Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  My himation blew in the wind behind me. Something touched me, soft as a prayer, as the quiet part in the hymns to Isis when one waits, wondering if one imagined that one heard the music begin, or just anticipated it. The roofs of the city to the west were blue against the sunset, a haze of cooking smoke over the lands of people. A sadness took my heart.

  “Do you think we will come back here?” I asked Iras.

  “Of course we will,” she said softly, not in her usual tones. “We will all come back here together. You’ll see.”

  I had no certainty of my own, and this one time I was content to rest upon Iras’.

  Cats and Snakes

  We arrived in Pelousion at night, after an uneventful voyage of a few days, and we did not stay long. Pelousion stands at the easternmost point of the Delta, where the farthest branch of the Nile flows into the sea and the coast begins to curve northward toward Gaza. While it is not so large a city as Alexandria, the greatest city in the world, Pelousion is of fair size.

  It was there that we heard that Tryphaena had been proclaimed Queen in Alexandria, and that a Seleucid prince was on his way from Syria to marry her. Auletes, it was said, had been tepidly received in Rome, and he had not been allowed to address the Senate.

  It seemed that the governor of Pelousion was also interested in walking a fine line between Auletes and Tryphaena, and was eager to have the Princess Cleopatra off his hands. It was only a few weeks before he gravely informed Apollodorus that he could not guarantee her safety in Pelousion, given the uncertain times, and that he advised her to seek sanctuary in one of the temples of the Delta.

  I don’t know how Bubastis was decided upon. Perhaps Tryphaena cared little where this much younger sister went, as long as it was nowhere she could raise a faction. Perhaps she thought it wise to keep Cleopatra as a pawn, just in case. Or perhaps Tryphaena had nothing to do with it, and the estimable governor simply wanted us gone. In any case, it was decided that we should sail up the branch of the Nile that watered Pelousion, and go to the Temple of Bastet at Bubastis, there to stay for some indeterminate amount of time, perhaps forever. Should Tryphaena hold her throne and produce sons and daughters of her own, this sister would be well disposed of at the temple.

  And so we came then to Bubastis, not knowing if we should ever leave.

  Alexandria and Pelousion were Greek cities, modern cities laid out according to principles of geometry and urban planning, part of the great world that looked on the Middle Sea. Bubastis belonged to the Black Land.

  Bubastis was old, older than it is almost possible to imagine. The first stones had been laid more than two thousand years before, and it had been the holy city of the Goddess Bastet for as long as anyone could remember.

  Bubastis was also hot. It wasn’t the sea-cooled heat of Alexandria, but the heat of the Delta, humid and thick. The river ran slowly there, with snags and bars, and it twisted about, joining and rejoining in many channels as it made its way to the sea, creating tiny islands of reeds and palms. Waterbirds called in the dawn, great white ibis standing solemnly to let our ships pass. Occasionally, a hippopotamus would rear its head. I had not thought there were any still living so close to the abodes of men, and perhaps there were not on the Saite branch of the Nile, near Alexandria. But we were far to the east, and much farther south.

  Fishermen poled along in little woven boats, looking like the pictures on the walls of temples. In the dawn, the river steamed, clouds of vapor lifting in the morning air.

  The ship left us, the captain making time upriver, and Apollodorus, Iras, Cleopatra, and I entered together. It was just the four of us. We had left Alexandria with few servants, and they had stayed in Pelousion. Now it was just us.

  We waited in the outer courtyard of the temple, for we had arrived during the morning services, when the Adoratrice and her priests were busy with the rites of Bastet. I looked uneasily at Cleopatra.

  She sat down on the base of one of the columns, her feet and sandals dusty from the street. Apollodorus shifted about. “This is what it is,” she said, looking around. Above, the courtyard was open to the sky, the color shifting to the opal of another stifling hot day. Under the pylons that marked the Inner Court, a lean tomcat stretched and settled down to wash, watching us with green eyes. “We’d better get used to it.”

