He had been eating too, but after he spoke he glanced down at his plate with more interest and his voice sounded more relaxed. That boded well for a peaceful life after their return—at least peaceful personally. Life in Plutos was never as dull as life in the outer world; there was always a little thrill of danger to keep one interested, such as the exigencies of earthquakes, minor volcanic eruptions, and new incursions of chrusos thanatos into the deep mines.
“I would like to leave as soon as possible,” she said.
Hades smiled. “I too, but we should also be careful not to wake any suspicion that we are fleeing.”
“I will leave you to decide what is best on that score,” Persephone said. “If we use the sick father excuse, that might be reason enough for haste. If he wished to be buried in his native land, he would have to take ship before he died because most ships will not carry a corpse.”
“Yes, but would not the daughter be expected to travel with her father? Never mind, I gave a similar excuse to the food vendors when I had to explain why I brought no vessels to carry away my meal. I said I had carried an injured partner ashore to be physicked. Either tale will do—but not on the ship on which I arrived.”
She told him then about Cyros’s list of vessels that were due to sail that week, and they settled more comfortably together to eat and plan. The detailed schemes for escape lifted their spirits, and the partially accidental touching of their hands as they both reached for the same dish soon came to intentional caresses. As one appetite faded, another rose, but the sharpest edge of desire had been blunted, and they lingered over their meal, taking bites of food from one another’s mouths so that their lips touched, and drinking wine from one cup.
Later they spread the bedclothes, marginally less musty, and took a long time over removing their garments, with frequent intervals, half-clothed, to talk of extraneous matters. Persephone exclaimed over the weight of Hades’s belt—and stroked his waist and hips to soothe away the pressure of the burden they had carried. He showed her—cheek to cheek while they made the examination—that between the two thin layers of leather was a thicker one of gold, so pure it was as soft and flexible as the well-tanned hide, from which pieces could be broken.
She laughed at his subterfuge, her warm breath teasing his ear, and exposed her own; the fine drape of her cloak was owing to the weight of all the jewels she had removed from the gold settings and sewn into the hem. She donned the cloak over her thin undertunic to show him, and when he took it off again, his fingers stroked the back of her neck and her now-bare shoulders.
Their lovemaking was as slow and easy as their foreplay, and their satisfaction as sharp and sweet as a sudden summer shower on a sunny day. It left them refreshed rather than exhausted, and after a brief contented rest closely embraced, they returned to their planning with renewed zest. By the time both were satisfied that all contingencies had been examined, it was time for the midday meal. They rose, half-dressed, and finished the food in a leisurely manner, talking now with serious contentment of affairs in Plutos, Both periodically glanced at the road, but without much fear.
Not long after, they were in bed again. It seemed the best way to while away the time and, being satisfied, this time Hades slept. Persephone smiled at him fondly, knowing he must be very tired. Having spent the previous night in a ditch outside the palace, he must have slept little if at all. For a time she went over in her mind all that they must do, and then she dozed lightly for a while. When she opened her eyes and saw the angle of the sun, she sighed. If Demeter had not come to seek her by now, she would not come at all, and Persephone was afraid that if she waited much longer, her mother might send guards to fetch her. She sat up, leaned down, and kissed Hades.
“It is time, beloved. My mother has not come. I must go back to the palace and leave a message that I will stay in this house for the night.”
His eyes opened immediately, and such joy lit his face when he saw her that Persephone kissed him again. The enthusiasm of his response almost trapped her, but she was now so eager to begin their escape that she pulled away.
“It is growing late,” she said softly, “and I fear she may send others to look for me. I must go back and lay my snare.”
“Are you sure they will let you leave again?” Hades asked.
“Oh, how I feared that before you came,” she said, and stroked his cheek. “Now, how can they stop me? If I do not return before dark, you need only walk through the wall, which is of stone, and then through the wall of my room, which faces the garden.” She described, starting from the road, the face of the wall he must enter. “I will either be waiting in the garden, or if I am confined to my room, I will watch for you from the window and light a lamp when I see you.”
