Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  MEANWHILE, I had other things on my mind. In addition to learning the running of Cleopatra’s household, I continued my studies. I did not have either the time or inclination to give them most of my attention, but I saw at least one tutor each day for an hour or two. And of course I had my lesson with Dion.

  Afterward, while Cleopatra went to her father to discuss affairs of state, where she should be well guarded by Pharaoh’s own men, Dion and I could go about town. More often than not Iras joined us. Sometimes we walked in the parkland over the tombs of the Palace Quarter, but more usually we went to plays, or wandered about the city seeing the sights, shopping or dining off the street, or in one of the many neighborhood taverns that catered to a respectable crowd. There were lots of these, and as the city had quarters that held as many different kinds of men as there are on the earth, there was always something new to try.

  There were Carians and Greeks, Lydians and Jews and Palmyrans, Romans and Numidians, Nubians and Babylonians, even Ethiopians with their spicy bean dishes that one ate wrapped in flatbread, and some Andalusians from far-off Hispania with their goat cheese and green olives. Once every ten days or so we stayed late into the night, laughing and disputing with Dion and his friends in a mock symposium on the nature of love, or the truth inherent in beauty.

  I turned sixteen, and found that beauty had its own truth. While Dion might not notice me, leaning as he did on the arm of his newest friend, their brows bound with vine leaves, there were plenty of young men who did. My coloring was considered exotic, and even I could find nothing to dislike in my deep breasts and curving hips. Iras was taller and slenderer, and she did not encourage attention the way I did. I liked to see the way young men drew breath more sharply when I came near, the way a casual hand against their lap when leaning across a table would cause them to moisten their lips nervously. It was a kind of power. Was this, I thought, what my mother had felt when she captivated Pharaoh?

  There was one in particular, a young scholar named Lucan who worked with Dion, who I thought beautiful. He had very full, very pink lips, and no matter how often he shaved a dark shadow showed around his mouth. When I watched his lips, he got nervous. Sometimes when we left dinner to begin walking back to the Palace Quarter, he would drop back to walk at my shoulder.

  I did most of the talking, as at first he seemed to have little to say. He was working with a noted lecturer in Pneumatics, which seemed to involve the complex process of making automations that moved or made certain sounds when air was forced through various tubes and pipes, a very specialized form of engineering indeed. I gathered that Dion had lately become fascinated with it, but I found it much less interesting. It was, after all, impressive to own a mechanical bird that sang when you pressed a lever, but it seemed of less practical use to me than ships or canals. On the other hand, as Lucan pointed out, there was a lot of money in Pneumatics, as wealthy people wanted all manner of interesting automata.

  He had a lot of money to spend for a young man, and took to bringing me little things—flowers or painted papyrus fans, things that I supposed would have been impressive to most young women. But most young women did not live among the riches of the Ptolemaic court, with the entirety of the Royal Treasury at their disposal. I was more interested in his regard than in his money. I did not need a well-off husband.

  Unfortunately, what I did have was Iras. She stuck to me as though we were joined like twins, her arm around my waist as we reached the parks about the tombs. Everyone knew it was a popular place for lovers to go apart. I brushed her hand off, but she got between me and Lucan smiling and chatting, and then the moment was gone. Lucan and the others were off with Dion, who walked with his arm around his beloved’s waist.

  I dragged Iras out of the earshot of the gate guards. “What did you do that for?”

  “Do what?” Iras asked loftily.

  “Keep me from going apart with Lucan. I’m sure he would have if we had been able to fall back together.”

  Iras raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were interested in Dion.”

  “I would be, if he liked girls at all.” I shrugged. “Lucan is perfectly nice, and he’s interested in me. Why not see what it would be like?”

  “I see,” Iras said. “One man is as good as another. You must not care about Dion very much, then. I can see how your heart is broken.”

  I tossed my hair back. “We’re not Greek maidens, bound to virginity as our only worth. We belong to Cleopatra. We’re slaves. Nobody expects us to stay virgin. And because we belong to Cleopatra, we can pick and choose as we want. We don’t need to lure rich husbands with our virginity.”

