Free Pilate's Wife: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Antoinette May Page A

lovely blue sea. We flew there together, she holding me in her arms. Sometimes we rested on the wave, rocking as in a cradle. I felt so...so safe."
    Rachel nodded knowingly. "The sea is sacred to her. She's chosen you, I'm sure of it."

     

    L ATER WHEN I JOINED M OTHER IN THE SUNLIT CORNER WHERE HER loom rested, she did not agree.
    "Don't let your father hear you talking about Isis," she warned.
    I nodded obediently, then after a pause, asked, "Are you happy worshipping Juno?"
    "Happy?" Mother looked surprised. "I seek reassurance from Juno, nothing else." She smiled at me. "When I was your age I worshipped Diana. She is a virgin, which is all very well when one is young-- very well. But then I met your father...My offerings to Venus were well received. In recent years, Juno has grown very dear. She protects our home, I feel it."
    "But Juno..." I hesitated.
    "Juno is the goddess of marriage," Mother reminded me. She picked up a skein of mauve wool. "What more could any woman want?"
    "I don't know." I paused again. "Her husband seems a strange god, always chasing one tunica after another, but Juno...isn't very forgiving. She does such cruel things to her rivals--changing them into cows and things."
    Mother picked up her shuttle. "When you are a wife you will understand."

     

    R ACHEL TOLD ME I SIS'S STORY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING WHILE WE walked to the fish market. At first Father had forbidden me to go; then, at Mother's suggestion, he agreed to a litter. I didn't want a litter. I wanted to see things, so I pleaded: "I need the exercise." Tata sighed, finally agreed, but later I noticed two house slaves trailing discreetly behind us.
    "If ever there were a pair of soulmates, it was Isis and Osiris," Rachel said, lightly swinging the basket she carried. "They met and loved each other in their mother's womb before their birth as twins."
    I had heard that Egyptian kings and queens sometimes married siblings. It seemed strange, but still, who would you know better than your own brother? "Their happiness must have been eternal," I ventured.
    "Anything but," Rachel explained. "A jealous brother tricked Osiris into trying a casket on for size, then locked it and flung him into the Nile. Isis set off to find her husband. It was a long, hard journey. She even pretended to be a temple love priestess."
    "A love priestess!" I was shocked and thrilled.
    "She had to," Rachel quickly explained. "It was the only way she could get Osiris's corpse back to bury. Even that wasn't the end. The same awful brother unearthed the body, dismembered it, and scattered the pieces all over the world. So what could Isis do but set off once again, this time to find and join his missing parts."
    "Did she find them?"
    "All but the most important."
    I tried not to giggle.
    "It's the means by which a woman brings life to her husband," Rachel reminded me. "The goddess used her powers not only to reconstruct the missing member, but to bring immortality to her husband through their child."
    We'd reached the seaside market. Brightly colored boats bobbed in the water as men hauled in tubs of flailing fish. Rachel darted from one makeshift stall to another searching for the rare bream, Mother's favorite. Sniffing from a perfume vial, I leaned against the sea wall, staring absently out at the harbor. Pharos, the great lighthouse I'd visited the week before, was emerging from early morning mist when Rachel touched my elbow. "We should return home," she urged. "Look what I have here. Your father will want these sardines for breakfast." In no time, she'd purchased not only sardines and bream but mussels and crabs.
    All around us slaves and sellers bargained and cursed, crying out to be heard about the market din, but my thoughts were of a female deity who roamed the world surviving by her wits. "That was the most beautiful story I've ever heard," I said at last. It was also the most exciting.
    Turning to Rachel, I announced: "You will take me to the temple of