Hand of Fire

by Judith Starkston

  Briseis’s face flushed. How had this priestess understood Briseis’s reaction to the rite when Briseis had worked to hide it from her own mother? It didn’t matter. The priestess had no right to treat her with disrespect. Briseis had been seeing to her duties as healing priestess throughout Lyrnessos all these weeks. There was more than one way to show devotion.

  “There have been conversations among the priestesses in the temple since your mother’s death,” Zitha went on. “You don’t live here as we do. I have pointed out how young and inexperienced you are, though I have chosen not to mention that the goddess does not favor you… yet. Leave the goddess’s rites to us.” She brushed off the smooth green surface of the nephrite altar with a dismissive gesture.

  Briseis confronted Zitha across the stone slab. “You have no right to keep me from worshipping Kamrusepa at the temple. How dare you suggest such things.”

  “I dare to speak the goddess’s will,” said Zitha. “I watched when you tried to read the snake signs in divination. You had no competency then either. You didn’t find the answer you sought, did you? How will you protect the well-being of Lyrnessos when you could not save your mother?”

  A feeling like a knife pierced Briseis’s chest. She shook off her dread, refusing to submit to this hatefulness.

  “How can you take care of Lyrnessos?” Briseis said. “What do you know about healing? I am the healing priestess. My mother taught me every day. Who else can read the tablets and perform Kamrusepa’s rites? You? Did your mother teach you?”

  Zitha recoiled as though she had been struck. “My mother? She…” Her hands plucked at the stack of linen cloths as though they would save her from falling. “My mother abandoned me in the temple precinct…”

  Then the arrogant glint in Zitha’s eyes returned. “Kamrusepa is my mother. Antiope coddled you. You balk at even the simplest duties for the goddess. Kamrusepa is a stern but loving mother who taught me to serve. You think because you are going to marry the prince that you are important and deserve to be the goddess’s priestess? You are an outsider here. You don’t understand the goddess with your whole heart as I do. Have you ever scrubbed the floors of this temple or polished her silver ornaments? Have you waited with a hungry belly until her sacrificial meal fed you? You think you can serve her fully while you live in luxury on your father’s estate or the palace. Only I love her enough for her to speak to me. Go read your tablets as your mother taught you and attend to the sick. Perhaps the goddess will have mercy on us and give your healing some strength. Leave the temple to those of us who understand the goddess’s will.”

  Zitha turned and limped out of the inner sanctuary. Briseis let her go for now. Although she believed Kamrusepa loved her, Zitha’s accusations had too much truth in them. She cringed at the idea that Zitha might speak of her doubts to her father or the royal family. She wouldn’t give Mynes a reason to be angry at her if she could help it.

  Briseis returned the golden basin, the pitcher and the linen cloths to their proper places. She pushed open the gold-plated door of Kamrusepa’s inner room and looked around the main sanctuary to see who was there. No Zitha. The priests had gathered at the altar to assist Briseis with the sacrifice. Their faces revealed only polite attentiveness. She circled the altar with the basket of barley raised above her head and then cast a handful of the grain onto the lamb to be offered. She said the correct words in her plea to Kamrusepa, but she did not feel her whole being expressed in the prayers. As she held the silver bowl under the lamb’s throat to catch the blood after the priest made the sacred slit, the hot scent of blood brought a sense of dread rather than the triumphant confirmation that the goddess would grant her protection. Was Zitha right about her incompetence as a priestess, or had Zitha’s envy ruined her chance of connecting with the goddess?

  On the way home from the temple, Briseis sat in the back of the cart on the floor instead of on the seat. She didn’t want to look at the passing world or hold on when the road got bumpy. If only she could talk to her mother. She’d been so busy with running the household on her own that she hadn’t had to confront the empty pit that gaped open inside her. Zitha had forced her to feel the emptiness. Why in the months of her mother’s illness hadn’t she asked her mother how to overcome her difficulties at the temple? She hadn’t wanted to confess those feelings, but the silence of the dead was worse. Maybe Zitha did know better how to approach the goddess. Maybe Briseis was too coddled and comfortable to connect to the suffering that she must pray to prevent.

