The Egyptian Royals Collection

by Michelle Moran

  On our fifth morning at sea, Alexander lowered a scroll onto his lap. “Who do you miss the most?” he asked quietly.

  I glanced at Ptolemy, to make sure he was still sleeping. “Charmion,” I admitted. “And Mother.”

  My brother nodded.

  “And you?”

  “Petubastes,” he replied, and I could see that he was struggling to hold back his tears as he recalled the young priest of Ptah who had been our Egyptian tutor in the Museion. “And Father, of course. Have you seen all the statues they took from Alexandria? Octavian has them in the library, and there’s one of Petubastes. Juba is labeling each one for sale.”

  “And what does Juba know about Egyptian history?” I demanded.

  “He’s a writer.” I didn’t know where Alexander came by this information, but he seemed certain of it. “He’s already written three books on history.”

  “At eighteen?” I challenged.

  “Nineteen.”

  “So he’s a writer as well as a spy.” I despised the Prince of Numidia, who had turned his back on his ancestry to become close to Octavian. But that afternoon, when I had run out of subjects to draw, my curiosity overcame my dislike. I had intended to keep away from my mother’s library, but I wanted to see what had been taken from Egypt.

  When I arrived, the doors of the library were already thrown open, and light streamed from the windows onto the rich panels. Hundreds of statues and stolen shrines were pressed against the walls. But aside from marble faces, the room was empty. I stepped inside, then heard the swift footsteps of someone rushing to hide.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded, and a man appeared at my mother’s wooden desk. I could see from his unmarked tunic that he was a sailor, and he was holding a statuette of Isis in his hands.

  “Well, good morning.” He took several steps toward me and smiled. “The men were right. You are a pretty girl.”

  Immediately, I turned to run. Then a streak of metal flashed in the doorway and someone’s arm lashed out. A heavy blade struck deep into the panels where the sailor was standing, and at once the man dropped the statuette. I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe.

  “I hope you are going to return that,” Juba said.

  The man bent to collect the statuette, but as he replaced it on the table, his trembling hands knocked it over and broke a tiny arm. When he rushed to leave, Juba caught him by the neck.

  “You will never touch anything that belongs to Caesar.” The man did his best to choke out a response, but Juba tightened his grip. “The next time, I will aim for your throat,” he promised. He shoved the man away, then turned his black gaze on me. “What are you doing here?”

  “A scroll,” I lied swiftly. “I—I just wanted something to read.”

  “So find it,” he said angrily, and made his way to the desk. He picked up the broken arm of the goddess and held it up to the light before discarding it into an empty amphora.

  “No! Don’t throw it away.”

  He looked up, and I could see that he did not wish to be disturbed.

  “That’s a very old statue,” I told him.

  “Well, thank you, Princess. Unfortunately, not many Romans are interested in purchasing broken statues of Egyptian goddesses. But since you’re so interested in art, why don’t you tell me which pieces you believe to be the most important?”

  I had seen Juba in his fury, and did not wish to make “him” any angrier, so I pointed to a statue, and he raised his brows.

  “Tuthmoses I?” Juba asked.

  I was impressed that he could identify a Pharaoh whose reign had been more than a thousand years earlier. “How did you know?”

  “I can read hieroglyphics,” he said curtly. “What else?”

  I pointed to the bronze bust of Dionysus, and suddenly tears were welling in my eyes. I tried to blink them away before Juba could see.

  “You can weep, but it won’t bring them back,” he said cruelly. “Kingdoms rise and fall on whims of the gods.”

  “Isis has never turned her back on Egypt! She will bring me home.”

  Juba’s voice grew threatening. “I would be very careful where I said that, Princess.”

  But I raised my chin, determined not to be afraid. “I know about you. Julius Caesar killed your own mother and brother. But I’ll never bow to Rome.”

  “How very brave.” Juba’s lips twisted into a sardonic smile. “Perhaps you’ll feel differently after the Triumph.”

