Daughters of the Nile (42 page)

“Suddenly, I am not so very tired . . .”

Good thing too, because we do not sleep.

* * *

THE
dismissal of my poet is easily managed the next morning. Then Crinagoras sails away with the Herods and I do not know when, or if, I will ever see him again. My mouth goes sour with the taste of sending someone I care about into mortal danger. It is what rulers do, but if it all goes wrong, how will I forgive myself?

Soon after the departure of the Herods, at the end of the month sacred to Juno, Julia gives birth. She asks me to play the part of the handmaiden and deliver the news to the emperor. I find him on the terrace overlooking a makeshift arena in which his soldiers have arranged an early-morning cockfight for his amusement. The emperor has been shown all the wonders of Greece, but in Aquileia, this cacophony of birds and men consumed with mindless bloodlust in the shadow of darkly forested hills is apparently the best sport to be found.

“It is a boy,” I whisper in the emperor’s ear. “Big and healthy. Julia would like for him to be named Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Postumus.”

It is the emperor’s prerogative to choose the boy’s name, but he says, “I suppose it is only right. He’s Agrippa’s only son by law, as I’ve taken all the others.”

I hear the note of satisfaction. Was it all for show, how hard he fought against adopting Gaius and Lucius? Or is it only now that Agrippa is dead that the emperor imagines the adoptions as a private victory over his ambitious general? “Shall I tell Julia you’re pleased by the birth of your grandson?”

Staring down at the cockfight, he replies, “You shall tell Julia that she must marry Tiberius.”

Neither the screeching of the birds nor the nip in the morning air chills me so much as the emperor’s words. “Tiberius? You cannot mean it. You cannot possibly mean to let Livia have her way.”

The emperor clenches his teeth. “It’s a necessary measure.”

“You are handing your empire over to the Claudians!”

“I am handing nothing but Julia to Tiberius.”

“That will be enough. Tiberius already has your legions. Now he will have your daughter too. What can Livia have possibly said to convince you to wedge her family into power at the expense of yours?”

As the birds battling below us scratch and peck and claw, Augustus says nothing. Normally, he would challenge me to work out for myself the reasoning of his political decisions, but whatever is behind this one, he would rather I did not know. That is what shocks me, and my mouth drops open. “You
suspect
her. You suspect her of doing away with Agrippa. And you fear—”

“I fear nothing.”

I give a bitter laugh to stave off sudden bitter tears. “You fear
Livia
. You are afraid of your wife, and you should be because you can’t touch her now. You can’t do anything to her without risking that her sons will turn the legions against you in vengeance. You can’t even divorce her or get rid of her now. She has you
trapped
.”

“Tread carefully, Selene,” the emperor warns.

I go on, heedlessly laughing, near hysteria. “She has outsmarted you. She has outsmarted us all. Now the Claudians will have their way . . .”

“They will
think
they do,” Augustus snaps, punctuating his words with a slap of his thigh. “With Tiberius as my son-in-law, there will be no need for them to scheme.”

Tiberius is now the empire’s most notable general. He’s achieved more than any of his ancestors in more than two hundred years. All that, with a bloodline far more prestigious than the emperor’s. “Don’t do it,” I plead with him. “For the love of the gods, give Julia to someone else. Find someone strong enough to stand against Livia. Someone who needs Julia and her sons to cement a claim. Do not clear a path for the Claudians. Create a
rival
for them.”

The emperor glares at me. “Who? You tell me who, Selene.”

“Iullus Antonius! He’s a soldier. He has my father’s legacy behind him. He might hold it all together. My half brother would defend Julia and her children and you.”

When the emperor leans forward, I think he’s considering it until I see the malice shining in his eyes. “I would sooner see Rome
burned to ashes
.”

“Then you just might see it burn.”

“Listen well, Selene. I will never give Mark Antony that victory over me. I
took
his daughter to my bed; his son won’t take mine.”

