Euenos stood. “I’ll leave you now. You have everything you need?”
She nodded. She couldn’t, after all, ask for a longer reprieve from her husband.
When Euenos left, Briseis returned to her loom and picked up a bobbin. Leaning in close to the threads, she worked the purple wool into tiny flowers shaped like clusters of beads, crowding a stalk of sage. How to create the gray down that formed a hazy cloud on each bloom, softening but not hiding the deep tone below? She stood back to examine her work and heard heavy footsteps. Her stomach clenched, but she willed away her fear. She turned and saw Mynes in the doorway with a small bundle in his hand. He still wore dusty hunting gear—leather kilt and chest guard over a thick wool tunic of olive green.
“May I come in?”
He sounded apologetic. She nodded.
He came a little way into the room and glanced around as if unsure of his surroundings. His head and shoulders hunched forward, reminding her of a dog’s posture when it fears a beating. Did Mynes feel apprehensive of her? She remembered his father’s misdirected criticism of Mynes. She supposed he had grown accustomed to his parents feeling disappointed in him. He certainly shouldn’t expect her to feel glad to see him.
Mynes looked up at the open windows still catching the last of the day’s light.
“You’re weaving on my grandmother’s loom,” he said, with wonder in his voice. “Perhaps this present won’t offend you. I didn’t choose it—a farmer’s wife gave it to me. It’s some of her wool, the first clippings, which she said are especially soft and would serve as a blessing for our wedding. She had set this aside from her new lambs this past spring and hadn’t spun it yet with all the outdoor work of summer on her hands. It’s just white wool, but….” He stopped and took a step closer. His dark eyes pleaded. He was asking forgiveness. She could see that and wondered if she could ever grant it.
“After I killed the boar, we were packing up our camp and had food left over. One of my men suggested we give it to the farmer. His wife gave me this in return. I didn’t ask for it, but she had tears in her eyes and said the food meant her little boy would eat well. She said you’d delivered the boy safely with the gods’ blessings so she wanted to give you a blessing in return.”
He put it to his cheek and then held it out to her. “The wool is soft.”
She put down her bobbin and went to him. She put the wool against her cheek just as he had. “It is soft. Thank you.”
He looked down at his dirty clothing and dusty feet. “I have to go wash up—from the hunt… before dinner.” He stood stiffly, his weight carried equally on both legs. When she said nothing, he turned toward the door and his shoulders slumped.
“Would you like to have dinner here with me—after you wash?” asked Briseis.
His “Yes” came out in a kind of gasp. He turned back toward her for a moment and then left.
Eurome served them lamb stew and lentils cooked with leeks in the women’s hall. They ate in silence. Mynes tapped his foot repeatedly, the annoying habit she’d seen in his early courting. Briseis wished he would say something. She didn’t have the energy to carry the conversation for both of them.
They were both startled when a log crumbled suddenly into the hot coals, releasing some inner reserve of sap that ignited with a furious spitting noise.
Briseis stirred herself. “Tell me about the boar hunt.”
Mynes jumped into a description of how hard it had been to kill the boar, even though they’d tracked it to its lair. He and his men could only wound it. It charged directly at them. The others jumped back, leaving him to make the killing blow. Mynes described how he had thrown his spear directly into the beast’s neck, jumping away just in time to avoid its tusks. His face lit with excitement.
A serving woman appeared in the doorway. Hatepa wished to see Mynes.
Mynes offered her his arm before they climbed the stairs. She drew in her breath but managed to put her hand on his arm, covering her discomfort by talking.
“Your mother will be happy to see you. She was worried that you might spend less time with her now that we are married. She was feeling a little cross with me.”
“My mother would never be cross with you—she thinks everything of you. It’s me she finds fault with.” His shoulders hunched forward as he said this, the fierce boar hunter gone.
Mynes knocked on the doorframe and they went in. Maira quickly left the room, murmuring she had to go down to the kitchen for some supplies.
