by Marilyn Todd
Then again, who the hell did?
‘His mother’s suggestion,’ said the thin-faced official. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, my lady, but after three days of aborted attempts to retrieve the body, she was worried the smell—’
‘Quite so.’ Hector stepped forward as a means of changing the subject. ‘Cadur? See to our guests’ horses, would you, while I check which of the staterooms is free.’
There was an economy of movement about the unsmiling young man who answered the summons, and either high priestesses passed this way all the time or Cadur was simply not interested. Either way, his dark eyes didn’t lift from unbuckling bridles.
‘Ah, just the person I was looking for!’ Hector sprinted over to a handsome, grey-haired woman in an expensive green tunic, whose ear studs glittered in the sunlight. In her arms was a bale of neatly folded linen, and there was a familiarity between the pair as they conversed.
‘His mother?’ she asked.
Something flashed behind Cadur’s eyes. ‘His wife.’
The word ‘ma’am’ came as an afterthought. She’d need to watch this one, she thought.
‘Fancy purebreds you have here,’ Ballio said approvingly. He had already noted their brand on his wax tablet. The inverted tripod of Poseidon, the Earth Shaker. ‘Not the ox horns one normally associates with the River God, Eurotas, though.’
His knowledge and professionalism had impressed her. ‘Like I said, officer, this is not an official visit. These horses are from my own stud.’
‘Your stud?’ His lips pinched in a cross between admiration and surprise.
‘Land ownership by women is an abomination in the sight of the gods,’ intoned a low voice from the shadows. ‘It flies in the face of natural succession and is an offence to the natural order.’
Iliona turned to the tall, thin individual dressed in the elaborate white robes of a priest. His eyes were pale green and bulging, reminding her of overcooked gooseberries, and on his head he wore a small bronze crown of roses, almond flowers and holly leaves. He also looked like he chewed wasps for the fun of it.
‘Sparta does indeed impose different laws to the rest of Greece regarding women,’ she said, smoothing her robes so he couldn’t miss the slit that revealed her thigh. Another uniquely Spartan characteristic. ‘But female independence is well established among the gods.’
‘You would do well not to compare yourself to the Olympians, madam. Arrogance does not become you.’
Perhaps baiting him wasn’t the best solution.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Sandor.’ A skeletal finger pointed to a circular shrine set high on the cliff top. ‘I serve the Blue Goddess. Zabrina of the Translucent Wave.’
Hence the bronze crown. Roses for worship. Almond blossoms to celebrate the end of the ice on the lake, since the almond tree is always the first into flower. Holly, of course, represented resurrection and eternity. For all those souls who perished out there.
‘Well, Sandor, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot, and if I’m treading on any of those misunderstood toes, I apologize. However, I am not here in any official capacity—’
‘You have cursed this posting station.’
Two hundred miles astride her black stallion, Hades, hadn’t improved the wound in Iliona’s side. Now it was starting to hurt.
‘That is nonsense,’ she said evenly. ‘I’ve only just arrived.’
‘Having made magic before you left,’ he agreed.
That was all the trigger she’d needed.
‘I’m sorry if my presence is a breach of your chauvinist principles, Sandor, but where I come from, we live by mathematics and science, where rational thought outweighs superstition, and rituals are carried out to maintain order and calm. The Oracle of Sparta doesn’t “make magic”—and she certainly doesn’t curse a posting station at the expense of a much-loved hero.’
Ballio, she noticed, was tapping his stylus against his wax tablet as though he was making notes. Cadur was busy unbuckling saddles, and if she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he was deaf. While Jocasta was leaning against a pillar with the sort of grin on her face that Iliona had an urge to slap off.
‘So you have no powers?’ Sandor asked.
‘Of course I have powers.’ Just not the type he was suggesting. ‘I simply don’t go around cursing things.’
‘But you could, if you wanted?’
‘If I wanted, then yes.’
‘Therefore you do make magic.’
‘Fine, Sandor. If that’s what you want to call it, then I make magic.’
‘A minute ago you said you couldn’t.’
‘A minute ago I didn’t want to put a curse on you.’
