Black Ships

by Jo Graham

  And still these waves of pain crested and broke.

  It was hard to check the progress in the darkness. There was nothing but Tia’s ragged cries, her hands clutching at mine, scrabbling in pain, climbing up one wave of darkness after another.

  Time stood still. Out on the sea our ships might founder, the People might drown. Xandros would be tied to his tiller, shivering with cold and exhaustion, keeping our bow into the waves.

  Tia and Polyra and I fought as though the entire future of the People lay in this one child. The entire ship might sink at any moment, but we would not think of it. This one life was the only one worth thinking of.

  In the first gray light of dawn, Polyra checked Tia again. “Look,” she said, drawing me down to see as Tia gasped in the wake of a wave. Between those stretched lips was something pale and hairless.

  “It’s the crown of the babe’s head,” Polyra said. She knelt up and took Tia’s hand. “Next time you must begin to push,” she said. “Do you understand? We are nearly there.”

  And push she did, screaming. I didn’t see that it moved at all. I didn’t see how anything could fit through. Once more. Twice more.

  “Give me the knife,” Polyra said.

  I had cleaned Xandros’ blade in seawater. It was bronze, and very sharp. Polyra wrapped most of the length of the blade with her cloak, choking up on it so that only a finger’s length of tip remained.

  Tia started up the crest. “Push, push,” I said, holding her hand. “Now, Tia.”

  The blade flashed, the tip cutting the flesh at the corner of the stretch. Blood spattered, and the head moved. A small bloody face dark with exertion, a strangely elongated head.

  “That’s perfect!” Polyra said, putting the knife at her side. “Perfect, Tia. One more push, on the crest, to get its shoulders free.”

  Tia was sobbing, and she bit down on her lip.

  I saw the ripples of the contraction coming across her stomach. “Now, darling.”

  She gasped, pushing down on her elbows, and I saw it slide free into Polyra’s arms, shoulders and torso and long legs. Polyra lifted it, blowing into its mouth, her own breath clearing its throat and nose. And then it cried, a high mewing sound like a seagull.

  The bronze knife flashed again, and she cut the cord.

  “One more push for the afterbirth,” Polyra said.

  Tia was trying to push up on her elbows. “Let me see!”

  Polyra handed the child to me and bent for the afterbirth.

  It was light and incredibly tiny, arms and legs like sticks under translucent skin, bald and without eyelashes or brows, but the tiny legs were kicking and she was screaming.

  “Tia,” I said, handing her the child, “you have a beautiful daughter.”

  The tears overflowed her eyelids and she took the baby to her chest, tiny bloodied hands against her breast. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, come here, come here. Tiny so tiny.” I think she hardly even noticed the afterbirth. She winced when Polyra washed the cut she had made with salt water, but she did not even look up from her crooning. I sat back against the lentils and let the tears run down my face.

  Polyra rearranged things, cloth to absorb the blood, and the warm woolen cloak around Tia and the babe. “You must keep her against you,” Polyra said. “She is very thin and can die of cold. There is nothing here to warm her but you.”

  She had quieted now, against Tia’s heart, her eyes closed perhaps in sleep. Tia closed her eyes too, the cloak tight around them.

  Polyra crawled away, and I with her. Carefully, she cleaned the knife.

  “Will she live?” I asked.

  Polyra looked at me. “You ask me? You’re Death’s handmaiden. What does She tell you?”

  “Nothing,” I said, and realized that was what I felt. The pulse of Her wings was gone. The crisis, whatever it was, was past.

  “She will live if she can eat,” Polyra said. “And stay warm. These very young ones sometimes can’t eat, and thus die. Or die of cold. But I think Tia will keep her warm. Sometimes they don’t breathe, either, but this one seems to have no trouble crying, and she seems strong enough.”

  “That is well,” I said, trying to find some of my ancient dignity again. “She is to be Pythia after me.”

  “Born from death,” Polyra said. “Stolen from it, really.”

  “All children are stolen from death,” I said. “That is the Mystery. I have not understood it until now.”

  Polyra patted my shoulder, and there was something almost motherly in her eyes. “Go and tell Kos,” she said. “He’s probably ill with worrying.”

