by Emily Hauser
I stood by his side, wearing only my tunic, my hair loose over my shoulders as Theseus had ordered. No Amazons attended me. There was none of the singing to Tabiti, the scattering of rose petals, the horse-sacrifice by the priest and the incense poured over the sacred fire. And yet I said nothing: for what small price was this to pay for Melanippe’s life? For the lives of my people?
Theseus beside me had his hands raised in prayer before the burning fire. The eldest of the Greeks, Thoas, performed the ceremony, while his brother stood to one side, his mouth twitching at the farce of the marriage. I bore it with all the dignity I could, my lips drawn together in determination.
Before us, Thoas raised his dagger and slit the throat of the young deer they had caught for the sacrifice. The blood spurted from the victim’s throat and spattered my flaxen tunic with bright scarlet drops.
‘A good sign,’ Thoas said. ‘The goddess Hera has blessed the marriage.’
I composed my face, and tried not to wonder which gods delighted in a blood-covered bride. But these are not the gods of the plains of the Saka.
The fire spat and hissed as the ritual continued, preparing the meat for the spit. Theseus’ hand in mine was slipping with sweat, the air around me becoming stiflingly warm, and I felt the orange of the flames, the scarlet dripping meat, the earth-red blood melt into one mirage of colour, the scene whirling before me, like a dream. Was I in Greece or the land of the Saka? Was I a queen or a slave? The ground beneath me seemed to tilt and darkness began to swallow my vision.
And then I felt a hand behind me, propping me. I blinked, the swirling figure of Thoas before me and the leaping flames coming back into focus. Thoas’ brother was holding me upright, the palm of his hand steady on my shoulder, and I nodded to him – ‘My thanks to you; I am well’ – and he stepped back, his face grim, all trace of a smile gone now. Thoas had not ceased his chanting. Theseus had hardly glanced my way. I felt a sudden wave of sickness overtake me – The heat and the stench of the roasting meat, probably, I thought, trying to calm myself. But I could not quench the flutter of panic, which was making beads of sweat stream down my forehead and setting my hands shaking at my sides. The Greek words, smooth as oil, bore down on my ears. The girdle at my waist was unbearably light without my war-belt to cover it. My legs felt naked with no trousers to cover them, my hair unbound.
I will never again ride as an Amazon. This was the sign and seal of my fate, from now on: to be a Greek woman, a Greek wife. Yet I have to do it. I have to.
There was no other way.
I had sworn to be a good queen to my people, to protect them above all others. I had already seen how far the mercy of the Greeks extended. If I went back on my word, the exchange of my freedom for theirs – if I attempted to escape, or fought my way from Theseus – then, I would have laid my mother’s honour on it, Theseus would not cease until he had unleashed bitter strife on all my people. No, it was unthinkable.
I shuddered and bit my lip, steeling myself against the flickering of the fire and the Greek incantations. There is no other way.
The words droned on, washing over me, like the waves on the shore.
And perhaps, another voice whispered, quiet as the beat of a bird’s wings on the air, perhaps – if I go to Greece – I may see him again.
I may see the Greek once more.
And so it was that, holding this thought to me, I was married to Theseus, prince of Athens.
I sat alone on the shore, apart from the Greeks, knees tucked into my chest, feet bare on the sand. The sun was setting in a blaze of gold, lining the clouds with purple and blue and streaking the sky with a veil of light. As the stars began to shine overhead and the circle of Tabiti’s moon rose into the sky, I heard footsteps. Then a hand rested on my arm.
I did not turn.
‘You sleep with me tonight,’ Theseus said. ‘Remember, we are man and wife now.’
Heat bloomed in my cheeks as he walked around and crouched before me, taking me in as if I were a deer caught in the hunt and spread before him for spearing on the spit, not a living, feeling queen. I felt his gaze rest on me, taking in my lips, my throat, my breasts, barely visible beneath my tunic. I nodded stiffly, feeling my throat constrict at his insolence. ‘As you wish.’
His fingers closed around my wrist, as if he would draw me to him. ‘I have captured you,’ he said. ‘A wild Amazon, tamed like a falconer’s bird to fly to me at my call. You were meant to belong to a Greek, I think. You need a man to guide you.’
