Song of the Nile (2 page)

I also couldn’t have written this without Leah Barber holding down the fort and without my Divas cracking the whip over my head every day. Nor do I think I could have kept track of the enormous piles of research for this book without the help of Scrivener, upon which I’m hopelessly dependent.

I must again thank Duane W. Roller, Professor (Emeritus) of Greek and Latin at Ohio State University, who offered his expertise on Cleopatra Selene and Juba II. I’m also grateful to anthropologist and
Amazigh
activist Helene Hagen, whose work on Berber culture is fascinating. Both scholars patiently answered my questions, but any mistakes in this manuscript should be ascribed to me alone.

Mindful that footnotes distract and that my sources are too numerous to cite here, I would, nonetheless, like to credit several, including W. W. Tarn’s scholarly paper titled “Alexander Helios and the Golden Age” as well as Duane W. Roller’s
The World of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene
, Margaret George’s
Memoirs of Cleopatra
, Wilbur Smith’s
River God, Pharaoh
by Karen Essex, and the splashy Hollywood film
Cleopatra
, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

I’m again indebted to authors who have also tried to bring Selene’s world to life, including Andrea Ashton, whose social awareness about the conflict of Berbers and Romans helped inspire several scenes in this book. Additionally, I want to thank Alice Curtis Desmond and Michelle Moran, whose influence can also be felt in this novel. However, it’s Beatrice Chanler’s 1934 novel,
Cleopatra’s Daughter
,
the Queen of Mauretania
that inspired me most. My work is heavily influenced by her ideas, imagery, and lofty prose. In particular, Ms. Chanler’s book captured my imagination because of its unusual theory that Cleopatra Selene and her twin brother were religious symbols—a theory that I’ve extended into the fantastic.

In adopting and modernizing this theory by reimagining Isis worship, I relied not just upon ancient sources and current scholarship but also upon the worship of Isis as it’s currently practiced. M. Isidora Forrest’s
Isis Magic
was invaluable on that count, as was Ms. Forrest herself, who kindly offered advice on rituals that Selene may have been familiar with. The calling prayer of Isis appears in this novel with her permission.

While it is a perilous endeavor to speculate about the sexuality of historical figures, I was emboldened by
Virgil in the Renaissance
by David Scott Wilson-Okamura and Saara Lilja’s
Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome
. I’ve portrayed Selene’s sexual morality through the lens of mythic Isiac fertility rites as explored in Merlin Stone’s fascinating book
When God Was a Woman
, itself inspired by the work of Robert Graves. While no detailed record of Isiac mystery rites survives, I drew upon the legend that Isis herself had served as a prostitute in Tyre. I was also mindful of Herodotus’s claim that female adherents of goddess cults gave themselves to a stranger at least once in their lives—an idea echoed by Strabo. And, of course, I must express appreciation for
The Metamorphoses
of Lucius Apuleius, an Isiac work and the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. I blended all this information with extant accounts of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Insofar as this novel is about Augustus, I relied upon ancient historians Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and Tacitus, freely adopting the latter’s uncharitable views of Livia. When it came to reconstructing Berber culture as it may have existed in Selene’s reign, I consulted Susan Raven’s
Rome in Africa
, Paul MacKendrick’s
The North African Stones Speak
, and
The Berbers
by Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress.

For additional sources, please see my website at stephaniedray.com.

CHARACTERS

The Court of Augustus Caesar

AUGUSTUS CAESAR,
or Octavian, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the imperator and victor of Actium

JULIA,
his daughter by his former wife Scribonia, and his only child

LIVIA DRUSILLA,
his wife, scion of a powerful noble family, the
Claudii

Tiberius
, her oldest son by her former husband
Drusus
, her youngest son by her former husband

OCTAVIA,
his long-suffering sister

Marcellus
, her son by her first husband

Marcella
, her daughter by her first husband

Antonia Major
, her eldest daughter by her second husband, Mark Antony

Antonia Minor
, called Minora, her youngest daughter by her second husband, Mark Antony

Iullus Antonius
, her ward, son of Mark Antony by his deceased wife, Fulvia

Ptolemy Philadelphus
, her ward, youngest son of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt

Alexander Helios,
her missing ward, son of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt, twin brother of Selene

AGRIPPA,
his most powerful and trusted general

MAECENAS,
his political adviser and overseer of imperial artistic programs
Terentilla
, the beautiful wife of Maecenas and mistress of Augustus

VIRGIL,
his revered poet and propagandist

ANTONIUS MUSA,
his renowned physician, a freedman

The Court of Cleopatra Selene & Juba
II

CLEOPATRA SELENE,
Queen of Mauretania, only daughter of Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Mark Antony

JUBA,
her husband, the Berber-blooded King of Mauretania and Numidia

Lucius Cornelius Balbus
, his adviser, a Roman veteran
Circe
, his mistress, a Greek
hetaera

CHRYSSA,
her Greek slave girl, a hairdresser and keeper of the wardrobe

TALA,
her Berber attendant, sister of Maysar, a tribal leader

EUPHRONIUS/EUPHORBUS,
her court physician, mage, and priest of Isis from Alexandria

