Daughters of the Nile (15 page)

He created my dark soul as a reflection of his own, so I shouldn’t be surprised that when he looks at me, it’s all he sees. “I don’t know what I can say to convince you, Caesar.”

“Nothing, Selene. Even Agrippa knows the truth.”

I miss a breath. “Agrippa?”

“He can count months too.” The emperor strokes the warm bundle in my arms with affection, and in his voice, I hear longing. “Agrippa demands that I deny this little boy his birthright. That I deny my own flesh and blood. That I treat my long-awaited heir as if he were only the petty prince of a faraway land. And little Ptolemy is an innocent in all this, just as Caesarion was.”

I’m startled to hear him speak my brother’s name—the brother he murdered because two men with the name
Caesar
was one too many. I’ve always wielded against the emperor his need to repeat history; I’ve played upon his desire for glory and used the past to torment him. It has never before occurred to me that I’ve worked into him a poison that also sickens me . . .

“Ptolemy is not Caesarion,” I say quietly.

“He’s
just
like Caesarion.”

I stare into those gray eyes and see myself as he sees me. I’m another Cleopatra, another foreign queen summoned to Rome with a child rumored to be Caesar’s. I come with a cuckolded husband, a great entourage, to bear witness to a sort of Triumph. This scenario was the undoing of Julius Caesar; does Augustus not fear it will be his undoing too? “Stop this. We were finished with all this the moment I sailed away from Greece.”

His eyes widen, a plea in their depths. “I did not let you go of my own free will. Don’t you know how much I want to crown you Queen of Egypt and make our son the ruler of the world? I’ll find a way. I’ll make our dreams come true.”

“Those aren’t our dreams. Those were the dreams of your father and my mother, dreams long since dead. I’m content to let them rest. I’ve buried those dreams. I’ve come to Rome only at your command, to offer fealty as your client queen. This is the Prince of Mauretania, Juba’s son. I bore
Juba’s
son.”

Augustus forces my chin up so that I must look at him. “You would never allow such a thing to happen unless your husband has become so inconvenient that you desire to be made a widow.”

It’s the calm, cold threat in his voice that stops my heart. There in his chilly gray eyes is the glinting dagger-tip of his pride. And I realize, for the first time, how I have gambled with Juba’s life. It does not matter if the emperor is truly convinced that my son is the fruit of his loins. What has driven him to my son’s nursery in the middle of the night is that he cannot bear the idea of another man touching me.

I’ve been told the emperor has the soul of a poet, but I’ve always known him to be an actor and playwright, and we’re all left to guess at which way he’ll turn the plot. If he wants to believe that he has a son, is it more dangerous to play along or to take from him the one object of his desire that fate has denied him?

I’m silent, half-horrified, half-fascinated, clutching my baby to my breast as the emperor asks, “Do you know what I face here in Rome without you, Selene? If I want to keep my alliance with Agrippa, he says I must adopt his son. I’ll be father in name, but Agrippa will be the father of the next ruler of Rome
in truth
. That’s how he steals my glory. How he seeks to cheat me. Perhaps I’m better off to be rid of Agrippa once and for all. Certainly my wife thinks so.”

Of course she would. Such a bargain between the emperor and his greatest general will threaten Livia’s position as First Woman in Rome. If the emperor does as Agrippa wishes him to do, Livia would be obliged to give way to Julia, the stepdaughter she tormented.

I find myself unexpectedly delighted by that prospect . . .

My mother was once the most powerful woman in the world, and if I cannot walk in her footsteps, Julia should. So I defend the admiral without whom my family might still be alive. “It’s no easy thing to kill Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, or you’d have done it by now.”

The emperor almost smiles at my cool assessment. “Agrippa is as wary of me as I am of him. We’ve kept the pretense of harmony, but for how long?”

“Julia would have you reconciled with her husband.”

“Such a reconciliation will make rivals of you,” the emperor says, his gaze still fixed on the babe in my arms. “Julia pitted against you. Her son pitted against yours.”

My blood begins to rise to this bait. He’s whistling like a master to a well-trained hunting cat, calling to the dynastic ambitions that have been bred deep into my Ptolemaic bones. But he has done it before and I turned it away. The price was too steep. The world for my soul. It’s still not a trade I’m willing to make. “You must do what’s best for the empire.”

