by Emily Hauser
I hesitated, then took it from him and wrapped it around my shoulders.
The following day I was well enough recovered to ride – or, at least, so I said to Hippomenes, and in truth, though the bruise over my ribs was tinged with blue and green, the pain had lessened to a bearable degree. I insisted, despite his remonstrations, that we should depart immediately for Greece. Dedali’s horse, though well mended in the hindquarters, was not yet fit enough to ride, so Hippomenes redressed the surface wound with fresh linen from my quiver before we left. I watched his hands, gentle and strong, upon the horse, listened as he whispered in its ear to comfort it. He turned and saw me staring. ‘Are you ready?’
I started. ‘I – yes.’ I turned and bent to retrieve my quiver from where it leant against the cave wall, then swung it onto my back, trying not to grimace. Hippomenes picked up his sword, kicked at the ashes of the fire to disguise our presence in case anyone tried to follow us, then led out the two horses by the reins, their large eyes blinking in the morning sunlight now pouring down from a pale sky.
‘The gods be thanked,’ he said, looking up to the heavens. ‘The rain has cleared at last.’
He held out his hand to halt me, and gazed around, shoulders tensed, as if listening for any sounds of riders, any sense that we were being watched; but after a few moments of silence, he nodded. We were alone.
I moved to Dedali’s horse and stroked his soft nose. He snorted a little, then snuffled at the crook of my elbow.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ I said in a low voice into his ear. ‘Return home safe to Myrtessa.’
He gave a low whinny and pawed at the ground, flicking his tail.
I stepped back.
‘Very well,’ I said, with a sigh. Hippomenes threw the rug Dedali had given me upon the horse’s back, then slapped him on his uninjured hindquarter. He started at a trot, then began to canter, through the dappled light of the forest, tossing his mane a little, back towards the mountains of Suzona. I watched him go, thinking of the house upon the edge of the darkened woods, and Myrtessa, wondering what she was doing now.
‘Here.’ Hippomenes turned to me and placed his hands upon my waist.
I started, like a nervous colt. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Do you think you can mount alone?’
I looked towards his bay horse, stamping the ground beside us, his withers just above the height of my shoulders.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, chin held high, picking up the horse’s reins and leading him over to the moss-covered stump of a tree nearby. I scrambled onto it, one hand clutching my injured rib, and managed to push myself to stand. But as I placed my hands on the horse’s withers and tried to leap up, I felt a searing, blistering pain in my side.
I winced, clutched at my chest, slipped and lost my balance.
‘Steady.’ Hippomenes was there in a moment, one large hand upon my back, the other at my hip, bracing me.
I held onto his shoulder, tears smarting in my eyes. ‘I think, perhaps, after all …’
He smiled a little as he lifted me, as easily and swiftly as he had done before, and placed me upon the horse, then vaulted up behind me. The mysterious pouch he had picked up in the forest pressed against my hip, and as he slid it quickly behind his belt I wondered once more what was inside it.
‘To Greece, then?’ he asked, reaching around me so that I felt the warmth of his chest against my back, and flicking the reins to bring his steed around. There was something comforting about his steady strength. Perhaps, I thought, it was that he, too, had grown up on the land as I had, on the Boeotian plains.
I smiled a little and nodded, gathering his cloak around me. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To Greece.’
Over the next weeks we passed through many settlements as we rode towards the west: fortressed cities set upon windy hilltops, villages nestling in wooded bays, and market towns upon the plain, where we were able to mix with traders and purchase new clothes – a wool cloak and new boots for me, a tunic for Hippomenes – and fresh horses for us both, once I was able to ride alone. My shoulder was almost fully healed with a clean silver scar, and though there was still a bruise across my ribs I could breathe without pain. Hippomenes would not call me Telamon – ‘Since I know the truth I can hardly pretend otherwise with good conscience,’ he had said – and as I refused to pretend to be his slave, we had agreed after much argument to be a voyaging merchant and his wife. How else could we explain to the Greek traders we met upon our journey that I, a freeborn woman, was travelling alone with a man to whom she was not married? Although I acknowledged that this guise had its merits, I baulked particularly at having to hand my quiver to Hippomenes at every settlement we passed. He had argued that a true merchant’s wife would never be seen carrying a bow, let alone using it – and I, recognizing the truth of this, had at last, though with an ill grace, given way.