Persephone left the house first, full of joy and completely at peace. If the scryer was watching for her at the house, the vision would follow her, at least until the watcher was certain she was coming back to the palace. Well after she left, but before the scryer would consider her destination a foregone conclusion, Hades would leave. He would first take the pots he had borrowed back to the market. Failure to collect the guarantees he had left might arouse comment or curiosity.
In addition, returning the vessels would give him the opportunity to mention that his partner was better, although still weak, and that they had decided to continue their voyage. Then he would go to the docks, check on when the tides would be right for departure, and pay for passage on one or more ships. That done, he would return to the house to wait for her. Persephone was so happy that she forgot until she was halfway to the palace that she had not stopped at Eulimine’s house to say goodbye. She hesitated, but then laughed softly and continued on her way. She would have time enough for that when she returned, and she could leave all her metal bits and pieces with the potter, even a handful of jewels, because Hades had enough to pay for their passage and anything else they would need.
Her mind was busy with how she could convince Eulimine to take a suitable reward. Should she just leave the metal and jewels? Would it be safe to tell the potter who she really was? Could she bring Hades with her when she said goodbye? How she would enjoy Eulimine’s surprise when she saw the King of the Dead. Surely when she had spoken to him and seen his kindness, Eulimine would never fear death again. Of course Hades had nothing to do with the truly dead, but for the short-lived natives, dying was a much greater shadow on life as one grew older than it was for the long-lived Olympians, who did not need to consider death for many hundreds of years.
Persephone put the idea aside rather regretfully as she approached the gate of the palace. Knowing the truth about her identity and Hades’s could be dangerous for Eulimine. If Poseidon was angry about her mother’s unannounced “departure,” Eulimine, who must be known to the scryer, might be questioned. If she knew nothing beyond the lies Persephone had told, a truth-seeker would sense that, and the potter would be more likely to escape punishment.
Totally absorbed in her thoughts, Persephone did not notice the widening of the guard’s eyes as she passed him. She met no one on the way to her room, from where she blew into the little shell that summoned Neso. The shell made no sound that Persephone could detect, but the maid arrived with her usual promptness, in fact before Persephone had quite decided what she was going to tell her mother. Her thoughts were fixed on getting Demeter down to Pontoporeia’s house, wavering between the lie about the altar to the Goddess or a form of truth, begging her, now that they were on better terms, to come and meet her lover. She hardly looked at Neso, just told her to ask Demeter to come to her room.
“I do not think she has yet returned,” Neso replied, looking down so that Persephone would not see the shock in her eyes. “The Lady Demeter told me this morning that she wished to examine the fields near Khalas Méni to see whether they were ready for blessing. She asked that you wait for her.”
“Oh, I cannot,” Persephone cried, relief filling her with such a bubbling effusion of pure joy she felt she might floa
t away. “I came to beg her to come to the town with me. There is someone I wish her to meet. It is very important. Will you tell her that I beg her pardon for not waiting as she asked, and also tell her that I will be spending the night in the town. If she is not too tired and can come—she knows the house where I will be staying—she will be very, very welcome.”
“You are happy,” Neso said softly, finding it hard to associate this glowing creature, her aura of power dancing and sparkling around her, with the plain, dull woman of the past months. “Very happy.”
“Oh, yes, I am,” Persephone said, laughing aloud. “And I want my mother to share my joy. Tell her that. Beg her for me to come.”
“I will. I will, indeed,” Neso said.
Impulsively, Persephone kissed the maid’s cheek, then sighed. “I must go back now,” she said. “If my mother cannot come, I will return to the palace in the morning.”
