by Anne Fortier
But as they rode back along the Scamander River, with the walls of Troy rising ahead, Paris was so silent she began to wonder whether there was something he had not told her—some terrible reality that would soon undermine her happy expectations. Myrina could not imagine what it might be, other than the obvious risk that the king and queen might be displeased in their son’s choice of wife. Whenever she had raised the issue, however, Paris had laughed it away and assured her no one would find fault with her … implying that, whatever it was, the problem lay with him alone.
In the end, Myrina purged all those futile speculations from her mind and took in the beauty of the landscape around her. The Scamandrian Plain had already struck her as rich and plentiful on the day they first arrived; since then, her appreciation had only grown. For this was her home now; these golden ears of wheat, swaying in the breeze, carried the grains she would eat, and those colossal walls, engineered for eternity, would be the cradle holding her future. And Lilli’s future, too, should she decide to stay in Troy.
Riding up to the city gate, Myrina had to put back her head in wonder. Never had she seen walls this tall, or doors made from such giant boards of wood. Nowhere in the city of the Moon Goddess had there been architecture to rival this; even the massive fortifications at Mycenae seemed puny in comparison.
The gate stood wide open, allowing for the constant coming and going of farmers and merchants, the latter of whom were either on their way to the harbor—glittering in the distance—or returning to town with cartloads of foreign goods. There was a great sense of purpose to the place. Myrina could happily have gotten off her horse and sat all day next to the grandfathers on their benches, bobbing in the flow of life.
“When we arrive,” said Paris, as he steered them through the mayhem, “there may be some … commotion. But please trust me and do not worry.” He gave Myrina a reassuring smile. “No one will prevent us from being together, and before you know it”—he leaned toward her and lowered his voice—”I will be chasing you around a bed so big you’ll finally have a chance of escaping my satyric lust.”
Myrina was not fooled by his levity. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the muscles at war in his jaw and the trenches drawn across his forehead. It pained her to see him suffer, and even more that he did not share his concerns with her, or hint at their nature. But then … she also knew him well enough to understand that his silence was, more than anything, an expression of his love for her. Whatever had to be endured, he intended to endure alone. To challenge his decision and argue he was hurting her would be a blow directly to his heart.
UNLIKE THE CITY GATE, the entrance to the Trojan citadel was closed and blocked by armed guards. A steep and narrow ramp led up to it, with tall walls on either side; it reminded Myrina of nothing she had ever seen before.
“We are private people,” explained Paris. “So many foreign ships stop here in the summer months—” He broke off to address the guards in the Trojan language, and they immediately snapped to, opening a small window in the door to order the whole thing unlocked from the inside.
As the gate swung out, Myrina saw that the entrance went through a tunnel built with enormous fitted boulders that looked as if they could have been moved by no one but the gods. On the other side of the tunnel, Paris led their party into a vast, sloping yard ringed with magnificent houses. The Trojan citadel, home to King Priam and his court, was a small city unto itself, dominated—at the top—by one particularly large building fronted with a colonnade.
“That is the Temple of the Earth Shaker,” explained Paris, following Myrina’s eyes. “The all-powerful uncle of the Sun God. This is where he lives”—Paris made a gesture out over the great blue sea visible beyond the walls of the citadel—”when he is not roaming the ocean. But come, I see my father is out. We have a chance of speaking to him without a great echo and a whining choir of doomsday priests—”
Only then did Myrina notice the cluster of men across the courtyard and the handsome red stallion in their midst. As she and Paris rode toward the group with Aeneas and her sisters trailing behind, she saw an old man with a walking stick checking the stallion’s teeth and guessed a purchase was afoot.
Dismounting, Paris walked up to another man who stood off to the side and began addressing him with a nod of deference. Because the man was clad in an entirely unremarkable garment, it did not even occur to Myrina that he was the illustrious King Priam until he held out his hand to Paris. After dutifully kissing his father’s ring, Paris went on—Myrina guessed—to explain something about the women he had brought to court. He did not get far before the king’s serene gaze turned into a squint.
