Hand of Fire

by Judith Starkston

  “Maira,” said Euenos, “assist Lady Briseis.” The woman bowed.

  Briseis wondered where to start. “What contact has there been between Zitha and the queen?”

  The brown eyes glanced toward the king. Briseis knew from supervising servants this woman would want to avoid being blamed for the queen’s suffering. Did that mean she wouldn’t tell the truth? Did she understand how important it was that Briseis find the correct source of the curse? Briseis shifted her shoulders to loosen the place where her sweat-dampened tunic clung to her back. Maira seemed to read the faces in the room and settled on Briseis’s with a direct look.

  “Zitha came to the palace,” said Maira, “the day after Lady Antiope died. I remember because the queen was distraught over your mother’s death. Queen Hatepa wondered what would become of her without Antiope’s care. I worried also. If you were not mourning your mother, I would have sent a messenger to bring you here. No one invited Zitha. She came on her own.” Maira clasped her small hands loosely in front of her, letting them fall into the folds of her rough woolen skirt.

  Briseis nodded, feeling relieved at the servant’s composure. It indicated honesty. “What happened that day?”

  “Zitha didn’t know much about healing, but she listened to Queen Hatepa’s complaints, which soothed the queen. When the queen complained of pain and ordered me to fetch you, Zitha said she could perform the rite to take away pain. She did—with a mouse and green and red wool, which she first tied on the queen and then on the mouse. She sent away the mouse to carry off the pain. Your mother had used a similar rite except Zitha did not know the right things to say. Nonetheless, it pleased the queen, and Zitha performed it many times over the days that followed.”

  There was no way to form a curse in these actions, however inept, thought Briseis.

  “Queen Hatepa’s cough is the biggest problem,” said Maira. “Zitha started making a warm drink for her that calmed it. Once Zitha began making the drink, Queen Hatepa stopped asking to send for you.”

  “What was in the drink?” Curses took form primarily from powerful words, not potions, but nonetheless Briseis felt a jolt at hearing about this cure.

  “Warm goat’s milk, wine and honey.” Maira looked like she wanted to say something else, but she glanced at Euenos in silence and settled into her calm demeanor.

  Briseis felt disappointed. “Those are harmless ingredients.” Her mother often dealt with the cough by making Hatepa sleepy, which this drink would do. Zitha had had some healing sense. Maira’s description gave her nothing to fight the curse.

  Briseis guessed that Zitha had appeared so opportunely in order to worm her way into friendship with the queen. Just as Zitha drove Briseis out of the temple, so she must have been determined to influence the queen against her—tell her Briseis shouldn’t serve in the temple and shouldn’t be the queen’s choice of priestess for the festivals. A soothing drink and a sympathetic ear would help her cause, but a curse? It made no sense.

  “Why does the queen say Zitha placed the curse on her?”

  “You must ask the queen,” Maira said, with a respectful bow to King Euenos.

  Chapter Seven

  Handkerchiefs, Herbs, and Sacred Tales

  Briseis looked at the king. Would he allow her to question the queen? She rubbed the soft indentation next to her left eye to relieve the throbbing that stabbed her there.

  Euenos nodded at Briseis and rose from his throne. He started to lead her toward the doorway, but then turned back to Glaukos. “It’s time to question Zitha. Take some of my men with you. Find out who is behind this. I cannot believe she has acted alone.”

  “Let me at her, Father!” shouted Mynes. He stepped forward from the shadows with his fists raised. “I’ll get the truth of this Greek treachery from her. She’ll talk and I’ll make certain she never threatens us again.” Despite her dislike of Zitha, Briseis shuddered at his words. Maira drew back and crossed her arms protectively across her chest.

  Euenos waved a dismissive hand in Mynes’s direction. “No, better that Glaukos handles this. It’s too important.” He turned back to his friend, his face still gray, although the shaking had stopped now that they had begun to take action. “Go to the storage barn where Zitha’s being held. Find out whatever you can.”

