Danae

by Laura Gill

  Sostrate cut me short with a gesture. “We’re not here under the auspices of Zeus, but by the command and under the protection of our goddess, Potnia Theron.” She crooked a lopsided smile that revealed a broken front tooth, and thrust her chin toward my private altar. “Show us the goddesses you keep.”

  I was not accustomed to strangers handling my idols, and felt certain that Father Zeus, the Two Ladies, and all the other immortals took exception to the casualness with which the Arcadian women examined them. Sostrate and her women were no priestesses. Genuine priestesses would have raised their hands to their foreheads and laid out offerings of milk, honey, and wine; they would have addressed the idols with the proper respect. Wordeia did not seem to notice their impiety, much less try to intervene, not even when Sostrate shifted aside the familiar idols to place a statuette of her own goddess there. “This,” she announced, “is Potnia Theron.”

  “What are you doing?” I exclaimed. Zeus and the Two Ladies would be outraged at the sacrilege, and I knew if I did not protest I would take the blame and the inevitable punishment, probably a lightning bolt from heaven or a giant serpent intent on devouring me. I might even be turned into a spider, like Arachne.

  “The Women of the Mountain recognize no other deity but the Mistress,” Sostrate answered. Wordeia looked scandalized, but said nothing. “You must become acquainted with her, so that she will protect you on the journey to her sanctuary, and allow you to enter unmolested.” The Hunter flicked a dismissive wrist at the clutter of other deities. “Forget these. They are the gods of Argos, lesser beings, subordinate to their primeval Mother. Come, receive her.”

  She produced a terracotta figure on a loop of sinew, which she knotted around my neck. The goddess she had placed on my altar was nothing like the familiar, painted figures of Queen Hera and Lady Athena that I loved, but as strange and feral as the Women themselves. She had wings outstretched like those of an eagle in flight, and clawed feet gripped the two lions on whose backs she stood. She exuded a simultaneously forbidding and compelling air. Potnia Theron. I did not know that name. What was this monstrous deity who demanded my lifelong service?

  “Why does she look like that?” I asked haltingly. “So frightening and ugly.” The idol’s deep-set eyes glittered with chips of obsidian, like Sostrate’s raven, and her gaze seemed to follow me everywhere. Why did Zeus or the Two Ladies not blast her for usurping their place of honor? Perhaps she, like the women who served her, was powerful. “Is she a demon?”

  The women passed bemused looks among themselves. “She is the Mistress of the Animals, the Mother of the Mountains, the Womb and the Creator, and the Receiver of the Dead.” Sostrate’s raven nodded with its mistress. “She is the source of all. Whatever other gods that exist spring from her womb and suckle at her breast. You are ignorant, filled with the lies men tell about their mothers, but we will instruct you.”

  I did not necessarily want to learn anything from them. The whole episode, from the savage appearance of the women to the demon figure they placed upon my altar to the weight of that goddess’s visage hanging from my neck, was fraught with an air of unreality.

  From that moment on, one or more of the Arcadian women constantly chaperoned me, sleeping in my chamber, accompanying me to the privy, and asking questions, too many questions. They bade me undress so they might examine me for defects or signs of illness, and the woman called Thettale even commanded me to lie on my back so she could probe the secret place between my thighs. What was this? Nobody ever touched me there.

  “If you’re to be consecrated as a virgin priestess,” Thettale explained, “then we must make certain you enter the sanctuary as a virgin.”

  Pursing my lips, shutting my eyes against the embarrassment and discomfort, I bravely tried to suppress any tears. Her fingers stretched and burned inside my thighs; that was the gods showing their displeasure.

  Thettale’s pronouncement to the other women that I was an untouched maiden and therefore suitable for the goddess’s service did nothing to soothe my hurt feelings when I could not comprehend why the examination was even necessary. Of course I was a maiden. I was not married. Wordeia had cautioned me long ago that only my wedded husband would have cause to touch me there. “Princesses are not beasts of the field to rut as they please,” she stated.

  A hot bath and a few hours plying my spindle in the inner court diminished the sting of my humiliation, but not entirely. Wordeia excluded the court ladies from the garden, that I could not find comfort among them or escape my chaperones.

