Lily of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  “I told you. She’s in the afterworld.”

  “No,” the emperor said. “Death is the end of all things.”

  “Then she’s dead,” I said bitterly. “She’s dead.”

  The stark brutality of my tone seemed to take Juba aback. He set his tablet down and lowered his head. It also seemed to snap the emperor out of whatever madness had possessed him. He took a seat behind his desk and ran his fingers over the golden dolphins that had once adorned my mother’s bath. Then he took a blank scroll and tossed it to Juba. “Write.”

  Juba took the emperor’s dictation. “ ‘I, Cleopatra Selene of House Ptolemy, ward of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Divi Filius, did on this day fall prey to a magical spell that made my hands bleed and forced me to be carried from the games. Magic is an integral part of the Isiac cult and was used against me in retribution for my loyalty to Rome. I ask that the perpetrators be punished for this treason.’ Date that today, Juba, and witness Selene’s mark.”

  I listened with a sense of dread. “What have the Isiacs ever done to you that you want to destroy them?”

  The emperor snatched the scroll from Juba and laid it before me, pressing a pen into my hand. “They represent everything I fought against. They hold un-Roman ideas that spread like contagion. They condone immoral relations between men and women. They encourage the little people to think that the gods actually have an interest in them. They’re a dangerous and influential cult, and I cannot tolerate their opposition. And none of this is even to mention how they conspired with Antony’s old partisans when they thought I was dying in Spain! If your mother is alive, I’ll not leave them whole to give her succor and assistance. Infiltrators and traitors all, even those in Rome. It’s time I’m finally rid of this troublesome sect. Now sign it.”

  I had cooperated and the Egyptian gladiator lived. It had not been a lesson lost on me, but now I held the scroll away from me as if it were poisoned. “You’ll just sign it and say I did either way.”

  “Don’t make this uglier, Selene,” the emperor said.

  He wanted me to choose. He wanted me to prove my loyalty. I held the pen in my hand, but I couldn’t write. “What will happen once I’ve signed it?”

  “I’ll have Agrippa leak it to the Senate,” he said smugly. “They’ll get curious about what I’m hiding. Then I’ll make a great show of being forced to bring this complaint into the open. The Senate will be outraged on our behalf and take action. The temples will come down and the Isiacs will be persecuted.”

  He was bragging. He wanted us to take in the details of his plan and appreciate its horrifying simplicity; he always needed an audience to appreciate his genius. Now the emperor’s gold furnishings winked with glittering mockery as I flailed in his trap. There would be no point in refusing him. The only thing my refusal would accomplish would be to spare me of complicity in destroying my goddess and her followers.

  Juba watched my struggle and put a hand on my upper arm. “Make your mark, Selene.”

  Questions ran riot through my mind. How could I fight him? What would my mother do? The most famous story of my mother is how, when she had nothing else to bargain with, she delivered herself to Julius Caesar. But this was a different Caesar.

  Could I soften his heart, the way my mother had softened two Romans before him? Could I make Octavian a better, more merciful ruler? “If I sign this, it’ll destroy my influence with the Isiacs,” I said softly, making my gambit. “Why oppress them when I could influence them?”

  “Don’t play games, Selene.” The emperor had already begun to rise. He’d thought of this, I was sure. Weighed it. Measured it. And decided against it.

  I had to change his mind.

  “Isis speaks through me, so perhaps I can win her followers to your cause.”

  “Or conspire with my enemies,” the emperor mused.

  “Have I been disloyal to you yet, Caesar?” I let him have my dead brother’s name. “Let me go to the Temple of Isis and speak with her followers. Send Agrippa with me if you fear it.”

  The emperor snorted. “I daresay Agrippa would do most anything for me, but there he might draw the line. You know how he feels about that religion.”

  “Then send Juba with me, but don’t destroy the temples in my name! If you do, what use will I be to your empire?”

  Octavian looked annoyed. “What use, indeed?”

  I said a silent prayer that I understood the emperor’s motives. “When you build your port in Mauretania, you’ll need someone to sway the natives to your cause. If they believe in me, maybe I can convince them not to fight you.”

