For the Immortal

by Emily Hauser

  ‘She went there?’ Hermes asks, swivelling to look north and squinting over the peaks of the Rhipaean Mountains. ‘Why ever would she do that?’

  Zeus considers for a moment. ‘I suppose she heard that the daughter of Eurystheus has asked Hercules to seek the golden apples. It looks like …’ he leans forwards, narrowing his eyes ‘… it looks like she is checking the nymphs, the Hesperides, reassuring herself that her guards are safe.’

  Hermes grins. ‘Elementary mistake.’

  Zeus allows himself an indulgent smile. ‘Yes, I’d say so.’

  He turns to gaze east, towards the camp of the Amazons on the banks of the Tanais river, where smoke curls from the tents and mixes with the looming clouds. ‘Now that Hera is gone …’ His eyes meet Hermes’ ‘… what would you say to a little interference?’

  Hermes pretends to look shocked. ‘But you said neither you nor Hera were allowed to intervene …’

  ‘Well,’ Zeus says, with a grin, as if he knows that what Hermes is about to say is far beyond the fine line between truth and lies, ‘you’re not me, are you?’

  Hermes laughs aloud, throwing his head back. ‘That’s low, Zeus, even for you.’

  ‘Are you saying you won’t do it?’

  Hermes holds up his hands. ‘No! Of course I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good.’ Zeus claps and turns on his heel, pacing as he thinks. ‘Then what we need,’ he says, and as he speaks Hermes’ appearance begins to shift, transform, ‘is a Greek – someone Hercules will respect, perhaps the one they call Timiades.’

  At once it is no longer Hermes who stands before him but a man of the Greeks, thick-set, his hair gleaming with oil, a fine line of dark hair tracing his jawbone and a sword slung on a belt around his hips.

  ‘You will join my son’s tent,’ Zeus says, his speech quickening as the ideas come. ‘I will contrive to distract Timiades for a few days – I’ll have him chase a deer over the plains and lose his way. And you,’ he turns to Hermes, ‘will ensure that there is no more delay in the capture of the war-belt, so that Hercules may succeed in his labour and soon be on his way. Incite him to battle. Stir up his desire for glory. Tell him whatever you have to – tell him to think of his immortality. That should do it. They all want it.’ He pauses. ‘I believe Hera has a plan to foil Hercules in the Amazon camp. What it is,’ he says, in response to Hermes’ unspoken question, ‘I do not know. But it would be best if he were gone with the war-belt before she returns.’

  Hermes bows his head. ‘It will not be easy,’ he says. ‘The Amazons will not give up their queen’s prize without a fight. They are a people used to war, and hard to trick in battle.’

  ‘Ah, but,’ Zeus says, as Hermes prepares to leap into the air towards the darkening east, ‘they have not met the trickster-god yet, have they?’

  Antimache’s Tale

  Hippolyta

  Amazons, Land of the Saka

  The Forty-first Day after the Day of Earth in the Season of Apia, 1265 BC

  I paced up and down my tent, my thoughts whirling. I slammed my hand into the tent-post in fury and shame at the memory of his fingers on my skin, the insolence of his thinking he might touch me. It was the Greek – the words, the way he looked, so similar to my own.

  I dropped onto a stool by the fire, my head in my hands, listening to the rustling and spitting of the logs, my breathing coming short and fast. For a moment all was still, my vision dark where my palms covered my eyes.

  And then, inevitably, as the surge of anger rose to such a pitch that I could bear it no longer, there was the tug of the memories …

  I am younger. My mother Marpesia, queen of the Amazons, still lives. I am riding alone, chasing a white-spotted deer along the coast, delighting in my horse’s speed and the strength of my arms. Further and further from the camp I ride, my only thought to capture my prey, but she is fast and in the close-set woods my arrows go awry.

  After many hours the daylight begins to fade, and I realize I have lost my way.

  My palms fell from my face, my eyes slanted sideways to the fire, and the leaping bronze flames distracted me, lulled me, allowing the shadows from the past to lengthen around me, the tree-trunks slipping into darkness, and on every side the trackless wilderness, stretching as far as I could see.

