Chapter Twenty-three

 

 

 

Aethiolas’s distinctive red-gold hair stood out among the swarthier men awaiting me on the beach. Abandoning etiquette, I waved to him.

“Princess,” the captain warned, “we’re going aground.”

I forced myself away from the rail and urged my handmaidens to a vacant bench. Behind me, the coxswain was shouting orders, and the rowers banked the oars to let the pentekonter’s momentum ground the keel. I braced myself against the wooden bench as a shudder raced through the hull. As it subsided, oarsmen deserted the rowing benches, and leapt into the shallow surf while others tossed down cables. Inch by straining inch, forty-five men heaved the great pentekonter above the tidemark.

As I disembarked onto dry land, Aethiolas offered his steadying arm; the gaunt steersman and the first mate assisted my maids. Two other pentekonters were beaching some twenty yards away. Porters scurried back and forth unloading my chests, vessels, and furnishings to pile into mule carts for the trip home.

Aethiolas swept me up into a crushing hug. “It’s good to see you!” he said. “I hope the voyage was mild.”

“I spent most of it seasick.”

He chuckled to hear that. “Poseidon doesn’t favor you.”

The Epirote ambassador hiked up the beach toward us on a seaman’s legs, and extended a weathered hand to my brother. Aethiolas greeted him, thanked him for the generous escort, and offered him Sparta’s royal hospitality.

Aethiolas had arranged lodgings in the governor’s residence. I bathed and rested a few hours before joining the men downstairs in the megaron. As the only noblewoman present, I tried to feign interest in the conversation, while wishing the ambassador and governor would retire to let me have some time alone with my brother.

All I managed were a few minutes when he escorted me upstairs to my apartment. “It’s been hours and you have not yet said anything about your wife,” I chided gently.

Aethiolas drew a heavy breath. “She is well.” I caught his atypical gloominess, and was about to inquire when he bestowed a kiss on my cheek and dismissed me. “Go to bed, Hermione. We rise early tomorrow.”

Autumn had brought the first blazing leaf-fall to the Laconian countryside, and snow blanketed the mountain peaks. As I breathed in the clear fresh air, I recalled how much I had missed being outdoors during those stifling summer months in Epirus.

My mother met us in the lower court. Helen said little to me, but gave brisk commands to the servant girls awaiting her pleasure. Upstairs in a guest apartment, she ordered me a hot bath and meal, though I did not want either, and laid out the rest of my day. I balked. Attending her in her apartment and dining with the court were among the very last things I wished to do on my first day home. “Mother,” I said, “I just want to lie down.”

She arched her eyebrows. “Are you unwell?”

“I feel terrible.” Let her think it was seasickness.

Helen laid her hand against my forehead. “You are not feverish. Very well, then. Lie down if you wish, but you will be up and about starting tomorrow. There’s no need to dwell on this unfortunate business. It’s finished.”

Trust my mother to dismiss my troubles, and attempt to smother them behind a veil.

I submitted to the hot bath. As my mother’s women dried my hair by the brazier, my father appeared. Menelaus dismissed Helen’s hissing admonishment to let me rest, then wrapped me in his embrace. “Thank the gods I have my little girl back safe and sound.” He stroked my still-damp hair while I stood numb. “It hasn’t been the same around here without you.”

He had abandoned me without a fight. Had he been anyone else I would have flung that fact back in his face. I forced a hollow smile to my lips instead. “I am glad to be home.”

“That’s good.” Gazing down at me, then at my mother and maids, he cleared his throat. “Well...” Another nervous cough. “I suppose I should leave you ladies alone now.”

Menelaus withdrew wearing an awkward look. My mother waited until he was safely gone to comment. “He missed you very much.”

I did not want to have this conversation right now. “I suppose.”

“Do you doubt it?”

She was going to press the matter. “Mother, I am very tired.”

Helen brushed her fingertips over my hair, testing a few strands. “I think it’s dry enough.” She took the comb from Adreste and teased out the tangles. “Tomorrow you can begin unpacking.”

Unpacking all my belongings took three long days, after which I became a recluse, spinning and sewing in my apartment, taking long walks along the ramparts, and sitting idle in the inner court. What was the matter with me? I ought to have been helping with the winemaking, dyeing, and making winter preserves. Olives were ripening in the groves this year. I should have visited the sanctuaries and agora, though my father refused to let me venture outside the citadel without half a dozen guards dogging my steps.

