Daughters of the Nile (36 page)

Julia smiles her brilliant smile. “That is because yesterday I dressed to please my husband, but today I dress for my father’s eyes.” It is a perfectly calculated defense; he cannot fault her. And yet he will fault her, I think.

For whatever pleases Agrippa now seems to displease him.

Later, when we are seated together on an uncomfortable bench in the arena, Julia confides, “I wish I’d not said that in front of Octavia. I am a horrible, wicked, selfish woman to flaunt Agrippa’s desire in front of her.”

Fanning myself to disguise that I am bored half to death by the chariots racing below, I say, “You have four children with the man, Julia. His desire for you is no secret.”

She flutters her lashes and smiles. “He wants another baby.”

“You sound pleased by the idea . . .”

“I am. Agrippa is, at heart, a simple man. It isn’t difficult to make him happy. Do you know what a relief that is for me? I know exactly what he wants and when I give it to him, he forgives me all else. Besides, I think I’m starting to like children. My own anyway. Fortunately, it gets easier to birth them each time . . .” She glances at me and pales. “Oh, I’m sorry, Selene. I really
am
a horrible, wicked, selfish woman.”

I’m puzzled by her mortification until I realize, with dismay, that she thinks I’m barren. She thinks that because I have not had more children that I
cannot
have them. She thinks I—the vessel of Isis—am
barren
! Do the rest of them think it too?

My cheeks burn with humiliation. I am still burning with it that night when I return home to find my husband pacing the length of the
impluvium
, the shallow pool that catches rainwater in our atrium. When he sees me, he crouches down to wash his hands. “I had to save Lucius Cornelius Balbus today when he made an impolitic remark to the emperor.”

It is a sweltering summer in Rome and my sandals are too tight, so I slip them off, sit beside my husband, and dip my feet into the pool. “Balbus doesn’t seem to understand that his career is at an end.”

“Well, he understands now,” Juba says soberly. “Augustus accused him of plotting against the state.”

“Balbus can scarcely plot a course on a map.”

My husband doesn’t laugh. “Augustus was ready to bring Balbus up on charges. He must have been ready to do it for quite some time. I had to persuade him to allow Balbus to retire to his estate in Spain . . .”

I realize, with a start, how I have come to take for granted the emperor’s milder temperament. Gone are the days when he murdered men with indifference and told me to have a stronger stomach when viewing their entrails strewn upon the road. In spite of all he said in my son’s nursery, in spite of his resentment of Agrippa, he
has
changed and I have helped change him. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still deadly. “Lucky for Balbus that you were there . . .”

Juba turns and captures my gaze. “More than lucky. Augustus needs me, Selene, and I do not want to fail him. He
needs
me. He does not rely so much upon Maecenas anymore. Tiberius and Iullus are too busy arguing with each other to give the emperor good counsel. Octavia keeps her own counsel, as she should, and Livia . . .”

He does not say it. I know. Livia seethes with impotence, her path to power blocked by two little boys named Gaius and Lucius. She can never hope to be First Woman in Rome now. Her sons will never rule this empire. Agrippa’s machinations have always stood in my way, but they stand in her way too—and I am glad of it.

* * *

TO
my surprise, there is one celebration in Rome that I quite enjoy. It is the thanksgiving in the month named for Julius Caesar, a processional intended to consecrate the ground for an altar to peace.

The
Ara Pacis
, they will call it when it is built.

To dedicate the ground, every member of the imperial family is to take part in a parade. Julia and Agrippa walk with their little ones. The Antonias, with their husbands and children. Tiberius and Vipsania and their infant son. Marcella and Iullus and their children. Livia and Octavia too.

Only a few of the visiting royalty in Rome are invited to take part and my family is foremost amongst them. We are the only royals to march with the emperor’s household. I admit, it gives me some pleasure to see Herod excluded while Juba and I, children in hand, walk together with the imperial family.

And what a glorious day it is, under a clear blue sky.

