“When I entered the House of Hera the day after the fire, I asked the head priestess—the one who oversaw the House prior the liver-spotted priestess I would later replace—if the Herenes couldn’t honor him. He’d saved one of their members, after all. She kindly said that if I’d already started my training as an initiate, then yes, they would have to honor him. But as I hadn’t even moved my things out of my parents’ home at the time of the rescue, she couldn’t. She did however, give me the bit of wisdom that mentioning a thing often enough can make it so.
“So, whenever my family and the people on my street spoke to others, we were sure to mention the Hero of Hestia and include Herc’s name. In only a few weeks, the majority of Portaceae City joined Herc Dion’s name with the title Hero of Hestia. By the time I was half way through my training, even people in the districts of Portaceae knew him as the hero who had saved dozens of lives.”
Iolalus and I sit for a moment with only the scratching of Maxinia’s quill breaking the silence. He swallows what remains in his cup and pours another to empty the first jug. He pops the cork out of the second jug and tops my drink off. My head is already fuzzy, but I don’t care. I don’t so much want to forget the day, not with what Herc said, not with the intensity of his look still clinging to me, but I do want to wash my mind clean of what he will be doing with Deianira on this their wedding night.
“You were quite heroic today yourself,” Iolalus says. “He was dreading leaving here.”
“Well, he’s gone now.” I down half my glass and fill it again.
Iolalus leans forward and places his hand over my glass as I reach again for the jug. “He does love you,” he whispers.
“Little good it does me.” My words slosh into themselves, but despite the quantity of wine I’ve consumed, flashes of Herc and Deianira’s faces on the thrusting bodies of Adneta and Baruch still invade my mind. “I am a Herene, not allowed to love or be loved,” I say haughtily. “But I am allowed to command you to keep this glass full.”
At some point, I remember Maxinia putting me into a spinning bed. I dream of nothing and thank all the gods except my mother for that.
20
HERC
The journey to my new wife’s home could not go better if I had planned it. She insists on riding together on her horse, a salt-and-pepper mare who is past her prime but still sturdy enough to hold two riders for a short distance. Deianira sits in front of me as I take the reins. Her hair blocks much of my view, but the horse seems to know her destination without any guidance.
The streets have filled with people who are breaking out bottles of homemade wine and liquor. As the horse lumbers her way through the crowd, people pass cups up inviting us to celebrate with them. After two cups, I only pretend to accept their offerings, but make sure Deianira enjoys several drinks.
“It honors them, don’t you think, to have the great Hercules Dion and his wife drink from their stores?” she asks. Her words are only slightly slurred so I agree and pass her two more cups that have been handed up to me. By the time the horse parks herself in the cramped yard behind a narrow house, my bride can hardly hold herself upright on the mare.
As much as I don’t want to be married to her, I don’t want to see Deianira hurt by a fall onto the worn and dirty cobbles of the yard. I dismount, then hold her by the waist to help her down. She takes the chance to cling to me and place wet, wine-sodden kisses on my face. When she grabs at my groin, I lift her into my arms, cradling her head as I slip through the unlocked back door.
“Where’s the bedroom?” I ask.
“Up.” She juts her arm toward a corner where the low hue of twilight seeps through the window to show a steep staircase that leads to the house’s cramped sleeping space. By the time I reach the top, Deianira’s head lolls in my arms.
I do bed my wife, but only in the sense of slipping off her sandals and placing her on a thin mattress. Before I can pull the covers over her bony body, she is already snoring more heavily than a satyr.
I make my way back down the stairs and bite my lip to keep from crying out when I bump into a table that takes up most of what must be the kitchen area of the house. I grope for a candle and find one in the center of the table. In the hearth, a pot full of embers glows. Most people in Portaceae City can’t afford matches so they keep ember pots to quickly light fires and candles as needed. The pots are a danger, but it’s impossible for the vigiles to enforce the law and make people begin every fire from scratch with flint and tinder when there are larger worries in the polis and not enough vigiles to tend to even a fraction of them.