* * *

AUGUSTUS
is already gone when Juba enters the nursery. “What did he want? What did he say?”

“Nothing,” I reply as my innocent baby nuzzles against my breasts.

Juba slants a dubious gaze at me, his eyes taking in the loose hair that flows over my shoulders. Here I am, having greeted the emperor in the middle of the night, dressed in little more than what I wore to bed. It would be enough to make any other man suspicious and Juba knows he has better reason than any other man. “Do you mean Caesar was silent? Utterly silent?”

Knowing the emperor as he does, this prospect probably alarms him more than if the emperor shouted and raged. And I am so shaken by the visit that I tell him the truth. “The emperor has convinced himself that Ptolemy is his son.”

I watch my husband wrestle with his emotions until his mouth thins into a straight line. “I see.”

Laying the baby back down in his cradle, gently untangling a fist from my hair, I ask, “Aren’t you going to ask me if it’s true?”

“No,” Juba says.

Remembering a long-ago day on the deck of a ship when my husband wouldn’t hear the truth about how Augustus violated me, I turn to glare. “Go on. Ask me if I’ve deceived you.”

Juba sits in an alcove by the window, folding his hands in his lap. “I didn’t ask you the day you laid this baby at my feet and I’m not going to ask you now.”

“Doesn’t it matter?” I ask, lashing out at him though it is the emperor who has me furious. “You’re already playing the father to another man’s daughter, so why not a son? Or don’t you want to know? I think you’re so beholden to the emperor that you cannot bear to know all the insults he’s done you.”

In the face of my tirade, Juba’s tone is calm and even. “I’m not going to ask because if the torn trust between us is ever to be mended, one of us must give way. I’ve thrown down my weapons on the chance that you’ll do the same.”

My cheeks sting with embarrassment even as the heat of my temper drains away. “I thought—”

“You thought I’d accuse you, as I’ve done before. You thought I’d treat you coldly.”

Coming to his side, I say, “I’m sorry.”

He looks weary. “As am I. I know that I’ve taught you to guard yourself against me but I’m a man of learning. I’m trying not to repeat my mistakes.”

And I’m trying not to repeat mine. I want to reassure him that he is Ptolemy’s father—to give him the gift of honesty, freely given. But when I start to speak he presses his lips to mine. Not softly. Not experimentally. Not playfully. He kisses me with a desire and perhaps an expectation of more. But more I cannot give him, not here in the shadow of the Palatine Hill . . .

* * *

“MY
father was here,” Julia says by way of morning greeting. She usually sleeps late; I hadn’t expected to see her so early. “Don’t bother to deny it.” Julia sniffs. “The slaves know everything. Phoebe says you rose from your bed and that you went to the emperor half-dressed!”

I’d expected recriminations from my husband—not from the emperor’s daughter. As we sit down together in my
triclinium
for the morning meal old-fashioned Romans insist is a gateway to Oriental corruption, I say, “I only went to see that my children were sleeping safely and was taken by surprise by the way your father stole into my house.”

Julia’s beautiful face twists in bitterness. “I thought he might have come for me. Isn’t that foolish? I hoped that my father might have come to take me home. That he came to say, ‘Well done, Julia. I know what you risked to obey my command and I’m grateful.’ But he didn’t even ask for me!”

“Of course he did,” I say, sipping at wine vinegar and water, a mixture Romans swear by to awaken the senses. “I told him you were quite big with child and shouldn’t be awakened. I told your father he must let you have your rest.”

She knows I’m lying and her nostrils flare, but before she can accuse me, Tala rounds the corner to announce that we have a visitor. “There’s a Roman at the gate most eager to see Lady Julia. King Juba has gone out to greet him.”

Julia’s head snaps up. “Who?”

“Admiral Agrippa,” Tala replies.

The emperor’s daughter goes pale with fright, lifting both hands to her face. To calm her, I say, “Go back to your rooms, Julia. I’ll see what I can do to make your husband leave.”

Julia laughs bitterly. “No, Selene. Not even you can make Agrippa do anything. I wondered which of them would come for me . . . would it be my father? I admit it; I even wondered if it would be Iullus. I just didn’t think it would be
Agrippa
.”