I resented the not-so-subtle reference to my abduction, yet he remained obstinate on that point, stating, “A princess needs a suitable escort.”

“I see no need for so many men.” I decided to call him on his blatant fib. “Why would anyone bother to abduct me now?”

“That’s not...” Menelaus tried a second time. “No one is going to abduct you, because then they will have a war on their hands.” But his halfhearted attempt at levity fell flat, and he abandoned the effort. “Now don’t sulk young lady. I have some very good news to share with you.” His shaggy eyebrows twitched upward, and a broad grin split his face. “Your cousin Orestes is on his way back to Mycenae.”

Orestes. I needed a moment to make certain I had heard him correctly. “He’s alive?” A rush of excitement banished my gloom.

Menelaus nodded, beaming. “Alive and well.”

Orestes had survived his trial and been exonerated. Profound relief washed over me. I had not heard anything so wonderful since... I honestly could not remember when.

“I thought you’d like to know.” My father held out his arms for a hug. “Ah, that’s more like the little girl I know!” He squeezed me tight. “No more brooding. You’re safe at home now, and we will find you someone worthy.”

But I did not want to think dwell on that now. Orestes! Once Menelaus left, I knelt before my altar. “Thank you!” Joy set my heart fluttering as I raised my palm to my forehead to salute Apollo and the goddesses arranged around him. “Thank you for letting him live.”

I went to bed that night wearing a smile, and woke more cheerful and refreshed than I had been in months.

My euphoria was short-lived. Chrysothemis threatened my celebratory mood to pester me with her troubles. “This morning when Aethiolas was eating, I suggested we go down to the river to feed the swans,” she complained, as we spun wool in my sitting room. “Do you know what he did?”

Aethiolas did not have time to toss crumbs to swans; an astute wife would have realized that. “No. What did he do?”

“He told me he had business in Amyklai and would not be back for three days.” She threw up her hands. “What’s wrong with me? I do my best to be agreeable and obedient, but he’s always so cold. Half the time he isn’t even home.”

“Aethiolas has important work to do.” Anyone who observed them together could see what the problem was. My brother found his new wife empty-headed and boring, and she was too dense to realize it. “Have you ever asked him about his duties?”

Chrysothemis made a face. “He never wants to talk.”

“Then let him be.” I twisted raw wool between my fingers.

But Chrysothemis could not let anything be, and slumped brooding in her chair. “How does he expect me to get pregnant when he won’t even lie with me. He always makes some excuse.”

So she wanted advice on how to bewitch a man, did she? I flicked the spindle whorl between my thumb and forefinger. Did she think I knew any better than she? “Ask Polycaste what to do.”

“Has she even been married?”

“Yes.”

Chrysothemis continued to dither, driving me to distraction. “I thought marriage would be different. I thought he would love me, and there would be babies, but it isn’t that way at all.” I did not want to hear her complaints, to be reminded of what I had left behind with Neoptolemus. “It’s painful and embarrassing.”

It was time to change the subject, before I lost my patience with her altogether. “Father says Orestes is on his way back to Mycenae to claim the kingship.”

As she grasped the words, her eyes went wide. “He is? You mean he’s alive?” So no one had told her.

I sensed a thousand questions coming. “Yes,” I said, “but I know nothing else. Orestes wrote to Father. I didn’t see the letter.”

“He’ll surely write to us soon!” she exclaimed. “I have so much to tell him. Little Orestes, king of Mycenae! Oh, but he isn’t so little anymore, is he?” She laid aside her spindle, kicked off her shoes, and pulled her knees up to her chest. “He’s a great big man now.” I resigned myself to her enthusiastic chatter, hoping she did not spoil it by mentioning the murders or trial. “How splendid he’ll look sitting on the throne! Do you think he’ll wear purple, Hermione? I think he ought to wear purple. It’s such a marvelous color on him.”

 

*~*~*~*

Some evenings, I abandoned my women’s work, wrapped myself in a fur-lined robe, and huddled near the brazier to brood.

