S SOON as I entered the Temple Compound I was received by several rich Roman women, who welcomed me generously. They were all properly painted with white on their arms and their faces, well-drawn eyebrows, lip color—all the details of which I’d made a hash that morning.
I explained that though I had means, I was on my own. They were for helping me in every way. When they heard I had been actually initiated in Rome, they were in awe.
“Thank Mother Isis they didn’t discover you and execute you,” said one of the Roman women.
“Go in and see the Priestess,” they said. Many of them had not yet undergone the secret ceremonies and were waiting to be called by the goddess for this momentous event.
There were many other women here, some Egyptian, some Babylonian perhaps. I could only guess. Jewels and silks were the order of the day. Fancy painted gold borders lined their mantles; some wore simple dresses.
But it seemed to me that all of them spoke Greek.
I couldn’t bring myself to enter the Temple. I looked up and saw in my mind our crucified Priests in Rome.
“Thank God you were not identified,” said one.
“Quite a few people fled to Alexandria,” said another.
“I raised no protest,” I said dismally.
There came a chorus of sympathy. “How could you, under Tiberius? Believe me, every one who could escaped.”
“Don’t be laden with misery,” said a young blue-eyed Greek woman, very properly dressed.
“I’d fallen away from the worship,” I said.
Again came a comforting round of soft voices.
“Go in now,” said one woman, “and ask to pray in the very sanctuary of Our Mother. You are an initiate. Most of us here are not.”
I nodded.
I went up the steps of the Temple and entered inside it.
I paused to shake from my mantle the mundane, that is, all the trivia I had discussed. My mind was focused upon the goddess, and desperate to believe in her. I loathed my hypocrisy, that I used this Temple and this worship, but then it didn’t seem significant. My despair of the three nights had penetrated too deep.
What a shock awaited me as I found myself inside.
The Temple was far more ancient than our Temple in Rome, and Egyptian paintings covered its walls. A shiver at once went through me. The columns were in the Egyptian style, not fluted but smoothly round, and brightly painted in orange, and rising to giant lotus leaves at the capitals. The smell of the incense was overpowering and I could hear music emanating from the Sanctuary. I could hear the thin notes of the lyre, and of the wires of the sistrum being plucked, and I could hear a litany being chanted.
But this was a thoroughly Egyptian place, which enveloped me as firmly as my blood dreams. I almost fainted.
The dreams came back—the deep paralytic sense of being in some secret Sanctuary in Egypt, my soul swallowed within another body!
The Priestess came to me. This too was a shock.
In Rome, her dress would have been purely Roman, and she might have worn a small exotic headdress, a little cap to her shoulders, perhaps.
But this woman wore Egyptian clothes of pleated linen, in the old style, and she wore a magnificent Egyptian headdress and wig, the broad mass of long black braids falling down stiffly over her shoulders. She looked as extravagant perhaps as Cleopatra had ever looked, for all I knew.
I had only heard stories of Julius Caesar’s love of Cleopatra, then her affair with Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s death. All that was before my birth.
But I knew that Cleopatra’s fabulous entrance into Rome had much affrighted the old Roman sense of morality. I had always known the old Roman families feared Egyptian magic. In the recent punitive Roman massacre, which I’ve described, there was a lot of shouting about license and lust; but beneath it, there had been an unspoken fear of the mystery and the power hidden behind the Temple doors.
And now as I gazed at this Priestess, at her painted eyes, I felt in my soul this fear. I knew it. Of course this woman seemed to have stepped from the dreams, but it was not that which struck me so much, for after all, what are dreams? This was an Egyptian woman—wholly alien and inscrutable to me.
My Isis had been Greco-Roman. Even her statue in the Roman Sanctuary had been clothed in a gorgeously draped Greek dress and her hair had been done softly in the old Greek style, with waves around her face. She had held her sistrum and an urn. She had been a Romanized goddess.
Perhaps the same had happened with the goddess Cybele in Rome. Rome swallowed things and made them Roman.
In a very few centuries, though I had no thought of it then—how could I—Rome would swallow and shape the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and make of his Christians the Roman Catholic church.
I suppose you are familiar with the modern expression, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
But here, in this reddish gloom, among flickering lights and a deeper muskier incense than I had ever smelled, I resented my timidity in silence. Then the dreams did descend, like so many veils lowered one by one to enclose me. In a flash I saw the beautiful Queen weeping. No. She screamed. Cried for help.
“Get away from me,” I whispered to the air around me. “Fly from me, all things that are impure and evil. Get away from me as I enter the house of my Blessed Mother.”
The Priestess took me in hand. I heard voices from my dream in violent argument. I strained to clear my vision, to see the worshipers coming and going towards the Sanctuary to meditate or to make sacrifice, to ask for some favor. I tried to realize it was a big busy crowd, very little different from Rome.
