Song Of The Nile Part 18

"Yes, Majesty," the gem cutter said, bowing. "But I'm surprised that you do. You were only a little child."

Sudden emotion made my voice thick. "I forget nothing."

Poor Petubastes. What had he done but breathe air with a claim to the throne of Egypt? I never knew how he died, but now I wondered if the emperor had ever intended to leave any male claimant to the throne of Egypt alive. When Augustus fished Philadelphus out of the lake, my grat.i.tude made me forget how deadly he could be. Is that why I'd suspected only Livia of poisoning my brother? Why had it never occurred to me that the emperor would prevent my mother's son from taking the toga virilis and becoming a man? As this thought occurred to me, the raucous bray of trumpets punctuated some commotion outside the palace. I was so conditioned to the unhappiness of Rome that I asked, "Is there a riot?"

"It's the king's caravan," a breathless Tala answered. "King Juba has returned!"

Twenty-four.

WAGONS rolled into the city carrying caged exotic animals. Others were piled high with ivory tusks, minerals, and lumber. Most of the men rode camels, but a team of wild-looking horses galloped at the back of the royal procession and I didn't see what happened to them after they rode by. A fancifully embroidered palanquin was lowered to the ground by its bearers, and when the curtains parted, a lovely woman stepped out. She was dressed exquisitely in the Greek fas.h.i.+on, her dark hair curled in l.u.s.trous ringlets and her shoulders draped with a patterned shawl. "Good greetings, Majesty," she said, with a grace at once natural and practiced. "I am-"

"I know who you are." I gave a false smile that could have rivaled Livia's. It wouldn't do to let my husband's wh.o.r.e think that I resented her. For that matter, it wouldn't strengthen my hand with the royal court if I seemed threatened, so I extended my hands. "We welcome you most gladly, Lady Circe. Where is the king?"

She almost faltered but recovered quickly enough, lowering to kiss my fingertips. "King Juba has gone hunting for hippopotami."

It surprised me to learn that there were hippopotami in Mauretania. I knew them to be dangerous creatures and would have warned Juba against hunting them, but I doubted he'd welcome my counsel in any matter. "Come into the palace, Lady Circe. The sun grows too hot for your fair skin."

She gave the impression of delicacy, but I was cautious; I knew that creatures weren't always what they seemed. Once inside, the hetaera delivered a few messages from Juba-hastily scribbled instructions to his advisers, reminders to do this or that. Several sealed letters addressed to old friends in Rome also featured Juba's florid script. None were addressed to me. If my husband was even aware that I'd returned from Rome, there was nothing to indicate it. He'd filled scroll after scroll with details about our new kingdom. There were maps too, all of them meant to be sent on to Agrippa, who collected such things. I immediately set about having these copied so that we'd have the originals for our own library when it was built.

When all this was sorted out, I found myself alone in the receiving room with Lady Circe. Quite suddenly, she sputtered with tinkling laughter. "Juba says you're a temptress who guards her chast.i.ty at knifepoint. I thought you'd be a pitiless Artemis, but you're just a tall, gangly girl!"

It was brazen of her to speak this way to me; I nearly slapped her. "And you're just King Herod's spy."

Circe gave a little shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Herod said that he'd pay me as long as I pleased King Juba. Now that your husband has sent me away, I'm without a contract."

So, Juba had sent her away. Why was I glad to hear it? With Juba, I never understood myself. "I'm sure there are other wealthy clients for you. Especially in the East. Far away from here."

Circe smirked. "The wealthiest is currently amusing himself with Terentilla. Is the wife of Maecenas as pretty as they say? Do you think I could compete with her for the emperor's attention?"

Greek hetaeras were more than simple prost.i.tutes. As educated women of high status, they were allowed access to the most powerful men. It didn't surprise me that she knew about the emperor's affair with Terentilla. I said only, "You aim high."

"So do you," she said, and this did surprise me. I wondered how much she really knew. Did she receive her information from Herod? If so, how would he know anything about me? Then I remembered his sons, Alexander and Aristobulus. Livia had favored them and they were still in Rome even now.

Circe took one of the incense burners from my table and sniffed at it. "I think we could learn much from one another."

