Children of Tiber and Nile

by Deborah Davitt

  Her eyes went wide. “How did you know that it’s impossible to write in my father’s house?” Sulpicia demanded. “Do you really have eyes everywhere?” She looked around them, as if looking for eyes glistening in the walls.

  Alexander snorted. “Many eyes, yes, but in this case . . . . my sister frequently complains that her own studies are constantly disrupted by servants asking her how well-done she wants the meat tonight, how the tables should be decorated before meeting with the Parthian ambassador, and other such trifling matters. You keep your father’s house now that your mother has passed away. Peace, quiet, and time for your writing is doubtless at a minimum.” He kissed her hand again, and then reluctantly sat up to reach for his clothing.

  Only to see her kick his tunic as far from the bed as she could manage, and then she rolled on top of him. Kissing. Touching. Stroking her fingers along the scar over his heart, her eyes intent. Lightly touching the amulet of Sekhmet around his neck—sacred to him, not just for its protective qualities, but for the fact that Tiberius wore its mate.

  No poetry. And yet, he felt as if she’d set his soul on fire with words, when all she gave him was silence and bliss.

  Chapter V: The Delta of the Nile

  Februarius 4, 20 AC

  A sea journey of twenty-five days took Caesarion’s flotilla from Rome to Alexandria. It would have been faster by a good ten days, if they’d only had the one ship, but keeping eighty ships together in formation added to the length of any voyage.

  Twenty-five days at sea—close to a month of being completely out of contact with the Empire. Caesarion was at this point in his life so accustomed to waking before dawn to read whatever urgent dispatches had come in by courier overnight that he’d snapped awake on every one of the last twenty-four days, wondering how in the gods’ names he’d slept in so late, and which servant had been derelict enough not to bring him his morning cup of vinegar-touched water and his sheaf of reports.

  And then the slow rocking of the ship impinged on his consciousness. The smell of brine in the air. The feel of Eurydice’s body against his on the sleeping couch. For once, they weren’t aboard a troop transport, and therefore had an actual cabin to themselves, with four walls, on the uppermost deck. Selene had one beside theirs, but Tiberius and Antyllus were belowdecks, bunking with their Praetorians. Caesarion lifted his head slightly, muzzily registering that their surroundings were, if not palatial, substantially more pleasant than the ships they’d taken to Hispania and Illyria in the past three years.

  His mother had insisted on this, for this journey. She had no intention of making the long journey in anything other than comfort, and that included the prospect of regularly washing her hair, if not bathing in asses’ milk. And she’d pointedly mentioned that Caesarion’s quarters on his ship should be rather more kingly than was his normal wont.

  He hadn’t been sure what that comprised, honestly. Golden basins to throw up into when we catch bad weather, Mother? he’d asked, receiving an irritable snort in reply. Occasionally, he asked servants at home, or even in a castra, to fan the still, unmoving, sweltering air in Sextilis, but it was Februarius. Even now, as far south as they were, their cabin held a slight, pleasant edge of chill. The coverlet draped over their bodies wasn’t military-issue wool, but had silk atop a warmer core. That was, as far as Caesarion could tell, the most kingly he could be on a ship, subject as it was to salt water and harsh weather.

  Eurydice stirred against him, and all his vaguely irritated thoughts vanished as he leaned down to kiss her lightly into wakefulness. While so much enforced relaxation had agitated him, he had to admit that he’d enjoyed every night of the last month. No dinner parties to attend at other villas. No dinners of their own to host, beyond simply eating with Selene, Antyllus, and Tiberius each evening. Then retiring to their quarters. Eurydice reading out loud from this philosophical tract or that poem. And then, as night fell with the utter darkness possible at sea, moving together under that silken coverlet. Over and over again. Both of them trying to deny, fiercely, the passage of time. And the inevitability of endings.

  Golden eyes opened, meeting his, and just as he moved into position to pick up where they’d left off the night before, a lookout shouted overhead, “Land! Land in sight!”

  Caesarion stayed precisely where he was. “They won’t need us for hours,” he muttered, and heard his beloved’s soft laugh in reply.