But the touch of the Priestess enfeebled me. Her painted eyes struck terror. Her broad necklace caused me to blink my eyes. Row upon row of flat stones.
I was taken into a private apartment of the Temple by her, offered a sumptuous couch. I lay back exhausted. “Fly from me, all things evil,” I whispered. “Including dreams.”
The Priestess sat beside me and enfolded me in her silken arms. I looked up into a mask!
“Talk to me, suffering one,” she said in Latin with a thick accent. “Speak all that must come forth.”
Suddenly—uncontrollably—I poured out my whole family story, the annihilation of my family, my guilt, my travails.
“What if I was the cause of my family’s downfall—my worship at the Temple of Isis? What if Tiberius had remembered it? What have I done? The Priests were crucified and I did nothing. What does Mother Isis want of me? I want to die.”
“That she does not want of you,” said the Priestess, staring at me. Her eyes were huge, or was it the paint? No, I could see the whites of her eyes, so glistening and pure. Her painted mouth let loose words like a tiny breeze in a monotone.
I was fast becoming delirious and totally unreasonable. I murmured what I could about my initiation, what details I could tell a Priestess, for all these things were highly secret, you know, but I confirmed for her that I had been reborn in the rites.
All the stored-up weakness in me was cut loose in a flood.
Then I lay down my guilt. I confessed that I had, early on, left the Cult of Isis, that in recent years, I had walked only in the public processions to the sea, when the goddess was carried to the shore to bless the ships. Isis, the goddess of Navigation. I had not lived a life of devotion.
I had done nothing when the Priests of Isis were crucified, except speak out with many others behind the Emperor’s back. There had been a solidarity between me and those Romans who thought Tiberius was a monster, but we had not raised our voices in defense of Isis. My Father had told me to remain silent. So I had. This was the same Father who had told me to live.
I turned over and slipped down off this couch and I lay on the tiled floor. I don’t know why. I pressed my cheek to the cold tile. I liked the coldness against my face. I was in a state of madness, but not an uncontrollable state. I lay staring.
I knew one thing. I wanted to get out of this Temple! I didn’t like it. No, this had been a very bad idea.
I hated myself suddenly for having become so vulnerable to this woman, whatever sort she was, and the atmosphere of the blood dreams beckoned to me.
I opened my eyes. The Priestess bent over me. I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares. I turned away and shut my eyes.
“Be at peace,” she said in her calculated and perfected voice. “You did nothing wrong,” said the Priestess.
It seemed preposterous that such a voice should issue from such a painted face and form, but the voice was definite.
“First,” the Priestess said, “you must understand that Mother Isis forgives anything. She is the Mother of Mercy.” Then she said, “You have been more fully initiated by your description than most here or anywhere. You made a long fast. You bathed in the sacred blood of the bull. You must have drunk the potion. You dreamed and saw yourself reborn.”
“Yes,” I said, trying to revive the old ecstasy, the priceless gift of belief in something. “Yes. I saw the stars and great fields of flowers, such fields …”
It was no good. I was scared of this woman and I wanted to get out of there. I’d go home and confess all this to Flavius and make him let me weep on his shoulder.
“I am not pious by nature,” I confessed. “I was young. I loved the free women who went there, the women who slept with whom they chose, the whores of Rome, the keepers of the houses of pleasure, I liked women who thought for themselves, and followed the goings-on of the Empire.”
“You can enjoy such company here as well,” said the Priestess, without batting an eye. “And don’t fear that your old ties to the Temple caused your downfall in Rome. We have plenty of news to confirm that the highborn were not persecuted by Tiberius when he destroyed the Temple. It is always the poor who suffer: the street whore and the simple weaver, the hairdresser, the bricklayer. No noble family was persecuted in the name of Isis. You know that. Some women fled to Alexandria because they would not give up the worship, but they were never in danger.”
The dreams approached. “Oh, Mother of God,” I whispered.
The Priestess went on talking.
“You, like Mother Isis, have been the victim of tragedy. And you, like Mother Isis, must take strength and walk alone, as Isis did when her husband, Osiris, was slain. Who helped her when she searched all over Egypt for the body of her murdered husband, Osiris? She walked alone. She is the greatest of the goddesses. When she recovered the body of her husband, Osiris, and could find no organ of generation for him with which she might be impregnated, she drew the semen right from his spirit. Thus, the god Horus was born of a woman and a god. It was the power of Isis who drew the spirit from the dead man. It is Isis who tricked the god Ra into revealing his name.”
That was the old tale all right.
I looked away from the Priestess. I was unable to look at her decorated face! Surely she felt my revulsion. I must not hurt her. She meant well. It wasn’t her fault that she looked to me like a monster. Why in hell had I come here!
