by Emily Hauser
He raised his head at once. ‘I should not have mentioned it – your mother – I did not wish to pain you, Admete.’ He was talking quickly, and it was he, now, who took my hand. ‘I am sorry for it.’
‘For what?’ I tried to keep my voice carefree, pulling myself from his grip and walking over to the jar of thyme on the trestle table, as if I had just recalled it. ‘It was many years ago, and a wound that is long healed.’
He had opened his mouth to respond when the door from the court slammed against the wall, bringing with it a sharp blast of winter wind. I looked up, startled.
‘My lady Admete.’ A figure tumbled into the room, a torch in her hand and her breath coming short and fast.
‘Elais – what is it?’
She tried to catch her breath, her cheeks bright with cold. ‘It is your brother, my lady, the eldest and heir to the throne of Tiryns.’
‘Alexander?’ I asked, feeling the blood drain from my face. ‘Oh, gods, what of him?’
‘He is returned – from Egypt,’ she said.
‘What?’ I turned to Alcides, frowning, still taking in her words, as if asking him to correct her. ‘Can this be true? In the midst of these tempests, this season of winter sea-storms?’
‘I know as little of this as you,’ he said, spreading his hands, but Elais interrupted him.
‘It is even so, my lady,’ she said. Her eyes were wide with fright and red-rimmed as I turned to her. ‘He is sweating with a fever the like of which neither I nor any other of the priests has ever seen. None of the healers in Egypt could cure him. His men tell me they determined at last to bring him back to Tiryns, despite it not being the season for sailing, to see if you might aid him. Oh, I beg you, my lady, come quick, for he is near to fainting after the voyage, and raves all kinds of madness.’
My skin prickled with fear, but I felt my training as a healer overtake it as I had taught myself. With all the death and pain I had seen over many years of tending spotted plagues and infections, breech births and suppurating wounds, my spirit would have broken if I could not trust in my skill to the very last. ‘Very well,’ I said, running to the store-room and grasping a handful of feverfew from its jar. ‘This will do until I can bring him here and prepare more. Alcides,’ I strode back into the room, and he was at my side in a moment, ‘will you carry a jar of water for me?’ I pointed to them. ‘Elais, take these linens.’
I snatched up the lamp from the table, glowing dimly now but enough to see us to the harbour, and faced the door, bare-armed against the biting wind, my heart blazing like the hearth behind me. ‘Take me to him.’
Hippolyta
Amazons, Land of the Saka
The Thirty-ninth Day after the Day of Storms in the Season of Tar, 1265 BC
I pushed past Teuspa into the tent, a veil of darkness overtaking my vision. Through the dim light I saw Cayster lying inside on a bed of pelts, Melanippe stroking his hair and murmuring to him, pale-faced, as she held up a lamp, illuminating a gash running the length of his thigh that was oozing blood. He was whimpering, tears streaming down his cheeks, his dark eyes wide and frightened. I put a hand upon the tent-post.
‘Melanippe,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking, ‘fetch Ioxeia.’
She bent to kiss the boy, lingering over him and pressing his hand in hers, then handed me the lamp, her fingers trembling, and swept from the tent.
I moved around the hearth and laid the back of my hand against his forehead. His skin was warmed by the fire but not flaming with fever. Thank the gods for that. I took his hand in mine and held it tight, feeling the fingers enclosed within my own and a burning pain within my chest.
‘It is natural for you to feel concern for him, my queen,’ a voice said. My hand slipped – I had thought I was alone. ‘But he will be well.’
I looked around. Teuspa had entered and was squatting by the fire, stoking it and sending sparks shooting up into the air. I dropped Cayster’s hand.
‘You were unharmed?’
‘Nothing of consequence. And I took one of the Budini for it. But there were too many for me to protect Cayster, and by then they were hot with blood-lust as well as looting.’
He lapsed into silence. I sat on Cayster’s bed and twisted my fingers in my lap, trying to trust that all would be well, to act as if the howling of the wind outside and the sound of the snow blowing in against the animal hides of the tent distracted me from his whimpers of pain.
At last the opening to the tent parted, with a freezing blast and a swirl of snow, and I leapt to my feet, heart hammering at my throat. ‘Ioxeia? Are you there?’
