Children of Tiber and Nile

by Deborah Davitt

  “I do. I did. I don’t know, and my head’s in a muddle,” she said, her voice so tight he barely recognized it.

  “Why in the name of all the gods didn’t you say something?” he whispered. The last three years of my life might have gone very differently if you had. Alexander and I might still have had fun . . . but it might not have gone as far.

  Selene twisted away, shaking her head. “Because I know,” she told him, looking back over her shoulder. “You and Alexander—and I’d never come between you, and . . . if you feel that way about him, you can never feel that way about—nevermind. It doesn’t matter!”

  “For Dis’ sake, yes it does!” That rang back off the walls, and Tiberius spun away himself for a moment, trying to sort out a half-dozen new realities all at once. Realities in which his friend’s younger sister knew more than she’d ever let on, and felt a good deal more than that.

  When he turned back, she was staring at him, wide-eyed, and Tiberius took a deep breath. Calmed himself. And wrapped his arms around her for a moment. “It does matter, because you matter,” he told her tightly. “I like you. I’ve always liked you. And what I feel for Alexander doesn’t matter, because while it’s wonderful now, it has no future. We’ve both always known that. No matter how stubbornly he tries to pretend otherwise.” He sighed. “You, on the other hand, are a future I think is worth pursuing.” The family is everything. And for a family to be a family, it has to continue forward. One more step in the great chain of being. Future connected to past, ancestors connected to descendants. If you don’t have heirs, what was the point of all the blood and sweat of your ancestors? Or your own? We live, not just for ourselves, but for others.

  She’d gone very still against him. “Is this why you were so upset at the idea of marrying anyone earlier?” he asked against her hair. It shook him, to think that he, of all people, had that kind of power over someone’s life and heart.

  A single nod. “Antyllus said it was probably just . . . infatuation.” Her voice was small.

  That cut on several levels at once. Tiberius hadn’t even allowed himself to think about her in this fashion before a few hours ago. His ideals told him that monogamy in marriage and love was the only correct path. He’d only allowed himself to love Alexander on that condition; that it would only be Alexander, until such time as it came to marry, and then, it would only be his wife.

  But Alexander had strong notions about fun, and since they both enjoyed women, it had been easy enough to fall in with Alexander’s tastes and mores in that regard, because that was just sex, and not love. So long as it wasn’t love, it didn’t matter. And therefore, no other love could be allowed to whisper into his heart, like the fingers of wind pressing in from the garden outside, through the shutters. Tiberius hadn’t even known how much he wanted to be loved, until he’d realized that Selene had feelings for him, moments ago. Nascent, delicate, easily-trampled feelings. “It could just be that, yes,” he told her, with scrupulous honesty, feeling empty inside as realizations washed over him. Oh, gods, have I wasted the last several years of my life entirely? I love Alexander. But right now, I want to punch him in the teeth.

  He exhaled. “Selene . . . all I want, at the moment, is to know that you’re going to be happy. To Tartarus with your mother’s insistence that everything be taken care of before Caesarion and Eurydice go to Egypt. Take your time. Make the decision in your own way.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “And if Antyllus is more apt to make you happy?” He opened his eyes and looked down at her somberly. “I’ll attend your wedding, and wish you nothing but joy.” He leaned down and kissed her hair before standing, nothing but a raw ache in his chest. If I’d asked her yesterday, she’d have said yes. But yesterday, I knew nothing, and was a fool.

  ______________

  Alexander had had a busy evening so far. What had promised to be a deadly series of hours spent listening to Octavia talk, had given way, instead, to a lively discussion with Sulpicia, beginning with, of all things, with her question to him if he’d ever read Herodotus. Of course, he had. “Then, now that our friend Antyllus has mentioned the Scythians, do you believe Herodotus when he says that the Scythians once had a city named Gelona, hundreds of times bigger than Troy-that-burned?” she’d asked, playing with her Egyptian-style necklace.

