Daughters of the Nile (9 page)

I wince, remembering a time when I was held down and forced. Remembering it as if it were yesterday. In the remembering, I restrain myself from glancing at my daughter. It was an ugly thing, that night, but I wouldn’t trade my beautiful girl, even if it meant I could swim in some other River of Time where that night never happened.

Oblivious to my distress, Julia goes on to ask, “Do you want to know the thing I despise most about Agrippa? It’s that I cannot hate him as much as I should.”

I too have reason to hate Admiral Agrippa, and yet I’ve never been able to do it. As much as I fear him, as much as he is my enemy, I’ve always known that what drives him is not malice—and yet, what solace would that be for all the men he’s killed? “Hatred is a heavy burden to bear. Especially hatred for your own husband.”

Julia lifts her face to the sun and closes her eyes. “I tell myself that I hate him. Then he comes to my bed with a diligence born of pure patriotism. I swear to myself that I won’t be roused by his touch, but I am.”

I blink more than once. “Truly?”

“There is something about Agrippa’s body,” Julia explains, quite unconcerned that she might be overheard by servants. “It’s scarred and weathered. It awakens hideously respectable urges in me to bear children and sit all day weaving at the loom.”

None of this is what I expect to hear. “You can’t mean it . . .”

“Well, not the part about the loom. But the rest of it, I mean every word. He undresses with military precision, lays me flat on the bed, then climbs atop me with a
gravitas
that would be laughable if he weren’t so appallingly good at it!”

I’m scandalized and a bit disturbed. “I might have gone my whole life quite happily not knowing this about Agrippa. Have a care—”

“Oh, our Marcella fooled us with her tears on her wedding day. Crying about Agrippa’s fumbling hands. She’s a liar. Agrippa masters everything he puts his hands to. Even me.” Julia sighs, then shivers. “It’s such an earnest business, the way he grinds me down into the bed. He tells me to close my eyes and think of the honor of my family and the good of Rome, and I do. I can see myself, a mother of the empire. He excites me. I don’t bother to hide it. I don’t care if Agrippa thinks I moan too loudly when I find my own pleasure. I don’t care at all. It’s freeing, not to care.”

I speak slowly. “So, then . . . you’re not entirely unhappy with Agrippa?”

“What purpose would it serve to be
entirely
unhappy? I’m the daughter of the emperor and the wife of the only man who can challenge him. There are worse fates that can befall a woman.”

Perhaps she is thinking of her mother. Poor, ostracized Scribonia, who not only hailed from a family that advocated for the return of the Republic, but had the temerity to give the emperor a daughter instead of a son; he divorced her the very day that Julia was born. Or perhaps she is thinking of
my
mother, who challenged this world of men and came away from it with deadly venom in her blood. “You’re right, of course.”

Julia likes to be told she’s right, so her dark mood vanishes in an instant. “Delightfully, there’s more to the world than bedmates and babies. There are advantages to being Agrippa’s wife. He took me to Spain and he’ll take me to Greece!” Her eyes cut at me, shrewdly. “Ah, but you’ve already been . . .”

I don’t wish to speak of Greece, both because it shames me and because I still carry secrets from my time there with the emperor that are not safe to share. Not even with Julia. “Hurry and finish your lunch,” I say to distract her. “We still have an adventure ahead of us . . .”

* * *

“IT
carries water all the way from those mountains,” I boast, sweeping a hand over the path our monstrous aqueduct cuts into the wide sun-drenched vista of Africa. “It stretches farther than your eye can see! We bridged rivers in five places and looped around the landscape where shale or other soft stones are prone to landslides.”

Julia feigns a little yawn. “Wake me when you’ve finished marveling at standard engineering, will you? Honestly, you’re worse than Agrippa. We have aqueducts in Rome, you know. Soldiers too.”

She’s speaking of the Legio III Augusta, which is overseeing the construction. Ordinarily, the officers show me only the barest modicum of respect, but now that I’m in the company of the emperor’s daughter, the highest-ranking officer makes haste to welcome us into their camp and boast of their aqueduct.

It’s a rough place, here on the river. Alongside the surveyors and engineers, there are men at hard work with picks and shovels. Laborers run pipes, sweating under the sun, while stiff-necked soldiers guard the dusty camp from the raiders on the frontier.

