I could not speak.
“Ptolly,” Alexandros said in an undertone as people watched us for our reaction. “That is supposed to represent … It is supposed to be Mother.”
Ptolly looked up at the painting again. “But that’s not what Mother looked like! And this lady has no clothes on!”
The soldiers and servants milling around with torches laughed and made lewd sounds.
“Ptolly, look at me,” I said. He turned his kohl-outlined eyes toward me, his golden-striped headdress from Egypt glimmering in the predawn light. Octavianus had ordered that we dress in our official royal garb from home. “Remember what we talked about? We are going to hear people say terrible things about Mother and Tata today. We must be strong and pretend we don’t hear them.”
Ptolly scrunched his face in an exaggerated scowl. “This is stupid!”
“But there is nothing we can do about it.”
Exactly one year after Mother’s death, Octavianus was finally celebrating his victory over my parents with a triple Triumph — three days of parades followed by gladiatorial games and feasting. Besides the free wine that flowed, the highlight of each day was heaping abuse on the chained “Enemies of Rome” as they were marched in the parade, ending with their executions and the dumping of their bodies on the Forum steps. Two former allies of Tata — Adiatorix of Pontus and Alexander of Emesa — had been marched and executed the day before.
“But they won’t kill us,” Alexandros had insisted earlier. “Both Juba and Marcellus said that when the Triumph is over, we will be led back to the compound, where we’ll be safe.”
Octavia had also tried to comfort us. “Soon it will be over,” she had said earlier that morning as she held on tightly to Ptolly. “And everything will be all right again.”
I shivered now, despite the heat. Sweat already plastered my white pleated linen dress to my back, even though the sun had only just begun to peek over the hills. High summer in Rome was miserable enough without a long trek through the dusty, smoky, overcrowded city. Even from outside the gates, we could tell the streets reeked of urine, vomit, and wine.
Iron chains, painted to look like gold, connected me and my brothers by shackles around our necks. Huge, heavy links dragged on the ground between us. I scratched my scalp under the ceremonial braided wig they had forced me to wear. It was too hot for a wig this heavy, but we were to look as Egyptian as possible. Octavianus did not want people to remember that we were the children of their most beloved general, or that they were really celebrating the triumph of one Roman over another Roman.
Alexandros made a noise and motioned with his head. Octavianus was coming our way. As Roman tradition dictated, his face was covered in red paint, aping the statue of the great god in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. This was the first time we had seen him since those murderous days in Alexandria. He grinned at us as he passed, sending a chill down my spine. The sharp little teeth in that red face made him look like he had just raised his head from gorging on the carcass of a wild beast.
Octavianus walked to his chariot, which had been rolled up behind us. I groaned. That meant we were to be marched directly in front of him, that we were his “prized” captives. Since Mother escaped this humiliation, we would have to endure it for her.
I watched as the Roman senators lined up behind Octavianus. Two white-haired senators in their bordered togas gesticulated angrily at him. I edged closer to hear.
“But the Senate always marches before the Conqueror! What kind of message are you sending to make us march behind you?” cried one of the men.
“Ah, but you misunderstand, Lucius,” Octavianus said. “It is with great respect that I allow you to walk behind me. It is an honor for you.”
The senators exchanged a look. “Caesar, this is a break with tradition that smacks of illegal usurpation —”
“Move it! Move it!” cried an officer, gleaming in his bronze armor. “Get it into position now. The Triumph begins!”
At the sight of the man’s drawn broadsword, the old senators acquiesced, but not without withering looks at Octavianus. I had just witnessed Octavianus symbolically making himself more powerful than the Senate. And this from the man who claimed he was “restoring the Republic”! What kind of hold did he have on Rome that only two senators dared question him?
Marcellus trotted up on a gleaming white horse. As Octavianus’s heir, he would ride on the right side of the Imperator’s chariot. I felt a wave of shame that Marcellus would see me like this. I turned my back, knowing that Tiberius, riding on Octavianus’s left, would likely be smirking at us. Juba, I guessed, was probably marching with the young officers behind the chariot. Livia, Octavia, and all the rest of the children would watch the procession from a special box in the grandstands.
