Iras of the Empire

By Lynne Bergero

The novel Iras of the Empire is the story of a woman living at the collision point of imperial and spiritual power, seeking power and peace in a dangerous world. Iras enjoys the full protection of the Roman Empire as handmaiden to Procula, wife of Pontius Pilate. An orphan from a Nubian family, Iras lacks power or privilege of her own. She becomes family with the other servants - her best friends Mitos and Joseph – and takes comfort in remembrances of her mother’s healing herbs and balms, and her father’s wisdom from the astral realm. Yet she finds little respite from the casual brutality just beyond the palace walls and columns of soldiers that protect them on their journeys. She meets John the Baptist in the desert – he gives her hope yet she unknowingly aids in his degradation as she serves at a banquet in King Herod’s palace. She meets with joy the coming of Mitos’ and Joseph’s baby, but the hatred of one man for another drives Mitos to her death, and drives Iras to become at once the protecting and avenging angel. Blood on her hands numbs her fear of Pilate, but the risk of paying the penalty for her crime makes her flee.

On the road to Ephesus, a chance encounter with the handsome charioteer Mandulis sets her on a detour to find the remnants of her family in Meroe. There, in the Nubian capital that rivals Alexandria in its splendor, Iras discovers her father’s mother, a pantheon of goddesses and queens, love, leprosy, and betrayal. She takes up work in the temple to be close to Mandulis, only to find that his ambitions and pledge of fidelity to the Candace would make family life together impossible. The anger of another woman leads to false accusations of leprosy; Iras endures a humiliating examination at the hands of a corrupt judge. She cries out to her goddess Hathor but no consolation is given. Returning from the temple, she finds her accuser near death from an accident in the street – a moment for mercy, for indifference, or for vengeance?

Iras’ life moves on, and in time she marries Pasan, a successful silversmith in Ephesus. She herself becomes a prosperous shopkeeper on the agora by the harbor, one of the many women who practices healing and sacred prayers in service to the goddess Artemis. Yet a new religion is catching fire, prayer scrolls are burning in the streets and Artemis’s silver icons are melted down for scrap. Paul and Timothy preach of one god not made with human hands in church houses and lecture halls throughout Ephesus, and Iras is drawn into their orbit as her husband’s business and many like it feel the rising threat against the goddess and protector of their city. Friend and foe from the past return, and Iras faces a life altering decision as the tension between the silversmiths and defenders of the new faith in the Christ erupts into a riot.

Iras of the Empire will be enjoyed by those who appreciate historical fiction, mystical imagery, Christian literature, and the cross-cultural worlds of ancient Nubia, Jerusalem, and Ephesus. In particular, the depiction of the city of Meroe will be for many readers an exciting new discovery of an ancient civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynne Bergero
• Release date: Nov 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463767658

Book preview

Iras of the Empire

Lynne Bergero

About the Novel – Iras of the Empire

IRAS OF THE EMPIRE is the story of one woman’s quest for the source of power and peace in a dangerous world. Though a servant, Iras has the full protection of the Roman Empire as handmaiden to Procula, wife of Pontius Pilate. An orphan lacking power or privilege of her own, Iras makes family of the other servants, yet she finds little respite from the casual brutality just beyond the palace walls and columns of soldiers that protect them. She meets a prophet in the desert who gives her hope, only to help unknowingly in his degradation in King Herod’s palace. A sudden act of rage spills blood onto Iras’ hands – it numbs her fear of Pilate, but the risk of paying the penalty for her crime causes her to flee.

A chance encounter on the road with the handsome charioteer Mandulis sets Iras on a detour to find the remnants of her family in Meroe. There, in the Nubian capital that rivals Alexandria in its splendor, Iras discovers her father’s mother, a pantheon of goddesses and queens, love, leprosy, and betrayal. Accused and tried for being unclean, she cries out to her goddess Hathor but no consolation is given. She soon finds her accuser near death from an accident in the streets – a moment for mercy, for indifference, or for vengeance?

Iras’ life moves on, and in time she marries Pasan, a successful silversmith in Ephesus. She herself becomes a prosperous shopkeeper, one of the many women who practice healing and sacred prayers in service to the goddess Artemis. Yet a new religion is catching fire, prayer scrolls are burning in the streets and Artemis’ silver icons are melted down for scrap. Paul and Timothy preach throughout Ephesus of one god not made with human hands, and Iras is drawn into their orbit as her husband’s business and many like it feel the rising threat against the goddess and protector of their city. Friend and foe from the past return, and Iras faces a life altering decision as the tension between the silversmiths and defenders of the new faith erupts into a riot.

