Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  I tell him again. “We’re going to have a baby …”

  This time he blinks, his lashes tickling my cheek. “What?”

  He nearly makes me laugh. “A baby, Juba. We’re having a baby.”

  Abruptly, he sits up, fingers still splayed over my womb.

  Discomforted by his stare, I ask, “Must I say it again?”

  “You had better.”

  “I am with child.”

  His brows furrow. “But I thought—”

  “We were wrong.”

  Now he shakes his head in denial. “You can’t be sure of this …”

  “I am. I am a vessel of Isis. These things are in my gift.”

  It is meant only to be a proud boast, but his expression darkens. “Your last birth went hard, Selene. Euphorbus said you ought not risk another child.”

  “I’ve had years to regain my strength and, in any case, it’s done. It’s too late to worry now.”

  His expression clouds over. “It is not too late. There are herbs women take to stop a child from growing. I’ve heard of them from soldiers, and Isidora would know them too.”

  Is he suggesting that I rid myself of this child? Does he think I would be the cause of another death? I am a mother lioness in fury, ready to tear and shred, but then Juba says, “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

  Quieting my anger, I let myself understand the import of his words. I let myself understand that he would sacrifice a legacy, a child, and his responsibility as a king. He would sacrifice it all for me. He is my king. My husband. My love. “We are going to have a baby, Juba. I am not afraid.”

  He is afraid, but a hint of a smile works its way onto his face. And now we have a secret that we share together.

  *

  “HOW did he die?” I demand of the Roman soldier who delivers the news.

  The soldier is a leathery veteran with a jagged scar from lip to ear. I’ve little doubt that he’s lost comrades in the field before. Yet he is fractured, his eyes shining with tears. “It was a fall.”

  “A fall?” I ask, my voice echoing down from my throne. “How should such a great warrior die from a fall?”

  “He fell from a horse and was trampled and crushed under the creature’s weight,” the soldier chokes out, unable to disguise his distress even before our assembled councilors. “His leg was shattered and the wound festered.”

  The crowd gives a collective gasp at such a painful, ignominious death. Some make sacred signs to ward off evil, but I am calm and clear-eyed with my son’s faithful hound at my feet. “Trampled, you say? His bones shattered …”

  These words fall from my lips with bitter satisfaction, though I do my best to disguise it. Is it only tragic coincidence that Drusus, the brightest star of the Claudii, should perish by the same means that took my boy? No, I do not believe it is coincidence. It cannot be only happenstance that such a fate should befall Livia’s son while new life grows inside me.

  Then the soldier says, “It was sorcery that did him in.”

  The hall goes silent, every eye trained upon this messenger, who sucks in his lower lip, then blows it out again, as if summoning his courage to speak of magic in the presence of Cleopatra’s daughter. “The night before battle, our poor general was awakened by an apparition. A woman of superhuman size commanded him to depart and foretold that the end of his life was near. We retreated for the Rhine, but ill omens followed us. Children weren’t allowed on our march, but two boys were seen in camp. One with straight dark hair, the other with golden curls … both riding fine royal mounts. Then we heard a woman keening for her lost child, but when we searched for her, we could not find her.”

  Two spirit boys on horseback. One dark. One golden.

  Ptolemy … and Helios.

  It was my keening, wailing curse that killed Drusus, and all the soldiers heard it.

  It was Drusus, then, who murdered my child. And this vengeance upon him is the work of my goddess. I give silent praise to Isis for it. Always, Isis hears me. Always, she is my fiercest champion. And I must be hers. That is why I cannot allow myself to take pleasure in her wrathful justice. Instead, I let her soften my heart and remember his wife and all those for whom this news will bring the greatest sorrow. “What of my half sister, Antonia Minor?”

  “Safe in Rome, Majesty,” the soldier reports, wiping at his eyes with his brawny forearm. “It was his brother who fetched our brave commander home. When Tiberius finally heard of the accident he rode two hundred miles in a single day and night to be at his brother’s side.”

