Song of the Nile (10 page)

“Stop it!” I cried, my voice near hysteria. Was he drunk? His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, though I smelled no wine on his breath. Had he finally gone
completely
mad?

“You’re as fecund as your mother, aren’t you? You can give me the son that I need.” He pushed me back against the bed, the wiry hairs of his legs scratching mine. “Beg,” he said, tugging my gown up around my waist. I tried to clamp my legs shut, but his knees were between mine, bruisingly hard. “Beg me like the first time I saw you. I love when you beg, Selene. And cry. I want you to cry.”

I didn’t want to give him one more tear, but as he pushed my legs apart I couldn’t hold back my sobs. “Isis, help me,” I whispered, and the faintest flicker of
heka
blew from my fingertips, but the winds I summoned were only enough to make the fire in the brazier blow out. In the darkness, in desperation, I struck him full across the face.

We both froze. I’d actually hit him and we both knew that he’d killed men for less. He said, “Yes, just like a good Roman bride. You may struggle, Selene. You have my permission. And you must cry when I take your maidenhead.
Cry
like all innocent little virgins do.” Trapped beneath him, my entire body quaked with disgust. He hitched up his tunic and I battered his shoulders, writhing to find an avenue of escape.

There was none.

He thrust up into me and I confess that I didn’t struggle after that. He was already moving inside me, a violation so profound it didn’t occur to me he could do worse. I lay there, dazed, thinking that this couldn’t be happening. This was only a nightmare. Did nightmares burn with pain? He speared me over and over again, as if stabbing at my womb. I smelled my own blood and whimpered with each jerk of his hips, wondering how much longer it could possibly last.

“It’s supposed to hurt, Selene.” The words gave him renewed pleasure. Or maybe it was my tears that aroused him, for they flowed freely over my cheeks. “You’re going to give me a son,” he whispered, pumping faster, making the straps on the bed creak. His skin slapped against mine as his fingers dug hard into my breasts, clawing at them until they too were on fire. “You’re going to carry my child, you little Egyptian whore!”

His body lurched and strained, his face tightening into a rictus as warm fluid flowed from his body into mine. Mercifully, he made only a few more rude thrusts. Then he collapsed on top of me, his finger over my lips. “Shhh. It’s all a dream . . .”

The blood and sweat and seed trickling down my inner thigh wasn’t the stuff of dreams, but I saw the emperor withdrawing into this fiction, the rabid animal he’d let loose slowly being pulled back on its tether. It was still raining outside and the pitter-patter of the water against the stone made a melancholy music. “Go to bed now, Selene. It was all a dream.”

I can’t say what hour it was that I stumbled back to my chambers, but the sun wasn’t up yet. Even so, Chryssa was awake and fully dressed. The haunted shadows in her eyes told me that she knew what had happened to me; it had happened to her too. “Forgive me!” she cried. “When I realized it was Livia who came to fetch you I should have gone with you—”

“Be silent!” I hissed through clenched teeth. I didn’t want her to look at me. I was a wounded animal, bruised and battered, though I doubted anyone could see where it hurt. What had happened to me happened to slaves everywhere. It had happened to Chryssa, and if she acknowledged it, I couldn’t bear it. Instead, I pushed past her, climbed into the bed, and huddled there facing the wall, my throat filled with bile, my heart filled with hate.

EGYPTIANS say you can sense the presence of a serpent in the room before it strikes. So it was that I sensed Livia’s presence even before I awakened to find her at the foot of my bed, her hair pulled back smooth, her slender shoulders adorned with a tasteful blue shawl. “Aren’t you feeling well, Selene? Perhaps there’s an illness in the house. The emperor is suffering from a grievous headache this morning.” I didn’t answer. “Well, no matter,” she said, reaching to adjust the blanket under my chin. “I trust that you’ve learned to cover up from now on.”

I slapped her hands away. “Don’t touch me.”

“That’s a common reaction. Though I expected more tears. You do like to create a scene . . .”

Through bloodless lips, I asked, “How could you do it?”

She tilted her head, as if amused. “Easily. I’ve seen how he looks at you. How you toy with him. I couldn’t allow it to continue. I couldn’t let you leave for Africa with the fantasy of you lingering in his mind, or he’d become your slave as surely as Antony was Cleopatra’s.”

So she gave me to him. She let him have me.

