Part 20 (1/2)

IN Juba's study I read the missive twice; then, as I dizzied, the lettering ran together like spilled ink. It wasn't the emperor's handwriting. Nor was it an expression of imperial fury. It was a formal and official doc.u.ment penned by Maecenas that summoned me to Greece. A broken water clock perched precariously at the edge of Juba's writing table and he tinkered with its decorated parts, intent upon repairing it. ”Why do you seem so stunned, Selene?”

Because the reckoning is finally at hand, I thought. More than a year had pa.s.sed since I'd fled Rome. Plenty of time for the emperor's cool anger to rise to a roiling boil. I'd used the time to make myself a capable queen; the reports he'd receive from legionaries and plantation owners should convince him I was a useful, if not essential, part of his plans. I'd gambled that his ambition was stronger than his vindictiveness. How anxious I was not to lose that gamble. ”Why am I stunned, Juba? Why aren't you? What have you heard? What does the emperor intend?”

Juba carefully removed the little chime from the water clock, inspecting it for rust. ”I'm not surprised that you've been summoned because all the Eastern royalty are being called to Samos. Archelaus of Cappadocia and Iamblichus of Emesa are both seeking to be reaffirmed to their kingdoms. I'm told that Augustus will restore Tarcondimotus to his ancestral lands. He might do the same for Mithridates III of Commagene.” In short, there wasn't a petty prince in the Mediterranean world who wouldn't be there, currying the emperor's favor in the hopes of retaining or regaining his patrimony. I was only different because I was a woman and because I was Cleopatra's daughter. Augustus had gone to the East to play kingmaker, and he was summoning me.

Juba leaned back, jingling the bell in his hand, avoiding my eyes, but his concentration on the water clock couldn't disguise the bitterness in his voice. ”If I had to guess, Selene, I would say that at long last the emperor plans to give you your heart's desire.”

At the word desire, an arrow of shame pinned me to my seat as I remembered my l.u.s.t-soaked lips pressed against Juba's mouth. In Rome, I'd given no consideration to the emperor's proposal to bear him a son, though it may have granted me everything. Then I'd kissed Juba for no advantage whatsoever. Regrettably, he had plainly read something into that kiss. Taken some sign from it. ”I'm sorry,” I whispered with genuine sorrow, for it seemed as if I were destined always to disappoint him.

”Augustus will expect tribute,” Juba said, stoutly. He was right. From the other princes, the emperor would demand monuments and oaths of loyalty. From me, the emperor would demand grain, but I couldn't lie to myself. Augustus might demand much more. You want Egypt, he'd said. Well, I want you to give me a son. Inwardly, I flailed like a bird in a net. Could I actually let Augustus put his defiling hands on me? Even for the throne of Egypt, could I open my legs for the same man who had forced them apart?

Augustus had wanted me to be his Cleopatra, his lover, the mother of his son. Perhaps that was what he still wanted. Or perhaps his single objective was now to punish me. If that was the case, my only defense would be to enchant him, drawing his fascination tight as a bowstring until he'd risk anything to have me and do anything to please me. Digging my fingernails into my palms as if to raise blood, I reminded myself that I'd endured worse than a rutting man inside me. What right did I have to hold my body somehow sacred while others suffered? Hadn't Isis herself written that I was more than flesh?

Juba interrupted my thoughts, a look of melancholy settling on his features. ”Are you going to go?”

I let the summons fall from my lax grip. ”What choice do I have?”

Twenty-seven.

DESPITE the king's distress, the mood in the palace was festive. Crinagoras lifted his wine cup in yet another toast to himself. ”Such good fortune for Alexandria! Not only will Egypt be blessed with her rightful queen, but that fair city will soon be the home of the greatest court poet ever known.”

Lady Lasthenia sighed with sentiment. ”Oh, I have missed the Museum. All that we've learned here will generate much interest as a series of lectures.”

Even Memnon, usually so professionally distant, quietly observed, ”We'll be exiles no more.”

