by Laura Gill
“Will she be whipped?” That would certainly be the least of the punishments Sinope deserved. Wordeia’s intimation that I had somehow provoked that stupid girl, my supposed half-sister, into attacking me escaped my notice until much, much later.
Instead, my aunt confounded my curiosity with a knowing expression. “Never mind that. Your father will decide what is to be done with her.”
Mention of Father and the ensuing tense silence brought the other matter, the cause of the altercation, to the forefront of my mind. “Why is Father angry with me?” I asked. “I was on my best behavior.”
For once, Wordeia did not have a ready answer. “I think it best not to disturb him until a more propitious moment. He has shut himself away in his chambers with his private idols. The feast has been canceled.”
I did not care about the feast now, as I would not have wanted to appear before the court with scratches and scrapes, and have the servants gossip that Xanthippe’s ugly bastard daughter had gotten the better of me. But I dreaded spending the coming night alone with my apprehensions about Father’s displeasure. “Will he punish me?”
Wordeia withheld her answer for a long, pregnant moment. “I do not know what is in his mind,” she then admitted. “Perhaps he has had some word of his brother’s misdoings that we have not, or he received some insult on the road, or the oracle...” She paused, made a concerted effort to erase her frown, and forced a smile that did not reflect in her eyes. “Tonight you will offer your honeyed wine and festival meats to Lady Athena, and beseech her for greater wisdom. This unbecoming behavior must never be repeated.”
PART TWO
WOMEN OF THE MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER FIVE
In midsummer, on the fourth anniversary of Mother’s death, I received permission to go down from the Larissa and pay my respects at her grave for the very first time. I never expected to be granted the privilege, for even after a month since his return and my scuffle with Sinope, Father failed to address the subject, though his continuing glum mood kept everyone on edge. An overwhelming sense of foreboding kept me awake at night, and ever attentive to the raw wool passing between my fingers and the shape of the signs under my stylus. Unless I did everything right and behaved perfectly, Father would surely change his mind and punish me.
Wordeia woke me herself. “Hasten and make ready. We must be on our way and back before Helios’s strength becomes too great.”
There would be a litter, for my aunt deemed it too sweltering and dusty to walk, but she made certain I dressed for the heat in light linen with a broad-brimmed hat. “Remember to sit up straight so the people may see your good breeding,” she admonished. “Princesses do not slouch.”
An hour after dawn, the morning air was already beginning to shed the night’s blessed cool; the petitioners in the main court fanned themselves with their straw hats and mopped their brows with sweat-stained cloths. An irrational fear that Father might at any moment burst onto the aithousa and loudly, publicly revoke his permission, his favor, impelled me down the path toward the lower citadel where the bearers waited with the litter.
No one interrupted at the last minute, yet the tightness constricting my chest did not ease.
On the way down from the Larissa, the litter bearers passed a row of laundresses heading to the riverfront to scour the palace’s soiled woolens and linens, and beat them on the rocks. I watched them, common women balancing laden baskets and bundles on their heads, until the chief of them, Mistress Xanthippe, pointedly turned her head away. Sinope’s mother. Embarrassment washed over me, though the insolence was entirely hers. Then we passed the shuffling line of women, and with an effort I shoved the whole melancholy matter from my thoughts.
Joining the flow of traffic coming and going from the countryside into Argos town, we reached the ancestral tombs clustered just outside the walls. Beehive-shaped tholoi whose plastered stones gleamed blindingly white under Helios’s rays, these were the graves of my kinsmen going back four generations to Danaus. Despite the litter’s tasseled awning, the brightness of the stones compelled me to shade my eyes with my hand, wherein by doing so I forgot not to slouch. A momentary lapse, for the presence of my renowned ancestors prompted me to remember who I was, and I corrected my posture before Wordeia noticed the infraction.
