by Laura Gill
Wordeia presented her to me. “This is Sinope, your maid.” My what? A royal woman’s handmaidens were supposed to be wellborn and pretty, and this girl was anything but. My aunt kept speaking. “She was born here in the Larissa—her mother is Xanthippe the mistress-steward of the laundresses—and she knows discretion. She also knows how to attend a lady’s wardrobe and dress hair, thanks to the instruction of your mother’s tiring woman. At night, she will guard your sleep and your maidenhead by remaining here with you in your chamber.” Wordeia nodded toward the floor. “During the day, wherever you go, she goes also. As a princess of Argos, your reputation must be beyond reproach.”
“But you don’t have a maid,” I argued. A laundress’s daughter! Sinope looked like she had nasty breath.
Wordeia frowned. “I most certainly do, young lady. Alkestis is in my chamber unpacking my belongings. As to going about the citadel on my own, I am a middle-aged widow, not a royal maiden anticipating making an important marriage when she comes of age. Do you object to having Sinope serve you?” Her tone implied that my objections made no difference.
What could I say? That she was ugly? Lowborn? Heat rose to my cheeks in lieu of the words that froze on my tongue. Sinope herself stood quietly in the doorway, hands clasped behind her back, and awaiting instruction. Her face was unreadable. “I thought...”
“That she would be older? Of noble birth?” Wordeia supplied possibilities. “Sinope is thirteen years old. She is obedient, and knows when to keep her mouth and her legs shut.” Seeing I did not comprehend that last remark, my aunt explained further, “You do not want a maid who is too pretty or gravitates too much toward the men. Then she will cause trouble and become a burden. As for her commoner birth, you are not ready to oversee the kind of wellborn ladies-in-waiting your mother had. Queens have certain responsibilities toward them and their daughters that you are far too young to undertake.”
Sinope did not speak unless addressed, and there was nothing I wished to say to her. When Wordeia said that the girl would accompany me everywhere and attend to my every need, my aunt nevertheless neglected to warn me that she would also expect to bathe me and watch me eat. Cyrene had done those things, too, but she had been the grandmotherly sort, comfortable and kindly, who talked as often as she pleased and filled the silence with stories and country songs, whereas Sinope was ugly and strange.
As for the new apartment, it might have been an elevation in status, larger and grander than the nursery, but it was not home.
Why did Sinope have to sleep wrapped in fleeces on my floor? She snored, passed gas, and sometimes mumbled during the night. I feared she might hold a pillow against my face to smother me, though I had no rational explanation as to why she might do that. I could not read her, whether she was kindhearted or indifferent, or even secretly despised me for being a princess while she was a laundress’s daughter. I constantly felt at a loss around her, as if there was something I should say or do but kept forgetting.
*~*~*~*
Wordeia’s name-day gifts to me were practical things: a stylus, wooden diptych, and bronze needles for embroidery, though she had not yet taught me the basics of needlework. She gave me no jewelry, no playthings. “Your grandmother never doted on me,” she said, noticing my discomfiture over brand-new woolen stockings. “So do not expect to be coddled with trinkets. As my mother once said, boys are for indulging, and daughters are for instruction.”
“Is that why Father never sends for me?”
“Your father is a busy man.” We were in her chamber, where, on account of the warm spring weather, her woman Alkestis had flung open the shutters to admit air and light. She sat in the sunlight, embroidering spirals onto a band to be stitched on a dress. Beside her sat an array of finely spun woolen threads arranged in a box of fragrant cedar. “As king, he has many cares: his petitioners, his followers, his many estates, and his rivals in Tiryns.”
I checked the thread I spun between my fingers. My aunt would have me fix the unevenness afterward; meanwhile, she told me to practice maintaining the rhythm of spinning. “Is his rival Uncle Proitus?” At the mention of his name, Wordeia made a noise that passed for yes. “Why do he and Father fight?”
“Because Proitus is sly and greedy.” Wordeia’s needle flashed in the sunlight. “They are twin brothers, he and your father. Acrisius was the firstborn by several minutes. I know, because I was there, attending your grandmother. As the elder, Acrisius would have inherited all of the Argive territories, everything you can see from the palace mount. Proitus could not accept that.” Wordeia never missed a stitch. “Your grandfather divided the kingdom for his sake, so he might make something of himself and reconcile with Acrisius.