The country became less mountainous as we rode further west, rolling into grass-covered plains dotted with olive trees and watered by broad shallow rivers. Hippomenes did not ask why I pressed on towards Greece with such haste, and I did not tell him – neither about the Fleece, nor that I was racing towards Pelion to challenge Jason before he reached the palace – so we rode in companionable silence through lands inhabited by farmers who worked the black earth for barley and emmer wheat. They were a peaceful people, whose fields bordered with the warlike Hittites to the south. As we neared the Bosphorus, we began to meet more of the Kaskaean merchants who sailed the ocean in galleys, trading with Troy and the cities of the Anatolian coast. Many spoke Greek, and we ate and slept in their homes, laughing with them as we told tales of our adventures, exchanging horses at the traders’ stables and moving on.
That evening we stopped in Kromna, a small town set back from the sea just down the coast from Kytoros. We were making good time – it was twenty-three days since we had left the shores of Colchis. Dedali’s house, the valley of the Fleece and the armed bandits felt so long ago, almost as if they had never happened. We arrived at dusk, our horses’ hoofs kicking up dust as we approached the gathering of mud-brick dwellings. A few fishermen were returning home for the night, sacks filled with shellfish, mullet and sturgeon slung over their backs, and when we signalled to them and they heard our language, they pointed us towards a hut on the outskirts of the settlement.
The trader, Illa, who lived there with his wife, sister and five children, welcomed us in fluent Greek as we offered our coins and gave our story. Hippomenes was a merchant, Daikrates, and I his young wife Galatia; we had been turned out of our homes in Sparta by raiders from the Taygetus Mountains and were now travelling the coast of Anatolia to persuade our former partners in trade to support us in recovering our estate. Illa was a native Kaskaean who, it turned out, conducted frequent business with the wine merchants from Lesbos; he accepted us without question, apologizing for the inadequacy of his home and its lack of stables. We tethered our horses instead to posts in the meadow behind, where they joined a flock of grazing goats and sheep. The hut was dark and stiflingly warm as we entered, with few windows. Chattering children were playing on the packed-earth floor while two women worked at clattering looms in the corner.
‘In here.’ Illa gestured us to a chamber at the back of the hut, divided from the main room by an ill-fitting wooden door. It was tiny, with one pallet bed laid upon the floor covered with a thin blanket, a single chair and a plain clay bathtub filling the rest of the space. A single window in the wall opened over the meadows behind, a welcoming breeze blowing in and lifting the hair on the back of my neck, cooling my hot skin. ‘We normally sleep here, Mala and I, but,’ he held up his hands, ignoring our protests, ‘it is yours for the night. You are young and newly married, and,’ he winked, ‘it’s clear enough you both have other things on your mind than sleeping.’ He grinned and pointed his thumb to the door. ‘Mala and I can sleep out there with the children.’
I glanced at Hippomenes, the memory of his urgent, passio
nate kiss in the forests of Colchis flooding my mind, his lips pressing hard into mine, his hands pulling me to him … Hippomenes was flushing around the neck, his ears reddening, avoiding my eye. I stammered our thanks, and Illa left, bowing himself out of the room.
‘Oh, and another thing,’ Illa said, pushing the door open and poking his head in. ‘We don’t have slaves, not being a family of means, but I’ll set my sister to heating up some water over the fire for you to bathe.’ With that, he closed the door.
Illa’s sister, Sarpa, found us sitting in silence when she knocked and entered, holding a cauldron filled with hot water by a sturdy wooden handle. She was a plump, round woman without much Greek, but she smiled as she poured the steaming water into the tub, returning two or three times until the bath was full, then gestured to a pile of towels and stoppered clay jars filled with olive oil, which she had placed beside it upon the floor. We nodded our thanks, and she left us alone again.
‘You should—’
We began together, and stopped, embarrassed.
