by Zizou Corder
‘And look, look!’ cried Pearl. ‘Look at my baby!’ She had a foal. A long-legged, smooth-flanked, milky-skinned, curly-headed, freckle-faced little Centaur baby, who had been sitting with Grandma, until Pearl pushed him forward.
‘Pearl! Are you a grown-up?’ asked Halo, smiling.
‘Sort of,’ she replied with a grin.
Halo was so happy. Her breath was short and she didn’t know whose arms to throw herself into first. So they all came round, a big circle of red curls and loving arms, and they all hugged her at once.
Xαπτερ 27
‘There’s something else,’ Halo said, carefully, after they had eaten and drunk and told their stories and been hugged half to death, and everything had quietened down. ‘We came to warn you. There’s – there’s a human, a young human, a seer, blond and pale and strange-looking…’
Chariklo gasped softly. ‘How do you know about him?’ she said.
‘How do you know about him?’ said Arko.
‘All the Centaurs know about him,’ said Chiron bitterly. ‘The evil little worm…’
Halo was surprised. Chiron was normally so moderate. ‘Was he up here?’ she asked.
‘He was,’ said Kyllarus. The adult Centaurs were glancing at each other, as if wondering how much to say.
‘He was after Arko, at Delphi,’ said Halo.
More glances.
‘Tell us,’ said Arko. ‘You must tell us. We need to know what we’re dealing with.’
Chiron told the story. ‘He appeared in the woods a few weeks ago. He tried to shoot at a hunting party of ours. We concealed ourselves, and he wandered on into the Ixion lands. We had sent them a message, of course, to warn them, so they were aware, and concealed themselves too. He must have waited there, hiding, for days – but he found their graveyard. The Ixions’ gravedigger was there, and this human –’ Chiron’s face twisted with disgust – ‘this person tried to buy a dead Centaur from him. Offered him money. He said he’d rather have a recent one, but an old one would do, if it could be dug up for him, or a living one, if the gravedigger could hand one over. Any age, he said…’
Halo and Arko could hardly believe what they were hearing.
‘What did the gravedigger say?’
‘He told the human he’d think about it, and he reported it to their chief, Ixionas. So both tribes put guards on our graveyards, and we held a council, of the Sons of Cronus and the Sons of Ixion. We decided that he was a mortal threat. We voted to run him off the land; the Ixions voted to kill him. In the end we were too late to do either. He must have realized that the gravedigger was not playing his game, and we haven’t seen him since. It appears he has left the woods.’
They pondered this for a moment.
‘But what does he want?’ asked Halo after a while.
‘There is an old story,’ said Kyllarus. ‘A stupid legend based on nothing. It says… it says that a Centaur’s heart can win any battle.’
For a moment, she was silent, as she thought this through. Some of the Centaurs stamped their hooves, others pursed their lips.
That’s disgusting, thought Halo. That is disgusting. ‘So no Centaur is safe,’ she said, ‘when he is around. Arko – you should stay here. It would be safer for you to be with the others. I can go back to Athens alone –’
‘If you go back alone, he could capture you, and hold you hostage knowing we must rescue you,’Arko replied thoughtfully. ‘Plus, I really am not going to live my life in fear. If he wants a Centaur, he’ll have to fight for it.’
‘He’s not a fighter. He’s a trickster,’ she said.
‘Then he’ll have to trick a Centaur, and that’s not easy either,’Arko said. ‘We know who he is, we know what he is and what he wants. We’re prepared.’
Halo and Arko kept that thought in their mind the next day, on their journey back to Athens. They took the main road, travelled swiftly, and stayed at inns, not in the dark of the countryside. She had her bow at the ready, and they kept their eyes open, and their senses alert. They were not going to be tricked again.
It was a relief to get back inside the city walls. Halo was happy to see Aspasia, and to get back to school. It felt nice to know that both her families knew where she was. Even when one was threatened by a mad seer who wanted to kill someone and take out their heart, and the other was at war with Sparta… Still, everyone knew what they were up against, and that helped.
