Hand of Fire

by Judith Starkston

  Briseis hoped her father was right, but she wondered how much greedier a king like Agamemnon would become when he had an unconquerable hero fighting for him. The bards’ songs said that Achilles had a burning inside him he could not control—left from when his mother, the sea goddess Thetis, attempted to make him immortal. This strange fire drove him to extraordinary feats in athletic competitions and mad killing frenzies on the battlefield. Just one time, Briseis would like to see this young warrior with hair like burnished bronze and fluid movements—on the practice field, not in battle—and then he could go back home and leave them alone.

  Worries about the Greeks fled from Briseis’s mind when a servant brought one of her father’s herders into the hall, out of breath because he’d run from his hut on one of the slopes above their estate. He shifted his weight from side to side, his narrow shoulders swaying with worry. He had a shaggy beard and above it, deep lines fanning out from hazel eyes.

  “I come home after rounding up the sheep. My wife’s in tears. Our Nessa—you know our little girl, Lady Briseis—she’s sick all day, nothing staying in.” The herder’s hands swung in awkward gestures and his eyes darted from one person to another. “Some evil spirit’s gotten hold of her. Now she can’t even stand and that little one don’t never hold still. Please come quick, Lady.”

  Eurome had already brought Briseis’s cloak and healing satchel. Iatros stood by, ready to go. Since Antiope’s death Iatros frequently accompanied Briseis when she went out as healing priestess. The excuse at first had been to distract his grief, but in fact, they needed each other. With a reassuring pat or understanding nod, he filled the void each time Briseis felt tears threaten from some memory of her mother’s guiding hand. Besides, compounding medicines and finding sources of illness suited him.

  To her surprise, her father joined them as they hurried out. “It’s close to nightfall. I’ll come with you for protection.” She shook her head, puzzled. Protection on their estate? The Greeks aren’t that close.

  They climbed the narrow sheep trail up to the herder’s place—a one room mud and twig hut built into the hillside, along with pens for one of her father’s herds and a small patch for vegetables.

  The child lay damp with fever, limp with exhaustion. At the sound of visitors, the little girl opened her eyes. Two wide, impossibly big circles of fear looked up at Briseis. The mother had washed her body with wet cloths to cool her, but she still burned. Briseis tried to drip some wine mixed with water on her tongue, but after a few drops, Nessa whimpered and turned away her head.

  Briseis glanced over at Iatros. He’d pulled out her mortar and pestle and was grinding a gray-green powder.

  “Sion, willow bark and fennel,” he said. She nodded. He made it into a paste with a dab of honey and knelt beside the child, smiling and cooing to the little one. He coaxed her into opening her mouth. With Briseis’s long medicine spoon he slid the remedy onto the back of the child’s tongue.

  A faint smile crossed Nessa’s face. “Sweet,” she murmured.

  Iatros worked in another taste and then a few drops of water. He and Briseis took turns slowly, waiting in between to make sure she held it down. Briseis relaxed. Her limbs felt heavy after the long day. She couldn’t have managed this last part without Iatros.

  Briseis asked the wife for an onion in order to drive off any spirits or cleanse the child of any sin she might have accidentally committed. She pulled off one layer after another, throwing each into the fire.

  “Like this onion which I throw into the fire, that the flames may consume it entirely, so may any evil that has entered little Nessa be thrown into the fire and be burned away. Nessa is only a child. If she has offended any god with her childish ways because she has not yet learned what is permitted and what is not, may her error be burned up like this layer of onion. May all pollution be far from this child.”

  They sat with the child and gave her more to drink. When they saw she could keep this down and Briseis felt confident the girl would recover, she and Iatros set off for home with their father, who had stood in the doorway watching.

  Glaukos put his hand on Iatros’s shoulder. He was smiling. Briseis tried to remember when last she’d seen him smile so broadly.

