Chapter Eighteen

 

 

 

Helenus arranged a splendid wedding feast, consulting with me over the details. “I know there are certain traditional rites Spartan royal brides observe,” he said, his tone hinting at deeper knowledge.

So he knew about the ritual bath and the pomegranate seeds, but those rites were for presumptive king-consorts, and Neoptolemus would never rule as king in Sparta. “This is not a Spartan wedding,” I answered firmly. “The local customs will suffice.”

Sudden doubt seized me. I had no idea whether Neoptolemus had met with my father’s ambassador and learned the truth. “Has he asked about Spartan wedding customs?”

“He left the arrangements to me.” A faint, enigmatic smile twitched the corners of Helenus’s mouth. On a small clay tablet, he marked my preferences in the wedge-shaped cuneiform his people used. “Now, if there are any particular Spartan dishes you would like served, tell me now so the cooks can do their shopping.”

I stared at the jewels spilled across the dressing table, the rich garments scattered spread over the bed, unable to decide what to eat or drink any more than I could choose what to wear.

Helenus laid the tablet and stylus on the table’s edge, then bent down to me. “I have arranged for you to spend tomorrow night in the temple of Artemis. The custom here is the same as in Sparta.” A pregnant pause. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, thank you, Hantili.” I had taken to using his real name because it seemed like the correct thing to do.

Later, I called for Briseis and gestured to the mess. “Choose something for me. Thebe, did Mother pack my doll?”

Briseis stood her ground. “Stop moping and get involved. Making what decisions you can will help you feel less powerless.”

Perhaps, but I could not decide. “I don’t know. Your taste is far better than mine,” I said. “You know what he likes.”

Thebe brought me the doll. Its cloth body was attached to a painted terracotta head with rooted yarn hair. Leda had given it to me. She had helped me clothe it. I touched my finger to the well-worn, faded pink dress with its childish stitches, not wanting to dedicate this childhood treasure in this foreign place, among these strangers.

Virgin brides spent their wedding eve with Artemis. Again, I found myself prostrate before a goddess who had never protected me.

After I made the customary reverences, the high priestess snipped a lock of my hair to burn before the altar. Then she directed me to the offering table where I would place the doll.

Artemis might as well have been a foreign goddess for all the reassurance she extended to me. I held out the doll, relic of a much happier time, while yearning to snatch it back and flee the sanctuary. Why had I not substituted a lesser doll? I wondered. Because Artemis would have known the difference and directed her wrath toward any future children, as she had punished Agamemnon’s hubris through Iphigenia’s innocence.

A knot formed in my throat when it came time to utter the dedicatory prayer. “Protectress of children, be with me on this last night of maidenhood.” It was a lie! I was not even a maiden. Yet I said the words because they were mandatory. “Receive this precious gift of my girlhood.”

My handmaidens joined me for the sacred songs and dances, and we tried to make merry as the sun set on my final day as an unmarried woman. But the harder we tried, the sharper my grief became. At last, I broke down. The priestesses assumed my weeping was the natural response of an anxious bride, and I did nothing to disabuse anyone of that notion. Nonetheless, I strove to dry my tears, smile faintly, and project a queenly demeanor, so that the women in the sanctuary should not speak ill of me, or claim that my incessant crying was a portent of evil things to come.

I did not sleep very well that night. Artemis’s sanctuary seemed to me like a place of danger. I avoided glancing over at the goddess on her plinth, illuminated by sacred fire. There was subtle menace in her gaze. I had dared proclaim myself a virgin when we both knew the truth.

Morning brought Briseis with the priestesses of Hera into the sanctuary to array me in my wedding raiment. Briseis truly had wonderful taste, having selected a royal purple bodice cinched with a golden girdle, a flounced skirt glittering with amethyst beads and golden roundels, and a sheer lilac linen veil spangled with glittering gold rosettes.

“Mistress, you look beautiful.” Monime stepped back among the other women once the final flounce was adjusted, the last ribbon tied, and the linen veil arranged in place over my coiffed ringlets.

Beautiful. It was just a word. I had not felt beautiful when Aegisthus used to corner me to steal a caress, or when he had forced himself on me. And I did not feel beautiful now, standing in the coolness of the shrine with my naked breasts thrusting out from the open bodice. Neoptolemus would be getting a marble bride, a doll such as the one I had left on the altar.

Shouts from outside distracted me. “Come out, daughter of Menelaus!” Male voices. “Let us see your beauty!” Neoptolemus and his friends had arrived for the ritual abduction.

Briseis turned to me. “It’s time.”

