0316382981 (29 page)

Elder

H
elmed, on horseback, Berenice squeezed the reins until the leather plowed into her palms and her charger slowed. She glanced out over the gathered soldiers. The infantrymen who formed the central phalanx wore red pleated tunics cut midthigh—the traditional battle garb of the Seleucids. Their lines stretched the length of the dusty practice field between the two single-story barracks that flanked either end. Sensible buildings, they lacked all ornament save a flaking layer of gold paint on their columns—a stark contrast to the opulent monuments that her father had constructed for himself. Still, the edifices were strong and solid—loyal. Unlike the men drawn up between them who’d clogged her canals with corpses. They didn’t seem so fearsome now. The rows on foot reached only halfway to the sandy beach beyond, which was dotted with marooned ships. Boys and old men, for the most part, not battle-ready soldiers. It was hard to believe that they numbered six thousand. On horse, Berenice could count perhaps five hundred, though she’d been promised twice that. Nereus, it seemed, had lied on several fronts.

Her sworn men formed a neat column dividing the traitors from the shore. A scant thousand, though most were mounted, which granted an advantage. Enough to guard against an escape by sea. Seleucus’s soldiers would be dead before they reached their boats. “Don’t be rash,” Pieton had warned her as she was boosted to the saddle. “They’ll never cleave to a woman’s rule.” But she had no choice. Bold or brazen, she’d bind these men to her.

“You grieve your general’s death,” she began. The winds whipped to steal her words. She’d conquer them too, Aeolus’s unruly charges. “And I, too, grieve his loss. But your grief has curdled into mislaid fury. Fury that you turn against me, your queen. Fury that brings you to attack my soldiers, not as men but as craven boys, in brothels and back streets. Fury that is rooted in a treacherous rumor. Because in your hearts, you know the truth: Seleucus’s death is a tragedy, but not one of my making.”

The breeze carried murmurs of disbelief. The footmen shifted in the dirt. More than one pair of eyes floated to their ships and the formidable guards who blocked that route. None of that concerned Berenice. She didn’t need to turn their hearts—only their swords and their tongues.

“And whose grief is greater than my own? You lost a brilliant general, but I lost so much more: my cherished husband, bound to me by blood and vows. His life was marked with bravery, passion, and, above all else, devotion to his subjects. I have never met a man more driven to avenge his realm’s wounds. In his final breath, he bade me, ‘Berenice, my queen, my love,’ his hand clutched in mine, ‘don’t let Rome steal the double kingdom as it stole my own.’”

Without thinking, she parroted the tone and timbre of Seleucus’s voice. His men ceased their grumbles. Their eyes fixed not on escape but on her alone. They held still and silent. No man adjusted his shield or fidgeted with his spear. Even their horses were frozen in the sand.

“You’re free to go,” she told them. “Throw down your weapons, if you will, and slink back to bow to your Roman overlords. My men won’t keep you from your ships.”

One shield, and then another, clattered to the earth. A javelin, its point glinting in the morning sun, joined them. Somewhere down the line a sword unfastened from its belt. Then silence. The other spears gleamed fierce against the sky. Why not? Here they were fed and housed and fucked. Who knew what sort of reception they’d get in Antioch? Given the choice, ninety-nine men of a hundred would stay the familiar course.

“Let those cowards flee. Be glad of it. I’d never ask a soldier of mine to fight beside such cravens. You who remain will be rewarded, granted lands and moneys and wives for your services to Egypt. And what are lands beside the greatest prize of all: the glory of carrying on your king’s fight against Rome, against the wretched Republic that rapes your land and your daughters?”

Only the wind and the waves echoed her words. Had she spoken too openly? Too brashly? Too soon? Perhaps she should have drawn out her praise of Seleucus. Now that he was dead, she had little trouble stomaching his lies. The blood pulsed in her fists. Her horse kicked at caked earth until, at last, a sputtered cry.

“To Queen Berenice the Shining One!” A man had called out her coronation name—some old, bedraggled soldier with a wispy beard and wrinkled brow. Such a supporter might hurt her cause more than help it: some wouldn’t want to join their voices to one who looked so near death’s door. The second silence drowned her. Pieton had been right, with all his gnawing doubts. These men thought no more of her than their master had. No number of choice words would ply them to her side.

