by Laura Gill
By the flickering light of the nearby brazier, Ariston’s smile appeared fixed. Down below the sanctuary, the hearth fires of the town twinkled against the black silhouette of the surrounding hills. “Lady, there is only one exit from the sanctuary, and none of us saw the young man pass through the doors. Almighty Zeus must have spirited him away.”
I sighed, hoping Hera did not take me to task over the high priest’s continuing to address me formally. And whatever information I had hoped to glean from Ariston was not forthcoming. Had Zeus taken my son, the god could at least have sent me a reassuring sign. “The loom you provided is very generous,” I said, once again changing the topic of conversation. “However, there are a few things I need before I can weave.”
The priests’ wives provided not only a pick, shuttle, and beater, but Ariston’s plump wife herself visited me in the sanctuary, bringing a gift of fresh-baked bread stuffed with cheese and spare clothing including a magnificent indigo-colored shawl that looked brand-new. “My husband is foolish but well-meaning.”
She noticed the dark circles under my eyes and prescribed several of her home remedies, which I tried for politeness’ sake, having already tried to avail myself of many of them at home. The light naps I managed had so far kept away the worst effects of sleeplessness, but my body and mind were starting to protest. I became even more agitated, unable to focus on my wool work and weaving, and unable to persuade myself with any lasting conviction that the chamber’s insufficient light was to blame. My hands started shaking, so I could not even spin thread. My body ached. I imagined shadows, demons, actively crawling in the corners, watching, though my rational mind insisted nothing was there. I found petty annoyances everywhere. Whenever the priests addressed me as “Lady,” or constantly solicited about my needs. When Hypnos sapped my strength. When Ariston’s wife, who often kept me company, became overbearing. Then I had to exert every ounce of my will not to become a badly behaved guest and snap at them.
I should have been able to relax. The sanctuary was a place of safety, and I had done nothing to offend the gods. Or had I? The idols with which Ariston had furnished me, which I venerated every morning and evening, and the xoanon in the main megaron, before which I paid my reverences each day, were ominously silent.
When Ariston reported that Diktys and our neighbors of Pelargos were safe, my mind refused to accept his reassurances. The deadline had come and gone. Surely Ariston was keeping news of the catastrophe from me. I found myself becoming deluded with worry, hypersensitive to every noise and murmur of conversation, even to the food the priests set before me. Suddenly my appetite had vanished. Polydektes was not going to attack the sanctuary to lay hands on me. Rather, Hera had infected his brain and had prevailed upon him to poison me. Impossible, improbable, ludicrous, and I believed.
Ariston confronted me about my friable state after his wife chided him for not making me comfortable enough. “Lady, it is clear that you have been afflicted by some unknown demon. I have appealed to the priests of Apollo for a remedy.”
I struggled to keep my equilibrium through the interview, even when the strain showed through. “How many times have I asked you to stop calling me ‘Lady?’ You’ll offend Queen Hera, who’s already angry with me.”
“For what reason would she punish you?”
Must he be so calm and reasonable? “Because I exist, because she punished my cousins of Tiryns, because you wanted me to wear garments meant for her.” I clasped the sides of my head. All irrational fancies—Hera had, after all, protected and restored me—and yet I could not banish them. “Take them away!” Tears leaked from my eyes. I choked back a sob. “Eurymedon caused this trouble. Never considered his poor mother!”
Ariston made me lie down to wait for the servants of Apollo; he called for his wife to sit at my bedside.
The priest who came was severe to the point of gauntness, almost as tall as the ceiling; his long shadow fell across the bed, and his sharp black eyes, his eagle eyes, glared at me as if he could see into my soul. I shrank from him despite myself. Ariston’s wife clutched my hand throughout the ensuing examination, even speaking on my behalf when I hesitated.
Milk of the poppy, he prescribed, with a dollop of honey to sweeten the taste. The prospect of ingesting opium unsettled me, not least because men had no business meddling with the mysteries of the poppy-crowned Mistress. Yet I myself, who had not gotten very far in my initiation into those same mysteries, dared not interfere by trying to prepare the draught.
