How are the Mighty fallen

by Thomas Burnett Swann

  “You mean they would show us off? You, a queen? Silver-gilt said they were like the Cretans.”

  “It’s true they came by way of Crete from their northern home. And they are kind. But all human peoples take slaves. Even we have our sea cows to give us milk.”

  “Why don’t we swim home?” you asked.

  “Because,” I said, “I have hurt my arm.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You’ve slept all day,” you said. “Eat now, Mama.” “Yes, you must both eat.” The speaker was a young woman who had darkened her eyes with kohl, ruddied her cheeks with the powder of the insect called cochineal, and reddened her hair with the dye of the henna plant. Even her voluminous robe could not conceal her enticing figure. I mistook her for a Philistine courtesan until I saw the sea in her eyes and recognized a considerably altered Alecto.

  “Silvergilt, you’ve hidden your wings and dyed your hair! I must call you Scarletgilt.”

  “It’s just as well, Honey Hair. Wings mean death or slavery in this land. The Philistines will worship you but lock you in a temple. The Israelites will take you for a demon, since you are too beautiful and the wrong sex to be an angel, and probably stone you.”

  The sight of her metamorphosed from a free-living Siren into a human-appearing prostitute saddened me almost out of the gladness of seeing her.

  “What shall we do?” I sighed. “Bumblebee and I.” Even a queen, particularly when she has lost her palace and her kingdom, can ask advice.

  “What I did. Hide the marks of our race. Become one with this land. Only three months ago I arrived on these shores. Look at my feet”

  Her sandals of kidskin revealed toes without webs. “A simple operation with a knife removed them. As you know,” she added with a disconcerting smile, “solitary queens like me have always been expert with cutlery.”

  “You live among the Philistines?”

  “No. I’ve stayed here on the beach since my arrival. The first day I met a young warrior who had come to net murexes. The cost of purple dye is prohibitive, except to kings,‘ he said. ’Yet Philistine warriors like myself are expected to wear a purple tunic on feast days and a purple plume into battle. I shall make my own dye.‘ At first he mistook me for a daughter of the fish-god, Dagon, and offered, indeed threatened, to carry me to his priest in Gath. I persuaded him to change his mind. When military duties called him back to his garrison, he left me his tent and sent me robes and jewels by way of his friends, who invariably lingered for a night’s refreshment. After him, there have been not only warriors but fishermen, merchants from Phoenicia, and even Israelite shepherds who owe fealty to Philistia.” “All in three weeks?”

  “A night with me is worth a year with the best wife in the country.”

  “But don’t your lovers die in the act of love?”

  “Drones disembowel themselves and of course they die.

  But human males are constituted for many acts and, I must add, they seem to improve with practice. Think of it, my dear. Every evening a nuptial flight, and with a practiced male, not a callow drone. When there are no young men- and I do insist upon youth, even though I am, as you know, upwards of a hundred-I work my arts of sorcery for the old. I conjure the dead from Sheol, a region of brackish streams and tongueless ghosts, the place where the Israelites go when they die. The spirits are glad to answer my summons and leave such a dreary region, if only for a look or a few words exchanged with a mate or a friend. Thus, with my two occupations, I can live near the sea and still pass for a native. I was walking along the seashore miles to the south when I heard you call.“

  “But I didn’t call.”

  “Your spirit did. I knew you needed help. You and Bumblebee there.”

  “But my toes,” I hurried to say, “and my wings-”

  “I will give you toes like mine. As for your wings, you must simply keep them hidden. They are very small; Israelite robes are very loose and concealing. Even if you intend to become a courtesan like me, you will have no problem. As for myself, I give my lovers a potion of forgetfulness-sea nettles crushed with the inky juice of the squid. Thus they forget my wings but remember me. It’s all in knowing the right dosage. Too much and they’ll forget everything. You may do the same-after I clip between your toes.”

  “And Bumblebee?”

  “Easier still. At his age, he wont even feel the pain of my knife. And you can teach him never to show his back.”

  “It means we can never go home. How can we cross the sea without webbed feet?”

