The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (10 page)

My Isis had been a Roman goddess, really, a universal goddess, the Mother of us all, her worship spreading out in a Greek and Roman world long before it had come into Rome itself. Our Priests were
Greeks and Roman, poor men. We the congregation were all Greeks and Romans.

Something scratched at the back of my mind. It said, “Remember.” It was a tiny desperate voice within my own brain that urged me to “remember” for my own sake.

But remembering only led to confused and jumbled thoughts. Suddenly a veil would fall between the reality of my cabin on the ship, and the tumbling of the sea—between that and some dim and frightening world, of Temples covered in words that made magic! Long narrow beautifully bronzed faces. A voice whispered, “Beware the Priests of Ra; they lie!”

I shivered. I closed my eyes. The Queen Mother was bound and chained to her throne! She wept! It had been her crying. Unspeakable. “But you see, she has forgotten how to rule. Do as we say.”

I shook myself awake. I wanted to know and I did not want to know. The Queen wept beneath her monstrous fetters. I couldn’t see her clearly. It was all in progress. It was busy. “The King is with Osiris, you see. You see how he stares; each one whose blood you drink, you give to Osiris; each one becomes Osiris.”

“But why did the Queen scream?”

No, this was madness. I couldn’t let this confusion overcome me. I couldn’t deliberately slip from reason into these fantasies or recollections supposing they had a true root.

They had to be nonsense, twisted images of grief
and guilt, guilt that I had not rushed to the hearth and driven the dagger into my breast.

I tried to remember the calming voice of my Father, explaining once how the blood of the gladiators satisfied the thirst of the dead, the
Manes
.

“Now, some say that the Dead drink blood,” spoke my Father from some long ago dinner talk. “That’s why we are so fearful on all these unlucky days, when the Dead are supposed to be able to walk the Earth. I personally think this is nonsense. We should revere our ancestors …”

“Where are the Dead, Father?” my brother Lucius asked.

Who had piped up from the other side of the table, to quote Lucretius in a sad little female voice that nevertheless commanded silence of all these men? Lydia:

“No,” my Father had replied to me quite gently. “Rather quote Ovid: ‘The ghosts ask for but little; they value piety more than a costly gift.’ ” He drank his wine. “The ghosts are in the Underworld where they can’t harm us.”

My eldest brother Antony had said, “The Dead are nowhere and are nothing.”

My Father had raised his cup. “To Rome,” he said, and it was he this time who had quoted Lucretius: “ ‘Too many times, religion mothers crimes and wickedness.’ ”

Shrugs and sighs all around. The Roman attitude. Even the Priests and Priestesses of Isis would have joined Lucretius when he wrote:

Drunk? Drugged? Bull’s blood? Systematic? Well, it all came down to the same thing. Know! Twist the poetry as you will. And the phallus of Osiris lives forever in the Nile, and the water of the Nile inseminates the Mother Egypt eternally, death giving birth to life with the blessing of Mother Isis. Merely a particular scheme and a sort of systematic form of contemplation.

The ship sailed on.

I languished some eight more days in this torment, often lying awake in the dark, and sleeping only in the day to avoid the dreams.

Suddenly, in the early morning, Jacob pounded my door.

We were midway up the Orontes to the city.

Twenty miles now from Antioch. I did up my hair as best I could (I’d never done it without a slave) into
a chignon on the back of my head, then covered my Roman gowns with a great black cloak and prepared to disembark—an Eastern woman, her face draped, protected by Hebrews.

When the city came into view—when the immense harbor greeted us and then embraced us with all its masts and racket and odors and cries, I ran to the deck of the ship and looked out at this city. It was splendid.

“You see,” Jacob said.

Taken from the ship by litter I found myself carried rapidly through vast waterfront markets, and then into a great open square, crowded with people. I saw everywhere the Temples, porticoes, booksellers, even the high walls of an amphitheater—all that I could have expected in Rome. No, this was no town.