  “You like the shade of the trees?” Sostrate asked. My lack of response did not deter her. “Many trees grow inside the sanctuary temenos. Cypress and oak, olive and fig. We don’t keep our women shuttered indoors as the men do here.”

  Gods, would she never leave me be? I could not sleep at night for the women’s presence in my bedchamber, and for the winged demon watching my every move from the altar. If I had possessed the courage, I would have removed the unwanted amulet at night, or pretended to lose it. I dared only mouth prayers to Zeus, the Two Ladies, and Lady Artemis in the darkness, so that they would not destroy me for such spinelessness.

  I hunched over my spinning, drawing out the translucent white thread, and pretended to ignore Sostrate.

  Yet she, as was becoming increasingly apparent, saw right through me. “Listen and answer when you’re asked, girl, so we don’t have to repeat ourselves. The high priestess won’t be pleased by unruliness,” she barked. “What else can you do, besides spin and sew like a typical woman? Can you milk a goat? Have you ever helped with the olive harvest? Have you ever ground corn into flour or made goat’s cheese?”

  What ridiculous questions were those? “The servants do those things,” I muttered.

  “Louder!” Sostrate snapped. I half-expected the raven on her head to snap its beak at me. “A Woman of the Mountain doesn’t whisper and mumble like some cowed slave. She speaks clearly, with purpose.”

  I lost my temper then. “I do not do that work!” I shot back, loudly enough for my voice to reverberate around the court. “I am a princess of Argos. I spin, I weave, I honor the gods and goddesses of Argos, not some foreign demon thrust on me by Arcadian savages. I am obedient to my father, and I—”

  Reaching over, Sostrate cuffed my ear. “Not so obedient that you can’t hold your tongue, girl!” Wordeia said nothing. “I asked you a question. Now I want a proper response, without your thankless grousing. What tasks can you do, besides spin and weave? Any invalid can do that. We want to know if you’re going to be useful.”

  Tears pricked my eyes. “I hate you!”

  Sostrate tugged my earlobe. “Go ahead and hate me.” Then she twisted, so my whole ear rather than merely the shell throbbed painfully. “Now stop your sniveling and answer the question. Are you useful?”

  “Let me go!”

  Wordeia started, “Lady Sostrate, perhaps you should...” Yet she hesitated, and let drop her burgeoning protest.

  Sostrate released my ear, but did not relent in her questioning. “If you expect to eat any supper tonight, you’ll do as you’re told.”

  “Go away, you peasant!” No one dared speak to me this way, least of all some Arcadian peasant woman who smelled like rancid fleece!

  To my surprise, another of the Arcadians, the one who was not a Hunter, interjected, “Your kinswoman says you can do signs and figures. That is useful.” Ignoring Sostrate’s pointed glare, she courteously took my hand in hers so I could mark the difference between my white, unblemished skin and hers, which was rough and brown with calluses. “This is the hand of a Woman of the Mountain. Even Phileia, our high priestess, has such hands, because she’s wise in many things. She can shake down ripe olives, grind paste, and turn the press to extract the precious oil. She can distill wild-growing herbs into scents for the goddess as easily as she can make poultices and potions to cure sickness, and she can just as easily shear a ewe as card and spin the fleece into a fine thread to make garments.
That’s what Sostrate wants to know, whether you can do the same, or whether you must be taught what most girls your age already know.”

  Then why had Sostrate not softened her tone and said so? “I know a little about dyestuffs,” I confessed, “but very little about herbs. Aunt Wordeia says I am too young to learn about their secret properties.”

  Sostrate demonstrated how unimpressed she was with a derisive snort. “Is that all? Can you bind wounds or make a fire from sticks and shavings? Do you know what spells to chant over the sick?” she challenged. “Can you banish evil spirits from a dwelling? Don’t shake your head, Rhona. The girl must answer.”

  The Gleaner woman released my hand, but remained beside me, and prompted me with a subtle touch on the elbow.

  “I know how to use honey and clay and hot water to treat scratches and scrapes,” I said. “I have learned spells, too, but you would not approve of them because they are prayers to Lady Artemis and Lord Apollo the Healer, and the only god you recognize is that demon you set up in my chamber.” I could not resist jibing Sostrate with that, and with one final comment. “If I could banish an evil spirit, then I would banish you.”

