Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  I’m struck by a sudden and vivid memory of our childhood. The day Philadelphus knocked us into the pool and Julia and I flung white ribbons of water at him. Minora and Drusus squealed and splashed and climbed all over us. Closing my eyes, I remember the laughter. We all laughed that day. Even Helios, who so seldom laughed. The remembrance is a sharp arrow of pain.

  I ought to push the memory away, but I let it linger because I cannot have the sweetness of Helios without the bitterness of having lost him. Indeed, I savor the memory, drinking deeply of my wine.

  Not in at least a hundred years have the women of Rome participated so fully in the business of the state. Regardless of the lateness of the hour, the rumors of impending bloodshed, and the supposed solemnity of this banquet sponsored by the most prestigious women in Rome, they chatter with excitement.

  Only Livia sits quietly at the far end of the hall, watching with detachment. And I am surprised when she motions to me with her finger.

  “Goodness, you’ve drawn the eye of the harpy,” Julia says with a laugh. “Well, you can’t keep avoiding her. Go on. Don’t worry. Livia’s claws have been clipped.”

  Though Julia’s popularity has brought Livia low, I cannot be seen to snub the emperor’s wife, so I stiffen my spine and make my way through the crowds to take the empty edge of the couch upon which Livia reclines. When I do, the emperor’s wife sucks in a big breath as if it takes courage to face me. Perhaps it does, since the last time we were alone, I threatened her life, vowing that if she should ever put my daughter in fear that I would make her disappear. Though I’ve yet to master my magic to the extent that I can do such a thing, the earnestness of my promise was not lost on her.

  But I am just as wary of her. Cautious as a cat, I ask, “What do you want, Livia?”

  “I want to know where you went wrong, of course,” she says, tapping one of her bony fingers against her lips. “Since you’ve returned to Rome, you’ve put on a masterful performance, as if you were content to be merely the Queen of Mauretania and the wife of a Berber. Yet we both know you aimed much higher when you made yourself the emperor’s whore on the Isle of Samos.”

  I shrug because I know better than to allow Livia to see what truly matters to me. “We must all content ourselves with the roles the emperor chooses for us, mustn’t we?”

  Livia plucks a flower from the wreath around her neck and crushes it between her fingers in contemplation. “Oh, I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but you did worry me. You bewitched my husband. I’m told he considered divorcing me and putting you in my place. But somehow you aimed too high. You overshot. I want to know how you failed.”

  Pride makes me ask, “Are you so sure that I failed?”

  “He cast you off,” she insists. Then her contemptuous eyes flick away to another woman entirely. The plump matron who has drawn Livia’s ire must be Scribonia. Long banished from social gatherings in Rome, the emperor’s former wife is now openly received thanks to Julia. Scribonia has emerged from veritable exile to take an honored place in her daughter’s retinue, a circumstance so abhorrent to Livia that she says, “This city is filled with the emperor’s cast-off women. He has cast off all of them but me.”

  That’s all she has left to cling to. Her social position in Rome is superfluous. She has only a few loyalists left amongst the women of the city, but none of them are seated with her now. Her influence is gone. Her ambitions for her sons to rule the empire after Augustus are all shattered. The horrible things she’s done have all been for naught. I take some measure of satisfaction in that, enough to make me say, “No one deserves him more than you do. In the darkest chamber of my soul where hatred resides, you have etched your name again and again, Livia. Even were I to forgive all that you’ve done to me, you’ve hurt those I love, so I am glad you have the emperor and that he has you.”

  “And I’m glad you hate me, Selene. So very glad. Because one day you will realize that we’re just alike. Then the self-reverence with which you carry yourself will melt away and leave you to hate yourself just as much.”

  It is an accusation that makes me boil over with rage. “We are nothing alike.”

  “Aren’t we? When I was fourteen years old, I was given over to an older man to be his bride, just as you were. My first husband was considered to be worldly and intelligent, like yours. A civilized man of middling ambition.”

  She is trying to insult my husband, I think, so I do not dignify it with a reply.