She had done much to prepare herself for this moment, and yet Myrina found herself shrinking under King Priam’s scrutiny when he looked at her, then her sisters. Although father and son were alike in stature, and the king’s hair had only just started graying, his eyes could have been those of the oldest man in the world.
“Come, my love.” Paris helped her from the horse and walked her over to stand before the unsmiling king. Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Father, this is my wife. Her name is Myrina.”
King Priam’s face might as well have been carved in stone, for it was absolutely unmoving, expressing neither anger nor joy. For the briefest of moments, Myrina wondered whether Paris had been wrong in assuming his father would be comfortable switching into the language of Ephesus—perhaps he had not actually understood what his son said to him. But even before she had completed the thought, the king responded in that same language, without even a hint of an accent, “Is it a fact?”
Myrina felt Paris’s hand closing firmly around hers. “Yes.”
“What say you?” King Priam turned to Myrina. “Are you his wife?”
She nodded, too breathless to respond in words.
“Speak up!” The king was in no mood for meekness. “Are you his wife?”
Myrina swallowed her nerves. “Yes.”
Then at last, King Priam nodded at Paris. “So be it. May the Earth Shaker—and your mother!—look kindly upon this union. I will go and forewarn her now.” With that the king turned and marched away, leaving not only Myrina, but also her sisters and Aeneas in a state of silent mortification.
“Right,” said Paris, addressing all the women at once, his smile defying their shuffling embarrassment. “Welcome to my father’s house. Aeneas will make sure you are comfortably installed, while Myrina and I will do what has to be done—a task you need not envy us.”
The queen was not in her courtyard, surrounded by ladies and musicians, nor had she withdrawn to her quarters to bathe and be private. When Myrina and Paris finally found her, she was kneeling in a windowless house shrine in front of a small altar crowded with wax candles and tiny figurines.
After waiting for a moment so as not to interrupt her, Paris leaned down and touched a hand to her covered shoulder. “Mama—”
Myrina heard a gasp, then a sob … before the queen rose from the small praying stool to throw her arms around her son with a stream of tearful lamentations. Stroking his hair with frantic, trembling hands, she kissed him again and again, unwilling to let him go, and whatever he whispered to her—calm and patient as he was—only seemed to aggravate her more.
Stepping backward, Myrina wanted to run away and hide. She had anticipated fury and accusations, but not tears. It did not seem right that she should witness these intimate emotions; how could she ever look the queen in the eyes after this? She felt anger toward Paris for having involved her in such a critical moment, and yet she could see that he, too, was shocked by the force of his mother’s grief.
“Please, Mother,” he said, in the language of Ephesus. “When you know Myrina better, you will understand—”
“Myrina? That is how I must address your murderer?” The queen turned reluctantly to face her new daughter-in-law. “Do you know what you have done?” she whispered, as if she were pleading with a merciless hangman. “Do you kno
w what you have done to my son, the only healthy boy that ever lay in my arms?” As she spoke, her voice gathered strength, and when she saw Myrina’s terror she fairly slung the last words in her face. “You think you have secured a life in riches, but you have not! Greedy sow! When he dies, I will see to it you burn on the same day, but on quite a different pyre!”
“Mother!” exclaimed Paris, taking her firmly by the shoulders. “Control yourself! Myrina knows nothing of this nonsense.” He drew his mother into a tight embrace, trying to still her trembling. “Look at you! What must she think of you? Myrina loves me, I assure you, and would rather die than cause me pain. Just like you.”
There was a brief silence. Then the queen mumbled, her voice muffled by his shoulder, “She can never love you the way I do.”
“I know, Mother.” He kissed her again. “But she is doing her best. She is one of Otrera’s daughters and thus your niece. Just like you, she undid her vows to become a wife. Only you can know what she has gone through.”