  “Is that all it means to you?” Iras snapped. “You can’t think of any reason not to fall into bed with the first boy who likes you?”

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy myself,” I said hotly. “Of course I don’t want to get pregnant right now, but there are plenty of things you can do without getting pregnant. I’ve asked around.”

  Iras’ lips compressed in a tight line. “I thought you had good sense. Are you determined to be a whore like your mother?”

  I slapped her across the face. Then I turned from her in horror and ran inside.

  CLEOPATRA WAS GETTING READY for bed, one of the junior maidservants combing out her hair. She looked up at me as I stormed in, still shaking. “Charmian? Are you all right? What’s happened?”

  I burst into tears.

  Dismissing the girl, she got up and came over to me, sitting down next to me and putting her arms around me. “Is it about that friend of Dion’s you’ve talked about?”

  I buried my face in her neck, nodding. I couldn’t answer.

  “Has he hurt you?” she asked very quietly.

  I shook my head. “No,” I choked out. “Nothing like that. It’s just that . . .”

  Cleopatra took a breath. I felt her chest tighten beneath mine. “If it’s that you’re in love, and he wants to marry you, you know that I would free you if you wanted me to. I can do that. I would hope you’d stay with me as an attendant or something, because I would miss you. But I can’t fault you if you want to marry, to have children and a normal life.” She put her cheek against mine. “I expect Pharaoh would give you a dowry if it mattered to his parents.”

  “I don’t want to marry Lucan,” I said. “Why should I want to do that?” I sat up, spreading my hands on the cushions.

  Cleopatra blinked at me. “Most women do,” she said. “Most women want to marry, and he seems like he’s kind and stable.”

  “?‘Kind and stable.’?” I smoothed out the fabric cover of the cushion absently. “He’s both of those things. But is that all I can want? Dion doesn’t have to settle for ‘kind and stable.’ Dion has a different friend every three months. Or sometimes he just ends the evening on another couch, when Dionysos is kind. He chooses to love when he likes and not when he doesn’t.”

  “Dion is a man,” Cleopatra said.

  “Is that what it comes down to then?” I fought back tears. “That this woman’s body is a prison? Dion can choose as he likes, because he is a man, but I cannot?”

  “Most women marry,” she said. “Of course you don’t have to. There are women who don’t, priestesses and hetairae, scholars and slaves. But most women want a normal life.”

  “Why would I want a normal life?”

  “Charmian, I don’t know what to say,” Cleopatra said. “I would hate for you to go away from me, but I want you to be happy. What is it you want?”

  I looked up at her, my eyes blazing. “I want to fuck him, all right? I want to kiss him and go apart with him into the tombs and get my clothes up and have him! I want him to touch me and tell me he worships me and that I am a goddess on earth to him and that he is never happy except in my arms. I don’t particularly care if it’s true or not. I want to find out if the things I dream can really happen, if I can stop being twisted into a wad of desire and longing. I don’t want to marry him and I don’t want to go away from you. Iras is
right! I’m a whore, just like my mother.” I choked again, and flung myself against the pillows.

  For a long moment there was silence. Then I felt her hand against my hair, brushing it softly like a child. “Iras shouldn’t have said that.”

  I felt as though my heart would crack open.

  “Asetnefer went to Pharaoh reluctantly, because it was her duty. We know how to serve, in the Black Land, and Pharaoh is the anointed of the gods. But Phoebe went laughing, and she came from Ptolemy’s bed naked, wearing jewels and his seed on her. It was said he carried the marks of her teeth on him for days after each time. It’s remembered here. Iras heard and told me, and I asked her not to tell you. I didn’t think that kind of old gossip and jealousy would do you any good.”

  “My mother was a whore,” I said into the pillow.

  I heard her take a breath. “There’s no shame in doing well the things put before you in life. Would you want a man to be a soldier who had no love of battle? Or a scholar who took no pride or interest in learning? Like your mother, you belong to Aphrodite Cythera. Do you not remember the rite we did at Bubastis? We all saw Isis differently, remember?”

