Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  “I am not sad,” I croak against the wet pillow. But tears wash over me, soaking my cheeks, my shoulders, my bare breasts. Tears flow until I am shaking.

  He holds me tight, trying to hush me, begging me between kisses to be content. “Why do you cry?”

  I gasp in astonishment that he does not know it. That he cannot see it or feel it. “I am crying because I love you and because I am so sorry for every moment I did not know it … and I’m so grateful that I know it now. I love you. I love you.”

  He smiles tenderly, using his thumbs to wipe away my tears. “That is no reason to cry …”

  “How did I never know the man you are? You don’t know how much I regret.”

  Where might I even begin to list all the ways in which I wish I’d loved him better?

  He tilts my chin so that I must look at him. “Regret nothing. I am only the man you made me, Selene … You are loved and you are forgiven all. As I hope I am.”

  “You are,” I say, with a violent intensity. “You are loved, Gaius Julius Juba. You are loved and you are forgiven everything.”

  *

  THESE are happy years in Mauretania.

  The happiest, I think.

  And filled with delightful surprises. One sun-drenched afternoon, some commotion erupts in the archway to our throne room, and Juba exclaims, “Aha! Here it is at last …”

  With great fanfare, a long wooden cage is wheeled into my tiled palace to the frightened and astonished gasps of our courtiers. “Good gods!” Crinagoras exclaims at the sight of the beast inside. “Majesties, are we not even pretending at civilization anymore?”

  That is when I see a beautiful crocodile inside the cage. She is a massive specimen with rows of gleaming teeth and scales banded with olive and brown. Her spiked tail is as long as the rest of her and she gapes open her mouth to show me her pink, well-fed gullet. Consumed with wonder, I stand up from my throne and ask, “Wherever did she come from?”

  “From Lake Nilidis,” Juba says, puffed up with pride. “I sent an expedition into the wilds to capture this creature for your temple, Selene, as I know they are sacred to your goddess.”

  My smile widens until my cheeks ache with it. I am nearly quivering with delight. No one else would have cause to know what this means to me. Why this crocodile is better than any jewels or scrolls or riches I have ever received. Heedless of the scandal, I throw my arms around his neck. “Oh, Juba!”

  He embraces me, well pleased by my reaction, murmuring into my ear, “And you think Isidora is strange to squeal when someone gives her a box of dried herbs?”

  Our open affection makes the stiff-necked Romans of our court very uncomfortable … which makes it all the more enjoyable. But eventually I become aware that one courtier in particular is more distressed than the others.

  With a rumble of disapproval, Amphio asks, “You mean to keep this crocodile in my temple?”

  I want to remind him that it is my temple, but I should not begrudge him. He prides himself on every detail of the Iseum. Every lily pattern in the stonework, every elegant curve in the bronze doors, every plank of wood for the throne of Isis, and every drop of gold paint on the shining dome. And so I take Amphio aside to explain to him why he must now pride himself on a crocodile pool.

  “Ridiculous!” Amphio blusters. “How am I to convince workers to put the finishing touches on the Iseum when they are afraid to drop a hammer too near your new pet’s snapping jaws?”

  I merely lift a brow and say, “I’m sure you will manage it somehow.”

  “Why not?” he asks in high pique, arms folded over his chest, as if daring me to throw yet another challenge in his way. “What next? An altar for shit-throwing monkeys?”

  Not a bad guess, I muse to myself. “We would like you to begin a temple for the divine Augustus.”

  Since my architect is Roman, I think he should relish this idea. But Amphio snorts in such a way that makes me think it is more than his usual irreverence that gives him a loathing for the idea. His disdain reminds me that in Rome, Augustus is no god but must cloak himself in false humility, calling himself the First Citizen. And Amphio says sourly, “I cannot do better than I have done with your Iseum, Majesty.”

  “Good.”

  “To be more exact … I have no desire to build another temple. This temple is my mark on the world. This one.”

