Daughters of the Nile (38 page)

Livia sneers, half-amused at my threat.

Juba is not amused. Through clenched teeth, he asks, “Selene,
what
are you going on about?” Each word of his question is edged with a bite that tells me he does not see Livia as a danger. That he thinks I am mad to suspect her of anything.

Meanwhile, I can hardly accuse her more plainly in front of crying children who want nothing more than to escape my clutches. Yet as I relinquish my hold on Julia’s sons, I lean to whisper in Livia’s ear. “I swear by Isis, so long as there is breath in me, you will not benefit from harming these boys.”

* * *

AGRIPPA’S
funeral train rolls into the city with the greatest solemnity and it seems as if all the citizens in Rome come out to see him. Beyond the professional mourners, there are Agrippa’s clients and the soldiers who served him, whose grief seems so genuine that it is difficult not to join them in wailing lamentations. The admiral makes a shocking sight where they prop him on the rostrum, a wreath on his head, two coins over his sunken eyes and one in his mouth. I suspect that Agrippa—a strong, proud bull of a man—wouldn’t have wanted people to look upon his wasted body. He is finally spared the indignity when the emperor has a curtain drawn in front of the body before giving the funeral oration.

The emperor is generous with his praise, which now he can well afford to be. He promises that his son-in-law’s ashes will be buried in the tomb of Augustus, so that he might never be parted from his good friend in death.

At this, Julia flinches. It is her first reaction visible to the rest of us, since her pregnant belly is swathed in mourning clothes and her face is concealed behind the mask of one of Agrippa’s ancestresses. After the funeral pyre has been assembled, she pours perfumed oils onto the wood and lays fragrant spices beneath her husband’s body so we will not choke on the fumes of the dead. Agrippa is burned in a fire so high that no one can stand close to the flames without being seared.

That night and into the next morning, Julia performs every duty expected of her with grace and composure; she stumbles only once when pouring wine onto the embers to turn them to ash so that she may collect the remains. And when she stumbles, it is Iullus Antonius who steadies her.

* * *

AFTER
the funeral, Julia returns to her father’s home on the Palatine Hill and says to her slave girl, “Phoebe, find my mother. Bring my mother to me. Until then, I will see no one but the Queen of Mauretania.”

Then Julia slams the door, pressing her forehead against the wooden frame, taking deep gulps of air. I watch her battle to stave off sobs, but it is a battle she loses. Everything I know of friendship I’ve learned from Julia’s example, so I wrap my arms around her shaking shoulders. “Oh, Julia. I’m so sorry. To lose your husband, so suddenly . . .”

At this, her head jerks up, her sobs hiccuping to a halt. “It wasn’t sudden. Do you think Agrippa would meet anything without a fight? It was a horrible struggle. It went on and on for weeks.”

“
Weeks?
But—”

“My husband took ill before we even got to the mountains! I sent word to my father at the start of the month that I was taking Agrippa to Campagna and that he must meet us at once, for I feared my husband would not live long.”

I can make no sense of this. “The messenger must have been delayed. Such things are common. Messengers are waylaid. Ships are sunk. Horses go lame. News reaches us in Mauretania sometimes swiftly, sometimes not at all.”

“Oh, no, Selene,” she says, fury glinting in her tear-filled eyes. “My father received the message. He sent word back that I must be exaggerating Agrippa’s illness. He said that I must not spread panic in the legions, for it would embolden our enemies in the Senate and endanger my children. So my dying husband and I were silent while we waited. We were silent while my father dallied in Rome to be made Pontifex Maximus.”

Every hair lifts on my nape as I remember the night the emperor told us that Lepidus was dead. Did he know, even then, that his greater rival was so very ill? I can scarcely believe it. Were we all there, standing in the forum, cheering while Agrippa lay on his deathbed? I don’t
want
to believe it. “There must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake,” she hisses. “Agrippa knew he was dying. All that remained was to pass on his last breath to his
paterfamilias
, an honor he wanted to bestow upon my father. He kept his heart beating in his chest long after the battle was lost. I sent message after message, but my father did not start out to meet us until he
knew
he would arrive too late to help Agrippa die. He made sure of it.”

