I look beyond the bulk of my guards who are holding back a reed thin body that’s topped by a mound of disheveled hair.
“It's fine, let her through,” I say. “Deianira.” She bows low and I hope all the people swarming the agora can see her show of respect, but no one seems to be paying me any attention. “Rise. What is it?”
“A private matter.”
“To do with your marriage, no doubt.” She nods and the mound of hair waggles just out of time with her head. “Fine, we can meet later today.”
“Thank you, Excellency. May I ask what brings you into the city? We don't see enough of you these days,” she says with a grin I think is meant to be alluring, but simply looks absurd on such a hard face.
“I was seeking knowledge,” I say trying to sound wise as I continue strolling. My guards and Deianira keep pace with me.
Her face lights up. “I know who can help. The Oracle.”
I let out a scoffing huff through my nose that has filled with the scent of stale, cooked onions that clings to Deianira. “That old hag?”
“No, she knows things. She knew I'd be wed. She knew it was my name that would be chosen.”
“I find it hard you recommend her after that.”
Her cheeks flush, but her eyes remain adamant.
“She knows things. You can ask her anything and she'll have the answer.”
I wonder, if the woman has all the answers why she hasn't advised her client about scissors and a better hair style. But I have to admit I’m curious and it’s either this or pour over the mountain of books in my study.
“Fine, take me to her. Or does she know we're coming?”
Deianira, ignoring or simply not understanding the joke, guides me through a series of small streets I didn’t even know existed. In places where rubble from a fallen building blocks the way, we have to back track. Each twist and turn seems to bring us into a road narrower and dirtier than the last.
At the turn of the corner into an alley, an old man squats in front of a heavy wooden box with a sign that reads, “Five drachars each.” I dare to peek at the contents. Inside swarms a mass of juvenile rats. I then realize they aren’t swarming; they’re feeding on a sibling—a sibling that still struggles against its brothers’ and sisters’ hungry teeth. I instantly recoil from the sight.
Once in the alley, the sky is nearly blotted out by leaning buildings and strings holding laundry that looks like it needs washed at least twice more. The lack of sunlight leaves puddles filled with wriggling mosquito larvae in the potholes.
“Here it is,” Deianira says as we stop in front of a door that hangs askew on its hinges.
“Here?” I ask. “If she knows so much, why can’t she place a few bets and move to the better side of town with her winnings?”
“Because I don’t work like that,” a stern, yet silky voice says as the door sways open.
“You’re not a hag,” I say. She isn’t attractive, but neither is she the wrinkled old heap of bones that had been the Oracle when I was young. Her bright red hair frames a pale, unlined face. She watches me with eyes of such a deep brown that it’s impossible to discern where the pupil ends and the iris begins. It gives her eyes a mix of youthful innocence and animal wildness. The look unsettles me and I step back a pace.
“Afraid?” she asks as she cocks a coppery eyebrow. “You should be with what’s in your heart.”
“What do you know?” I say defiantly.
She leans in so her lips are near my ear. I can sense my guards tensing, but I raise a hand to signal them to hold back.
“A man shouldn’t rape his wife.”
I tell myself it’s the chill of the dark alley that makes my arm and neck hairs stand on end. She moves back and gives a triumphant smile.
“Good advice,” I say, “but what does it have to do with your skills?”
She laughs at this. A pleasant and warm laugh that is completely out of place for this dank location. A woman on the stoop next door to the Oracle looks up from scrubbing her linens in water that appears as if it has been scooped from one of the alley’s puddles. With a disapproving shrug she returns to her scrubbing.
“Come in if you want to discover my skills.”
She turns and walks back into the hovel seeming not to care whether I follow or whether I stay on her stoop.
“Guards, wait here. Make sure no one else goes in. Deianira, I’ll meet with you in an hour’s time,” I say as I start through the doorway.
“But you’ll need payment,” Deianira says.