Ignoring Briseis, Hatepa chastised Mynes for not coming to see her as soon as he got back. He sat down on the edge of her bed, quieting her fussing by reminding her of the dangerous hunt he’d been on. He started telling the details of it. As he described the blow to the charging boar, Hatepa looked alarmed. She interrupted him.
“You should be more careful. Place the other men in front. That is why your father keeps trained hunters. You are the future king.”
Mynes objected. “Mother, I am a better fighter than our servants. No one else could kill the boar.”
Hatepa shushed him. “They are only servants. It doesn’t matter if they get hurt. You must lead by giving orders from a distance.”
Briseis heard Mynes mumble, “That isn’t how Father leads in battle.”
But he turned to Hatepa and said loudly, “Yes, Mother.”
For the first time that evening Briseis heard anger in his voice—the voice of her wedding night. She watched his face. It was oddly stiff, as though gradually turning to stone.
A serving girl came in with wood for the brazier. Hatepa ordered her to send Maira back.
As the conversation between mother and son wound down, Briseis felt panic. In a moment she would be outside her rooms with her husband. What would he expect from her? Mynes glanced at her. To her surprise a look of pain flashed across his face. Had he understood her thoughts?
Maira returned. Mynes stood. “Mother, now that your maid is here to take care of you, I must say good night.” He leaned over and kissed his mother’s cheek.
He and Briseis left Hatepa’s room. They walked toward the stairs that divided the hallway joining the queen’s room and hers. No servants passed by. They were alone. Mynes stopped.
“May I kiss you? I won’t….”
She nodded and he embraced her, letting out a strangled sound. His hands moved hungrily over her body and his lips found hers—she tried to think of the moment when he had put his hand on her thigh during one of the betrothal visits and wished for the response she had felt then—but she could not. She stood stiffly. He released his arms.
“Good night, Briseis,” he said, and rushed down the stairs.
Chapter Thirteen
Plowing and Fighting
The months passed and autumn colors came and went, but the difficulties of her marriage remained. Each time Mynes came to her room—blessedly he kept away more often than not—she retreated inside herself. She recognized Mynes’s hunger for her body, but she felt no desire for him. It was like an illness. He had caused it, and neither of them had a cure. She guessed his awareness of this kept his visits few and short. Outside her room, she learned to engage him in conversations he found interesting and to show him the deference he found agreeable. She prayed to Kamrusepa to bring her husband calmness and so far the goddess had granted her this—or at least Mynes directed his violent eruptions at others.
One part of her life was less trying than she had dreaded—caring for Hatepa. Maira learned each healing procedure Briseis used, and she was far more patient with the queen than anyone should be. This puzzled Briseis. Maira showed quick thinking and a liveliness at odds with her subdued life at Hatepa’s side. Briseis heard tales of previous maids who lost their tempers with Hatepa and ended up grinding wheat, the lowliest household chore. Maira had, for a time, served the king in the main hall, a privileged assignment reserved for the most graceful servants. Maira had requested to serve Hatepa instead. This much Briseis had gleaned from servants’ gossip reported by
Eurome, but not why. An uneasy suspicion she wanted to ignore hovered at the edge of her thoughts. She’d noticed that Maira always left Hatepa’s room if Mynes entered. She recalled how after her wedding night, Maira had told her to remember her courage—Maira who had been close enough to hear what Mynes had done. Maira acted as her ally and support. Briseis accepted her silent loyalty and returned it, but hoped she was wrong about another bond they might share.
As healing priestess she escaped from the palace regularly, although Mynes grumbled at her absences. He questioned her in detail, especially when she attended on men. The long hours of delivering a child infuriated him when he wanted her company. She pretended to sympathize while relishing her work even more than before her marriage.
