HETAERA: Daughter of the Gods

by Coffey, J. A.

  But I had only Aesop.

  I told him all that had happened and after he poured me a bracing cup of mellow aged wine, I felt stronger.

  “Fortunate for you our master happened by,” Aesop said, when I had finished my cup and my tale.

  I nodded. “Still, I wonder. What did The Swine want?” The kitchen was small and comforting to me. There were no corners that held hidden dangers.

  “What did he want?” Aesop echoed and frowned at me. “You cannot be that innocent.”

  My cheeks burned. I didn’t want to appear stupid—not to Aesop. “I didn’t understand. When he said being on my knees suited him just as well?”

  “Oh, that. Well, I suppose he meant for you to take him in your mouth.”

  My curiosity was roused. “Take what in my mouth?”

  “His manhood. What else, you silly girl?” Aesop stroked his beard.

  I thought for a long moment. “Can it really be done?” I could not picture such a thing.

  “Yes, it can be done. As easily a man’s kiss, though perhaps with a bit more depth.” He wiped a hand over his chin.

  “I’ve never done it,” I responded.

  “No….no I should think not.” Aesop grabbed up the cup, and poured himself a draught.

  “I mean, I’ve never been kissed by a man.” I scuffed at cobbled floor.

  He corked the wine. “Haven’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to?” he asked.

  “With you?” I asked. An image of Dionysus’ lithe form flashed through my thoughts. Aesop was my teacher, my only friend. Did I?

  Aesop looked around the empty kitchen. “There is no one else about unless you prefer to find The Swine. He would be more than willing to teach you whatever you wish to learn and perhaps a bit more. Come now, Doricha. Do you dislike me so?”

  I caught my breath at those words. They were similar to those Merikos had spoken to me in the temple. Merikos, who’d loved my mother. My father and even Aidne, that treacherous serpent, had loved her. I knew betrayal, but what did I know of love, save for my adolescent passion with Mara?

  I eyed Aesop, the man they called Fabulist. He was a massive man, olive complexioned--odd for a Thracian, and with a shock of unruly hair kinked like wiry strands of copper from his scalp. Though he walked like a lopsided mountain, he had a gregarious smile that infected me with his wry humor. And there was his mind and his voice…. He was not so very ugly, I thought. Not handsome, but not so ugly. Could he teach me the mysteries of the flesh?

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  “Very well. I am ready to be kissed,” I announced.

  Nothing happened. I cracked an eyelid.

  “I think not, Little Flower.” Aesop chuckled. “But you will be, soon. Keep your eyes closed if it suits you.”

  His face loomed closer and I dutifully kept my eyes shut tight.

  I felt the raw scratch of his beard tickling my cheeks and inhaled the scent of sharp Grecian wine a moment before something soft and warm pressed on my lips. The pressure was not unpleasant, but certainly nothing like I’d imagined. It was nowhere near what I’d experienced with Mara, those years ago in the temple. I stiffened a little, at the memory, and the warm pressure disappeared.

  “There now,” Aesop announced proudly. “You have been kissed.”

  “That was all?” I cracked an eye open just in time to see Aesop’s cheeks flush.

  “For all that you stood there like an unforgiving stone. Yes, that was all.” He sounded offended.

  “Try again,” I ordered and closed my eyes a second time.

  This time as Aesop pressed his moist lips against mine, I tried my best to conjure up the image of my lithe Dionysus. Heat rushed through my body as Aesop’s hands rubbed my breasts through my chiton. I reached my hands out to touch the perfect white flesh in my memory, but encountered a very hairy forearm instead.

  “Oh.” I drew back as disappointment flushed the image of my lord from my mind. “That is all.” I frowned at Aesop. “It hardly inspires my passion.”

  Aesop made a growling noise, deep in his throat.

  “Shall we try again?” I was less than enthusiastic. “I do wish to be pleased.”

  Aesop’s countenance darkened like Boreas’ thunderclouds. “Be gone, girl!” He pushed me none-too-gently towards the doorway. “You come to me with tears staining your cheeks and tales of despair, and yet you expect to be wooed? Go away and return when you are ready for a proper instruction. Go!”

