Song Of The Nile Part 4

Through bloodless lips, I asked, "How could you do it?"

She tilted her head, as if amused. "Easily. I've seen how he looks at you. How you toy with him. I couldn't allow it to continue. I couldn't let you leave for Africa with the fantasy of you lingering in his mind, or he'd become your slave as surely as Antony was Cleopatra's."

So she gave me to him. She let him have me.

Livia smiled when she saw that I understood. She'd been planning this for a very long time. She'd chosen her moment. She'd waited patiently until I was no longer under Lady Octavia's protection. She'd waited until we were out of Rome. And I'd gone with her like an unwitting fool. "You're a vile woman, Livia."

She laughed, the sound of it wicked. "And you're just a plaything for a petty princeling of an isolated and unimportant Western province. The emperor will never do anything you ask. He won't make you Queen of Egypt. He won't be fool enough to spare Helios when we catch him. In fact, once you're in Mauretania, my husband won't even think of you again except to remember some fleeting pleasure from this night, and if he drank deeply of my tonic, he won't even remember it well."

"You drugged him," I said, remembering the glazed look in his eyes. "I'll tell him. I'll tell everyone."

Livia smiled, giving a delicate shake of her head. "You won't tell anyone, because if your new husband asks me about last night, I'll rea.s.sure him that it wasn't your fault. The brutish Thracian slave I saw staring at you when our caravan arrived must have done it. It was so dark and rainy out. A girl could get lost in the pa.s.sageways and be attacked by such a man."

"It was the emperor who did this to me."

"Oh, Juba!" Livia said in clever mimicry, putting her hand over her heart as if she were speaking to him. "The poor girl is in such shock. Of course she thinks it was the emperor. What princess could accept the shame of having been taken by a filthy slave? If she were any true royal wife, she'd kill herself rather than live with the dishonor of having been raped by an animal, but I must take Selene's part in this and insist the culprit be crucified!"

Raped. The word was nearly as ugly as the deed. I couldn't bear to hear it said, and turned away. "You're heartless."

"Not entirely," Livia said, nodding toward a cup by my bedside. "I've provided you with an honorable exit. It won't be as dramatic as your mother's end, but unless you have the power to conjure up Egyptian cobras, a goblet of poisoned wine will suffice."

I stared at the poisoned wine, surprised at my sudden thirst. Then Livia leaned close, her voice a mere whisper. "Your influence over the emperor is done. Your glamour, your mystique, your hold on him-it's over. You're nothing more than a little trollop in rumpled bedclothes. You're ruined. I'm told your family motto is Win or Die. Well, Selene, you didn't win, so that leaves only one choice, doesn't it?"

Six.

YOU'RE ruined.

That's what Livia had said to me with that satisfied grin, believing she'd destroyed me. As if my whole worth had been a maidenhead that Augustus breached like a besieged wall. She thought that in the emperor's one depraved act, he'd looted everything valuable inside me and left me in smoldering ruins. Maybe she was right, because here I was, huddled and tear-streaked beneath a blanket like some refugee of a plundered village, a cup of poison in my shaking hand.

You're ruined.

She was right when she'd said there was no one I could tell. If I went to Juba, Livia would spin her lie about the Thracian slave, and my new husband would believe it, because he'd want to believe it. Juba had always idolized the emperor and suspected me; I didn't need to test my sad little fraud of a marriage to know whose side Juba would take. Worse, what if Livia was right? What if l.u.s.t was all that bound the emperor in his promises to me? What if I'd lost my chance to win back Egypt? What if I'd suffered all this and still not saved the lives of my brothers?

You're ruined.

She'd said that, knowing that the emperor had done to me the worst thing that could be done to a woman. Was it the very worst thing? I'd faced death the day I first came to Rome as a chained prisoner, a sacrificial knife poised above me. Roman matrons killed themselves when disgraced, but I wasn't Roman. My mother had killed herself when she was conquered, but I wasn't my mother either. In fact, I'd endured the humiliation meant for her. I'd been called vile names and spat upon and pelted with stones. I'd been forced to watch the Prince of Emesa die for me, his blood spattered all over my feet. Remembering the heat of his blood as it poured out of his body, I put the poisoned cup down. Shoved it away. I'd survived every trial Augustus and his wife had ever fas.h.i.+oned for me; I'd find a way to survive this too. And, oh, how I'd make them both regret it.