While we survey the marvel from the vantage point of a watch post, I hear Tala sharply scold the children in a Berber dialect I’ve learned. I turn to see Pythia and Tala’s son Ziri standing close together, innocent of any wrongdoing. But my daughter is kneeling in the dirt beside a cage of camp dogs, trying to give them a drink from a water skin.

“What is she doing?” Julia asks.

Groaning, I give a shake of my head. “My daughter can resist no creature under the sky . . .”

My big Berber woman tries to haul my daughter away from the dogs, but Isidora is so intent on the animals in the cage that she actually struggles. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?” my daughter shouts, slapping at Tala’s tattooed hands.

Never before has she treated her nursemaid in such a way and it shocks me. “Isidora! Shame on you. Tala is trying to protect you. You don’t know those dogs. Do you want them to bite you?”

“But he’s not a dog,” Dora cries, sniffling. “He’s a boy!”

I march to her side, frustrated by the increasing frequency with which my daughter says strange things to vex me. Peering into the cage, I’m brought up short. There, curled up on the straw amidst the caged hounds, is a little boy with cinnamon-kissed skin. A gash across his dirtied cheek is caked with dried blood and his filthy fingers splay over a festering wound in his side.

I think the boy is dead, so I startle when his agonized eyes pop open and fasten on mine. “Sweet Isis!”

Julia comes up behind me, demanding of the centurion, “Why is this boy in a cage?”

The centurion, who has, thus far, forced himself to politeness for our inspection, clears phlegm from his throat. “He’s a raider.”

A
raider
, he says! The boy can be no more than eight or nine years old. He’s a scrawny, pathetic thing, mangier than the dogs that sniff around him. He is a bag of bones I could rattle to death with one hand, so my lips curl with contempt when I say, “A fearsome warrior, I’m sure. No doubt it took the whole legion to subdue him.”

“Just about,” the centurion replies. “Little bastard bit half the ear off the soldier who captured him. He was riding with Berber raiders from Numidia. Garamantes, maybe.”

The condition of the boy gives rise to my anger. Straightening to my full height, I look the centurion in the eye. “I was told Lucius Cornelius Balbus rid us of the Garamantes. Isn’t that why he was granted a Triumph in Rome?”

The centurion shrugs. “We caught the raiders trying to steal the livestock from a farm after they’d set fire to the granary. We spared this one on account of his age. If he lives, maybe he’ll fetch a price.”

They’re going to make a slave of the boy. It’s not the worst thing they could do to him, by far. So near to the frontier, it would be risky to try to find the boy’s tribe, not to mention more trouble than any legionary soldier would bother with. No Roman magistrate would have any interest in the matter either. What are the soldiers to do? They can’t let the boy wander off into the wilderness on his own; given the harsh terrain, he’d be dead in a day. Slavery is the kindest fate for this boy, should he live . . .

“He’s hurt, Mama,” my daughter sobs. “He’s thirsty and hungry too.”

“Let Tala give him water. You stay away,” I command before turning to the boy in the cage and addressing him in the Berber dialect I’ve learned. “What is your name? What tribe do you hail from?”

The boy jerks upright, as if not having expected to hear his own language from my lips, but he doesn’t answer.

Keeping hold of my weeping princess, Tala says, “He’s dull. He has no wits.”

Something in the brooding stare of the boy behind the wooden slats of the cage makes me think otherwise. As a child hostage in Rome, I practiced making a mask of my face. When I was older, I learned to slow the beat of my own heart, so that I wouldn’t betray myself to the emperor’s touch. Having mastered the art of deception, I’m not fooled by the boy’s bravado. The spark in his eyes is one that I recognize; it’s the enraged and contempt-filled stare of a child who has been taken prisoner.

His defiance is such a sharp reminder of my proud twin brother that I’m nearly undone. “He is one of my subjects,” I say to the centurion, though it is almost certainly a lie. “He needs care if he’s to survive; does your camp physician believe the best medicine is to lock a wounded boy in a cage?”

The centurion looks not even slightly abashed. “There’s a physician back at the fort, not here.”

I opt for a conciliatory tone. “Of course. I imagine conditions are very difficult for your men here. Perhaps it would be best to release the boy to us.”

Julia raises an eyebrow. “Just what are we going to do with him?”