He drew me to stand and led me along the shore, not talking, the only sound the lapping of the waves and the sand crunching beneath our feet. At last he turned to me.
‘My Amazon,’ he said, running his fingers through my loose hair, his expression shadowed against the bright moon behind him. I turned my face up to him, jaw clenched, shuddering at the touch of his hands. ‘My captive eagle.’
He bent to me and kissed me full on the mouth, his tongue rude, exploring. As he pressed himself into me and I felt the tautness of his body, a sudden thrill of desperate fear shot through me.
I broke apart from him, panting, a sob caught in my throat. ‘Theseus – please—’
But he pushed me down onto the sand and, with a single thrust, drove himself into me so that I almost cried out with the pain. I bit my lip to stop myself shouting at the soreness in my hips, the ache in my belly, and lay on my back staring up at the stars as he thrust himself into my body again and again, invasive as the blow of a battle-axe. As he pushed harder and the pain mounted I felt my eyes fill, then tears rolling down my cheeks. And then, feeling more alone than I had ever done, I was crying in the darkness, as Theseus made one final thrust, and all was done.
GREEK
Hippolyta broke the laws of the Amazons, lying with Theseus and following him from her home to Athens, living with him there as his wife …
Isocrates, Speeches 12.193
To the Ends of the Earth
Ἀδμήτη
Admete
Royal Scythians, Scythia
The Eighteenth Day of the Month of the Harvest, 1265 BC
We rode north-west for two days with the god-wind Eurus at our backs, guiding our path by the sun. All I knew of the Hyperboreans was what the queen had told me – that they lay north of the Tanais, beyond the Scythian lands – for after the battle the Amazons had refused to help us. We passed bands of nomads, living much as the Amazons had in tents and spending most of their day on horseback, and as we did not attempt to attack they let us be. On the second day we passed into the territory of a settled people, who farmed the dark soil for cabbage, vetch, flax and a type of thick-stemmed wheat. The plain stretched on endlessly around the neat plots and timber-framed huts, and, as I rode at the back of our pack, relishing the solitude and the wind blowing on my cheeks, I thought it strange now to find the horses stabled, instead of roaming through the grassland.
That night we were forced to stop and ask for the hospitality of the Skoloti – for that was the name these people gave themselves. Alcides had suffered a wound to his thigh at the hand of an Amazon, and the cut was deep, the flesh now swollen, filled with pus. He was sweating and his skin was pale. I had a few of the Greeks support him into one of the huts and lay him, muttering my thanks to the inhabitants, on their cot. Quick as I could to prevent the spread of the contamination, I cleansed the wound with yarrow, applied an ointment of comfrey I had brought and some arnica to stop the swelling, then gave him an infusion of yarrow and elderberry to drink – there was a river nearby where I could fetch fresh water – to reduce his fever. Soon he had fallen into a doze, his eyes rolling beneath the lids. I left him to sleep off the illness. The Skoloti had prepared some food for us in another hut, and I sat in silence beside the other Greeks as we partook of a boiled stew of vetch and edible roots, a fish they called pelamys, and buttered bread.
I returned to Alcides before retiring to the bed the Skoloti had provided for me. He was awake and sitting up, eating a bowl of s
tew, his face still pale in the lamplight but with a tinge of colour to the cheeks, his eyes not as over-bright as they had been. He had tossed away the blankets and his leg was stretched over the straw pallet, the bandage still neat and unstained. My jaw clenched as I saw that he had laid the war-belt of Hippolyta over the stool beside him, so that the gold plates glowed in the low light.
‘Admete.’ He swallowed the spoonful of stew and spread his hands wide. ‘You are a miracle-worker. I am quite restored.’
I said nothing, but walked over to him and placed my hand to his forehead and bent to look in his eyes.
‘You are not speaking to me now?’ He caught my gaze, then my wrist, as I straightened and turned away to fetch more water. ‘You are still angry with me?’
The family of the hut – grandmother, two sons and their wives – were sharing koumiss by the fire, now that the children had been put to sleep in their cots, and were talking in low voices. The light of the flames glimmered over the coloured tapestries that hung on the walls and cast leaping shadows.