Occasionally she assisted Iatros as he accompanied the physician—some illnesses required both priestess and physician, and she felt the old happiness of family and shared enthusiasm. With winter’s cold weather came increased illnesses and she and Iatros crossed paths more often—a hidden blessing to offset the increased worry of treating her people’s ailments.
The physician said Iatros’s apprenticeship progressed with all the speed Euenos could hope for. Iatros took to healing as if he had always done it. Briseis suspected he had absorbed more as a child than he realized, listening in while Antiope taught Briseis. She envied his expanding range of knowledge, but with her palace duties, it was all she could do to fulfill her responsibilities as healing priestess. She didn’t ask Iatros to teach her any of his new skills.
One evening while she was eating dinner with the royal family in the great hall, a messenger called for her to deliver a child. She rose immediately and turned to tell Eurome to go for her cloak and satchel.
Mynes put down his wine cup. “My wife shouldn’t be dragged out into the darkness like some common servant. You should stay here where you belong. It’s too cold and stormy outside. I won’t have this.” Hatepa murmured in agreement and patted his hand. The rings she wore, so large and heavy with gemstones, clattered against each other on her bony fingers.
Briseis clenched her hands into fists, hidden by the folds of her skirt. “A healing priestess is not a common servant. I serve our goddess Kamrusepa. What I do is sacred. Do you care so little for your people that you would let a woman and child go without my help because she happened to labor in the hours of darkness? Are you mad?”
She turned to Euenos for help, glad he witnessed Mynes’s outburst and might curb his son’s increasing annoyance with her necessary work.
“Now, now, Briseis,” said Euenos. “Don’t be so upset. Mynes is only concerned for your welfare.”
“Is he? Then while I’m gone you can help him be concerned also for the welfare of his people. He is their future king, after all.” She knew she should not have let her anger speak, but she didn’t have time to apologize now. Eurome arrived with her cloak.
She started toward the door, but her fear of Mynes turned her back. She forced herself to speak. “I’m sorry, Mynes, I spoke so sharply. A wife should not address her husband like that. I only meant I cannot neglect the responsibilities the goddess has given me. She brings on the time of a child’s entrance into the world, and I must obey her summons. Even your wife, I’m sure you agree, must listen to the will of the gods.” Mynes grunted. She took it as assent and left.
She did not return until the next morning. Exhausted, she wanted only to go up to her room and rest. She answered the palace steward’s few questions so the palace day would go smoothly and then started up the stairs. Mynes came storming in and grabbed her arm. She flinched away from him and he dug his fingers into her skin so hard she cried out.
“How dare you stay out all night and not come in to greet me! The worm of a steward gets your time, but not me.” He dragged her off the stair and forced her arm behind her back, pushing her against the railing. He pressed his mouth hard against hers, forcing in his tongue.
He kept his face pressed in close, his stale breath making her gag. “The men in the barracks jest about their wives—that an unplowed field grows no wheat. A proper wife welcomes her husband every night. You’ll start acting like my wife. I’ll be digging deep furrows every night with my plow.”
He let go of her, laughing. She stumbled up the stairs, praying he wouldn’t follow.
Later that day, Briseis slipped outside to the royal family’s courtyard despite the frost that made the cobblestones slippery—not as restoring as a walk on Mount Ida, but all she could manage in the palace. As she returned inside to the small connecting hallway, she overheard two servants gossiping while they scrubbed the great hall’s floor, and she realized someone among the serving women must have witnessed that horrible scene with Mynes.
“—hates him, I’d say. Not surprising, the way he treats her.”
“He’s handsome enough if you ignore them eyes of his, but I’m glad he won’t take a grab at the likes of me, only beauties like Maira or poor Lady Briseis. Not easy for Lady Briseis to get him out of her bed—no one’s like her. Only Maira is close. She’ll have to choose—Hatepa or Mynes. And which is worse? Maira can’t keep both entertained, not unless she took on both at the same time.”
