Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  The sun rose over the steaming swamps of the Delta, a Prince who should return to save His people, Horus, the Son of the Widow. In His bright ascension we are made whole, and life begins anew.

  “For nothing is more precious than hope,” they sang, and my heart filled. I felt the uraeus warm on my brow, not a burden but a weight, as though it too quickened in the pulse of the flames.

  Mother Isis, I thought, please help me do what is best for Egypt. Please help me do what is best for Your people.

  I heard Her then, as if She kissed me softly on the brow. They are all My people.

  I closed my eyes, not against the darkness but against the light, long lashes sweeping my cheek for a moment.

  The priest was coming down from the high altar with the oil in his hand, his shaven head slick. The children were singing, their sistrums shaking, each bronze disc glittering in the leaping light. I felt his hand on my forehead for a moment, rose and myrrh of the anointing oil. Of course the Queen should be the first, and the Hierophant himself should tend her.

  “Thank you, Father,” I said.

  “Peace be to you and yours, Cleopatra, Lover of Egypt,” he said.

  BY THE TIME I returned to the palace, it was almost evening. I changed back into my own clothes, being careful to remove every trace of the heavy makeup, and put the wig neatly on its stand. Cleopatra’s room was quiet and tidy, nothing out of place. I stood looking out the windows toward the harbor, waiting. I should have to do this before I fled, to set the time that Cleopatra left. I felt vaguely nauseous.

  As soon as the sun set, I walked to the main doors and pushed them open, running past the guard outside toward Pharaoh’s rooms, calling out for Pothinus.

  The guard caught me at the entrance to his chambers, grabbing me about the waist. “Here now,” he said, as I struggled feebly.

  “I have to see Pothinus,” I said. “Please let me in. It’s very important.”

  “You can’t just barge in there,” the guard said.

  “It’s very important!” I sobbed. “I have to see Pothinus!”

  In a moment he came out to me. I had never liked him, but he looked every inch the courtier, polished and well bred. “Is there a problem?” he asked mildly.

  The guard let go of me.

  I fell to my knees before his fine leather slippers. “Forgive me, oh gods! Let not your wrath fall on me!”

  “What has happened?” There was a note of alarm in his voice now.

  “The Queen is gone!” I gasped. “I helped her disrobe after the ceremony, and she sent me to fetch wine and food for her, and when I returned she was gone, she and Iras! Oh gods, they have left me to feel Pharaoh’s wrath!” I pressed my face against his toes.

  “What?” Pothinus kicked me accidentally as he grabbed my elbows. “What?”

  “The Queen is gone!” I sobbed. “Fled with Iras! Oh mercy upon me!”

  “When?” I thought irreverently that Pothinus was being a bit slow on the uptake, as I had to keep repeating lines. “Tell me, girl!” He shook me.

  “Just now I think,” I said. “I wasn’t gone long. Just long enough to go to the kitchens. And I put her wig on the stand and shook it out first. She wore the heavy wig for the ceremony, and it has to be blocked right away. It’s very expensive, you know.”

  “Just now.” Pothinus looked about as though he expected Cleopatra to materialize from a shadow. “You, fetch the captain of the guard. Search the palace! The Queen must not be allowed to escape!” He dropped me and I collapsed to the floor, sobbing where I fell while over my head the guards ran about, mustering and giving orders. It seemed to go on forever. I hoped I was forgotten, and that no one would think to question me more closely until later.

  The stamping feet began to die away, and Pothinus had gone to join the hunt, keen to direct matters himself. I made myself not run toward the portico of the bathhouse. I would not go to my room. If Pothinus wanted more information from me, that was where he should look first.

  Among the linens and towels was my bundle, tied up to look like the rest. I got out the dark cloak, put the bundle under my arm, and slipped out of the bathhouse window into the night.

  Quietly, I made my way into the park. There were no search parties there yet. Obviously, they thought she was still in the palace. And in any event, one could not leave the park without going through one of the gates and the guards there.

  The tombs and mausoleums gleamed in the moonlight. We should have waited for a moonless night, but we did not think we had half a month. I tried to stay in the shadow of the trees, making my way among the older tombs closer to the harbor gate.

