Lily of the Nile Read online

  “The Athenians call me Athena. The Cyprians and Romans know me as Venus. The Candians say I am Diana. The Sicilians call me Proserpine. The Eleusians know me as Demeter. Some call me Juno, others Bellona, and still others Hecate. But the Egyptians, who are excellent in ancient doctrine, and by their ceremonies accustomed to worship me, do properly call me Isis. I am one goddess. I am all goddesses.”

  “Praise Isis,” I whispered in wonderment as Philadelphus and Helios burst into my room.

  “She’s hurt!” Philadelphus cried, coming to my side, his eyes wide with panic.

  I could hear other members of the household stirring, awakened by my scream. The guards would be here any moment; their boots were already pounding down the walk toward my door. “There’s a message on my arms. Block the door and I’ll try to read it!”

  Helios glimpsed my blood and his face went ashen. He looked at the doorway uncertainly, then back at me. Then he closed the door behind him and braced himself against it.

  I read aloud, my voice shaking.

  “I am the natural mother of all things, and I know suffering. The dark god murdered my love and I was forced to wander the world collecting his dismembered limbs. Grieving, I gathered mangled flesh, spilled blood, and broken dreams, then knit them together in love one last time so that I might conceive a child. Alone, and frightened, as you are, I secreted away my joyous miracle until he was powerful enough to again make me mistress of the elements and Queen of Heaven. Behold, children of Isis, I know thy fortune and tribulation.”

  Someone tried to open my door, but Helios put his shoulder into it to keep it closed. I knew a boy would be no match for the guards, but when they crashed against it, Helios’s feet only slid back slightly.

  “Read faster. The symbols are fading,” Philadelphus urged.

  I tried to remember the sounds and words. There were so many of them, and the pain blurred my senses. Then I realized that they were changing. I’d read the first part of the message and now there was a second part too, symbols healing and cutting anew. Thrones, disks, feathers, snakes, and cow horns swam before my eyes, and I wiped more blood on my sleeping gown.

  “Open up by order of the emperor!” Another bash followed the command. The door started to splinter, but Helios held it closed.

  Finally, the last of the symbols became clear to me.

  “Children of Isis, leave off thy weeping and lamentation. Put away thy sorrow and behold the beautiful day, which is ordained by my providence. Like babes hidden in the reeds, attend to my commandment. Live, love, and learn.”

  Then there was no more.

  “That’s everything?” Helios asked, incredulous.

  I couldn’t disguise my disappointment. Isis had reached through me to deliver a message, and yet it told us little. It urged acceptance of our fate and I was crushed.

  I stared down at my hands as my skin began to heal. The soldiers outside continued to batter against the door. It finally cracked and Helios took a step back, letting one guard fall into the room with a clatter.

  In the doorway with the soldiers was Lady Octavia in her bedclothes, her face puffy with sleep. “What’s happening?”

  Octavia rushed to me, pulling back the bedcovers. She stared at my arms, but the message left only blood in its wake. For a moment, genuine concern washed over Octavia’s face. She took my arms, searching for a wound. “Send for a healer!”

  I noticed her wrists, encircled with bruises where my twin had grabbed her days before. Helios had hurt Lady Octavia, after all, and she’d kept it to herself. She could’ve told the emperor, but she hadn’t. I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

  “Maybe the girl has come of age,” a guard suggested.

  Lady Octavia gave him a withering glare. “Where are you hurt, Selene?”

  Perhaps Isis meant to give me forgiveness. She’d commanded us to live, love, and learn—so perhaps begging the emperor for our lives hadn’t been the shame my brother thought it was. Perhaps this message was to ease my guilt. “But now it’s gone,” I whispered miserably.

  Octavia’s concern became suspicion. “What’s gone?”

  I just shook my head. Something about Lady Octavia always brought out rebellion in me when I least expected it. It was my message and I wasn’t going to tell her. It was meant for my brothers and me, from Isis herself.

  At my refusal to answer, Lady Octavia’s eyes flashed. “Have you been working magic in my house?”

  These barbarians knew nothing about heka. “How could I work magic? You won’t even let us worship properly. The markings on my hands were the work of Isis and she’ll judge your actions.”

