Goddess of Yesterday: A Tale of Troy

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Even though I had spoken the word “dowry” to coax Menelaus to guard the treasure, and even though last night Axon had used that same word, twelve-year-olds do not think of marriage.

  No doubt possession of an island helped my looks. No doubt I would appear beautiful to any man in need of treasure. But Axon was old. Older than Menelaus. He was fat and wrinkled and his toes were too long. He did not even have an altar at his front door so that gods could come and go.

  But the danger was more profound. Marriage is a vow. Dared I, in the company of gods, take a vow in the name of Callisto? I, Anaxandra?

  It is an offense to the gods to throw away your lineage, since the gods chose it for you. I had offended and did not shrink from the offense. I had stolen a birthright and did not shrink from that either. But steal a marriage? Axon would want sons. He would believe those sons to carry the blood of Nicander. But they would not.

  “Axon tells me Nicander's daughter is fifteen,” said Menelaus. “I would not have guessed this. You are nearly as small as my Hermione, who is nine.”

  Actually I was shaped like twig off a tree and probably looked precisely like Hermione. If I said I was fifteen, Menelaus would make the dowry arrangements immediately and I would be Axon's wife by nightfall. But if I admitted to being twelve, I would be unmasked.

  “I am fifteen, but because of my lengthy illness,” I said, “I am behindhand and have not yet become a woman.”

  A potential husband would think twice when he learned that. Suppose his bride were barren. Suppose she could not give him sons. Of what use was such a woman, even with an island?

  “I see,” said the king. “Axon and I will discuss it further. Meanwhile, you will come home with me and play with Hermione. Come. We set off for Amyklai.”

  I had been told that it was two days' walk to Amyklai, a thing I could not imagine, since the hike across Siphnos at its very widest took but two hours. “Wouldn't it be quicker to sail?” I asked.

  “There is no water. We are leaving the sea behind.” And with that impossible remark, Menelaus put me in the care of the two serving women, and all three of us in the care of a male slave named Tenedos.

  Tenedos led us through the alleys of Gythion and north of the town. We never passed through a gate and we never saw a wall. If I were attacking Menelaus, I thought, I would sail quietly up the far coast and seize all the tiny villages in every tiny inlet, and then I would approach Gythion from behind and take it by land instead of by sea.

  But these were the thoughts of a pirate, not a princess. I had to think of other things. And then I laughed aloud, for there indeed were other things.

  The Trojan horses.

  Their great rippling flanks gleamed where grooms had brushed them. Into their long tossing manes had been tied ribbons and on their traces were medallions, glittering in the first rays of sun. One matched pair was black as starless night. Another pair was sable and several were white. The horses were very nervous and people stayed well back when one stallion reared and snorted. He was dark creamy gold, like topaz. A strike from his great hoof would break your leg. His groom spoke tenderly to him. “Good boy, Sea Belt,” crooned the groom, and slowly the horse calmed, although it continued to mutter under its breath.

  The eldest son of Troy's king Priam, Hector, was famous as a tamer of horses. I had not understood how a man could achieve fame for putting reins on a horse. Now I knew. I edged closer.

  The groom smiled at me. “You like horses?”

  “I love horses,” I told him.

  He put an apple core in my hand. The topaz horse whickered softly and lowered its great head into my palm to take the treat. Then the stallion nodded its head up and down as if saying thanks.

  “Trojans speak Greek,” said the groom, “although with strange accents. But it means that I can use the same names for these horses that their trainers used. This is Sea Belt. The black pair with stars between their eyes are Sea Star and Sea Reach.”

  “I had a puppy once named Seaweed,” I told him.

  “Isn't that interesting? I ran into a captain last year whose ship dog was named Seaweed.”

  My heart was sundered. Should I ask for the name of that captain? The age of his dog, Seaweed? The names of that captain's sons… and daughter?

  The topaz horse nibbled the grass at my feet and I pressed my face into its long windblown mane.

  Tenedos said, “Little princess, you must stay beside me. Take my hand, please.”