I was struck by the red-rimmed emotion in his eyes. Had none of my courtiers come to love Mauretania as I had? Or was it simply that none of them knew the price I might have to pay? Unutterably selfish ideas crowded my thoughts. I flirted with the idea of refusing the summons. Of staying here in Mauretania, where I might live in defiance. I fantasized about building something new, something untouched by the emperor . . . but I was a Ptolemy and these people, these Alexandrians, had been my mother's subjects. Now they were mine. I must fight for them. I must fight for my heritage. I must fight for Egypt.

At the start of their romance, my father had famously summoned my mother. At Tarsus, she'd come to him as Aphrodite. She'd come to seduce him, and no one who saw her gilded barge with its perfumed grottoes could've mistaken her intentions. Was that part of the grand drama that the emperor felt compelled to re-create? I wasn't the only one to wonder. ”He expects you to make a spectacle of yourself, doesn't he?” Chryssa asked, as if calculating how this journey might drain the treasury.

”Why wouldn't she make a spectacle?” Lady Lasthenia asked. ”She's good at it. Our queen has theatrical sensibilities. If she's to be the Queen of Egypt, isn't it appropriate to show that she's wealthy, powerful, and beloved of the G.o.ds? How else will people understand the import?”

She wasn't wrong. Before the other royalty of the world, it must never seem that I was just a minor queen of an unimportant Western kingdom. I'd have to bring lavish gifts that wouldn't laden down our s.h.i.+p-smaller things of value, made of pearls and ivory. I'd need extravagant royal costumes and even the sails of my s.h.i.+p ought to be dyed in Gaetulian purple. Every prince in the world must see me as a worthy heir to my mother's legacy.

It would all play out on the world stage, so I must consider the symbolism behind every choice. With the emperor, everything was a game, a test. This one might well be the most important of my life. So how was I to make my entrance? Was I to dock the s.h.i.+p and invite Augustus and his men to join me for a feast? To flaunt my wealth, should I, like my mother before me, dissolve my pearl earrings in a gla.s.s of strong wine vinegar and drink it down? No, I thought. Augustus might have claimed my father's place, but he didn't see himself as Antony. He was Caesar. If I went to him, better to be rolled out at his feet in secret than come to him in open invitation.

If I went to him . . . How was there any other choice?

I might finally be going home to Egypt, so why did I feel so melancholy? Perhaps it was my maudlin tendencies or perhaps it was because I might never see Mauretania again. The cream and yellow marble of our palace, the green columns, the blue Berber carpets, the tapestries and statuary, the aloe plants beneath the almond and olive trees, and the glittering fountains in which my daughter loved to play. Without remembering how I got there, I found myself standing in the gardens, amidst the ocean of lavender that swayed in the breeze. When Euphronius came upon me, the sun was setting into the glow of dusk; I hadn't noticed the lateness of the hour. ”Majesty, you'll send for me, won't you?”

It was understood that he couldn't come with me to Greece, where he might be recognized as a mischief maker. ”I'll send for you the moment I step foot in Egypt . . . if I do.”

”This may be your last opportunity, Majesty.”

One didn't need to see into the Rivers of Time to know that. Lifting my arms, I hoped to catch sight of symbols carved there, red and vivid, serpents and sails, ropes and staves, papyrus reeds and boats. There was nothing. No hieroglyphs to guide me. ”Isis used to speak to me. She used to etch her words in my skin. If she'd only show me the way . . .”

”I'll find a blade,” Euphronius said. ”If she's called by the blood of her followers, I'll spill my blood for you.”

His offer, so earnestly made, so faithful, touched me. Once, Philadelphus had given his blood for just such a purpose, but now it seemed wrong to call upon my G.o.ddess by making someone else suffer. ”No, Euphronius. I suspect Isis isn't to be summoned to account like some client queen.” When the old man's face fell, I took his hands. ”There's a story about Isis in Tyre. To protect her child and all of Egypt from the dark G.o.d, she lay down as a prost.i.tute, did she not?”

”So some stories say,” the old man admitted.

I fingered the jade amulet at my throat. ”And I am the Resurrection . . .”