Livia smiled when she saw that I understood. She’d been planning this for a very long time. She’d chosen her moment. She’d waited patiently until I was no longer under Lady Octavia’s protection. She’d waited until we were out of Rome. And I’d gone with her like an unwitting fool. “You’re a vile woman, Livia.”

She laughed, the sound of it wicked. “And you’re just a plaything for a petty princeling of an isolated and unimportant Western province. The emperor will never do anything you ask. He won’t make you Queen of Egypt. He won’t be fool enough to spare Helios when we catch him. In fact, once you’re in Mauretania, my husband won’t even think of you again except to remember some fleeting pleasure from this night, and if he drank deeply of my tonic, he won’t even remember it well.”

“You drugged him,” I said, remembering the glazed look in his eyes. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell everyone.”

Livia smiled, giving a delicate shake of her head. “You won’t tell
anyone
, because if your new husband asks me about last night, I’ll reassure him that it wasn’t your fault. The brutish Thracian slave I saw staring at you when our caravan arrived must have done it. It was so dark and rainy out. A girl could get lost in the passageways and be attacked by such a man.”

“It was the emperor who did this to me.”

“Oh, Juba!” Livia said in clever mimicry, putting her hand over her heart as if she were speaking to him. “The poor girl is in such shock. Of course she thinks it was the emperor. What princess could accept the shame of having been taken by a filthy slave? If she were any true royal wife, she’d kill herself rather than live with the dishonor of having been raped by an animal, but I must take Selene’s part in this and insist the culprit be crucified!”

Raped
. The word was nearly as ugly as the deed. I couldn’t bear to hear it said, and turned away. “You’re heartless.”

“Not entirely,” Livia said, nodding toward a cup by my bedside. “I’ve provided you with an honorable exit. It won’t be as dramatic as your mother’s end, but unless you have the power to conjure up Egyptian cobras, a goblet of poisoned wine will suffice.”

I stared at the poisoned wine, surprised at my sudden thirst. Then Livia leaned close, her voice a mere whisper. “Your influence over the emperor is done. Your glamour, your mystique, your hold on him—it’s over. You’re nothing more than a little trollop in rumpled bedclothes. You’re
ruined
. I’m told your family motto is
Win or Die
. Well, Selene, you didn’t win, so that leaves only one choice, doesn’t it?”

Six

YOU’RE ruined.

That’s what Livia had said to me with that satisfied grin, believing she’d destroyed me. As if my whole worth had been a maidenhead that Augustus breached like a besieged wall. She thought that in the emperor’s one depraved act, he’d looted everything valuable inside me and left me in smoldering ruins. Maybe she was right, because here I was, huddled and tear-streaked beneath a blanket like some refugee of a plundered village, a cup of poison in my shaking hand.

You’re ruined.

She was right when she’d said there was no one I could tell. If I went to Juba, Livia would spin her lie about the Thracian slave, and my new husband would believe it, because he’d
want
to believe it. Juba had always idolized the emperor and suspected me; I didn’t need to test my sad little fraud of a marriage to know whose side Juba would take. Worse, what if Livia was right? What if lust was all that bound the emperor in his promises to me? What if I’d lost my chance to win back Egypt? What if I’d suffered all this and still not saved the lives of my brothers?

You’re ruined.

She’d said that, knowing that the emperor had done to me the worst thing that could be done to a woman. Was it the
very
worst thing? I’d faced death the day I first came to Rome as a chained prisoner, a sacrificial knife poised above me. Roman matrons killed themselves when disgraced, but I wasn’t Roman. My mother had killed herself when she was conquered, but I wasn’t my mother either. In fact, I’d endured the humiliation meant for her. I’d been called vile names and spat upon and pelted with stones. I’d been forced to watch the Prince of Emesa die for me, his blood spattered all over my feet. Remembering the heat of his blood as it poured out of his body, I put the poisoned cup down. Shoved it away. I’d survived every trial Augustus and his wife had ever fashioned for me; I’d find a way to survive this too. And, oh, how I’d make them both regret it.