It’s a very good question. I cannot venture into the hills looking for his people. Nor can I find him a competent healer unless I take him all the way back to the city with us. While I consider my options, Dora wrenches free of her nursemaid to offer the boy her water skin. He goes for it with such savagery that I think he’ll snatch it from my daughter’s hands. But, like a wounded creature brought low by the mercy of a goddess, he only presses his mouth to the skin and lets her hold it for him while he drinks.

She’s disobeyed me and behaved very poorly, but the sight of my daughter tending to this poor Berber boy moves me. “Please release him, Centurion. Or must I pay you to do so?”

The veteran soldier kicks a stone in the dusty earth. “He’s not worth a bronze coin to you, Majesty. What will you do when he lunges for your face and tries to tear at you with his teeth?”

“My guards can handle a boy.”

At my side, Memnon nods, one leathery hand upon the pommel of his sword.

The centurion lifts a hand in surrender, then barks out an order to one of his underlings who returns with the keys to the cage. After a bit of rattling, the boy is dragged out amidst barking dogs. Smeared in blood and dirt, the boy tries to make himself tall. Tries to hide that he’s in pain. Again, I ask his name. This time he answers, but puts such animus behind the word it sounds like an obscenity.

“Tacfarinas,” the boy snarls.

“Do you know it?” I ask my Berber woman.

She shrugs. “I doubt he’s of high status. There is not even a speck of blue dye on his skin.”

Yet the little wretch stands before me with the bearing of a prince, glowering at his Roman captors and the rest of us too. We’re the enemy. That is what he thinks.

Then he spits at me.

Julia gasps. All my courtiers gasp.

And the Roman centurion snarls, “I warned you he was a little bastard.”

Memnon has his big hand wrapped round the boy’s throat before I can stop him. This is an insult not to be endured, but the sight of my brawny guard half choking the injured boy fills me with horror. “Memnon, stop.”

“Don’t hurt him!” my daughter shrieks.

“He
spat
at my queen,” Memnon seethes. “I’ve killed men for less.”

I don’t ask what men he’s killed before and for what reason. I only seek to bring calm. “You’re very much mistaken, Memnon. I’m the Queen of Mauretania. My subjects dare not spit at me.” Catching Julia’s eye, I lift my chin and ignore the wet saliva on my gown. “I didn’t see anyone spit at me. Did you, Julia?”

The emperor’s daughter shrugs one shoulder. “I saw nothing of the sort.”

“There you have it, Memnon. The desert makes a man’s eyes play tricks on him. Find the boy some clothing. We’re taking him with us.”

* * *

“YOU
speak their language?” Julia asks, reclining in the curtained litter beside me. “Yet you keep interpreters in your employ . . .”

“There are many Berber dialects. I don’t speak all of them. Interpreters are still helpful. Besides, subjects will say things to an interpreter they won’t say to a ruler. Sometimes it’s better not to let someone know that you understand. It’s a lesson I learned at your father’s knee.”

Julia bunches up a quilted cushion beneath her head. “Your daughter is kind.”

Still annoyed by the entire episode, I complain, “She’s prone to every kind of mischief and—”

“She is
kind
,” Julia insists. “She helped that boy even at your displeasure. She defied you and you let her . . .” That I’m too lenient with Isidora has long been a complaint of those closest to me, but this is not Julia’s concern. “I fear my children will never be so kind.”

“Why wouldn’t they be? You’ll teach them to be.”

“What would I know of kindness?” Julia asks with a shake of her head. “I was never kind. Moreover, if I’d behaved as your daughter did, my father would’ve killed that little savage boy on the spot.”

“You
were
kind,” I argue, for when I was her father’s prisoner, she offered me friendship when no one else dared.

“No,” she says, closing her eyes. “I was a selfish, self-absorbed child. When my children are as old as Isidora, what will Agrippa teach them? My husband isn’t a cruel man for the enjoyment of it, Selene. But he is
hard
. If cruelty serves a purpose, he doesn’t shrink from it. He’s killed many savage boys—just like the one you rescued today. What will my children become with such a father if I’m not there to listen to them and soothe their tears and . . .”

She trails off, and I sense there is some secret she is hiding. “Why wouldn’t you be there to soothe your children?”

Catching herself, she gives a false little laugh. “I’m hardly there now. What would I know about mothering anyway? I never had one. Besides, children are sticky little creatures who babble and cling and rumple clothing. It’s for the best that Agrippa rips my babies from my arms and gives them into the hands of their nursemaids as soon as they’re born.”