I drank the brew with misgivings and lay down under the priest’s unrelenting gaze; it might have helped had he politely withdrawn as Ariston had done. Closing my eyes against an oncoming spell of dizziness only triggered sensations of nausea. My eyelids grew heavy, heavier, and it seemed the priest loomed above me to shove me down a deep pit, through which I fell and fell, miles down into the underworld, until I found myself again in a cave impregnated with the distinctive mustiness of serpents, a stone wilderness of stalagmites that had once been living men. Men with faces half-turned away, half-melted against the dripping limestone.
Afraid and determined, I crept through the forest of stone men toward some terrible destination. Yet where I expected to find myself carrying offerings to the Persephone Cave, I was instead armed with a sword and a shield of such blinding brilliance that it threw back a reflection, casting light into shadowy corners that had never seen the sun. I even glimpsed myself in its silvery depths, sharp-eyed, black-haired and black-bearded, breathing in the earthy must of snakes, thinking always of snakes, reminding myself to resist the temptation to turn around. Let the shield become my eyes, immortal and impervious, my own mortal gaze never meeting hers...
I woke bewildered, and overpowered by a need to vomit. Ariston’s wife was gone, but Apollo’s priest held the pot into which I retched, and kept retching even after I had exhausted the meager contents of my stomach.
“Is that better, Lady?” The priest spoke with a mellower voice than I remembered from before, and he no longer appeared seven feet tall.
“Dorea.” I rinsed my mouth with the water he proffered.
Putting away both the cup and the vessel, the priest urged me to lie down again. “Describe your dream. Let us see what message Morpheus has imparted to you.”
I did not need him to explain that I had encountered Eurymedon in the depths of the earth—the Gorgon Medusa’s lair? Indistinct as the surface of the mirror-shield was, I would have known my son’s features anywhere. And he was alive, or had been at that moment. I did not want to cast my imaginings further. “Why should I be witness to such a thing?”
“Why not?” Apollo’s priest threw the question back at me. “Are you not his mother? You have wanted this reassurance for a long time.”
How would he know that? Ariston must have told him. “Not so reassuring,” I said, “to feel his terror. I sought rest, not nightmares.”
“Rest does not come easily to those who are so troubled, who are so accustomed to hiding themselves. A day may soon come when you have to step out from the shadows and confront that which you fear most.”
The priest’s assertion had the ring of authenticity. “Are you an oracle?” Questions swirled in my head. “I always thought dream-interpreters and oracles were supposed to speak in riddles.” My opium-inspired sleep left me feeling heavy-eyed, lethargic. Perhaps trying again would see me to a dreamless slumber.
His hand upon mine was firm despite its boniness. “Not always.”
“Tell me, then. Have I neglected some god?” My voice sounded distant, my tongue seemed as impenetrable as wet wool. “Is Hera angry with me?”
“Hera? What could you have done against her?” I found his chuckle inexplicable; it was not a laughing matter. But I, drifting away, could not contradict him. Last thing I knew, his voice was echoing down to me. “What a lovely weaving, Danaë. You must finish it.”
I slept deeply, without a visitation from Morpheus, and woke feeling better, my appetite restored. Later
, I apologized to Ariston for any trouble I had caused. The loom demanded my attention, warp and weft urging me to continue the pattern. Something the priest of Apollo had said about the weaving, how much he liked the scarlet and yellow.
Ariston showed himself more pleased by the dream than I. “The gods are kind, Lady. Eurymedon has found the Gorgon’s lair.”
“I did not see him emerge from the underworld.” I meticulously threaded the shuttle of pale buttercup-colored wool through the weft. Not much remained; the priests, as men, had no inkling of how much wool a weaver needed to make cloth. Theano, Ariston’s wife, promised to try to obtain more. “If I had seen him standing once more in Helios’s light, I would have been satisfied.”
What right had I to complain, though? I acknowledged how unnerving I had found the priest of Apollo’s assertions, the way he had called me by my birth name, as if we were old friends rather than perfect strangers.
“Remarkable, nonetheless,” Aristion concluded of the dream.
