Song Of The Nile Part 28

"You don't belong to Octavian either. You owe him nothing more."

How like Helios to know what no one else did. That in spite of my hatred for the emperor, I'd always felt grateful for his mercy. In his debt. When he made me a queen, I felt that was part of his largesse too. When he told me that he had every right to take my body-that it was no more than he had paid for, hadn't some part of me believed it? "If I have his son, Helios, he'll belong to me."

"This conversation isn't done," he said, but dawn, accursed dawn, was here, and I had to let him go.

NOT since old King Aegeus saw the black sails of his son Theseus's s.h.i.+ps and threw himself into the sea has anyone reacted to the sight of sails with such despair as I did now. The vision of the emperor's flags.h.i.+p, emblazoned in red and gold, made my hands tighten on the terrace rail for balance. The whole world had tilted, realigned itself, and put me at its middle.

I wouldn't have been the only one to have realized it. Out there, somewhere on that sea, with all the other merchant s.h.i.+ps, was Helios. Squinting into the sun, I surveyed the horizon for a glimpse of his s.h.i.+p, but in the bustle of the harbor only the Roman flotilla announced itself like the trumpet of a new G.o.d. Then the whole island erupted at once, word pa.s.sed from merchant to servant, from slave to master, from soldier to commander, "Augustus has returned! Make ready!"

I hurried back to my chambers to check my hair, my face, my jewelry. How had my mother rushed to greet her Romans? I wondered. Or had she tarried, waiting in the palace, forcing them to come to her . . . but this wasn't Egypt. This wasn't even Mauretania. The gown I chose was a bright saffron that set off my features dramatically. I opted for a bun at the nape of my neck, studded with pearls, and just over the white peak of my diadem, the front of my coiffure raised like the uraeus of Egypt. Finally, I grabbed up Isidora and was borne to the docks, where the gathering crowd chanted, "Triumphator! Io Triumphe!"

This was entirely inappropriate. Augustus hadn't defeated any new foe in battle. The Senate hadn't voted a Triumph for him, and this was certainly not its appointed day. Moreover, we weren't in Rome, and oh, the calamity my father had suffered when he dared to celebrate his victories in Egypt instead of Rome!

From between the parted curtains of my litter, I glimpsed Augustus on the deck of his s.h.i.+p. He was in his military cuira.s.s, one arm upraised in a pose that has now become famous in so many of his statues, all of which depict a more flattering, never-aging version of the man. He looks as satisfied as Apollo, I thought, giving Isidora's little hand a squeeze. Then we stepped out of the litter to greet him.

But he didn't come ash.o.r.e; his s.h.i.+p remained far out in the sparkling sea. A small group of his soldiers rowed in. Iullus was with them, and when my Roman half brother approached me, his prominent chin jutted proudly beneath his helmet as if he'd conquered Parthia himself. He snapped his feet together and executed a curt bow. "Queen Cleopatra Selene, Augustus requires your presence aboard his flags.h.i.+p."

A trill of fear echoed in my ears. "For what purpose?"

"I didn't question him, Majesty," he said, offering his arm with great formality.

Myriad possibilities swarmed my mind, stinging flies all. The emperor would have some dramatic gesture planned. He might make me Queen of Egypt here and now. It had all been settled aboard s.h.i.+ps at Actium, so perhaps it was only right to do it this way. Why couldn't I be glad of it? Why should I dread the very thing I'd struggled all my life to reclaim? Why should I, on the brink of victory, turn away my prize? Perhaps it was some wary instinct that warned me of the emperor's treachery. Perhaps, just as he'd made an end to my father's forces in Actium, he would now make an end to me.

No. I could defend myself and Isidora with my magic. And even if I couldn't, some deeper part of me understood that he would never kill me. The emperor might torment me every day for the rest of my life, but he would want me alive.

I fixed my most gracious smile upon my face and allowed myself to be brought aboard the emperor's craft. He greeted us with all the correct and public decorum one might expect. He looked unchanged by battle, for there had been none. Still, I couldn't help but be affected by the stance he took, the hard, shrewd aura of command that surrounded him now. He drew me aside into the awning erected to protect him from the heat. "Queen Cleopatra Selene, I return to you triumphant. The whole world has surrendered to me."

I lowered my lashes. "As do my daughter and I, Caesar."

