Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  Once, I nearly did.

  I let the emperor send me away because I would never have been able to live with myself otherwise. Livia’s sense of self-preservation isn’t stronger than mine, nor are her ambitions greater. The only difference between us—the only true difference—is that I have tied myself to the emperor in the hope that he might one day be a better man.

  I know the emperor’s dark side. I know the chained monster inside him that he unleashes to ravish young girls. I know the cold ruthlessness that slows his blood and makes him murderous. But I also know a side of him so pathetic and vulnerable that I have always been able to exploit it. He longs to be a great man. He longs to be the hero that the world needs.

  Caesar. Aeneas. Apollo. These are the names he wants as his own and I have given them to him. I have used him to have my own way. He’s given me riches. He’s saved men on my word and killed others because I wanted them dead. If I have such power over the emperor, if, like the goddess I serve, I know his true name and can wield him as a weapon—can I not also make him lay those weapons down?

  I have done it before. I have convinced him to spare men’s lives. I have persuaded him against war. I have changed him in ways large and small. And that is why I return to my house on the Tiber to don the garb of an Isiac priestess.

  Tonight I will go to the emperor wearing a clean linen tunic, the threads of which come from a plant so that no harm is done to a living thing. Dyed in bright colors to represent the various facets of my goddess, it shows how she can be found in every beautiful thing given to us in nature. Tied between my breasts in the sacred knot of the tiet is a black-fringed cloak weighed down in silver stars.

  In my hand, I hold the ankh. The symbol of eternal life.

  For those who believe me to be an incarnation of Isis—or my mother reborn—the sight of me dressed this way has a powerful impact when I make my way to the emperor’s side that night. Whispers swirl around me asking whether the ban on Isis worship has been lifted. The crowd parts for me not only because I am a queen, but because they sense the heka that tingles at my fingertips.

  Augustus might well object to an apparition of my forbidden goddess here, in Rome, where she may not be worshipped by name. But whatever he tells himself, he is worshipping her on this night. He is sacrificing to Isis.

  And I will help him do it.

  The emperor’s gaze sweeps my way and I stop where I stand, lifting my eyes in challenge. This is my price. If he would have me call upon my goddess on Rome’s behalf, then I must be allowed this latitude to appear as her priestess. I have chosen this moment so that he cannot forbid it. I’ve chosen to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

  We are seasoned bargainers this way; we no longer need words to negotiate. He gives one curt nod, and I find a place in the shadows beside him. The cow he will sacrifice tonight is heavy with an unborn calf. She’s a pretty heifer, snowy white and without blemish, adorned with garlands of flowers. Standing over her, beside the rushing birth waters of the Tiber, the emperor asks the great mother of all things to give birth to a new Rome.

  When he has said all the sacred words, he looks to me to hand him the knife. I’m standing close enough to him that I might plunge this blade into his heart and rid the world of Augustus forever. But his body has always been at my mercy in some way or another, no more now than ever before. I have nursed him to health and shielded him from harm so that he might finally bring about some good in the world. And tonight, he is trying to. He is begging the gods to give Rome a new start—to clean the sin from this world and from his heart.

  “It is not blood that she wants,” I whisper.

  My voice is quiet but he hears me over the gurgling river beyond. He draws nearer until our torchlit shadows mingle on the ground and the rest of the world, all the priests, all the worshippers, all the citizens who watch and wait, seem to freeze in place.

  The emperor asks, “What does Isis want?”

  Once, I looked for the words of my goddess to reveal themselves upon my arms in blood. Now that I’m older, I think she carves them inside me where only I can see. They are no less painful for it. I’m saddened by the certainty of what she would have of me now. For Isis does not cling as hard to her hatreds and resentments as I do.

  I may have been born to usher in a Golden Age, but the people don’t care if it’s mine or his. Their lives turn on small things like food in their bellies, the security of good laws, the prosperity of peace. What dynasty should rise or fall is nothing to them if it costs them everything else they love. They’ve known too many dark days to fight for a Republic anymore. It has all become empty talk for them.

