Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  “You misjudge me, my lady. Those are the mistakes of a younger man who has not yet accepted that his wife, like the moon that is her namesake, is essentially unknowable. Once, I was determined to solve the riddle of you, but I’m now content to be enchanted by your mystery. For example, there was a time I would’ve peppered you with questions about your magic. I would’ve made a study of it to include in my treatise on cult worship. But I suspect that would offend you, and I very much wish to avoid offending you. So if the cost of a kiss is that I must not question you—”

  “Or speak of it,” I caution. “You must never speak of it.”

  With victory in sight, he grins. “I won’t question or speak of it unless you do. Though I intend to kiss you so well that you’ll want to boast of it to your ladies.”

  How little he knows me, even after all these years. “If it were a kiss well done, I should want to keep it secret, so no one could ever tarnish or take it from me.”

  “Well, then,” he says, taking my face in his warm hands. “Here is to silence.”

  He tilts my head and gently closes his mouth over mine …

  … and I do not want to tell a soul.

  *

  IN the days that follow, Juba complains bitterly of the trouble that may come of Julia’s visit, and, in spite of the winter sea, he sends a special military dispatch to Rome requesting advice from the emperor on what we are to do with his wayward daughter.

  Nevertheless, our court is gayer for Julia’s presence and my heart is lighter than it has been in years. When the time comes for winter sowing, I take Julia to my nearest plantation, on a gentle slope in the shadow of Mount Chenoua, where rows of bountiful fruit trees blanket the hills. The villa overlooks the blue sea on one side and rolling orchards on the other, its terrace overgrown with vines of ivy and late-blooming hibiscus flowers. I call it the House of Olives, for the fat olives we harvest in these hills make a fragrant oil when pressed. It’s a farm exactly as Cato the Elder described a perfect farm should be, near a well-traveled road, with a vineyard, an irrigated garden, a meadow, and vast grain lands.

  When I say as much to Julia, she makes a face. “Why would you spend your time reading Cato? He was such a cranky old man!”

  “He was wise in the matter of agriculture,” I argue, though I don’t follow all of Cato’s dictums. Especially not his advice to starve the slaves that work the fields or sell off the old and sickly. Whereas the vast majority of farms in Mauretania are worked by slaves who toil for absent Roman masters, my plantation is worked mostly by sharecroppers. Of course, I’m foolish to take pride in this, because I don’t earn as much as I could …

  Still, I defend myself by saying, “I read Cato as I read everything on agriculture, because your father has set me the task of feeding the Roman Empire.”

  “Is that all?” Julia laughs, climbing the summit of the hill and shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. “All he needs from me are grandsons. I’d chide you for exaggerating your importance but apparently you keep a goddess at your beck and call, whereas none of the gods have ever taken any interest in my desires … Your plowman’s team of oxen seems to be mired in a patch of mud. We ought to call for your overseer.”

  “The overseer here is an old man; he won’t be of much help, but I know that plowman. Let’s go down and help him.”

  Julia is aghast. “You and I?”

  “And our guards,” I say, smiling at the cohort of Macedonian soldiers who accompany me always. “I keep trying to convince Memnon that when he’s ready to retire his sword, he ought to serve as overseer here. Now is your chance to prove you can do a good job, Memnon.”

  Only because I’ve addressed him directly does he speak. “Majesty, a Macedonian guard is never without his sword.” But because I’ve pricked his pride with the hint that he may be nearing the age at which he cannot hold a shield, Memnon goes first down the hill into the field to help the plowman.

  The rest of us follow. On our way, I stoop down and gather a handful of dirt. “It isn’t as black as the river-brought soil in Egypt,” I tell Julia. “But it’s good earth that surrenders to the plow after the rains. I grow wheat on it, and in the less choice fields, I grow barley.”

  Julia backs up for higher ground. “You’re dirtying the embroidered hem of your chiton. It will never come clean.”

  “I have others.” Lifting my skirts to the knee, I walk out into the field, where my guards help guide the team of oxen out of a shallow depression where the rain water has turned the soil to mud.

