Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  This thought is both dark and light, like this night, glinting silver beneath the moon. Never before has my mind been so clouded, so murky and confused. I am a queen. I am Cleopatra’s daughter. I am the chosen child of Isis. I am worthy of this monument. I have earned this man’s reverence, time and time again. It is only right that I should have some part on this altar to peace. It is only right that I be remembered for the thing I was born to bring about …

  And yet, it sends shivers down my spine. I am a Ptolemy and I am proud. But I am also a survivor, and some ominous voice, deep within, cries out to be wary. Perhaps Romans will look upon this frieze and not recognize me in it; it isn’t a Roman likeness, warts and all. It’s a perfected vision of me. Perhaps people will pass it by and think only of whatever goddess pleases them best. Venus. Ceres. Tellus. Isis. It may be that the name Cleopatra Selene will not enter their minds. But when they see the winds …

  “Caesar, what will they think you mean by this?”

  “Ah, my Cleopatra. Let me show you what I mean by it.”

  Thirty-five

  I stumble along beside him in a daze. Now we come to the wall of the monument where the carved processional continues and I see a likeness of Augustus. He is carved surrounded by the priests, wearing their distinctive leather caps with the strange pikes, and his lictors with their bundled rods and axes. In the carving, he holds up a wand of augury, as if he can foretell the future of Rome.

  My eyes stop at the portrait of Agrippa. The admiral is a ghost on this panel, like Octavia. I’m gladdened to see him as he was. Big and strong, decidedly awkward in ceremony, his head covered. As he was in life, he stands at a position of most prominence near the emperor. And just behind him, holding the hem of his toga, is a little face that steals my breath.

  Ptolemy.

  There is my son in the princely garb he will wear for the Trojan Games. There he stands, on this wall, looking over his shoulder at Livia. The air whooshes out of my lungs and I falter. For a moment I don’t think I can stand. The emperor catches me with a hand at the small of my back while I struggle to finish a sentence. “You put … you put my son … you carved my son …”

  “Our son,” the emperor insists. “That is why I put him here at my side, as Agrippa was once at my side. I gave Agrippa my signet ring when I thought I might die, but you nursed me to health and now I shall give it to our son.”

  “Oh, gods,” I gasp, then repeat it, again and again. “Oh, gods!”

  “Calm yourself, Selene. I am laying the foundation to claim Ptolemy as my heir. When he is Emperor of Rome, he will point to this monument as proof of his worthiness. I’m a descendant of the Trojan Aeneas, and here is my son, dressed as a Trojan, at my side, do you see?”

  I do see. As I fear everyone will see. My senses rush back to me, and I fear the keenest danger. Julius Caesar honored my mother with a statue, and was murdered for his trouble. What might the Romans do now were they to know that the emperor meant to name my child, a foreign prince, his heir? “Augustus, what have you done?”

  “I have claimed my son in the only way I can.”

  My breath stutters; my knees weaken. “Do you think you’re fooling someone? To put Gaius and Lucius on the other side of the monument, on the other wall, far away from you, and here my son—”

  “He is not the only foreign prince on the monument.”

  “But the others are hostages!”

  When I was a girl, the games I played with the emperor were mine to play. That my own children should be part of the emperor’s madness was never my intention. This monument is a web of his creation and mine, but now my children are caught in it too. Though it is a midwinter’s night, I begin to sweat. “Sweet Isis …”

  The emperor thinks the Romans will not see what he intends until he wants them to see it. And it is true that everything on this monument can be denied. Each symbol carries more than one meaning. The placement of my son can be argued away. But there are some for whom no arguments will be persuasive. Livia will know, in one glance. She will know, and she will take it as a threat most dire. “Your wife will strike back. And when she does, she will have two sons at the heads of your legions, both willing to defend her.”

  “Why should she strike? I have honored her too. This monument will be unveiled and celebrated on her birthday. Can she complain? No. Have I slighted her sons on this monument? I have not. Look there and see Tiberius. Look a little farther and you see Drusus and Minora talking to each other, grouped together with their children. I’ve given them a place of great prominence. Have I slighted Gaius and Lucius on this monument? I have not. They are my adopted sons—”

  “They are not Livia’s sons and she will never forget it.”