  “I won’t be judged by some whore,” Octavia said, pulling me out of bed by the arm.

  “Isis is the natural mother of all things,” I replied.

  “Stop it.” Octavia shook me. “They’ll call you a witch as surely as they did your mother. They’ll kill you. Is that what you want?”

  “Let us worship,” I said, dazed. “If not at the temple, then here, with candles and sage. Isis is our mother now.”

  Octavia’s handsome face crumpled as she dug her fingers into my arms. “Why are you doing this to me? Why? Even though your every gesture reminds me of your mother, I’ve taken you in with my own children. My husband abandoned me, yet I honor his memory by raising his bastards. This is the thanks I get?”

  “My father never loved you,” I said, remembering all the bits and pieces I’d heard from my parents over the years. “The emperor threatened war if he didn’t marry you. Then you both betrayed my father anyway—and you expect us to thank you for it?”

  Lady Octavia was stricken. The corners of her mouth tightened as if she were in great pain. There was something frightening about seeing a formidable person crumble. She seemed frail and I regretted my words. I tried to utter an apology, but Octavia had already withdrawn.

  Her voice was shaky. “Take her to the emperor.”

  THE guards led me to the emperor’s house and up the stairs to his private study, a room he called the Syracuse. This is not where he received guests, but where he worked alone and where he permitted only intimates like Agrippa and his advisor, Maecenas, to enter.

  Still, he admitted me.

  The emperor glanced up from his work as I appeared before him in bloody nightclothes. The guards pushed me to my knees, and I stayed there, beneath his chill gaze. He let me kneel there in silence, finishing whatever he was writing.

  And while he made me wait, I dared to glance at my surroundings. Here, hidden behind the plain doors, the ruler of the world’s riches finally shone. His desk was ornate and gold; beautiful art adorned the walls. Silk bunting draped from the ceiling in red, like the interior of a tent. The gold dolphins that had once adorned my mother’s bath now hung in one corner of his study. He liked to say that he had taken nothing from Egypt but an agate cup, but all of Egypt was now his personal property and I saw that even the rug beneath my knees had been stolen from my mother’s palace.

  “Selene,” the emperor finally said, “would you like to see what I’m working on?”

  I was too frightened to do anything but nod.

  He tilted a group of sketches so that I could see them. They were architectural in nature—plans for some kind of building—and he was making notes in the margins. “This will be my mausoleum,” he said. “They say the Egyptians have a fascination with death, so I thought it might interest you.”

  What I saw momentarily startled me enough to stop the trembling in my limbs. The design was a bastardization of Etruscan, Greek, and Egyptian architecture. It was a circular building with a vaulted ceiling. It also rose up on an earthen mound, like the tomb of Alexander the Great, but he’d ornamented it with obelisks like the ones my mother used to adorn her sepulcher. Yes, if I squinted, it was reminiscent of her tomb … and the implicit threat in his showing it to me made my blood run cold.

  “Don’t you like it?” the emperor asked. When I didn’t answer—because I couldn’t
answer—he asked, “Selene, didn’t you beg me for your life at my Triumph?”

  I dared not look up at him. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Did I spare you gladly at my sister’s request?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Then why are you and your brother so determined to die?”

  I shivered. “I swear to you, I was working no magic.”

  “Why is this blood all over you?” the emperor asked, rising from his desk to approach me. “Did you sneak out of your room somehow? Did you kill an animal? Tell the truth and don’t hesitate, for while my patience is legendary, it’s not unlimited.”

  I’d been so defiant with Lady Octavia, but before the emperor I cowered. “I woke up and my hands were cut everywhere with tiny symbols—a message from the goddess Isis.”

  “You don’t dare lie to me,” the emperor whispered, crouching in front of me as if to get a better look at my face.

  Desperately afraid, I jumped as if he’d shouted. “I’m not lying. I did nothing to bring it about. I swear it. It was the same as when Admiral Agrippa saw the symbols. They appear and disappear.”

  The emperor’s jaw worked, then he motioned to the guards. “Summon Agrippa and shut the door.”