  Huffing with indignation, Julia follows me, and we circle round the powerful haunches of the oxen that toil here in my fields. Both great beasts turn their horned heads. As we pass closely near the sweating animals, I whisper to her, “This always sets Memnon’s nerves on edge.”

  As if on cue, poor Memnon barks at me to get back from the animals for my safety, but we ignore him and I give a little wave to the plowman, who bows deeply. “Your Majesty …”

  “Last season he taught me to drive the plow,” I say.

  Julia’s eyes go round with delight. “You’ve driven these animals? With your own hands?”

  “Not by myself, of course,” I say. “But I have done it.”

  “I want to learn!”

  “Julia, you can’t. You ought not exert yourself when pregnant.”

  It’s the wrong thing to say, for she takes it as a dare. “I am not very pregnant. Not even five months gone, I would guess, though I seem to be showing earlier and earlier with each child. At any rate, it’s your doing that I’ve come down into this field to dirty my gown and fill my nostrils with the scent of manure. I might as well learn something.”

  She reaches for the handles of the plow while I try to warn her off. “Julia, you’d be surprised how much strength and steadiness it takes to keep the furrows straight.”

  In spite of my warning, Julia’s hands both wrap round the wood, her knuckles tight as she marvels at the whole contraption. Then the oxen lurch forward. When the plow begins to move, Julia’s sandals wobble on the broken ground of the furrow. I reach to steady her, but my interference throws her off balance.

  I stagger to catch her before she falls, but lose my own footing in a long slide that takes us both down with a dramatic splash in the mud. Julia wails and I am horrified. “Julia! Are you hurt?”

  She looks up, her face a mask of dirt, her hair in filthy strands, one hand on her pregnant belly. “I think—I think I’m unharmed … just filthy.”

  She begins to laugh, relieved, but when I join her she shrieks at me, “Why are you laughing? This is your fault, you cow!” With that, she launches a fistful of sticky earth that spatters my cheek and clings to my face. Howling, I crawl to her for vengeance, intending to shove her back down in the dirt, but I’m doubled over with laughter as she kicks at me, shouting, “You horrid Egyptian cow!”

  I laugh harder, trying to grasp her legs so she can’t peg me with the hard sole of her sandal. Julia hoots, tears of laughter streaking her dirty face as we wrestle. Our poor guards think we’ve gone mad.

  But we cannot seem to stop. My sides hurt from laughing, but every time I relent and try to help her up from the ground, Julia drags me back down and I am helpless to do anything but lie on the earth with her and laugh.

  *

  “THE emperor’s daughter is a menace,” Juba announces. He has caught me out in my rooms after my bath and now scolds me like a misbehaving child. “When the seas open again, we will have trouble as you have not imagined. We can only hope Agrippa hauls her away over his shoulder kicking and screaming …”

  “The plowing was my fault, I assure you.”

  “You’ve too much pride to lower yourself in such a way,” he insists. “Or you’ve changed very much, indeed.”

  “I told you that I’ve changed.”

  He comes closer and I see that he’s not as angry as he pretends. “I will say of the mud, however, that if you’re an example of its merits as a beauty treatment, I
very much approve.”

  His unexpected flirtation makes me smile. “Ouch! My face hurts from laughing too much today.”

  “I never thought to hear you say such a thing, Selene,” he says, cradling my cheek in his palm, taking advantage of the new liberties I’ve granted him. In truth, I never thought to hear myself say such a thing. In my life, I’ve rarely laughed with abandon. Never kissed without consequence. Tragedy, sadness, and bitter rage have had the care of my soul.

  I’m not sure I would recognize happiness.

  But when my husband kisses me, I wonder if perhaps this is it. Here, so far from Rome, we may have found some happiness. It is not love, but it may be happiness. It may only be a happiness born of the things we do not ask of each other and the faults we overlook. It may be a happiness born of concessions, silence, and secrets. But if we are happy, it is such a precious and fragile thing that I must cherish and defend it against whatever may come with the arrival of spring.