She and others had told me that the tombs were a place of reverence and cult. Someone remembered Mother fondly, to judge from the flowers strewn at the top of the sloping passageway, the dromos, leading down into the underworld of the tomb. Guards flanked the stout, bronze-clad doors separating the worlds of above and below. Robbers had twice broken into King Lynceus’s tomb, Wordeia told me once. “The shades of the outraged dead hounded their path, striking terror into their hearts, and dulling their wits so that each time the perpetrators were apprehended. Not even Hermes, who guards thieves, could protect those evildoers from the vengeance of great Lord Zeus and the Two Ladies whose altars Lynceus and his wife heaped with offerings during their lifetimes, and whose powerful spells safeguarded that place.”
Thinking on that old story and on my anticipation over the prospect of descending that shadowed dromos, I suppressed an involuntary shudder. I knew that the guards would not open the doors, that I would not have to lay the garlands Wordeia carried on Mother’s bier, that I would not have to endure the stench of death or the sight of Mother moldering in her burial clothes. Yet this visit was the closest I had been to her physical remains in four years. Half my life I had been without my mother. I should have experienced joy such as Mother Demeter did every spring when she welcomed her daughter Koré-Persephone back from Hades. Not this suffocating dread, this sense of impending doom. Mother’s shade had flown elsewhere. Hermes had come to escort her away.
“The Fields of Asphodel must be very dim and sad.” Conversation was allowed in the dromos, if somber and appropriate to the occasion. I kept my voice low on account of both the acoustics and the guards.
“That is so,” Wordeia murmured. I emulated her stride, straight-backed and stately, a walk that proclaimed her prepared to bravely approach the dead but by no means eager to meet them. “Yet your mother’s people believe in a different hereafter. The Isles of the Blessed, a place of gardens and all other manner of good things. Her dower chest was decorated with such a scene of the dead rejoicing. Do you remember?”
I contemplated my dimming memories of my mother’s apartment, and her trinkets, and her furnishings. “Ladies in Cretan clothes dancing.”
“Priestesses celebrating in the world after. I thought it a curious subject for a dower chest at the time. Ill-omened, perhaps.” Wordeia lifted her shoulders in a delicate shrug. “I do not know the truth of what comes after, only what the priestesses who partake in the sacred rites of the poppy reveal of their journeys between worlds.”
Our conversation ceased as we reached the tomb’s threshold. As I had dressed earlier, Wordeia taught me the words for addressing the dead in their place of repose. So many new epithets for me to memorize. “Dread Queen Persephone stands upon my right as my shield. Hermes Proopylaios, the Guardian of the Gate, safeguards me upon my left. Aganippe, daughter of Minos Lakhuros, and wife of Acrisius, here is an offering of evergreens from your daughter Danaë.” So saying, I hung the evergreen wreath from the bronze hook mounted upon the door for that purpose.
Wordeia went after, reciting a similar formula as she slathered the threshold with wine from the alabastron she carried with her. Once she finished her ritual obeisance, she retrieved the threads of our earlier conversation.
“Danaë, there is something important you must know, and you must hear it straightaway Your father gave you permission to visit your mother’s tomb because you must soon leave Argos. You are to be consecrated as a virgin priestess.” Her words, though delivered in good measure, seemed to come swifter than I could process. “I say this to you now so you may bid farewell to your mother’s ghost.”
“Leave Argos?” I stammered. Virgin priestess? When had that been deci
ded, and why? I contemplated the possible reasons. Had I misbehaved once too often, or was it for some other reason, something far more benign? “Am I to serve Lady Artemis before my marriage?” Lady Astimache had mentioned taking vows to the goddess and serving in Artemis’s sanctuary as befit the daughter of a noble house. Of course. Father wanted the Argives to see that his daughter was both pious and virtuous, completely contrary to his brother’s wicked offspring.
Wordeia’s hesitation heightened my discomfort. “No,” she demurred. “You are to serve Potnia Theron, the Great Goddess, in her sanctuary in Arcadia. You are to be dedicated in perpetuity.” She elaborated before I could pose a single question. “Your entire life, because that is what the goddess demands.”
