Lily of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  The emperor pursed his lips at my defiance. “There may be clemency for him if you cooperate with my plans. After all, Agrippa says that Helios hasn’t declared himself king. That counts for much.”

  He was lying. Having spared my brother once, he wouldn’t spare him again. Still, how could I not cling to the possibility that Helios might yet be saved? “You’d pardon my twin?”

  “There’d be consequences. Exile, at a minimum. He’d have to live in obscurity with you in Mauretania and give up his name. But Helios hasn’t taken the toga virilis of manhood yet, so he might be pardoned. You must trust in Caesar and do everything I tell you.”

  Trust in Caesar. Had he said these words to my mother and then gone on to murder her son? The thought hardened me. Always the emperor demanded promises of me while he broke his own, but he’d underestimated how much I’d learned from him. In fact, I was his star pupil. Whatever I must become to fight him, I’d become.

  Again, the emperor and I stood facing one another like colossi on each side of a road. If I was some part Isis, he was some part Set. I felt Isis and Egypt in me. As we stood in that shadowy temple, I found my inner iron. “I have conditions.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve nothing to bargain with.”

  “Don’t I?” I asked, remembering the way wind had come from my fingertips. What magic could one day be at my disposal? I didn’t know, but neither did he. “While you’ve held us hostage, the East has submitted to you. Now Helios slips away for only a few months, and Thebes has already risen up. Alexandria will be next, then the Kushites, the Numidians, the Mauretanians, all of Africa and Spain. You need me to bring about your Golden Age—not the real one but the pretty vision that Virgil propagandizes in his Aeneid. You need me.”

  “I can always send Juba to Africa without you,” the emperor said, averting his gaze from Venus. This place made him uncomfortable, and I was glad.

  I felt the weight of my frog amulet at my throat. “Who will accept a Romanized king named Gaius Julius Juba without even a royal wife at his side? But they’ve all heard the name Ptolemy. They all know the name Cleopatra.”

  “If they reject Juba as their king, we’ll fight them.”

  “Then they’ll ally with the Spanish tribes,” I said, showing that I’d learned my lesson well. “On how many fronts can you afford to fight?”

  His face reddened. “As many as it takes. Roman soldiers are the envy of the world.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I told him sweetly. “But how many able generals do you have left? Agrippa can only be in one place at a time. Aren’t you always telling us how we must grow up quickly because there are no leaders left in Rome?”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “Perhaps the prophecies are wrong,” I continued, my voice melodious. “Perhaps you really have eliminated every rival. Perhaps you’re luckier than Julius Caesar, but can you be sure?”

  I watched as the emperor’s eyes fell upon the statue of his uncle. A leader just like him, who had eventually been stabbed to death in the Senate by the very men he thought were his friends. The emperor’s jaw tightened.

  “Why risk it when I’m offering reasonable conditions?” I asked. “Don’t you like to say, ‘Better a safe commander than a bold’?”

  The emperor lifted his chin. “What are these reasonable conditions of yours?”

  “You won’t persecute the followers of Isis. No crucifixions of Isiacs. None.”

  The emperor waved this away. “I suppose that’s in as much my interest as yours. If the Isiacs are divided between you and your brother, it makes little sense to focus their hatred on me.”

  “I’ll denounce the rebellion in Thebes,” I offered. “But I’ll never denounce Helios or call him a traitor.”

  He adjusted his armor impatiently, but didn’t refuse me. “Any more conditions?”

  I breathed deeply and said, “Make me Queen of Egypt.”

  At this, his face jerked up, his eyes rounded, and something pulsed at the base of his throat. “No. Rome has made that mistake before.”

  I could see his mind was set, but so was mine. I had plotted and planned. “Then give me Mauretania.”

  “You’re already going to be—”

  “Juba’s wife. Queen consort. That’s not the same. If you’re going to take Mauretania, don’t make it a dowry for Juba. Give it to me.”

  “I’ve already promised Mauretania to Juba!”

  “What Caesar gives, Caesar can take away,” I said slowly.

  The way his lips parted, I couldn’t tell if he were staring at me in outrage or admiration. “Selene, I can make you a co-ruler in the Hellenistic tradition, but Romans will only acknowledge you as queen because you’re Juba’s wife.”