I indicate the pouch at my waist. This is not the area of town where I want to announce how much coin I’m carrying. Deianira looks about to say something, but I ignore her and follow after the Oracle.
Where I’m expecting mysterious objects and talismans of fortune telling, I’m greeted by a normal Portacean home. A brazier holds a still-glowing coal, the squat wooden furniture has seen repair upon repair, and a wall niche holds a simple shrine to the Oracle’s ancestral gods. A corner that makes up the kitchen area has shelves where foods such as squash, garlic, and apples that will keep for months are stored and a wooden counter where meals would be prepared. Hanging from the ceiling are several pots that seem too large for any meal for a single person. Along the wall hangs at least a dozen of fine Helenian-forged knives. Knives that cost the average Portacean a month’s wages for a single blade.
“Sit.” She indicates a wooden chair placed in front of a small oak table. As I sit, she slides into the chair opposite me. “What is it you want?”
“I thought you knew these things.”
“I do, but I need to hear it from your lips. If you can’t admit to what you want, then you don’t want it badly enough.”
“Power,” I say without hesitation.
“Power,” she repeats with a hint of a question in her voice. “What kind of power? Electrical power? You need engineers, not oracles for that. And from what I hear, you don’t like engineers.”
I hesitate. The idea had seemed so perfect when it bloomed inside my head, but to tell it to another turns the idea from a fragrant rose blossom to a dangerous tangle of thorns. The Oracle gives me a knowing smile. Satisfaction gleams in her eyes over her perceived triumph. I think of Adneta yelling at me, saying I have nothing I can give her. I think of Iole daring to threaten me with a neglect charge. I think of Hera. I sit up straighter in the chair.
“The power of the gods. The power over Hera.”
“So, you do want it. And do you have payment?”
I reach to my waist and pull out a coin. She shakes her head with that same knowing smile.
“Coin won’t give you the power you’re after. Only blood. Most people pick up a rat on the way in.”
“I’ve no rat. Here,” I push a gold piece over. “That will buy at least fifty rats.”
She stands. Ignoring the coin she glides over to the kitchen corner and makes a selection from her knife collection—a heavy cleaver with a blade that glints in the broken light.
I jerk out of the chair ready to call my guards.
“So, you don’t want what you came for after all. A bit of blood for the power of the gods? Seems a small price to pay.” She gives a shrug and puts the cleaver back in place.
“How much?” I ask. My voice shakes. She moves around me, slipping past me like a cloud of mist.
“I can’t tell you. If you truly want power, you must be willing to pay any price. Do you truly want power?”
I nod, trying to hold her gaze but finding it harder to look into her dark pools with each circle she makes around me.
“Remove your tunic and bind it around your eyes.” She glances at my crotch as she tells me this.
Dear gods, does she mean cut my cock off? This has to be a bluff. I refuse to let her shake me any further. I undo my belt and set it and the pouch on the chair. Once I’ve slipped the tunic over my head, I fold it to form a band that I then tie over my eyes.
“Hold your arms out away from your body a
nd keep them there. Do not move them.” I stick out my arms with my fingers splayed. My arms shake and my breath comes out in nervous pulses through my nostrils. I hear her step away and then the clink of another knife being taken away from its companions.
I’m about to give in, fling the covering from my eyes, say I’ve changed my mind. How hard could it be to read a few books? But my arms are frozen in place and before I can will my limbs to move, cool fingers clutch my groin. I feel the surge of an instant erection. A single whimper escapes my throat. No amount of power can be worth this.
“How much are willing to pay?” she asks
Before I can protest, before I can shout power will be pointless if I can’t enjoy Adneta’s body, I hear the swish of a blade arcing through the air. A sense of pressure and then heat washes over me before pain pulses through my body.
A cold hand squeezes my cock. I wonder if this is only the phantom sensation I’ve heard amputees describe. Another burst of pain hits me. I then realize the pain is coming not from my groin, but from my hand. Although, they are starting to tremble, I don’t dare drop my arms.