This pronouncement is a slap to the face—a stinging reminder of how he took me by force. He told me I wanted it and he is not the only one to have accused me. My own husband blamed me for the emperor’s lust. Even I tried to convince myself that the emperor would never have done it without Livia’s encouragement. Now I know better. Now I know what was in his mind from the first moment he came to Alexandria. He wanted to
take
everything my father had, and when my mother escaped him in death, he turned his eyes to me. He was
always
going to rape me; always intended it. Nothing I did or didn’t do would have changed that. It was never my fault or Juba’s fault or even Livia’s fault. The crime was all his.

Below us, a rooster falls bloody and defeated into the dirt.

While the men cheer the victor, the emperor insists, “Tiberius must marry Julia. If my health should fail me while my heirs are still little boys—”

“Then they’ll all be at Tiberius’s mercy. Julia and Gaius and Lucius . . .”

“Not only them, Selene. You and your children too. Everyone who belongs to me. The only way to hinder the aspirations of Tiberius is to bind him to my legacy. My daughter must be his. My sons must be his. This will tie his hands.”

The Tiberius I remember was a sour boy and a brooding young man who kept his own company but was never cruel without provocation. The trouble with Tiberius has always been his willingness to cater to his mother’s overweening ambitions. With the emperor gone, Livia will be free to take her revenge on all those she despises. We will be at
her
mercy, and perhaps that is what the emperor intends to protect us against.

“It will be Tiberius,” he insists. “It
must
be Tiberius. Not Drusus, not Iullus, nor any other man I have not observed since his boyhood. We both know Tiberius’s nature. He never takes a risk if there is no promise of reward. He will be grateful to me for this marriage and it will buy us time, for he will never act against me if he believes that he must only wait for me to die . . .”

“It’s a gamble. You’d rely upon Tiberius’s character and gratitude?”

“And his love for my daughter. I’m told she can be very charming.”

“Tiberius is besotted with his own wife. He doesn’t want Julia.”

“She can change that. And you must persuade her to do it.”

Twenty-six

“SO
now I am to seduce my own stepbrother for the good of Rome?” Julia bares her breast for her infant son, who is her child in a way none of the others have been. Sitting beside her on a couch in the inner courtyard, I sense in her a new mother’s fierceness. “My father doesn’t even have the courage to ask it of me. Instead, he sends the daughter of the woman he called the world’s greatest harlot to give me lessons. You don’t mind being used in such a way?”

She’s entitled to her bitterness, so I take no offense at her words. Her position is altogether too familiar and it pains me to argue on her father’s behalf; I would not do so if I saw any other way. “The emperor intends to ask Tiberius to marry you. If you appear . . . unwilling . . . Julia, you do not want to be blamed for providing an excuse for Tiberius to refuse.”

Julia’s nose wrinkles as if she has smelled something foul. “Either way, I will have the blame.”

I take a breath before telling the truth as I see it. “I believe that your father is trying to secure your welfare. Yes, he is thinking of his own legacy and selfish desires, but he is also thinking of you and your children. What would happen if your father died tomorrow?”

Julia’s eyes drift to the window with an expression that is either worry or wishfulness. “I would be a prize for the highest bidder, no different than now.”

She’s being stubborn. She doesn’t know what it is to grow up at the mercy of a man who considers your every breath a danger to his ambitions. I’ve lost four brothers to the emperor’s fear and it would be naive to believe he’s the only man capable of such monstrous acts. A man who wished to rule Rome would smother Julia’s little children in their beds if given the chance.

And that is to say nothing of what Livia might do.

I must make Julia understand. “Until your sons come of age, they are in danger. We know Tiberius isn’t ambitious for his own sake. If you win his heart, he may defend your sons against his mother. Against all. He may come to love your children as his own.”

“Now you’re thinking of
your
husband, Selene. Not Tiberius.”

I dare not ask what she means by that or what she knows.

