Daughters of the Nile (8 page)

With these words, she sends a twinge of anxiety through me. As my agent here in Mauretania, Chryssa has become a great lady of commerce, accustomed to bartering and bickering with shippers and bankers and tradesmen. She presides over royal monopolies. Citrus-wood furniture, amber, copper, and purple dye. Were she not a woman, she’d have command of the kingdom’s treasury too. But more importantly, Chryssa has been with me since I was a child. Alone amongst my intimates, my freedwoman knows the truth of what the emperor did to me.

Now Chryssa sits beside her new husband, playfully stroking his beard, and I’m irritated that Julia should make me feel anything but happy for her. “Why should I lose Chryssa? As my freedwoman, she still serves me well . . .”

Julia takes a gulp of unwatered wine. “You’ll lose her because she’s besotted with her groom. There’s no room in a heart for two.”

Can that be true? Already I love my infant son and my daughter more than my own life. My heart has room for more . . . but Chryssa isn’t bound to me by blood, and the thought of losing her nearly spoils my celebratory mood.

It also makes me petty. “Save room for the lungfish, Julia,” I say, knowing they have a disagreeably strong taste. “They burrow into the soil and can live for quite a long time breathing air instead of water. The Berbers capture and store them, mud and all, so that we can eat fresh fish even when the streambeds dry out.”

Julia eagerly takes some from a passing silver tray. I think she’ll gag on it, but she chews with relish, her lips shining with oil. “I predict that I’m to become very fat during my stay and not only because I’m eating for two!” Just then, her eyes dart to where my eleven-year-old niece sits near the king, and asks, “That can’t be your daughter, so grown up already?”

“No. My Isidora is abed this hour. That girl is Pythodorida of Tralles, my half sister’s daughter.”

Curiosity sparks in Julia’s eyes. “Another half sister?”

“My father’s daughter,” I explain, remembering when I first met my half sister on the Isle of Samos, where, in endless captivity, I awaited the emperor’s pleasure. “Lady Antonia, or Hybrida, as we called her, after her mother.”

Julia sighs dramatically. “How is it that I am an only child whereas you need both hands to count all your siblings?”

“I suppose it’s because my father was notoriously fond of women, whereas yours . . .” I trail off, looking away and hoping it’s true that Julia is an only child. I have always hoped that my daughter was conceived in love during the storm that once brought Helios and I together and not when the emperor forced himself upon me. I don’t want to believe, or give Julia any reason to suspect, that my daughter could be her sister. And I’m relieved when she doesn’t press me to finish the statement.

“I’d like to meet this Hybrida,” Julia decides.

“Sadly, you cannot. She came with me from Greece but fell ill and died last winter. We found her in bed, curled round my old cat, Bast. They were both gone. I like to think that Bast helped her at the end, like a protectress in the night.”

“Oh,” Julia says with a sympathetic shake of her head. “I am sorry. It was a bad year. We lost Virgil too so suddenly . . .”

The emperor’s poet died of fever, but his death didn’t seem sudden to me. Even though Virgil penned vile propaganda against my dead parents, he was my friend, and when last I saw him, he seemed a broken man. He swore to me that his
Aeneid
would be burned when he died, but when he fell ill in Brundisium, Augustus acted swiftly to seize Virgil’s work before it could be destroyed. In the end, the emperor lost his poet, but not his poem. Already, the wretched
Aeneid
is the most famous story since Homer’s epics. In spite of this, I raise a cup in honor of Virgil and we drink.

“To Virgil,” Julia agrees. “And to your sister . . . you must have been very fond of her to let her daughter wear royal purple.”

“Quite fond. When she fell ill, I swore to her that I’d bring up Pythia as my own.”

About to take another gulp of her wine, Julia stops and gives me a long, hard look. “Are you establishing a little embassy of royal orphans, like Octavia did when we were young?”

“I could do worse than to emulate her. Your aunt was kind to me—even if I didn’t recognize it for kindness at the time. There was no reason she needed to gather up all my father’s orphaned children . . .”