I dip the wick into the embers and blow light puffs of air until flames catch the wick. On the table, Deianira has set out a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a small cake she must have hoped we would share if she was selected. A stab of pity hits me, but I cannot bring myself to feel anything deeper for my wife. I place my breastplate and cloak on a chair, sit at the table, and fill one of the glasses.
I can only imagine what is running through Iole’s mind. I want to flee from this house, jump on the old mare, and race her back to the House of Hera. “And what then?” I mutter as I take a sip of the wine. It’s bitter with a vinegary tang so I shove it aside. Would I take a Herene, the Herene of Herenes as Artemis had called her, tell her I love her, and bed her?
I scoff at my own thought, but the image of Iole, how perfect she looked in her dress, how we matched one another on the dais, and how she had looked at me when I all but said I wanted to be with her, leaves me with the seed of hope. Ever since Athena planted the possibility in my mind that I might not be the monster I assumed myself to be, thoughts of Iole loving me have not been far from my mind and today’s events have only flamed the pot of embers I hold in my heart for her. I stand and go to the door, my hand on the knob ready to go back to her. In the dark of night when all of the House is asleep, who would see me go into her rooms?
A loud snort from upstairs clears my head and forces me out of my daydream. I drop my hand from the door. How can I go to Iole? I am wed. She is a Herene and the daughter of Hera. We will both face severe punishment if I act on my impulses. It’s bad enough I’m avoiding my marriage bed on my wedding night to sit up thinking of Iole, worse still to risk her life. I return to the table and pick at the stale cake. I’m disturbed only once from my reverie by distant shouts, but no one trips a call box so I assume the noise is merely a group of partiers that have had too much to drink.
When the room starts to glow pink with dawn’s light, I go upstairs and slip into bed hoping to give the appearance I’ve spent the night with my wife. Once in the bed, exhaustion overwhelms me making it impossible to hold my eyes open.
I wake to Deianira straddling me. Her mound of hair slips forward and swallows her face as she leans down to kiss me. She hasn’t cleaned her teeth and the morning smell on her breath makes me jerk my head away.
“Morning lover.” She grinds against my hips. “Let’s do whatever we did again.”
Apparently she’s made her own memories of our wedding night.
“I need to relieve myself,” I say and slip out from under her.
“In the corner.” She points to a white pot at the far side of the room. As I lift my tunic, she inches up behind me, peering around to catch a glimpse.
How can I tell her I want to share no intimacy with her, not even a piss?
“Please, I can’t with you watching.”
She cackles at that and flops back into bed. “With something that size, you ought to show it off.”
I take as long as I can. I have no desire for this woman. The woman I want is in the House of Hera, not here. As I lower my tunic a sad desperation settles like a blanket of fog over me. What does it matter? What can I hope for with Iole? I may love her, I may imagine us together, but by the laws of Portaceae, Iole serves only Hera and cannot love a man. To top it off I’ve been bound to the woman behind me. I have a duty to uphold with her. If I can hold thoughts of Iole in my mind, perhaps I
can manage to complete that duty.
I turn from the pot. On the bed Deianira is on all fours with her skeletal hind end sticking up in the air. She looks through her hair back at me.
“Fuck me, husband.”
Gods, there is no way I can pretend this woman is Iole.
Seeing my hesitation, she turns around and crawls to the edge of the bed where I stand and takes me in her mouth. I close my eyes and imagine Iole in her gauzy dress with the band of silver chains at her waist. I think of removing the outfit piece by piece to reveal her body. When I picture bending down to touch her lips with mine, I finally feel myself stirring. Deianira pauses from her aggressive attention.
“It’s about time you got interested. It’s not men you like, is it?” Her words fly me back to my flaccid state.
Just as she returns to her work, a knock sounds from the door below. I brush her away and smooth down the front of my tunic.
“Leave it,” she says. “It’s probably just another well-wisher. You’ll ache if I don’t finish you.”