Coming home should have felt different, liberating and comfortable, yet it did not. Helen, who now managed the household, did not seem to need me. As the acknowledged heiress, Chrysothemis was now responsible for carrying out all the ritual duties. Between them, they made me feel redundant.

Dreary weather bred grim thoughts.

Footfalls outside my door and the turning of the latch drew my attention. I had not been expecting anyone at this late hour.

Helen dismissed my women with a curt gesture, banishing them to the bedchamber. In her hand she held a letter. “This arrived for you this afternoon. It was tucked among all the other correspondence, and your father’s secretary with his weak eyes didn’t notice until after supper.” She handed it to me. “It’s from Nemea.”

I knew no one in Nemea. Even the seal was unfamiliar; it depicted a lion resting before a mountain flanked by olive trees. “Do you know who this is from?” I asked.

“Iphinous tells me that is King Orestes’ new seal.” Helen claimed Thebe’s seat. “Why do you think I brought it to you myself?”

Did she mean to watch me read the letter, or to peruse it afterward? Orestes! Hearing her use his title drove home the reality that he was no longer a pariah or exiled prince. King Orestes Agamemnonides of Mycenae. It sounded so regal. Like Chrysothemis, I wondered what he would look like seated upon Agamemnon’s throne, cloaked in purple and gold, and grasping the royal scepter in his hand.

I slid a fingernail under the wax to break the seal and unfold the papyrus.

“Dearest Hermione,” he wrote, “please accept my condolences on your recent bereavement. How strange it is, writing to console you, when it has always been you lending me your comfort! I would have left you alone, to mourn and find consolation among your family and friends, but I did not wish you to be troubled by any lingering concerns about my trial, or any scabrous rumors you might hear.”

Orestes sounded as though his dead pedagogue was once again standing over his shoulder dictating how a proper prince should write.

“I will spare you the details about the trial, except to say it was a difficult ordeal, and that the double curses on our house are now broken. We are all free.” Bless him! I kissed the words on the papyrus. “I left Delphi a month ago. Since then, I have discovered that some rather vicious rumors have been circulating with regard to your late husband’s last hours there.”

Why did he have to spoil my joy by mentioning the matter? “You may have heard talk that Neoptolemus and I encountered each other at the god’s altar, that we quarreled over you, and that I killed him because he stole you from me.” My mouth fell open. I stared at the papyrus, poring over that passage two more times. Until that moment, it had never even occurred to me that Orestes and Neoptolemus might have met at Delphi.

“I assure you, the rumor is quite false. Neoptolemus and his Myrmidons arrived the very day of my trial. I did not witness the attack, or hear about the altercation until several days after. I cannot be certain, but I believe the rumor may have started in part because my Phocian guards left their posts and joined the mob in bludgeoning the intruders.”

Helen’s expectant gaze crawled over me. I did my best to shut out her presence, to smooth over my distress and keep reading. “These rumors have traveled with troubling haste. King Strophius has asked about the incident, as have others. Just this very evening, the lord of Nemea showed his tactlessness in asking whether you had prevailed upon me to kill Neoptolemus.”

Again, I had to pause and reread his words before continuing. “I can understand why others would slander me—I have become quite accustomed to their vile accusations and whispers—but there is no excuse for them to do likewise to you. You are blameless,” he wrote. “I defended your good name, but the sad truth is that people prefer to believe sordid falsehoods over dull facts.”

No wonder no one wanted to marry me. They all thought me a coldblooded Spartan whore, a murderous bitch, painting me in lurid strokes as another Clytaemnestra, another Helen.

“What’s wrong?” Helen asked.

“It’s nothing,” I answered unsteadily.

“Don’t lie to me, young lady. Your hands are shaking. Something he said upset you.”

I did not want to talk to her about it. “It is nothing.” Why could she not go away? “Let me finish reading.”

Turning back to the letter, I found my place. “I know the last thing you want is to revisit your husband’s death, and I apologize for upsetting you. That was not my intention,” Orestes said. “Your words comforted me in the darkness during my trial. I held them against my heart when the Erinyes came to judge me, and it was as though you were there beside me.” So he had gotten my letter in time for the trial. Thank the gods! I read down to his final lines. “For that, I shall always be your servant. Yours, as long as life endures. Orestes.”

