Song of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  “Your queen,” I said, because even in the guise of a mercenary he would always be Egypt’s king.

  “Yes,” he admitted, finally close enough to take my face in his hands. “You’ve always been that.”

  “I’ve looked for you, worried that you’d die somewhere far away and I’d never know. Tell me everything.”

  Talking wasn’t foremost on his mind; he leaned forward to kiss me. I thought to turn away, so he wouldn’t taste the poison of the emperor in my treasonous mouth. I thought to turn away, because I must know what had passed between him and the Kandake of Meroë. I thought to turn away because I was—at least in the eyes of the world—married to another man. But there could be no turning away from Helios. He kissed me with such ferocity that all my questions flew away, any desire to speak extinguished. His flesh and blood, warm and alive, was such a miracle to me that I forgot all else. I wanted only this—a kiss as familiar to me as my own soul but as mysterious as the afterlife.

  In all the years we’d been apart, and all the ways I’d imagined kissing him again, I couldn’t have predicted the way it would strip me bare. I’d taken such pride in mastering my every reaction that I’d forgotten entirely what it was to feel something with my whole body, without restraint. “Selene . . .” They say the gods can call you by your true name and hold you in their thrall; I believe it, because when Helios said my name, I’d have done anything for him. Anything. Since my marriage to Juba, whatever tentative passions I experienced were always tempered by darker realities. Even my first time with Helios had been tainted by grief and pain, all mixed up with the heka and the desire of an eternal goddess for her god. Now I claimed a lust that was mine alone. I didn’t want Helios because he was the god or because he was the husband I should have married or because I needed his kisses to wash the emperor away. I wanted him because I wanted him, a deep, defiant desire. Kissing him boldly, I bunched his tunic in my fists, trying to yank it off. My eagerness made amusement rumble in his chest. “Selene, wait . . .”

  “I don’t want to wait,” I said, trying to pull him down, but that was like trying to move a colossus.

  He held me against his chest where his heartbeat galloped against my ear. “I just thought you’d like to do this somewhere warm and dry this time.”

  I glanced to the terrace where my oil lamps still burned and he swept me up into his arms. Kissing my cheeks, my shoulders, my neck, my mouth . . . he carried me up the stairs and through the open doors. He didn’t look upon the riches of the room with avarice—he didn’t seem to notice the priceless statues and vast mosaic floor. His eyes were on my face. The whole bed, heaped with pillows, creaked with his bulk as he climbed atop me. “Selene, are you sure?”

  “I’ll die if you don’t.” I knew that I should be thinking of the consequences, weighing the risks, plotting what lies I must tell in the aftermath, but my need for him had become such a torment that I truly believed it would kill me to deny it.

  I believe it still.

  AFTERWARD, we lay tangled together, damp and breathless. Whereas I’d gone limp, too weak to lift my head from the pillow, his hand still caressed me, tracing the pale lines on my belly. They weren’t so prominent as when Isidora was first born, but it vexed me that his fingers should worry over them. “I have a daughter.”

  His hand went still. For a moment, he didn’t breathe. Then, finally, “Her name?”

  “Cleopatra Isidora.”

  “A good name,” he allowed, teeth clenched. “Does she look much like Juba?”

  I tensed, clasping his hand to make him listen. “She’s not Juba’s daughter.”

  A flash of jealousy sparked behind his eyes. Was he imagining me frolicking with some nubile slave? Whatever emotion tormented him, he reined it in. “It doesn’t matter who her father is. She’s yours. She’s a Ptolemy.”

  “Helios, you misunderstand. She’s nearly five years old . . .” A pause. An unspoken question. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and made a sound that broke my heart. He clasped his head in his hands, then pressed his palms to his face. I touched his shoulder, trying to comfort him. “Oh, Helios, be glad—”

  “Glad that monster forced a child on you?” he snapped. “Or glad that I have a daughter I’ve never known and can never see?” I felt his anguish deep in my soul and was now sorry for having told him. Sorry for having added to his misery. He’d lost so much. His throne. His family. His name. Now this.

