Hand of Isis (8 page)

I think it was the melon farmer who subdued the man, even before the temple guards arrived. They were not much soldiers, more used to keeping order at festivals and breaking up fights than dealing with royal assassinations.

I was half-fainting from the blood loss before they carried me back to the temple. I remember Cleopatra walking beside me, almost running to keep up with the bearers of the litter, her face set in a frown, my blood all down her white dress as though she had made the feast day sacrifice.

“Iras . . . ,” I whispered.

“She went with Apollodorus,” Cleopatra said tightly. “To see about the man.”

The Greek doctor came then, and laid me on the bed in Cleopatra’s room, where they got my chiton off to see how bad it was.

He had meant to stab me in the gut, a horrible way to die, but I had turned at the last second, and so the thrust he meant for my lower belly scored instead along my hip, a long jagged wound that laid my hip open to the bone and trailed off into the flesh of the upper part of my thigh. The doctor probed it wordlessly, and I could not help but scream.

“Not life threatening of itself,” he said. “Unless it turns septic. It does not seem to have broken the bone.”

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Cleopatra said. Her face looked white.

“And will lose more while I clean it and stitch it,” he said. “That’s what the distilled alcohol and linen thread are for. Hold her arms when I pour it in, so she cannot fight.”

I tried to shake my head to show I understood as Cleopatra took my wrists in her hands, but he poured the alcohol straight into the wound, and I fainted.

W
HEN I WOKE
, I was still in Cleopatra’s bed, though it was night now, as the fretted lamps were lit. My leg was a blinding pain.

It must have been her voice that awakened me. She stood in the curtained doorway, her back to me, one pale arm holding the folds of the curtain back. She was talking to someone, Apollodorus and a man I did not know.

“Princess,” he said. “I have come with Master Apollodorus from the magistrate. The man has been put to question, and we have been very specific in asking if he was hired by any person, here or in Alexandria, to harm you. He has insisted under greatest duress that he was not, and that his actions were solely his own, intended to restore to the throne what he terms the rightful rulers of Egypt, the dynasty of Nectanebo II.”

“Nectanebo lived and died more than three hundred years ago,” Cleopatra said, “killed by the Persians.”

“Yes, Lady.” The man shuffled a little. “But memories are long in the Black Land, as your Ladyship knows.”

Apollodorus cleared his throat. “The magistrate says that it is up to you what is done with him, Princess.”

I saw her head lift against the light in the next room. “Execute him,” she said.

“Your will shall be done, Lady,” the guardsman said.

I
WAS A
long time convalescing. The wound did not take septic, thanks to the ministrations of the Greek doctor, but it took a long time to heal, being both deep and straight into the muscle.

“What possessed you to say you were me?” Cleopatra asked me later, as I sat propped in her bed eating porridge. It did not escape me that she only wore one bangle now.

“I don’t know,” I said, though of course I did. I had played the incident over and over to myself in my mind, remembering each phrase, each movement. I had known something was wrong. Isis had told me. “I think . . . ,” I began uncertainly.

“Think what?” my sister asked.

“Nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to seem foolish to Cleopatra. After all, since the night in the chapel we had not spoken of it.

“What?” she said. “Charmian, I know you’re thinking some-thing.”

“That it was Isis,” I said reluctantly. “I think She warned me.”

“Oh.” Cleopatra looked startled.

“I heard Her, just a moment before he stabbed. She said, ‘Now,’ just one word, but I knew what it meant. I knew what was happening. And that my blood was the price for your life. My life for yours, freely offered.”

“It wasn’t your life,” she said. “And I will bless Her name forever for that! Charmian, you must never do that again.”

“I am your handmaiden. It’s what I’m supposed to do,” I replied.

A
T FIRST
, during that long winter while the crops grew and Cleopatra turned fourteen, either she or Iras stayed with me all of the time. Later, as I grew stronger, they went about their day, returning to me often to see if I needed anything. I stayed in Cleopatra’s room, and she persuaded one of the temple servant girls to look in on me in the morning, when she and Iras were both at the Morning Offices. I dozed, and when I could I read from one of the scrolls Iras found for me in the temple archives. The Adoratrice, it seemed, had warmed to me when she heard I was willing to die for my mistress.

One morning, early on, I woke from terrible dreams in which a great weight rested on my chest, a crushing weight of water pinning me down, water on top of a steel breastplate that cut into me, holding me under. I struggled up from the dream to find there was indeed something on my chest. A cold thing touched my nose, and I opened my eyes.

A small gray cat was sitting on me, her nose against mine. Her green eyes blinked at me.

“Hello, cat,” I whispered.

She uncoiled gracefully, her soft little paws against my chest. She must be one of the temple cats, I thought, though I had never seen her before. Leaning down, she butted against my chin.

I raised a hand and petted her. Her fur was clean and warm, and she kneaded me delicately, her claws pricking but not breaking the skin, purring like a lion.

“Hello, sweet,” I said. “Bastet and Sekhmet alike, aren’t you? An iron fist in a silk glove.”

She settled down against me, leaning in and washing my cheek with her rough tongue.

We were thus engaged in the adoration of cats when the servant girl came in. “Oh,” she said with some surprise. “You’ve found Sheba.”

“Is that her name?” I asked. “I’ve never seen her before.”

The girl nodded. “She’s not usually around. A snake killed her litter of newborn kittens, and since then she hasn’t let anyone touch her. I’m surprised she hasn’t taken your hand off.”

The cat watched her, her ears forward, but she did not hiss.

“She’s been perfectly friendly to me,” I said. She purred under my hand, though her eyes did not leave the girl, and her claws pricked through my thin chiton.