“Orestes always seems to have this effect on you.” Helen observed.

“What do you want me to say?” I thrust the papyrus at her. “Here! Go ahead and read what the Nemeans are saying, how I wrote to my lunatic lover and begged him to murder my husband!” Enraged as much by her prying and unflappable calm as by the calumnies themselves, I crumpled the letter into a ball and hurled it at her. “Go ahead and show Father! Let him get it through his head that no one wants to marry me now!”

Indignant, Helen straightened in her chair. “Is that true, what they’re saying about you?”

“Pick it up and read it for yourself!”

She did just that, bending down to retrieve the wadded letter, smoothing it out over her knee. As she read, her mouth pursed into an ugly line. “Well, is it true, young lady?”

“Of course not!” How could she believe that rumor, when she had in her hand a letter from Orestes explicitly stating it was a lie? “What sort of conniving bitch do you think I am? I would never do such a thing.”

Slowly, Helen set the letter aside. “Now you know what it feels like to be slandered.”

“Is that all you can say?” I shouted. “Why should I be despised and slandered? What ill have I ever done to deserve that?”

Helen rose and crossed over to me. She grasped my chin between pincer fingers and forced me to look at her. “You have no choice,” she rebuked. “The world is what it is, and we mortals are nothing but the playthings of the gods. It’s obvious you’ve been sitting idle too long, because your delusions have gone to your head.” Releasing me, she left.

I nursed my resentment as my maids ventured back into the room. Just this once, why could she not have comforted me and lied to me, and told me that everything would be all right, the way a normal mother would have done? But she was a stranger, a cipher, and she understood nothing at all about me.

In the bedchamber, I huddled near the brazier to undress. Thebe lowered a linen nightgown over my head. Then I climbed into bed, sliding between the sheets while Monime blew out the lamp.

I contemplated the coals glowing in the brazier, seeking some semblance of peace without much success. Doubts swirled around me like the wind gusting through the leaves outside. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the positive things Orestes had said, only to realize my mother had taken the letter with her.

 

*~*~*~*

Menelaus came to see me early the next morning. “That’s enough of that.” He dragged the widow’s veil from my head and tossed the black linen to the floor. “You were married to that blasphemer for less than three months, and he didn’t deserve you.”

So my mother had run straight to him after last night’s argument. “You didn’t object when he abducted me.”

“What else was there to do?” he replied gruffly. “There’s nothing wrong with a man stealing a woman when it’s a legitimate abduction and there’s no harm done. Neoptolemus had a kingdom he won through his own prowess, an honorable name, and the wherewithal to defend what he stole.” My father huffed. “I had no idea he’d turn out to be such a colossal fool.”

“No harm?” I heard myself raising my voice. “He snatched me from a sacred altar! I had no idea who he was, or what he was going to do with me. I thought he was going to rape me.”

I should have shut my mouth, but now that the dam had broken I could not seem to stop; this outburst had been months in coming. “Stop lying to me. There aren’t going to be any more suitors. Or did you make some other arrangement that you forgot to tell me about? Did you negotiate with Odysseus over the latrine trench to marry me to Telemachus? Or did you—?”

“That’s enough!” Menelaus’s barrel chest heaved. When he opened his mouth to speak again, he made several abortive starts before he found the right words. “I had no idea he rough-handled you like that. He gave me his solemn word you were safe.”

“Bruised and terrified obviously doesn’t count,” I answered sullenly.

“I did what was best then,” he grumbled, “and will do what is best now.” He wagged a finger at me. “There will be no more moping and mourning. Take your ladies and go down to the agora. Buy whatever you fancy. Ruin me. Forget this nonsense about abductions and slanders. You are my daughter, Hermione, and the daughter of Menelaus doesn’t hide behind walls or veils on account of a few rumors. She holds up her head like a queen.”

 

*~*~*~*

“You must preside over the midwinter rites.” Aethiolas claimed a seat near the brazier, waving aside the mulled wine my maids brought. “You’re the only one who can do it.”

Aethiolas had always made a point not to pry into women’s business, so this was not something he would have said on his own. “Did Mother send you to talk to me?” I asked skeptically.

“She might have said something, yes.”

“Then let her lead the rites,” I retorted. “Is she not the queen?”