There was nothing amazing about Eurymedon delving afraid into the darkness of a cave, the dominion of the Mother of the Mountains. I peeked into the wool basket, where I had sorted the skeins according to their colors. Suppose Theano could not match the dyes. Enough brown and dark pink remained to create a new band below the scarlet and yellow. My son and I had been sent away from the Mountain precisely because Eurymedon as a male was forbidden to enter the goddess’s domain. The Gorgons belonged to the earth, to the Mistress, however terrible they were. Eurymedon did not belong there.
“Yes,” I mumbled absent-mindedly. “Remarkable.”
*~*~*~*
Then the day came when I learned of the troubles in Pelargos. “The king’s men have started punishing the villagers. An extra levy of olive oil for their defiance.” Ariston spoke slowly, gently, with Theano present to hold my hand if need be. “And one villager to be sold into slavery for each week that Diktys defies his brother.”
“Defies?” My nerves might have been strained, but I was no weakling needing a hand to squeeze mine. “How exactly are Diktys and the villagers of Pelargos defying the king? How would they know whether Eurymedon has run away for good or been killed trying to fulfill that wretched quest Polydektes imposed on him?”
Polydektes cared nothing about the deadline. Eurymedon could have been slain or run from cowardice; my son did not matter as long as he was no longer an obstacle. I had known that since the beginning.
Ariston’s expression darkened. After a few weeks in his company, I had learned to gauge his temperament. He liked to control the dissemination of information, to always be in charge, especially regarding women; he had not greeted the revelation that I could read, write, and tally sums with much appreciation.
So he neither confirmed nor denied my speculation, only informed me that I could no longer exercise outside after nightfall. “The king’s agents have been seen in the marketplace and around the sanctuaries,” he said, “and those are only the agents we know about. Theano can no longer come to keep company with you.”
Theano responded with a mournful look and many protestations that she would miss me, while Ariston seemed relieved to send his wife home. She talked too much for his liking, I had observed, and always prevailed upon him to come home a few times a week. Their lack of children, she had confided, remained a source of contention between them, and he blamed her. I myself thought she sometimes rambled, though I welcomed the respite. If the king’s agents were watching the sanctuary, they would have eventually noticed the high priest’s childless, ill-favored wife going to and fro on mysterious errands, and perhaps would have put her to the question.
Once again, I lacked the solace of female company. Theano’s chatter had helped the hours pass. Alone, my mind wandered, found diversions in worry and speculation. Why did Diktys not simply tell Polydektes that I had taken sanctuary, and where? The king and his men knew better than to violate the sanctuary temenos to seize and drag me out. Why must the villagers pay the price for Diktys’s stubborn silence?
I stepped away from the loom to gauge my work. Bands of scarlet and pale yellow alternated with bands of blue and rusty pink. When it was finished, if Ariston gave me access to the combed goat hair inventoried on the storehouse tallies, I could fringe the edges to wrap as an outer garment around the xoanon.
With the days shortening, the lamps and the scant daylight falling through the clerestory windows meant I frequently had to leave the loom to exercise in the corridor or lie down to rest my eyes. Had the sanctuary only had a closed inner courtyard where I could get some air, maybe sit down and work embroidery. The back corridors were poorly ventilated, smelling of dust and urine from the chamber pot, which the acolyte was slow to empty. I had tried to do that task myself, only to earn a stern rebuke from Ariston and venomous looks from the youth. He did not sweep much, either, but from spite would not reveal where he kept the broom.
“You don’t look like a god’s consort,” he hissed once. “And women don’t belong in the god’s domain.”
“Are you here to pass judgment, or serve the god?” I asked. “Because you do far too much complaining and not enough serving.”
Because I refused to be intimidated by him, the acolyte took to avoiding me instead. Whenever I entered the corridor to stretch my legs, he scurried toward the public spaces of the sanctuary on some imaginary errand. Samos, when I encountered him, always bid me good-day and asked what I needed, although his overly unctuous manner betrayed a desire to see me back in my chamber; the other priests shared his sentiments.