  “But Aesop, I only wished to….”

  “Go!” he rumbled again.

  I fled back to my quarters, thinking something must be very wrong with me, if The Swine wished to abuse me and Aesop did not wish to please me with kisses.

  *** ***

  A week passed, days and nights when I felt eyes on my back; whether they were Aesop’s or those of my master’s son I could not say. I had lost the favor of Aesop’s protection. The other slaves began to whisper and avoid me, especially after The Swine made a show of pinching my bottom in the dining hall. He left a nasty bruise.

  Aesop avoided me. If I entered the kitchens, he jerked to his feet and stomped out. If I was to serve at symposium, Aesop refused to even glance in my direction. I must be truly horrible, I thought. First Merikos and now Aesop, my only friend and teacher. Was it the nature of all men to leave behind those most in need of their care and protection? Well, if I was to be alone, then I would carry on.

  I swore I didn’t need Aesop’s protection.

  So I was, again, quite alone when The Swine found me next. I’d been sent to the agora to buy fresh eel and fish for the day’s meal. Aesop, Iadmon, and his son had gone to assembly and were not expected home until later.

  The wind blew in from the ocean, and reminded me somewhat of Perperek. For a brief moment, I was a child again, wending the seaside village paths. I felt rather free as I traversed the winding streets down to the marketplace, twirling my fish basket before me. With a twinge of guilt, I remembered my first view of the large open area that housed the slave stocks. I wondered what had happened to the old Samothraki, and I prayed that he’d been spared from the mines.

  Dionysus, if it be your will, send him some measure of your grace.

  I’d begun to pray to the gods again, in these last few days, and so caught up with my belated pleas I was that I did not recognize the man lounging in the doorframe ahead of me until he grabbed my arm.

  “Young Iadmon!” I drew away from him and my sandals skidded on the crushed limestone path. The basket dropped from my fingers and lay abandoned in the street as he dragged me away to a nearby alley.

  His thick fingers bit into the soft flesh of my shoulder. When he pushed me back against the rough stone building I had the sense to open my mouth to scream. Most of the city peacekeepers are slaves. An unprovoked attack on a slave was forbidden!

  The Swine covered my lower jaw with a bruising hand before I uttered a sound.

  “I will have you, you red bitch. You will not twitch your skirts and offer yourself solely to that misshapen tale spinner.”

  I tried to deny him, but his fingers obscured my words into an unintelligible groan.

  “Be silent!” he hissed. His eyes darted from side to side and the fingers of his spare hand ground further into my shoulder joints. I moaned at the flash of pain radiating down to my fingers.

  The Swine wedged a knee between my legs, nudging the fabric of my chiton up to my thighs. He rested the length of one forearm against my throat.

  “Make no sound, do you hear? Not one,” he said.

  His fingers peeled away from my aching jaw and I felt the sea breeze cool my hot, sweaty skin.

  “You’re so pink,” he said, his gaze roaming my face. “So very soft and pink. I’ve longed to feel you yield beneath my touch.”

  “Please,” I begged and tears stung my eyes. My voice was hoarse from the crushing pressure of his arm against my throat. “Please let me go. I will no
t tell, I swear it. Just let me go!”

  His hand returned with a blinding slap and clamped over my lips.

  “I said, ‘be silent.’ Now, I must find a way to keep you quiet.”

  His face was so close to me. Too close. I could smell the stink of Greek onions and olives on his breath and see the red rims of his eyes.

  My fingers clawed at him. I had to get away, yet I could not strike him.

  And then he kissed me, if one could call it a kiss.

  His hand peeled away at the last instant before his mouth bruised my lips. I tasted salt and the copper tang of blood. He’d pressed so hard my teeth had punctured my bottom lip.

  He savaged my lips. Saliva trailed from my nostrils to my chin. I wanted to retch. Then he thrust his tongue inside my mouth and I gagged. He drew back and boxed my ears. They popped and the world became muffled, as though stuffed with wool. I cried out at the stabbing pain and felt a wet stickiness in my left ear.