“May the gods shine their glory on the Queen of the Upper and Lower Lands,” a second voice answered.

This enthusiast had a more promising look: he was a well-built youth with dark curls to his chin, his javelin kissed by the sun. The soldiers around him regarded him with interest. A third shout followed, this one from a mounted man, and then another until both armies roared together, louder even than at her crowning: “Queen Berenice the Shining One.”

On horseback, she was her best: bright and graceful. She’d remember to make better use of that. She had been haunted by her mother’s fears for so long, and for what? Here she appeared hardened, never soft. Whenever she addressed her fighting men, it should be from this perch, where they’d see her not as a failed woman but as some sort of hybrid creature born to lead. She scratched her stallion’s mane; he whinnied in appreciation.

The soldiers carried on with their shouting, even after she’d raised her hand in acknowledgment and eased her charger back toward the palace. Their cries echoed in her ears as she dismounted and handed off her steed. Victory spun her thoughts. She even admired her father’s details: the ivory gates curled with vultures and lions and men-at-arms. Serapis stared down at her, and for once it wasn’t with foreboding. She could swear a smile twitched on his stone lips.

“My queen.” Dryton cleared his throat at her side. He seemed twitchy too, his cockiness worn away. “My queen, you were—you are magnificent.”

Once, such a compliment from him would have made her flush with pleasure. No more. One pretty man’s praises hardly made an impression.

“I’m surprised at you, Dryton. You’re not a man given to sycophancy. Out with it, then. What favor do you beg? Has some golden trinket caught your eye, some girl you wish to wed or bed?” His good looks and self-assured smiles had no effect on her. Berenice knew what such a man was worth. He died as easily as any other.

“I ask—I ask nothing,” he stammered. “I don’t, perhaps, flatter as swiftly as other men. But your speech—your speech was brilliant. I’ve never heard your father give one so inspiring as that. If there was a time I underestimated you…” He trailed off. “Well, I was wrong to do so.”

A king, she strode through the colonnades. Hatshepsut on the temple walls. Fair news traveled fast: the eyes of guards and servants and noblemen trailed her with wonder. She tasted it in the air. This was what it felt like to be loved—and feared. It was intoxicating. She could grow used to this spinning of her head and heart. No holes remained now, no emptiness lingered inside her, no worry about what might take fury’s place. Only triumph, and bliss.

Her royal atrium, though, was filled with small men with small minds. They didn’t care for her triumphs. Muttering to himself, Nereus hunched over a map of the Upper Lands. Reedy Thais whispered at his side. The old man pretended not to notice. She wondered if he realized that she knew about his lies, that his life trembled on a thread. She might merely reach over and cut it at any instant.

Pieton sat apart, staring down another scroll. He’d a dour look about him.

Berenice cast a smile at Dryton. “Come. Look at our stern eunuch. Perhaps he hasn’t heard the good news?”

“She was magnificent,” her minister of war repeated at her right.

“That’s lofty praise indeed, considering the source,” Pieton replied. “And though I hate to bear bad tidings, there was, you may recall, another matter neglected as you charmed the Seleucids. A certain petitioner was kept waiting for some long hours. He wasn’t pleased by the delay, especially given all the previous postponements.”

Psenptais. The high priest of Ptah. Her father’s priest, his
prophet.
Pieton had caught her: this rendezvous had slipped her mind. Or rather, for days she’d been doing her best to forget that he’d sailed down from Memphis at all. Whatever his business here, her father’s creature, it didn’t bode well. The god’s priests rarely ventured to Alexandria; she didn’t like his newfound interest in her goings-on. But perhaps she should be flattered: traveling here showed that he recognized her rule.

“I’ll see him now.” She snapped her fingers at a passing servant, who scurried on to carry out her words. After all, she had nothing to fear from Psenptais anymore—her father had failed in Rome. She was the last remaining Ptolemy, and she ruled alone.

“Psenptais, son of Psenptais, high priest of Ptah, prophet of the Lord of the Two Lands,” Berenice’s herald called from the center archway.