  I spun around and crossed the library. But before I left, I glimpsed the basalt statue my brother had seen of Petubastes. The priest’s face was beautiful even in stone, and a hastily chiseled inscription indicated the day of his death at sixteen years old. When I reached out to touch it, I glanced back and saw Juba watching me, then thought better of it and walked away.

  Inside our cabin, Alexander was pacing.

  “Where have you been?” he cried.

  “In the library.”

  “Well, I’ve been looking for you.” I followed his gaze to the bed. Ptolemy was a sickly color. He lay between the cushions, hardly moving. “He’s burning even hotter than before.”

  “Then we must find the ship’s physician!”

  “He already came.”

  When my brother didn’t add anything more, I felt my chest constrict. “And?”

  Alexander remained silent.

  “And what did he say?” When Alexander only shook his head, I rushed to Ptolemy’s side. “Ptolemy,” I whispered, pushing his hair away from his brow. He was as hot as Alexander had said. Slowly he opened one of his pale blue eyes.

  “Selene.” He reached out and placed his small hand in mine; the tears ran hot down my cheeks onto his palm.

  For the next three days Alexander and I kept a constant vigil at Ptolemy’s bed. When Octavian took his meals in the courtyard, we didn’t join him. When the sailors spotted dolphins alongside the ship and pronounced it a good omen, we didn’t go to see. The three of us were the last of the Ptolemies. We had nothing more in the world than each other.

  Several times a day, Agrippa brought trays of fruit, and once, when the physician said there was no hope, Agrippa found a slave in the galleys who had studied medicine in his native Macedonia.

  “Caesar wants all three children alive for his Triumph,” Agrippa explained. “I will give you a hundred talents to cure him.” But even for the price that would buy his own freedom, there was nothing the Macedonian could do. Frustrated, Agrippa shoved a bag of gold at the man. “Take it!” he said angrily.

  “But I can’t heal him, Domine.” He used the Latin word for “master,” and I could see he was afraid. “He’s too sick.”

  “Then just take it and go!”

  The man left the cabin before Agrippa could change his mind, and I buried my face in my hands.

  “You will keep the door closed,” Agrippa said. “Caesar sickens easily. We must move the two of you to a different cabin.” But even though Alexander and I protested at this, Agrippa was firm. “Caesar wants you alive.”

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Before a new cabin could be found near the royal courtyard, Ptolemy began to moan. I pressed his little hand in mine, and whenever the pain was too great, he bunched his fingers into a fist, squeezing his eyes shut as if he could squeeze out the world. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t even drink, and by morning his small body lay rigid on the silk sheets of the bed.

  “Ptolemy,” I whispered when he didn’t move. “Ptolemy!” I cried.

  Alexander shook him. “Wake up! Ptolemy, we’re almost there. Wake up!” But even such a lie wouldn’t open his eyes. Although Alexander began to weep, I was too numb to cry. Perhaps the Ptolemies had angered the gods. Perhaps Juba was correct, and we would all die by Fortune’s whims.

  I smoothed my little brother’s hair from his brow, then opened his fingers so they could finally relax. “My little prince,” I whispered.

  But my brother stood up from Ptolemy’s bed in a rage. “What have we done? Why are the go
ds punishing our family like this?”

  “Shh!” I said sharply. “Give him some peace! He heard enough anger in life.”

  Alexander sank to the bed and put his face in his hands. “Why?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  When the news was sent to Octavian, the Macedonian slave returned to collect Ptolemy’s body for a burial at sea. But Alexander stood guard in front of the bed.

  “Only murderers are buried at sea!” he cried.

  “I’m sorry, Domine, but these are orders from Caesar himself.”

  “Then tell him no!” my brother shouted.

  Agrippa appeared, and the Macedonian shook his head. “They want to keep the body.”

  Agrippa stared at my brother. “We have many days left at sea, and no embalming materials to keep his body fresh. Let your brother rest with Neptune, Alexander.”

  While the Macedonian wrapped Ptolemy in the sheets of his bed, I strained to see his golden head one last time, and the little lips that had so often trembled in fear. He’d been a timid child, and my mother’s favorite after Caesarion. I should have looked after him better, I thought. He was too young to survive so much upheaval.

