Lily of the Nile Page 16

  “I won’t let that happen to you,” Helios said after we tucked Philadelphus into bed.

  “You won’t let what happen to me?” I asked as the two of us sat on my bed.

  “I won’t let him marry you off like you’re chattel. You’re the Queen of Egypt, even if you don’t want to be.”

  I watched the lantern burn. “When I said I didn’t want to be queen, I didn’t mean it.” And in any case, it wasn’t a choice. It was in my blood. I was the last queen of the Ptolemies. The very last. I could no easier cut off my arm than turn my back on that legacy.

  “I know you didn’t mean it,” Helios said. “And I promise, one day I’m going to bring you back to Egypt.”

  It was a reckless promise, but he sounded so very sure that it made me smile in spite of myself. “On the prow of your warship …”

  “Yes. And when we see the lighthouse, we’ll know that we’re home. At the docks, the people will throw flower petals in the harbor.”

  “To greet you as their king,” I said, wanting to lose myself in this fantasy, for just a moment.

  “I’ll take you straightaway to the Iseum, to be anointed before all the people and have the royal diadem placed upon your brow …”

  “But that won’t be enough,” I protested. “Egypt needs a pharaoh. She needs the blessings of the old gods, and the magic that makes the Nile rise. We’ll have to go down the Nile.”

  “All the way to Aswan,” he agreed. “On a luxurious river barge. And when we’ve ensured a bountiful harvest and nourished the people, we’ll go to see the pyramids and we will restore Thebes. We’ll reform the laws too—”

  “It sounds like a great deal of work being queen,” I teased, easing my head down onto the bed and closing my tired eyes.

  “It won’t all be work,” he said, resting beside me. “We’ll invite all the finest minds to our court, all the dazzling, brilliant people. And if the harvest is good, we’ll actually feed them and serve expensive wine. We’ll have music and we’ll dance, you and I. So that any Roman who happens to see will faint in horror.”

  I liked this idea. “I’ll wear silk and put netting over my bed and wear perfumes,” I murmured, getting sleepier all the while.

  “And I’ll give you jewels,” Helios said. “I’ll give you emeralds to match your eyes and black wigs with beaded braids to wear in the Egyptian style and no one could chastise you for it, because you’ll be my queen …”

  THE next morning we woke before dawn, but not of our own accord. We heard shouting and slammed doors—such a commotion that I wondered if Octavia’s house were not being overrun by barbarians. I’d barely had time to slip on my sandals when Julia came bursting into my room. She must have run all the way from Livia’s house, because her cheeks were rosy and it took her a moment to catch her breath. “What are you both doing in here?”

  I glanced over to Helios, who was still wiping the sleep out of his eyes. “What are you doing here, Julia?”

  “Marcella’s come back!” she crowed.

  “So?” I hadn’t even seen the bride leave the night before, so I wasn’t sure why Julia’s eyes were gleaming with gossip.

  “How could you have slept through the wailing and crying?” Julia asked. “Marcella’s run away from Agrippa and locked herself in her old bedroom and won’t come out.”

  Poor Marcella, I thought. “Oh no …”

  But Julia burst into a peal of laughter. “Agrippa’s going to fetch his wife back for the wedding breakfast, but first he needs to sleep off his enormous hangover! I almost feel sorry for the great big lout, having to chase after his bride like some cuckolded merchant—”

  “Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “What will Lady Octavia think if she hears you rejoicing in Marcella’s misfortune?”

  “Oh, I’m not rejoicing,” Julia replied, dutifully lowering her voice to a whisper. “I feel rather sorry for Marcella. Can you even imagine what Agrippa must have done to her to make her run away?”

  Actually, I couldn’t, and in spite of myself, I was very curious. I glanced at Helios once, and he said, “Go.”

  So I followed Julia out into the hallway. Lady Octavia was standing near Marcella’s old room, shouting, “You open this door at once, you wicked girl!” When she saw Julia and me standing there, Octavia put her face in her hands and let out a long breath. “You girls tell my daughter that if she’s not come out within the hour, I’m going to get the guards to break down the door and march her right back to her husband’s household.”

