Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  “Charmian? I hardly knew you.”

  I came toward him, but did not give him the kiss of greeting, not knowing whether it would come amiss under the circumstances. Instead I greeted him in Latin. “Hail, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. You are welcome under the Queen’s roof.”

  He stared at me, a little confused by the greeting, then gestured with his draped left arm. “Oh, this. I thought I should dress properly in case I saw people other than you. I wouldn’t want people to think I was being disrespectful of Queen Cleopatra.”

  “You mean you’re here to crash Caesar’s party?” I asked, but there was no sting in my voice.

  “Is he having one? I didn’t know.” He took a step closer. With his new height he positively loomed over me. “My father and Caesar aren’t really . . . My father was always Pompeius’ man. It’s my mother who’s friends with Caesar’s niece.”

  “And now you are your family’s best chance of clearing up . . . misunderstandings?” I smiled at him, unable to avoid it. I had forgotten how overwhelming he could be in person, young as he was, how intoxicating the sense of the familiar about him. I had intended to be angry.

  “Well, yes.” He shrugged. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with being here. I came to see you.”

  “Really?” It is possible that my tone was frosty. “After more than two years with not so much as a note? Suddenly you absolutely must see me?”

  “I wrote to you,” he said. “I wrote to you from Zela, and twice after that.”

  “I had no letters from you.” Though, to be fair, I thought, only about one in four of the letters Emrys had sent Dion had arrived. It was just that there had been so very many letters.

  “I only had one from you,” he said.

  “I wrote you five,” I said. And hardly knew what to say, I thought. I knew then that I was pregnant with Demetria, but should I put that in a letter? I was suddenly very aware of her, splashing and yelling with Caesarion in the compluvium in the atrium, while their nurse stood by. Demetria seemed to think that the atrium pool was put there for the express benefit of the household children so that they could pretend to be ducks.

  But this was not the time or place for that conversation. Marcus had not noticed her. Why should he? Children are not the responsibility of young men, and if he noticed anyone it should be Caesarion, who no doubt was the subject of speculation by more than one noble Roman.

  “I should have written,” he said. “But I didn’t know what to say.” He glanced away, toward the four cypress trees in pots that screened the compluvium from the door and also sheltered a small statue of Aphrodite. “I’m not good at writing things. The things I mean look silly when I put them on paper.”

  “I understand,” I said coolly. He had said many things he could not have meant later, when he had a chance to think, when the magic of the Black Land had worn off. No doubt it seemed like some enchantment, when it was nothing except the intensity of first attraction, first experience. Or perhaps it was enchantment after all. One did not play lightly with Isis Pelagia, nor with any who might embody Her.

  But I did not intend, then or now, to hold him to his declarations of love. I had made it clear I expected nothing from him. Why should I be angry at him for taking me at my word? It was not as though I were some innocent girl of good family, led astray into disgrace. I had lost nothing because of him.

  Marcus looked at me, chewing on the inside of his lip. “I’d like to talk to you, Charmian.”

  “You are talking to me,” I said.

  “Privately. I mean . . . I don’t mean . . .” He stopped.

  “You mean to talk,” I said. “Not to have me.”

  “No. I mean, of course I’d like . . . but that wasn’t what I meant.”

  “Do Romans never court women?” I asked bemusedly. “Do you have anything between ‘let’s take our clothes off’ and a visit to her father?”

  “No,” he said, sounding almost miserable. “And anyway it wouldn’t be me meeting with her father. It would be my father.” He squared his shoulders as though he were about to explain something difficult. “You see, my family’s from Campania, an old family, but nobody ever had anything much until my great-grandfather got in with Marius. He was gifted, or bought for almost nothing, a lot of property—vineyards and orchards and good farmland. He got killed by Sulla, but then my father became a client of Pompeius Magnus, when he was just rising and was getting rid of the pirates. Which is how my mother met Caesar’s niece, back when Caesar and Pompeius were family. They stayed good friends through all the ups and downs, and it was my mother who got me a place as a tribune. But my father’s still not welcome in a lot of houses. Fortunately, he wasn’t a very prominent supporter of Pompeius, but we might have lost the property anyway because of my older brother Lucius—he fought for Pompeius—if I hadn’t fought for Caesar. Since Lucius was killed in battle and I wasn’t, confiscating my father’s land would be like taking it away from me, so we’ve kept it.”

