Daughters of the Nile (41 page)

Prince Alexander speaks again before Herod can. “It’s an easy thing for your advisers to say that my brother and I want to take your throne in revenge for our unhappy mother. But could not such an accusation be made against any young men in our circumstance? Suspicion is not proof. Let any man come forward and testify that we have procured poisons. We beseech any man who has witnessed conspiracy to speak of it now.”

Not one person steps forward. The floor remains empty. The emptiness stretches on and on, which fuels the prince’s righteousness. “Our mother is dead, this is true. But isn’t it possible her death has served as a warning to us? We cannot confess to evil deeds never done, but we are sorry for any conduct on our part that has let you believe the worst. Before Caesar, we put this to you. It is a terrible thing to be falsely accused. Yet we cannot bear for our father to live in fear of us, so if you are not convinced of our innocence, then we desire to die.”

Pandemonium breaks out with shouts in favor of the princes. Whereas Herod is late to appreciate the sympathies of the crowd, the emperor can plainly see that any order of execution will cause a riot. Herod has made himself hated. There is not a slave or senator in the room who does not count the King of Judea a deranged fiend. Should the emperor sanction Herod’s butchery, Augustus
too
will be seen as monstrous . . . and for no political gain.

So when Augustus turns to Herod, a chasm has opened between them. One wrong word and Herod will fall into it. I’m eager for it.
Do it
, I think,
and you will be destroyed
.

Unfortunately, Herod sees the danger. At this last crucial moment, he wisely takes a step back. “Like the rest of you, I am moved by the words of my sons and apologize to you, Caesar . . .”

Augustus waits, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

Herod begins to speak, then stops. Begins again. Stops.

“Oh, why apologize, King Herod?” Augustus finally breaks in. “Though your sons are surely innocent of the crimes of which you have accused them, they are not
entirely
blameless. After all, it is the duty of a child to behave with such subservience to a father that such suspicions would not be believed by anyone.”

Here the emperor’s gaze lifts to the gallery as if seeking out his daughter, and I am glad Julia made a hasty retreat. The emperor clears his throat. “I admonish you to be reconciled with your sons. Dismiss gossip and rumor in the future. Harbor not suspicion for your sons, but affection.”

It’s both a command and a reprieve. The emperor’s evenhanded justice allows the king to save face. But the truth is seen in gestures, not words. Augustus does not embrace Herod. Instead, he summons the two princes forward. Knowing they’ve been spared, they both drop to their knees in supplication, but the emperor lifts them up, one after the other. The gesture is understood by all. Augustus has given his personal endorsement to the two princes.

None of this is lost on Herod. “I shall send an amended will to you, Caesar, for your approval. I shall restore these sons to the succession.”

“Make whatever provisions you like,” Augustus snaps, as if envisioning an endless stream of paperwork every time Herod wishes to punish someone. “Divide your kingdom evenly between your sons for all I care; I don’t need to approve every change.”

Herod forces himself to smile at this chilly response and bows graciously. “This is a great honor, Caesar, that you grant me the authority to dispose of my kingdom as I see fit. How many other client kings may say the same? I will do it now, if you so desire. In the spirit of harmony we have found here, I will make such arrangements before all assembled.”

It’s another blunder, and Augustus narrows his eyes. “You would do better to keep your final arrangements to yourself. I would not want, after all, to deprive you of the power over your kingdom, or your sons, while you live.”

With that, the emperor turns on his heel. In a swirl of red cloaks, his praetorians snap to attention and assemble at his back, and then they are gone.

* * *

MY
poet writes an amusing verse mocking Herod, but he is wise enough to show it only to me in the privacy of my apartments. “I thought to pass it off as the work of an anonymous epigrammist, Majesty, but my style is too distinctive, my talent unmatched.”

The poem amuses me but I blot it out with ink from my reed pen. “Let the moment pass unheralded, Crinagoras.”

“Don’t you want to immortalize Herod fleeing with his tail between his legs like a broken dog?”

“Herod is not broken,” I say, bitterly.