Melanippe entered, and after her the priest and healer of the Amazons, an elderly woman of more than sixty years, one eye blinded in battle, her wolf’s-pelt cloak glittering with snow and her white hair frosted. She was carrying a pitcher, several cloths, and pouches of herbs thrown over her arm. She poured a little water from the pitcher into the cauldron set over the fire before kneeling down by Cayster. Melanippe glanced at me, her face drawn, and I nodded my thanks, tight-lipped.
Ioxeia was now pressing Cayster’s wound gently with her fingers. I felt the gall rise in my belly, and longed to command her to cease, but she was inspecting the rest of his leg now, checking for other wounds, then feeling with her fingers along the bones.
‘It is but a surface wound,’ she said finally, turning to Melanippe and Teuspa. Melanippe let out a half-sob and closed her eyes, and Teuspa drew her to him, taking deep, steadying breaths, his gaze over-bright. The gods be thanked, I thought, bringing a hand to my forehead and turning away. ‘I have drawn as much of the illness from him as I can. Rest, plenty of koumiss, and the mercy of Tar the storm-god should heal him in time. For now,’ I heard the sound of a cloth being dipped into water and wrung out again, ‘keep this soaked with water and press it to the wound until the stars appear in the sky. I shall return then and bind his leg myself.’
I turned to Melanippe as Ioxeia left the tent. ‘I am so relieved for you, sister,’ I said, my hands on her forearms, gripping into the skin. ‘But I must see to the others of our tribe.’ She nodded, biting her lip to stop it trembling. ‘Will you and Teuspa manage alone?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then – I will leave you.’
As I pushed open the tent-flap I glanced back at Cayster, his eyes closed now, tears gathered on the lashes, as the warmed cloth soothed him. His father was singing to him, and I saw Cayster’s eyelids flutter; and I felt a hollow tug of sadness at their closeness. I bent my head and left, stepping out into the snow.
The sun was but a thin orange line upon the horizon. I started to unbuckle my war-belt, the symbol of the ruler of the tribe, given to us by the storm-god Tar and handed down from my mother, the queen before me. It was wide enough to cover me from hips to navel, leather plated with gold plaques and equipped with straps from which my battle-axe, bow-case and sword hung. My fingers brushed the eagle pendant on its thong by my quiver, the amulet and tamga of our clan. It was the most sacred and precious sign to the Amazons, and as I touched it, I thought of all the queens who had gone before me, whose thumbs had rubbed the eagle after victory: some small comfort in the aftermath of the battle, surrounded by the warriors I had led to risk their lives. Men and women busied around me, dragging the bodies of the dead Budini beyond the camp to bury in the snowdrifts, throwing blankets of felt over their horses’ backs to keep them warm. I stopped to let a pair of men pass me, their swords still gore-crusted from the battle. As I turned aside, for a moment, just a moment, it was as if a warm breeze blew over my face – a breeze scented with rosemary and thyme and bay leaves.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Wind whips over the water, turning it white. The sea laps against the shore, and foam swirls over the pebbles, splashing around my ankles as I hold up my robes, trying not to wet them. He laughs at me, pulls me down, and I fall into the water, laughing too, my hair streaming down my back …
There was a cla
ng of metal, and I opened my eyes. A group of Amazons were stripping one of the Budini of his armour and tossing it in a pile onto the blood-soaked snow, the shield clattering against the breastplate, the sword thrown on top, the broken spear shaft set aside for firewood. I looked back to Melanippe’s tent. She was standing before it, watching me, her arms crossed and her face creased in a frown.
She knows what I am thinking. I felt a flicker of shame creep up my neck and blaze upon my cheeks.
I turned, bowed my head against the freezing wind, and made my way through the snow across the Amazon camp.
Ἀδμήτη
Admete
Tiryns, Greece
The Eighth Day of the Month of Zeus, 1265 BC
We ran through the corridors that adjoined the inner court, down the steps and across the yard. Rain was slanting through the black air upon the paving slabs, and I had to hold a hand over my oil-lamp to prevent it going out. The guards at the tower nodded to me as I passed and swung the gates forwards so that we could clatter, slipping in our sandals, down the stone steps towards the postern gate. Elais’ torch sputtered ahead of me as I slid past her through the door and beyond the outer walls, my heart rattling in my chest, my eyes squinting against the rain, to the harbour where a cluster of torches bloomed in the darkness.
