Song of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  “It wasn’t my prediction. Those were the words of Isis,” I said, for my goddess had sent that warning scrolling in blood and hieroglyphs down my arms. As you refuse Isis her throne, be assured your descendants will never inherit yours. Deny me, and your ignoble name will fade to dust. It had been a threat in retaliation for his mistreatment of Isis worshippers, but he’d believed it was my mother reaching for him, sparring with him from the afterlife. Now, he seemed at last to have accepted that my mother was gone. When he looked for her, he looked to me. “Isis never promised it would be your destiny, Caesar. Honor my goddess and change your fate.”

  His gray eyes were lupine in the dark. “Why isn’t it enough that I honor you, her sorceress?”

  Years ago, such a question would only have been put to me in threat, for the Romans had a fear and loathing of magic. But the emperor valued any power I had—whether it sprang from magic, religion, or my heritage—and he wanted to possess it for his own ends. “I’m not a sorceress.” That much wasn’t a lie. What powers I had, I didn’t know how to control. Not yet.

  “There’s a woman who says otherwise, Selene. She tells everyone who’ll listen that you put your hands upon her and made her fertile again. She was barren, and now she’s with child.”

  I squinted, adjusting to the darkened interior, seeing his face knit in concentration, in expectation that I must disappoint. “Such things happen. It’s the will of the gods.”

  “I need a son, Selene. I need you to make Livia’s womb fertile again.”

  How like him to bring up such a thing with men lying dead behind us in the road. “I can’t help you.”

  He made a dangerous sound, the snort of an animal. “Your mother worked fertility magic for Caesar. It was easy to say her child was of some other man’s get, but I looked at the boy’s face after he died. He was Caesar writ small.”

  It shocked me to hear him admit my eldest brother’s true parentage. “Whatever magic comes to me, comes from Isis. I’m spent of it. I can’t help you. Neither you nor Livia share my faith.”

  “Faith,” he said, as if the word always puzzled him. The Romans built great temples to their gods and made bloody sacrifices, but they didn’t forge personal relationships with the divine. They didn’t pray, at least not without great ritual and fanfare, and rarely in the way that I called upon Isis in moments of solitude and reflection. “Livia could make an offering,” he said. “It wouldn’t do for her to publicly honor a goddess whose worship I’ve banned, but she could do it in secret.”

  “Livia is past the age of childbearing. It isn’t within my power.” Even if it were, I wouldn’t wish Livia as a mother upon any child. If she’d ever given a kind word to either of her sons that wasn’t calculated to advance her own ambitions, I’d never seen it. The carriage rumbled to a stop. Soldiers shouted to water the horses and if I had any sense at all, I would have let the conversation end there. But I said, “If you want a son, Caesar, take a new wife.”

  At that very moment the curtain drew back and Juba stood outside the carriage, offering to help me down. My new husband cleared his throat as my words died away, and in the awkward silence I noticed Livia nearby, standing beneath the shade of an umbrella pine, her eyes narrowed in a murderous stare.

  WHEREAS Rome was a chaotic warren of narrow streets, the port city of Ostia was an orderly assemblage of brick shops, some of them covered in white stucco. Colorful mosaics graced the walkways in front of each building, the tiles depicting the trade of the place. Grapes in front of the wine warehouses, leaping fish before the seafood markets, and so on. The bustle was such that even the sailors, stacking sacks of wheat at the docks, were too busy to greet the emperor.

  The screech of the gulls called my attention to the harbor, where I saw the masts of great ships, one of which would carry me back to Africa. The scent of grain captivated me. Oats, barley, and wheat all mingled in the ancient, earthy notes of civilization. I closed my eyes and imagined the threshing floors in Egypt, where all this grain found its source. Alas, there was too little of it, the merchants all said. The crops had failed this year and much of the rest was spoiled by vermin. In Africa, I must find a way to feed Rome, the way my mother did before me. The way Isis had fed the world since the dawn of time . . .