  “Maybe I’ll send your twin, and while he’s there he can have a tragic boating accident. I don’t need you, Selene.”

  My heart stopped in my chest. Was he just trying to frighten me, or did the emperor hate Helios that much?

  “But you do need me,” I forced myself to say. “I come from a line of rulers who take disparate peoples and bind them together. A line of builders. You need a Ptolemy in Africa and I am that Ptolemy.”

  I could see that the messages on my hands had put poisonous doubts into the emperor’s mind. Where he’d been so smug riding in his chariot today, now he was undone. “Your name may hold power, but you’re just a girl. A very unusual girl, I admit, but just a girl.”

  “I am not just a girl. I’m Cleopatra’s daughter.”

  Silence.

  The emperor stared at me, trying to penetrate my walls, trying to see into my mind, but I’d somehow found my pharaoh’s mask again. I lifted my chin as he stared at me. Let the emperor look at me and think of my mother.

  “You are Cleopatra’s daughter,” he finally said. “But will you be mine, Selene? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  I could see it then, for the first time, as I’d never seen it; he needed a protégé. He wanted me to belong to him, in spite of himself. My mother had also played this game with dangerous Romans. I must learn to play too. “Caesar, I’m yours,” I said, hiding the shudder that went through my bones. “Everything I want can come to me through you alone. You’re the only father that I have now.”

  It made me sick to say that. Sick in heart, sick to my stomach, and sick in my limbs. Loyalty to Isis had overcome loyalty to my father and it hurt more than I could have imagined. But I wasn’t sorry.

  “When you want things, Selene, you want them very much,” the emperor said.

  “So do you,” I shot back.

  “What I want is for you to marry Juba.”

  It stunned me into silence. I glanced at Juba whose cheeks colored, but he didn’t look surprised. Clearly, they’d spoken of this before, and that realization made my cheeks color. I’d feared that the emperor would match me with some wrinkled ally in the Senate, that I’d be sent away from my brothers, to serve an old man, never to lay eyes on Egypt again. I’d never expected this.

  Juba was young and handsome, and when he looked at me, sometimes my belly fluttered. Most important, being married to Juba might mean that I could stay near my brothers. Had I charmed him into asking the emperor for my hand?

  How foolish I’d been to bind my breasts, to keep him from seeing me as more than a girl. Now, the bindings felt useless and I wanted to tear them off. I’d never wear them again—for I understood that my strength now lay in being a woman.

  “I’ll announce the betrothal when it pleases me,” the emperor was saying. “But I’ll have your assent and your cooperation now in exchange for my clemency toward the Isiacs.”

  He didn’t need my assent. He could marry me to whomever he wanted. He had all the power and I had none—except for this. He wanted my assent. And I would give it to him. I didn’t look at my intended bridegroom as I said, “You have my assent and cooperation. When will we marry?”

  “Soon,” the emperor said. “Perhaps you can wed together with Julia, since whoever she marries will be my heir.”

  He had it all wrapped neatly as a package. Julia and I were chattel to bind chosen men to his si
de. I again nodded my assent and watched the emperor throw the document accusing the Isiacs of attacking me into the fire. The bargain had been struck.

  Twenty-two

  JUBA walked me back to Octavia’s house, and as we made our way there, in spite of how much worse things could have turned out, I slipped into a solemn silence.

  “You did the right thing,” Juba said.

  I didn’t want to speak, but I found myself asking, “Would my father think so?”

  “Your father wouldn’t encourage a child’s rebellion. You had no other choice than to cooperate … but I’d hoped you would like this match between us.”

  “Maybe I would like it more if you stopped calling me a child.”

  Juba stopped beneath a columned archway where green vines crept up the stone and clung. “You’re a young lady—more mature than most I know. That’s why I want to marry you.”

  Juba’s eyes were filled with affection and I realized now how much I’d wanted to hear him say such words to me, and yet how could I believe them? “You flatter me, Juba.”

  “You doubt my sincerity? I’m fonder of you than it would be appropriate to admit.”

