Hand of Isis

by Jo Graham

  “We can still get clear,” he said. “If it all goes wrong. No one will look for us.”

  “I know,” I said.

  If it did, I would. There was nothing I could do for them from here. Memnon would still have a bargaining chip. He could claim that Iras was the real queen, and that the Cleopatra Caesar held was a fake.

  We waited for what seemed like half the night. I suppose it was a few hours. The Roman watch changed, at any rate.

  At last Apollodorus came out with two Romans. They did not touch him, and seemed to accompany him rather than escort him.

  Dion stepped out of the shadow. “What’s happened?”

  “We’re to return to the palace and make the Queen’s quarters ready for her. Caesar intends to enforce the terms of Auletes’ will, and reinstate her as Queen of Egypt. He is meeting with her now.”

  I saw how the men tried to follow the conversation, but apparently they did not speak Koine. Still, my answer was carefully gauged. I nodded deeply. “It is my honor to prepare my Lady’s things.”

  We fell in with them, crossing the park and the street beyond, walking along beneath the trees in the starlight. The moon was rising, and not yet a quarter grown.

  One of them, the one on my side, seemed to be trying to follow the very formal conversation between Dion and Apollodorus, his eyes flicking back and forth from one to the other. They were hazel, almost green, and, unlike any Roman I’d ever seen, he wore his hair long and caught behind him in a chestnut-colored tail. He also wore trousers, faded buff woolen ones beneath a scarlet tunic and leathers. The sword that hung at his side seemed longer than the others I’d seen.

  Making my Latin more halting than it was, I asked, “Are you Roman?”

  He nodded. “Decurion Aurelianus, of the Seventh Turma of Pollio’s Lancers.” He gave me a sideways glance. “We’re cavalry. That’s why we don’t wear steel.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’m Aremorican,” he said, as if that made it all make sense.

  “Oh,” I said again. “Where’s that?”

  “We’re a tribe in northern Gaul,” he said, with a tone that suggested he’d explained it a hundred times. “Along the coast, on a peninsula jutting out into the sea.”

  “That’s very far away,” I said, forgetting that my Latin was supposed to be halting. “Why are you here?”

  “We hated the Arverni,” he said. “So when Caesar raised an auxiliary cavalry legion of eight hundred men to fight Vercingetorix, I joined.” Aurelianus shrugged. “It seemed more exciting than raising sheep. I’ve seen a lot of the world in the last six years.”

  “Your Latin is very good,” I said.

  “So is yours.” He glanced at me sideways again. His eyes were actually green, not just greenish. “But I’m not following the Greek very well.”

  “You’ll learn Koine if you stay in Alexandria long,” I said.

  “That will be as Caesar commands,” he said.

  We were at the doors of the Queen’s quarters. Aurelianus stopped. “I’ll be here. Caesar has my turma on guard duty. Cavalry’s not much use in the city, and we’ve been with him a long time.” There was pride in his voice. “I imagine your Queen will be along in a few minutes, with Constantius’ turma. You can rely on us.”

  I certainly could, I thought, to obey Caesar’s orders rather than Theo’s, which was something. The others went in ahead of me, but I stopped in the doorway. “Shall I ask for you if we have any difficulty?”

  He nodded briskly. “Just ask for Decurion Aurelianus. What’s your name?”

  “Charmian,” I said. “Principal handmaiden to the Hands of Isis, Cleopatra of Egypt. I’m in charge of all her staff and personal arrangements.”

  “Oh.” He looked a little taken aback. Then he smiled. “So you guard her back.”

  “I took an assassin’s knife for her once,” I said, and gathered my robe at my side to show him, the scar jagged and ugly across my white skin. “We are not as soft as we look.”

  “I would not make that mistake, Charmian,” he said, and his eyes were warm.

  “Nor would I,” I said.

  His smile grew. “Then I believe we understand one another.”

  “I think we do,” I said. With an answering smile I stepped in and closed the door.