The young men were crowded about the barbershops ready to have their obligatory shave and the inevitable fancy curls on their foreheads, which Tiberius with his own hairstyle had made fashionable. There were wine shops all over. The slave markets were jammed. I glimpsed the entrances to the streets devoted to crafts—the street of the tent-makers, the street of the silversmiths.

And there in all its glory, in the very center of Antioch, stood the Temple of Isis!

My goddess, Isis, with her worshipers coming and going, undisturbed, and in huge numbers. A few very proper-looking linen-clad Priests stood at the doors! The Temple was aswarm.

I thought, I can run away from any husband in this place!

Gradually I realized a great commotion had come upon the Forum, the center of the city. I heard Jacob ordering the men to hurry out of the broad market street and into the back streets. My bearers were running. The curtains were brought shut by Jacob’s hand so I couldn’t see out.

News was being shouted out in Latin, in Greek, in Chaldean: Murder, Murder, Poison, Treachery.

I peeped out of the curtain.

People were weeping and cursing the Roman Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, cursing him and his wife, Placina. Why? I didn’t much like either one of them, but what was all this?

Jacob shouted again at my bearer to hurry.

We were rushed through the gates and into the vestibule of a sizable house no different in design or color than my own in Rome, only much smaller. I could see the same refinements, the distant peristyle, clusters of weeping slaves.

The litter was promptly set down and I stepped out, deeply concerned that they had not stopped me at the doors to wash my feet, as was proper. And my hair, it had all fallen down in waves.

But no one noticed me. I turned round and round, amazed at the Oriental curtains and tassels that hung over the doorways, the caged birds everywhere singing in their little prisons. The woven carpets lying all over the floor, one heaped upon another.

Two obvious ladies of the house came towards me.

“What’s the matter!” I asked.

They were as fashionable as any rich woman in Rome, drenched in bracelets and wearing gold-trimmed gowns.

“I implore you,” said one of the women, “for your own sake, go! Get back into the litter!”

They tried to push me inside the curtained cell of the litter. I wouldn’t go. I became furious.

“I don’t know where I am,” I said. “And I don’t know who you are! Now, stop pushing me!”

The Master of the House, or someone who certainly appeared to be such, came dashing towards me, with tears streaming down his cheeks and his short tousled gray hair a mess—torn as if in mourning. He’d ripped his long tunic. He’d smeared dirt on his face! He was old with a bent back and a massive head, loaded with skin and wrinkles.

“Your Father was my young colleague,” he said to me in Latin. He grabbed me by the arms. “I dined in your house when you were a baby. I saw you when you crawled on all fours.”

“Tender,” I said quickly.

“Your Father and I studied in Athens, slept under the same roof.”

The women stood panic-stricken with their hands over their mouths.

“Your Father and I fought with Tiberius on his first campaign. We fought those lurid barbarians.”

“Very brave,” I said.

My black outer cloak fell down, revealing my unkempt wild long hair and plain dress. Nobody cared.

“Germanicus dined in this house because your Father spoke of me!”

“Oh dear, I see,” I said.

One of the women motioned for me to get in the litter. Where was Jacob? The old man wouldn’t let me go.

“I stood with your Father and with Augustus when news came to us of the massacre of our troops in the Teutoburg Forest, that General Varus and all his men were slain. My sons fought with your brothers in the legions of Germanicus when he punished those Northern tribes! Oh, God!”

“Yes, very marvelous, indeed,” I said gravely.

“Get back in the litter and get out,” said one of the women.

The old man clutched me.

“We fought the madman, King Arminius!” said the old man. “We could have won! Your brother Antony wasn’t for giving up and coming back, was he?”

“I … no …”

“Get her out of here!” screamed a young patrician man, who had also been weeping. He came forward and shoved me towards the litter.

“Stand back, you imbecile!” I said to him. I slapped his face.

All this while, Jacob had been talking to the slaves, getting the scoop.

Jacob appeared beside me, as the gray-haired Greek sobbed and kissed my cheeks.

Jacob took over, guiding me into the litter.

“Germanicus has just been murdered,” Jacob said
in my ear. “Everybody loyal to him is convinced that the Emperor Tiberius put the Roman Governor Piso up to the murder. It was done with poison. Word is spreading through the city like fire.”

