Daughters of the Nile (60 page)

That night mobs do not swarm my house. From the city across the river, we hear only the sounds of merriment, late into the evening. No furious senators send letters of rebuke. Indeed, we hear no complaint from any quarter. Can I have been too proud to admit that I am of no threat to
anyone
?

I am just a client queen from a kingdom at the far edge of civilization and my son is only the Prince of Mauretania, not the next Pharaoh, nor the next Emperor of Rome. There is no danger to my son because I am the only one gullible enough to believe a thing Augustus says . . .

In the morning, Ptolemy insists he must visit the stables and work with his prize stallion, practicing his drills for the Trojan Games, and I cannot deny him. I cannot go on fearing every phantom shadow and see danger lurking everywhere. My son must be known to the Romans and respected. If Ptolemy is to rule over
anything
, I cannot hold him back. Juba is right. Perhaps he has always been right about everything.

* * *

ON
the day Julia distributes salt and olive oil to the poor, she insists I go with her. Most charity in Rome is done with great fanfare and accompanied by a lasting monument, but she prefers spontaneity. Unfortunately, her spontaneity takes us into the Suburra, a run-down neighborhood of questionable safety. “Did you ever suspect Livia’s son would turn out to be such a bloody-minded imbecile?”

With a wary eye on the ruffians in the street, I ask, “What has Tiberius done now?”

“Not Tiberius,” Julia says with exasperation. “My husband is just a miserable lump. I’m talking about
Drusus
. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard how our new consul is preparing for his return to Germania, vowing to win the noblest spoils by hunting down a tribal chieftain and bringing back his armor!”

“It’s just talk,” I say dismissively, for the
spoila optima
is the highest honor a Roman general can achieve, considered greater even than the military Triumphs that the emperor has denied him. “Drusus says it to excite his soldiers.”

“Oh, no, Selene.” Julia shifts in the litter, jostling it so that I must grip the edge not to be tossed out. “I’ve heard tales of Drusus rushing onto the battlefield ahead of his armies, chasing great big fur-clad warlords through German forests and thickets. He’s going to get himself killed. The only good news is that Livia is beside herself, wondering how she could have possibly raised a man who champions the
Republic
.”

I doubt Livia is truly vexed. For it is the same old strategy of putting a brother in each camp. Drusus agitates for a return to the Republic so that the emperor cannot pass his powers down to his heirs. But Tiberius is the stepfather to those heirs, and if Augustus dies before his grandsons reach majority, then Tiberius will take power with or without a Republic.

Either way, the Claudians win.

Julia continues, “If Agrippa never celebrated a Triumphal parade and was never given the honors of a Triumphator, why should Drusus get them? He thinks he can call the emperor’s bluff and
force
my father to allow it. That’s what an idealistic fool Drusus is.”

Either that, or he’s more ambitious than I ever gave him credit for. Noble Drusus. Always affable. Always ready with a kind word. He is so unlike every other member of his family that it has never occurred to me he might be the best politician of them all.

Julia peeks out the curtains at the rough crowd that has started to follow us. “It’s a dangerous pretension. You ought to speak to your sister about her husband.”

“I’m done meddling in Roman affairs.”

At this, Julia rolls her eyes. “You’re so very sour today! Well, if you aren’t going to help me save Rome from the idiotic heroics of her generals, the least you can do is make yourself useful handing out salt and oil to the poor.”

“Why can’t you have slaves hand it out?”

Julia twists her finger into a lock of hair, dyed purple today to cover the gray . . . speaking of pretension. “Because I’m a woman of the people!”

“Well, I’m a Ptolemaic queen.”

“Exactly. And your presence increases my stature,” Julia replies, her eyes narrowing a little too shrewdly for my taste. “After all, you’re a goddess on my father’s monument whereas I am depicted as a mere mortal woman.”

Acid burns in my belly, tempting me to deny the accusation. I
would
deny it, if I were speaking to anyone else. “It doesn’t look very much like me, does it? I swear to you, the Tellus panel wasn’t my idea. I didn’t ask it of him.”

“Of course you didn’t. What could you stand to gain from my father making a fool of himself?” Her voice is light with amusement, but it must be the very question she’s been asking herself.

What
do
I stand to gain?

If the emperor’s obsession with my son is real and not the pretense Juba thinks it is, then it comes at the expense of Julia’s sons. I want Julia to be the First Woman in Rome. I want her sons to fulfill their promise and have all that she would wish for them. But I want a brilliant future for my children too. That is the weakness in me the emperor has preyed upon, and I am frightened that Julia might sense it.

I ask, “What did Livia say about the
Ara Pacis
?”

“Do you think Livia would say anything to me about it?”

“Tiberius, then.”

“My husband is even less likely to share. You know he despises me.”

“No one could despise you.”

She gives a dismissive flick of her fingers. “Tiberius does.”

“That’s unfair. You’ve done nothing but reconcile yourself to being his wife.”

Her shoulders droop. “Maybe if our son had lived, things would have been different . . .”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching for her hand.

She lets me take it, her eyes wistful. “You wouldn’t think it, but Tiberius is very sentimental. His grief for that baby was wild and without reason. He wished the child was never born, so he wouldn’t have felt the pain. And of course it is my fault the child was born. Livia has him convinced that I’ve always had designs on him. Even when I was married to Agrippa. So Tiberius fancies me a temptress and dares not even look at me.”

I am altogether too well acquainted with the way men will blame their own lustful desires upon the women who aroused them. I am also aware of how difficult it is to have a husband who will not look at you. “Perhaps time will change him.”

