by Marilyn Todd
‘Priests can be mistaken.’
‘As you are the mouthpiece of Eurotas, milady, so Sandor speaks for the Blue Goddess, and Zabrina is gentle. She never lies.’
So this was to be a battle of divine powers, was it?
‘A mistake is not a lie,’ she said patiently. ‘It is a genuine error, and we are all guilty of those. But if it puts your mind at rest, Melisanne, I’d be happy to put myself in a trance and tell your fortune. Tomorrow, if that would suit you?’
‘Would you, ma’am?’ Her eyes lit up, but with relief rather than gratitude. ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you so much!’
‘My pleasure.’ Hundreds of people were employed at this station, and if Iliona had to win them over one at a time, then so be it. She rubbed the aching wound in her side, and thought, some rest! ‘Now off you go and enjoy the festivities. You can tell me about it in the morning.’
Alone in her chamber, she approached the niche in the wall and, from the silver phial in the shape of a dolphin, poured a libation of wine. In theory, her prayers should have been to Zeus, for his sense of honour, justice and good faith. She smiled, wondering what the Krypteia would make of her offering prayers to Athene, patron and protector of the arch-enemy Athens. He’d argue treason. She’d argue that Athene was also a leader of armies, and no army was stronger than Sparta’s. That wasn’t why she’d chosen the virgin goddess of warfare.
She unpinned the brooch Dierdra had given her and laid it on the tiny stone altar, a focal point for her prayers. Was it coincidence that it was shaped like an owl? Iliona was no great believer in fate. She believed everyone was responsible for forging their own future, and that destiny lay in your own hands. Treason again? The High Priestess of Eurotas denying the very River God she was supposed to serve? Possibly. But did it matter how the pieces went together, providing the mechanism was sound?
Which is where the Goddess of Wisdom came in. Iliona used tricks and illusion every day to help people overcome their problems, qualities Athene was familiar with. She was a schemer, a strategist, a manipulator of men, and had she been a boxer, Athene would have hidden metal nuggets inside her leather knuckle protectors. Whilst Iliona wouldn’t necessarily stoop to such tactics, she couldn’t deny that murder ran in her blood. Her father had slowly and systematically sent the preceding king mad, dripping poison into his wine under the aegis of friendship, until the poor man slashed himself to death outside the temple. And she, too, had killed in cold blood, and whilst in both cases the ends justified the means, it didn’t mean she slept at night.
Three times Iliona poured the libation, then anointed the tiny altar with oil of cloves. Invoking Athene, she prayed for the goddess’s insight. With just a smidgen of conniving thrown in.
Changing into a gown of rose pink trimmed with silver, as far removed from her official robes as she could get, her mind turned to Gregos’ murder. Snooping wasn’t part of her brief. Retrieving the gold was Lysander’s problem. All the same, it wouldn’t hurt to have a wander round the stables at some stage, she mused. If the gold was being switched at the posting station, as he suspected, it was unlikely the rocks would be stored far from the swap site, which ruled out the paddocks, the vegetable plots and the hay fields. Equally, lugging heavy sacks out of the accommodation block would attract too much attention, whereas deep piles of hay made for perfect cover. Especially when few animals needed to be housed indoors this time of year.
She twisted her hair into a simple bun, securing it with ornate, bejewelled pins. The frescoes on the wall were yet another surprise. The quality of the artwork was quite astonishing for such an isolated outpost, and the pictures set just the right tone for travellers a long way from home. Soft. Restful. Reassuring. Iliona threaded earrings through her ear lobe, from which dangled tiny gold bunches of grapes, then slipped on various bracelets of shining electrum. On the west wall, Orpheus was busy taming wild wolves with his lyre. Opposite, Aphrodite rose prettily from the foam. While a pastoral scene, showing Helios’s cattle grazing in the light of his setting rays, covered the wall to the south. Truly, they were works of art—
Wait a moment.
She laid down the choker she was about to pin round her neck and took a closer look at the pictures.
‘Well, well, well.’
