The Egyptian Royals Collection (112 page)

“This door is always to remain open,” Agrippa instructed. “Do not close it. Do not lock it.”

“Even when we sleep?” Alexander asked.

“Even then. If you would like food, you may ask me. If you are sick, go to the railing, but never disturb Caesar for anything.”

Our room faced onto an open courtyard where Octavian was already reclining on a couch, scribbling across a scroll with his reed pen.

“Caesar spends most of his day writing,” Agrippa explained. “There is never a time when he isn’t busy. If he wants to hear noise, he will ask for the harp.”

Alexander and I both looked to Ptolemy. How would a seven-year-old child keep silent on a two-month voyage? And we weren’t even allowed to shut the door.

I sat on one of the cedar beds and pulled Ptolemy onto my lap.
“You are going to have to be very quiet on this ship. Do you understand?”

He nodded, and his curls bounced up and down. “Will Mother be coming?”

I looked at Alexander.

“No, Mother won’t be coming,” he said softly. “Don’t you remember?”

Two small lines creased Ptolemy’s brow. “She’s with Father, in Elysium?”

“That’s right.” Alexander seated himself on the second bed, and we avoided each other’s gaze. Outside, Juba and Agrippa joined Octavian in the courtyard as the ship wrenched away from the port. With the door open, we could hear their conversation.

“It’s finally over,” Juba said, reclining on a separate couch.

“It’s never over.” Octavian looked up from his scroll. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

“Then perhaps Plato was wrong, and you’ll forge something different. Who in Rome is going to challenge you now?”

Octavian smiled. “Antony did me a favor by getting rid of Cicero. He taught the Senate a powerful lesson. Seneca and the rest of the old beards will keep their silence.”

“For now,” Agrippa warned.

“Yes,” Octavian said, after a pause. “The danger is no longer with the old men. I must restore the prestige of the Senate. I must make equestrians’ sons want to be senators again.”

“That would mean convincing them to come out of the whorehouses first,” Agrippa said dryly.

“Then I will close the whorehouses!” Octavian flushed. “They are breeding grounds for rebellion.”

“And you will have a different kind of rebellion on your hands,” Juba said. “The boys visit them because they have nothing better to do. But if you increase the Senate’s pay and power, they will think
you are bringing back the Republic and they’ll leave the whorehouses on their own. That was what Caesar forgot, and what Antony never knew.”

The three of them looked into our cabin, and Octavian beckoned to Alexander with his finger.

“Me?” my brother asked.

Octavian nodded, and my brother stood.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“He wants me to go.”

While Alexander crossed the short distance between our room and where Octavian sat, Ptolemy cried sharply, “You’re hurting me.” I was holding him so tightly I was crushing his chest.

“Tell me about your father,” Octavian said.

Alexander looked back at me, wondering what kind of game Octavian was playing.

“He loved my mother,” Alexander replied.

“And horses.”

Alexander raised his chin, and the long white chiton he was wearing flapped in the warm sea breeze. “Yes. He taught me to ride as soon as I could walk.”

“They say your father held races every day of the week. Is that true?”

Alexander grinned. “Yes. There was nothing he loved more than the races.”

“Even his kingdom,” Octavian remarked, and I saw Alexander flinch. “Tell me about your sister. Did he teach her to ride as well?”

My brother’s voice was not so bright when he replied. “No. She sketches.”

Octavian frowned.

“Drawings of buildings and temples,” he explained.

“Bring one to me.”

Alexander returned to our cabin, and I shook my head angrily.

“Never!”
I hissed. “Didn’t you hear him? He thinks our father squandered away his kingdom.”

“And what
did
our father like more than races and wine?”

I thought of my father’s last request, and sat back among the cushions.

“He asked, Selene. What if this is a test?
Please
. Give him the one overlooking Alexandria. The one you drew at the Temple of Serapis.”

Ptolemy looked up at me with his wide blue eyes, waiting for me to tell him to get my book.

“Selene,” Alexander whispered nervously, “they’re waiting.”

It was true. Beneath the potted palms of the courtyard, the three men were watching us, though so long as we kept our voices low they couldn’t hear what we were saying. “Pass me my leather bag.”