I soaked until my toes puckered and paled beneath the water. Then I scrubbed and sc.r.a.ped until my skin was livid, all in a fruitless attempt to get clean. Sometimes Romans opened their veins in hot baths like this. They claimed that the heat of the water disguised the pain as they bled their lives away. Maybe that's why I didn't feel the sting of the tiny lacerations that opened on my hands. It wasn't until the water clouded crimson that I drew my palms up to the light where I could see my wounds pulse with the slow and steady beat of my heart. Blood. I let the steam settle into my lungs as symbols swam before my eyes. The sharpest blade couldn't have cut so precisely into my fingers and palms, bright red outlines of vultures, double-reed leaves, owls and vipers. These were hieroglyphics and I could read them. These were the words of my G.o.ddess, come back to me.

Child of Isis, you are more than flesh.

These were her words, reaching for me in my dark hour, and a small sob of grat.i.tude escaped me. There were nine parts of the Egyptian soul, of which my body was only one. The emperor had violated my flesh but he hadn't touched the rest. There were parts of me that he couldn't reach, could never touch, and had no power to defile . . .

The symbols on my hands changed. The needle-fine cuts healed themselves and opened again, with a new message entirely. I rose from the bath, pulling on a dressing gown, then padded barefoot out into the broad hallway. My hair was wet and wild and I held my arms out, blood trailing behind me, vivid red droplets on the white marble. "By the G.o.ds!" Strabo cried when he saw my frightening visage, bright blood running down my pale arms.

"By the G.o.ddess," I replied.

This put the emperor's praetorian in white-faced terror. Like most of the Romans, he'd heard the rumors about me, and he must have seen something in my face that made him step aside. I pushed into the emperor's chambers and found him sitting before an array of maps and battle plans for the invasion of Parthia. His lids were at half-mast and he was unshaven. He actually startled to see me and not because I was bleeding. I'd tucked each hand into the folds of my gown. I was overly aware of him. I could still smell his acrid sweat in the room. I was conscious of his every accursed breath. "Go away, Selene," he said in a voice like gravel. "I'm unwell."

"Is that your way of expressing regret?"

He crumpled a sc.r.a.p of papyrus on his desk. "It's my way of telling you that you should know better than to come to a man's bedchambers. There are limits of propriety that must not be crossed. Even by you."

My laugh was bitter and I felt cold, all the way to my bare toes where they curled against the tiles. "You want to speak to me of propriety, after what you did last night?"

"I did nothing to you last night." Avoiding my gaze, he cradled his head in his hands as if a storm were pounding behind his eyes. "You must've had a vivid dream."

"Did I dream the bruises your knees left on my thighs?"

He couldn't look at me. "I've never laid a hand on you."

"You did last night." It hurt to speak over the rising lump in my throat. "You've spent your whole life lying to yourself, but you can't lie to Isis." With that, I revealed my hands, holding them in the light where he could see the shapes carved into my palms. He'd seen this before-the way the G.o.ddess came through me-but he still paled.

I began to read from the scroll of my own flesh. "I am Isis. I am nature. I am the mother of all things. No man has a son but through me, and I will not give you one, for you are an instrument of Set the destroyer, the infertile G.o.d of the desert whose envy burns away everything he loves. You are a rapist, an enemy of women, and a destroyer of faith. You have closed my temples, persecuted my wors.h.i.+ppers, and violated my daughters. Until you repent and make amends, you are cursed. The Julii will come to nothing. You' ll live long enough to watch your heirs fall, one after the other, until your empire rests in the hands of those who despise you."

If I hadn't felt the G.o.ddess in me, I would have had the presence of mind to be afraid. The emperor stood, knocking the stool out from under him, and was upon me in two strides. Too late, I shrank back, bracing myself in case he might throw me down and force me again. Roughly grabbing my shoulders, he cried, "Why do you condemn me for one moment of weakness! You're a wicked temptress, just like your mother. What man can resist such a young nymph forever? Even Apollo was seduced by the virgin huntress Cyrene. Am I to be stronger than a G.o.d?"

