by Anne Fortier
PARIS DID NOT COME back the next day, nor the day after. And on the third day, when Myrina stole out of the house to look, she could no longer see the Trojan ships in the harbor.
He had gone. Without another word of farewell.
Her disappointment was so great she nearly sat down in the middle of the road and cried. For three days she had dreamed of the moment she would see him again, and had insisted—selfishly and irrationally, scorning the plans of Lady Otrera—that she and her sisters remain in town rather than going out to the farm right away … just in case he returned.
Walking back inside now, heavy with defeat, Myrina found everyone occupied much as they had been since their arrival: Some were busy in the kitchen, grinding grains and tending pots, others were crawling around in the inner courtyard, spreading out laundry on the warm tiles. Every single one of them—even Egee—had embraced these simple tasks with grateful relish. After all they had been through, any chore not interrupted by high seas or an abusive master was a happy one.
Even Kara was beginning to show small signs of recovery. She was no longer muttering to herself, and no longer slept through the day, her back turned in hateful protest. But even as she was up and about, taking part in the tasks of the house, she still slipped in and out of awareness. In the middle of sweeping a floor or beating on a rug, she might pause and lean on the broom for the longest time, her thoughts presumably back in Mycenae—not the Mycenae Myrina had seen, but a Mycenae of her own making where she, Kara, was queen.
When consulted on the matter, Lady Otrera had advised Myrina and the others against any manner of confrontation or impatient urging. “Kara will return when she is ready,” she said, walking with Myrina in the shade of the portico. “The mind is a changeable thing. It will take on any form it pleases; sometimes it is a lion, sometimes a rat … and the more you chase it, the faster it runs, the deeper it burrows.”
They stopped in front of the statue of the Lady of Ephesus, and on Otrera’s prompting Myrina found herself describing in some detail the rites of the Moon Goddess. To which Lady Otrera—snaking her arm around Myrina’s elbow and commencing another turn about the quiet loggia—replied, “Our mistresses are one and the same, I am sure. For we, too, worship the night when men are asleep, and our passions are as pure as the hearts of the does in the woods. Animals are what we love—horses above all—and every one of my daughters knows that man, fascinating as he may be, brings nothing but deceit and destruction. It is man, and man alone, who robs woman of her natural dignity and infects her with despair and death.”
“Surely there are some good men,” began Myrina, thinking not only of Paris and the courteous Trojans, but also of her father, and Lilli’s father, too, the latter of whom had rivaled any woman in the village when it came to nurture and patience.
Otrera looked straight into Myrina’s eyes, her light-brown gaze as calm as that of a lioness at rest. “I did not say man corrupts woman by design, merely that it always turns out so. This was once the house”—she made a loving gesture at the buildings around them—”of a mother who lost all her daughters to childbirth. Three she had, three darling girls who grew up, and were wooed and married … only to be snatched away by death at the height of their happiness. This woman—so goes the story—sat here many a sleepless night at the feet of Lady Artemis, deep in conversation with the Goddess, until she understood at last that she had been taught a lesson. And so she decided to open her house to strangers, inviting orphaned girls from far and near to take refuge here, as long as they agreed to a pact of purity.” Otrera pointed at a fresco of running horses upon the wall of the loggia. “It was this poor, grieving mother who discovered the healing powers of the hunt, and I must say, I have never seen a woman who was not perfectly satisfied with the exchange of a man for a horse and halter.”
AS THE WEEKS WENT by, Myrina began to understand what Lady Otrera meant. Even though it was winter and the farmlands were dormant, the farm itself—a rambling village at the foot of a hill—was perpetually crawling with activity.
In the beginning, Otrera’s daughters were skeptical of the newcomers—not because they did not embrace the influx of new blood and foreign quirks, but because the kind of life Myrina and her holy sisters had led in the Temple of the Moon Goddess struck them as so overly regulated, so agonizingly dull, they could scarce accept that any sane person would willingly lead it.
