Cleopatra’s Daughter: A Novel (21 page)

“Is that a Grecian Nike?” Tiberius asked as we passed through the atrium.

Juba smiled. “From the sculptor Phidias himself.”

Octavian paused at several niches to admire the statues that Juba had found. Each time, he ran his hand over the marble, caressing a hand, an arm, the curve of a shoulder. When we reached the library, slaves rushed to light the oil lamps placed in tall candelabra, and the soft glow cast nearly a hundred statues in a warm golden light.

“Magnificent,” Octavia murmured.

“Where does he get them all?” my brother asked Marcellus.

“I travel throughout Rome looking for sellers,” Juba replied, having overheard my brother’s question. “And if I can’t find the right statue, I will go to Greece.”

Each of the statues was numbered, and all of them had small bronze plates at the base giving their names and where they were discovered. Octavian busied himself on the other side of the room, showing Livia and Octavia his favorites.

“Look at this one!” Julia exclaimed, pointing to an image of the goddess Aphrodite.

“She looks like you,” Marcellus said. It was true. The sculptor had chosen a model with rich black hair and eyes as dark and soft as twilight. All of the statues were painted, and only a few, whose paint had rubbed off after years of neglect, were flawless white marble.

“Let’s find one that looks like you,” Julia said eagerly, taking his arm, and they visited half a dozen statues before Julia decided that Marcellus looked like Apollo.

“We should come here more often,” Julia exclaimed. “I enjoy Grecian statues.”

“Of course you do,” Tiberius said nastily. “They speak to your vanity.”

“Well, perhaps we should pick one that looks like you. How about this?” She pointed to a hideous statue of a Gorgon, and Marcellus laughed.

“I think you’re being too generous,” he said.

I snickered, and Tiberius shot me a withering look. “You lower yourself with them.”

Across the library, Octavian regarded a statue of Jupiter. The god’s symbol was an eagle, and the proud bird perched on his marble shoulder. Octavian traced its beak with his finger.

“We will find him,” I heard Juba promise sternly.

Octavian looked up into the bird’s black eyes. “I know. And when we do, we will crucify him.”

When we returned to Octavia’s villa, Alexander and I pressed our ears against the wall of our chamber, listening to Octavia interrogate Marcellus.

“I want to know where you were while everyone else in this villa was asleep this afternoon!”

“I went for a walk,” Marcellus swore. “Down the hill,” he added, “around the Temple of Apollo.”

“Exactly where the Red Eagle’s note was found.”

“Mother,” he implored, “all I did was walk.”

“Without an escort? Without telling anyone?” she challenged. “The temple priest says he’s certain he saw a flaxen-haired man post the actum. How many men on this hill have such light hair?”

“Your brother!” he cried. “And almost every slave!”

“And do they have access to a temple next to Caesar’s villa?”

“Perhaps they snuck in and left him the message. Or perhaps it’s one of the workers themselves. Mother,” he protested, “you don’t really believe—?”

“Why not? I see you with Gallia. She’s beautiful. Perhaps you feel sorry for her.”

“Of course I feel sorry. But to betray my uncle?”

There was silence in the next room, and when I went to speak, Alexander shook his head. Octavia’s reply was soft. “You are idealistic and rash. But I shall hope you are not so rash as that, Marcellus.”

“I promise you, Mother, I’m not the Red Eagle. Look at his writing.”

“Gallia can write. Perhaps you are posting
her
words.”

“And risking everything? Do you know what Octavian would do—?”

“I know exactly what he’d do, even if he discovered it was you. And there would be no mercy.”

“I wouldn’t need it. I know nothing about this. All I did was go for a walk.”

“Then that was your last walk alone,” she said darkly.

We heard the door open and scrambled away from the wall.

I looked at Alexander. “Do you really think it could be Marcellus?”

“You heard him. Why would he risk his position as Caesar’s heir? He could just as easily wait to become Caesar and change the laws, if that’s what he wanted.”

I sat against the back of my couch and drew up my knees. “Then Gallia?”

“It’s possible. She has every reason, and if Octavia already suspects her….”

The next morning, I watched Gallia as she carefully laid out a fresh tunic on my couch, and I wondered if those same delicate hands were responsible for crafting the rebellious acta. I noticed my brother watching her, too, moving more slowly than usual with his toga and sandals.

“What is this?” Gallia asked in frustration. “Do I have to dress the both of you myself? Domina, the architect is waiting for you!”

“It’s Selene and Alexander. Not Domini.”

When I shoved my diadem back on my brow, she moved to arrange it tenderly among my curls. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You are a princess as much as I am,” I replied.

“Not anymore.” She pressed her lips together.

I would have argued with her, but Octavia appeared in the doorway and waited with her hands on her hips while I fetched my book of sketches. “I’m coming,” I promised, and followed her into the atrium. “Do you think Vitruvius will agree to tutor me?”

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “He’s a very busy man who’s never taken a single apprentice. But we can try.” She guided me into the library, where neatly labeled scrolls rose to the ceiling on polished cedar shelves. The architect Vitruvius was already waiting, sitting behind a table with his hands folded in front of him, contemplating the drawing I had given to Octavian. When he heard us approach, his chin jerked up, and his eyes fixed on my book of sketches.

“So you are Selene,” he said, regarding me with his sharp, dark eyes. “And I hear you like to draw.” His tone was bemused.

“Just look at what she’s already done,” Octavia said. “She has talent. Even my brother thinks so.”