  “I watched you work beside your sister. The work of a healing priestess is not so different from that of the physician. King Euenos tried to entice another physician to live among us with the promise of a large estate, but no one has agreed, and a speedy apprenticeship of one of our own young men seems the only solution. You have more knowledge to start than anyone else—if you agree to it. The position brings honor as well as the estate.”

  “I would like that very much.” Iatros embraced his father.

  “You’ll have to learn quickly,” said Glaukos. “If our warriors go to Troy, they’ll take a physician with them. Nowhere is a physician as necessary as the battlefield.”

  Briseis shook her head. Her father’s decision made her happy, but she did not want the men of Lyrnessos fighting at Troy, and her brother would need time, even if he did know a lot already. He’d have to learn to bind wounds and reset broken limbs, which physicians handled, but not healing priestesses. She wondered if at some point she would be able to talk Iatros into showing her how to do those things. It wasn’t ladylike to close up a bloody gash, but she’d like to try.

  Chapter Five

  A Goddess’s Will

  The next morning Briseis arose extra early. She couldn’t put off a visit to the temple any longer. She had to assume her mother’s responsibilities and build closeness to the goddess. The community’s health and well-being rested on her ability to assure the goddess’s protection of Lyrnessos.

  She’d been so pleased the day before with her father’s decision to let Iatros train as physician, but Glaukos’s comment about needing two physicians because one would go to Troy undercut his assurances that Lyrnessos would not join the fight. Her duty as priestess had suddenly taken on a new urgency. Kamrusepa must protect their warriors—her father and brothers among them—when they fought at Troy. Only Briseis could gain that divine blessing for them.

  She hoped her delay in attending on the goddess in her sanctuary had not caused concern among Kamrusepa’s temple priestesses. They carried the burden of attending to the goddess’s daily needs and sometimes viewed the higher status of the healing priestess with jealousy. Briseis understood that her training and healing skills gave her the ability to intercede with Kamrusepa on Lyrnessos’s behalf, but the other priestesses did not always see that distinction as clearly. They had loved Antiope, but Briseis needed to maintain that same bond, and she had been remiss so far. Surely they understood how hard losing her mother had been?

  So she pulled on the simple brown tunic and skirt that the priestesses wore for everyday practices in the temple, grabbed her cloak and went downstairs to see if the groom had harnessed a cart for her as she’d requested the night before.

  The small donkey cart painted with yellow and red stripes stood waiting by the gate. The donkey twitched his ears to show his annoyance at being put to work so early. She slipped into the kitchen to find a quick breakfast.

  “I heard them preparing the cart,” said the cook, “so I gathered some of yesterday’s flatbread and slices of the goat’s cheese that you suggested I make with some thyme added in. It came out lovely. I thought it might cheer you along the way.”

  Briseis thanked the cook and took the bundle wrapped in a linen napkin. She wondered how the cook knew that she needed cheering up. She didn’t want people to know how little she wanted to go to the temple. Probably Eurome and the cook had been talking. Briseis could never hide anything from Eurome.

  She climbed up beside the groom onto the board running across the front that served as a seat, and the cart lurched forward so quickly she almost dropped her breakfast. She eyed the donkey with suspicion, but decided he was just energetic first thing in the morning. Their donkey had never before shown signs of being vengeful.

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nbsp; She uncovered a corner of bread and cheese and took a bite, enjoying the smell of the herbs with the briny cheese. She tried to focus her thoughts on the rites ahead. Her mother’s death had loosened many of the anchors that held Briseis’s world in place. In the household Eurome helped her, but Briseis faced her relationship with Kamrusepa alone. As long as her mother had been by her side, she had thought the right feelings would come with time and guidance. Now she had neither. Her city and family faced war, without Antiope’s devotion to Kamrusepa to invoke protection.

  The cold early morning air crept under her cloak and she pulled it closer with one hand while trying to balance the napkin of breakfast. They passed fields of wheat and barley, and vineyards, interspersed with pastureland and woods.