I was struck with horror at his words. Apollo was the emperor's patron G.o.d, and like me, Cyrene had once been Queen of Cyrenaica. The kingdom was given to her by Apollo after he raped and impregnated her. That Augustus should mention this story told me that maybe he wouldn't have done it if Livia hadn't slipped something into his drink, but he'd been toying with the idea of forcing himself upon me for quite some time. Livia had only made it easier for him to have what he wanted. She'd only given him an excuse to do to me what he'd done to so many other girls. Only this time, it was no slave he'd taken. "You needn't worry about my condemnation," I said as the small wounds closed, flesh knitting over flesh. "Isis condemns you."

The whites of his eyes widened with defiance. "Well, I've challenged Egyptian G.o.ds before and won. I'll put my faith in Roman G.o.ds, who are stronger."

"And which Roman G.o.d countenances the violation of another man's wife?"

He shook me by the arms. "Don't you know that you're mine to do with as I please? When I captured you in Egypt, I could've made a slave of you. I could've forced you into a brothel. Instead, I gave you a throne. I'm sending you to Africa with income from mines and deeds to plantations, with chests of gold and silver bars, with treasure enough to humble the proudest royalty in Asia, so don't cry to me about your spoiled virtue. I've taken from you no more than I've fairly purchased."

His words demeaned me, made me feel filthy, just as he'd intended them to, and I pressed my hands on his chest to push him away. He released me, staring down at the b.l.o.o.d.y handprints I'd left on the stark white folds of his toga. What guilt and remorse he was capable of feeling now welled up in his eyes. "I won't see you again," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Tomorrow, you and Juba will go to Africa without me. You'll find a way to forget this. I vow by Apollo that I'll never set foot in Mauretania."

Good, I thought, because I never wanted to see him again. I never wanted to smell him, or hear his voice, or have him breathe the air of any land I ruled. An ocean between us wouldn't be far enough, but he was Augustus. He was Caesar. He still held in his hands everything I ever wanted and the lives of everyone I loved. "But what of our bargain?"

"This changes nothing, Selene. I'll spare your brothers if you remain a loyal queen. But this will be the end of it."

"No," I said, a bitter taste in my mouth. "Now there will never be an end of it between us."

STUMBLING out of his rooms, my arms covered in blood, half delirious with both the joy of my G.o.ddess championing me and the unbearable pain of her leaving again, I was certain that I'd spoken truly. He wouldn't be rid of me with a royal dowry and a promise to stay away. I was a Ptolemy, the kin of Alexander. He thought that like a length of cloth dipped in royal purple dye, he could stain himself with the glory of my maiden's blood. But I hoped my blood would be a toxin to him. A slow poison that would eat at him for all our days.

"G.o.ds be good!" one of Maecenas's slaves cried. "Where are you hurt, my lady? Have you been stabbed?"

"Hus.h.!.+" Chryssa said, rus.h.i.+ng to my side, breathless as if she'd been searching the villa for me. "Isis has been here. Now the heka sickness remains. We need to get her to her chambers before she falls."

I let them put me to bed, drifting asleep to a familiar song. The melody was so far away that I couldn't make out the words, but it was a man who sang to me, his voice like the rus.h.i.+ng of water, strangely alluring over the notes of a plucked harp. He sang like a lover whose hands wouldn't hurt me but would coax warmth from my skin. Of other, sweeter sensations that would make my heart pound not from fear but from the pleasure of skin against skin, breath upon breath, the tangle of my fingers in his hair. It was a promise from my G.o.ddess to me, that a lover would come to purify me, like the Nile washes over Egypt and makes it new again. A promise I'd find someone who would take the pain away.

I awakened to see Juba hovering over me. Was he the lover my G.o.ddess promised? I'd married him. It would be only right if he were the one to make me feel safe and whole. So why did I flinch when his hand touched my shoulder? "Selene . . ." Juba had once seen my blood blossom to flowers on the temple floor. He'd tried to stop me from running into a pit of crocodiles. It had frightened him. I could see he was frightened again now. "How is it that you're working magic again?"

His gently spoken remonstration wasn't meant to be a question, but I wondered myself. How had Isis come to me? Always before, she was moved to speak when I'd touched the blood of her wors.h.i.+ppers. Only now did I remember how Chryssa had cut herself with the strigil, her blood in my bathwater. "My G.o.ddess is moved by suffering."

"What torments you?" Juba asked, rubbing at the stubble of his beard. "Why does your G.o.ddess come to you like this?"