  “It was my duty to my family to be a good wife,” she continues. “To give him sons and learn to love him no matter what weakness I saw in him.” Her lips curl with scorn. “He got me with child right away. My son Tiberius can make nothing easy on anyone, so the birth was hard. While I was screaming, my husband told the midwife to cut the baby out of me. She protested, telling him that it was too soon for such a drastic course. That it would kill me. But my husband said, ‘Better a dead wife than a dead child. I cannot make sons easily, but I can find another woman to bed.’”

  I’m too fascinated to stop her now. With a coldness that makes me believe it, she explains, “They tied me down so that I couldn’t struggle against my death. The midwife told me how great my child would be if it was a boy. How he would honor my name and bring it glory. Would not any good Roman woman wish to die to ensure such a thing? She wanted my assent to kill me. She even offered to cut my throat first to make it quicker and less painful.”

  I stare at Livia to see if she feels anything about this at all, but she goes on without emotion, as if describing something that happened to someone else. “That is when the child finally slithered out from between my legs. It didn’t matter that I was tired and frightened and so very injured. They put the babe on my breast. They could have sent for a slave—some slut from the kitchens with milk in her breasts—but if they would take my blood for the baby, why not my milk? For that squalling brat they would drain me of everything.”

  I say nothing to Livia, because I can say nothing to her. The birth of my own son was not easy. But no one threatened to cut him free of my body and leave me to die. Livia is the same vile creature she has always been, but she is telling me how she was made. And I find that I want to know.

  “My first husband was one of your father’s men,” she says, and when my eyes widen, she adds, “Oh, yes, I was in Antony’s camp then.”

  The mention of my father’s name alarms me, for it’s rarely mentioned in public. As he was declared a traitor and his birthday named an unlucky day, I look over my shoulder to see if anyone has heard, but Livia and I are alone together in this alcove, both of us trapped by the past.

  She draws closer and I can smell the herbs on her breath. “Your father came to congratulate my husband on his new son. I heard them laugh about the beardless boy who meant to fill Julius Caesar’s shoes. That was the first time I heard the emperor’s name spoken. In laughter. They refused to honor him with his adopted name, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Divi Filius—the son of the god. Instead, they laughed, calling him by the name he was born with. Gaius Octavius Thurinus. Or, when they were drunk, they called him just Octavian or the boy. The boy had no army, they said. No breeding. He was the descendant of slaves. All the boy had was his adopted name and hubris. And he would be easily defeated.”

  Would that he had been, I think.

  “That was the last time I ever heard anyone say Octavian’s name in laughter. The next time I heard it, it was spoken in panic by our slaves as they fled in terror, abandoning us to the boy’s marauding soldiers.”

  She is talking now about the dark days of civil war. Days when blood ran in the streets of Rome. Days when my father and the emperor struggled for power … the days that shaped us both. “He captured you?” I guess, fascinated.

  “Just listen and let me tell it!” she snarls. “I was an ailing girl with an infant at my breast and thugs at my gate. My husband snatched our son out of my arms and commanded me to stay behind to delay the soldiers. He meant that I should let them di
shonor me and my family name. Give myself to rutting soldiers …”

  To protect my children, I can think of nothing that I would not do. But to be a girl—just a child myself—and given such a command by my husband, by the man who was bound by honor to defend me … if it were anyone but Livia telling me this story, it would break my heart.

  She must see something akin to pity in my eyes, because she laughs. “Oh, do you think I would let men violate me and live on, shamelessly, as you do? No, the soldiers were too intent upon looting our valuables to concern themselves with me. So I slipped out the back into the garden, climbed over the low wall, and fled to my husband. When I caught up with him he simply put little Tiberius into my arms and told me that the boy was hungry.”

  The dark tale is starkly at odds with the revelry around us and I am eager for it to end. I have changed my mind. I do not want to hear more about Livia’s sufferings because the fiendish woman has dared to remind me of how she brought me to the emperor’s bed, then gave me poison to drink the morning after. “May no other girl ever know such suffering.”