And then a light bobbed towards us: a slave, laden with clothes tied into bundles with twine, his face gleaming with rain. ‘My lady Admete!’
‘Rhoecus!’ I lost my footing as I tried to stop, and flung a hand to the wall to steady myself, scraping my skin on the stone. ‘Alexander – where is he?’
‘Taken to his chambers already, my lady,’ he said. ‘They wanted to lay him down. He’s in a bad way.’
Without hesitation I turned back, colliding with Alcides and almost causing Elais to drop her torch.
‘He’s in his chambers,’ I called, as I gathered my skirts in one hand and ran up the steps.
Back across the yard, up the staircase and into the lowering darkness of the palace, along the corridor that skirted the Great Hall, past the empty queen’s rooms and to the double doors that led to Alexander’s chambers. As they swung back, pushed open by the guards, I felt the heat of the room assail me, the air stifling – they had lit a fire, at least. A crowd of men and slaves thronged around Alexander’s bed: I saw at once my father, my brothers Iphimedon and Eurybius, and the twins Mentor and Perimedes, all of them fair as my father had been, though the king’s hair was streaked now with grey and coarse with age. They would have to go, of course. At once I set down my oil-lamp on a side-table and turned to Alcides, all activity and business.
‘Set a cauldron to boil on the fire,’ I threw at him. ‘Elais, the linens – over by the bed.’
My father heard my voice and turned. In two breaths he was across the room and by my side, his hand gripping my shoulder, his brow creased. ‘Can you heal him?’ He rubbed his forehead with his fingers as he spoke, chafing the skin, as if by doing so he could somehow avert the danger that threatened his eldest son.
‘I will have to see him before I can tell. But I will do all I can – I swear it.’
He stooped and pressed a swift kiss to my head. ‘Go, then.’
I pushed past Mentor and waved away the slave who was bent over Alexander, fussing at him with a cloth. At last I saw him. I recoiled, horrified to see how far the fever had gone. He lay twitching and convulsing on the sheets, the blankets tossed back and his under-tunic stained dark with sweat. There was a sickly pallor to his skin where the firelight gleamed over it, and his hair was slicked to his head; his eyes were closed, the whites just showing, rolling back and forth. I pressed my hand to his forehead. Oh, gods. Hot as a stone in the sun at the height of summer. I felt the first tremor of fear. Yet there were no blisters, no pockmarks on his skin, as far as I could see. No plague, then.
‘He needs rest,’ I said to the gathered crowd. ‘You have served him well,’ I told his slaves. ‘You too, father, brothers. You did well to bring him here.’ I bowed to them. ‘But now he needs my care. The ministration of herbs and the peace of sleep will be the best cure.’
The guards swung open the doors, and first the slaves, then Alcides and Elais left the chamber, treading over the tiles like shadows.
Eurybius reached out for my hand as he passed. ‘You – you will be able to cure him, sister, will you not?’
I pressed his fingers to my lips, then to my forehead, summoning my strength for the long night at Alexander’s bedside. ‘I will do my best, Eurybius.’
His gaze wavered. ‘Our mother would have—’
‘We have managed long enough without her.’ My father had approached, and waved Eurybius away; he melted into the darkness with my younger brothers and Iphimedon.
There was a moment’s silence in which the fire in the hearth spat and sparked, and Alexander moaned, muttering beneath his breath.
‘Work hard for him, Admete.’ My father’s voice was strained. Our eyes met, speaking words we need not utter: the years he had spent on Alexander, grooming him to be king; the mastery of Egyptian and Hittite; the training in diplomacy; the knowledge of trade, palace accounts, the methods of dealing justice – all the heir of Tiryns would need. All that Iphimedon, boisterous, carefree, selfish, did not know. ‘It is more important,’ my father swallowed, ‘more important than anything else that he is cured.’
A last grip of my shoulder, painfully tight, and then he, too, was gone.
I turned back to the bed as the door clicked shut, with nothing but the harsh rattle of Alexander’s feverish whispers to accompany me. With a deep breath, I moved towards the cauldron Alcides had set over the fire and ladled the bubbling water into Alexander’s goblet, my hands shaking as I dropped in the feverfew. I gripped the cup, readying myself for the long, hard battle ahead.