  The whites of Sostrate’s bulging eyes contrasted sharply with the black of her headdress. She raised her hand to strike me across the face, and would have knocked me flat to the ground had Rhona not interposed herself. “She has spirit. It’d be far worse if she didn’t.”

  Rhona invited me to sit down with her in the place where the court ladies usually sat. Like the Hunter, she was a middle-aged woman with graying hair, but she wore hers in a severe bun. When she spoke again, she was stern, scolding. “Now, Danaë, you mustn’t speak to us that way, and you mustn’t disrespect Potnia Theron the Mistress as you’ve done.

  “You consider us Arcadian savages rather than priestesses, I know, but we’re women of the primeval earth, and our goddess is terrible and beautiful and awesome.” She took my hand, held it. “Dwelling here shut up in this palace, you haven’t learned how powerful the Mistress is. You know only what the men of Argos want you to know, that the goddesses are beneath Zeus, subordinate to him, as women are bound as chattel to men. But that’s not so.” Her voice was gentle, persuasive, and the hand clasping mine offered comfort. “Potnia Theron is far older than he. She is Rhea, his mother, and Demeter whose breath makes living things grow, and Hera the matron, and Artemis the Mistress of the Beasts and Winds. She is stern Athena with her spear and distaff, and dread Persephone who receives the dead, and Hekate who knows the secret means of magic. You see, the Mistress embodies all goddesses, and all women.”

  Despite myself, I was starting to like the thought of an all-powerful goddess. No! Surely a sacrilegious notion. “Then why does she have wings and claws?”

  Rhona’s smile brightened her entire face. “Because the women she represents are so much fiercer and stronger than they appear. Who else bleeds each month without dying? Who else will fight tooth and claw to preserve her child’s life? Women create life in blood and pain. They nourish and nurture. And you will see, if Sostrate is kind enough to point out on the journey to the sanctuary, how among many animals in the wilderness the female is often larger and stronger than the male. Mortal men may compare themselves to lions, but what lazy creatures lions are when the lionesses do all the hunting!” Her laughter filled the court.

  The women’s presence in the Larissa caused a stir. They were as out of place as a bird underwater, drawing strange and often hostile glances, and as the huntress Thettale told me, there was no reason for them to linger. “There are men here who would like to do us harm. The only safety is in the wilderness and the sanctuary.”

  I did not see it that way. The wilderness meant peril and death, outlaws and lions and dreadful maenads. “But you have guest-right,” I argued. “No one can harm you while you are under Father’s protection.” And the women struck me as the kind who would not let any man hurt them. Father would never dare shout at or threaten a woman like Sostrate; I imagined her boxing his ear, and him unable to retaliate.

  “You think a few mumblings from a mortal man carry that much weight? What does a man’s promise to a woman mean when she doesn’t behave like a demure and submissive woman the way he expects?” Thettale wore eagle feathers knotted in her many plaits; I could not see her in the bangles and ribbons the court ladies liked. “No, we will go tomorrow before first light, before the situation becomes worse.” Then she looked at me. “Go to sleep early, girl. You’ll need all your strength for the journey.”

  *~*~*~*

  The women brought me clothes for traveling: rough homespun that felt stiff and scratchy, and reeked of sour sweat. They even provided me with second-hand leather sandals, which stank even worse than the clothes, and did not fit. Rhona finally asked Wordeia if I had suitable shoes, at which Sostrate complained, “She must bring nothing from her old life.”

  Rhona remained firm. “You expect her to be able to walk in those cast-offs? Let her wear something more comfortable, at least till we reach the boundary stones.”

  I had a pack of waterproofed goatskin to carry a sleeping blanket and the hand-me-down underclothes the women gave me. “Do I get a weapon?” I asked.

  Sostrate glowered, “Do you know how to use one? You’re too small for a sword or spear. Can you use a dagger, then? A bow and arrows? Then what good would such things do you? We will do the protecting.”

  Her assertion offered little reassurance. We would be killed our first day out, devoured by lions, murdered by outlaws, ripped limb from limb by the madwomen of Dionysus. I bit my lower lip and struggled not to cry.