“Proitus rules competently in Tiryns, I will grant him that, but he works constantly to undermine your father, employing spies here in the palace and brutes in the field to bully your father’s tenants. While your mother lived, Proitus ceaselessly wooed her, first with sweet words and gifts, and when she rebuffed him, he disparaged her reputation with his crude remarks.” Wordeia paused before returning to her needlework. “Proitus is not an uncle who will dandle you on his knee and spoil you with presents. He has daughters already.”
My fingers had stopped working. No one had ever told me these things. Cyrene only said that Proitus disliked Father and wanted his throne for jealousy’s sake, not that he was such a bad man. “No sons?”
“No, thanks be to blessed Lady Eleuthia. But he has three girls, two of marriageable age. Such wretched creatures! Ill-bred, haughty girls, allowed to serve as priestesses of Hera, which is only the prerogative of married women. He spoils them too much.” Shaking her head, Wordeia softly tsk-tsked under her breath. “You should be glad your father is so strict, Danaë. Strictness is a sign of a parent’s esteem, though you may not think so now. In this way you will become pious, gracious, and industrious, a credit to your father’s house.”
*~*~*~*
That summer, the second since Mother’s death, Father sent for me. Wordeia made me bathe thoroughly, inspecting under my fingernails and behind my ears until she was satisfied with my cleanliness. Sinope arranged my hair in plaits, with elegant pin curls hanging over the ears and looping across the forehead, the way the court ladies wore their hair, while Aunt Wordeia selected for me the pretty yellow blouse and skirt upon whose hem I had practiced straight stitching. “Remember your manners,” she admonished, though she need not have.
I had not visited Father in his apartment before; he had always come to Mother and me and Eurymedon in the garden court or in her apartment. His chambers exuded a masculine air. Though the furnishings showed a taste for ebony and ivory and other rich materials, everything smelled of leather, horseflesh, sandalwood. The gleam of obsidian eyes from the lion’s head whose pelt occupied a nearby folding chair made me jump.
“Ah, I jumped, too, when I encountered that beast in the hills above Lerna.” Father occupied another chair. He wore a plain scarlet tunic and a golden armband that glinted as he braced his left hand upon his knee. His other hand, he extended to me. “Come, Daughter, and bid your father good-day.”
In approaching him now, I could not help but remember how I used to bound laughing and squirming into his arms. Was it my stepmother’s unexpected presence that inhibited my movements? Eurydike stood behind his chair, bedecked in jewels, plump and completely self-satisfied.
Even had we been alone, even had he laughed as he used to, I could not have thrown my arms around him with the same enthusiastic abandon. Not after enduring that sinister night of overheard expletives and beatings and murder. Not after mistaking the suddenly-graying, heavy browed, stoop-shouldered man seen in the shadows of the garden court portico for the dread Lord of the Underworld, Hades.
And yet, what I could I do when he enfolded me with his right arm but stand there, wooden but obedient? “I hear good things of you, Daughter,” he rumbled. “You are minding all your lessons? A princess of Argos must be pious and industrious. Are you so?�
�
My throat was dry. Nevertheless, I found enough courage to swallow. “Yes, Father,” I answered, while trying to remember Wordeia’s assertion that his admonishing words, his gruff mannerisms, and his strictness meant that he loved me.
CHAPTER FOUR
Eurydike had returned to Father’s favor because she was carrying a baby again. Upon hearing the news, the ladies of the court, whose company I was encouraged to keep, shook their heads in bemused confusion and made comments I did not fully comprehend. Wordeia said only, “The king and queen do their sacred duty. It is not a matter for speculation or jest.”
Laughing, the ladies gently ribbed my aunt for her severity; Wordeia accepted their lighthearted remarks in stride. “A wellborn lady of Argos must be gracious, even when she does not approve of the jests,” she told me later, in private.