  I nodded. “You saw Isis the Mother of the World, with Horus on Her lap.”

  “And you saw Isis Pelagia, the Lady of the Sea, who the Greeks call Aphrodite Cythera. No man owns the Sea Lady. No man ever brings Her home to his house. She chooses where She wills.” My sister put her hand over mine. “We took on the responsibility to be Her hands and Her faces. The face you wear is the Queen of Love. Of course you want to go apart with Lucan. Of course you want to come into your power. Do you think I do not want to come into mine?”

  I put my head to the side, wondering what it was she desired so much.

  For a moment Cleopatra looked almost embarrassed. “I want a child. Were I an ordinary woman, I could marry and perhaps there would be a baby in my lap by now. When I see young mothers with their children, my heart leaps into my throat, and I am so envious, Charmian! I am so jealous. But I can’t do anything about it. My children will be the heirs to the throne, and my maidenhead is too valuable a playing piece.” She swallowed roughly. “I know when it’s time, it won’t be a man of my choosing. It will be for politics, and because it is useful to Egypt. I hope it won’t be bad, and that I can take some pleasure in it. But I can never hope for love as you can.”

  I closed my eyes. “I want to choose, not be chosen. If I were a man, I could even have Dion!”

  “So could I,” my sister said quietly.

  I looked at her sharply, and she gave me a little smile. “Do you think I don’t notice him too? But it is impossible. I understand that. I would share him with his male lovers if he were interested in women at all, but he is not. And in any event, I cannot choose as a prince could, as Pharaoh can. If I could, I should marry for Egypt and love where I willed, one love to last a lifetime.”

  I nodded. I had always known that about her. She was made for fidelity, as I was not.

  “You can choose,” she said. “You are my handmaiden, and you always have a place, you and any children of yours. Yes, you can marry if you want. But you don’t have to. If you want to choose, you can. And the same is true of Iras.”

  I thought again of Bubastis, of what Iras had said she’d seen. “Isis before the Veil,” I said. “The Queen of Amenti, unengendered and unengendering.” And how terribly hard, I thought. How lonely, to forever forsake the mortal loves of husband and children for the love of the mind! I could never do it, I thought. “I slapped her,” I said guiltily.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

  “I know.”

  I heard something in Cleopatra’s voice and looked up. Iras was standing uncertainly in the doorway. Her eyes were red. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I am too,” I said.

  And then we flew together in a flurry of arms and kisses, tears and apologies, crying into each other’s hair while Cleopatra put her arms around both of us.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “Can we have peace now, dear sisters?” Cleopatra said.

  We did. Though, like flawed alabaster, I knew where the cracks were.

  I WENT WITH LUCAN nine days later, among the tombs of my ancestors in the park, walking alone in the fragrant night, his arm around my shoulders tentative and gentle, as though I were some rare creature of moonlight that might vanish like a dream. We lay down on his cloak beneath a cypress tree that shaded the entrance to a tomb. The white marble gleamed coldly in the moonlight.

  His lips were warm, and the body I pressed against was as hard and needy as I desired. We explored with hands and lips, touching, caressing. It was not all I had imagined, but it was pleasant and warm. I could not help but feel there must be more that was missing, some spark that should leap from one to another, rather than this indolent dream of moonlight.

  Kindle it, I thought. Shape it from shadow, from the light on stones. Shape desire from the pale breadth of his chest, pushing him down beneath me, licking and sucking at his nipples as though he were a girl, hearing his breath catching as his hardness pressed against me. Shape passion from his moans, rubbing against him, straddling his thigh with my skirts lifted, rubbing that tender pearl back and forth against his flesh, my head thrown back, looking down to see his eyes as wide as if I were Aphrodite Herself. I spent against him as I had so often in my own hands, reached for that hard, aching length. He groaned something that might have been my name, and I closed my hand around him, smiling.

  When he came in my hands he called out as though he were dying, and afterward he lay on my shoulder like a lost child. Having a lover was not quite all I had imagined, but it certainly was nice. Perhaps next time we should progress to defloration.

  “Good,” Lucan said, and nibbled at my ear.