While they were away Pericles had led the entire Athenian army into Megara, the city on the Isthmus that had allowed the Spartan army through, giving them access to Attica. With every axe-blow into the trunk of a Megaran olive tree, the young men found it easier to forgive Pericles for keeping them inside the walls during the spring and summer. Halo heard that the Athenians did more damage in Megara than the Spartans had done during their invasion of Attica.
‘Is that it then?’ Halo asked Aspasia, as winter drew in and the sailors and soldiers of the fleet and the army returned – Pericles included.
Everyone was so glad to see him, so happy. I’ll tell him soon, Halo told herself. I don’t want to spoil this moment though.
‘No,’ Aspasia replied. ‘It’s over for the season, but it’ll start up again next spring.’
Halo had watched Pericles go to war. She had watched Aspasia sit and wait for him to come back. She didn’t want to be a man or a woman. She didn’t want to be a grown-up at all.
Not everyone came home. Even a strange, suspended war like this one killed men, and there were mothers and wives and children whose family tables had an empty seat. As the weather grew colder, the Athenians held their great public funeral for the war dead. Halo and Arko saw the huge tent going up, and couldn’t help staring sadly at the families bringing in the bones of the dead, and making their offerings. Then two days later came the funeral itself.
It looks almost like the pompe of the Dionysia, she thought as she stood by the road, watching the procession, but the other way round – instead of coming into town celebrating fertility, it’s heading out to Kerameikos and it’s all about death.
Wagon after wagon left the living city for the graveyard, bearing coffins of cypress wood filled with the bones of the men of each tribe, and followed by their relatives, mourning and lamenting. As the Skythians passed, she prayed for Lotess and Ando, the two who had been killed the day she helped Gyges. Then came an empty wagon: it was decorated as finely as the rest, and carried with as much honour. But there was no coffin, and no bones. This was for the men whose bodies had not been found. Later, when the coffins were laid in the tombs at the cemetery, she went and stood with those families, and listened as the women shrieked and wailed their formal and heartfelt laments. Part of her wanted to join in – but she was a boy, and boys did not shriek and wail at funerals.
Pericles had been chosen to make the oration to the dead. Halo watched him proudly as he came forward from the tomb and climbed up on to a high platform so that everybody could see and hear him. The sky was very blue behind his head, and though he had aged even in this past six months, to her he looked like a God would look, with his white beard and his wise eyes.
His voice was clear and true, and his words were too. She didn’t understand a lot of what he said, but it made her heart fill up over and over. When he spoke of the courage and virtue of their ancestors, who had handed over the land, a free country; and when he spoke of everyone being equal, and free and tolerant before the law, because the law commands respect, she felt proud. When he said, ‘Each of our citizens is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person,’ she thought, I am the lord and master of my own person – but then she realized that actually, no, she wasn’t, of course she wasn’t. She was a girl, and half foreign. Then he was saying, ‘Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous…’ Well, that’s true, she thought, and she laughed softly. For her, freedom depended on being a boy, and that took some courage – more and more every day.
I will have to stay
a boy forever then, she thought, if I want Pericles’s good opinion.
But she knew by now that Centaurs were pretty much the only creatures in the world who didn’t think that females were less important than males. And she knew why – she had worked it all out with Arko. It was because of War – men were physically stronger, and made better soldiers. And War was because of Fear – all the men were afraid of their land and their women being taken away from them, so they fought to protect them. And the women had to stay at home. She’d talked about it with Aspasia. Aspasia had laughed, and said, ‘I’d like to see a man strong enough to have a baby.’
Her head was reeling from all the ideas which Pericles’s speech brought up in her.
‘I wonder,’ she said quietly to Arko as they walked home afterwards, ‘if anyone will ever say to Pericles, and the Athenians, that all that fine talk is wonderful and inspiring, but it’s not really true…’
‘What, because of the slaves?’Arko replied.
‘Yes! And the women! All that he was saying about every Athenian being master of himself, and not being ruled by a minority is only true if you’re a grown-up, an Athenian citizen, a man, and free. Even if I was a boy, I’d never be master of my own self the way he means, because my mother was a foreigner.’