I lay dazed. The room had a soft golden light coming mainly through its three doors, and they were cut Egyptian-style, these doors, wider at the base than at the top, and I let this light make a blur of my vision. I asked the light to do this.
I felt the Priestess’s hand. Such silken warmth. So lovely, her touch, her sweetness.
“Do you believe all of it!” I suddenly whispered.
She completely ignored this question. Her painted mask gave forth the creed.
“You must be like Mother Isis. Depend on no one. You don’t have the burden of recovering a lost husband or father. You are free. Receive into your house men with love as you choose. You belong to no one but Mother Isis. Remember, Isis is the goddess who loves, the goddess who forgives, the goddess of infinite understanding because she herself has suffered!”
“Suffered!” I gasped. I moaned, a very uncommon sound for me, most of my life. But I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares, bound to her throne.
“Listen to this,” I said, “the dreams I will now recount, and then tell me why it is happening.” I knew my voice sounded angry. I was sorry for it. “These dreams don’t come from wine or potions, or after long periods of wakefulness that twist the mind.”
Then I launched into another totally unplanned confession.
I told this woman of the blood dreams, the dreams of ancient Egypt in which I had drunk blood—the altar, the Temple, the desert, the sun rising.
“Amon Ra!” I said. This was the Egyptian name for the sun god, but I had never spoken it to my knowledge. I said it now. “Yes, Isis tricked him into revealing his name, but he killed me and I was her blood drinker, do you hear me, a thirsty god!”
“No!” said the Priestess. She sat motionless.
She thought for a long while. I had scared her and now this scared me all the more.
“Can you read the ancient picture writing of Egypt?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
Then she said, in a more relaxed and vulnerable tone:
“You speak of very old legends, legends buried in the history of our worship of Isis and Osiris; that they once did indeed take the blood of their victims as sacrifice. There are scrolls here that tell of this. But nobody can really decipher them, except for one …”
Her voice trailed off.
“Who is the one?” I asked. I sat up on my elbows. I realized the plaits of my hair had come undone. Good. It felt good because it was free now and clean. I raked my hair with both hands.
What did it feel like to be entombed in paint and wig like this Priestess?
“Tell me,” I said, “who is the one who can read these legends. Tell me!”
“These are evil tales,” she said, “that Isis herself and Osiris live on, somewhere, in material form, taking blood even now.” She made an expression of denial and disgust. “But this is not our worship! We sacrifice no humans here! Egypt was old and wise before Rome was born!”
Who was she trying to convince? Me?
“I’ve never had such dreams, in a string like this, with the same theme.”
She became very worked up with her declarations.
“Our Mother Isis has no taste for blood. She has conquered death and set her husband Osiris as King of the Dead, but for us, she is life itself. She didn’t send you these dreams.”
“Probably not! I agree with you. But then who did? Where do they come from? Why did they pursue me at sea? Who is this one who can read the old writing?”
She was shaken. She had let go of me and she stared off, her eyes taking on a deceptive ferocity due to the black lining.
“Perhaps somewhere in childhood you heard an old tale, maybe an old Egyptian Priest told it to you. You forgot it, and now it flames in your tortured mind. It feeds on fires to which it has no right—your Father’s death.”
“Yes, well, I certainly hope so, but I’ve never known an old Egyptian. At the Temple, the Priests were Roman. Besides, if we take the dreams and lay them out, what is the pattern there? Why is the Queen weeping? Why does the sun kill me? The Queen is in fetters. The Queen is a prisoner. The Queen is in agony!”
“Stop.” The Priestess shuddered. Then she put her arms around me, as if it was she who needed me. I felt her stiff linen and the thick hair of her wig, and beneath it the hurried pounding of her heart. “No,” she said. “You’re possessed of a demon, and we can drive this demon out of you! Maybe the way was opened for this wretched demon when your Father was attacked at his own Hearth.”
“You really believe it’s possible?” I asked.
“Listen,” she said as casually now as one of the women outside. “I want you to be bathed, to have fresh garments. This money, what portion can you give me? If none, we will provide all for you. We are rich here.”
“Here’s plenty. I don’t care.” I pulled the purse loose from my girdle.
“I will have everything done for you. Fresh clothes. This silk is too fragile.”
“You are telling me!” I said.
“This mantle is torn. Your hair is uncombed.”
I spilled out a dozen or so gold coins, more than I had paid for Flavius.
It shocked her, but she covered up the shock very quickly. Suddenly she stared at me, and her painted mask managed to make a flexible expression, a frown. I thought it might crack.
I thought she might weep. I was becoming a regular expert in making people weep. Mia and Lia had wept. Flavius had wept. Now she was going to cry. The Queen in the dream was crying!