  Part of her wished that her brothers hadn’t told her that Achilles fought as part of the Greek army. Knowing they would face that particular warrior made the whole thing worse, and it was bad enough. The stories she had heard of the half-immortal Achilles troubled her. She felt disgusted with her previous delight in them. Any warrior born of a goddess would be formidable, but this man was born of Thetis, who had saved Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, when the other gods conspired to overthrow him. Briseis had noticed with interest that Thetis—female as she was—had the power to stand up to all the other gods. That had made Thetis so confident of her strength that she had dared to challenge her son’s fate by burning away his mortality. She’d failed—the gods, as well as mortals, must yield to fate—but what sort of man had this goddess created? Briseis shuddered and wondered what standing near Achilles must feel like. Lyrnessos would need all of Kamrusepa’s protection in the face of such a foe.

  Because of her need to win Kamrusepa’s goodwill, Briseis had decided to go extra early to the temple in order to bathe and dress the goddess, a statue the size of a three-year-old child, wooden but covered in shining silver. Generally the resident priestesses performed this daily rite, but Antiope had viewed it as the strongest way to bond with the goddess. Performing this rite would prepare Briseis to beseech the goddess on behalf of Lyrnessos. Unfortunately, this ceremony, more than any other, made her uncomfortable.

  “When I am bathing the goddess,” her mother had once told her, “she speaks to me more clearly than at any other time. I can hear Kamrusepa’s voice reaching into me.” This closeness was what Briseis wanted to achieve, but she had heard nothing when she performed the intimate rite. Instead she felt impertinent, lifting and disrobing the figure, as if Kamrusepa were a helpless infant. Briseis hoped this time would be different.

  Her stomach felt better now that she’d put something into it, but her shoulders and neck ached. She shook out the empty napkin and dropped it into the storage basket behind her on the floor of the cart. The sun was still too low to warm her. A dusting of frost whitened the twisting branches of the vineyard they were passing. It seemed too late in the year for even a light frost. She hunched down in her cloak and imagined the army camped before Troy. She hoped Achilles was cold and miserable. Maybe he’d go back to Greece and she’d have less to discuss with the goddess.

  They had to wait at the city gates for the guards to pull open one side of the giant gates and let them through. She must be the first to enter the city that morning. Once inside the city walls they crossed the open marketplace. The stalls around the square lay empty at this hour. They bumped through winding streets of shops and crowded mud-brick homes. She held onto the seat as the cart climbed the hill to the temple. If the cart went all the way to the top instead of turning down the temple road, she would arrive at the palace, where it felt like Mynes lurked in every corner. That thought did nothing to settle her nerves. She squeezed shut her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Her father’s groom dropped her at the temple precinct gates. They towered above her head and even though she’d stood in this very place with her mother many times, she felt intimidated. She knocked for the temple gatekeeper to let her in. The stern-looking man, whose age she’d never been able to guess, peered out and opened the gate when he saw Antiope’s daughter. She followed him past the stone carvings of processions of gods that flanked the entryway on either side. Kamrusepa marched with the others, but her head turned sideways and even when Briseis stopped for a moment to peer closely at the goddess’s face, she received no divine reassurance of Kamrusepa’s love.

  They crossed the large courtyard that served all the gods and passed into a smaller area devoted to Kamrusepa. The walls of the goddess’s courtyard were mud-brick on a foundation of large stones, decorated with red and green pilasters. The courtyard was large enough for royal assemblies to gather for worship. The gatekeeper left her at the heavy wooden door to the goddess’s sanctuary, which was guarded by two life-sized stone lions.

  A priestess on duty pulled open the door. Briseis entered the sanctuary with its soaring midnight blue columns trimmed in red, took a deep breath, and slipped behind a gold-plated door into the goddess’s inner sanctum. Kamrusepa rested on a throne covered in tin, a precious metal brought by traders from a land far away. She had heard her father negotiating for it many times. Milos used tin in his workshop, mixing it with native copper to make bronze. The throne stood on a base of red stone carved as twin stags. The goddess wore a blue woolen robe with a tall, cylindrical hat decorated with lapis lazuli rosettes. A gold necklace set with precious stones hung from her neck. Briseis peered into her lapis eyes, but their deep blue wore a distant expression.