She says this as if she has even started me. She reaches for my crotch, but I step aside placing myself just out of her grasp, then jog down the stairs to the door.
I’ve barely taken the sealed letter from the messenger’s hand when I hear my wife’s heavy footfalls on the wooden steps. How a woman so skinny can have such an ungraceful step perplexes me. With a quick snatch, she steals the letter from my hand and breaks the seal despite it being addressed only to me.
“He can’t be serious.” She starts to tear the letter, but I grip her wrists before she makes it halfway through the first rip. She closes in on me, an attempt at a seductive smirk on her face. “Oh, rough play. Why didn’t you say that’s what you like?” When she relaxes her hold on the letter, I let go of her wrists and whisk the paper out of her hands.
“Another task?” My voice is tinged with disappointment. I won’t be staying in the House of Hera tonight or for several nights to come. Will I even see Iole before I leave?
“You don’t have to leave right now, do you?”
“It’s a summons from the Solon,” I say feigning the highest respect for my cousin. “If I ignore it, it could mean my death.”
“We have time for something quick.” She emphasizes the final word by clutching onto my crotch. I gently push her away and move to the table to be out of her grasp.
“I have to gather my things and collect Iolalus.” I throw my cloak around me and grab my breastplate. “I’ve no time. I need to get to the House of Hera.”
I may have earned her sympathy if not for the final sentence. At the mention of the House, her attempts at looking seductive instantly change. Her eyes narrow and her thin lips stretch into a harsh gash as she crosses her arms over her narrow chest.
“To her. You’re going to her,” she accuses. “You plan to fuck her before you go? Is that what you want?” My ears ring with the volume of her shouts in the tight house.
“Enough, Deianira,” I yell. “I am married to you and I know the law and my duty. And you know I still have tribute to pay. I don’t intend to die or have my cousin die because of your needs that can wait until I return.”
I yank open the door and storm out of the house slamming the rickety piece of wood behind me. Once outside of the dark, narrow home and out of its dank alleyway, the morning sunlight hits me. Despite a lingering sense of agitation with Deianira, the warm light bathes my face and fills me with a sense of hope for a fine day. I hurry my way through the pitted streets, anxious as a schoolboy to see Iole.
21
EURY
My feet crunch across the broken glass littering my foyer. In the small hours of Herc’s wedding night, the partying turned to rioting and a hoard of people invaded the grounds of my villa. One of the trespassers hurled a rock through my front windows before the guards chased the attackers away. Only one was caught, a boy of thirteen with blonde, cow-licked hair. I told the guards to detain him, then use him for archery practice as soon as dawn gave them enough light.
I don’t try to go back to bed. What would be the point? I hadn’t been sleeping when I heard the crash of rock meeting glass. Instead, I stand at the window watching the guards dragging the boy off. He resists so violently, his shoulder rips out of its socket leaving his arm dangling at a grotesque angle. His screams as they shove it back into place set the horses in the stables whinnying in fright as if one of their own has been injured.
The entire event and its aftermath truly sickens me. Of course, I did enjoy watching Herc’s discomfort at the wedding, the Herene’s too. But afterwards, the celebrations had taken on ridiculous proportions with partying continuing far into the night. A person would think Portaceae had been chosen to host the Osterian Games again with the way everyone took to the streets cheering and hooting and drinking and shouting, “Herc the Hero, Herc the Hero is wed.” The sounds of the people’s cheers refuse to leave my head.
I push at the mess of glass with my foot being careful not to pierce my slippers, then bend down to pick up the rock.
The marriage isn’t even news, certainly none worth celebrating. Of course, he’s wed. He’s an adult male and therefore married like most of the rest of us. It’s not as if he made it rain gold. Oh, and that ploy from Iole by dragging up some old tribute law. It took guts, I’ll give her that. For a moment there, I’d thought Deianira might just leap up and rip the Herene’s throat out.