For, though I would not admit it to anyone, I had known the first instant I saw him that Alexander was closer to Charon’s boat and a passage to the Underworld than he had ever been.
The Last Labours
Hippolyta
Amazons, Land of the Saka
The Fortieth Day after the Day of Storms in the Season of Tar, 1265 BC
The sound of hoofbeats echoed across the camp. I dropped the sword I had been sharpening to the ground and it clattered upon the whetstone as I left my tent. Brilliant sunlight and an expanse of blue sky forced their way upon my senses, and at the edge of the camp a stampede of high-necked horses …
‘Orithyia!’ I ran towards her, boots crunching on the ice.
She leapt from her mount and embraced me briefly. ‘Sister.’
‘You look tired,’ I said, drawing back and examining her. Her eyes were creased and her cheeks whipped by the wind, the hilt of the sword at her waist crusted with old blood and the shoulder of her tunic ripped, showing a slowly healing gash slashed through the inked image of a soaring eagle on her skin.
‘The work of a Hialean?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘But I sent him to the gods for it,’ she said, and grinned at me, revealing white teeth.
I gave a half-smile. Orithyia’s blood-lust was famed even among the Amazons. ‘It is good to have you back, sister. We have missed you.’
She bent to pick up the reins of her horse and we walked towards the camp, feet sinking into the snow.
‘And the raid on Hialea?’ I asked, glancing back towards the crowd of warriors behind us, now dismounting with a clatter of swords, patting their horses, reuniting with husbands and wives who ran from the camp carrying woven rugs and pouches of warmed koumiss. I felt my voice tighten as I asked, ‘Did we lose any?’
‘Not as many as the Hialeans,’ she said. ‘And we took twenty steeds before we left. But yes, we lost Toxaris and Artimpata. And I had to leave Areto. She would not have survived the journey back across the Silis river in any case.’
I nodded, my fists clenched tight so that the knuckles whitened, and my thumb went again to the eagle on my belt. You are the queen, I thought. You cann
ot mourn every loss. And without those horses your people would not survive the winter.
‘And you?’ Orithyia asked, cutting across my thoughts as we turned into the clearing at the camp’s centre. Her horse whinnied, knowing his home, and she patted his rump where the tamga had been branded and let go of the reins. I watched him canter to a group of horses feeding from a trough filled with dried grass from the summer plains. A couple of children laughed as he tossed his head with joy to feed again.
‘A raid from the Budini,’ I said. ‘We expect another, for they did not capture many horses. Melanippe and I have been in need of your counsel.’
‘You? The queen of the Amazons, who excels above us all in battle? Requiring counsel from me?’
I bowed my head. ‘I am queen as the eldest of the daughters of Marpesia – you know that, sister.’
She clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You are queen because you are the wisest and strongest of us all,’ she said. ‘The gods would not have made it otherwise. But before I give you war-counsel, I must change my clothes. I have not been fully dry for several days, and my feet are cold as ice from the ride.’
The council took place in my tent, crowded, as it always was, the heat from the fire mixing with that of the bodies pressed against each other on stools. These were my advisers and guides, who gave counsel to the queen and upheld her decisions among the people. Six were warriors, advanced in years, who had excelled in battle and preserved their lives longest on the plain; the other six were members of my guard, fleet of foot and swift horse-riders, chosen for their skill with the sagaris and the spear. Tent-holders like Teuspa, who raised the Amazons’ children, were not admitted – yet the council was not devoid of men, just as not all women rode to war. All among our people trained to fight from the first, all growing up side by side, young men and women alike. The first time they fought in war they rode to battle together, killed an enemy side by side, tasted the slice of the iron in the air and felt the sting of blood upon the sword; and that night, when they returned, sacrificed to the gods and, while the stars swam in the sky, selected a partner to mate. The next dawn, as the sun rose over the plain and the priests blessed them as Amazons, the men and the women declared their choice – to be a tent-holder and care for Amazons to come, or ride out again as a warrior to protect our tribe. Only one had no choice. Only one had the task of her life’s work allotted to her by birth, not by preference. For me, daughter of the queen in a line of women stretching back to the first founders, there was – there had always been – no other way. And, I thought with warmth, as I gazed around the faces of my council in the flickering half-light, I lay my life at my people’s feet with pride.