  “If you wait till your arm is healed, you can certainly never go home. And what is home anyway with the likes of Goliath skulking about the place?”

  “Yes. The Cyclopes. They've probably captured my palace, killed my people, and eaten my sea cows.”

  “But Mama, what about the Celestial Vineyard?” you cried. “We’ve left the island of the Goddess. The god of Israel may send us to Sheol.”

  “I suspect the Great Mother will still look after us.” It was a doubtful hope; we had angered her once in our northern home and she had sent us wandering to the south. Now, we had left her island for a country where deserts outnumbered forests. But Alecto possessed a genius for survival, and her advice, though unpalatable, was certainly practical.

  “Whatever you say, Mama.” You looked, however, with longing at the sea and fingered your stubby wings as if they, like the webs of your feet, must also face the knife.

  Alecto smiled at you with sympathy. “I will give you my potion to make you forget the past.”

  “Must I forget?”

  “Yes, my dear. The memory of Crete, the sea cows and the white bears, would only haunt you in this dismal land. Do you want to stay with me, you and your mother, here by the sea?”

  “I think I had better take him inland,” I said quickly. “I rather fancy the Israelites, from what I have heard. I like farmers-men who are close to the earth.”

  “I must find you some cloaks before I lose my business. A look at you and your nakedness, Honey Hair, and-well, I would earn silver while you earned gold.”

  I had quite forgotten that Bumblebee and I had shed our garments at the start of our swim from Crete.

  “Down the beach a way, there’s a camel caravan out of Midian. But first, your toes.”

  In Alecto’s tent, I drank of sleep, you of forgetfulness. Awaking, we found the webs removed from our toes. You knew me to be your mother but did not know the past.

  “My toes hurt, Mama,” you said, “and I have a pain in my head. Where have we been?”

  “You’ve had a fever,” I said. “You walked in your sleep on the beach and stepped on some jagged shells. I ran after you without my sandals.” You did not ask me about the remoter past. It was the power of Alecto’s drink.

  She returned at dusk. I thanked her for what she had done to earn the cloaks, the shekels, the provisions for our trip- dates, cheese, bread, waterskins, and a vial of her potion in case I should choose to follow her trade. The cloaks smelled of camel, but they were loose and comfortable against the heat, and our new sandals did not press cruelly between our toes.

  We stayed with Alecto for a week. Then, jangling shekels in a money bag, we began our journey to find a home. We traveled by night and rested by day. In seven days we crossed the border into Israel and reached a small village-one of those forgettable and featureless villages of clay and straw-thatched huts clustered around a well-and we lingered in an inn which was little more than a house whose attic was rented to wayfarers. Dressed like the villagers-I in a white ankle-long robe trimmed with malachite-green, with a veil to hide my face; you in a goatskin tunic-we spoke little and seemingly escaped notice. The language of the place was a dialect of the same tongue which was spoken on Crete, in Philistia, and by the Israelites. Daily, at dusk, I visited the village well. On the fifth day a young man arrived on foot, accompanied by a small contingent of soldiers who looked as if they would rather be farmers. Israelites. I could tell from then- pointed beards. In their
ill-fitting tunics, they hardly seemed a match for the armored Philistines. But there was earth in their look. They were close to the soil. They were men who could predict the rain by the flight of quail or snow by the thickness of fur on a fox’s back. I liked them, and more than liked their chief, who stared at me as if he were trying to guess the features beneath my veil. I lifted the veil to drink from the well and gave him a generous look. “By Yahweh,” he gasped. “It’s Eve out of paradise!” He walked toward me with purposeful steps. Boldly I met his gaze. A simple man but brave; a man to trust Of course it was Saul.

  Her story ended, Ahinoam stared impatiently at her son and waited for him to speak. Have I eased his heart, she wondered, or tortured him with another guilt?

  “Did you tell him who we were?” he asked finally. “Or did you give him the potion like Alecto?” Even as the lamplight flickered across his high cheekbones, his faintly slanted eyes, an inner radiance equalled the reflected light of the lamp. It was the bright and wounding light of innocence.

