Daughters of the Nile (65 page)

I lean forward, and speak the truth. “Hear me because I am going to tell you who I am and who you are. You are Gaius Octavius Thurinus and I am Cleopatra Selene of House Ptolemy. You built an empire, and I fed it. This is our story. The whole of our story. And this is how it ends.”

PART FOUR

THE BREAD

Thirty-nine

I
do not stay to watch Augustus suffer or to see him draw himself back together. I stay only long enough to meet his eyes one final time. Mine, green as the Nile. His, a stormy gray. I will not forget his eyes and he will not forget mine. But we understand each other now as we have never done before.

He sees in me not only the cowering girl who has always made common cause with him, but also her fiery twin—the one who would burn everything he has built to ash. I am dangerous to him, and for the first time, he knows it.

While I draw breath, he will never again threaten Juba’s life with impunity. Nor will he take my daughter from me unless she wishes to go. That much we understand. And so I leave him.

I leave him atop the Palatine Hill and cross the bridge to Tiber Island. I cross again to my home with the black and white tiles where my children threw stones from the balcony, and I do not look back.

We hoist black sails in Ostia and carry our son’s sarcophagus to Mauretania. We make harbor in the shadow of our lighthouse and my unfinished Iseum. We are met by our royal guard, mounted on horseback. Beneath helmets adorned with smart plumes that bob up and down as they ride, the riders break into two ranks, forming an honor guard for our sad procession.

King Juba is grim-faced, his back stiff, his gaze so faraway that I’m unsure if he even cares that we have at last returned to our own kingdom. But I am comforted. My son died in Rome, but he was born here in Mauretania. He played here on these shores, collecting rounded pebbles from the beach. There, in the market, where Tala took him to taste honey and laugh with merriment at the actors in the streets. This city, Iol-Caesaria, is another child that Juba and I birthed together.

For that alone, I would hold it always close to my heart.

Our court is in mourning. We give Tala’s embalmed body over to her son so that he may bury her in the traditions of the Berbers. Ziri—or Mazippa as he is now called—and his people will paint her in red ochre and make a tomb for her in the side of a mountain. I take upon myself the expense for it. In honor of Tala, I also give her son a royal grant to vast plantations, making him the greatest Berber landholder in Mauretania. He will always have a place in our court, I assure him. Always a seat in our council chambers or at our table. Where he has no mother now, I bid Mazippa to consider me in her place, if he should feel I am worthy, but I know I am not.

In memory of Memnon, our Macedonian guards cut their hair in solidarity and sorrow. I commission for Memnon’s tomb a new sword, for he should never be without one, in life or death. Then I begin to make arrangements to return him to Egypt, from whence he came.

It is then that Lady Circe tells me that Memnon once asked her to put his last wishes in ink, for he himself could neither read nor write. She shows me the parchment, where he made his mark, a crude blot of ink. And there I see written that Memnon wished to be buried wherever I am buried, in Mauretania or Egypt, for he would never willingly leave his post.

These words would break me if I were not already broken.

On the day of our son’s funeral, our people line the streets from dusk to dawn to pay tribute to their lost prince. For Ptolemy, they give coins and silver jewelry, fine woven carpets and polished furniture, little ivory toys and silken clothes to carry with him into the afterlife. They loved their prince. Truly, they loved him.

We carve his name where the gods may see it. We perform all the sacred rites. And we seal him in his tomb with half the wealth of our kingdom. I do not count it much of a sacrifice, for we have already lost our greatest treasure . . .

At every step of the funeral and the feast that follows, Juba is at my side, stoic and silent. When we return to the palace, he takes my dazed daughter to her chambers, brushes her tears away with his thumbs, and tucks her into her bed as if she were still a small girl. He does all that is expected of him as a father. All that could be desired from a king. But there is nothing of a husband in him.

He does not seek comfort in my company. He does not speak to me. He cannot even look at me, and I fear whatever was between us died with our son. When I wake in the morning, Juba is already holding court. When I go to meet him in the stables before his daily rides, he is already gone. When I offer to dine with him, his slaves tell me he has retired to bed. We live in the same palace, but slip past each other like dim spirits in the necropolis.

I think we will live like this the rest of our lives, for it is all smashed.

All ruined.

Everything destroyed.

* * *

I
must know how I swallowed a fire and why sparks now snap to my fingertips whenever I desire them to. If I can throw fire now, what can that mean? I think it means I imagined Helios always in my darkest moments, always coming to my rescue when no one else would. But perhaps I was always my own rescuer and I have survived everything on my own.