“And you,” said the broad-shouldered Penthesilea to Myrina one day, while they were feeding the chickens together. “How can you call yourself a hunter when you do not even know how to ride?”
Myrina had taken the exclamation as a product of language confusion rather than ill will and had smiled at her new friend, saying, “I depend on my own legs and not those of a fitful animal. Besides, my weapon is the bow, and I don’t see how you can be an archer and a rider at the same time.”
“Then do as we,” replied Penthesilea. “Rely on the javelin. Come.” She brushed the last grains of chicken feed from her wiry fingers and started toward the stable. “I will show you!”
Left to her own apprehensions, Myrina without question would have stayed away from the horse enclosures for a good long time, but her pride forbade her from saying so to the dauntless Penthesilea. In fact, it was primarily the realization that these other women—some too waifish to lift a sack of grain—were perfectly comfortable around the temperamental beasts that made Myrina determined to master the art … if only to silence their teasing.
No sooner had she commenced her training than her sisters came forward, too, emboldened by her being still alive and—apart from a few bruised ribs—tolerably whole. Aided by Penthesilea and the slightly more sympathetic Hippolyta, they spent the winter months learning how to ride and control the horses, and before the first spring flowers were out of the ground, even Animone was tearing around the pastures with abandon.
Lilli, of course, was clamoring to take part in the games. But Myrina was loath to let her sister ride a horse alone or even be around the animals on the ground, for fear she would be kicked or trod upon. Penthesilea’s horse, in particular, was an unpredictable, aggressive beast, and its rider did nothing to curb its temper; quite the contrary. So, instead, Myrina would come to the house on her own horse at least once every day, sidle up to the raised porch, and have Lilli sit either in front or right behind her, holding on tightly. In this fashion they would trot around an uncut hayfield or make their way slowly to the beach for a gallop in the sand. And yet Lilli never stopped talking of the day she would be riding a horse of her own, and Myrina barely knew whether to be happy or worried that her sister—who had never actually seen a horse—continued to have such a zest for excitement.
In the beginning, Myrina had tried to encourage a friendship between Lilli and Helena—the girl they had rescued from Mycenae. Close in age, the two could have found solace in each other’s company … but the girls were so different Myrina might as well have tried to make a cat befriend a dog. For while Lilli was the happy, pleasing girl she had always been, Helena was silent and brooding, her eyes full of spite. And whenever she spoke—which, fortunately, she did rarely—her words were so belligerent Myrina often felt inclined to cover Lilli’s ears with her hands.
“I thought you were warriors,” Helena had said once, when Myrina asked her rather bluntly to justify her surly manners. “You said big words, and I followed you, because I am a warrior. But you are not. You do not fight.”
Even the discovery that she would not, in fact, need to have a breast seared off had only seemed to infuriate the girl. “You lie about everything!” she hissed at Myrina, pointing a hateful finger at her face. “Just like my father.”
The exclamation startled Myrina; for some reason she had assumed Helena was an orphan. “Where is your father?” she asked, already toying with the idea of sending the unpleasant girl home to her parents, wherever they may be. “Was he, too, taken by the Greeks?”
Helena turned up her nose with disgust. “I am not a sl
ave. And I am not going home. My father will kill me. He will. He killed my mother. And my sister. I know he did.” Her mouth tightened. “I wish I could kill him.”
More than once, Myrina caught Helena behind the barn, playing solitary weapon games. Sometimes she would join her, and they would practice together, throwing spears and knives. And yet later, back at the house, Helena would regard Myrina with eyes as cold as ever—as if their sport had done nothing to soften her animosity.
In this flux of new challenges—learning the language of Ephesus being one of them—Myrina hardly had time to spare for daydreaming. And at night, when she lay quietly in the darkness, reaching out for the memory of Paris, she was usually asleep with exhaustion before he could join her. But even so, he was never far away, and the thrill of his imagined presence neither wavered nor waned. Most of the time it made her happy, but occasionally her happiness was trampled by panic at the fear that she would never see him again. For while he had healed her old wound, he had left a mark in its place: a mark of kinship that no number of baths—warm or cold—could erase.