  The great columns were painted like trees, their capitals surmounted with palm fronds opening wide, their bases carved with stories. The massive pylons at the entrance to the Inner Court showed a Pharaoh in a starched linen skirt presenting gifts to Isis and Bastet, while Sekhmet stood behind him, her head that of a lioness.

  Iras took a step toward it. She read hieroglyphics better than I.

  “Who’s the Pharaoh?” I asked.

  “?‘Osorkon Usermaatre, Great is the Soul of Ra,’?” she read. “Only eight hundred years ago.” She pointed. “There’s his cartouche, there. I think he rebuilt the temple after somebody damaged it in one of the wars then. There’s a story all along here.”

  “Read it to me,” I said, coming closer. I could get some words, but not all of it.

  Iras looked up the wall. “It says that he dedicates this wall in the twenty-second year of his reign, he and his wife Karomama, may their souls endure forever. That he has restored the worship of the gods and that he has followed the way of Ma’at in all things. He has restored the temples in Memphis as well, and has brought the sacred archives to safety. Over here he’s being presented to Bastet,” Iras said. “And he’s got the uraeus on his brow now, and he’s blessed by cat and snake.”

  “By cat and snake?” I said.

  “By cat and snake,” said a voice behind me. I spun round to see an elderly lady standing beside Apollodorus. At least I thought she was elderly. Her face was wrinkled, but her hair was completely black, hanging in heavy plaits around her head, each plait tied with gold wire and ending in green malachite beads. “But then I should not expect a Greek princess to understand. I imagine you have interpreters for that sort of thing,” she said in perfect Koine.

  I flinched, half in surprise and half in confusion.

  She was only a little taller than we were, but she seemed tall as the sky. “I am the Adoratrice. I understand that you seek sanctuary here.”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it. I was the fairest of the three, and had been talking to Iras. She had taken me for Cleopatra.

  Apollodorus spoke before we needed to. “Gracious Lady,” he said, “Pharaoh Ptolemy Auletes asks the Temple of Bastet for sanctuary for his daughter in this uncertain time.”

  The Adoratrice snorted, and continued in her perfect Greek: “Ptolemy Auletes is not here, and I doubt he asked any such thing. But it is just as well you ask in his name, rather than that of Queen Tryphaena, as she is dead.”

  Cleopatra gasped. Iras and I did not move.

  The Adoratrice shot Cleopatra a dirty look. “Your handmaiden is unschooled, Princess,” she said to me. “Such gulping is unseemly. Tryphaena is dead. Killed by Princess Berenice, it is said.”

  Spots of color showed on Cleopatra’s cheekbones, and though her voice was cool, it shook. “It is true I am unschooled as a handmaiden,” she said, “for I am Princess Cleopatra. Such strife between my sisters saddens me.”

  The Adoratrice transferred her gaze. Cleopatra looked less a princess at the moment, seeming younger and sallower. “It is unlikely there shall be further strife between your sisters, Princess, unless you have other sisters. Berenice has proclaimed herself Queen of Egypt, and Auletes waits in Rome for Pompeius Magnus to give him crumbs from his table. Why should you be welcome in Bubastis?”

  Apollodorus moved to speak, but Cleopatra forestalled him. “I have no faction,” she said. “And yet I may be of use to someone. Would you throw away out of hand a weapon that may prove useful, simply because you have no use for it at the moment?”

  The Adoratrice looked at her keenly. “You are a very minor playing piece.”

  “But not entirely inconsequential,”
Cleopatra said, meeting her eyes.

  “I shall not conceal your presence here from the Queen,” the Adoratrice said, and I let out a breath I had not been aware I was holding.

  “My sister Berenice and I are on the best of terms,” Cleopatra said serenely.

  OUR ROOMS FACED one of the smaller courts, with windows and doors only on the courtyard side. The rooms backed up to one of the chapels along the side wall of the Sanctuary of Bastet. There was a small chamber for Cleopatra with a good couch, table, and chest, and a somewhat heavy and sprung couch in the antechamber for Iras and me. Apollodorus must sleep elsewhere with the male priests.

  One of the temple slaves brought in an armload of linens and put them on the outer couch.

  “Aren’t you going to make up the beds?” Cleopatra asked.