  “I told him. After I had won his heart.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was too besotted with me for reproaches. I knew that he was horrified-a woman with wings, a Siren! — but fascinated too. He asked me only this: that I should marry him but give you another draught of Alecto’s drink. He wanted you to think him your father-he liked you at once, it seems.

  We never spoke of the matter again, not even when I bore him, from time to time, the eggs which hatched to become your brothers and sisters. All of them were human in every way, neither wings, nor webs, nor troubling memories, nor eyes and ears in their brains. They know the legend, of course, that you and I are from Crete. But they know better than to ask questions.“

  “Who was my real father?”

  “A drone named Meleagros. It was he who gave you the green of your eyes. I loved him more than Saul.”

  “But how did Saul explain us to his friends?”

  “He said that I was a widow from Ophir and you were my son. The Midianites had stolen us from our house. But we had escaped in the desert and found our way to Endor and the well-and him. No one believed him, I think. But Saul was a king. Who were his men to deny his tale? Except in the whispers which have encompassed the land, and made us, you and me, an intriguing legend which even Samuel does not dare to attack.”

  “And you never knew if Myiskos and Hylas were dead?”

  “No one has ever survived Goliath’s blows.”

  “But they died together, didn’t they? That is something, at least.”

  “Yes, and perhaps we will meet them in the Celestial Vineyard.”

  “Not Sheol?”

  “Not that gray anonymity. Sheol is for the wingless.”

  The veins stood blue and prominent on his clenched fist “You think I am like them, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. If you are, I am not ashamed. In the eyes of the Goddess, the only sin is unloving.”

  “I loved Nathan, the shepherd. But he was a brother to me, or so I thought.”

  “Who can say that any love between the young is entirely of the flesh or apart from the flesh?”

  “The sins of Sodom-”

  “Sodom was neither better nor worse than any other city in this desert land-Israelite or Canaanite. An earthquake destroyed it, not the hand of Yahweh.”

  “It may be true,” he said. “But there won’t be any more shepherds for me.”

  “Won’t there, my dear?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The recent victory at Michmash belonged to the scribes. The routed Philistines had returned to ravage the land, and Goliath was now their champion in the Vale of Elah.

  Most of the night he had ranged the opposite bank of the stream which divided the two armies and, prodigiously drunk on Philistine beer, hurled obscenities and thick-tongued defiance. He did not know of Ahinoam’s presence among the Israelites. If it were not for Jonathan’s fever-Jonathan whom she had come to nurse-she would have fled on foot or by ass at sunrise and closeted herself in the fortified house at Gibeah. Fear of his lust was a dryness in her throat, like a breath of scorching sand from a sirocco. But he threatened more than her person; he threatened to lose her the trust of the Israelites. Rumors that she had been a queen in Caphtor, the sometime home of the Philistines, had failed to harm her, for her loyalty to Israel was beyond question. But the knowledge that she was a Siren would enrage and terrify a people who believed that women with wings, unlike men and angels, were descended from the cruel and seductive Lilith. She could imagine Samuel inveighing against her: “A witch, a temptress, abhorrent to Yahweh! Stone her before she ensorcels more than the king…” If only they knew how she loathed the beast Goliath! How once, as a girl, she had met him in a forest on Crete and… (Ashtoreth, spare me from memories, she prayed. But Ashtoreth had other concerns)… oak trees grew tall around her, and sunlight dappled her tunic of ibex fur.

  – She had found him kneeling beside a stream and studying his image in the clear water. He was so repulsive-indeed, he shuddered at his reflected self-that she wanted to touch and reassure him. His people were newcomers to the island. They had come on a huge raft with a sail-a dozen of them — and no one knew at the time their homeland or customs or gods.

  “Are you afraid of me too?” he asked. “Everyone else is.”

  “Bears can be big but they don’t frighten me.”

  “Come and show me your necklace. I never saw such lovely stones.”

  “Amber,” she said. “Alecto, the Siren, gathered the bits on the floor of the sea. The tears of the Nereids.”