  I cannot blame him for feeling this way. Amphio is a bald, twitchy shadow of himself. Ten years more, he said it would take, and yet he has nearly completed the Iseum in half that time. And so allowances must be made. “Very well, Amphio. Then set an apprentice to the task of a temple for Augustus. Only see to it that the cult statue is wearing sandals; I will not have Augustus barefoot like some Homeric hero from the Iliad or like some god in flight. There is only one winged deity in my lands. And speaking of Isis, I am told the Iseum will be ready to dedicate soon?”

  “This spring,” he promises.

  “You have worked a miracle to get it done.”

  Amphio does not blush; it is not his way. “I don’t believe in miracles, Majesty.”

  I smile and say, “One day, you will.”

  *

  COME spring, we are drowned in a deluge of letters. The most notable missive comes for my husband, written in the emperor’s own hand, praising Juba’s newest geographical treatise. Reminiscing at length about their long-standing friendship and how glad he is to be served by King Juba II, Rex Literatissimus, Augustus makes it plain that he has decided to reconcile with my husband, or at least pretend that he has …

  I am glad of it. “So he has heard about the temple we are building for him.”

  “Of course he has,” the king replies. “No doubt he imagines that you will tend to him as his high priestess, bathing and dressing his statue every day like a humble wife.”

  “If spitting upon his statue counts as bathing it …”

  The king is not amused. In a huff, he leaves me to dress for a musical competition at which we are to choose the victor. I sit at my dressing table making ready, dabbing perfumed oil at my wrists, when a servant delivers to me a letter of my own.

  This one is from Julia, and her letter explains the emperor’s new conciliatory attitude far better than our cult to the divine Augustus.

  To My Friend, the Most Royal Queen of Mauretania,

  I will send another letter shortly inquiring as to your health and asking after your baby boy and your daughter, who I am told is the incarnation of Asclepius in a frock! But enough about you and yours, for I have excellent news.

  Tiberius has finally done something to make me love him.

  He has sailed away!

  Yes, that’s right. I am nearly free of Tiberius.

  And good riddance to him.

  According to Julia, her husband grew so jealous of the popularity of her sons in Rome that he threw a fit, announced he was retiring from public life, and sailed off to Rhodes. In so doing, he has abandoned Augustus, Livia, and all the power over the empire he had been offered.

  Which means that the emperor has one less man upon which he can rely …

  I read the breathless details in Julia’s scrawl, frowning. This is a careless letter, one that she would never dare put to paper if she were not flush with victory. She has been fighting a war in Rome with Livia, each of them maneuvering the strongest men left in the Republic. Julia has won this battle, and I will do anything she asks to help her win the next one, but I will also have to remind her that it is only a battle. A battle for her sons—and my heart aches for my Ptolemy, who would be almost old enough now to take the toga virilis and be counted a man.

  I am still thinking of my eldest son, tracing his image on the portrait cameo I wear around my neck in remembrance, when Isidora comes to the door of my chambers, her baby brother in her arms. “Mother! Everyone is waiting for you at the music festival. Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “Yes, of course, I am coming with you.”

  Glancing one last time at Julia�
��s letter, I set it aside. For this is Julia’s war now.

  Not mine. Not anymore.

  Forty-six

  IOL-CAESARIA, THE KINGDOM OF MAURETANIA

  SPRING, 5 B.C.

  IN the twentieth year of my reign, I am tired by many things I used to do with ease. These days I cannot walk far without gasping for breath. I blame it on the fact that I have grown a little plumper, but some mornings my hands are swollen like they were when the Greek physician told me I had lost too much blood and would never recover.

  It is my daughter who first notices. “Why are you panting?” she asks while I play with T’amT’am, rolling a ball back and forth on the beach while Luna barks happily in encouragement.

  “It is only that I am not as young as when you were a babe and we played together.”

  But a few days later, when I accompany the king on a hunting trip, I feel light-headed. Watching Luna chase down a hare, her silver fur nothing but a flash against the greenery, I suddenly swoon.