I shook him off. ‘No.’
‘It was a jest, Admete – nothing more!’
‘If you mean the rude manner in which you sent me from the Amazon camp, then I am not angered at that.’
‘Then what?’ he asked. He leant forwards and pulled me to sit on the pallet beside him; I allowed him to draw me. Had he not always been my closest friend – my only friend, if truth be told, the only one to whom I had been able to confide my fears about my mother? ‘I cannot stand it when you speak in slanted words. Tell me what you mean and be done with it.’
I bit my lip, feeling a spasm of irritation flare up. ‘The battle!’ I hissed at him. ‘At the camp.’ I shuddered as the images rolled before my eyes, and I glanced towards the embers of the fire, trying to forget them, trying to ignore the swell of nausea in my belly. ‘How could you? Girls who were barely entering womanhood and mothers of children! You cut them down, without mercy – I saw it!’ My voice broke as I remembered the fury of his blade flashing this way and that, the horror of the rage in his eyes, and the bleeding, suppurating wounds of both Amazons and Greeks. ‘I came to the land of the Scythians expecting to find barbarians. I did not know I would find them within you.’
He let out a spluttered oath. ‘You think I took pleasure in it?’ he asked, his face flushing. ‘I hate it as much as you do! But I had no choice – I had to capture the war-belt, at whatever cost!’ He grasped my hand. ‘You wish to see your mother, do you not?’
I looked aside. I had not told him of my conversation with Hippolyta.
‘Well,’ he went on, not waiting for my response, ‘this is the price I must pay to have what I wish for – to have my glory!’
‘And what price will you not pay?’ I asked him, my voice rising. The family glanced at us from the hearth and shifted on their stools. ‘What more will you ask? Can you not see how terrible it is? Is the immortality of one man really worth the freedom of the queen of the Amazons, the deaths of so many innocent people?’
‘Yes,’ he said, crossing his arms over his chest and setting his jaw. ‘It is. It has to be.’
I recoiled from him. ‘You do not mean that.’
He thumped his fist against his hand, and I felt the heat rise in him. ‘Do not attempt to tell me what I mean!’ His eyes were blazing, the muscles along his neck tensed though his wounded leg was stretched before him, a bizarre spectacle of impotence. ‘I have no choice, I tell you! This is how it has to be!’
I got to my feet, looking him up and down, fingers trembling at my sides. ‘If you think you have no choice, then you are not the man I knew. The man I knew was kind, and loyal, and courageous, and would have spat on the kind of outrage you committed yesterday. He would not have listened to dog-hearted cowards like Theseus, who whisper only arrogance and privilege. He would have known to be the man you are – instead of the man you think you have to be.’
It happened within a moment. He raised his hand and slapped me full across the face, with such a crack that the blow resounded through my skull, setting my ears singing. Tears smarted at my eyes as I pressed my fingers to my cheek.
‘What by Hera do you think you are doing?’ I shouted at him. ‘You – you—’ I stammered for the words, and all the while my face burnt with pain. ‘I hope your wound pains you tonight, Alcides,’ I cried, strode to the wicker door and slammed it behind me.
‘Hercules!’ he screamed after me. ‘My name is Hercules!’
I ran out under the stars, swept across the sky like a thousand glimmering lamps, with his cries ringing in my ears. I brushed the tears from my eyes and winced as I grazed the bruise on my cheek, then turned back towards my hut across the village, shoulders hunched against the cold, my feet chilled on the wet grass.
I knew then that my friend Alcides was truly gone.
Hippolyta
Athens, Greece
The Twenty-second Day before the Day of Fire in the Season of Tabiti, 1265 BC
The rock of Athens shimmered before me, white in the afternoon heat, sparse ridged stone towering to the sky, topped by walls made of slabs large as a man and crenellated, a gateway sitting squat above us like a sentinel. I squinted up at it, my eyes smarting against the bright sun and sweat. Never, with my broken remembrances of the pine groves and wildflowers of Skyros, could I have imagined something like this – so bare, so lifeless, only a few shrub-like olives clinging to the rock, as if all life had withered beneath the beating sun. And the air was scented not with pine but with smoke and mule-dung from the dwellings shambling around the lower slopes. A breath of sweat washed over me as the Athenian townsmen passed us on the road, bowing to their lord, bearing pots filled with grains threshed from the fields or netted fish, or dragging mule-carts loaded with wood. I did not see any women among them. The rock above me seemed almost prison-like, its precipice falling down either side, the walls shielding the palace from view – as much for keeping captives in as guarding against enemies from without.