That is not the impression here in Rome. All anyone will remember is the emperor’s mad scramble to reach Agrippa’s bedside. All anyone will remember is the great tragedy that he did not get there in time. But that is not what Julia remembers.

Smearing her tears with the backs of her hands, she says, “My father must have been afraid to come because of the plague. Musa tells him that plague leaps from person to person, like a mad
lemur
. What a coward. More fearful of his health than of betraying the man who was once his truest and most loyal friend.”

Maybe that is the explanation. Augustus has always hidden from danger even at the expense of his honor; and he has seldom passed up an opportunity to spite a rival, which is what Agrippa had become, in the end. But can it be only chance that Lepidus and Agrippa should die at once? “You are sure it was plague, Julia?”

“I am sure of nothing but that I have never seen any man fight so hard against his death. Agrippa strained and gritted his teeth. He endured the humiliation of being washed and fed by me until he was too weak to protest. Those strong hands withered in mine. One night, I saw he could bear it no more. I told him that there was no shame in this defeat; that there is one war every commander must lose. He couldn’t speak, but put his hand on my swollen belly. Then he sighed and I knew it would be the last sound he ever made. So I kissed him. I put my mouth on his dry, cracked lips and I breathed him in. I took Agrippa’s last breath.
I
took it.”

She is not crying anymore. That is done. She squares her shoulders with something of the strength of her dead husband. “He’s inside me now. Not just in my child, but in our breath and bones. We have him, Selene. We have Agrippa. Me and his unborn child. I’ve never been so happy to be pregnant before. I’ve never been so glad of anything in my life.”

* * *

I
stay with Julia well into the night.

I am filled with sorrow for her and her poor children. But it is more than sorrow. Her suspicions have unleashed the dark and angry shadow in my soul. I thought I had defeated my
khaibit
, but some part of me still hates this city and would see it all turned to ash. Here atop this hill, the emperor has built a palace virtually on top of the fabled house of Romulus, a thatch-roofed hut that has been carefully preserved to honor Rome’s founder. Like me, Romulus was a twin. He killed his brother for Rome, and I have been left to wonder if I somehow did the same.

Two crows land at my feet, their raven wings flapping as they fight over a charred piece of meat that is still smoking from the flames. It is from the funeral, I realize, from the sacrifice made at the funeral of Agrippa. Now the birds are squawking and squabbling over the scraps like two Roman generals . . .

Juba nudges me gently. “The litter is waiting.”

Still, my eyes are on the crows as they take to the sky. The events of the past few days have filled me with white-hot anger. A vengeful
heka
rises in my blood, setting it to boil, and I release it into the wind lest it consume me. I want to punish Livia and the emperor and everyone who has helped bring about such heartache, but there is nothing I can do but smolder. Or is there more magic inside me than even I know?

I wonder because the next morning we learn that the hut of Romulus has burned to the ground. Two crows, they say it was. Two fighting crows, they say, dropped charred meat onto the roof and it somehow caught fire . . .

. . . and now Rome’s oldest monument is ash.

It is an omen the emperor takes seriously. He commands the entire imperial family to make ready to travel to the outpost of Aquileia. The official reason is that suppressing the insurrection in Pannonia now falls to Augustus with the greatest urgency. In truth, I think it is the emperor’s intention to flee the plague. Or perhaps he fears that his legacy—like the hut of Romulus—will go up in smoke.

I might almost take satisfaction in his fear if it weren’t for the fact that Augustus insists that he must have us at his side. He says he must have Juba’s help fighting in Pannonia, which is utter nonsense. My husband is no great Roman general, and has not nearly enough battle experience to make himself a worthy successor to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa even if he
were
a Roman.

