Danae

by Laura Gill

  Because she had not asked a direct question, I said nothing. Even so, my silence infuriated her. “Who do you think you are? Some jumped-up village whore with a bastard son? An insolent weaving woman who does not know when to obey her betters?” she challenged, screeching. Now everyone could hear. My face reddened despite myself, and I judged it wiser not to answer.

  When Amphiera thrust her face into mine, I stiffened and held my breath against the rottenness underlying the cloves.

  For my ears alone, she said, “How dare you flout and torment my son. He is consumed with thoughts of you. He wants nothing else. So now you will be an obedient peasant and come with me to relieve his suffering. You will count yourself fortunate that I do not order you horse-whipped for your insolence.”

  How dare I refuse Polydektes? How dare she call me a whore and insult my son’s parentage? Trembling with anger, I nevertheless strove to play the convincing menial. “Lady, I’m not good enough. Only a poor—”

  “Rest assured that you will bathe and bathe again to take away the reek of fish before you go anywhere near the king.” Stepping back, Amphiera raised her voice again to make my humiliation public. “Come, into the chariot with you.” She pointed to the vehicle, driven, I could see, by Polydektes’ own Thracian charioteer, Tarbos. “A lowborn slut like you ought to crawl in the dust, but I do not have all afternoon to wait for you.”

  What to do now? If I defied the queen mother by refusing outright or by trying to flee to the sanctuary, my situation would worse, though on the other hand if I went unresisting, implying consent, Polydektes would have me by nightfall. No matter what I did, he would take me. My mind worked. Somehow, there must be a way...

  “Lady, I have my bleeding. Please—”

  Her long-fingered nails scored my cheek as she slapped me. “Spare me your lies, whore. Lift up your dress and we will see.”

  Her challenge, delivered in ringing tones, could be heard by all. Sweat beaded my brow, and I reddened yet further at the prospect of exposing my parts to satisfy this harridan’s perverse pleasure. Neighbors snickered.

  “I will not.” That was it, the dam broke. “Moon blood is a mystery, goddess-given, not cheap entertainment.” Amphiera recoiled like a serpent. “Call me what you like, but before witnesses and the Mistress, I am no whore, no slave, and no man’s plaything.”

  “You are an insolent cow!” the queen mother shrieked back. Glancing over her shoulder, she shouted, “Tarbos, take her!”

  The prospect of the Thracian charioteer laying hands on me sent a thrill of fear up my spine, but I refused to be intimidated. “I am a freeborn woman,” I announced, “and you may not seize me against my will.”

  Then Diktys stepped out of the crowd. Had he been there the entire time, or had he recently arrived? My heart sank when I saw Eurymedon trotting at his heels; this confrontation was no place for a child.

  “Mother?” Diktys managed a courteous smile, but his demeanor was anything but welcoming. Tarbos halted a stone’s throw from me, and looked to the queen mother for further directions. “Is there some trouble?”

  Amphiera regarded him with contempt. “This woman of yours refuses to do as she is bidden. Tarbos, I gave you an order.”

  “Thracian, stay right where you are.” Diktys gestured to the man without even turning his head. Tarbos obeyed. “Mother, you will leave Dorea alone.”

  “Is she your wife?” Amphiera quirked a painted eyebrow. “Do not lie. I know very well that she does not call you husband. Her brat is not even yours.” Her attention flicked to me, and she waggled her fingers as if at a dog. “Come, girl, or see your weaver’s status revoked. I will not have rations wasted on some disobedient slut.”

  She could do that? But I loved my work, Keremaia notwithstanding. Nevertheless, I would not permit my son to see his mother shame herself. “No.”

  “You are a stubborn peasant bitch.”

  “And you’re a mean old lady,” Eurymedon piped up, to my everlasting mortification. “Leave my mother alone.”

  Amphiera bent down to him. “Little boys who do not mind their manners grow up to be troublemakers.”

  I started to intervene, to snatch my son away from her, when Diktys scooped him up. “Mother, there’s nothing more to say.” Quiet menace filled out his voice. He gritted his teeth. “I suggest you go home.”