  “And so now your father owes you,” I said.

  “Which isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” Marcus said. “He’s supposed to be head of the family. You can’t know how it hurts his pride to know that everything his grandfather won would be lost if it weren’t for me, and I’m not but eighteen.” He turned, looking back toward the doorway. “And my mother goes on day and night with the I-told-you-so and now-your-foolishness-has-cost-us-Lucius. I know it’s because she’s grieving Lucius and she has nobody else to blame. We don’t even have his ashes. We hope he was burned on one of the mass pyres and not just left for the vultures, but we’ll never know. I don’t know why I’m alive and Lucius isn’t.”

  “Perhaps he simply wasn’t as lucky,” I said.

  “No one ever is,” he said. “Nothing touches me. Five battles now and not a single scratch. You’d think I’d be wounded.”

  “Be glad you aren’t,” I said, smiling. “Many men would be glad to be proof against swords. It’s like Achilles or something.”

  “It’s not.” He did turn then, his eyes bright. “It’s nothing like Achilles.”

  I stroked the folds of his toga over his arm gently. “Marcus, it doesn’t require a charm or the favor of some god for a strong young man to win through battles. You’re bigger than many men you face, and you’ve practiced hard and learned well. Yes, some is luck, but some of it is your common sense and hard work.” And, I thought privately to myself, to have the order of battle set by Caesar instead of Gnaeus Pompeius. In his youth Pompeius may have been a great general, but when he left things to his son there was only one way it could go.

  “I do not want to succumb to hubris,” he said.

  At that moment a very wet something plowed into my knees shrieking. I looked down to see Caesarion, his soaking wet chiton pulled up above his belly, his hair plastered to his head with water. When I looked down at him he collapsed into a giggling heap.

  “Caesarion!” I exclaimed, reaching down to catch him. He evaded me and scooted away, rolling across the tiles of the atrium, still laughing wildly. From the other side of the potted cypress trees I heard Demetria splashing, then a rising wail with the tone that meant actual pain, not mere frustration.

  I grabbed Caesarion about the waist and handed him to Marcus, then darted between bushes and picked up Demetria. She had fallen and bitten her lip, which bled in a tiny place while she shrieked.

  “There now, sweetheart,” I said. “It’s just a tiny cut. You’re all right.”

  She put her wet arms around my neck, nuzzling in, spluttering.

  Caesarion. I ducked back around the bushes, Demetria in my arms.

  Marcus stood just where I’d left him, looking at Caesarion bemusedly. Caesarion, for his part, regarded Marcus with curiosity, crumpling the border on his toga in one damp little hand.

  “Here now, darling,” I said, swinging Caesarion back on my right hip. Together they made quite a handful, one on each side. It wouldn’t be long before I couldn’t pick them up together
.

  Demetria stopped crying and pushed back to look at Marcus, and I felt my face grow warm.

  “Is that Caesarion?” Marcus asked.

  “Yes,” I said. Truly, I should never have handed Caesarion to someone outside of the household, not even for a moment. It only took a minute to break a child’s neck. But in that instant it had seemed as natural as breathing, that of course any child of mine should be entirely safe with Marcus Agrippa.

  “I should take them to their nurse,” I said. “And I have words for her on leaving them alone near water, even for an instant.”

  He looked at me, a child in each arm, and I waited for him to ask who the other child was. But he didn’t. “I suppose I should leave you to your work then,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “We can talk soon?”

  “If you want,” I said.

  As I carried the children to their nurse I buried my face in Demetria’s soft curls, a shade lighter than Marcus’. He did not want to know, I thought. But surely the loss was his.