  It was good that the emperor’s most trusted political adviser was extremely wealthy, because hosting the imperial entourage would cost Maecenas a fortune. We descended upon his seaside villa en masse. To my astonishment, an entire set of apartments overlooking the ocean had been made ready for me. My sleeping chamber adjoined Juba’s bedroom on one side and a room for Chryssa on the other. Without my having to command it, Chryssa capably directed the other slaves who carried my trunks. Her tastes could put lesser royalty in Asia to shame, and as we settled in I caught her appraising the decorative amphorae and each stick of gilded furniture with approval. “By the gods! This statue of Venus is an original Praxiteles,” my slave girl breathed.

  I stopped to admire the work of the famous sculptor, wondering if Maecenas had adorned my bedchamber with a statue of the goddess of love to honor my marriage. Two nights had passed since the wedding, and I had no right to expect Juba to be patient much longer. He might even come to my room tonight. Was the sudden gallop of my heartbeat fear or excited anticipation? It seemed when it came to Juba, I never knew my own mind.

  IT rained that night and the gentle splashes against the roof lulled me to sleep. It rained in my dream too, like the tears of Isis falling on the desert. Beneath my bare feet, sand slipped between my toes like silk. My hands stretched to catch the raindrops. My lips were wet with kisses. It was a god who wrapped his arms around me, singing a magical little song. When I looked up to see his face, I saw only the rays of the sun, which broke through the rain to form a rainbow. It was rapture. I was overcome with a feeling of wholeness. “Who are you?” I asked, but my divine suitor didn’t answer.

  A sinuous shadow rose over us, a viper in the mist. It swelled, hood expanding, until my rapture turned to dread. It was an asp, the Egyptian cobra—the snake that had killed my mother and now came for me. I bolted upright, out of sleep. Wet with sweat, my hands clammy, and my heart racing. That’s when I heard the knocking. I thought it must be Juba come to make a wife of me. “Selene?” someone called softly from outside, but it wasn’t Juba.

  Chryssa emerged from her chamber, wiping sleep from her eyes. “I think it’s Lady Livia.”

  That made me sit up straighter. Chryssa unbolted the door, and Livia stepped inside, a mist sweeping in behind her. She held an oil lamp in one hand, and her hair was damp beneath her cloak. “The emperor wants to see you. There is news.”

  I lost my wits. For Livia to come for me, the news must be urgent and terrible. Philadelphus had taken ill again. The war in Thebes had taken a terrible turn. Helios had been captured. A thousand stories of tragedy played out in my mind. It took me three tries to properly fasten a robe over my sleeping gown and then I trailed behind Livia like a wraith in the fog of night. As we walked in the shadows of fabulous gilded lions and marbled athletes, Livia donned her otherworldly posture of serenity; it gave her a kind of frightening beauty, thin and ethereal.

  The house was unfamiliar to me, and I can’t say how many passages we navigated before we reached the emperor’s chambers. We were met by one of the praetorian guards, a man named Strabo, and though he shared the same name as Juba’s friend, the highly regarded Greek historian and geographer, this Strabo was all brawn. He admitted Livia without question and I followed in her wake. To my great surprise, we found the emperor settled into bed. The room was dark. A single brazier burned. “What is it?” I gasped, the words bursting from my lungs.

  Livia went to the emperor and whispered something in his ear. He caressed her arms and she stroked his forehead. I’d never seen so much as a kiss pass between the two before; they considered public affection to be vulgar. Now, in the darkened room, I saw their silhouettes close and intimate. I watched, paralyzed. “You said ther
e was news . . .”

  Livia drew away from the bed, her hand lingering in the emperor’s until their fingers broke apart, like a rope unraveling. She gave me a look that would have made me shiver even if my nightclothes weren’t damp. “Remember,” she whispered, venom in every word. “I warned you there’d be a price for embarrassing me.”

  “Come here, Selene,” the emperor called to me. His voice was strange, throaty and unnatural.

  Livia put her hands on my shoulders, nails digging into my skin like talons. “Obey him.”

  If I’d been fully awake, if I had any heka left in me at all, I’d have forced her to release me, but I drowned in confusion. “Come here, Selene,” the emperor said again, and I took a few steps to him. Livia closed the door, leaving us alone, and Augustus rose to his feet. Then he circled me, like one of the beast hunters in the arena. “Look at you shivering like an innocent maiden . . . but we both know better, don’t we?”