The Oracle makes a few deft motions with her hand sending an engulfing and frightening pleasure through me. With a full body shudder and a cry I’m certain will turn the neighbors’ heads, I release myself onto her palm. In the moments it takes me to recover, she wipes the fluid over the area where my right thumb had once been and binds the hand in cloth. She then yanks the tunic from my eyes. I don’t know which I want more: To grab her to me and thrust my tongue into her mouth or to slap her until the teeth rattle in her head. She smiles with a coy yet firm expression that tells me I should try neither.
“If it’s still bleeding when you leave, I can cauterize it. Do you need a cloth?” she asks looking to my crotch which continues to throb in time with the wound on my hand. I shake my head dumbly and slip my tunic back on. I then slide into the chair to hide the bulge that refuses to die down.
“Have I paid?” I hold up my hand. Surprisingly, the cloth is clean and no blood seeps through.
“I think you’ve done well. Impressive actually. You’ll want to be careful with that wound, though. Cruelty can crack open even the thickest scar.”
“If I need medical advice I’ll go to the Herene nurses, not an oracle. Now, will you tell me how to get Hera out of my life?”
“Yes.” The dark eyes glint like the knife blade she is wiping clean. “In the Garden of the Hesperides grows a tree that bears golden apples. That tree is Hera, Hera is the tree. If you take the tree, you take Hera.”
“Where is the tree?” I ask picturing Herc uprooting the thing trunk, roots, and all and hauling it back to my villa.
“No man knows.”
I slam down my fist. Searing pain rips through a thumb I no longer have.
“You mangled my hand and you don’t know the answers to my questions? Can this tree be found?”
“I could have taken more,” she says as if speaking of trimming my hair. “I still can. There are answers, but no man knows them. There is a tree, but no man can take it. Others do, others can. Not humans. Find them and you can find the tree.”
My head reels trying to sort out her knot-like words that seem to twist in on themselves without any hint of where to begin to unravel them.
“So, it can be taken?” I ask slowly.
“Yes,” she replies, exaggerating the syllable as if talking to a stupid child.
“And once I have this tree, I will be able to rule over Hera.” She gives a slight nod. The knowing smile has returned to her lips. “What? Why do you look at me like that?”
“Because you have already promised your wife something. If you don’t get it for her, she won’t care what power you have.”
The belt. How can this woman know about that? No matter, it should take Herc little time to overpower a woman even if she is an Amazonian warrior. Once he has procured the belt he can perform one final task. Hera will then be finished, the Herenes banished, and Portaceae will bow at my feet.
“Are we done here?” I ask as I stand. My foot grazes something. When I look down I see my thumb lying in a pool of blood. It points to the southeast. The Oracle comes to look at it with me. “Does it mean the search for the tree should begin in the southeast?”
“No, it means that’s how it fell,” she says in a sarcastic tone and then laughs. “But southeast sounds as good as any direction.”
I grab my belt and fix it around my waist as I hurry out of the insane woman’s hovel.
“Get me out of here,” I say to the guards who form a barrier around me as we march out of the alley.
Deianira sits waiting on the steps of the veranda when I return. The guards flank to my sides when we stop. I look again to the cloth around my hand. Even after a near jog up the hill, not a single drop of blood blossoms through the binding. I stride up the steps to the main door.
“How did it go? She’s wonderful, isn’t she?”
“You could have waited inside,” I say ignoring her question and turning the lock in the right sequence to release it before pushing open the door.
“No one answered, so I waited.”
I wonder briefly where Baruch is but my thoughts never linger long on my servant.
“This must be important for you to be so patient.” We cross the foyer and I show her into my study wondering if Adneta has seen her waiting on the porch like a dog for its master. No doubt if she has we will have an excellent time joking about the woman's horrid hair and boyish body later in the evening.
“It is.” She sits in the chair I indicate and gawks around the room before focusing her attention back onto me. “You have to do something about Herc. He has duties under the law. Neglecting a wife is just as bad as cheating on her.”
