Danae

by Laura Gill

  “Let Dorea be reborn!” other voices chanted. “Let Dorea receive the gifts of rebirth.” Several neighbor women had crowded into the house to help with the ceremony, and from somewhere close by I heard my son crying.

  “Let the shroud of the tomb be stripped away.” With her looming so near, I could not help but notice that Leukothea’s breasts were enormous, jiggling like fat pomegranates with her every movement. Animal sacrifice, that was what she smelled like. I imagined the red ocher to be fresh blood instead, and gagged anew.

  The moment she stepped away, the other women swarmed in, hauling me upright, pulling at my clothes. They wanted me to undress, when I was so cold and aching, still shivering. Nonetheless, they relieved me of gown and shift. My breasts were leaking milk. Leukothea noticed, of course, and again swooped in. Her fingers pinched, squeezed, and she slapped them. “Bring a vessel! This mother’s milk comes from the Fields of Asphodel. Let not the child drink of it.” I thought the pronouncement, coming from one such as her, the most outlandish, pompous thing I had ever heard, though there might well have been truth in it. Had Eurymedon been nursing from death’s teats? Where was he? While I heard him, I could not see him.

  “Hush, hush! He is safe,” the women assured me. Whatever hands did not support my weight grasped at my breasts, squeezing them like udders. My milk squirted into a painted vessel. I groaned, but then they were pushing and pulling me again, herding me outside and around the house to a terracotta tub filled with water.

  At least the water was warm, though not enough to banish the Stygian chill. I continued shivering, even when the women scoured my limbs with bare hands and washcloths to massage life back into me. Leukothea’s infernal chanting assaulted my ears. “Dorea, daughter of Pelargos, child of the Fates, breathe and be reborn!” Her cobbled-together prayers inspired more apprehension than relief; throughout, I thrashed about in fear that the overenthusiastic women would drown me.

  “Stop!”

  Leukothea scooped up handfuls of water to sluice over my head, while the women remained oblivious to my cries.

  My skin was red and wrinkled before the women hauled me from the tub to dry me with thick woolen cloths. A threadbare shift awaited me; as we passed around the house to return indoors, I saw Klymene feeding my old clothes and even my sandals to a bonfire. Inside, the bed had been stripped, the fleeces and linens from the chest heaped on the floor. Leukothea made me sit, then with more chanting forced me to drink from a chipped kylix that had once been very fine. I tasted cold water flavored with barley and mint sweetened with honey. At last, something I recognized; the wild priestess knew how to prepare Demeter’s sacred kykeon.

  She repeated the ritual with Eurymedon, but more gently, and in a basin by the hearth while I observed. Philagra and Huamia sat with me; the former kept patting my hand while the latter chafed my limbs to warm them. Another woman I did not know toweled my hair dry. Everyone else echoed Leukothea’s chants.

  After the hot bath, and with so many bodies crowded in such a small space, I craved cool air. Moreover, I wanted the priestess to leave my child alone; she had handled him too much, and even Eurymedon thought so, for he bawled. “Behold, a propitious sign! The child embraces life.” Leukothea’s painted breasts were streaked where Eurymedon had splashed her. “Quickly, swaddle him in blankets and give him to his mother.”

  She was not content simply to hand my son to me, but made a show of tucking me into bed and ceremoniously laying him in my arms. My time with Eurymedon, however, lasted but a moment; the neighbor women, all eager to soothe his fussing and let me sleep, took him from my embrace with reassurances that he would be well looked-after.

  Gradually, the house emptied. It took longer for the priestess’s reek to dissipate, and I could still smell the bonfire.

  Through the stuccoed wall, I overheard Leukothea and Klymene haggling over the price of the former’s services. The priestess had dropped all pretense of nicety and spoke in shrill, nasal tones. “You ought to be grateful you had me to battle this demon, and not tried it yourselves. That’s worth more than some piddling goat.”

  Her annoying tones made my head ache harder, and I was disinclined to hear Klymene’s retort. What a place was Seriphos, where men and women lived peaceably together and priestesses behaved like fishwives!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I take this boy-child, Eurymedon, as my nephew.” By the bonfire’s light, Diktys unwrapped Eurymedon and made a show of inspecting him. “He springs from the blood of my house. He is healthy and strong of limb.”