  I turn back, guiding myself north against the light of the sinking sun, telling myself that I will rest the night here and journey to the Tanais tomorrow. And then a band of men closes round me, raiders who scavenge the coast for prisoners to sell as slaves. I draw my sword and battle-axe to fight them, but I am alone, and there are many of them and but one of me. And so they drag me from my horse and truss me, struggling and screaming, but there is no one to hear me.

  I gave a shuddering breath. So long – so long since I have allowed myself to remember.

  I swallowed and allowed myself to slip back into the limpid pools of memory.

  They load me onto their ship, and there they untie me and force me to row. It is aching work and my spirit almost breaks beneath the steersman’s whip. But then, one night, after weeks of imprisonment, when the guards have fallen asleep at their post, I leap overboard and swim away. The sea is cold as my body hits the water, but I am strong and used to hardship, so I swim for many hours, my skin chilled as winter ice, praying all the while to Tar the storm-god to deliver me.

  At last I come to an island – where, I hardly care. Coughing and choking I let the surf spew me onto the shore, and there I collapse from exhaustion.

  I do not know how long I lie there, asleep to the world.

  When I awake next I am in a bed, wearing a tunic and covered with blankets, my hair combed over a pillow. For days I sink into and out of a fever, and they care for me, wiping my sweating face with sodden cloths, forcing me to drink sips of honeyed wine.

  When I emerge from my feverish state, I learn that I am on the isle of Skyros, far from my Amazon home, in the land of the Greeks. I am set on leaving at once, of course, my duty to my mother and my people foremost in my mind. Day after day I tie the laces of my boots, and I tell myself that this will be the morning I will find a ship, set sail for the east; this will be the morning that I return home.

  Yet something keeps me there.

  The Greek is younger than I, barely a man yet, and hiding from the dangers of his warlike world. He comes upon me in the stables, bridling a horse to journey to the harbour, and he tells me of the twin horses his father has promised to give him when he comes to rule his kingdom. After that we spend almost all our days together. We leap from the cliffs to swim in the sea, and stand on each other’s shoulders to pick ripe figs from the trees. He teaches me to play the lyre, and I show him how to ride without stirrups or saddle. We kiss in the wild grass of the valleys, and lie in each other’s arms on the sandy shore. At length, one night, when the rest are celebrating a festival to the gods, he takes me apart from them, and there, simply, we lie together in love. Gradually, as the days pass and the months round the turning-post of the year, I learn his language and his ways. I change my boots for sandals, and wear my hair in loose curls as the Greeks do; I abandon the ways of war, and learn to love the sound of the wind blowing through the olive trees, the clanging of the goat bells, and the quiet rhythm of days spent weaving at the loom, waiting for him to call me out to ride. Slowly, the memory of the grass plains and the arching sky fades from my mind. I forget who I am.

  I think that nothing can take away my happiness.

  And then, one day, a ship sails into harbour, bearing Greeks – older than he, and equipped for war. They take him with them, telling us they need him, that he was born to fight, and that his hands are for holding the spear, not plucking the strings of the lyre. He is dazed by the glitter of the weapons and the stories they tell of immortal, never-dying glory; his mind is turned, and nothing I can say persuades him to stay. The worst of it is that I am a warrior too. I know he has to go. I know he has a duty. It is one that I have forsaken and forgotten, too long.

&n
bsp; I do not tell him that I am with child.

  And then it is too late, and he is gone.

  Tears welled in my eyes and spilt down my cheeks as I remembered the raw, consuming pain of that loss, mixed with the bittersweetness of what he had left behind. I closed my eyes and let the tears come.

  My courses stop; I watch my belly swell over many months; and then I bear his child alone on Skyros, knowing he will never see his son. I name the child Cayster, after a clear-flowing river that runs near the land of the Amazons.