Neoptolemus let me exit the sanctuary so as not to offend the goddess, but the moment my feet left sacred ground he clasped me around the middle and swung me into his chariot. Briseis and the maids raised the alarm, their initial cries ritual protests, then genuine squeals as the bridegroom’s friends snatched them into their garlanded chariots for the ride back to the palace.

“You’re a ravishing morsel.” Neoptolemus kept one arm around my waist as he drove. “Much more beautiful than your mother.”

I stared straight ahead. “Watch where you’re going.”

Neoptolemus steered into the palace’s outer court, tossed the reins to a groom, and carried me across the megaron’s threshold. He had had an ivory chair placed for me upon on the dais, and took immense pride in presenting me to his guests as his new queen.

“Behold our bride: Hermione, daughter of King Menelaus Atreides and Queen Helen, descendant of the great royal houses of Sparta and Mycenae!” Neoptolemus grasped my hand. “She comes to us heiress to the rich fields and pastures of Laconia. She is a fit mate for the heir of glorious Achilles.”

So the Spartan ambassador had not yet informed him that he would not be claiming those rich Laconian fields and pastures once my father died. I was not anticipating that moment with any relish.

Hera’s high priestess conducted the ritual, binding our hands and directing us to circle the hearth three times. Then we sat down on our thrones as king and queen of Epirus.

Epirote nobles and Molossian chieftains formed a queue to congratulate us and to present their gifts. Her face half-hidden under a spangled Anatolian veil, Andromache hung back among the maidservants and scribes. When her turn came, she dropped an anonymous present at the pile’s edge. I had Thebe bring back the necklace with its silver pendants to inspect it for strange markings that might be a curse, but upon close examination it seemed innocuous.

At noon, servants set up the trestle tables for the wedding banquet, and brought out steaming platters of roast sirloin, mutton dripping with crackling fat, lamb seasoned in coriander, and tender venison in milk. Neoptolemus and I shared a bridal cup, a painted kylix once owned by Achilles, which the king’s server kept filled with a potent cocktail of mead, beer, and retsina.

“Paris once told a story that Aphrodite had promised him the most beautiful woman in the world.” Neoptolemus focused on the female acrobats gyrating by the hearth as he related this anecdote. “It began with a wedding very much like this,” he said.

“What’s that?” I had not been paying attention.

He gazed sidelong at me. “Paris, dear. When Agamemnon’s envoys questioned his right to keep Helen, Paris fabricated some nonsense about the gods. They were invited to a mortal wedding, you see, all but the goddess of discord. So Eris took a golden apple and inscribed it with the words ‘for the fairest,’ and rolled it into the megaron. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite all laid claim to it.”

“And where did you hear this?” I asked.

“Helenus told me.” Neoptolemus nodded toward his advisor, sitting beside the Spartan ambassador. “Of course, the gods all had Anatolian names, but I understood what he meant.”

I stifled a yawn. “Ah, yes, I see.” My not sleeping well the night before was catching up to me.

Oblivious to my boredom, he continued, “Zeus knew better than to judge the matter, so he chose a handsome young goatherd grazing his flock on Mount Ida. Paris told the envoys he had been raised as a peasant after a terrible prophecy inspired his parents to abandon him on the mountainside. Hah! Paris did only one thing with goats, and it wasn’t drive them to pasture.”

I hoped Neoptolemus was not as bad a lover as he was a storyteller. If I had to suffer him in my bed, I at least wanted him to be a considerate mate. “Go on,” I urged, feigning interest.

“All three goddesses promised him fabulous rewards,” he answered, “but then Aphrodite whispered hot in his ear that if he gave her the apple he could have the most beautiful woman in the world. So how do you think that peasant decided? With his cock.”

My head was starting to ache. “That’s a ridiculous story.”

“So it is.” Neoptolemus clamped a hand on my wrist as I reached for the kylix. “You’re getting tipsy. I think it might be time for you to retire.”

Nervous anticipation cut through my stupor. “It’s not even sunset.” Was he that randy already?

He kissed my fingers. “But summer nights are so short.”

Raucous catcalls and applause attended me as the ladies of the court escorted me from the megaron. Upstairs, ladies crammed into my bedchamber, jostling aside my maids for the honor of sponging away my cosmetics, and removing my jewels and clothes. Briseis attempted to keep order, but as a foreigner she exercised no authority over the Epirote noblewomen; it was all she could do to rescue the discarded garments and trinkets from the floor.

All the arguing and chaos further chafed my nerves. “Stop your bickering!” I shouted. A stunned silence overtook the chamber. Ladies and maids alike gaped at me. “Let us be sensible about this. Out, all of you. I am going to lie down to wait for the bridegroom. Let my maids clean up.”

