Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  “I love you too, sister,” I said.

  OUR LIVES SETTLED into the long, slow rhythms of the life of the Black Land, harvest and fallow and inundation, season following season. My blood came in, and then Cleopatra’s. We grew taller and our shapes changed, the curves of our bodies carrying us toward womanhood.

  In the mirror we looked like variations on a theme. Cleopatra and I were the same height exactly, while she and Iras had the same eyes, warm brown and beautifully expressive. The sun lightened my hair with gold, while Iras’ remained dark and Cleopatra’s the same shade of medium brown as always. Yet our faces were alike. The shape of our noses and chins, the arch of our brows were identical.

  Outside these walls, girls only a little older than us were courting and marrying, moving to the houses of husbands and mothers-in-law, bearing their first children. In Egypt, wives were not kept apart, as they are in some lands. They would be working at trades, brewing beer and making paper, tending animals and weaving cloth, selling goods in the markets and shopping too.

  We were neither dedicants of Bastet who might look forward to a life spent in the temple precincts, nor servants who might come in to do work and then go away again. Nor were we the other girls, orphans or children of the temple who lived here until they were grown and married. Bastet loves children, and there were always orphans coming and going. Sometimes they stayed only a few nights until some relative from another city came to claim them and conduct their parents’ funeral rites. Sometimes they stayed years, until they were grown, if there was nobody who wanted them.

  We were not like them, learning proper trades by doing the work of the temple. I was not sure what we were.

  Yet to my surprise, I found myself coming to love Bubastis. It was true that I no longer had lessons, and instead had hard work to do, but there was a piercing beauty to it. When I stood in the temple for the evening rites, seeing the first stars appearing above in their endless dance, I felt my heart fill with a sense of rightness. Here, there was love. Here was peace. Here it mattered to serve Isis and Bastet through service to Their people.

  Iras missed lessons terribly, and I pretended that I did too, though in many ways I was relieved not to have them. I had always been the slowest of the three, the one who fell behind in mathematics and sciences. I did not know, then, that Apollodorus had pushed us far beyond our years, and the lessons I had been behind in were normally given to men of twenty, not girls of twelve. I merely thought myself much stupider than my sisters.

  Here, other things mattered. I could remember every word of the offices and hymns after hearing them once or twice, every word of the long complicated litanies that the acolytes took years to learn.

  “All hail Isis, Mother of the World. I am She who rises with Sothis. With My brother Osiris I made an end to the eating of men. I taught men to honor the gods. I break down the governments of tyrants. I make an end to murderers. I make the Right stronger than gold and silver. I ordained that the Truth should make men free.”

  Singing each of the litanies, my voice soaring up through the sungate, I knew that what I sang was true, and felt in each word the beauty and mystery of it sinking into my bones, timeless and real. Justice. Mercy. Freedom. Those were the things that mattered, the things that made people happy.

  And the dreams came back.

  At first they were no more than pale shadows, scenes of unfamiliar places or people, but as time passed they grew stronger. Often when I slept I dreamed that I walked in strange lands. I dreamed I sailed blue waters aboard a black ship with a leaping dolphin on her prow, or journeyed in high strange hills with a pacing cheetah at my side. I dreamed of battles that echoed with distant trumpets. Once I dreamed that I fought on horseback on the banks of the Nile, while darts rained down from archers mounted on elephants. I shouted aloud, a sword in my hand, rallying men who struggled in the mud, their horses terrified of the great beasts, while about my horse’s legs I felt the tug of current, the river rising at last.

  I woke with tears on my face and lay awake in the bed beside Iras, watching the curtains move in the faint breeze at the window. But I told no one of my dreams. I did not want them to think me foolish.

  The Hands of Isis

  Cleopatra turned thirteen, and then I did. Here, away from Alexandria, we heard little news that wasn’t months old. We heard that Auletes had left Rome, then that he had gone to Ephesos, that he was living in sanctuary at the Temple of Artemis. Then we heard that while it was true he was in Ephesos, he was there to confer with the new Roman governor of Syria, a man named Aulus Gabinius, from whom he hoped to borrow troops. It meant little to us.