  The Swine drew his hands back and scrabbled at the front of my clothing. I wept as he tore the top of my chiton away. His ragged nails scratched crimson lines into my flesh and my breasts puckered at the exposure to the cold air.

  It hit me then. He was going to take me, here on the rocky hillside overlooking the path to the agora, like a common street whore, a pornai. I understood enough of what went on between men and women to understand this.

  Dionysus, if it be your will, I began to pray. But I could not think the words to finish. The world began to tilt crazily as The Swine’s fingers began to grope and squeeze. I scraped my back sliding down the rough stone wall. The ground rose up to meet me.

  And all the while he cursed until my ringing ears were full up with the sound of them.

  “I will have you. I will. I will.”.A strange light glittered in his eyes.

  The world grew dim.

  His voice seemed very far away. Further off, I heard the braying of dogs and then, blissfully, I heard and saw no more.

  *** ***

  “Bring some wine. She’s coming round.” A familiar warm voice filled my aching head and penetrated the fog in my ears.

  “Aesop?” I tried to crack an eye open but a stab of pain made them water so fiercely, I kept them closed. “Aesop, where am I?”

  “Shh, Doricha. You’re safe. We’ve brought you home.”

  “What hap-?” My voice cracked.

  If the Swine had succeeded I would know soon enough. I shifted and found I was sore at the juncture between my legs. I could not stop the tears that leaked out of my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks.

  “Leave us,” Aesop spoke to some unseen servant. He paused for a moment and I felt his cool, dry hand pass over my brow. I was sore there too, just above my left temple. I winced.

  “You have a nasty bruise over your eye,” Aesop said. “And your body is scratched and sore. But you are…intact for all purposes.” He sighed. “Fortunate we were passing and heard your cries.”

  “We?”

  “Iadmon, Aeschylus, and myself. Iadmon became worried when his son did not arrive at the assembly.”

  “Oh,” I turned my face away in a direction I hoped was toward the wall. If Aeschylus knew, soon the entire city would know of my shame. “Where is The Swine now?” Would he creep upon me in my very bed?

  “His father has sent him away to Phrygia.”

  Relief, followed swiftly by cold fear washed over my limbs. “Because of me?”

  “Iadmon ordered his son to oversee a shipment of tablets. But, yes. Because of you.” Aesop touched a cool rag to my eye.

  I was glad I had not been raped. While we do not prize virginity as much as the Greeks, I did not wish to be taken unless I desired it. And I most definitely did not wish The Swine to take me. What little I’d experienced of his attentions had left me bruised and sickened.

  “Will Iadmon send me away as well? I didn’t do anything, Aesop. Please, you must tell him!”

  “You are to stay here, for now. And that is all I can say, Doricha.”

  It would have to do. I sighed heavily and tried to rest. As long as The Swine was away, I would not be touched. My body ached but I leaned over and pulled the hetaera’s peplos from under my cot. I buried my nose in it to comfort myself with the faint scent and stroked the soft material until I fell asleep.

  The following morning, Iadmon himself came to visit me. My master had called a healer from the temples of Abdera to serve me, a mere slave. Iadmon was a good man, a kind man. I tried to remember that in later months. Kailoise sent me seed cakes for my breakfast, and glared at any man within ten paces of me, so Iadmon nodded briskly at the physician’s report and left.

  In the months that followed, the household treated me with kindness. Aesop and I never spoke again of that morning when he’d kissed me, or of The Swine’s attack, but the rest of the slaves regarded me with a grudging tolerance they had never shown before.

  My body healed, even my ear, which the healer proclaimed burst. After a week’s time, they poured sweet olive oil in my ear cavity, and when the golden liquid drained there was no blood and no pain.

  Though my bruises faded, my memories did not. I shied away from dark corners. My body grew thin with anxiety The Swine would complete his father’s bidding and return to us in Abdera.

  Aesop tried to turn my thoughts away from my fears with increasingly difficult puzzles and indeed my mind grew sharp as my body waned. I learned much under his tutelage. On more than one occasion, Aesop’s bushy brow raised and he would laugh like thunder booming down from the mount in reaction to my words. Things resumed their normal pace.