  The king catches me at the elbow before I collapse, then rushes me to the palace, where the entire court is in an uproar wondering if I am again with child.

  Alas, I am not.

  In my chambers, the physician says, “I warned you, madam, yet you foolishly insist upon exerting yourself.”

  When he pokes hard at my abdomen, my daughter intervenes. “Be gentle! Can you not see my mother wincing when you touch her?”

  Startled, the physician straightens to his full height. “Princess, I fear you are too inexperienced to know that sometimes one must cause pain to heal …”

  “And I fear you have no interest in finding a cure for what ails the queen. Why don’t you come back when you do?”

  He stares at her in a most intimidating manner, but she gives not an inch. Instead, she glares back, daring him to defy her, all while raising an imperious brow.

  Good. I did not think she knew how to be imperious.

  I am capable of defending myself against Greek physicians or any number of other petty irritants, but as a mother lion who has just seen her cub learn to bare her teeth, I find it immensely satisfying to watch the princess back him down. He shoves his instruments and tonics into his medicine chest, murmuring under his breath, but obeys her by taking his leave.

  Alas, once he is gone, Isidora subjects me to a series of gentler examinations that try my patience beyond endurance. First she makes me drink some tonic of hawthorn, to help the blood move inside me.

  Then she fetches her snake.

  It has taken all my forbearance to tolerate that creature in the palace—I do not like it so near to me. “Keep it away and do not tell anyone at court that I am ill. I am not going to be like Augustus, sending everyone into a panic every time I get a sniffle.”

  “It is more than a sniffle.”

  “I am only tired,” I insist. But I am more than tired. My head aches intolerably and I am also freezing. Though it is springtime, I cannot get warm. When the rains come, I shiver even to step outside of my chambers for a moment. It seems there are not enough woven blankets for my bed or a big enough fire to put the heat back in my blood. I cannot draw the flames into me anymore.

  The sirocco gifted me with precious time, but every storm eventually quiets.

  This is because of the curses, I think. They took years of my life with them. Or perhaps it’s because of my baby. The magic I used to birth him—just like the magic I used to make the crops grow—is not without price. But I would do it again for my tiny prince, my precious T’amT’am. The little boy who has finished what his older brother started by helping Juba and me to find each other.

  The next time the physician comes to my rooms, I make an effort to rise from my bed. Every day I try and every time I am defeated. My limbs are heavy and weak. Sleep holds great allure. Even when I’m awake, my head feels as if it’s been stuffed with cotton.

  And on the morning that I am seized with convulsions, the Greek physician insists that I suffer from an excess of black bile. “You are dying, Majesty …”

  “We are all dying, or so the philosophers say.”

  He does not know that I once said this to the emperor. Nor is he amused. “The king must be made aware.”

  “Are you so high in favor that you can tell him without fear of losing your head?” If I enjoy the way he pales at my words, it is only because I don’t like him, and not because I am cruel.

  No one needs to tell my husband. He hears my panting in the night. He sees my paleness upon waking. We do not speak of it, but in a dozen little ways he shows me that he knows. He brings my robe to me before the slave girls think to do it. He changes the hour of his daily ride so that he is not apart from me unless I am napping. And once, I hear him berate Chryssa to make swifter arrangements for the dedication of the Iseum, as if he too were afraid that I might die before it can be dedicated.

  *

  “YOU’RE not with child again, are you?” I pose this question to my freedwoman as she eases into the chair beside the sickbed to which I have been confined. Blushing, she rests a hand on her silver girdled belly, and I have my answer. “Sweet Isis, do you and Maysar intend to breed a new Berber tribe all by yourselves?”

  She pretends to frown, but pleasure shines in her eyes. “I should never have made him promise not to take a second wife. I would welcome a respite from my duties at hearth and home and motherhood.”

  “Liar,” I say.

  And she laughs. She, who once knelt before me and asked me to place a blessing on her head, is happy. Is it a vanity to hope that I saved the slave girl who once called me savior? Or perhaps she saved me, for she helped make possible everything I take pride in.