CRINAGORAS OF MYTILENE,
her court poet

MEMON,
her captain of the Macedonian guard from Alexandria

LADY LASTHENIA,
her adviser, a Pythagorean scholar from Alexandria

MAYSAR,
her adviser, a Berber tribal leader

CAPTAIN KABYLE,
her Berber-born ship’s captain

MASTER GNAIOS,
her father’s famous gem cutter

LEONTEUS OF ARGOS,
her court tragedian

LADY ANTONIA,
also called Hybrida, her long-lost sister, a wealthy widow and daughter of Mark Antony

Pythodorida
, her daughter

Prologue

ISIS

I am nature. I am the mother of everything that has ever been or will ever be. I am all goddesses. And you know me, for I live inside you. I am in the part of you that feels magic when the wheat is harvested and cleansing wind separates golden grains from the chaff. I am in the part of you that sees a woman dance by firelight and understands the sacred power of her body. I am in the part of you that has suffered dark nights of the soul and survived to see the dawn.

You know me, because I am every strong hand that ever stretched out to help you. I am every soft kiss that soothed your tears. I am every warm meal that has filled your hungry belly. I have a thousand names, and yet,
you know me
.

I am the good goddess. Bona Dea. Call me Hecate or Cybele, Venus or Inanna, Neith or Tanit, Kore or Demeter. I will answer to them all. But I am properly known as Isis, for it is by this name that the world has best worshipped me.

They tell stories of how my husband was murdered and how I raised up my son to avenge his father. This story is true, but it is a son’s story. A daughter’s journey is different. That is why there are
other
stories they tell about me. Stories of how my daughter was taken, pulled down into the underworld, and how I refused to work my magic until she returned to me.

This is one of those stories.

One

SELENE

ROME
AUTUMN 25 B.C.

MY wedding day dawned rosy as the blush on a maiden’s cheek. Like the sun peeking between pink clouds to warm the sprawling city of terra-cotta roofs below, I must also shine for Rome today. As morning broke, I surveyed the middling monuments that blanketed Rome’s seven hills. I gazed to the Tiber River beyond, diamonds of dawn sparkling on its surface, and tried to see this day with my mother’s eyes.

She was Cleopatra, Pharaoh of Egypt, a woman of limitless aspiration. And I was her only daughter. She’d wanted a royal marriage for me. She may have even hoped my wedding would be celebrated here in Rome. But could she have conceived that this wedding would come to me through her bitterest enemy? In her wildest dreams, could she have imagined that the man who drove her to suicide—the same man who captured her children and dragged us behind his Triumphator’s chariot—would now make me a queen?

Yes
, I thought. She could have imagined it. Perhaps she had even planned it.

Worn around my neck, a jade frog amulet dangled from a golden chain. It was a gift from my mother, inscribed with the words
I am the Resurrection
. On my finger, I wore her notorious amethyst ring, with which she was said to have ensorcelled my father, Mark Antony. It was now my betrothal ring, and I hoped it would steady me, for I was a tempest inside.

At just fourteen years old, I had neither my mother’s audacity nor the brazen courage that allowed her to so famously smuggle herself past enemy soldiers to be rolled out at the feet of Julius Caesar. I had
heka—
magic—but had inherited none of my mother’s deeper knowledge of how to use it. I didn’t have her wardrobe, her gilded barges, nor the wealth of mighty Egypt.
Not yet
. But the Romans often said I had her charm and wits and the day she died, she gave me the spirit of her Egyptian soul.

Today I would need it.

It was early yet in the emperor’s household; only the servants were awake, bustling about the columned courtyard, trimming shrubbery and hanging oil lamps in preparation for the wedding festivities. They were too busy—or too wary of my reputation as a sorceress—to acknowledge my presence beneath an overripe fig tree, where my slave girl and I made devotions to Isis. My Egyptian goddess was forbidden within the sacred walls of Rome, but no one stopped us from lighting candles and using a feather to trace the holy symbol, the
ankh
, into the soft earth. The Temples of Isis might be shuttered here in Rome, her altars destroyed and her voice silent, but my goddess dwelt in me and I vowed that she would speak again.

Once we’d offered our prayers, my slave girl and I strolled the gardens with a basket because it was the Roman custom for a bride to pick flowers for her own wedding wreath. The summer had been ablaze, so hot that flowers lingered out of season. I had my choice in a veritable meadow. Stooping down, I plucked two budding roses to remind me of my dead brothers, Caesarion and Antyllus, both killed in the flower of youth. I chose a flamboyant red poppy for my dead father, the Roman triumvir, who’d been known as much for his excesses as his military talent. Finally, for my mother, a purple iris because purple was the most royal color, and my mother had been the most royal woman in the world. The sight of a blazing golden flower, the most glorious in the garden, reminded me of my beloved twin. But Helios was only missing, not dead, and I refused to tempt fate by plucking that flower from its vine. Helios promised me that we’d never live to see
this
day; he swore he’d never let me be married off to one of the emperor’s cronies, but the day had come and Helios was gone.