Wild beasts from the mountains being brought to heel. A goddess rising out of the water. Grazing cattle… The people of Phaos were known as the Bulls. Herdsmen and fishermen, whose sole aim in life was to subjugate the wild highland huntsmen.
We, at the station, take great pains to remain impartial.
Like hell they did. The symbolism couldn’t be clearer, which prompted the question: was this Hector’s doing? Anthea’s?
Or both?
*
‘What did she say? Is the curse permanent?’
‘I’ll need to look for another job after this.’
‘Where? You won’t find one round here.’
‘There’s Phaos.’
‘The city? That’s on the other side of the lake!’
‘Who cares how far it is,’ someone else piped up. ‘If there’s work, I’m taking it, mate.’
‘What work? If the posting station closes, the town’ll die too.’
‘So are we all cursed, or what?’ the wheelwright wanted to know. ‘My wife’s expecting a baby and I don’t want it born with two heads.’
‘Why? Don’t you want it to take after you?’ Yvorna retorted.
Sniggers rippled round the jetty where the servants had gathered. Out on the translucent water, fishing boats dotted the surface like ink spots in search of sponges, crabs and eels, while waterfowl bobbed round the reed beds and pelicans on the islands grunted and preened.
‘This is no joking matter, young lady.’ The porter wagged his fat finger. ‘We’ve had a curse laid on us by the Spartan priestess—’
‘Priestess, my arse,’ sneered a water-bearer. ‘If she’s not here in an official capacity, that makes her a witch.’
‘Well, you’d know all about that, seeing as you’re married to one,’ said Yvorna, and this time the laughter was open.
‘You never take anything seriously,’ a gardener murmured without criticism.
‘What’s to take seriously about this?’ Yvorna threw up her hands. ‘My sister told you what the Oracle said. Sandor’s mistaken. There is no bloody curse.’
‘Then how come Nobilor’s dead?’ one of the cooks asked.
‘Yes, how come?’
The mood swung to hostile again.
‘A whole churn of milk went rancid in the night. You tell me that’s coincidence!’
‘One of the chickens stopped laying.’
‘I slipped getting out of bed this morning.’
‘You lot! Honestly, I can’t believe my ears.’ Yvorna tipped her head back and laughed. ‘Chickens often stop laying, you big dollops, just as milk always turns sour in the heat, and you, you clumsy oaf, you’re always tripping over things.’
‘What about me, then? I didn’t have this headache yesterday.’
‘You weren’t drunk yesterday.’
‘Are you siding with her, then? The bitch who put a curse on us?’
‘Morin, you pick on someone your own size!’ Lisyl waded into the argument with a mock punch at her big, burly betrothed. Chatting to Melisanne in the clearing, she’d arrived late and only caught the last part of the exchange. ‘Leave my baby sister alone.’
‘Do you mind? I’m quite capable of looking after myself, thank you very much.’
‘See? The curse has them fighting each other,’ a chambermaid said. ‘Sister pitted against sister, it’s civil war—’
‘Civil warts more like.’ Yvorna stuck her tongue out. ‘On your bum, so you can’t sleep or sit down.’
‘Are you cursing me now?’
‘With the black blood of bat and venom of snake—’
‘Don’t joke about this, Yvorna. I’m scared stiff my kids—’
‘Who said she’s joking?’ The water-
bearer again. ‘Maybe the witch cursed Melisanne, who cursed her sister in turn—’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, either we’re all doomed or we’re not,’ Lisyl said, ‘and Melisanne quite clearly says that we’re not.’
‘So you’re under the spell, too?’
‘Hey.’ The crowd parted as a young man with chiselled cheekbones pushed his way to the front. ‘If any of you have a problem, take it to Hector. Lisyl and Yvorna are your friends. They don’t deserve to be put on public trial.’
‘Absolutely.’ Dierdra forged through to stand beside Cadur. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves, bullying these poor girls, or do any of you want to call me names, too?’
‘’Course not.’
‘Sorry.’
‘We’re just worried.’
The crowd thinned out as they headed back to the clearing, where the Axe God was quenching his thirst with a pitcher of ale.