A degenerate expression of pleasure spread over his features such that I wished Isidora weren't staring up at him with her steady gaze. Augustus tilted his head back and made a sound not unlike carnal release, and for a moment I wondered if the force of his obsession shook the s.h.i.+p. The deck lurched beneath my feet, and I heard the commands below to the rowers.

"Why are we moving?" Isidora asked, ignoring the squeeze of my hand that should have silenced her.

Augustus smiled. "We're en route to Athens, my dear child. I stopped here only to retrieve you."

Seldom did I allow a gasp of surprise to escape my lips, but now I did as the s.h.i.+p steered for open water. Sweet Isis, where was Helios? Was it not bad enough that my twin may have watched me board the emperor's vessel? Must he now also watch me sail away without a word? I wondered if, like my father chased after my mother's s.h.i.+p at Actium, Helios would rush after me. I prayed that he didn't! I needed to get word to him. I needed to return to the Isle of Samos, just long enough to somehow leave a message. "Caesar, what of my clothing, my servants, my guards, my courtiers, and my s.h.i.+p?"

"They'll all follow," Augustus said, taking a seat upon his folding curule chair as if he intended to dispense judgment, or perhaps he now found it more comfortable than all other chairs. "And if they don't follow, what need have you for them? I can afford you with anything you desire . . ."

He was carrying me off! He'd tricked me into boarding this s.h.i.+p and now I was being born away as a captive again. "But surely we can go back, long enough for you to fetch Terentilla, and Virgil. He traveled all this way to greet you-"

"My poet can travel a little farther, to Athens. Come, Selene, let's play a game. Why would I take you to Athens?"

To make me miserable, I thought. To tear me away from Helios and my happy stolen nights. To ruin me. To again strip from me all that I have and drag me behind some chariot in chains! These fears weren't mature or reasoned but came from the desperate part of me I thought I'd cut away. "I don't know," I whispered.

"Yes, you do," the emperor said. "What begins in Athens?"

I made my heart match the slow and steady drumbeat of the rowers and commanded myself not to fly to the rail with my daughter and leap into the water to escape. Augustus looked at me expectantly, as if I should enjoy this game, as if my distress were a puzzle to him. What begins in Athens? Think. Think. Think! Athens was one of the oldest cities in the world, home of the Parthenon, of democracy . . . "The Panathenaic Games?"

How irritated my unsuccessful guess made him. "What else?"

"I don't . . . Forgive me, I'm so overcome with joy at your return I can't think clearly."

He stood and offered me his hand. "Come." I took it, understanding that I must leave Isidora behind. I tried to tell her with my eyes that she must be very well behaved and wait right where I left her, and this helped to steady me as he led me into the dimly lit berth that was his own. I didn't know what he would do then. Rush upon me? Grab me in his bony little hands and trail his curiously cold kisses down my neck? Instead, he pulled back a draping and revealed the tattered battle standards of Roman legions.

I'd known that he recovered them; all the world knew. But somehow I hadn't expected him to keep them so near. And oh, Helios might condemn me for it, but I felt a certain reverence for these Roman symbols too. I went to my father's-I recognized their insignias. These sticks of his legions, the loss of which had been his descent, his end. These standards that had been borne by men who fought for him, who had died for him, and had known him at his best. There was something sacred in them and Augustus laid his hand upon the battle standards, wors.h.i.+pfully. "My enemies will put out that I'm a coward, that I resorted to trickery, but I've conquered Parthia without blood. Is it not a fine thing that I've done?"

"Yes," I admitted, surprised to hear the emotion in my voice. "It may be the finest thing you've ever done."

"Worthy even of you, my arrogant little Ptolemy?"

I didn't want to say it, not with my skin still tender from Helios's touch. It broke my heart to say it, but show me any woman who says she feels no compulsion to surrender to a man who has just prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and I'll show you a liar. "Worthy even of the Queen of Egypt."

"Ah," he said, moving behind me so that my shoulder blades came to rest upon the hard and unyielding surface of his breastplate. "That is what you want, still?"

"Always," I said with a lift of my chin. "At last, you're in a position to give it to me."

"And I shall." Three dizzying words. "Give me a son, Selene."