  As it turned out, Marcella responded neither to our knocks nor our shouts for her, until Julia wondered aloud, “Perhaps she’s died. Perhaps she drank one of Livia’s toxic tonics and now she’s lying in there rotting—I hope she left me something in her Last Will. I quite like the embroidered shawl Marcella wore to the Saturnalia and I think it would look very nice on me.”

  Marcella unbolted the door and opened it just wide enough so that she could direct one black but bloodshot eye at Julia. “I’m not dead,” Marcella finally said. “And if I were, I wouldn’t leave you anything, Julia.”

  “I don’t see what you should have against me,” Julia huffed. “It wasn’t my idea to marry you to Agrippa. I was the only one who was against it!”

  With the door already unbolted, Marcella opened it a little farther. Julia and I both went into Marcella’s room and sat together at the dressing table, which was empty because her belongings had been packed up and sent to Agrippa’s house the day before.

  “Are you unwell?” I asked, for Marcella was still in her bed clothing and she hadn’t bothered to fasten her hair, which fell in a messy tangle of dark waves over her shoulders.

  “You have no idea how awful it was,” Marcella said, clasping her hands together. “Agrippa was so big and heavy, and he stank of wine!” Her nostrils flared as if she were recalling a pungent scent. “He was frightfully drunk. Then he was on top of me, and he was sweating. Actually sweating. Dripping onto my face as he moved above me.”

  The emperor’s daughter and I were both aghast. Julia’s eyes riveted on Marcella’s tearful face. Meanwhile, I leaned so far on the edge of my seat that I nearly lost my balance.

  “And it hurt,” Marcella continued, her lower lip trembling. “I tried to lie still, to be stoic, to do my duty for my family and for Rome. But every which way I turned my hips, it seemed to hurt worse!”

  Octavia would have liked to think I was too young to know anything about the way men and women came together in intimacy, but I’d worked beside the slaves in her household long enough to have overheard a thing or two. Even so, a heated blush came to my cheeks. “But it can’t have lasted long, can it have?”

  “You would think not,” Marcella snapped at me. “After all, he promised it wouldn’t last long. His face got red, his arms bulged with effort, the bed creaked like mad, and he cursed like he was leading a battle charge. But even that I could have endured, at least until …”

  Here, Marcella broke off in a gale of sobs as she buried her face in her hands. I watched her cry, at a complete loss as to how to comfort her. It was Julia who quite naturally went to Marcella’s side and wrapped her into a hug.

  “He said her name,” Marcella whispered. “Agrippa said her name, and then he found his pleasure. Grunting and calling her name as he …”

  And then I knew. He’d said Lady Octavia’s name. Something beneath my stomach fell away at the awfulness of it. No wonder Marcella couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother what was wrong.

  “That’s perfectly terrible,” Julia said.

  “It’s perfectly humiliating,” Marcella cried. “How can I tell anyone? How can I go back to Agrippa’s house?”

  “You know,” Julia said, her eyes lighting up with sudden mischief. “You can hold this over Agrippa’s head. He was likely too drunk to even remember what he said last night. You could embellish the incident to make him ashamed. Why, you could even claim it was my father’s name that he called out in bed. Octavia becomes Octavi
an. It’s only one letter off.”

  “Julia!” Marcella and I cried in unison.

  But the emperor’s daughter wasn’t the least bit chastened. “Agrippa won’t want that story repeated, and to keep your silence he’ll likely give you anything you want.”

  “Julia!” we both cried again.

  She only shrugged. “If I were Marcella I’d make a list of all the things I wanted, knowing full well that Agrippa won’t say no.”

  I thought this was a spectacularly bad idea, but it made Marcella laugh through her tears, so I helped find a wax tablet for her to start writing.

  “No more sewing and weaving for Marcella!” Julia declared, putting a request for a seamstress at the top of the list, and the three of us laughed. It was hard not to like Julia when she was like this, openheartedly instigating rebellion that she could only enjoy vicariously. For a moment, she’d made me laugh—earnestly laugh—and I hadn’t thought that possible ever again.