  I would gladly blame the emperor for this. I have blamed him. But this is what ninety years of civil war and instability has wrought. Now all they want is peace and order. They are hungrier for it than they are for bread.

  And he wants to give it to them.

  When I speak, my voice is still a whisper, only for him. “She wants a true sacrifice. You must make peace with Agrippa. You must forgive him for his defiance. You must forgive him and give people peace and security at long last. You must adopt Agrippa’s son as your heir, Caesar.”

  The emperor’s eyes narrow as he whispers, “You know what I sacrifice should I do that.”

  His fantasy that little Ptolemy is his son is potent. Having me close to his side during these proceedings lets him dream he might claim us in the future. This is a fantasy that must be cut out of him just as my hatred must be cut from me. “Caesar, Romans sacrifice the best horse, the winning horse, the October Horse to the gods. They do not sacrifice the losing stallion. It must hurt to surrender it … or it is no sacrifice at all.”

  As the wind begins to pick up, the emperor looks thoughtful, as if he is hearing a truth he already knows. “And what do you sacrifice?”

  What have I not sacrificed? Yet, still, I must surrender to my goddess the bitter bile in my spleen toward these people. These Romans. For their sake, my mother, my father, my brothers, and all their dreams of a different world have been sacrificed and burned like the lambs.

  This is all that remains. These people. This empire—a thing I can only shape if I recognize my kinship with it. I must forgive those soldiers who abandoned my father at Actium; I must forgive men like Plancus and Juba whom I once called traitors. I must forgive even the emperor …

  I must bury my khaibit, that shadowy, vengeful part of myself that fights the Romans, plots against them, pretends that their fate is not my fate too. That this empire is not the same one my parents fought and died for. Always I’ve been taught that forgiveness is a tender, uplifting force, but forgiveness can be sharp as a knife. Forgiveness will cut me this night and I will bleed. “What do I sacrifice tonight?” Taking the knife, I see that my hand is strangely steady. “Why, tonight I become Roman.”

  I press the hilt into his palm. Our fingers touch and I let the spark of my heka flow into his hand, into the knife, and into the night. He’s seen words called forth upon my body, engraved in blood. He’s seen me call the wind with my upraised hands. But he’s never felt the force of my power as he feels it now. I yield it to him, using my hopes and dreams for a new world in the hopes I will make him blossom the way I once made a hillside in Mauretania bloom with flowers.

  His eyes widen with the sensation, then widen again as we connect. The tendrils of magic wrap around him and bind us more tightly than anything else ever has. More closely than carnal knowledge. If I have never before truly bewitched him, this time I do, and the ruler of the world nods to me his surrender. He will do what is right. He will make peace.

  My winds scour the night and make it clean, sweeping away the pains of the past to make room for a new world. I pray that Isis lifts any curses she has laid upon these people … even upon the emperor himself … and that she fill our hearts with forgiveness.

  As the people cover their heads and huddle together, Augustus holds the sacred knife above the cow. Isis does not want blood, but the g
ods of Rome do, so Augustus slashes the poor animal with swift mercy. The cow falls before Occia, and the rest of the Vestal Virgins crowd close to pull the unborn calf from its dying mother just as I was ripped away from mine.

  The cow and the calf are burned by the Vestals, their ashes to be used in remembrance of this night at all holy occasions in the coming year. And I stand in the wind, trails of salt on my cheeks where my tears have burned away.

  *

  IN the days following, Juba brokers a private agreement between the emperor and Agrippa. The emperor’s wayward general agrees never to celebrate a Triumphal parade. In so doing, Agrippa vows to decline the honor that would make him a veritable king for a day, even if his soldiers should hail him as imperator after a victory on the field of battle, even if the Senate should vote one for him. With this vow, the general agrees to support the idea that all Roman generals are, in some sense, merely legates of the Princeps, the First Citizen.