About the Author – Lynne Bergero

For many years, I have written poetry, stories, and essays exploring themes of love and spirit, nature and history, current events and social justice. I have published pieces in the BAC Street Journal and Protestants for the Common Good Newsletter. My unpublished collection entitled Riffs, and other recent pieces, navigate deep and mystic waters, or touch on quirky things real or imagined that get my brain all buzzy.

IRAS OF THE EMPIRE is my first novel; I’d love to hear what you think! Feel free to connect with me on Facebook, Goodreads, the Chicago Writer’s Association, and Smashwords.

Copyright © 2017 by Lynne Bergero

Dedication

This book is dedicated with love to my family, who taught me to believe in my dreams; and with gratitude to God, who renews us, unites us, and makes all things possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1 – Servant at Caesarea

Part 2 – Daughter of Nubia

Part 3 – Sorceress of Ephesus

Part 1 – Servant at Caesarea

She saw it with her eyes closed. Unaware that she had even fallen asleep, a blazing spear of lightening followed seconds later by a low rumble of thunder broke the deep slumber that fatigue, fear, and cold had cast upon her. Iras opened her eyes, blinking into another brilliant flash that faded quickly to black, but not so quickly that she didn’t see her house in the distance. The fire she had set in her hearth hours earlier no longer glowed, the shapes of the strangers in her home no longer strutted in her window frames.

In the darkness she moved closer, peering carefully into one of her windows to see where they were and what they were doing. Her eyes now accustomed to the darkness, she could see plainly the disorder they had made of her small tidy home, her few possessions strewn about and piled in reckless heaps here and there. The three intruders had each taken up a place on a rug or mat, their wineskins at their sides, now open and flattened, narrow red rivers glistening on the floorboards. Their weapons were also at their sides. They had burst through her door like a pack of hounds, and before she could ball up her fist one of them had pushed her to the wall with a knife at her throat, his other hand searching her body. The last man in the door shoved him in the face and pulled him back. Let her be, he growled, she’s too young and you know it. You’ll bring curses upon us again. He let her go with a sneer. She bolted past them through the door and down the path toward the woods.

Iras now moved around the corner of the small house, reaching behind the water jug near the front door where she kept the small knife she used for scaling fish and skinning rabbits. She tucked it in her belt and said a quick prayer to the Queen of Heaven. Iras knew she was no match for their strength, but she prayed that anger would overcome fear if she needed to blind or unman one of them to make her escape again.

She pushed open the door and closed it slowly behind her, but dropped quickly and silently to her knees as another flash of lightning pierced the darkness outside and within. She held her breath waiting for the drumming of the thunder. She held all three men in her gaze, they did not move – their snoring nearly drowned out the thunder, but not the pounding of her heart in her ears. Moving slowly along the wall, she reached a spot next to the eastern window with a false floor underneath. Her father had built it years ago for valuables, and in the year since her parents and brother perished Iras kept there a cache of money and the scrolls her father brought from his family home in Nubia. She lifted the boards carefully, pulled out two small pouches of gazelle hide, and tied them securely to the belt around her waist. Stumbling over the small bowls her mother used for mixing herbs, she grasped them before they could skitter across the floor and tucked them inside the top of her tunic. Her parent’s ivory wedding cups were next, a dozen carved by the finest craftsman in Meroe. Iras had kept them on a shelf, flanking an altar her mother had made to honor the goddess Taweret. The shelf now stood empty, and Iras stepped cautiously yet urgently among the sleeping men, her eyes begging the darkness to yield a glimpse of her precious ivory cups. Finding just two of them, buried among shards of pottery the men had bashed against the hearth, her eyes burned with tears of rage knowing that they had stolen the rest; family treasures soon to be bartered away by swine – drunk and slumbering, drooling and grasping the last things her family had left her.

Seeing her family altar desecrated, and her mother’s favorite idol clutched in the fat fist of the man who tried to ravage her, she relished revenge for a moment, fingering the small blade tucked in her belt. She could debone a fish, why not his hand? The moment passed as reason overcame rage – she was spared once, she might not be spared again. Queen of Heaven, Iras said under her breath, you know me, and you know these vermin. If evil needs doing to punish evil, let your will be done. Carefully cradling the two precious cups in her hand, she picked her way to the door and slipped back out into the night. She sat on her small front porch while she secured the ivory cups in her money pouch, when a bolt of lightning pierced the sky, streaked past her shoulder and burst through her front door. Iras jumped and ran down the path toward the woods. Turning back, she saw the men’s desperate forms as flames engulfed her home. Crouching in the darkness, her eyes straining against the bursts of light now coming from inside the house, she saw two men bolt through the doorway, running singed and smoking into the night. The third, the one who laid hands on her, did not escape the inferno.