“Except for all the usual political reasons,” Julia says drily. “My virtuous, venerated aunt has a warm heart, but never forget that she arranged my first marriage to ensure that her son would be the next emperor—”

“You loved Marcellus,” I counter, unwilling to hear a new version of a sad story.

Julia admits it with a shrug. “I did. We were good companions. We let each other love freely. But don’t pretend I have no cause to resent Octavia. When Marcellus left me a widow, she sold me to Admiral Agrippa.”

“Octavia did not
sell
you.”

“Not for money. For the wages of
spite
.”

It’s a simplification of a very complicated dynastic game and Julia blames the wrong person for her woes. Or perhaps she understands my role in it, and I stand accused. I argue, “Would you have rather been married to one of the Claudian brothers? Because that’s what would have happened if Octavia hadn’t given her blessing to your match with Agrippa. Your father would’ve married you off to one of Livia’s sons and then your malignant stepmother would have had us all entirely in her power.”

“I would rather not have married at all,” Julia says, leaning back with a sly smile. “Here in Mauretania I have a taste of what that’s like. You must show me everything. I want to swim in the sea and picnic in the hills. I want to trade for silver jewelry in your market and buy some of these magnificent woven carpets. I want to make an offering in a temple to strange gods and tour your purple-dye factory. I want to see a lion and ride a camel. No, an elephant!”

I wince at the way, in her wild, childlike enthusiasm, she reminds me of my daughter. “You won’t like the dye factory or the camels, Julia. They both stink.”

“I don’t care. You must show me everything before Agrippa comes to fetch me and make us all miserable!”

Five

“THIS
is morbid, Selene. Even for you.”

As Julia and I settle ourselves under the shady entryway of my mausoleum, I say, “I cannot imagine what you have to complain about. Look at the lovely yellow flowers in these urns and the skillful stonework.”

“It’s a
tomb
. Hardly the place for an idyllic picnic in the hills . . .”

Though Julia is my favorite Roman, times like these remind me that she
is
Roman. “It’s a
royal
tomb and it’s the
best
place for an idyllic picnic in the hills. From here we can see the sea and the beauty of Mauretania. Why should I wait for the afterlife to enjoy it?”

“Because there’s a sarcophagus inside!”

Truly, she is ridiculous. “What of it? It’s Hybrida’s sarcophagus and Bast is beside her.”

The emperor’s daughter makes a strange noise in her throat. “You mummified your cat?”

“She was a good cat. Why shouldn’t she enjoy salvation?”

“So we dine with the
lemures
.”

When Julia says
lemures
, she means ghosts, spirits of the dead, restless and malevolent, so I’m determined to set the matter straight. “There is no reason to fear the shades, Julia. I’ve drawn my family’s
kas
to this very spot by erecting statues in their likenesses.”

“All the more reason for me to fear. Your parents hated my father; I don’t suspect their shades will be fond of me. And what is a
ka
?”

“It’s one of the nine bodies of the Egyptian soul. It’s the part of you that makes you live. A spark. It eats and drinks, which is why I bring meals for my dead. My family is lost to me in this River of Time, so if they can join me here in any way at all, I’m gladdened by it.”

Julia sighs as if she must grant me that. “Still, I cannot approve dragging little girls to romp in the tombs of their dead mothers. Visiting one’s ancestors should be a somber endeavor. A thing done with all the solemnity of old men who lecture about
gravitas
and
dignitas
.”

“Since when have you wanted anything to do with
gravitas
and
dignitas
?”

Julia laughs, conceding the point, while under the supervision of my Berber woman, the children happily play hide-and-seek behind the pillars. As fair as she is, I should worry that my daughter will freckle in the sun, but I don’t want to see her covered up before her time . . .

“One day this tomb may be the only place Isidora can be with me,” I say, as servants lay a bountiful feast upon our picnic table. “I want her to be happy here. I want to fill this place with warm memories, so that when she comes with offerings for me, the remembrance will be a comfort. She won’t fear it. It will already be a home to her.”