  His huge hands tentatively moved toward her-she did not run-to fondle the beads. How gentle, she thought His hand is as big as a shield but his touch is butterfly-soft.

  “Now you are my prisoner,” he smiled, cupping her between his hands. “I will build a house for you in the woods and keep away the wolves and the Night Stalkers.”

  “And I will cook you tunny and sea-grapes,” she laughed, for she was a child at the time and fond of games, “and keep your house as clean as a beaver’s lodge!”

  Finally she saw the evil behind his eyes. It was rather like looking into a sea cave and finding, deep in the shadows, a malevolent shark.

  “But first I must get my robes and my comb and another pair of sandals. You don’t want a slattern to keep your house!”

  The odor of him was rank in her nostrils.

  “Honey Hair.” The fixed and frozen smile became a leer. “I’ve heard them call you that. Come with me now. You won’t need robes with me.” The shark had emerged from his cave.

  She uttered a sweet piercing cry which echoed through the trees and over the beach and under the sea like the song of a nameless bird. He threw her to the ground and spread her arms and her cry became a scream… It was the Artori who saved her. The forest suddenly bristled with living bushes, and bushes became bears, and the bears snapped at his heels until he fled among the trees.

  “Honey Hair, one day I will crush your petals and drink your nectar!”

  Would he recognize her and remember his boast?

  – She dozed briefly and then stirred into consciousness; the rough animal-hide walls materialized around her. The smell of goatskin permeated the air; the couch was hard and pillow-less; there was sand in her hair from the journey which she had made without preparation and without attendants on the back of an ass. Almost instantly, however, she dismiss such minor hardships from her mind…

  “Jonathan is ill,” the runner had said.

  “I know my way to the camp,” she had answered. “Stay here and rest in Gibeah until you recover your strength.”

  The Vale of Elah was not a desert like Michmash but a valley of palm trees and acacias and a stream of pure melted snow from the mountains. For more than a month the Israelites and the Philistines had faced each other across this stream, equally matched and readier to exchange insults than spears. It was the return of Goliath, cured of fever, which had destroyed the balance
.

  She had visited Jonathan immediately on her arrival and found him feverish and incoherent in the grasp of demons, while the kind but inept physician bled him with leeches. She had instantly recognized the nature of his attackers. They were Bedouin ghosts to whom leeches were no more objectionable than gnats. They were not killers, these Bedouin dead, but troublemakers, jealous because they must dwell forever invisibly among those places where, in life, they had roistered and robbed and worshipped no gods except the moon and the stars.

  She kissed Jonathan’s brow-how hot he felt! — and momentarily he recognized her.

  “You should not be here, Mama. He’s here and I must fight him.”

  For an instant she thought: He remembers Goliath from Crete. But no, he knew only what the men had told him about the foreign giant, engaged as a mercenary by the Philistines. Quickly she gave instructions for the preparation of a medicinal drink.

  “Jonathan,” she said, pressing his damp hand. “Repeat these words after me.” His voice was hardly audible but hers was strong and clear; the star spirits would surely hear her and perhaps turn from the Bedouins.

  “Chant the astral formulae; ‘Deneb and Aldebaron, Capricomus, Scorpio, Wheel in orange, wheel in blue, Whirl the stellar sorcery.’

  Hail the crescent courtesan Climbing halls of indigo (Orange is her sickle shoe): ‘Wrest the lunar sorcery Onto them assaulting me.“

  Unexpectedly he relaxed and smiled and pressed her hand. She lifted his head and forced him to drink a bitter concoction of sour wine, gall, myrrh, and opium which was poisonous to the demons. Shadowy figures like great bats flapped above his couch and passed immaterially through the roof of the tent. Thus, she eradicated his pain and fever but left him too weak to accept Goliath’s challenge.

  Across the stream, Goliath boomed continual obscenities. “I will crush the tent of Saul beneath my fist. Hyenas will feast where I have walked. Gibeah will shudder at my approach. The queen of Israel will lose her gold.”