  “Why not?” Livia asks. “Suffering is what makes us. You’ve certainly worn your suffering like a mantle. It is always in your eyes, in your every breath. You never let any of us forget it. You wallow in it. But all anyone thinks when they look at Livia is how high she’s risen.”

  “Oh, I assure you, that is not all I think when I look at you.”

  She doesn’t hear me; in a sense, I don’t even think she’s speaking to me anymore. “Have you ever smelled your own hair burning? It is a horrible stench. My husband never gave a thought to my safety. I was nearly burned alive when Octavian set fire to the town where we fled. Like a wolf, Octavian was always on our heels. I knew that if ever the wolf got too close, I would be the bait.”

  I will not let this story soften me, I think, for she has ever been my enemy, a threat to everyone I love, and I do not forget. But this story haunts me and will linger in my mind.

  Livia must know it because her smile is chilling. “I decided that when the wolf got close enough I would let him snap me up in his jaws. I was already the wife of a ruthless man, so why not be the wife of the most ruthless man? A man who would never be sent fleeing into the night. A man who would stop at nothing to win. Octavian was that man.”

  “So you let the wolf catch you,” I say.

  Livia smiles mysteriously, examining a simple golden ring upon her bony finger—the one that must have been her betrothal ring to the emperor. “I caught him. When your father married Lady Octavia to make peace, we were able to return to Rome. I suggested a dinner party—how could it be unseemly to host Mark Antony’s new brother-in-law? My husband agreed, and a day later, Octavian reclined upon our dinner couch. I let him know, with whispered words and a glance, that I was his for the taking, if he should dare such a thing in my husband’s house. So he dared … that very night. He took me in the gardens, then brought me back to my husband’s couch still red-cheeked and flushed, utterly shameless. He loved that shamelessness—and I knew then, it was the wrongness of it that fed his appetite.”

  That is how she seduced the emperor away from Julia’s mother. And she has been clinging to him for survival ever since. Livia thinks we are alike because we have both played the emperor’s strumpet in the name of survival. She sold her very soul for her ambitions; I nearly did the same. But I turned away before it was too late.

  Haven’t I turned away? “You sicken me, Livia.”

  “Only because you tried to play my game and failed. I want to know what you did that drove Augustus to cast you off and run back into my arms.”

  She assumes it was the emperor who stepped back from the abyss. That he took his fill of me and sent me away when he was done. Even my courtiers think this and I’m not at liberty to contradict them, because the emperor must think it as well. And yet, I have finally come upon the one person to whom I can speak the truth, because Livia will not believe it, and even if she did, she cannot repeat it.

  “He did not cast me off, Livia. I cast him off.” The shock on her face gives me such satisfaction that I go on boldly. “I didn’t want him. I never wanted him. Not when you helped force me into his bed. Not when I was at his side on the Isle of Samos, striving for my mother’s crown. He gave it to me, you know. He put the crown of Egypt upon my brow and he pressed the scepter into my hands. He promised me a greater place at his side than you have ever enjoyed. But I would not live as that man’s wife, even for the whole world. I drove the emperor back into your arms because it’s what you both deserve.”

  She draws back as if I’ve slapped her, gulping in air. Let her think on that. Let her suffer knowing the truth. I don’t care. And I feel a moment of triumph as darkly thrilling as it is dangerous.

  Fourteen

  JULIA is the glittering center of the party. It is difficult to convince her that she must go home and to bed because until she does, none of the other matrons of Rome dare leave. I nearly have to haul her outside into the dark.

  The moment the humid night air touches my cheeks, however, I regret having done so. An escort of minor officials have gathered to see guests home, led by none other than Iullus Antonius. Julia sees him and her fingers clamp down so hard on mine as to cause me pain.

  Iullus cannot take his eyes from her, but he greets me first, with unusual gallantry. “My sister, the Queen of Mauretania … Lady Julia …”

  The unspoken longing between them after their heartbreaking separation is so suffocating that I feel certain everyone else must be holding their breath. But no one else seems to notice the anxiety on my Roman half brother’s face and the mask that descends over Julia’s.