By the time the fireball that was once her home had sent up its last columns of black smoke, it was near dawn and Iras was on the other side of the woods, on the road that led to the Bay of Ephesus. She knew the men were no longer a danger to her, but something was planted in her spirit last night. In the bleak stain of sadness from losing first her family and now her home, the kernel of something still darker took root, a fog that eclipsed her young heart as she fingered her knife in her ransacked home, an acrid smoke that stung her throat in her cry to the goddess for vengeance. This was a new shadow on her soul, and part of her prayed that it was passing - but only a small part.

* * *

Iras groped in the darkness of the servants’ quarters for the grapes and bread she’d stashed the night before. Finding them, she placed them in the small leather pouch lashed across her chest. She strapped on her sandals, wrapped her coarse, heavy cloak around her shoulders, picked up her water jug, and slipped out into the cool morning air. Two years and many rivers, islands, and deserts lay between Iras and the last home she knew with her family. She made her way in the world like most her age without kin, wealth, or land - a laborer when she could be, a servant when she had to be. Never having endured the nightmare of slavery, Iras now served the wife of the prefect of Rome, tending to her needs at home, on official travels, and as they were now, on holiday.

The moon was a faint sliver low in the sky; a few stars still twinkled in the deep blue of the early dawn. The only sounds Iras heard were her own footfalls on the gravelly ground, and the peeps and chirps of the morning birds rustling in the shrubs that lined her path. In the shadows, Iras’ sharp eyes teased out the small rabbits hiding in the underbrush. She envied them their fur as she tightened her cloak around her shoulders, but said a quick prayer to the Queen of Heaven that they might be spared when Azor and the other young men come out later to hunt for the evening feast.

Azor had told Iras how to follow the path to the lagoons, and told her that if she got there just after dawn it would be well worth the walk. He was an early riser like Iras, but had to stay back to start the ovens for the day’s baking. Iras’ mistress Procula was enjoying her holiday – sleeping late in her sister Helena’s villa was a simple luxury she couldn’t afford in her palace at Caesarea – so she wouldn’t need Iras until much later in the morning. Iras was free to spend this time as she pleased.

As her skin warmed with her walking and the rising of the sun, Iras shook off her fog of sleepiness and focused on the hillsides and fields of Samaria unfolding around her. Turning in a circle to get her bearings, she saw the small stand of houses she’d just left rise above her as she made her way down toward the lagoons. The footpath ahead was a brown ribbon meandering through gently rolling grasses, flowering shrubs, and towering trees. Through the trees in the far distance she could see glints of sunlight bouncing off the water. The sun was fully above the horizon now, and she quickened her pace to get to the lagoons to see – what? Azor had not told her exactly what. But he said that of all the creatures that the empire held, these were the most magical. From her childhood, Iras was used to going to the lake near her house in the early morning hours with her brother Stephanus and casting for fish for breakfast. What could she see in the sea or sky here that she hadn’t seen before? Stephanus had told her tales of the fierce predators and gentle giants brought to Rome to delight Emperor Tiberius – could one of them have escaped and come to the lagoons of Samaria? Her brother had told her tall tales, could Azor be doing the same?

Iras came to the fork in the road where Azor told her to turn toward the old fire pit. It was circled in stones and dug into the ground, and had been there for as long as anyone could remember, he’d said. Mostly it had been used by hunters or soldiers cooking their meals. But when the moon was full, it was used by the Daughters of Cybele. They were expelled from the temple for indecent practices and were forced to carry out their goddess worship in secret. Azor wouldn’t tell Iras what the practices were, he just told her to stay away from the Daughters, and never go near the fire pit at night. Rather than discouraging her, the promise of mystery and magic drew her to linger for a moment over the charred branches and smoky stones, stirring her toe in the ash of what was for a glimpse of what may be.