This, at last, seemed to have an effect. Wiping her eyes with the corner of her praying shawl, the queen stood back and looked at Myrina once again, her hatred momentarily curbed. “Yet another woman with broken vows under this roof? Then we are doubly damned. But I must take my blame, I see it now. The Goddess has never allowed me to forget … and now my judgment is near.” She pressed a fist to her chest, fighting back another onslaught of misery. “I should not hate you, child. I was wrong to condemn you. For you are but an instrument of the Goddess. It was not you who killed my son. It was me. In my ignorance and wickedness, I gave him death even before the gods gave him life.”
PARIS HAD HIS DOMAIN on the top floor of the royal palace—a vast room with a balcony overlooking the city and harbor. Beyond the harbor, which lay in a protected bay, the sea heaved quietly in the midday heat, specked with the occasional ship coming out of the narrow strait of the Dardanelles to round the Trojan headland.
It was a magnificent, truly luxurious sight, and yet Myrina could not enjoy it. The meeting with the queen had disturbed her greatly, and she was unable to pry her thoughts from the unspoken curse that had cast such a formidable shadow over mother and son.
“This will be your view from now on,” said Paris, coming up behind her. “And this will be mine.” He kissed her neck, then pushed the dress from her shoulders and ran his hands over her skin. “The finest view in Troy … nay, in the world altogether—”
“Please.” Myrina held on to her dress as best she could.
“Just as the sun rises on one side of the earth,” mumbled Paris, tracing every rise, every valley of her spine, “and spends the entire day traveling to the other … so could I spend my days traveling over you, from front to back, from top to toe. And never once”—he pressed against her teasingly from behind—”would you wait in vain for me to rise.”
But Myrina could not bring herself to frolic so soon after the drama she had witnessed. “Do tell me,” she whispered, looking at him over her shoulder, “what your mother meant by what she said. I cannot forget her sadness.”
Paris sighed and released her. “I should have warned you that my mother is superstitious. Do you believe me if I tell you it is nothing to worry about?”
“No.”
“Damn it!” Paris walked out onto the balcony. “That is a fine start to our marriage. But then, I suppose I did not marry you because I wanted to be followed around by a cowering slave.” He glanced at her to make sure she was listening. “What you must understand is that my mother has carried twelve children, but lost nine of them. Some at birth, others later, due to”—he shrugged—”jealous fortune? I do not pretend to understand these matters.”
Myrina shook her head. “Poor woman. To have endured so much grief—”
“Meanwhile”—Paris turned his back on the city, arms crossed—”my wonderful father keeps siring children with his other wives and concubines and is rarely without a babe—or a woman—in his lap.” Seeing Myrina’s shock, he smiled wryly. “I am sorry. But you were the one who wanted to know.”
“And I appreciate your candor.” She moved closer to him, not ready to quit the subject. “But why would your mother accuse me of killing you?”
Paris rolled his eyes. “Religious nonsense.”
Myrina looked at him intently, willing him to continue. When he did not, she framed his face with her hands and said, “Please let me share more than your bed. Something bears down on you, and it pains me that I cannot help you shoulder the burden. Remember what you taught me … and let me fight with you, back to back, until we have driven it safely away—”
Taking her hands, Paris kissed them one by one. “When I was born,” he finally said, turning toward the ocean again, “there was no shortage of evil omens. The priests used all their tricks to convince my parents I was an unwanted child—hateful to the gods and therefore a threat to Troy.” He threw her a sad smile. “You see, it has always been a fear with us that one day the Earth Shaker will rise and march away from our city in anger, causing destruction as he goes. Occasionally, you will feel him stirring”—Paris ran his hand over a tiny crack in the stone balustrade—”but have no fear, my sweet; he has never been calmer than he is right now.”
Myrina studied his profile, anxious to understand. “What could the priests possibly have against a newborn?”