IN the days leading to my departure the Alexandrians weren't just festive but jubilant. By contrast, the Mauretanians were dispirited and, in Maysar's case, insolent. Hastily announcing his resignation in the empty audience room, the Berber chieftain gave no hint of that flas.h.i.+ng white smile I'd come to appreciate. ”I wish you luck, madam. If it's time for you to return to Egypt, then it's time for me to return to my tribe. I wasn't meant for city living and can no longer be of use.”

”That isn't true,” I argued. ”Without me here, Juba will need your advice more than ever.”

Maysar snorted, his dark eyes boring into mine. ”The Garamantes are a people much like the Egyptians. For months now, I've been extolling your virtues to their emissaries, making it known that you're a queen who honors the same things they do. Can I say the same of King Juba? Once you leave, it isn't difficult to predict what will happen. Within a year, Lucius Cornelius Balbus will use the legions of Africa Nova to crush these tribes and there'll be no sanctuary for them in Mauretania.”

”Perhaps they deserve to be crushed,” I said with a nonchalance I didn't feel. ”They're rebels. The Romans aren't always wrong in all things. Perhaps the Garamantes will only respond to a show of violent force.”

”You don't believe that,” he said sadly.

I rubbed my forefingers over the pearled arms of my throne chair. ”And you're not resigning because of the Garamantes. You're leaving because you're angry with me.”

He shrugged his shoulders, throwing his blue-stained hands to the sides. ”You're right. I am angry with you.”

”Why? How have I offended you?”

An indignant puff of air burst from his lips. ”You're abandoning Mauretania, madam, where you're needed. Where you're loved.”

There was no pretense to be made about my ambitions, so I said, ”I'm loved in Egypt too.”

He gave a stubborn shake of his head. ”Your mother is loved in Egypt. You are merely remembered. Mauretania is the land where the people have turned to you with hope. This is the city you've built. The city in which you rear your daughter, our beloved princess. But it isn't enough for you.”

What did he want me to do? Who did he think I was? ”I belong in Egypt. I'm a Ptolemy.”

”Yes,” he said, staring more boldly than a subject had a right to. ”The last of the Ptolemies; I've heard it said. You've never forgiven yourself for it. Do you think you can bring your dead to life?”

”Yes, I do!” Was I not the Resurrection? ”My family is dead and I must walk the steps they can't walk. I must breathe the breath that was stolen from their lungs. Speak the words their silenced tongues can't speak. It's a sacred thing. Berbers honor their ancestors, why shouldn't I?”

My words changed his expression and for a moment he bowed his head. When he lifted it again, he said, ”Because you let yourself enjoy nothing that your mother didn't enjoy. Love nothing that she didn't love. You refuse to be content where she couldn't be content. I think you punish yourself for being alive. That is not sacred.”

This was too much, and I rose to my feet. ”I should have you flogged for speaking to me this way.”

Contemptuously, he threw the end of his woolen burnoose over one shoulder. ”You wouldn't even trouble yourself, madam. Your mind is on Egypt. You wish for Augustus to make you queen and Pharaoh. If he grants your wish, you'll live in Alexandria and we'll never see you again. It's understood by all. So I bid you farewell.”

I was appalled. ”I haven't dismissed you. Will you leave Chryssa too? Didn't you ask her to wed?”

He paused only long enough to say, ”Cleopatra Antonia.n.u.s has chosen to be at your side, not mine, so I cannot marry her. I'm not so well mannered as our king to sit at the sh.o.r.e and watch my bride go.”

I sought Chryssa in my rooms but found only a horde of servants packing up clothing, jewels, furnis.h.i.+ngs, and artwork-all my belongings, as if they too, didn't expect me to return. In all this bedlam, Tala's little son, Ziri, and my Isidora ran riot. To their great delight, the yellowish brown monkey was pelting the children with dates. Tala sat nearby, mixing a henna paste for her tattoos, raising no objection whatsoever. When I complained, she gave me a cool stare such as she hadn't done since I first arrived in Mauretania. ”Your brother has already given me an earful of contempt today, Tala. If you plan to do the same, please let it wait until tomorrow.”