  Now alone with him in this sumptuous apartment, I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. In the center of one wall, given the highest position of glory, was a statue of Fortuna, who stared down at me with a mocking wink. If Isis embodied all goddesses, was she watching me now through Fortuna’s fickle smile? “You have to believe me.”

  The emperor scrutinized my face. I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “Your mother lied prettily too.”

  I wasn’t brave like Helios. I couldn’t bring myself to argue in her defense. “I’m not lying.”

  The emperor narrowed his eyes. “What did this message say?”

  I didn’t want to tell him, but I was too frightened to refuse. “The message told us to live and love and learn.” I fumbled through my memories for more. “And the message said that we are the children of Isis.”

  He leaned back on his heels. “Your mother’s propaganda.”

  I stayed silent as the emperor rose and stormed back to his desk. “It’s also the propaganda of the Isiac temples. You and Helios have been brought up on this rubbish. Don’t deny it. Night and day since Cleopatra’s death I’ve heard this prattle. Isiac priests coming to plead for your lives. Even Herod, that old suspicious fool, is panicked by whispers of the word messiah.”

  “Why should King Herod fear us?” I asked.

  “He probably hates you more than he fears you,” the emperor said simply. “Your mother created in Herod a bitter enmity that survives her death. He was a powerful client king, you see, but Antony put your mother above him and called her the Queen of Kings. Besides, Herod’s people are always waiting for a savior of one type or another. Herod doesn’t want the Jews getting unpatriotic ideas. For that matter, neither do I. So let me assure you, in case you have doubts, you and your brothers are quite mortal. Don’t make me prove that to you. They called your mother an incarnation of Isis and your father an incarnation of Bacchus, and they’re both dead now.”

  It wasn’t just Bacchus that people called my father. Bacchus was also Dionysius, who was Osiris, who represented the mystery of rebirth and was the divine consort of Isis. As my mother’s husband, he could be no less, but I dared not explain that to the emperor as he perched himself on the edge of his desk and stared down at me. “Selene, we all choose our propaganda and the peasants believe. I’m just the son of a middle-class household. Not a drop of royal blood in my body, but now, for the first time in my life, I’m without rival. I’ve conquered where every other Roman has failed. So I’ll pick some god to be. Which one shall I choose?”

  I bit my lip at his heresy.

  “Isn’t Julius Caesar a god?” he asked me, sipping his tonic before a cough wracked his frame. “Since he adopted me as his son, it stands to reason that I must also be a god, but which one? My family descends from Venus, but she hardly strikes fear into the hearts of my enemies.” I just stared at him until he said, “Apollo might suffice.”

  Apollo. Cool, reasoned, Apollo the Purifier. That’s how Octavian saw himself—anointed to rid Rome of foreign influences and new ideas. Apollo was also known as the Pythian, for having slain the Python of Parnassus. At the emperor’s Triumph, they had called my mother the Serpent of the Nile, and I saw now that Octavian meant to build his legend upon her death. Not my father’s death—never that—for Mark Antony was Roman. No, Octavian wanted to be remembered for having rid Rome of Cleopatra.

  At last, Agrippa burst into the doorway, pounding one fist against his breastplate. “Hail, Caesar.”

  My father had once told me that war garb beyond the pomerium—the old city wall that protected the heart of the city—was forbidden. But I knew the emperor’s guards secreted daggers and weaponry beneath their togas. Agrippa also wore armor where he pleased. Despite the emperor’s constant praise of tradition, the old Roman rules that my father had cherished and my mother had derided were set aside at the convenience of those who ruled; it was a lesson not lost on me.

  The emperor motioned Agrippa inside. “The girl claims that all of this blood came from symbols cut in her hands. But they’re gone now, Agrippa. What do you say to that?”

  The brawny admiral looked at my blood-smeared appearance, eyes flickering with alarm. “It’s what I saw before.”

  The emperor crossed his arms over himself. “The guards can’t find any sharp instruments in her room, and I don’t see any wounds. The blood seems to be real, but I’m not sure where she would get it if it weren’t her own. She’s watched all the time.”