‘That’s the trouble,’ Lisyl said, nodding in his direction. ‘They’ve all drunk too much.’
‘Or not enough,’ Yvorna added wryly. ‘Anyway, thanks for sticking up for us, Cadur.’ She planted a smacker of a kiss on his cheek. ‘No one else was going to.’ She glowered at Morin. ‘Quite the opposite, in some cases.’
Lisyl was also watching her boyfriend. Taller and broader than most, and with dark curly hair, he hadn’t moved from the spot.
‘Yes, thank you, Cadur. Dierdra.’
She gave the older woman a hug and then, as an afterthought, embraced Cadur. He smelled of fresh hay and pine, and his muscles were harder than iron.
‘No problem,’ he rasped.
He seemed uneasy being hugged, but with Morin showering daggers on her, Lisyl hung on for all she was worth, then kissed both his cheeks and hugged him again, even tighter. Take that, she thought, for calling my sister names!
‘Come on.’ Yvorna linked one arm through Cadur’s, the other through Lisyl’s. ‘The feast should be starting up soon.’
With Morin linking his arm through his fiancée’s and Dierdra hooking up with Yvorna, they walked in a line back to the clearing, where flutes and drums drowned out the laughter.
From beneath the Tree of Life, Melisanne watched them approach. At first glance, she thought, you’d think this was a happy band of friends rejoining the festivities, not a care in the world between them.
But Nobilor was dead and the posting station was cursed.
Regardless of what Iliona had said.
Eight
In the hills, where Jocasta was gathering herbs, there was a sense of change in the air. It whispered through the drying of the leaves, the rustle of squirrels hoarding hazelnuts for the winter, dormice weaving nests to keep them warm through the long months of hibernation. Soon the collage of colours that ranged from flame to rust red, amber to sulphur, would change to a grey leafless monotone and wolves would howl.
But for now, on the cusp of the autumn equinox, this was a season of bounty. Of ripening berries, finely spun spiders’ webs, clucking pheasants and fairy rings. As well as plenty of herbs to collect!
Vervain, clary, boxberry, hawthorn, fennel, and not forgetting horehound, whose flowering stems were excellent in combating digestive disorders. There were also sloes to pick, and broom, not to mention her old friend thorn-apple, which, though toxic and needing to be used with caution, offered outstanding painkilling and narcotic properties. What surprised her most about the plant was that smoking the leaves actually eased asthma attacks. You wouldn’t credit such a thing, but like they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
When she left Sparta, she hadn’t set out to treat anyone other than Iliona, whose wound had stood up astonishingly well to the journey. But as she’d passed through the yard, Jocasta noticed a groom with boils, a maid with leg ulcers and a gardener limping with what looked like sciatica. With so many people employed in and around the station, there’d be menstrual disorders, ear aches, insomnia, migraines and fibroids—and she’d seen at least one lazy eye.
There would be several competent physicians in the town of Phaos who could take care of such ailments, but that was on the far side of the lake. A long way to trek just for a poultice. In any case, physicians don’t come cheap and, judging from their faded, worn tunics, the workers at the station didn’t earn a fortune. Of course, the horse doctors would be more than capable of healing them, but with the vast volume of traffic passing through, the veterinarians were rushed off their feet.
One of the first changes Iliona made when she took over as high priestess at the Temple of Eurotas was to bring in a physician and treat the patients for free. The king, her cousin, had turned puce when she told him, but by that time it was already a done deal.
The rich won’t stop hiring their own doctors, she’d told him. They’ll want him to call on them, not the other way round, and in any case they wouldn’t be seen dead consulting a helot.
Helot? The king almost needed an undertaker, never mind a physician. You never said anything about—
The point is, she’d said firmly, the nobility’s customary endowments of silver and gold will be put to much better use subsidizing a healing room than sitting around in the treasury, gathering dust.
The Oracle would set the poor riddles, telling them to leave chaplets of flowers on the river bank, or toss bread rolls shaped like fish into the water, as a means of repaying the god.