The emperor leads the ceremony as if he were the Pontifex Maximus—which he is not, a thing I know still vexes him, and he makes no secret of it. He still mutters darkly about Lepidus having the temerity to live on, when Augustus would rather he were dead. But it does not stop him from usurping the high priest’s place, directing the
flamens
of Rome, the priests wearing strange spiked leather caps, to perform sacred rituals to consecrate the ground.

I would describe these rituals if they moved me, but they are nothing compared to what my mage did to consecrate ground for my temple in Mauretania. What does move me about this ceremony is what happens when the solemn duties are at an end.

The dignified march I have come to expect somehow transforms itself into a stroll of all Rome’s most important citizens, talking and laughing as artists sketch us on scrolls. What was a procession becomes more of a summer picnic. A reunion with all of us feasting and reminiscing while the children play jumping games with sticks and lines of chalk on the pavement.

With a grandchild in each arm, Octavia meets my eyes and smiles, for it is exactly as she hoped and neither of us wants the emperor to undo it. In the dark, the emperor talked to me of my son’s destiny, but now in the light of day, even Augustus cannot help but enjoy himself just as things are. He is surrounded by family, all of them finding a way, on this one warm afternoon, to be happy.

All except for his wife, of course, who sits slightly apart from the rest of us beneath a shade tree watching the idyllic scene unfold with wistful regret. This is not as she would have it, but it is exactly as it should be. If the emperor could take my husband’s example and love his family without regard for who sired them, Augustus would see himself as the patriarch of this enormous brood.

Little Gaius and Lucius admire him. They want his attention and approval as a grandfather and a father. He could give them a different life than the one he gave Julia. He could keep Marcus Vipsania Agrippa as his good and loyal friend. He could reach inside himself and find the part that inspires such loyalty from men like my half brother, Iullus, and my husband, Juba. And so I pray the emperor abandons the man he is with me in the dark and embraces the man he is now, lit up by the summer sun.

* * *

“SAY
that you’ll stay in Rome through winter,” Julia pleads with me. “I want to spend the Saturnalia with you before I must trudge through the mountains.”

“What mountains?” I ask.

Julia waves a dismissive hand. “There is some uprising in the new province of Pannonia, south of the Danube River. I think the duty should fall to one of the Claudian brothers, since Livia’s sons are now so popular and eager to impress. But my husband itches for battle. Only the gods know why he insists I go with him. After all, he’s just going to leave me behind at Aquileia, but I think he wants me nearby. Say you’ll stay until I must go!”

Julia is persuasive, but we stay because this may be the last Saturnalia we celebrate with Pythia. And it is a merry one. Like all children, mine love the Saturnalia. Freed from studies, Dora spends every last moment with Pythia and my son sets aside his
toga praetexta
in favor of a simple tunic and freedman’s cap to play all day with the children of the imperial family.

They spend the holiday playing ball, jumping ropes, running about in masks, and eating so many pastries that they spoil their suppers. Julia and I allow it. Neither of us wish to inflict our own strict upbringing on our children. So we let them run wild through the emperor’s halls on the Palatine, a thing that puts us at odds with Octavia’s daughters, all of whom try to enforce some manner of discipline.

On the day the boys learn how to make slingshots, Marcella forbids them from the garden, saying, “Put those rocks down. No stones! I’ll strap you if you shoot even one pebble.”

They promise, then use their slingshots to shoot coins instead, smashing a row of expensive Greek vases in the emperor’s dining hall. “This is your fault,” Marcella hisses at Julia. “You let them do anything. Now the emperor will punish them when he should punish you as an unfit mother.”

But when Augustus learns that it was my son who taught the other boys to shoot coins instead of pebbles, he laughs. “They are only vases. There are a thousand more vases in Greece for the taking. But I have only one Prince of Mauretania!”

Marcella drags her son away by the ear, Julia makes a token effort to scold her boys, and I try to decide what to do with my son. Still clutching the slingshot, Ptolemy is sheepish, but a little proud too because he senses the emperor approved of his antics.

Ptolemy’s father, however, does not approve. Furrowing his brow in a way that makes my son gulp, Juba says, “You’re going to be punished. Not for playing. Not for using coins in the slingshot—that was rather clever—but because you broke things that have a history. Things that people made with their own hands. Things that told a story. So we’re going to fetch the shards back from the slaves, get some
gluten taurinum
, and use it to put all these pieces back together again. That is how you’re going to spend the rest of the Saturnalia until it is done.”