  Once the queen mother departed and the neighbors started to disperse, Keremaia refused to admit me back into the weaving house. “You heard her. No more rations for you or your brat.” She braced herself against the door frame to create a human barrier, and added smugly, “I always knew you were trouble.”

  Diktys, having remained with me, answered on my behalf, “You seem rather secure in your position.”

  “I’m only doing what the queen mother says. The woman’s worker status has been revoked.” Keremaia looked at me, but this time when she spoke she tempered her venom. “You may, however, go inside and gather your things.”

  Uncertain, I turned to Diktys, who shook his head. “Your worker’s status remains until Megistokritos makes the change, if he does it,” he informed me, though his words were also for the headwoman. “You can keep working. The scribe is the king’s creature, and the king doesn’t always follow our mother’s advice.”

  Yet I had been shaken by the encounter, and saw that under his youthful bravado Eurymedon remained unsure, too; he needed my attention far more than the unfinished cloth stretched across my loom. I took him from his uncle. “I’ll return tomorrow,” I told Keremaia.

  Diktys escorted us home, and afterward found work to do nearby. Eurymedon squirmed in my arms, wanting to run outside to be with his uncle, but I refused to let him go anywhere until I could reprimand him. “What have your uncle and I said about minding your manners around your elders?” Getting his attention proved hard, for I had to snap my fingers, even grasp him by the chin, and repeat myself.

  Eurymedon expressed no remorse. “She was mean.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” I emphasized. “She’s the king’s mother and your elder. You’re lucky she didn’t have you beaten. Now your uncle will have to do it.”

  At that, he whined and pleaded, and looked to Klymene, who always left the discipline to me or Diktys, but she did not interfere when I grabbed his hand to take him outside. When he refused to walk, making me drag him like a dead weight, I picked him up and carried him to where Diktys sat in the yard spinning goat hair. “He needs to learn to mind his manners around his elders.”

  I returned to the house followed by my son’s vindictive wailing, “I hate you!” And then the unmistakable sound of a man’s hand striking a child’s bottom. Wincing, I shut out his screams and went inside again.

  Klymene met me with a sympathetic look. “If it’s anything to you,” she said, “I very much doubt Polydektes sent her. He resents her interference in his personal matters.”

  Absently nodding, I searched the house for something to do; my worker’s shift would not have ended till late afternoon. “But she can still revoke my weaver’s status.” I ran my hands through my hair. “What will I do?”

  “Do? Why must you do anything?” Klymene set down the vessel she had taken from the shelf. “You’re not going to starve. Neither Polydektes nor Amphiera can stint Diktys his right to food and supplies.”

  “I like working.”

  Klymene chuckled, still not grasping my meaning. “Why, there’s plenty of work for you to do around here.” When I groaned and rolled my eyes, she added, “Yes, I know what it is to feel useless. Amphiera never let me do anything but sit in the palace weaving room and mind my loom. If I had a moment alone with Magnes, she let me feel her displeasure for days. Her threats will come to nothing. Megistokritos and the other palace officials know better than to change the records without the king’s approval.”

  “Would he even know? Does he even take an interest in such things as what woman is working where?” Retrieving my spindle from its basket, I sat down and started spinning.
Twisting yarn freed my mind to wander. How strange and disconcerting that I should look to Polydektes to resolve the situation.

  Klymene brought her own wool work when she sat beside me. “Polydektes only cares about the tallies when the taxes are due, but remember, he has his spies watching you. If you’re not in the weaving house, he’ll ask why.”

  Naturally, he would. How else did he know to send trinkets on those rare occasions when I was sick? Yet I found no comfort in that odd reassurance. “She called me a whore in front of everyone. I never...”

  “Why, she’s called me a whore more times than I can count, when she shouldn’t talk.” Klymene found her own spindle and sat beside me; her hands remained idle. “She’s done it to every woman she meets.”

  “If Diktys hadn’t come, that Thracian would have seized me.” Agitation took hold, now that the shock of the encounter wore off. To think that I should have to look to a man to protect me! I ought to start carrying a dagger. What use, though, when other men like Tarbos would surely come to beat the defiance out of me? The Women of the Mountain had had strength in their numbers. I had only myself.

