I raise the spear high above my head, above the baby’s writhing, kicking body. “Hekate, claim this child now. He is yours—as I am yours, Mother.”
Mother I never knew.
I never knew my mother—not even her name. My father never spoke of her; nor did Pasiphaë, my half-sister, though we talked of everything else imaginable.
Pasiphaë and I never could be separated, nor could we be silenced, even when ceremony and propriety demanded. We were born in the same month of the same year, to different mothers; we were as inseparable as twins. We would whisper and giggle at the temple shrines, until one of our nurses clouted us both upon our ears. When our father, Heliodoros, a great and wealthy chieftain, feasted the other chiefs of Colchis—or even greater men; princes and kings—Pasiphaë and I could still be counted upon to make mischief. During those many lavish feasts, we seldom remained in the gynaeceum—the dining area set apart for women and girls—of our father’s house. Instead, we snuck through the halls to his andron; there, we spied on the men in their private space, listening to their conversations, wondering which chieftain each of us would be married to when our time came to wed. If we were caught by one of our brothers, Aeëtes or Perses, he would chase us back to the gynaeceum, grinning and laughing, or roaring like a lion to make us squeal. But if our father Heliodoros spotted us, he would summon our nurses to drag us back to the bed chamber we shared. There we would be scalded by their tongues, and sometimes beaten on the backside. But even the harshest rebukes couldn’t deter us for long.
Pasiphaë’s mother had been as pretty as she was kind. I remember her, some…though I could not have been older than five or six years when she died, victim of the fever that had swept through Colchis that summer. Her name was Perse. She was one of many daughters of some Black Sea tribal chief, of little importance in her father’s house, but unparalleled in beauty. Perse had given her auburn-red hair and fine face to Pasiphaë. To me, she gave the same tenderness I might have expected from my real mother, had she survived my birth.
If Perse had lived longer, perhaps she would have told me about my own mother—in time, when I was old enough to understand. For Heliodoros had only one wife—Perse—and no concubines. At least, my father had no concubines whom he cared to acknowledge. Now that I am grown, and can look back on my childhood with the wisdom of distance, I understand all too well: my mother must have been a whore, or someone little better. When she died birthing me, only the gods know why Heliodoros chose to take me into his house and raise me as a true daughter. And only the gods know why Perse accepted me as readily as she did. Perhaps it was simply a measure of her innate kindness. Perhaps it hurt her heart too badly, to leave an infant without a home and loving arms to hold it—even if that infant was a girl, and a product of her husband’s dalliance.
The mystery of my mother’s identity died with sweet Perse, for Heliodoros was not the sort of man whom a daughter ever questioned. My brothers, Aeëtes and Perses, did not know my mother’s name. They made up fantastical tales, in answer to all my questions about the mother I never knew. Their stories were full of fond teasing, the sort of games older brothers have played with their little sisters since the beginning of time. They meant no harm with their tales—on the contrary, I feel sure that Aeëtes and Perses believed they were somehow helping me with those fanciful inventions. Out of love, they wove a bright tapestry to cover the holes in my history—in my knowledge of myself.
“No one ever speaks your mother’s name because to do so would be blasphemy,” Aeëtes once told me. “Your mother was a goddess, little Circe…but I cannot tell you which one. It’s a great and terrible secret.”
Perses corroborated Aeëtes’ claim. “A very powerful goddess came to our father, wearing an ordinary woman’s body, just as you wear a tunic or a cloak. She came for one purpose only: to get with child, for she knew her daughter would be lovely and charming and good when she was born.”
I remember asking, “But if my mother was a goddess, then how did she die at my birth?”
“Ah,” Perses said sagely. “It was only her disguise that died. The real goddess whisked herself back to Olympus as soon as she saw you laid safely in the arms of our mother, Perse. And that’s how you became part of our family, dear little sister.”
Perses lifted me up to his shoulders then, and ran about the flat, dry yard outside our father’s house until a pair of dogs gave playful chase and I was shrieking and gasping with laughter. For a time, I forgot all my questions.