‘So you do make magic and you do curse things?’ His lip curled in a sneer. ‘First you swagger, then you lie, until finally the Oracle shows her true colours. Nobilor was alive before you left Sparta, but thanks to your witchery, his new bride’s a widow, his daughter is fatherless, and his bones cannot be laid to rest, nor can his spirit.’ The overcooked gooseberries pushed themselves into her face. ‘I don’t know what you hoped to achieve, but Zabrina is no match for your mischief. Make no mistake, priestess. You will rue the day you came to Phaos.’
The only good thing to come out of that exchange, Iliona decided, was that it would really piss off the Krypteia—and there was not one damn thing he could do about it. He’d got exactly what he’d set out to achieve. From now on, the crossroads and posting station would indeed be associated with the Oracle of Sparta, and though the moral of the story was be careful what you wish for, Iliona thought it might also work to her own advantage.
The Krypteia might not be so eager to employ her services in the future.
Six
The Axe God was busy shaping the Tree of Life when Iliona approached the clearing. Jocasta needed to stretch her legs after so much riding, she said, and made Iliona promise to rest while she was gone. Iliona had given the physician her word, but didn’t define what she meant by ‘rest’.
With their protective powers, poplars were the traditional tree of the autumn equinox, and today the Divine Woodsman was busy hewing niches in its trunk. Dancers dressed in flowing red robes, the poplar’s sacred colour, were twirling to the sound of a Pan-pipes, while a drummer beat time to each thwack of the double-headed axe. Any suggestion that this was a solemn undertaking was banished by the toasting of each niche with foaming mugs of a local drink made from fermented barley. Iliona felt it would be discourteous not to join in.
‘Hello, I’m Dierdra.’ A woman upon whom life’s knocks had been well and truly etched appeared at her side. ‘I’m a masseuse at the bath house, and I thought I’d introduce myself, since I’ll probably be pummelling your poor stiff muscles in the morning.’
Her voice was deep and throaty, and, looking at her, Iliona thought she would not be out of place adorning the kerbs of the agora or touting by the docks. The heavy kohl around her eyes only added to the impression, as did the excess flounces on her frock and froth of ringlets in her hair. But closer inspection revealed this was nothing more than overkill. That here was a woman clinging desperately to her youth, without realizing that it emphasized her age. A case where less would very definitely be more.
‘You’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to that, Dierdra.’
‘Oh, yes I do.’ The masseuse chuckled. ‘Everyone comes to me the first time, thinking they’re crippled for life. But when they leave my table, they’re as lithe as a snake and— Oi! Find someone else’s jugs to ogle, you pervert! ’
Along with everyone else, Iliona spun round, but Dierdra’s bellow had done the trick. Whoever the pervert was, he’d made himself invisible, though who could blame the poor man for gawping? Critical side of forty or not, she’d retained her figure, if not her looks, with breasts that would have most women crying rivers for, regardless of age.
‘Heard about your run-in with Sandor.’ Dierdra adjusted the diaphanous m
antle that covered her curls, because no freeborn woman dared to venture outdoors bareheaded, especially on ceremonial occasions.
‘News travels fast,’ Iliona murmured.
‘Gossip’s the lifeblood of this posting station. Without it, half this lot wouldn’t have anything to say to each other from one week to the next, though between you and me, milady, I’m not sure I can stick another season of noses poking where they don’t belong. It don’t half get on my wick. Oops. Sorry.’ She pulled an apologetic smile. ‘Rude of me to moan.’
‘Not at all.’ Iliona thought of Nobilor. ‘It does everyone good to let off steam.’
‘Well, now, that’s sweet of you to say so. Anyway, lovey, I wanted to give you this.’ She unpinned a silver brooch in the shape of an owl, with coral for eyes. ‘Cross between a welcome gift and a good-luck charm, if you like.’
‘I can’t possibly—’
‘’Course you can.’ Dierdra pinned it where Iliona’s mantle crossed her shoulder. ‘With that Sandor spitting his poison, you’ll need an amulet, and honestly, I’ve that many jewels I don’t know what to do with them all. I mean, it’s not like I can wear them to work, now is it?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but…well, this may sound a silly question, but why buy so much?’
‘On what they pay me here? Do me a favour.’ Dierdra rolled her heavily kohled eyes. ‘I just attract marriage proposals, me, and quite honestly, it’s embarrassing at times. The way they cling, you know? What starts off as a gentlemanly admirer can turn out a proper pest in the end.’
‘I thought all men were pests to start with,’ she quipped.
Dierdra tutted. ‘Pests or bastards, it’s rare to find a good ’un.’