  Silver droplets played in the air from a fountain, and I came to crouch behind it. The basin was a massive stone sarcophagus once belonging to Nectanebo II. Ptolemy Philadelphos had it drilled as a fountain that caused the water to play in the night air, spreading a sweet mist about. I knelt there, one hand on the stone. My heart beat so loudly I thought it must be audible at a distance, but part of me was exhilarated. The night was cool, and the plan was working.

  I heard running feet and froze. There was a sound, and then a body dropped on top of me. “Ooof!”

  “Dion?” I tried to sort out his splayed limbs while he righted himself.

  “I didn’t know you were already here,” he whispered.

  “I’m here,” I replied. “And Cleopatra, Iras, and Apollodorus are away. What about Apollodorus’ family?”

  “His wife and the four younger children are at my aunt’s house,” Dion said. “And the oldest two are at my cousin Gorion’s. Or Yusef. Or whatever his name is this week.” Dion gave me a sideways grin. “He can’t ever decide if he’s using his Hebrew name or his Greek one. They’ll all be safe. My family will hide them.”

  I nodded. Cleopatra could hardly flee with Apollodorus’ family, the youngest not but six, but as soon as Apollodorus was seen to be missing his family would probably be arrested and questioned. Better that they disappear into the Jewish Quarter.

  Dion looked up. “Now don’t you think we’d better get started? I’ve got us passage up the Mareotic Canal on a trade ship. I told the captain I was eloping with a Gentile girl, and my parents would be furious.”

  “Well,” I said. “I suppose I can pretend to be madly in love with you.”

  “Work at it,” he said, and helped me to my feet.

  We approached the gate on the palace harbor side together, his arm around my waist, with me leaning on him and looking at him adoringly, strolling along in plain view of the torches. There were guardsmen I knew, men who had whistled or called to me before, but it seemed there were many more of them on the gate than I ever remembered seeing.

  “Hold there!” one called.

  We stopped full in the light.

  “What’s going on?” Dion asked, as one of the guardsmen came forward.

  “Where have you been?” he replied.

  Dion and I exchanged loving glances. “Just . . . around . . .” He gave the guardsman a wink and a grin. “You know. Paying our respects among the tombs.”

  I blushed furiously as one of the guards catcalled, one who had always called out to me before.

  “This is Charmian,” Dion said. “One of the Queen’s maidservants. You know her.”

  I tilted my head up in the glare of the torches, letting the cloak fall back and uncover my light hair.

  “That’s her,” the guard said. “Fancy a real man next time, love?”

  “I’ve got a real man,” I said, twining my arm around Dion.

  “We’re going for a bite to eat,” Dion said. “Any problem with that?”

  “Bring me some of what you’ve got,” the wit said.

  “No problem,” the senior one said. “Mind you come back in the open. There are some who are jumpy and will hit first and ask questions later.”

  “Thanks, my friend,” Dion said.

  We walked through arm-in-arm, winding our way down the street toward the harbor, our heads together. I
’m sure we made a pretty picture.

  “Oh my God,” Dion whispered, “I nearly had an accident.”

  I started giggling. And then I couldn’t stop. I was sure they could hear it at the gate, and it made our story all the better.

  “Will you shut up?” Dion hissed. “It’s not that funny. It’s not that funny at all.”

  “My poor little boy,” I said, leaning on him and slipping one hand down toward the front of his tunic. “Do you need to go take care of that?”

  “Charmian, for the love of . . . ” Dion grabbed my hand, and then he couldn’t stop laughing either. He took my hand and we ran all of the way to the boat.

  Lord of The Black Land

  We followed the Mareotic Canal all that night, the barge making its way slowly upstream under the stars, drawn by oxen on the shore plodding steadily. A boy walked with them, sleepily driving them along the bank. The commerce of the land of Egypt did not stop when the sun set. Perhaps it once was so, but now the great grain barges went back and forth all night.