  I stretched, cramped by lying on stone. The names over the door of the tomb were just visible in the moonlight, relief marking out the dead. I touched the nearest one. HEPHAISTION SON OF THE HIPPARCH LYDIAS AND HIS WIFE CHLOE, FAITHFUL SOLDIER OF PTOLEMY SOTER, FALLEN IN BATTLE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF HIS LIFE?. . . She must have been a woman of some note, to have her name with her husband’s on her son’s tombstone.

  Young men warm and loving go down to the shades below, to Death and His Queen.

  Lucan sat up, pulling his cloak around me. “Charmian? Does it bother you to be among the dead like this?”

  I smiled. “Why should it? What do we have to fear from the shades of those who have gone before us, who surely loved us?”

  UNFORTUNATELY, within a few weeks I had other things than love to think about.

  I had enjoyed a pleasant night out with Lucan, Dion, and their friends while Iras remained with Cleopatra, doing some entirely routine dinner. We traded off those nights that were not affairs of state, so that we did not both have to be there unless it was a great matter. Lucan and I had progressed farther along, though it was not as pleasant as I had hoped. While it didn’t exactly hurt, it wasn’t comfortable, and the awkwardness fell like a damp sponge on the pleasure I had felt until then.

  Lucan left me at the palace gate, where the guardsmen made their usual flirtatious noises. I came in with a pleasant haze of wine around me, interrupted the moment I entered the palace.

  One of the messenger boys came rushing up to me. “Lady? The Princess Cleopatra wants to see you in her rooms right away. She says it’s most urgent.”

  I went at a run. It was not like Cleopatra to say that.

  I burst into her chambers, but the dining room and sitting area were empty, and so was the bath. I heard Apollodorus’ voice coming from our room, and ran to the door.

  Cleopatra was talking with an older man, whom I recognized as Pharaoh’s personal physician from the Temple of Asclepius. One of the young slave girls held a basin beside the bed, where Iras lay pale and shaking, her limbs trembling and palsied.

  “What has happened?” I asked, feeling my pulse beating suddenly in my head.

&nbs
p; Cleopatra turned, her eyes shadowed. “Iras got the poison that was meant for me,” she said.

  The Wolf’s Heirs

  If she lives a day, she will live,” the physician said. “I have done all I can with the emetic.”

  Cleopatra nodded. “I see that you have done your best.”

  The physician knelt down beside Iras on the couch again, pressing his fingers to her wrist. “She is a strong young woman,” he said. “And her heart rate, while elevated, is steady, not weak and thready. She has a good chance, Princess.”

  “What happened?” I demanded. Guilt gnawed at my heart. I had been having fun with Lucan, laughing with my friends, while . . .

  Cleopatra sank into the chair beside the window. “Nothing unexpected. It could have happened anytime. Iras took the portion prepared for me at dinner, and served me a second portion with her own hands. The one prepared for me was poisoned. She took sick before the dinner ended, and we sent for the physician.”

  “Who?” I said, and did not mean the doctor.

  Cleopatra raised an eyebrow. “Who do you think?” She did not wish to say more in front of the serving girl.

  “I should have been here,” I said.

  “And what would you have done?” she asked. “It could as well have been you.”

  I knew that, but it mattered anyway. I did not sleep until the poison passed from her, and it was clear Iras would recover.

  * * *

  PHARAOH CONDUCTED his own investigation. Five days later, the Queen was sent into exile in Ephesos.

  “You must understand,” he said when he spoke to her, “that nothing is more important than my heir.” I heard so from Asetnefer, who heard from a servant who was there. Auletes would not risk the kingdom again.

  I sat beside Iras in the archive room, the scrolls on the table around us, as I told Cleopatra. She nodded gravely.

  “I don’t understand why she tried it,” Iras said. She was feeling almost entirely well now. Whatever the poison was, it had passed out of her body. “Her son would already inherit with Cleopatra. Ptolemy Theodorus will already be Pharaoh. I don’t see what she gains so much by getting rid of Cleopatra and having Arsinoe with him instead.”