Children of Tiber and Nile

by Deborah Davitt

  Antyllus chuckled a little at the reaction initially, but when he saw genuine fear in her eyes, he stifled his laughter and sat down on the bed beside her. Saw the way she leaned away subtly, and sighed under his breath. “Lots of changes, very quickly,” he acknowledged, as gently as he could, doing his best to master a trickle of impatience that muttered, Am I back to being a monster in your eyes again? Just hours after taking my hand before the priestess? “You know, I don’t think you’ve played your kithara once since coming to Egypt. Why don’t you dig it out and play something?” He reluctantly took his hand away from her shoulder, and stood to look out their tiny window at the great city as their ship began to slip away from the quay. Listened to the sounds of her hesitantly fishing through their bags and chests, finally finding her kithara “We didn’t have a chance to see much of Alexandria at all.” An unintentional note of longing filled his voice. “We’ll have to come back. So long as your sister’s here, or my father, we should have a warm welcome. And next time, we can see the tomb of Alexander the Great, and everything else we missed this time.”

  Her fingers touched the strings, and he glanced back over his shoulder at his new bride. “Would you like that, love?”

  She gave him a look of confusion, and shrugged. “I doubt we’ll have as many attacks next time,” he pointed out, sitting back down on the bed, and closing his eyes, composing himself to listen. To not move a muscle, until he was sure she’d relaxed.

  It took several songs before he didn’t hear missed notes, and she shifted between Hellene modes to some Egyptian air or another. “When did you hear that one?” he asked, trying not to break the spell.

  “At dinner a week ago,” she replied quietly. “One of the entertainers played it.”

  “And you can play it from memory after only one hearing?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember it perfectly. The main melody, yes, but I’m sort of . . . making up all the rest as I go.” Her voice sounded easier now, and he exhaled in relief. Edged closer, cautiously, not disturbing her playing, and thought again of his joking words to his father, about trying to hunt a unicorn. Maybe I should have just settled for a deer, he thought, finally managing to stretch out fully on the bed beside her, and kicked his boots off at the foot. His sudden movements made her fingers catch the strings awry, a harsh dissonance, and Antyllus lay back. Put his right forearm over his eyes, and said, simply, “Go on playing. You’re enjoying yourself, and gods know, between your mother and everything else, you haven’t done much of that since leaving Rome.” Cleopatra’s not a monster. She genuinely wants what’s best for her children. But she can’t let go of the reins for even an instant.

  As the notes spilled out again, Antyllus shifted his left arm, and rubbed the small of her back gently, feeling smooth skin through the layers of stola and tunic. Slowly, he told himself grimly. A unicorn startles worse than any deer. But if I move slowly enough, and carefully enough, I might be able to slip the halter up and over her head before she knows what I’ve done.

  Not looking at her directly, all he had to go on were the subtle cues of muscle tension in her back, and the stutters and stops of her fingers on the strings. Finally, he eased to his side, feeling the stitches in his chest pull a little, and put his own hand on the kithara. It had grown darker since he’d covered his eyes, as the sun had now set, and only a faint, gray light came in now through the tiny window. She’d been playing by touch for quite some time, it seemed.

  He eased the instrument from her suddenly limp hands, and set it down in its case on the floor. “I think it’s my turn to play,” he told her quietly. “I’m not a musician, but there’s one instrument I play, and I’m told I do it fairly well.” Antyllus tried to keep his smile audible in his voice, but felt her muscles tighten again as he brought his right hand up to cup her face. “It’s just me,” he reminded her, trying once more to leash his impatience. “You’ve liked kissing quite well before. Remember? And we’re in private, and we’re married, and it’s right.” A little light teasing, and then he leaned in to taste her lips again. Eased her back against the bed, trying not to rush, but he hadn’t had a woman under him in some time, and it was glorious, knowing that she was his, and he was hers, and he didn’t have to go hunting for this anymore. “Here,” he said after several fervent moments. “Let me light one of the lamps. I want to see you.”

  “Aren’t . . . aren’t we supposed to . . . in the dark?” Her voice was a squeak.