“And one day you will be queen!” Aethiolas rubbed his bearded jaw in frustration. “Chrysothemis is no good. More often than that, she forgets her place, and then the ritual has to start all over again.”

I twisted fleece between my fingers, pausing only to flick the spindle whorl. “I am a childless widow whose husband committed an unspeakable sacrilege. My being his wife has tainted me. I have no business blessing anyone.”

“Stop this self-pity!” he snapped. “Neoptolemus got what he deserved for his presumption. You knew nothing about it. You were miles away when it happened, fulfilling your duties to the gods.”

Distance and innocence were no assurance against the wrath of the gods. Iphigenia was proof enough of that. But Aethiolas would never understand my deep-rooted fears; he was not a woman, he had not known Iphigenia, and he not been at Mycenae when she was sacrificed. “Father never even came after me.”

Aethiolas hissed an expletive under his breath. “Is that it? You’re sore because Father didn’t start a war over you?” Eyes blazing, he leaned toward me, bracing a hand on his thigh. “Leave it in the past where it belongs. You’re home now. People want their high priestess back. They want you.”

Although the local women had flocked to me the other day in the agora, wanting to kiss my hands and receive my blessings, it had felt more like simple courtesy than a burning need to have me as their high priestess again. Sighing, I stopped the spindle’s rotation. “A true queen has to be a mother. I bled in Epirus. My womb could not nourish my husband’s seed.”

“Would you rather still be in Epirus, stuffed with that man’s seed? Thank the gods you weren’t cursed with bearing his sons!” Aethiolas shook his head, then he smiled. He saw my barrenness as a blessing? I had not considered that point of view before.

When he spoke again, his tone had softened. “I know a dozen excellent Spartan gentlemen who would die for the chance to court you.”

I wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss him, and push him away and cry, all at the same time. “You’re just saying that to be kind.”

He snorted in mock indignation. “Are you calling me a liar? They’re coming to Megapenthes’ wedding, and it isn’t simply to wish him well. Just think, we could have an old fashioned marriage contest.”

Aethiolas left me with a glow that lasted as long as it took my sister-in-law to drag her heels into my sitting room. “Aethiolas is giving up the kingship.” Her bottom lip quivered uncontrollably. “He’s giving up the kingship so you can be queen!” She broke down then, and bawled out the rest. “I tried, but everyone hates me, everyone hates me as priestess, and...”

I set aside my spinning to gather her into my arms, rocking her while trying to sort out my confusion. After my earlier conversation with Aethiolas, I believed he had done exactly as Chrysothemis said, but how could he have? What man in his right mind would refuse power and prestige for a woman’s sake?

Chrysothemis’s sobbing distracted me. “It’s not your fault.” I stroked her tumbled hair.

“Yes, it is!” she blubbered. “People don’t want me as a priestess. Aethiolas says I embarrass him!”

“That’s not true.” Had he truly said that? I waved my maids to the bathroom to bring water and fresh linens. “Hush, don’t cry.”

“I have every right to cry!” she wailed. “He hates me!”

Lying to her would accomplish nothing, but telling her the truth would be no easy task, either. “Chrysothemis, listen to me,” I began carefully. “Aethiolas wants you to be a silent, proper wife, and not bother him with your chatter.”

“He makes me nervous!” As I feared, she struck a hysteric note, her face burning scarlet and screwed up with frustration. “I try to be quiet, but then it’s too quiet. I try going to his athletic contests and taking an interest in his work, but he just shoos me away like a child.” She blew her nose into the linen Thebe handed her. “Isn’t there a spell or love potion or something to make him like me?”

“Ask Polycaste,” I answered.

“She hates me, too! I can’t ever do anything right in the sanctuary.”

Right now, my sister-in-law was making me hate her, too. Aethiolas had left me contemplating a return to the cult house, but Chrysothemis’s hysterics cinched the decision. Sparta had to have better than this empty-headed goose.

 

*~*~*~*

Chrysothemis loved taking part in the women’s rites, and naturally felt excluded when she was not invited to the cult house for my re-investiture, even when my mother explained the situation. “You will not like watching Hermione take back her estate as sacred heiress.”