  A bit later, she managed to slip out of the bed, saying, lightly, “You were so busy making Antyllus and Tiberius spar with you yesterday afternoon, that you entirely missed Nesa opening the chest that has what Mother considers our investiture clothing in it.” She wrapped a palla over her otherwise bare shoulders, looking back at him as she did.

  Caesarion wasn’t so busy admiring the line of her spine, still visible through the translucent silk, that he lost track of the words. “Our investiture garb?” he repeated, raising his eyebrows. “I was invested with the title of pharaoh when I was three. I . . . vaguely remember the ceremony.”

  Eurydice sighed, taking one of the chairs, bolted to the deck as it was. “That’s the thing. You have to crown me as your queen. Which means full regalia for you, too. She said before we left that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to let the priests marry us there. Again. So that the Egyptians can see it.”

  Caesarion rolled to his stomach on the bed, suspicion coursing through him. “Somehow, I don’t think that my purple toga picta is what she has in mind.” He hated the damned thing. Nearly half again as heavy as a normal toga, it bled violet dye onto anything he wore under it, including his skin, and it was freighted with gold embroidery as well.

  She shook her head mutely. Caesarion sighed. “All right, let’s see what she picked out. While we’re still twenty miles from shore, and only the sailors and the birds will hear me shouting.” He paused. “You, first, however.”

  Eurydice looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then stood and stepped behind the wooden screen that concealed the dressing area from the rest of the cabin. She tossed her palla over the top, and he could hear shuffling for a moment. “This is fairly difficult to get into without Nesa’s help,” she called, sounding uncomfortable. And then she stepped around the screen, flicking her hands down at herself.

  Caesarion’s eyebrows rose. “No,” he told her, uncompromisingly.

  “I know.”

  “No!” His voice rose.

  “I’m not arguing! I don’t feel comfortable in it at all!” Another helpless gesture down at the kalasiris encompassed all the reasons why a Roman woman might not be comfortable wearing it. Eurydice had worn such garments on and off for most of her life, though she clearly usually preferred the flowing layers and lines of a stola and tunic. A kalasiris clung tightly to the body, leaving little to the imagination. It was typically made of thin, almost translucent cotton, to stave off the heat of an Egyptian day, though this one was made of pure white silk. But it wasn’t the thinness of the silk or the tightness of the dress that left little to the imagination this time. It was the fact that her breasts had been left completely exposed, the straps that usually concealed and supported them being narrower and thinner, and much further to the sides. “In Mother’s defense,” Eurydice said hastily, “Egyptians don’t think of the breasts as sensual. They view them as a measure of a woman’s fertility and fitness for motherhood. Nothing more.”

  Caesarion sat up on the bed, riding on an enormous surge of anger mingled with a disconcerting hint of desire. Even though he should have been quite sated by their morning activities thus far, it took an effort of will to raise his eyes to his sister’s own. “They might not find them sensual, but I do,” he said between his teeth. “Sensual, and private. Something for us, not for everyone in the palace. Or the mob outside, when we go to greet the people together.”

  “I know,” Eurydice said, shifting her shoulders uncomfortably.

  “Not to mention that the ceremonies will be attended by quite a few non-Egyptians! Hellenes, Romans, Syrians,
Parthians, a handful of Judeans—“

  “I know,” she said, taking a seat once more, fidgeting.

  Caesarion paused in mid-rant and gave her a long look. “You hate it. You’re uncomfortable in it. You agree with me. And yet, I sense that a ‘but’ is about to enter this conversation.”

  Eurydice winced. “I’m going to be living there for . . . the gods only know how long.” Her eyes looked haunted, and he felt it too, like a kick in the stomach. “I have to appease the people there who will surely say that I’m too Roman to be their queen.” She closed her eyes. “I hate it. I hate the dress. I hate the jewelry and the wig she sent with them. I hate every single thing about it. But it’s . . . probably necessary. This one day.” She sounded nauseated. Uncomfortable. And Caesarion hated that she felt that way, yet remained compelled to follow their mother’s advice.