  “That might be what’s deemed proper by old dead men like Cato the Elder, but he threw a man out of the Senate for kissing his own wife in public, for the gods’ sakes. I’m not going to base my life around what people like him think.” He fumbled for a sparkstriker. Stood, and lit one of the tiny lamps hanging from a hook on the wall, where it couldn’t fall and set the ship on fire. Then turned back towards her, pleased by what the golden lamplight did to her face, casting her eyes into shadows and mystery. And got back to what he’d been doing.

  He eventually got her clothing off. Felt her shiver in the cool air coming in the open window, and moved to cover her with his own body. And in desperate need of a distraction, so that he wouldn’t do what he ached to do, which was to slide into her, hilt-deep, all at once, he whispered against her ear, “You do know what comes next, yes?”

  “Mother explained it when I was ten.” Her voice was small. “And the love-spell, too, of course. Not that it works.”

  He pulled back, raising his eyebrows, hoping she could see his expression in the dim light. “I don’t know. Have you ever worked the spell on me?” Antyllus asked.

  She shook her head, rapidly. “It . . . didn’t seem fair,” Selene admitted. “I . . . wanted you to like me for me. Again, not that it works.”

  “I do like you. What’s involved in the spell?” he asked, grateful for the distraction. And then looked down, surprised, as she shifted her legs further apart. And sucked in a breath as he saw where her hand slid next. Fingers moving, dancing. “Oh, gods,” he murmured reverently. “Now that’s a pretty sight. Show me how to play you, Selene. There you go.” A quick, wicked grin. “You definitely want me to get the fingering right, don’t you?”’

  A squeak of embarrassed laughter, and then he replaced her fingers with his own. Saw the look of startled, dazed pleasure that told him more clearly than words that she’d never gotten quite this far before on his own. A wave of lazy triumph, and then he pulled off his own clothes, and joined their bodies at last. Soothed her through the yelp of pain—“only the first time, I swear, Selene,”—and generally tried to do more good than harm as he finished.

  “There,” he told her as he held her in the golden light of the lamp afterwards. “See? Not so bad, was it?”

  She shook her head against his chest, and he asked, teasingly, “Actually, since I have a certain amount of evidence that you did enjoy yourself. . . I don’t suppose you might be ready for a second song?”

  “I’m . . . very sore,” Selene whispered, and Antyllus kissed her hair.

  “I know. At least we don’t have anyone outside the door, counting how many times I take you tonight. There are houses where I’ve seen that done at weddings. And the guests were all drunk, and cheering the groom on.” Antyllus felt her stiffen against him in mild horror at the thought, and laughed. “The last one I went to like that, they stopped counting at nine. Fortunately for the woman, it was her second marriage.”

  “Oh my dear gods.” Selene’s voice was tight.

  He kissed her again, and told her lightly, “I’ll wait till tomorrow night for that.”

  “Oh, gods.”

  “Oh, very well, the night after that.” He got up and blew out the lamp, coming back to bed and gathering her up in his arms again. “Are you at least happy you married me?” Say yes.

  “I think so,” Selene whispered softly. “But I think I’m going to disappoint you. I’m . . . not very adventurous.”

  His chest ached. “I don’t think you know what you are. It’s not as if you�
��ve ever had occasion to find out. Why not try an adventure or two with me, before you decide if you like them or not?” Antyllus paused, and then added, trying to keep the resignation out of his voice, “And if you really don’t like adventure, well. I can leave you at home in Rome. The way many men do.” I want a wife like my own mother. Minus the shouting that could be heard across the castra. She went everywhere with my father. Camp after camp, province after province. I don’t want a wife like Octavia. Sitting like a toad in Rome, never budging from her rock. “But at least try it first?” he coaxed. “You never know. You might like it at least as much as you liked what we just did, right?”

  A tiny, muffled laugh, and he had to be content with that for the moment. And closed his eyes, thinking, It’s far easier to make my Scythian maiden smile, than to make this one do so. To make my wife smile. I never thought that would be a goal of mine. Nor that it would be so much work to attain.