  I went out on deck. It was early morning, and the storm was beginning to abate. Through the rain I could see Xandros at the stern, lashed to his tiller. Kos came stumbling toward me, sloshing through knee-deep seawater. Half the rowers were bailing. None rowed. The spread sail gave us way.

  “Tia? How is she?” His face was gray and his eyes were bloodshot. The blood on my clothes must have looked frightening indeed.

  “Tia is fine,” I said, embracing him. “She is young and strong and already she mends. She and the babe are both sleeping. It’s a little girl.”

  Kos lifted me in a mighty bear hug. “Praise to your Lady and Cythera Aphrodite and all the other gods! A little girl and Tia well! Ela, Ela, Cythera!”

  He put me down with a splash.

  “And the ship?” I asked. “We seem to be out of the worst of it. It’s not rolling as it was.”

  “Not too much damage,” Kos said. “This water’s all coming in over the rail, not from a leak below the waterline. We’re staying ahead of it, and it’s getting better as the seas aren’t running so high as they were. Still, there’s a reason that men don’t sail in this weather. And we lost the boy.”

  “The boy?” I asked, thinking for a moment of Polyra’s son.

  “Ashterah,” Kos said. “He went overboard in the worst of it, during the night.”

  “Oh,” I said. I looked aft. Xandros’ ashen face, bound to his ship, told me everything. That, and the beating of Her wings that I had felt. One life begun, one ended.

  “He thinks it’s his fault,” Kos said. “He’s half mad with it and won’t let me take the tiller. Still, we’re riding the storm, and I thought it best not to cross him.”

  I went aft. “Xandros?”

  He said nothing. The ropes had raised weals around his waist, splashed with salt water. He did not ask me about Tia and the child.

  “Xandros?”

  He said nothing. I stood beside him as the sun broke through the clouds. Morning wore on. Out to sea I could see Seven Sisters, Hunter, and Winged Night.

  “Will you take some water?” I asked, offering him a full water skin. He shook his head and would not drink, would not look at me.

  It was full afternoon when we saw a low, long shape on the horizon, and the sun was hot overhead, the soaked decks steaming in the sun.

  “Land!” cried Kos in the bow.

  I looked and heard a sound behind me. Xandros had fainted in the traces. I used his knife to cut the ropes and lowered him insensible to the deck while Bai caught the rudder.

  We had reached Egypt.

  THE MOUTHS OF THE NILE

  I do not remember how we came to the mouths of the Nile. I do know that it was three days that we plodded along the coast after our first landfall, but I was on deck for very little of it.

  Tia took ill with a fever. Sometimes, Polyra told me, fevers come on after the child is safely delivered and the mother may yet die. With such a tiny infant, there would be no chance for her either, if Tia were to die. I was terribly worried and sat by her, bathing her face and breasts with cool water.

  On the third morning Tia woke with her brow cool and damp, and the fever brightness had left her eyes. Whatever its cause, the fever had passed.

  Xandros, however, seemed worse each day. He did not eat, and took only a little water. On the third day I crawled into the bow cabin to find him lying awake, staring up at the s
unlight streaming through the chinks in the deck above. I sat down beside him.

  “Xandros,” I said, “you must leave off this grieving.”

  He looked at me, eyes fierce in a face that was too thin, too honed. “It is my fault, don’t you understand? I took her from her oaths. I led her from the place she was vowed to be. I brought the curse of the Lady of the Sea down upon her, and upon me!”

  I looked at his face, and I saw that he believed it, but I felt no shadow upon us. Whatever wings Death had wrapped us in on the deeps, Her presence was gone now. “Ashterah’s death was not your fault,” I said.

  “If I had not taken her from Byblos...”

  “If you had not taken her from Byblos, the Achaians would have slain her for what she knew,” I said. “This is what you told Neas. Was it a lie then?”

  “No,” he said, and looked away. “They might have. I shouldn’t have told her anything.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said, folding my legs and sitting beside him. “But if you had not asked Ashterah’s aid, how would we have questioned the Shardana captain and found out what they planned? We needed her help. None of us speak Shardan.”