“Arcadia?” I croaked. Had I heard right? All I knew of the country west of the mountains that girded Argolis was that it was an impoverished wilderness, the haunt of herdsmen, fearsome beasts, and maenads, those mad, murderous handmaidens of Dionysus. People there dwelt in straw huts and caves. No fit place for a princess. “Why must I be sent so far away?”
Wordeia averted her face from me. “Be grateful, child. Potnia Theron is a generous mistress to her faithful servants. As a virgin priestess you will never suffer under a domineering mother-in-law or find yourself having to endure the unpleasantness of the marriage bed or the perils of childbirth. You will be revered by the Arcadians, blessed with a long life undisturbed by the treachery of war or family quarrels.” She started rambling, without actually answering my question. “This is a gift from your father and the goddess.”
I trembled, and not from standing in the shade of the dromos before the door of Mother’s tomb. “How could this be a gift from Father?” Then a possible solution popped into my mind. “This is a punishment.”
Jerking her gaze back to me, Wordeia looked aghast. “Do not be absurd, Danaë. This is...” Hesitating, she alternated between starting to speak again and drawing her lips into a tight line, as though debating with herself. At last, she relented. “This is on account of the oracle at Delphi and what she revealed, but you must not press me further. I should not have said even that much.”
I stood there, breathless and disbelieving. Father had consulted the Delphic oracle to learn whether he should marry once again, and whether the goddess Eleuthia would ever bless him with living sons. What had that to do with me? “Is it...?” I gulped down a breath. “Is it because of me that Father has no sons?”
A curious, unfathomable expression crossed Wordeia’s face; she just as quickly banished it. “As I said, I can say no more.” She reached for the brim of her hat to draw it down, concealing the traitorous upper half of her face. “The priestesses of Potnia Theron will come for you soon, to take you away,” she informed me. “They call themselves the Women of the Mountain. But come, we have lingered too long. The morning grows hot.”
Neither the heat nor the dust affected me as I sat stunned in my litter for the return trip. Why should the gods want Father to send me away? What wickedness had I committed to offend them—and him—so? Those questions consumed the rest of the morning, which I spent in my chamber with my spindle in hand and Timonassa, one of Wordeia’s women sent to replace Sinope, minding her needlework in a corner. My misgivings kept me wide awake during the heat of midday when the entire citadel settled down for the afternoon sleep.
“Did I forget to remember an immortal in my prayers?” I whispered toward the ceiling. Timonassa, middle-aged and somewhat hard of hearing, would not be awakened by my slight murmurings. “Was it Eurydike’s babies? Did I ill-wish them?” A child’s fearful instinct urged me to deny it, but deep down I knew my guilt. I had loathed my stepmother. I had resented all the attention paid the short-lived Prince Abas. Not that I had wanted him to die—no, I could not have been that hateful. Only to go away, to stop distracting Father. But the gods made no distinctions. They were stern, sometimes capricious, but always unyielding and unforgiving once they determined that a mortal had wronged them. I must have offended Lady Eleuthia many, many times by wishing my stepmother would have a girl instead of the heir Father wanted.
The heat pressed down upon me as thickly as my body pressed against the mattress. I felt tears starting. Father needed me to go away so he could marry again and have a son. But why the distant, primitive Arcadian wilderness? It must have been the scuffle with Sinope. I had behaved like a peasant rather than princess, and deserved to be banished among them. Oh, but that was not true! She had been insolent, had provoked me with her words and the cushion she threw, and even though Wordeia was absolutely right—
A familiar voice rumbled through the fuggy air, instantly snapping the thread of my self-pity. I listened, heard it again, greeting the sentries posted along the corridor, then the sound of a man’s heavy footfalls.
Father! Fearful yet determined, I leapt from the bed, dashed past the dozing Timonassa, and, wrenching open the door, ran into the corridor. If I showed myself obedient and contrite for whatever infraction I had committed, if I threw myself on his mercy, he might change his mind and not send me to Arcadia.