  Eurymedon whimpered at the touch of the chilly, spring night air, but Diktys swiftly bundled him again, and his fussing ebbed. Strange, I reflected, for a man who claimed to have no sense of handling infants.

  Night had fallen. Villagers congregated on the beach around a blazing bonfire to observe the amphidromia. Six days had passed since the purification ritual. I was still weak and shaky, but insisted on attending.

  “Eurymedon’s mother is Dorea. In the name of Zeus Xenios, Lord of the Strangers, I take this woman as my sister, blood of my blood. Any injury or insult to her is an injury or insult to me.” Did I imagine the tenderness of his gaze? “Dorea dwells at my hearth under my protection.” Those words were for neither the neighbors nor the gods, but flew straight to me with the gentle imprecation that he would gladly have accepted more.

  I lowered my eyes demurely, as befit a young, unmarried kinswoman. Around me, enthusiastic shouts and cries of blessing heralded my son’s entrance into village life. Now we would celebrate. The fishing boats would not go out that night; enough day-old sardines and mackerel remained that the market women could conduct business in the morning. Two roast goats were served from the spit, and grilled fish and octopi, with bread and nuts and dried fruit. There was beer and a sour vintage that Selenos fermented from wild vines; Luktia cautioned me not to overindulge. “To newcomers, it tastes like piss and flies straight to your head.”

  Diktys returned my son to me the moment the feasting started, but that was merely a signal to the women to present their gifts, a dividend I had not expected. Acrisius’s guests had brought horses and weapons and jars of perfumed unguent when my half-brother was born. A display of richness, of the bonds between the noble givers and the royal house, I did not expect to encounter the same largesse in a fishing village on a small island. And yet, work-weathered fishermen delighted in waving hand-carved birds and fish before my son’s eyes, and their proud wives held forth new diapers, a blanket, a brand-new cap and knitted socks with exclamations of, “Look, look!” And then, a woolen cloak and presents for me, including secondhand sandals, to replace the items that the priestess had burned.

  Everywhere I turned, someone pressed something upon me: food, drink, congratulations, advice, presents. I found myself trying to remember names, and then thanking the air as that person vanished, replaced by another.

  Eurymedon cooed and babbled nonsense. Right away, he began gumming the carved seagull Iolanthe had enticed him with. However, he did not care for the closeness and noise, and soon became cranky—an excuse the women seized upon to offer to carry him inside for a nap. Why did the women gravitate so toward my son, when most had their own children and grandchildren to dandle?

  Diktys found his way to my side just as Iolanthe’s husband brought out a ship’s drum to beat a rhythm for the circle dance. “Would you partner with me in the circle?” he asked formally. “Two dozen maids have offered, but they’re a jealous bunch. I’ve refused them all on account of tonight being my sister’s night.”

  I hesitated. “Tongues might wag.” Did kinsmen routinely offer to partner with their kinswomen for dances, or did Diktys already regret his decision to keep me at arm’s length? “I’m sure you can find more enthusiastic partners elsewhere.”

  Yet Diktys persisted. “It’s only the joining of hands in a circle of unmarried folk.” He laughed generously. “You see, even the children are dancing.” By then, the dance had already started, and th
e children, male and female, linked hands with the older youths and maidens. Everyone rejoiced inside the infinite circle honoring the goddess.

  As I did not answer, Diktys opted to sit down beside me on the blanket instead. “Well, let’s see,” he began playfully. “I’m not drunk. I bathed and changed my clothes just before the ceremony, and I haven’t leered at you or made obscene overtures as Memnon is doing over there with Halia.” He ticked each option off on his fingers. “Therefore, your refusal must be on account of excessive shyness or maybe you’re lightheaded or nauseous. Are you sick?” I shook my head. “Then surely you can spare a desperate fellow one dance.”

  His lightheartedness brought a chuckle to my lips. “Why aren’t you married?” I asked. “From everything I’ve observed, you could have your pick of young women. Why not?” I took a chance, questioning him so directly.