Was Zeus solely a man’s god? His priests and their narrow-minded views reminded me of the Women of the Mountain. Athena’s sanctuary would have done just as well; the goddess’s manifestation at least struck terror into Polydektes.
“What are you doing there, musing about disrespectful priests and fearful kings?” Theano’s voice reached me from the opposite end of the corridor. She stood straight-backed, commanding, where her demeanor in the men’s domain of the sanctuary had always been matronly and more timid. “Listen! Your enemy has entered the temenos.”
Only a goddess would speak so. Should I reverence her as Queen Hera, or as Lady Athena? Apparently, she read my thoughts. “You will have time to dwell on that later, Danaë. Now is the time to observe.”
I had to quiet my mind and stand utterly still before I heard anything, and even then, the voices coming through the walls were low, almost indistinct.
“...said before, the king knows the princess is here. I have a warrant to remove her to the palace in Chora.”
Ariston’s reply, though firm, was softer. “...claimed the sanctuary of...”
“If she is not surrendered...two days.”
“Who is he to think that the priest or any other man has the power to surrender you?” Theano’s scent, a musky blend of sandalwood and frankincense, engulfed me as she came to stand at my shoulder. Such scorn as I had never before heard from her suffused her voice. “Only you can surrender yourself, Danaë.”
“Is that what the gods wish?” Taking a breath, I turned to face the goddess. “I know about the troubles in Pelargos. My neighbors, Diktys, they should not have to suffer on my account. Merciful Lady, tell me, am I doomed to submit myself to Polydektes? What must I do to end this madness?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Only you can choose to surrender.” The goddess remained frustratingly vague. “I cannot command you.”
“What did he threaten, the king’s man?” I pressed. “I could not hear everything he said.”
“They will kill one villager a week until you submit.” Her nonchalance seemed strangely alien, forbidding. “They will not violate the sanctuary to seize you. Zeus has cast a pall over the temenos. They are afraid.”
I chanced another look at the goddess’s face. Her eyes were as gray as slate, and dispassionate. “Why does Zeus not protect the villagers?” But I knew. This was some game of the gods, in which Polydektes and I, Diktys and the people of Pel
argos, and yes, even Eurymedon, were all pawns to be sacrificed or assisted, but not valued in any meaningful way.
“You are mistaken.” Athena heard my thoughts. “Nonetheless, you cannot expect us to do everything for you.”
Why not? She did not answer, though she must have heard that, too. She merely walked away, turned the corner, and was gone. I stood alone in the corridor, shaken, suddenly ice-cold, until a voice heaping scorn upon me roused me from my stupor.
“You bring trouble, woman.” The acolyte stood there, disdain writ large on his pimpled face.
“Do I?” I flung back at him. Anger burned fierce in my belly. “Or is it the king who is the troublemaker, who does not know when to let be?”
“What is this?” Suddenly the corridor was full of priests, Ariston at their head. “Why are you bothering the lady, Ketros? Away with you.” He banished the acolyte with a curt gesture. “Lady, has he harassed you much? I will have him dismissed if this—”
“I don’t care about that now. The king’s herald was here. What did he say?” I was not ready to announce that a goddess had just visited me. I wanted to hear the news from mortal lips, and moreover needed to gauge what the priests themselves thought of the threat.
Ariston nodded and dismissed the priests to their tasks. “Walk with me, Lady. The sanctuary is empty.”
The megaron reeked of burnt offerings and scented oil, but the fire on the central hearth was welcome on that cold morning. Ariston treated the subject with excess delicacy, as if I were made of eggshells, even when I told him to come right out and tell me the truth. Which he did, after a fashion, couching his answer in elaborate language. “This dreadful price the king wreaks upon the villagers of Pelargos is not directed at you, Lady, but rather at those—”
“His actions are directed at no one but me.” Ariston was a terrible liar. “He knows he can’t physically enter the sanctuary and seize me, so now he threatens to play on my guilt. Hasn’t anyone protested? If Diktys is still in Pelargos, why hasn’t he called on his powerful friends to help him defend the village?”