  “Then acknowledge me as a queen in my own right. Confirm my right to Cyrenaica. My father gave it to me; now you can give it back.”

  I thought he might choke. With Egypt, Cyrenaica, Numidia, and now Mauretania, I could lay claim to rule all of northern Africa. More than any Ptolemy before me. The audacity of it seemed to stun him. “You know that I could do such a thing only as a symbolic gesture.”

  “It will be enough.” To start with.

  “Selene, understand that in all the empire, I have only client kings, not client queens.”

  “Now you’ll have one. You’ll have me,” I said.

  All those years he’d made me play the kithara harp for him, but now it was his strings that I plucked. In the shadow of the statues, I could see that his reason was at war with something deeper inside him, something darker and more dangerous by far. The emperor was Roman, but he too had a khaibit in which his secrets lurked. This specter was a part of himself he didn’t see or understand, and it was wholly mine to exploit.

  “Very well,” he finally said.

  As simply as that. Had Julius Caesar said it so simply to my mother when he made her the most powerful woman in the world? Everything, everything had changed in an instant and I tried to show neither surprise nor doubt. “Philadelphus must come with me to Mauretania.”

  “Your brother isn’t well enough to travel.”

  “The remedy Agrippa sought for him is helping. He’s getting well.”

  The emperor abandoned all pretense. “Philadelphus will stay in Rome to ensure your loyalty. As long as you do my bidding, Philadelphus will be treated kindly. Now I tire of this. You’ll marry Juba, you’ll help me end rebellion in Egypt, and I’ll confirm your right to rule as co-ruler with Juba.”

  “How do I know you’ll keep your word?” I asked.

  “You don’t,” he snapped.

  “I’d be a poor sort of queen to accept that answer.”

  “You’ll have it written and sealed at your wedding.”

  “That isn’t good enough,” I said, scenting the moss that had grown at the corners of the masonry, and beneath those earthy notes, I sensed something deeper still. Could there be magic even in a Roman temple? It wasn’t enough to fill me with power, but the ache of heka sickness that had been in my limbs began to ebb, and I stood straighter. “Why don’t you worship here? Julius Caesar built this temple, after all.”

  “And it was the death of him,” the emperor replied.

  “You do seem genuinely grieved,” I admitted, glancing over my shoulder at the Divine Julius. “You asked me once if my mother loved Julius Caesar. Did you?”

  “He was my father.”

  “He was your uncle,” I said, shaking my head.

  “No,” the emperor said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t remember the man who put me in my mother’s womb. He died when I was only four years old and I don’t remember a single thing about him. But I remember Julius Caesar, who was my father in every way that matters.”

  “Then be like him,” I said. “You ask me to be your Cleopatra, so be my Caesar.”

  His eyes snapped to me and when he tried to speak he struggled. It was now his mouth that had run dry. I was Egyptian; I’d learned about all the parts of the soul—I
knew that a man was not only himself but also who he wished to be. The emperor didn’t want to be only humble Octavian, even if he’d conquered the world. He wasn’t enough at peace with all the things he’d done to be easy with the man he was.

  He’d always held all the power; nothing had ever forced him to bargain with me, not truly. When I said that he needed me, I’d been telling only a partial truth. He wanted to need me because it made of him another man. That’s why I knew I would triumph this day. “Be my Caesar,” I said again.

  “How?” he rasped.

  “May I have your blade?”

  He eyed me suspiciously, but slowly withdrew the gladius at his hip and handed it to me. He was too curious, I think, to deny me. The weapon was more of a dagger than the typical legionnaire’s gladius, and I gripped it by the carved hilt which fit perfectly in my palm. I was pleased it was made of ivory, fashioned from the tusk of a great African elephant whose spirit might be watching me now as I lifted the hem of my gown and pierced the fabric with the sword.

  “What are you doing?” the emperor asked.

  A distinct tearing noise answered him as I ripped the cloth. “I’m making a diadem,” I said. “Alexander the Great wore only a ribbon upon his head as a symbol of his divine royalty; it will be sufficient for me.”

