For the Immortal

by Emily Hauser

  And then she shakes herself, remembering why she is here, and what she has to do. The tense anticipation of the beginning of the story – like the silence before the singer takes up his tune – fills her again.

  ‘Aphrodite.’

  The goddess of love opens her eyes, and a smile spreads across her face. ‘Calliope,’ she says. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  She rolls over onto her front. The cupids drape her hair across her back and flutter away to her dressing-table for perfumes and oils. She props her head on her hands, rosy and gorgeous as the sunrise.

  Calliope takes a deep breath. ‘It is time.’

  Aphrodite blinks once, twice, then her lips draw together in a silent exclamation. She sits up, gathering her gauzy robes over her shoulders.

  ‘You have it still?’ Calliope asks.

  At the word, two of the cupids – giggling among themselves – flit to a rosewood chest, then return clutching the golden apple. They drop it into Aphrodite’s lap.

  She lifts it. ‘Here.’

  Calliope holds out her hand and, with a thrill of pleasure, feels the skin of the apple in her fingers once more. She walks to one of the windows, examining it, turning it over and over in the light with a critical eye, but it is unblemished, as perfect as it was when she gave it to Aphrodite many years before on the shores of Hyperborea.

  Oh, yes, she thinks, as she gazes out towards the islands that scatter the Aegean, like pebbles on a pond. Of course the mortals will say it happened at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. It is a story she herself will seed among them – when the snake-haired, bat-breathed goddess Discord wreaked her revenge on the gods for not inviting her to the marriage-feast, and rolled an apple in their midst, inscribed with the fatal words that would set a war raging across the world of mortals …

  But she and Aphrodite alone know that it is happening now, here, quietly and deliberately, in the chamber of the goddess of love as the peach light of dawn streaks the horizon to the east and the swallows chatter on the warm summer air.

  She turns back towards Aphrodite, who is watching her with a faint look of curiosity.

  ‘What is your plan?’

  Calliope does not answer. Instead she draws a stylus from where it is tucked into her girdle and – just as Iris did many years before – she inserts the tip into the apple’s flesh, gouging into it two words: ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ.

  ‘For the Most Beautiful,’ Aphrodite reads aloud. She moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘So. It is time for my epic.’

  Calliope bows her head.

  ‘And?’ Aphrodite asks. ‘After the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to the ends of the earth – well, what next?’

  ‘A war,’ Calliope whispers, her breathing ragged in her excitement. ‘A war that will be waged from east to west and will give birth to the greatest heroes Greece has ever known – fought over a beautiful woman.’

  She hands the apple to Aphrodite, who holds it to her bosom, caressing it, tracing the letters inscribed there with her fingertip. ‘I see,’ she says. ‘And you want me to—’

  ‘Yes,’ Calliope says, as their eyes meet and they exchange a look between them. ‘Exactly.’

  A moment’s silence, broken only by the cooing of doves and the breaking of waves against the rocks below.

  Then Aphrodite slips from the bed to her feet. The cupids flutter to her and drape a shawl of shimmering gold around her shoulders that catches the early-morning light, like dew on a spider’s web. ‘Well, then,’ she says. ‘I suppose I should fetch Hera and Athena.’

  ‘Yes,’ Calliope says. ‘I suppose you should.’

  A moment more, as they smile at each other in acknowledgement of a job well done, a contract completed. Then Aphrodite turns towards the door, slips through it with a swift nod back to Calliope, and is gone.

  Calliope listens to the fall of her feet over the marble corridors beyond. Then, when she is sure Aphrodite is gone, she slides her fingers into the fold in her robes and draws out the last of the three apples, her own, the one Hera was forced to give to her in the council when everything changed, when the Muses gained their victory and the Olympians were forced to concede defeat. She holds it up to the pale light, watching the surface sparkle, her eyes darting over the words she wrote there, when she thought it was an epic of Hercules: TΩI AΘANATΩI – For the Immortal.

  But she knows now that it is not Hercules this apple is meant for.

  Her gaze moves past the apple towards the eastern horizon, now a blaze of golden light threading the clouds into yellow ribbons, then to the sea, sparkling white-gold beneath the sky, and beyond, the vast grasslands ridden by the horse-taming Scythians.

  A slow smile spreads over her face.

  The very last epic is yet to come.