  IT WAS NINE DAYS before Emrys and I managed to go into the city. Between Emrys’ duty, and the enormous business of setting up the Queen’s household and arranging three dinners, not to mention having Caesar in and out nearly every day, it was more than a week before I could take an entire day off.

  It was a beautiful day in early fall, with bright sun and the leaves not yet quite changing color on the trees in the park.

  “They’ll be changing in the mountains now,” Emrys said, turning unerringly toward the northwest. “The snowline will already be creeping down the passes, and at home the gales of autumn are beginning.”

  “Will it snow here?” I asked him. I had always wanted to see snow.

  He grinned. “You sound like the children. No, probably not. Or not much. There’s some ice in the winter, but Rome never really gets heavy snow. A little bit, maybe.”

  I draped my himation about my shoulders. It was a little chilly under the trees and out of the sun, though I expected it would warm up later in the day. “Who do you worship, Emrys?”

  “Epona,” he said, “though I respect all gods. But Epona is who I’m dedicated to.” We walked downhill through the last of the parkland, toward the Sublician Bridge, past the shops just outside the gates of the Grove of Furrina, where women were selling seed cakes to give to the sacred doves. “She’s a horse goddess, born when the Great Mare was mounted by the sea god, Mann. The Great Mare gave birth to Epona, and it was She who brought horses to men and taught them to ride. To Her we owe our herds, the horses that pull our plows and mount our warriors, our life. Like a mare, She can be gentle to those She loves. And She guards Her children as fiercely as the herd mare will the foals in the herd.”

  “That’s fascinating,” I said. “I know almost nothing of horses.”

  Emrys shrugged. “Horses have been my life. Since the first horses came up out of the sea, there’s been a tie between us, my people and horses.”

  “Tell me that story,” I said comfortably as we strolled.

  “It’s not long,” he said. Emrys dropped his voice to a storyteller’s tones. “Time was when there were no men. All of the world was dark and held in the grasp of a winter that never ended. The first men awoke in a distant place, and they wandered in the snow, always looking for food or something to hunt. The mountains were dangerous because the dwarves lived there in great caves.”

  I must have looked blank, because he smiled and elaborated. “Smaller than men, and somewhat like men, but thinking differently and living in the deep places of the earth. They were dangerous, and men had to be wary of them. And so the first men wandered far from the mountains, following the game northward across the plains. Sometimes a false spring would come, and on those plains there would be for a little while tender new grass, so men hunted the animals that lived there. Only it was very dangerous, because the animals were very big, and the men had nothing but spears. They could not keep up when the animals ran, and when they charged, the men had to flee.

  “One day, after years of wandering and following the herds, with the high mountains left far behind them, they followed the animals right to the edge of the world. And there, at the end of the plain, was the sea. Now no man had ever seen the sea before, and they didn’t know what it was, so they stopped and stared in wonder at the waves crashing on the shore. And they fell to their knees at the beauty of it.”

  I could imagine that so clearly, a bright day at the edge of the world, a keen breeze off the sea.

  “And Epona saw them and She was filled with love for them, and so as each wave began to break, as the white foam sped down its green side, it turned into a great white horse. The horses galloped out of the sea and frolicked on the sand, running and dancing for the sheer joy of it. One of the men who was braver than most stood up, and he walked toward the horses. A white mare stood her ground and waited for him, and when he came beside her she was not afraid. And she let him touch her and feed her, and at last ride her. Thus, horses came to men and with them the end of starvation and need. With horses, the herds could be ridden down, and hunters with spears could take even the largest bison, speeding beside them in their wild stampedes and throwing a javelin to their hearts. With horses, food could be salted and carried, and men no longer depended only on that day’s hunt. With horses, the old people did not need to be left behind to die, but could ride with their families, and children and pregnant women could ride at need. All men prospered and revered Epona.”

  “You tell the story well,” I said. “You should have been a storyteller, Emrys.”

