Cleopatra’s Daughter: A Novel (51 page)

We took the winnings with us to the Forum, where we all bought
nivem dulcem
even though we were freezing, then washed it down with warm honeyed wine.

At the theater, Lucius critiqued the dreadful speech making and the five of us shouted, “Bring on the Bear!” It was an awful play, but
none of us cared. We laughed at the senator who fell asleep in his seat, and at the woman whose snores were disturbing the actors. By the time Alexander and I returned to our chamber, the sun had long since set, and the guards looked ready to collapse.

“Felicem diem natalem,”
he repeated, then embraced me tightly. “Sleep well.”

“Where are you going?”

He smiled.

“And you don’t think Octavia will know?”

“It’s just for one night.”

“It’s been many nights,” I said sternly. “The slaves talk.”

“Then let them. In six months,” he added darkly, “we’ll both be married. We might as well enjoy our freedom while we can.”

I watched as he disappeared down the hall, then shut my door and blew out the oil lamps. As I was closing my eyes, I imagined that I heard footsteps in the atrium, and I wondered if my brother had changed his mind. But the door didn’t open, and I fell into a deep sleep filled with strange dreams.

Then, suddenly, I awoke with a start. There was the sound of sandals slapping against marble, then a wail like the scream of a wounded animal tore through the villa, shattering the stillness. Doors were being opened and shut, and slaves were shouting to one another for lamplight. I rushed from my couch and put on my cloak, but I couldn’t find my sandals. By the time I found them, I could hear women crying and Vitruvius’s voice shouting orders over the madness. I fumbled with the door, unable to find the handle in the darkness, then flung it open and stepped into the hall.

Outside, Antonia and Tonia were already up, shivering in their heavy linen sheaths.

“What’s happening?” I cried. But neither would answer me. “Who’s
screaming?” I followed their gaze to Lucius’s room, then cried out, “Alexander!”

Antonia reached out to stop me. “Don’t go in there,” she pleaded.

“Why?” Slaves were running with hot water, then Vitruvius appeared with bottles and bandages. I approached the chamber slowly, as if still in a dream, and when I saw what had happened, my legs nearly gave way beneath me.

“Take her away from here!” Vitruvius shouted.

A dozen different men were attending to Lucius, who had been wounded in the chest and was lying on the floor. But on the couch, still dressed in his white tunic and cloak, Alexander wasn’t moving. Several slaves stepped forward to take me away, but I shrieked at them wildly, “Leave me alone!” I rushed to Alexander and took him by the shoulders. Blood seeped through his shirt onto the linens. A deep gash ran along his neck, and when I felt his cheeks they were already cold. “No,” I whispered again and again. “No!” I screamed so that Isis could hear me.

Hands lifted me up, and men began saying things I didn’t understand. There was light, and I saw books and sketches. Someone had laid me down on a couch in the library. Gallia and Magister Verrius appeared, followed by Juba and Agrippa. There were times when I wasn’t sure if I was sleeping or awake. As dawn came, Gallia pressed a cup into my hands.

“Drink.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve been crying all night. You need fluid,” she instructed.

I drank, but didn’t taste anything. I could hear Juba questioning the slaves in the atrium, and when he came to me, I turned my face away.

“Selene,” he said gently.

I closed my eyes.

“I know you don’t wish to speak, but if we’re to find who did this—”

“Just tell me,” I whispered, “is my brother … is my brother gone?”

Both Agrippa and Juba were standing above me, but neither of them spoke.

I opened my eyes. “Is he dead?” I cried.

Gallia rushed to my side. “Selene, he was attacked. He had no chance.”

Tears blurred my vision, then suddenly my mind was as clear as ever. I remembered Augustus’s letter to Octavia. “You want to know who did this?” I demanded.

“Yes,” Juba said.

“Then find Octavia! Tell her to bring you Augustus’s letter!”

Juba frowned at me.

“Do you think I’m lying? Find Augustus’s letter!” I shrieked.

I heard a slave go running, and when he returned, Octavia was with him.

She handed the scroll to me with trembling hands. “What do you want?” she asked nervously. “What’s in the letter?”

I read the first line to myself, just to be sure I wasn’t mistaken, but it was there.
On this, the fifteenth year of their birth, I hope you will wish the Gemini well
. The Gemini. Meaning Castor and Pollux. The twin sons of Leda, and the brothers to Helen of Troy. Except Castor was killed, leaving Pollux all alone.

I continued reading, only this time, louder:

Tears burned my cheeks, and I looked from one face to the other. “
A
good marriage,” I repeated.
“One!
And why just one?” I shouted angrily. “Because he knew my brother would never be married!” When Octavia gasped, I sat up and read: “ ‘There is nothing nearly as momentous as the passing from childhood to adulthood, and it is an occasion that merits serious consideration.’ If these words aren’t a death sentence, then what is? He wanted Alexander dead! The last of the Ptolemies. Antony’s son. And at fifteen, a man!”

“No!” Octavia wouldn’t believe it.
“No,”
she whispered.

Agrippa said firmly, “We will find these men, and they will be tried.”

But it was a lie. All of it was a lie. Augustus had paraded us through the streets of Rome and made a show of raising us before the people. But always, in the back of his mind, he knew that my brother would never live to wear the
toga virilis
. First Caesarion, then Antyllus, now Alexander …

Thunder clapped overhead, and I heard Juba say, “Leave the princess alone. She needs her rest.” When Octavia hesitated, he told her firmly, “Go and tend to Lucius.”