  “Don’t dwell anymore on it.” Klymene set a wrinkled hand atop mine. “Though, if you married Diktys, Polydektes would think twice. Yes, yes, I know you dislike talking about marriage, but it’s not as if Diktys is a stranger your family has betrothed you to, or a Thessalian raider who wants to make you his concubine. He wouldn’t ever mistreat you, and if you ask me, I think you two would make a very happy couple.”

  We had this conversation on occasion, she either sensing a need on my part or his, or I confiding doubts about my continued celibacy. Part of me did want Diktys as a husband. I wanted him to hold me close, to make me feel loved and needed, but then reality reared its ugly head, presenting me with other women chafing under their husbands’ rule. Bruises from arguments, the pain and exhaustion of constant childbearing. Also, remembrances of dreams in which beauty turned to terror, where light and wonder became a violating darkness. No matter how handsome the man, and how loving and considerate, sexual intercourse meant sweaty, clumsy fumbling, embarrassment and pain, an invasion of one’s pure, innermost self.

  Not that my body always agreed with my mind. At times, especially during certain phases of the moon when the goddess made me most fertile, I craved the warmth of a man’s body, hard where mine was soft. Kissing my mouth, stroking my limbs through my clothing, caressing my breasts and kissing them—but no more than that. Whatever heat my imaginings generated between my legs, I wanted no one else probing there, taking advantage; those mysteries belonged to me alone.

  As a man, even Diktys was crude about sex; his body betrayed its yearnings where at least I could keep them private. Once a month, he went into town, not to conduct the business of the village, but to frequent loose women, the pornai. Was it on my account that he felt compelled to seek out these trollops? The neighbor women assured me otherwise. Men thought about copulating most of the time, and no woman, no matter how he might love her, ever sufficed.

  I taught myself to overlook these things, and to accept them as the price of living a normal life alongside men. After all, Eurymedon himself would one day become a man, rough and coarse and preoccupied with sex.

  Eurymedon returned at sundown with his uncle to show me a length of spun goat hair. Uneven, lumpy, but he showed pride in his labors. I kissed him and accepted the apology he presented with the thread.

  Any anxieties I had about returning to the weaving house vanished with the news that Pikreus’s young bride, Halia, was in labor. With her flat hips and the babe apparently turned the wrong way, the gossips already predicted that she would not survive the birth. Panope and Ornis spoke of nothing else. Auge sat white-faced with the carding comb.

  Keremaia showed her indifference. “A man marries a thirteen-year-old girl, what does he expect when her time comes?”

  “You could be kinder,” Panope observed. “It’s not Halia’s fault that Pikreus plucked an unripe maidenhead.”

  “And you could be working harder,” the headwoman rejoined.

  “Do you have any children of your own?” Ornis asked. How strange that the two women should engage Keremaia in conversation where they rarely had before. Either the subject of babies or my defying the queen mother yesterday had stiffened their backbones. I preferred to think they were affected by the former, for I had set a bad example with the latter.

  Keremaia’s fingers tightened around her spindle. “That’s none of your concern. Now stop chattering and get back to work.”

  Ornis turned up her nose. “Just asking.”

  After a short time, however, conversation once again competed with the rasp of the carding comb and the clack of the shuttle. Ornis looked to me and Panope. “Do you think they’ll send for Leukothea? She’s interceded with Eleuthia before.”

  “I don’t know,” I murmured.

  “Philagra and Klymene are as good a pair of midwives as any,” Panope said. “They’ll only call Leukothea if it’s Thanatos or the dark goddess who threaten.” Her deft hands beat the weft threads into place. “Or they’ll call you, Dorea. Myrtilis keeps saying how lucky she was to have you near when she delivered Hektor.”

  Myrtilis’s constant praise for my saving her life in childbed was a source of embarrassment rather than pride. A talisman against death, she called me, and constantly brought up the fact that I had cheated Hades. “She should stop saying that. I did nothing but hold her hand and pray with the other women.” A thread hung loose. I attended to the mistake before Keremaia noticed. “Luktia will bring the kourotrophos from the sanctuary and the midwives will pray.” Then I noticed earlier errors that required me to undo a quarter of an hour’s weaving. I had to start paying attention.