  “Fuck that,” he told her sharply, the barracks oath vivid in the air around them. “Dress in some combination of Roman and Egyptian styles, just like back home—“

  “On every other day, I will,” Eurydice told him, still not opening her eyes. “One day of humiliation to appease thousands of people. It’s . . . not so much to ask, I suppose.”

  That’s the problem. Mother isn’t asking. As usual. She’s compelling. Good reasons or not, it’s getting damned annoying. Caesarion stood, moving to his wife’s side. And knelt, taking both her hands in his. “I don’t like it,” he told her simply. “I don’t like that you don’t like it. And surely, there will be some people in the crowd who will say ‘Look, there goes a Roman woman, dressed like one of us, but with no right to it.’”

  She nodded, her expression tight. “But I need to do something to make up for how . . . stridently . . . I dismissed Tahut-Nefer, years ago,” Eurydice whispered, opening her eyes. “And whatever enmity he’s sowed against us, since then.” She looked at him, her lips compressed into a taut line. “You won’t be living there,” she added, her eyes fixed on his. “You don’t have to . . . wear what she’s picked out for you. Which I’m sure you will find as demeaning as I find this.” Another self-conscious gesture down.

  Caesarion kissed her hand, and stood. Stepped behind the screen. And stared for a long moment at what he found there. “Is this where I ask ‘where’s the rest of it?’” he asked tiredly, picking up the shendyt kilt. Multiple folds of bleached linen cloth, asymmetrical in cut, it was a poor substitute, in his mind, for a set of leather pteruges. He wrapped it in place and grimaced, finding a belt with which to keep it all more or less together.

  He was perfectly accustomed to going about sparring practice in nothing more than a loincloth. Naked at the baths, or when wrestling. That was fine. But Roman custom dictated that only defeated enemies and slaves went naked outside of a gymnasium or practice yard. The thought of going half-naked, without armor, in front of thousands of eyes made him uncomfortable. Not out of shame over his body, which was an odd concept held by certain nomadic desert tribes and the Judeans, but because he wouldn’t be an unconquered Roman citizen if he didn’t dress like one. Thank the gods there’s no mirror made of polished bronze in this cabin, to go with the golden vomit basins I wouldn’t allow here, either. I’d have to look myself in the eye if there were.

  Eurydice peered around the edge of the screen. “You look marvelous,” she told him.

  Caesarion grimaced. “I feel like an idiot. Every Praetorian we have will be biting their lips bloody, trying not to laugh.” He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, not sure where to put his hands if he didn’t have the heavy leather belt of his armor to hook his thumbs into, or the folds of a toga to manage. “I assume there is jewelry and other such shit to go with these . . . costumes?”

  She nodded, trying not to look dispirited. “There’s even a crown for you,” she added.

  “Now that I remember from when I was three,” Caesarion admitted. “Mostly, that it was heavy and hot.” He sighed and looked down at her, pulling her into his side for a moment. “If you have to suffer through it for one day, I will, too,” he told her, his voice grim. “But under no circumstances will I put kohl around my eyes.”

  Her lips quirked. “But it would look so good on you,” Eurydice teased, very softly, playing with the pleats of his kilt. “And given what the rest of you looks like in this, no one would ever mistake you for being anything but a man—“

  “No!”

  She exploded into laughter, and Caesarion gradually let his sour expression fade. “Let’s get properly dressed before anyone comes in here and sees us,” he muttered. “And when we go from the palace to the Temple of Isis, or wherever the investiture will be held, we’ll ride, too. No damned litters. Let the people of Alexandria see who we really are, as well as who they want us to be.”

  Eurydice managed a half-smile. “Normally, I’d cheer,” she said. “You know how much I hate litters.”

  Caesarion frowned down at her. “Please don’t say that it’s better for the look of things. The pharaohs used to be warrior kings. Their people should be used to seeing them on horseback or in chariots. Or would be, if the last ten or so hadn’t been grossly overweight. Quite a step down from the warlords who used to follow Alexander the Great over half the world—“ He paused. She still looked worried. “Accipitra, what’s wrong?” He caught her face in his hands, and tears rolled free of her eyes, slipping down to splash his hands. “Are you sick?”