  I turned my back on the groom, who had perhaps listened to the bark of my puppy, Seaweed, and shared a cup with my father, Chrysaor. I put them out of my mind, for mine must be the mind of Callisto.

  Behind the Trojan horses were carts filled with Trojan gifts and Siphnos treasure. My dowry.

  On my birth island, there had been one or two carts. Their wheels were always breaking from jouncing over stones, so everyone preferred donkeys. On Siphnos, there had been several carts, whose proud owners painted them in vivid colors. But wheels remained a problem, for the punishment taken by wheels quickly destroys them.

  These carts were different. Some had not two wheels, but four. Some were pulled not by one mule, but by a pair of oxen. One immense wagon had four oxen. The wheels of this cart were bound in bronze. It kept the wheels alive longer, Tenedos explained.

  For this journey, the king himself would stand up in a chariot until he had left the crowds behind, while Axon and the other Gythion nobles walked alongside, spilling wine to keep the feet of the king safe on his journey.

  The path was so wide that two carts could pass each other, and it was not simply made of beaten dirt, but spread with gravel. “What a remarkable path,” I said to Tenedos.

  “It is called a road. The gravel makes the way smooth for wheels. When it rains upon such a road, there are no ruts and no mud. And when we reach the king's palace, the road will be paved.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Slabs of stone,” said Tenedos, “as if the palace courtyard extended out beyond the walls, all the way down the citadel ramp and far into the valley.”

  “The king must have many men, if they can be spared to lift stones into place for a cart track.”

  “Menelaus' kingdom is far flung,” said Tenedos in a tired voice. Perhaps he had once thought himself safe from the far-flung power of Menelaus. Perhaps he had once been free. “There are about three thousand people in Amyklai,” Tenedos told me, “and Menelaus owns a dozen such cities.”

  My jaw dropped at the thought of so many people on earth. And had not Menelaus himself told me that his brother Agamemnon had an even larger kingdom? And had not everybody said Troy was the largest of all? How many people lived and breathed in this world?

  “In his palace of Amyklai alone,” Tenedos went on, “are five hundred female slaves and about that many slave children.”

  He himself must have been a child when captured, for if he had been an adult, he would have been killed.

  When we had left the city behind, the king stepped out of his chariot. His men removed the wheels, folded up the basket and set it on top of the four-ox wagon and the king walked, as did we all. A white mule with exceptionally long ears walked placidly near him, in case he should wish to ride, but I knew that he would not. I have heard that in some parts of the world, people do not use their legs. I would not want to abandon my body like that and a king among his troops would never do so.

  A slave named Pyros jogged back and forth along the line, making sure every cart rolled smoothly, every slave walked swiftly and every order was obeyed. “Pyros” means “fire,” but in the overseer's case, it was not the comforting fire of the hearth. The slaves were afraid of Pyros and it infected me. When Pyros whipped a laggard on both cheeks with a leather-bound rod, my fingers tightened convulsively on Tenedos' hand.

  “It's all right, princess,” said Tenedos softly. “The overseer will not scold you.”

  “Isn't your name, Tenedos, the name of an island?”

  “Yes, l
ady. Tenedos is the island of my birth. It is not far from Troy, but we were never Trojan allies. We thought ourselves neutral and a friend to all. We were wrong. When Tenedos was sacked, we younger boys were taken as slaves, but none of us were permitted to keep our names, as it was too much trouble. We are all just called Tenedos.”

  I knew what it was to be sacked. I knew the number of bodies left unburied and the sobs of women in the boats. “When was this?” I asked, wondering how old he was. House slaves last better than field slaves.

  “When I was ten, which—”

  Pyros thrashed Tenedos on the back of the neck, where the spine ends, and hit him a second time on the side of his head, just above the ear. Tenedos staggered slightly.

  “Do not bother a princess with your past!” snapped Pyros. “You are nothing. Your past does not matter.”

  Tenedos apologized to me.

  I spoke as a princess would. “I will decide whether a slave requires punishment,” I said sharply to Pyros. But perhaps a princess would not say that, because she would not notice how a slave was treated. I had much to consider.

