Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  “Not more than half,” I said. “Not more than half the men I see could be Roman citizens.” A litter with parted white curtains passed, two elderly men in togas conversing, the bearers’ long blond hair pulled into loose tails, their tunics stretched tight across their shoulders.

  “Much less than half,” Emrys said. “And in the legions it’s maybe one in five. Boys who are citizens don’t serve in the legions for twenty years, not except for a few families. They go in as tribunes and get a little experience to help their political careers, most of it somewhere nice and safe.”

  “Except Agrippa,” I said, remembering.

  “Except Agrippa,” Emrys said agreeably. “He’s all right. He’s a good enough tribune, and he did his work, unlike a lot of them. He has some talent and he shuts up and listens. But most of them aren’t like that. They’re like that spoiled brat great-nephew of Caesar’s that we got stuck with in Hispania, complaining all the time.”

  “Does that happen a lot?” I asked, my mind still on what he’d said about Agrippa.

  Emrys shrugged. “Often enough. But mostly it just begins to grate. No matter how good I am, I’ll never rise very high because I’m not a citizen. I can’t become a citizen, and Rome is for Romans. But do they even notice who’s fighting their wars and cooking their meals and washing their clothes? Gauls and Germans.”

  “I suppose it’s like that everywhere,” I said, thinking of Iras, and how the scholars had frowned at a woman and native Egyptian approaching Greek learning.

  “Well, yes,” Emrys said. “But that doesn’t keep it from grating.” He reached up and brushed a piece of soot off my himation. “Where did you get those looks, anyway?”

  “My mother was a slave from Thrace,” I said. “She was bought in Histria, in Dobruja. I think this was in all that mess in the Third Mithridatic War. But she wasn’t born in Histria. She came from somewhere up the Danuvius River. I don’t know how she became a slave.”

  She had never told Asetnefer, I thought. And I had never thought about her that much, Egyptian as I was. Now I wondered. How far up the Danuvius? How far from home had she already been when she was bought by Pharaoh’s agent in Histria? What home had she remembered when she went into Pharaoh, her head held high and laughter on her lips? Almost certainly she had seen snow. Had she missed it in a white city by the sea?

  “It’s a long river,” Emrys said. “It rises in the Alpes too, just on the eastern side. You could be Scordisci or Pannonian or Vindobonian. There are a lot of tribes that trade down the Danuvius, some of them German and some of them Keltic.”

  “I suppose I’ll never know,” I said.

  I must have sounded wistful, for Emrys touched my face gently. “It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly. “She lives in you, she and all her people.”

  I blinked, and was surprised to find sudden tears there. I had never told Demetria the story, young as she was. I should. I should tell her from the cradle what I knew of her beginnings, of my proud mother and Auletes, of Agrippa with his mystical streak and stubbornness. I should make sure she remembered.

  “Show me Rome,” I said. “Your Rome. Not just the Forum and the monuments. Show me the living city as you live it. Show me what you love.”

  Emrys reached as though he would put his arm about my waist and thought better of it. “I will if you will show me the Alexandria you love, when we are next there.”

  “That’s a promise,” I said, and smiled.

  WE WENT all over the city together, walking arm-in-arm. No one paid us the slightest attention. If I looked like some freedwoman, Emrys looked like exactly what he was, one of Caesar’s Keltic Auxiliaries. It was, after the pomp and ceremony that attended the Queen, a considerable relief.

  We visited the markets and looked at the baths, bought food that Emrys swore I should try. I was a bit dubious of seafood stew with apple wine in it, but it turned out to be delicious. We ate at trestle tables under the tree outside a popular little shop. Most of the patrons didn’t stay to eat, but took their food along with them, ripe cheese with a thick rind, blood sausages, round loaves of barley bread. Most of them were Gaulish and German, chatting in unfamiliar languages as they came and went. In addition to the food, the shop seemed to have a little of everything, plates and dishes, beads, knives, and various cosmetic things. I lingered briefly over a bolt of wool woven in a checked pattern, dark blue and white.