  We followed the slave into the crisp morning air, then through the royal courtyard to the side of the ship. All the important members of Caesar’s retinue were gathered. A priest of Apollo said several words in prayer, and each face was solemn, even Octavian’s. I held on to Alexander’s arm to keep myself from collapsing on the deck. And when the Macedonian dropped the tiny body into the sea, my brother dashed to the railing. “Ptolemy!” he cried desperately. “Ptolemy!” Agrippa held him back.

  “Take him to the courtyard,” he instructed. “Find him some food and good Chian wine.” Several men escorted my brother away, but I remained on the deck, letting my hair whip in the wind, too tired to push it away.

  He hadn’t even been given a decent burial. The blood of Alexander the Great and Marc Antony had run through his veins, and he’d been tossed into the sea like a criminal. But what better fate lay ahead for Alexander and me? Octavian had said he would keep us alive, but if he’d lied to the Queen of Egypt about leaving for Rome in three days instead of eleven months, what would stop him from lying to us? He was never going to parade my mother through Rome. I knew now that Caesar had tried it with Arsinoë, and instead of cheering, the people had revolted. They were shocked by such treatment of a woman, and the sister of the Queen of Egypt, no less. My mother had never faced any future but imminent death, and if Octavian hadn’t fooled her into taking her own life, he would have found someone to kill her. And once his Triumph in Rome was finished, why should our future be any different?

  I thought of the many terrible ways there were to die, and wondered if Ptolemy had escaped worse pain. I put my hand on the polished rail. With one jump, there would be no more tears, no more loneliness.

  “I wouldn’t think it, Princess.”

  My back tensed. I had thought everyone had left, but I spun around to face Juba. In his vermilion toga, he looked more regal than Octavian in his homemade tunics and broad-brimmed hats.

  “Have you ever seen the body of a drowned man?” he asked. “It swells five, even six times its size, then turns black until the skin peels away.”

  My knuckles grew white as I gripped the rail.

  “Do you want to end up as a bloated corpse abandoned at sea?”

  “Better than a corpse abandoned in Caesar’s prison!” But I turned from the railing and Juba got what he wished for. Alexander and I would be alive for Octavian’s Triumph.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ROME

  AS THE ship approached a harbor for the first time in weeks, Alexander and I rushed to the prow.

  “Is this Rome?” I asked. There was no Museion gleaming in the afternoon light, and the villas that hugged the vast stretches of shore were plain, without columns or ornamentation. There was nothing to distinguish one squat white building from the next except the colors of their wind-beaten shutters.

  My brother shook his head. “Brundisium. I heard it’s another ten days by litter to Rome.”

  Hundreds of soldiers waited on shore, their red standards emblazoned with a tall, golden eagle and the letters SPQR, for Senatus Populusque Romanas. Brundisium’s port was large enough to berth fifty ships, but there was nothing like my mother’s thalamegos. I could see the soldiers’ reactions as the ship came near, her banks of ebony oars catching the sun as her purple sails snapped in the wind. The men shielded their eyes with their hands, and they shook their heads in wonder.

  Agrippa appeared with Octavian on the prow. Both men were dressed as if for war. To remind Rome that they’ve returned as conquering heroes, I thought bitterly.

  “Caesar’s carriages are waiting on the shore,” Agrippa told Alexander. “The pair of you will travel with his nephew, Marcellus.”

  I tried to pick out Octavian’s nephew, but Agrippa remarked, “Don’t bother.” There were too many horses and soldiers.

  “Do you have your sketches?” Alexander asked.

  “Yes. And do you—?”

  Alexander nodded. He had hidden books from our mother’s library in his bag—a last reminder of her before we left her thalamegos to the Romans at Brundisium. I looked one last time at the polished decks as the tinny sound of trumpets pierced the air. Three of her children had boarded her ship, but only two had reached her enemy’s shore.