  His eyes were half-lidded and he stumbled as if drunk, crowding me, edging me nearer and nearer to the brazier. My mouth went dry as he brought his face to mine, close enough to kiss me. It was madness. In spite of everything I knew about the emperor, I could make no sense of this moment, a strange dream. Truly, neither of us seemed fully awake. “Don’t look at me that way,” I said.

  “Why not? You dressed like a whore for your wedding. I couldn’t look away, and why should I have? You wanted me to look at you, Selene. You wanted me to stare.”

  “I wanted you to see the queen in me,” I protested, suddenly apprehending the awfulness of my situation. With the emperor in front of me and the brazier behind, I was trapped between fire and ice.

  He left me no retreat. “I saw your shoulders bare, Selene, with that golden snake wrapped around your upper arm. Your hair loose. You issued an open invitation for me to take you . . .”

  I’d never seen him this way. He’d been my enemy, my savior, and my mentor. Never a seducer. Never! “You’re mistaken.”

  “Did you use your magic to enchant Juba as he worked between your legs that night?”

  “No!” I cried as much in shock as offense.

  “Did you try to convince him that he was the first?”

  “He will be!”

  “Are you saying you’re innocent?” the emperor asked, his gray eyes as foreboding as the stormy sky outside. “Prove it to me. If you cannot prove your innocence, then I’ll let Juba divorce you as an adulterous slattern.”

  I could think of no proof to offer. I turned, intent upon fleeing, but he seized me by the shoulders. Those hands that had spared my life now grabbed my robe as if it were an army between us that must be conquered. He gripped the cloth until it bunched in his fists. His face was twisted, as if he were caught in the jaws of a monster, as if passion escaped like a chained creature from the depths whose existence he couldn’t admit even to himself. I thought he might kill me in his next breath. “I’ll see if you’re lying to me,” he growled, stealing his fingers beneath my gown. I flailed, trying to escape the sudden invasion. He wasn’t the strongest of men, but he had a soldier’s training and I didn’t. The surprise, the shock, the horror of his hand probing my most secret places made me cry out. Dry fingers pushed into my sex and when he found some barrier, the murderous frost in his eyes melted away. He released me. Dazed. Astonished. “You’re a virgin.”

  My legs gave out and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed, waves of nausea rolling over me. I put my hands over my face, squeezing the tears against my palms. “Are you satisfied now?”

  He reached with a trembling hand to stroke my hair. “Oh, Selene, you were true to me. You never played me false. You really are my own Cleopatra.”

  “Stop it!” I cried, my voice near hysteria. Was he drunk? His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, though I smelled no wine on his breath. Had he finally gone completely mad?

  “You’re as fecund as your mother, aren’t you? You can give me the son that I need.” He pushed me back against the bed, the wiry hairs of his legs scratching mine. “Beg,” he said, tugging my gown up around my waist. I tried to clamp my legs shut, but his knees were between mine, bruisingly hard. “Beg me like the first time I saw you. I love when you beg, Selene. And cry. I want you to cry.”

  I didn’t want to give him one more tear, but as he pushed my legs apart I couldn’t hold back my sobs. “Isis, help me,” I whispered, and the faintest flicker of heka blew from my fingertips, but the winds I summoned were only enough to make the fire in the brazier blow out. In the darkness, in desperation, I struck him full across the face.

  We both froze. I’d actually hit him and we both knew that he’d killed men for less. He said, “Yes, just like a good Roman bride. You may struggle, Selene. You have my permission. And you must cry when I take your maidenhead. Cry like all innocent little virgins do.” Trapped beneath him, my entire body quaked with disgust. He hitched up his tunic and I battered his shoulders, writhing to find an avenue of escape.

  There was none.

  He thrust up into me and I confess that I didn’t struggle after that. He was already moving inside me, a violation so profound it didn’t occur to me he could do worse. I lay there, dazed, thinking that this couldn’t be happening. This was only a nightmare. Did nightmares burn with pain? He speared me over and over again, as if stabbing at my womb. I smelled my own blood and whimpered with each jerk of his hips, wondering how much longer it could possibly last.