“Father!” At my cry, he halted and swung around. The beginnings of a scowl darkened his expression, but I was already running toward him, and casting myself onto the stuccoed floor to grasp his ankles. “Please, don’t send me away! I promise to be good.” My sobs burst forth. I wept all over his sandals with their shining bronze studs. My fingers dug hard into the sun-browned skin of his ankles. “Please don’t banish me!”
“What is this nonsense?” Father bent down, gripped my arms to pry me loose, and hauled me upright. His face in mine reeked of garlic and wine. “Has Wordeia told you, then?” His voice held no comforting note, just scorn. Only my fear of him held back a renewed flood of tears. “Then you will behave.”
“Please!” I gasped.
“Please, nothing,” he spat. “This is for your own good, and mine. You will do exactly as the priestesses instruct and never, ever look on a man, never think of one. Do you understand, you foolish child?” When I neither nodded nor gave any answer, he shook me till my teeth rattled. “I asked you a question! Do you understand?”
Not by half, but in my terror I nodded dumbly. Anything to get him to release me so I could disappear, escape, take back my attempt to petition him. In the background, I heard Timonassa’s horrified gasp; the commotion must have awakened her.
“What is going on?” Wordeia’s voice cut through my fear and confusion. I became aware that Father and I were not alone. There were the sentries and Father’s manservant behind him, Timonassa’s frantic attempt to explain circumstances to my aunt behind me, and then Wordeia silencing her with a command. “Has the child displeased you, my lord?” I swallowed, hearing her cautious tone. She only addressed Father as “my lord” in order to observe the appropriate public niceties or to privately salve his pride.
“How much have you told her?” Father asked accusingly. Thus distracted, his grip slackened, yet when I tried to slip away he caught and restrained me in a bear’s grasp. “We agreed there was to be no trouble.”
Slowly, Wordeia stepped into view. Her hair hung in a single, taut plait down her back, and in the suffocating heat she had stripped to a fine linen shift leaving little to the imagination. “And there will not be.” A tremulous note inflected the normal smoothness of her tone. “She knows she is to be dedicated. This scene—” She attempted a nonchalant gesture that rang false. “This disturbance is nothing but an untried maiden’s fears of leaving home. Rest assured, she will remain obedient to your will while she is away.”
By then, I had scraped together just enough courage to question the adults. “But what did I do wrong?”
Father did not answer. Opening his arms, he growled, “Go,” and with a little shove pushed me toward the women and turned his back on me.
*~*~*~*
The Women of the Mountain, when they arrived a month later, were not the priestesses I had imagined, those with the chalk-white faces, tiered skirts, and the pol
os headdresses I associated with the servants of the goddesses of Argos. Rather, the five women whom Wordeia ushered into my apartment looked brown and weathered, dressed in rough homespun and leather. Theirs was not a fragrance of narcissus or lilies or saffron, but of the outdoors, of animals and rank sweat. Each woman wore a dagger at her belt, and carried a staff, quiver, and bow; each deposited her weapons in a tidy pile near the door before introducing herself.
“I am Sostrate, leader of the Hunters of the Mountain.” Foremost among the strangers was a sinewy, middle-aged woman who wore a stuffed raven atop her head; the glittering obsidian chips of its eyes distracted me. Why would anyone wear something dead on their head? But then, the woman’s hair was a rat’s nest of gray and brown tangles. “My companions are Thettale, Kynane, and Phylo. And Rhona here belongs to the Gleaners.” Her voice was gravelly, coarse, like a man’s. “We are here to escort you to the sanctuary on Mount Parnon.”
I glanced slack-jawed from her to Wordeia, and back and forth, unable to speak, until my aunt prompted me. “This silence is not how a daughter of Argos welcomes guests, especially ones who have journeyed many days to see you.”
“Uh, I...” What did she expect me, an eight-year-old girl, to do? I had neither sacred bread nor salt to offer, and no wine for the libation Father would have dedicated to Zeus Xenios downstairs in the megaron. “Welcome,” I croaked. There were other words for guests. “Zeus of the Strangers bids you—”