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Across the plaza, she stole a glance at her husband-to-be. Beneath the archway, Seleucus shone. His skin glowed beneath a golden tunic, and his hair glistened with reflected sunlight. While she’d pursed her lips, he had smiled and waved at the adoring crowd. Tall and broad and bold, he looked everything a king ought to. She felt a jealous twinge in her spleen.

She forced a smile as she climbed the temple steps and marched through the lines of priests and nobles in festive garb. Her feet struggled to obey her will, turned heavy and stubborn. Too much wine, too much sun. She nearly tripped over her trailing chiton; her hands hastened to lift her skirts and clear her path. These efforts consumed her energies: she must not, could not fall. When she reached Seleucus and placed her fingers on his sturdy arm, she felt her innards unclench in relief.

The temple quieted as they approached the altar. An onyx Serapis loomed as implacable as the one who sat beside his wife on the building’s facade. The high priest joined the betrotheds’ hands; Seleucus’s, like her own, was slippery with sweat. She took comfort in that. Perhaps Leda had been right: he, too, might be nervous.

“I give myself to you.” She loathed these words, the verb “give.” But at least her father didn’t speak them for her. The fact that the two were at war rendered the traditional call-and-response between father and husband rather difficult. Instead, she and Seleucus met as equals: wife and husband each speaking with an independent voice. A small victory. “That I might bring into this world children born in wedlock.”

“I accept you,” Seleucus replied in kind.

“I agree that you shall rule beside me on the throne of Egypt.”

“I accept that too—with pleasure.”

Seleucus’s eyes, dark and fierce, fixed upon her; her own wandered. Even this closeness made her more nervous than she cared to admit. The crowds, she realized as she gazed over the gathered men, didn’t rival those of her coronation day. That soothed her furies: even if he looked a king, they wouldn’t love him as one. The first rows were crowded with nobles and their wives—Berenice could tell them by their resplendent robes and inlaid jewels. But beyond those ranks the colors dimmed. Pieton must have found merchants, even peasants, to warm the farther benches. Among them, surrounded by a set of serving women, she spotted little Arsinoe, bold and brash in a sapphire chiton. The girl caught her eye and grinned; Berenice couldn’t help but grin in return.

“Before the great god Serapis,” the priest called out, “I join these two suppliants in body, in spirit, and in mind. Their union shall be blessed by sons, sons who will rule Egypt until the day Serapis rises from the dead.”

Cheering erupted, but it sounded halfhearted to her ears. It didn’t matter: the ceremony was over, the marriage sealed with the god’s blessing. Or at least his priest’s. Berenice ventured a glance at her husband, but Seleucus no longer tried to meet her eye. His own drank up the cries of commoners and nobles alike. There was something almost sweet in that. He’d never been worshipped before.

“Soon we shall give them more to celebrate,” he whispered in her ear as he led her back through the reeling crowds. “A realm loves nothing more than a beaming baby boy.”

He was no idiot, at least. He knew that his place depended on his showing as a stud. Berenice could admire that. Despite herself, she wanted to find traits she might admire, to fill a small part of her emptiness with something sweeter than hate. Esteem, perhaps. She clutched his hand and smiled. She could play this game as well as he could—after all, it was hardly the first time she’d been displayed before adoring throngs. Long ago, when she was small, before Cleopatra had stolen the Piper’s heart, her father had brought her with him on his fleeting trips up and down the Nile, offering her as breathing, kicking proof of his line’s vitality. She knew what it was to be venerated.

Entering the palace by the southern gate, Berenice was overwhelmed by the sticky scent of flowers. During the ceremony, thousands upon thousands of blossoms had been set up around the entrance courtyard, to the point of foolishness. Great silver vases carved with marital scenes of the gods—Ariadne and Dionysus, Hera and Zeus, frightened Persephone and gloomy Hades—bloomed with rich roses and pale lilies and golden-bellied narcissi. Even the granite statues of her forefathers suffered the same motif: a veil of pink lotus buds draped Arsinoe the Brother-Loving’s gold-plated hair, and a crown of hyacinths knotted around her beloved brother’s diadem.