I laughed in madness, throwing back my head, but then I saw the Queen! I saw her in distant wavery recollection, and I felt such sorrow that I too could have cried. My mockery was blasphemy. It was a lie unto myself.
“Take the gold for the Temple,” I said. “Take it for new clothes, for all I need. But my offering to the goddess, I want it to be flowers, and bread, warm from the oven, a small loaf.”
“Very good,” she said with an eager nod. “That is what Isis wants. She wants no blood. No! No blood!”
She started to help me up.
I paused. “In the dream, you understand that she weeps. She is not happy with these blood drinkers, she protests, she objects. She herself is not the one who drinks blood.”
The Priestess was confounded, and then she nodded. “Yes, that is obvious, is it not?”
“I too protest and suffer,” I said.
“Yes, come,” she said leading me through a thick tall door. She left me in the hands of the Temple slaves. I was relieved. I was weary.
I was taken into the ceremonial bath, cleansed by Temple maidens and re-dressed carefully by Temple maidens.
What a pleasure to have it all done right.
For a little while I wondered helplessly if they would frame me in white pleats and black plaits but they used the Roman style.
My hair was properly done by these girls in a correct circlet that would hold, leaving a generous frame of ringlets around the face.
The clothes given me were new and made of fine linen. Flowers had been stitched along the borders. This finery, so precise, so minute, seemed more valuable than gold.
It certainly gave more joy to me than gold.
I felt so tired! I was so grateful.
The girls then made up my face more artfully than I could have done it, and more in the Egyptian style, and I flinched when I saw myself in the mirror. Flinched. It wasn’t the full paint of the Priestess, but my eyes were rimmed with black.
“How dare I complain?” I whispered.
I put down the mirror. One doesn’t have to see oneself, fortunately.
I emerged into the great hall of the Temple, a proper Roman woman, with the extravagant face paint of the East. A common sight in Antioch.
I found the Priestess with two others, as formally dressed as she, and a Priest who wore the same old-fashioned Egyptian headdress, only he wore no wig, just a striped hood. His tunic was short, pleated. He turned and glared at me as I came forward.
Fear. Crushing fear. Flee this place! Forget about the offering, or have them make it for you. Go home. Flavius is waiting. Get out!
I was struck dumb. I let the Priest draw me aside.
“Pay attention,” he said to me gently. “I will take you now into the holy place. I will let you talk to the Mother. But when you come out, you must come to me! Don’t leave without coming to me. You must promise me, you will return each day, and if you have more of these dreams, you will lay them before us. There is one to whom they should be told, that is, unless the goddess drives them from your mind.”
“Of course I will tell anyone who can help,” I said. “I hate these dreams. But why are you so anxious? Are you afraid of me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t fear you, but there is something I must confide to you. I must talk to you either today or tomorrow. I must speak with you. Go now to the Mother, then come to me.”
The others led me to the chamber of the Sanctuary; there were white linen curtains before the shrine. I saw my sacrifice lying there, a great garland of sweet-smelling white flowers, and the warm loaf of bread. I knelt. The curtains were pulled back by unseen hands and I found myself alone in the chamber kneeling before the Regina Caeli, the Queen of Heaven.
Another shock.
This was an ancient Egyptian statue of our Isis, carved from dark basalt. Her headdress was long, narrow, pushed behind her ears. On her head she wore a great disk between horns. Her breasts were bare. On her lap sat the adult Pharaoh, her son Horus. She held her left breast to offer him her milk.
I was struck with despair! This image meant nothing to me! I groped for the essence of Isis in this image.
“Did you send me the dreams, Mother!” I whispered.
I laid out the flowers. I broke the bread.
I heard nothing in the silence from the serene and ancient statue.
I prostrated myself on the floor, stretching out my arms. And from the depths of my soul, I struggled to say, I accept, I believe, I am yours, I need you, I need you!
But I wept. All was lost to me. Not merely Rome and my family, but even my Isis. This goddess was the embodiment of the faith of another nation, another people.
Very slowly a calm settled over me.
Is it so, I thought. The Cult of my Mother is in all places, North and South and East and West. It is the spirit of this Cult which gives it power. I need not literally kiss the feet of this effigy. That is not the point.
I raised my head slowly, then sat back on my heels. A real revelation came upon me. I cannot fully record it. I knew it, fully, in an instant.
I knew that all things were symbols of other things! I knew that all rituals were enactments of other happenings! I knew that out of our practical human minds we devised these things with an immensity of soul that would not allow the world to be devoid of meaning.
And this statue represented love. Love above cruelty. Love above injustice. Love above loneliness and condemnation.
That was what mattered, that single thing. I stared up at the face of the goddess and I knew her! I stared at the little Pharaoh, the proffered breast.