  He raises a hand to cover half his face. “Selene, enough. Enough. Can’t it be enough for you to know that you will prevail over her in the end?”

  I don’t want to prevail over Livia; I want to survive her. But she is not the only deadly scorpion in my life. I am loved in Rome, but I have enemies here too. Roman senators may not be powerful enough to throw off the yoke of Augustus, but my family is an easier target for their ire. If they have ever feared my influence over the emperor before, this will scare them witless.

  “For the love of Jupiter, Selene, are you really so timid? Haven’t I taken us safely this far?”

  I round on him fiercely. “I don’t want you to take me anywhere. I’ve told you before that this is behind us. I am so tired of this lunacy. So exhausted by it. I don’t want what you think I want!”

  “I don’t believe you,” he says, giving me a little shake. “You want your mother’s Egypt and you want the world. You and I want the same dream …”

  “You’re wrong. I have grown and changed and now everything I want in Rome is something I brought here with me.” If his angry expression is any indication, he thinks I mean Juba. Because I don’t know that he’s wrong, I hasten to add, “I’m building a kingdom. I’m building a sanctuary. I’m feeding the empire. Mauretania is where I want to be. I am only here because you command it and because I will not abandon my children.”

  “What of our son? The grandson of Cleopatra and Antony. A Ptolemaic prince, kin of Alexander. I will not let you deny him his rightful place at the center of the world.”

  He has found in me a weakness, a terrible weakness. I can accept for myself a destiny my mother never wanted for me, but for my children, the last of the Ptolemies? I want the world. Isis forgive me, I want them to have the world. Every cunning instinct in my bones, every ambition that has driven me in my life, every dark desire for vengeance and victory screams inside my blood to embrace this moment and even this man, if need be.

  This scream, this desperate scream echoes inside me until it is answered with perfect, tranquil silence. For though some part of me is shadow, another part of me is light. I want the world for my children, yes, but I would not gamble their lives for it. I have made this decision already once before on the Isle of Samos. I have made this decision more than once. I made it here in Rome the third night of the Ludi Seculares when I offered up my hatreds and ambitions for peace.

  I have made this decision every hour of every day since then.

  And at long last, it is no longer a struggle.

  I am at peace with it. I am. And now I know what I must do.

  *

  JUBA is sitting up awake in his chambers, staring into the fire. I am chilled from the winter night, but I hesitate to come nearer for warmth when his words float to me in the shadowy darkness. “When I heard you leave with the praetorians tonight, it occurred to me that you might not come back …”

  Taking a deep breath, I say, “But I have come back.”

  My husband bows his head, his voice quiet, distant, and contemplative. “I started to remember all the little things you’ve done in recent days that felt like you were saying good-bye … or have I imagined it?”

  There was a time I could have deceived him. There was a time that he could not see past
my masks and could not breach my walls. He once asked me if he was married to a stranger and I glibly answered, Aren’t we all? But he knows me better now. “I’m not here to say good-bye.”

  I decide to start from the beginning, or at least as near to the beginning as I can bear. I tell him that Augustus once demanded a son from me. I tell him how I manipulated the emperor on the Isle of Samos, promising to give him a son if he would give me Egypt. I tell Juba how I stoked the emperor’s lust to such a white-hot flame that he wished to set Livia aside and put me in her place. I tell him that I, Cleopatra Selene, had in my grasp everything my mother ever wanted. And that I turned it away.

  My husband knows, or has guessed, most of this story, though there are moments in the hearing of it that he shows genuine surprise. Still, it is only when I come to the part where the emperor threatened Juba’s life if I should ever bear his child that his surprise turns to furious denial. “Caesar would never harm me,” he says.

  “He would. I remember his words plainly, for I have wrestled with them for years. He said, ‘You would never allow such a thing to happen unless your husband has become so inconvenient that you desire to be made a widow.’”