Julia gives a toss of her dyed hair. “Let him despise me. I don’t care. I don’t even care what my father thinks of me. I have my
own
partisans now. Soldiers who would fight for me as Agrippa’s widow. Men who report to me on the doings of everyone from my father to the lowest senator. I mean for my sons to rule this empire, Selene, even if I never have an easy night’s sleep until it comes to pass.”

* * *

THE
emperor’s daughter arranges for my husband and me to interview an imperial shipbuilder who used to serve Admiral Agrippa. We need such a man to take a position in our court. Nevertheless, Juba insists that he has urgent business elsewhere. Given my husband’s brusqueness, I suspect the urgency is simply to avoid me.

My son is also up and away into the bright February morning, eager to return to the stables. At least Ptolemy lets me kiss his cherub cheeks before he goes, a thing I treasure because I do not know how much longer it will be before he won’t accept cuddles and cosseting without embarrassment.

Once he’s gone I rummage through the scrolls in the cubbies that line the wall in our study for something that will make me seem less than hopelessly ignorant on the matter of shipbuilding. In the end, I give up. When the shipbuilder comes, I quickly offer the man a position; if he was good enough for Agrippa, he is good enough for me.

Wanting to give my husband no reason to be more displeased with me than he already is, I carefully slide Juba’s dusty old scrolls back into their holders. That’s when I hear Dora scream.

At the sound, I dart out into the atrium, where I see every slave, servant, and courtier turn to the peristyle garden. Guards rush to defend us against unseen danger and we find Isidora sitting alone beneath the grape arbor, her bags of herbs scattered around her and a divining bowl, filled with water, clutched in her trembling hand.

I sense the
heka
—it tingles up and down my arms—and I know she’s been reading the Rivers of Time against my wishes again. Alas, I cannot fly into a rage at my daughter’s willful disobedience because I’m too terrified by the tears in her eyes . . . and the way her lips are tinged with blue.

“Dora?” I grasp at her hands. They are ice cold. How long has she been sitting out here without so much as a cloak to shield her from the bite of winter? My daughter trembles, red-rimmed eyes so filled with horror that I cannot imagine what she has seen, or what she is
still
seeing. She screams again, her eyes looking through me. And I am afraid for her. I can see that she is being swept away to some other place and I feel helpless to stop it. I shake her. I shout at her, “Isidora!”

I give her my voice to latch onto, to swim her way back to me, but she is fighting strong currents of magic. It isn’t until after I drape my own cloak over her shoulders and try to rub warmth into her arms that she begins to groan. “Oh, Mother, no . . .”

She knows who I am. That much is good. “What is it?”

My daughter dissolves into sobs, and it is difficult to make out her words. She is shouting at someone I cannot see. She is warning them to run away!

Iacentus helps his princess to her feet but she cannot see him either, a thing that plainly disturbs him, even under his professional veneer. I send for Musa, the emperor’s very own physician, for if there is something physically wrong with her, I will trust no one else to heal her. Then I take her to her room, swearing that I will search it and confiscate every potion, talisman, or magic item I can find.

And I will kill that snake, wherever it is.

As I get her to bed, she sobs, “Ptolemy run!”

The blood drains from my face. I feel it go, nearly taking my sanity away with it. Where is Ptolemy? I start for his room, then remember he is at the stables. I don’t want to leave Dora, not like this, when she is so fragile, drowning in the Rivers of Time. But now I must find my son.

There is a commotion downstairs. Banging at my gate. The sound of boots on tile as people rush into my atrium. It is the shrieks that send me running down the stairs two at a time. That is when the scent of smoke gets into my nostrils and I feel a terrible thunder underfoot. The house seems to shake with it, and someone cries, “There’s a fire at the stables!”

Thirty-seven

OUTSIDE,
black smoke rises from the stables like a pillar into the sky. Spooked Barbary horses with perfect pedigrees gallop wildly through the street in front of my house, smashing carts with their back hooves and rearing up at anyone who approaches them. Rushing out into the madness, I have a near miss with my son’s stallion; the big horse’s eyes roll with fear, his mouth foaming with fury, a gash on his shoulder and a smear of blood upon his fair mane.

One trampled man howls in pain, while others try to wrestle the horses into submission. My guards shout warnings, but I am only dimly aware of the danger from the horses; my eyes are on the fire beyond. “Ptolemy!” I cry, sprinting toward the fire, dodging broken gates and smashed carts. Even before I reach the stables I’m nearly overcome by a wall of heat that warps and bends the air. I can hear nothing but the roar of fire as it blazes in brilliant red and orange.

I throw both my arms up, summoning my magic to clear the smoke away with my winds. The sail-shaped birthmark on my arm tingles with power but when I hurl a pillar of air at the flames it only fans them and forces them to jump higher. Somewhere in the stables, I hear my son’s dog barking and I know they must both be inside.

Screaming Ptolemy’s name, I break away from my guards and sprint into the burning stable, stumbling over something that feels human. It is the body of a man whose head has been split open, his face to the dirt, unrecognizable. Still, I know the dead man’s hands—hands that have protected me. It is Memnon, sooty fingers clutched round a dagger.

Where his sword and shield may be, I don’t know.

I let out a cry of grief, but I cannot stop for him. Again and again I hear the dog bark. Frantically, my eyes sweep the conflagration for the sight of my son. All I find is the end of a familiar blue cloth. Crawling beneath the flames, I follow the cloth like a ribbon, knowing with each turn of it on my hand that it will lead to bitter tears. For this is Tala’s turban. “Tala!” I shout. “Ptolemy!”

Sooty smoke dims the air around me, and the heat scorches my lungs with every breath. But I surge forward until I find the barking dog and find my Berber woman on her back in the dirt, her unseeing eyes wide open, staring at the sky. In the cradle of her tattooed arms . . . I find a broken boy.