My other half. My twin. “How will I live without him?” I whispered.

Gallia placed a warm cloth on my head. “By getting some sleep.”

“But I don’t want to sleep!” I sat up and searched the room desperately. “I want to see him.”

“He’s being dressed for burial.”

“Where?” I cried. “In an unmarked grave? Beneath a plain tombstone on the Appian Way?” I looked up at Juba. “You must have known about this,” I accused.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Only one man on the Palatine kills for Augustus.”

His jaw worked angrily. “And that man isn’t me.”

“I want you to leave.” When he didn’t move, I screamed violently, “I want you away from here!”

Hurt flickered across his face, then he turned and walked toward the door.

“Juba!” Gallia called after him.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “He knew about this. He probably planned it!”

“Don’t be a fool,” Gallia said strictly. “He would never do such a thing!”

“How do you know? Who else knows Augustus’s closest secrets?”

“His wife,” she said when Juba was gone. “Livia knows everything.”

“And Livia isn’t here!”

“But her slaves are.” She pushed me firmly to the couch. “They will find them,” she promised, “but you must rest. There is nothing you can do for him now.” Her voice broke, and though she turned, I could see that she was crying.

But she was wrong. There was still one thing I could do.

I WOULDN’T
let him be buried without a mausoleum, and because Octavia feared that the last of the Ptolemies would end her life by suicide, she wrote to Augustus, and he approved. My brother’s body was kept in the Temple of Apollo while workers from the Pantheon, the basilica, and the baths worked day and night for three months to finish. And in the time it took to build his tomb, I saw no one unless they came to me.

When Marcellus first heard the news of my brother’s death, he’d sworn vengeance on Livia and even Augustus, but I’d warned him that if he spoke a word against his uncle, he would suffer next. It was better to wait, I told him. To bide his time until he became emperor. But as winter melted into spring, he was still angry, and even when the Red Eagle posted acta across Rome denouncing the imperial family as murderers who treated their guests like slaves, killing them off with impunity, he wasn’t satisfied. No perpetrator had been found for the crime, and though Lucius survived and could describe his assailants, nothing was done. No one spoke of how Alexander had been found in Lucius’s room. It was as if their love had never existed.

I ate alone. I worked alone. And when I asked Octavia to move me
from the chamber I had shared with Alexander, she placed me next to Antonia, who came to me at night and brought me food.

“Do you think you will return to the triclinium?” she asked.

It was April, and I shook my head. “Not until the mausoleum is done.”

“But it’s finished,” she protested. “His funeral is tomorrow.”

I blinked away my tears. The priests of Isis and Serapis had embalmed my brother’s body, and I had gone to visit him every day in the temple. What would it be like not to have him near me? “I’m not sure the tomb is done,” I said.

“But what will you do?” Antonia cried. “Work on it forever?”

I turned and looked at her. She had her mother’s gray-eyed innocence. “Yes, I will.” And I would make the mausoleum my second home. When Augustus returned and married me off to some decrepit senator, I would leave my husband as often as possible. And when he’d go searching for me, he’d find me sleeping by Alexander, the two of us together in a marble eternity.

Antonia’s eyes filled with tears. “But it isn’t natural.”

“No. And neither was my brother’s death.”

The funeral began on the Palatine, and as the procession wound its way through the streets, thousands of people came to see the murdered Prince of Egypt. He was borne on a bier, carried by slaves, and preceded by the imperial family. I walked at his side, while Lucius and Vitruvius walked behind me. I could hear Lucius weeping, the deep, heart-wrenching cries of a man completely gutted by grief, and if I hadn’t been so embittered I might have gone to offer him some comfort. But I had no reserve of sympathy left in me. It had been cut away with Alexander’s life.

As we reached his mausoleum on the Appian Way, I wondered which of the people among us had been responsible for my brother’s death. But everyone’s mourning appeared genuine, and whenever
Octavia looked on Alexander, sobs racked her body. An Egyptian embalmer had disguised the wound across my brother’s neck, and if not for the thin layer of gauze across his face, Alexander might have been sleeping. The beautiful curls he had taken such care of were still dark and lustrous, topped by his pearl diadem. He was the last of the male Ptolemies and my only hope for returning to Egypt. He was my twin and my closest friend. And now, his short life was over.

We entered the cool recesses of the tomb, and Julia stifled a sob with her fist. The marble plaque she had purchased to celebrate our birthday hung above the sarcophagus. When Castor, who was mortal, had died, his immortal twin chose to join him in the sky. They were the Gemini, and now Alexander had gone to Elysium to wait for me.

The priests of Isis and Serapis lifted my brother’s body from the bier into the coffin, singing Egyptian hymns that no Roman would recognize. And when I placed my book of sketches in Alexander’s sarcophagus, I saw Vitruvius cover his eyes with his hand. As the lid was lowered my knees grew weak, but Marcellus steadied me, and I saw Juba flinch as if something about this disturbed him deeply. He regarded us from across the chamber with eyes as hard as onyx, and I thought,
If justice truly exists in this world, my brother will be avenged
.

Then Roman hymns were sung, and Maecenas read a long poem in honor of the Ptolemies. Even Tiberius was shaken. His eyes were red as if he’d been weeping, and when he placed a heavy wreath at the front of the tomb, I noticed that his hands were unsteady. But when the ceremony was finished, I could still smell the oil of cedar and myrrh used to perfume my brother’s body, and as long as it lingered, I wanted to remain in the mausoleum.