“I am yours!” I said coldly.
Her stark primitive Egyptian features were no obstacle to my heart; I looked at the right hand which held her breast.
Love. This requires strength from us; this requires endurance; this requires an acceptance of all that is unknown.
“Take the dreams away from me, Heavenly Mother,” I said. “Or reveal their purpose. And the path I must follow. Please.”
Then in Latin I said an old litany:
You are she who has separated the Heavens and the
Earth.
You are she who rises in the Dog Star.
You are she who makes strong the right.
You are she who makes the children to love their
parents.
You are she who decreed mercy for all who ask for it.
I believed these words, but in a wholly profane way. I believed them because I saw her worship as having collected together from the minds of men and women the best ideas of which men and women were capable. That was the function for which a goddess existed; that was the spirit from which she drew her vitality.
The lost phallus of Osiris exists in the Nile. And the Nile inseminates the fields. Oh, it was so lovely.
The trick was not to reject it, as Lucretius might have suggested, but to realize what her image meant. To extract from that image the best in my own soul.
And when I looked down at the beautiful white flowers, I thought, “It is your wisdom, Mother, that these bloom.” And I meant by that only that the world itself was filled with so much to be cherished, preserved, honored, that pleasure itself was resplendent—and she, Isis, embodied these concepts that were too deep to be called ideas.
I loved her—this expression of goodness which was Isis.
The longer I looked at her stone face, the more it seemed she saw me. An old trick. The more I knelt there, the more it seemed she spoke to me. I allowed this to happen, fully aware that it meant nothing. The dreams were remote. They seemed a puzzle which would find its idiot resolution.
Then with true fervor, I crawled towards her and kissed her feet.
My worship was over.
I went out refreshed, jubilant.
I wasn’t going to have those dreams anymore. There was still daylight. I was happy.
I found many friends in the courtyard of the Temple, and sitting down with them under the olive trees, I drew out of them all the information I needed for practical life, how to get caterers, hairdressers, all that. Where to buy this thing and the other.
In other words, I was armed by my rich friends with full equipment to run a fine house without actually cluttering it up with slaves I didn’t want. I could stick with Flavius and the two girls. Excellent. Anything else could be hired or bought.
Finally, very tired, with my head full of names to remember and directions to recall, and very amused with the jokes and stories of these women, delighted by their ease in speaking Greek—which I had always loved—I sat back and thought, I can go home now.
I can begin.
The Temple was still very busy. I looked at the doors. Where was the Priest? Well, I would come back tomorrow. I didn’t want to revive those dreams now, that was certain. Many people were coming and going with flowers and bread and some with birds to be set free for the goddess, birds that would take wing out of the high window of her Sanctuary.
How warm it was here. What a blaze of flowers covered the wall! I had never thought there could be a place as beautiful as Tuscany, but maybe this place was beautiful too.
I went out of the courtyard, before the steps, and into the Forum.
I approached a man under the arches who was teaching a group of young boys all of what Diogenes has espoused, that we give up the flesh and all its pleasures, that we live pure lives in denial of the senses.
It was so much as Flavius had described it. But the man meant his words, and was well versed. He spoke of a liberating resignation. He caught my fancy. For this is what I thought had come to me in the Temple, a liberating resignation.
The boys who listened were too young to know this. But I knew it. I liked him. He had gray hair and wore a simple long tunic. He was not ostentatiously in rags.
I at once interrupted. With a humble smile I offered the counsel of Epicurus, that the senses wouldn’t have been given us were they not good. Wasn’t this so? “Must we deny ourselves? Look, back at the courtyard of the Temple of Isis, look at the flowers covering the top of the wall! Is this not something to savor? Look at the roaring red of those flowers! Those flowers are in themselves enough to lift a person out of sorrow. Who is to say that eyes are wiser than hands or lips?”
The young men turned to me. I fell into discussions with several of them. How fresh and pretty they were. There were long-haired men from Babylon and even highborn Hebrews here, all with very hairy arms and chests, and many colonial Romans who were dazzled by the points I made, that in the flesh and in the wine, we find the truth of life.
“The flowers, the stars, the wine, the kisses of one’s lover, all is part of Nature, surely,” I said. I was of course on fire, having just come from the Temple, having just unburdened all fears and having resolved all doubts. I was for the moment invincible. The world was new.
The Teacher, whose name was Marcellus, came from under the arch to greet me.
“Ah, Gracious Lady, you amaze me,” he said. “But from whom did you really learn what you believe? Was it from Lucretius? Or was it from experience? You realize that we must not ever encourage people to abandon themselves to the senses!”