But the procession pressed relentlessly forward—Berenice had no time to ponder the floral arrangements in the first courtyard or mark the alterations in the great one that opened before them. Already her herald’s voice boomed to announce their entrance into the great banquet hall: “Berenice the Shining One, Queen of the Upper and Lower Lands of Egypt, and Seleucus the Mother-Loving, King of Syria.”

King of Syria.
Berenice covered her laugh. The audacity of the claim: Syria was Roman territory, ruled by the stern hand of some Latin governor. But she felt generous as she glanced at the man by her side. The former Salt-Fish Seller was welcome to the title now, in the safety of her realm.

Within the great banquet hall, the smell of smoking meat made Berenice groggy once more. Her head spun as she crossed the chamber with Seleucus. The golden tables blinked like lesser moons in the lamplight. She found herself gripping Seleucus’s shoulder as she stepped up the marble lip to where their twinned dining couches stood. The two gold-encrusted pieces were set head-to-head so she and her now-husband would share a single table. Her hand dropped away from him, and she sank down into the silken pillows with relief.

The evening ebbed as the courses came and went—the crabs seasoned with rosemary and thyme, the game hen stuffed with Illyrian truffles and sweetened with honey, the roasted boar overflowing with duck and prunes. Berenice scarcely touched her food, save to split a rib bone with her husband and suck away at the fatty innards. Her husband shared her lack of appetite—he sated himself with conversation. First, he addressed himself to nearby Dryton and Thais, asking after their families and allegiances. When he’d drunk his fill of their tales, he took it upon himself to tour the lesser dining couches, addressing the various members of the noble families who’d come in their finest purple silks to pay their respects. As she watched him, forever ready with a kind word or a joke, Berenice realized that he was charming—despite all his mad claims to glory. She strained her ears to listen to his conversations, his careful small talk into which he slipped knowledge of Egypt and her double lands.

Nearer at hand, old Nereus had devoted himself to savoring the feast. He cracked each bone and drained it dry, the milky marrow dripping from the corners of his mouth. It disgusted Berenice, the way the sticky juice of prunes and blood and wine stained his chin. There was an odd relish to his face as he carried on with some Seleucid, a robust-looking man with a nose that looked to have been broken in several spots. The two grew rowdy as the night carried on. Once, the Seleucid slapped Nereus so heartily on the back that it sent her old adviser sprawling to the onyx floor. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. But even this amusement lost its charms, and she began to fear that the procession of plates would go on forever—until Serapis himself rose from the dead. But slowly, surely, the feast died down. The young ladies retreated to their chambers, and the men picked fights with their neighbors or snored, drooling onto their plates. Seleucus, she noticed, studied the scene as well.

“Come, my love.” His hand was on her shoulder. She’d had too much wine, she realized as she stood, and she was glad to have his arm to grip.

The bridal chamber hung with new tapestries, scenes of lustful maidens chased by raunchy satyrs and the goddess Isis with the Horus babe at her teat replacing the ordinary ones of Alexander’s great battle against the Persians, as though these fresh images of fertility would set a babe kicking in her belly. Each corner was marked by squat statues of Bes, the gape-mouthed dwarf staggering beneath his enormous cock. Seleucus vanished, and an unfamiliar maid—his?—helped her stumble free of her clothes. Stripped, Berenice perched at the edge of the bed, searching for steadiness, though she knew she’d had too much wine for that. When her husband returned, naked too, his cock hard—at least she needn’t put it in her mouth—she even managed to smile. He returned the favor. That seemed a promising start.

“That was quite a feast,” he said. “They don’t exaggerate the Ptolemy opulence.”

She nodded, though his words sounded like a condemnation. He stared at her, expectant; she wasn’t so drunk as to think his gaze was touched by lust.

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, lie down,” he directed. “On your back.”

Surprised, Berenice obeyed. It felt good to lie down. Once she stretched out on the bed, Seleucus straddled her and kissed her. Hard. His tongue pried into her mouth, and she fought the urge to bite it off. As far as she could tell, he didn’t much enjoy it either: his sex seemed to soften against her thigh. But soon he opened her legs, his fingers sticking up inside her.