  Seven

  WE welcome our son’s first Saturnalia with much merriment. At six months old, our little prince’s skin is as pale and translucent as alabaster. He now sits up on his own and makes a game of peeking between his fingers. He knows his name too. When I call him Ptolemy, he turns to look, and his eyes, like Juba’s, are an earthy amber brown.

  To celebrate the season, Juba orders fresh pine cut from the forest to be made into fragrant wreaths for every door in the palace. We also use the resin to flavor our wine. Our halls are festooned with garlands and the trees on the grounds have been ornamented with little stars made of hammered silver. I take Dora and Pythia to my private altar to Isis. There I teach the girls to burn frankincense in her honor and we burn so much that fragrant blue clouds of it drift throughout the palace.

  It’s all very costly, but one cannot be stingy with the gods …

  This year we’ll celebrate more than just the Roman Saturn, whom the Berbers call Ba’al Hammon. My Alexandrians will also celebrate the birth of Isis’s son, Horus, who himself is a sun god. Some will honor the Haloea in honor of Demeter or the Brumalia for Dionysus. It’s hard to know which tradition they’ll embrace, for some Alexandrians consider themselves first Greek. Others Egyptian. Perhaps it is a vain hope, but I want them to consider themselves Mauretanians, now.

  One rainy afternoon I find Julia in the receiving hall surrounded by baskets of candles and ribbons and pastries. With the children of my palace, she kneels on the floor, the center of attention. Dora is with her, leaning against Julia’s pregnant belly as the emperor’s daughter teaches her to tie a bow onto a sprig of evergreen. Dora smiles, and with her lovely little face so near to Julia’s, in profile, they look like sisters. The thought wounds me. My daughter. My dearest friend. I cannot bear to think that the emperor is a common thread between them, so I tell myself they’re bound by no one and nothing but me. “What are you up to, Julia?”

  All the children bow to me as they are accustomed, given that I’m their queen, and this delights Julia. “Why, I’m telling your little subjects all about our days together in Rome. Do you remember how we used to make gifts for the street children on the Saturnalia? How we tied candles and bundles of spices or pastries onto evergreen boughs until our fingers were numb from the cold?”

  I do remember, though all such remembrances of Rome are tainted for me. “Did you tell them how you used to steal stewed plums from the pot of spiced wine?”

  “Oh!” Julia says, rocking back on her knees. “You’ve given me a craving. Can we have spiced plums for the Saturnalia? Or don’t you think the plums will taste so sweet if we don’t have to steal them from Livia’s pot?”

  “My plums will always be sweeter than hers,” I declare.

  Julia wants plums, so I give them to her. Wearing a freedman’s conical red pileus cap, as is the tradition during the Saturnalia, I serve plums at all our holiday banquets, and they taste sweeter than ever before. The Romans shout, “Io Saturnalia,” and I gather the children in my chambers, where I shower them with gifts, including masks of revelry. I give gifts to my courtiers too. A new set of alabaster lamps for my mage. A thick silver bracelet for Tala. A length of precious cloth for Chryssa. Gem-encrusted inkpots for my poet, Crinagoras, and a vial of perfume for Circe.

  Such gifts as these would be too humble for Julia, so I commission a play in her honor. It is a new version of The Trojan Women that makes us all weep. It’s one of our playwright’s best; everyone agrees that Leonteus of Argos has outdone himself.

  Later, still dabbing our eyes and weary with emotion, Julia and I huddle together on a couch by a burning brazier in my chambers, sipping warmed wine. Elsewhere in the palace, we hear revelry that will last late into the evening. I should be there with them in the banquet hall, celebrating with the king, but my quiet intimacy with Julia is a sweet respite. I give her a set of combs and ribbons in commemoration of the first gifts she ever gave to me, and she likes them very much.