Rather ironic, when you stop and think about it. Slaves are fed, clothed, even physicked for free, Jocasta mused. Yet if you’re freeborn and doing the same job of washing rich men’s sweaty feet or combing their hair over their bald spots, cleaning their floors or scrubbing bathtubs, you weren’t half as well off financially. And you probably didn’t have to work as hard, either. The whole point of being wealthy was to flaunt what you had—and nothing screams rich like an overstaffed household.
Then again, who in their right mind would swap freedom for comfort?
Plucking leaves, berries, stamens and flowers, Jocasta placed them carefully in separate sections of her satchel. Even though she, as a helot, was caught in the same trap, enjoying a far higher standard of living than she could ever expect as a freewoman, she would not let the good life cloud her vision. Freedom for her people remained top of her list.
One day.
One day, my friends, the helot s will be free.
One day we will return to our homeland…
Rutting bucks contested supremacy in the valley with loud grunts and clacking of antlers. An adder slithered off its stone and disappeared in the dark, damp leaf litter, searching out prey with its tongue. Magpies chattered noisily in the treetops. With the sun starting to sink, Jocasta reluctantly wound her way down the hillside, nibbling raspberries as she followed the track. Her first task would be to classify her herbs, then cleanse and re-dress Iliona’s wound. The stab had been shallow—as weak at the attacker himself—and hadn’t, thank heavens, penetrated the muscle. But Zeus alone knows what she’d been up to, to split it open again. Luckily for Iliona, she was young, she was fit, she was healthy. An afternoon’s rest would go a long way towards healing the wound. Zeus willing, the patient had even taken a snooze.
Crossing a small brook by means of a tree trunk which had fallen over the water, Jocasta thought she heard footsteps. She stopped, and decided it was probably a badger snuffling around. Maybe a rabbit darting into its hole. All the same, she clapped her hands in case it was a marauding bear. Bears run at the first sound of noise.
Further downstream, the river opened up into a small pool overhung with willows and pungent with the smell of soft moss. With the bath house off limits until morning, she’d have happily made do with a good flannel wash, but there was nothing quite like submersion and this was too inviting for words. She assessed the sun dipping down through the leaves and decided there was still enough time for a plunge. She slipped out of her clothes and into the water. Cool, refreshing and sweet to the taste, she surrendered to its luxury, floating her long black hair on the surf
ace like duckweed.
‘Pff.’
She blew the water out of her mouth as she came up for air. That felt good. Better than good, and watching scores of painted lady butterflies heading south on migration, their flickering orange and black flight mirrored in the crystal-clear water, she decided that the water nymph who lived here was blessed.
She sank again, wondering where the best place would be to dig up some of the dark purple crocuses that were unique to this region. Said to have bloomed where Medea spilled the elixir of life, Jocasta could well believe it. Medea was a sorceress and the crocus was a highly potent poison, though in the right hands it went a long way to alleviate gout pain. But this local bulb had a reputation for easing the symptoms of fever accompanied by joint, chest and stomach pain. Something to follow up on tomorrow.
Surfacing, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Shadows, surely? Bears don’t stalk the weeping willows. All the same, Jocasta was a helot, and when you’re plotting rebellion and the death of the king, you can’t afford to take risks. You remain constantly alert, watching and listening. Attuned to the nuances of nature.
The pool was too shallow to dive, so she splashed and played as if she was alone. If there was anyone spying, she intended to retain the advantage.
Helots are good actors, as well.
After a few minutes of apparently idle bathing, she emerged close to where the willows had moved, arching her arms out in the uninhibited manner of one who thinks they’re alone.
‘Is this good?’
Faster than lightning, she’d spun round, brought him down in a headlock, driving her heel into his groin.
‘I mean, I’m naked. Leaning over you. Isn’t this what you wanted?’
He wore priest’s robes, white, getting browner with each agonizing roll in the dirt. The bronze crown had slipped over his forehead.
‘Are those grunts of passion I hear, Sandor?’
‘Aargh.’
‘Not good enough, I’m afraid. I like my men to scream.’
She balled her fist and rammed it into his kidney.
‘Aaargh. ’
‘Louder.’ She repeated the action. ‘Oh, much better.’