  Sixteen

  LATER that morning, we were guests at the wedding breakfast at Agrippa’s villa on the Palatine. In the hours since Marcella had run away, she’d managed to wash her face, fix her hair, and return to her husband’s home. Married women wore shawls called pallas over their shoulders, for modesty, and Marcella seemed to use hers to remind herself that she was now a woman grown. Squaring her shoulders, she directed the slaves and did a fair impression of her mother as hostess. It was actually Agrippa, with bags under his eyes and bloated cheeks, who looked green and ready to bolt for the door.

  Agrippa’s villa devoted an entire wall to engraved gemstones, and I stood to admire the sparkling stones while the other guests arrived. “You have an eye for expensive things,” the emperor said, coming up behind me. “Do you like them?”

  I nodded my head, remembering that my parents had collected these carved stones too. “Were these my mother’s?”

  “No,” he said. “I have hers in my study, in the Syracuse. I like to keep her things near.”

  There was something about the way he said it that made me look up at him. Something about the way he always spoke of my mother, as if contempt and fascination had coiled together for him like twin snakes of a ureaus. As if her death had made her that much stronger an influence over him. “Sometimes I cannot fathom how much you remind me of her,” he said. “Your face isn’t the same. Nor your hair. Nor your skin. But somehow … my sister is right. Cleopatra is in your every gesture …”

  I couldn’t tell if this was meant to frighten me, but it did. The moment Maecenas arrived with his wife, Terentilla, she began fawning over the emperor and I used the opportunity to slip away to my seat.

  “Did you enjoy the wedding, Selene?” Juba asked, sitting together with Helios and me. “Don’t tell Marcella, but I think you’ll make an even more beautiful bride.”

  This made me flush and I took a bite of leftover wedding cake to hide my flattered expression. Then Helios whispered to me, “This was our father’s house.”

  The cake went sour in my mouth. “Here?”

  “Marcellus told me,” Helios explained. “This used to be our father’s house, but after Actium, the emperor gave it to Agrippa as a gift.”

  I let my eyes follow the intricate design to the balcony that overlooked the Palatine. I noticed the gilded handles on the doors and the engraved gemstone collection on the far wall. I could almost imagine my father here in this room. His laughter would have boomed off the walls and I imagined its faint echo. And yet, instead of making me smile, it filled me with melancholy. My mother may have known what was going to happen to her and risked our lives anyway—her accursed bracelet was testament to that—but I felt certain that my father always thought he’d return. Perhaps to this very banquet room. Maybe some part of him was here. I felt the sudden urge to touch the mosaic floors, the bronze-banded doors and the painted walls, as if I might somehow reach through time to my father and his comforting arms.

  “It’s wrong that Agrippa should live here,” Helios said, keeping his voice low.

  It was wrong, but there was nothing we could do about it. Meanwhile, as the guests cloistered together around the banquet tables, the emperor looked as if he’d set things to order according to some master plan. Raising his wine goblet in toast to the couple, the emperor announced, “Feliciter! This is a good day for the happy couple, and for me. I’ve purged the Senate of undesirables, and those senators who remain have voted me new honors. Amongst them, a new title, suggested by General Plancus.”

  At his name, Plancus stood and announced, “To our first amongst equals … to our first citizen … to the new Augustus.”

  Augustus. It was a strange title, carrying with it neither lawful authority or regal connotation. In fact, it was more religious in nature, as if he’d somehow become a sacred person. Octavian, a holy man? My father would have laughed in mockery if he were here, but my father was dead and the men who had betrayed him were making toasts here in his old banquet hall.

  “To Augustus!” Agrippa said and all the guests repeated it.

  And Augustus seemed pleased. “Not only do I add a new title to my honors, but I will now have Agrippa as my nephew-in-law in Rome to watch over things while I’m gone.”

  “Gone?” Livia asked, her cheeks pink.

  “To fight the Cantabri in Spain,” he replied. “The mountain tribes are in rebellion, and it’s time that I made a conquest of my own.”

  I bit my lip. It couldn’t have been Helios’s barb alone that worked its way under the emperor’s skin, but I remembered well how my brother had taunted the emperor about letting Agrippa do all his fighting for him.