  It was terrible to miss her mother’s advice so much and at the same time to be challenged by an older priestess who might very well be better prepared, even if she was only a temple servant. During the next couple of weeks tears overwhelmed Briseis every time she tried to think of a plan to silence Zitha’s criticism or win her over. The only way she could prove to Zitha she did have a connection to the goddess was to perform rites at the temple in such a way that Zitha believed in her devotion. Except so far Zitha hadn’t been persuaded by her bathing rite or her snake divination, and Briseis didn’t think Zitha would ever believe in Briseis’s devotion no matter what she saw. Going to the temple would cause a direct confrontation with Zitha.

  The fear that most kept her from standing up to Zitha and demanding an apology was the worry that Mynes would hear of Zitha’s challenge and think Briseis was weak and vulnerable. She would do all she could not to appear to Mynes like that slave child he had beaten.

  Patience was not a skill Briseis had, but she waited, unsure what change might repair this trouble, and chafing at the insult and worry. Each day she prayed at home and in the sacred places on the mountain, determined to build the bond she must have with the goddess to protect her family and city. Why couldn’t the wretched woman have helped her instead of attacking her?

  Chapter Six

  A Wolf Curse

  A couple weeks after her encounter with Zitha, a clattering of horses’ hooves rang out in the courtyard, interrupting a busy morning on the estate. Briseis hurried outside to see a royal messenger reining in the two frothing horses harnessed to his chariot. Her father ran through the gates. Glaukos must have seen the chariot while coming from the fields where he had been supervising the plantings that came on the cusp of spring. Her father hailed the messenger with a wave of his arm.

  “Kallu, you’ve worked your horses hard. What’s happened?”

  The messenger was a slender young man with beads of sweat running down his brow. “The king wants you and Briseis immediately.”

  “Both of us? Is the queen ill?”

  “I heard the queen screaming, but I don’t know what happened. Something to do with the priestess at the temple—the one called Zitha. They’ve dragged her off but no one knows why. Hurry. The king ordered me to bring both of you as fast as possible.”

  Briseis froze. What has Zitha said? Am I going to be dragged off also?

  Glaukos called over one of his grooms. “Harness a cart with horses for Briseis and me. And take care of these.” He indicated the messenger’s pair. He turned to the king’s man. “We’ll go ahead as fast as possible. You stay and let these fellows recover.”

  Glaukos then nodded to Briseis to run for her cloak. “You’d better bring your healing satchel, Briseis, in case this is about the queen’s illness.”

  Briseis shook herself and went inside for her things. Why hadn’t she warned her father of Zitha’s threats? They would head straight into whatever was going on at the palace and he didn’t know his daughter needed protecting. The queen screaming and Zitha dragged off? She couldn’t make sense of this news.

  She hadn’t been called to the palace to care for the queen since before her mother’s death—more than two months. Now she wondered if she should have visited anyway. Had Hatepa’s health deteriorated? What did Zitha have to do with that?

  They were soon rushing along the wagon road toward Lyrnessos in a cart drawn by two swift horses. Briseis considered telling her father about Zitha, but he
focused on the horses and she couldn’t get the words out. How could she admit to him Zitha thought she had failed the city and that Zitha might be right? Besides, they’d dragged the woman off—she seemed to be in the wrong. But did that mean Briseis was also in trouble?

  The huge, bronze-reinforced city gates lay open for farmers and merchants bringing in produce and goods. The guards recognized her father and waved their wagon through without a stop. Briseis and Glaukos crossed the lower town and her father leaned forward with the effort of guiding the horses through streets made narrow by the overflow of displays from the shops. They climbed the hill toward the palace. The palace loomed above on the rocky outcropping surrounded with its own defensive walls, part royal home, part citadel. The walls’ massive cut stones rose high overhead, topped with wooden towers.

  Briseis said Zitha’s name. Her father didn’t look at her and she couldn’t tell if he heard her. “I had a run in with Zitha a while back.”

  Glaukos risked a quick look at her and then turned back to the horses. “Did she harm you?”

  “No—that’s not it. She doesn’t approve of me.”