"I'm a royal queen. There's nothing for me to learn from a prost.i.tute who befriends King Herod."

At that, her mask of unaffected glamour fell away. "I'm no friend to King Herod. I hate Herod. He's mad and I don't want to return to his service. I'd rather stay here in Iol-Caesaria."

I was shocked at her nerve. "So that you can reconcile with King Juba when he returns?"

She laughed. "Your husband is an agreeable lover, but like all men, he likes a challenge. Unfortunately, there's little challenge for him in a woman whose companions.h.i.+p can be purchased."

I was astonished at her candor, if it was candor and not some ruse. "If not for Juba, why would you want to stay in Mauretania? Go home to Greece."

"I've reached the level of wealth and prominence to which the greatest hetaeras aspire but also the age at which we must compensate for fading beauty. There's a fortune to be made here in Mauretania."

"I think you mistake me," I said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the incense dish from her hands. "I won't suffer a spy. The moment I catch you corresponding with Herod, I'll have you put to death. Don't think I can't do it. Even if my husband returns to defend you, I'll make sure some tragic accident befalls you."

She looked into my eyes as if measuring me, but I'd been measured before. There was a catch in her breath, and then I heard her swallow. "Majesty, I vow never to correspond with King Herod and to make myself useful if you'll only allow me to stay."

I wanted her gone, but how would it look if I banished all Juba's favorites? Besides, I'd learned from the tension between Augustus and Agrippa that it wasn't always better to have your detractors in some remote part of the world, outside of your reach. At least here in Mauretania, I held power over the hetaera. "You may stay, but you will be watched."

FOR weeks I'd dreaded the angry letter from Augustus that I'd thought inevitable. I had run from him. He'd be furious. But I should have remembered that Augustus burned cold. Now I worried at his silence. I sent grain, emptying our warehouses and filling the hulls of s.h.i.+ps bound for Rome, but still he said nothing. Perhaps he knew-as I knew-that famine still lingered, and if we didn't have spectacular rains, our next harvest would be a disaster. Adding to my worries, Lucius Cornelius Balbus sold me all of his holdings in Mauretania and accepted a military appointment in the province of Africa Nova. I feared that I'd been prideful and mistaken to make him leave. Thankfully, the exorbitant profit he'd made in our exchange seemed to have sweetened his disposition considerably, and he gave me lengthy advice on how best to profit from his plantations. Still, the king would likely be livid that I'd driven away his most able soldier . . . if Juba ever returned, that is.

As for the Greek hetaera, Memnon reported back to me on all her doings. She didn't take a new client, but I couldn't count that against her. As the king's acknowledged mistress, there was no other man in Mauretania willing to claim her. Besides, she seemed like a vain woman, unlikely to accept less than a king for a lover now. Instead, she made a business of teaching Greek and earned a reputation as a talented grammarian. She was charming, made friends easily with the Alexandrians, and I found myself studying her. She wasn't the beauty I originally supposed, but skillful cosmetics enhanced her best features. She carried herself as if she were a great beauty, and the act made people believe. She'd said that we could learn from one another, and I began to suspect that was true.

Meanwhile, in Juba's absence, it became easy to believe that Mauretania was my kingdom alone. Juba's Roman advisers treated me with a new deference. Work on the amphitheater ceased. Work on a theater commenced and I put Maysar in charge of the project even though the Berber chieftain protested that he wasn't a builder. To convince him, I said, "You're the only one I can trust to take into account the concerns of my subjects and not simply knock everything down in Roman fas.h.i.+on."

He gave a wolfish grin at my praise. "This will be costly. I'll need the help of someone with a keen sense of finance. Perhaps you can lend me the services of your freedwoman, Cleopatra Antonia.n.u.s."

"Chryssa?" Perhaps a swarthy desert warrior like Maysar was incapable of embarra.s.sment. He showed me a flash of teeth and I realized that he fancied her! First Julia and Iullus. Then Tala and her s.h.i.+p's captain. Now Chryssa and the widowed Berber chieftain. It seemed as if all my intimates were involved in amorous affairs whereas I . . . Oh, yes. I was pitiless Artemis, guarding her chast.i.ty at knifepoint. It wasn't the worst thing that could be said of me. My mother's reputation for promiscuity had been her undoing. Perhaps I'd do well to follow the example of Artemis and surround myself with loyal maidens, forgetting men altogether.

