Daughters of the Nile (27 page)

I remember a time when Augustus wanted me to do just that. It was then, and is still, beyond my imagination, not to mention outside my reach. “You still dream of me battling the Romans, Euphronius? As my twin summoned such fires that he burned Roman legions into dust? Or did he lose that battle?” I do not ask it to be cruel; I have forgiven the wizard his part in luring my twin into a battle that lost him everything. Even, as the world believes, his very life. I ask only because the old man needs to be reminded that I have no desire to bury armies in the sand. More war is not what I want. “This is my kingdom now and you must accept it.”

“But there is another path to Egypt now, Majesty. Augustus calls himself Pharaoh, but he does not name Livia the Queen of Egypt nor does he have children by her to put onto the throne after him . . .”

I have not told my wizard that the emperor believes himself to be the father of my children because I feared his mind would turn in this direction. Still, I think he knows. Perhaps he saw it in the Rivers of Time before his magic slipped away from him. “You have seen my children on the throne of Egypt?”

“Once,” he answers. “Long ago.”

I should not have asked. Curse him for putting this new hope in my breast! It is now more difficult to beat down my ambitions, to deny the legacy of my Ptolemaic blood. I told Juba that I choose Mauretania and I have. For me. For myself. But can I deny my children what is theirs by right?

Simple practicality hardens me. “My son is not even two years old and my daughter only a girl of seven. There will be time enough to think of their future.”

“Easier said by a queen of your years than a wrinkled mage nearing the end of his.”

I will not hear talk of that. My mage has been with me in one way or another since the day I was born and I cannot imagine a time without him. And he will have to make common cause with me on this Iseum. I tell him as much, and set him the task of persuading Necho of Alexandria to work for a lower fee than he might normally command.

In this, my mage is successful. But there are still other details to work out. Necho chooses a site in the Greek quarter of the city, high on a hill. My freedwoman tugs at her silver earring when she hears the plan. “Brick walls?”

“They will be faced with marble,” Necho explains in the council chambers, spreading his sketches upon a table, the legs of which have been carved into gilded sheaves of grain. “It will save the kingdom a great expense.”

A healthy consideration for the cost is certainly the way to please Chryssa, but I have other concerns. “Will brick walls be strong enough to hold up a magnificent dome?”

“Majesty, not even the emperor’s architect objects to brick walls,” my new architect says. “Vitruvius himself points out that brick is used in temples throughout Greece. We need not waste time quarrying and cutting stone. Brick will allow us to begin without delay. I am told that your amphitheater is nearly completed and we will have an army of slaves to put to work.”

At this, my freedwoman scowls. My mage does not look pleased either. I am equally unsettled.

Though slavery is a way of life everywhere in the empire, it is a complicated matter in Mauretania where my Berbers call themselves the
Amazigh
. Free people. They resent the idea of captive men toiling in the blazing sun. We came here at the command of the emperor with shiploads of slaves. More arrive every day to work the giant plantations owned by Roman senators who administer their lands from far away. I cannot rid my kingdom of slavery. I cannot even rid the palace of it, should I desire to do so. Juba owns thousands of slaves and many of them serve at my pleasure. But I have heard priests and priestesses of Isis speak against slavery. “Can we afford to hire tribesmen and freedmen?” I ask.

“Your amber would have gone a long ways toward funding that,” Chryssa says, though, as a Greek, she knows full well why I pledged it to the Olympic Games. When I make no reply, she takes a deep breath through flared nostrils. “I will find the money,” she says, and I do not ask how.

Then my new architect goes down to one knee before me in submission, praising my intention to give my goddess a throne. “Together we will honor Isis as is befitting, Daughter of the Moon.”

And so I sign the order in Greek as my mother once signed hers.

Ginesthoi
.

Make it so.

* * *

“WHY
are there crickets in my hall?”

I ask this standing in the threshold of the schoolroom where a horde of insects chirp and hop across my feet. Our lady grammarian has a Berber boy by the hair. Tala’s boy, Ziri, is too red-faced with laughter to even notice that his tutor is reaching for a leather strap. And meanwhile, his partner in crime, the boy we saved from the cage, is emptying another clay pot of crickets onto the floor, to the shrieks and laughter of the other children—even my Dora and Pythia too.

No learning can take place in this chaos, so I clap my hands together at the children. “Go capture those crickets before they get all over the palace. Go now!”

At my command, the children jump up from their benches and Ziri uses the distraction of my presence to wriggle out of Lady Circe’s arms. She cries after the boys with uncharacteristic shrillness, “Run, then, you little brats! When I catch you, I’ll strip the hide off your backs.”

“You don’t actually whip them, do you?”

Her answer is laced with indignity. “Of course I do. It is the only thing the little savages understand.”

By this, she means the Berber children. Lady Circe is a well-educated Hellene whose salon has become a popular place for our most arrogant Greek philosophers to gather and sneer at those beneath them. Lady Circe has never approved of the king’s insistence that all the children of our court take their education alongside our own children, whether they be Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or Berber.

But in this, Juba and I are in complete agreement. Even the emperor, for all that I loathe him, provided the boys and girls in his household with an excellent education. We can do no less. These children are more than just children. They are all that I have to rebuild my family’s fallen dynasty so that I may not be the last of the Ptolemies . . .

“How well is my daughter taking to her studies?”

“Princess Isidora has a natural talent for language. Her other tutors say she has a mind for philosophy, mathematics, and science.”

This pleases me. It pleases me
too
much. “Are you saying this because she is my daughter or because it’s true?”