  “Thread dyed with woad,” Emrys said. “The design isn’t stamped on, like the Greek cloth. The raw wool is dyed before it’s spun. So it doesn’t fade like the other does.”

  I thought about buying it, but I didn’t have many places to wear heavy wool. In Alexandria it would be exotic, but probably too warm.

  “It’s like the shops at home in the Jewish Quarter,” I said. “Places that sell a little bit of everything to people from their homelands.”

  “I can find you a kosher butcher if you want,” Emrys said. “There are Jews here too. Not nearly as many as in Alexandria, and they’re regulated a lot more. But they’re here. And there’s a Temple of Isis here too.”

  “Is there?”

  Emrys nodded. “I suppose it was Egyptians living here who built it originally, but there are a lot of Romans who go there now too, at least to celebrate the Pelagia in the spring. Some consul or other ordered it torn down about ten years ago, but he couldn’t find anybody willing to take on the goddess’ displeasure by doing it.”

  “I should go there while I’m here,” I said. A prayer, I thought, O Queen of Heaven, for Your hands on earth.

  We walked the last little bit uphill, and the narrow street turned suddenly into a wide plaza. Bounded on three sides by white temples, the fourth side gave onto a steep cliff and a magnificent view of the city. The river curved like a snake through it, and all stood suddenly visible, as though we were at once become gods. A grassy lawn ran right up to the edge, dotted here and there with statues, and the sky arched above. The city lay at our feet.

  I turned, clutching at Emrys’ arm. “It’s glorious,” I said.

  He grinned and put his arm about me. “This is the old citadel,” he said. “Capitoline Hill. Behind us there is the Arx where the augurs take the omens, and the Temple of Juno. And a lot of other temples besides. It’s not allowed to build anymore up here because it’s already too crowded.”

  Endless foot traffic moved over the bridges, and the forums were easy to pick out amid the tangle of buildings. I lifted my eyes from the city. Already Rome grew outside her walls. The walls were dark streaks where some streets ended, but the buildings huddled on both sides all the same. Beyond her, I could just see where countryside began, though the city continued some distance along the highways, great radial roads fanning out from the walls.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, and knew that what I said was inadequate.

  In the distance, above the haze from the city, a bird of prey turned on the wind, sliding slowly away on the invisible roads of the air. The augurs would call it an omen, I thought. Or perhaps they saw that same bird here every day.

  “I’ve stood here before with you,” I said, and in that moment had the strongest sense that it was true. The river below curling through tree-covered banks, brown and swollen with spring rain, morning light over green trees and the high, endless sky.

  I reached for his hand. It was where I thought it would be, and I stood transfixed. The city. The forested valley. It was one.

  ET In Arcadia Ego

  I hardly expected it when a few days later a messenger arrived for me bearing a very formal scroll. “Thank you,” I said as I took it.

  He folded his hands behind his back. “Domina, my master has asked me to wait for your reply.”

  “Your master is?”

  “Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa,” he said.

  “I see.” I carried the scroll away, to open it in the light that came in through the impluvium. Now, I thought. Now he writes me letters. But my fingers were shaking as I untied the cord.

 
Hail Charmian,

  This comes to you to invite you to visit at the country home of my father, Lucius Vipsanius Agrippa, from his heir, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Tribune. I hope that you will come. It would give me pleasure if you did, and I could show you the house and our farms and other lands. We have many fine cattle and also our goats are well known for the sweetness of their milk, which is because of their pasture, which makes them cheerful and well grown. If this is agreeable to you please reply and say that it is. If it’s not, please reply anyhow.

  M. Agrippa

  I stood holding the scroll, hesitating. I should say no, I thought. I have my duties. And yet.