Iliona wouldn’t know, she’d never found one, and the best thing to come out of her marriage had been divorce. ‘Well, you know the saying, Dierdra. Good men are ugly, and handsome boys are bad. But if by some miracle they are handsome as well as good, then they’re married, while if they’re ugly and good, they’ll be broke.’
Bleached ringlets joggled up and down with laughter. ‘Now I’ll give you a tip. Treat your men like wine, luv, and you’ll never go far wrong.’
‘Wine?’
Dierdra clinked her beaker against Iliona’s. ‘First you walk all over them, then you keep them in the dark. Then with a bit of luck they’ll mature into something you’ll enjoy having dinner with.’
‘Ooh, what’s so funny?’ asked a high-pitched, little-girl voice. ‘Do share the joke, Dierdra. You’re always such a riot.’
Pushing through the crowd, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, came the most perfect specimen of femininity that Iliona had ever seen.
‘My lady.’ Dierdra bobbed a curtsey. ‘Meet Calypso.’ She paused for effect. ‘Nobilor’s widow.’
Studying the flawless complexion, enormous blue eyes and legs that went up to the clouds, she decided it wasn’t so much the shock of discovering that Nobilor’s second wife was so beautiful. It was that she was so fragile.
‘Be a darling.’ Calypso passed Iliona a fur cushion that was the same hue as her strawberry-blonde hair. ‘Hold this while I fish a stone out of my sandal.’
‘Delighted—ouch!’
Dammit, the cushion had just sunk its teeth into her finger.
‘Oh, now, Pookie, what has Mummy told you?’ Calypso lifted the dog out of Iliona’s hands and held it level with her giant saucer eyes. ‘Naughty boy, snapping like that. What do we say?’
She turned him round to face Iliona and waggled his little paw.
‘Pookie says sorry,’ she twittered in a sing-song voice that was only slightly exaggerated from her own. ‘Iliona forgive Pookie-Wookie? Pretty please?’
‘Iliona forgive Pookie-Wookie.’ Sucking on the blood, she vowed the next time she got that little sod on his own, so help her, he’d have no bloody teeth left to bite with. ‘Pookie?’
‘Nobi named him that when he was just an itsy-witsty-liddle puppy.’ Calypso plumped a kiss between the dog’s minuscule ears. ‘He kept pooking all over his feet, see?’
‘Got to go.’ Dierdra nodded towards a buxom redhead with a froth of tumbling curls wielding a giant pitcher of beer. ‘Yvorna.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘Wonder what she needs my advice for this time. Anyway, mind you come to the bath house first thing in the morning,’ she warned Iliona. ‘The quicker we work on those muscles, the better. Yes, yes, I’m coming! ’ She chuckled. ‘I don’t know, youth today! Not an ounce of patience between them.’
Looking at the redhead, flirting with every man whose goblet she topped up, Iliona didn’t imagine Yvorna needing anyone’s advice, much less taking it. But appearances can be deceptive. We all put on a face for the public, it’s only a case of how often.
‘Shall we sit down?’ Calypso pointed to a fallen log. ‘It’s in the shade, and Pookie gets so restless in this heat.’
Iliona looked at the teeth marks in her finger. ‘Poor poppet.’
The irony was lost. ‘I know I should be wearing black for mourning, and doing all that loose hair and ashes stuff, but I look such a fright in dark colours,’ Calypso trilled. ‘You must think that’s terrible.’
‘Actually, pink suits you.’
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Big blue eyes lit up in joy. ‘Nobi always called us Pinkie and Pookie. Don’t you think that’s absolutely darling?’
Following Calypso trip-trip-tripping across the clearing as though her knees were tied together, Iliona tried to reconcile the Olympic bruiser with this shallow lovely. He must have been knocking forty when he married her, and by all accounts hardly a sculptor’s model in his heyday.
But there were enormous pressures in being a trophy wife.
On both sides.
‘I’m sorry about your husband. The accident must have been a terrible shock.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about that. It’s simply too ghastly…Hermione!’ She broke off with a squeal. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Begrudge a grief-stricken woman a break, do you?’ Nobilor’s mother betrayed her slum origins by fanning her neck with her mourning robe. ‘Or do you think I’m too old to watch young folk enjoying themselves?’
‘You said you were staying behind to look after Daphne.’