  Berenice had married a man named Archelaus, a son of a great general of Mithridates of Pontos, and it was reckoned that they would hold the throne together. In time, perhaps, Berenice would send for Cleopatra to make an advantageous marriage. Or she might simply think that forgotten was best.

  In the afternoons, Cleopatra had lessons with Apollodorus, though Iras and I did not. We had clothes to wash and linens to hang and fold. We had to help in the kitchens and with the ducks kept behind the temple, clean the dishes Cleopatra would use at her evening meal, and tend to anything she might need.

  On the other hand, Iras and I had much more freedom than Cleopatra now. When our work was done, we might leave the temple and go about the city of Bubastis as we wished. Often we went down to the market beside the river docks, not because we had money to spend, as we did not, but for the pleasure of seeing all of the goods assembled, and talking to the crews of the riverboats. We were, after all, thirteen now, and more than one young sailor called after us when we walked along the river. We would pretend to ignore them, putting our heads together and laughing, cutting them glances out of the corners of our eyes. I liked the dark-skinned boys with long black hair, the ones who leaped from deck to dock without looking, surefooted and at ease.

  Iras seemed to enjoy all of these games less than I did. She would hurry me along sometimes.

  “Don’t you like it?” I asked, looking back at one especially pretty young man who was watching us, his arms crossed on the rail of a fast scout ship.

  Iras shrugged. “I don’t like it when they make crude comments, like they’re measuring our breasts and bottoms. I like men who have interesting minds. Most of these men can’t even read! I don’t understand what you could see in them. They’re nothing but sweaty soldiers and fishermen, men who ought to be beneath your notice.”

  “You like men with minds.” I was distinctly skeptical. Minds were all very well, but there was something to be said for an expanse of muscled chest, sculpted by rowing.

  “Minds,” Iras said firmly. “Men with interesting things to say. Intelligent men with daring thoughts.”

  “Like Dion,” I said.

  Iras snorted. “Dion thinks he’s a philosopher when he’s just a bratty boy. Besides, he’s forgotten about us by now.”

  “Probably,” I said. But it didn’t escape my mind entirely that two years had passed since we left the city. If we were thirteen, Dion was sixteen, and a man already.

  SOMETIMES Apollodorus made short trips up the Nile to Pelousion for news. Then Cleopatra was able to go with us, since her afternoons were free until an hour before sunset, when they began the evening offices.

  I was delighted, and enjoyed every minute of showing her our discoveries, the shops with the cloth brought in from Parthia embroidered with leaves and berries, the shop that sold sticky pastries that weren’t expensive at all, the lady from Palmyra with gorgeous patterns painted in henna on her hands.

  The sun lowered in the sky, and we began walking back to the temple, past the fruit and vegetable sellers who were packing up. One poor farmer’s children were helping him pick up the last of his melons, two boys and a little girl, the youngest five or so. Their eyes were swollen and red, flies continually landing on the little girl’s face, crawling on her eyelids as she cried and batted them away.

  Cleopatra stopped. “Why doesn’t
he get a doctor for that little girl?” she said. “She’s got conjunctivitis. Any doctor can fix it with eyedrops.”

  Iras took her arm. “He probably can’t afford it,” she whispered.

  “Oh,” she said, and though she let us lead her away, the set of her jaw didn’t change.

  It didn’t surprise me in the least that as soon as we got back to the temple she sent for the Greek doctor. Cleopatra received him in her inner room, with Iras and I standing behind her one chair, as handmaidens should, impassive and lovely, part of the trappings of royalty.

  “I would like you to treat the three children of the vegetable seller at the south gate,” she said without preamble. “They have conjunctivitis in their eyes, and I am given to understand that their father has no money to pay for the treatment.” Her voice was cool, and I thought she did very well indeed, sounding as though she had a huge staff to do her bidding, not just me and Iras.

  The doctor looked amused at her stern gravity. “I shall do so upon your command, Princess,” he said. “But as you know my services require payment.”

