“Stand, child,” said the High Priestess. Ayesha lifted her head up from the stone floor. She was allowed to stand now, right? She looked up sideways at her mother, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod. She stood, awkwardly because she was feeling light-headed. For a moment the temple seemed to shimmer around her, as though it too were a mirage. Stop that, she told herself. After all, she was a princess of Meroë. She would not allow herself to be intimidated by this situation or any other.
The High Priestess stood, put the black cat on the stone chair behind her, and descended from her dais. The cat meowed in protest, but then sat like a statue of Bast with its tail curled around its legs. When the High Priestess reached out her left hand, Ayesha almost drew back in surprise and consternation. On that hand the High Priestess had seven fingers! But she had been trained well, by both her mother and Nana Amakishakhete. She did not flinch as the High Priestess lifted her chin, so that her eyes, which had been cast down in a sign of respect, looked directly into the dark eyes of the High Priestess, who considered her with as little emotion as though she were a rather interesting insect.
“Do you truly wish to serve the great Isis, with your heart and mind and spirit? Will you pledge yourself to her, leaving your father and mother, your sisters and brother, your house and your lands, giving up the ordinary life of a woman, to become one of our sisterhood, from now until the hour of your death?”
“Yes, High Priestess,” she answered as steadily as she could.
“My name is Tera, and here in this temple, my order is the word of the Goddess. You must obey me as you would her. That is the first of many things you will learn here.” The High Priestess withdrew her hand—Ayesha could feel a tingling in her chin where the High Priestess had rested her seven fingers. She turned to Queen Merope and said, “I accept your daughter into the temple as a novice. She shall go with Heduana to the dormitory where the novices sleep and learn the rituals of our order. If she serves the Goddess well for a year, she shall become a priestess at the Festival of the Inundation. You may bid her farewell. She is a daughter of Isis now, and the priestesses are her family. The tributes you have brought, which I understand are in a wagon outside the temples gates, may be brought in.”
Queen Merope bowed once again to the High Priestess, then turned to Ayesha. “Serve the Goddess well, my daughter,” she said.
Ayesha wished she could embrace her mother. She would have liked, once again, to inhale her mother’s scent—the fragrant oils in her wig, combined with the warm, human smell of her skin. But it would not be dignified in front of all these people.
Queen Merope leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, then turned and walked back out of the room, leaving her daughter behind. Ayesha watched her depart with trepidation. Did she truly want this new life? Was she ready to be a priestess of Isis? She did not know.
MARY: Why in the world are you starting with Ayesha? This is supposed to be a book about us.
CATHERINE: Our readers won’t understand what happens later if I don’t tell them about Ayesha—how she became a priestess and her time at the temple. Anyway, Egypt is very fashionable nowadays. Everyone wants Egyptian furniture, clothes, jewelry. Why not a book?
MARY: But this book isn’t about Egypt. It’s about—well, England. And us, as I said.
CATHERINE: Fine, I’ll start with us. But it’s not going to be anywhere near as exciting.
Mary Jekyll stared out the train window. She was so tired of traveling! Three days ago, she, her friend Justine Frankenstein, and her sister Diana Hyde had boarded the Orient Express in Budapest. They had disembarked at the Gare de l’Est in Paris, made their way to the Gare du Nord, and boarded another train from Paris to Calais. This train was not an express—to Mary, it seemed unbearably slow. Sometime that afternoon they would arrive in Calais and catch the ferry across the English Channel. Then yet another train from Dover to Charing Cross Station in London. And then a cab. And then—finally, finally—home. Sometimes in their travels she had missed the Jekyll residence at 11 Park Terrace terribly. Now, all the details of it came back to her: the front hall with its dark wood paneling and the mirror in which she checked to make sure that her hat was on straight, the parlor with a portrait of her mother above the mantel, the library where her father had once planned his experiments, the kitchen where Mrs. Poole presided, and her own bedroom, her very own bed, soft and cool. She would sleep in her own bed tonight.…
“You look very far away,” said Justine with a smile. Diana was asleep, sprawled on the seat beside Justine, with her head in the Giantess’s lap. At least she was not snoring!
“I was thinking about how happy I’m going to be to get home,” said Mary. “But what about you? Will you miss Europe?” After all, Justine was not English, although she had lived in England for more than a century—she had been born in Switzerland. Would she miss being able to speak French and German when they were back in London?
“I will miss it—a little,” said Justine. “Although I am in no sense a gourmande, I will miss the Austrian pastries. But I think I will miss our friends more.” Irene Norton, and her maids Hannah and Greta, in Vienna. Carmilla Karnstein and Laura Jennings in Styria. And of course Mary’s former governess Mina Murray and Count Dracula in Budapest. Without their help, the Athena Club would never have been able to rescue Lucinda Van Helsing from her father, the despicable Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who had been conducting experiments that turned his daughter into that dreadful thing—a vampire!
LUCINDA: Catherine, if you’ll forgive my interrupting, it really is not such a dreadful thing to be a vampire. I have a different diet than you do, that is all.
CATHERINE: Can’t you all just go away and let me write this book?
DIANA: Not if you’re going to get the details wrong! And you should be nicer to Lucinda. She can’t help being a blood-sucking creature of darkness.
CATHERINE: What sort of trash have you been reading now?
LUCINDA: Of darkness? But I do not require darkness.
Diana snorted in her sleep. Well, at least she was asleep! On the Orient Express, she had pestered Mary endlessly: Why did she have to wear women’s clothes? It was so much easier traveling as a boy. Justine was traveling as a boy, or rather man, so why couldn’t she? And why couldn’t they have taken one of Count Dracula’s puppies? There were plenty in the litter. And why couldn’t she have some money? Yes, all right, the last time she had stolen some of Mary’s francs to gamble with, but she had won more at Écarté. Anyway, it was so boring on the train. She would probably die of boredom.
“Because Justine is over six feet tall, and it’s too conspicuous for her to travel as a woman,” Mary had told her. “You are not over six feet tall—you’re not even five feet tall—and we need you to share a cabin with me. And because I don’t think Alpha or Omega would appreciate having one of the Count’s white wolfdogs in the house, plus Mrs. Poole would have a fit, and then where would we be?” But she had finally given Diana five francs, just to make her stop talking and go away. Diana had come back that evening with fifteen, won from a card game with the porters. Mary, thoroughly ashamed of her sister, had given half of it back in tips.