Read Online Song of the Nile by Stephanie Dray - Free Book Online

cruel.”
    No. That wouldn’t be the emperor’s way. The deepest wounds were those he inflicted on the inside. And I was no better, for I’d been thoughtless and selfish to ask her this question. She’d gone unwilling to the bed of Augustus and been horribly ill used. Why had I made her remember it? I turned to apologize when I saw Chryssa clutching the strigil. It was only a scraper, meant to slough off sweat and oil. It wasn’t very sharp, but Chryssa’s white-knuckled grip made it cut into her skin. “You’re bleeding,” I said softly. She hissed as if only now realizing it and let her hand drop into the water between us, where the red droplets of her anguish mixed with the bathwater. “He won’t touch you again, Chryssa. I’ll take you away with me to Africa, and you’ll never have to see him again.” Her expression went carefully neutral in the way of a slave and together we watched the reed basket of sponges float across the murky water, like a sailing ship gone adrift. “You don’t want to go with me,” I said, realizing it for the first time. “You want to stay here, in Rome?”
    “It’s just that I have a sister,” Chryssa said. “I wish I wasn’t leaving Phoebe behind.”
    I was being forced to leave my little brother Philadelphus; I didn’t have to imagine Chryssa’s inner torment. “Maybe I can find a way for Phoebe to come with us . . .”
    “No. There’s nothing to be done. My sister belongs to Lady Julia now and considers herself quite fortunate. She’s had cruel mistresses before who beat her with the lash. She wouldn’t want to risk her new station.”
    Such were the terrors of slaves. Chryssa’s back was also striped with scars from the lash, for she hadn’t always belonged to me. “I’ll find a way to let you stay here with your sister, then. Perhaps Augustus will allow me to grant you your freedom. I mean to do it anyway, the moment we get to Mauretania.”
    I was surprised to hear her gasp with dismay. “What would become of me? Do you think it’s easy for a woman on her own in Rome? How would I feed myself ?”
    I felt foolish and confused. “You’re a skilled ornatrix . Besides, I have money now. I’d help you.”
    Chryssa seemed angry, or at least as angry as a slave ever allowed herself to seem. “Do you know how many barbarian slaves have been brought into the city? It would be cheaper to buy ten of them than to pay me a wage. I was once Chryssa, slave of the emperor’s wife. Then, Chryssa, slave of the Egyptian prince Helios. Now I’m Chryssa, slave of the Queen of Mauretania. If you set me free, I’m nobody at all.”
    “That isn’t true. You’ll always be Chryssa, a child of Isis.”
    My goddess opened her arms to slaves, and thus had many followers even where the conscript fathers had deemed hers a dangerous foreign cult. But Chryssa only said, “Without you here, Rome is no place for those who honor the goddess.”
    I bit my lip, worried about what might happen to the worshippers of Isis in my absence. Until I could return Isis to the throne of Egypt, perhaps I could make a safe haven for her worshippers in Mauretania. I tried to offer Chryssa some comfort. “My new kingdom isn’t so far. With the right winds, Mauretania is just days away. I promise you can visit Rome—”
    “No.” She glanced over her shoulder as if she could see Livia and Augustus and all the others who had tortured her. “I’ll never want to come back.”
     
     
    FOR weeks now, I’d been consumed with the wedding and all that attended it. It was only now, in the quiet aftermath of the celebration, that my imminent departure became a painful reality. Knowing this to be my very last day in Rome, I ushered Philadelphus to the schoolroom. Because my littlest brother was far more prone to pranks and frivolity than a Ptolemy ought to be, I rummaged through the scroll-cases that lined the wall, searching for parchment and vellum works on history and mathematics that I thought it