  Octavian was the first to disembark, followed by Agrippa and Juba. When it was our turn to walk the wooden steps, Alexander held out his hand. I shook my head. “I’m fine.” But we hadn’t felt land in more than three weeks, and suddenly my legs gave way beneath me.

  “Alexander!”

  But it wasn’t Alexander who caught me. Instead, it was a young image of Hercules.

  “Be careful.” He laughed. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with hair the color of summer’s wheat. His eyes were lighter than Ptolemy’s had been, a turquoise made even brighter by the darkness of his skin. I felt my cheeks growing warm at the sight of him, and he smiled. “Now, don’t faint on me,” he warned. “I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of you.”

  “You’re Marcellus?” Alexander asked.

  “Yes. And there she is.” He indicated a horse-drawn carriage.

  “But that’s a king’s carriage,” I replied.

  Marcellus laughed. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. My uncle likes to think of himself as consul. If the people should get the idea he wants to be king, there’ll be another mess on the Senate floor.”

  “Romans don’t want kings?” my brother asked.

  Marcellus led us from the docks, and his toga flapped at his heels. “There was a time. But it has passed, and all they can think of now is a republic. Of course, there’s been a hundred years of civil wars with their republic, and the first end in sight was Julius Caesar. They all want a vote, but they vote for their own clans, and nothing but bloodshed ever gets accomplished.” We had reached one of the carriages beyond the shoreline, and as Marcellus held open the door for us, he said warmly, “Prince Alexander, Princess Selene.”

  Inside, I looked meaningfully at my brother. Why were we being treated so kindly? What had Octavian written to his family from Alexandria? We listened while Marcellus chatted genially with Juba and Agrippa outside, and his voice carried far beyond our carriage.

  “And the Egyptian women?” he was asking.

  I could hear Juba’s wry laughter. “They would have swooned at your presence,” he promised. “Falling into your arms like the princess Selene.”

  When my brother looked over at me, I blushed.

  “And the fighting?” Marcellus pressed.

  “The gods were with us,” Agrippa replied.

  “With us, or with you? They say the Egyptian fleet—” Marcellus cut himself off, and his voice grew serious. “I am glad to see you’ve returned safe, Uncle.”

  “Marcellus,” I heard Octavian reply, “I hope you’ve been applying as much p
assion to your studies as you do to your gossiping.”

  “Yes, Caesar,” he said quietly.

  “Good. Then you may tell me what kind of ship this is.”

  There was an uneasy silence, and I could imagine Marcellus’s extreme discomfort as he stood in front of Octavian. I pressed my mouth close to the window and whispered, “Thalamegos.”

  “Selene!” Alexander mouthed, but Marcellus had heard and repeated the word.

  “It’s the queen’s thalamegos, I believe.”

  I could hear Octavian step back on the gravel. “He’s going to be your equal someday, Agrippa. A titan in the Senate and on the battlefield as well.”

  I couldn’t see Agrippa’s face to know his reaction. But when Marcellus joined us in the carriage, he looked immensely relieved.

  “I don’t know how I can thank you, Selene.” He took a seat across from me, next to Alexander. “I would have had to study ships all the way to Rome if you hadn’t come up with it.”

  “Is he really so strict?”

  “All he does is write letters and prepare speeches for the Senate. He wouldn’t leave Syracuse if not for his wife.”

  Alexander frowned. “The city?”

  “No. His study. He named it for Archimedes, the Greek mathematician who lived there.”

  “But he doesn’t speak Greek,” I protested.

  Although my brother glared at me, Marcellus only laughed. “It’s true. But everything is theater with my uncle. You’ll see.”

  In front of our carriage, there was a confusion of voices. Then someone shouted and the crack of a whip set the long procession rolling. I looked at Marcellus and decided he wasn’t more than two or three years older than Alexander and me. He was dressed in an undistinguished white toga, but the fabric was superior to anything I’d seen Octavian wear. When he caught me looking at him, he smiled.

  “So you are Marc Antony’s daughter, Selene,” he remarked. “Strange. There’s almost no resemblance between you and Tonia or Antonia.”