  With greatest dignity, Cleopatra took one of the thin gold bangles from her arm, one of the ones we had brought from Alexandria. She handed it to Iras, who passed it to him. “Will this suffice to pay for their treatment and the eyedrops they will need?”

  He took it with a bow. “Assuredly, my Princess. However”—he met her eyes as he straightened—“there are a great many children in Egypt. And I do not think you have so many bracelets.”

  After he had left, we sat together on Cleopatra’s bed. Iras sat on the edge, and I sprawled across the pillows. Cleopatra sat cross-legged, playing with the three bangles still around her wrist. There had been six when we left Alexandria, but two had already gone to pay for various things. Needless to say, Queen Berenice was not sending her an allowance.

  At last she burst out, “If Isis is the Mother of the World, why does She let Her children suffer? And don’t tell me it’s a Mystery and we’re not supposed to understand.”

  Iras looked sad. “Maybe Isis doesn’t have hands, up among the stars.”

  “Isis has hands,” I said, sitting up. “Ours.”

  Iras looked surprised. “I suppose in the old days people believed Pharaoh was Horus, in some actual way. And that the Queen was Isis Herself.”

  “Her desires given flesh,” I said. A shiver ran through me, like a cool hand at my back. “Her voice and Her hands.”

  “Her voice and Her hands,” Cleopatra repeated, looking down at her wrists, at her slender, ordinary hands against her lap.

  “Her avatar,” I said. “Isn’t that what you are, when you give your bracelet to the doctor to fix those children’s eyes? You’re a princess of Egypt, born to be the voice of Isis.”

  “You may not have enough bracelets now,” Iras said. “But there’s plenty of gold in the Royal Treasury in Alexandria.”

  “Not really,” Cleopatra said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? My father ran out of money. The wealth of the Black Land is in grain, and in our trade. We have to manage our trade as carefully as our farms if we want them to yield well now and every year. And we have to get the money out of Alexandria and into the countryside.”

  Iras frowned. “How?”

  Cleopatra smiled at the back wall of the chapel that made up her bedroom. “Just like Osorkon did. You pay people to build things for the public good, canals and temples and dockyards. When they have money they spend it on food and cloth and household things, things that are made by other people. Then the merchants are happy and the craftsmen are happy, and so is the Royal Treasury, because the taxes enrich us. Then we spend that money again on things that we need.”

  “Like a fleet,” I said. “So we never fear the Romans again.”

  “Like schools,” Iras said. “So that we invent new things that make things better, like Archimedes’ Screw makes it much easier to irrigate the fields.”

  “Like hospitals,” I said, thinking of the one in Alexandria where the young doctors learned how to treat every disease, and would work on poor people for free for the practice.

  “Like floodgates and cisterns,” Iras said, “so that when the Nile doesn’t rise enough we can still get enough water.”

  “The Royal Treasury isn’t mine,” Cleopatra said. She let her hands fall to her lap.

  We all waited, while it hung in the air around us: treason.

  The cool touch was at my back again, as though something huge turned on a fulcrum. I shrugged and said it. “It should be.”

  Iras looked at me, her face inscrutable. Then she nodded like a soldier facing his opponent in a practice bout. “You’d be a better queen than Berenice.”

  “You’re the avatar of Isis,” I said. “You’re Her hands.”

  “I’m thirteen,” Cleopatra said. “Berenice is twenty-one. She has a soldier husband and an army, a powerful faction of the nobles, and the city of Alexandria at her back. I have exactly two handmaidens and a tutor.”

  “You have Isis,” I said.

  Iras and Cleopatra both looked at me.

  The absence of Apollodorus made me bold. “Well, what is the use of being the avatar of Isis if you don’t ask Her for anything?” I said. “She has the power to make you queen. I don’t see the harm in asking Her to do it.”

  “What, just ask?” Iras said.

  “She’s the Mother of the World,” Cleopatra said thoughtfully, chewing on her lower lip. “What’s the worst She will do? Say no, as a mother will, when you ask for something that’s not good for you? Charmian’s right. She won’t punish us for asking.”