  I did not think I could sleep, but I did. When I woke just before dawn all was quiet. I was stretched out on the deck toward the bow, and Dion sat beside me. He clasped his knees as if he were a boy, with his head tilted back, looking up at the stars. He glanced down at me, and seeing I was awake, spoke softly. “Do you suppose the stars have changed?”

  I smiled, looking up. The night air was cold. Above, the dawn stars winked brightly away from the haze of the city. “Why would they change?”

  Dion smiled up at them as though they were old friends. “Every year the Earth moves a little differently on her axis, like a top not quite spinning true. It’s an infinitesimal part of a degree each year, but over two or three thousand years, it should change quite a bit. Do you suppose any of the old temples up the Nile have a star painting?”

  “They might,” I said.

  “Still, that wouldn’t account for it,” he mused.

  “Account for what?”

  Dion glanced at me. “I remember different stars.”

  A chill ran down my back that had nothing to do with the night’s breeze. “Remember what?” I asked gently.

  Dion tilted his head back again. “Sitting under a night sky like this, on a beach where the tide was coming in. Just sitting. Looking up at the night. But the constellations were all different.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “Just that,” he said. “That’s all.” He smiled at me. “I’m not like you.”

  “Like me?”

  Dion settled closer to me, as though he shared my couch at a party. “In another age you’d have been a seer, a prophetess. Touched by the gods.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I said. I knew what a real oracle was, what one should be, and I was not that, someone who lived for the gods.

  “You believe,” he said. “And you know what you believe. You know who you are.”

  I leaned against him. “I just am, Dion. There’s nothing special about it.”

  “There is,” he said. “You’re someone who can see the pattern clearly. But we don’t really believe in things like that anymore.” Dion grinned. “Alexandria, the city where you can believe in any gods you want, as long as you don’t take it too seriously!”

  “Surely most people believe in the gods,” I said.

  Dion shrugged. “Educated people don’t. Philosophers don’t. Courtiers don’t. I’d bet any amount of money there’s not one of the council who actually believes in the gods, except for Cleopatra.”

  “Politics is ruled by self-interest,” I said. “But surely most people are better than that.”

  “You think?” Dion raised an eyebrow. “I think most people just look after their own. And that’s not malice. It’s just that most people don’t think about anyone outside their circle. They don’t want to think about grain farmers in Upper Egypt, or orphans in Ashkelon, or people burned out by wars in Cyrene. Unless they know them personally, or they’re kin. How many people would take in an orphan who wasn’t their relative?”

  “The temples do,” I said. “The Temple of Bastet in Bubastis had a bunch of orphans.”

  “But that was a temple,” Dion said. “Presumably a temple is run by people who make it their business to care about others.”

  “Isn’t it everyone’s business?” I asked. I had never considered that it might not be. From my earliest days on, we had always thought of Egypt and her people. But now that I considered it, I wasn’t sure why that was so. It wasn’t in our lessons, really. The three of us had decided upon it, as surely as we had chosen to be the Hands of Isis.

  Dion looked at me very seriously, as though weighing something important. “No. Not everyone makes it their business.” He took a deep breath. “I do. Make it my business, I mean. I took oaths. I took a sacred vow to work to build the Temple with all my strength and power in this life.”

  “An oath to whom? The Hebrew god?”

  “Well, to one of His servants, actually,” Dion said, shifting his arm about me, his voice low. “To one of His angels, Mikhael. He was the angel of the Lord who defeated Sennacherib the Akkadian seven hundred years ago.”

  I looked up at him, my head to the side. “I thought the Pharaoh Shebitku defeated him at the Battle of Pelousion.”

  “With the aid of the angel Mikhael,” Dion said smugly. “And then Shebitku restored Jerusalem to its people. He has long been the defender of peace in this part of the world, though he is a warrior at need.”

  I leaned back against Dion. It seemed to me I had heard this story before, somewhere. “But you are not a warrior, Dion.”

  “I don’t fight with a sword,” he said. “But what else would you call it, helping the Queen escape Alexandria and fight for her throne? What else would you call it when I spend my life seeking things that will improve the lives of all mankind? That’s the purpose of all my studies. Like Archimedes, I want to create things that feed people and give them healthy water, that save backbreaking work and that add to the store of knowledge. Because through these things, sure as anything else under the sun, we are all elevated.”

