by Laura Gill
DANAË
Laura Gill
Copyright © 2016 by Laura Gill
All rights reserved worldwide
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ALSO BY LAURA GILL
Helen’s Daughter
The Orestes Trilogy
Knossos
PROLOGUE
The rowers, churning the surf with their oars, back the ship onto the beach. I hear the crunch of gravel, and feel the hull scrape against solid land. Patiently, I wait under the striped awning the captain has erected for my comfort while the men hammer in the chocks and lower the gangplank, but all the while I tremble with an anticipation unseemly for my advanced years. Argolis. I had not thought to see my birthplace again.
When all is ready, the captain offers his arm and we descend onto the beach, where two richly arrayed chariots and a lady’s litter await. There are honor guards in shining bronze, though the citadel of Tiryns looms on its rock directly behind, and commoners turned out to see what the fuss is about. I recognize my grandson Alcaeus, and with him my great-grandson Amphitryon, whom I have not seen since he was ten years old.
The captain hands me over to my escort with a flourish. “Here is the Queen Mother Danaë, delivered safe from Seriphos.”
I had hoped for a quieter entry into Tiryns, and even sent a messenger ahead with instructions that there should be no fuss. My legs ache sometimes, and I tire more easily, and I have never really enjoyed being the center of attention. But my kinsmen are determined, I see, so for courtesy’s sake I smile and endure.
Alcaeus, acting as the warden of Tiryns that he is, welcomes me on behalf of the family and his brother Alektryon, king of Mycenae, onto Argive soil. So Alektryon is behind the spectacle. My eldest surviving grandson relishes grand displays, and as proof there are now libations poured onto land and sea. The captain receives a silver bracelet. A goat is sacrificed to Poseidon. I let the men perform the rituals, nodding and playing my part when necessary, while wishing someone had remembered to provide an old woman with a chair.
Amphitryon has appointed himself my personal protector. “How are you, Mother Danaë?” He smiles unabashedly. Like his father and uncles, he has the look of Perseus Eurymedon: dark-haired and husky, with the lumbering gracelessness of a bull in the megaron. How he has grown since his last visit to Seriphos!
“I am well.” Another great-grandmother might complain that her joints hurt, or that bright Helios’s chariot burned too hot, but I do not gripe around my descendants. Clearly, they have put much effort into welcoming me, though the frequent mention of Alektryon’s name makes me suspect that my grandson of Mycenae is using the occasion to magnify his glory. I blink. The day is cloudless. I hope my descendants will soon finish placating the gods. Argives might love these long-winded speeches and ceremonies, but I have been a woman of Seriphos for more than fifty years, and find that I much prefer the more direct, self-effacing customs of the islands.
“You know, I am to be married.” Amphitryon thrums with a natural energy that despises ceremonies and silence. He is somewhat awkward in his own skin, I see. Manhood has not been kind to him. His face is red, covered with pimples, and his hand, when he takes mine, feels clammy. I know of herbal remedies that might help him, but I suspect that he, like his grandfather, is a typical young man who pays little heed to personal cleanliness, and who balks at the advice of old women. I doubt he even notices his condition. If he will not help himself, then I will have to find a way to maneuver around his pigheadedness.
I squeeze his hand. “Yes.” We should not interrupt the sacred rites with idle conversation, even though they are now praising King Alektryon for his generosity to Zeus and the Two Ladies. “You may tell me about it later.”
At last, the rituals conclude, the sailors are released, and my grandson and great-grandson escort me to the waiting litter. My maid comes from the ship to join me; the cushion she carries is not necessary, because the interior is stuffed with pillows—too many, it seems, and all of them infused with a different scent. With difficulty, I suppress the urge to sneeze.
