Hand of Isis (11 page)

“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. H
EPHAISTION SON OF THE
H
IPPARCH
L
YDIAS AND HIS WIFE
C
HLOE, FAITHFUL SOLDIER OF
P
TOLEMY
S
OTER, 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?”

U
NFORTUNATELY
, 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.

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

I
f 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.

* * *

P
HARAOH 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.”

Cleopatra began rolling the scroll neatly and tightly. “She knows Theo has no spine and he’ll do anything she wants. I won’t. And Arsinoe will play whatever game she’s told.”

I shrugged. “You’re stuck with Theo no matter what. He’s only nine, so at least you won’t have to marry him for a while.”

“Not for five or six years,” Cleopatra said. “A lot can happen in five or six years.” She tied the cord around the scroll and put the label on, then looked up as if eager to change the subject. “So where are you going tonight?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “I’m ending with Lucan,” I said. “I belong here.”

H
E TOOK IT WELL
, I thought. I explained to him that my sister was very sick, and that I had no idea when I would be able to see him again, that he was wonderful and would make someone very happy, but I could hardly hold him when I knew that my duty led me to be apart from him. I thought it was flattering, and as kind as one can be.

After all, what discontent was there to voice? Lucan was considerate and his company was enjoyable. He was handsome enough and more than smart enough. How could I say that I did not love him as he wished to be loved?

If I were a man, I thought, I should love as men do, able to go from one house to another freely, pursuing youths and maidens alike as the whim took me. If I were Ptolemy Auletes, and could have anyone I wished, I would enjoy beauty in all its forms, fair and dark, curved and hard, spiced or pleasing. I should sample all of the delights of the world.

And there were so many. It almost staggered me sometimes, how many forms of beauty there were. I saw it in the broad shoulders of a guardsman, in the handsome dark face of a young doctor from Elephantine, in the lissome movement of a eunuch dancer, in the knowing gravity of Masters of the Sciences from the Museum old enough to be my grandsires. Each, in their turn, looked aside at me, and I felt their eyes following me.

It was not that I was beautiful. When I looked in the mirror I could not see that it was so. My face was symmetrical, only marred by the Ptolemy nose, and my eyes were blue. But so were the eyes of others. There were plenty of young women as fair, with rounded breasts and sweet curves. It was, I thought, something more.

It is an old maxim that Aphrodite gives beauty to women who love Her. Like most young girls, I had thought that meant that those who give offerings will have their skin clear up. Now I understood better. Those who love Her gifts are always beautiful, no matter what they look like.

There were women too who caught my eye. I saw it in the quiet girls with a way of moving that suggested depths of sensuality they had not yet plumbed, or the way some women tossed their heads, beads on the ends of their braids clicking against the smooth honey skin of their necks.

I understood my father better then. With all of the beauty put before him, how could one not sample a little of each? And he, I thought, would understand me.

But I was neither a man nor Pharaoh, so I threw myself into my work. I had the feeling that the time to learn was running out.

Ptolemy Auletes must have felt the same way. He made his will, and keeping one copy in our archives, sent the other off to Rome, to his great ally. “My kingdom I leave in joint trust to my eldest son and daughter alike, the Twin Gods Cleopatra Philopater and Ptolemy Theodorus. It is my wish that they should marry when both have come of age, and from their union should continue the heirs of my kingdom. I therefore establish the executor of my will to be none other than the Republic of Rome, thus to defend the realm of Egypt for my heirs in their minority.”

Rome, of course, meant Pompeius, the First Man of Rome. It would be in his interest to balance the Queen, should Auletes die soon. The Queen would not wish to give over the regency to Pompeius Magnus.

Or perhaps what Auletes planned had less to do with some future hypothetical regency, and more to do with defaulting on the fifth payment of the loan. He had paid the fourth, but when the fifth came due there were other things more pressing, including the repair of the breakwater around Pharos. Instead of the money, he concluded a treaty with Rome, promising that forthwith Egypt and Rome should be the sturdiest allies. Egypt should contribute to Roman expeditions in the east, and Rome should defend Egypt against all enemies.

T
HE INUNDATION CAME
. It was a good year, but the flood was high. Many banks and sluices were overrun, and when the water came down they had to be repaired. Day by day, Auletes looked thinner and grayer. He no longer visited the harem, and he complained constantly of a pain in his side. The physicians examined him and looked grim, prescribing rest and care.

The waters receded, and Iras turned eighteen. Dion’s most recent friend went to study in Athens, and he was alone again. He moved out of his parents’ house, though, to rooms nearer the Museum, supposedly because his astronomy required he keep late hours, but actually because he was tired of assignations in odd places.

There were bills for naval stores, and to repair the walls of Pelousion where Gabinius had breached them for Ptolemy so long ago. We defaulted on the sixth payment of the loan.