That night in my chambers, I watch the two of them work together with the pieces, big and small, until poor little Ptolemy is bleary-eyed. Juba makes him stay awake, makes him good and tired, before sending the chastened boy off to bed. My husband is still kneeling on the lion-skin rug, hovering over the puzzle of the broken vases, when I close the door and bar it behind me. Juba looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. And when I kneel beside him, he warns, “Careful. Some of the edges are sharp.”

I put a finger over his lips to silence him. When he is quiet, I kiss him. He seems startled by it, frozen with surprise, for I rarely initiate such intimacy. So I kiss him again, until I make him understand that my lips have not fallen upon him by mistake. He pulls back, a question in his eyes. I answer it by unfastening my girdle. Then he lifts me up onto the couch and we are quick about it.

What we do here in Rome seems more illicit. I think that makes it more heated. Furtive and fumbling. Panting and primal. Though my husband is older now, I take more pleasure in him than before. Maybe the spirit of revelry that is the Saturnalia has gotten into me. Maybe it is the spiced wine. Or maybe it is because I can imagine no other king in the empire kneeling upon a rug to take a boy in hand.

I want another child. I
desperately
want another child. If we are to secure our dynasty, we must risk it. We must again risk the emperor’s wrath. Perhaps this frenetic act will give me the courage to prove that I’m not barren. But when I try to open my womb for Juba, when I try to use the powers gifted to me by my great goddess to bring new life into this world, I cannot.

You would never allow such a thing to happen unless your husband has become so inconvenient that you desire to be made a widow.

* * *

WE
cannot leave Rome until the sailing season. Thus, everyone leaving overland departs before we do. Julia is the first to go because her husband refuses to let the snow keep him from his campaign. Eager to crush the rebellion in Pannonia, Agrippa sets out on a winter march with his legions, and his wife follows. I am there on the road waving to her as she goes, but I am not alone. Mounted on a bay stallion, Iullus is there too, breathing puffs of silent longing into the cold morning air.

Julia waves back at us with a wistful smile, letting a flower fall from her hands as her carriage rolls away. When I start for my house to escape the chill, I look back over my shoulder to see Iullus get down from his horse, take the flower from the cobblestones, and press it to his lips.

In February, the Eastern kings begin their journey and my niece must go too. “My friend Strabo will join Pythodorida’s court,” my husband says. He means Strabo the historian and geographer, not the emperor’s praetorian of the same name. “We will exchange letters often, so you can be reassured of her safety.”

I am grateful, both for my husband’s consideration and that Pythia has found her place in the world. It’s only the rest of us who will be miserable for her absence. On the day of her departure, my son clings hard to Pythia’s knees. “Will we never see you again?”

“We’ll meet again here in Rome,” Isidora says, as if she has seen it come to pass. I think she is only being brave, though, because my daughter cries inconsolably when Pythia is gone. Dora was fond of my mage, but this is a harder loss. It is the first time she learns that not all friendships can go on unchanged even if the love remains the same.

* * *

“LEPIDUS
is dead,” the emperor says, smiling with such predatory satisfaction that the lamplight gleams off one tooth. Juba and I are taking a meal with the imperial family and they seem as surprised by this news as we are. Our hands filled with goblets, napkins, lettuce leaves, and eggs, we all fall silent.

“Lepidus is dead,” the emperor repeats, saying it in the way one might announce that there will be gold-dusted honey cakes for dessert. He holds a scroll aloft over the remains of our meal in case we doubt him. “The Pontifex Maximus is dead.”

Iullus makes a toast. “Good riddance to the worthless Lepidus, then.”

Grudgingly, we lift our cups. All but Drusus, who pointedly pushes away his wine.

Livia’s youngest son pulls himself upright from his couch, his flashy military sandals settling on the floor. “I do not celebrate the death of
any
Roman. We should
mourn
the Pontifex Maximus and honor his public service.”