BY summer, my daughter was talking in complete sentences. Not just incoherent baby babble but real expressions of wants and needs. Tala taught her some Berber words too. She'd become the delight of my life and the adored princess of my court. Beekeepers gifted her with honeycombs. Cooks gave her pastries hot from the kitchens. Dairy maids let her sip the cream from their buckets. I indulged her in everything.

Though the Berbers didn't count the years of their birth and seemed to have some superst.i.tion against doing so, on the occasion of Isidora's second birthday, I hosted athletic games in her honor. Memnon wasn't in his prime anymore, but the captain of my Macedonian guard was still strong, and his tolerance for pain allowed him to prevail over a younger opponent in the wrestling event. With his sinewy muscles oiled and gleaming in the sun, Memnon beamed with pride when I awarded him the victor's wreath. And I thought to myself, He must have looked at my mother this way. He sees in me a true Ptolemaic queen and I must never disappoint him.

I hosted games for the Berbers too-contests for the finest woven textiles, compet.i.tions for the best-looking camel, and equestrian events in which they proved their superb horsemans.h.i.+p. The winning stallion might have been sacrificed if this were Rome, for their October Horse was always given to the G.o.ds, but my daughter's birthday games were bloodless. Greeks, Romans, Alexandrians, and Berbers had all competed and now shared fond memories. I took it as proof that we had no need of gladiator games!

After the final wreath was awarded to the last winner, I saw to it that trays of saffron-sprinkled cakes were adorned with edible blossoms from the garden. I hired a group of minstrels to make music and invited the young children of all my courtiers to spend that summer day at play. While the children splashed in the shallow palace pools, I sipped at watered wine that had been chilled with snow from the Atlas Mountains. My ladies and I lounged beneath an enormous canopy of ostrich feathers to protect us from the summer sun. It was hot. Too hot. Summer scorched the land, and if the rains did not come early this year, we'd have famine even in Mauretania. This weighed on my mind as I read a missive from Julia: To My Friend, the Most Royal Queen of Mauretania, Even though you are a wretched friend to leave me without so much as a good-bye, I hope this letter finds you well. I suppose you abandoned Rome just in time, because the city is a nest of vipers all hissing and striking at one another. Some blame everything upon my father, who they still say means to do away with the Republic. Others say that it's because we've offended Isis. Since you're so well loved in Rome, the Isiacs are emboldened. They demand that their temples be restored and claim that it's the evil of slavery that has turned the city into a mob of idlers on the dole. They risk much in light of my father's hostility. He won't hear their grievances-as if Isis had herself personally offended him. Or perhaps you have.

Your sudden departure from Rome seems to have vexed him even more than it has vexed me. The Antonias and I have faithfully performed the rites for Philadelphus that you taught us, but none of us can pretend to understand why you'd run off in the middle of the night. I can only surmise that Livia must have said or done something to make you go. With Octavia broken by grief, Livia has all the power again, but if only you'd waited, you could've enjoyed Rome without her. When my father refused the consuls.h.i.+p, he left the city. He's gone east-to reconcile with Agrippa, I think-and has decided to winter on the Isle of Samos in Greece. Livia went with him. Tiberius too. Also, Maecenas and his wife. Their departure makes Rome a less disagreeable place for me, but I worry that I've been left behind yet again. How is it my father is master of an empire and I've never been farther away from Rome than the Isle of Capri?

Marcellus and I used to talk of how we'd travel, but now Octavia would have me mourn the rest of my life. Even so, I'd prefer it to marrying Tiberius. How grimly he climbs the ladder to power just for his mother's approval. He hasn't yet realized that no one can ever please Livia. Not truly.

Julia's letter went on to detail her exploits with Ovid and the other young aristocrats of her social circle, but she never mentioned Iullus-not even to rea.s.sure me that my half brother was still alive and well-which is how I knew that their love affair continued. Julia gave the impression of being careless, but what she cared about most, she guarded.