  Euenos himself led Briseis and Maira upstairs to the women’s quarters. He dismissed the two serving women sitting on stools in a corner. Hatepa lay limp in her bed. She had a pinched nose but bulging eyes that seemed too big for their sockets. Her dun-colored hair had broken loose from its braid and lay damply on the pillow. Sweat and thrashing had crumpled her white linen sleeping tunic.

  Approaching the bed, Briseis found the stale, rank air of the room hard to breathe. When she sat down next to Hatepa, the queen whimpered and clung to her future daughter-in-law. Her sallow skin hung on her arms. Hatepa’s breath came in irregular wheezes interrupted by coughing fits. Briseis sat quietly, holding the queen to settle her. Hatepa’s bed had a much larger wooden frame than most and more generous cushioning of fleeces and pillows on the leather straps strung across it.

  After a time, Briseis edged Hatepa upright against her pillows. “I will remove this curse, but I need your help, Queen Hatepa.”

  Briseis pulled her satchel off her shoulder and set it on the bed. She took out a mullein-leaf infusion and mixed it into some mead Maira brought her from a pitcher at the side of the room. Several wooden chests crowded the large sleeping chamber, filled, Briseis presumed, with Hatepa’s robes, both sacred and royal. A queen had many duties to fulfill as the gods’ royal servant, as well as sharing her husband’s rule.

  “Why did I let Zitha convince me not to send for you?” Hatepa reached out and clutched Briseis’s free hand against her wheezing chest as though it were a talisman that would keep the convulsions and wolves at bay.

  Briseis loosed her hand and encouraged the queen to sip the mead. She asked Maira to stir up the fire in a brazier in a corner of the room and to boil some water. Briseis then turned back to the queen.

  “Can you tell me what Zitha did to make the curse?”

  “Zitha is not a healer like your mother.” Hatepa’s mouth turned down at the corners in a pout. “She performed the rite to send away pain, but my pain never left for long. I don’t know what I expected from a deformed cripple. Why did your mother have to die?” The queen’s chest shook with sobs.

  “Don’t worry, Queen Hatepa. I will take care of you. You will be safe.” Briseis bit back what she wanted to say and practiced the patience she’d learned by watching her mother handle Hatepa’s difficulties. Her own life and the good of Lyrnessos depended on her getting the correct information from Hatepa. Something evil throbbed behind the quivering terror of this woman—evil that could just as well overtake Briseis.

  She rose and sprinkled ground licorice into the pot of hot water on the brazier. The aromatic steam rose to her face. Maira watched and then began to stir the tea with a wooden spoon as it boiled. Briseis returned to Hatepa’s side.

  “Did Zitha ever take anything from you, something she could use for a curse?”

  “Take from me?” Hatepa looked around the room with a glazed look. Then she drew her fingers to her mouth with a shrewd light in her eyes. “Ah, I remember now. That disgusting rat. The last day she took my handkerchief—a dirty one from one of my coughing fits.”

  Euenos stepped from the doorway to come close to his wife. His eyes focused on Briseis.

  Hatepa coughed, caught her breath and continued. “Zitha tucked it into her basket—a filthy thing like that. She should have given it to my maid to wash—that’s why I remember.”

  “Could that be it?” Euenos asked, resting his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  “It’s possible,” said Briseis, while she weighed this idea. “Since she captured the queen’s weakness in the handkerchief, she could use it for a curse. What made you realize it was Zitha who cursed you?”

  Hatepa fidgeted with the yellow and
green braided ribbon decorating the neckline of her sleeping tunic. “Zitha thought she was fooling me, but I figured out why she kept coming to visit. Fooling me!—she’s the fool. I liked her company so I didn’t let on. The temple had taught her manners and proper speech. I can’t tolerate bumpkins around me. But I knew what she was up to. She thinks I’ll choose her as Kamrusepa’s priestess for the festivals if she’s nice to me. She kept saying how she cares for our goddess’s needs every day. What a stupid woman. What else would she do in the temple all her life? She even told me she knew how to recite the story of Telipinu at the Spring Festival—imagine that abandoned stray taking Antiope’s place. Who could tolerate watching that limping cripple hobble up onto the platform above us all—above me? As if I would take that honor from my son’s wife.” Hatepa wheezed out the words, but in her anger she had lost her fearfulness.