Lady Circe had known what I hadn't. What he'd done in Parthia, I could admire. The thought that perhaps he would become a more peaceful ruler was a hope I could reward and nurture. And though every moment I'd spent with Helios turned this into treachery, I reached for the clasp of my bright saffron gown. "No, don't take it off." Augustus stopped me, his hand closing upon mine. "I like this color on you. It's the color a Roman bride wears and I'd like for you to wear it the day we make our son."

My heart leapt to my throat. "Is that not today?"

He eyed me smugly. "You said that you'd give me an heir, not a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. So, first, I must take you as my bride . . ."

My throat seemed to swell shut. Though it had been my own suggestion, I'd never wanted to be his bride. I'd only thrown up that condition to delay his pa.s.sions and to ensure that he could not promise me Egypt and then go back on his word. To ensure that whatever censure and scandal touched me would touch him too, in equal measure. "How can I be a true wife to you?"

"Ah, my African queen, my sorceress and temptress . . . I'll take you in a ceremonial rite that will appease your vanity and your religious fervor too. I've made arrangements for us to go to Eleusis, where we'll be initiated."

What begins in Athens? The Eleusinian Mysteries. This was his grand dramatic gesture. "But it isn't the season-"

"They'll make it the season. As I've said, the whole world now surrenders to me. Even Demeter and Kore . . . That is what they call you now, don't they? The New Kore? Another name for your Isis. You warned me once that my name would fade to dust if I denied her. Well, in this ritual, I will acknowledge her. In her Greek guise, I will honor her before all the world. Isn't it appropriate that I take you as my own during this initiation?" It seemed as if sawdust had filled my mouth. When I could make no reply, he continued, "Back in Rome, I've ordered that they prepare for a great celebration of the Mother G.o.ddess. The Secular Games come about every hundred and ten years, so this too is out of season, but my astronomers have found a way to argue otherwise."

I didn't know if he'd done all this to please me or to help lift the curse that Isis had laid upon him, but these were well-calculated moves in every respect. I felt shamefully dispirited, as if I'd never wanted him to be true to his word, as if I'd never wanted to be Queen of Egypt. Had I secretly hoped to fail? To break faith with my dead family and turn away from the legacy that they'd fought and died for?

Augustus saw my hesitation and said, very simply, "Once my son is safely born, I intend to divorce Livia."

It was the last thing I expected; I choked on my reply. "You'll make an enemy of the Claudians!"

"They're nothing to me now," he said, with a note in his voice that alarmed me.

The Romans always claimed that the East changed their generals. That the luxury, the indulgences, the older practicalities, and the corruption and religion and complicated cultures all warped simpler Roman virtues, twisting men into something other than they were. Now I wondered if it were true. All the East might glory in a battle won without bloodshed, but how would the emperor's victory be perceived in Rome? "Y-you will cause great offense . . ."

"I don't care. I'm the one who should be offended. A Triumph was allowed for Lucius Cornelius Balbus though he fought with legions I gave him. These kinds of insults must be met with confidence." I actually feared for Balbus at that moment. For Balbus and Agrippa and Livia and all those who stood in the way of anything Augustus wanted for himself. "Your marriage to Juba must be annulled. I'll not let the world think I'm taking the leavings of a king. I'll have it known that you're mine. That you've always been only mine."

"Then you would make my daughter a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said, stomach roiling.

"As your father did to you. It hasn't hurt your prospects, has it? You stand poised to rule at my side."

Here it was then, the world glittering at my feet. To grasp it, all I had to do was abandon and betray everyone who had ever loved me. Were the emperor to divorce Livia and marry me, it would hurt nearly everyone . . . "You will turn Agrippa against us completely ."

"If he lives long enough," Augustus said. He meant to make Julia a widow for the second time. "And he's not my only ally. I'm told you like coins. Consider this one. A gift from Herod in contemplation of what comes next."

Digging into a small pouch on a table, he pulled out a coin and pressed it into my hand. A gift from Herod? I shuddered to think what I might see. Wetting my dry lips, I turned my palm and opened it. What I saw was a shocking surprise but not so pleasant as the one I'd experienced in seeing Juba's coin.

