Hand of Isis (16 page)

W
e assembled outside the door. The old priest of Thoth stood in front, his cheetah skin wrapped about his shoulders. A young priest with a censer stood beside him. The rich scents of kephri and myrrh flowed back over us. Cleopatra stood silent in her simple white linen gown, looking as though she could have walked out of a painting from the pyramids. Iras and I stood behind her.

The priest of Thoth looked at us gravely. “You are resolved to do this, Daughter of Egypt?” he asked.

Cleopatra nodded. “I am.”

“And you will accompany your kinswoman, as Bastet and Anubis accompanied Isis in the marshes?”

“I will,” we said. Bastet and Anubis, I thought. Cat and dog, the two creatures that stay with humans for love, since the earliest days. Sheep and goats and cattle stay because they must, but only dogs and cats love. I wondered which of us was which, but then I knew. Sheba had come to me, and I wandered farther from Cleopatra’s side than Iras ever had, but I always came back. I should be Bastet and she Anubis.

I looked at Iras and saw that she had decided the same.

We went down into darkness. Behind us, the Horologers cried out the first hour of the night. Ahead of us, the censers walked slowly, the smoke rolling back over us, redolent and heavy. The passage sloped gently down. In the flickering dim light, the pictures on the wall seemed almost to move. Ma’at, the Goddess of Justice, reared life-size, Her profile crisp and lifelike.

Then she stepped forward, between the censers and Cleopatra, and I saw it was a priestess gowned as Ma’at. In her hand were her scales, and her dress was red as sunset. “Daughter of Egypt, why do you seek the Halls of Amenti?”

“I seek my lord Serapis, whom You name Osiris,” Cleopatra said. “He brought justice and peace to the Black Land, and now He is dead.”

“Will you serve Me here and above?” Ma’at asked. “Will you serve out justice to your people, and weigh their hearts when they are brought before you as righteously as you may?”

“I will,” she said solemnly.

“Then pass, Daughter of Egypt,” Ma’at said, and it seemed She stepped back into the wall, though I knew it was only an alcove that stood in shadow.

The priest of Thoth led a song of thanksgiving then, and in the chamber his voice was curiously magnified, a lovely strong voice. The smoke washed over me again.

We went on, through the darkness. How long could this passage be? I wondered as I walked beside Iras. Surely not so very long. And yet it seemed we went on for hours. The paintings on the wall beside me showed peasants at work in their fields, plowing with their oxen beneath a painted sun, fishing in the river. I almost missed the beginning of the next tableau.

A young man and woman came forth, he wearing nothing but the plain linen skirt of the laborers, wreaths of grain on their heads. “Daughter of Egypt,” they said. “We are the peasants of the plains of Wernes, those who dwell below in everlasting sunlight, who suffered in life many cruelties and illnesses, and now live in fields of plenty. In the world above, our misery was unrelieved. But the gods are merciful. Why should we let you pass, Daughter of Egypt?”

Cleopatra licked her lower lip, as she had as a girl, and in a moment I felt a powerful wave of love crash over me. I was not here because I must be, but because I loved her. And I knew what she must say.

“I am Isis, and My heart is heavy too. I am seeking one who has gone from Me, and I shall only find Him through the Halls of Amenti. As the gods are merciful to you, be merciful to Me and let Me pass.”

The love was real, not pageantry. She had loved Auletes, flawed as he was. We were cut of the same cloth, and we had all loved Egypt.

“Pass, Daughter of Egypt,” the man said, and stepped back.

“Pass,” the woman said.

We went on through the darkness. It seemed the passage ahead had no end. There was only the singing and the rushing smoke. Beneath the song, I thought I heard the sound of running water. Surely that was not possible?

The passage took an abrupt turn, and suddenly before us there was space. The sound of running water was loud, and as the priest stepped aside I heard Cleopatra gasp. A dark figure, snake-headed, reared up before her. Unthinking, I stepped ahead of her.

“You have come to the river,” he said. “And Death waits for you.”

It seemed to me I saw a real snake, grown to monstrous size. I felt Cleopatra’s wrist tremble in my hand, and knew she saw it too. I spoke without thinking. “Go back,” I said. “You may not touch her, creature of Set.”

“By whose authority, Little Cat?” it asked.

“Cats kill snakes,” I said flatly. “Try my teeth and claws.”

For a moment I almost heard a chuckle, and knew it was Dion beneath a mask. “That I will not do.”

“Snakes are not Death in dreams,” I said, and felt I had said it before. “You will have to try harder than that.”

The snake reared up for a moment, then stepped back, vanishing from our way.

In that moment, shuttered lamps opened, and the light leaped forth, dazzling our eyes. The walls were hung with saffron, and the smoke was resinous, the sky arching blue above. We stood on the edge of the desert, under the endless blazing sun.

I closed my eyes, blinking with tears in the sudden brightness. “The Fourth Hour of the Night. You have come to the edge of the desert, and there is no escape. Here, you will wander eternally, sorrowing.”

I couldn’t see a thing. The light was too bright, after so long in darkness. Cleopatra also must be blind.

“Here,” Iras said, and I felt her take both our hands. “You know that I am the hound, and I track by scent. The desert holds no terrors for me. There is nothing I have lost behind me. It is all ahead.”

I let her lead me, still blinking at the tears running down my face, and in a moment it was blessedly dark again. When I opened my eyes, I could still see spots of light. We were in a cool corridor, and ahead the sound of water was stronger still.