  He’d had to scramble to remember what she meant. “They’re wandering herdsmen—no, wait. The bulk of them are, with red hair and blue eyes. But the Budini were part Hellene, and part Scythian, and had a great city. And when the Persians came to conquer the Scythians, the Buduni burned their own city, rather than fall to Persia. And retreated, free as the wind, burning their own grasslands before the Persian advance. Darius made no conquests there.” He considered it. “I don’t know if it was larger than Troy, however.” For him, as for many others, Troy was an enormous city in his mind. At least as big as Rome.

  “Ah, so you doubt the veracity of ancient authority!” Sulpicia had said, laughing. “Next, you’ll say he was quite mad when he reported that the Phoenicians, back before they started calling themselves Carthaginians, actually circumnavigated Africa.”

  Octavia had looked between them crossly, obviously looking for a way to jump into the conversation, but quite unable to answer. Alexander had thought about his reply carefully before answering, “I doubt everything on principle, dear lady, until it’s proven true. In this case, the Carthaginians were always great seafarers. But there are no maps that show just how far the lands of Africa go on. You’d think that if they ever wanted to return that way again, they’d have taken some soundings. Recorded how many days at what rate of speed, what the beaches looked like, and the names of any towns they passed . . . if any.” He shrugged.

  “You think there are towns?” Sulpicia asked, raising her eyebrows. “Most people think it’s a trackless, burning wasteland.”

  “But it is!” Octavia said, finally finding a point she could latch onto. “There’s nothing but sand there. Totally worthless in every respect. A waste of time to send traders that direction.”

  “Where there are people, there are usually towns,” Alexander had replied, bypassing Octavia’s comment lightly.

  “Man is a social animal,” Sulpicia quoted, smiling.

  “And you’ve read your Aristotle, too,” he returned, enjoying himself now.

  “Naturally.”

  “There must be more than sand there. Because the Nile floods, and all that water must be born somewhere. Herodotus suggests snowmelt, though he can’t quite fathom where it could possibly snow in the middle of all that heat.”

  “And you think you know?” Sulpicia had asked, popping a mussel in her mouth.

  Alexander raised his eyebrows. “Hispania’s a blazing hot place in summer, but it has mountains. Covered in ice year-round, some of them. And water has a tendency to run downhill, as any engineer of our aqueducts will tell you. I think there might be a southern range of Alps to match our northern ones. Somewhere. If the gods truly like balance and symmetry as much as they’re said to.”

  “Of course they do,” Octavia had objected, frowning slightly at him. “That’s why we have two eyes and not just one, like the ugly cyclopses.” She shuddered. “You know, if one of those could be found, it would make a wonderful beast-fight in the games,” she added, brightly. “Did you see any of them while you were in Hellas, Alexander?”

  He’d wanted to close his eyes for a moment at the thought of a lifetime of exactly those kinds of brightly-chirped questions. Octavia was pleasant, cheerful, kind, and utterly inane. She could hold her own in any conversation that had as its topic the conversation she’d had with someone else, last week. But she didn’t read, in spite of Eurydice’s frequent suggestions that she at least pick up a book of poetry now and again. And it showed in her sometimes staggering lack of understanding of the world.

  Sulpicia had stepped in, smiling. “They’re extinct, darling. Odysseus killed Polyphemus, and Apollo slew all the rest in revenge for the death of Asclepius. E
uripides tells us so.”

  “But then Zeus brought them and Asclepius back,” Alexander corrected mildly, pouring more wine for Sulpicia. “Because the cyclopses built most of the Olympians’ weapons, and were the basis of their power.”

  Octavia’s head swiveled between them. “So do they exist, or don’t they?” she demanded.

  “They’re said to dwell in Aetna’s heart now, toiling for Vulcan,” Sulpicia returned quickly. “So, as you can see, Alexander wouldn’t have seen any in Hellas. Our gods of Rome conscripted them!”

  Alexander had laughed outright at that, ignoring the irritated frown on his betrothed’s face. It was simply so refreshing to be able to talk to a woman to whom he wasn’t related as an equal. The way he’d talk to Tiberius, Caesarion, Antyllus, or Eurydice. “Come now,” he’d told Sulpicia then. “Tell the truth. In your poems, you always complain about your lover, Cerinthus. Confess.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “There’s no such man, is there?”