  After a time, I stopped watching the shadows.

  But the fear never left me, and I think Aesop knew it. If he felt sorrow over the cause of it, he never said, but I never went anywhere without him or one of the other slaves to accompany me. At least not in those months.

  Then my first woman’s blood began.

  I woke after a feverish night where I’d dreamt Dionysus had stepped off his stone platform in the temple and caught me by the wrists. He bade me dance for him, and I did gladly, until my legs ached and my throat was dry and parched. My body was hot, much too hot, and I quivered under the touch of my lord. The heat ignited my innards like flame, consuming my strength with it as it burned.

  When I begged my lord for rest, he turned his face to me, and his face was that of The Swine. The lithe, marble hands of Dionysus became bird’s claws that raked my flesh to crimson ribbons.

  “Dance for me, Rufus,” he ordered and pulled me stumbling along, until I collapsed on the floor in a shivering heap.

  I awoke in a puddle of sweat and sodden, blood-rich bed linens. My chiton was half-dried to my legs and the air was thick with the meaty odor of spoiled flesh.

  My first woman’s blood.

  By moonlight, I climbed out of my cot, washed myself off as best I could, and changed into a fresh chiton. I tore linen into strips and tied them around my waist to secure them under my crotch like an infant’s swaddling. Then I carried my linens out to the rear courtyard to wash.

  My body felt wobbly and out of joint and my stomach churned and ached from my nightmare and the pains cramping my womb. My mother had spoken of a woman’s courses before we fled to the temple, so I knew well what the blood signified. I could bear children. I was not afraid, but still I wept as I scrubbed the stains out of my old clothing and my bed linens. If only my beautiful mother were here to guide me.

  At last, I was a woman.

  *** ***

  Some weeks later, after a long day spent shuttling between the agora and the weaving room, Kailoise sent me to the courtyard gardens to collect herbs for a Lydian meat stew. The dusk air was heavy with humidity and the clean scent of parsley. I was tired after a long day, and did not attend to my surroundings. So it was that I bundled up the plants and stuffed them into my basket, with little note what lie just beyond the shadow of the pillars.

  “Night becomes you, Rufus.” It was the voice of my dream.
>
  My blood ran cold and my teeth chattered in terror. He should not be here. We’d had no warning! He could not be….I felt a hysterical scream bubbling up my throat as Young Iadmon stepped from behind a shadowed portico.

  “You…here?” I croaked. I held my herb basket before me like a shield.

  “And where else should I be, but in the house of my father?” He reached out to finger a lock of my hair and I flinched from his touch.

  The Swine’s brows drew together and he slapped the basket away. It hit the stones with a muffled thunk. My throat closed in fear and I swallowed hard.

  “Ah, little Rufus. There is only one place I desire to be tonight. Between those lovely pink thighs of yours. Or have you had your fill of the Fabulist? Perhaps even my honorable father, as well. They both seem to champion you to extraordinary lengths.” He turned and spat. “They sent me away to Phrygia on a god-forsaken mission for some crumbling tablets of stone, when I had a much more a precious treasure waiting for me here.”

  I stumbled backwards to a column and gripped it to steady myself.

  Think. This is simply another puzzle.

  He delighted in torturing me with unwelcome attention. What would he do if I were to turn the tables? What if I feigned interest in his attentions? He was scarce a man and interested only in that he should not take. Well, I was his for the taking in any case; what did it matter if I failed? Perhaps, with this ruse, I could buy some time until someone discovered I was missing.

  “I have been awaiting your return.” I leaned back against the column in what I hoped was an alluring manner, but in truth the stone lent strength to my quaking knees.

  The Swine were wary and more than a little puzzled. His eyes darted back and forth across the courtyard and he wet his lips with his tongue before speaking, as if his mouth had suddenly gone dry.

  “You are thinner than I recall. Are you not so much a woman, then?”

  “I have begun my courses.” I tossed my hair. “I am fertile now and ready to bear you many sons.” I wanted to retch at the thought, but I forced a smile to my lips.