  “I’ll be taking Juba with me as he’s almost as skilled a soldier as he is a scholar,” the emperor continued, and Juba nodded his head in gracious acknowledgment of the compliment. I looked at him as if for the first time. How had I never known that there was a warrior in him?

  “You’ve fought in the legions?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Juba replied. “But I’m a cavalryman.”

  The Numidians were famed for their horsemanship and I had seen Juba ride before, so I should have put this together, but before I learned more the emperor announced, “Also, the older boys of the family need military experience, so I’ll be taking Iullus, Marcellus, and Tiberius with me to serve in the legions.”

  Iullus puffed with pride as the other two boys looked up with surprise. Marcellus had been sitting close to Virgil, and now the poet reached out an affectionate hand to reassure him, even as his mother paled.

  Livia kept silent, her lips thinning as she considered tall, broody Tiberius. But Octavia couldn’t be still. “The tribesmen in Spain are brutal savages! At least Iullus is fifteen, but Marcellus and Tiberius are only fourteen years old. They haven’t even donned the toga virilis of manhood yet.”

  “We’ll remedy that shortly,” the emperor said. “Besides, the boys are nearly the age I was when my father, the Divine Julius, called me to serve with him in Spain—”

  “You were too young at that,” Octavia broke in. “You never did serve because you were a frail boy who nearly died en route, and my son—”

  The emperor silenced his sister with a dark look of warning. “And your son may one day marry Julia and rule the Roman Empire in my place … or don’t you want that?”

  Octavia flinched. I saw maternal worry clash with all her hopes and dreams for her son. Had my mother looked that way when she risked all by claiming Caesarion’s rights as Julius Caesar’s heir? My mother had raised three sons, but Octavia had only one. Marcellus was everything to her, so she said, “Of course I do. He should rule this Republic.”

  “Then Marcellus needs to experience war,” the emperor said.

  “I think it’s a marvelous idea,” Livia finally added. “You’ll find Tiberius to be a quick study in the field, and if Marcellus is too frail to serve you, my son is hale and hearty.”

  Octavia slammed down her goblet. “Marcellus isn’t frail. He’s sensitive but not f
rail.”

  Livia seemed to enjoy having tweaked Octavia in this way. “Once things are settled I’d like to join you in Spain, husband. I know you suffer so when you’re away from home and no one could tend to your needs the way I can.”

  “It’s settled, then,” the emperor said, looking tremendously smug. He wasn’t the only one. Helios was sitting beside me, an expression on his face that I could read plain as day. If the emperor, Livia, Marcellus, Juba, Iullus, and Tiberius would all be away in Spain, it’d be that much easier for us to escape.

  WINTER thawed into spring and the next weeks were filled with my brother’s schemes. “A week from now, the Navigium Isidis will be celebrated,” Helios told me as we peered down at the city from the height of the Palatine Hill. “There’ll be a great procession through the streets. The priestesses will be carrying flowers and the initiates will make offerings to the ship that they plan to let loose for the goddess.”

  Huddling against the cold in my wool cloak, I pressed against the gate, trying to imagine the parade. “And you think the new Augustus will just let us take part in an Isiac festival? You’re mad.”

  “He won’t let us, no,” Helios said. “But the slaves will go. I’ve heard them talking about it. There are tunnels they use to come and go, and with all the construction we might not be noticed if we went with Chryssa. Then all we need to do is make our way into the crowd and let ourselves be swept along. Soon after that we can exchange clothing with initiates and when the priestesses are pouring out milk libations and filling the ship with spices, we can ask the worshippers about Euphronius.”

  “And what if he’s not here?” I asked. “What if Euphronius has gone back to Egypt?”

  “Then we’ll board the ship that they dedicate to Isis. They’ll cut her free of the moorings and let her loose down the Tiber. I can sail a ship. I know I can.”

  “By yourself?” I asked, blinking at his desperation. Finding Euphronius was risky, but it had a certain amount of sense to it. Sneaking aboard a sacrificial ship and using it to sail away was foolhardy. And I told him so.