  Without warning, and although it was midday, we entered a shocking darkness. It was black yet green, filling the world from earth to sky. It was the dark of trees and yet not of trees. It was evil. “What is this?” I whispered. I wound my fingers around each other to keep from grabbing the hand of Tenedos yet again.

  “It is called a forest, my princess. Many trees in one place, so dense they blot out the sky, like the evil message of an eclipse. I too hate the forest. On my island, like yours, few trees stand together. We will walk for an hour among these pines before the forest ends.”

  Nicander's bard used to sing a poem:

  Seven ways of terror

  in a forest all of pine.

  The empty.

  Now I understood the words.

  “Do not leave the path,” said Tenedos, as if I had considered this for one moment. “The leaves that brush your face are the souls of those who died unburied.”

  But Pyros heard this and hit him again. “Don't talk nonsense, slave. Princess, the trees are just firewood. One day men will cut it all down. Anyway, we are armed. Neither man nor beast will hurt you.”

  Tenedos and I were not worried about man or beast. When the overseer moved on, Tenedos hissed to scare away spirits. “May the daimon of this grove take Pyros and—” With an effort, Tenedos stopped himself from cursing in my presence. I was sorry, because a good collection of curses is a useful thing, and Tenedos probably knew some I had not yet heard. I almost told Tenedos that I agreed with him, Pyros was just a dog tick, but remembered in time that I was the princess Callisto.

  At last we broke out from the evil shade.

  Before us lay tilted fields sliced apart by dark hollows and rocky gorges. The Sparta before us was an unquiet land, skeletal, spines of rock and ribs of stone. White and black and brown sheep wandered, too many to count even with the word “thousand.” Flocks of wild doves burst out of bushes. Before us were mountains so high they invaded the gods' sky.

  So this was the Main Land. How could the people of Menelaus bear to live under these great mountains, close to the dark of that awful forest?

  But they did not live close, I discovered, for we walked on and on.

  We passed fields of flax being harvested with scythes. I had never seen this, and I found the rhythm and the gleam of the curved blades quite beautiful. Having set in motion my new life, could I keep it swinging back and forth, like a scythe? Or like a scythe, would it cut my throat?

  We came upon slaves knee-deep in pools of water, treading on the flax to soften the stalks so that the linen thread could be removed. It was strange water, having motion but not waves.

  “The Eurotas River,” Tenedos told me. “It runs even in the heat of summer.”

  I had never seen a river, only seasonal brooks from spring rains. And in all my life I had heard of only one river, the river at Troy, the great Hellespont. Since his birth island was close to Troy, Tenedos must have seen that. “Is this what the Hellespont is like?” I said eagerly.

  He nearly laughed out loud. “No. Up this little stream, one man could pole a boat. In the Hellespont, forty rowers could row till their hearts burst and hardly make progress against the current.”

  We passed through fields of clover and red wheat, olive orchards frothing silver leaves like the foamy sea and clusters of tiny stone houses. At the doorstep of a cottage, an old woman milking her goat let me drink out of the pail. It was warm and thick.

  “This Main Land,” I said to Tenedos, “is a wondrous place. I did not know there were mountains as high as gods. I never dreamed of roads, or roads made of stone. You know, the first time I saw stairs—” I chopped off my statement. It was Anaxandra who could remember the first time she saw stairs. Callisto had been born into a house with stairs. “Tell me about the family of King Menelaus,” I ordered him.

  Tenedos broke off high slender grass and chewed the end of it. “The household is confusing. Menelaus married Helen, a daughter of the king of Sparta. From this marriage, Menelaus' land greatly increased. All you see within the embrace of those distant mountain ranges and all the way back behind us to the sea is the kingdom of Menelaus. Now, Helen also has twin brothers, much older than she, named Castor and Pollux, who also possess much land.”

  “I know about Castor and Pollux,” I said delightedly. “They sailed with Jason on the Argo to bring back the Golden Fleece. Every bard who ever visited Siphnos sang of Jason's voyage.”