  “You needn’t say such things.” I leaned against the wall to still my shaking knees. “I know that ours is a political arrangement.”

  “Yes, political,” Juba said, abashed. “But your mother’s marriages were political and that didn’t lessen their reported passion.”

  I knew what kind of things they said in Rome about my mother’s reported passion and worried to have that reputation. “If this marriage will help serve Isis, then I’m glad for it.”

  Juba winced at my neutrality. “You resent how this was presented to you, and I don’t blame you. Did I know the emperor might want us to marry one day? I did. But I didn’t know how much I’d welcome it. I didn’t expect to care for you as I do. I didn’t know that we’d have things in common, like literature and—”

  “A love of Africa?” I looked at him hopefully.

  “That too.” He pulled me from the archway into the torch-lit garden. “I’ll give you a good life, Selene. An exciting life. We’ll travel. We’ll write. We’ll meet all the most important people in the world. Our pasts are so much the same. Don’t you think it’s fitting, in a way?” At a loss for words, I studied him as he studied me and Juba brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. “Selene, won’t you like me a little?”

  “But I do like you,” I said. I liked his intelligence, I liked his curiosity, and I liked the sensitivity in his eyes. Still, this was no moment for romance. Today, I’d found Isis again and all that filled my thoughts was that I needed to see Helios. I’d kept so many secrets from my twin, and all that had to change. I needed to tell him everything—about Euphronius and about my bargain with the emperor. He’d see that I’d fight for our family, for our people, and for our faith as hard as he did. He’d see what I was willing to sacrifice for Egypt and he’d forgive me and maybe even help me.

  WHEN I came through the door of my room, Bast had been dozing on my bed, and she came awake from her catnap with all her fur on end, as if my blood-covered visage were a terror even to her. I went to the washbasin and sponged my arms, then changed into clean clothes. “Are you better, Selene?” Philadelphus asked from the doorway.

  “Yes. So much better …” I went to him and hugged him close. “Isis sent a warning for the emperor and he thinks Mother sent it!”

  “Did she?” Philadelphus asked.

  It was a surprising question. My mother had been called the New Isis, and perhaps she’d carried the words and the will of the goddess when she was alive. Perhaps the part of my mother that had been Isis sent the emperor a warning, but I didn’t think so. “No,” I finally said. “It’s Isis who speaks through me, but I think Octavian wants it to be our mother. It unsettles him, it haunts him, and yet he wants it to be her.” Philadelphus chewed his lip, clearly bewildered. Perhaps my twin would understand. “Where’s Helios?”

  “He won’t come to see you,” Philadelphus said. “I told him not to fight, but he’s mule-headed.”

  “Let’s see if we can convince him,” I said, crouching under the desk to reach for the loose brick. I pulled it toward me, out of the wall, and found that Helios had blocked the hole with his bed on the other side. “Helios?” I sighed miserably when he didn’t answer.

  Philadelphus crouched beside me. “He’ll forgive you.”

  I stared for a long time. “How do you know?”

  Philadelphus peeked up beneath auburn lashes. “I just know.”

  I remembered all the strange things that my little brother said, and the words that my mother had spoken when she put his amulet around his neck the day she died. “Philadelphus, you knew that I’d save the gladiator at the games today. You knew it before it happened. You read the Rivers of Time, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Philadelphus admitted. “I see things sometimes, before they happen. Other times, the things I see don’t happen, because the river has changed course. It’s wide like the Nile, with all possible futures. Sometimes I catch up the water in my hands and see so clearly. Other times I look down again and the river goes a different direction and whatever I saw is gone.”

  “Can you see mother?”

  “Sometimes,” he said shyly. “Sometimes I see her victorious, with our father, and the eagle of Egypt flies over the whole world. I see Helios married to Iotape and Caesarion wearing his pharaoh’s crown and Antyllus a great lord. But sometimes I see our mother in chains and the temples of Isis crumbled to dust.”

  I only dared ask the question in a whisper. “Is our mother alive?”

  Philadelphus tilted his head. “Somewhere. Somewhere I see her with Julius Caesar and they laugh together and we don’t exist at all. But mostly she’s in the afterworld … Selene, don’t be angry at me.”

