Hand of Isis (29 page)

My eyes pricked unexpectedly. “My dear Marcus,” I said gently, “you are dreaming of a time that is past.”

“Why should it be past?” he asked. “Why should we abandon the things that we once were?”

“Rome is not a collection of houses by a river with fields and fishing boats and young olive trees. It is a city of half a million people. It’s an empire stretching from the northernmost reaches of Gaul to Judea! Rome cannot be a settlement of pious farmers, not when its people speak twenty languages and it covers half the world!” I put my hand on his forearm, filled suddenly with tenderness for him. “You may not like this new Rome, but this is what is.”

Marcus looked away. “I wish I lived in a simpler time, when one knew what was right and just did it.”

“I don’t think it has ever been thus,” I said. “I don’t think it’s ever been so simple.”

He nodded toward the window. “Look on that,” he said, “and tell me so.”

I leaned across him to see what he pointed to, and a chill ran down my back like a cold hand. The green and golden fields sloped slowly upward toward a great mountain, reposing like some vast slumbering beast, quiescent, its peak wreathed in a tiny puff of white cloud.

“Vesuvius,” Marcus said. “The forge of the gods.”

“A gate,” I whispered. “A forge, a tomb, a womb.” The mountain terrified and beckoned at once, and I wanted to shout, to turn the coach around; at the same moment I knew that whatever menace it held, it was not for me. Not today.

“You see,” he said, and I realized that I was holding his hand so tightly his fingers were white.

I let go. “It’s amazing.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “And it gives life to this coast. But I cannot ever find myself entirely easy with it.”

“No,” I said, still looking out the window. “I couldn’t either.” With a jolt the coach turned off the main road onto a dirt track. “What? Are we going right up on the mountain?”

“Not so far,” he said. “Our pastures sit at Vesuvius’ feet, while some of our vineyards are terraced above, and that’s also where we keep our goats. This is the north side of the mountain. If we stayed on the main road we’d go past the mountain and on into Neapolis, and then to the beach towns on the other side, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. Farther on along the north side, past our estate, you can come around to a view of Capri, and the town of Cumae.”

“Cumae,” I said, tasting the word and wondering where I’d heard it before.

“Where the Sybil used to live,” he said.

“And the Gates of the Underworld,” I said.

He put his arm around me. I was shivering. “We don’t have to go there,” he said.

I nodded. “You’re right. We don’t.”

And yet I could see a future in which I should come there with Caesarion and Agrippa, with the prince and the soldier who served his father, come to the Gates of the Underworld that served Rome as Abydos served Egypt, so that he, too, might come forth by day.

That autumn day it was still possible.

We came to the villa a few minutes later. Set back from the road, with a high wall screened by cedars, it crowned a rise just below the mountain’s skirts. I noted, as we passed through, that there was a place where the wall seemed to have been breached and patched, though now it was all covered over by climbing rosebushes. In Egypt, private homes might have walls to keep out vagrants or to keep in livestock, but one did not expect country houses to be besieged. On the other hand, we had no slave revolts either.

Marcus’ parents seemed to be away, and the servants greeted him as though he were already the master of the house. I recalled what he had said about his father’s disgrace, and that these lands had not been confiscated only due to Marcus. I imagined that if they had been, then the old woman who came to greet him would have been sold on the block. Yes, I thought, watching Marcus greet his old nurse with affection, he was already the master here, if he chose to be. This was clearly his home, and it suited him more than Rome had. And a man who could show affection to his old nurse was a man worth having.

“Demophile,” he said, “this is Charmian. It would please me greatly if you could attend to her and make her comfortable. We’ll take dinner on the terrace rather than in the dining room, if you do not mind.”

The old nurse raised her eyebrows at me, an assessing look.

“I am certain I shall be well taken care of,” I said in Koine, giving her a half smile. I knew I should be the same, the first time Caesarion brings home a hetaira for my approval.

I spent the afternoon in the bath, being pampered and polished as well as one might expect in a fine establishment anywhere. Their baths were not entirely new, nor as large as Caesar’s, but they were more charming in many ways, with a cool pool that looked out through an arcade decorated with a fine old statue of Diana into a small walled garden. A woman’s garden, I thought, from the scale and the love that had been lavished on a huge old rosebush that climbed the wall, nearly hanging from the branches of a dwarf apricot tree.

A woman bath attendant massaged me, and I lay listening to the birds outside in the garden and the soft lapping of the pool. I rarely had time for this, even if I had the inclination. Every day was so busy. A hetaira would have leisure. If I had nothing except the ordering of my own house and the care of Demetria, how many hours there would be in the day! I could get used to spending an afternoon in the bath, to having my nails hennaed and pumice stone applied to my feet by a slave who knew what to do.

The sun was casting long shadows, and most of the garden stood in shade before I went to dress for dinner. After some consideration, I settled on an aqua silk that was very simple in style, the luxury of the fabric and its beautiful drape carrying the effect. I caught it up at the shoulders with a pair of gold pins cunningly worked like dragonflies, their iridescent wings of thin gold. It was, I thought, the perfect dress for seduction, for the end of the chase. It had been so long.

I put my hair up and endured the curling irons, so it fell in soft ringlets from combs and pins, the largest of them a dragonfly that matched the ones on my shoulder. With a himation of sheer white embroidered with aqua butterflies, I thought I at least looked good enough for a hetaira.

Marcus seemed to think so too, for when I came out onto the terrace he caught his breath and all but jumped to his feet.

There were three couches there, little tables before them, but only one was laid, so I came and sat by him, though it took a bit of doing to get him to sit before me. He lay back on his left arm, and I sat at his knees. If I had leaned back it would have been into the circle of his body, but of course he did not touch me, simply waited for the slave to pour the wine, as is proper. There were some sort of grilled sausages, and a relish of olives and parsley in olive oil and vinegar, good crisp bread and finely chopped cabbages dressed with vinegar and celery, all very good and fresh.