“Wait.” Berenice struggled under his heft. Leda’s words rang in her ears; she might at least try to please him here, even if it was distasteful. It could reap its rewards.

“Don’t tell me you’ve grown shy.”

“Not in the slightest,” she returned—jaunty, almost. Heady confidence flooded her form. She wriggled from beneath him, and he made no move to pin her back. She climbed on top, placing her knees on either side of his.

“Do you think this is an Athenian whorehouse?” Seleucus’s face twisted in disgust. He no longer looked so handsome as the world claimed. But Berenice refused to be so easily cowed. Clumsily, she wrapped her fingers about his cock. Who knew what a man might like once a thing had begun?

“Stop it.” He clamped a hand onto her wrist. “Lie still.”

Seleucus flipped her roughly onto her back, and with his fury roused, she felt his full strength. He was a hardened warrior, she—much as she hated to admit it—a woman. She leaned up to kiss him; perhaps closeness would salvage matters. But he showed no interest in that now. His body grew rough, hardening once more, and though she knew better, she fought against it. The slash of a fingernail cut across her breast, another against her thigh. She sank her teeth into his chest, hard—and he cried out in anger. The flat of his hand struck her face. Warm blood ran down her cheek, but she could scarcely feel the pain.

“I told you to lie still,” he hissed. “Neither of us seeks pleasure here.”

And so she let him thrust away, an animal in heat. The shame was enough to make her sympathize with Medea, the child-killer: “Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched.
^*
When, for an extravagant sum, we have bought a husband, we must then accept him as possessor of our body.” His body twitched, and he was finished. Shamed, she fell into wine-drenched sleep.

When Berenice awoke, she was alone. The hour was late; a midmorning sun spilled in arches through the windows. To her surprise, she found that the mat was dressed in fresh white covers. The ravaged ones had disappeared. Bloodstains displayed elsewhere. The new sheets burned rough against her skin.

Her head pounded from drink. Between her legs ached too. When she looked down, she saw that her thighs were stained a dark and murky brown. She swallowed back bile and the child’s desire to shout for Leda. She wasn’t some girl at first blood. Instead, she surveyed the other damages: a crimson welt raised across her swollen breast, a purple bruise marking her knee, a set of four scratch marks spanning her arm.

She’d seen toms come out of fights looking more bedraggled, but she hadn’t thought rutting should bring equal scars.
Women do battle in the bedroom.
Her mother hated that saying, but Berenice had always assumed that was only because Tryphaena had lost hers. With care, Berenice tried to stand, but that, too, was a mistake. The motion hastened new aches, and she collapsed back on the bed.

The door creaked and two maids heaved in with slopping buckets for her bath. The younger, a girl of eight or ten, gasped at the sight of Berenice and let her pail crash to the ground, leaving the pair sopping in the threshold. Her companion was the copper-faced maid from the Upper Lands, the one who’d comforted her and led her from her mother’s death chambers. Another life. The older girl hushed the little one, whispering a few words in the child’s ear that sent her scurrying on her way. With surprising ease, the remaining maid lifted both buckets—her own, still brimming, and its half-empty partner—and carried them across the room. She gave Berenice a shy smile as she poured their steaming contents into the silver basin.

When the second servant returned, she managed to balance her pails without further incident. With care, she poured her buckets into the bath, looking to the older girl for approval after each pour. Loneliness knotted Berenice’s belly as she watched the pair, watched how the little one bristled with admiration for the elder, glowing at the slightest encouragement. Much as she’d scorned her royal comrades in her younger days, Berenice also missed them. They’d been stolen from her after her mother’s fall from grace. Nobles had preferred to have children wait on the exalted infant Cleopatra than befriend the shunned elder child. In that way, Cleopatra had taken everything.

The basin full, the copper-faced maid dismissed the younger attendant. Then her eyes turned to Berenice, shimmering with that strange boldness.