I looked up to hear Isidora cry with gladness, clapping her hands when presented with a basket of mewling kittens. "Baby Basts!" My daughter laughed the way Philadelphus had laughed, with unreserved joy. In my rooms, at the bottom of an iron-banded strongbox, his amulet rested beneath my other treasures and I remembered how he'd wanted her to have it. Perhaps, someday . . .

Setting Julia's letter aside, I turned to Juba's writings with surprising enthusiasm. My husband appeared to be making a complete accounting of this part of the world. His words brought a new landscape to life for me. He claimed to have found the source of the Nile; he said it flowed underground for several miles in the desert before reappearing again. I devoured every detail as he described finding the flora and fauna of Egypt here in Mauretania. This was as much a surprise to me as my own delight in Juba's prose. Every time I thought I understood the man, I discovered a new side of him. In person, he could be bloodless. Pedantic. Suffocating and frustrating and lacking all vision. But his writing voice was somehow more pa.s.sionate than the one I heard when he spoke. And when I finished reading the last scroll, I longed for more.

When I looked up, my daughter was covered in kittens, squirming things that snuffled under her chin and made her giggle. As if to express her regal indifference to these interloping youngsters, Bast curled up by my feet, tucking her paws under and purring. I wondered, fleetingly, traitorously, what it might be like to give up all my other ambitions and embrace moments like these.

Chryssa ducked under the ostrich feathers to join me. "That's a strange smile you wear, Majesty. I think it's happiness. It becomes you."

Happiness. A word that all but forced the lips into a delighted shape to speak aloud. It spoke of pleasures, of blissful decadence, both of which were easily found in Mauretania. No sooner had I taken the word into myself and considered it, than guilt consumed me. By what right had I survived to feel such a thing? What would my mother, my father, and all my dead brothers think of me relaxing here in the sun while they languished in the shadows of the underworld ? "It can't be right to enjoy happiness when so many suffer."

Chryssa's smile fell away. "Majesty, happiness and sorrow change partners in the dance of life. On the same day you've wept with loss, someone else has wept with joy. It can't be wrong to feel gladness. Isn't it a gift of Isis?"

I eyed her suspiciously. "You sound like a philosopher. Have you been attending Lady Lasthenia's lectures?"

"Bah, the wealth of this life is lost on the Pythagoreans. There has been much on my mind, though . . . The Berber chieftain desires to wed." My eyes must have flown wide because she hurried to say, "It's the custom of his people to ask the bride's family, so he might ask you. I won't consider his suit unless he learns Greek and unless you give your blessing, of course."

"You're a free woman, Chryssa. You don't need my blessing, but you have it if you want it. I only ask you to consider how you'll feel if Maysar takes a second wife, or a third."

"Maysar swears he'll only have one," she said, pressing her lips together. "He says that while some of the tribesmen treat their women badly, his own reveres women. Do you think he can be trusted?"

I wasn't optimistic when it came to the trustworthiness of men. "I suppose a good test is whether or not he learns Greek."

"He's taking lessons from Juba's pretty hetaera. We'll see if Circe turns his head as well as trains his tongue to a civilized language." She threw her feet up onto the pillows. "If he disappoints me, well, there's always the future, for it's said you'll bring about a Golden Age."

"Is that what you believe?" I asked, watching a lizard sun itself beneath a potted citron tree. "That I can make everyone happy and end all suffering with a wave of my hand?"

"I used to believe it, but even Isis couldn't deliver her son, Horus, into a world of complete happiness. The dark G.o.d Set was always there, lurking. If Isis cannot do it, how can you?"

I arched a brow. "Should I be pleased or disappointed that I've somehow broken your faith in me?"

"Oh, I still believe in you and the Golden Age. It's too important an idea. Everyone believes in it. The Easterners, the Asiatics, the Jews, and even the Romans pine for a time that's more just, more peaceful, and more enlightened."

That's because everyone is looking for a savior, I thought. Some extraordinary person who will rescue them from all their cares. "No one person can be all things to all people."

"That's why the idea of twins is compelling," Chryssa said. "It isn't just one extraordinary person. It's the idea of a partners.h.i.+p. Symbolic for the notion that a Golden Age can only be attained by combined effort."