  “It’s supposed to hurt, Selene.” The words gave him renewed pleasure. Or maybe it was my tears that aroused him, for they flowed freely over my cheeks. “You’re going to give me a son,” he whispered, pumping faster, making the straps on the bed creak. His skin slapped against mine as his fingers dug hard into my breasts, clawing at them until they too were on fire. “You’re going to carry my child, you little Egyptian whore!”

  His body lurched and strained, his face tightening into a rictus as warm fluid flowed from his body into mine. Mercifully, he made only a few more rude thrusts. Then he collapsed on top of me, his finger over my lips. “Shhh. It’s all a dream . . .”

  The blood and sweat and seed trickling down my inner thigh wasn’t the stuff of dreams, but I saw the emperor withdrawing into this fiction, the rabid animal he’d let loose slowly being pulled back on its tether. It was still raining outside and the pitter-patter of the water against the stone made a melancholy music. “Go to bed now, Selene. It was all a dream.”

  I can’t say what hour it was that I stumbled back to my chambers, but the sun wasn’t up yet. Even so, Chryssa was awake and fully dressed. The haunted shadows in her eyes told me that she knew what had happened to me; it had happened to her too. “Forgive me!” she cried. “When I realized it was Livia who came to fetch you I should have gone with you—”

  “Be silent!” I hissed through clenched teeth. I didn’t want her to look at me. I was a wounded animal, bruised and battered, though I doubted anyone could see where it hurt. What had happened to me happened to slaves everywhere. It had happened to Chryssa, and if she acknowledged it, I couldn’t bear it. Instead, I pushed past her, climbed into the bed, and huddled there facing the wall, my throat filled with bile, my heart filled with hate.

  EGYPTIANS say you can sense the presence of a serpent in the room before it strikes. So it was that I sensed Livia’s presence even before I awakened to find her at the foot of my bed, her hair pulled back smooth, her slender shoulders adorned with a tasteful blue shawl. “Aren’t you feeling well, Selene? Perhaps there’s an illness in the house. The emperor is suffering from a grievous headache this morning.” I didn’t answer. “Well, no matter,” she said, reaching to adjust the blanket under my chin. “I trust that you’ve learned to cover up from now on.”

  I slapped her hands away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “That’s a common reaction. Though I expected more tears. You do like to create a scene . . .”

  Through bloodless lips, I asked, “How could you do it?”

  She tilted her head
, as if amused. “Easily. I’ve seen how he looks at you. How you toy with him. I couldn’t allow it to continue. I couldn’t let you leave for Africa with the fantasy of you lingering in his mind, or he’d become your slave as surely as Antony was Cleopatra’s.”

  So she gave me to him. She let him have me.

  Livia smiled when she saw that I understood. She’d been planning this for a very long time. She’d chosen her moment. She’d waited patiently until I was no longer under Lady Octavia’s protection. She’d waited until we were out of Rome. And I’d gone with her like an unwitting fool. “You’re a vile woman, Livia.”

  She laughed, the sound of it wicked. “And you’re just a plaything for a petty princeling of an isolated and unimportant Western province. The emperor will never do anything you ask. He won’t make you Queen of Egypt. He won’t be fool enough to spare Helios when we catch him. In fact, once you’re in Mauretania, my husband won’t even think of you again except to remember some fleeting pleasure from this night, and if he drank deeply of my tonic, he won’t even remember it well.”

  “You drugged him,” I said, remembering the glazed look in his eyes. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell everyone.”

  Livia smiled, giving a delicate shake of her head. “You won’t tell anyone, because if your new husband asks me about last night, I’ll reassure him that it wasn’t your fault. The brutish Thracian slave I saw staring at you when our caravan arrived must have done it. It was so dark and rainy out. A girl could get lost in the passageways and be attacked by such a man.”

  “It was the emperor who did this to me.”

  “Oh, Juba!” Livia said in clever mimicry, putting her hand over her heart as if she were speaking to him. “The poor girl is in such shock. Of course she thinks it was the emperor. What princess could accept the shame of having been taken by a filthy slave? If she were any true royal wife, she’d kill herself rather than live with the dishonor of having been raped by an animal, but I must take Selene’s part in this and insist the culprit be crucified!”