  I wrapped my arms around Philadelphus to reassure him. “Why would I be angry?”

  “Lady Octavia says people might think I worked magic, and they’d be angry and crucify me. She said not to tell anyone. Not even the emperor. She said she’d keep my secret safe.”

  I paled at the idea that Octavia knew more of my little brother’s gifts than I did. How could I have left it to Octavia to protect Philadelphus? “Do you trust Lady Octavia? Does she treat you well?”

  “She’s very nice and she says I have our father’s hair.” Philadelphus took a curl in his fingers. “I used to know just what he looked like, but I can’t remember anymore.”

  I ached at the sadness of his admission. It hurt worse when I tried to remember my father’s face myself. The details were fading. How much longer before I forgot what he looked like entirely? Just then, Chryssa knocked at the door. Philadelphus and I crawled out from under the desk and let the slave girl inside immediately because her eyes were red and teary.

  “I didn’t think he would do it,” Chryssa kept saying, sniffling and wiping her eyes. “Oh, my lady, I only showed him the tunnels to explain my comings and goings. I never thought he’d use them.”

  Tunnels. I remembered Helios talking about the tunnels as a way to escape before. My heart began to race. “What are you talking about?”

  Chryssa cried, “Master Helios is gone!”

  Twenty-three

  HELIOS was gone. Of all the words that I could have heard, none would have made me feel so lost, for in my world, when people left they never came back. I stared at Chryssa wordlessly, overtaken by despair. I stood so still that I thought I’d turned into stone.

  “Say something,” Chryssa pleaded.

  In answer, my hand struck like an asp, slapping her full across the face. But hitting her once wasn’t enough to diffuse my rage. I struck her again and she went to her knees. Isis forgive me, so soon after finding your mercy, I wanted someone else to feel pain. I screamed at her. “How could you let him go?” Philadelphus stood in wide-eyed shock at my violence. Then I rounded on him too. “Did Helios tell you anything about this?”

  He shook his
head, his own distress obvious. The slave put her hand to her cheek where the red marks of my fingers lingered and her tears dripped on the floor, but when pity welled within me, I shoved it back down. “Where’s Helios? What did you show him?”

  “There’s a tunnel near the Temple of Apollo,” Chryssa said, voice wavering. “The emperor built it so he can go back and forth without being bothered by clients, but slaves use it too. There are guards at the end of the tunnel. Helios might still be there, waiting for an opportunity to slip past.”

  “Maybe if we run, we can catch him,” I said, making Chryssa get up. I grabbed Philadelphus with one hand, took up my skirt with the other, and led the way, racing down the corridor toward the gardens. I wanted to run as fast as my legs would carry me, but that would arouse suspicion. Instead, we strode with unquestionable purpose, as if summoned by the emperor himself. We wove through the arbors, where the scent of jasmine filled the warm night air, but just as we turned a corner into the privacy of the hedge, Chryssa pulled me back.

  The house was quiet, everyone having been quite exhausted by the games, and yet I heard soft laughter. In the torchlight I glimpsed Julia and my Roman half brother in an alcove, locked in a kiss. Iullus had both his hands on her cheeks and kissed Julia as if she were a woman grown. The sound of Philadelphus’s gasp caught their attention, and they broke apart. Then Julia sprang to her feet and Iullus sneered in my direction. “Shouldn’t you be bleeding half to death somewhere, Selene? What are you doing here?”

  What were we doing here? What was he doing here with the emperor’s daughter was the better question, but I didn’t have time to scold them now. “Have you seen Helios?”

  Iullus smirked. “Do you mean Marcus Julius Alexander?”

  Even in the dim torchlight, I could see that Julia’s cheeks burned. “Selene, we didn’t see Helios, but if he saw us, he wouldn’t tell father, would he?”

  That’s when Philadelphus broke in with, “We think he might have run away into the tunnels.”

  Once again, I despaired of ever having a sibling who knew when to stay quiet, but Julia looked fascinated, as if exhilarated by my brother’s nerve. “Ran away?”