There was something vitally important in what Chryssa had said, but I was distracted by my child, who squealed when Euphronius showed her the trinkets in his magician's box. Alabaster lamps and magic wands and little bowls for mixing potions. She was enraptured by all of it, a pampered princess who knew only the delights of the world, and while it could never be that way for me, I wanted it to always be that way for her. I marveled at the way sunlight made her hair a golden halo and couldn't help but see Helios in her profile. My ache for him was only made worse every time I thought of him battling in the sands of Egypt, making war at the side of a mysterious queen. I imagined the Kandake as an ebony beauty with gleaming skin and a long neck that bent gracefully when Helios stooped to kiss her ear. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image, for it wounded me. It wasn't only a stab of jealousy but some deeper despair.

When my mother was my age, she'd only just met Caesar. Her love for him would be the beginning of her journey as a lover, not the end. My romantic future, by contrast, seemed bleak. Even if I could find it within myself to have feelings for Juba, he seemed to have abandoned our false marriage at long last.

That night, music awakened me, the soft strum of lute strings, the mournful longing of the double-reed pipe serenading me. I'd heard this song before, this Song of the Nile, and knew Egypt was calling me. Half asleep I sighed at the soft breath upon the nape of my neck. Strong wet hands caressing my shoulders, thumbs tracing down my spine. It was the G.o.d, come to me again, and need flowed hot through my body. I tasted the silted water of the Nile as it kissed my lips. And with damp bed linens clenched between my knees, I wanted . . . I wanted . . .

But I was alone. Rising from my bed, I went to the terrace where the full moon lit the sky and glinted silver off the sea. The roar of the ocean, waves folding over waves, didn't drown the music out. At my throat, my frog amulet seemed to vibrate with heka, as if it had leeched from my body. I am the Resurrection, the engraved stone said, and I ran my fingers over the etching as if to remind myself. Was I meant to be the resurrection of my mother's spirit or was I meant to resurrect the G.o.ddess in a hostile Roman world? By dawn, having dressed and wandered into my gardens on the far side of the palace, I realized that the melody echoed from the sunlit mountains of the Atlas to the south. And why not? If Juba was right, then that was the source of the Nile, the sacred river.

I couldn't go to Egypt. I couldn't fight with Helios. But perhaps I could go to Osiris; I must find the source of the Nile.

Twenty-five.

IVORY wands from Egypt adorned my wizard's lair, but new instruments found their place here too. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the walls, mortars and pestles littered a workbench, and baskets spilled forth green plants of every variety. Like me, Euphronius had learned to keep himself busy in exile, but when I told him my plans he forgot about all else. "Majesty, no one knows the source of the Nile. It's a question that has plagued geographers for centuries. Your husband the king is an eager theorist; you ought not take everything he says as fact!"

I was nearly eighteen years old now and disliked it immensely when people lectured me. "What am I to make of you, old man? You always caution me not to forget Egypt. Now I want to journey to the highlands of Mauretania to find the very source of Egypt's Nile and you discourage me."

He furrowed his bushy white eyebrows. "I'm only concerned at the way you busy yourself. Since your return from Rome, you sleep very little and you eat even less. Except for Isidora's birthday, I don't think I've seen you take your leisure for a moment."

"I feel too guilty to eat much," I confessed. "There wasn't enough food in Rome. I saw people starving. We must have early rains here in Mauretania to prepare the soil for the winter sowing if we're to have more grain in the next harvest."

And I must have grain. What Augustus needed from me-what he had always needed from me-was grain. If Helios should fail in Egypt, grain would be my last political leverage. "Euphronius, when I was a little girl, my mother brought me to the Isle of Philae, where she gave herself to the Nile. It was the first time I watched her work heka. The first time I ever knew that there were things queens could do that kings couldn't. The Nile rose. The crops were bountiful. Now she's gone and famine stalks the lands. She gave me this amulet and said that I was the Resurrection. Why can't I make the land fertile the way she did?"

"Majesty, as Queen of Egypt, you'd have already made that journey down the Nile. Should I live long enough to see you on your rightful throne, I predict the most bountiful harvest that Egypt has ever known."