  What would it be like, I wondered, to do something entirely different? To live as a lover, not a sister. To be prized for pleasure, not for my mind. If I wanted, Cleopatra would manumit me. She had promised me so, long since. What would it be like to be instead a hetaira, a companion, prized for beauty and wit? I should leave behind worry about affairs of state, about politics and diplomacy. I should plan private parties for lovers, not state banquets. I should arrange all for the pleasure of one man, not for the good of a kingdom. What would it be like?

  Marcus was young, only eighteen. He might not marry for years, and even if he did a hetaira was no challenge to a Roman wife. I had already borne a child. And he was not the kind of man to cut all ties, even if passion waned. I could have a house of my own, manage slaves that were mine, not my sister’s. And if Marcus grew tired of me or me of him there would be other men, powerful, interesting men whose acquaintance I would make. I could make my symposia famous, as hetairae had in the past, all of the best poets and statesmen gathering in my garden.

  And I should be here, in Rome. I should be here, with Caesar.

  The world turned on the fulcrum of Caesar, as it had turned on Alexander. In that day it had been the Athenian hetaira, Thais the Firebrand, who had burned Persepolis in revenge for the Persians burning Athens, who had sat at dinner with Alexander and urged him to it, who had won the love of Ptolemy and had kept it all her life. What would it be like, to be such? To stand among Companions for love alone?

  “Wait,” I said to the slave, and went to see the Queen.

  WHEN I SHOWED HER THE LETTER, Cleopatra raised one eyebrow. “You can do as you wish, Charmian,” she said. She took the scroll from me and read it again. “He is not the most eloquent suitor,” she said, and I wondered what Caesar had written to her. Whatever it was, he was certainly better at expressing himself. “He almost sounds as though he intends to sell you livestock.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he has in mind,” I said.

  “He is Demetria’s father,” Cleopatra said. “But do you understand what that would mean in Roman law?”

  “Not entirely,” I said. Iras was the one who had studied law before we came to Rome, while I had studied custom.

  “A Roman father has the power of life and death over his children,” she said. “Not simply in the matter of exposing infants, but forever. And while he might acknowledge her, Demetria was born the daughter of a slave. She cannot be his heir. Even if you bear him a son, he cannot be his heir, though he could inherit property in his will, should he choose to acknowledge him.”

  “I know,” I said. “But many companions have done well enough anyway.”

  My sister looked at me, and her eyes were troubled. “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He swore that he loved me in Egypt, but I don’t know how he feels now. I don’t know how I feel now.”

  Cleopatra handed the scroll back to me. “Maybe you should go and find out. If you don’t, you will regret it. I know you well enough to tell you that!”

  I laughed. “You’re right. I have to see, don’t I?”

  “Go and see,” she said. “And don’t buy any livestock!”

  THEY SAY that Campania in autumn is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I cannot fault the beauty of it. We journeyed south from Rome along the Via Appia in a carriage, a slow way to travel but a certain way to see the beauties of the countryside.

  At first it was hard to tell we had even left the city. Even after the walls were behind us, the city continued, miles upon miles of houses, shops, and markets. Marcus, seated beside me, pointed out that these were all small villages, with their own names—Pollitorium, Tellene, Bovillae—but I should not have known it. They seemed like one endless city, Rome stretching out long fingers into the countryside, toward the Alban Hills.

  We spent all day on the road, following the Via Appia through the hills and valleys and across the Pontine Marshes. It was evening before we came to Formia, and to a taverna there that Marcus said was good. By that time I could have cared less. I was not used to extended travel except by sea, and the continual jolting of the coach had left me somewhat nauseous.

  After some miles, Marcus confined himself to saying how wonderful the road was and explaining to me how it was made, an explanation that might have seemed more interesting were we at sea. I had asked why we hadn’t simply sailed down the coast in perfect comfort from Ostia to Neapolis, but Marcus looked at me as if I were mad and launched into an explanation of road building that seemed quite at odds with his usual style of talking, as though it were some presentation he had once been called upon to give, concluding with the smug assessment that “no Roman need ever travel by sea unless in some forlorn place where there are no roads.”