I soaked until my toes puckered and paled beneath the water. Then I scrubbed and scraped until my skin was livid, all in a fruitless attempt to get clean. Sometimes Romans opened their veins in hot baths like this. They claimed that the heat of the water disguised the pain as they bled their lives away. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel the sting of the tiny lacerations that opened on my hands. It wasn’t until the water clouded crimson that I drew my palms up to the light where I could see my wounds pulse with the slow and steady beat of my heart.
Blood
. I let the steam settle into my lungs as symbols swam before my eyes. The sharpest blade couldn’t have cut so precisely into my fingers and palms, bright red outlines of vultures, double-reed leaves, owls and vipers. These were hieroglyphics and I could read them. These were the words of my goddess, come back to me.

Child of Isis, you are more than flesh.

These were
her
words, reaching for me in my dark hour, and a small sob of gratitude escaped me. There were nine parts of the Egyptian soul, of which my body was only one. The emperor had violated my flesh but he hadn’t touched the rest. There were parts of me that he couldn’t reach, could never touch, and had no power to defile . . .

The symbols on my hands changed. The needle-fine cuts healed themselves and opened again, with a new message entirely. I rose from the bath, pulling on a dressing gown, then padded barefoot out into the broad hallway. My hair was wet and wild and I held my arms out, blood trailing behind me, vivid red droplets on the white marble. “By the gods!” Strabo cried when he saw my frightening visage, bright blood running down my pale arms.

“By the
goddess
,” I replied.

This put the emperor’s praetorian in white-faced terror. Like most of the Romans, he’d heard the rumors about me, and he must have seen something in my face that made him step aside. I pushed into the emperor’s chambers and found him sitting before an array of maps and battle plans for the invasion of Parthia. His lids were at half-mast and he was unshaven. He actually startled to see me and not because I was bleeding. I’d tucked each hand into the folds of my gown. I was overly aware of him. I could still smell his acrid sweat in the room. I was conscious of his every accursed breath. “Go away, Selene,” he said in a voice like gravel. “I’m unwell.”

“Is that your way of expressing regret?”

He crumpled a scrap of papyrus on his desk. “It’s my way of telling you that you should know better than to come to a man’s bedchambers. There are limits of propriety that must not be crossed. Even by you.”

My laugh was bitter and I felt cold, all the way to my bare toes where they curled against the tiles. “You want to speak to me of propriety, after what you did last night?”

“I did nothing to you last night.” Avoiding my gaze, he cradled his head in his hands as if a storm were pounding behind his eyes. “You must’ve had a vivid dream.”

“Did I dream the bruises your knees left on my thighs?”

He couldn’t look at me. “I’ve never laid a hand on you.”

“You did last night.” It hurt to speak over the rising lump in my throat. “You’ve spent your whole life lying to yourself, but you can’t lie to Isis.” With that, I revealed my hands, holding them in the light where he could see the shapes carved into my palms. He’d seen this before—the way the goddess came through me—but he still paled.

I began to read from the scroll of my own flesh.
“I am Isis. I am nature. I am the mother of all things. No man has a son but through me, and I will not give you one, for you are an instrument of Set the destroyer, the infertile god of the desert whose envy burns away everything he loves. You are a rapist, an enemy of women, and a destroyer of faith. You have closed my temples, persecuted my worshippers, and violated my daughters. Until you repent and make amends, you are cursed. The
Julii
will come to nothing. You’ ll live long enough to watch your heirs fall, one after the other, until your empire rests in the hands of those who despise you.”

If I hadn’t felt the goddess in me, I would have had the presence of mind to be afraid. The emperor stood, knocking the stool out from under him, and was upon me in two strides. Too late, I shrank back, bracing myself in case he might throw me down and force me again. Roughly grabbing my shoulders, he cried, “Why do you condemn me for one moment of weakness! You’re a wicked temptress, just like your mother. What man can resist such a young nymph forever? Even Apollo was seduced by the virgin huntress Cyrene. Am I to be stronger than a god?”

I was struck with horror at his words. Apollo was the emperor’s patron god, and like me, Cyrene had once been Queen of Cyrenaica. The kingdom was given to her by Apollo after he raped and impregnated her. That Augustus should mention this story told me that maybe he wouldn’t have done it if Livia hadn’t slipped something into his drink, but he’d been toying with the idea of forcing himself upon me for quite some time. Livia had only made it easier for him to have what he wanted. She’d only given him an excuse to do to me what he’d done to so many other girls. Only this time, it was no slave he’d taken. “You needn’t worry about
my
condemnation,” I said as the small wounds closed, flesh knitting over flesh. “
Isis
condemns you.”