by Marilyn Todd
‘Will I die of old age?’
‘The Fates spin the thread of life, child, not I, and only they know the length of that thread. As ever, a mortal’s fate lies in the hands of the gods, though I, Hestia, sister of Zeus, tell you this. Apollo sends you health and Aphrodite wishes you well in ventures of love. Though I see Discord and Dishonesty skulking in the night, clouding the mind of your lover.’
‘What about his wife?’
Air spat out of the tube. Shit. Iliona hadn’t seen this one coming.
‘Let me see, child.’
Usually she took her cues from the smallest of details. The way the subject stiffened or relaxed at her pronouncements. Changes in their breathing patterns, skin tone, in dilation or contraction of their pupils. From their reactions, she could determine whether she was on the right track, stressing those points where she had hit the target, moving on swiftly from those that elicited no response, whilst using these unwitting signals to predict what they wanted out of their future. This was different. Peace of mind might be the Oracle’s stock in trade, and misdirection and distraction the tools that achieved it. But suddenly there was more than one person involved here. Possibly children, as well.
‘You would give up everything to be with this man.’
‘I would. I really would.’
‘Because your lover is the kindest and most generous of men.’ She crossed her fingers, hoping to heaven it was true. ‘But I see a tree with a forked branch.’
What kind of monster would sleep with a trusting soul like Melisanne while still married to somebody else? If it was hot, dangerous, illicit sex he was after, it made him a bastard, who had no right to string her along and destroy any chance she might have for happiness with somebody else. He must know the lowlanders’ view on virginity prior to marriage. On the other hand, if he’d genuinely fallen head over heels, then he should damn well stand up and be counted.
‘A decision is looming,’ she said. ‘Maybe tonight…maybe tomorrow…’
She sprang the release on another contraption. Powder slid down her sleeve into the tripod, releasing clouds of white smoke, and at the same time as the goddess let out a loud sigh, Iliona slumped to the floor.
‘What happened?’ she asked woozily. ‘Did Hestia speak?’
‘She did.’ Melisanne’s eyes were shining.
‘How did we do?’ Iliona rubbed her eyes as she emerged, dazed, from her trance. ‘Did you get all your answers?’
‘Not all, my lady, but I am so excited. The things she said—! The goddess—! Everything was unbelievably accurate. It’s amazing.’ When she tried to stand up, she had difficulty finding her balance. Not the first time that Iliona had rendered a questioner quite literally giddy from the experience. ‘I can’t thank you enough, ma’am, I just can’t.’ She squeezed Iliona’s hands with bone-crushing gratitude. ‘I feel so blessed. I mean, to be touched by the gods—! I don’t know what to say, really I don’t, but I know, I just know, that everything will work out fine now!’
‘I’m glad for you, Melisanne.’
Was she? She covered the tripod. No fire lives without air. Just as no life is worth living without fire.
Maybe tonight…maybe tomorrow…
With luck, this charade might just force the issue. Dammit, either stay with the wife or make a clean break! The current situation wasn’t fair on either woman, and if there were children involved, the quicker he cut his ties to Melisanne the better. Little ones always came first.
Either way, though, someone was going to get hurt.
Maybe tonight…maybe tomorrow…
But hurt nevertheless.
*
In the windswept pass in the Macedonian hills, the sun slipped into the Lands of the Dead. Bats took to the wing. Fox, lynx, jackal and wolf moved from shadow to shadow.
Beside a soft, rushing stream, the gold train made camp. No lanterns were lit. No welcoming fire to cook by.
Six of the warriors stationed themselves for the first watch, accompanied by six auxiliary helots. They sat back to back with a stone between their shoulder blades, so if one fell asleep, the other would know. The rest of the squad turned in for sleep to take over in four hours’ time.
Above their heads, the metallic fingernail of the new moon climbed above the horizon. Millions of stars twinkled and shone, so close you could almost reach up and touch them.
The new commander checked and counted the saddlebags, just as his predecessor would have done. Poor bugger, he thought. A broken leg was no joke for a soldier. He hoped for Gregos’ sake that the break was a clean one.