  IMMORTAL

  One year later, at the time of the Trojan War

  The Amazons did not cease to disregard danger – though their camp was attacked by Hercules, and later they sacked Athens; no – still, they went to Troy, and fought with all of Greece.

  Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.15.2

  To Troy

  Hippolyta

  Amazons, Land of the Saka

  The Twenty-third Day after the Day of Fire in the Season of Tabiti, 1250 BC

  Night was spreading her dark veil over the plains as I settled myself on a cushion by the fire, folding my legs beneath me and surveying the council gathered in my tent with quiet contentment. These were moments I treasured: the whispering of the flames and the low murmur of talk, the passing of the koumiss pouch between us, the councillors of our tribe gathered together in peace. Fifteen years had passed since we had ridden out together to sack the citadel of Athens – of the elders only Sitalkes and Iphito now remained, and my band of twelve warriors was studded with younger fighters, as well as my son Cayster, who had grown tall and sturdy in my care as a shoot in fertile ground grows into a sapling. These had been years of plenty, in which we had measured time by the rhythm of the seasons, changing pasture over the plains in summer, making camp by the river’s banks as the colder months approached. I had negotiated a truce with the Budini, and raids had been few. All was well.

  Yet we were Amazons still, and still, after all these years, our talk turned, inevitably, inexorably, to war.

  ‘Any news of the conflict?’ Sitalkes asked, once the koumiss had made its rounds and I had placed it on its stand.

  I saw Cayster and Thermodosa, one of the youngest warriors in my band, exchange a smile. Sitalkes was more than three times their age and wire-muscled with the years, his cheeks sunken, yet he had the battle-spirit of a warhorse.

  ‘None, since I spoke with the leader of the Hialeans last,’ I said, taking up a poker to stir the fire, watching the embers spark. ‘Thus far the reports are all the same. The city of Troy remains besieged by the Greeks. Battles are waged back and forth, but as yet there is no decisive victory.’

  ‘Is there no end to the Greeks’ lust for blood?’ asked another of the elders. ‘Must they now sail the waters of the seas to seek it out?’

  ‘It seems so,’ I replied. ‘Yet if the tales we hear are true, it was Paris, son of Priam, who was at fault for capturing Menelaus of Mycenae’s wife.’

  ‘You know that is not the reason,’ Melanippe said, from beside me. ‘You know no one would go to war on such a pretext. For one man’s marriage! I wager rather it is the greed of the kings of Greece.’

  ‘Or perhaps,’ Sitalkes said, ‘it is the storm-god Tar and his consort Tabiti who stir up these battles. A war to shake the very foundations of the earth – is that not what the Hialeans told us?’

  I bowed my head. ‘Rumours, Sitalkes, these are but rumours.’

  ‘May I speak?’

  Cayster was leaning across the hearth, and I had to repress a smile as my eyes met his. His flaxen hair, pale like my Greek’s in his youth, had darkened with age, and a beard was growing on his chin, but his eyes were the same – that dark passion, intensity,
like a black flame.

  I gestured to him to continue. ‘Cayster. Of course.’

  He clambered to his feet, lithe and agile. ‘Are we not age-old allies of Troy? Did not your own mother the queen, my grandmother, do battle with Priam, fighting with the Trojans side by side as sworn friends?’

  I let out a sigh that made the flames before me shiver and send smoke curling into the air. ‘Speak on.’

  ‘We should go to Troy!’ The words gushed from his lips, like water bubbling from a spring, and his eyes shone. ‘We should join the Trojans and fight the Greeks!’ He hesitated, then, almost imploring, said, ‘It will be the greatest battle the world has ever seen!’

  The council was quiet, waiting for my answer. Only the spitting of the fire and the whinnying of the horses on the plain broke the silence. I wondered how to respond, what I could say that would curb my son’s enthusiasm – for, though he truly longed for battle with the warrior spirit of an Amazon, I also guessed his desire. Had it not been mine also, when I had left for Athens? Had I not hoped, when I was younger – as he was now – to see the Greek again?

  Cayster’s gaze burnt as I lifted my eyes to meet it. My lips parted, though what I was to say I did not know.