  “But you can see her. She’s sleeping not far from here. I’ll fetch her.”

  He sat up, abruptly, then his shoulders sagged. “No, we can’t do that. If I were to meet her, we’d have to ask her to keep it a secret. That’s a terrible thing to do to a child. Even a royal child.”

  We’d both been forced to keep secrets since we were children. All the secrets I’d held and the lies that I’d told had transformed me into someone I wouldn’t wish my daughter to become. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But there must be some way that you can see her.”

  “Bring her to the market,” he said. “In the daylight. In a crowd. Where I can see her from afar.”

  This was easily arranged but raised new questions. “When? You can’t mean to stay here. If Augustus is victorious in Parthia, he’ll return to this island.”

  “And when he arrives, I’ll be waiting for him,” Helios rasped, eyes bloodshot with emotion.

  Dread coiled in my heart. “To what end?”

  “You know it already, so why do you ask?” He found his tunic in the pile of pillows and pulled it over his head. “I’ve spent all these years fighting the Romans. In Arabia. In Egypt. In Meroë. Wherever I could fight them. But now I’m here to fight for you . . .”

  “Don’t say it’s for me,” I said, wrapping the bedsheet around me.

  “I’ve come to kill him, Selene,” Helios said with a fearsome stare. “I’m going to kill Octavian. I’m going to kill him for all the wrongs he’s done. Win or lose in Parthia, he’ll return to the Isle of Samos. When he does, I’ll make an end to him. But you . . . you must be away. Go back to Mauretania.”

  How I wished that I could. “That isn’t possible.”

  Helios had grown from an impetuous boy to a man who gathered all the facts. He paused in dressing, tilting his head to ask, “Why? Is Juba a danger to you? Is that why you’ve stayed so long?”

  “Of course not.” Juba is only a danger to himself, I thought.

  “Then why are you here on the Isle of Samos? It’s almost summer. Your business with the Kandake is long done and Octavian has refused to make you Queen of Egypt. Why have you lingered?”

  My heart could only bear to give the simplest answer. “Because the emperor asked it of me.”

  It wasn’t simple enough to deceive him. The blood drained from his face, leaving him pale to the tip of his nose, a white-faced fury that was terrifying to behold. He shuddered and I thought he might break something, smash aside the lamps and pretty bottles and little adornments by the side of my bed. “It isn’t bad enough that he violated you all those years ago? Now he keeps you as his . . . his . . .”

  Afraid of what word he might settle upon, I hastened to say, “He hasn’t taken me to his bed again.”

  “Nor will he,” Helios vowed, turning to grab hold of my arms. “I’ll see to that. I’ll avenge you.”

  He couldn’t know that I’d resolved to give myself to the emperor and that I needed Augustus alive. There must be more to this conversation between us, but I couldn’t bear to have it now. Not now. Not when there were so few precious moments until the sunrise. I clung to him as long as I could, and when he finally readied to leave, he promised, “Sleep a little. I’ll come again tonight, when it’s dark.”

  IN the weeks that followed, I lived for nightfall. Helios was the only sun in my sky. I walked about dazed, counting the hours until I could be rid of my servants and make my way to the water’s edge. You must understand that Helios was my brother no more—if he’d ever been. He’d grown to be a large man, his hardened body
a specimen of devastating masculinity. It was as if he’d been carved like one of those great cult statues, and there wasn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t have stopped in her tracks for a worshipful glimpse of him. There was no woman he couldn’t have seduced—from the lowest slave to the highest queen. For him, they’d have all thrown their bedroom doors wide. But at night, he came for me.

  We always made love in twos. The first time, he’d descend upon me like an invading army, yanking at my clothes, tearing the fabric if need be. I never resisted or even feigned struggle, but as swiftly as I’d spread my thighs to welcome him, it never seemed quick enough. His heart thundered in his chest loud enough for me to hear it and he’d clutch at my hips as if he were frantic to feel skin against skin. My own need matched his so precisely that we often cried out together.