Satisfied with the bag count, he took the first watch.
Nothing human moved in the hills.
If it did, the commander was ready.
*
By the light of lamps scented with lavender oil, Iliona slipped into a simple robe of pale pink linen with four narrow parallel lines round the hem embroidered with silver. She fastened it with gold clasps in the shape of grasshoppers, then belted it with a girdle from which nine small tassels dangled, one for each of the Muses. In the lamplight, her hair shone, silken and flaxen, as she brushed it, pinned it up then carefully fed the hoops of her earrings through her ear lobes. Pearl studs, subtle but elegant, with a choker and bracelets to match. Painting a thin line of kohl round her eyes, she tinted her cheeks with a cream made of wine lees, then dabbed perfume on her pulse points. Finally, she bound her sandals to her feet, clipped on the diadem her mother had given her and tossed a diaphanous veil over her head.
After thirty-five summers, Iliona of Sparta was still turning heads.
…though you put on a public face of discipline and self-control, there are times when you are deeply, yes deeply troubled. In fact, there have been occasions when you have had serious doubts about whether you’ve made the right decision…
Words. Meaningless tosh, pure generalizations lacking in background and detail. And yet words which applied to everybody.
Not least the High Priestess of Sparta.
She stared at her reflection in the bronze-handled mirror. Maturity had rounded out her once coltish hips and given definition to her bosom, etching a few lines around her eyes in the process. Character lines, she decided. She ran her hands over a stomach that was as hard and flat as a discus. Maintaining the physical training that was indoctrinated into every citizen, regardless of age or sex, had kept her back straight and her shoulders square without marbling her long limbs with excess sinew, and yes, she thought contentedly, looking back was a confident woman. A woman of power. A leader, if only by example. The picture was exactly how it should be. Calm, authoritative and firmly in control. She peered closer to be sure, but no.
No indication of the pain that the return of a long-lost son would bring.
No indication of the agony of losing him for good—
‘Damn.’
If that wound opened again because she’d just bumped into the table, Jocasta would kill her. The past was the past, there was no going back. Compose yourself. Decisions had been made which could never be changed, decisions made for the right reasons at the right time, so what was the point in stumbling around, feeling sorry for yourself? Blotting her tears with the hem of her veil, the high priestess lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and set off for the stables. Calm, authoritative and firmly in control.
For the next few hours, anyway.
Fourteen
Lisyl was exhausted. More and more washing kept appearing through the course of the day, and the last thing she felt like was trekking up a mountain and then dancing. Much less having to go through the ordeal of meeting Morin’s relatives for the very first time when her hair was all over the place, her hands were rough and wrinkled, and her eyeballs seemed to have slipped halfway down her cheeks. If Morin was still in the stables, waiting for her as she’d secretly been hoping, she would just tell him straight that she was too dog-tired to go.
Of course he wasn’t. She checked in every stall, because you never kn
ow, do you? He might just have nodded off while he was waiting. Oh, well, never mind. Daft of her to expect him to hang around while she was finishing off that extra shift. It was his clan’s festival, after all.
‘Hello?’ She thought she heard a noise up there in the hayloft. ‘Morin, is that you?’
Nothing.
‘Yvorna, if that’s you buggering about up there, looking to jump down and scare the living daylights out of me like you did last week, I’m not in the bloody mood, all right?’
‘It’s not your sister.’
‘Cadur?’ She was surprised to see chiselled cheekbones peering down at her. ‘What the devil are you doing up there at this time of night?’
The lower part of the stables was lit up well enough, but not the hayloft. I mean, you couldn’t, could you? Oil lamps in dry grass? One slip and the place would go up like a…well, haystack!
‘Nothing.’
‘You must be doing something.’ He looked too sheepish to be minding his own business. ‘Here, have you got a girl up there?’
‘No.’ It came out too fast. ‘No, I’m alone.’
‘Come on, what is it?’ she laughed. ‘You’re hiding something, I can tell.’