  “Yesterday, I lost patience with her boasting. I told her she was trying to steal her position from those above her. She was unsuitable to be a priestess and I would have her thrown out of the temple. I could see her fear then. That put an end to her ambitions. She left in a rush, barely saying a proper parting. I thought she was only an abandoned girl, left at the temple to serve us. I didn’t dream she studied sorcery. Some in the temple have the knowledge, but who would have taught her such things? She must have created the curse last night. With my handkerchief—that’s what she used.”

  The queen fell back against the pillows, struggling to breathe. She had given Zitha a reason to act, thought Briseis. She felt Zitha’s terror at being cast out of her temple home, separated from Kamrusepa. Briseis resented the woman, but she didn’t doubt her devotion to the goddess. After what the queen threatened she’d have nothing to lose, and the dirty handkerchief would have given her the opportunity to place a curse. Briseis squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and felt a slight release of tension. She felt stifled in this sour air and told Maira to pull open one of the shutters on the clerestory windows despite the queen’s squawked objection.

  “Fresh air is necessary for your health, Queen Hatepa,” Briseis countered.

  Euenos patted his wife’s arm. “Rest. Zitha will be stopped. Briseis, you know what to do now?”

  Briseis hesitated. The king was eager to proceed, but she wanted to be certain she had learned all she needed. “I should stay and settle the queen. Then I’ll go home and use my mother’s library to plan the correct rite.”

  “Of course,” said the king. “I will order an escort if your father has not returned from questioning Zitha.” He left the room.

  Briseis poured licorice tea into a cup. “Try this, Queen Hatepa.”

  Hatepa tipped her head up and sniffed at the liquid. “Ah… like Antiope’s teas.” She sipped. “Not a horrible smell like Zitha’s drink… not bitter.”

  Briseis startled. Milk, wine and honey? “What did Zitha put in that made it bitter?”

  “Some herb,” answered Hatepa. “She made a great show of hiding it, but I caught on, of course. It helped my cough. I didn’t care about the taste since it worked. That’s why I never sent for you.” Briseis studied the queen, confused by this revelation and the queen’s lack of concern about it.

  Maira stepped closer to Briseis and held out a small pouch. “Lady Briseis, Zitha left this yesterday. She must have dropped it when she pulled on her cloak in her upset. Lucky, since I could make the drink last night when the queen could not stop coughing. I would have made another for her today, but—” But the queen saw lunging wolves and the king sent for the real healer, Briseis thought. What had Zitha used?

  She opened the pouch and sniffed. A nauseating smell, not anything she recognized. “Queen Hatepa, couldn’t this herb be what harms you?”

  Hatepa looked surprised. “Oh no, Antiope used this herb for my cough before you were born. I could never forget that horrible taste. It’s the same one. I don’t know why she stopped—she must have forgotten about it—but if Antiope used it, I know it is not harmful.”

  Briseis knew her mother would not have forgotten a useful herb, but the queen had never seen wolves before, so how could the herb be the cause? The handkerchief provided a much better method of placing a curse, getting as it did to the source of the queen’s weakness.

  “Whatever it is, I should know about it. May I take some to study?” The queen nodded uncertainly. She would ask Maion if he recognized it. She put some of the green powder in an alabaster vial and tied it to her linen belt.

  “Maira, please give me one of the queen’s handkerchiefs to act as substitute in the rite, and then I must go.”

  Her father had not returned from questioning Zitha, so Briseis went home surrounded by six of the king’s men. The crunch of the horses’s hooves on the gravel road sounded strange to her, as though something pursued them. She wondered how the warriors sent to protect her would fight wolves they could not see.

  Briseis sat in the courtyard on the bench by the kitchen door with a stack of tablets, catching the last of the day’s light. The work of planning the rite had settled her. When she drew in breaths she no longer felt choked, although her heart still thrummed with a fear she’d had to push out of her thoughts.