Ironically, these feelings were what eventually enabled Myrina to bond with Kara. One night, when they had cleaned up the kitchen together and sat quietly on the doorstep, stroking the house cats, Kara suddenly said, in a voice thick with defiance, “I am carrying his child. Do you understand?”
And in a strange way, Myrina did. She had heard the others talking about Kara’s imaginary pregnancy with headshaking weariness, but had so far not been asked to comment. Klito and Egee, she gathered, had proof it was merely a delusion and had tried to shame Kara into reason, but the result had been a weeklong return to tears and hateful silence.
Sitting there on the doorstep, both of them tired from the day’s work, Myrina could almost feel Kara’s pain … could almost sense the lump of deformed emotions she carried within. And so she put her arm around the woman who—for weeks now—had refused to speak to her directly, and said quietly, “I understand.”
EVER SINCE HER FIRST conversation with the haughty Penthesilea, Myrina had harbored a secret ambition. The more Otrera’s daughters scoffed at her beloved bow and extolled the advantages of the javelin, the more Myrina became determined to adapt the art of archery to horseback riding. It was no easy task, for regardless of how she held her bow, the horse was always in the way. In the end she decided that since not much could be done to alter the shape of the animal, the solution must be to improve the shape of the weapon.
“What is the matter?” asked Lilli one night, when she heard Myrina grunting with frustration. The sisters were sharing a cot in a corner of the dormitory, and while everyone else was asleep after a long day of chores and training, Myrina worked stubbornly on her new bow in the light of a small clay lamp. “You are in pain. Did you cut yourself?”
“The pain is in my pride,” whispered Myrina. “For I cannot contrive of a way—” She interrupted herself, struggling with wood and string. “Go back to sleep. I am sorry I woke you.”
“Let me see it.” Lilli reached out to feel the instrument in progress. “I thought you said it was a bow. This piece of wood is far too short—”
“It needs to be short,” sighed Myrina, brushing thread fibers and wood splinters from her lap. “Or one cannot maneuver it in full gallop. But the shorter I make it, the weaker it becomes. Pull it! It’s a child’s weapon now. The wood has lost all its power.”
Lilli tested the string and ran her hands admiringly over the flawless piece of craftsmanship. “It is beautiful,” she said. “Smooth and obedient. But how to make it stronger?” She thought for a moment. “Perhaps, as with humans, strength comes from provocation … from being forced and needing to resist. Maybe”—she handed the bow back to Myrina—”you must force the wood in an unexpected way. Try to surprise it and tease out its hidden strength.” With that the girl lay back down and fell immediately asleep, while Myrina sat staring at the challenge in her hands, more awake than ever.
SPRING HAD TURNED TO summer by the time she was ready to exhibit her invention. Crafting a bow was no simple task; first, she had to build the tools, then the materials had to be found and cured … and above all, it had to be done discreetly, without Penthesilea finding out. For if the product was a failure, Myrina knew ridicule would be her only reward for toiling so hard.
After weeks of clandestine practice, she finally summoned everyone to the horse enclosures. Since only Lilli had been privy to her plans, no one else knew what to expect, not even Myrina’s closest friends. All they saw was one of the straw stags set up for javelin practice in front of a vacant paddock. And then, to their bafflement, they saw Myrina mounted on her horse, without a javelin in sight.
“What is that deformed little thing?” asked Penthesilea, nodding at the curiosity Myrina was holding in one hand. It was a bow about half the length of a regular longbow, its tips forced over backward by the aid of horn and sinew; to the eye it did not seem like much, and Myrina could hardly blame the others for laughing and shaking their heads.
“I call it a recurve bow,” she told them, with patient defiance, “and I say it is superior to the javelin as a rider’s weapon. Care to put it to the test?”