The words smarted in her ears. That he dared to announce by that title, when the man who had bestowed it was cowering behind Artemis’s skirts in Ephesus. Berenice remembered this Psenptais only slightly, in bits and pieces that sprang more from the tales that she’d heard of him than from actual recollections. There was the famed story of how at thirteen he’d crowned her father, then a nervous but precocious boy. But that was years ago, well before her birth. The priest who emerged before her was a man grown.

And a handsome one, even, despite his shaved pate and simple linen robes. The two boys who attended him looked young—too young even to grow beards. Psenptais gave her a long look, expectant, as though he thought that she—
his queen
—should speak first. She said nothing. This man could sway little now.

“Troubles plague the double kingdom,” he murmured. He spoke Greek well, almost as if it was a native tongue, but with a strange formality common to Upper Landers. And he didn’t deign to address her as queen.

“What troubles, Psenptais? The Nile rose high this Inundation, which promises a prosperous Emergence. Last year, our farms were barren, but this season they will grow lush and green. I see few troubles there.”

“I speak of troubles of a higher sort. Events that shock both gods and men. Events that are of great interest to Ptah, and to every god. Events here in Alexandria.” He paused to clear his throat. “Marriage is a divine rite, a rite that should not be undertaken with ill intent. Our idols are none other than the great Serapis and his unwavering wife, Isis.”

Berenice’s hand hid a smile. Had he come to lecture her on marital devotion? Her, a Ptolemy? Her eyes slipped to Pieton. His face was a mask of stone. She could read no amusement on his pursed lips. A pity. He should laugh more. Why not? Triumph tasted sweet.

“When I heard that you were to marry Seleucus, it gladdened my heart. The gods prefer a man—any man—to rule. But other news, troubling news, reaches Memphis. And when I heard that so soon after your wedding day Seleucus lay dead, dead not at a brother’s hand but at a wife’s—”

“Mind your words, Psenptais,” Pieton’s voice cut in. “You don’t mean to accuse your queen of murder.”

Berenice held up a ringed palm. “Silence, my friend. Let the good priest go on.”

But the eunuch’s words had called the man back to his senses. Psenptais’s eyes sprang furrows; he realized that he didn’t stand before Ptah, or before her meek father, but before a far more fearsome judge. Berenice was no child who’d listen to his lectures on marriage and divinity.

“Psenptais, go on. I beg you,” she goaded him. “You were, I believe, about to blame me for my husband’s death, a tragedy that pains me beyond measure. I’m sure you know what fate awaits those who levy false accusations against the queen.”

“I am not—I am the high priest of Ptah, master of justice. Threats won’t sway me from the truth.” His head was held high; his lip twitched.

“Tell me, Psenptais: how does Ptah anoint his high priests?” Threats would sway him—Berenice was quite sure—as long as they were clearly made. “You are, as you say, but a servant to the great deity. In dire times, surely, a god might select another priest, a servant who would be more willing to fulfill his duties here on this earth. Mortal lives are only brief flickers before the deathless ones.” She smiled lightly at the priest. He didn’t look so frightful now—a tall man, and powerfully built, but a mere ant before her. And to remember how he’d frightened her, how he might have refused to crown her queen. He would refuse her nothing.

“Ptah yields mighty powers. He must and shall do as he pleases.”

“It does ease my mind to hear that.” Her voice held light and airy—she had no reason to fear. He’d come to chide her, but by doing so he’d conferred approval on her rule. Priests held sway when rulers fought amongst themselves, or when the Nile failed to flood and crops were low. Not when the gods smiled on their earthly agent as they smiled on her. “Your Ptah’s temple might serve as a good place to reflect on my words—unless you’d prefer that we arrange accommodations for you here.”

“Your offer is kind, my queen, but you are right. My own humble rooms will serve well for such reflections.” He kept his tone steady. A last attempt at dignity.

The carved ebony doors beneath the ivory-enameled arch swung open and swallowed the man of god and his attendants. The atrium didn’t stir, except with the sound of some ibis calling in the distance. Thais and Nereus, Dryton and Pieton, were joined for once in silence. Fear glinted in their eyes—fear mingled with respect.