  If true, such an incredible feat would be an unsurpassed speed record. To ride so far in one day he would have to waste horse after horse …

  “By the time Tiberius reached the fortress,” the soldier continues, “Drusus had taken with fever. Tiberius held our poor general’s hand on his deathbed.”

  I try not to begrudge my enemy the love of his brother in his dying moments, but then I remember Ptolemy’s broken body in the dirt and my heart hardens again.

  The soldier goes on, “So great was the esteem of Drusus even amongst his enemies that the Germans agreed to a truce so that his body might be carried on the shoulders of his men. Then, once they reached the Rhine, his lictors broke their ceremonial axes and accompanied his body back to Rome. All the way, Tiberius walked, on foot, in front of his brother’s funeral carriage.”

  Tiberius walked all the way back to Rome? Such an ostentatious display of piety might be thought a cynical ploy, but I can well imagine doing such a thing for my dead brothers, had I been allowed to. Of course, I was not …

  Tiberius is now Livia’s only living son. The only hope of the Claudians. For the sake of Livia’s ambitions, Tiberius has lost the wife he loved, married a woman he despises, and lost his brother too. He is alone now. I might even find it in my heart to pity him. I do pity Minora. My poor widowed sister must now rear up all Drusus’s little children, the eldest of whom is officially to be called Germanicus as a posthumous honor to his dead father. My nephew is now a six-year-old boy with a very big name.

  It is my sadness for these innocents that prevents me from seething when Juba suggests we make tribute to the memory of Drusus here in our kingdom. Let Drusus be honored, I decide, for the sake of all those who loved him. For the part of me that loved him. Because it will also be my private memorial to vengeance, my mark of triumph over him, knowing that he died by my hand …

  Justice was done and more is yet due. Livia said that she did nothing to my boy, but she sent her son after mine, didn’t she? It is not enough that Livia has now lost her son the way I lost mine. It is not enough. I want to destroy her. I want to crush her into dust.

  But when I retreat to the room in the palace where the colorful painting of my winged goddess smiles down upon me, I find myself strangely reluctant to work more dark magic—and not only because I find my daughter there, her head bowed in worship, expensive incense upon the altar.

  “What are you praying for?” I ask, my hand atop her head.

  “For our soldiers,” Isidora replies. “I’ve made an offering to Isis to protect them, for if a general like Drusus can meet such a fate, what dangers lay in wait for a simple cavalry officer?”

  I do not think it is our soldiers she prays for, but rather one particular soldier. “Is Tacfarinas an officer already? We are not at war, my sweet. There is no danger to your Berber boy …”

  I say it only to comfort her, because there is always danger if we look for it. And perhaps there is danger even in what I have come to do. I remember well the acrid stink of death in my nostrils when I cursed Drusus, and later, when I offered Livia’s hair to the flame. I remember too the words of my wizard. Curses have especially jagged edges and hooks that take chunks of you with them.

  When I worked dark magic, I was empty, carved hollow with grief. I did not care how the magic tore at me, bleeding me with each incantation. But I am not empty now, I remember, laying my hand gently over my pregnant belly.

  Dora w
atches the trail of my hand and asks, “Did you come to pray for the baby?”

  I do not want to tell her that I have come for vengeance, but my daughter must be made to understand the way of the world. “When you looked into the Rivers of Time, what have you seen of Livia? I ask because she is my enemy and she is yours. You must never trust her or anything that comes from her. She is a monster … and we must always keep a wary eye upon her.”

  “You must not worry yourself about the emperor’s wife, Mama. You must not worry yourself about anything right now.”

  What has Juba told her that she thinks I am so frail? “That is advice for village women. I am the queen—”

  “Childbirth is a danger to village women and queens alike. If it will ease your mind, I will tell you what I have seen of Livia. I have seen her die. Always, she dies alone. She dies alone and afraid and frustrated. And her son leaves her to rot. That ought to satisfy you. Does it?”

  No, it does not. It’s what I cursed Livia to and though it is not enough, it will never be enough, I must find a way to let it be. For I carry inside me a great gift. A new baby. More than that, I have my daughter and a new love with my husband—a new marriage, truth be told. Everything is new. Everything is begun again.