‘Can you now.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Were you looking for Morin? If so, he left hours ago.’
‘I wasn’t,’ she said airily. Hours, eh? ‘I just wondered if he’d had time to grind up that bag of chestnuts I left him, that was all.’
‘The sack’s in the corner, by the trough.’
‘Blimey!’ It slipped out before she could help herself. Lisyl hadn’t expected him to start, never mind finish, and her mood softened. ‘All that peeling and rasping,’ she said. ‘He must love me.’
Cadur grunted, though whether from agreement, lack of interest or the effort of leaning upside down, she couldn’t tell.
‘It gets stains out, you know.’
‘Huh?’
‘Ground chestnuts. An old woman told me that, when she was passing through in the spring. She told me to steep them in water and keep stirring until it turns frothy. Once it’s settled, she said, strain the bits off and anything you soak in the liquid that’s left will take all the mucky spots off your clothes.’ She pointed to his tunic. ‘I’ll get those grass stains out, no bother. If…you want me to, like.’
He looked at the marks, which hadn’t washed out despite several scrubbings. ‘I want.’
‘Leave it by the sack, then. I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘Don’t you think you work hard enough?’
‘I can’t abide the idea of dirty laundry left lying about. What a pong, especially in this heat. And baked-in sweat stains something wicked.’
Eyes, darker than ebony, watched from under lowered brows. ‘Does the station master know what you do?’
‘I doubt very much whether he’s interested in a laundress’s stain-removal secrets,’ she laughed.
‘You should tell him,’ Cadur said. ‘He’ll pay you extra, because then he can charge it as an additional service. He’s canny on finance, is Hector, and anyway, he’s interested in everybody’s secrets.’
‘That’s what I said to Morin. About the extra money, not the secrets. But he told me not to be so daft, and it’s not as if I’ll be working here once we’re married. Morin says a wife’s place is at home, beside the hearth.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘He’s right. I mean, it’s not what I want. I love it here. But you never see an Eagle woman working, do you? It’s not their culture. Only—well, it must get kind of boring. Still. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’ She wagged a playful finger. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what you’re doing up in that hayloft or what?’
‘I wasn’t planning on it.’
‘Then I’ll just have to come up there and see for myself!’ She belted her skirts and began to climb the ladder.
‘Hey, hey, hey.’ A strong hand grabbed her wrist. ‘You be careful.’
Suddenly Lisyl found herself being whisked through the air, and for a second it felt like flying. And so what if Morin thought it inappropriate that his girl was in a hayloft with another man, her skirts kilted up to her knees, breathless with exhilaration? He never swung her through the air like that. Probably the only chance she’d ever get!
‘Lisyl.’ Cadur’s voice sounded raspy. ‘I’ve never asked anything of you before, but will you promise? Promise not to tell anybody that you’ve been up here or what you’ve seen?’
‘Seen what? Either it’s pitch black up here or I’ve gone blind.’
‘Seriously.’ He still had hold of her wrists, and he gave them a squeeze. ‘You swear?’
Her heart was knocking louder than kettledrums. ‘If it’s that important, then yes. I give you my oath, Cadur. This will be our secret.’
‘Then quietly.’ Holding her arm, he guided her through the dark. She smelled sacking, which was odd, because she didn’t realize they kept sacks up here. Odd place to store them, where no one could reach… Her thoughts were distracted by a series of squeaks, and as her eyes acclimatized she could see something squirming. Overlaid with a loud rattle of purring.
‘Kittens! ’
‘Careful, their eyes have only just opened.’ With one hand, he stroked the head of the proud tortoiseshell mother. The other fished into the sacking and came out with a minuscule lump of mewling fur.
‘Oh, Cadur. He’s perfect!’
‘Don’t you mean purrrr-fect?’
For half an hour she played with the kittens, one ginger, one tabby, two with black and white bibs, after which she didn’t feel tired at all. In fact, a night of feasting and dancing with the man she loved no longer seemed remotely daunting, and so what if his family caught her with rough hands and her hair all over the place? She’d been working all day, what the devil did they expect!