“Your blood may be Macedonian Greek,” Julia murmurs, mirth in her eyes, “but you’re more
Egyptian
than anything else.”

“I am Mauretanian,” I say, as much to convince myself as her. Then, as if to prove it, I lay aside my fears of the hot sun and remove the shawl of my embroidered blue
himation
to leave my shoulders bare.

“You’re Mauretanian, then,” Julia agrees. “All the better, as far as I’m concerned. Your kingdom is just a few days’ sailing from Rome—”

“Depending upon the weather and the direction,” I interrupt, which leads me to ask, “Just how did you convince the captain of Agrippa’s ship to carry you here against your husband’s wishes?”

“Blackmail, of course.”

It’s the last answer I expect. “The captain of that ship must have a dark and terrible secret for him to fear it more than he fears your husband.”

“Perhaps he does,” Julia says, plucking a cluster of grapes from a silver platter. “Imagine that the captain became very drunk one night and put his hands on me. Imagine that I gave myself over to him. Now imagine that I threatened to tell my husband about it.”

Her words are a cool cup of water thrown in my face. I am the last person to judge anyone for adultery, but I cannot imagine that even Julia would do such a thing. She loves to shock people, and I see that she’s enjoyed shocking me, but I cannot affect an air of sophisticated indifference. Remembering her father’s new law, the
Lex Julia
, which makes adultery punishable by banishment or even death, I shudder. “You take lovers so freely now?”

She laughs, patting the gentle swell of her belly. “It can be done carefully, Selene. Agrippa’s children all look like him. After all, I never take on new passengers until the cargo is full.”

With a gasp, I say, “I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t risk it!”

“Believe it. I do it to punish Agrippa. Even if he never knows about it, I do.”

“You don’t want to punish Agrippa. You want to punish the man you love.”

Julia had been ready to pop a grape into her mouth, but this stops her. “I don’t love
any
man.”

Her vehement denial reveals the true depths of her heartbreak and I find myself saying, “Iullus Antonius did not betray you, Julia. It was your father who forced him to marry Marcella. Like you—like all of us—Iullus is at the mercy of the emperor.”

Julia frowns. “Selene, we shall get on a great deal better during my visit if you don’t mention your half brother to me. He’s forgotten me, so I do my best to forget him.”

I never thought to hear myself defend him, but I say, “Iullus has not forgotten you. When I saw him last, he was bereft.”

“Not so bereft that he couldn’t perform his marital duty with Marcella,” Julia counters. “Iulla and Lucius Antonius, their children are called.”

“You have children the same age.”

“Iullus has a choice in such matters; I do not.”

I know what it is to feel helpless. To feel seething hatred for the men who have lorded over me. So my heart fills with pity for her. “I feared it would be hard for you, married to Agrippa. Do you hate him, then?”

“Of course I hate him,” she says, stuffing another grape into her mouth and swallowing it whole. “Big, bellowing Agrippa. I take satisfaction in irritating him to the point of rage. I must be wicked to enjoy his distress as much as I do. But doesn’t he deserve it? On the battlefield, they say he’s the incarnation of Mars. He’s wiped out entire tribes; these past years in Spain he’s had his legions hunt the Cantabri to the last man.”

Yes, that sounds like Agrippa. “And now he has won . . .”

“He’s Rome’s best general and has earned a Triumph, but my father will block it—”

“I thought it was at your father’s command that the Senate voted Agrippa the honor.”

Julia rolls her eyes at me. “You know very well that everything my father does in the Senate is for show! My father will insist that my husband refuse the honor. Perhaps he should. I’m told that Agrippa can’t count even a single ancestor amongst the first families of Rome. Not that I’ve bothered to confirm it, because that would only remind everyone that the emperor saw fit to marry his only daughter to a New Man. And even if I could forgive Agrippa all that, there remains the fact that he’s forced me to bear two—now three—children for him.”