“They never approved of my father’s choice of wife. They feared that under a queen raised in Ephesus—a queen used to weapons and independence—the Trojan people might revolt against the new gods and revert to their old ways.” Paris hesitated, then continued reluctantly, “I might as well tell you that before my great-grandfather took the throne, Troy was, for many generations, ruled by women. Otrera and my mother are descended from the ancient queens of Troy, and this was why my father chose to ally himself with them through marriage. But the priests have always worried that my mother would challenge my father’s authority as king and so, from the moment she set foot in Troy, they began filling her head with superstitious nonsense.”
Sensing Paris’s pain, Myrina wrapped her arms around him, and they stood like that for a while, looking over the town that seemed joyfully ignorant of its own secret past. “I am sure you can sympathize with my mother,” said Paris at length, leaning his head against Myrina’s. “Relieved as she was to keep her baby, she was distressed by all the talk of evil omens. And so, as soon as another chorus of scheming priests was installed, riffling through entrails and pronouncing self-serving inanities, she consulted them again, to better understand my destiny.”
Paris fell silent once again, his eyes running to and fro across the teeming city, following an oxcart here, a group of roving sailors there. Then he turned and walked back into the room, to pick up his satchel and take out the cloth containing the golden chalice. He did not unwrap it but merely put it gently on a table before walking over to the bed—an enormous divan mounted on a marble podium between four red stone pillars—to throw himself across it, facedown.
When he finally spoke, his voice was stifled by the soft bedding, but Myrina—climbing up beside him—heard every word, although she might have wished she didn’t. “Now, to please my parents,” Paris began, “the new priests decided my fate was not as evil as formerly thought … as long as I never married. My marriage, they claimed, would enrage the Earth Shaker and he would strike me dead. But here I am”—Paris rolled over, throwing out his arms—”married and still alive.”
When Myrina did not respond, he sat up on one elbow and tugged teasingly at her hair. “Come now, lovely wife, laugh with me. The ways of the gods may be mysterious but the workings of man are only too obvious.”
Myrina, shaken by what she had heard, threw her arms around him. “You didn’t have to marry me, you know. I would have happily lived with you—”
“Liar!” Paris rolled over and pinned her to the bed. “From the moment I first called you Queen Myrina and placed a crown upon your head, we both knew there could be no other way. I had t
o possess you”—he looked down at her body and the dress that was still undone—” fully and completely.”
“You speak as if you own me,” protested Myrina, partly relieved to quit the sinister topic, yet also piqued by the patronizing tone in which Paris had addressed her ever since their arrival at the palace.
“Do I not?” He smiled at her frown, then began caressing her as if to demonstrate his ownership. “I think I do.”
“Allow me to disagree.” Myrina sneaked a hand underneath his tunic and soon found what she was looking for. “For all your cocky posturing, it is man’s lot to be possessed by woman, not the other way around.” Her touch made Paris lie back on the bed with a gasp of pleasant expectation, and she straddled him triumphantly. “Now that I understand the mechanics of things,” she said, hovering over him, “I wager that for every rapacious bandit who takes his pleasure at the point of a dagger you will find a hundred husbands bound by the whims of their wives.” Myrina moved teasingly against him, enjoying Paris’s groans of impatience. “No, my love. Yes, my love. Not now, my love.” She leaned forward to catch his eyes, making sure he acknowledged her power over him. “We possess you, my prince. Nature wanted it that way. Never forget it.”
MYRINA’S FIRST WEEK AT the palace was a confusing web of intense, almost euphoric, happiness intertwined with embarrassments and frustrations that left her—the killer of lake monsters, the savior of enslaved sisters—secretly in tears at the end of every day.
Her primary concern was Lilli. Sadly, Myrina’s ideas of how to ensure her sister’s comfort went far beyond what Paris was prepared to do. “What?” he exclaimed, when she first set a tender foot on the subject. “You would have your innocent sister sleep in our room, where she will hear everything we say and do?” He shook his head with disbelief. “Why do you want to strangle our pleasure like this? You know we would never be at ease with her so near.”
