Calling for some sheets of papyrus, I sat down to write Julia a letter. My pen hesitated over each word, and I ended up committing it to the fire. I’d had no messages from her since her remarriage. She was being closely watched; I was sure of it. Besides, even if I could slip a letter past Agrippa’s censorious eye, what could I say to her? My ambitions had driven a wedge between her father and her husband. I loved her, but we were now, she and I, kept women in enemy camps.
ON a brisk morning, Memnon knocked softly on my door to wake me. “The emperor’s ship has been spotted.”
I roused myself, intent upon racing to the shore to greet him with the pomp and circumstance to which he’d no doubt grown accustomed, but he hadn’t sent word ahead or given us time to prepare. Indeed, as would later become his habit when entering Rome, he’d arrived swiftly and secretly to forestall any grandiose welcome.
I hurriedly dressed and rushed down the stairs. Augustus was already in the courtyard before my sandal left the last step. The folds of my
chiton
swayed behind me, and I quite feared that my diadem was askew. “Welcome back, Caesar!”
Holding his arms out so that a slave could relieve him of his dress armor, he seemed almost amused at my breathlessness. “You seem altogether too surprised by my arrival.”
“Iullus said there was to be military action in Armenia. I thought you’d be there with Tiberius, to fight King Artaxias.”
“As it turns out,” he began flatly, “King Artaxias is dead.”
I swallowed. “You had him executed? A sovereign king?”
“It wasn’t my doing. By the time our forces arrived in Armenia, the king’s relatives had already assassinated him. So we were able to install the newly made king Tigranes of Armenia unopposed. Tiberius put the crown on his head.”
“That ought to please Livia,” I said, regaining my bearings. “Her taciturn son is now a kingmaker.”
“It ought to please you too. For this clears the way for our campaign in Parthia. Armenia is now an ally, and I can amass my legions there.”
All very tidy. I could never fault Augustus for poor planning. His game was expansive and deep whereas mine was of a single, narrow purpose. But I still remembered my father’s tales of arrows launched upon him in Parthia like a plague of insects that darkened the sky. The Romans were infantry fighters, foremost and always; they’d never fared well against Parthia’s mounted archers. “If Agrippa were with you, he’d have some new invention, some new technique to frustrate the Parths.”
“I have something better than Agrippa and his strategies,” Augustus said, those gray eyes fastening on me. “I have a sorceress who can summon the winds with an upraised hand and knock hardened warriors like Agrippa to their knees. I have
you
, Selene.”
When everything we think we know about the world fractures in an instant, we don’t hear the shattering. We feel it in our bodies as if we were all dry brittle bone instead of flesh. “
Me?
You expect me to—to do what? To call down a storm upon the Parthian army and bury them in sand?”
He answered only after he’d waved all the slaves and attendants out of the courtyard. “Is that within your power?”
“No!” Were it in my power, it wouldn’t be Parths buried under sand but Roman legions.
“I’ve had you
watched
, Selene. I’ve had reports that you swallowed a storm whole. That you swam in a Mauretanian river and brought dead animals to life. That you nearly swamped a pirate ship with your magic. You’ve grown stronger.”
“So that I could give you grain. I’ve asked Isis to bring her blessings to the soil of Africa, and she’s done it for my sake. To feed people, to nourish people, to protect people—those are the purposes for which I can use her magic. She didn’t give me these powers to make war.”
“Why not? Your mother made war.”
“And you condemned her for it!”
“Quite so,” the emperor mused. “But she commanded Antony. You will be commanded by me. The Kandake and the rumors of her fire mage demoralized my Roman legions; I can play the same trick on the Parths.” So that is why he kept me on this island—so that I would be near enough to send for if I was needed at the scene of a battle. He motioned me into the seat beside him, and I sank down into it in shock. “Together, Selene, we can avenge your father’s ignoble defeat.”
My father had been defeated in Parthia, but it had been anything but ignoble. It had been a disastrous campaign, but my father had bravely led a retreat through the Parthian snows. He inspired his soldiers by example, eating grass and insects to survive. His bravery in the face of relentless pursuit by Parthian forces was a thing of wonder. He’d lost his battle standards, he’d lost most of his men, and he’d lost the fight, but he hadn’t lost honor, and even if he had, the emperor was the last man who could have restored it. “No, Caesar. I’ve never wanted to go to war; I’ve never wanted to kill anyone.”