Moving on, Iras could see the clearing beyond the trees. The grass and shrubs were giving way to bare earth, as the water was salty and not kind to green growing things. She could see something else – something puzzling, as the morning sun looked like molten gold in the sky yet the water glowed hot pink like the breaking dawn. As she made her way through the last stand of trees, she saw in the distance that this pink mass was not the water, but something hovering above the water. She continued walking slowly and stopped in her tracks when here, there, and everywhere in the mass, there arose a long neck, a white face, a black beak. First two, then five, then a dozen and a dozen more, then too many to count. The heads turned slowly in all directions, the curvaceous bills and sleek graceful necks giving way to powerful shoulders and majestic wings. Their bodies were bigger than wine jugs at a wedding feast, but their feathers were a miracle of grace and precision, like delicate slivers of mosaic tile laid one by one by a master hand. When they began to stretch their necks, cock their tails, spread their wings, and generally show off to each other, Iras dropped to her knees in delight. They were magnificent other-worldly creatures overlaid by ten-thousand rose petals and lit from within by the sun. Only their long skinny legs made them look less than celestial. These were not birds, these were bird-gods.

Iras sat cross-legged on the dirt, mesmerized, feeling at one with them in a way she couldn’t explain. She felt that way about all animals, and the trees, the lakes and the sky. Iras was grateful to live in a place of safety in Pilate’s household, and mostly enjoyed serving the needs of his wife Procula. Procula was wise and kind, and when Iras missed her mother, Procula and the other women of the household reminded her that she was not alone. Yet the times she felt most at peace were when she was outside, with no roof above her and no walls to block the wind. Something was in the air – she listened for it, and sometimes, she could hear it.

The sun was climbing higher; Iras tossed her cloak off her shoulders. Feeling thirsty, she remembered she hadn’t had her breakfast yet. She pulled out her leather pouch, spread her cloak before her and laid out her meal. The grapes were a little warm now, but they were juicy and filling. The bread was a little stale, but it was Azor’s mother’s special honey loaf and it was delicious. With a few sips of water, it went down well. Reluctantly, Iras soon had to rise up and get ready to leave. She took in another long look at her rose-colored companions. By now they had moved further out into the water and were busily plunking their bills below the surface in search of their own morning meal. Iras backed up, watching them as she made her way back to the trees, locking the memory into her mind. When she felt the grass again under her feet, she turned and hastened back to Helena’s house.

They’re called flamingoes! Azor yelled as he saw Iras running through the yard toward the ovens. The reason for her smile was unmistakable. I’ll tell you about them later, but you have to hurry and get washed. Helena will be waking up Procula soon. Iras ran up to Azor and threw her arms around his sweaty neck in joy and thanks. She wrapped her cloak around her hand and grabbed a hot loaf from the cooling rack, and raced around the corner of the house to quickly bathe before going in to attend to Procula.

* * *

After helping Procula dress, Iras joined Azor with Helena’s other servants in the courtyard for instructions for the evening’s festivities. Iras was to clean and repair the sandals of the visitors who were staying overnight when she wasn’t attending to Procula. In addition, she was to help clean and set up the banquet room and help with service during dinner. Azor and the other male servants were to move the furniture and set up the massive water and wine jugs, then some would go hunting while others slaughtered the goats and pigs for the feast.

Normally, Iras would have worked with the other girls preparing the herbs, flowers, and incense for the dining hall and courtyards. But this time, she was glad to be in the small storage room polishing dozens of golden goblets and platters by herself. The large storage room for the jugs and oil lamps was across the hall. As she sat there quietly doing her work she could hear the boys and men talking about the people who were coming to town or passing through. Iras made fast friends with Azor, Sulla, and the other young servants as soon as she got to Helena’s house - the older boys had more freedom of movement and knowledge of the intrigues of the empire, so tales of their masters’ and mistresses’ exploits always helped the time and toil to pass more quickly.

He’s depraved and he can’t control his passions, Iras heard Azor say from across the hall, as he and Sulla rolled the large jugs from their alcoves for the older men to take to the banquet hall.

Well is the king here himself, or just his chef? Sulla asked.

Just his chef. I saw him in the marketplace. His cart was loaded with more exotic beasts than I’d ever seen before. He likes to try new dishes to impress the king. As for the king, he’s at home, he doesn’t like to leave his palace much these days.

Probably because someone would kill him if he did, and no one would miss him, said Sulla. I always heard there was a death threat on his head, or maybe it’s a family curse, said Sulla.

The Herod’s are the curse, said Joram, Azor’s grandfather, in a deep gravelly voice that made Iras lean closer toward the doorway to hear. "You should know this Sulla, not tall tales, but the truth. And the truth about the Herods is that each