Scoffing at the challenge, Penthesilea mounted her snorting horse and rode toward the target, javelin pulled back for a mighty throw. With a cry of delight she launched her weapon from a distance, and the spearhead struck the straw stag with such force that it toppled over and fell down with a thud.
“There!” she exclaimed, circling back to Myrina in a triumphant canter. “Now what are you going to kill?”
Myrina nodded at the empty horse enclosure. “Those.”
Everyone turned to stare, and it took a moment before Hippolyta grasped what she meant and yelled, “Look! On the fence posts!”
Indeed, every third post had a straw ball balancing on top; the paddock was ringed with no fewer than ten targets.
Without another word, Myrina spurred on her horse, gathering as much speed as she could without sacrificing her aim. Then she pulled the first arrow from her quiver and laid it on the bow … but her desire to put Penthesilea in her place made her release it too soon, and the arrow flew right by the target without touching it.
Furious with herself for letting petty concerns interfere with her concentration, Myrina rode on and shot the next arrow with great care … and the third and fourth one, too. All were perfectly on target, and the straw balls fell into the field one by one, pierced through by her arrows. Encouraged by her success, Myrina rode faster, and her aim remained true despite her speed. By the time she came back around the enclosure on the other side, after shooting down every single target on the way, her speed was so furious the women scattered before her like poultry. Only Lady Otrera did not move; the distinguished woman stood perfectly still while the horse came to a skidding halt before her.
“I missed one,” said Myrina, glaring at the straw ball on the first post.
Lady Otrera turned slowly toward the post, then looked at the others, her face inscrutable. “What do you say, Penthesilea? Myrina missed one. Should I pronounce you the victor?”
Penthesilea did not need to reply with words; the red blotches on her cheeks said it all. And although everyone around her was silent, too, Myrina heard their roaring cheers in her heart.
IT FINALLY HAPPENED ON a bright summer morning. Alone in the hay barn, Myrina was chasing a runaway chicken when a long shadow fell across the floor. Looking up, pushing away her tousled hair, she did not recognize him right away, for the sunlight coming through the door behind him was so blinding she had to shield her eyes.
“Still a hunter, I see,” said a voice she knew well—a voice she had longed to hear for months and months. “Are you ready for your lesson?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There has always been affection in my heart unfading, for these Phrygians and for their city; which smolders now, fallen before the Argive spears, ruined, sacked, gutted.
—EURIPIDES, The Troj
an Women
THE AEGEAN SEA
PRESENT TIME
WHEN WE REACHED THE ISLAND OF DELOS THE NEXT DAY, MR. Telemakhos took one look at the water thermometer, threw the anchor overboard with a grunt, and announced that it was bath time. “Nineteen degrees!” he assured us, waving the thermometer before tossing it back in the water. “Better than a shower.”
In the sunshine of midday the water was a mellow transparent blue, and above were the sandy semicircles of the coastline. I wanted to point out that this was no pleasure cruise as far as I was concerned, but even my fastidiousness had met its match in the allure of this sunny cove. The only thing stopping me from tearing off my clothes and jumping in was pride; I didn’t want Mr. Telemakhos to think I had surrendered so wholeheartedly to his abduction scheme.
“Come on, North Sea woman!” he taunted me, clearly interpreting my hesitancy as a form of squeamishness. “Your namesake was born on this island! Not Lady Diana,” he went on to clarify to Nick, “but the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis, or, as the Romans knew her, Diana.”
“Yes.” I gave them both a sideways look. “But as you know, it is not wise for mortal men to behold Diana while she bathes. One tends to end up dead.”
I was sure I heard Nick mutter, under his breath, “The name’s spot-on, then.” We had avoided each other all morning, and whenever our eyes met, he looked at me with a sort of ironic forbearance, which did not exactly encourage conversation. Nor did I particularly look forward to our next exchange; I had spent most of the night cringing at some of the things I had said to him, and yet, upon reflection, would wish none of them unsaid.
Before jumping into the water, Nick handed me his phone and said, “I’m sure you have someone back at Oxford waiting for a report.”