Ptolemy scurried across the bed for my bag. He handed it to me as if it were a rare and precious stone, and I took out the leather-bound book of sketches, with its title neatly penned by Charmion in gold ink. Her father had been a great architect in Egypt. When she was young he had taught her the beauty of building and the precise penmanship required of architects, and then she had passed these abilities on to me.

“Hurry,” Alexander implored.

I flipped through the pages and unfolded a loose sheaf. It was an image of Alexandria: her roads, her temples, the palaces that spread like the feathery wings of a heron across the Lochias Promontory. Charmion had taught me to pay attention to even the smallest details, and I had captured the sea foam as it broke against the Lighthouse, and the still faces of the marble caryatids that lined the Canopic Way.

Alexander snatched the parchment from my hand and returned with it to the sunny courtyard. Agrippa saw it first, then Juba, and by
the time it made its way to Octavian, all three men had fallen silent. Octavian pushed back his wide straw hat to see it better.

“Your sister drew this?”

“When she was nine, from the Temple of Serapis.”

Octavian ran his finger over the drawing, and I didn’t need to lean over his shoulder to know what he was seeing. His eyes would be drawn first to the Lighthouse, whose four corners were crowned by bronze images of the sea god Poseidon. Then he would see the great statue of Helios, copied from the colossal masterpiece in Rhodes and straddling the Heptastadion. From there he would see the Museion, the towering obelisks taken from Aswan, the theater, the public gardens, and the dozens of temples dedicated to our gods.

“Your sister has great talent. May I keep this?”

From the cabin, I gave a little gasp. “No!”

The men turned, and Alexander said quickly, “She’s talking to Ptolemy. Of course you may keep this.”

I pressed my nails into my palms, a nervous habit I had picked up from Charmion, and Ptolemy asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Our brother is giving away my things.”

His little features were bunched up in confusion. “But we already gave away all of our things from the palace.”

“No,” I replied, barely containing my rage. “They were
taken
. And now Octavian wants this as well.”

When Alexander returned, I couldn’t bear to look at him.

“What’s the matter with you?” my brother whispered harshly, pushing back the hair that escaped from his diadem. “We’re not in Alexandria anymore.”

“No, because the man you are giving gifts to murdered our family!”

“Do you think if our father had won he would have kept anyone alive? Even Octavian’s heirs?”

“He has no heirs! Just a girl.”

“Then if he did?”

“So we’re alive! For now. And only because Octavian doesn’t want to parade three stinking corpses through the streets of Rome. Wait until the Triumph is over,” I warned. “Antyllus was murdered at the feet of Caesar’s statue, and Caesarion was beheaded. What do you think will happen to us?”

“Exactly what he said. We will be given away in marriage.”

“And how is that better than death? To marry a Roman?”

“Our father was Roman.”

“Perhaps by blood, but in every way that counted he was Greek. The way he dressed, the gods he worshipped, the way he spoke—”

“Not on the battlefield.”

I looked up, and Alexander’s light brown eyes were blazing.

“You didn’t see him in the stadiums,” he said, “preparing for battle or racing chariots. All he ever spoke was Latin.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie? Our father was a Roman, even if he never put on a toga.” When I didn’t say anything, Alexander shook his head. “You are very stubborn.”

“And you are very trusting,” I said accusingly.

“Why shouldn’t I trust? We have no other choice!”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Ptolemy cried. He put his hands on his ears and screeched, “Stop fighting!”

Octavian had gone back to his work, but Juba looked up from his couch.

“You see what you’ve done?” Alexander said to me, casting a look over his shoulder. “Agrippa warned us to be silent.”

“Ptolemy, we aren’t fighting,” I said comfortingly. But he had put his head down on my pillow, and I could see that his pale skin was flushed. I placed the back of my hand on his cheek. “Alexander, he’s hot.”

My brother crossed the cabin to feel Ptolemy’s brow. “He probably needs sleep.”

But even though Ptolemy slept for much of the next few days, his cheeks remained flushed. Alexander and I devised quiet games to play with him, even while he lay on the pillows of his bed, but by the third day, he was too tired even to play.

