Written in the Ashes (27 page)

On a glassy morning when the birds were quiet, Gideon and Hannah set out for the docks in the harbor. However, where there should have been the island of Pharos with its lighthouse and temples, a thick wall of marine mist whorled as it brushed the surface of the water, obscuring the lighthouse from view.
The Breath of Nereus
. What had Alizar said about it? That it concealed the workings of the gods? Hannah sighed. So be it. The Greeks and their mad gods.

She touched the bottom of her haversack to find the white alabaster jar that held the remnants of her family, all except for her Abba, who had been buried in the Jewish necropolis beneath a mulberry tree in the far eastern corner nearest to Sinai. Alizar made certain he was tucked under the first patch of earth to be illuminated at sunrise. Hannah traced the bronze slave collar at her neck with one finger. She was a Jew. She was a Roman, a gypsy, a pagan, a slave. A slave with a life that pulled her like the tide. She had no idea who she was now.

Hannah had wrapped her arms around Gideon’s neck, and he kissed her for the last time. Still grief’s captive, her lips held little warmth. All the better for him. Her beauty, however enchanting, was not a sea he wished to drown in.

The boatman pocketed Gideon’s coins and lit a torch at the front of the skiff so any approaching ship would not plow blindly into them. The erratic orange flame licked at the mist and danced across the surface of the mirrored sea, the only color in the endless expanse of grey, just as the dip and lift of the oars in the water was the only sound in the silence.

Hannah gathered her woolen shawl tightly around herself and hugged her knees up to her chest. She was still unused to the way the ocean’s dampness burrowed into her bones. The cold of the desert was never so penetrating. She looked back to the dock, but it had already been swallowed in the mist. Gideon was gone.

Hannah felt lonely, suddenly. The cold fog did nothing to reassure her, yet somehow it was apt. Beside her skiff the silver dolphin surfaced for breath. His presence was an omen of good fortune, she knew now, and so she whispered words of thanks to him in Aramaic for helping her to Alizar’s ship. Still the sea unsettled her. Only when the bottom of the skiff scraped against the strand did she exhale.

So.

Standing on the beach with her things at her feet, she scanned for the little path that Alizar had said would take her to the Temple of Isis. Not seeing it, Hannah began to walk the length of the beach. Beneath the lighthouse, a sheer cliff rose up from the sand and sea caves. Beyond it, the beach was choked with bramble-bushes. She startled a flock of cormorants, and they swept out across the harbor like displaced black parentheses.

There was only one choice.

Hannah re-pinned her
fibula
, gathered up the ends of her
himation
and began to pick her way through the bushes toward the escarpment. Thorns slashed her calves and drew streaks of blood. Twigs that snapped back at her tangled in her hair and snagged the fringe of her shawl.

She laughed in spite of her melancholy. The priestesses might think her some wild child spit up on the beach by a pack of wolves. When she finally got through the last of the brush, Hannah set her things down and went to work on rescuing her appearance. She combed the twigs out of her long thick hair and plaited it down her back. Then she picked the thorns from her shawl and moistened a corner with spit, dabbing at the stinging scratches on her legs.

Then she saw a thin dusty path just beyond the thicket snaked between the palms. It seemed to come from the west and wind its way uphill, so Hannah tied the lyre to her satchel, strapped the satchel to her back, and prepared to climb.

As she wound her way up the first knoll, the landscape became barren and rocky, speckled with low lying ground cover that clung to patches of dirt, the succulent leaves turning from green to pink at the tips and sprouting luminous purple flowers that seemed even more vivid in the mist. When Hannah paused to rest, a black lizard with golden eyes darted beneath a rock at her feet.

The path gradually became steeper and Hannah had to use her hands to pull herself up the white jagged stones that jutted out from the slope like milk teeth from gums. When she finally clamored to the top, the lapis blue dome of the Temple of Isis appeared from behind the mist, nested like a robin’s egg against the back of a rounded hill of dry grass. Hannah paused. Before her was a new life.

A barren hill stood between the lighthouse and the temple, blocking the lighthouse beam from the rest of the island, forming a quaint rural backdrop for the little cloister with its white lime-washed walls and tall trellises overgrown with jasmine and pink bougainvillea. There was a palpable peace that seemed to seep up from the ground and encircle everything nearby, perhaps from so many women dreaming under one roof.

As she approached the temple, Hannah could hear water splashing into a fountain. She walked around the high walls until she reached a set of tall wooden doors that were locked from the inside. Hannah set her satchel and lyre down at her feet and rapped loudly.

From behind the wall came the braying of a goat, the tinkling of a bell, and light footsteps on a stone path. Behind the doors, a child spoke. “Who is there?”

“I am called Hannah.”

“Do I know you?”

“I just arrived from Alexandria.”

A little finger poked through a knothole in the gate. “Look through here.”

Hannah knelt and peered through the hole. An eye with long lashes and a big brown iris speckled with gold was looking back at her. The child giggled.

Hannah stood up. “What is your name?” she asked sweetly.

“Suhaila,” said the child. By the sound of her voice she was no older than four or five.

“Suhaila, can you open the gate for me?”

“I am not allowed.”

“Oh, I see. Could you get someone to open it for me?”

Suhaila ran from the gate calling the name “Mira” again and again.

Hannah heard two sets of footsteps, and then the sound of a key being turned. The gate opened a fraction and a beautiful girl peered through, everything about her golden. Her long hair swirled around her gleaming skin like bronze water, her amber eyes so luminous they might belong to a hawk more than a woman, though her nose was red and swollen, as if she were a tad ill. There was something unsettling about her eyes that peered through Hannah, weighing her on a scale. Mira eyed her slave collar and her full breasts with a slight look of disapproval.