But that wouldn't come soon enough. "You taught us that Isis is a G.o.ddess of a thousand names," I argued. "I found Isis in the temple of Carthaginian Tanit. Crinagoras compares her to Kore. Are we to believe that her story is only an Egyptian story? That the great G.o.d who is her lover can find her only in Egypt? The Nile sings to me, as Osiris sings to Isis. I must go to him."

Even after I'd convinced the mage, my plans met with almost universal opposition. The Berbers argued that in my absence Juba's Roman advisers would wrest away control of the country. The Romans didn't want me to go either. Without Balbus, no clear leader stood out amongst them. They disliked taking orders from a female monarch, but there was something in the Roman psyche that preferred order above all else and my presence provided a rea.s.suring hierarchy. They feared that my journey would plunge the government into chaos. I a.s.sured them that given the new roads and an accompaniment of soldiers, I'd be gone no more than a few weeks. A month at most.

I had no idea how arduous the journey was going to be.

Camels travel swiftly over great distances without food or water, but that doesn't mean that their riders don't fatigue. The scorching sun forced us to slow our pace and there were days, thirsty and dispirited, the stink of camel in my nostrils, that I considered turning back. Yet the parched land still called to me.

I'll never be able to capture the beauty of that journey the way Crinagoras did in the poems he later read at court; I am, nonetheless, compelled to try. As our expedition rode southwest, expanses of s.h.i.+mmering fields gave way to the vast steppes upon which the Berber tribes grazed their animals. I gasped with delight when our camels carried us past a family of African wildcats playing in the brittle gra.s.ses and thought how Isidora would have clapped her little hands to see them. Many days later, ascending from the steppes into the cedar-forested mountains where wild boars rustled in the green foliage, we looked down upon a rippling sea of sand. I knew the stark desert and its deadly beauty. Still, the cold mountains seemed even more intimidating.

Crinagoras had always indulged me with flattering verse, but I knew he took me for an eccentric queen and this trip a bizarre divergence. Swatting a fly that plagued him, he called to me, "We're on a fool's errand, Majesty. My hands are almost as blistered as yours and you'd cry if you could see how the sun has ruined your skin." Then he leaned forward on his mount. "Besides, I think you're killing your mage."

At the sight of Euphronius slumped on his camel, huddled beneath his white robes as if in a trance, I wondered what price we all might pay for my folly. I pressed my chapped lips together, considering a retreat. But no sooner had my confidence wavered than a lone jackal appeared atop a rock outcropping. Anubis, I thought, as the jackal howled, and my resolve was renewed.

We didn't climb to the snowy summits but hugged the edges of the mountains where fruit-laden trees and freshwater oases offered respite. It seemed hardly possible that the source of the Nile was to be found so far from Egypt, but I followed Juba's maps and his exacting descriptions, relying upon my husband in absence as I'd never relied upon him when he was near.

The deeper into the wilds we traveled, the more familiar our surroundings became; I didn't even have to close my eyes to imagine myself in Egypt. When at last we reached the banks of a river, I spied a hippo spouting a mist of water from its gaping nostrils! At the marshy scent of the river, Euphronius came awake. "Egyptian lotus," he whispered, captivated by the floating water lilies.

"Look, Majesty, all the G.o.ds of Egypt have come to do you homage," Crinagoras teased, pointing at the far bank where a crocodile sunned himself, vicious jaws cracked in a toothy smile. "First Anubis, then Hapi, now Sobek too."

I ignored my poet's irreverence. "What do you think, Euphorbus? Can the great G.o.d be found here? Is this the source of the Nile?" I urged my camel to kneel, unwrapping the shawl from my shoulders as my guards helped me down. I needed only a steadying hand from Memnon, but Euphronius had to be lifted from his mount. I didn't like to see my mage so stiff and frail, as if his bones creaked when he moved, but his awed expression told me that his spirits had been lifted along with mine.

Holding his divination staff in one hand, and his rattle in the other, he stepped onto the low rocks on the sh.o.r.e and stooped to touch the water. His eyes were damp when he said, "Maybe it is the Nile . . ."

Inside my hastily erected tent, Chryssa undressed me and brushed my hair until it gleamed. "I never thought to prepare you for another wedding," she said. "But if Osiris is here, you must come to him as a bride, divine wife to divine husband."