  I am not like Livia. I will not live in a cold and corrupt marriage. I will not risk everything for the sake of ambition or vengeance. I will leave Livia to her fate … and embrace mine.

  Forty-one

  THE KINGDOM OF MAURETANIA

  DECEMBER 9 B.C.

  HOW can we celebrate the Saturnalia? Without Ptolemy to squeal over his gifts, without Tala to paint our hands in henna and scold us for being spoiled, without Memnon to watch over us, how can we be merry?

  But when I glance out from the balcony at my city, my heart is gladdened at the sight of rain-soaked children playing in puddles. Colorful awnings in the marketplace shelter revelers, and vendors hawking roasted meats and sweet treats peddle their wares in every covered doorway. The spirit of my people is defeated by nothing. They are bowed by neither sorrow nor rain. They thrive in the searing sun of the desert, the hardscrabble life in the mountains, and the fierce struggle for survival in the city streets. They never turn away an opportunity to rejoice, and I take a lesson from them. Life is a bargain between bitter and sweet. Because there is a surfeit of bitter, we must savor the rare sweet.

  So the king and I observe the Saturnalia. Together with our court, we give thanks that our cold, dark nights will soon surrender to warmer days. We give thanks too that I am with child. Whatever else has happened, our kingdom still prospers and we still have Isidora with us.

  She is a young woman and a scholar besides. There is not a scroll about medicine in our library that she has not read. Nor is there a day that she does not pester the king’s new Greek physician. I wish that she showed as much interest in the governing of our kingdom as she does in medicine, but she has lost the boy she loved and her brother too. I will not take one more thing from her.

  She performs the rites at the Saturnalia for us. And we allow her to host a banquet of her own for the young people of influential families, Greek, Egyptian, Berber, and Roman. As always, I am concerned by my daughter’s inability to maintain a proper distance between herself and the subjects over which I intend her to rule, but she has a rapport with the future leaders of our kingdom and that should stand her in good stead.

  In truth, with that disquieting snake so often wrapped around her arm, I think she frightens them a little. And that is a good thing in a future queen.

  On the one day of the Saturnalia that it does not rain, the king and I attend a play in our theater. It is Leonteus’s lighthearted version of the story of Hypsipyle. And though we are all great admirers of the dramas written by our court tragedian, his comedy is dreadful. The story begins when the goddess of love curses all the women on the isle of Lemnos with a disagreeable body odor. The rest is such bawdy farce that our sophisticated Alexandrians actually boo.

  Later, bundled in woven blankets by the fire, Juba shows me a critique he’s written in mock-tragic language on his wax tablet, panning the play. How I have missed Juba’s dry wit!

  We laugh together at the expense of our playwright, but then Juba’s smile falters, as if he felt it some disloyalty to our son that he should ever laugh again. My own laughter dies away too. How long will we feel this way?. Will every moment of levity be banished by the memory that our little Ptolemy is shut up in his tomb? Probably so. I think we will feel this pain until the moment we die.

  But Juba and I are still alive and I make sure to remind him of it.

  *

  CAN it have been a year since my son breathed his last?

  The violent winter rains are but drizzles now and I count the days. It feels as if my boy was alive only yesterday, and yet it also feels as if I have lived a lifetime since. The king is unsure of how to mark the occasion. He does not know if he should dedicate a memorial for Ptolemy or a feast in honor of our forthcoming child.

  I argue that we should do neither. In truth, we are both still too fragile for a public display. I also worry that Juba may have memorials enough to arrange if the birth does not go well. I told him I was not afraid to give birth to another child, but perhaps I should be.

  Three times now I have awakened to blood on my sheets and pain in my abdomen. And three times now Chryssa has called our new Greek physician to my rooms. Unfortunately, he is worthless. Overfamiliar too. A young pup who seems to believe childbirth is beneath his expertise.

  I would rather have the midwife, though she is not much help either.

  Knowing that it is too soon for the baby to come, I will away the pain, pushing it aside. Tala would tell me not to complain of my ailments and I miss her stern advice. Would that she were here to paint her tattoos on my belly and work her Berber magic … but she is not here.