  CLEOPATRA RETURNED within the hour, looking tired but not displeased. “Wait,” she said, as Aurelianus closed the door behind her. We followed her, Dion, Apollodorus, and I, out onto the small terrace, where the wind from the sea whipped in, forty feet over the breakwater below. No one could overhear us there.

  “We can work with him,” she said. “He’s determined to enforce Auletes’ will, and for us to rule jointly.”

  “The money,” I said.

  Cleopatra nodded. “He says he put up seventy million sesterces of the money that Pompeius loaned to Auletes. And that he’ll forgive thirty million if we can pay the other forty immediately.” She put her hand up to forestall Dion’s question. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. The proof is in Rome, even if it is. It’s about twenty percent of what we owed Pompeius, and then the debt is completely cleared.”

  “We can’t find forty million sesterces right away,” Apollodorus said. “And neither can Pothinus.”

  Cleopatra paced to the brink and looked down at the waves. “He has to pay his troops. About half his men are from the Sixth Legion, which only came over to Caesar after Pharsalus. They haven’t been paid in months. And they used to be Pompeius’ men.”

  “And Gnaeus is still out there,” I said.

  “And the Senate may or may not accept his victory over Pompeius,” Apollodorus said. “Or may raise another army against him.”

  “What about these Gaulish Lancers?” Dion asked. I was surprised he’d heard that much of my conversation with Aurelianus. I’d thought he was busy with Apollodorus.

  “There are only six hundred of them,” Cleopatra said. “He’s dismounted them on guard duty in the city. I think he’s sure of their loyalty, but six hundred on forty-five hundred isn’t good odds if some of his troops mutiny. The rest of his are from the Twenty-eighth, and they’re very young and were badly mauled at Pharsalus. If I were Caesar, I’d be worried that the Sixth could carry them with them if it came to that.”

  I thought that was true. If Aurelianus was representative of his men, they’d stick with Caesar, but they didn’t even wear steel.

  “So what did you promise him?” Apollodorus asked.

  Her mouth was hard. “I promised him forty million sesterces if he would make me sole ruler of Egypt. He said he’d consider it.”

  I shook my head. “And if he takes it, then what?”

  “We find forty million sesterces. There are temples in Upper Egypt. If Memnon and the others want the Romans gone, they’ll have to sell their treasures.” Cleopatra looked out to sea, where Pharos burned golden on the breakwater, symbol of our wealth and our world.

  “Perhaps it won’t come to that,” I said.

  THE NEXT DAY in the palace there was a grave ceremony of recon-ciliation. I stood beside Apollodorus while Caesar, in his carven chair, prepared to read the terms of Auletes’ will, that his heirs should together rule Egypt in peace and harmony.

  At first my attention was on Theo. He looked sulky, though behind him Theocritus and Pothinus were beaming. Crocodile smiles, I thought.

  Then Caesar began to read.

  His voice was light and cool, his Koine perfectly accented as he read the will. His balding head was inclined to the scroll, but even from that vantage I could see the firm lines of his face, the elegant hands.

  “I know him,” I whispered. I had seen him in the dream in Abydos. He had been the last vision, the man in the tent. I had summoned him to Alexandria, summoned him by his bones. I stood on my toes to see a little better.

  Yes, that was the man. I was quite certain of it. I had not mistaken the keen dark eyes that occasionally scanned the room. He knew the contents of the scroll quite well.
He sat with his right foot forward, and he looked like a bird at rest, pausing for a moment only, like the golden eagles his men held at either side. Their cuirasses gleamed.

  “I know him,” I said, a chill down my spine as though someone stood at my back.

  THAT NIGHT there was a banquet in honor of the reconciliation. Theoretically, Cleopatra and Ptolemy were honoring their guest, Caesar, but we all knew the banquet was on Caesar’s orders.

  It was not a very splendid banquet. Pothinus had hidden all of the best plate the moment Caesar arrived, and we were using the everyday stuff, silver servers and kraters, with fine antique Corinthian pottery, elegant and plain. It spoke of good taste, and the appreciation of generations of Ptolemies for fine things, not of great wealth.