“Wouldn’t the queen love that!” They laughed. Briseis felt sick. The servants’ gossip confirmed her suspicions. She knew why Maira chose to live in Hatepa’s sickroom—the one place Mynes couldn’t get at her.
Unless she was out of the palace tending to the ill or delivering babies, Briseis never missed a meeting of the king’s Council. At first she only spoke up when they discussed something directly related to her work as healing priestess. Gradually, as talk of war with the Greeks increased, she realized she could contribute to this topic also.
The war showed no signs of ending. The Greeks couldn’t prevent supply ships from entering Troy’s main harbor and restocking the city, although they attacked during the unloading and caused losses of men and supplies. Equally, the Trojans couldn’t starve out the Greeks because the Greeks had taken control of a fort that guarded a small harbor to the south of the city and they too could supply their army.
Although the young men were eager to go fight at Troy and end this stalemate, the Council was made up of men with sons to lose and they sought ways to postpone. The Council understood much better than did the young men that Lyrnessos’s warriors would not shift the balance enough to end the war. When Briseis proposed they offer King Priam weapons instead of warriors, they listened. Many of Troy’s allies could supply men, but there was an acute shortage of arms. Her father’s workshop with Milos in charge could fill that void if the other nobles assisted in providing the ore from the mines up in the Taurus Mountains. The Council dispatched wagons and slaves to the mines. A delegation traveled to Troy. For months this arrangement kept Lyrnessos out of the war, and the nobles’ coffers grew richer from the trade. Her father’s weapons bought the lives of Lyrnessos’s men even while they were used to kill others.
The Council could be tedious. Some of the king’s advisors spoke as much to hear themselves as to solve problems, but she appreciated her growing understanding of Lyrnessos. Fortunately, Mynes considered training with the young warriors more important, so he rarely attended. When he did, his irritation at her presence showed. He interrupted and contradicted her when she spoke, especially if she discussed ways to keep Lyrnessos’s warriors out of the war. He did not share Euenos’s view of her role as future queen. An invalid like Hatepa would have pleased him more, but she gained the respect of the others. Her knowledge of metalworking did not disgust them as it did her husband. For now she let the value she held in others’ eyes sustain her and soften the pain of her husband’s repugnance.
One morning, when Briseis had been delayed by her household responsibilities, she entered the Council after the king and his advisors had already begun. A larger number of men than usual had gathered—twenty or more, including her father. The lines around his eyes had deepened in a way that no longer originated from laughter.
; The noblemen sat in a semicircle in wooden chairs facing Euenos’s throne, which stood on its platform framed with a fresco of two griffins behind it. The regal beasts spread their wings on either side of the throne and bowed their heads to the king. Something about the attentive posture of the men that morning mimicked the beasts’ special deference, and she wondered what event they knew about that she had missed.
Some of the Council were men in their prime with bodies well-muscled by training for battle. Others showed their age with bent backs and white hair. The tension in the air warned her that these men expected something significant to occur.
Mynes sat beside his father. Irritation twisted his face when he saw her. She took her seat slightly apart from the group. Her father glanced at her briefly, but she couldn’t read his thoughts.
The king stood and lifted his scepter from the table next to him. “I have called all of you here to witness my announcement of war.”
Briseis’s heart dropped.
“I have had enough of waiting while the Greeks batter Troy. We must fulfill our treaty obligations to Priam. Glaukos’s weapons production gave us valuable time to prepare, but we can no longer put off our duty.” He nodded toward her father in thanks. “The winter weather will make transporting our warriors and supplies more difficult—we are close enough to manage, though. Troy suffers in this cold, harsh season, and our succor now will be of greatest benefit. The Greeks will not expect the arrival of new allies at this time of year. I will lead our warriors to Troy within the week, with Glaukos as my second in command.”
Without thinking, Briseis rose from her chair. “No! Let us hold off a little longer. Perhaps the Greeks will leave. King Priam knows how valuable we are as a supplier of weapons. We—”
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