  The girl blinked at her. “You have slaves of your own. It’s their job to wait on you. You’ll take your meals with the Adoratrice, but anything else you need, like your tiring and laundry, is up to them. That’s what you have slaves for, isn’t it?” She gave a very scanty bow and went out.

  Iras and I looked at each other. Neither of us had made up a bed in our lives.

  I picked up a handful of bed linens, my face scarlet. “Then we’d best get started.” The largest piece must be the undersheet.

  Cleopatra hesitated, then plucked at one sheet. “I suppose we can figure it out.”

  Iras snatched it from her. “We are not sunk so low as that! If it is necessity, let us make a pride of it. No one will touch your things except for us. Charmian and I can perfectly well learn to serve you as well as anyone. Better.” She grabbed up a load of linens and started sorting them out.

  I followed. The long thin ones must be the curtains for Cleopatra’s window. I had seen the rod and clips in her room. By dragging the table over, I could stand on it and fix the curtains in the clips. I sweated and swore, balancing on the table, wishing I were taller, while Iras made up the bed.

  Cleopatra hovered about, picking up one thing and then another. At last she said, a little sadly, “I have never thought of you as slaves.”

  Tears filled my eyes, and I came down off the table and threw my arms around her. She bent her face against my shoulder. “I want to go home,” she whispered.

  After a moment, Iras came and put her arms around us both, her long braided hair against my neck. “So do I,” she said.

  “We’ll be the best handmaidens anyone has ever seen,” I said, a tear running down my nose and splashing on my sister’s shoulder. “There will never have been a princess in the world waited on like you. People will be amazed by us. You’ll see.”

  THUS WE BEGAN a new life. Each day Cleopatra rose at dawn to begin the Morning Offices with the temple’s acolytes. Male and female alike, they tended the statues in the sanctuaries, flinging wide the doors and sweetening the air with incense, bathing the statues of Bastet and all who shared Her temple, the statues of Nepthys and Horus in the side chapels, the old-fashioned statue of Isis Pelagia raised by Ramses III long ago in gratitude for his victory over the Sea People.

  The morning hymns were sung. Iras and I were expected to join the others in the Inner Court and sing, and to join the temple servants in bringing the ritual meals to be blessed, that the gods might break their fast—bread and honey, melons dripping with moisture, fresh-drawn milk, fish or olives, and sometimes the flesh of a duck or a kid that had been dedicated for sacrifice. We carried them in all solemnity to the doors of the sanctuary or chapel, and handed them to the priests who waited within.

  Since this was the Temple of Bastet, we were usually joined by a throng of Her sacred animals. Each morning, twenty or thirty cats would appear, ambling out of the shadows or flashing down from the rooftops, twining around our ankles adding their song to ours. Meowing, they leaped onto the altars. The milk and fish and duck did not last long, though they turned up their noses at the honey. Some of them, smaller kittens who could not yet jump up to the main altars, waited mewing on the floor while their mothers claimed a choice bit of duck entrails for them and dragged it down.

  Needless to say, after the Morning Offices were completed, the next thing was to mop and clean the chapels entirely, getting the remains of the meal off the floor. Every last spot of blood and milk and honey must be scrubbed away by the temple servants, which in this case included Iras and me, while the Adoratrice, the priests, and Cleopatra retired to the dining room for their own breakfast, the Morning Offices having taken some two and a half hours after the sun rose. I hated this part of it, for the main statue of Bastet was not the common kind where she is shown as a smooth, sleek cat, but rather a seated queen with a cat’s head, the pediment completely covered with incised carving, perfect for getting tiny bits into where they should have to be scrubbed out.

  When the temple and chapels were sparkling, the dining hall was cleared of the priests’ breakfast and the tables were laid again for ours. By this time the sun was high, and my stomach was invariably growling. The food was good and plain, fresh bread, honey, eggs, and milk and there was plenty of it. Still, breakfast was an ordeal for me.

  From the first day, no one would sit beside me except Iras. The other girl servants all moved down to the far end of the table, whispering and speculating in native Egyptian.

