father had loved one another so desperately that they set the world aflame and let it burn. Their love, timeless and enduring as it was, had known no reason. No caution. No limits. Their love had eventually defied political sense and self-preservation. Their love had killed them and set in motion all the things that had led to the abuse and torment that shattered me and destroyed Helios. All the things that had twisted us inside so that we could never love anyone the way we loved each other.

"Would you have us be just like them?" Helios asked, reading my thoughts. "Gamble everything, bold and reckless and defiant? Shall we risk your daughter? Egypt? Isis? The world? You cannot be mine." His lips pressed to my cheek, the stubble of his beard scratching my chin. "So let it be Juba. Let it be any man but Octavian. You cannot give yourself to your own rapist. To do so would be to spit in the face of our G.o.ddess."

I shuddered, then shook my head in denial. "Isis will forgive me. You must let Augustus live and this is how this game must play out. If I cannot have you, then I will have the world, and this is the only way to get it."

"Isis will forgive you," Helios agreed. "But will you forgive yourself ?"

For months now, I'd lived with the self-loathing of knowing I was making true everything my enemies said about me. That I'd set myself upon a course of action in which my ambitions ruled me. In which I'd even pit the interests of my child against Julia's infant son. I'd convinced myself that I must push aside that guilt. "I'm a queen. What does it matter how I regard myself?"

"You're not a crown," Helios said, kissing my brow. "You're not a scepter. You're a queen but a woman too. Haven't I proved that to you again and again?"

My cheeks heated at the reminder, but I had to make him understand. "When we were young, I was afraid of everything but you were always brave. Well, I'm not that frightened girl anymore. I'm Cleopatra's daughter. I've clawed my way to the pinnacle of power. How can you ask me to back away?"

"I've lost everything for my recklessness. Why would you follow my example?"

Because I'll triumph where you failed, I thought, the blood of my ancestors singing proud in my veins. My mother and father had made battle plans upon this very island and now I would triumph where they had failed too. I would even triumph over the emperor and Alexander too, for I, Cleopatra Selene, will have won the world without ever having wielded a sword. And the only blood I'd spilled was my own. Down my arms in the holy words of Isis and between my legs on the emperor's sheets.

"I won't let you do it," Helios said.

"This is what our mother would have done. What she did do. She offered herself to Caesar, even though she didn't know what manner of man he might be-"

"She knew he wasn't a perverse fiend!"

I winced, silent tears now flowing down my cheeks. "Helios, when she died, our mother gave Philadelphus her sight. She gave you her strength. But she gave me her spirit. She told me not to forget, and I never have. When I'm unquestioned ruler of Egypt and all North Africa, when my daughter has her birthright, when the emperor is burned to ash, you'll see it's all been worth it."

"I won't let you do it," he said, again, his fingers digging into my arms.

I put my palms flat on his chest. "It's my choice. Should I let anyone take that from me again?"

He released me, then fell silent, staring into the black ocean. "If it's your choice, then change your mind."

"There are people who depend on me. Given the way I feel about you, it doesn't seem possible, but I don't belong only to you-or even only to myself."