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moon shedding her pale light throughout the clearing. Collapsing on his front legs, he felt the cool earth beneath him. He was the earth, was the collective spirit that drove the maddened women to throw themselves on the exhausted deer and rip it apart with their hands and teeth in a euphoric frenzy, smearing the animal’s rich blood across their breasts and faces, bathing in its life force, drinking in the hot liquid from its dying body.
    He felt the ripping of his flesh. The mind-numbing pain and draining of his energies mixed with the renewal which the flesh and blood brought the Bacchantes.
    Somewhere out of the deep well of his mind he heard: All of this has taken place before and all of it will take place again, into eternity, into eternity, into eternity ….
    He came to in his own body. He was freezing and his limbs tingled, still half asleep. The savage scene of the Bacchantes blurred with the gently swaying trees and the song of the cicadas. He barely noticed as the blood-spattered women raised him up in their moon-pale arms. They chanted a discordant hymn as they wound their way through the pine groves, past the village, to the harbor at the bottom of the hill.
    Raising his head, he saw more women dressed in shimmering translucent gowns of silver tissue. They reminded him of naiads and sea nymphs, Priestesses of Isis.
    They were here for him .
    A fabulous golden barge bearing silken lilac sails rose up from the water, the gold's hue reflected by the tranquil sea. From inside, he could hear the lulling sound of harps. The heavy smell of incense wafted up from the vessel, swirling around his head, and he inhaled the musky odor of lotus blossoms.
    Surely this was a vision of the Gods .
    The naiads and sea nymphs bowed.
    The Priestess of Dionysus returned their reverence. “Dionysus brings you greetings from his sacred groves on the hills of Tarsus.”
    A girl with a wreath of white roses crowning her pale locks came forward. “The Great God is welcomed here to the womb of Isis––to the Mystery of Love.”
    The girl leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, then removing her crown of roses, placed it solemnly over Antony’s dark hair.
    Like a bewitched sleepwalker, he found himself on his feet again as he made his way up the gangplank into the golden barge.

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    The scent of Syrian incense and moonflowers mingled with the sea air to create an intoxicating perfume which lulled Antony’s senses as he stepped into the banquet hall of Cleopatra’s barge. Candles lit the chamber with a warm glow, the light sparkling off the precious gems of the elegantly dressed courtiers.
    Still half-hallucinatory with the power of the God, he took in the wall paintings. Every inch was covered in the spare Egyptian style depicting the erotic joining of one soul with another, but before Antony had a chance to examine the scene closely, the nymph-like creatures who had welcomed him aboard this floating temple of love silently took his hands and led him to a couch at the head of a large banquet table.
    The solemn beating of drums sounded as a mummy, carried by two priests wearing masks of the dark Jackal God, Anubis, appeared.
    “Anubis, Guide of the Dead and Opener of the Way!” called out one of the priests in a gloomy voice. “Drink and be merry, for someday you will die!”
    For a moment the stillness of death hung over the room. Antony sat in the quiet of its powerful grip, but the spell was broken by the delighted laughter of one of the young naiads, like tinkling bells pealing through the banquet hall.
    Antony realized he was surrounded by the Bacchantes who had been with him in the hills, and judging by their dress, the priests and priestesses of Isis. There was goodwill and merriment throughout the hall as the people feasted. He looked down at the delicacies before him on the table but his lips had gone numb and his head seemed to float, making him too disoriented to eat.
    Two attendants,