What must Nicholas of Damascus have reported to Herod to make him mint such a coin? This coin celebrated Kore. A veiled representation of the G.o.ddess with some of my features, for I was the New Kore. Herod had always scented the winds of political change and calibrated his moves to survive the oncoming storms. The Judean king who was my enemy had studiously avoided human imagery on his money until now, out of fear that his Jewish subjects would protest. Herod could say that it was meant only to commemorate his new city of Sebaste. That it was meant to glorify Augustus on the occasion of his impending initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. But for Herod to take such a risk as to honor me and my G.o.ddess, even in her Greek guise, he must have believed that it was in his interest to swallow his hatred and ally with me.

The very idea of such an alliance was repugnant. Apparently, I'd finally mastered all the lessons the emperor had to teach me. I'd turned my friends into enemies and my enemies into friends. Change your mind, Helios had said. Now I shook my head, trying to dislodge his words from my thoughts.

Augustus took the coin from my cold fingers. "You fear another civil war, Selene. But I say, let it come. For once, like my father, the divine Julius, I'll let the dice fly high!"

It was with the darkest, most treacherous satisfaction that I realized I was destroying him. As a girl, I'd sworn to become whatever I must become to fight the emperor. When he raped me, I vowed that I would make him rue the day. Now I could make good on those promises. He wanted to believe that having negotiated a settlement with Parthia, he could now do anything, but I knew better. By divorcing Livia and marrying me, he'd lose his allies. He'd open himself up to the very same charges the a.s.sa.s.sins made against Julius Caesar. And I, if I was willing to eschew my mantle of respectability, if I behaved high-handedly, demanding not just Egypt but Judea as well, and all the territories my mother had claimed, I could reignite the flames that brought down my father.

Laughing, I turned my eyes to the emperor with a sense of mad power. I had his life in my hands. Not just his life but his reputation. His legacy. His entire empire. I could ruin him . . . as long as I was willing to destroy myself in the process. So long as he was alive and obsessed with me, I could have anything from him. Even his downfall.

I could have my mother's kingdom and all her glory. Nay, more than that. I could have anything but my heart's desire. Of what consequence was it, then, that I loved another man or loathed this one? For so many years my khaibit held my ugliest thoughts, my deepest pain, kept them safely away from me. Now my khaibit flew free. It ruled me like an avenging specter and I said, "Let it all be done as you wish, Caesar."

Thirty-seven.

ATHENS, GREECE.

SUMMER 19 B. C .

THE first thing I saw in Athens was the first thing anyone sees-the Parthenon, that most perfect building, high above the city. There it was, that temple to the city's patron G.o.ddess, s.h.i.+ning white in the sun like an ethereal palace against the blue sky. "Is that Mount Olympus?" little Isidora asked, staring up at the fortified acropolis.

"Maybe it is," I admitted, more than a bit thunderstruck.

The city couldn't have greeted Zeus himself with more enthusiasm. Athens is very old, and very flat, so the claustrophobic aspect of a roaring crowd wasn't even alleviated by hills or high spots upon which the people could view our procession. Instead, the press of humanity mingled with the blare of trumpets, the cheers, and the flower petals that rained down before us. The ground itself trembled beneath marching feet and the roar of the chariot wheels. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the clasp of my golden manacles at my wrists, the tight collar at my throat pulling me forward. But this was no Triumph and I was no prisoner. My daughter wasn't chained to a wax effigy of me all covered in spit, enduring the venomous curses of her enemies. She was at my side, a celebrated little princess, and I blinked back tears. I could give her this. I could give her all this.

Or I could smash everything.

"You are the darling of the h.e.l.lenes," the emperor said, for no secret was made of the people's adoration. I was the last Ptolemaic queen, Cleopatra's daughter, the pride of Greece. And if they guessed that I had seduced the emperor away from his wife, what of it? They would be proud of my wit, of my ambition.

My courtiers followed me to Athens, and at night we stayed as the guests of a very rich government official. When the roosters crowed the morning, the priests of Athens shouted their invitation to join in the Mysteries. Ours was a great procession, not just the emperor and his secretaries and soldiers and attendants but a whole great horde of religious pilgrims, who seemed delighted to embark on this journey with such great personages. Anyone who spoke Greek could partic.i.p.ate in the rites-men, women, and even slaves. And so the proclamation was spread by the heralds calling all who were pure of soul, who'd lived a life of justice and righteousness, and did not have blood-guilt on their hands.