  Iatros sat nearby, helping her search the library’s tablets as she planned the rite to remove the curse. Physicians, like healing priestesses, had to check the procedures for rites that had been recorded by their predecessors. Iatros didn’t read as well as she did, since no one had formally taught him, but, like many things a physician needed to know, he’d picked it up at his sister’s side, mimicking her practice with the clay and stylus, and now as an apprentice he used the skill regularly. He’d poured himself into the task of helping her find the needed pieces for this rite. Having him there had given her the strength to concentrate.

  Antiope had taught Briseis to join ideas from several rites, to add as needed. Briseis still lacked one part—she must draw a god’s presence into the rite with a story, a god who understood wolves and could make them leave Hatepa. Briseis felt desperate about finding this essential part, but neither she nor Iatros had come up with it.

  The sun set, and Eurome brought out oil lamps, placing one on the bench and handing another to Iatros. Then she seated herself beside Briseis. She’d been horrified with the news that Briseis had to deal with a curse.

  The old woman shook her head. Her gray hair had thinned, and the strands pulled into a wisp of a braid didn’t cover her scalp. “Oh my stars and fishes, a curse? You’ll be careful?” Briseis nodded. Eurome hugged her to her bosom. “My little Poppy. I wish your mother were here.”

  Briseis loosened herself. “Do you know a tale about a god and wolves? Neither Iatros nor I can find one in the library.”

  Her nursemaid sat up straight and folded her arms across her sizable belly. Iatros leaned closer to listen.

  “Hmm… There’s that one about the Sungod and the—no, that was a cow, not a wolf, and I think a fisherman and some snakes, but no—no wolves.” Eurome closed her eyes for a moment. Briseis bit her lip to keep from scolding the old woman for wasting time.

  “Let’s see, sea monsters, magic sticks, birds. I can’t think of no stories about gods and wolves.” She sighed in disappointment. After a moment she brightened. “Wait. A long time ago, I heard a good story. Back when I was just a speck of a girl—I swear I don’t know how I can remember it—not a tale about the gods of Lyrnessos, mind you, but a god, good enough. Maybe the god’s name will come to me… No, not yet, but I’ll tell the tale and you see if it’ll suit.”

  By the time Eurome finished her story, one of the oil lamps had gone out, but Briseis and Iatros smiled at each other. Properly focused, it would be perfect for the cleansing rite. If only she could perform the rite correctly and not endanger her own life.

  Chapter Eight

  Voices

  Later that night her father returned home, along with the king, who would stand in for his wife at the rite in the cave, since Hatepa lay ill.

  Briseis approach
ed her father. “Zitha?”

  He shook his head, “Nothing useful.”

  Briseis patted his arm, but Glaukos turned to his men and gave the order to gather torches. Then they set out toward the cave on Mount Ida where the curse could be buried in the Underworld.

  Briseis had never found it so difficult to climb the mountain trail. Her legs felt jittery and a forceful thumping in her chest set her off balance. Only a small sliver of moon showed in the sky, making the narrow path hard to see even with the torches the king’s men carried, made from mullein stalks dipped in mutton tallow. Briseis thought of the mullein infusion she had given to the queen that day. Odd how many uses one plant could have, while others were of no use, or worse, harmful. She remembered the awful smelling herb. Even though the sample she’d taken dangled from her belt, identifying it had slipped her mind as she prepared for this rite.

  Briseis carried a palhi vessel, the only safe way to lock away a curse. The ceramic vessel was misshapen like a rough stone and marked with black lines that crossed each other to keep the curse from escaping through its walls. The vessel filled her arms and balancing it in front of her blocked the view of the rough path, causing her to stumble on unseen stones. She worried she might fall and break the vessel, but at the same time she was glad for its solid feel against her forearms. She believed in its power to contain the curse.

  They reached the upper part of the trail, and a cool breeze brushed against Briseis, carrying the scent of pines and the music of the unseen brook. This caress by her mountain reassured her. She formed a silent prayer of thanksgiving to Kamrusepa, sure her goddess sent the blessing.

  She scrambled up a steep stretch, struggling with the palhi vessel in her arms, and one of the king’s men steadied her. They arrived at a flat area on the trail, and she saw in front of her the greater darkness on the face of the mountain that indicated they’d reached their goal.