Song of the Nile Read Online Free Page A

need . . . something else.”
    Chryssa’s eyes widened. “It’s almost time for the wedding. Half the city is at the gates.”
    This did nothing to calm me. Roman weddings were supposed to be small and modest affairs, simple contracts that required only a few witnesses. Mine would be different. The guests would be looking to see if I was just a Roman girl, the daughter of Mark Antony, or if I was Cleopatra’s daughter, a sorceress whose blood made flowers grow, whose hands left crocodiles docile in her wake. As the foremost worshipper of Isis in Rome, stories about me had passed from temple to temple, tavern to tavern, amongst the slaves and the lower classes. I’d emboldened them. Perhaps I’d inspired them. So maybe I need not fear the crowds; I wasn’t a prisoner anymore.
    Be my Cleopatra , the emperor said, and one day your mother’s Egypt may be yours.
    Augustus was a grand actor in a pageant of his own creation and the only way to remain in his favor was to play my role. He wanted spectacle? Well, I would give him one. With deep resolution, I unwound the braids that Octavia had so painstakingly fastened, brushing out my dark hair so that it curled and cascaded, loose and free, over my shoulders. “I won’t be a Roman bride,” I said. “My mother was Pharaoh and I’ll let no one forget it.”
    Chryssa’s mouth formed a circle of surprise when I threw open my wardrobe chest, giving no care to the fact that the slaves had carefully packed it for the journey. I rifled through it until I found a beautiful diaphanous gown that Helios had given me. Octavia had tried to make it modest with stitches and brooches. Now I refashioned it. Removing the pins, I wrapped the gown under my arms and tied it between my breasts in the knot of Isis, the tiet , a loop with trailing sides that was a variant of the ankh . My wideeyed slave girl watched me as if I’d gone mad. “You’re going to give insult. You’ll anger the emperor!”
    “I know him better than you do.” Since I was a little child, I’d learned to play all the emperor’s games; this was just one more. Be my Cleopatra , the emperor had said, and I was young and foolish enough to believe I knew what that meant. “Don’t stand there gaping, Chryssa. Help me!”
    Reluctantly, she went to my dressing table, searching for the proper cosmetic pots, as I told her what to do. My mother had been a Hellenistic queen, and when she dressed for the civilized Greek-speaking world, she dressed accordingly. But she’d also been Pharaoh of Egypt. It was that reminder of Egypt I wanted now, so I urged Chryssa to draw the dark lines of the wedjat —the eye of Horus—on my eyelids with black kohl. Then she used the greens and blues and reds of Egypt to color my face. When she was done, I held up the mirror and peered at myself with the green eyes of a jungle cat, exotic and wild. “You need more jewelry,” Chryssa suggested, finally warming to the idea. “Something sparkling to go with your little jade frog and betrothal ring.”
    I knew just the thing. Carefully wrapped in the bloodstained dress I’d worn as a prisoner was a golden snake armlet with gemstone eyes that my mother left for me when she’d foreseen her own death. I retrieved it from under my mattress, where I’d kept the bundle hidden for years, and slipped the armlet up until it hugged my bicep, its history merging with my skin. The effect was dazzling and scandalous. “You look like your mother’s portraits,” Chryssa breathed.
    But I saw in myself someone entirely new.

Two
    THEY were all waiting for me. At the edges of the vast peristyle garden, guests found their seats beneath the columned porticos. In the torchlight, the emperor’s family gathered—the Julii and all their numerous friends and clients. Sitting apart was the emperor’s wife and her family; as a Claudian, Livia descended from a nearly unbroken line of power-hungry maniacs and criminals, but in Rome their pedigree made them