I complimented the situation of the terrace, the view, and the way the terraces sloped down the hill in front, as from where we sat we could see over the wall, so far down the hill was it on this side. Before us, Vesuvius reared up, dominating the landscape. One lone shred of cloud clung about its peak in an otherwise cloudless sky.

The terrace lay in shadow. “Charmian,” Marcus said, and I heard the hesitation in his voice. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“What is it?” I said.

At that moment the slave came along with the main course, pork cooked in a fresh fig glaze, and we could not continue until he had served us and withdrawn behind one of the potted trees beside the door. Automatically, I approved of the well-trained staff.

“Will you marry me?”

“What?” I looked around at him, an uncomplimentary disbelief in my voice.

“I asked if you would marry me.” He sat up straight on the couch and caught my hands.

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it isn’t. Listen, I’ve worked it out.” He held my hands in his large ones, his eyes bright. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else for two years than how to make it work. When I couldn’t forget you, I knew there had to be a way. There must always be a way for lovers.”

“You can’t marry someone who isn’t Roman,” I said. “You have to marry a Roman citizen. And your parents? What would they say? Marcus . . .”

“My father can’t gainsay me,” he said. “He owes me too much. And my mother would never interfere with something that would make me happy. I’ve worked it out. There’s an old man with land near here, a client of my father’s. He only had one son, and he was killed at Pharsalus. He’s got no heirs now, no family at all. So it would be perfectly natural for him to adopt his niece if she were raised abroad and orphaned. His sister might have been married to a man who did business in Greece, and when they died their daughter decided to come home to Italy and live with her old uncle. It all makes sense. He’ll swear up and down that you’re his niece. Once he’s adopted you, there’s no bar at all to our marriage!”

“Except that it’s a lie,” I said.

“It’s a lie that harms no one,” he said. “I would never suggest it if he had any relatives living, but the poor old man is all alone. He gains a daughter, a son-in-law, grandchildren. He’d spend the rest of his life treated as a beloved family member. He’s not well-to-do, and it wouldn’t be an excellent match for me, but it’s a respectable one. And given that I grew up here and I love it here, it’s easy to come up with a story about how we met one day in the countryside and fell in love.”

“You really mean that.”

He must have taken my expression for concern that the story would hold, because he rushed on. “It will work! I’m sure it will! We’ll say you grew up in Athens, and that you were living very quietly with your old uncle, mourning your parents, when we met by accident. I came to buy some goats from your uncle, or something like that.”

“What a lovely story,” I said. I felt as though my hands had turned to ice. I heard my voice going on. “And where does the Queen of Egypt come into this?”

“Why would the Queen of Egypt come into it at all?” For a moment Marcus looked confused. “You’ve never met her.” He stopped. For the first time he felt the storm coming, saw the leaves flying before the wind. “You’d be free, Charmian! Not a slave all your life, but free. You’d be the mistress of this house someday. You’d be respectable, a Roman matron, with a station in life and plenty of money.”

My voice only shook a little. “I am a Royal Ptolemy.” I stood up, stepping around the little table to face him. “I am the descendant of kings, of eight generations of kings since Ptolemy son of Lagos won Alexander’s crown. I am the daughter of a slave so proud that men talk about her twenty years after her death, of her pride and her laughter and her beauty. And I am the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, Pharaoh of Egypt, who gave me to Cleopatra to serve her all her days. I will not pretend to be less, not for you or any man!”

“But I thought that you . . .” He looked entirely confused.

“Do you not understand that I have charge of the heir to the throne of Egypt? That I am responsible for Caesar’s son, who you might have as your king?” And how had I even thought of it, how had I even considered for one moment leaving him? How had I even considered leaving Cleopatra? “I speak five languages. I manage a budget of thousands of talents a year. If I say to the Queen this should be done, it is done because she trusts me. Do you not understand that cities and provinces are taxed on my word? That levees are built and ships made and soldiers hired? Do you not understand that you are asking me to leave off the government of the wealthiest and oldest nation in the world, the governance of which is my birthright, to come and be your wife?”

Standing there panting in the shadows, I could have cursed myself. Lady Isis, I thought, surely it was love or desire that clouded my mind! How could I have ever even considered such a thing?

“Being my wife is not such a small thing,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Compared to what?” I snapped, and regretted it almost as the words left my mouth.

Marcus colored. “I have offered you everything.”

“If I will pretend to be something I am not,” I said. “If I will pretend for the rest of my life to be Roman, to disavow my father and all of the Ptolemies who came before me, leave my sisters and pretend not to know them, and most assuredly of all to disavow my slave mother who was no more than these men who work your lands.”

“But you . . .” He did not need to finish the sentence. His face showed his thought.

“I would be Roman,” I said. “I would be the best thing on this earth.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said.

“But you think it,” I said. “All of the things that I am are nothing to you, compared to the status of a Roman matron. What in the world could be better than to be the wife of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa?”

“Then what did you come here for, dressed like that?” he snapped.

“To be your lover,” I said. “You see, you have overbid. You did not need to offer me marriage. Kindness would have sufficed to get me into your bed.”

“I don’t want you in my bed! I want you to be my wife! I’ve dreamed of nothing but you for two years, been true to you every day.”

I shook my head, trying not to let anger turn into sorrow. “You’ve dreamed of a lovely time we had together, an interlude, a beautiful memory. If you had let it stay that, you should have been happy. Why did you have to ruin everything by trying to turn it into something impossible?” I turned away, toward the mountain, so that he would not see the tears in my eyes. “I thought you knew me.”