  We lost her, as we lost Memnon and my precious son.

  We will not lose this baby, even if it kills me to bring him into the world.

  I do not tell Juba, but I know the baby will be a boy. What I do not know is whether or not the baby will live. What if our baby should perish, wasting away in his cradle as Julia’s little boy did? The king and I could not bear it, so I do not worry my husband with my troubles. Nor do I let him plan a celebration, the memory of which might fester if it should all go badly.

  Instead, I make a private pilgrimage to our Royal Mausoleum with offerings of wine, olive oil, milk, and honey—libations for my dead. The ones who are buried here and the ones I have drawn to me.

  There is my son in his sarcophagus, a crown of antler horns above his head. There is my mother’s statue in a queenly pose and my father’s bust with eyebrow raised in mischief. There is my cousin, Petubastes, in black basalt. And there are my brothers, Caesarion, Antyllus, and Philadelphus. They are all here, their names carved in stone.

  Even Helios. Perhaps he is still alive somewhere in the world, but I doubt it now. I think he is inside of me. And either way, I have betrayed him. If he is dead, I never properly mourned him. I never found his body. Never bound his wounds. Never performed the Opening of the Mouth that he might breathe again in the afterworld. Never did anything for him but build this tomb and carve his name in stone that the gods might see it.

  Yet, if he is somehow alive, I have betrayed him in a different way, for I have given him up. I have matured beyond our youthful love and taken another man as a husband. I have taken another man as my king. I have taken another man to my heart.

  Love for Juba is not the same as for Helios. It could never be the same because I am not the same. But I love Juba. Oh, I do. I love him in a way I did not understand I could love. It is an impure, tainted love, no less beautiful for its roughened edges and lack of illusion. For all its flaws, my love for Juba runs deep and wide.

  So I will think no more on Helios today. For the good of the child in my womb, I must keep my thoughts small. I must take each day as it comes, shrinking the weight of my world s
o that I can bear up under it.

  *

  WHEN the yellow primrose blooms in our gardens, we receive another emissary from King Archelaus in Cappadocia, carrying grim news. “Herod and Augustus have mended their rift, Majesty.”

  Even with a cushion at my back, I cannot sit comfortably on my throne in my advanced state of pregnancy and this news makes it worse, agitating me beyond reason. “No, you must have this wrong …”

  Juba clutches the arms of his throne chair as if to keep himself from flying out of it. “Do you mean to say that the emperor has forgiven Herod?”

  I can scarcely believe it. Neither can the child in my womb if the kicking is any sign. But the emissary replies, “He has, Majesty. Nicholas of Damascus convinced the emperor that Herod had been misjudged in the Nabatean affair. Augustus has forgiven Herod and given him permission to take his sons to Beirut and try them for treason before a court of Roman officials and other men of importance.”

  So there is to be another trial. While I try to decide who benefits, the emissary continues, “Princess Glaphyra and her husband tried to flee to the safety of Cappadocia, but were found out and arrested. Now Herod believes King Archelaus is part of a conspiracy too.”

  I wish he had conspired with us against Herod. Would that we had all banded together to destroy Herod when he was weakest. We assumed he was finished, but now he has somehow ingratiated himself with the emperor again. The damned King of Judea is like some mythical creature from the depths that cannot be slain by ordinary means. Always he rises again when we least expect it. In this, he’s like Augustus … and me. “What would you have us do?”

  The emissary explains, “We beseech King Juba to travel to Beirut and serve as one of the judges.”

  My husband’s expression is curiously blank. “Herod has not invited me to sit in judgment over his sons. I don’t see how I might intervene.”

  “Your Majesty, with all due respect, you are the King of Mauretania. He cannot easily turn you away.”

  The emissary shouldn’t need to remind Juba of his power and reputation. We rule more territory than all the other client kingdoms put together. We have fostered friendships throughout the empire. My husband is esteemed not only for his marriage to me and his connections to the imperial family, but also for his learned scholarship and diplomacy. The Cappadocian ambassador is right. Herod can’t easily turn Juba away.