  ‘I say we let the Trojans deal with their own disputes,’ Iphito said, breaking the tension. She drew the dagger from her war-belt and poked at the fire with the iron tip. A shadow crossed her face. I knew she was thinking of Arga, her daughter, fresh and pale as an apple-blossom, who had fallen beneath the sword of the Greeks in the battle for Athens so many years ago. But how, I thought, how can we make the young understand what we lost in those long-gone battles?

  The tent-flap billowed open, and the evening air blew across us. Polemusa, daughter of Toxis, was standing in the entrance, breathing hard, sweat shining at the base of her neck.

  ‘Polemusa!’ I exclaimed. ‘You interrupt the gathering of the council!’

  ‘My apologies, my queen,’ she panted. ‘But there is an emissary arrived from the Trojans, and he demanded to see you at once. I could not prevent him.’

  A man with the haggard look of one who had not slept in many days pushed past Polemusa.

  ‘What is this?’ I stood, my hand on the hilt of the sword at my belt, and around me the council did the same. Cayster drew his blade. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘I am Idaeus, herald of King Priam of Troy, your friend and ally,’ he said, in stilted Saka. He, too, was short of breath. ‘I have grave news of the war in Troy.’

  ‘What news?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Prince Hector is dead,’ he said, and his voice broke as he spoke the words. ‘The defender of our city has been killed before our walls, and even now the Greeks rampage over the plain. If we do not summon help soon, all will be lost.’ He straightened himself, and I shuddered at the look in his eyes – the cold desperation of one who had seen death and wished to see no more. ‘I beg you, Queen Hippolyta. I am here as King Priam himself could not be, to clasp your knees as he would,’ he dropped to the floor and wrapped his arms around me, his face tilted up, creased with pain. ‘I beg you, in the name of your mother Queen Marpesia, who rode out with King Priam in the famed battle against the Phrygians, and swore to him a lasting alliance, I beg you to come to our aid, you and your Amazons – not merely for ourselves, but for the protection of all the peoples of Anatolia and the Saka tribes, against whom the Greeks will surely come, if the gates of Troy fall. You are the last hope for our city – the very last.’

  I bent forwards, took his hand and raised him to stand. ‘You need not kneel to me,’ I said gently, moved beyond words by the emotion with which he spoke. ‘I hear your plea.’

  And how easily the gods change our fortunes with a single word. My hand fell from my sword-hilt and my fingers brushed my war-belt – crafted for me after my return from Greece, leather and studded with gold, a beautiful thing. And yet it was not – it never could be – the same as my mother’s. I remembered every embellishment pricked on those gold plates by the craftsmen, every dent hammered into them in battle, as if my mother’s belt had been a tale, like those the bards sang, each hollow telling its own story. I felt a surge of certainty in my heart. I knew what she would have done, faced with this herald, with this choice. Better, far better, I knew that it was not my bitterness at the Greeks that drove me to it, but my kinship to the Trojans, and my determination to protect my people, my Amazons. All that enmity against the Greeks, that sense of betrayal, that longing – it had subsided now into nothing but a dull memory. My lips twisted into a smile. Perhaps, at forty years of age and ripe in my womanhood, I had become a queen at last.

  ‘We will send our troops to your aid,’ I said, and the old man trembled. ‘Melanippe,’ I said, turning to my sister, ‘how many can we spare?’

  Melanippe stepped forward, and I thought how much older she looked, her dark hair threaded with grey – how much older we all were than when we last rode to battle against the Greeks. ‘How many do you need?’ she replied, addressing herself to the herald Idaeus.

  He wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic. ‘I have brought ships, a fleet, anchored out on the open sea,’ he said. ‘We rode to the Bosphorus and took ship from there, as the harbour of Troy is no longer safe. It is fastest this way – the passage south through the Hittites’ lands will take too long, and the gods know that every day we delay more Trojan lives are lost. We came first to you, as our oldest allies and the most famed fighters. We intend to sail the coast supplicating the other Saka tribes.’

  ‘And the number of your ships?’

  ‘Enough to take a few hundred troops. Steeds we can supply from the Trojan plain.’

  ‘A hundred troops—’ Melanippe glanced at me.