To guarantee the health of this new child, Eurydike undertook rites of propitiation to Eleuthia. When Wordeia as Father’s sister accompanied my stepmother to the cult house, and despite Eurydike’s vehement objections, I went along as a silent observer. “This is part of the female mysteries,” Wordeia explained. “You are not too young to learn.”
On the morning of the ritual, my stepmother appeared with an odd, greenish pallor and had to scramble for an inconspicuous corner in which to heave and retch. Wordeia had told me that women carrying babies sometimes got sick, but had not gone further and explained why it was all right for a sick woman to go to the cult house to reverence the goddess. If Eurydike were to vomit on the image of Eleuthia, that would be a bad omen.
We followed my stepmother and her Spartan attendants at a discreet distance. Lady Chrysopeleia, flashing me a pert grin, offered to let me hold the alabastron of perfumed unguent that Eurydike had earlier and rather inelegantly thrust into her hands. “To show the goddess that you don’t approach her house empty-handed,” she murmured.
I demurred. “What will you carry?”
“I have a little something of my own.” Chrysopeleia smoothed her white hand with its elegant, tapering fingers over her belly.
“Oh!” I gasped. In her many-flounced skirt, she was not showing. “Does it hurt?” Chrysopeleia appeared not at all green-sick.
“No. Lady Eleuthia has been very kind to me.” Chrysopeleia favored me with a softer, more luminous smile. With her ebony-black hair wound in fashionable ringlets and her refined manners, she reminded me sometimes of Mother, though she stood taller and owned a mischievous sense of humor. “Shall we go, Princess?”
Eurydike had already reached the next landing, when she should have gone slowly and gracefully, allowing everyone to stay together. “The Spartan broodmare does not yet know about this child,” Chrysopeleia confided, “or she would never have let me accompany her.” She hummed a contemptuous note in her throat. “Goddess forbid that anyone but her should receive Eleuthia’s blessings. But you must say nothing of this to her, if she should later happen to inquire why I am glowing so this morning.”
She truly did appear very fresh and lovely. I always thought Father should have married her instead, had she not already been married. Chrysopeleia would have made a beautiful queen, and a much nicer stepmother.
“She never asks me anything,” I answered quietly, “but I promise, anyway.” Then Wordeia, two strides ahead, turned her head and shushed me.
The cult house of the Larissa was a squat, colorful building hunched in a corner of the lower citadel. Pillars zigzagged with scarlet and yellow supported a wide aithousa in the shadows of which yawned a doorway offering entry to the mysteries beyond. High Priestess Kitane, standing half a head taller in her spangled polos headdress, and her wrinkled dugs sagging from her open bodice, stood sentry before the portal. Eurydike halted on the stuccoed paving below the steps, and we all paused behind her to await Kitane’s pleasure.
Of course the high priestess would admit her, on account of the royal child in her belly, but according to court gossip Kitane held my stepmother in low regard. If she wished, Kitane could make Eurydike wait for hours in the hot midmorning sun, and claim that the goddess required that show of devotion; we would have to wait alongside her, and share her ordeal, or else risk incurring Father’s displeasure.
Kitane’s expression, wrinkles masked by her chalk-white paint, was inscrutable. I hoped she let Eurydike inside, and soon, because I did not want to have to stand there in the blistering heat of the forecourt. Nor did I want Wordeia and the ladies to have to stand, either. Eleuthia could not be so mean-spirited as to demand that.
“What are these offerings you bring, queen of Argos?” Kitane began with a ritual question. Priestesses always did, when supplicants approached them with gifts for the gods.
Eurydike extended her arms and bent the knee in reverence; she was clunky and without grace. “High Priestess, I bring thanksgiving offerings of wine and honey, milk and perfumed oil for the Lady Eleuthia for the benevolence she has shown.”
“Are you pure of body and intention, queen of Argos?” Kitane asked. “Have you cleansed yourself?” Eurydike flushed pomegranate red. “You are entering the domain of the goddesses, where no woman or thing may enter that is unclean. I say this to you, queen of Argos, and to every woman in your train, to give you ample warning.” Kitane’s dark eyes gleamed with feral delight, delivering that lecture. And the Spartan woman was dirty and lowborn. “To violate the purity of their sanctuary will anger them, and incite their wrath. Thus, I ask again, queen of Argos, do you and your attendants come here pure in both body and intention?”