In the citadel, Astydameia, Alcaeus’s wife, welcomes me by kissing the air beside my cheeks. She appears reserved and stiff, and her greeting seems like no greeting at all. There is a saying in Hellas nowadays that has found its way to Seriphos, that wherever one encounters a son of Perseus, one will also encounter a daughter of Pelops. I have heard many unpleasant things about the House of Pelops, but have decided to hold my judgment until I know Astydameia better. She might simply be anxious, uncertain about an elderly grandmother-in-law she has never met, or, less charitably, she anticipates a meddlesome old woman who forget things and wets herself. I chuckle inwardly at that thought. My wits are still sharp and I am in better health than some women half my age.
Alektryon has, to my surprise, sent his daughter to meet me. Over the years, all of Perseus Eurymedon’s sons and most of his grandsons have visited me in Seriphos, but I have never met his one daughter, Gorgophone, who has since married into a noble house of Sparta, or his only granddaughter. Fourteen-year-old Alkmene is fetchingly dressed in blue and soft pink with ribbons in her hair. Her appearance startles me, for in her I remember the dark beauty and gracefulness of my own mother. An instinctive kind of recognition, a persistent sense that one has seen the like before, even though the exact memory has faded through the distance of many years.
Later, upstairs in the women’s quarters, hints of despondency show through her mask of good humor. “Come,” I say, “and tell your Mother Danaë what is the matter.” But for the maid, who is unpacking, we are alone in the comfortable apartment Alcaeus has appointed me; Astydameia and the men have withdrawn to let me rest before that evening’s feast. Just the thought of several courses of sumptuous food, too much wine, endless libations, and conversation wearies me.
Alkmene furrows her brows. She is a fetching child, this great-granddaughter of mine, even when confused. “Mother Danaë?”
“I let all my grandchildren and great-grandchildren call me that,” I explain. “It’s more convenient than ‘Grandmother’ or ‘Great-grandmother,’ especially when there are so many.”
She twisted her fingers together. “I-I thought you would be more...”
“Taller?” I suggest. That is a joke, because I am already a tall woman, not one of those old ladies who stooped or shrank with age. “Why, if I were any taller, my head would scrape the ceiling, and your uncle’s carpenters would have to build me a longer bed!”
The smile Alkmene manages appears less than heartfelt. “Grandfather was very tall,” she says quietly.
She is describing Perseus Eurymedon, gone these past five years. I hope to visit his tomb later this week when we travel to Mycenae. “Ah, yes, he was tall and husky, even as a boy.” I manage a sad smile despite the grim, oft-repeated thought that a mother should not outlive her children. “But I hope it is not my coming that makes you sad.”
“Oh, no, Great-gran—er, Mother Danaë!” Alkmene exclaims. She is small and delicate, as my mother was, but I wish she would sit. Her darting gaze draws my attention to the appearance of the bedchamber, and that in turn brings a pang of homesickness for my familiar chamber in the palace of Seriphos. “You see, I am to be married soon, and...and I...” She clamps down on her lower lip with her teeth.
I could guess what the trouble was. “You are to marry Amphitryon, and he is not everything you desire.” I pat the sponge-filled mattress beside me, inviting her to sit down, but when she does she leans against my shoulder just as she might her nurse. All I can offer her is common sense. “I am sure your mother has told
you that marriage is not about what you desire. Even so, your circumstances are not unhappy. You will not have to go very far from home, and you already know your husband. Marriage is worse when it is with a stranger.”
By the time I married Diktys, we had known each other for seventeen years. We liked each other, were comfortable together, though we were both middle-aged by the time we wed.
Alkmene and Amphitryon are both so young, and she is thinking a maiden’s thoughts of sweaty, awkward fumbling in the dark with a pimply-faced youth. Womanhood is new to her. She is not comfortable with blood and pain. I must find out how much instruction she has had in the women’s mysteries. Mothers sometimes breed unnecessary terror in their daughters when teaching them about the duties of marriage and motherhood, and fourteen is young to have to shoulder those responsibilities. I remember becoming a mother in my fourteenth winter as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. One does not forget so easily when Zeus is involved.
Alkmene seems to sense the trail of my thoughts, for as she burrows against me she says, “You are much braver than I.”
As I enfold her in a comforting embrace, I stroke her hair. So dark and soft, like her grandmother Andromeda’s hair. I anticipate the enjoyment of combing it. “Why do you say that?”