  Chapter X: Thebes of a Hundred Gates

  Februarius 15-Martius 1, 20 AC

  The long march from Lower Egypt to Upper would have been enervating, had it not been for the earliness of the season. Even so, the men sweated under their armor, and were left with no other recourse but drinking directly from the Nile, and some of the legionnaires who bathed in the river complained of stomach discomfort later, even urinating blood. The medici had their hands full, and consulted with the local physicians, to no avail; red urine was considered almost normal in some villages along the Nile, and no one knew the cause. Caesarion did his best, but he could only cure one person a day, and he generally preferred to hold back on the blessings of Isis until after they’d made camp, in case there were actual wounds over the course of the march.

  Eurydice found the stares of the locals as the legion passed to be almost as depressing as the looks in the eyes of the natives of Hispania, three years ago. Women and children fled into their tiny houses. The menfolk retreated as far as their doorsteps, watching warily. Might go so far as to offer water, and smiled with relief when the legion’s quartermasters asked to buy food, rather than simply taking it from them. “Gaius Cornelius Gallus hasn’t made a good name for Rome here,” she told Caesarion on the fourth afternoon.

  “No. He really hasn’t. But that’s partially my fault. I’ve been concentrating on other provinces.” He sighed, and they rode on.

  At their mother’s recommendation, Eurydice had opted to wear a modified kalasiris dresses every day of the march south. She couldn’t fathom cutting her hair as short as a man’s, and wearing a wig over it, but she did wear a diadem, even on horseback, perched just ahead of Caesarion. He, naturally, wore armor. Try to look as if at least one of you embraces your heritage, Cleopatra had advised, her lips curling down.

  Eurydice knew that none of her mother’s ancestors had even spoken Egyptian; Cleopatra was the first of the Ptolemaic line in hundreds of years of rule to reach out to her subjects, and adopt some of their culture. And she—and they—are afraid she’ll be the last. I’m trying, Mother. I’m really trying.

  Several days into the journey, they passed close enough to the Giza Plateau that they could see the pyramids from the banks of the Nile. Eurydice gaped at them, her eyes wide. Each of their sides were sheathed in white limestone, and the largest had a cap of pure gold at the top. At this distance, she couldn’t make out the details of the temples that crouched at their feet, but the pyramids themselves were among the most impressive things she’d ever seen. The largest was easily the same height as the staggering Lighthouse of Alexandria, but spread out from its peak like a mountain, reflecting the blazing light of the Egyptian sun searingly off its gold-capped peak—it looked as if the sun itself had found a new place to rise. “Men made those,” she said, stunned. “How on earth did they manage it?”

  “With quite a bit of manpower, and some good engineering,” Caesarion said against her ear, but he sounded as awed as she did. “We’ll take a closer look on our way back. When we’re not so pressed for time.”

  Seeing the pyramids, sleek and perfect, and utterly alien to the smooth pillars and arches she was accustomed to seeing in Rome, gave Eurydice really her first inkling of how different the Egyptian mind-set really was. Oh, she’d grown up reading demotic texts—Egyptian by way of Hellene writing—and had had hieratic pounded into her head over the past few years. She knew many of the legends, but again, understood them from a Hellene perspective.

  A Hellene looked at Thoth and saw Hermes, with an oddly-shaped head. Your god and our god both handle knowledge and magic, and ours is a trickster, and yours is solemn, but really, they’re the same, aren’t they? And the Egyptians, as a people conquered from time to time by the Nubians, the Kush, the Assyrians, the Persians, and most recently the Hellenes under Alexander the Great, tended to reply, If that’s how you choose to understand our god, we have no real objection.

  But, as she and Alexander and Caesarion had been discussing of the problems with Hispania and Gaul, where the locals were angrily refusing to worship in temples built by Roman hands, that were for Jupiter and Taranis alike, they weren’t the same. Jupiter might throw thunderbolts, and so might Taranis, but they weren’t the same gods. And while polytheists like themselves might willingly nod to whichever god currently seemed to be helpful, there were too many differences to say Thoth is Hermes and Hermes is, well, whatever the Goths or the Gauls call their gods of knowledge.