Though she was Greek, she'd studied well under the priests and priestesses of Egypt. I closed my eyes, surrendering to her ministrations, listening to Euphronius chant prayers and hoping the river G.o.d awaited me. I'd come to him once as a lover in the arms of Helios, so I told myself that we weren't strangers. For a thousand years, queens of Egypt had met him on the Isle of Philae, where Isis first wept for her murdered husband. Where she brought him back to life with her magic, where he waited for his love. I couldn't go to him in Philae, where the warrior queen, the Kandake, now ruled. Was it foolish to think he'd come to me here?

I emerged from my tent accompanied by a chorus of frogs. Adorned in the pure white robe of an Isiac devotee, I carried a bouquet of wildflowers. My hair was loose about my shoulders and my amulet throbbed at my throat with a heartbeat of its own. I stepped into the shallows. Close behind me, Chryssa held my robe so that I slipped naked into the murky water without revealing myself to onlookers. The mud of the riverbed sucked at my feet and warm water caressed my skin. I remembered Helios as he'd been that night in the storm, when the G.o.d had first taken me. Now I felt certain he'd been waiting, pining for me all along. "I'm the queen of this land," I said quietly. "I call upon you, Lord of the Rebirth, to bring us water for the crops. To bring us grain."

Memnon shouted in alarm as the crocodile on the far sh.o.r.e roused from its stupor and slid into the river with me. I wasn't afraid. Isis was in me; I had nothing to fear from crocodiles. Already, the green waves were lapping at my consciousness, drawing me into the marshy reeds of a waking dream where life teemed. And I realized that I'd seen this all before. The moment my mother put my amulet around my neck, I'd seen myself surrender to the river. Not in Egypt. Here.

It had always been here.

"She is the Resurrection," Euphronius chanted. "She brings life from death. She gives to her kingdom an heir, she gives to her people their daily sustenance, and she gives Isis an embodiment on earth for Osiris to love."

Closing my eyes, I drew the heka inside me, releasing it like a kiss. The wind was soft at my neck and I flushed hot all over. My nipples tightened and I felt the river swell for me. The G.o.d had come! The sweet rush of heat between my legs made me moan, a rapturous sound so foreign that I knew it belonged to the G.o.ddess. Not to me. My skin expanded to accommodate Isis. She smiled a seductive smile with my mouth. She opened her legs to the water and my thighs trembled. She panted, beckoning her paramour, and through her, I learned how it was that a woman might tease a man and make him want her.

With heka swirling warm in my womb, I opened like the petals of a flower. I hadn't known before that I could use magic upon my own body, to make myself ready for a child. Tentatively, I pulled at the heka inside me so that my womb closed again, then allowed all the wonderful sensations to come rus.h.i.+ng back. With a wild toss of my head, I laughed. All my life, my body had been at the mercy of others. The flesh of my arms had been a canvas for my G.o.ddess to paint with blood. My b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the tender flesh between my legs had been in the emperor's possession, to give away to Juba or plunder for himself. Mastery over myself, over my body, over my fertility itself, was a triumphant thrill.

"Now," Euphronius said, somewhere in the distance. "Work your magic now! "

Controlling heka the way he'd taught me, I found the core, the hopes and fears and dreams, and I let it flow out of my fingertips into the river. I let it go. Sweet release! I saw the frog and the minnows, the life-giving silt settling onto the fields beyond and everywhere I turned in the water, the birds flocked and water lilies blossomed. I traced lazy circles into the river, bringing fish leaping to the surface. I pa.s.sed dried brown foliage as I made my way to sh.o.r.e, and it sprouted green with life again. I gazed upon the washed-up carca.s.s of a viper and it arose, swollen and s.h.i.+mmering like the phallus of a lover. My mother had surrendered to his venomous love bite, but I wasn't ready to pa.s.s into the afterlife.

I rose up, gloriously naked, glistening rivulets of river water flowing over my bare belly, hips, and thighs. With the flush of divine lovemaking on my body, I knew that I radiated beauty. I was beautiful at last. Filled with promise. An overflowing cornucopia.