  “My dear late husband certainly believed me when I said there wasn’t,” Sulpicia replied, a wicked sparkle in her eyes.

  Octavia’s head twisted towards her. “I hadn’t heard that he’d died,” she cried, sounding appalled. “Why, you’re not even in mourning!”

  “My father applied for my divorce about six weeks before the old sot died,” Sulpicia replied without charity. “Since I was back to living in my father’s house, he told me there was no need to put on a false show of mourning. I told him I admired his lack of hypocrisy, and wore white for the next three months.” Since her stola tonight was a pale shade of green that set off her dyed red-gold hair, this had obviously been some time ago.

  Alexander checked through his mental catalogue of information, and came up with the name of her now-late, previously-aging husband. “Lucius Caesennius Lento?” he asked, blinking for a moment. “One of Antony’s staunchest allies, back in the day.” Also, considering the fact that the family goes back to the Etruscans, something of a scandal. He used to write plays in his youth. And owned a theater troupe, if memory serves—the basis for Cicero’s allegations in the Senate that he was an actor himself. Then again, Cicero sometimes had a hazy relationship with the truth when he was mid-oration, gods know. He once accused Antony of being another man’s wife, stola and all. He’s lucky he had any damned teeth left after that speech. “Whatever happened?”

  Sulpicia smirked over her next bite of food. “He told several guests one night, deep in his cups, that he wasn’t sure that he approved of all this Egyptian nonsense permeating Rome. Why, some people had Egyptian furniture these days! And the young women who went around wearing Egyptian kohl and jewelry—he quite disapproved of mine, and forbade me to wear it, which made me wear it all the more, you must understand. Which . . . quite limited the social circles I was allowed out into for the duration of the marriage.” Alexander laughed at her words, as he was clearly meant to, and she went on, lightly, “—and why, some fools were marrying Egyptian women. Which of course meant that their children couldn’t be citizens. And the next thing you know, that young Imperator would surely be extending the rights of citizenship to Egyptians, and not just Cretans and Hellenes who happened to put in their twenty years in the legions. Why, even Antony had an Egyptian wife—leftover and used up after Caesar had had her, of course.” Sulpicia rolled her eyes.

  “You heard all this?” Alexander asked, half-closing his eyes.

  “I couldn’t help but hear it. I was at the table with him. I made it a point to call on my uncle Corvinus the next day.” She popped another mussel in her mouth.

  Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, Alexander had thought. Father used to call him a political weathervane. Whichever way his loyalties inclined today, indicated perfectly from which quarter the wind in Rome happened to be blowing. “And your uncle proved of assistance in the matter?”

  “He went to my father and arranged my divorce the next day,” Sulpicia replied, smiling. “It was the happiest day of my life, moving out of that house. And watching the old actor chew the scenery, calling me an ungrateful bitch of a wife, and how I’d be sorry someday, and that he wouldn’t accept me back even if I came crawling to him on hands and knees? Fah.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Octavia put in, for lack of anything better to say. “You poor thing.”

  “It was quite entertaining. Perhaps the best performance of his life. Six weeks later, he was dead. Some sort of a splitting of the heart. The will was contested, of course. I said I didn’t want any of his money, but he hadn’t gotten around to changing it between the separation and his death.” She shook her head. “So now, I am part-owner of a vineyard and a theater troupe. My father bought a manager for me to take care of it all. I’d love to say that the coin flows in, but the theater? It’s a losing proposition.”

  Alexander chuckled into his cup. “So,” he pressed delicately, “Was there a Cerinthus?”

  Sulpicia snickered. “Ask me again some other day, and I might be inclined to give you an answer,” she told him archly, and there the subject had lain.

  Seeing that Tiberius and Antyllus were about to make their various offers to Selene, Alexander had walked Sulpicia politely to the door. Where she’d quickly whispered in his ear, “I believe you’re the person to whom I should speak, if I happen to hear other unusual sentiments in Rome?”