A woman in green waited for us, and her eyes were painted with gold. “I am Nepthys,” she said, “Lady of Sorrows.” She held out a goblet. Cleopatra took it and drank, then passed it to me and Iras. The goblet was solid gold, and heavy enough to take two hands. It was dark good wine, and I drank thirstily after the smoke that had seared my throat.

“Why do you weep?” she asked.

Cleopatra, remembering what she was supposed to be doing, replied, “I am mourning Osiris, who has passed beyond the world. I seek Him in the Halls of Amenti.”

“The dead will not return to us,” she said. “And sorrow will follow You all Your life.”

“Still I must search,” Cleopatra said. “For I have hope, and under that bright star must continue. Sorrow will not stop Me.”

“Then search,” Nepthys said, and led us on.

It seemed that we went through an endless series of corridors and small rooms, seeking in tiny cells of stone, turnings that went nowhere and walls that blocked us. All the while the sound of water came, moisture in the air, as though we approached some great underground river.

At last we came to the riverbank. We stood on a stone embankment far underground. A vast dark pool lapped at our feet, at massive black stone columns rearing to the ceiling. Away, in the midst of the dark pool, there was an island of stone, steps going up from a tiny platform. A faint light came to me across the water, as though a single torch stood in an iron stand in that distant place beside a dark sarcophagus.

“How do we cross?” I wondered aloud.

“There,” Iras said, pointing. At the side of the pool was a tiny reed boat such as peasants use in the marshes. Like the ones in the paintings on the walls of pyramids, it was barely big enough for three people if we were very careful.

I looked down at the dark water and felt a frisson of fear. Who knew what waited in its black depths.

Now a man approached, a priest stepping out from one of the columns, and I saw that it was Memnon. His shaven head shone with oil, and he wore the skin of a cheetah across his shoulder. “The Sixth Hour of the Night. You have come to the edge of the Primeval Water. Once, the world lay in darkness, and waters covered all that was. There was no dawn or sunset, no stone or fire, no green things that grow or animals that creep. There was nothing except the dark sea. There were no beginnings or endings, no light, no time.”

I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the coldness that settled around us.

“And Isis moved like a breath over the waters, and where She was, winds troubled them, and the clouds stirred. Through the clouds might be seen at last a single star, and then the breadth of the heavens, where all of the stars sang for all eternity. And where She was, the clouds were troubled, and they brought forth rain. And where She was, storms rolled over the depths, lightning striking the seas and quickening them. Isis is the Mother of the World.”

Somewhere behind us, among the pillars, a choir began to sing softly, voices soaring in eerie descant.

“And when the world was green and beautiful, She and Her husband Osiris came and dwelt in it. They came to the first men and showed them how to tame the wild goats, how to plant grain and to grow fruits and good things of all kinds. She taught men writing, and Osiris gave them law, that they might dwell in justice together and that no man might harm his neighbor. But nothing endures forever, and Osiris’ brother Set was jealous, and He wished to be Pharaoh. He murdered His brother and cut His body into many pieces, that He might conceal the deed. Thus He became Pharaoh, and Isis fled from that place. She searched land and sea, and at last found all of the scattered pieces of Her husband Osiris, and brought them together. Will you seek Osiris across the stormy seas?”

“I will,” Cleopatra said.

Together, the three of us climbed into the tiny boat, me in the front and Iras in the rear with Cleopatra between us. Cleopatra took up the single paddle, and we set out over the dark water.

It seemed that somehow the pool was much bigger than it could have been, that the island was much farther and the shore more distant. A dreamlike silence descended. All I could hear was the quiet strokes of the paddle, as though we did indeed row into the past, or into a dream.

I could not see my sisters behind me, and it seemed the water went on and on. At last we came to the shore, and I scrambled onto the platform, reaching back for Cleopatra’s hand. Everything seemed to take a very long time.

Together, we mounted the steps to the platform. At the center of it lay a huge sarcophagus of black stone. Above us, the vault of heaven stretched uninterrupted, stars prickling in the firmament. I wondered, with some part of my mind that was still awake, how they had managed that effect.

“We have come to the grave of Osiris,” Cleopatra whispered.

Iras sank to her knees beside the sarcophagus, her hands reaching upward, and for a moment I thought we stood in the Soma, beside the tomb of Alexander.

“No,” I whispered. This was the tomb of Osiris, not Alexander.

Cleopatra bent stiffly over the sarcophagus. I could not tell if she read the marks inscribed there, or if she spoke some words.

I caught at the edge of the stone, leaning on it. Above, the stars wheeled, seasons spinning forward at an incredible rate. And in the wrong direction.

It seemed to me that a king lay in state on the lid of the sarcophagus, his brown beard laced with white, a red dragon banner across him like a shroud, covering his death wound, while a man with a censer wove patterns in smoke above him, speaking Latin to his shade. “Rex quondam, rexque futuris . . .”

No, it was instead a red-haired queen, her elaborate copper curls belying the deep wrinkles of her face. The stars spun.

A sword spun around and around, as though caught in a whirlpool, now a Roman gladius, now a long straight sword, now a sharply curved sword with a guard ornamented with ivory elephants, now a heavy two-handed sword, now a half-moon of steel in a red and black enamel case, now a fine thin straight sword like lightning, now a sword with a cross hilt engraved with golden bees.

The king lay in his sarcophagus of marble beneath a huge dome, light streaming down from the ceiling, the floor still echoing from my footsteps.

“Back,” I whispered, my hands grinding into the stone, trying to halt this wild progress into the future. “Back. Back to Cleopatra.” I held to the memory of my sister’s face, whirled around and around in the maelstrom.