She sniffles. “Because you are the mother of a hero.”
Just then, my maid reenters the bedchamber with my scent jars. Not the best time for an interruption. I nod and gesture for the girl to hasten, and only when she scuttles away again do I answer Alkmene.
“And you think my life as Perseus’s mother was easy, simply because he was the son of a god? Would you believe when he was born that I knew absolutely nothing about changing diapers or treating teething pains or colic? I had no younger siblings to take care of as you do, so I had to learn the hard way. And I was not a princess in a palace with a wet nurse and a dozen servants to help me. Rather, I had roughened hands from doing common work, and I suffered terrible dreams, and in those days I was perpetually afraid.”
“You, afraid?” Alkmene drew away enough that I could see sticky tear-tracks on her reddened cheeks.
We could worry about her red face and puffy eyes later, when it was time to go down to the feast. Poor thing! She does not seem to have anyone else to truly confide in. “But of course I was afraid. Any gods-fearing girl would be,” I admit. “Here, now. Did you also know that I was also one of the enkheroquoinoi, the wage-earners, a wool-spinner in a workshop on Seriphos.”
Alkmene, eyes red-rimmed and wide, stared up at me in disbelief. “You were a woman of the workshops, the tallies?”
“You say that as if it were a terrible thing,” I chide gently. Her confusion inspires a sudden determination to dispel whatever rumors she has heard and fill her with understanding. “I started life the same as you, as the daughter of an Argive king. That we are sitting here together now, having this conversation, is because the Fates wove for me a very different thread than what the daughter of a king should expect.”
PART ONE
PRINCESS OF ARGOS
CHAPTER ONE
The summer of my fourth year, Apollo with his plague-darts struck Argos.
I fell ill, but survived. My mother, Queen Aganippe, had left my side to nurse my baby brother, Eurymedon, and perished with him. My nurse did not tell me at first, but I heard the lamentations throughout the Larissa, Father’s palace on the high hill of Argos, and understood with a shudder that dread Thanatos had passed through the bright-frescoed halls.
In the evening, finally, Cyrene sat beside me on the bed and in a gentle voice confessed, “Your mother has been very sick.” She held my hand while she spoke; the gesture pricked an instantaneous discomfort. “You know of Thanatos with his dark wings?” I nodded apprehensively. “He comes to steal away the breath, and then Lord Hermes comes, soft and swift-footed, to lead a mortal’s soul to the Underworld. That’s where your mother’s gone, child, to the place where the white asphodel grows.” She chose her words carefully. “Thanatos came and kissed her, you see, in the gentle way he has, and then Hermes came to lead her across the Styx.”
All those words meant but one thing: death. I sat there numb, disbelieving. Mother could not be dead. Young and beautiful, beloved of the gods, Mother was the queen of Argos, the high priestess. I wrenched my hand from Cyrene’s. “I don’t believe you!” I burst into a flood of tears. “You’re lying! Mother’s not dead.”
“She and your brother, child.” Cyrene tried to touch my shoulder in sympathy. I angrily shrugged away the contact. “Apollo’s plague-darts were too strong, and your mother wouldn’t rest as she ought. She nursed your brother till she no longer could, till the dark-winged god took him.” Excuses tumbled from her lips. “Your father and her women had to force her to rest, but she was already so tired, so weak, and her grief...”
What about my grief? Did anyone in the palace care what the king’s daughter might think? Father had not inquired about me, had not come to see whether I was feverish or resting. I hurled my rag doll against the wall. “No!” I screamed, sobbing, inconsolable. Hiccupping into my pillow, I cried myself to sleep.
Everything from my infancy—my embroidered night shifts, my favorite coverlet with blue and scarlet flowers, my bed linens, and even Nefret, an Egyptian paddle doll with wool-sausage curl hair and painted eyes—was taken away and burned. Whenever Cyrene opened the shutters to let in the sunlight, my eyes watered at the tang of smoke in the air. “Some of the things are the possessions of the afflicted, that are dangerous to keep, but there are also burnt offerings,” she explained. “Your father has already driven many animals to the altar for the priests to sacrifice. The finest beasts of his herds.”