  Yet it was always the second time that left me annihilated. The second time, sheepish and between kisses, he’d murmur apologies for his barbarism. Then he’d lay me gently on pillows and navigate the sensitive spots of my body without hesitation—as if he’d memorized a secret map of my skin. He knew just where to kiss the places that made me burn. He knew just how to capture me beneath his sweat-slick limbs so that the air ignited in my lungs. Trapped between him and my own desire, I was defenseless. He wielded my arousal against me like a weapon he’d mastered, thrusting, parrying, exhausting me until I begged for quarter. Then and only then, when I was scarcely coherent, he’d bury himself inside me and we’d become one.

  There was never a time he didn’t make me burn with desire. Never a time he tired before I did. Never a time that he didn’t leave me storm swept and shaking. It was an art, what he did to me. A practiced talent. “You’ve been with other women.”

  “Yes.” He let his broad palm rest on the expanse of my belly. “I wanted to be good at it.” He didn’t need to say why. He was Antony’s son. Antony, as famous a lover as he was a fighter. But when Helios saw my expression, his eyes lowered. “But now, I swear, there will never be another.”

  Who was I to insist upon fidelity, having married one man and now seducing another? “I can’t ask that of you.”

  “You didn’t,” Helios said, rough hands kneading the fleshiest parts of me. It didn’t matter that I was tall; he was taller. He made me feel delicate in his solid arms, fragile and safe all at once. And though it was selfish and petty, I hated to think he’d made some other woman feel this way too. “I want to know about your lovers. Like this Kandake of Meroë.”

  I didn’t expect him to laugh.

  “Don’t mock me, Helios. You have no idea how it pained me to hear about her. How she’s a fierce fighter, beautiful and—”

  “She is beautiful,” he said, his golden hair upon my pillow, a playful smile on his lips as if in fond remembrance. “Her spirit is beautiful. Though she lost one eye in battle, she’s majestic. A true embodiment of Isis.”

  These words were soured milk in my belly. “I’ve changed my mind. I can’t bear to hear.”

  “Selene, she’s nearly fifty years old. Devoted to her people, to her son, and to her husband.”

  Though I’d long since learned to keep blood from rushing to my face, I flushed like an unpracticed girl. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

  “You are,” he said, forcing me to look at him. “My relations with the Kandake have been entirely chaste, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You are the magic in my soul that keeps me alive. You are as constant in my heart as the moon in the night. You are my other half and I’ll always seek you out somehow, even though it puts you in danger, and that is my shame.”

  His words melted my anger away and filled my veins with sweet honey. “You should never be ashamed for returning to me. I need to know where you’ve been and what you’ve done and where you’ve triumphed and who has hurt you!”

  “Then I’ll tell you,” he said, soothing me like a falconer smoothes ruffled feathers. “I’ll tell you anything.”

  In the next hours, we exchanged five years’ worth of tales. I told him of how I’d helped poison the emperor against the first Gallus. He told me of Arabia, where he led the second Gallus into a trap. I learned of Helios’s ships—yes, he’d had more than one. And I traced each scar on his body and listened to him tell me how he got it. When he was done, I told him about Mauretania—about the crops and the lavender, the harbor and the lighthouse, and about the wondrous purple that the royals all clamored to have. I told him about the crocodiles and my visit to the river. And even about the tomb I’d built for him. The only thing I didn’t tell him was about my bargain with the emperor, and whenever his questions tread too closely to that subject, I distracted him with tales of Isidora. Her first steps. Her first words. “I want to see her tomorrow,” he said. “Take her to the market. I’ll watch for her from afar.”

  THAT day, in the market, I feared to look up into the crowd. Were I to somehow find Helios in daylight and lock eyes with him again, it would remind my servants of the day I leapt out of the litter and raved like a madwoman, so I instructed Tala to take the children amidst the merchant awnings and let my daughter spend what she would on any trinkets that pleased her.

  While the common folk fawned over my little princess, I remained in my litter with a package newly arrived from Mauretania. It bore a wax seal pressed with a lion signet, the mark Juba had taken as his own. After all my complaints about the scarcity of word from Mauretania, now I didn’t want to break the seal. Juba and Augustus were a world away, but Helios was here, with me. My skin still tingled from his touch, and the tender places he’d left sore now ached so pleasantly I might have sighed or laughed or even sang with the joy of it. And I did not care for Augustus or Juba or what either of them represented.