  The pain of guilt at what I have done and the pricking awareness that I have failed in every way in my duty to my people drive me home at last – despair propelling me to the responsibilities of my birthright, which happiness has allowed me to forget. I contrive to board a trading ship bound for Troy. I travel back across the lands of the Hittites and the wilds of the Caucasus Mountains to my home, telling my people when I arrive that Cayster is a Saka foundling I came upon on my way by a nearby tribe. I give him to my sister Melanippe and her husband Teuspa to raise as their own. No one except Melanippe knows that Cayster is my own son. I will never be able to tell any other of my kin that he is mine – or where he comes from.

  Then they tell me that my mother’s spirit went to the gods while I was away.

  And so, though I am the consort of a foreigner, the mother of a bastard child, and a liar to the people I am meant to rule with fairness and honesty, I am heralded queen; and for five years I reign, without once revealing my secret.

  At once my mother’s image swam before me, leading me out as a girl over the frost-tipped grass to ride, though I strained to return to the fireside in our tent. ‘To be an Amazon,’ she had said, striding ahead, her boots crunching a path for me, ‘is to fight, whether man or woman, virgin or mother. You are destined to become a queen, so the fight to protect your people will be both your calling and your duty, and nothing, no man, no marriage, no child, shall come before it.’

  I swallowed, my belly twisting with discomfort and bitter castigation, thinking of the flaxen-haired, dark-eyed child who played with the other children in the camp, and all the Amazons who watched him, thinking he was a foundling, knowing only that he was born to ride the plains of the Saka, like all the rest. I had given up my son, never allowed myself to breathe in the scent of him, to wrap him in my arms. I had been abandoned by his father, left like driftwood cast up on the shore, yet I had not allowed myself to give in to despair. I had tried, through it all, through all my errors and failings, to be the queen I knew I could be. Had I not done as my mother had told me? Had I not learnt?

  I stared into the flames. Tears rimmed my eyes, and I blinked to free them.

  To fight to protect my people.

  I understood that now, as I had not when I first met the Greek.

  I felt warmth in my belly, like the glow of the embers. I know that I have to protect my people.

  And repeating those words in my thoughts, like a talisman, I sat watching the flames at the hearth flicker into nothingness, vowing to myself as the heat of certainty grew within me: I will be – I am – the queen my people deserve.

  I have to be.

  Ἀδμήτη

  Admete

  Amazons, Scythia

  The Thirteenth Day of the Month of the Harvest, 1265 BC

  I requested an audience at once with Queen Hippolyta, determined to take Alcides at his word, however reluctantly given. The next morning, as the sun broke through patches of cloud to dapple the Amazon camp in light and reflect from the pools of water on the grass, she agreed to speak with me.

  Another of the Amazons – her sister, Melanippe, a quiet girl with dark eyes – led me to her tent. I could barely say my thanks, my throat was so constricted, but I bowed my head and hoped she understood. It was not simply anticipation at what Hippolyta might tell me, though that was occupying my mind: Alcides’ words – We take the war-belt, by force if need be – were ringing in my head and I could not rid myself of them. How could I approach her when I knew the theft Alcides was planning? How could I keep from her what he intended? Guilt twisted in my stomach as Melanippe gestured me into the tent. I took a breath, then ducked beneath the folded hide and into the tent of the Amazon queen.

  It was modestly decorated, not unlike the others I had seen. A blazing fire at the centre sent up smoke to a hole in the tent’s canopy, the floor was covered with hides and rugs, scattered with low stools and cushions, and a fur-and-pelt bed was spread on its other side. Lamps were set on small tables, glowing dimly against the daylight pouring in behind me, and a ewer of water stood by the hearth. Her war-belt, I noticed, with a wrench, a strip of shining gold and leather straps from which hung all manner of weapons, axe and sword, lay slung over a table nearby, gleaming and reflecting the light of the flames.

  The queen was seated cross-legged on the floor. Close to, she looked different from when I had first seen her on the river’s shore. Her eyes were fiercer, brighter, and her mouth, which had been grave, now seemed set at the corners. She had drawn up the sleeves of her tunic in the heat of the fire, so that the black outline of the eagle pricked into her skin seemed to flit over her arm every time she moved. She beckoned to me, and I made my way towards her and onto a cushion when she gestured to one before her. Her eyes swept my face.

  ‘What is it they call you?’ she said in Greek, and at her accent – Greek mixed with Scythian, so like my mother’s – I almost started.