  Iras gave them a scornful look and sat beside me. “They don’t think you understand,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Do you think I care if they talk to me or not? Or if they think my hair is too light and my skin looks like an unbaked pastry? I just don’t understand why they hate me and not you.” For it was true that as we went about our work, other girls were happy enough to talk to Iras.

  Iras shifted on her bench, looking down at her dish. “It’s because I look like them. Nothing more. We have the same father, you and I. But you look Greek.”

  “I’m Egyptian,” I said. “We both are. We’re Ptolemies.”

  Iras laid aside the piece of bread she had picked up and glanced sideways at me. “They don’t count the Ptolemies as Egyptian, here. We may have been in Egypt nearly three hundred years, but that doesn’t count for much in the Black Land. We’re not real Egyptians. Or you’re not. They asked who my mother was, who my people were, and when I told them my mother was from Elephantine, the daughter of a scribe sold into slavery to pay her father’s debts when he died, they all understood that. Don’t you see? I have a place and people here. You don’t. Your mother was a foreigner from across the sea. And no matter what you believe or how you’ve been raised, your face says you don’t belong.”

  I got up and ran outside, ignoring the derisive giggles that followed me. No doubt they thought Iras had put me in my place as well. Tears blinded me, and I dodged about the columns and courts without thinking. I heard Iras calling after me, but I didn’t turn back. Left and right and left again.

  If I went back to our rooms, Cleopatra would ask me what was wrong, and I didn’t think I could bear to tell her. They must hate her too. Only they could not touch her because she was a princess.

  I finally sat down in a sunbeam that came in through the sungate in the roof in the Chapel of Horus. If I sat between the statue and the wall, no one could see me from the door. At this hour the chapels were empty and quiet. I curled my knees up and hugged them to my chest.

  Iras found me anyway. She came in and sat down cross-legged opposite me, her saffron chiton all Greek, not Egyptian. “It’s stupid,” she said. “I didn’t say it was right. I just said that’s how it is.” I didn’t say anything, and she went on. My chest hurt too much to talk.

  “It doesn’t matter in Alexandria,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter as much,” Iras corrected. “Do you think there aren’t places in Alexandria where people stare at me? They don’t expect a native to speak such good Koine. Or that the scholars don’t watch me closely when Apollodorus takes us to the Library?”

  “But you’re brilliant!” I said. “You’re much better at mathematics than I am!”

&nb
sp; “I’m an Egyptian, and I’m a girl.”

  “There are plenty of women scholars in Alexandria,” I said stubbornly. “There’s no reason you can’t be one.”

  “But there aren’t in Athens,” she said. “Even Plato says that women are by nature inferior to men in intellect, and that true companionship and discourse are only possible with equals, not with women and barbarians.”

  “Who cares about Plato?” I said rudely, sitting up. “We aren’t in Athens. And I don’t see what Athens has on Alexandria, anyway. It’s been generations since anything came out of Athens except posturing and hubris. Euclid and Archimedes, Herophilus and Pythagoras, they were Alexandrian, like us. They belonged to the freest, most interesting city in the world. We both belong there. In a place where it doesn’t matter so much who your mother was, but what you can do. People may look at you funny, but they’ve never tried to stop you from learning, have they?”

  “No,” Iras said. She shook her head. “No. Not like they would in Athens. It just hurts sometimes, the things we read.”

  “They’re stupid,” I said.

  “You can’t call Plato stupid.”

  “I can,” I said. “If the things he says are contradicted by the evidence of my senses and by my practical experience of life, it’s only intellectually responsible to dismiss him.”

  Iras laughed. “You don’t dismiss the gods so easily.”

  “Oh, that,” I said, glancing up at the gilded statue of Horus that loomed above us. They called him Harpocrates in Alexandria, but he was the same person. “Isis is the Mother of the World. It’s just that people can’t see things as clearly as She can. Just because the Adoratrice isn’t nice doesn’t mean that Isis doesn’t love me. After all, the Adoratrice is just a woman.”

  Iras put her arm around me, tanned skin against my cream. “Sometimes I’ll never understand you, Charmian. But I love you anyway.”