  Snorting, he dismissed the idea with a gesture. “Mere girls. I have no interest in them.”

  “But you find me interesting?” I ventured. “I’m no older than they.”

  “Yes, but not really,” he admitted.

  The raucous, festive air on the beach must have loosened my inhibitions to allow me to dare speaking so boldly to a man, for at once I countered him. “You find me interesting only because I’m a stranger and you know so little about me. If you knew all my secrets, you would think me just another woman.”

  Turning his head, Diktys looked at me. “You truly think so? I might not know your every secret, but I’m a fairly good judge of character, and I think I can say that you haven’t been and will never be just another woman.” He glanced away again, toward the bonfire. “For one thing, you worry like an old woman.”

  I sputtered in disbelief. “No one has ever compared me with an old woman before. Always I’ve been too young for this, and not ready for that. And as for my worries, I have plenty to worry about. Eurymedon is a handful.”

  The circle dance had ended. Now the dancers, hands still joined, undid the ring in a sinuous, synchronized movement like a uncoiling of a serpent.

  Diktys did not ask me again to partner him. As I began second-guessing myself, contemplating whether or not I should just be polite and accept an innocent dance among neighbors, he suddenly started browsing through the gifts. “The carved fish is Eumelos’s work. If Eurymedon doesn’t teethe it to ruin, he might somebody be able to wear it around his neck as a talisman. No hooks?” He shuffled among the blankets and diapers, which the women had neatly folded, heedlessly creating a mess. “Well, that’s all right, I suppose. When he’s old enough, I’ll get him his own hooks, and his own needle and shuttle and teach him how to mend nets.”

  “He isn’t even walking and talking yet, and you’re already making plans for his livelihood?” I exclaimed.

  “Boys grow up quickly by the sea,” Diktys asserted playfully. “It’s Poseidon’s influence and the nurturing presence of Lady Posidaeia and the Mistress of the Winds. Why, I myself was swimming like a sardine by the time I was three.”

  Unable to swim, and embarrassed to admit it to the villagers, I nevertheless wanted Eurymedon to learn. “Will you teach him?”

  “What good is a fisherman if he can’t swim? You’ve no idea how many times I’ve fallen off the boat.” Diktys gestured to the moonlit ocean. “Thank Poseidon no monster came up out of the dark to devour me.”

  “There are such monsters in the deep?”

  “Yes, in the deeper waters,” Diktys affirmed. “You should see some of the beasts we haul aboard whenever we take the boats out for a day. Why, a man from Livadi was once swallowed by a giant tuna. When we cut open its belly, we found him there.” For some reason, Diktys found my shock amusing. Laughing, he indulged himself for a moment before explaining, “Dorea, if you’re going to live among fishermen, you mustn’t believe every fish story you’re told. We tend to exaggerate, the way men on the mainland boast about the size of the boar they’ve captured, or the way we all boast about the size of...” Catching himself, he cleared his throat noisily. “Uh, that’s not a thing to say around the servant of a goddess.”

  “No,” I agreed. From those Women of the Mountain who found sport in mocking men for such things, I understood what Diktys had been about to say. Most men talked that way, I was discovering, but I could not yield ground by letting my new “brother” think I did not mind his crude expression.

  “Dorea! What are you doing still awake?” Klymene tromped across the sand toward us with a disapproving air. “It’s late and getting chilly out.” When she reached us, she laid a proprietary hand on my shoulder to urge me to my feet. Never mind that my shawl kept me perfectly warm, and that I had not exerted myself with the other young people. “You need your rest, young lady, unless you want to fall sick again.”

  Patting my arm, Diktys offered me his hand. “She does this to me, too. Let me walk you back home.”

  I did not wish to be mothered, and said so the next morning when Klymene persisted in her behavior, this time refusing to let me fetch water. “When will you let me be? I feel fine.”