“Bruised, then.” Crinagoras takes a seat without being bidden, draping one leg casually over the other while admiring the length of his own thigh. “So bruised that he is trying to buy his reputation back in the East. Nicholas of Damascus shared with me a bit of gossip that the King of Judea has promised to fund the Olympic Games in perpetuity and they’ve appointed him to preside over the coming games . . .”

“Yes, I know.” For hundreds of years my family funded the Olympic Games. There is even a gymnasium there named after my illustrious ancestor. Of all the reasons for my enmity with the King of Judea, this is surely the most petty, but it irritates me like a rash I cannot scratch. “Herod will get away with it. All of it. Augustus has done nothing to punish him. He allowed Herod his show trial, he allowed Herod to make veiled accusations against Julia, he allowed Herod to go about boasting that he is King Herod
Philokaiser
 . . . the friend of Caesar. And what’s more, Herod has now convinced the emperor to give him the profits from the copper mines in Cyprus.”

This sobers my poet, who understands the importance of that last bit. Cyprus was part of the Ptolemaic empire—part of the kingdom that should have been mine. Part of the kingdom that could still belong to my children. That Augustus took my ancestral lands for himself is painful enough; that he should cede any part of it to the King of Judea is beyond endurance.

Crinagoras is plainly shaken. “So Herod
does
want Egypt. He dares to think . . . he will try again to arrange a marriage with your daughter.”

“Yes. He will keep trying. He is that brazen. The rest of the world thinks King Herod is the emperor’s exotic pet lion—a creature to let loose in the arena for amusement or to set upon enemies when convenient—but one that needs periodic beating with a whip to keep tame. But I know better than to trust Herod can be tamed or that it is the emperor who holds the whip.”

“Then Herod is your rival,” my poet says, slowly.

“Yes. Herod is my rival,” I agree. Herod is my rival in the way none of the emperor’s friends or mistresses have ever been. Herod is my rival because he has intuited the emperor’s need to be appreciated by those who
understand
the full measure of what he has accomplished.

Herod is part of the old guard. He has been playing the game longer than any of us. He knows how to woo the emperor, to seduce him on an equal footing, withholding from him the empty adulation of the masses. I have seen him do it before; he did it even during the trial when he spoke to the emperor as one father to another.

It has taken me far too long to realize that the emperor indulges Herod much as he has always indulged me. Herod is a threat. If not to me, then to my dynasty. But I will never let Herod have Egypt. I will never let him have my daughter. And I will never again think of him as a petty irritant. I must crush Herod under the heel of my silvered sandal by whatever means necessary.

I am a Ptolemy. Our motto is
Win or Die
.

I must find a way to engineer his fall. “You know that Herod once sent Lady Circe to my husband as a gift, as a spy.”

“You should do the same to him, but he has so many wives I do not see how he could find the room in his bed for a
hetaera
too.”

My poet has finally drawn me to the point of our visit. “I intend to put a spy in his court, but it cannot be a whore. Herod does not trust women. Yet, he is vain enough to trust flatterers . . .”

“Your Majesty,” Crinagoras says carefully, “I believe you are about to do something
enormously
foolish.”

Knowing that he has guessed at my intentions, I glance up over my cup of warmed wine. “Am I?”

“Yes,” he drawls, drawing out the word. Then, just when I think he will refuse me, he smiles. “You are about to quarrel with the world’s greatest living poet. Without regard for his unsurpassed talent and the damage it will do to the beleaguered state of the arts in your kingdom, you are about to dismiss me from your service. In a fit of royal pique, you are going to take offense to a wonderfully witty remark that amuses everyone but pricks at your Ptolemaic pride.”

“You are not as witty as you think you are, Crinagoras.”

“Exactly what you will say before dismissing me from your service, seizing what pittance you pay me, and leaving me resentful and without passage home to Mytilene. Why, I will be forced to beg the indulgence of the Judeans to set sail with them . . .”

He looks satisfied and amused with this plan.

“Do you think Herod will be fooled? I worry that he will never offer you employment knowing that you’re an intimate of mine.”

“Did he not steal Nicholas of Damascus from your mother? Herod attracts malcontents. He’d like nothing better than to stick it in your eye.”

“But can you do it? You’re a poet, not a spy.”