  “?‘Us’?” I said.

  Cleopatra gave me a penetrating look. “If we’re going to do this together, all of us Her hands, then it’s not going to be just me asking. You’re both of the blood of the Ptolemies. Either one of you could be Her avatar. Either one of you could be Pharaoh, if you were boys. Auletes was the son of a woman of the harem. He had no more claim to the throne than you. If we’re going to do it, then we’re going to do it together.”

  Iras nodded solemnly. “Then we need to do it right, so it’s respectful.”

  We all fell silent. None of us was quite certain how to do it.

  “We could go in the chapel,” I said. “There’s no one in the Chapel of Isis at night. And they don’t lock it up like the sanctuary of Bastet, because there’s no Inner Room, just the votive statue under the sungate.”

  “We need some incense,” Iras said. “And an offering. I can get some incense out of the storeroom when we reset the temple after the Morning Offices. But we need something to offer.”

  One of the birds was out, I thought. To start with, every cat in the temple would come around yowling, wanting to know why they were being fed at an unexpected time.

  “Wine,” Cleopatra said. “It won’t make any noise. And we can get it in the kitchen.”

  The next evening, when everyone had gone to bed, we rose in the tenth hour of the night and slipped out of our rooms.

  The Chapel of Isis was bathed in moonlight streaming in from the sungate overhead. Through the square we could see the night sky, the stars paled by the light of the full moon. It lit a lozenge on the stones in front of the statue.

  Isis sat regally, infant Horus on Her lap, His lips against Her breast. Her face was serene, carved eight hundred years ago from black basalt. On the walls behind, Her face looked out at us over and over, from different stories. Enthroned beside Her husband Osiris, She presided over the judgment of the dead, Lady of the Halls of Amenti, with Her wise eyes. On a different panel She ruled the waves, Isis Pelagia, the Lady of the Sea, Queen of Love and Desire.

  They were all Her, I thought, the chaste Widow with Her sorrows, the Sea Lady with Her breasts like shells, untamable and unknowable, and the Mother of the World with Her child, compassionate for us all. They were different sides of Her, different faces. No one would ever know all there was of Her. No one could ever embody it all.

  There was the
sudden scent of smoke and resin as Iras lit the incense on the brazier at the back of the chapel, stirring the coals to life. Cleopatra stood in the middle of the lozenge of light, the moonlight shining on her white linen gown as she waited, a cup of wine in her hands. She looked up, and the light limned her face, as though she were carved from white stone, counterpoint to the black.

  “We could sing the welcome,” Cleopatra said. We all knew the beginning of the Morning Office, and even though it was the middle of the night, it seemed like it might be a good idea. I came to stand beside her, and we began.

  Morning Star, Lady of Morning,

  Queen of the Heavens bright

  You come before the sun to show us

  Hope of the coming dawn . . .

  She stepped out of the shadows made by the moonlight through the sungate. I thought that She was young and slender, Her red sheath ornamented with gold beads and Her hair worked in dozens of braids, Her high, small breasts half-covered by the straps of the dress. “What do you seek, daughters of Ptolemy?” She asked.

  I clutched at Cleopatra’s hand, wondering if she saw Her too. From the expression of utter terror on her face, I thought that she did. Iras looked disbelieving, as though of all things she had not really expected this to work. I looked at Cleopatra and she looked at me, each of us willing the other to say something.

  Isis laughed, and Her voice was clear and soft. I thought, with some surprise, that She looked hardly older than us, a girl in the first flush of womanhood, serene and confident in Her own beauty, and exactly my height. “Are you so frightened, little sisters?”

  “Yes,” Cleopatra said, at exactly the same moment I said, “No.” Iras said nothing.

  She laughed again, and Her eyes fell on me, dark and warm and sparkling, as though I shared Her joke. “Why then do you call Me, daughters of Ptolemy?”

  Cleopatra cleared her throat. “To ask You . . . to petition You . . . to make me Queen of Egypt.”