  “No,” Eurydice told him, her voice holding an ache he’d never heard in it before. “But I think I’m with child. I haven’t had a moon-flow since I took the bracelet off. Six weeks.” She closed her eyes. “Too early to be sure, but . . . best that I not ride, perhaps.”

  Caesarion’s knees suddenly felt unaccountably weak. More so than at any point since Germania, when he’d suffered blood-loss from a dragon’s savage claws, and had been debilitated by some manner of attack by a northern goddess. His head swam a little, and he pulled her into his arms, wrapping her there. They’d tried to hold this moment off for so long, but now, it was here. And he had to see it for what it was. Creating a family. Establishing our line. Continuing the lines of the Julii and the Ptolemies. Except I can’t be here with her through it. In September, I’ll probably still be in Britannia. And if I left all the men there, in winter camp, and raced across the world, the fastest I’d be able to get to her side would be . . . December. If that. I can’t bring her home to Rome, both for her safety, and the safety of the child—too many threats of poison and knives, as Mother said. I can’t take her with me into a war-zone; other men can take their wives and children, but an Imperator? And there’s the issue of governing Egypt. Alexandria’s the second most powerful city in the Empire. And the source of half our grain.

  “Your dreams always used to suggest I wouldn’t see our child till it was three. Or even five,” he finally said against her ear, his throat tight.

  “That was before the gods changed everything,” she whispered, her head planted against his shoulder. “I don’t want to do this alone.” Her voice shook for a moment.

  “If I can be here with you, I will,” he told her, simply. “I will write to you. Every single day. It might not be more than a paragraph, added to a longer letter. The dispatches might take time to reach you. But you will be in my thoughts every night. And I will return to you. I promise that.” He cleared his throat. “You won’t have to do it all by yourself.” Somehow.

  She nodded against his shoulder, and looked up, her eyes red-rimmed. “Should we get out of these ridiculous clothes?” Eurydice asked.

  Caesarion swallowed. “Come high summer here, and they’ll probably feel much more comfortable, and far less ridiculous,” he allowed. “But . . . yes.” He looked down at her, at the waist that still looked impossibly slender, and felt his mouth go dry with fear. Venus and Juno, I can’t be with her when her time comes. Please, let her pass through this safely. We have all the assurance of her dreams. But . . . prophetic dreams have a way of hiding the truth sometimes. They’re cloaked in allusion and met
aphor. Let her be safe. Let the child be born gently.

  Two hours later, their ship was the first to touch the quays of the Royal Harbor at the center of the port, Antony and Cleopatra’s gliding in beside theirs a few moments later. And to Caesarion’s considerable surprise, the prefect of Egypt, Cornelius Gallus, was nowhere at hand to greet them. In fact, the honor guard that might have been expected to welcome the Imperator of Rome to the second-largest city in the Empire was a scant fifty legionnaires, behind which the Egyptian and Hellene palace staff stood, looking uneasy. I’m not usually one for ceremony, but this is practically an insult. The question is, is it an intentional one?

  Caesarion waited for the centurion in charge of the welcoming squads of legionnaires to hasten up the ramp of his ship, and thump his chest in salute. “Dominus,” the man said, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Gaius Hosidia,” the centurion introduced himself. “I regret to inform you that Prefect Gallus left the city six weeks ago for Thebes, and has been bogged down there ever since. He sent word for me to greet you in his name, however.”

  Caesarion, wearing his scaled armor now, and seated in a curule chair on the deck, under the cover of the roof that sheltered the upper decks, found his hands curling on the arms of the chair, and forced himself to relax his grip. “His last dispatch spoke of unrest,” he said carefully, keeping a leash on his temper. “Six weeks in a city with a full legion should have quelled unrest.” Exactly how badly has this situation been mishandled, and what are we walking into?

  The centurion’s face tightened. Embarrassment. Awareness. But Caesarion hadn’t asked him a direct question, so he couldn’t actually respond. “Yes, dominus.”

  “What form has this unrest taken?” Caesarion asked, feeling Eurydice slide a hand to his shoulder, lightly. “Are we looking at food riots?”