Father’s absence I understood, for he rarely ever bothered with affairs of the nursery, but not Mother’s.
As for my brother, Eurymedon was far too little to be interesting, and I secretly hated how he received most of Father’s attention just for being a son when all he did was cry and fuss and soil his swaddling clothes. If I felt sorry for his loss it was only because I knew how hard my parents would be grieving.
But Mother was the verdant green earth, the sweet-smelling flowers, and the softening Meltemi breezes that blew in early summer. She embodied the tinkling laughter of young maidens and the honey-golden morning radiance spilling through the painted colonnades. She represented Queen Hera to Father’s Lord Zeus. If she perished, then the earth and all its bounty would wither from despair, as it had when Mother Demeter mourned for her lost daughter.
Yet Mother was gone, dead, her apartment empty. Cyrene took me there a week after I had recovered to reinforce the truth of her words. I would find nothing but emptiness and sad memories, she said.
Cyrene opened the door easily. My breath caught. What should I find within? Mother might be sitting at her dressing table. She rose late and took a long time with her toilette; she bathed before breakfast, and had the tiring woman she had brought with her from Knossos dress her hair with pearls and ribbons. Another woman applied Mother’s cosmetics before the maids robed Mother in embroidered scarlet and blue, with hemming of expensive purple. Father liked to groan about the time she wasted, but from the twinkle in his eye I knew he appreciated how lovely she was. She made a show of it, too, coming downstairs slowly, revealing herself to Father’s councilors like the sun emerging from behind the clouds. She never hurried about her duties, yet somehow she managed to tend the altars in the cult house, the tallies for the storerooms were inspected, and the cooks and laundresses and scrub maids and weavers all worked as hard as if she were standing over their shoulders the entire time.
I bit my lip, expecting to see my mother’s women carding wool and sewing in the outer room. Agapia, Mother’s tiring woman, would be singing a Cretan song whose refrain would carry from the bedchamber where she was plaiting ribbons through her mistress’s night-black hair. Yet I heard nothing except the muffled footfalls of servants in an adjacent corridor.
Cyrene stepped aside w
hile urging me to go on ahead. “See what’s there, child.” Her invitation, delivered without enthusiasm, rang hollow.
Nothing was there. No furniture, no baskets of wool, no servants, absolutely nothing. Where moments before I had been sweating under my woolens, now a chill passed through me. I gripped the doorjamb with its painted blue and saffron rosettes.
Every trace of Mother had vanished, evaporated as if she had never been—but no, there were patches on the floor and against the wall in the outer room and bedchamber where furniture once stood. There had been tables and chairs, cushions of sea-green, purple, and scarlet fringed with bullion, a great bedstead of ivory and ebony, and a massive oak dower chest decorated with a scene of dancing maidens. All gone. Mother’s inlaid dressing table with its clutter of alabaster and faience scent jars, her rock crystal cosmetic palette, and the pyxis containing the sparkling strands of beads and earrings and bracelets that she sometimes let me play with—all of it, gone. Only the Cretan-style frescoes of waving papyrus fronds and lilies, and playful blue monkeys gathering saffron remained.
And then, when I dragged loose the protective linen masking my lower face, I caught a whiff of expensive perfume, her favorite blend of narcissus and sandalwood. I choked. Mother’s essence still suffused the space, her scent a suggestion that I had only to turn around to find her standing in the doorway as fresh as the dew, but when at last I found strength enough to turn, to chance the possibility, however tenuous that was now, that Mother had escaped the clutches of Hades and returned to the living, there was nothing.
A wave of despair washed over me. I felt as lost as a child abandoned in the press of the agora. Worse than that, even, because no one was coming to rescue me and I could not find my way back. A screeching wail escaped my throat, and then I was knuckling my eyes and bawling like a common child, inviting in the specter of Echo the sorrowing nymph.