  The emperor arched a brow. “I imagine his was made of some fine shimmering fabric and not torn from a homespun gown like a raggedy bandage.”

  Indeed, the strip of cloth in my fingers with its jagged edges did look like a bandage, and seeing that made something tighten in my chest. In Egypt we wrapped our dead in bandages to preserve their souls. Just so, Isis bound together with bandages the pieces of her dead husband and brought him to life. A bandage was a sacred thing.

  “I can’t crown you within the walls of Rome,” the emperor said. “It’s against the law.”

  He didn’t care about the law, as we both well knew. He only cared that he not be caught breaking it. “We’re in a sacred space here,” I said. “Beyond the laws, and what we do isn’t to be witnessed by outsiders.”

  “What’s the point of a coronation without witnesses?”

  “Oh, there will be witnesses,” I said, gesturing toward the statues that hovered over us. “Can you not feel their kas? They’re watching: Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Venus too.”

  He looked at the statues and the strain in the emperor’s shoulders drained away. He took the knife back from me and slowly slid it back into its scabbard as if in a dream, and then his jaw went lax. Perhaps he felt the faint traces of heka in this place too and fell under its spell.

  “Make your pledge to me,” I said. “Your oath in our family temple as witnessed by my mother and your father. What you promise in front of them, I’ll take on faith.”

  “Faith,” he said slowly.

  “Faith,” I repeated. Then he held out his hand to me. Reverently, I kissed the ribbon before placing it in the emperor’s outstretched hand.

  Though it was torn from my dress, a strip of cloth he’d mocked just moments before, I saw something in him change as he touched it. His fingers caressed it as if it were made of the finest silk, and then his gray eyes fastened upon me with deadly earnest. “To rule is a responsibility.”

  When I was a girl, I hadn’t known what it meant to be queen. I hadn’t understood when my mother asked her people not to fight anymore—when she put her hand into that basket for their sake and mine. But I understood now that being queen wasn’t about sparkling crowns or scepters. It wasn’t about the beautiful palaces, the silvered sandals, and elegant gowns. Not about the adoring crowds and the thrones made of gold.

  It was about the people whose lives you held in your hands. I’d never lived in Cyrenaica nor Mauretania, but I knew without reservation that I’d rule more justly than any Roman governor and more gloriously than Juba ever could. “It’s a responsibility I accept; I claim the crown.”

  The emperor’s eyes burned like some dark metal in a forge and he brushed my shoulder as he passed behind me. We were both facing the statues now.

  Had I been crowned Pharaoh of Egypt, it would’ve been done in Memphis and I’d have worn the two crowns and held the crook and the flail. But I was in Rome and the land I’d rule held no such traditions. There could only be this—but under the eyes of my mother, it was still sacred. A flicker of torchlight lit up my mother’s face and it seemed as if she smiled.

  The emperor was very close behind me now, his breath on the back of my neck. I should’ve feared that he might take that cloth, wrap it around my throat, and strangle me. After all, he’d murdered Antyllus in a temple too. But I didn’t fear. With faint traces of heka thrumming warm through my body, I was, in this moment, certain no mortal hand could destroy me.

  The emperor reached around me and I felt his breastplate against my back as he wrapped the cloth around my forehead; the diadem kissed my brow like the lips of a lover. I closed my eyes as the emperor fastened it at the nape of my neck. Then I whispered in Egyptian, words that came from some past that wasn’t my own:“Hear me, Queen of Heaven,

  Let there be terror of me like the terror of thee,

  Let there be fear of me like the fear of thee,

  Let there be awe of me like the awe of thee,

  Let there be love of me like the love of thee,

  Let me rule, a leader of the living,

  Let me be powerful, a leader of spirits,

  Oh, Mother, thou hast come forth from me,

  And I have come forth from thee.”

  I flushed at the power of it. The warmth flowed from my heart, to my lips, and all my most secret places. After all I’d endured and all that’d been endured for me, there was this sweetness. Tears welled in my eyes as I reflected that this diadem was a bandage to bind back together all the broken pieces of my family and my faith. I’d make it so. I had come to Rome in chains, but I would leave Rome a queen.

