Daughters of the Nile (71 page)

I push and push, screaming until I am hoarse.

Hours pass and I cannot tell whether the sun has risen or set again because of the storm. The wind howls, the sand it carries scrapes at the stone walls and threatens to slip past the coverings on the windows. A forgotten chime in my gardens rings madly. But for it, the wind, and my cries of pain, the world seems empty.

I am half-hysterical with agony when I hear a pounding that is louder than my own heart. It carries up to my room, shakes the floor, and dances on my sweaty skin. “What is that sound?”

Chryssa grimly mops at my brow. “It is the war drums, to heal and trance you. Maysar has the tribesmen gathered in your throne room below. The Berbers remember how you fought a storm before and they will not let their queen fight alone . . .”

They know it is a battle, then. I battle for my baby’s life.

And it goes on, and on.

I push until my muscles fail. I push until I can push no more. I wilt against the girls who hold my arms, limp and half-asleep, moaning softly. And when the world begins to blur to nothing, I hear the king’s voice at the door.

Husbands do not attend their wives in the birthing chamber. It is not done. Moreover, I do not want the king here. I cannot bear for him to see me like this—to see more blood, more pain, more suffering.

Thankfully, Chryssa hurries to block his way. In wildly flickering lamplight, I see her silhouetted in the doorway like a praetorian, commanding the king to go.

“I will have you whipped,” he snarls at her.

Still she will not give way. “Flog me, then, Majesty. You will not be the first.”

This is my battle and she
is
my soldier, my brave general. Blinking through half-lidded eyes, I see the Greek physician push forward to whisper something to the king. Whatever it is, my husband does not want to hear it. Even over the roar of the storm, I hear the king bellow, “You bloody butcher!”

I know what the physician must be saying. He is telling my husband that if the baby does not come soon, it will die. The physician can take his sharp instruments and cut my baby out of me. But there is no way to do it that would spare us both. This I know. And Juba must know it too.

Though I would happily give my life that my child should draw breath, I will not suffer as Livia once suffered, knowing her husband would not have minded her death. No,
my
husband smashes the physician against the door with a promise of more violence. “Get out or I’ll have your head.”

It is not the physician’s fault; it is mine. I must bring this babe into the world. This little miracle, this child conceived wholly in love. What must be done is beyond mortal strength, but there has always been within me a divine spark. My magic will consume me—it will tear its way out of me with the baby and take with it my life. But it is mine to use. Mine to choose. Magic carves its way out. This is what my mage taught me. What I taught my daughter in turn.

Even if you can’t see the wounds, the magic does cut you.

Juba will not let the physician cut me, so I must cut myself.

Somewhere in the palace, I hear my son’s dog barking. Outside, there is the crack and splinter of wood, the clatter of debris as it flies into the air, and the roar of the sand as the storm bears down on us.

Gathering the
heka
in my blood, I call on it now, using the strength of the one who dwells inside me. Helios was always strong, so very strong. He left bruises without meaning to. He broke benches with bare hands. If he is with me now, I call on his strength.

I bear down. With all my strength. With all my will. With every part of my soul. The frog amulet at my throat burns hot with the magic I cannot tame as it tears through me. My scream is something outside of myself. Something raw and jagged and sharp that exposes all the wounds inside me.

But the baby moves. The midwife gets a grip on his little head and pulls. Then my magic and the babe all tear themselves out of me together. I look down to see blood flow down my thighs, bright red, vivid as the fatal spray in an arena. The midwife draws back with my babe, her hands and arms covered in bright blood.

There is so much blood. Too much blood. Salty, tangy, iron blood, an endless River of Time flowing away from me . . .

Struck with terror at the sight, Chryssa sinks to her knees. I do not know if her horror is for me or for the child. Is it malformed? Why does he not cry? These are my fears as a warm river of red rushes from betwixt my legs. Why does my baby not cry?

“My baby,” I rasp. “My son . . .”

I want to hear my baby cry. As my own heartbeat pounds fainter and fainter in my ears, that is all I want. Then he does cry. A little bleat of outrage that makes me smile. And as the bowl beneath my birthing chair flows over with my blood, I think I will not have much time now.

Forty-three

THEY
cannot stop my blood from flowing. They unstrap me and put me on a bed where the midwife massages my womb to make it close. She holds my head up so that I can swallow a draught of fenugreek and Cretan oregano. I shiver, but it is not a fever that keeps me in a drifting state of listlessness. It is that I am an empty sack, drained and thirsty. I suffer greatly from
heka
sickness, as if it has leeched the life force from the marrow of my bones.

And the bleeding will not stop.

“The baby,” I whisper, and they put the little swaddled bundle to my breast, though I am too weak to hold him.
Praise Isis
, my baby is a perfect little boy, pink from head to toe. There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. His hair is dark and his eyes are blue. I wonder if they will turn green like mine or a warm amber like Juba’s. I want to hold him in my arms and kiss his tiny nose and the furrowed little brow, but I am too dizzy even to lift my head.

The king is near but Chryssa is gone. He must have vanquished her somehow. Driven her off or had her carried off by his praetorians in his unseemly, and un-Roman, insistence upon entry to my birthing chamber. But I am so tired, I do not mind that he has won the battle.

“Open the doors to the terrace,” I whisper.

The midwife says gently, “There is a storm raging. You don’t know what you are saying because you are so near to the veil. Rest easy and go peacefully.”

She has given up all hope—as if she has glimpsed the carnage from the inside. As if she has seen the hacks and slashes and chunks that have been torn out of me by curses and magic beyond that which one mortal body can endure.

“Open the doors,” I say again.