“Tiberius, you idiot!” I whispered, rolling my eyes. “One cowardly step after another!”

I sank back into the darkness. The litter was being lifted.

Jacob went right on: “Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso has allies here, naturally. Everybody’s fighting everybody else. Settling scores. Mayhem. This Greek family traveled with Germanicus to Egypt. There are riots already. We go!”

“Farewell, friend,” I cried to the old Greek, as I was carried from the house. But I don’t think he heard me. He had gone down on his knees. He cursed Tiberius. He screamed of suicide and begged for the dagger.

We were outside once more, hurrying through the street.

I lay askew in the litter, thinking dully in the darkness. Germanicus dead. Poisoned by Tiberius!

I knew that this recent trip of Germanicus to Egypt had made Tiberius very angry. Egypt was like no other Roman province. Rome was so dependent upon it for grain that Senators could not go there. But Germanicus had gone, “just to see the ancient relics,” his friends had said in the streets of Rome.

“A mere excuse!” I thought in desperation. “Where was the trial? The sentence? Poison!”

My bearers were running. People were screaming
and sobbing around us. “Germanicus, Germanicus! Give us back our beautiful Germanicus!”

Antioch had gone mad.

At last, we were obviously in a small narrow street that was little more than an alleyway—you know the kind, for a grid of them was uncovered in the ruins of Pompeii in Italy. You could smell the male urine collected in the jugs on the corner. You could smell food cooking from high chimneys. My bearers were running and stumbling over rough cobblestones.

Once we were all thrown to the side as a chariot came crashing through the narrow place, its wheels no doubt finding the ruts in the stone intended for it.

My head had hit the wall. I was furious and frightened. But Jacob said, “Lydia, we are with you.”

I covered up all over with the cloak, so that only one eye allowed me to see the seams of light between the curtains on either side of me. I had my hand on my dagger.

The litter was set down. It was a cool indoor place. I heard Jacob’s father, David, arguing. I knew no Hebrew. And I wasn’t even sure that he was speaking in Hebrew.

Finally, Jacob took over in Greek, and I realized that they were purchasing outright a proper house for me which came with all fine appointments, including much fine furniture, left recently by a rich widow who had lived there alone, but alas, the slaves had been sold off. No slaves. This was a quick cash deal.

Finally, I heard Jacob say in Greek:

“You damn well better be telling me the truth.”

As the litter was lifted I beckoned to him. “I owe you my life twice over now. That Greek family who was to shelter me? They are truly in danger?”

“Of course,” he said. “When a riot starts, who cares? They went with Germanicus to Egypt! Piso’s men know that! Anybody with the slightest excuse will attack, murder and plunder someone else. Look, fire.” He told the men to hurry.

“All right,” I said. “Never say my real name again. From now on say this name: My name is Pandora. I am a Greek from Rome. I paid you to bring me here.”

“You have it, my dear Pandora,” he replied. “You are some strong woman. The Deed to your new house is made up in a fake name with less charm. But the Deed verifies you are widowed, emancipated and a Roman Citizen. We’ll get the Deed when we pay up the gold, which we won’t do until we are in the house. And if the man does not give me that Deed with everything written out in full to protect you, I’ll strangle him!”

“You’re very clever, Jacob,” I said wearily.

On and on went this dark bouncing journey in the litter until at last it came to a halt. I could hear the metal key turning in the lock of the gate, and then we were brought into the large vestibule of the house itself.

I should have waited out of consideration for my guardians, but frantically I climbed out of this miserable little black veiled prison, throwing off the cloak and taking a deep breath.

We were in the broad vestibule of a fine house,
with great charm to it and much ingenuity in its decoration.

Even now, my thoughts scattered, I saw the lionhead fountain right near the gate through which we’d just come, and I washed my feet in the cool of the water.

The receiving room, or atrium, was huge, and beyond it I saw the rich couches of the dining room on the far side of a rather large enclosed garden—the peristyle.