  “Of course you do, but...” Klymene paused to scrape a finished round of flatbread from the overturned clay vessel that served as an oven. “The weaving house is no pleasurable respite. The headwoman can be a harsh task mistress.” She slapped the next round of dough against the hot ceramic. “Her name is Keremaia, by the way. Always make sure you’re prompt with her, and that you do whatever you’re told whenever you’re told, nothing more or less. She despises workers who are both too smart or are dullards, and she has a habit of complaining to the palace officials. It’s best that you don’t let on that you were ever a priestess.”

  The sourdough she had handed me was still hot enough to burn the tongue. I scrabbled for the vessel of spring water and drank before attempting to speak. “She’ll already know about my being consecrated, won’t she?” Keeping a secret in the village was no less difficult than keeping one on the Mountain or in Acrisius’s court; the walls were thin, and sooner or later everyone knew everyone else’s business.

  Klymene peeled another finished round of flatbread from the ceramic. “Keremaia knows only what she sees and hears in the weaving house.”

  Keremaia was not a villager herself; she lived in nearby Livadi and walked half a mile each day to Pelargos. As a townswoman, she therefore carried herself with a superior air that showed in her hawkish features; her hooked nose could have baited mackerel, and her dark eyes were set too close together. She offered no comment about my origins, suggesting she did not know, but her criticism, which began immediately, extended to every other aspect from my physical appearance to the baby I carried in a basket.

  “You look thin and sickly. I won’t have a weakling at the loom, thinking she can loaf about and collect rations at the palace’s expense.” Keremaia made a show of inspecting my fingernails for dirt, then behind my ears. She even made me open my mouth to look at my teeth, as if she were bartering for an animal.

  “And you with a baby,” she continued. “If you’re going to have him with you, I expect him to be quiet and you not to waste time fussing over him. If you ruin the cloth by not washing your hands after you’ve changed him, that’s on you, and I’ll make sure Megistokritos knows it.”

  Keremaia should complain, I thought, given how enormously pregnant one of the other young women was.

  On and on she screeched, while I made a concentrated effort to look both attentive and properly submissive when what I genuinely wanted to do was tell her to show me where the raw wool was stored, which loom was mine, and to otherwise shut her mouth and let me work. Yet caution overrode instinct. Myrtale of the Mountain could have done all those things. Dorea of Pelargos had to hold her tongue and not call attention to herself.

  Not only did the headwoman not know anything about my background, she apparently did not realize that the chest, which for some inexplicable reason had not been destroyed, belonged to me. Her naked admiration for its size and decoration might have had something to do wi
th its being preserved, and even now she adopted a proprietary attitude toward it. “This chest of expensive Cretan workmanship was donated to the weaving hut by a generous benefactor.” She truly had no idea? The three weavers kept throwing surreptitious looks in my direction; few who had seen the chest and knew how it had come to Pelargos could explain what so humble a girl was doing with such a splendid piece of furniture. “This is where we keep the finished cloth. You are not to touch or open it. I will do that. And only I will decide whether your cloth is worthy enough to be stored here.”

  Soon enough, I had raw wool to work. Not on the loom, of course, not until Keremaia gauged the quality of my combing and spinning. Her grousing provided a challenge after the indulgences of the village women, especially because I knew my wool working was flawless. A woman instructed by a princess of Argos and a high priestess of the Mountain did not turn out inferior thread or fabric.

  She never let me near the loom at all that day. Not for three weeks, and then, when she finally relented, she tested me on how well I knew the parts of the loom. What was a warp weight? How tight should the weft be? I wondered how well she wove, because I never saw her do anything but criticize, vigorously comb wool and spin, and nap. And she had no affection for children at all, because she kept reminding the pregnant girl that she had but two days to recover from her coming labor, and that the baby had better not be sickly or colicky.

  When Klymene suggested leaving Eurymedon at home, she showed me a cunning little vessel equipped with a spout where a baby could nurse. “You can fill this with your milk beforehand, and I can warm it and give it to him when he’s hungry. He’s almost old enough to start weaning, anyway. This will help start the process.”

  A few times, I had asked her about her child, for I knew she had a grown son. “Eioneus is just like his father, rarely at home,” she said. “He’s a sea captain with his own ship, and no time for his poor, dear mother.”