outside the walls than in, but my body shouted, yes! And my imagination, some fertile mating of the two, whispered, anything might happen. There’s a chance now, there’s a chance. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that we were being transported in curtained litters. I wanted to walk. I wanted to know the lay of the land with my feet. But Domitia Tertia conscientiously flouted any law enacted against whores. We had to ride in litters precisely because it was illegal for us to do so. Another reason oral law is better than written; if you have to hold a law library in your head you stick to the essentials.
Bone and his assistants, three male slaves on loan for the day from Flavius Anecius, escorted us on foot (well, it would have taken a dozen litter bearers to heft the eunuch). They kept an eye out for the aedile, and Bone repeatedly and futilely shouted at us to stop sticking our heads outside the curtains. He could hardly be heard over Succula and Berta’s tour guide patter as they called to me from their litters, “And here is the best place to buy pigeon pie, and look over there. That entire block of insulae belongs to Claudius Appius, and he owns all the shops, too. They say he is richer than Croesus.”
I didn’t catch all their words, and I didn’t pay much attention, because neither of them was saying things like, “and if you take that street there, it leads to the nearest gate out of the city.” So I just took in the bustle. Everyone was out and about trying to finish errands early. Some vendors were already closing up or packing their wares to sell to the crowds at Circus Maximus where all Rome, rich and poor, would soon be.
Our route became increasingly hilly and circuitous, whether to keep us disoriented or to find the least crowded approach to the Circus Maximus I wasn’t sure. We were winding down a hill on the other side of the Circus from Palatine Hill with its enormous temples, palaces, gardens, everything on a godlike scale. I was more interested in the sky; I had been starving for it after seeing only a small cut-out square of sky for months. Now here it was, a heaping bowl of blue, enough for everyone, with birds circling it—high up an eagle, lower down the flocking birds wheeling and turning, now invisible, now flashing as the light caught their wings at different angles. Then the sky narrowed as we wound down the hill towards the Murcia Valley.
“Red,” called Succula, “we’ll be coming to the Temple of Venus Obsequens soon.”
The compliant Venus, I translated to myself, the accommodating Venus. I had barely become acquainted with Roman deities; they struck me as petty and cruel, like the Romans themselves. You had to wonder about a people who worshipped their emperors as gods. Civic religion has always struck me as both dismal and dangerous to the health of the general population.
“She’s the protectress of whores and adulterers,” Succula went on.
I was not impressed. In Rome there was a Venus for everything, including Venus Cloacina, the goddess of the sewer—she helped the Romans maintain the illusion that their shit didn’t stink.
“What does she protect us from?” I quipped but not loud enough for Succula to hear. If Succula wanted to believe there was a goddess who cared about whores, let her. As for me—I stopped for a moment, not quite prepared for my next thought—I had no gods. I had left mine behind in the wells and groves of Tir na mBan and Mona. Or you could say they had abandoned me, cast me out. I was a slave and an exile in a place where I had no connection with the local gods and wanted none. As for my beloved’s god—the invisible one, the jealous one, the portable one who was any and everywhere—I thought that Joseph was quite right to take refuge in Greek philosophy. I was through with gods, I decided.
“It’s right down this alley,” called Succula.
With no warning, the dream I’d had my first night at the Vine and Fig Tree came back to me—only now it wasn’t a dream. I could hear the sound of the water moving through the reeds, the whispering rasp of snakes; I smelled the mud; then the drums started and the women’s voices singing, keening, wild as wind, high as birds. Before I knew it, I was running in my silly Roman sandals on the hard stones, in the narrow alley, running straight into the dark mouth of the Temple, the dark waters of the river.
You may argue that what I saw was a trick of the eye caused by going from bright morning light to cavernous dusk of what turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall shrine. But in that suspended moment I felt as though I had stepped into the cosmos, stars and comets blazing by me, the waters rushing past me. And then I saw her, shining horns above a face black and luminous as a clear night, her head crowned with a many-petaled star. Her breasts flooded the sky with milk; her wide wings were made of fire, of fine mist, of colors I did not know how to name. I had known her all my life, and I had never known her before now. But she had called me. She had found me in this terrible place far from home, and she called me to her.
“Bride,” I tried to whisper, for so she must be, “Bride.”
“Welcome, daughter, in the name of Isis.”
In a literal blink of an eye the goddess was gone. A plain middle-aged priestess in an unadorned white stola greeted me. A half-dozen other priestesses stood by, holding frame drums and sistrums. They made a semi-circle around a statue—a small unimpressive statue, garishly painted like all Roman statues and dressed in gold cloth. The figure held a sistrum in one hand and what I came to know as an ankh in the other. She had been garlanded with fresh flowers.
“Isis?” I repeated.
“Our goddess is called by many names: Demeter, Aphrodite, Dyktynna, Proserpina, Hekate, Bellona, a thousand other names. The Temple is known from the outside as The Temple of Venus. Within these walls we know the mother of all, mistress of the living and the dead, ruler of wind and water, builder of ships, guide of the planets, queen of the stars, star of the sea, giver of grain by her true name—Almighty Isis.”
“Red!”
The door darkened with Bone’s huge bulk. The priestess, who had been swaying as she chanted her goddess’s attributes, looked past me towards the eunuch, her eyes mild as a cow’s, utterly unperturbed. When I turned to face Bone, he hesitated in the doorway, not so much as a toe inside. There is something intimidating to a man about a phalanx of priestesses.
“Red?” He sounded confused, as if he wasn’t sure who I was, though he was looking straight at me. Was the light that dim?
“I’m coming, Bone.”
“If you are a fugitive, the goddess gives sanctuary,” the priestess said.
“She is a slave,” stated Bone, recovering himself.
“Our goddess makes no distinctions between slave and free.”
“Your goddess may not distinguish between slave and free, domina, but Roman law does. There is no sanctuary for runaway slaves.”
“Listen, Bone.” I went to him. I had to assure him that I hadn’t been trying to escape or I would never be allowed outside again. It was hard to persuade eunuchs of anything, because, in contrast to most men, their brains were actually between their ears. The usual methods didn’t work. “I wasn’t running away. I just got carried away. I heard the drums and the singing, and it reminded me of…of home.” I didn’t want to talk about my dream of the river. “I had to see what the music was. That’s all. I’m sorry. Let’s go.”
“You will come back,” the priestess called after me; it was neither a question nor a command; I recognized the tone: it was a prophecy. “You belong to her.”
I looked back at the priestess; her face was impassive, masked in the maddening