“Have I said anything about abandon?” I asked. “To yield is not to abandon. It is to honor. I speak of a prudent life; I speak of listening to the wisdom of our bodies. I speak of the ultimate intelligence of kindness, and enjoyment. And if you will know, Lucretius didn’t teach me as much as one might think. He was always too dry for me, you know. I learned to embrace the glory of life from poets like Ovid.”
The crowd of boys cheered.
“I learnt from Ovid,” came shout after shout.
“Well, that’s fine, but remember your manners as well as your lessons,” I said firmly.
More cheering. Then the young men began tossing out verses from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
“That’s splendid,” I declared. “How many here? Fifteen. Why don’t you come to my house for a supper?” I asked. “Five nights from now, all of you. I need the time to prepare. I have many books I want to show you. I promise you, I will show you what a delicious feast can do for the soul!”
My invitation was accepted with amusement and laughter. I disclosed the location of my house.
“I am a widow. My name is Pandora. I invite you with all propriety, and the feast awaits you. Don’t expect dancing boys and girls, for you will not find them under my roof. Expect delicious food. Expect poetry. Which of you can sing the verses of Homer? Truly sing them? Which of you sings them now from memory for pleasure!”
Laughter, conviviality. Victory. It seemed everybody could do this, and welcomed the opportunity. Someone made a soft mention of another Roman woman who would be most jealous when she discovered she had competition in Antioch.
“Nonsense,” said another, “her table is overcrowded. Lady, may I kiss your hand?”
“You must tell me who she is,” I said. “I’ll welcome her. I want to know her, and what I can learn from her.”
The Teacher was smiling. I slipped him some money.
It was getting dusk. I sighed. Look. The rising stars of the tinted evening that precedes blackness.
I received the boys’ chaste kisses and confirmed our feast.
But something had changed. It was as quick as the opening of one’s eyes. Ah, painted eyes, no.
Perhaps it was only the awful pall of twilight.
I felt a shudder. It is I who summoned you. Who spoke those words? Beware, for you would be stolen from me now and I will not have it.
I was dumbstruck. I held the teacher’s hand warmly. He talked about moderation in living. “Look at my plain tunic,” he said. “These boys have so much money, they can destroy themselves.”
The boys protested.
But this was dim to me. I tried to listen. My eyes roved. Whence came that voice! Who spoke those words! Who summoned me and who would attempt the theft?
Then to my silent astonishment I saw a man, his head covered by his toga, watching me. I knew him immediately, by his forehead and his eyes. I recognized his walk now as he moved steadily away.
This was my brother, the youngest, Lucius, the one I despised. It had to be him. And behold the sly manner in which he fled from notice into the shadows.
I knew the whole person. Lucius. He waited at the end of the long portico.
I couldn’t move, and it was getting dark. All the merchants who are open only in the day were gone. The taverns were putting out their lanterns or torches. One bookseller remained open, with great displays of books under the lamps above.
Lucius—my much detested youngest brother—not coming to welcome me with tears but gliding in the shadows of the portico. Why?
I feared I knew.
Meantime, the boys were begging me to go to the nearby wine garden with them, a lovely place. They were fighting over who would pay for my supper there.
Think, Pandora. This sweet little invitation is some keen test of the degree of my daring and freedom. And I should not go to a common tavern with the boys! But within moments I would be alone.
The Forum grew quiet. The fires blazed before the Temples. But there were great spaces of darkness. The man in the toga waited.
“No, I must be off now,” I said. Desperately I thought, what I shall I do for a torchbearer? Dare I ask these youths to see me home? I could see their slaves waiting about, some already lighting their torches or lanterns.
Singing came from the Temple of Isis.
It was I who summoned you. Beware … for me and my purpose!
“This is madness,” I muttered, waving goodnight to those who left in pairs or trios. I forced smiles and kind words.
I glared at the distant figure of Lucius, who now slouched at the end of the portico in front of doors closed for the night. His very posture was furtive and cowardly.
Quite suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I brushed it off immediately, wishing to lay down limits to such familiarity, and then I realized a man was whispering in my ear:
“The Priest at the Temple begs for you to come back, Madam. He needs to talk with you. He did not mean for you to leave without talking.”
I turned to see a Priest there beside me, in full Egyptian headdress and impeccable white linen and wearing a medallion of the goddess around his neck.
Oh, thank Heaven.
But before I could recover myself or answer, another man had stepped up boldly, heaving forward his ivory leg and foot. Two torchbearers accompanied him. We were embraced by a warm light.
“Does my Mistress wish to talk to this Priest?” he asked.
It was Flavius. He had followed my commands. He was wonderfully dressed as a Roman gentleman in the long tunic and a loose cloak. As a slave, he couldn’t wear a toga. His hair was neat and trimmed and looked as impressive as any free man’s. He was shining clean and appeared completely confident.
