Daughters of the Nile (64 page)

“That is you,” I whisper. “Not me. I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. For your daughter, you will. What other choice do you have?”

No other choice at all . . .

Julia’s forgiveness calms me. Her strength keeps me standing. Her hand keeps mine steady. And when the moment has passed and I can stand on my own, she asks, “What will you do about Juba?”

“I will go with him,” I say, for in that, there is also no other choice.

Julia nods, knowing this is farewell. There is nothing more we need say, and we clasp our hands even tighter, quietly bleeding into each other as we have done in one way or another from the very start.

* * *

ON
the day of the Floralia, prostitutes dance in the streets of Rome, drinking and celebrating. I do not celebrate the rebirth of the world, but I acknowledge it. The world is changed. For me, everything is changed. Rome will always be the place my son died and now that the embalmers have finished their work, I cannot wait to leave. But there is one thing I must do before I go.

I make a visit to the emperor.

My last visit, I vow.

This will be the last time I make my way up the Palatine Hill. The last time I stand at these gates. The last time I inhale this distinct scent of bay as it floats down from the laurel trees on either side of the entryway. The last time I will climb the stairs of the emperor’s house and enter his private sanctuary . . .

But at the foot of the staircase, the emperor’s wife blocks my way. Beneath her severely conservative hairstyle, her eyes narrow. “Augustus will not grant you an audience. After what you and your husband did, how dare you even show your face here?”

Just the sight of Livia gives rise to a primal hunger for vengeance. I do not know if she stands guilty of my son’s death, but my fingertips grow warm with the desire to burn her to ash and then call down my winds and scour the earth of her. I am holding myself back from such violence only by the thinnest of threads.

Perhaps she knows it, because she takes a breath and stiffens her spine. She is afraid of me and she should be. Restraining the surge of fury in my blood, I tilt my head. “You stand before me while my son lies cold and dead, and you ask how
I
dare? You are braver than I ever gave you credit for . . .”

“I did nothing to that boy,” she vehemently declares.

She has never been eager to exonerate herself before, no matter what I have accused her of, so perhaps she is telling the truth. I do not trust myself to judge. I do not trust myself, but there are other darker powers that I now put my faith in. All at once, I lunge at her, snagging my fingers in the knot of hair above her brow.

“What are you doing?” she shrieks, trying to pull free of me. But she is an old woman now and I have the strength of a mother lioness. I yank hard on her head, driving her to her knees, tearing her gray hair out by the roots. Then I hold a fistful of it in her face, knowing I will make a curse of it. “What am I doing? I’m making you a vow, you cold, grasping bitch! If my son died for your ambitions, you will suffer. You will suffer what I have suffered. You will lose your sons too, one way or another. And you will die, unloved and alone. You will
rot
like carrion left for vultures, stinking of all your vile deeds.”

She gasps, clutching at her scalp, her eyes bulging. “I did nothing to your son . . .”

I tuck her hair into a pouch on my belt, then leave Livia there, stepping over her to march up the stairs.

“I did nothing to him!” she cries after me.

Fortunately, the praetorians do not stop me. They do not even look me in the eye. The emperor should have left orders to refuse me entry, but his vanity prevents him from guarding himself from me. He will not kill me and he will not defend himself from me because to do either of those things is to end it all.

He will not end it. But I will.

Stepping into his private study, his so-called
Syracuse
, I brace myself for the mocking golden eyes of the statue,
Fortuna
. Instead, I find that Augustus has turned that fickle goddess to the wall and draped her in black. The emperor is also draped in dark cloth that hangs on his wiry frame in a way that makes him look old and tired. He hasn’t shaved yet today and I see how white his whiskers have become. They emphasize puffy jowls that give away his age. He was never truly the vigorous young soldier he is depicted as in his statues, but he never seemed so old as he does now.

Perhaps he does not hear Livia below us, still shrieking her innocence. Instead, he stares out the window, overlooking the garden where my son once played with the children of his household. I can imagine the laughter of the boys. I can imagine glancing into the yard and seeing my son playing with them. That is why we brought him to Rome, after all.

