repeat what you said to me, that resisting a fear only emboldens it.”
She smiled. “Yes, I resisted my fear, too.”
“What will you do? There’s little time left.”
Outside the rain had started again. We listened to it for a while. Finally she said, “I can’t know if Chaya wants to be found or how finding her might change either of us, but it’s the truth that matters, isn’t it?” She leaned over and blew out the candle. “Tomorrow we’ll go to Isis Medica.”
xvi.
I stood naked on the limestone slab in the bathing room, shivering as Pamphile poured unheated water over my torso, arms, and legs. “Do you delight in torturing me?” I said, my skin rising up in tiny bumps of protest. I did truly appreciate the Egyptians’ conveniences, their bathing rooms and miraculous stone-seat privies with water running beneath to flush the waste—but how hard was it to heat the bathwater?
Setting down the pitcher, Pamphile handed me a drying towel. “You Galileans have little forbearance,” she said, grinning.
“Forbearance is all we do have,” I retorted.
Back in my chamber, freshly scrubbed and flesh tingling, I donned the new black tunic I’d bought in the market, tying it snugly under my breasts with a green ribbon, then draped a red linen mantle about my shoulders. I would wear it despite the heat outside, which was atrocious. At Pamphile’s insistence, I allowed her to line my eyes with a green pigment, then wrap my braid into a little tower on top of my head.
“You could pass for an Alexandrian woman,” she said, leaning back to take me in. The notion seemed to please her enormously.
Alexandrian. After Pamphile left, I turned the word over and over in my head.
Stepping into the sitting room, I heard Yaltha in her chamber, singing as she dressed.
When she finally stepped into the sitting room, my breath caught. She wore her new tunic, as well, cerulean like the sea, and I saw that Pamphile had tended my aunt, too, for she had streaks of black paint beneath her eyes, and her graying hair was freshly plaited and fastened in intricate coils. She looked like one of the lion-headed Goddesses painted on the wall in the library.
“Shall we go and find my daughter?” she said.
* * *
? ? ?
ISIS MEDICA APPEARED in the Royal Quarter near the harbor like an island unto itself. Catching my first glimpse of it from a distance, I slowed my steps to take in a complex array of walls, tall pylons, and rooftops. It was more expansive than I’d imagined.
Yaltha pointed. “See the pediment of that large building over there? That’s the main temple to Isis. The smaller ones are minor temples to other divinities.” She squinted, trying to make sense of the maze. “Over there—that’s the healing sanctuary where Chaya attends, and behind it, not visible, is the medical school. People come from as far as Rome and Macedonia to find cures here.”
“Have you ever sought a cure there?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been inside the walls only once and then merely out of curiosity. The Jewish citizenry doesn’t go there. It’s a transgression of the first commandment.”
Last night I’d learned to love her weakness; today it was her daring that excited me. “Did you go inside Isis’s temple?”
“Of course. I remember there was an altar there where people left little statuettes of Isis as offerings.”
“And the healing sanctuary? Did you go there, too?”
She shook her head. “To enter, one must present an illness and be prepared to remain through the night. Those seeking cures are put into an opium sleep in which they dream their cure. It’s said that sometimes Isis herself comes in their dreams and presents cures.”
So strange was all of this, it left me speechless, but inside me, there was a kind of humming.
* * *
? ? ?
THE OUTER COURTYARD swarmed with people making music. Sistrums rattled and flutes piped out soft curling sounds that spiraled like ribbons through the air. We watched a line of women wind through the scarlet pillars of the colonnade, their dance like a