At least they obeyed me. I smothered an unladylike yawn behind my hand and climbed between the linen sheets, ignoring admonitions not to fall asleep. I must have dozed a little, because the sudden clashing cymbals, trilling pipes, and boisterous male laughter outside my apartment gave me a start. The bridegroom’s party sounded like a troupe of satyrs.

Furniture shifted and fell over in the next room as the gentlemen entered the apartment. I heard the women nearest the bedchamber door laughing and calling out. Startled, I sat up just as the curtain parted, and the bridegroom appeared with his retainers. The ladies who followed them in fell like honeybees upon a laughing Neoptolemus to undress him, while his attendants burst again into drunken song. My head ached.

As Neoptolemus winked at me, instinct prompted me to clutch the bed sheet to my breasts. Did he intend to take me in front of his entire court? Determined not to endure that indignity, I prepared myself to speak up.

Yet my intervention proved unnecessary. “All right!” the bridegroom called, hustling men and women alike out the door. “Leave us to it.”

Briseis left last, closing the outer door as she withdrew.

Now we were alone. Neoptolemus finished undressing, removing his loincloth and tossing it aside. He had a handsome physique, long and lean, and dusted all over with fine golden hairs. Moreover, the conceited fool knew it, crooking a confident smile as he sauntered over to the bed and sat down beside me to pull at the sheet. “Why are you so shy, Hermione? I’ve already seen your breasts, remember?”

I let him expose me because he was now my husband, but could not help but shiver as his hand ghosted over my left breast. It was happening, he was touching me, and in a short while he would be atop me, inside me.

I shut my eyes. The sheets rustled and I felt him move even closer, until we were close to share each other’s breath; he exuded an odor of drunkenness. As I made that observation, his bracing arm went around my back. I knew he was about to kiss me.

His lips touched mine, gentle at first, giving me space to reciprocate, then more demanding as he slipped his tongue into my mouth.

I willed myself to relax as he stretched out on the bed beside me. I tried hard to remind myself that this was my wedding night, and everything would be all right. Neoptolemus was my husband, he was supposed to be doing this, and I told myself over and over how nice it felt and how gentle he was being.

But his hand sliding down my belly revived old terrors. He was going to touch my thighs, then he was going to pin me to the mattress and mount me, and it would be Aegisthus all over again. I was not melting with desire for him, and with the ladies causing such chaos I had not been able to go into the bathroom to rub oil inside me. It would hurt.

He kept kissing me, while his hand rubbed circles up my inner thigh. I tried to relax, but it was no use, and soon enough he noticed. “It’s all right,” he murmured into my ear. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I forced myself to smile. “I know.”

Then his probing finger sank inside me. The intrusion burned. Now it was coming, he would mount me, he would notice, and...

Withdrawing his finger, he glared down at me. “You have no maidenhead.” Mingled fear and shame kept me from responding. “You’re not a maiden at all, are you?” Anger blazed in his eyes. “Did you spread your legs for Nestor’s son, or did you let some stranger enjoy you during one of those orgies you Spartan women like so much?”

That did it. I might have been ashamed on account of his discovering my maidenhead was gone, but he was not going to insult my honor as a Spartan princess. “How dare you! It was rape. Rape!” Furious tears slid down my cheeks. “I never wanted to be taken, never!” Gathering the sheet to my breasts again, I turned onto my side, away from him, and curled into a tight ball.

Neoptolemus cursed under his breath, then bent over me and asked, “Who was it?”

“Leave me alone.”

Instead, he stroked my upper arm. A kiss landed on my shoulder. “Who was it? Tell me. I will kill him for you.”

“He’s dead.” Saying Aegisthus’s name would have been inviting his shade into the bridal chamber.

That answer satisfied him, and he had other concerns at the moment. As he nibbled my ear, he spooned against my back, where his erection prodded my buttocks. “It’s all right. It’s still our wedding night, after all.” He reached around to squeeze my breast. “I won’t hurt you.”

I sobbed into his kisses as he rolled me onto my back and resumed caressing my inner thighs; he was going to have me tonight no matter what. When he took me, each thrust stretched and burned me inside, and he never seemed to notice. Even when he finished and withdrew, when he kissed my mouth and rubbed his thumb over my sticky cheeks to try to soothe me, he pretended everything was all right when even a fool could have seen it was not.

Afterward, Neoptolemus dropped into a sated sleep beside me. I stared at the painted spirals whirling across the ceiling, trying to ignore the raw and pulsing void between my thighs. Silent sobs wracked my body. So this was what it was like to be married.