Augustus surely didn't fit this description, and neither did I, khaibit-ruled creature I'd become. Yet this pageant had been arranged for our convenience, so we prepared to go from Athens to the sacred spot in Eleusis where the G.o.ddess Demeter was said to have mourned for her daughter, Kore. Many of my courtiers, including Lady Lasthenia, had decided to be initiated with the rest. But whereas they all walked the fifteen miles from Athens to Eleusis, we rode in a carriage, the emperor and I. He sat in quiet contemplation beside me until at last, his whisper cut through the silence. "This is a new beginning for me. I shall be a different kind of ruler, Selene. A different sort of man."

"May the G.o.ddess will it," I said, closing my eyes. It was all a dream, yet I wasn't asleep. I floated somehow apart, observing on high, the performance of myself.

The next morning, we were awakened by a call to the sea. I left Isidora with Tala, and then with the rest of the initiates, the emperor and I dressed in plain garments. A rough-hewn tunic for him, no doubt woven by Livia. For me, a simple white chiton that fell to my ankles and fastened at my waist with a thin leather cord. We both carried piglets in our arms, animals meant for tribute to the temples. As my feet found purchase in the sand and the surf lifted my dress to my knees, I thought that once again I'd come to the G.o.ddess to be purified. But even with the emperor's gaze on me, I could never feel the water on my skin and not think of Helios.

I remembered how he first bathed me. The way his palms spanned the expanse of my hips, how his lips tasted like the sea. After, with squealing piglets running at our feet as we dried ourselves in the sun, we made ready to return to Athens. This travel between the two cities was to bring us closer to the travails of Demeter, who had walked the world to find her lost daughter. Closer to Isis, who had searched far and wide for her lost Osiris. That night was a night of fasting, and I curled round the hunger in my belly, embracing the emptiness.

On the fifth day, with saffron ribbons tied at our wrists, we pa.s.sed over the narrow bridge that would take us back to Eleusis, and jesters hurled insults to amuse the crowd. When it was dark, the women carried candles and danced while I prepared myself for the role of a temple prost.i.tute. You may think I use this phrase with derision or scorn, but all the stories of G.o.ddesses were now coming together in mine.

On the sixth day, when the stars came out, I was weak with hunger. Humbled. When I felt the grief of my G.o.ddess in my throat, when my own eyes were filled with tears for her, I thought, Isis must have a throne. I must restore her to Egypt . . . But somehow, my thoughts were of a new temple. A giant Iseum that I wished to build in Mauretania, with pools filled with Nile water and sacred crocodiles. My thoughts weren't of Egypt but Mauretania, and I cursed my guilty heart for it.

Late that night, we were sent scrambling through the dark, torches in hand, jostling against one another. As queen, I'd seldom felt the touch of commoners against me, but now I was carried along with the tumultuous flow of the crowd as the priests brought out the sacred kykeon. It was a mysterious mixture of meal and pennyroyal, but when a cup was poured for me I tasted something else that sent my mind swirling into a heka-infused abyss. For a moment, I sensed Helios here in the crowd and squinted my eyes for a flash of that golden hair.

The night was alive with shrieks and dancing, of celebration in the forest. Of life and death, and an awareness that there was life after death. I had always come to the G.o.ddess sober and clear-eyed, but that wasn't the tradition in Athens so I sipped again from my cup. The emperor drank deeply from his, swallowing it all at once, while the others cried out like maenads in a Bacchic frenzy. The light of the torches danced before my eyes, and the trees themselves loomed like the bony hands of Set reaching for me all the way from the desert.

A gong rang in the night and Augustus grabbed my wrists, crying, "Now!"

I shuddered, thinking that he meant to lay me down here on the earth, where the whole world might witness our joining. But as the emperor pulled me to the temple, I was dizzied and dropped my cup, its sacred fluid soaking the ground. "The hierophant invokes the G.o.ddess," the emperor said. "Tonight I shall take the place of the hierophant and you shall take the place of the high priestess. We'll join together in the anteroom of the temple for the sacred marriage."

Just then, I saw Caesarion in the crowd and gave a startled cry. I saw Philadelphus. Then my mother. My father too. And poor Antyllus, or was it Iullus? No. Antyllus, for here, we'd parted the veil between this life and the next. These were all my beloved dead. Isis was here, her magic was here, and now we could glimpse her as the queen of the underworld.