  Traveling south, the Nile unwinding for what felt like the better part of forever as they kept to the pace of the Sixteenth, she began to understand, dimly, how old this place was. Rome accounted itself great, because the city had been built, supposedly, seven hundred years ago. The city they were journeying towards, Thebes? Had been populated for over three thousand. That was a number that inspired awe, and not a little humility. And yet, as they continued along the Nile, she felt as if they were traveling not just in space, but in time. For the farmers here wore the same clothing that she’d seen on the ancient walls of temples in Alexandria. Used the same types of tools and plows. Went to worship in the same temples that their great-great-great-great grandparents had used—or at least, it seemed that way. Their guides and scribes were quick to point out which temples were ‘new,’ or at least, only five hundred years old or so. “That one is new,” they told Eurydice. “Put up by the Persians when Cambyces came here five hundred years ago, before he was deposed by the Magus Gaumata, who posed as his younger brother successfully for seven months, ruling the whole of Persia, before being deposed by Darius.”

  And then Alexander conquered Persia, and my family came into power, Eurydice thought numbly. And they consider this to be new. No wonder they have a hard time accepting Roman customs and laws and beliefs. We’re even newer than the Hellenes. And here they are, farming the same land that their grandparents farmed, as far back as the dawn of time. Because what else are you going to do, if you were born on that farm?

  She swallowed. Changeless, because in spite of the waves of conquest that had hit this kingdom, time after time, there was no real need to change. The Nile provided its abundance, for so long as the pharaohs, no matter their original extraction, comported themselves by the pact made by the ancients with the gods of Egypt. And over time, each set of conquerors either retreated, or came to an accommodation with those gods. Which is . . . precisely what we’re doing. But Egypt needs to change. At least a little. If we’re to change a little to accommodate them.

  She did ask Damkina, quietly, if Gaumata had been a real person, and if he’d really successfully impersonated Persian royalty, and killed a Persian king. “Oh yes,” the Magus replied simply. “He’s a hero among the Magi. We have a secret history of his life, which we’ve kept away from the eyes of our various Persian, Seleucid, and now Parthian masters. He was a master of illusion and disguise. And only one of the wives of the real younger brother saw through the deception. Or at least, only one of them cared, which says something about the man whom Gaumata impersonated, Bardiya.” The magus snorted behind her veil—
garnet-colored silk today—as they sat in the command tent, waiting for the sun to go down. “The world would be a very different place if Gaumata had maintained control of the Empire,” Damkina added, flatly. “Darius and his son Xerxes would never have headed west into Hellene lands. The Hellenes would never have mustered the interest in heading east, and Alexander would have had no purpose in conquering in our direction. Gaumata was Median; he was committed to knowledge and the Magi. Persia would have been more insular, but more peaceful. But he made mistakes, and Darius was able to wrest control from his hands. More’s the pity.”

  It was a very different view of history than the one presented in Herodotus and the other classical Hellene and Roman authors that Eurydice had read. Her head spun, trying to imagine a world in which Thermopylae had never happened. In which Macedonia had remained a pastoral backwater. Would Rome as I know it even exist, if this Median man had successfully held the Persian empire? Eurydice wondered. Would we have our grand, pillared temples in the Hellene style? Or would we just be . . . Etruscans?

  Dizzying thoughts, ones she couldn’t maintain for long, not without feeling somehow small, dwarfed by the whole of history.

  And then, finally, after sixteen grueling days, they reached Thebes. Sacked during the turbulent reigns of Ptolemy Lathyros and Ptolemy Alexander, the two brothers who were, well, both her great-grandfathers. They’d quarreled viciously, stolen the throne from each other two or three times, each bedded the same sister (Cleopatra Selene) with her bearing them each offspring, but it was Ptolemy Lathyros’ son by another sister that had married Ptolemy Alexander’s daughter by another woman, and thus had carried on the line. Eventually. Eurydice was fairly sure that was how her mother had explained it to her a few days before her own marriage to Caesarion.