“That’s a lie,” Augustus said, leaning close. “When you were a frightened little girl, your face would go pale as the moon. When you were angry, your cheeks burned scarlet. Now your skin betrays nothing. But there is a flutter, right here, at the base of your throat, just beneath your amulet . . .” He tapped his forefinger against the very spot. “This shows me when you lie and when you’re afraid.”
Heart, be still
. I measured my breaths, slowing them, allowing a tiny stream of
heka
to thicken my blood, willing the rest of my body to mold itself to my artifice. He would find no satisfaction in feeling my heartbeat quiver beneath his thumb. No corpse has ever been as still as I. “Is there something I should fear?”
“I’ve sent Livia away,” he replied, leaning a little closer, his lips brushing my cheek.
“And Terentilla?”
“She is Maecenas’s wife, not mine. You and I shall winter together here on the Isle of Samos. It will be enough time to conceive another child, I should think. The price of your throne has come due, Selene. I will come to you this night.”
Thirty-three
SOMEHOW I wasn’t ready. I’d come to this island to make myself the mistress of Augustus more than a year before, and still I hadn’t reconciled myself to it. I should have listened to Circe, but I’d been a fool. I was
still
a fool. When the door swung open to reveal Augustus on the threshold, torchlight blazing behind him, I propped myself up on my pillows, unsteady, unsure. Then he disarmed me completely by saying, “It seems that I have a grandson.”
A grandson. Dismay hollowed out my belly. Oh,
Julia
. She’d had a
boy
. Instead of rejoicing for my friend, I could only grind my teeth with bitter frustration that her otherwise rebellious loins could not have defied her father in this one thing. Augustus had his heir now. He wouldn’t need me. All of this for nothing! But the emperor didn’t look nearly as pleased as he should have been. “Is it not what you hoped for, Caesar?”
“It is not,” he said, closing the door behind him. “The baby’s name is Gaius Vipsanius Agrippa. Moreover, Livia writes that Julia’s child is fast fading. She doubts he’ll live past winter.”
It wasn’t an uncommon fate for babies born into a loving family, much less for a child with an unhappy mother and murderous step-grandmother. Julia’s son weakened my position but destroyed Livia’s hopes for her sons. Another woman might have been content to be married to the ruler of the world, but no Claudian had ever been satisfied with less than total victory. If the opportunity presented itself, Livia would kill Julia’s son without hesitation. That my own interests would also benefit from the little boy’s death made me sick at heart. If I were like Livia, I’d wish the child dead. But I
wasn’t
like her and I vowed that not for Egypt, not for anything, would I wish harm to come to Julia’s child. “I’ll pray for his recovery.”
“You should.” Augustus came to the side of my bed and yanked the coverlet away. “My grandson’s illness is your doing. You and this curse you’ve put upon me that I shall outlive all my heirs. You and your witchery. What are you doing to the boy?”
I forced myself to take a breath. “I’ve done nothing. Truly, I
am
sorry that he’s sickly. Not only for you or little Gaius, but for Julia, who doesn’t deserve more unhappiness in her life. I pray that Isis—”
“Isis is a faithless whore of a goddess!”
My eyes went wide and round at this blasphemy. “You tempt her.”
“I’ve done everything to
appease
her. I’ve granted amnesty to the Isiacs in Egypt. I’ve sent gold to the temples in Philae. So, tell me, Selene, Isis would not make
your
son sicken and die, would she?”
“No,” I said, making a wild gambit. “But I don’t have a son and you won’t give one to me.”
He grabbed at my arm. “Oh, I would give you a son.”
“No,” I said, yanking away. “You would give me a
bastard
and then leave for a war from which you may never return. You’ll go off to die on some foreign field and leave me alone with your son to defend, just as Caesar’s death left my mother desperate, thrashing about for a new defender.”
He didn’t like to be reminded of Caesarion. “What new game is this?”