Marcellus, the Philosopher-Teacher, lingered. “Lady Pandora, you are most gracious, and let me assure you that the tavern these boys frequent may give rise to another Aristotle or Plato but it is not a fit place for you.”
“I know that,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
The Teacher looked warily at the Priest and at the handsome Flavius. I slipped my arm about Flavius’s waist. “This is my steward, who will welcome you the night you come to me. Thank you for letting me disrupt your teaching. You’re a kind man.”
The Teacher’s face stiffened. Then he leaned closer. “There’s a man under the portico; don’t look at him now, but you need more slaves to protect you. This city is divided, dangerous.”
“Yes, so you see him too,” I said. “And his glorious toga, the mark of his genteel birth!”
“It’s getting dark,” Flavius said. “I’ll hire more torchbearers now and a litter. Right over there.”
He thanked the Teacher, who reluctantly slipped away.
The Priest. He was still waiting. Flavius gestured for two more torchbearers and they came trotting to join us. We now had a plenitude of light.
I turned to the Priest. “I will come to the Temple directly, but I must first talk with that man over there! The man in the shadows?” I pointed quite visibly. I stood in a flood of light. I might as well have been on a stage.
I saw the distant figure cringe and try to fade into the wall.
“Why?” Flavius asked with about as much humility as a Roman Senator. “Something is very wrong about that man. He’s hovering. The Teacher was right.”
“I know,” I answered. I heard the dim, echoing laughter of a woman! Yea gods, I had to stay sane long enough to get home! I looked at Flavius. He had not heard the laughter.
There was one sure way to do this. “You torch-bearers, all of you, come with me,” I said to the four of them. “Flavius, you stand here with the Priest and watch as I greet this man. I know him. Come only if I call.”
“Oh, I don’t like it,” said Flavius.
“Neither do I,” said the Priest. “They want you in the Temple, Madam, and we have many guards to escort you home.”
“I won’t disappoint you,” I said, but I walked straight towards the toga-clad figure, crossing yard after yard of paved squares, the torches flaring around me.
The toga-clad man gave a violent start, with his whole body, and then he took a few steps away from the wall.
I stopped, still out in the square.
He had to come closer. I wasn’t going to move. The four torches gasped and blew in the breeze. Anybody anywhere near could see us. We were the brightest thing in the Forum.
The man approached. He walked slow, then fast. The light struck his face. He was consumed with rage.
“Lucius,” I whispered. “I see you, but I can’t believe what I see.”
“Nor can I,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said to me.
“What?” I was too baffled to answer.
“Our family is in disgrace in Rome and you’re making a spectacle of yourself in the middle of Antioch! Look at you! Painted and perfumed and your hair full of ointment! You are a whore.”
“Lucius!” I cried. “What in the name of the gods are you thinking? Our Father is dead! Your own brothers may be dead. How did you escape? Why aren’t you glad to see me? Why don’t you take me to your house?”
“Glad to see you!” he hissed. “We are in hiding here, you bitch!”
“How many of you? Who? What about Antony? What happened to Flora?”
He sneered with exasperation.
“They are murdered, Lydia, and if you do not get yourself to some safe corner where no roaming citizen of Rome can find you, you are dead too. Oh, that you would turn up here, spouting philosophy! Everybody in the taverns was talking about you! And that slave with the leg made of ivory! I saw you at noon, you wretched and infernal nuisance. Damn you, Lydia!”
This was pure unadulterated hate.
Again, came that distinct echoing laughter. Of course he did not hear it. Only I could hear it.
“Your wife, where is she. I want to see her! You will take me in!”
“I will not.”
“Lucius, I am your sister. I want to see your wife. You’re right. I’ve been foolish. I didn’t think things through very well. There are so many miles of sea between here and Rome. It never occurred to me—”
“That’s just it, Lydia, you never really think of anything sensible or practical. You never did. You’re an uncompromising dreamer, and stupid on top of it.”
“Lucius, what can I do?”
He turned from right to left, sizing up the torchbearers.
He narrowed his eyes. I could feel his hatred. Oh, Father, do not see this from Heaven or the Underworld. My brother wants me dead!
“Yes,” I said, “four torchbearers and we are in the middle of the Forum. And don’t forget about the man with the ivory leg over there and the Priest,” I said softly. “And do regard the soldiers outside the Emperor’s Temple. Take note. How goes it with your wife? I must see her. I’ll come in secret. She’ll be happy that I am alive, surely, for I love her like a sister. I will never connect myself with you in public. I’ve made a grievous error.”
“Oh, knock it off,” he said. “Sisters! She’s dead!”
He looked from right to left again. “They were all massacred. Don’t you understand? Get away from me.” He took a few steps back but I moved forward, drawing the light around him again.