Arko paced on, slowly, his hooves clopping on the stone road.
‘They’re a lot freer here than anywhere else though,’ he said mildly.
‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘But a lot of that is because they’ve conquered everywhere else and get money off them. The people they’ve conquered aren’t exactly free, are they?’
Arko laughed. ‘Don’t say that too loud,’ he said. ‘People will think you’re a Spartan sympathizer.’
‘Well I’m not!’ she exclaimed, walloping his flank – one of the good things about Arko was you could hit him as hard as you liked and he hardly noticed. ‘I just wish they could be a bit freer with their freedom, that’s all.’
Still, she was reassured that the funeral without the body was all right for the lost soldiers. It comforted her to see how much care and attention was paid to the dead.
‘Halo,’Aspasia asked one wintry night, though she knew the answer. ‘Have you spoken to Pericles?’
‘No,’ Halo replied. She was ashamed. ‘You know I haven’t.’
‘Will you ever?’
‘I don’t know how I can now.’
Aspasia was quiet. ‘Circumstances have not helped you,’ she said. She looked at her fondly. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘are you sure you want to continue like this?’
Halo looked up. She knew what Aspasia was talking about.
‘Aspasia,’ she said, ‘I know of no women who heal the sick, who set bones and remove arrowheads. When a woman can be a doctor, then I will be a girl again.’
Aspasia made a little face, as if to say, Well, of course you have a point, then she sighed, and then she said, carefully, ‘When you came here, my dear, you wanted to know who you are. You are a girl, Halo, whatever you may think about it. Younger girls than you are married, are mothers… What of your future? I could find you a husband, you could grow your hair, change your name, nobody need know…’
I can’t think about that…
Aspasia kept watching her.
Finally she said, ‘In the meantime, you may want to bind your chest.’ She handed her a roll of bandage. ‘You’re growing.’
Xαπτερ 28
One morning in May, two days after Archidamus and the Spartans returned to ravage Attica again, Gyges the Skythian woke with a filthy headache. He rolled over on his straw pallet, got up anyway, poured a jar of cold water over his head and hoped the pain would go once he had eaten.
The country folk were already filing back into Athens. Halo stared at the clanking wagons and worried faces, at the distant columns of smoke rising against the clear blue sky. As she walked down to the Skythians’ compound, she saw how swiftly the city was filling up again. Already, shacks had been rebuilt along the walls, lean-tos and makeshift roofs had appeared almost overnight alongside the temples and shrines, tents and little piles of bedding were beginning to fill the arcades and the grounds and gardens. Again, the sections of land between the walls towards Piraeus, the Pelagian Quarter and the marketplaces had become camps for the refugees. She thought of the ravaged farms she had seen the previous summer, and she felt sorry for them. How lucky she was, having a home.
And strange, she thought, that a whole year had passed – more than a year. Here she was, a year older, a year wiser. A year taller. A year more Athenian, she thought, smiling, as she strode easily down streets that she now knew as well as she used to know the fig groves of northern Zakynthos. With a year’s more experience of doctoring. Yes, and a year more female… She might be fourteen by now, a tall girl, stronger through the good Athenian food, but still skinny and rangy. Her breasts were small, but even so she bound a cloth round her chest every day beneath her chiton. When her periods had started, Aspasia had helped her. Without Aspasia, she could not have kept the secret. Even the slaves in the house did not know. She no longer told herself she was a boy though. How could she be a boy now? Other people would see her as a boy, she would make sure of that. But inside, she told herself she was a warrior girl, an Amazon. A secret Amazon. It made her feel better about lying to everybody. One day she would be able to tell Pericles that she was a secret Amazon, and he would respect that. He would understand why she had to do it. Surely…
She felt almost cheerful. It wasn’t that she didn’t mind about the war. It was just – she felt at home now. She felt capable. If the war this year was the same as it had been last time, well, it would not be too bad. Well, of course it was bad. But you could live with it. Pericles would reassure the city. Everybody knew it couldn’t last too long. It had been all right last year. Again, the Athenians would grit their teeth and get on with it.