  The look Juba shoots me is withering. “You would say anything, wouldn’t you? Whatever words are necessary. Don’t lie to me. He needn’t put the threat to you. Augustus has had ample opportunity to threaten me over this matter, so why hasn’t he?”

  Because it might unite us, I think. Better to keep us forever in discord. However, I am already asking my husband to hear hard truths about a man he admires, a man he loves. Oh, yes, even now, I can see how my husband still loves the emperor. How he defends him as a son would defend his father to the very last breath. “Maybe he only said it to frighten me, but it did frighten me, Juba. Can you not understand that? Augustus has kept me in terror since I was a girl and when I was no longer frightened for myself he made me frightened for everyone else.”

  The king doesn’t answer. Nor does he invite me to sit, so I stand there on stiff legs, trying to find the right words to make him understand. “Juba, Augustus told you he would foster Ptolemy under his roof. What he did not tell you is that he intends to keep him. And me. He does not want me to return to Mauretania. He wants both of us by his side here in Rome.”

  The king rises from his couch, folds his arms, and stares at me coldly. “That’s what he had to say to you tonight?”

  Miserably, I shake my head.

  “Then when is he supposed to have made such a demand?”

  This is already so much more difficult than I ever dreamed it would be. “Two years ago.”

  In wide-eyed shock, my husband cries, “Two years!”

  Though I hate every moment of this confession, I do not spare myself. “I wasn’t going to tell you until I had to. Not until the last possible moment. Not until I’d exhausted every option or excuse. Because I didn’t know how I could bear the way you are looking at me now.”

  My words do not thaw him at all. “Oh, ho! I think you underestimate yourself, Selene. Surely you are not exhausted yet. Surely you had it in you to spin a few more lies. You may have kept me in ignorance at least until it was time for me to return to Mauretania. Perhaps even longer than that.”

  This is going very badly, but still, I must try. “I never wanted to deceive you. It is only that I hoped you might never need to know. I hoped that I would find some way, as I have so often found a way, to turn it all around. But what the emperor has done now … I cannot undo.”

  Taking another deep breath, I tell him about the altar to peace. About the long-ago procession of thanksgiving depicted. I tell him about the Tellus panel where I am carved as a goddess with two children upon my knee. I tell him everything I can remember. Every inane detail. It all comes out in a rush, my words tumbling over themselves until I am nearly panting for breath.

  Juba paces as he listens, but he doesn’t interrupt or ask questions. He doesn’t speak at all, which makes it that much more difficult to go on. Yet I must go on. I tell him how Ptolemy is carved upon the monument and where he is placed and why. I finish by saying, “I am so afraid for our son, I don’t know what to do.”

  Never have I doubted myself more than now. What has happened to the schemer inside me? I can think of nothing! That is why I have come to Juba. I need his help more than I have ever needed it.

  The king stops his pacing and comes toward me, still staring. Every moment that goes by in silence, I shrink a little more. I am not frightened in the way so many wives would have good cause to be frightened. Juba isn’t the kind of man to rage violently. Instead, he lets his pain ferment into bitterness. “So, as always, you wait until there is nowhere else to turn before you turn to me …”

  That isn’t true. He is the first person I turned to this time. The only one. Still, I do not dare defend myself. It is only Ptolemy I must defend. “We cannot go to the dedication of the Ara Pacis. We cannot stand there while the crowds look at our son carved on those walls. We must find some excuse to leave the city. Some excuse to spirit Ptolemy away.”

  The king snorts. “We must go to the dedication, Selene. Everyone must go.”

  “Not everyone is carved in living color on the altar’s walls.”

  “That is why we must go,” Juba says, grinding his teeth. “We must stand there together and behave as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. We must stand there, side by side, as if our mockery of a marriage were not impugned there in marble for all to see.” I wince at the word mockery, but it does not stop his tirade. “Yes, Selene, we must stand there shamelessly smiling at one another as if it were of no consequence. Because it is of no consequence. It is only stone.”