The baby in her arms hiccups round her nipple, then screws up his face to cry. “There, there,” Julia murmurs. “You cannot cry, Postumus . . . not when you look so much like your father, who never cried at all . . .” The baby screams instead, and she says, “Yes, screams are better than tears. Better that you bellow like your father . . .”

Truthfully, little Agrippa Postumus wails louder than any babe I’ve ever heard, and I remember the way the Admiral’s booming voice could shake a room. I wonder if it is this reminder of her dead husband, of taking his last breath, that stiffens Julia’s spine. Because when Julia looks at me, I don’t see the girl who gave herself over to one wild impulse after the next. I see a woman who knows the world and her own place in it. “My answer is no. I will not woo Tiberius. You may tell my father that I am no whore.”

* * *

IN
the end, the matter is decided by Iullus Antonius.

He waits until the celebration of the
Neptunalia, when the citizens camp beside the River Aquilis and splash in the water when the afternoon sun gets too hot. Of the Roman festivals, this one requires the fewest formal prayers and was Admiral Agrippa’s favorite—for he believed that Neptune had granted him his naval victories. Perhaps it is for this reason that Julia arranges for the sacrifice of white bulls, enough to honor the god and feed the people of Aquileia too. The mouthwatering scent of meat roasted over campfires fills the air and we are all on hand to celebrate.

The imperial family has settled in to dine in a lavish tabernacle, complete with garlands wound round every tent pole and flower petals strewn upon the tables. It is in this idyllic setting, where luminescent glowworms light the darkening sky, that Iullus an-nounces, suddenly and without warning, “Caesar, I would marry your daughter.”

It is such an outrageous statement, so bold and out of place, that everyone ignores it. As if our ears had all played tricks on us. As if his words were just a low murmur on the evening breeze, a sound only imagined. Inside the tabernacle, children shriek protests against nursemaids who usher them to bed, guests continue to eat heartily, and slaves still scurry between couches fetching platters, filling wine cups, and wafting giant fans made of ostrich feathers.

In truth, I would wonder if
I
heard wrong were it not for the narrowing of the emperor’s eyes.

Before I can prevent it, Iullus lumbers to his feet, struggling to pull the end of his toga into proper position over one arm. His low baritone is not unlike my father’s. And this time it carries. “Caesar, give Julia to me and I will seek no other honor as long as I live.”

The crowd’s laughter dies away. But the uncomfortable silence does not stop Iullus. Nor does he see the urgent warning in my expression. He does not even flinch from the gorgon’s glare Livia shoots him from her couch. There is only one woman he sees. And that is Julia.

Still garbed in mourning, the emperor’s daughter is sprawled on a low couch beneath garlands of flowers and fruit, blinking at Iullus with tears in her eyes. It is plain that he has taken her utterly unawares and she is not the only one . . .

The emperor folds his arms and gazes upon the son of his conquered enemy. Surely Iullus must see that is all he has ever been to Augustus. He must see the malice in the emperor’s eyes, the pure contempt. Any fool would see it, and Iullus is not a fool.

But he is worse than a fool; he is a man in love. “Caesar, all my life, I have defended what is yours. Your name, your family, your legions, your empire. Allow me to defend your daughter and her children with my sword and I swear by Jupiter, it will be my honor and only ambition.”

The emperor’s reply is pure venom from a seething maw. “You are nothing
but
ambition, Iullus Antonius. I gave my niece to you thinking it might satisfy your appetite, and this is how you repay me?”

It is a small mercy that Marcella retired early for the evening. Perhaps Iullus told her what he intended, or perhaps her absence was the permission he needed to blunder forth. And blunder forth he does with a heartbreaking, wine-soaked passion. “Your niece is a woman of the greatest value, second only in virtue to your daughter. Marcella has been a good wife to me. But it is Julia I love—Julia I have always loved—and I would take her as my wife for all my life long.”