Juba will not hear of my objections, however, for the emperor has preyed upon his great weakness. My husband needs to be needed. It has always been thus. Perhaps I have made it worse by so seldom admitting that
I
need my husband. I fear it is true that I do need Juba—more every day. Perhaps if I confessed it, I could turn him from the emperor, but need is a vulnerable thing . . . and I am not brave enough to be that vulnerable.

Instead, I find the courage to confront the emperor, climbing up the stairs to his private study where I once cowered as a girl. “Let Juba go,” I say the moment the doors are closed at my back. “If you will have grain for Rome, food for your soldiers, we must return to Mauretania.”

The emperor is thrusting scrolls into a pouch, making such haste to depart the city he doesn’t even wait for slaves and secretaries to do it for him. He does not look up when he says, “You can set sail from Aquileia.”

“But our ship is waiting for us in the port of Ostia.”

“Then send a messenger to your ship’s captain to meet you in Aquileia, because I will not let you go to Ostia.”

“Why not?”

“Because I will not let you expose my children to plague!” he hisses with an angry fling of his arm that nearly topples the golden dolphins he stole from my mother’s baths in Egypt. “I am taking you as far away as we can get from the illness without actually crossing over into the provinces.”

I cannot decide if he is truly trying to protect us or if this is another performance. “Is the plague really so dangerous?”

He shoves another scroll into the leather pouch. “Dangerous enough to kill Agrippa. Damn him and the mess he left me.”

“Are you certain it was plague that killed him?”

His eyes snap to mine. “What makes you ask?”

More than once the emperor spoke to me of killing Agrippa. Now I search his expression for the pretense of grief or the satisfaction of murder. All I see is
rage
. I think he is angry at Agrippa for having had the temerity to die at an inconvenient moment. The emperor used the death of Lepidus to his advantage, but there has been chaos in the wake of Agrippa’s funeral. With some legions on the cusp of mutiny, the emperor has been forced to send dispatches to his military commanders beseeching them to be stricter with their soldiers.

I stare and stare, as if I can see through his skin and bones to get to the truth. The emperor’s shoulders are knotted in tension. His lips curl in a slight snarl the way they do when his aching teeth are bothering him. And I think he is innocent of Agrippa’s death.

If he had sent someone to poison his wayward general, he wouldn’t be able to hide his smugness from me. He would want me to know. If he did away with Agrippa, he would want me to appreciate his work. He would
need
someone to appreciate it.

“
What
do you mean by that question, Selene?”

I clear my throat. “It is only that Julia was with Agrippa when he died and she is not ill of plague. None of her children are.”

“A good thing too, because Ptolemy is not old enough to be named as my heir. Think! If I should be without Gaius and Lucius to conceal our true ambitions . . . think how my enemies would be emboldened.”

Which enemies does he mean? Having worked all his life to be a man without peer, the emperor now imagines himself abandoned and assailed on all sides. He once despaired to me that we now live in a world with only little men, but he has made that world. He is an old man without young ones to succeed him. He is the king of kings without any prince old enough to inherit his kingdom—not even my prince.

That’s what decides it for me. Yes, he considered killing Agrippa, but did not want him dead
yet
. He would have waited for a time and place of his choosing—not when one of the provinces is in rebellion and all the children are still so young. He delayed going to Agrippa’s side because he was cowardly and petty and because he needed the extra time to cement his power in Rome as Pontifex Maximus.

He may have killed Lepidus, but he did not kill Agrippa.

The only person for whom Agrippa’s death is convenient is Livia. She might have given Agrippa a tonic before he started his journey. She might have sent a slave to do it in her place. In any case, she is now mother to the only good generals Rome has left. Between Tiberius and Drusus, the Claudian brothers now have the legions. And Augustus has finally begun to appreciate the threat posed by his own wife . . .

Twenty-four