  “I have no gift for music such as bards need,” he said, but he did not look displeased. “They tell this story at home. I’ve heard a version of it from the Batavians, who claim that it happened in Batavia, where the Rhenus River flows into the sea, and that the men had followed the river north from the mountains where the dwarves lived.” Emrys shrugged. “It could be that it happened in Batavia. Who is to say that it cannot be true?”

  “An endless winter that never turned into summer?” I said. “Dwarves that live in the mountains?”

  “In the very high mountains it’s never summer,” Emrys said. “In the Alpes Mountains the snow never melts on the peaks, and there are rivers of ice that are frozen all year. Summer may come in the valleys, but the mountains are always in winter. I’ve been there several times. Perhaps these men lived somewhere like that, or perhaps that’s where this story began. The Rhenus flows from the Alpes, after all.”

  “Oh,” I said. I tried to imagine. It was hard enough to imagine snow, much less a river of ice.

  “As for the dwarves, why not? There are many strange creatures in the world, and there are a lot of stories about the dwarves in the Alpes. I myself have seen caves decorated with paintings far below the ground, bizarre animals and elephants.”

  “Elephants?” I frowned. Surely elephants lived in India.

  Emrys nodded. “You have my word on it. Strange as that is.”

  I took his arm as we stepped off the bridge and into Rome proper. We waded into the crowds going north toward the Forum, and I was surprised how many women there were afoot. While there were some being borne in litters, most of the women were walking, mingling with the shopkeepers and laborers on their way to worksites, with the business traffic of the city. They were veiled no more than I, with only perhaps a light himation over the backs of their heads, or just about their shoulders, like Egyptian women instead of Greek.

  Alexandria was the crossroads of the world. I had seen people of different lands many times before, but as Emrys and I walked through the streets near the Forum, Rome seemed different somehow. We stopped to see the Forum, of course, and the ancient round Temple of Vesta and the House of the Virgins beside it, where within lived the patrician priestesses of Vesta. We could not go in. Instead, we walked along one of the streets nearby, pitched steeply up the side of a hill.

  “Are you hungry?” Emrys asked. He stood by the front of one of
the shops, where a woman with several baskets was selling pastries on the street.

  “Oh yes,” I said. The smell of apples wrapped in warm dough was wonderful.

  The vendor, a heavy woman of fifty or so with faded blond hair streaked gray, handed me the pastries while Emrys counted out coin. She smiled at me, saying something I didn’t understand.

  I shook my head.

  Emrys replied in that same language, giving over the coins with a nod.

  We walked down the street together. The pastries did indeed taste as good as they smelled. “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said you didn’t speak German.”

  “Why would she think I did?”

  “Well, you look German, don’t you?” Emrys gave me a sideways glance. “Look around you.”

  I did, and I saw what he meant, what had seemed strange to me since we crossed the bridge. The litters that crossed the Forum were carried by tall blond men, and everywhere in the crowds of shoppers in the markets blond and red hair stood out like banners. Women carrying marketing baskets, skinny children at their sides. Slaves toting parcels. Maidservants and bodyguards following the rich. The unmistakable occasional pleasure slave, her pretty face dressed with cosmetics. I had never seen so much blond hair in my life.

  In Alexandria, I was a rarity. Yes, there were blond slaves, but they were few and far between, and Greeks as blond as Alexander, though that was unusual. Here, everywhere I looked I saw faces like mine. The faces of the lower classes. Freedmen and gladiators, bodyguards and cooks and women who cleaned houses, children who swept shops and boys who ran errands, old women who baked pastries and the wary campaign wives of soldiers with too many children—they all had my face, my looks, my blond hair. And there were others as fair as Emrys, with that pale, freckled skin and light eyes, long hair instead of short, chestnut or red.

  Faces that were not Roman.

  I breathed out a long sigh. “Do they not notice?” I asked.

  Emrys shook his head. “No. Roman virtue and Roman custom, Roman ways and Roman honor. Rome belongs to her citizens. But look around you.”