Daughters of the Nile (4 page)

In recent months, others have viewed my return to Mauretania with bewilderment. I am a Ptolemy, after all. The blood in my veins is the same Macedonian blood that thrummed through the veins of Alexander the Great. I am heir to the throne of Egypt. They wonder why I am here birthing a child for my Berber husband when I could be in Rome at the emperor’s side, scheming to reclaim my mother’s lost throne.

But Chryssa never wonders. Beneath her blousy
peplos
pinned with little gold brooches at each shoulder, she hides a tangle of pale, knotted scars—her keepsake from a flogging she received at the emperor’s command. Chryssa knows better than anyone what manner of man the emperor is and why I fled from him to bear a son for my husband. She will never wonder. We need not even speak of it. And that it is why it is a comfort to have her near.

“Has anyone told the king?” she asks, critically inspecting the midwife’s tools, linens, sea sponges, and pots of goose fat, olive oil, and sweet-smelling herbs.

“The king has yet to return from Spain,” Tala replies.

“He should be here,” my freedwoman snaps. “He is not the King of Spain!”

In this, she echoes my petty complaints. Here in Mauretania my husband is king. But in cities across the narrow strait in Spain, he has no royal authority. There he serves as a Roman magistrate, setting aside his crown to drape himself in a toga as the emperor’s legate, sitting not upon a throne but upon a low folding curule chair—that strange little stool with curved legs that the Romans use as a sign of office.

My husband doesn’t see this as an insult to his royal dignity nor does he resent it as yet another way in which Rome exploits his loyalty. To the contrary, my husband sees these unusual responsibilities as evidence of the emperor’s faith in him. And so I find myself defending my husband in his absence. “It makes no difference if King Juba is here or away, and in any case, he had no cause to know the child would come so soon . . .”

Before I can say more, pain rips through me. I clutch my belly, groaning. The midwife examines me, her face grim. “It’s too soon for the child.”

Chryssa all but hisses. “We know it. Tell us what to do, woman. Or must I send for a civilized Greek physician?”

“He’ll tell you the same thing,” the midwife replies. “There’s nothing to do but wait.”

And so we wait. In the grips of agony, I feel sweat soak my hair and run down my back. Chryssa mops my brow with a cold cloth, murmuring a prayer to our goddess Isis that she may deliver me safely of a healthy child. Meanwhile, Tala again insists that I let her paint me, and I’m too pained to argue. She uses her henna paste to draw intricate symbols on my feet and ankles. When she reaches for my hands, however, I stop her, for they have been a canvas for symbols before.

I am Cleopatra’s daughter. I am a sorceress. I have carried the words of my goddess on my outstretched palms, in vivid hieroglyphics that ran red with my own blood. I worry to submit my palms now to sacrilege. “What do the symbols mean?”

Tala looks up with impatience, using the same tone she uses to scold my little daughter. “On your feet, the symbols are protective talismans to keep evil from seeping up from the earth as you walk. Over your womb, a symbol of fertility. On your hands I would paint the stylized sun, to purify and protect you against your enemies. You know Egyptian magic, Majesty. But we Berbers have magic of our own.”

When the first gushes of bloody water pool beneath me, I will gladly accept
any
magic to help my child. There shouldn’t be so much pain. Surely there wasn’t this much when my daughter was born. I would have remembered!

Tala wraps me in linens and I stifle the cries that threaten to tear from my throat. At length, an arrow of excruciating pain shoots through me. I scream and the voices of my attendants mingle into a dull, faraway roar.

I’m hoisted up onto the squat wooden birthing chair with its open bottom. Then the midwife waves a small clay pot of mint under my nose, and the bracing scent helps me make ready. Since the night I shared with the king, I’ve curled round my womb, cooing softly to the baby inside. I’ve dreamed of holding him safe and warm in my arms. To know my baby is struggling for life even now, before he has taken his first breath, fills me with a fierce determination.

This child will mark me as my own woman, no longer the emperor’s plaything. This child will be the beginning of a new life that I’ve chosen in defiance of every expectation of me as Cleopatra’s daughter. Even if my baby is tiny, I will see that he grows strong. I will safeguard him as Isis nursed her secret child in the marshy reeds of Egypt.