“Entertainers make the best spies. We’re easily overlooked.”

It occurs to me that Crinagoras may very well have been spying upon
me
all these years. He’s been within my most intimate circle, privy to many of my secrets. And he’s right. It is very easy to overlook a poet—even one as ostentatious as mine . . .

But my goddess can see into the heart of a man and know his true name, and I think this too may be in my gift. My poet has seen me through very dark days and I trust him. “It would be a very great risk, Crinagoras.”

“I need the excitement,” he replies, eyes dancing with delight at the opportunity to make mischief. “When I first came to serve you, it was all storms and sorcery and royal pathos worthy of Homer. Now you’ve become so dreadfully domesticated . . .”

“Domesticated!”

“Oh, that’s very good. See how easy it is to offend you with a witty remark?”

My jaw snaps shut. “How would you get information to me?”

“Infrequently. I might send it with someone I trust or put it in a poem as a coded message you could read with a cipher. Lady Lasthenia is better suited to this kind of scheming . . . but she is in Mauretania and here I am, bored and willing. How long would you have me stay in Herod’s court?”

“Until you found a way to destroy him.”

“Splendid,” he says. “Then I offer my services without hesitation.”

Ah, what a shiny prize he offers me. “If we really mean to do this, we must tell King Juba.”

“Very well,” Crinagoras says, daring to roll his eyes at me. “But on the matter of your domestication, I rest my case . . .”

* * *

JUBA
does not like the idea. “If your poet wants to leave, let him leave. If he wants to serve Herod, let him serve Herod. If he is caught sending you letters or receiving Mauretanian gold, we will be implicated.”

Perched on the edge of my husband’s writing table, where I seek to win his approval—or at least distract him with peeks at my breasts and the scent of my lavender perfume—I say, “Then let us be implicated. How many letters did your
hetaera
send before you realized she was Herod’s spy?”

Juba pretends to write upon a scroll but leaves only a scribble. “I knew what she was all along.”

I do not believe him. “Still you took her for a lover?”

He lifts his eyes from the page to stare at me in challenge, knowing that he has been caught in a prideful lie. “I took Lady Circe to bed to arouse your jealousy.”

“That was poorly planned, since I did not learn of your love affair for nearly a year.”

“It was not a love affair,” he snaps, trying to ride it out. Then color floods his cheeks. “I was lonely.”

I smother a smile, for I am charmed beyond measure. “Why, husband, I did not know that loneliness could lead to such bad political judgment. I shall endeavor not to leave you lonely again . . .”

His hard stare melts and he murmurs, “That might be best. For the good of the kingdom.”

“Ah,
for the good of the kingdom
, what would I not do?” I ask, pressing an affectionate hand to his cheek to soothe his embarrassment. “Will you consent to send Crinagoras to Herod’s court?”

“Will you obey me if I refuse?”

I consider my answer. “Yes . . .”

He considers my hesitation. “But then you will find another way to spy on Herod without telling me . . .”

“Possibly.”

“And you will resent me as an unworldly king . . .”

“Probably.”

“And either way, we will quarrel late into the evening?”

“Certainly.”

He leans back, stretching his neck. “And just so I understand all the pertinent facts . . . even if I emerge victorious from this quarrel, I will lose a great deal of sleep tonight.”

“You will lose several nights’ sleep and not for any pleasant reason.”

He smirks. “Then you have my consent, Selene, because I must be up before dawn to ride out with Roman soldiers into the hills . . .”

I would like to quarrel about that as well, for I am fearful every time he rides out with the emperor’s soldiers to face a hailstorm of arrows, but that is an argument I cannot win. Furthermore, I’m sure to make a fool of myself in such an argument when I’m running hot with desire for him. I do not understand this desire and how it can flourish in the grief and danger and drama of Aquileia. This is not a desire born of love or duty or sacrament. I fear that my husband has taught me to desire for desire’s own sake.

The realization of it embarrasses me, but not so much that I pull away when he leans in for a kiss. Perhaps he only means it to be a tender kiss good night, but it swiftly turns hungry and breathless and in its aftermath, I am shy. “Juba, I thought you wanted a restful evening . . .”