‘You should bathe first,’ Hippomenes said at last, breaking the silence. He picked up the chair and turned it so that it faced the wall, then sat upon it, looking determinedly away. I grinned, wondering whether to protest at his foolish gallantry, but I was covered with sand, dust and dried mud from several days’ riding, my hair matted with sweat and dirt, and the water, steaming in the homely clay tub, looked inviting.
I stood carefully and pulled off my boots, sighing as I felt the earth on my feet, then undid my belt, slipped out of my trousers and pulled my tunic over my head. The material rippled down to the floor, and then I was standing naked behind Hippomenes, his eyes still fixed upon the plain mud-brick wall, feet planted slightly apart upon the floor. It felt odd to be so close to him, only a few paces away, and so vulnerable, trusting him not to ill-treat me as I had thought, after Meleager, never to trust a man again. I drew my arms protectively across myself, though I knew he could not see me, then walked towards the tub and lowered myself with a soft sigh into the water.
Once I had washed, oiled, dried and dressed myself again, I touched Hippomenes gently on the arm. ‘You can turn around now.’
His shoulders relaxed. ‘Thank the gods,’ was all he said, and he stood. Without waiting for me to leave, he untied the fastenings of his tunic. I bent to pick up a flask of oil for him, and when I straightened and turned I found him directly before me, not an arm’s length between us, his tunic unfastened to his waist.
My eyes were drawn to him, irresistibly, like a crab drawn into the deep sea by the tide. His shoulders were ridged with muscle, the skin of his broad torso a light olive colour, paler than his tanned arms, and soft curls of brown hair covered the tight muscles on his chest and belly; the heavy-set, work-honed body of a farmer and a warrior, not the slim athletic figure of a noble.
I bit my lip and looked down, trying not to inhale the scent of him – that heady mixture of horse, leather and sweat.
‘Your – your oil,’ I said, and pressed the flask into his hands, feeling his gaze bearing down on me, his chin so close to the top of my head that we were almost touching. I held his stare for a moment, and felt my heart beat faster, in spite of myself.
Then I turned and fled out of the chamber.
Hippomenes found me later, seated in the meadow behind the hut with the horses, which were cropping the long grass, my arms clasped around my knees. I tried not to look at him as he settled beside me, one leg outstretched, his long damp hair framing his broad cheekbones and jaw. I became suddenly very aware of the pulse at my throat and the dryness of my lips.
Remember why you are here, I told myself firmly.
You let down your guard once with Meleager, and see how much good it did you.
I plucked a stem of grass and peeled it between my fingers.
It is the Fleece you are pursuing, nothing else.
I looked at the nearby stream, which trickled through the meadow, trying to distract myself. The water was leaping lightly over rocks, and swifts skittered overhead, catching insects on the summer air. If I had not known better, I should have thought we were already in Greece, for there was a warm familiarity about the olive trees scattered over the field, the rocky outcrops of the hills in the distance and the line of the sea upon the horizon, shimmering gold in the setting sun. Even the clanking of goat bells and the scent of the sea salt mixed with thyme upon the warm air felt like a summons from my home. My stomach flipped. Pray the gods I will be in time to get there before Jason …
Hippomenes shifted beside me and stood slowly, rubbing the small of his back, then stretching his arms to the sky, deepening from yellow to a pale turquoise.
‘I have been too long on horseback these past days,’ he said. ‘I am growing stiff as an old man.’ He glanced around him. ‘Would you care to race? Say, from here to that young oak? I would give anything to stretch my legs after all the riding we have done.’
I let out a laugh. ‘You wish to race me?’
‘Why not?’
I plucked another grass stem and squinted up at him, smiling into the evening sunlight. ‘Because you will not win.’
Now it was his turn to laugh. I raised my hands in indignation, and he subsided into a chuckle. ‘I am sorry, Atalanta,’ he said, still grinning, ‘but you know that that cannot be true. I am a head taller than you and stronger by far.’
I frowned. A part of me did not want to rise to the provocation, but another part – the part that, I supposed, had sent me sailing across the world in the guise of a man – was determined to show Hippomenes that he was wrong.