The girl looked back at her, careful to stay out of range of her claws. “Bastet’s favor, I suppose.”

“Perhaps so,” I said.

Through the rest of my convalescence, Sheba was rarely far from my side. She slept beside me at night, or prowled about the room hunting. She brought me dead rats from the temple granary, which I suppose she thought a delicacy. She would bear the other girls in the room, but she would not let either Iras or Cleopatra touch her.

I tried to accustom her to them, but Iras smiled and shook her head. “She’s yours,” she said. “You earned her.”

I had never had something before that my sisters had not. Now I did. Sheba’s love was both unconditional and exclusive. It made me afraid. What should happen to the three of us when some greater love should come between us, a man who could not be shared?

I
TURNED FOURTEEN
in the spring, just as I was able to get about again. I would have a terrible scar that would show in the bath, marring my looks forever, but it seemed a small enough price to pay for Cleopatra’s life. And she was not likely to forget it, with the scar staring her in the face in the bath each day.

Not that she would anyhow. Lately it seemed that we were all shifting somehow out of true. Iras was cranky and sullen before her blood, Cleopatra was given to fits of temper that were most unlike her, and I dreamed long and intricate dreams in which a beautiful eunuch tempted me with things I could not do, lacking a manhood to do them with, and in which two faceless strangers enfolded me on a couch deep with pillows, stroking me and sucking on my breasts, one to each side, their bodies hard and yearning against me.

Perhaps it was that we were all fourteen.

We might have said things we regretted ever after if the messenger had not come. A swift scout ship came upriver from Pelousion with the news, Pharaoh’s banner flying from its stern.

Ptolemy Auletes had indeed hired the Roman Gabinius with Pompeius Magnus’ money. Gabinius had fought Archelaus outside the walls of Pelousion, and killed him in battle, utterly crushing the Royal Army in the process.

The messenger stood before us and the Adoratrice in the Inner Court, and his voice rang off the columns painted like trees. “Pharaoh Ptolemy Auletes is restored to his palace in Alexandria, where he has executed his perfidious daughter, Berenice. He sends his gratitude to the Adoratrice of Bastet in Bubastis for her loving care of his daughter Cleopatra, and bids us to place ourselves at the service of the Princess, that her return to Alexandria may not be long delayed. He also asks me to convey the sad news that her elder brother died of a fever at Ephesos. Proper sacrifice should be made to his memory.”

I looked at Iras, and she looked at me. I saw her throat work. We both knew what this meant, what we had asked for, and yet when it came we could hardly believe it.

Cleopatra stood straight and tall in her white dress, like the queens carved on the wall behind, as though she had half-expected it. She did not so much as glance at the Adoratrice. “I will obey my father’s wishes as quickly as possible. Philopater he should name me, for in this as in all things I have proven myself the lover of my father.”

The messenger almost smiled. “My Princess,” he said. “I am sure that would make a fine throne name.”

She had left Alexandria an unregarded third daughter. She returned the heir to the throne.

Amenti

Isis spread Her hands on the arms of Her chair and leaned forward. “And do you think if you had told the Adoratrice of your dreams that she would have laughed?”

“No,” I said slowly. “I think if I had told her I might have been trained as a priestess, as an oracle as was my birthright. I might have learned to use my gifts in ways that would help us—both Cleopatra and the Black Land. But I was too afraid.”

“And what were you afraid of?” She asked gently.

I looked up at the high ceiling, disappearing into infinity. “That people should laugh at me. That people would think me a weak and superstitious woman.”

“And do you think the Adoratrice of Bastet would think so?”

“No,” I said, and regret swelled in me. “I think of all the places in the world, this was one where I would have been understood, and valued for the things that made me different rather than despised. Where I should have been cherished, if my gifts were true. But I was afraid of her, and I had been laughed at for my blond hair and pasty skin, so I didn’t say anything. Even when Sheba came to me I said nothing. I did not trust myself.”

Beside Serapis’ throne, the lean hound stretched, His legs lengthening as He stood up on two legs, a man with a hound’s head. Anubis spoke from the shadows beside the throne. “And yet you took a knife for Cleopatra without hesitation.”

I shrugged, looking at Him with surprise. “Wouldn’t anyone?”

He laughed, and I saw an expression pass between Him and Serapis. “Indeed, anyone would not. There are some lessons you have learned well, Companion.”

“Companion?”

“Do you think this is the only time you have served Cleopatra, or the only time you have stood before these thrones?” Anubis smiled, a hound’s openmouthed smile. “Three times before you have walked into the dark places at Pharaoh’s side as he came forth by day. And not three hundred years have passed since you took Companion’s oaths together, not three hundred years since you swore yourself to the service of Egypt and the House of Ptolemy. And in fulfillment of those oaths, you returned as a member of that same House, of the same blood, no less than your sisters.”

I bent my head. “She is Ptolemy, the first of our line who came to the Black Land. I have always known that.”

“Just so,” Isis said, stirring on Her throne. “She has tried to fulfill her oaths, as have you.”

“And yet it was not enough,” I said, and tears welled again behind my eyes. “All we did was not enough.”

“Then let Us see where you have gone wrong,” She said. “You are brave enough to bear it.”

“I am not brave,” I said. “Gracious Lady, do not think me so! I am no hero, no leader of men, nor have I aspired to be.” My voice broke. “All I have ever wanted was to be with those I love and to have good work to do. If I have had any strength, it is in those things. It is in the beauty of the Black Land, in a child’s smile or the play of light on the water, in the beauty of the night or a word written well, or in my lover’s eyes.”

“It is in love,” Isis said, and Her eyes were like stars. “Tell Us then, how you have loved.”