  In exchange, the admiral is given large swaths of property in the East including the Thracian Chersonese. Agrippa is also given proconsular imperium, so that he may never be outranked wherever he travels. Moreover, he is granted the unusual tribunician powers that make him a colleague of the emperor for the next five years. And while Agrippa is extorting these favors from the emperor, his wife gives birth to a little boy named Lucius Vipsanius Agrippa.

  It is a name the baby does not keep long because the emperor adopts both of Julia’s sons under the laws of Rome.

  Six years ago, the whole city was in a near state of insurrection at the idea that the emperor intended his nephew Marcellus to take the part of political heir. I remember the riots. I remember how I feared the whole mob would turn against the emperor’s family, then come for me and mine. Those dissenting voices are strangely silent now. The adoption of little Gaius and Lucius is a far more obvious danger, an unsubtle dynastic move, and yet there is nary a protest.

  Perhaps we are all willing to pay any price for the peace we begged of the gods.

  As reward for his service, my husband is given a small fleet of warships with which to guard against piracy. He is also named patronus coloniae over the Roman settlements in our kingdom. There will be no question now of any disgruntled Roman appealing our rulings to the emperor. With Agrippa ready to start off for the East and the emperor’s legions in Germanic Gaul, my husband is now the foremost authority in the West.

  That is all very well for Juba, but I have my own ambitions. I have my own calling. On the night the emperor’s astronomers present to him a bronze device used to predict the movement of the stars, I find Augustus in the room dedicated to his ancestors.

  “I did my part,” I tell him, with the masks of the Julii there to witness it. “Now I want permission to celebrate my goddess in my kingdom.”

  Watching the gears turn in the device, Augustus asks, “You give nothing freely, do you?”

  “You allow Isis worship in Egypt,” I argue. “There is no reason to forbid it in Mauretania.”

  “You are the reason. In Egypt, there is no more queen. There is no pharaoh. The priesthood is beholden to me. But in your kingdom, they will look to you for a savior.”

  “Have I not delivered those who worship me into your hands? You have allowed Herod to rebuild a temple and his people do not recognize you as their messiah. Let me build a temple for Isis in Mauretania, where my Berbers will honor Rome too.”

  “I won’t pay for an Iseum. Not a copper coin.”

  “I’m not asking you to pay. I am asking you to make peace with Isis as you wish her to make peace throughout the empire. Give me your blessing and I’ll return to Mauretania and trouble you no more.”

  “There is nowhere I am untroubled by you, Cleopatra Selene,” he says, lifting his head so that our eyes meet. “There is no hour in any day that I do not resent the way you have been torn from me.”

  I swallow in the face of what seems to be earnest emotion. “It cannot be otherwise, Caesar. We begged the gods for peace and paid their price. We have shaped a new world and must be content.”

  “I am not content,” Augustus says, pinning me with an intent stare. “I will never be content and neither will you.”

  “I am content, Caesar.”

  “You are lying. You are lying either to me or to yourself, Selene. But I will allow you to return to Mauretania with Juba. I will allow you to build your temple. So long as you are mindful always, in both matters—in all matters—that you are mine.”

  PART TWO

  THE GROWING

  Fifteen

  IOL-CAESARIA, THE KINGDOM OF MAURETANIA

  AUTUMN 17 B.C.

  WE make harbor just before the autumn rains begin to fall. The rains are welcome in our kingdom, but late, and I cannot help but think it is my fault for staying away so long in Rome. This land needs me. If I had performed the proper rituals for the god of the river, I could have made the rain come sooner. But I did not and now the farmers are in a frenzy to get their seeds into the earth for the winter sowing.

  The sharecroppers hurriedly sow barley. The shepherds make ready to slaughter their fatted calves. The vintners rush to make their wine and turn the remaining grapes into raisins. And I have an overripe matter of my own to attend to; I dare not wait another moment to begin my temple lest the emperor change his mind about allowing it.