“It’s only the plain truth of it,” I said, leaning forward so that my dark hair cascaded loose over one shoulder. “When you’re gone, Agrippa will point to me and say, ‘There goes the great Egyptian whore who stole our good Octavian away from us.’ Then what fate for your children?” Genuine emotion swelled in my breast because it could all play out again in just such a fashion.
As he watched me all atremble in my bedclothes, his gaze softened. “You
do
fear for me . . .”
“Of course I do. When you were so very ill and all Rome said you were dying, Livia couldn’t bring herself to sit beside you. Agrippa and Marcellus vied for power outside your door. Even Octavia and Julia, for all that they love you, were paralyzed. But
I
sat beside you, willing you to live. Now you accuse me of cursing Agrippa’s infant son and insult me by allowing yourself to be surprised at my concern for your well-being.”
He sat on the edge of my bed and the anger went out of him. “Insult is not what I wish to offer you.”
He wished so badly to believe me that he had allowed this to become a lover’s spat. I pressed forward. “Then why have you humiliated me by summoning me to this island and denying me my mother’s throne?”
“My dear girl, I have not denied you. I’ve merely asked you to wait.”
“As I’m asking you to wait.”
His eyes slid to mine. “Your mother didn’t make Caesar wait.”
I tilted my chin and said, “My mother was already the Queen of Egypt.”
He would not have satisfaction this night. I knew it because of the stillness of his hand in mine. The lustful monster inside him was safely chained for now, perhaps because the news of Julia’s son had shaken him. He would leave without touching me. Perhaps I shouldn’t let him go. Perhaps it would be safer to seduce him before he had a chance to ponder whether or not he still needed a son from me at all. But I knew one thing about him as I knew nothing else.
Augustus always wants most what he cannot have.
IT had been a year since the negotiations with the Kandake’s ambassador from Meroë. Now the weather turned cold again, and a delegation purporting to come from King Pandion of faraway India arrived to meet with Augustus. The delegation carried with them credentials written in Greek, alleging that King Pandion was an overlord of six hundred vassal kings. His eagerness to open diplomatic relations was a matter of great import and the entire court of Augustus was obliged to welcome the Indians in celebration of the winter solstice.
I was grateful for the cloying presence of Terentilla, because she disguised my status. Whereas she draped her beauty in gaudy jewels and little else, taking no pains to hide her adultery, I maintained the very image of maternal virtue, wearing gowns that Octavia would have approved and keeping my daughter close so that few might guess the true reason for my extended sojourn at the emperor’s side.
Keenly aware that Nicholas of Damascus, Herod’s ambassador, was always watching me, ready to report all my doings back to my enemy in Judea, I made subtle inquiries about him too. He maintained frequent contact with Livia. I hadn’t forgotten how she’d feted Herod’s sons during the Saturnalia in Rome. Herod and Livia. That was a dangerous alliance that I must not underestimate.
When the feasting began, the Indian embassy presented Augustus with exotic gifts. Slaves rolled huge cages into the room inside of which were enormous striped cats. And when the animals roared, all the feasters gasped.
“Tigers.”
Augustus tested the word with great pleasure. “I’ve never seen such a creature before. They will make for excellent entertainment in the arena. Look at their teeth, almost four inches long!”
My daughter, who seemed intent on forming her very own menagerie, wanted one for a pet, but I told her that these tigers would eat the rest of her little animals in one gulp. Nonetheless, the great cats were beautiful and I was no less amazed by the rest of the curiosities. The Indians also presented Augustus with a giant river tortoise, a very long python, and an enormous partridge with a red beak. In addition to the animals was human merchandise. At the emperor’s feet, eight naked slaves prostrated themselves, one of whom was a boy named Hermes, whose arms had been amputated at the shoulder.
The armless boy demonstrated that he could perform tasks with his feet, bending a bow, throwing a javelin, and even playing a trumpet with his toes. When the boy glanced up at me as if sensing that I might have some power over the new life he’d find as property of the emperor, I had to look away.
We learned that a much larger Indian contingent had set out to reach a treaty with Augustus in support of his quickly approaching war with Parthia but that a great many of them perished on the way. One of the survivors was a holy man named Zarmanochegas, who said, “We’re told that you have a powerful sorceress to aid you in battle.”