The lowing of bulls and the roaring of the crowd indicated that the sacrificial animals had passed the gate. All of the fifty bulls would be sacrificed at the end of the Triumph. Soon, Rome would be awash in blood and entrails. We moved in the procession slowly, as carts and stretchers laden with all of the riches stolen from our palace and Egypt glimmered before us in the sun — huge mounds of gold, ivory, onyx, lapis lazuli, emeralds, spices, cinnamon, pearls. A group of men held aloft a painted representation of the billowing Nile, showing its seven sacred mouths. Greek pedagogi, dressed in the white tunics and white sandals of our Library scholars, pulled cartloads of scrolls plundered from our Great Library. Nearly naked, sweating slaves groaned under the ropes and pulleys of gigantic obelisks and sphinxes taken from our sacred temples. When they rolled out a giant terra-cotta re-creation of Pharos, our Great Lighthouse, one drunk yelled, “Hey, that lighthouse is not so big!”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Still, the supposed portrait of my mother in her death throes elicited the most responses. Catcalls, jeers, spitting, hissing, booing, throwing of rotten fruit and rocks — the painting seemed to excite the crowds into convulsions of hatred.
“Whore! Bitch! Slut! Sorceress!” The insults fell on us like hailstones raining down from the sky. We had no way to protect ourselves from the assault. The twisted, hate-filled faces of the Romans lining the streets, I knew, would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. The crowds grew even more venomous when they saw us.
“It’s the whore’s children!”
“The little bastards!”
“Kill ‘em!”
I raised my chin at the insults and looked straight ahead. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that Alexandros had done the same.
“Where’s your great queen now?” voices jeered. Liquid spattered at my feet, and I realized someone had thrown a used chamber pot at us, the strong scent of urine filling the air. Amidst the shouting and insults, I heard Ptolly sniffing, “I hate them! I hate them!” I squeezed his hand.
At the sight of Octavianus, the crowds grew deafening. “Our Savior!”
“Io Caesar!”
“Bringer of peace!”
“Bringer of death,” I mumbled.
The procession crawled at an infinitesimal pace. The sun climbed in the sky and bore down upon us, making me pant under its weight of relentless, blinding heat. The reek of human sweat and cheap wine; the cacophony of yells, curses, and roars; the plumes of smoke from sacrificial fires gathering like black storm clouds over the city … As the iron chains dragged behind us, I felt as if I moved in a nightmare where my limbs grew heavier and heavier, trapping me in a paralysis of hopeless despair.
But we had no choice. We had to continue on. And I would not give these people the satisfaction of watching me stumble. Over the long, hot parade route, it was Ptolly who worried me the most. I stole a glance at him once and saw that he had been crying, the kohl melting into rivers of black running down his cheeks. He looked up at me with such pain-filled eyes that I could barely breathe. Oh, sweet Ptolly, I thought, how can they make you do this? Then I remembered that Juba was marched in a Triumph like this when he was little more tha
n a baby. The difference was, he would not have understood the vitriol aimed at him. Almost-eight-year-old Ptolly did.
As if he were still a toddler, I leaned down to pick him up, wanting to ease his physical discomfort if nothing else. Alexandros saw what I was doing and touched my shoulder. “I have him,” he mouthed over the deafening noise, lifting Ptolly up into his arms. Ptolly wrapped his limbs around him, buried his face in Alexandros’s shoulder, and sobbed.
Some of the comments hurled at us began to change. I heard one woman shout, “By the gods, they are just children!” But the crowd turned on her, yelling “Traitor!” and “Gypto lover!”
That woman is someone’s mother, I thought. I wanted to tell her that the painting that almost blotted the sky was not my mother, that my mother would have protected us from this. But then I remembered that we were here without her, and my thoughts grew muddled with despair and confusion. My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth in a terrible thirst. Every muscle, straining at the weight of the chains, screamed to rest.