How could I tell him without confessing what the emperor had done? I wanted to trust him with the truth, but I remembered what Livia had said. Juba wouldn't believe me. How much worse for him it might be if he did! What if my new husband took my part, raging like a lion, thundering down the hall to the emperor's rooms, pounding upon his doors and demanding satisfaction? It would cost Juba his throne, if not his life.

As Juba searched my eyes for an explanation, I said nothing. He couldn't know. I didn't want him to know. I didn't want anyone to know. That the emperor had forced himself upon me was a wound so deep it might be fatal to expose. For now, I must give this pain to my dark shadow self, with all my unworthy thoughts, all the wrath that Isis warned against. I let my khaibit hold my atrocities-the ones done to me, and the ones I wished to do-knowing they'd be there for me another day.

AS the skipper led our small armada out of port, I stood at the rail, refusing to look away. From the sh.o.r.e, Augustus watched me go. I've always said that his power was in the cold treachery of his gray eyes, with which he could hold me perfectly still. Now, after four long years, his eyes were fading into the distance, his figure getting smaller on the horizon. His grip was loosening and I wanted him to remember me like this. Let him look at my cloak billowing behind me like the aura of a G.o.ddess. Let him wonder about the curse Isis had laid upon him in my name.

The sailors busied themselves with s.h.i.+p's tasks and my attendants saw to my berth. I thought I was quite alone at the rail, watching the milky green waves pa.s.s beneath us until Juba murmured, "Is it done between you?"

My breath caught in my throat. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

The sea breeze whipped his dark hair against the grim set of his jaw, and there was a shadow in his eyes that I'd never seen before. "The night it rained, Selene, I came to your room. You weren't there. Where were you?"

I turned away. I'd already resolved not to speak about that night. Not to Juba. Not to anyone.

He put his hand on my arm, a harmless gesture, but I was still too raw to be touched. When I yanked away, Juba winced as if I'd slipped a dagger past his defenses to wound him. "Am I really such anathema to you, Selene?"

"Juba, you misunderstand-"

"Where were you that night?" he demanded, eyes narrowed.

I shook my head. I wouldn't tell him. Perhaps I couldn't tell him. My throat closed with emotion and Juba's expression turned to stone. Snapping his gaze away from me, he stared out to the sea as if it might swallow us both up. The harbor of Ostia was receding now, all its warehouses getting tinier with every stroke of the rower's oars.

"I'll find a way to forgive you," Juba said at length, his voice cold. "Just tell me that it's done."

He shocked me into saying, "You think I went willingly?" I turned to stare at him.

"Don't!" His grip on the rail tightened until his knuckles went white. "Don't pretend you didn't seduce him, Selene. You used the occasion of our wedding to make a wh.o.r.e of yourself, and I endured it, so don't lie. If not your loyalty, you at least owe me the truth."

Each word drove into me like a dagger. I'd known he wouldn't believe me, so why did it hurt so much? And I remembered that Juba had asked for my love, but he'd never promised his. "What of your loyalty?"

"First and always to the emperor," he said, without any hesitation at all.

Looking deep into Juba's troubled amber eyes, for one horrifying moment, I wondered if he'd somehow been complicit. "You left me a virgin. Were you saving my virtue for your master?"

He snorted. "It was you who went rigid on our wedding night."

"What about the night after?" I asked only to lash out at him, to cause him as much pain as he was causing me, but a flicker of guilt pa.s.sed over his features and what he said next stole my breath away.

"One doesn't take from Augustus what he wants for himself."

Though wind filled the billowing sails overhead, I couldn't seem to get enough air. Until this moment, I hadn't known what kind of man Juba was. Not truly. Both hands went to my cheeks, fingers over my ears, as if I could unhear his words. "You knew . . ."

"I'm not blind," Juba said. "Of course I knew what he wanted from you."

Then Juba had betrayed me. Again. "Why didn't you defend me? Why didn't you protect me?"

"Protect you?" Juba asked, eyes ablaze. "It's what you wanted, Selene. Now you've had your way."

"It's not what I wanted. Shall I show you the bruises?" I reached for my skirts to yank them up.