  Xandros rolled onto his side so that all I could see was the line of his ragged hair, his dirty chiton. “I don’t know. All I know is that I have stolen Her priestess, and the Lady of the Sea has cursed me. Everyone I love...” He broke off, facing away from me, and I understood.

  Xandros had been the one who did not grieve, who did not drink or fight, who did not weep or lament, who did not fling himself at his foes seeking death. Xandros was cool, steady. Xandros was reliable. Xandros was the one who never gave way to inconvenient emotion, piloting his ship through whatever weather, faithful to Neas in all things. And yet in less than a year his wife and daughters had been killed, his city lost, his friends gone. All that he had known before was gone forever. Kos had his sister and she him. Neas had his father and his son. Xandros had no one, save a foreign priestess met in a temple brothel, and even she had been taken.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and it was warm under my fingers. “Xandros, my friend,” I said. “There is no curse upon you. Ashterah served the Lady of the Sea. It is the prerogative of the gods to stretch out their hands to their servants when they will, to call their handmaidens when they wish. If Ashterah was called by the Lady of the Sea, that is between Ashterah and Her Lady. You cannot take that upon yourself. It is not yours.”

  He was quiet.

  “I know this,” I said. “I know this as I know my name. And if my Lady should call me, it would have nothing to do with anyone else.”

  In Byblos they make the sacrifice with blood, I had heard. And it is not always the blood of a bird or a lamb. Ashterah knew this. And perhaps she did hear that call. Who can know such things?

  I rubbed the tight line of his shoulder, hard muscles under sun-browned skin. I wanted to keep touching, far, far too much, but I stopped. “Come, Xandros,” I said. “Come on deck in the air.”

  He shook his head, but I drew him by the hand. When he sat up, his eyes were wide and he clutched at my sleeve.

  “Are you light-headed?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” I said. “You haven’t eaten in nearly four days, or drunk more than a little. Come on deck, in the light, and drink some water.”

  “I don’t...” he said.

  “You must come,” I said. “Kos is going to name and accept the baby. You are his captain, and must stand in for his kin as witness. You will offend the truest man of your company if you do not.” I was harsh, but he frightened me. It had been too long with only a little water.

  I thought he would refuse, but he did not. I got him out onto the deck. The winds were blowing fresh and cool, and the sun was warm on the weathered planks. The sail was furled and we floated calmly among the other ships like so many seabirds resting on the waves. Southward, a green mass waited.

  Under the high sun, Kos lifted the child high so that all might see her. It is a father’s task, but one given to closest kin if there is no other. Tia stood beside him.

  “Her name is Kianna,” Kos said, and drew her down against his chest.

  For their sister, I thought. The one whose fate would be forever unknown.

  Kos held the baby in one arm, and his other arm went about Tia’s shoulders. Xandros crossed the deck in a few steps, only a little unsteady. “Congratulations, my friend,” he said, clasping Kos’ hand. Then he bent and kissed Tia’s brow in a gesture that seemed oddly like Neas. “Your daughter is beautiful. May the sun rise many times on her long and happy life.”

  I knew then. I had a word for the thing that leaped inside me, pure and sweet. I thought my heart would break at the grace of him, black hair shining like a raven’s wing, bending with a gentle smile over this little girl who lived while his own daughters were offal for the kites. I knew. And I knew what was not mine.

  Unobtrusively, I went and fetched water. I brought it to him while he talked with Kos, and he drank without thinking, only looking around at the second swallow.

  “Sit,” I said, gesturing to the rower’s bench. “Sit while you talk.”

  The baby was squirming, and Tia sat down too, so that she could put her to the breast. In the bright sun I could look at the child more clearly. She was not, in fact, entirely bald. Her head was covered with soft faint fuzz that might be reddish gold when it grew. Her eyes, now squinched up with bliss as she nursed, were a cool gray-blue, like storm clouds far out to sea. Her fingers where she kneaded were long and white, and without much baby flesh on her, the line of her jaw was sharp and clear under skin like cream. Xandros was right, I thought. She is indeed a beautiful child. And if we can get her there, a beautiful woman.