At congested points, the procession stopped and we were forced to stand still in the faces of those cursing us and praising Octavianus. The soldiers, bringing up the rear, bellowed ribald songs about the man who had led them to victory, a tradition Father had told me about. When I focused on the words of their song, though, I flushed in embarrassment. They were not about Octavianus at all.
Poor Antonius,
Trapped in a web!
The queen grabbed his obelisk
And now they’re both dead!
I stole a look behind me as the crowds whooped and jeered. Octavianus also looked furious, but probably because he wanted them to sing his praises, not remind the people about Father. Any mention of Marcus Antonius could shatter the pretense that this had been anything but his made-up war to take sole control of Rome. My guess was proved right when the officers tried to shut their men up, but most of the soldiers were too drunk to pay much attention. So the commanders chanted a new song that, after a few minutes, hurtled down the line of legions like a wave moving to shore:
Io Caesar!
We give him our hand.
Now we can retire
And work our own land.
This ditty the soldiers belted out with gusto, for that was how Octavianus had gained their loyalty — the promise of land upon retirement. He could never have delivered on that promise without stealing Egypt’s wealth. I looked back at Octavianus again. He grinned, chest puffed out, looking like a bloody weasel.
I could not tell how many hours had passed. In front of the viewing stands, I straightened my back, knowing that Julia and all the others watched us. I glanced up at the special box where Livia and Octavia sat, and I spied Tonia weeping on her mother’s shoulder. The sight of her tears over her beloved Ptolly filled me with cruel satisfaction. Yet it also made me feel hopeful. Somebody else loved my little brother enough to cry over his mistreatment.
As the crowds pressed even tighter, we neared the last stretch of the procession. It would continue up to the Capitoline Hill and end at the Temple of Jupiter Maximus. Alexandros put Ptolly down. It was almost over.
Then — blackness. I gasped. A blanket had been thrown over us. “Do not fight us, do you understand?” someone growled in guttural Latin, a sword tip pressing into my back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Ptolly! Alexandros!” I cried, but my voice was swallowed up by the blanket and the noise around us. People roared and clapped as someone shuttled us out of the procession.
“Klee-Klee!” Ptolly shouted. Blindly, I reached for him and he grasped my hand. In my moment of panic, I had forgotten the chains that bound us together. I breathed out with relief. We would not be — could not be — separated.
“What’s happening?” Alexandros cried.
The sounds of hobnailed boots and jangling metal-link armor meant we’d been taken by soldiers. Were they escorting us back to the compound? But why under a blanket? Then I realized it was probably for our protection in case the mobs worked themselves into a frenzy of hatred and attacked us.
The roughly woven blanket smelled of sweat and old hay. People cursed as we bumped into them. The soldiers pushing us barked orders. An exchange of words. We were brought inside a building and dragged down rough stairs. The smell of wet stone. I shivered as the sweat on my body cooled. The roaring of the crowd above us sounded like rocks tumbling down a hill.
The blanket disappeared, and I blinked into the darkness as someone pushed my head forward to unlock the shackle around my neck.
“Where are we?” Ptolly asked. “I’m thirsty. Can I have some water?”
Our liberator, a sweat-soaked centurion, did not respond. “We will get some water soon,” I promised Ptolly, my lips cracking like over-baked clay.
After unchaining us, the soldier ushered us down a hallway and into another dark room. As my eyes adjusted, I saw a filthy man on his knees, naked, bleeding, shivering. He looked up, his eyes huge in dread. In one swift movement, someone threw a garrote around the man’s neck and began choking him.
My heart pounded. We were in the Tullianum? The pit where they strangled Enemies of Rome? Ptolly hid his face, breathing hard in terror. But … but we were supposed to go back to the Palatine! A part of me stepped outside my body. This is not happening. I am not watching a man get strangled to death in front of me.
The man’s eyes bugged, the cords in his neck strained, and his face turned purple as he thrashed, fighting for air. “Look away!” Alexandros hissed. I jumped and closed my eyes. But the horrible sounds remained — the man’s desperate gasps and splutters, the impatient breathing of the soldier behind us. Ptolly crying. The heavy thump of the body as it hit the ground, and then the smell of loosed bowels as his body released.