  “You think me vain!” she cries, but she sets about putting them in her hair straightaway. “And here all I have to give you is the rights to quarry stone in Numidia … They fell to me somehow as a gift from Marcellus. I suspect that given all the construction here in Iol-Caesaria, you can make better use of stone than I can!”

  It is an astonishingly generous gift. “I’m so grateful. Truly, I cannot tell you how glad I am to have you here for the Saturnalia. I only wish it didn’t mean we’ll have to face your father’s wrath come springtime.”

  “Oh, Selene, you need not worry about my father’s wrath. Did you really believe that I let a sailor of low birth bed me just so that I might blackmail him into sailing across the narrow strait?”

  I know the look in her eye when she means to tell me something vital and the hairs rise on my nape. “How should I know what to believe when you play such games with me?”

  Julia gives a rueful smile that fades into sadness. “I’m sorry I deceived you. It’s just that I wanted time with you that belonged only to me. Time I didn’t have to share with my father.”

  Disentangling myself from her, I begin to sit up. “I need you to explain yourself …”

  She sighs with regret. “I half convinced myself that I was acting upon my own desires instead of being pushed like a piece upon a game board between men vying for power. I hope you’ll forgive me …”

  “How can I forgive what I don’t understand?”

  “Fine. I’ll make it plain. I left Agrippa at my father’s command.”

  “At your father’s command?” But that makes no sense at all, unless … “So the emperor means to break from his alliance with Agrippa. Has he grown so powerful in Rome that he no longer needs his best general?”

  Julia gives a delicate shrug. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been in Rome since my marriage, and my husband censors my letters. But my father has ways of getting word to me through the soldiers. It was my father who gave me the means to leave Agrippa and come here.”

  The grinding gears of imperial intrigue have grown rusty in my mind, but now they start to turn again. “Sweet Isis. Your father must be planning some move against Agrippa. Is there to be another civil war?”

  Julia stares down, twisting her betrothal ring around and around the fourth finger of her hand. “I don’t know. I only know this is the only mission my father has ever set for me other than to marry the men he chooses and bear children for them. I couldn’t refuse him.”

  It doesn’t surprise me that the emperor would use Julia’s desperate need for approval against her. But it does surprise me that she remains so stubbornly loyal to such a father. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me. It is, I begin to think, the Roman way. “Meanwhile, your husband returns to Rome, unaware of the trap …”

  She has too long been the daughter of Augustus for my implication to startle her. “I cannot believe that Agrippa is in any danger. My father cannot mean to make a widow of me a second time. He simply intends for a new ordering of their partnership. A new understanding. A negotiation …�
��

  The emperor once described Julia as a kind of hostage that his powerful and increasingly independent general held against him; now, with Agrippa returning to Rome with his legions, the emperor has sent Julia to me for safekeeping, and I wonder at the significance of that. “Why here? Why did he make you flee to Mauretania?”

  “It was the nearest client kingdom, though I’m sure there are other, more personal reasons.” She doesn’t say what those reasons are and I don’t ask. We’re both too shrewd for that.

  “But, Julia, Agrippa has your children …”

  “They’re his children, or so he insists. My loyalties aren’t torn, Selene. I am of the Julii. I must do as my father commands. As must we all.” Her eyes are strangely intent on me now, all the gaiety gone from them. Then she says quietly, very quietly, “I have never understood what passes between you and my father.”

  If I have my way, she never will, for it is something too wicked to name. Something I have banished to the past, buried in my dark shadow self, my khaibit, which, Isis willing, will not rise again. “There is nothing to understand, Julia. Your father has done me great honor by making me queen and entrusting unto me some part of the grain supply for the empire. He’s commanded from me shipments of grain, and I have obeyed.”

  “That is not all he commands of you now, Selene.”

  What can she mean by that? I scarcely breathe, so anxious am I. Will the emperor admonish me for having borne the son of another man? In his rage, would he dare to entrust such a missive with his own daughter? Julia meets my eyes and speaks carefully. “My father and my husband need a man to mediate between them.”

  “Maecenas?” I suggest, for that has long been the role of the emperor’s old friend.