  On the green nephrite altar, Briseis placed an ivory box of linen drying cloths and the golden basin for washing, then turned back to the goddess, bracing herself for the undressing. At the sound of the inner sanctum’s door opening, she looked with relief as another priestess entered, bearing a pitcher of perfumed water for the sacred bath. She didn’t know this woman’s name, but she recognized her. The priestess had a lame foot, turned under in a way that must be painful, but Briseis had noticed how swift to volunteer for tasks this woman had been each time she’d seen her. A priestess like this devoted her life to serving the goddess. Briseis bowed her head in respectful greeting. The woman returned only the merest dip. Her lips formed a stern line. She held her thin, off-kilter body with stiff formality.

  Briseis sighed and returned to her duties while the priestess stood to one side watching. The rose perfume filled her nose in a pleasant way as she poured water into the basin. She hoped the goddess enjoyed it. She dampened a linen cloth, caught by the iciness of the water, which came from a grotto underneath the goddess’s courtyard. Her fingers ached from the cold as she wiped each part of the goddess’s form as the rite required.

  Briseis finished the bath, hoping Kamrusepa did not notice her trembling hands. The goddess’s lips were pursed in a small, secret smile. What was she thinking? She dried the statue quickly, wanting desperately to be rid of the cold. Instead of dressing her in the same gown, Briseis searched through one of the chests at the side of the room and found the garment she herself had woven for Kamrusepa as an offering upon her initiation into the goddess’s service six years earlier. She saw a look of annoyance on the priestess’s face when Briseis brought it to the altar. Perhaps Kamrusepa had been wearing the priestess’s own offering and now Briseis was putting it aside, but whether the woman liked the change of costume or not didn’t matter. What mattered was Briseis’s connection to the goddess. She hoped the goddess would give her a sign of approval.

  The robe for the goddess had taken her the whole of a winter to make—the first fine thing she had made by herself. She had loved to weave from an early age, standing at the loom creating tapestries with her mother. The rich colors, fine wool and linen threads she’d spun, her increasing skill and her mother’s praise, had combined to form the one inside activity she adored. The loom she shared with her mother stood in the upstairs women’s hall. Its tall upper beams were braced against the ceiling and its feet rested on the floor two strides out from the wall. Stone weights suspended just above the ground held the warp threads in place, an
d the tapestry grew under her fingers, gradually being wound around the upper beam.

  For Kamrusepa’s gown, her father gave her sun disks hammered out of gold to sew on once she’d completed the weaving. She sewed all the disks he gave her onto five of the ten pleats and then asked for more to cover the rest. At the time she did not realize how extravagant her request was, but her father did not complain, instructing Milos to make more. Each sun looked as though it rose from a deep blue sea. She was glad her robe glistened with so many suns, the wool a soft caress to the skin. Briseis prayed skill and splendor would suffice to show the depth of her devotion.

  She bowed to the goddess, her service complete. The priestess scowled and Briseis fell back a step.

  The priestess stood at the altar, her expression pinched as if in pain. With precise movements she smoothed the damp linen cloths Briseis had used and set them to one side.

  “Why did you come here?”

  Briseis straightened to her full height. “What kind of question is that? You know why a healing priestess comes to serve Kamrusepa.”

  “I know why your mother came. She was beloved of the goddess. But you?”

  This woman should not speak to her like this. “You’re being insolent,” Briseis said, “What gives you the right?”

  “You may not have noticed me, the lame priestess. Who pays attention to a crippled servant? I am Zitha, and I have watched you with your mother. Today you are even worse. You do not understand the goddess. She does not speak to you. You assume your mother’s place is yours. Now that Lady Antiope is gone, Queen Hatepa and the temple priestesses will determine who pleases the goddess enough to serve her. You did not even come to attend on the goddess for weeks. How could you keep away from Kamrusepa if you were devoted to her?”