A servant enters with a broom and waits in the shadows pretending to be invisible but her breathing is like a wheezing scream in the silence of the foyer. I tip the rock back and forth between my hands. How easy it would be to hurl this at her and silence her irksome noise. I wonder, would the rock shatter her skull as it had the glass pane?
I step away from the window, moving toward her, clutching the rock in my right hand. Her eyes dart to me, but then, as she’s been trained to do, she looks to the ground as I come near her. Does she know she’s inches from death?
I pause a moment beside her. Her breathing stops. I linger, wondering how long she can hold her breath. How long until she can take it no longer and sucks in a deep wheezing gasp? I work the rock back and forth a few more times, then jerk it up clutched in my hand like a weapon just to watch the woman flinch. The power of her fear should thrill me, but my foul mood allows no room for any joy. I lower the rock, turn away from the servant, and climb the stairs to my bed chamber. To Adneta.
She’d been ecstatic when I revealed the golden menagerie to her little by little over my festival days. My wife was like a child as she clapped for joy at the sight of the glittering creatures, but proved to be very much a woman when she thanked me with every attention a man could want. She burned with a passionate glee over her gift.
Until she saw Iole’s dress today.
When my wife saw the Herene’s outfit, she turned as cold as the glacial ice on the Hooded Mount and insisted I get her one just like it. Not knowing how I would pay for it, I promised her a similar gown in every color, every material she could hope for. Unfortunately, even the acts Adneta performed with her pouty little mouth after I put in the order with the royal dressmaker couldn’t erase the lingering traces of the chants that still ring in my ears.
Herc is becoming ever more a favorite with the people. And that popularity is a risk to me more than ever before. But I still need him.
A feeling of being in a box I can’t climb out of consumes me. I have to cling to the railing to avoid toppling back and as I do, the rock tumbles out of my hand tolling a heavy bang, bang, bang as it rolls down the stairs. The servant yelps at the sound, but she quickly cuts off her cry and I hear the swish of her broom pushing the glass once more.
Do I need him? Why can’t I just insist on a task such as, “Drive this dagger through your heart?” If he does so, good, I can always find some way to be rid of Iolalus. And if he doesn’t, all the better because both my cousins will be sent under for Herc’s failure to complete the tribute service.
I push o
pen the door to the bed chamber. My dressing room door stands open; perhaps I’d forgotten to latch it when I grabbed my robe and slippers. In the bed, Adneta sleeps looking beautiful in the moonlight. My heart aches as I touch her hair.
And here is the very reason I can’t be done with him. My wife will wake when the sunlight streams in the bed chamber and begin asking what I can give her and I will scramble to come up with a gift. Perhaps I’m a fool, or being made into a fool, but she gives me joy and I want to do the same for her. She will always want things, but only Herc has the strength, the cleverness, and the blind devotion to Portaceae to risk his life performing tasks he thinks benefit the polis. Tasks that can get me the objects to bring my Solonia pleasure
I despise him for that.
I need him and I need rid of him. I go to the window and squint my eyes to see how far I can see in the low light. The hills of the city are clear, but in the distance, only the silhouettes of the mountains can be seen.
The silhouettes send a spark of an idea through me. The further away I send him, the longer the tasks will take.
Sending him away during my celebrations has proven one thing: Unlike any normal man who would have taken his chances with the gods and run when he had his freedom from Portaceae’s borders, Herc keeps returning. I can hardly fathom such morality. Of course it may be the Herene drawing him back, but why bother with a frigid priestess when there are thousands of women all across Osteria who would gladly take my cousin into their beds? Truly unfathomable.
Absence kills remembrance, they say. The longer he is gone, the more his popularity will fade. People have short attention spans and they’ll soon find another distraction.
I leave the bed chamber and jog back down the stairs. The servant woman stops her sweeping and tucks into the nearest corner. I snatch up the rock on my way to my study. After striking a match to light a candle, I mindlessly return to tossing the rock back and forth between my hands as I scan the wall map of Osteria.
The Trials of Hercules: Book One of The Osteria Chronicles Page 22