But first, I must give him breath.

* * *

“CHILDBED
fever,” someone says. And as I toss and turn upon sweat-soaked sheets, I’m filled with dread. Merciless
fever
has taken loved ones from me. I know to fear it. Fever ravages the body and the mind and it ravages me. My breasts leak and ache. My empty womb cramps and I cannot find my ease. I sleep too long. I shiver and burn by turns. My only comfort is the sound of a raspy cry, breathing ragged and desperate.

My son
does
breathe, and that is what matters.

After several nights—I do not know how many—I hear Chryssa murmuring prayers. I smell the burning sage she offers to our goddess. My Berber woman is there too, pressing a wooden talisman into my hand. It is the looped symbol, sacred to the native goddess Tanit. Narrowed only a little, it is also an
ankh
, the symbol most sacred to Isis. It is meant to protect my soul.

So they think I am dying . . .

Pharaohs journey to the West when they die, finding immortality with the setting sun. But I am not Pharaoh and Mauretania is already near the western edge of the living world. The world of the dead is very close now, just past the veil. I am not eager to reach beyond it, for I have fought for my life since I was a child. My survival has always been at the mercy of Augustus and his obsession with my mother, and then with me. All my life, I have charmed and reasoned and plotted to stay alive. But this illness cannot be charmed away or reasoned with or plotted against.

The luxurious room, with its wispy linen draperies and alabaster lamps, blurs white in my fevered eyes. Above my bed hangs a gilded circular frame carved with my proud Ptolemy Eagle. When I look up, he’s no longer wooden but alive and glowing, spreading his wings. I blink and the bed netting that drapes from his jeweled talons turns to mist.

Then I see them. My lost loved ones. My regal mother wearing fat pearls and the amethyst ring that once was hers but is now my betrothal ring. My father is there too in his red cloak and crested parade helmet. My brothers, each one. Caesarion riding his horse, fitted out as the King of Egypt with a diadem of white ribbon in his hair, giving me a jaunty smile as only the son of Julius Caesar might. Our half brother Antyllus is at his side, his arms thrown open in generous welcome. There too is my little Philadelphus, ripe dates in one hand and a pair of dice in the other, his pudgy cheeks scrunched up in a smile.

I see them all sheltered by the iridescent wings of Isis. I want to go to them. I want to run to them. I want to clasp my mother round her perfumed neck and bury my face in her hair. I want to weep for the joy of our reunion upon my father’s broad shoulder and feel the stubble of his chin scrape my cheek. I want to hold my brothers. Caesarion, and Antyllus, and Philadelphus, and . . .

“
Helios
,” I moan from beneath the blankets where I shiver.

With his hair lit golden in the sun where he practices with his sword, he glances at me over one broad shoulder. That is how I know my eyes play me false. I
cannot
see Helios in the afterlife, for he is not there. Last of the Ptolemies, they call me. The only survivor. But I am not the only one. My twin brother escaped the emperor’s clutches. They think he is dead, but he battles the Romans still, known only as an outlaw, Horus the Avenger. And yet, in my delirium, I see him in the afterworld.

Helios
. My twin, my king, my beloved . . . he reaches one hand for me. The same hand I have been reaching for all my life. I long to take it. I long to rush into his strong arms, to be made whole again by his kiss, to love him and be loved by him. To beg his forgiveness, to stroke away every moment of separation between his skin and mine with fevered fingertips. I am desperate to go to him, but I cannot.

Last of the Ptolemies, they call me, but I am not the last.

I
won’t
be the last.

I have a daughter, and when she was born, I swore to her that I would never leave her. I vowed never to leave her afraid and vulnerable the way my mother left me. Now I have a new baby son. He has not heard me make this promise to him, but I have already made it in my heart. I will never leave him. My mother surrendered to the venomous bite of an asp. My father fell upon his sharp sword. My brothers are dead or presumed to be. But life has always been my stubborn companion.

I
survive
. That is what I do.

* * *

“YOU’RE
not meant for such an end as this, Cleopatra Selene.”