Not a one among the women breathed a word, not even a gasp, though I saw many of them stiffening at the suggestion that they were anything but physically and ritually clean. Even I, unable to approach the goddess due to my youth, cringed. Had I washed enough behind my ears that morning? I glanced down at my fingernails, worried over the crescent of dirt embedded under one. When had that happened?
I could not see Eurydike’s face, but her arms trembled where she continued to reverence the goddesses in the person of my great-aunt. And her voice, when she spoke, quavered. “I swear by my foremothers, I approach the Lady Eleuthia and all the holy spirits dwelling within the divine house in all purity.”
Kitane said nothing, just stood there on the top step of the aithousa long enough to make us all squirm. Finally, she said, “Remove your shoes, queen of Argos, and attendants. You will, all of you, approach the goddess on the bare feet with which you were born.”
I waited till Chrysopeleia doffed her sandals to return the alabastron with the scented oil. She thanked me before joining the other ladies following the queen into the sanctuary. Kitane stood aside, ushering them in with admonitions to treat the goddess with all due respect. At the last, just before she brought up the rear, she addressed me from the high porch. “Danaë, dear daughter, you and your maidservant may rest here in the shade of the aithousa, but remember where you are and that the holy daimons of this sanctuary have a hundred eyes and ears.” She raised a cautionary finger to emphasize her next words. “Do not cross the threshold or attempt to eavesdrop on the rites. Any impiety will be most severely punished.”
Sinope removed her shoes, too, and kept to the lowermost step, while I climbed to the porch to enjoy the relative cool of the space between the pillars. When Kitane mentioned eavesdropping, did she mean actively listening at the closed door, or passively paying attention to whatever sounds happened to escape the cult house? For I could hear the cadence of the women’s chants from within, even though the words were garbled, indistinct. I made out the name of Eleuthia. Sinope heard, too, because she, superstitious peasant she was, clapped both hands over her ears.
“It’s not like you can understand anything,” I told her. She saw my mouth move, and the exasperation of my gestures, and shook her head. When I reached womanhood, and gained the right to approach the goddesses of Argos and receive the female mysteries, I resolved to leave Sinope behind. Simpleton that she was, she would probably gawk at everything and do or say something to
offend the immortals.
During the rites, the door opened a crack and, to my surprise, Chrysopeleia slipped outside. On dainty feet, her toenails red with henna, she padded down the aithousa and settled like a maiden on the ground beside me. “Do not worry,” she told me. “Kitane and your stepmother will not mind my withdrawing.”
“Will my father mind? He said all the ladies of the court must accompany the queen.”
“I have laid the offering before Eleuthia and said the prayers. My part is done.” Chrysopeleia fanned herself with her hand. Beads of sweat clung to her skin, plastering her pin curls against her white forehead. “Perhaps I should not say this, but your father does not care much for Eurydike’s health except where the child is concerned.”
Chrysopeleia’s husband was one of the royal companions, and, from the few times I had been permitted to watch the courtiers in the megaron, Father regularly complimented the companions on their wives and engaged the women in genteel teasing, taking a strange pleasure in Eurydike’s jealousy and discomfort. “Father won’t be happy if it’s a boy and it dies again,” I said.
“But that’s what sometimes occurs, Danaë,” Chrysopeleia replied. “Women lose many more children than the goddesses let them keep. Miscarriages and stillbirths are the blood-red sacrifices they demand in exchange for the children that live.” Her feather-thin brows drew together in a delicate frown. “Hmm, that is a mystery I should not have shared with you, perhaps. You should not be afraid of childbirth.”
A squeal from within reached us. Chrysopeleia laughed softly. “Like the squealing of a hog. I should not mock your stepmother, though. Those cries invoke the blessings of Lady Eleuthia. Your stepmother will be beating her breasts to show the goddess how large and suitable they are for suckling a child. Not that she will nurse an infant. Your father already has your aunt searching for a suitable wet nurse.”