“You are Hannah?”

Hannah collected her things into her arms and nodded. “I am.”

“Come in.” The woman opened the gate wide enough for Hannah to pass and then closed it behind her and locked it again from a key that hung from a cord around her neck, and then withdrew a handkerchief and blew her nose modestly, then tucked it away. “I am Mira,” she said, bowing slightly, her palms pressed together in front of her heart. “And this is Suhaila.” Mira placed one delicate hand on the head of the small, dark-haired child standing beside a white goat with a bell around its neck.

Suhaila fingered the ends of one of her curls and introduced the goat. “This is Cleopatra.”

Hannah smiled and returned the bow. “A pleasure.”

“Come, I will show you the grounds and the gardens and then you will meet Mother Hathora, our High Priestess,” said Mira. As she led Hannah around the temple, the diminutive priestess carried her head high and walked with the same sprightly gate as the Arabian horses Alizar adored. Hannah felt a bit awkward by comparison.

They crossed the wide stone steps of the temple, weaving between the tapered columns, and then down again into a flourishing garden where the ordinary life of duties blended into the sacred timelessness of worship. Several ancient olive trees stood watch over the garden where between the vegetable rows, women in long colorful robes were gathering bunches of herbs and flowers into their arms, or digging with small spades.

On the far side of the vegetable garden, opposite the lapis dome of the temple, stood a quaint split-level stone house that adjoined several other structures. “Those are mostly rooms devoted to study.” Mira indicated the smaller octagonal buildings covered in creeping vines. “Before us is the Garden House, where we sleep. Up on the knoll, behind the fire circle, there are much older gardens and a beautiful outdoor chapel that overlooks the sea in the north.”

Hannah smiled a little, feeling for the first time in many months that this was where she belonged.

The angel too, rested. The door had been promised. The warrior would come.

Mira kissed Suhaila’s head and pushed her off toward another priestess. who took her by the hand. “Come, Hannah, I will take you to your room.”

The entry of the Garden House opened to a sparsely decorated room with some large cushions set on the floor and a glowing brazier at one end, called the common area.

“We mostly use this room for meetings, meals, and occasionally crafts. We have no need to work the way the priests of Poseidon do with their stone carving. The Great Library completely sustains us.”

“Is there water here on the island?” Hannah asked.

“There was a flowing spring once when the Heptastadion bridge was still in place some fifty years ago, but now we use a well. We send our requests for items like candles and incense by skiff when we pick up the morning wood. You will see.” Mira sneezed, and blew her nose in the kerchief she kept tucked up her sleeve.

Beyond the common area was a small kitchen. An open door led outside where two red hens scratched at the damp ground beneath a sprawling belladonna tree, pink blossoms bobbing amorously. Mira paused to explain the various kitchen duties the priestesses performed, and then they crossed the common room and ascended a flight of winding stone stairs to the sleeping quarters where ten or more doors opened at angles into the wide stone hall. “That door at the end leads to the room where the children sleep. The other rooms are for the priestesses. You will share my room.” Hannah could not tell by the look in her eye if Mira was happy about the arrangement. Hannah had seen the look once before in a gypsy woman who sold sheep to her father, only to switch the young ewes for old when he was not looking. She hoped what she saw was only because Mira was ill.

Down two steps in the center of the cozy room hung a worn white tapestry with a peacock feather design that acted as a divider. All around were a number of candles set on stone pedestals and tucked into recesses in the wall that cast a warm, radiant glow over objects of devotion: crystals, curved branches, seashells, round black seeds, and small cups of water where colorful rose blossoms floated. The scent of frankincense hung in the air. At the end of Mira’s bed a black cat with white feet and lunar eyes awakened, letting out a tiny sigh and stretching its legs.

“We have our own balcony that leads up to the roof through those doors there. I sleep outside in summer, but not this time of year. I never seem to have enough flesh on my bones for the winters here.” Mira rubbed her arms as she crossed the room and picked up a bundle of sticks from a basket in the corner, tossing them into the brazier. Then she took a seat on the floor to warm her back.

Hannah set her bag on the straw mattress, the lyre on the floor. Then she noticed the fine sleeveless white linen
khiton
with the braided sash that lay on the pillow, and stroked it, finding it smooth as water.

Mira smiled. “You can change, then we will go outside.”

As they stepped into the garden, a bell high in the temple clanged and all the priestesses paused, closed their eyes, and repeated the same gesture. Hannah watched as Mira brought her hands together at her forehead, and then lowered them to her heart.

When Mira opened her eyes she explained that it was a meditation bell. The priestesses took turns sitting beside the bell in the temple attic, ringing it about once an hour. If the bell rang twice, it signified a meal. If the bell rang three times, it was time to wake up or go to sleep.

Mira led Hannah out a south-facing archway erupting with jasmine and down a winding path to a labyrinth, its four quadrants lined with white stones. At its center was a giant clam shell half buried in the ground, set there for offerings. Mira explained that the labyrinth had been formed by a brush from Isis’ wings when she flew down to the island. Hannah requested a moment to walk through it, and Mira indulged her.

When she was ready to continue, Hannah followed Mira behind the Garden House to an exquisite cave carved in the side of the hill with an elaborate fabric embroidered with falcons and snakes hung over the door. Mira explained with reverence that this was the moon hollow, a place where the women went to relax during their monthly blood when they were not expected to do chores or participate in temple rituals. It was a time when the priestesses recognized women were closest to the goddess, and so they were invited to create art for the temple if they felt so inspired. Hannah thought it sounded a bit strange, but warmed to the idea.