This time Pompeius did not send his banker to collect the money. This time he sent his son.

A
T THIS TIME
Gnaeus Pompeius was twenty-four, and though he was well built, he was not handsome. He was the oldest son of Pompeius Magnus, however, and might in due course of time become, like his father, the First Man of Rome. He did not remind me of a wolf, but of a jackal, decidedly untrustworthy.

The son of a devoted friend could not have greeted Auletes more smoothly, or with greater graciousness. He did not drink excessively in public, and when he was invited to use the palace baths, he displayed a body that was honed to perfection by military life.

“Watch him for me,” Cleopatra said. “There are half a dozen attendants in the bath at any time. No one will notice you in particular if you dress like the others, and stand about holding towels. I want to know what you think of him. Candidly.”

So I went to the baths and stood about the pool, moving jars of oil from one place to another and watching while Gnaeus Pompeius splashed about in the pool and lay on a cushioned couch for a slave to massage him. When he turned over so that she could work on his front, his phallus was already erect, glossy and surrounded by dark curls. I averted my eyes, so that I should not seem curious, glancing beneath my lids.

She worked on his legs. It was Philene, one of the best girls, and the most professional. She displayed no embarrassment as she worked. He was so swift I hardly saw it as he grabbed her wrist, his other hand slipping between her legs and grabbing her by the pubic hair. Philene squeaked, more with surprise than alarm.

“There’s a use for all this oil,” he said, sliding her oiled hands onto his manhood; she was caught on one knee, unable to back up, held by the hair.

Her mouth opened as he sat up, drawing her down hard onto him in full view of every bath slave. The two boys who sluiced bathers off gaped. He thrust hard while Philene tried to find the rhythm, to keep her composure, biting down on her lip. With each thrust he withdrew almost completely, driving hard. There was no sound in the baths except the slap of his skin on hers. It only took him a few minutes. He came with a groan, drawing out of her, his hands leaving red marks on her hips. Her distended nether lips seemed to clutch at him, moist and full and purpling.

I felt it deep in my stomach, my answering arousal, and with it the horror. I had never been taken like that, as though I were nothing, before half the household, and I imagined I should like it no better than Philene did.

Gnaeus Pompeius took a towel from the stack and cleaned himself off, while Philene stood mute, clutching the edge of the couch.

Tossing the towel on the couch, he strode off toward the dressing room.

I found my voice. “Myrtle,” I said to the steadiest of the attendants, “tend to Philene, please. You are both dismissed from your duties today.” I did not trust myself to touch her.

I
TOLD
C
LEOPATRA
everything, everything except my arousal. That was nothing she needed to know.

She looked away, out the window that faced the sea. “Oh sweet Isis,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “He had no business. Philene’s not in the harem. And she hadn’t done anything to encourage him.”

Cleopatra nodded. She seemed abstracted. “He can’t send for her. Tell her that, and the Master of the Baths too. That’s not her job. And tell her she can slip out if he comes into the baths.” She walked over to the window, and I could not see her face. “Sweet Isis.”

“It’s a message,” Iras said. “Everything that’s here is his. It’s about politics, not Philene.”

“I know,” Cleopatra said. “But there’s no other way to sweeten the deal enough this time.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“No,” Iras said at the same moment. “No. Absolutely no.” She stood up, her hands clenched. “Auletes can’t mean to do that. That old pimp!”

“We don’t have any other choice.” Cleopatra turned around, her chin high. “The only thing that will sweeten the deal enough to keep him from his father’s mission is me.”

“You can’t do it,” Iras said, grasping at straws. “You’re supposed to marry Theo.”

“Theo is eleven years old,” Cleopatra snapped. “He’s no help. He’s nothing at all. The only other thing Auletes could do is throw Arsinoe at him, but she’s three years younger than I am, and she’s not the heir.”

“Gnaeus could marry Arsinoe,” I said. “And take her away from here where she can’t be the focus for her mother’s faction anymore.”

“Except that he already has a wife,” Cleopatra said. “A woman named Appia. I don’t like it. But I don’t see any other way.”

“I won’t permit it,” Iras said, her face flushed.

Cleopatra walked toward her, and put her hand to Iras’ shoulder. “Dear Iras,” she said, “you are not my brother.”

“I wish I were,” she said. “I would never let you do this while you have breath in your body.”

“There isn’t any other way!” Cleopatra dropped her hand and spun about. “Don’t you see that? I just have to make the best of it. If he calls in the whole debt, we have no way to pay. The economy will collapse. It’s worse than it was in my great-uncle’s day, when he melted down Alexander’s golden sarcophagus and replaced it with a glass one. If I don’t do this, we’re going to have to start robbing the dead. It’s either that, or rob the living.”