“But who is with you, then? Who escaped with you? Who else is alive?”
“Priscilla,” he said, “and we were damned lucky to get away when we did.”
“What? Your mistress? You came here with your mistress? The children, they are all dead?”
“Yes, of course, they must be. How could they have escaped? Look, Lydia, I give you one night to get out of this city and away from me. I am lodged here comfortably and will not tolerate you. Get out of Antioch. Go by sea or land, I don’t care, but go!”
“You left your wife and children to die? And came here with Priscilla?”
“How the hell did you get away, you stinking bitch in heat, answer me that! Of course you had no children, the great famous barren womb of our family!” He looked at the torchbearers. “Get away from here!” he shouted.
“Stay right where you are.”
I put my hand on my dagger. I moved the mantle so that he could see the flash of the metal.
He looked genuinely surprised and then gave a ghastly false smile. Oh, revolting!
“Lydia, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world!” he said as if insulted. “I am only worried for us all. Word came from the house. Everyone had been killed. What was I to do, go back and die for nothing?”
“You’re lying. And don’t you call me a bitch in heat again unless you want to become a gelding. I know you lie. Somebody tipped you off, and you got out! Or it was you who betrayed us all.”
Ah, how sad for him that he was not more clever, more quick. He did not take umbrage at these loathsome charges as he should have. He just tilted his head and said:
“No, that’s not true. Look, come with me now. Send these men away, get rid of that slave, and I will help you. Priscilla adores you.”
“She’s a liar and slut! And how calm you have become in the face of my suspicions. Nothing as steamed as when you saw me! I just accused you of betraying our family to the Delatores. I accused you of abandoning your wife and children to the Praetorian Guard. Can you hear these words?”
“It’s utter stupidity, I would never do such a thing.”
“You reek of guilt. Look at you. I should kill you now!”
He backed up. “Get out of Antioch!” he said. “I don’t care how you judge me or what I had to do to save myself and Priscilla. Get out of Antioch!”
There were no words for my judgment. It was harsher than my soul could hold.
He backed away, and then walked fast into the darkness, disappearing before he reached the portico. I listened to his steps as they echoed down the street.
“Dear Heaven!” I whispered. I was about to cry. My hand was still on the dagger, however.
I turned around. The Priest and Flavius stood much closer than ordered. I was frankly utterly baffled, stopped.
I didn’t know what to do.
“Come to the Temple at once,” said the Priest.
“All right,” I said. “Flavius, you come with me, stand watch with the four torchmen, I want you right by the Temple guards, and keep an eye out for that man.”
“Who is he, Madam,” Flavius whispered as I strode towards the Temple, leading them both.
How regal he looked. He had the presence of a free man. And his tunic was beautiful thin wool, striped in gold, belted in gold, well fitted across his chest. Even his ivory leg had been polished. I was more than pleased. But was he armed?
Beneath his quiet demeanor, he was deeply protective of me.
In my misery, I couldn’t form words to answer him.
Several litters were now crisscrossing the square, carried on the shoulders of hurrying slaves, and other slaves carried the torches beside them. A kind of soft glow rose from the commotion. People were on their way to dinners or private ceremonies. Something was happening in the Temple.
I turned to the Priest. “You will guard my slave and my torchbearers?”
“Yes, Madam,” he said.
It was full night. The breeze was sweet. A few lanterns had been lighted under the long porticoes. We drew near to the braziers of the goddess.
“Now I must leave you,” I said. “You have my permission to protect my property, as you so eloquently put it earlier, unto death. Don’t move from these doors. I won’t leave here without you. I won’t stay long. I don’t want to. But have you a knife?”
“Yes, Madam, but it’s untried. It was among your possessions, and when you did not come home and it grew dark …”
“Don’t recount the history of the world,” I said. “You did the right thing. You probably will always do the right thing.”
I turned my back to the square and said, “Let me see it. I’ll know if it’s decorative or sharp.”
When he drew it from the forearm sling, I touched it with my finger and blood came from the cut. I returned it. This had belonged to my Father. So my Father had filled my trunk with his weapons as well as his wealth, so that I might live!
Flavius and I exchanged one last slow glance.
The Priest grew very anxious. “Madam, please come inside,” he said.
I found myself ushered right through the tall doors into the Temple, and with the Priestesses and the Priest of earlier that afternoon.
“You want something of me?” I asked. I was out of breath. I was faint. “I have much on my mind, things that must be done. Can this wait?”
“No, Lady, it cannot!” said the Priest.
I felt a shudder in my limbs as if I were being watched by someone. The tall shadows of the Temples were too concealing.
“All right,” I said. “It’s about those awful dreams, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the Priest. “And more than that.”