‘Do you like it?’ Theseus asked me, turning back with one foot on the lower step of the stairs that were carved into the rock, leading up to the gate. The back of his neck was browned from the days at the oar, his hair slicked with sweat. His eyes narrowed, as if reading my hesitation.
I said nothing. I might have been brought low. I might have no recourse to freedom. But I would not let him play with me. Neither would he make me admit I was there for anything other than the safeguarding of my people. The hair was sticking to the back of my neck, and I pushed away my longing for the cooling breezes that swept the plains.
I held his gaze, defiant, and for a moment I thought his hand twitched at his side, as if he would strike me. But then he began to climb the steps. I lifted the hair from the nape of my neck and, gritting my teeth – This is how it has to be – I followed Theseus.
The voyage across the seas to Athens had taken many weeks, though the steersman had told me that the sailing was fair. We had journeyed out onto the open sea, and for days we had sailed without sight of anything but the water stretching from side to side. I had sat alone near the prow, my knees tucked into my chest. I stared at the waves breaking against the keel and tried not to see Orithyia’s eyes staring at me in death, to accept the overwhelming, terrifying certainty that I – a queen who had been raised by her mother, who had loved and lived with her sisters as her dearest companions – had lost both Melanippe and Orithyia: one to protect my people, the other – the fiercest warrior I had ever known – to the land of the dead, from which none ever returned. At night we had nowhere to go to shore, so the sailors threw down the anchor and we floated mid-sea beneath the stars. Those were the worst moments: for then Theseus would come to me and, though all the other Greeks lay in their blankets on the rowing-benches near us, he would take me pinned against one of the thwarts without a thought for my shame before the men who lay silent and unmoving nearby. I submitted to him every night as I had that first time on the shore in the land of the Saka. Ev
ery time I gasped with silent pain, as he thrust his body upon mine, and tried not to inhale the bitter tang of his sweat, I knew that my spirit was broken a little more, like a horse from the wilds being tamed to the bit and bridle. Often his force left me bruised in the hips and unable to sit, my skin mottled green and blue-black (thank the gods my tunic was long enough to cover it). I tried to hide it from the rest as best I could.
Yet now that we had sailed through the islands, which were scattered like stones across the sea, and had landed in Athens, I hoped – with the fading hope of a traveller on the dark plains as her torch sputters its last flame – that things might be different. Perhaps Theseus had been eager to return to his home. He might have been a different man at sea, fatigued from the oar and the swelling sickness of the waves. Perhaps now that we were back on land he would treat me with more respect: the respect that the gods demanded be afforded to a queen, even in captivity. Perhaps even – when he was assured that I would not risk my people’s lives by running from him – we might journey to Thessaly. Perhaps then – I felt contempt for myself, yet I had not the strength, here, in Greece, to curb it – I might see my Greek once more.
We reached the gateway and entered, spear-bearing soldiers bowing their lord through, to a courtyard. It was scattered here and there with colonnaded buildings and, to my left, a columned sprawling structure that must have been the palace, two or three times larger than that on Skyros. My heart tightened to see it: the stone foundations bore the weight of several floors, rising one above the other to the sky; the columns and the roof-beams were painted blood-red, with a frieze of yellow-blue around the high roof, so dazzling against the sun I could barely make it out. And there, again, planted by the path as we walked, were the olive trees, their roots so gnarled and twisted that they seemed to suck water from the rock by mere force. Slaves were tending the trees, pruning the branches and raking away dead leaves. They looked up as we passed, and their eyes fell on me, and I thought how strange I must seem, wearing only an unbelted tunic, not a Greek dress with skirts, and with my Saka cheekbones and browned skin.