Juba caught my wrist, stopping me. He wouldn't look. He wouldn't see. And whatever might have been salvaged between us was now shattered. Blinking back stunned tears, I wrenched my arm from Juba's grasp, hating the white indentations his fingers left in my skin. I didn't want him to touch me. I didn't want any man to touch me ever again. There wasn't a man in the world I could rely upon. No one but Helios had ever protected me, and now no one else ever would. I must always and only rely upon myself. The realization left me frightened, furious, and torn asunder. When I found my breath, I spat, "You're a coward, Juba."

He blanched, his throat bobbing. "I ask you again, is it done between the two of you?"

For him to ask such a question, he mustn't have known me either. "No. It isn't done. I'll never let it be done."

Another man might have struck me or demanded a different answer from his wife, but as I turned to go Juba merely followed me to the tiny cabin on the deck that had been specially prepared for us. Inside, Chryssa vomited into a bra.s.s pot. Juba hovered in the entryway. "If she's going to be seasick the whole journey, I might as well find another berth."

I didn't even glance at him. "You might as well."

Seven.

THEREAFTER I shut myself up with my slave girl in a cabin that smelled of vomit. I'd taken to scratching at my arms with my fingernails, as if I could sc.r.a.pe off the emperor's filth. That Juba had known, and let it happen, defiled me twice over, and I feared that all the water in the sea couldn't wash the shame away. So while Chryssa retched, I wished I could heave up the poison of humiliation in my own belly. All that comforted me was the memory of my G.o.ddess and her words.

Child of Isis, you are more than flesh.

"I'm going to die," Chryssa whispered late on the third night of our voyage, her eyes bloodshot, hair clinging in tendrils to the back of her sweating neck. She groaned as the waves tossed our s.h.i.+p like a gambler tosses knucklebones. "Promise that when I die, you'll commend my spirit to Isis."

"I promise no such thing as seasickness isn't fatal," I said, though her waxy complexion did nothing to convince me. Still, my tone was sharp and I hated the way my own despair made me mean-spirited and selfish. At the thought of her death, all I could think was that everyone else had left me. My parents. My brothers. Even my new husband had abandoned me to the clutches of a depraved fiend. I couldn't lose Chryssa too. "You're not allowed to die, Chryssa. I can't be burdened with the guilt of having dragged you across the sea to meet your end."

The next day, convinced that Juba was engaged elsewhere on the s.h.i.+p with his new advisers, I finally coaxed Chryssa out of her sickbed to take lunch on the stern deck. We enjoyed a pleasant meal of dried dates and savory cheese wrapped in bay leaves, and Crinagoras sidled over to amuse us. Wary of male company, I remarked, "King Juba fears that you don't share Virgil's vision, court poet."

Crinagoras smirked, making a gift to me of an ingenious little feather fan. "It's true that my vision is clouded with the perfume and glitter of royalty. Remember, madam, Virgil is Augustus's poet, whereas I am yours. Augustus uses his poets to shape his reputation; I intend to help shape yours."

My twin had loved all things nautical, the transport s.h.i.+ps and their banks of oars, the ports and the sea itself. He'd spent the better part of his youth sketching war galleys and river barges; but when the skipper offered to give me a tour of the s.h.i.+p I declined in favor of a nap. Arranging myself beneath the billowing square sail of our big-bellied craft as it rode the waves to Mauretania, I dozed. Hence, it was with my eyes half closed that I first spotted land, and when my eyes fluttered back open I gaped in astonishment, letting the fan fall from my hand.

What I saw was no strange Berber land at the west end of the sea. This was Alexandria. Her towering lighthouse rose up from Pharos Island, winking fire to greet me, and I saw the Heptastadion too-that jetty connecting the island to the mainland and sheltering the harbor, where dock workers unloaded cargo. Beyond that, broad avenues lined with swaying palm trees and the Great Library where scholars strolled, debating the questions of the day. Alexandria . My birthplace, home of Isis, whose temple shone brightly in the sun. I jolted up, the words exploding from my chest. "How have we come to Egypt?"

"This is Mauretania, Majesty." The skipper must have thought I'd lost my wits.

I blinked once and Alexandria was gone. A small untamed island off the coast led into the neglected harbor of a colorful village. Mountains broke through the clouds to loom over the blue sea and I was so disoriented that I forgot everything. "What is this town?"

"It was the capital city before old King Bocchus died," Crinagoras replied.

"It looks barbarous," Chryssa said, surveying the rocky coastline with a wary eye. "Is it just the first stop on our journey or are we meant to make it our home?"