  Could be bait, Alexander thought, deep behind his own eyes. She’s never been affiliated with the Octavianites, however. She dropped out of sight, much to my sister’s dismay, after to her marriage to Lento. “I’m always interested in hearing other people’s opinions,” he’d murmured in return. “The more varied, the more interesting.” He’d smiled as he helped her drape her palla over her shoulders to keep her warm on her litter-ride back to her father’s house. “Do you know the taverna near Pompey’s theater? Merges?”

  “I do.”

  “The owner’s a friend of mine. Former member of the Tenth. If you ever happen to pass by, ask him for a drop of Falnerian, and give him my name. If I’m in the neighborhood, I tend to stop in. We might be able to have another lovely conversation about Herodotus.”

  “Or Euripides?” Her eyebrows arched. “Or do you mean about Cerinthus?”

  “I’ll leave it to the lady’s discretion.”

  He’d then returned and dutifully walked Octavia back to her room. Bowed over her hand, and ignored her agitated remarks about how Sulpicia certainly thought she knew something about everything, and wasn’t she just a horrible person, not mourning the death of her husband, and everything else. Then he’d walked back to his own rooms, and stood on the balcony outside, smiling to himself and rolling his head around on his neck.

  Which was where Tiberius found him. Alexander greeted him with a smile, noting that Tiberius didn’t give him an answering one. “Ti, you missed a delicious conversation at dinner.”

  No verbal response. Just a dark look before Tiberius put his head down on the railing, and then interlaced his hands over his head. Well, this doesn’t bode well for his proposal. Alexander debated asking directly, but when Tiberius was deeply angry about something, he sometimes snapped if approached about it first-thing. “I wish I’d been able to spend more time with Sulpicia before this,” Alexander therefore murmured. “I think I might want to fuck her mind.” A hint of affected dreaminess in his voice, to cover the actual hunger there. “Slowly. And then come somewhere between the epic and the ode.”

  Tiberius turned his head to the side for that one. “Exactly which orifice do you have to use to get there?” His voice was muffled.

  “I thought I’d start at the top, work my way down, and if and when I figure it out, I’ll tell you.” A snort from Tiberius, and Alexander went on, still with a little mock-dreaminess in his voice, “It may take repeated investigations and experimentation.” He lowered his voice. “More seriously, either she’s sniffing for information, in which case, she’s a damned attractive spy for someone else, or she’s offering information. In which case, she’s connected
in places I haven’t had access to before.” He leaned his own elbows on the railing now, looking down into the atrium as the servants scurried around, pinching the wicks of the oil lamps. “So, how did it go with my sister?”

  “I don’t know,” Tiberius muttered.

  Alexander turned slightly. “How can you not know?”

  “Because, you idiot, she told me that she’d been in love with me for three years. That I am the reason she actually defied your mother today,” Tiberius said, his voice harsh.

  Alexander froze for a moment, and then thawed. Jealousy of his siblings simply wasn’t part of the formula for the cement that made up his foundations. “Ti, that’s wonderful,” he murmured, putting a hand on Tiberius’ shoulder. If she feels strongly enough about him to stand up to our mother? That bodes very well for our lark. “You two are going to be very happy—“

  “She cried, gods damn it,” Tiberius snapped, raising his head. Even so, he kept his voice down. “She cried because she’s not an idiot, and she knows just enough about the two of us to be convinced that because I love you, I can never love her.”

  “Oh, shit,” Alexander said, suddenly feeling numb. “Fuck.”

  “If I’d have asked yesterday, she’d probably have said yes, but Antyllus got in first, and while he has no idea who the dishonorable bastard is that she’s in love with, he did plant the suggestion that she’s probably just infatuated, and not actually in love with the worthless piece of shit,” Tiberius went on, his voice barely audible. “Which is, let’s face it, probably the truth.” He moved away, and Alexander let his hand fall back to the railing.

  “Ti, you’re not dishonorable.” Alexander put as much firmness as he could into his voice. “She didn’t tell anyone. We were doing . . . everything . . . probably before she developed those feelings. There is no need to feel guilty.” He cast about for words that would help fix this. “Her heart’s about as fragile as glass, but I refuse to feel badly about anything we did, when she never said a word.”