*
The hut by the lakeside was so small you could almost touch the four walls with outstretched hands. It was timber-framed, with a low roof of thatched straw and a beaten-earth floor. The hinges on the door were ill-fitting and there was no chimney, either, so in the winter the room filled with smoke. For this, the landlord demanded a staggering five drachmas a month, though Dierdra would have paid double rather than share a dormitory with nine other women. Even the single rooms at the station were horrid. No windows, no peace, and just a curtain over the doorway for privacy. Nothing more than cubby holes, them.
She heard the knock, but didn’t answer. The second time it was harder. Made with the side of the fist, rather than a rap of the knuckles.
‘Dierdra?’
The door opened a crack. ‘Cadur? Oh, thank Zeus. I thought it was that ruddy cloth merchant again. Talk about a bleedin’ limpet!’
‘You told me to come after I finished my shift.’
‘I know, I know, I didn’t realize the time, love. Come on in.’ She glanced up the path. ‘Anyone see you?’ She squinted. ‘Were you followed?’
‘Who’d follow a stable boy?’
Dierdra shrugged. ‘You never know. Funny things have been happening lately.’ She stepped out into the path and yelled at the top of her voice. ‘If you’re watching, you pervert, we’re just playing chess.’
Melisanne was no pervert, but she was watching. If her baby sister was involved with this creep, she wanted to know exactly what he was up to. Not every man was as decent and kind as her Hector, and if that was chess, she was a Phrygian. No one shoots the bolt on a simple board game. Or pulls the scrap of oiled skin over the only tiny window to shut out the night.
She listened to the slap-slap-slap of water on the shore. Heard something plop into the reed beds.
Dierdra called it a cottage. Hector called it a hovel. Melisanne called it a whorehouse.
Sure enough, the bolt shot again a few minutes later, and Dierdra emerged to draw water from the lake, wisps of badly dyed hair hanging loose from their ringlets and her tunic practically off the shoulder, exposing half her breast.
All
right, it was a good breast, she conceded grumpily. Round and bouncy, not like her little poached eggs, and she shivered with pleasure. Maybe Hector could slip away from the Eagles and they could make love in the woods? Poached eggs or not, he couldn’t keep his hands off them, and she wondered what he was doing right now.
Holy Muses, if Anthea made him wear that dreary rust-brown tunic to the festival, she’d scream. You look so handsome in green, she kept telling him, but he still wore the clothes Madam ordered to be laid out. Let her have her say on what I wear, Mella. I have you. What does it matter? Sometimes they’d make love in the store rooms, sometimes in empty guest rooms, once in Madam’s own bed. Catch! That was the time he’d picked up Anthea’s favourite perfume jar. The little alabaster one. Then threw it to Melisanne, who only just caught it, but the thrill of that near miss was exquisite. After that, he would often toss a fragile or precious object up in the air and catch it in the other hand. Every time her heart fluttered that he’d drop it, but he never did, and sometimes she wished he’d take the same sort of risks when they met. It would add even more spice, she said. I don’t want spice, I want security, Mella. Then he’d kiss her, or tickle her, or blow in her ear and suddenly she wouldn’t want spice any more, either.
Had he left for the Feast yet, or was he stuck in his office, dictating lists, letters or endless reports to his scribe? Poor Hector. If he wasn’t sorting out piles of administration, he was stocktaking in the cellars, checking the stables and dorms. No peace for the wicked, he’d say.
You can’t keep getting up with the larks and going to bed with owls, she would chide, with a teasing pull on his beard. It’s wearing you out.
Not for much longer, he’d whisper back. Not for much longer, my love.
Melisanne’s heart leapt. Wait till she told him what the Oracle said in her trance! This was just so exciting! She’d memorized every word to pass on. Love, warm and spreading, like the sun in a hayfield. Hard work not always rewarded. Children. Obstacles. Some large, some not so large, but most importantly, you must persevere to overcome them.