Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,24

to the moment of ecstasy, which was quite easy, given his phenomenal stamina, I tasted blood. I was the blood drinker in the dream. I went limp, but it didn’t matter. He had all he needed to finish the rites to his satisfaction.

He rose up. “You’re a goddess,” he said.

“No,” I whispered. The dream was rising. I heard the wind on the sand. I smelled the river. “I am a god . . . a god who drinks blood.”

We did the rites of love until we could do them no more.

“Be circumspect and very proper with our Hebrew hosts,” I said. “They will never understand this sort of thing.”

He nodded. “I adore you.”

“Not necessary. What is your name?”

“Marcellus.”

“Fine, Marcellus, go to sleep.”

Marcellus and I made a night of every night after that until we finally saw the famous lighthouse of Pharos and knew we had come to Egypt.

It was perfectly obvious that Marcellus was being left in Alexandria. He explained to me that his maternal grandmother was still alive, a Greek, and indeed her whole clan.

“Don’t tell me so much, just go,” I said. “And be wise and safe.”

He begged me to come with him. He said he had fallen in love with me. He would marry me. He didn’t care if I bore no children. He didn’t care that I was thirty-five. I laughed softly, mercifully.

Jacob noted all this with lowered eyes. And David looked away.

Quite a few trunks followed Marcellus into Alexandria.

“Now,” I said to Jacob, “will you tell me where I’m being taken? I might have some thoughts on the matter, though I doubt I could improve on my Father’s plan.”

I still wondered. Would they deal honestly with me? What about now that they had seen me play the whore with the boy? They were such religious men.

“You’re headed to a great city,” Jacob said. “It couldn’t be a better place. Your Father has Greek friends there!”

“How could it be better than Alexandria?” I said.

“Oh, it is far and away better,” Jacob said. “Let me talk to my Father before I talk to you further.”

We had put out to sea. The land was going away. Egypt. It was growing dark.

“Don’t be afraid,” Jacob said. “You look as though you are terrified.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said. “It’s only that I have to lie in my bed and think and remember and dream.” I looked at him, as he shyly looked away. “I held the boy like a Mother, against me, night after night.”

This was about the biggest lie I’ve told in my life.

“He was a child in my arms.” Some child! “And now I fear nightmares. You must tell me—what is our destination? What is our fate?”

3

NTIOCH,” said Jacob, “Antioch on the Orontes. Greek friends of your Father await you. And they are friends with Germanicus. Perhaps in time . . . but they will be loyal to you. You are to be married to a Greek of breeding and means.”

Married! To a Greek, a provincial Greek? A Greek in Asia! I stifled my laughter and my tears. That was not going to happen to me. Poor man! If he really was a provincial Greek, he was going to have to experience the conquest of Rome all over again.

We sailed on, from port to port. I mulled all this over.

It was nauseating trivia like this which of course protected me from my full and inevitable grief and shock over what happened. Worry about whether your dress is properly girdled. Don’t see your Father lying dead with his own dagger in his chest.

As for Antioch, I had been far too embroiled in the life of Rome to know or hear much about this city. If Tiberius had stationed his “heir,” Germanicus, there to get him away from Roman popularity, then I thought: Antioch must be the end of the civilized world.

Why in the name of the gods had I not run away in Alexandria, I thought? Alexandria was the greatest city in the Empire, next to Rome. It was a young city, built by Alexander, for whom it was named, but it Was a marvelous port. No one would ever dare raze the Temple of Isis in Alexandria. Isis was an Egyptian goddess, wife of the powerful Osiris.

But what had that to do with things? I must have been plotting in the back of my mind already, but I didn’t allow any conscious plot to surface and blemish my highborn Roman moral character.

I quietly thanked my Hebrew guardians for this intelligence, for keeping it even from the