Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,43

retrieved it. I scarce noticed. “I had so prayed that Tiberius would let Ovid come back to Rome!” I told myself I had no time to stop for this. “Ovid. No time to weep for him now . . . ”

“His books are no doubt plentiful here,” Flavius said. “They are very easily found in Athens.”

“Good, perhaps you will have time to find some for me. Now, I’m off; pins or tumbled braids or sliding mantle, I do not care. And don’t look so worried. When you leave the house, just lock up the girls and the gold.”

When I finally turned around he was making his way rather gracefully towards the girls. The sun rippled prettily on his well-muscled back. His hair was curly and brown, rather like my own. He stopped for one moment when a vendor attacked him with an armful of cheaply made tunics, cloaks and whatnot, more than likely stolen goods, full of dye that would run in the first rain, but who knows? He bought a tunic hastily and slipped it over his head, and purchasing a red sash, tied it around his waist.

Such a transformation. The tunic went halfway to his knees. That must have been a great relief to him, to have on something clean. I should have thought of this before I left him. Stupid.

I admired him. Naked or clothed, you can’t carry such beauty and dignity unless you have been cherished. He wore the raiment of the affection bestowed on him and inscribed in the art of his ivory leg.

In our brief encounter, a bond had been forged forever.

He greeted the girls. With his arms around them, he guided them out of the crowd.

I went straight to the Temple of Isis, and thereby, unwittingly, took the first firm step towards a larcenous immortality, an inglorious and unearned supernature, a never ending and utterly useless doom.

5

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, mat 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