I confess that I don't recall how we came away from the crowd. I found myself in the stillness of the temple, adorned in flower garlands, my knees upon a glorious bed of silken sheets, piled high with cus.h.i.+ons, the scent of frankincense in the air. Above us was the statue of the G.o.ddess. Demeter. Kore. Tanit. Isis. All the same. I knew her, and it comforted me, for I'd made love in a temple before.

"I have something for you," Augustus said, laying a wooden chest beside us. Gracing the top of the box was a golden Ptolemy Eagle laid over a silver bolt of lightning. The box itself was studded with carnelian and a broken lock dangled from its fastening. "Open it."

Dizzied by the kykeon, it took me several tries to pull the latch and reveal the contents. There, upon a pillow of purple, was my mother's beaded diadem and gem-encrusted scepter glowing with golden magnificence. These were the insignias of her rule; she'd surrendered them to the emperor before she died in the hopes that he would spare her children and her kingdom.

"Queen of Egypt," Augustus said, reverently placing the crown upon my head. It was happening as Philadelphus had foreseen it. No rumbling mountain has ever quaked as I did in that moment. I couldn't speak, overcome by the enormity of it. My mouth went dry and I lost all possession of myself. I couldn't even hold the scepter when he placed it in my trembling hands. It fell to the bed, and when I stooped to retrieve it a keening sound escaped me. My mother's golden scepter . . . I must hold it. I must wrap my fingers where hers had been and never let it go.

"You are a G.o.ddess," the emperor rasped, stroking my shoulders. "I've come to do you homage. I'm the G.o.d come to meet you."

I could think only of the scepter, but when I reached for it he pushed the box from the bed and it landed on the floor with a clatter. The scepter. I must have the scepter. Why could I not stop my mind from spinning long enough to find it, to seize it? Forcing my eyes open in the flickering light, I saw scraggly hairs above the line of the emperor's ribs. When had he become undressed? His nakedness moved nothing in me. He didn't look like a G.o.d; he looked as he did when he swam in the pools or played ball with the boys in the yard in Rome.

But his eyes weren't his own. Those chilly gray depths were unfocused, his jaw lax. The emperor pulled me down with him. How small and spindly he seemed. When my hands came to rest on his shoulders, I thought I might crush him. He seemed just a man. Just a man who wanted a son. It was that simple, natural human desire that made me reach for the belt of my gown and loosen it. This time, I wouldn't be held down and forced. This time, I'd come to him, like the primordial sky spreads herself over the earth. I didn't recoil as his hands roamed freely over my body. I must have stroked him, for I found him erect in my hand. I had put the whole of myself into my khaibit and watched now only from a shadow.

"I'll give you a son," I whispered, inviting the G.o.ddess into me, feeling the heka swirl warm round my womb. Outside we heard shrieks and howls, the cymbal and drums, and strange noises, unreal. The sounds of the underworld. Like the G.o.ddess, I would bring life from death. I was the Resurrection, was I not?

So insensible was Augustus under the influence of the kykeon that as I crawled over him he snorted with pleasure as if he thought himself already inside me. "Yes, yes. Such exquisite pleasure!" He rubbed against me, an obscene motion, and I felt a spurt of seed. Whether it was the whole of his o.r.g.a.s.m or only a prelude, I couldn't tell because the gong outside rang again, then again, only to be followed by a bang. It was an impossibly large crash that even in our various states of undressed ecstasy, we couldn't ignore. Was it a door being slammed open?

A breeze caressed my neck, then all the torches guttered out, plunging us into blackness until everything flared bright again. A figure appeared in the doorway, all aglow in an aura of heka.

It was Helios.

AUGUSTUS was helpless, unarmored, unarmed, unclothed, and intoxicated on the sacred kykeon. The emperor was seldom unguarded, but we'd come to this chamber alone, for who would dare harm him during the most holy ceremony of the civilized world? Slow to respond to the bronze-clad warrior whose beloved hand drew a sword from its sheath, Augustus rose to a seated position to protect me, as if I were the one in danger. "It's only a vision of the underworld," he said. "You're safe, Selene."

"But you aren't, Octavian," Helios said, fingers gripping the pommel of his sword.