After sweet Perse was gone, Pasiphaë and I became inseparable, as close as true, full-blooded sisters—closer than twins. We played together in the orchards and among the dusty grape vines; we walked slowly along temple paths, swinging our offerings carelessly in our baskets, dawdling so we might have more time together. But the seasons turned too quickly, and all too soon the idyll of our childhood had fled. Womanhood was fast approaching.
There was one feast I remember with painfully vivid clarity. Pasiphaë and I were in our fourteenth year. Music of harp, horn, and drum drifted from the andron to the screened cloister of the gynaeceum, where we, the last living females of our father’s house, lay on our small couches amid nurses and maids and scullery women, the servants who made the great house of Heliodoros run. We had finished our bowls of fish stew quickly, and licked the last crumbs of honey-soaked bread from our fingers.
Pasiphaë nudged me with her elbow. “If we go now, we can see the jugglers in the andron, and be back before the second course is served.”
“You go if you like,” I whispered, so our nurses could not hear. “I don’t want to see the andron tonight.”
“Don’t want to see it? Why not?”
A sour weight sank in my stomach. “There is nothing amusing about the andron, Pasiphaë. Better to leave it alone. We have everything we need here; we can even hear the music.”
“You sound like an old grandmother! Where’s your sense of fun?”
I had clutched her hand then, squeezing hard, as if I could force understanding through her skin and into her blood, her heart. “Don’t you see? The men we’ll marry are probably in that room right now, drinking and feasting with Father.”
“Of course they are, you goose! You’ve always liked spying on the men, and trying to guess which will be your husband.”
“I don’t want a husband,” I said with a sudden flare of passion. I’d never thought it through before, had never asked myself whether I looked forward to the inevitable path my life would take. But now that the words had flown from my mouth, a bitter taste of truth lingered on my tongue. “I don’t want to marry, and I don’t ever want to become a mother—not ever!”
The two old nurses who had looked after us since Perse’s death gasped in horrified disapproval. In my wildness and fear, I’d allowed my voice to rise above a whisper.
I hung my head, blushing, but I spoke on, loud enough for every woman in the gynaeceum to hear me. “It’s true. I want nothing to do with men, nor babies. You all know what happened to my mother.”
Korinna, my old nurse, patted my shoulder with her dry, wrinkled hand. “There there, little one. The same fate won’t befall you in childbed.”
“How do you know?” I cried. “You can’t say! Only the gods can say!”
Pasiphaë had pushed herself up from her couch, then, and sat upon my own. She embraced me, stroking my hair and kissing my forehead. “Marriage is nothing to fear, Circe.”
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, shaming me before the eyes of the servants. “How can you say that? Once Father has chosen our husbands—once he has given us, like a pair of ewes or a couple of sows—we’ll be sent off to new houses. We’ll never see each other again!”
“But of course we will,” Pasiphaë said. “I’ll come and visit you every year, even if I must take a ship from the farthest island. Even if I get terribly seasick, I’ll still do it, every single year until we’re too old to stir from our beds.”
“Once a year isn’t enough,” I s
obbed against my sister’s shoulder. “It’s all going to change, Pasiphaë. And I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready!”
“But you have so much to look forward to. Father will make you a good match. Don’t you want to be mistress of your own house?”
I sniffled, mired in misery, and did not reply. Pasiphaë had much to anticipate in marriage. She was the daughter of Heliodoros’s true and beloved wife. Hers would be a brilliant match—a powerful, much-admired prince, perhaps even a king. I, on the other hand, was little more than an orphan—the bastard daughter born of a dead whore. By that time, I had ceased to believe my brothers’ tales about my mother’s divinity. They had only been trying to protect a little girl’s tender feelings. I was a sensible, thoughtful young woman; the stark reality of my origins was plain for me to see. What kind of husband could a whore’s daughter expect?
At length I said, “I shall ask Father not to marry me at all, but to give me to you, as your handmaid. Then I can go wherever you go, and you won’t have to get seasick coming to visit me.”
Pasiphaë had laughed. “You will never be my servant; you’re my sister. Anyway, you would never dare to ask Father for anything.”