Her tactless explanation sent my sister-in-law into hysterics again. Helen let her bawl. Perhaps she thought Chrysothemis would outgrow her childishness, if no one indulged her. If so, then my mother was wasting her time. Clytaemnestra had already tried toughening up her middle daughter. At twenty-six, Chrysothemis was far too set in her ways to change.

So I asked Erigone to sit with her that night, while reassuring her that they were both invited to the midwinter rites.

Consecrating a sacred heiress began with a ritual bath. I shivered despite the five braziers exuding their warmth through the small lustral chamber and the heated water the novice priestesses poured over my head and shoulders.

“Great Mother Goddess!” she cried. “Receive as high priestess and heiress this royal daughter of Sparta: Hermione, daughter of Helen, daughter of Leda. Let her keep the altars and the feast-days. Let her bless the sheaves in the fields and the grapes upon the vine. Let her bless the young and make the women fruitful. Let her do all these things in your service.”

For this part of the ritual, I had to walk naked to the altar and kneel shivering on the bare floor, my hair hanging limp and damp down my back. My mother stepped forward to sponsor me. She was dressed like a high priestess, wearing the moon-mask under her round headdress and coiling black ringlets, and her women had painted scarlet suns upon her cheeks.

“Great Mother Goddess!” she cried. “I am your servant Helen, daughter of Leda. I am the sacred queen of Sparta. Receive my daughter Hermione back into your service.” I shivered, as much from the cold as from the goddess’s awesome presence and the power my mother was channeling into her invocation. “Let her bless the sheaves in the fields and the grapes upon the vine. Let her bless the young and make the women fruitful. Let her do all these things to serve you.”

I clenched my jaw to try to suppress my chattering teeth, and stood up when Polycaste gave me the signal. I raised my arms to salute the goddess, keeping them aloft as another priestess smeared my breasts and belly with consecrated oil.

“Let Mother Dia breathe life upon her.” Helen wafted myrrh smoke from a clay incense burner over me. I choked back the impulse to cough. “Let her be filled with the holy essence.”

She replaced the incense with ochre paste, and began to mark the places the other priestess had already anointed. “Let her nipples give milk to nourish many children.” She ventured lower, to my navel. “Let her womb become a fertile field.” I dared not breathe as her fingers touched my skin, for it was not merely pigment mixed with cold goose fat she was painting onto my nipples and womb, but the goddess’s own blood which permeated my skin and made me glow from within.

As Helen anointed me, the priestesses began clapping their hands and chanting in unison.

Look upon her breasts!

They are white as cream.

Round with blessings for the people.

Look upon her nipples!

They are holy pomegranate seeds.

Sweet and fit for a king.

Look upon her womb!

She is the fertile earth, the sacred cave.

Life comes from her!

Life comes, with the Great Goddess’s blessing!

My arms started trembling from the strain of maintaining the votary’s stance. “Great Mother Goddess,” I called out, “I am Hermione, daughter of Helen, daughter of Leda. Let me bless the sheaves in the fields and the grapes upon the vine. Let me bless the young and make the women fruitful. Let me do all these things your service.”

Afterward, my handmaidens dressed me in a woolen gown and robe. A novice brought mulled wine to warm me.

Helen stayed close. “Did you feel the goddess’s touch during the ritual?”

“When you were painting the sacred signs on me,” I said.

She nodded slowly. “Then you know that returning to her service was the right thing to do. The goddess always lets her servants know when she approves.”

 

*~*~*~*

A week later, we returned to the cult house to celebrate the winter solstice. Noblewomen came with their daughters to celebrate with the queen and sacred heiress, while elsewhere in the town the common women doused their hearths, swept away the old ashes, and started new fires from brands lit here in the sanctuary. I helped bake and distribute goddess cakes and stayed near the hearth with my mother to bless the fire with my presence.

Once the last woman left with her brand, we shut the doors. Polycaste clapped her hands and marshaled us into line for the procession into the inner court. We carried torches as we went, and our shoes crunched over the gravel the novices had laid down so we would not slip on the frosty ground.

Stars glittered like silver spangles against the night sky. I glimpsed my breath turning to smoke. Once we reached our destination, a navel stone in the court’s very center, we gave our torches and wrappings to the novices, and linked hands to form a circle around the omphalos.