  I nearly asked him why in the world he was blathering like that, but didn’t. I should learn to make myself agreeable. After all, a hetaira must. I should have to school my tongue and smile politely when men rattled on about layers of gravel and sand and other aspects of roadbed construction. For his part, I suppose he thought I didn’t feel well, for as soon as we arrived at the taverna I put a cold cloth across my eyes and I went straight to sleep.

  I woke to the bright light of morning and the sound of endless carts and coaches on the road outside, all of the traffic of the Republic passing by. I went to the window and looked out. The courtyard wall only extended as high as the second floor, so I had a view of the Via Appia, already crawling with traffic. Beyond, the outline of the Alban Hills was still visible, blurred by distance and autumn. I had time to wash my face and breakfast before we went on.

  At midmorning we reached the city of Capua, where the Via Appia turned inland to cross the mountains. Instead of staying on it, we turned toward the coast on the Via Popilia, which should take us the rest of the way. I had thought the traffic would be less, but the Via Popilia was also a major road, and there was it seemed a tremendous amount of trade between Capua and Neapolis.

  “It’s not much farther,” Marcus said. “We turn off the Via Popilia after only six miles. And then it’s just a small road to the farm.”

  I nodded, watching the countryside go by. There seemed to be so few people for the amount of land. In Egypt, one came upon small villages constantly, not even out of sight of one another. Here, fields golden with grain stretched uninterrupted, and I saw why Campania had been considered the breadbasket of Rome before they bought so much from Egypt. Now and then we passed a side road, hardly more than a muddy track, going off between fields, or glimpsed far across the fields a house surrounded by olive trees, the road marked with a line of cedars.

  “Where are all of the people?” I asked. “Where are the farmers who work this land?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Most of these are estates. There aren’t many small farmers left in this part of the country. We have about six hundred slaves who work the land. A lot of it is in pasture for the cattle, but they take work too. There’s haying and we grow our own grain for fodder. We also own about a dozen women to do the work in the house.”

  “Six hundred slaves?” The Great House of Pharaoh owned less than two hundred, all told, and I doubted there was a lord in Egypt who owned more.

  “Six hundred.” He nodded. “Not so many, really, because a lot of it’s pasture. Some estates have a couple of thousand.”

/>   “Slaves from where?” I asked, remembering all Emrys had said. I could hardly imagine what one would do with a thousand slaves. Even the pyramids had not been built that way, long ago. The artisans and workmen who built our tombs were free peasants.

  “Gauls, Germans, Greeks, whatever,” he said. “They can be manumitted eventually, or buy themselves out. Though generally it’s the craftsmen who can do that, the Greeks usually. The Germans don’t know anything but farming, away over the Rhenus.”

  “And hunting, I suppose,” I said. It was true that it was inefficient, the way the Egyptian peasants divided and subdivided each piece of land, until some parcels were hardly big enough to reach across if they lay in rich bottomland beside the river, litigating and arguing over hereditary leases from Amon. In dry seasons when the Nile did not rise enough, some bits didn’t get enough to produce at all, and hunger haunted the villages. Still, I liked it better. They had their families and their gods, their own people and their own names.

  Marcus scratched his head. “Actually, we can’t let them hunt. It’s not done, arming slaves in this part of the country. It hasn’t been very long since Spartacus led his slave revolt here. You could still see some of the crosses where Crassus crucified about six thousand of them along the Via Appia when I was a boy. He gave orders for their remains never to be taken down, you see. An example.”

  “I see,” I said, and was proud to say that my voice was calm. That had happened the year before I was born, no doubt to kinsmen of my mother’s who had been sold less fortunately than she. She had had the best of it, a pleasure slave to Pharaoh in Ptolemy’s white city by the sea. I could not even imagine crucifying six thousand slaves. In Egypt such a thing had never happened.

  Marcus looked at me, and his brow furrowed. “I don’t know why we’re talking about this, Charmian. Every time I talk to you I say the wrong thing. And I don’t even know what I said.”