  I turned, shoulders high as if I were floating toward the sky. He paused for a moment, as if he didn’t recognize me. “You’re a sovereign now. So what say you then on Egypt’s rebellion against Rome? What stance shall you take in a war, if it comes? Choose.”

  This would be the first—and most important—decision I’d ever make for my people. It was a summer evening, and outside frogs called to one another. The warm night air was tinged with possibility. But there was only one choice. Holding my amulet at my throat with one hand, I lifted my chin and pronounced, “We remain a Friend and Ally of the Roman People.”

  “A good choice, Queen Selene.”

  Queen Selene.

  He smiled and I smiled in return. It was my Isis smile, my eyes still secreted in the reeds. He thought I would build my kingdom on the blood and bones of my brothers, but he’d soon learn he was wrong. The emperor had bemoaned living in a world of little people. He wished for an equal. Well, I would make myself his. He wanted in me, his own Cleopatra. Well, he would get one.

  Win or Die.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Cleopatra’s daughter was born at the cusp of a religious awakening and came of age in a dangerous political world. Like her more famous mother, this young girl also forged important alliances with the Romans and charmed her way into power. It may even be argued that she did so more successfully, and with less bloodshed. But Selene’s importance may have to do more with her religious influence than with her statecraft.

  Today, we take for granted the concept of personal spirituality or a relationship with God. In much of the ancient world, however, religion was a covenant between the state and the divine realm. Insofar as personal or household gods existed for the Romans, worship was more orthopraxy than orthodoxy. That is to say, the emphasis was on correct ritual rather than on faith or intimate prayer. For the early Romans especially, religion was more a matter for men than women.

  All of this started to change with the rise of henotheistic mystery cults, and as a forerunner of Christianity, the Isiac religion was one of the few in the ancient world to conc
ern itself with social justice. In challenging temporal authority, the spread of Isiac worship nurtured a nascent concept of personal spirituality without which our world might be very different today. And were it not for the influence of Cleopatra Selene as the foremost proponent of Isis during the Augustan Age, such a transition may never have taken hold.

  In spite of her role in fostering a religion that paved the way for modern-day spirituality, the historical record of Cleopatra Selene’s remarkable life is scant. Plutarch, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius give us only brief but tantalizing clues. It was for this reason that I imagined the truth of Selene’s story in terms of magic.

  The idea that Octavian may have been obsessed with Cleopatra is not my original innovation. After her death, Octavian not only allowed Cleopatra’s legend to grow, but he actively cultivated it. This was, no doubt, because it glorified him to have defeated an extraordinary woman, but historians like Diana E. E. Kleiner in Cleopatra and Rome have described a fascination that may have gone beyond the political, and it is hard not to imagine the influence that Selene may have had in sustaining her mother’s image in the mind of her conqueror.

  I departed from the historical record concerning the campaign in Spain insofar as Augustus wasn’t able to return to Rome before Julia’s wedding to Marcellus in 25 B.C. Juba was made King of Mauretania that same year, probably while serving with Octavian in Tarraco. It’s possible that Juba went directly to Africa to claim his throne with Selene, without returning to Rome. The dedication of the Temple of Apollo occurred earlier than my novel would indicate, as did the rebellion in Thebes. For the sake of brevity, I also omitted the mention of Hyginos as one of the orphans in the imperial compound and made no mention of Octavia’s eldest daughter, also named Marcella.

  No ancient sources mention Iullus in Spain, but given the fact that Octavian took all the other young men of his household of fighting age, including Juba, it’s the most likely time that Iullus would have obtained military experience to qualify him for the political offices he would later hold. As for Selene’s other brothers, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, the historical record is ambiguous. For example, while the twins are specifically referenced as having been marched in Octavian’s Triumph, Philadelphus is not mentioned. This may be because he perished before he could march, was spared on account of his age, or simply lived a relatively obscure life and wasn’t acknowledged again by historical sources except by those who claimed that both boys went to live with Selene in Mauretania. Modern scholars have theorized that the boys must have died young, but for purposes of the novel’s narrative arc, I’ve embraced the uncertainty surrounding their fate.