The emperor must be thinking the same. “Ptolemy will be borne by the greatest men in Rome for his funeral,” he murmurs. “I will carry his bier. Tiberius, Drusus, and Iullus have all agreed to take part in the procession.”

“Oh, have they?” My son was the Prince of Mauretania. He should have been Pharaoh of Egypt. He might have even been the next Emperor of Rome. He died too soon for us to know how brightly his star could burn. I would give him a grand funeral. I would have him carried in an elaborate coach, so laden down with jewels that it must be pulled by a hundred white mules. I would see mourners by the thousands at the sides of the road. But I will do none of these things because I will not give my enemies anything more of my son.

Certainly I will not have my son carried through the streets of Rome where Livia may silently gloat over his death. “There will be no procession,” I declare.

“There
must
be a procession,” the emperor insists. “If the people are to accept that a foreign prince will be buried in my mausoleum, they must see the imperial family honor him in the streets.”

He wishes to have my son beside him for all eternity? Augustus banishes Juba, but wants my boy in his tomb. I should be angrier at this revelation, for the emperor’s love for Ptolemy is narcissism. It is vainglorious folly. What he mourns most is the loss of his own legacy, his own glory. But he
does
mourn. The human part of me that survives my sorrow recognizes his suffering. And insofar as Augustus loved my son, it is no longer in me to be cruel to him.

It is no longer in me to be anything to him.

“Ptolemy is not Roman,” I say. “I will do for him what was done for Alexander. I will wrap him in sheets of gold pounded so thin that we will see his face through the covering. I will put amulets in his hands and over his heart and tokens of remembrance in his sarcophagus to take with him into the afterworld. I will fill his tomb with wax
shabti
figures, to go ahead of him and herald him to the gods so they know the spirit of a great prince is to join them. But my son will be buried on a hill in Mauretania where I built a tomb for my family. There I have placed statues of my loved ones so that their spirits may watch over him. And I will visit him and perform the rites that will sustain him in the afterlife.”

Augustus turns angry eyes my way. “You mean to take Ptolemy to some remote, inaccessible tomb in a faraway, barbarous frontier where I have vowed never to set foot?”

“Oh, yes. I am going to take my children and leave you to the disaster that you’ve created, as I should’ve done all those years ago.”

He grinds his teeth. “This is a disaster of your making as well as mine. Did you not curse me to this fate? Did you not speak the words that threatened my heirs would fall before me if I did not appease Isis?”

“Those were the words of a goddess.”

“A goddess who let Ptolemy be struck down!”

That is hard to hear. It is a forbidden thought I have not allowed myself. A bitter thought that puts doubt in my heart. Isis did not protect my child. She did not save my child. I don’t know why; I will never know why.

He thinks he does. “Your goddess took him because he was my son. It is her curse. After all the ways in which I have sought to appease her, this is how I am repaid? I am done with Isis, that faithless Egyptian whore.”

I stand there swallowing my bile, searching my faith. Here I stand, a child of Isis. Still her champion. I should defend her, but I fail her in this, as I have failed her in so many ways.

“Let Ptolemy be buried with me,” Augustus says, his voice turning from anger to pleading. “He was my only son.”

“You have two sons, Caesar. Their names are Gaius and Lucius—”

“You will not leave me, damn you!” For a moment I think he will strike me, but he knows better than to test my strength. Instead, he reaches for my heartstrings. “You know that I am surrounded by enemies and rivals. You would not leave me to a pack of jackals, with no one to trust.”

“Trust Julia. Take her for a partner.” He snorts as if the idea is ridiculous fantasy, so I strive to convince him. “Julia’s interests align with yours. Cleave to her and her sons as if they are the only family you will ever have—because that is true. You will need them to hold the Claudians at bay. Treat them well and your love will be repaid a thousand times. Help Gaius and Lucius become strong men who will honor a Golden Age.”