That much had been true. Heliodoros was a stern, hard man. In the weeks and months that followed, I tried desperately to work up my courage. I cannot count how many times I approached Heliodoros timidly, like a mouse creeping up to a cat, as he’d stood watching his men drilling with their spears in the yard, or as he’d stalked along the temple paths toward the shrines, leading his household up the hill to make our obeisance to the gods. But my courage had never held, if indeed I’d had a scrap of courage to begin with. Once I thought to ask my brothers to intercede on my behalf. But they were grown men by that time, working our father’s land, overseeing their share of the servants, and turning their attentions to women of their own. It would have been a great shame to Aeëtes or Perses if I were to ask either man to grovel before Heliodoros on my behalf.
To this day, I wonder what my life might have been if I had ever found my courage, and begged my father to give me to Pasiphaë. For within a year of that fateful night when I had wept on my sister’s shoulder, Heliodoros had chosen our husbands. Pasiphaë and I found ourselves kneeling at the altar on the hill, high above our father’s house, offering the freshly cut locks of our hair to Artemis. All at once, we were pledged brides. Our proaulia—the last days we would spend in our childhood home—had begun.
Throughout the ten days of our shared proaulia, Pasiphaë bubbled over with joy. Heliodoros had found a husband worthy of his true daughter’s beauty and noble spirit; she was justifiably thrilled. Minos was handsome and strong, the new-made king of a glittering kingdom. Crete, the huge island he had claimed by might, was a rich and beautiful place. We knew its reputation, even in Colchis, far to the north. Heliodoros was a man of great influence, but he was neither king nor prince. How he convinced Minos to take a simple chieftain’s daughter for his queen, I will never know. Perhaps Minos saw Pasiphaë on one of his visits to my father’s house, and was struck by her unearthly beauty—her rich red hair and pure, goddess face.
My husband made better sense. Lycus was an exile, a prince of Sarmatia who had been banished from his homeland by a usurper. He had found welcome in Colchis, once he had pledged his sword to Heliodoros. My father had given Lycus a small estate, a few miles south of his own holding. The land was still mostly forest; it would be many years before Lycus and his servants could make the land fertile and cause the farm to flourish. Until his land produced, my husband would be entirely beholden to my father. Young as I was, still I saw my situation—my future—with bleak clarity. Daughter of Heliodoros’s favorite whore, I was no fit bride for a king. But I was a daughter of the chieftain, none the less. Lycus, the fallen prince, would read a compliment in the offer—in me, as a gift and obligation.
If my new husband had found any flattery in Heliodoros’s gesture, it quickly lost its luster. Within days of our marriage—on the very same day, in fact, that Pasiphaë and King Minos sailed for Crete—Lycus turned dark and bitter. After spending the morning at the river bank, where I had sobbed through my farewell to Pasiphaë, we had returned to Lycus’s new house on his half-cleared farm. I was alone in my small chamber, with a curtain pulled across its single, small window to block the light—the dull throb of a headache had confined me to my bed. Outside, I could hear the distant blows of axes as my husband’s men worked among the trees, but nearer to the house, Lycus and a few of his friends stacked the slim logs into pyramids. Either my husband did not know that I lay just behind that curtained window, or he didn’t care.
“Your wife Circe is a pretty little thing,” one man said.
Lycus gave a half-hearted grunt.
The men laughed in disbelief. Another said, “Surely, you have no complaints.”
“She’s not as beautiful as the old chief’s other daughter,” Lycus said. “The red-haired one.”
“Go on, then—swim after Minos’s ship if you want to fight him for the red-haired daughter,” said the first man. The others laughed.
“Minos got the prettier one because he’s a king,” Lycus sounded petulant, like a pouting child. “If that creature Mnason hadn’t overthrown my father, I would still be a prince of Sarmatia.”
“Now now,” said one of the men in a soothing way, “you are still a prince of Sarmatia.”
“Living off the charity of a Colchian chief?” My husband snorted.
“But even so, Circe is a beauty. What of it, if she’s not quite as beautiful as her sister? And she seems a nice, biddable woman, with good sense.”