Polycaste started the chant. It was old Cretan. I knew but a few sacred words, and fragments of songs and spells, for it was no longer taught as it had been in the sanctuaries of the great Labyrinth of Knossos. Serpents understood the tongue, though, and the sacred bulls used in the bull-leaping. Sometimes I thought about what would happen when the women could no longer sing to the house snake hibernating under the omphalos to remind her that spring was coming, or urge her to carry our messages to the gods.

I remembered my promise to Chrysothemis. But Polycaste was not so eager to accommodate her. “You should concentrate on bearing your own children,” she told me, after we had danced the Serpent Dance and come back indoors.

“You say that as though I can simply go out, choose a man, and lie with him.” I let my gaze wander to the Cretan-style fresco splashed across the wall behind her; it depicted rows of brown-skinned young men with serpentine lovelocks and waspish waists adoring a priestess. It belonged to another time, when ordinary men could approach the goddess-on-earth and receive her favors.

Perhaps I should revive the old ways. Perhaps I should step down from my seat during the next revels, select the comeliest man, and let him serve me while the goddess inhabited my skin. Let my father fume and my mother tsk-tsk me for the impropriety. I was a high priestess, a sacred heiress, and descended from a long line of priestess-queens who had taken consorts and borne holy children as they pleased.

Yielding to a stranger of my choosing, a man sent by the gods, could not be any worse than submitting to a husband I had despised. “Sparta needs daughters to continue the bloodline,” I said.

“And you’re hoping Chrysothemis will bear them?”

I dared not confide my rebellious thoughts to her; she would only shake her head and urge me to wait for a true king. “Chrysothemis needs to get my brother into her bed first.” I felt self-conscious having this conversation with my sister-in-law standing less than twenty feet away, but it had to be done. “I know there are things you can do to help her attract him and conceive.”

“Yes,” Polycaste admitted, “but she has to be bright enough to use the gifts she’s given, or nothing will happen.”

I omitted that caustic remark when telling my sister-in-law that the high priestess had agreed to help. I also accompanied her to the cult house, to ease her apprehensions.

Polycaste met us on the portico. Mellow lamplight beckoned to us through the open doors. “Princess Chrysothemis,” she announced, “you are entering Dia’s sacred domain. The Great Mother Goddess is all things to all women. She is the fertile womb from which men spring, and the tomb to which they return. Enter here, and you will do her bidding.”

Her ritual greeting sounded too much like a reprimand. Chrysothemis hung her head. I had to urge her forward.

“Let me enter,” Chrysothemis said. “Let Mother Dia help me please my husband and bear him a child.”

Standing a step above, Polycaste loomed over her like the goddess on her plinth. “And will you submit to her in mind and body?” she asked sternly.

“I will do anything you ask.”

I empathized with my sister-in-law and cousin, a demoted high priestess and heiress, and a barren, unloved wife forced to grovel in the freezing cold. Just coming here took immense courage on her part. I climbed another step to stand beside her. “I, Hermione, daughter of Helen, sponsor this woman Chrysothemis. She is sincere in her desire to become a good wife and mother. Let her enter the sanctuary and receive the blessings of Mother Dia.”

Polycaste’s women whisked Chrysothemis into the lustral chamber to purify her. A novice brought mulled wine to banish the chill while I waited with my handmaidens in the inner sanctuary.

Chrysothemis returned naked and shivering, her wet hair wrapped in a cloth. An older priestess urged her toward a cot covered in sheepskins laid out before the altar. To her credit, she did not complain about the cold. She did not even resist as the priestesses began crowding in around her like vultures. Her white limbs vanished amid their bodies as they began to draw sacred signs on her womb.

When they finished, they covered her and told her lie to quiet while the design set, but she drew aside the blanket to show me what they had done. I was astonished, having never seen the like. A tree of life spread its limbs across her womb, and a serpent coiled where the tree’s roots met her shaven vulva; it was an amulet painted with henna into the skin itself.

“What do you think?” Chrysothemis asked, uncertain.

“Aethiolas won’t be able to ignore you now,” I said.

Mortified, she pulled the covers over her. “He’ll be aghast.” She flung an arm over her eyes. “He’ll laugh. What have I done?”