The midwife glances at the king, fearful to let in the storm that rages outside. But Juba, face shadowed and tortured, says, “We commanded you to open the doors.”

The midwife moves to obey, but is not fast enough for the king. He goes himself to tear down the coverings from the doorway. Little puffs of sand cloud up by his feet, but it doesn’t stop him. Then my ladies rush to help. Pulling rugs from where they are piled at the door, yanking draperies out of the way, and throwing the doors wide.

A great gust of air blows in, showering us with sand. It is the king who lifts me up and carries me out onto the terrace, where his purple cloak billows up around us. With the wind whipping into my face, I take in the view of the sprawling city under siege. In our harbor, the waves froth and churn in the ocean, plucking fishing boats from their lines on the pier only to smash them to splinters.

I want to save my kingdom from this, but I cannot battle every storm. I cannot battle this one. It is too big for me to swallow. I am ravaged by childbirth, too weakened to serve as a vessel for all the desert’s rage. Still, the storm and I are kin, so I surrender to its
heka
.

This storm and I, we are both of the desert. We are both of Mauretania. I have given of myself, of my magic, and all of my strength to make this land prosper. I cannot take it all inside myself, but neither does it take me.

The land gives back to me again. The Romans sometimes say of my lands that they are too close to the sun. That it is so hot here that it will set a man’s blood boiling. It is true. The heat of the sirocco is like a furnace. It sets fire to my blood. But then, I am part fire now, so I welcome it.

It burns away bile and bloat and phlegm. It cauterizes my wounds. The hot desert preserves me as it does a mummy, bandaging what has been cut open inside me and drying up the flow of blood betwixt my legs, just as it dries up riverbeds at the end of a season.

And I know it is the sirocco that heals me, because as I cling to Juba, blood rain begins to fall.

* * *

“IT
is some manner of miracle that you are alive,” the physician says while my servants collect silver pots of red rain and the wet nurse drapes my baby’s cradle in a transparent purple veil with beaded fringe. “You lost more blood than I have ever known any person to lose and survive to tell the tale.”

“I am not
any
person,” I reply. “As you can see, I am recovered.”

The physician puts his tools back into a small chest designed just for such instruments of torture, then gives a long-suffering sigh. “You may think so, but the body cannot recover from such a loss of blood. Eventually, your blood will pump slower and slower. You will find yourself dizzied and you may swoon away at the smallest provocation. Any exertion will cause exhaustion and you will find it more difficult to breathe. You are very frail.”

Frail
, am I? He does not know that I have been bleeding most of my life. He has not seen my goddess work her magic through me. What does he know? My women hang extra lanterns and stack coals in the brazier in case I am chilled, but I am sweating through my linen shift, for the sirocco inside me is hot. Gloriously hot. So hot that it has boiled the lethargy from my bones.

And I do not want to spend another moment abed.

Especially since the king is coming to call.

My ladies wash me, comb my hair, and fill the room with sweet-smelling herbs to chase away any lingering odors. Then they put my baby into my arms, though I have no milk for him, for that has dried up with my blood.

The king refuses to be kept away another moment, and when he strides in, my husband’s eyes are still shadowed, as if he has not slept at all since the moment of my first birth pang. Perching at the edge of my couch, he says, “You gave me such a fright!”

“I would never die in childbirth,” I whisper, as if I had never been afraid. “That is an ordinary death. Besides, Isis favors mothers above all.” Then I put my infant into my husband’s arms. “I deliver to you a baby boy, King Juba. You’re the father of a healthy little prince.”

Cradling the bundle, my husband is deeply affected, and I am glad I did not wait to put this baby at the foot of his throne. This moment is meant only for us to share.

“Hello, little prince . . .” Juba’s eyes glisten, then flash as a crack of lightning splits open the sky. Our son does not even cry as the storm loudly boasts of its power. And Juba says, “You will make a fine leader of men, for the red rain has frightened many grown men in our court who see ill omens in every bolt from the sky.”

“The blood rain is not an ill omen,” I insist.

“Blood rain has been witnessed in the islands and across the narrow strait. But here?” Juba peers down at his son. “It is your mother’s doing. If it
is
blood, it is the queen’s blood, for she battled the sirocco to bring you into the world.”

That is not how it happened, but I do not interrupt him, because Juba is in tears, bowing his head as his emotions pour forth. “I am . . . I am . . . I don’t even know what I feel.”

“Is it joy?” I ask, my own lashes wet with it.

He glances up. “Is it right to feel such a thing again?”

“It is, for if we do not take joy in the good things we are given, do we not invite only evil?”

At my words, I think he will let himself smile.

Instead, he weeps.

He weeps without shame. My husband is weeping over a babe in his arms, and he is weeping with happiness. Moved by his emotions, I weep too. And when we are sniffling, wet and red-nosed, chuckling with embarrassment at our overwrought state, I ask, “What should we name him? You choose this time.”

“I would name him Ptolemy. To honor our lost boy and . . . as an act of . . .”

He struggles for his explanation, so I suggest one. “Defiance.”

His breath of relief surprises me. Is it possible, after all these years, we finally think the same thoughts? To name our son Ptolemy is to defy the forces—mortal or divine—that took our elder son from us. It is to defy those who would see an end to my family dynasty. It is also to defy the emperor’s belief that I would never have a child with another man.

There is no question this time, no doubt that this is the king’s son. The months add up in such a way as to frustrate even the delusions of Augustus. This baby belongs to us and only us, no matter what his name. And I am so very glad of it. “Ptolemy the Younger,” I say softly. “Prince Ptolemy of Mauretania.”