  Few things last longer than stone, and I feel certain that if he had seen the monument for himself, he would understand. “Augustus is using the Ara Pacis to soften the ground for what he means to do. He means to claim Ptolemy as his own son. He thinks to make Ptolemy the next Emperor of Rome.”

  My husband gives a bark of dark laughter. “You must enjoy this game. Playing the emperor’s whore. You must take as much pleasure from it as he does. Most adulterers do their filthy fornications in a bed, but not the two of you. You need never touch in the dance you do. You have shamelessly teased and tormented each other to a fever pitch and now you are both hungry for release.”

  Here he goes too far. “Do I look flushed with pleasure? Look at me and, for once, truly see me.”

  But he turns away. He storms away. With his cloak trailing behind him, he slams past furniture, overturning a small table in his anger and haste to flee from the truth. When he gets to the door, he flings it open.

  “Juba!” I cry.

  And he stops. He stops. His hand hovers there, gripping the door until his knuckles go white, his shoulders rising and falling with each heaving breath.

  To his turned back, I speak urgently. “When I was a bruised and battered bride I tried to show you the marks Augustus left on me, but you wouldn’t look. You wouldn’t believe me. I was fourteen years old. I was the same age Dora is now. I was a frightened girl, all alone in this world. I asked you to believe me, but you wouldn’t. This time, I am begging you to believe me.”

  Juba does not move. Neither of us does. He stands there and stands there. I gasp when he closes the door again, then strides to where I stand. He comes close enough that I feel his breath on my face, but we do not touch. With a stony expression, as if steeled for ferocious battle, he lifts his gaze to my face. I do not shield myself from it; I let all my masks fall away. Let him see me. The truth in me, the falsity of me, my virtue and my vice. All of it. Trembling, I say, “This is the truth: Ptolemy is your son and mine. I do not want the emperor to claim him. I do not want to be at the side of Augustus. Not now. Not ever.”

  Staring, Juba breathes in. He breathes out. His voice is hoarse when he speaks. “If that is true, then lay aside your trembling, because it will never happen. Whatever Caesar has been telling you, whatever he has promised you, he will neve
r do it. You think you know him. You think you know him better than anyone else. But I have known him longer, Selene. I’ve seen him toy with adversaries for years. For decades. He tells them what they want to believe—”

  “He is the one who wants to believe Ptolemy is his son, not me.”

  Juba lifts one hand as if to grant me that. “Perhaps the desire is all his. Still, you must understand that these fantasies are private indulgences. He has many. Things to help him find relief from the realities he cannot escape. In the end, he always does that which will assure his esteem in Rome.”

  My husband is telling me that I am nothing to the emperor but a very expensive hetaera with whom he plays the most intricate bedroom games. Perhaps he is right. It would be better for us all if it were true. Unfortunately, I cannot believe it. “The Ara Pacis is not a private indulgence. It will be unveiled days from now before all of Rome.”

  “Tell me, Selene. Which hero is depicted on that monument?”

  “Aeneas.”

  Juba nods as if I have proven his point. “Not Alexander. Not Julius Caesar. Not Mark Antony. None of the men who took an exotic or forbidden woman for a bride. He chose Aeneas. He chose the hero who abandoned his African queen. He will never jeopardize his legacy. Not for you or even for a son of his own. If you believe otherwise, if you truly believe otherwise, it is a vanity.”

  He puts a terrible doubt in me. Can I have been so foolish? I think of all the promises the emperor has made to me. All the promises he has broken. Has my Ptolemaic pride blinded me to the truth that the only promises he has ever kept were the ones most convenient to him? I am shaken but not convinced. “It is not my vanity that carved me with the winds as a goddess. How will our enemies answer it?”

  My husband adopts the tone he uses to lecture. “We do not have enemies, Selene. We have a rival in Herod, that much is true. But here in Rome? We have friends and allies. Julia adores you. Tiberius and Drusus were your childhood playmates, and I would happily serve either of them should they come to power. I understand that you do not care for Livia. She resents you because of the emperor’s fascination, and two strong-willed women will undoubtedly come to conflict.”