  Half of the men present were Caesar’s officers. Most of the Egyptian clergy were absent. Memnon and his party hadn’t returned to Alexandria with Iras yet, and I wondered if they would. If they did, they should have to acknowledge Theo, and they had just gone to great lengths not to.

  Indeed, a great many people were there who seemed not to want to be. Theo left as soon as it was possible without unforgivable rudeness. After all, some leeway is allowed in leaving banquets when they begin to turn into lingering over the wine when one is only fourteen.

  Caesar stayed on and on. People kept coming up and talking with him. Cleopatra, whose couch was too far away from Caesar’s for conversation, courtesy of Pothinus, began to stop smiling. She was tired, I thought. Bred as she was and trained for the last seven years to these things, even her smile began to fade well after midnight. Yet for all that, Caesar hardly seemed drunk. In fact, either he held his wine exceedingly well or he had hardly drunk at all.

  Without Iras to trade off with, I had not been able to sit down, but sometime after midnight, when there were only the sweets that go with the wine left, Apollodorus took my place behind the Queen so that I could eat something.

  Some of the couches had been abandoned, but I could hardly go and sit down at a place covered in other people’s dishes or their abandoned flowers. I looked around in irritation for a couch that had not been full.

  I saw one toward the end of the hall, a young man who seemed to be eating alone, leaning over the bolster and talking to a friend at another couch. One of the Romans. I should be my most charming and diplomatic, since that seemed to be how Cleopatra had decided to play it.

  I came and stood beside him. “Is this place taken?” I asked.

  He hurriedly shook his head, and I thought that he was younger than he seemed at first. I had thought him my age, but flushed with drink and the blood rising in his face, he might be several years younger. He was strongly built, with hair halfway between brown and blond, and long blond eyelashes and a cleft chin. He looked at me and blushed scarlet.

  “I’m not a hetaira,” I said gently.

  “I know.” He sat up, showing me the entirety of his legs in the process. They were very nice indeed. “I saw you standing behind the Queen.”

  “I’m her handmaiden,” I said. “Charmian is my name. May I sit with you and eat for a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” he said, leaning back again so that I could sit on the couch beside him, my back not touching his body at all.

  “Thank you,” I said. One of the servants appeared swiftly with wine and sweets. It would have been nice if some of the meats or savories were left, but no. I filled my cup and made conversation. “So which legion are you with?”

  I had caught him in the middle of a drink of his own wine, and he swallowed hurriedly. “Neither one. I’m a tribune seconded to Caesar.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” I asked.

  He nodded, and I thought there was something like embarrassment in his face. “My mother’s a good friend of Atia Balba Caesonia,” he said. “Caesar’s niece. She got me the appointment and I joined Caesar right after Pharsalus.”

  Green, I thought. And owes his rank to his mother pulling strings. No wonder he’s down at the last couch. It’s that or insert himself among veterans many years his better. Still, he had sense enough not to try it. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa,” he said, and glanced up at me from beneath those long lashes. “And I’m not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Spoiled. Come out east for a little military experience so I can go home and run for office. My brother Lucius was with Pompeius Magnus.” He took a gulp from his cup. “I don’t know where he is now. But nobody found his body after Pharsalus.”

  I refrained from asking if he’d joined Gnaeus Pompeius in flight. That wasn’t the sort of thing one could ask.

  “All my life I’ve wanted to be a soldier,” he said. “And Caesar’s the best. When I first met him I could hardly speak. I knew I had to do this.”

  “How old were you then?” I asked.

  He blushed again, his fair complexion showing every emotion. “Ten. I knew I was born to serve him. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “I suppose it does,” I said. Perhaps I should have found him amusing, but I didn’t. The intensity in his eyes made that impossible. Here is one, She whispered, here is one the gods have touched. Here is one like you.

  “Good,” he said seriously. “He’s like no one else.”

  “I know,” I said. The wine was unwatered, and it made my head spin. And the hour was incredibly late.