  But I did care about Mauretania. I broke the seal. Inside was a letter all smudged and wrinkled as if it’d been worked beneath perspiring hands or spotted with a pale wine. Selene, it began. So it was to be informal.

  Selene, I write to you from Spain where I have joined with Agrippa and received an appointment as a duovir in Gades. We’ve received word that Lucius Cornelius Balbus has crushed the Garamantes and been hailed as imperator. He’s asked to be granted a Triumph in Rome. No mercy was given to the combatants. Perhaps this will be a lesson to our own rebellious tribesmen, the Gaetulians, who show little respect to our throne since your departure.

  Of course, I write as if this were still of some consequence to you. I blame myself for your leave-taking. But whatever holds you on that island is illusion. What you want cannot be. It is not real, whereas you and Isidora are very much real and very much alive. I had hoped the anniversary coin I struck would prove to you that I would care for and protect you both, so what compels you to place yourself and the little princess in such peril? You throw away what you have to grasp hold of what you cannot. Is this the way of the Ptolemies?

  I crumpled the paper. The nerve of the man to write these things to me! Juba, who could not be bothered to rule Mauretania, was now across the strait in Spain as a duovir, an honorary magistrate? If I could have reached him, I might have struck him. The show of Roman might against the Garamantes would do nothing but stir up rebellion amongst our fiercely independent tribesmen. And he had the temerity to lecture me about illusion?

  His bitterness and condemnation astonished me. As if I hadn’t been summoned by the emperor. As if I hadn’t been commanded to stay here in case the emperor wished to use my powers against his enemies. I had no choice! Then, calming myself, I muttered at the absurdity of a man like Lucius Cornelius Balbus holding a Triumph. I knew Augustus. He was the imperator, the emperor. He would never sanction another of equal status. How would they dare arrange such a thing so hastily while he was away? I sensed Agrippa’s hands on this . . .

  I read the last lines of Juba’s letter again, still seething. You throw away what you have to grasp hold of what you cannot. Is this the way of the Ptolemies? Perhaps it was. I didn’t care. Helios was here and would come again to me, this very night.

 
“Look!” Isidora cried, waving a little wooden tiger in my direction. “It’s like the ones the Indians brought in the cage. I want a lion and a falcon too.”

  “Let her buy what she wants,” I told Tala, who surrendered the coin. “She is a Ptolemy. She can have anything she wants.”

  “DID you see her?” I asked Helios when he came to me that night.

  He nodded, as if he scarcely trusted himself to speak, and a needle of doubt pierced me. Helios was quiet. Somber. With a brooding expression that left me half to wonder if he was going to build some cabin by the sea and waste away. In silence, we listened to the waves as I wondered if he saw the emperor’s features on Isidora’s face where I could never see them. “Aren’t you going to say something about her? Can you not love my daughter because—”

  “Not love her?” He rounded on me, his voice rising. “She’s a miracle! ”

  I knew she was a miracle and not simply in the sense that every mother knows her child is a gift. Isidora represented the survival of the Ptolemies. She embodied my desperate attempts to preserve our dynasty and all the dreams my mother had ever dreamed. And yet miracle that she was, she seemed to have put Helios in agony. “I only meant to ease your pain. I didn’t think that seeing her would make it worse.”

  “She looked at me,” he finally said. “I was so far away. She shouldn’t have even glanced in my direction, but she did. She looked up from her wooden toys, stared through the crowd, and found my eyes. It was like looking into a River of Time. Like everything I’d ever done or wanted to do or dreamed is all inside of her. And she’ll never know me. She’ll never know me.”

  I wanted to promise him that I’d tell her tales of Horus the Avenger. That one day, when the world was different, we could all be together. Maybe I could make it so. Even if the emperor returned from Parthia victorious, even if I gave him a son and he made me his wife, he couldn’t live forever. Helios and I were young, we were—