  When her laughter subsides, she ruins my moment of pride by saying, “I must speak to you about Master Gnaios. He came to me with concerns about the latest coin you have made him fashion. Concerns I share.”

  I give a haughty shake of my head. Or at least as haughty as I can make it, given that I am unable to get out of bed. “If the king does not object to my new coin, why should you?”

  “Because the king will forbid you nothing, so it falls to me to warn you that Augustus will not like this new coin.”

  She holds a prototype of the coin out to me, but I already have one cradled in my palm. I have been sleeping with it. It is reminiscent of one minted years ago by Agrippa and Augustus, proclaiming that Rome had conquered Egypt. Their coin shows a crocodile in chains. But the crocodile stamped on my coin is free, just as Chryssa is free, just as I am soon to be …

  “Augustus will think it is a message just for him,” I say. “A reminder that he may have conquered my mother, but he has never conquered me …”

  That is the truth of it. Egypt is not conquered and neither am I. The spirit of Isis has spread the world over. She can be found in my kingdom, in my daughter, and in all the people everywhere who understand her promise. Perhaps I will endure in just the same way.

  A crease of worry splits Chryssa’s brow. “Majesty, what if the emperor thinks you mean to reignite the old battle?”

  “He probably will, but it is too late for that. This coin may be the last thing I ever say to the world. So spend the coins and let the blame fall on me.”

  For a moment, I think she will comfort me with platitudes about how I will get better soon, but she lowers her eyes. “As you wish, my beloved queen.”

  She understands that I am dying, and that is a relief to me. I will not entrust my last wishes to the Vestals who were such poor guardians of my father’s. Instead, I tell Chryssa what I want done, because I know she will see to it that everything is as it should be. Silent tears wet her cheeks even as she nods her head to reassure me that my instructions will be followed to the letter.

  And I hate to see her sad for my sake. “Be brave, Chryssa. Think how far we have come from the frightened girls we were together in Rome.”

  She tilts her head, wiping her wet cheek with her palm. “You never seemed frightened. I always thought you were very brave.”


  “No. I was a good actress. It was Helios who was brave.”

  She sighs for the master she loved. And she did love him. I always knew it. Perhaps she loved him as much as I did. Perhaps she wanted him for her lover; maybe she sensed him inside me before I did. Perhaps that is why she has stayed with me all these years, held only by the bonds of loyalty.

  I dare to say it aloud. “I think he died, Chryssa. Helios died some time ago. Perhaps in Thebes when they told us he did. You knew it before anyone did. His spirit found me in the storm so that we could become one akh.”

  “Then he is not dead,” Chryssa says, lacing her fingers through mine. “He is here with us now.”

  *

  SWEET Isis, I am here to do you glory.

  The tall bronze doors carved with lotuses and ankhs and the story of Osiris open to reveal the glow of a thousand candles on your altar. Clouds of sweet-smelling blue smoke rise up from the braziers where we burn precious amber for you. And while the crowd of priestesses shake their sistrum rattles and your young acolytes drop lilies into the reflecting pool, my daughter helps me to rise up to my feet and walk with shaky steps into the Iseum I have built for you.

  How lovely you are. How the sight of your beautiful graven image fills my heart. In all my darkest hours, through all my losses, in the times I have abandoned you or thought you abandoned me, you have always been with me. Here you are now, at the end, with a forgiving gaze, the sacred tiet knot between your breasts and bounty in your outstretched hands.

  And how much you have given me!

  Egypt was taken from me, but you saw me to a new land. My family was taken from me, but you gave me another. I lost my child, but it was you who gave him to me in the first place. You gave me my strength as a woman, as a mother, as a queen. And you taught me forgiveness that I might know love.

  Yes, you gave me even that …

  There, bathed in the light of dusk streaming down from the oculus, is my husband. A man I have forgiven; a man who has forgiven me. A king who showed me the true source of the Nile. A king who now humbles himself before my goddess with a censer of incense in his hand to make fragrant the steps I take today.