‘So that’s it.’ Hermione plonked her knees squarely apart as she sandwiched Iliona between her bulk and Calypso on the tree trunk. ‘You came here to get away from me!’
‘More like you came to spy on me.’
‘With my Billi in that terrible makeshift grave just four short days ago, I wouldn’t have thought there was any need to spy on you. But it just goes to prove. You always were a sneaky cat.’
The blonde wrinkled her pretty little nose. ‘If my Nobi was here, he wouldn’t stand by while you—’
‘Drink up, girls.’ Yvorna, Dierdra’s young red-headed friend rapped her knuckles on each of their goblets in turn. ‘Otherwise your throats’ll be too dry to cheer the little squirrels when the Axe God lifts them up to hang their dollies in the branches.’
She pointed to half a dozen tots dressed from head to foot in fur, clutching knitted dolls in their sticky little fists.
‘They’re adorable,’ Iliona said.
‘Not so adorable once you know the history,’ Yvorna said with a wink. ‘I mean, it’s not called the Tree of Life for nothing, is it? In the old days, those dollies were very much alive and kicking.’
Iliona took a harder look at the woollen offerings. ‘You mean hanged?’
‘I do mean hanged.’
‘Have a care,’ Hermione snapped, as Yvorna accidentally spilled beer over her skirt. ‘I’m not overrun with mourning clothes, you know, and this embroidery didn’t come cheap.’
The redhead simply laughed. ‘Didn’t you know it’s good luck? Pour a libation to the Axe God, my lovely, and pray for his enormous chopper in your bed!’ Her tasselled skirts swished as she turned away. ‘Bottoms up, girls.’
‘Don’t listen, P
ookie, that’s so vulgar.’ Calypso covered the little lapdog’s ears. ‘You have to make allowances,’ she confided to Iliona. ‘The shock of losing both parents turned her a bit wild.’
‘Bit?’ Hermione snorted in the finest tradition of a truffle hound. ‘That little alley cat goes through more men than that dog of yours goes through boiled frogs.’
‘Not lately,’ Calypso protested, not making it clear whether she meant Yvorna’s appetites or Pookie’s. ‘I heard for a fact she’s in love.’
‘Love? That strumpet was over my Billi like a rash until we arrived.’
‘Girls don’t stop flirting just because they’re in love, y’know.’
‘Oh, and what would you know about love? After the way you sank your hooks into my boy—’
Iliona left the women to their sniping and wondered what it must have been like for Nobilor, caught between the two. Another reason why he drove chariots at full speed round mountain bends, presumably, though surely he must have foreseen the difficulties of mixing his forthright, unsophisticated mother with his dainty, superficial bride? Then again, if he’d fallen heavily for Calypso, he might have been too dazzled to think through the repercussions.
With a fanfare of trumpets, the dancing girls scampered off and the music harmonized to harps and lyres. The cue for the Divine Woodsman to start positioning his sacred objects in the niches. Wooden bulls symbolizing strength. Ravens to represent the souls of the dead, cockerels for fertility, wagon wheels for change, cranes for loyalty, pigs for tolerance. Finally, he embedded his axe deep into the grey pitted bark, consecrating it to the Tree of Life as an emblem of power, the symbol of creation, the tool from which all things in the forest are shaped.
To her surprise—and relief—Sandor had not put in an appearance at the festivities. Spitting poison, Dierdra called it, and Iliona fingered the brooch the masseuse had given her. Men on the road, a long way from home, would quickly feel isolated and friendless, and it was easy to see how attachments were made. A warm wit, a rich laugh, healing hands. The perfect antidote to a traveller’s loneliness, and she was reminded of Odysseus, who spent seven years with the beautiful Circe on his way home from Troy. Arrogant to the end, Odysseus blamed Circe, branding her a sorceress who cast spells and caused him delay. Well, Dierdra was no temptress, but the Blue Goddess was, and the spell cast by this beautiful lake would be strong. Sooner or later, though, reality would strike. Deals still needed to be concluded, merchandise delivered, payments collected or made, and reluctantly the travellers would pack up and move on. Yet amid this ebb and flow of lonely wanderers, there was a core that never changed. Almost a family in the way they had been thrown together, the workforce relied on one another for everything from food to friendship, from gossip to moral support. It was inevitable that affections would bloom in this tight-knit community, but so would jealousies, envy and rancour.