“You know the law the Herene dug up,” I say as I sit down across the desk from her. “He must stay in the House of Hera until he is done with the—”
“The task, the tasks. Can't you just declare them done with? He's not doing anything for Portaceae.” She looks shocked at her own outburst then says in a meeker tone, “I mean, not really.”
If even this common woman has noticed my cousins’ works haven’t benefited the polis no wonder the walls of the city are lined with the people's hatred of me. But it’s too late to worry about their opinion now. The Oracle has given me hope, regardless how vague that hope may be, and I will not back down even if people start building golden statues of my cousins taller than the arena's walls.
“His crime was great. You know that. So, no, the tasks cannot be waived.”
“Then command him to be with me. You're the ruler of Portaceae, make him—”
She cuts her words off, but it’s plain what she means to say. Command Herc to love her. What a pathetic notion.
“Love is not a condition of marriage.”
Although I say the words gently, her eyes brim with tears and her nose flashes red as she snorts out a sob.
“But he's mine. You gave him to me, not to her, not to that Herene bitch. What sort of Herene keeps a man from his wife?”
Jealousy and a need for love. Gods, there’s a perfect brew. If she’s desperate enough, those two emotions could work to my advantage. After all, once the tree is found, I can't leave Herc to be a threat or a rallying point for the people no matter what power this tree might give me. But if Deianira can do my dirty work, the people won't hate me when their hero falls. For a day that began so terribly, it really is shaping up quite nicely despite the loss of a thumb.
“It is a sad and shameful business. That's the problem of allowing such a young Herene to be priestess and a matter I plan to tend to. But there is a way to get what you want from your husband.”
Her face lights up like a stray that’s just been offered a fresh hunk of steak.
“I'll do whatever it takes.”
I knew she would.
From my desk drawer, I pull out a small vial using my left hand. Inside, the red liquid still retains the warmth of lif
e. Strange, given that single drop means death. I had saved it from the hydra blood I'd sold to the Areans. It isn't much, but it will be more than enough to do away with my cousins.
I hold the vial between my thumb and forefinger letting the contents catch the light coming in from the window. She eyes it with fascinated curiosity.
“What it is?”
“The famous Drops of Love. Feel.” I hold it out for her to touch. She brushes a tentative finger against it, then lets the finger linger as a smile forms on her paper thin lips. “What you feel is the warmth that burns in the heart of true lovers. Just a few drops of this potion will make Herc love you for all time. He will forget Iole. You will be his only thought.”
“Does it work?”
“Look at me. I'm a man with a skewed nose and paunch of a belly.” I pat my abdomen as I deliberately push it out making it look fatter than it truly is. “But yet my wife is one of the most beautiful women in all of Portaceae.”
“You gave her these?”
Oh, I've given her many things to keep her mine.
“What do you think?”
“Hand them over,” she says with an eager grin.
I start to hand her over the vial but just as she reaches for it, I snatch the vial back.
“On one condition.”
“Anything. I have money.”
“No, marriage is important to the polis so think of this as a donation. What I need is a promise from you that you will wait until the tasks are over before you give the drops to him.”
Her face pulls into a scowl as she slumps back against the chair.
“Why? He's my husband. Why should I wait for these stupid tasks?”
“My dear, you chose to marry him knowing he had duties to fulfill. Now, whether you believe it or not, his duties are vital to Portaceae, to the future of this polis. As you know we are at war with the Areans and now the Athenians may threaten to invade us. If you give this to your husband the hero before he is done getting us the resources we need to defend ourselves, he will be so distracted with his love for you he won't be able to help Portaceae. You wouldn't want to be the woman who was the ruin of the polis, would you?” She shakes her head guiltily. “Isn't it worth waiting a few weeks, a month at the most, to have him utterly besotted with you for the rest of his life? Isn't a tiny bit of patience worth it for the good of the polis?”
The Trials of Hercules: Book One of The Osteria Chronicles Page 29