Lady Circe smiles, her voice smooth silk. “Who would dare lie to you, Majesty? But do not think it is all good news. Your niece is not quite as gifted. Answers do not come easily to Pythodorida . . . she struggles at her studies. But Pythodorida works hard for the answers, Majesty. In this, she is a good example for your daughter, who must learn that not everything will come easily to her.”

I do not treat my children as little adults, as queens and kings from the cradle. I coddle them as I was never coddled. This is not the way of the Ptolemies or the Greeks or the Romans. But I know how adversity can shape a child for the worse. I shield my children from everything, because I was shielded from nothing. And I do not need to justify myself to Lady Circe. “What of the other children? Are the Berber boys always so disruptive?”

“Tala’s boy shows promise, but Tacfarinas . . .” She sighs. “Let him go back to hauling firewood for the lighthouse. He is no good for anything else. He will never appreciate what you have done for him, Majesty. He steals wax tablets from the other children. He breaks inkpots. He looks for ways to create mayhem. The only way to make that boy behave is to bloody him.”

I have seen him bloodied before, and so I say, “No, I will not have it. I don’t want the children beaten.”

“You risk a reputation for softheartedness, Majesty. Strapping the children will do them no real harm. Trust me when I say that I’ve met grown men who would pay for such treatment.”

Though she amuses me with such talk, I raise an imperious eyebrow. “Which reminds me that you ought take a new name as yours calls to mind a profession you’ve left behind.”

The retired
hetaera
who was once both my husband’s lover and Herod’s spy smiles indulgently. “It is a profession I may need to take up again if you don’t allow me to discipline my students. I propose a bargain. If you allow me to thrash those boys, I’ll change my name to anything you think appropriate.”

One glance at her leather strap and I’m reminded of a beautiful golden-haired boy who was beaten for his insolence in the emperor’s home. My beloved twin, whose flesh was rent for protecting our family honor. A youth who promised that he would always, always defend me and that I would be his queen. She cannot know the things that haunt me, so I only say, “Keep your name, then, Circe, and I will bear up under my reputation for softheartedness somehow.”

Seventeen

IOL-CAESARIA, THE KINGDOM OF MAURETANIA

SUMMER 16
B.C.

CHRYSSA
gives birth to a healthy boy, dark like his father. “Your Berber chieftain will burst with pride when he returns with the king,” I promise her, but I do not know when that will be.

Juba has settled his court in Volubilis, where he says the buildings are holdovers from the Carthaginians, so old that they boast the Punic style. The people of Volubilis are not hungry or lacking for useful employment, but their city is in need of defensible walls and public baths, new marketplaces and a basilica too.

The expense for these projects makes me dizzy to comprehend, but I think we were wrong to pour all our wealth into Iol-Caesaria. It has created resentments elsewhere in the kingdom that now need a remedy. As a gesture of goodwill, the king gifts the city of Volubilis with his prized bronze bust of Cato the Younger. I match his gift by sending overland a statue of the goddess Kore that was given to me during my sojourn with the emperor on the Isle of Samos.

I have just made the arrangements for the statue’s transport when my niece comes rushing into my chambers, her black hair damp with sweat, her cheeks scarlet, as if she has run the whole way.

“We were nearly eaten by a lion!” Pythia cries, breathlessly telling the tale. “Tala took us to the market to choose new sandals. We were only halfway there when we heard shrieks. Then people ran in every direction at the sight of an escaped lion from the amphitheater.”

That accursed amphitheater! It has only just been finished and already the gladiatorial arena is a danger. “Well, what happened then?”

“Everyone ran from the wounded lion but Dora rushed to it and began to speak to it!”

I gasp, covering my cheeks with both hands. “Where is she now?”

“With the physician, but she isn’t hurt. Tacfarinas pulled Dora out of the way while Tala distracted the lion, but Tala was slashed and Euphorbus is tending her wounds now. Tala would have been eaten too if Dora hadn’t told her to plead with the lion in your name.”

“What?”
I ask, still weak with fear.

“Dora told her to talk to the lion and he might let her go. So Tala shouted that she served a great Ptolemaic queen. And when the lion cornered Tala against a market stall, she begged him to spare her in your name, for she was the caretaker of royal children. You should have seen the lion stare, listening to each word as he limped back and forth, pacing in front of her. Tala told the lion that the Queen of Mauretania would be very displeased with him if he should make a meal of her and pleaded with him to leave her in peace. So he did.”

“What?”
I say again, unable to comprehend it.

“Like a king, he listened to her petition, then set her free. He limped off into the street and left us alone, though I don’t know where the lion is now.”

“Sweet Isis!” Standing on wobbly knees, I rush to the chambers of my mage, where I find my daughter helping to bandage three claw marks on my Berber woman’s big thigh. “Is it true, Tala? You were slashed by a lion?”

My Berber woman tells the story just as Pythia told it, and I turn to my daughter, not knowing whether to clutch her against my breast or thrash her or both. “Why did you run toward the lion? What could you have been thinking?”

“He had a spear in his flank,” my daughter says. “He was badly wounded from the gladiator arena and needed help.”

Yes, I will thrash her
, I think. For the first time in her little life, I will thrash her until she is howling. It is only that I am still so weak with fear that I cannot make myself do it. “You could have been killed. You could have all been mauled to death in my market, far from me where I could do nothing to stop it.” The thought that I could have lost her—that I could have lost any of them—has me shaking all over. My emotions are so volcanic, I do not trust myself to touch her. “You are not a physician, Dora! You cannot heal every creature that crosses your path. Surely you understand danger. You will have no dinner tonight and you are
never
to be out of my sight again, do you hear me?”