She left the room on Neso’s heels, turned toward the outer door rather than the inner chambers, and half ran, half danced, all the way to the gate. Resting on a bench in the garden, not far from the entrance to the palace, Demeter sensed her daughter’s aura. She looked up just in time to see Kore disappear through the gate. She stood up, furious because her daughter had not waited for her as she had bid her, but it was too late to call her and Demeter was too tired to run after her. She sank down on the bench again, staring at the gate and wondering how she could bring the stupid girl to heel.
Her first impulse was to ask Poseidon to forbid her idiot daughter to go into the town. That would separate Kore from her lover, but Demeter did not wish to admit to Poseidon that Kore had taken as a lover one of the common folk of the town. Beyond that, Demeter had had a bitter taste of her daughter’s anger and despair. She feared that to separate Kore from a second lover might have dire results. Would it be better to wait until Kore tired of her swain’s bucolic charms?
If she did not interfere, she was reasonably sure that Kore would be content to remain in Aegina. On the other hand, she did not intend to remain in Aegina forever. She missed her temple in Eleusis and was concerned about the effectiveness of her priestesses in maintaining the fertility she had established. How long would it take this love to pall? More than a few weeks, Demeter feared. She began to examine other ways to break up the affair.
Inside the palace, Neso had watched Persephone disappear down the corridor and turned toward Poseidon’s chamber. She did not wish to go to him but could not help herself. Like Nerus, she was bespelled to report to Poseidon at once any fact or incident that might affect him. Any Gift might do so, and Persephone had great power. How she had hidden it all these moons, Neso did not know. She had sensed a flicker of power in Persephone now and again, but the Gift had seemed so weak that the compulsion to tell Poseidon had not been invoked. Now she moved toward her master’s chamber with dragging steps. She liked Persephone and knew how jealous Poseidon was of the Gifted.
Remembering Poseidon’s usual response to a strong Gift, Neso shuddered with horror, but then she realized he would not harm Persephone. For one thing, she was of his own kind, not one of the native people or seafolk. For another, Persephone’s Gift was probably the same as Demeter’s, and Poseidon did not seem to regard Demeter as a threat. Neso tried to linger at the door but she could not, and with tears in her eyes she breathed her name to the shining plaque that would transmit it to a servant within. In the moment before the door opened, she remembered that Poseidon had left the palace in the morning and hope that he had not returned rose in her, but his own voice from the plaque bid her enter.
He was propped in the bed, holding a tall goblet—another item traded for salt fish to King Celeus, who got it from the dead—of a sweet purple wine. Before she had completed her bows he asked, “Has Persephone returned?”
Neso’s eyes widened with fear. “Yes, lord, but she has gone again. I did not know you still desired to see her.”
“Left again? For where?”
“The town. She came to invite her mother to go back there with her, but Demeter had gone to look at the fields near Khalas Méni and had not yet returned. Lady Persephone told me to ask Demeter to come and join her if she were not too tired.”
“Join her where?”
“I do not know, lord. She was very excited, very happy, and she said her mother would know the house and that there was someone it was important for her mother to meet.”
“Important for Demeter to meet?” Poseidon echoed.
Suddenly he smelled fish—long-dead fish. He remembered the odd expression he had caught on Demeter’s face when he first told her her daughter was missing. He had assumed she was annoyed because Persephone was gone, but she had not been in the least surprised about it. Perhaps she had not been annoyed with Persephone but with the fact that he had discovered the girl was missing! That glib explanation about the potter— He had swallowed it whole, but was it the truth? What was that conniving bitch Demeter up to?
He leapt from the bed, thrusting Neso aside so violently that she tripped over the low wall that kept the water off Poseidon’s rugs and shining floor and fell backward, striking her head on the edge of the flat area around the pool and sliding into the water. Poseidon did not even look toward her. She could not drown, and one of the maids would soon draw her out. She would be waiting for him when he returned.
A few moments later he burst into the server’s chamber and bellowed, “Where is Lady Persephone?”
The man leapt to his feet, stammering, “I-In th-the p-palace, I-I looked in the b-bowl only a lit-little while ago.”