  ‘We send you forty of our fighters willingly,’ I said, cutting across her. ‘I will apply at once to the tribes of the Saka and King Panasagoras to join us. And I will join the expedition myself, with my twelve finest warriors, a band of fearsome Amazons to guard your city, my lord, and your king.’ I laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘The lady Tabiti knows I do not go to battle with joy in my heart,’ I said, and my gaze went to Cayster, whose face was alight with anticipation. ‘But when we ride out to restore peace and to drive the warmongers from our lands, this I do gladly. It is my duty as your ally sworn by my mother’s blood, and,’ I said, the corners of my mouth lifting in a smile, ‘my calling as an Amazon queen.’

  Ἀδμήτη

  Admete

  Troy, Anatolia

  The Twenty-seventh Day of the Month of the Grape Harvest, 1250 BC

  I shivered – some prescience of the hand of the gods playing over me, perhaps – as the ship rounded the tip of Lesbos, and the city of Troy came into view, perched on its headland, like a coronet ring slipped onto a finger. The memory of so many years before overwhelmed me: when, bound for the Amazons, our ship had slid through the waters of the Hellespont, and Alcides and I had climbed from the harbour to enjoy King Priam’s hospitality in his halls. For a few moments I had to close my eyes, inhaling the salt-scented sea air, to remind myself how many years had passed since then – how many things had changed.

  I smiled as I thought of my daughter, Lysippe: a gift to me and my husband Proetus to bless our marriage. Whether it was a gift of the gods or the work of the chaste-tree berries, which I had found to aid in quickening a child in the womb, I was content not to ask. She was grown now almost to a woman, her hair dark as her grandmother’s had been. Alexander had come to the throne of Tiryns, healthful and full of vigour, and we lived there in peace under his rule, I with the noble Proetus, and my brothers with their wives, laughing in the court as we watched our children play together. Those were sun-filled days of much joy in which Lysippe and I tended the herb-garden together, and sat in the evenings by the hearth in our home as I recorded by the lamplight on my tablets the herbs I had found.

  And then the call had come to war.

  It was Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who summoned us. Bound by ties of ki
nship and loyalty, Iphimedon and Eurybius had led the troops of Tiryns out to battle. Alexander, remaining behind to rule the city, sent our eight black war-ships and our finest warriors – Proetus among them – with the contingent of Diomedes of Argos. As spring wore into summer I had watched Lysippe grow and tried to seem as if my only business was with herbs, but when a messenger was announced from Troy I picked up my skirts and ran to the throne-room to hear his news.

  ‘No news of Proetus,’ the herald had said, when I asked. ‘But, my lady, it is with you, not the king, I have come to speak.’

  I frowned, listening as his story unfolded. Patroclus, comrade of Achilles, had been killed. Without his skill with herbs, and only two healers left to attend to the army, Nestor, lord of Pylos, had sent for me. My reputation as a healer had spread throughout Greece after Alexander’s cure, and I had devoted many years to herbal lore, healing many who had been said to be past the help of the gods. Yet I was hesitant to leave Lysippe. Only when the messenger invoked the names of my husband, my brothers and other Greeks, who would be in peril if I left them to die of their wounds, had I agreed – at last – to go.

  I opened my eyes again, recalling myself. The ship Alexander had given to convey me was a broad-bottomed merchant ship, which the slaves of the palace had filled with pickled olives and salted meat from our stores, weapons, and as many of the plants, bandages and linens from the herbary as I could bring. The oars cut into the sea and sent white fountains of spray into the air, while ahead of me the leaping dolphin of the prow seemed to cavort over the waves. The wind blew against my back, sending my hair flying forwards in a mass of curls. Before us, the headland that protected Troy’s harbour stuck out into the gushing waters of the Hellespont. As we rounded it, the steersman pulling on the oar to guide us into the bay, I saw again the city, sitting atop its hill with the lower town spilling beneath it, towers rising against the sky, and beneath it, across the Scamandrian plain, a cloud of dust swirled thick as fog. Nearing the beach, I could make out black-hulled ships ploughed into the shore, a makeshift rampart circling a camp of tents erected from sailcloth and wooden huts, some in sore need of repair, with holes smashed through their roofs, and littered around with debris. Soldiers called to us as our fleet approached, and a herald ran towards us, beckoning us ashore. I felt a thrill of anticipation – not excitement but some strange sense of unreality, as if I, the camp unfolding before me and the billowing cloud of war-dust were already legend, and that the battle here took place outside time, outside history.