Is it jackal-headed Anubis speaking, releasing me when he finds I am too tough a morsel to chew? I open my eyes to see not the death god but the mage at my bedside. This wise old man of Egypt is the only man, save the king, whom my guards would admit into my chambers. His name is Euphronius, but to escape the emperor’s wrath, he masquerades at court as a physician by the name of Euphorbus Musa. I know the mage’s secrets and he knows mine, for he has gifts of seeing I do not possess.

“How will I die?” I murmur. “Have you seen it in the Rivers of Time?”

My wizard presses a cool cloth to my brow. “You have years ahead of you, Majesty, and much left to do.”

From my birth, much has been foretold. I was to be a divine child and a powerful queen. I was to bring about a Golden Age. I was to save my goddess too. I have failed at it all, save that I am queen. But if I am to fulfill any of the prophecies that attended my beginning, I think it will be easier to know how I will meet my end. Perhaps death will come to me in poison, offered to me by a false friend at the behest of my enemies. Perhaps it will be the edge of a knife’s blade that slithers into my body to bear my soul away. Perhaps one day when I’m swimming, a strong current will drag me under and I will sink into blackness. Or perhaps it will be the venom of an asp, its fangs sunk deep into my flesh, bringing me to the gods like the serpent that killed my mother.

I think it will go better for me if I
know
.

“Tell me how I will die. I command you.”

The old man only smiles, for he knows his disobedience will never result in punishment. He has been with me too long, or perhaps he has reached the age at which men no longer fear their monarchs. “Majesty, I can only tell you that yours will not be an ordinary death.”

* * *

I
awaken to the scent of roses. It is the season when blossoms are harvested to make wreaths for funerals, weddings, and festivals, so slaves have adorned my bedchamber in rose garlands. The whole palace teems with the perfume as I reach out for my son and they put him in my arms.

He is tiny and his skin is petal soft, pale like mine. I can see the blue veins beneath his skin. And I worry over a shallow indentation on his chin that I hope will become a dimple. My daughter hovers over us, watching her newborn brother sleep. I stare at them both, this daughter I didn’t want and the son I shouldn’t have had. And I love them fiercely. They are part of me, molded inside my body, brought into being like magic. They will be my legacy. The part of my family that lives on.

For nearly three hundred years the Ptolemies have thrived. It will not end with me.

With a lilt of excitement, my daughter says, “The king has returned from Spain, Mama. And he wants to see the baby.”

My freedwoman frowns and I know what she is thinking. The baby is fragile yet. No one can say if he will live. Better to wait until little cheeks are flush with color lest a husband be tempted to order a sickly child be left on a hillside. Many babes have died at the command of their fathers, exposed to the elements, vulnerable to predators, at the mercy of the gods. This is what all my women are thinking, though they will not say it in front of my sweet daughter, Isidora.

And they dare not say it to me.

I draw my daughter close and kiss her fingertips. They are lightly sticky, as if she’s recently visited the kitchens where the cook spoils her with honeycombs. My daughter has never known fear, and if I have my way, she never will. So, when she looks up at me with her unnerving blue gaze, I am decided. “Then we’ll take the baby to the king.”

My freedwoman frowns again. “Your fever has only just broken. You shouldn’t be so soon out of bed, Majesty.”

I do not want to admit that Chryssa speaks the truth, but as my servants dress me, I can barely stand upon my shaky legs. I feel bruised and battered inside. Worse, a glance in a polished mirror reflects back my image, deathly pale and stripped of vitality. Still, what I’m about to do, I need to do while I still have the courage for it.

Tala appears, her silver bracelets jingling together as she knocks lightly against the half-opened carved wooden door. “The king has called together the court to attend to him.”

So we leave for the throne room, my sandaled feet shuffling slowly on the mosaic floors. My Macedonian guards snap to attention, their eyes lowered in deference. I am a tall woman, but I make myself stand taller, for I must preserve my reputation as a fertile young queen. My ability to bring forth life in this land is at the heart of the people’s love for me. I cannot be seen as weak.

In an archway, I peer between shimmering draperies to see King Juba seated on his ivory throne chair—the one given to him by the Senate and people of Rome, along with a purple robe, ivory scepter, and golden crown. My husband’s full lips turn down at the corners when he is pensive, and they are turned down now. He fidgets while our courtiers crowd the throne room.