“Good sense is hard to find in a woman,” another man agreed.
Lycus muttered, so quietly I could scarcely hear him, “Good sense, but bad blood.”
A log clattered onto the pile, but then the men fell silent. I could picture them, paused and turning to Lycus, curious and hesitant. At length, someone said, “What do you mean?”
“I’ve heard rumors about that Circe, ever since I arrived in Colchis. She has sorceress blood…witch’s blood.”
My heart stilled in my chest. A terrible, icy chill crept along my veins.
One of the men chuckled uncomfortably.
“It’s true,” Lycus said. “I’ve heard her mother was a goddess.”
“Pretty as she is, I can believe it.”
“Not Aphrodite or Hera,” Lycus pressed on. “Hekate.”
The men fell silent again. I pressed a hand to my mouth, stifling a gasp. The stories my brothers had told me when I was a little girl crashed back into my head like an ocean wave, turbulent and cold. Was it true, after all? Had Aeëtes and Perses known this secret—my secret—all along?
No, I told myself firmly. It could not be true. It defied belief. It was gossip; a silly tale, told to comfort a sad, lonely little girl. Surely my new husband was wise enough to see that such a tale couldn’t possibly be true.
“Well,” said one of the men with forced cheer, “better the goddess of witches than no goddess at all.”
“I admit, she seemed no different from any mortal girl, when I took her on our wedding night,” Lycus said.
His matter-of-fact tone made me squirm with humiliation. The knowledge that these men felt free to speak of such a private thing—my wedding night, my body—flooded me with sickening rage. I swallowed hard, fighting back a swell of nausea.
Lycus went on, while my cheeks burned. “She is made after the usual pattern, fair as you please when she’s naked, and tight enough that I’d swear to her virginity. I took a great deal of pleasure in that night; I won’t lie to you. But the whole time, even as I was fucking her, all I could think about was her witch blood. The red-haired one—her mother was a sea nymph. That’s what they say, here in Colchis. Minos got the daughter of a sea nymph, but old Heliodoros passed his witch-daughter to me.”
I could listen no more. I scrambled from my bed and ran out of the house, into the deep forest, where the light was dapple
d and serene. I sank down among the roots of a laurel tree and hugged my knees to my chest. There I remained, weeping and broken-hearted, keening for my sister and my mother—whoever she had been—until the sun set and the chill of night set in.
Lycus may have taken pleasure in our wedding night, but the gods know I never did. His touch had revolted me from the first. After hearing the crude way he spoke of me to his friends, the mere thought of lying with him again made me sweat and shake. He came to me that night—witch blood or no—and claimed the right of a husband. I endured it, for I had little choice, but I had made up my mind as I’d huddled beneath the laurel that I would never bear Lycus a son or a daughter. If he truly believed I was born of Hekate’s blood, then I would not burden him with a witch-child. There was no telling what such a callous brute might do to a baby he thought tainted by sorcery.
That week, instead of going to the temple shrine, I went instead to the riverside. There, I found a trader in scrolls, and paid a handsome price—gold I had skimmed from my dowry—for a long list of useful herbs, complete with illustrations of their leaves and flowers. I was not a strong reader in those days—Heliodoros had seen little point in educating his daughters. But I could puzzle out enough words to learn the best application and basic utility of each plant described in that fascinating compendium.
As luck would have it, the forest around my husband’s half-formed farm was full of silphium. The sunny yellow flowers with their glossy leaves seemed to smile at me from every crossroad and clearing. While the silphium still bloomed, I crushed their leaves into an acrid-smelling juice, soaked up the juice with wool, and placed the wool high within my body. Lycus never knew it was there, and he came to my bed nearly every night. My monthly flow continued moon after moon, and every day I prayed in gratitude for the blessed emptiness of my womb. When autumn came and the golden petals withered and dropped, I gathered the seeds of my little friend, the silphium plant. By the end of the harvest season, I had two sacks full of silphium seed hidden in the bottom of my clothing chest—enough to brew a strong tea every day, until spring came again and the yellow flowers opened new in forest and field.
A Sea of Sorrow Page 13