  Calling my advisers to the tiered benches in our council chamber, where they may lounge beneath linen draperies and potted cherry trees that I have brought with me from Rome, I say, “I intend to build a great Iseum in honor of my goddess. Can we afford it?”

  This question should go to my husband’s master of the treasury, but it’s my freedwoman who manages our monopolies, and my own riches. And so I do not like Chryssa’s hesitation when she rises from her seat to address me. “That depends, Majesty. Will we take donations from the wealthy Isiacs who have come to your city to be free of persecution or will the temple be dedicated in your name alone? How big will the Iseum be? Will the walls be made of brick or stone?”

  “Questions for an architect,” I say.

  “That will cost us too depending on the architect’s skill and reputation.”

  “I will have only the best for Isis,” I insist.

  With a severity matched only by the tight braids that make up her elegant coiffure, my freedwoman says, “You will not have the best. The best architects in the empire are in the employ of Augustus or they work for Agrippa.”

  Tugging at my pearl earring in irritation, I say, “Surely not all of them.”

  She spreads her hands in helplessness, so that her gauzy blue shawl billows from her arms like the wings of my goddess. “We’ve sent agents to recruit the talented ones in the East. But they are easily wooed away by King Herod, who pays them a ransom.”

  It is not the money, I think. Talented architects and craftsmen would flock to a true Ptolemaic queen. But they have begun to think of me simply as the wife of a Berber. It is difficult to face the diminishing reputation of my dynasty …

  From the corner where he has been idly plucking at the strings on my kithara harp, Crinagoras says, “Have you considered a Roman architect, Majesty?”

  I scowl, because every Roman architect in Mauretania is otherwise occupied with roads, markets, warehouses, public baths, city walls, and the king’s gladiatorial arena. I want to say that there is no Roman who could build a worthy temple to my goddess because although they are genius builders, they lack for artistry in their souls. But have I not just declared myself Roman? “Who do you recommend?”

  My poet replies, “I rather like Publius Antius Amphio. He is shamelessly ambitious. Arrogant too.”

  Chryssa winces at the suggestion. “The amphitheater builder? Majesty, he is a greedy whoremonger. He is more prideful than most of his kind. Resentful too. On more than one occasion, I’ve heard him speak disparagingly of your Berber subjects.”

  “I’ve heard you do the same, Chryssa,” Crinagoras taunts my freedwoman, plucking at another s
tring. “But you married one, didn’t you?”

  To prevent them from bickering, I ask, “Well, what do we know of this Publius Antius Amphio?”

  “He is a greedy whoremonger,” Crinagoras confirms. “But he believes baths and walls and useful buildings are too humble for his talents … he won’t be difficult to manipulate into accepting the project for a fee that will not bankrupt the crown.”

  “Why must we manipulate him into it?”

  Crinagoras snorts. “Because you want an artist, Majesty. And as the greatest artist in your employ, trust me when I say that you must appeal to vanity.”

  To that end, I give my court poet permission to put out two rumors. The first, that I am seeking a Greek architect to oversee the construction of a grand Iseum, not believing any of the Romans up to the task. And the second, that I have specifically rejected Publius Antius Amphio because I do not approve of the work he has done on the amphitheater.

  Two weeks later, Amphio seeks an audience with me and haughtily submits a sketch for my perusal. The design isn’t what I envisioned—not exactly anyway—but it is ambitious. I approve of the Egyptian influences. I’m pleased by the central lotus altar and ankh panel above the door, but my experience forces me to ask, “How would a building of this size, with this footprint, support a heavy dome?”

  The Roman architect approaches me without permission, positioning himself at my elbow and rudely pointing over my shoulder. He stinks of stale perfume, as if he has just come from a brothel. “It will not be that heavy, Majesty. Look at the next sketch. See this honeycomb of recessed panels? It is a coffered concrete dome with a central window to the sky. Like the Pantheon.”

  I’ve seen the majesty of the Pantheon. It is a grand structure and my goddess deserves something as grand. Perhaps Amphio is the man to give it to her. “Do you worship Isis?”