  I remembered the dream I had had, huddled with Tia in our first days out of Pylos. The slope of young olive trees with the river beyond, My Lady speaking to me from a face framed by red-gold hair, a girl with long freckled hands. But where is that place? I wondered. Lady, help me find the place, and I will find You the priestess.

  At nightfall Neas went ashore with some of his men. He was back before dawn. I came on deck in the gray light to hear him talking with Xandros. “We must go somewhat to the east,” he said, “to the harbor of Tamiat. The peasants who live among the reeds say that is where the great lords are.”

  “We need a port,” Xandros said.

  Although our ships did not require deep water, they were not meant for the meandering channels and mudflats of this coast. Even standing off a bow shot, I could smell the dank rich greenness of it, the thousand mouths of the Nile making their way into the sea through thick stands of trees and reeds. There must be some larger channel where the river was broader, I thought. And a port.

  Neas gave his captains orders, and as Jamarados and Xandros hastened to carry them out he beckoned me to the rail. He looked out toward the lowering coast and did not speak.

  “My prince?” I prompted.

  He was quiet, as though putting off some difficult question. “Strange, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes,” I agreed, propping my elbows on the rail beside his. It was like nothing I had seen before. Somewhere in the predawn darkness was the call of a bird I did not know.

  “And yet not strange,” Neas said. He was silent for a long moment, and we watched the stars of night setting into the sea. “I do not speak of these things to the others, because they will think me god-touched, which isn’t always a good thing in a captain.” He looked at me sideways and smiled.

  “They do not mind calling you the Beloved of the Lady of the Sea,” I said.

  “Ah, but that’s different,” he said, “when they mean it for a luck piece. But you know how that story ends, Her beloved, Her son.” Neas raised one eyebrow.

  “No, I can see that’s not a comfortable comparison. Their touch can be both a blessing and a curse.”

  “Speaking of curses,” he said, and I knew he was finally getting to the heart of the matter, �
�Xandros has told me that he lies under a curse. That the Sea Lady has condemned him for taking Her priestess.”

  “There is no curse!” I exclaimed, dashing my hand from the rail. “Xandros is sick with grieving, but there is no immortal hand in this.”

  “Are you certain?” Neas asked. “You know I cannot afford a captain who lies under Her displeasure, not with so many lives entrusted to him.”

  “There is no curse,” I said. “Does it take a curse, my prince, for a boy who has never set foot on a ship to fall overboard in a storm?” I looked him squarely in the eye. “Are not men lost in severe storms all the time, without a curse involved? And they are sailors, men who are accustomed to the movement of the ship. For a boy who has never been afloat before, a misstep hardly requires divine intervention.”

  I saw the set of his shoulders relax. “That is true. She should not have been on deck at all, but Xandros said she wanted to see.”

  And she had not the blood of the Sea People in her veins, I thought, the steadiness that has been mine from the moment I set foot on a ship. It requires but a moment’s inattention to lean on the rail, perhaps nauseous or dizzy, and be swept overboard. Perhaps it was merely an accident.

  Neas smiled. “Well then, if there is no curse, then Xandros must do his duty. He has offered me his sword back. I will not take it. I need him on Dolphin, where he belongs. And we will run up the coast to Tamiat and see how Pharaoh will appreciate our news.”

  PHARAOH WAS NOT in Tamiat, of course. Egypt is a mighty kingdom, many times vaster than all of Achaia together, and the great Nile cuts through it south to north. From the mouths of the Nile it is several weeks’ journey upriver to where the Nile rises from the vaults of the Underworld at Elephantine. Pharaoh, who was the third Ramses by name, ruled from the city of Thebes a long distance to the south. Tamiat was ruled by a vizier, who spoke in his stead.

  This vizier seemed an able man to Neas, and grasped the situation immediately. Either Neas spoke the truth, in which case the kingdom stood in peril, or he was a false messenger, sent by these same sea raiders to cause Egypt to move the fleet and open a path for the pirates who would follow. In our favor was the condition of our fleet, and the number of women and children who would not, in the course of things, be a part of any raiding party. To our detriment stood that none knew us, and why should we not be part of this conspiracy we claimed?