  Their love is a secret. And the way Julia’s fingernails dig into my palm makes me wish it was a secret I didn’t know. “How good to see you again, Iullus Antonius,” Julia says. “How long has it been?”

  “More than three years,” he replies stiffly. “Almost four.”

  Her grip tightens on my hand. “I trust the years have been good to you. Certainly your loyalty has been well rewarded. I’m told that my father relies upon you and Tiberius for everything. Much has changed since I’ve been gone.”

  In the moonlight, he drinks her in, head to toe, his eyes burning with emotion that he dare not express openly, but still, he comes close. “Some things never change, Lady Julia. Some things are as eternal as the flame in the heart of Rome …”

  I feel the tremor that goes through her hand. “Horace told me you’d taken up poetry, Iullus Antonius; now I believe it.”

  “Any man may be a poet if he is graced by a Muse,” he replies. “And you have always been mine. May I escort you home?”

  It is a plea to walk alone with her as they used to do in the gardens. He wants to take her aside from her attendants so that they might speak privately. Once, Julia would have readily agreed. I know she is tempted. She stares at him, weighing his proposition for long moments, her heart beating so loudly that I can hear it. She wants to go with him, but she is married to a man who will never forgive such impropriety. It will be disaster if she goes. I will not let her go, I decide.

  Thankfully, Marcella emerges from an archway and the spell is broken. One glance at her rival seems to bring Julia to her senses. She gives a polite nod to Iullus’s wife. “Thank you for the offer, Iullus Antonius, but no.” The effort seems to makes her cruel, and she turns to show off her swollen belly. “I’m sure that Admiral Agrippa has sent a litter to fetch me now that I am great with child again …”

  Then she walks away with me, her eyes straight ahead, never looking back. But I look over my shoulder and see the knob in my half brother’s throat rising as if he cannot swallow it all down.

  *

  IN the morning, I have slaves bear me away from the city in a covered litter to visit the tomb of my little brother Philadelphus. I find his crypt well tended, the stonework in good repair, new paint upon the carved garlands and fresh flowers strewn upon the entryway. The Antonias vowed to
me that they would tend his tomb and perform the rites due a child of Isis … and I am grateful when I see a little brazier with the fresh ashes of costly incense.

  Then my steps come to an abrupt stop at the sight of a Roman soldier wearing a red-plumed helmet inside. I gasp, astonished. “Drusus?”

  Turning from the wall behind which my brother’s sarcophagus is safely bricked in, the dashing military commander removes his helmet and tucks it under his arm. “Ah, Selene. I didn’t mean to give you a fright.”

  Clutching my basket of offerings, I ask, “What are you doing here?”

  “I stop here when I can,” Drusus replies sheepishly. “Today I was nearby on an errand, and Minora asked me to make an offering for Philadelphus.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” I say, reminded that my youngest brother spent as much time in Rome as he ever did in Egypt. He was as much theirs as he was mine, but even though I’m touched at the sentimentality of Livia’s youngest son, I want to make my offerings alone.

  Fortunately, Drusus does not stay long. He’s always busy with somewhere to be. And so he leaves me to make my offerings to the statue of Philadelphus—where I think my little brother’s ka may reside. I give him milk and barley cakes covered with honey, figs and dates and little pastries with beans in them. They were his favorite at the Saturnalia …

  Then I tell him of all that has happened since I came to Rome. As I speak, I know that Augustus and Agrippa are making another sacrifice on the Capitol, this time a cow to Juno. But it’s always what Augustus does in darkness that most concerns me. Since I’m named after the moon, perhaps that’s only right. They tell a story of my goddess that she knew the secret name of Ra. Perhaps, like her, I was born to glimpse the souls of men at their darkest hours and know them for who they really are.

  These gloomy thoughts are a reflection of Livia’s words. I told her that we’re different because I didn’t want Augustus; but perhaps she never wanted him either. I told her that I cast him off, and even though it is true, I did so only for my own survival. How many times on the Isle of Samos did I wish to throw myself into the water and drown?