  A waterskin and walking stick joined the tally of my new possessions. The latter I could not comprehend, for when noblewomen such as myself traveled long distances we always went by litter or covered mule cart. I must have believed there would be a similar conveyance for me, even when we descended from the Larissa, marching down the hill of Argos toward the southeast gate in the predawn hours.

  My stomach was in knots, and those same knots moved into my throat, threatening to choke me. Did Father hate me so much that he wanted me to be eaten by lions or wolves? I tried to be brave, to do as the women said and move along, but it was so hard when all I wanted to do was strip off the hateful secondhand clothes and stay in my room with its pretty frescoes, and spin wool.

  Helios’s chariot with its golden streamers had yet to break the eastern horizon; the ground was damp and cold with dew. I glanced toward the mountains on my right, their rugged features yet shrouded in evening’s blanket of cobalt and black. Did the Women of the Mountain really expect me to traverse that rough terrain on foot? Already, my feet hurt from covering the distance from the palace to the gate, and many more miles stretched before me. What were the adults thinking? I was not a country woman, born and bred to tireless labor. I was highborn, accustomed to being served. How could Father do such a thing to me?

  Sunrise came. Shivering from more than the cold, I stopped and looked back at the Larissa, its eastern facade shining rose and gold from Helios’s reflected brilliance. Father had not even come out to say goodbye. I was going away forever, and the painful knowledge hit me like a closed fist to the stomach.

  Tears started flowing. I knuckled my eyes, but could not stop the flood.

  The palpable impatience of the women worsened the blow. Only Rhona seemed to grasp my distress. “Homesick already?” A blurred column of brown and gray at my periphery, she touched my forearm. “Partings are hard, but remember what we said earlier about the great adventure you’re going to have. Your aunt and the ladies of the palace would burn with envy if they knew about the wonderful things you’re going to see and learn!”

  Her appeal did not quite convince me. As far as I knew, only terrors and a life of hard labor lay ahead.

  Again, Sostrate voiced her aggravation, “We haven’t got time for this nonsense. Dry your eyes, foolish girl, and let’s be on our way.”

  Why did she always have to be so hateful? I had
never been chastised so much in my life, so I continued bawling. Father did not want me, Wordeia did not want me, and these strange, rough women seemed determined to make my life miserable.

  Thettale interjected, “Give her a moment. We were all homesick once.”

  “Maybe you were,” Sostrate shot back, “but I forgot my father the same day I left my village. Now come, girl.” Her tone softened somewhat as she addressed me, which was saying relatively little. “Girl, if you’re going to become a Woman of the Mountain, you’d better learn to grow a thick skin.”

  Rhona, however, continued shielding me from the gruff Hunter even as she withdrew from my embrace. “Dry your eyes. We have a long way to travel today.”

  Sniffling, I dried my eyes and runny nose on my grubby sleeve, and tried not to look again toward the Larissa. Yet the temptation reminded. Argos exuded a persuasive aura echoing pleasant memories of mornings with the ladies in the garden court and winter afternoons in the weaving megaron with Wordeia and her women. Father I could forget, and gladly, for he had hurt me more than I ever thought possible, but with him would go Mother’s memory, too. I had nothing of hers, not even my familiar gods, some of which had belonged to her. What kindly spirits would protect me in the wilderness, among the strange Women of the Mountain?

  Rhona empathized with my distress, for the moment my mood turned she spoke. “Usually we move silently, like the deer of the foothills, but you’re here to learn.” Even so, her conversation was soft. “How far do you think these paving stones go?”

  Once we had left the Larissa by the servants’ postern gates, we had returned to the main thoroughfare, whose cobblestones showed deep grooves along the edges where years of regular cart traffic formed ruts. The bare ground was easier going.

  I shrugged sullenly. “I do not know.”

  “You do not know?” She laughed quietly. “We’re not ladies of the court. You needn’t be so formal. This road goes to Lerna, that town whose smoky hearths you see to the south, and a little beyond, but the paths narrow as they turn toward the mountains. We took a goat path here, and that’s the way we’ll return. We may see some herdsmen and their flocks, but they won’t bother us. Country people keep the old ways better than those in the towns. They respect the Mistress and her servants.”