  ‘Admete,’ I said, glancing down. ‘I am the daughter of Eurystheus, king of Tiryns.’

  ‘And yet,’ she leant forwards, ‘you have the look of an Amazon about you.’

  I bit my lip, hesitating.

  ‘It is that,’ I said at last, in the Scythian tongue, and I saw her eyes widen, ‘among other things, which I have come to ask of you.’

  She arched her brows. ‘Indeed. I hardly imagined you wished merely to make my acquaintance. But perhaps you should tell me more of yourself before you ask your question.’

  ‘There is not much to tell, my queen.’

  ‘A woman who has the look of an Amazon, travelling alone with a band of men to the ends of the world? I am sure there is a tale in there somewhere.’

  ‘No tale,’ I said, ‘only a woman’s search for a cure for her brother who suffers from a fever that will not abate. The legend that covers it is far greater. Alcides’ quest to the Amazons will be remembered for ever, if he has any say in it.’ I did not quite know why I was talking to her so freely, the words coming easily, except that she seemed familiar, and her gaze – sure and steady – seemed to invite confidence. ‘I have been searching for cures, the herbs and healing of the Amazons, writing it all on my tablets, so that it may aid me in curing my brother when we return.’

  ‘Then that explains why you have been occupying our healer Ioxeia.’

  I could not tell if she was reprimanding me. ‘I – I did not—’

  ‘You are curious and quick-minded,’ she said, and I was relieved to see she was smiling, ‘and the gods do not punish curiosity.’

  ‘I did not wish to do anything you would not like,’ I said, eager to have her know that I, at least, meant the Amazons no harm. ‘But I have longed for so many years to learn of your customs. The stories that are told in Greece! They say that you are all women, that you despise men and leave your sons to die. They say you slice off one of your breasts, so you can place an arrow to the bow while you ride.’

  She snorted with laughter. ‘How typical of the Greeks, who do not know the first thing about riding a horse or the proper handling of a bow, to imagine such a thing! And how would that aid us, pray?’

  I shook my head. ‘I have never used a bow.’

  ‘So,’ she said, after a while, her gaze thoughtful, ‘you are searching for something.’

  ‘And you?’ I asked, unsure if I was overreaching myself, yet so at ease with this Greek-speaking Amazon that I felt I could not keep to the formalities. ‘You are searching for something too?’

 
; She considered me for a moment, and the dancing light in her eyes dimmed, as when wind flickers through a flame. ‘Someone I lost,’ she said.

  I felt my heart leap at the words, so close to my own desire, and felt a bond of friendship, invisible as the thread of the Fates, twine itself between us at the longing and loss we had unknowingly shared. I leant forwards and took her hand in mine. ‘I, too, am looking for someone I lost.’

  Her eyes met mine, vulnerable, much younger, and I felt the question burst from me.

  ‘My queen, I must ask. I have searched and found nothing. I have asked, but no one will tell me.’ I took a breath. ‘What do you know of Antimache, the Amazon?’

  Hippolyta

  Amazons, Land of the Saka

  The Forty-second Day after the Day of Earth in the Season of Apia, 1265 BC

  ‘You ask of Antimache?’ I leant back, surveying the girl. There was determination in the way she set her mouth and lifted her chin, yet also, I thought, something fragile in her eyes, the slight protective rounding of her shoulders. And the mark of our tamga was just visible on her forearm, branded into her skin. I could not deny that she intrigued me – not least because Antimache had been close to my own thoughts, for my own reasons, these past days. For a moment I gazed at her, gathering myself. ‘Why would you know?’ I asked at last.

  She drew a breath, and her lip trembled. ‘She was my mother.’

  Her mother …

  I let the words wash over me.

  But it makes sense, I thought. Her Amazon looks. Her Greek father.

  We had all considered Antimache lost, and when anyone had spoken of her it had been as a warning against breaking the customs of our tribe. She had become a myth, a byword for betrayal, and the figure of Antimache had girded my thoughts as I had left Skyros to return to my people; as only a few nights before I had vowed to myself again to protect them.