Arimaspou and Akinakes greeted her.
‘Any Spartans today?’ she said, with dark cheerfulness.
‘No,’ said Arimaspou. ‘We rode out at dawn, and patrolled all day, but there’s nothing going on within reach of Athens. It’s been quiet so far. But have a look at Gyges,’ he added. ‘He’s not well…’
Gyges was on his pallet inside. Dusk was drawing in, so Halo lit a lamp. Even before its flame steadied so Halo could see him properly, she could sense his illness. There was a sour smell in the room, and his eyes when she drew close to him were red and painful-looking. She was sorry to see it. Gyges was special to her – the Skythian who had brought them into Athens (there had been many jokes about that) and the first patient she had ever helped. She liked him to be well and healthy.
‘What are you feeling, friend?’ she said gently. She had learned a lot from Hippias over the past year. There were many things she could do to make a sick man comfortable while his humours realigned themselves, and nature ran her course.
‘That my head is on fire,’ said Gyges. His voice shocked her – it was gravelly and rasping.
‘Since when?’ she asked. ‘This morning,’ he said. ‘And my throat too.’
‘Open your mouth,’ she said. ‘Let me look…’
The youth let his jaw drop. Halo peered in – and had to hold herself very firm not to reel back in dismay.
His mouth in the dim lamplight was dark and red with blood.
‘Have you bitten your tongue?’ she asked, steadying her voice.
‘No,’ he said. He was blinking as if his eyes hurt. ‘But I know my throat is bleeding. I have been wiping blood from my mouth since noon…’
‘I have never seen or heard of anything like this,’ she said quietly. ‘I will go to Hippias and ask him. Rest, and remember to eat, even though it must be difficult. I’ll come back as soon as I have found out what to do.’
He smiled his thanks, and she went back outside.
‘Well?’ asked Arimaspou, who was sewing a tear in his arrow bag with a leather thong.
‘He is sick,’ said Halo. ‘I don’t k
now what it is. I’m going to ask Hippias about it.’
Arimaspou grunted. ‘Let’s hope it passes quickly,’ he said.
It did pass quickly. Within a week, Gyges was dead.
He had bled, and sneezed and coughed, he had vomited every kind of bile, his body had been racked by spasms and retching, his skin had turned red, and erupted in pustules and ulcers, he had been unable to bear even the lightest cloth to cover him. By the fifth day, he was unable to sleep, or even to lie still, and he had been consumed and burned up by a terrible terrible thirst, which all the water his brothers brought him could not quench. Finally, with a kind of mad strength, he had torn himself from his bed in the middle of the night, run into the street and down to the canal, where he had drowned himself in his desperate need for water.
But within that week, Athens had become a different city.
Halo had gone straight to Hippias’s house after seeing Gyges on his sickbed for the first time. The house was unusually crowded.
‘Halo!’ the doctor called. He looked pale and intent. ‘How useful you should turn up. Come, help me.’ He didn’t offer her cake.
‘I come only with a question,’ she said. ‘It’s late, and Aspasia will wonder where I am.’
‘Does your question concern a burning head and a bleeding throat?’ he asked.
‘It does,’ she said, surprised.
‘Tell me it is not your head and your throat,’ he said, turning to her, fear in his eyes.
‘It is not,’ she replied.
‘Thank the Gods,’ he said. ‘I’m glad of it. Though I think it’s the only thing I am glad of. Who is it?’
‘Gyges the Skythian,’ she said. She knew Hippias didn’t approve of her tending the Skythians – he thought she hadn’t enough experience and knowledge to take the responsibility – but he knew too that they wouldn’t see any other doctor.
‘The Skythians too,’ he murmured.
‘Only one of them,’ she said.
‘The day before yesterday, my child,’ Hippias said, turning his dark eyes on her, ‘only one person came to me, speaking of a relative very weak with a burning head and foul-smelling blood in his mouth. Yesterday, six. Today, twelve. How many tomorrow?’