“Take him up to the Forum and throw him down the steps,” the executioner ordered the two men standing beside him when the body stopped twitching. Each man grabbed an ankle and walked toward the wet stone steps. Muffled roars and cheers from the crowds above us echoed at the signal of another successful execution. I could not tell how deeply underground we were, but it seemed as if the sound of the dead man’s head thumping on the steps as he was dragged out went on forever. Too soon I realized it was only us, the executioner, and the Roman soldier.
Oh, gods, were we next? Our captor pushed us forward. Ptolly howled. “What are they doing here?” the executioner cried. “I did not get orders that we were to execute the children!”
“But I did,” came the rough reply from the soldier who pushed us forward.
“There’s been some kind of mistake,” I said. “We were told we would be brought back to Octavi — Caesar’s house on the Palatine after the Triumph.”
The soldier ignored me. “Move!” he yelled. “This has to happen quickly!”
“No!” Ptolly wailed.
“Wait!” Alexandros cried. “We are Roman citizens! You cannot execute a Roman citizen without a trial.”
I remembered Father, dying, instructing us to use those words. A surge of relief filled my chest at my twin’s quick thinking.
“Don’t matter,” said the man pushing us. “I got orders.”
“From who?”
“Caesar’s lady. The fancy one.”
Livia? This was Livia’s doing? The executioner looked dubious. “You will do it!” the soldier yelled, shoving me forward. “I have my orders. Do it now!”
The executioner shook his head. “I don’t strangle children!”
“You gonna disobey Caesar, then?” growled my captor.
The man paled. Isis, he was considering it! I looked around wildly. Where had we come in? Could we make a break for it now that the chains were off?
The executioner crossed his arms and raised his chin in my direction. “Either way, I do not kill the girl. It is against Roman law to execute a female virgin,” he said.
“Cacat, man!” the soldier roared, lunging for me. “I can fix that quickly enough.”
“No!”
I screamed. The soldier grasped my upper arm, but I twisted free. “Run!” I bellowed at Ptolly and Alexandros, but they stood frozen, wide-eyed in shock. The soldier cursed and swiped at me again, grabbing my wig and ripping it off my head. He growled in surprise and disgust. I scrambled for the stairs behind us.
“Run!” I yelled again at my brothers. We took off. The soldier tackled my ankles and I fell down hard on the stone floor, my upper arm and shoulder absorbing most of the impact. I cried out in pain. Ptolly ran back to attack my captor. “No, Ptolly! Run!” I cried. Ptolly kicked out wildly at the man’s head, but Alexandros rushed at the downed soldier and booted him in the eye socket. The man howled and released me, covering his eye with both hands.
“Come on,” Alexandros commanded, pulling me up by my arm. Pain shot through my shoulder, stealing my breath. I stumbled after my brothers.
“Stop them!” shouted the soldier.
“Let ‘em go,” the executioner said. “I ain’t killing children.”
“You idiot!” the soldier snarled. To my horror, I heard his hobnailed boots thundering up the stone steps behind us.
“Leave them be!” shouted the executioner. “The crowds will rip ‘em apart anyway.”
We burst out into the open and staggered, blinded by the harsh light and a heat so intense it took my breath away. My heart raced as I ran, holding my right shoulder. “Take off your headdresses!” I cried. My brothers ripped them off, their curly hair plastered to their heads with sweat as the gold-striped material floated behind us.
“Blend into the crowd!” Alexandros directed. Holding hands, we pushed our way into the sweating masses. Romans cursed at us and pushed back, but thankfully, they never looked at us, preoccupied as they were with trying to get a glimpse of the tail end of the Triumph — the senators and soldiers who marched behind Octavianus.
An angry-looking soldier, one palm over his left eye, tore past us, retracing the parade route. I breathed out as he disappeared around a tenement building. I tugged at my brothers’ hands, moving us away from the throngs looking up the hill to the Temple where the bulls were being sacrificed.
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