Steeling her spine, she snaps her fingers at her slave girl and Phoebe helps her rise up out of her chair; for Julia is so pregnant now it takes both of them to get her upright. Then we all go out to the front of my house to greet the admiral where he is mounted upon a warhorse accompanied by
lictors
, the ax-wielding guards that denote his office and power.

Agrippa is a big man with a thick brow over his fierce eyes. He has the bearing of a commander, and even though he’s aged since I saw him last, the graying temples and weathered face only make him look more dangerous.

Fortunately, he and Juba appear to be in amiable conversation. My husband has maintained good relations with the two most powerful men in the world. Juba has no mind for intrigue—he is ever willing to swallow Roman lies and propaganda—but he has always said that he wished to bring about a more peaceful world, and in spite of my reservations, I find myself earnestly hoping that he may accomplish it.

Agrippa dismounts and falls into stride with the king, entering our courtyard. “Welcome, Admiral Agrippa,” I say, forgoing almost all the formalities of address. It isn’t as if my whole royal court is looking on, after all. “It seems that our little home on the Tiber has become a veritable embassy, which the most important men of the Republic feel compelled to visit.”

He takes my meaning at once. “Caesar was here?”

“Indeed, he was,” I reply, hoping the invocation of the emperor is enough to still Agrippa’s hand if he means to do violence. But Julia fearlessly pushes past me to face her husband.

The two of them stare at each other and the courtyard falls into silence.

Agrippa is the first to break it. “Pack your things, Julia.”

“I’m delighted to see you too, my darling husband.”

Agrippa grinds that massive jaw. “Don’t call me
husband
when you ran away from me like a rebellious slave. I should thrash you within an inch of your life.”

Moving to her side, I’m ready to defend her, but Julia lifts both her hands in invitation. “So do it, Marcus. Right here in front of the royalty of Mauretania. Better still, take me to the forum and beat me. Humiliate the daughter of Augustus and the granddaughter of Julius Caesar the god. I’ll wear the bruises proudly before your legions. Before your children. Do you think that will endear you to them? Or do you think the bruises will serve as evidence of the lowbred
New Man
that you are?”

I’m surprised to see him flinch, surprised that she knows how to cut him. “I thought you’d been lost at sea, you wicked woman. When I heard nothing from you, I thought you’d been lost or taken by pirates. Do you understand? I feared you were
dead
.”

Julia lowers her chin, perhaps a bit chagrinned. “Wickedness wasn’t my aim. In this, I was an obedient and dutiful daughter.”

Agrippa grunts, as if this were the only excuse that might appease him. “Then rejoice, because your father and I hope to soon be in accord.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to go with you.”

He glowers at her. “Get your women and your things and follow me meekly or I’ll haul you over the saddle of my horse and carry you off like a Gallic slave girl.”

Julia sighs. “For such a brilliant strategist, you’re terribly simpleminded at times. There
are
other options . . .”

Agrippa raises a brow. “Such as?”

“You could extend a hand to me. I might take it. I might walk
with
you away from this house, where all the people can see us warmly reunited. Why, you might be vulgar enough to press a kiss to my cheek. And if the stars align, I might forget that you’re just a coarse soldier, not fit to put hands on me . . .”

I’m slack-jawed at her nerve and even more astonished that Agrippa seems prepared to bargain. He crosses his meaty arms over his chest and asks, “What would such a performance cost me?”

“Not much, for I confess I’m more pleased to see you again than I thought I’d be.”

I swear I see a blush creep under his stubble. “Don’t trifle with me, Julia. We’re neither of us very fond of each other.”

“Oh, yes,” Julia says cheerfully. “You despise me and I think you’re a perfectly contemptible old goat, which makes my sentimentality all the more confusing. Perhaps it can be explained by way of the fact that we’re having another baby. Perhaps it will even be another son, which is all you care about, isn’t it?”

Agrippa barks, “What do you want, Julia? A gown of Coan cloth? A strand of pearls? Tell me now, because I’m not going to stand here all day while you heap insults on my head. What do you want this time?”

“I want my mother,” she says, the thread of hope in her voice pulled tight. “I’ve been scarcely permitted to see her since the day my father took me from her arms. I want to see my mother.”