  I swallowed, feeling tears start in my eyes. “Dion, I made an oath too. To Isis. I . . . we . . . promised to defend this land, and to love the Black Land and govern it for the good of all its people.”

  “?‘We’?” I did not answer, but Dion laughed, bending his head against mine. “You and Iras and Cleopatra. There’s only one ‘we’ for you.”

  I nodded. “Isis agreed that Cleopatra should be queen, if she would swear her own oath to govern always for the good of Egypt, to keep the bargains of the first Ptolemy.”

  “?‘The bargains of the first Ptolemy’?”

  There was an odd sound in Dion’s voice, and I craned my neck to look up at him. “The first Ptolemy made oaths,” I said slowly. “He made a bargain with the gods of Egypt. He would protect Egypt and govern her justly . . .”

  “. . . and the gods would make him Pharaoh as of old, Horus Come Forth by Day,” Dion said.

  I nodded again. “Yes. How did you know that?”

  Dion shrugged. “I’ve always known it. Perhaps I was there with you and don’t remember it.”

  “I remember it,” I said. “Dion, I’ve always remembered it. Even when I tried to forget. Sometimes I feel like there’s a thin veil between me and all the rest of it, and it would be so easy to just sweep the veil aside and look.”

  “Why don’t you then?” Dion asked. His curiosity was always insatiable. “I would.”

  “Because I’m afraid,” I said. “I don’t know what would happen if I did. I don’t know who I’d become.” I moved closer, taking comfort in the warmth of his body.

  “I think you’d only become more yourself,” he said gently. “But you shouldn’t do it if it frightens you so. Not now. Not when our big question is what we do next.”

  I took a breath. “We find an army. We find money. We keep Gnaeus Pompeius sweetened enough to back Cleopatra with Rome, we ret
ake Alexandria, execute Pothinus and Theocritus, and exile Arsinoe to Ephesos.”

  “Well, that ought to be easy,” Dion said with a smile. “Nothing to it, really.”

  “The first problem is finding an army without any money,” I said.

  Dion took a deep breath, his chest against my back. “No, the first problem is convincing the authorities in Memphis not to pack Cleopatra straight back to Alexandria as a prisoner.”

  “That would be the Hierophant of Serapis,” I said. “His name is Memnon, and he has a reputation for being a fair man, but one who drives a hard bargain. I think we can work with him.”

  Dion nodded slowly. “And then of course there’s my more pressing problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I forgot to bring a blanket,” he said sheepishly.

  I stifled a giggle. “Dion, trust you to plan the perfect escape from Alexandria without a blanket. You can share mine.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not,” I said, and went to sleep with Dion pressed against my back, his arms around me.

  AT NAUKRATIS we left the barge and changed to a fast boat, one of the sailed passenger ships that plied regularly up and down the Nile. It was much more comfortable, and would get us to Memphis faster. Cleopatra should be far ahead of us, since Apollodorus had arrranged a swift sailing vessel for her from the beginning.

  We had seen no sign of pursuit. Not a single royal scout ship had passed the barge. It seemed that Pothinus and Theocritus had logically concluded that Cleopatra had either departed by sea to join Gnaeus Pompeius, or intended to make for Pelousion, which had been Auletes’ stronghold. Indeed, those were reasonable choices, and the choices Auletes would have made. Their mistake was assuming that Cleopatra was like Auletes.

  Dion was a child of the city, and had never before left it, except for a brief trip to Canopus, and the farther we got from Alexandria the more obvious this was. As farms and fields unrolled along the riverbank beside us, he watched all with unabashed enthusiasm, but he had no idea how to barter in the native Egyptian for our supper from the market vendors of any medium-size town where we might stop. To me, it was Bubastis again, and I realized exactly how much I had learned. Strange to say, I had missed Bubastis just a little, when we were back in Alexandria. Though we were on the westernmost branch of the Nile rather than in the east, it seemed much the same. And I was nearly as excited about seeing Memphis as Dion was.