  “You do, don’t you?” he said, looking at me again. “You really do know.”

  “Yes,” I said. I might have said more, oddly enough, in the presence of this all too intense Roman, but at that moment Apollodorus caught my eye. The Queen was preparing to retire. She would not wait out Caesar.

  “I need to go,” I said. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” he said, leaning forward as I stood up. “Will I see you again?”

  One of the men on the next couch called out to another, “Oh, look! Baby Marcus found a girl! She’s too much for you, little boy!”

  I swept my skirts around me and turned, giving Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa a dazzling smile. “I’m looking forward to seeing you again, Tribune.” And I went to tend to my Queen.

  Son of Venus

  For several days we had very little to do. Cleopatra kept sending word very politely to Caesar that she would like to see him, and he kept sending word very politely back that he was too busy, but that he would wait upon the gracious Queen at some other time. She paced and I planned intimate little meals that seemed like they were never going to happen. Dion went to the Library and brought back a case of assorted scrolls, supposedly for the Queen’s amusement.

  Cleopatra took one look at them and burst out laughing. “?‘A Treatise upon the Physiology of Geese and Ducks’? ‘Some Copies of Documents from Memphis Requested by Ptolemy Eugertes’? ‘A New Method of Calculating the Angle of Navigational Stars’? Dion, what in the world?”

  Dion hastily grabbed for the stack. “There are some other things in here. There’s a copy of the new poems by Catullus.” He shuffled through the end tags and then produced a slender scroll.

  “Just what I need. More Romans,” she said, but still laughing she took it and went off to her bedchamber to read.

  “It’s the waiting that’s killing me,” Dion said.

  I handed him a scroll. “Why don’t you read about the insides of geese and ducks?”

  “I think I’ll go talk to the guards,” Dion said, and sauntered off.

  “Fine,” I said, and picked up one of the other ones at random. “Some Copies of Documents from Memphis Requested by Ptolemy Eugertes.” I was still reading when Dion came back in a few minutes.

  “Decurion Aurelianus is off duty,” he said. “I suppose he sleeps sometimes.”

  “Dion, listen to this,” I said, and began to read.

  “?‘From the Library of the Temple of Thoth in Memphis, from the eighth year of Ramses Usermaatre, the third of that name. Hry, He Who Walks in the Sunlight of Amon, writes: I had occasion to c
onverse with a traveler, one of those Denden from the lands between the Akhiawa and the Hittites, who had journeyed much in the islands, and from that traveler I heard of the Drowned Land, the island that is no more. Three generations before there was a mighty kingdom on an island, with sweet water springs and rich pastures, with vineyards and fields and all else that men might need. There too stood a great city, ruled by powerful princes with many ships. Somehow they angered the gods. It is not known what crime they might have committed, but in punishment the gods destroyed their land utterly. The land itself heaved up, and the mountain upon which the island was built exploded in a rain of fire and ash. The land heaved and crumbled and fell into the sea. All that was left was tree branches and ash, and bits of bone floating on the waters. The plume of smoke of its burning could be seen from far away, appearing a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.

  “?‘This traveler had been there, and affirmed that nothing was left of the island except a narrow beach and springs, and that beneath the sea could still be seen the ruins of houses and temples. I have written this down, that it may be compared with an account from the reign of Ramses the Great, second of that name, because like broken shards of pottery do the stories fit together. In that day, there appeared on the northern horizon a vast pillar of smoke, and all of the water rushed out of the Sea of Reeds, leaving the sea floor barren, that men might walk upon it as upon dry land. Pharaoh ordered his chariot men to investigate, and they drove upon the bottom of the sea. Suddenly, with a great rush, the water came flowing back into the sea in a mighty wave, and all who had driven out were drowned. The sea returned to its normal place. However, for many days it could still be seen on the northern horizon, a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.’?”

  I stopped reading and looked at Dion. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  He sat down next to me, leaning over the scroll. “Everybody knows that story, Charmian.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “You mean you’ve heard it before?”