“Stop being such a worrywart!” I exclaimed. Maybe it was time to get her drunk and let Dionysus remove her inhibitions. “Aethiolas isn’t going to laugh, not when you show him the sacred signs and let him know you mean it.”

 

*~*~*~*

Not long after, Helen returned the crumpled letter to me. “I took this with me by mistake. Have you written to him yet?”

Her query piqued my suspicions. “No,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

“Phaidon is leaving shortly.” She named Sparta’s new ambassador to Mycenae. “Your father suggested that Orestes might like to hear from you. Your cousin is a king now, and it is not polite to ignore a king’s letter.”

Helen’s explanation rang hollow, but with so little time left to compose a reply, mulling over her duplicity would have to wait. Once she withdrew, I called for writing materials and sat down by lamplight to try to find something suitable to say to a king.

“To Orestes Agamemnonides, king of Mycenae. Thank you for your letter and good wishes. I am relieved to hear that you have been acquitted and reclaimed your rightful station.” A groan escaped me, rereading my stilted words. “Thank you also for dispelling any rumors surrounding the death of my late husband. No such tales have yet reached Sparta, but hearing them from you first softens the blow.” Nothing could have alleviated my dismay. “It never occurred to me that you might have been involved.

“I hope you find joy in your homecoming, and that Elektra has not completely taken over the palace. Chrysothemis and Erigone are both doing well. Chrysothemis longs for a child. Erigone has made a few friends, and sometimes we catch her casting glances at the handsome young men around court. I have become very fond of her.”

By now, the words felt like empty courtesies, and it simply would not do. After all this time, I had to be straightforward with him. “You must forgive me for curtailing the family gossip, but my heart is not in it, and writing to a king is not like writing to a dear cousin.” As I caught my self-control starting to unravel, I discovered a strange solace in the correctness of my grammar. “I do not wish to burden you with my troubles, not only because you have so many more cares now, but also because you have already endured enough suffering. I do not think you would understand a woman’s concerns, or worse, it would embarrass you, and you would shake your head at the impropriety.

“Spring cannot come quickly enough for me. I have never liked winter. I feel the cold creeping into my bones, and the gray winter skies reflect what I feel inside. When it rains, it seems the gods are weeping with me.”

Had I gone mad? I wished I had taken the time to inscribe a wax draft, to be able to erase that last paragraph. Curse my mother for having waited until the last minute to remind me to write! Now it was too late to begin again. “Do not mistake my tone for a widow’s mourning. I grieve because there are no children, and perhaps never will be. I should have liked at least one child to love, a son or daughter to look after me in my old age, and to remember me after I die.

“You must forgive me for spilling my thoughts like this.” I had gone too far. “Send me news to brighten my days. Let me hear all about your nieces and nephews. I want to hear about the servants we knew, and how they are doing. Always, your loving cousin, Hermione.”

I blew on the ink to help it dry faster, folded the letter, and sealed it. Perhaps it was a mistake, confiding such thoughts in him like when he had no time for my troubles. All I knew was what my heart told me to write.

 

*~*~*~*

The early spring deluge battering against my shutters could not dampen my sister-in-law’s effervescence as she danced into the sitting room.

Chrysothemis flung her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. She should have been lying down, sick as she had been the last few days. “Hermione! I have to tell you the good news. I think I might be—you know!” She squealed with girlish delight.

Monime and Thebe beamed congratulatory smiles at her. So she was with child. I felt a sharp stab of jealousy. “Does Aethiolas know?” I asked.

“I’m going to go tell him right now.” Flashing me a naughty smile, Chrysothemis bent to my ear and whispered. “Did you know he was so excited when he saw me shaven and painted down there that he couldn’t keep his hands off me?”

She kissed me again and darted away, leaving me numb and bereft. I should have been elated. Instead, I bit down on my knuckles to stifle the grief of an uncontrollable mother-hunger.

I wrestled with my tears, but they fell, anyway, splotching the new wool cloth stretched across my loom. This would not do, not at all. It must be the gray weather working on my spirits. After all, I was still young enough to marry and bear children, and this news was a blessing. A child would bring my brother and his wife together. Eleuthia had granted Chrysothemis a precious gift. There was no reason to think the goddess might not also be smiling upon me, to let me share in it.