  “You will hear them sing even more now,” said Tenedos dryly. “Castor and Pollux never tire of hearing how wonderful they are. The twins have even coaxed the astronomers at the palace to name stars in their honor.”

  A princess should not let a slave speak badly of his betters. I should have Pyros use his whip. But I wanted Tenedos silent about my stair mistake, so I let it pass. I said, “I have never heard of the naming of stars.”

  He stared at me. “But how do you study them, as they cross the sky every night?” When I had no answer to this, Tenedos chewed down hard on his grass and said, “Queen Helen has a sister Clytemnestra, and Clytemnestra married the older brother of Menelaus, who is Agamemnon, strongest king in the world. So two sisters married two brothers. Agamemnon's far-flung lands are beyond those mountains on the north. When the brothers visit each other, they do not cross the mountain range, for the pass is fit only for wild goats. Each king returns to the sea and sails to his brother's port.”

  I drew a picture in my head of marriage lines between the brothers. I drew lines down for the children of each king. With a sickening thud in my heart, I realized that I had paid little attention to the genealogy of Callisto. No noble child exists who cannot preach the family genealogy. I would be expected to recite it back ten generations. I began piecing together the lineage. I knew the parents and grandparents of both Petra and Nicander. Could I recall anything more than that?

  “The sisters Helen and Clytemnestra are the most beautiful women in the world,” said Tenedos. “Helen is so lovely that goddesses are jealous. But even the jealousy of a goddess cannot hurt Helen. In fact, nothing can hurt Helen, for she does not have an earthly father. She is the daughter of the Lord God Zeus.”

  I had known this, of course; all the world knew. But now I would meet her. Was Helen fully human or would I be able to tell that she was half god? Was her blood red like mine? Would she know things, the way immortal gods did? Would she know, for example, that I was not Callisto? “What did Zeus look like?” I asked. “Did Helen's earthly mother tell anybody? Was he a giant with huge muscles and a curly beard?”

  Tenedos shook his head. “Zeus came to Helen's mother in the form of a swan.”

  “Oh.” I was blank. “What is a swan?”

  Tenedos sucked in his breath and held it.

  In his silence, I heard a thousand noises: the creak of wheels and axles; the panting and wheezing of donkeys and mules; the clopping feet of oxen and hor
ses; the slap of sandals; the talk and laughter of men.

  “Little princess,” said the slave softly, “the court of Menelaus and Helen is sophisticated, and you have been isolated. You have never seen glass, don't know what a river is, have never walked on a road, do not know the names of stars, have never seen a swan. Here is my advice to you. Stay silent. Be fearful of Helen. The daughter of a god pays no price for any action she takes. She cannot suffer and so does not discern the suffering of others.”

  How dare a slave speak like that of his queen? I was angry with him.

  But—Listen carefully, said my goddess. You enter a strange world under a false name. He is an ally. Be thankful.

  Pyros missed nothing. He was beside us in an instant, eager to inflict pain. “The slave has offended you?” he asked me eagerly, flourishing his whip. I thought I knew how he had come by the name Fire. He burned to hurt Tenedos.

  And then I saw sailing on the Eurotas River several large and beautiful birds whose slender heads turned on remarkable long thin white necks to study me. “In the river,” I said to Pyros. “What are those?”

  Pyros turned but saw nothing worthy of comment.

  “Those are swans, princess,” said Tenedos.

  In such a shape had Zeus visited the mother of Helen. How white Helen's skin must be. How long and slender her throat. How graceful her profile.

  We walked on. I dreamed of swans and cold clear gods.

  “Swans are vicious,” said Tenedos. “Be careful of swans, my princess.”

  THE WALLS OF SIPHNOS were a sheepfold compared to the walls of Amyklai.

  Men standing on the shoulders of men standing on the shoulders of men could not have touched the top of Menelaus' wall. Above his immense gate, stone lions snarled at one another. They were not painted the tawny color of the wild, but scarlet. Their eyes and fangs and claws were laid with gold leaf.