“No, she is gone again,” Poseidon said, but more quietly, and he gestured for the scryer to sit down. The worst of his fears, that the whole tale Demeter had told him was a fabrication to hide some plot she had hatched against him, was greatly diminished by the fact that the scryer apparently did have a bowl bespelled to track Persephone. “Look again for her,” he said. “Where is she now?”
It took the scryer a little time to activate the spell, longer actually than usual, because he was so nervous, but he was able to report that Persephone was some way down the road toward the town and that if Poseidon wanted her back before she reached the place, he would have to send out guards at once.
Poseidon shook his head. “I am more interested in where she is going,” he said.
“I cannot say for certain, lord,” the scryer mumbled, his voice shaking. “There are three places most common: the market, the potter’s house, and the bespelled house.”
Poseidon had almost turned away when the scryer named the market and the potter’s house as most probable goals for Persephone. The first two matched perfectly with what Demeter had told him and implied that his suspicions had no validity. The last words stopped him cold.
“Bespelled house?” he echoed. “Have you ever seen inside that house?”
“Before it was bespelled, once. Lady Persephone bought a fish from the woman who lived there.” The scryer knew he had missed something very important that had taken place in that house—he had heard Persephone bargaining for a fish and turned his attention elsewhere; when he looked back she had been leaving, and the way she and the old woman looked at each other had sent chills down his spine—so he had never admitted the lapse and was not about to do so now. “And once after it was bespelled,” he hurried on, his voice shaking again, “this morning, in fact—the spell was weakened for a while.” The scryer dropped his eyes. “The lady was in bed with her lover.”
“Her lover!”
The scryer huddled in on himself at the bellow. “She was in bed with a man,” he whispered. “The vision was not clear because the spell was still working, just not strong enough to shut me out completely. I thought they were—
Poseidon burst out laughing. So that was what Demeter was hiding, that her daughter was a little whore. “Where is Persephone now?” he asked.
“Still on the road, lord.”
“Can you tell me where the bespelled house is?”
“Oh, yes, my lord. It is the last house on the road that goes down to the docks, on the left side if you face the sea.”
Poseidon laughed again. “Give me your cloak,” he said.
He snatched it from the man’s hand and strode out of the palace and through the gate, carrying the cloak in his hand. At first he did not see Persephone, but his stride was longer than hers, and before the first houses of the town appeared, he caught a glimpse of her on a straight stretch of the road ahead. His lips pulled back in a feral smile as he swung the cloak over his shoulders and pulled up the hood.
Poseidon did not want the townsfolk to recognize him just yet. Their awed cries and bows would warn Persephone. Then he laughed. It did not matter. He had her now! Even if she were going to the market or to the potter’s house, he could seize her and drag her to the place the scryer had described. When he told her he knew she used the place to lie with lovers, the slut would not dare refuse him or complain that he had forced her. But he did not push off the hood. It would be easier, sweeter, if she went to meet her lover and he took her in the same bed, perhaps with the lover watching. He would enjoy watching her face when the churl would not defend her.
Still seated on the bench in the garden, Demeter had not seen Poseidon emerge from the palace; however, the stir at the gates—the guards drawing themselves upright, the shouted orders to make way—had drawn her attention. For a moment when she saw him pass through, without attendants or guards and clutching a shabby cloak, she simply stared blankly at his disappearing back. Then, suddenly, she connected Kore’s hurried departure with Poseidon. She recalled that Poseidon had sent for Kore before dawn—just at the time when a man woke with lustful urges!
Demeter leapt to her feet, all fatigue forgotten, as a surge of protective fury swept over her. Poor Kore, she was not running back to a lover but away from Poseidon! That lecher! She knew he was, of course, not only with human women, but with all sorts of creatures from the sea, Nereids and merwomen—but he would not have her daughter! She had come to him for protection, but he was worse than Zeus. She would see him dead or damned before she let him take Kore against her will.
Dazzling Brightness Page 31