  “Magic,” Agrippa said. The emperor waved a dismissive hand. Agrippa seemed abashed and it made me uncomfortable to watch the way the emperor made the stronger man squirm. “Then illusion, perhaps.”

  “What’s the difference?” the emperor asked.

  “Illusion is when you see things that you don’t see. When you think … I’m not sure.”

  “Bah,” the emperor said.

  “It’s like the omens and augurs,” Agrippa explained.

  At that, the emperor’s mouth tightened. From the beginning of her founding, Rome practiced ritual divination and paid careful attention to good and bad omens. I could see, on the emperor’s face, a mixture of superstition and skepticism. “If I were to believe that this is magic or illusion, where did it come from?”

  “It’s the work of the Isiacs.” Agrippa’s weathered face was filled with conviction. “Cleopatra and Antony are not without partisans, even now. They just hide in this city like rats, waiting.”

  The emperor had said that he was completely without rival, but Agrippa’s words told a different story. No matter how much Octavian tried to make the war about my mother, the truth was that it had been a civil war. Romans had fought Romans in a bitter struggle. Octavian was the victor, but I’d just learned his power wasn’t secure. Some still opposed him, and thanks to Agrippa, I now knew that some of Octavian’s enemies were right here in Rome. They might even be willing to fight in our cause.

  The emperor lifted up his hands in a helpless gesture that seemed feigned. “If you’re right, where do we strike?”

  “Are you not Master of Rome?” Agrippa asked. “We know the Isiacs have a dangerous faith. They encourage wives to stand equal to their husbands; they tempt slaves to rebellion; they threaten the social order. Their priesthood operates in the shadows. Who are they to stand in your way? Leave nowhere for them to hide. Destroy all the temples in Rome devoted to Isis.”

  This aroused a visceral reaction from me. “You can’t!”

  Agrippa glared at my outburst, but the emperor’s voice was cautious, as if he were standing on the edge of a blade. “The girl is right. You know the cult makes adherents of nobles and slaves alike. Tearing down temples in Rome would seem impious.”

  “Yet, there’s precedent for it, Caesar. In days pa
st the Senate ordered the temples of this Egyptian cult destroyed in Rome.”

  The emperor’s cool expression betrayed that he already knew this. He’d drawn it out of Agrippa, making it seem as if he was reluctant to attack. But for whose benefit was this show of reluctance? Mine or his?

  “When we destroyed Isiac temples in Rome,” the emperor said, “the people rebelled. No, we need to slowly undermine their faith before we make such a bold move.”

  As I would later come to understand, it was a classic strategy. Octavian never risked open battle until he’d weakened his opponent through treachery; that’s what he’d done to my father too. Agrippa, apparently content to play his role in the emperor’s theatrical construction, asked the question he was supposed to: “How will we undermine the cult?”

  “We’ll first demonstrate that the twins are merely children. They’ll be seen often as members of the imperial family, doing normal things children do. They’ll be seen to be happy and content.”

  Then he looked my way and I realized he’d reserved a special part in his play, just for me. “If Selene suffers more of these illusions upon her body, she’s to come to me immediately. We’ll accuse the Isiac temple of using magic to attack her because I’ve taken her in. They attack her, a mere child, because she no longer advances their anti-Roman agenda.”

  Shocked, my tongue worked slowly. “But it’s not true.”

  “It is true. You’ve been attacked, Selene. Did you not claim this makes you bleed and causes you pain?”

  “Yes, but—”

  The emperor hovered above me with an aura of threat. “You’ll tell us if it happens again. Won’t you?”

  He’d made me betray my family dignity before all Rome, and now he asked me to betray my religion as well. But the goddess had commanded me to live, love and learn. I’d be able to do none of that if I openly defied the emperor.

  Masking my hatred like a pharaoh dons her headdress and face paint, I nodded my assent.

  Ten

  I waited for days for Isis to come to me again—half fearful, half eager—but she did not. There was nothing to do but fall into the rhythm of my new life. My world now was the collection of brick houses on the Palatine Hill, an imperial compound connected by gardens and surrounded by low walls. There were no gold-capped columns or marble walkways like in Alexandria, but what the Romans lacked in splendor they made up for in thievery.