Who, then, is Horus the Avenger? A legend or
lemur
?

I will never know the truth of it. But if I have conjured up Helios in my sorrow, then why isn’t he here now? I have never suffered more than with the loss of my son. So if Helios is only a comfort that I give to myself, then why isn’t he here?

Perhaps, he
is
here. My mage once said that if he was alive anywhere in the world, Helios was alive in me. I feel him inside me even now. Perhaps when the Romans said he died in Thebes all those years ago, he did. If that is true, Augustus has nearly died more than once at my hands. If it was not Helios who nearly assassinated the emperor during the Eleusinian Mysteries . . . then it was me.

I remember the night of Agrippa’s funeral, I watched the crows fight over a scrap of meat and felt anger flare up inside me. The hut of Romulus burned before dawn. I think it was my doing. I think there has been a war inside my soul between an avenging sun god who wants nothing more than destruction and the moon goddess who pines to bathe the world in peaceful splendor.

If my wizard were alive, I would put these questions to him. I would demand that he answer them. I would demand that he tell me the truth, and I would stay with him until I could understand and believe it. But the wizard is long dead. So when the moon has risen, I go to the island upon which my Iseum is being built, and I reach for his essence, for the wisdom he gifted me here.

Thinking I am alone, I light candles in the nearly finished inner chamber and leave my tears where masons will build the altar.

How it enrages me when my search for spiritual guidance is interrupted by Publius Antius Amphio.

“I beg your pardon, Majesty,” he says, from the dim recess of an archway. “I was only just told that you had come to inspect the Iseum. I had hoped you would come in the daylight.”

He looks as if he had been abed and roused by panicked workmen before rushing here with his toga askew. The end of it trails on the ground when he bows. Since, in all the time I have known him, he has never made any real pretense of respect, I worry what bad news he might have for me.

Gathering up my candles, I take in the work he has completed. The piers of the Iseum look to be tall and strong. The stone walls look to be solid, tightly constructed, perfectly in order. Above us, the impressive dome has been laid over a temporary olive-wood frame. But Amphio’s mood is so subdued that I ask, “Won’t the dome hold on its own?”

Amphio, who has grown balder since we met last, stiffens. “It will hold, Majesty. Once it is set, we’ll remove the frame. The concrete layer, being one piece, will exert pressure downward rather than out. It will hold.”

“You’re sure?”

He nods gravely. “I swear it to you upon my life. What’s more, I won’t wait for you to execute me if it fails. I’ll stand beneath the dome when the centerings are removed as proof that I’m a genius or a fool.”

He is many things, but not a fool. “Tell me, then, why it is that you seem so sad when you should be boasting. What can have gone wrong
now
?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the Iseum, Majesty, save that I have not finished it sooner. I don’t believe that Isis exists, but you do. It would have pleased me for you to have found comfort here in your grief.”

If he is mocking me again, I will have his head. But one glance at his stern face with its hawkish Roman nose and I know he’s sincere. “Prince Ptolemy would have made a very great king,” he says.

Though he is a stiff-necked Roman, he does understand compassion. He does understand suffering. In spite of the fact that he claims no gods for his own, he somehow understands our need for them. His humanity is evident in the beauty of this temple he is building. And for the first time, I am sure that even Amphio has a soul. He may not know it, but Isis and I do.

* * *

IN
the first days of summer, there comes for us a letter from King Archelaus. This letter catches us unawares because we thought nothing of the King of Cappadocia when we sailed away from Rome with the girl he meant to wed. In our grief, we broke the betrothal without offering recompense and I cannot imagine that a king of his stature would easily forgive such an insult. Yet he sends heartfelt condolences for our loss.

Perhaps our long-standing friendship accounts for his willingness to overlook this slight to his royal dignity. Or perhaps this letter has less to do with friendship than with the plea of the emissary he has sent with it. “King Archelaus asks your intercession in a matter most dire,” the ambassador explains when we receive him in our mostly empty throne room, where potted palms droop wearily in the corners. “The King of the Jews has again taken it in his mind that his sons are plotting against his life and has again put them both in chains. Princess Glaphyra too is being held against her will.”

The king and I are so numb with our own loss that I only murmur, “
Again
?”

“Herod sees enemies round every pillar. He’s expelled friends and ambassadors from Judea. The country is in disarray. We fear that our Princess Glaphyra may be put to torture or executed.”

I glance at Juba for his reaction, to see if he has anything to say. He is silent on his throne, distracted, his eyes on the colorful paintings that line our walls. I force myself to be the queen I still am and clear my throat. “We are grieved to hear this news. How can we be of assistance?”