  Glaukos shook his head. “She’s a temple servant. Approve of you, Antiope’s daughter?”

  They had reached the final stretch of road to the palace gates. This last short piece narrowed and ran parallel to the walls and towers. The design forced attackers to come underneath a rain of arrows from soldiers on the towers. Briseis looked up nervously. There wasn’t time to explain to her father. She wanted to tell him to shield her from whatever lay ahead, prevent her arrest, but she couldn’t make him understand why in the moments they had.

  “Whatever Zitha said to you can hardly matter,” said Glaukos. Perhaps he was right.

  A watchman announced their arrival and the lofty gates opened. As soon as they dismounted from their cart, a servant sped them through a crowded, working courtyard with stables and kitchens, then along the portico of a decorative courtyard and into the living quarters of the royal family.

  The servant opened one of the double doors that led into the king’s megaron hall where Euenos held court. At home on Glaukos’s estate, Briseis and the servants used the megaron hall as an extension of the kitchen to chop vegetables or peel garlic, a space for carding or spinning wool, and countless other daily tasks. At the palace, the expansive frescoes, gold-plated furnishings and delicate, carved side tables of the megaron expressed Euenos’s power. Here he conducted royal business. Discreetly off to one side, the scribes had space to store their styluses and clay to take down the court records and the king’s decrees. Today the big room lay oddly empty of the king’s staff and courtiers.

  Briseis and Glaukos stepped into the silent hall. All she could feel was the pounding in her chest. She expected guards to grab her at any moment. Instead, King Euenos sat slumped in his throne, an ornately inlaid chair on a low platform. Briseis stared at him, undone by this peculiar scene.

  His finely woven tunic of black linen glistened with gold embroidery worked into a winding leaf pattern. He wore his customary band of gold on his head. He was the same age as her father and still strongly built and in fighting form. But his posture and the deep lines around his eyes and mouth contradicted these signs of well-being. Even his long hair, turned white a number of years before, seemed to indicate frailty. He raised his head at the sound of their entrance and rose slowly from his throne.

  At that moment Briseis noticed Mynes standing off to one side behind his father. His powerful chest and arms—usually attractive to her—felt like a threat in her panic. His black eyes, buried under his deep brow, flashed in her direction, and then he hunched his shoulders forward in what looked like fear. Fear of what? He wore both a leather kilt and chest guard as if ready for battle—or the practice field, she tried to tell herself. She gasped at a slash of red underneath until she realized it wasn’t blood but the color of his tunic. She’d been nervous enough before she realized he was present, but she took a deep breath to settle herself and bowed her head to both father and son in modest greeting.

  King Euenos stepped toward them, his face gray. “My friend Glaukos, and Briseis, keeper of Kamrusepa’s divine healing. A curse has been cast upon the royal family.”

  “A curse?” Briseis stumbled forward until she could brace herself by gripping the back of a chair.

  She glanced at her father. He’d gone pale. Euenos did not sound angry at her, quite the reverse, but a curse meant the worst sort of trouble. Curses could spread throughout a community. No poultice or mixture of herbs could relieve the suffering inflicted through such evil incantations. Only rites, carefully designed, could remove a curse—and such rites posed dangers to the healer. Curses rebounded onto the one removing them if the rite proved ineffective.

  “What happened?” asked Briseis. She couldn’t connect this news with what the messenger had said. She struggled to pull her knowledge as a healer into the forefront of her confused thoughts. Her life and the city’s survival depended on those skills.

  The king’s hands shook. “A waking nightmare. This morning, Hatepa writhed as if a giant twisted her body. I tried to break this monstrous grip, but I couldn’t stop her thrashing. She cried out, begging me to slay the wolves that lunged at her—to rid her of their bloody jaws, teeth, red eyes, and huge, filthy bodies. Wolves in our bedchamber! I saw nothing. How can I kill what I can’t see? When they finally left her in peace, she told me Zitha had placed a curse upon her.”