I looked at Vitruvius, with his lean face and angular jaw, and wondered what he was thinking.

“Let me see your sketches,” he said at last.

I gave him my book, and he quietly flipped through it. He studied each page with a critical gaze, pausing the longest over the drawing of my mother’s mausoleum. Slowly, he held it up to the light, then lowered it again so that he could question me. “Is this in Alexandria?”

“Yes. Near the Temple of Isis and Serapis.”

He nodded. “She can draw,” he said thoughtfully. “But so can many others. What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Tutor her,” Octavia replied.

“In what?”

“Architecture.”

“A girl?”
I thought he was going to laugh, but he glanced at my face and asked soberly, “What does she need with architecture?”

“The same thing my mother needed with eight languages,” I replied boldly. “She commanded the best diplomats in the world, but she refused to leave anything to someone else that she could do better herself.”

“And what do you hope to do better yourself?” Vitruvius raised his brows.

“Build.”

He leaned back. “Where?”

I glanced at Octavia, who nodded encouragingly. “Thebes. It was my mother’s dream,” I explained. “I know what her plans were for it,” I said quickly. “The entire city was destroyed by Ptolemy IX. But if my brother ever returns to Egypt, I could go with him and build a new Thebes.”

Vitruvius looked at Octavia. “You know that Caesar will never allow it.”

“He may change his mind.”

But Vitruvius shook his head. “He will marry her off, and if she’s lucky, Livia will not have a say in it.”

“You mean, Livia may decide—?”

“She’s my brother’s wife,” Octavia cut me off. “Anything’s possible. Which is why you must train her, Vitruvius. Show my brother that she has use beyond being some old senator’s wife. You can make her your apprentice.”

Vitruvius laughed.

“Why not?” she exclaimed. “When Octavian showed you her sketch of Alexandria you said it was inspired.”

“It’s true. She has a gift. But what does she know about architecture?”

“You can teach me,” I said. “I already know every type of tool that’s used in building, and every architectural style from Egypt to Greece.”

Vitruvius shook his head. “Building sites are no place for a princess.”

“Then take me with you in the mornings when you leave to do your inspections.”

“Your son has no interest in architecture,” Octavia pointed out.

The color rose in Vitruvius’s cheeks. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “He wants to be a lover and a poet!”

“Then share your knowledge with me.”

Vitruvius sat forward in his chair, and Octavia said persuasively, “My brother wants a mausoleum like Queen Kleopatra’s. Selene has probably sketched it a dozen times. At least give her the chance to help you with this.”

Vitruvius regarded me in silence. Then finally he said, “Tomorrow at dawn. Meet me in this library.”

I clapped my hands.

“We will begin with Caesar’s mausoleum, and if I’m satisfied with your progress, I may teach you to build.”

“Thank you.
Thank you!”

Octavia smiled. “Go. Or you’ll be late to the ludus.”

I met Alexander and Marcellus on the portico and told them what had happened. And when Julia and Tiberius met us on the road, Marcellus said proudly, “Did you hear? Vitruvius wants to train Selene as an architect.”

“Oh, I’m not sure he
wants
to,” I amended hastily. “It was Octavia’s idea. She pressured him.”

Julia stared at me. “Why would she do that for you?”

“To give me something to do,” I said awkwardly.

“It’s more than that,” Marcellus protested. “She likes you.” I saw Julia’s back straighten. “You’re the half sister to her daughters, after all.”

But it was strange to think of ten-year-old Antonia and seven-year-old Tonia as my siblings.

“They’re not much like us, are they?” Alexander asked. We followed Gallia through the crowded streets toward the Forum. It was the last day of Octavian’s Triumph.

“No, they’re quiet,” Marcellus reflected.

“And charitable,” Tiberius added.

“I’m charitable,” Marcellus protested. “I give in the Circus all the time.”

My brother laughed. “And the bet-makers are thankful for it. Will we go again today?”

“Of course.”

“Your mother had Gallia give me several denarii.” Alexander patted a small leather bag at his side.

“You didn’t tell me that!” I said.

Alexander looked sheepishly at me. “Because you were with Vitruvius.”

“And he really wants to teach you?” Julia asked suspiciously.

“Your father wants an Egyptian mausoleum. Octavia convinced him that maybe I can help.”

Julia was quiet for several moments, and I wondered whether she was jealous. “I’ve heard that Alexandria is beautiful,” she said at last.

“The most magnificent city in the world.”

“Greater than Rome?”

I hesitated. “It was three hundred years in the making,” I said carefully. “All marble buildings perched above the sea.”

“And your mother? Was she as beautiful as they say?”

I blinked rapidly, so that I wouldn’t cry as we approached the ludus. “She wasn’t a traditional beauty,” I explained. “It was her mind.” Julia frowned. She didn’t understand that a mind could be beautiful. “And her voice. It drew men from every corner of the world.”

“Like the Sirens,” Julia whispered. “I’ve seen her image in the Temple of Venus and wondered if that’s what she was really like.”

Alexander and I stopped walking.

“What image?” my brother asked.

“Her statue in Julius Caesar’s Forum.”

“And it’s still there?”

Julia regarded him with a puzzled expression. “Of course. Where else would it be?”

“But why didn’t your father tear it down?” I asked.

“The statue of a queen?” Julia was shocked. “Because she was loved by Julius.”

I glanced at my brother. “So all of Octavian’s rage against her was a lie,” I said in Parthian. “Just a piece of theater so that Rome would stand against her.”