  “You’re no priestess,” Keremaia snapped, “and no weaver, either, from the mistakes you’ve been making.” She saw everything, even from the side.

  “Why must you always be so mean-spirited?” Panope spoke up on my behalf before I could. “If you were nicer, you’d have more friends.”

  “Friends in the village?” Keremaia’s lip curled in disdain. “I don’t need friends who smell of mackerel. My friends are...” Her mouth closed. She frowned and appeared momentarily stricken, vulnerable.

  By late afternoon, Halia’s ordeal continued, even though her water had broken just before the midnight run. Huamia, who had been with her all night, came out for air and, encountering me, called, “Dorea, you must help us!” Before I could refuse on grounds that I was no midwife, she clasped my wrist and urged me toward Pikreus’s house.

  The expectant father, his kinsmen, and friends hunkered down by a bonfire on the beach. Just as well that he stayed away. The house reeked of blood. Halia’s thighs and the bed coverings were saturated with scarlet. The baby had been born, to judge from the wailing from the next room, but the mother was hemorrhaging, pale as wood-ash, and there was Leukothea, rank and disheveled, dancing in supplication to the dark goddess.

  Ismene, the girl’s mother-in-law, kept pressing the kourotrophos into Halia’s bloody hands when Eleuthia could no longer help. “It’s Lord Apollo she needs,” I told her, while resisting the urge to gag. “Where’s the house snake?” As divine messengers between worlds, and sacred to both the Mistress and Healer, serpents could both kill and affect cures.

  “Listen to Dorea. She knows!” Goddess help me, Myrtilis was there, her mule-face radiant with adoration. Ismene stared mindlessly, and kept trying to get the senseless Halia to hold the kourotrophos. Myrtilis hustled her aside in order to steer me toward the bed. “Blessed Dorea, take her hand. Make her live!”

  “I’m not a priestess!” Even as I protested, I knew the woman would not see reason, nor could I refuse the desperate midwives. I leaned over to see what could be done—perhaps a reviving tonic—but nothing, not even the wool and linen the midwives had packed her with, could stanch the uncontrollable bleeding.

  Klymene and I exchanged glances. Hers said try.


  Halia’s hand felt cold and clammy in mine. I squeezed her wrist, finding but a fluttering pulse. “Apollo Healer!” I cried. “Attend this woman. She is Halia, wife of Pikreus. She has endured a hard childbirth, even as the Lady Leto, your own divine mother suffered. For Leto’s sake, have pity on this wretched mortal.” And some small mercy on me, I privately added, for I had no training in how to propitiate Apollo.

  I glanced around the room, caught Leukothea staring at me in the midst of her dance, saw to my dismay Myrtilis’s feverish adoration, and averted my gaze to Halia’s face. Her lips were losing their color, and, to my mind the most pathetic thing of all, in the haste to save her, no one had bothered to wipe the smear of blood from her cheek. I fumbled for the edge of the blanket, wetted it with my own saliva, and tried to clean her. Someone handed me a damp cloth. Maybe the sensation of bracingly cold water or the sharp reek of vinegar, the things that had aided me when I gave birth might do for her, though I doubted it. Had she been a little older, had her hips been wider, more developed—too many should-have-beens.

  And then, as I started to shake my head and release the girl’s hand, Halia stirred. Her eyelids fluttered. She released a groan—a prelude to her last, shuddering breath rather than a hopeful sign of survival.

  Just as she released her final breath, I dropped hold of her hand lest dark-winged Thanatos snatch me along with her soul. Ismene wailed; Philagra, Luktia, and Klymene pressed in around her to offer sympathy and comfort. Huamia stood frozen in the doorway with the jar containing the house snake her mother had ordered her to fetch. Leukothea’s chanting changed tenor as she, ignoring me, wafted rancid smoke over the body.

  Hearing the women’s bereavements, the dead woman’s husband shouted and tried to break the barrier of sterner-minded men who knew better and enter the house; his heartbroken calls of “Halia! Halia!” cut straight to my heart. Ismene shrieked even harder, her body shaking so hard that she lacked the strength to stand upright. Her comforters sank to the floor with her, covered her limbs with theirs.