  Now the messenger’s words made sense, but nothing about this curse or Zitha’s part in it did. Briseis’s knuckles clenched white on the chair as she leaned on it. From the corner of her vision she saw Mynes take a fighting stance full of menace. He seemed prepared to attack the wolves or Zitha. She wished a sword would work.

  “Zitha?” said Briseis.

  “Yes, the temple priestess,” Euenos said, stepping closer to Briseis. “You must know her, don’t you? We had no idea what an evil woman she is.” Briseis nodded. Oh yes, I know her.

  “You must release Hatepa from this curse,” the king said.

  “Consider what you are asking of my daughter,” Glaukos said. “She’s very young for such a dangerous rite.”

  “Who else can help Hatepa?” Euenos said.

  What had Zitha done? Haunted by wolves? She’d never heard of a curse like this. Curses caused people to wither gradually or struck them with illness of the bowels, barrenness, or other troubles. Wolves didn’t make sense.

  “I must know how it was placed on her,” Briseis said.

  “I have summoned the queen’s maid. Start there. The less strain on Hatepa the better.” Euenos glanced at the door as if expecting the maid to appear at any moment.

  Briseis nodded. Mynes shifted uneasily—his discomfort at his mother’s plight made sense, but Briseis wondered at the sour expression when his father recommended she speak to Hatepa’s maid. Was the woman unreliable? That could prove fatal if Briseis designed the rite incorrectly. A clammy sweat dripped down between her breasts, spreading the sour odor of fear. She turned to Euenos, who had grasped her father’s shoulder.

  “I know I am putting your daughter in danger,” Euenos said, “but she is all that stands between us and disaster. A royal curse will insinuate itself into all of Lyrnessos. We cannot be weak with the Greeks so close to our doorstep.”

  “I’ll fight the Greeks. We’re not weak,” said Mynes. “This trouble brought on by a foolish priestess—that part Briseis can manage.”

  Euenos turned on him. “Silence! Where were you when your mother faced ravening wolves? Only the healing priestess can challenge these demons.” His father’s words seemed to strike Mynes like a blow. Fear for her future as a wife thrust up against her terror of this curse.

  Glaukos edged closer to his daughter and took her hand. Tension had drawn the skin of his face and neck so tight that the bones of his lean face had shifted from their usual handsome definition to the painful sharpness of a corpse.

  Glaukos leaned do
wn and whispered, “Can you do this? Did Antiope teach you enough?” She squeezed his hand in a reassurance she didn’t feel.

  On one occasion, despite the danger, her mother had insisted she observe the removal of a curse. That time it had been a curse by a jealous woman against a nobleman’s wife to make her barren. Briseis remembered with horror the pitch-black night, the pit dug near a spring deep in a cave on Mount Ida, the way her mother had locked the curse in the Underworld through that pit. If Briseis’s rite did not seal the curse eternally in the dark realms below, it could attack her or anyone else. She had to prepare in haste. In order to ensure the queen’s safety, she must perform the rite during the middle of this coming night.

  Euenos slumped again onto his throne. His fingers thumped repetitively against the chair’s arm. “Why would Zitha do such a thing? She has been sheltered in the temple almost since birth. Where did she learn sorcery? I ordered her locked into the farthest storage barn in the lower city. I’ll keep that polluted bitch away from my household and our gods.” He slammed his fist against the armrest. “I’ll have her questioned. Who put this idea in her head? Are there Greek spies among us?”

  Briseis pictured the invulnerable Achilles. He wouldn’t need a curse against a foe. Maybe that greedy King Agamemnon would. She wished she were half immortal like Achilles. What had Chiron taught the young warrior about removing curses?

  A striking serving woman, not much older than Briseis herself, appeared in the doorway of the hall. To Briseis’s surprise Mynes stepped aside, hiding himself behind a pillar in shadow. Briseis turned her attention to Hatepa’s maid, puzzled that the queen did not keep a trusted old servant to care for her, but maybe no one lasted that long. The woman’s dignified carriage as she crossed the room reminded Briseis of her mother, and she wondered how long this woman had been a slave. Their eyes met and Briseis saw intelligence in the large brown eyes and beauty in the delicate features and glossy black hair smoothed into a braid. She also saw fear.