I placed my hands on the grass beside me and pushed myself to stand. ‘Very well, then,’ I said, and I bent down to loosen the ties on first one, then the other of my boots, shaking them off so that I could feel the soft meadow beneath the soles of my feet. I straightened to look up at him, raising my eyebrows and cocking my head with a smile. ‘If you wish to lose, it is no care of mine.’
We drew the finish line between two young oaks, around two hundred paces distant. The winner was to pass between the trees before the other. I bent down to the grass, kneeling, my fingertips pressing into the earth, my toes curling into the warm blades beneath me, every muscle tensed, my eyes fixed ahead upon the trunk of one of the oaks, its leaves waving slightly in the breeze. The sun’s rays slanted down over the field, turning everything a deep, pinkish gold, and somewhere above, in the deep blue heavens, a swallow sang and the nearby river gushed over the stones.
‘Now!’ Hippomenes shouted.
I leapt forwards.
The air flew past me. Like one of my arrows, I felt myself fly, straight and true. The ground seemed hardly to touch my feet, and I could feel a strength in me I had never felt before, new-found after days spent pulling at the oar and sweating beneath the heat of the sun: a hardiness, a suppleness to my muscles that added strength to my speed. I felt alive, more alive than I had for a long time, and behind me Hippomenes was pounding the earth while I flew ahead. This was effortless – this was where I was meant to be: to feel my bare feet upon the grass and the beating of my heart. My tunic was clinging to my skin as I ran, the air deliciously cool upon my face. For a moment I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the hills on the horizon were nearing, the green-grey leaves of the trees so close I could almost hear them rustling in the wind …
And then I was past them, my hair flying out behind me, turning to watch Hippomenes hurtle in, red-faced and panting, several paces behind.
I grinned as he bent over to rest his hands on his knees and catch his breath.
‘Another?’
Later that night, as the pale circle of Artemis’ moon rose through the window in Illa’s chamber, Hippomenes and I were lying to rest – I, at Hippomenes’ insistence, alone upon the pallet bed, and he on the earth floor beside me, his cloak spread beneath him. Illa, Mala, Sarpa and the children were already asleep, their muffled snores and grunts just audible from the room beyond. The single
window in the back wall let a slant of moonlight down into the tiny room, casting the rickety wooden chair and clay tub into relief and lining the profile of Hippomenes’ face with silver. The scent of olive oil from our bath was still upon the air, mixed with the tang of evening dew from the meadow beyond, and I shifted a little upon the prickly straw of my pallet bed, trying to get comfortable.
Hippomenes was lying upon his back, his hands folded behind his head. ‘Atalanta?’ he said softly.
‘Hmm?’
‘I have been thinking – I have been riding with you for weeks now and yet I know nothing about you.’
I sat up and patted the straw down beneath my back, trying to smooth it. ‘You know my name.’
He chuckled. ‘Gods be praised, I know your name.’ He sat up and turned towards me, propping his head upon his hand. ‘I was thinking of other things besides – your parents, say. Where you come from. How,’ he grinned, ‘you happened to be hunting with us upon Mount Pelion, disguised as a Cretan nobleman.’
I bit my lip.
‘You can tell me the name of your father, at least?’ he pressed me.
I let out a breath. That is the one thing I cannot tell you. ‘I – I cannot tell you all,’ I said.
He shrugged in the darkness. ‘Then say what you can.’
I wondered how much to tell him; whether I should tell him anything at all.
‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ Hippomenes said gently into the silence.
Slowly, I lay down, looking up at the darkened wooden beams of the ceiling so as to avoid the sense that he was watching me. ‘What is it you would know?’ I asked.
‘Tell me where you come from.’
An owl hooted softly outside the window, somewhere across the meadows.
I took a breath. ‘I come from Pagasae,’ I said, my voice halting. ‘I – I am a mainlander. Not a Cretan.’
I heard his cloak stir beside me as Hippomenes nodded. ‘And your family?’
I swallowed. I had never told anyone this, except Myrtessa. And yet …