“There’s something the matter with him,” I said. “It isn’t normal.”

“It’s just a fever,” Alexander replied. “We had it in Thebes. It’ll break with enough water and rest.”

So we brought Ptolemy fresh juices and fruit. And while he lay, I sketched my mother’s
thalamegos
. Alexander read from my mother’s library, scrolls she had chosen for the ship herself. But it hurt me too much to read them, and whenever he brought them back to our cabin I turned away so I wouldn’t have to smell the faint scent of her jasmine on the papyrus.

On our fifth morning at sea, Alexander lowered a scroll onto his lap. “Who do you miss the most?” he asked quietly.

I glanced at Ptolemy, to make sure he was still sleeping. “Charmion,” I admitted. “And Mother.”

My brother nodded.

“And you?”

“Petubastes,” he replied, and I could see that he was struggling to hold back his tears as he recalled the young priest of Ptah who had been our Egyptian tutor in the Museion. “And Father, of course. Have you seen all the statues they took from Alexandria? Octavian has them in the library, and there’s one of Petubastes. Juba is labeling each one for sale.”

“And what does Juba know about Egyptian history?” I demanded.

“He’s a writer.” I didn’t know where Alexander came by this information, but he seemed certain of it. “He’s already written three books on history.”

“At eighteen?” I challenged.

“Nineteen.”

“So he’s a writer as well as a spy.” I despised the Prince of Numidia, who had turned his back on his ancestry to become close to Octavian. But that afternoon, when I had run out of subjects to draw, my curiosity overcame my dislike. I had intended to keep away from my mother’s library, but I wanted to see what had been taken from Egypt.

When I arrived, the doors of the library were already thrown open, and light streamed from the windows onto the rich panels. Hundreds of statues and stolen shrines were pressed against the walls. But aside from marble faces, the room was empty. I stepped inside, then heard the swift footsteps of someone rushing to hide.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, and a man appeared at my mother’s wooden desk. I could see from his unmarked tunic that he was a sailor, and he was holding a statuette of Isis in his hands.

“Well, good morning.” He took several steps toward me and smiled. “The men were right. You are a pretty girl.”

Immediately, I turned to run. Then a streak of metal flashed in the doorway and someone’s arm lashed out. A heavy blade struck deep into the panels where the sailor was standing, and at once the man dropped the statuette. I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe.

“I hope you are going to return that,” Juba said.

The man bent to collect the statuette, but as he replaced it on the table, his trembling hands knocked it over and broke a tiny arm. When he rushed to leave, Juba caught him by the neck.

“You will never touch anything that belongs to Caesar.” The man did his best to choke out a response, but Juba tightened his grip. “The next time, I will aim for your throat,” he promised. He shoved the man away, then turned his black gaze on me. “What are you doing here?”

“A scroll,” I lied swiftly. “I—I just wanted something to read.”

“So find it,” he said angrily, and made his way to the desk. He picked up the broken arm of the goddess and held it up to the light before discarding it into an empty amphora.

“No! Don’t throw it away.”

He looked up, and I could see that he did not wish to be disturbed.

“That’s a very old statue,” I told him.

“Well, thank you, Princess. Unfortunately, not many Romans are interested in purchasing broken statues of Egyptian goddesses. But since you’re so interested in art, why don’t you tell me which pieces you believe to be the most important?”

I had seen Juba in his fury, and did not wish to make “him” any angrier, so I pointed to a statue, and he raised his brows.

“Tuthmoses I?” Juba asked.

I was impressed that he could identify a Pharaoh whose reign had been more than a thousand years earlier. “How did you know?”

“I can read hieroglyphics,” he said curtly. “What else?”

I pointed to the bronze bust of Dionysus, and suddenly tears were welling in my eyes. I tried to blink them away before Juba could see.

“You can weep, but it won’t bring them back,” he said cruelly. “Kingdoms rise and fall on whims of the gods.”

“Isis has never turned her back on Egypt! She will bring me home.”

Juba’s voice grew threatening. “I would be very careful where I said that, Princess.”

But I raised my chin, determined not to be afraid. “I know about you. Julius Caesar killed your own mother and brother. But
I’ll
never bow to Rome.”