Ayesha frowned in anger. Catherine worried for a moment that she was going to start zapping someone! “How can this century pride itself on progress, when it perpetuates the barbaric institutions of the past in even baser form? Someday, the depredations of the European nations will end, and the land above the Zambezi will be free once more. If it happens within your lifetime, I will show you the land of your ancestors, Mr. Jefferson. Alas that I could not be the one to free it! But I was one woman against the British East Africa Company and its soldiers.”
“Beatrice told me that you were a priestess in Egypt, a land I would like to visit,” said Clarence. “How did you come to be here in Budapest, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Ayesha smiled. It was the first genuine smile Catherine had seen her give in—well—ever. “Would you like to hear my story, Mr. Jefferson? Or Clarence, if I may? We were going to stop for coffee in about an hour, but perhaps this is as good a time. Sit down, all of you. Kati, could you fetch us some coffee? And perhaps some kifli to go with it.”
“I’ll help her,” said Frau Gottleib. “I’ve heard this story, and I have more important things to do than hear it again.”
“Thank you, Eva. If the rest of you would care to sit? That is, if you have nothing more pressing.”
Well, they did have to finish packing! They would need to catch the Orient Express to Paris tomorrow morning, and Catherine had not even started yet. She always seemed to put packing off until the last minute. Soon, they would be rejoining Mary and Justine—and Diana, of course. Hopefully Mary and Justine had already found Alice! But they could certainly spare an hour, and anyway, Clarence had already sat down. From the way he was looking at Ayesha, it was obvious that he wasn’t going away without hearing her story, and Beatrice would not want to leave without him. Catherine was amused by Beatrice’s jealousy. Not that Beatrice was vain, of course, but she was used to being the most beautiful one in any room.
BEATRICE: I was not jealous! I was merely concerned that his fascination with Ayesha would put him in danger. Do not misunderstand me—I have great respect for our Madam President. But she has lived so long that she no longer understands human morality. Those around her must remind her of the need for empathy and compassion.
CATHERINE: Oh, so “concerned” is now a synonym for “jealous,” is it? And she’s certainly not my Madam President!
Ayesha, Princess of Meroë, Priestess of Isis, Queen of Kôr, and now President of the Alchemical Society, sat down on a corner of her desk and, with a faraway look in her eyes, began to speak.
“When my mother left me at the temple of Isis at Philae, I became just another of the postulants—that is the closest equivalent in English, I think—of the Goddess. In my father’s palace, there had been servants to tend to me and my sisters—but at the temple, we were all servants of the Goddess. The girls came from every corner of Egypt and beyond—the sophisticated salons of Alexandria, the temple complexes of Memphis, the merchant houses of Damascus and Tyre. There were girls from Athens and Carthage and Babylon, for Isis was worshipped throughout the known world. We were all equal—that is, servants in the house of the Goddess—and the priestesses did not let us forget it! Indeed, I was considered rather slow and old, for I had come to the temple on my twelfth birthday, and some of the novices had been there since they were seven. We woke at dawn and bathed in cold water, then oiled our skin and hair. For an hour before breaking our fast, we cleaned the temple, so it would be fresh for each day. After a breakfast of barley bread with butter and honey, and a mug of beer for each of us, we studied for the rest of the morning. I missed my mother, my sisters, and brother—but to learn as we were learning! No school now teaches as we were taught in the temple of Isis.
“The greatest of our teachers, the one whose image even today I hold in my heart, was an Assyrian named Heduana, the priestess in charge of novices when I myself was one. She had been a princess in her own country, but at the temple such worldly distinctions meant little. We were all equal in the sight of the Goddess, except for those ranks established within the temple itself—the novices, junior priestesses, senior priestesses, and of course the High Priestess herself. Even she, despite her power, was simply called Tera.
“You know—or perhaps you infants of the modern age do not know—the story of Isis, how she healed her husband, Osiris, after he was murdered by his brother Set, who had cut his body into pieces and scattered them across Egypt. Isis searched for his body parts, keening with grief like a falcon. Her tears flooded the Nile, which is why the Nile floods to this day. When she had found all the parts of his body, she assembled the pieces and brought Osiris back to life with herbs and spells. She was, in a sense, the first physician. When I grew older and was inducted into the mysteries of the temple as a priestess myself, I learned that the gods were metaphors, names for energic forces—that all the world, from the stars down to gems hidden in the rocks, was filled with these energic forces, and that we could use them to heal. As novices we studied all the plants in the temple garden, learning their names and properties, their uses in medicine. We helped the priestesses treat the sick and poor who came to the temple.
“So I grew up in that place, under the tutelage of Heduana, and of Tera herself. She had been a queen—the wife of foolish Ptolemy, called by his friends Auletes and his enemies Nothos, which means bastard, for he was illegitimate, and she was the mother of ill-fated Cleopatra. When her husband died, she had been sent to the temple to serve as High Priestess, for Cleopatra considered her own mother a rival for the throne. She had a curious physical feature—seven fingers on her left hand. Now it would be considered a deformity, a congenital abnormality. Then, it was seen as the mark of Isis, whose sacred number was seven. She was an effective, if exacting, High Priestess. She ruled the temple as efficiently as she has once ruled Egypt while her husband was in exile. The novices were frightened of her, but the priestesses treated her with respect. Heduana always told us that she was not as frightening as she appeared to inconsequential beings such as ourselves. But she said this with a smile, for she loved us and we loved her in return. Heduana was our leader and guide. She never allowed us to slack in our studies or shirk our responsibilities to the sick who came to see us. ‘You are serving the Goddess,’ she would say. ‘See that you do it well.’ I remember, once, a novice who used her energic powers to kill a mouse that had been bothering her at night, squeaking about her room. The next day she was sent back home to Thebes. All of the novices were assembled to watch her walk out through the lion gates, wearing the clothes she had arrived in rather than the white linen of the Goddess. It would, Heduana said, be a lesson to us all never to abuse our powers.”
“Yet you used your power to kill those vampires,” said Beatrice. She sounded both perplexed and accusing.
Ayesha turned to her. “I am not the girl I was then. I have lived and learned a great deal, and I do not value life as I did. What would Heduana think of me now? I do not know.” She looked grim.
Just then the door opened. In walked Kati with a coffee tray, followed by Lady Crowe bearing a plate of crescent pastries. “Hello, Catherine, Beatrice,” she said. “How nice to see you again. Do give my love to Mary and Justine, and of course little Diana, when you see them. Ayesha, can I borrow Kati for a while? I need help sorting through the receipts from the conference. Based on how much was eaten, you’d think we had put on a conference for elephants!”