“You aren’t leaving me. This is about Juba, isn’t it? You wish to make a grand gesture for his sake. Fine, then. Have your way. The King of Mauretania can stay in Rome as long as he likes so long as you take your place at my side.”

“My place is with him, in Mauretania, and I am going home . . .”

He shakes his head with furious denial. “This does not end it, Selene.”

“It ended the moment my son took his last breath.”

“We have a daughter together too.”

“No. We have nothing together. Let there be an end of it between us, you once said to me. I obey that command.”

“Now I command you to stay. Obey me or—”

“Do you remember you once wanted to bring me with you to Parthia?” I show him the palm of my hands, which have so often told our future. “You asked me to bury the armies of your enemies in sand. I said I could not do it and you called me a liar. Perhaps you were right. Think what you have seen me do with these hands. Think of the winds I have commanded. Think of the fire.
Think
for one moment of whose armies I might bury if provoked. I am taking my family to Mauretania and you will leave us in peace. If you do not, if you send ships after us, I’ll send your navy to the bottom of the sea.”

I hear the catch in his breath, see the whites of his eyes as fury overtakes him. But he is considering my words. He is wondering what I would dare and how he might stop me. “You cannot do it, Selene. No more than your mother could. If your mother had that power, she would have won the war. If you had that power, you would be in your mother’s place now, the Queen of Kings, the Empress of the World . . .”

“Are you so sure that I’m not?”

His brow furrows in confusion.

I don’t wait for him to figure it out on his own. “You have turned to me, again and again, to help you in your quest for power. I have nursed you. I have nurtured you. I have helped guide you and curbed your worst instincts. I have invoked gods on your behalf. You have prospered through me and through everything you have taken from me. Like Isis,
I
am your throne. It has been thus since the moment I discovered I had the power to destroy you . . . and chose not to. I was born to bring about a Golden Age, and through you, I may still do it. So has it never occurred to you that
I
am the ruler and
you
are the vassal?”

He startles visibly, a hand lifting shakily as if to slap me. We are face-to-face, here in this room where I once cowered at his feet. Where he once grabbed me and shook me until I was weak with fear. He doesn’t grab me this time. He does not dare. Once, I imagined we were two towering colossi on either side of a road, but we are both cracked and crumbling now. He is old and tired and broken. And I—I am divided against myself. Some part of me is determined to kill him, here and now. But the other side knows it is enough to ensure that he will never harm me or my loved ones again.

“You started a war with my mother,” I remind him. “But not only her. You made war on Isis too and called it a just war.
Justum bellum
, you said. She told you the war was not over and so it is not. She will win. Isis always wins. That is why I am leaving and I am never coming back. I will never again answer your summons. Not for any threat. Not for any promises of riches or glory. This is the end.”

He stares, but nothing changes behind his gray eyes. He doesn’t accept what I’m saying. “You have run from me before, Selene. You’ll come back.”

“No. You will never see me again.”

The flat finality of my words, spoken like an oracle, finally reaches him. He stares, rattled as I have never seen him. He looks as if he is shrinking into himself, falling into a pit of inner blackness, and though I should let him, I offer him one last chance at grace. “Caesar, if you ever cared for me, if there was ever a moment of genuine feeling in your heart, if I have ever pleased you, if you ever pitied me or admired me or wished to give me or my children anything, give me this:
Let me go
.”

When I say it, he nearly crumbles before me. His face screws up and then the words burst out of him like a plea. “I
can’t
! You are my Cleopatra and I am your Caesar.”

Perhaps I should remind him that Julius Caesar was parted from Cleopatra, that Aeneas was cleaved from Dido, that Cyrene lived apart from Apollo . . . but these are all dangerous pretensions. Bitter loss has taught me that there is peril behind wearing masks.

In the oldest Egyptian stories, Ra was the king of all gods and creation, but Isis held power over him because she learned his secret name. The name the emperor was born with is no secret, but it holds just as much power. He is not wily Julius Caesar. He is not pious Aeneas. He is not sun-drenched Apollo. He is not Set, the evil god of the desert. He is not Jason . . . and I am not Medea.