“So, Ion,” I heard Xikos say, “if the king dies after all your efforts to curry his favor, how will that work out for you?”
Ion ignored him.
“Even if he lives, you’ll never get into his good graces.”
“He could have chosen new companions and he hasn’t,” Philologos pointed out.
“He’s not going to send you away, Philo. You are his darling.”
Ion said very firmly, “This is not the place, Xikos.”
“Yes, leave it, Xikos,” said Sotis. “I’m ahead and I want to finish this round.”
Just then one of the queen’s oldest attendants, Imenia, came in, interrupting the game again to announce that the king had awakened. Hilarion stood to go to him and waved at Philologos to attend as well.
Imenia shook her head. “He asked for the little Erondites.”
Startled, they all turned to find me sitting back on the chair as if I’d never left it.
“Oh, Philo, you have been replaced after all,” said Medander as I dutifully followed after Hilarion.
Medander was talking nonsense, of course. Philo was always a favorite of the king and, no matter how much they teased him, a favorite of the other attendants as well. I was merely a pawn and in the game of kings, even pawns are counted with care. I was kept under a watchful eye almost every waking moment for the next few weeks as the king made clear his unequivocal wish for my continued well-being.
As they grew resigned to my presence, the other attendants tried to set me tasks.
“Pheris,” Cleon would say, “bring me that wine.” Or Lamion might tell me, “Hang up this coat.”
Melisande had taught me well. I kept my eyes down and my face blank as an empty plate. I stared off to one side as if I hadn’t heard them, or studied the wine bottle for a leisurely count of ten before slowly delivering it. I would take whatever clothes they handed me with a puzzled look and subsequently drop them on the floor.
“We could leave it there,” said Sotis, looking at a shirt sure to be wrinkled when the king next called for it. Lamion just sighed and bent to retrieve it.
It took very little time for them to give up on me. I could not be sent to fetch a lamp, could not be asked to bring a pillow. Sooner than even I expected, I was ignored, which is not to say that I was free from all abuse, any more than I had been at home. Xikos was a man who resented his betters and mistreated his inferiors. He thought I was a suitable target to exercise his resentment on, but he was mistaken. Those same means I used in my defense at the Villa Suterpe were useful to me at the palace: the sticky fingers wiped on his sleeve, the accidental spills, and the many small mishaps in his day for which I could not possibly be blamed. Xikos soon learned to despise me, as I despised him.
I sat through the business of the court until my leg grew so stiff that walking was an agony. I walked until I was so tired that I fell asleep when we stopped, nodding off beside the king’s chair. Used to the meager diet afforded to an aging nurse and an unwanted child, I ate rich food for the first time, too much of it, and made myself sick. Hiding it better than the king, I threw up into the necessaries in the middle of the night. What I could not hide was myself. I was pointed at, laughed at, seen in a way I never had been before. I was overwhelmed, and in spite of all my efforts, my eyes were often leaking my woes to the world. Whenever we returned to the king’s apartments and he released me to the quiet of my closet, I went sobbing with relief, longing to be with my nurse in our own little outbuilding on the farm, longing for a sense of safety I would never know again.
Slowly I came to tolerate the ceaseless activity of my new home. The weight of watching eyes faded, and the people of the court began to ignore me, just as the attendants had. They talked over my head about affairs of state, and about the state of very private affairs, as I sat on the floor, arranging and rearranging the small items I collected in my pockets. Moving the coins and buttons and pebbles, I paid close, if invisible, attention to everything I heard. Studying the king, I saw how he, too, hid himself in plain sight, how his outward flamboyance helped him keep his secrets, how much he also disliked the noise and the lack of privacy.
Whenever there was an opening in his schedule, he visited the queen’s garden, the section of the palace grounds reserved for the royal family. He said the birdsong was restorative, but I knew it was the solitude he savored. Once the guards had confirmed that the garden was free of intruders, he would leave both guards and attendants behind and disappear down the graveled paths. The guards remained at attention at the top of the stairs leading from the terrace down into the garden, watching for any glimpse of the king, ready to rush to him at a moment’s notice. The attendants sat around the table where the king and queen frequently breakfasted during fine weather. Neither the guards nor the attendants would leave their places unless the king failed to return in time for his next appointment. When that happened, the attendants would have to wander through the shrubbery calling for him. It offended their dignity and they hated it.
Each time we sat waiting, I felt the pull of the garden. It called to me with the acrid scent of the cemphora bushes released in the sun’s warmth, the sound of water pattering in fountains out of sight, the birds chittering in the trees, the wasps that came to collect any crumbs left from the royal breakfast, and the bees that buzzed in the potted plants before heading off in the direction of the kitchen gardens.
With the invisibility I’d felt at the Villa Suterpe settling around me, I inched farther and farther away from the other attendants. One day I crouched down near the guards to lay out my patterns, and on the next visit to the garden, I chose a step halfway down the stairs. Then I moved to the very bottom of them. Finally, holding my breath, I stepped as quietly as I could across the gravel and slipped between the cemphora bushes on the other side. I waited there for an outcry. When there was none, I took a deep breath and moved farther into the garden, sticking to the spaces between the hedges instead of traveling the noisy gravel paths. I didn’t go far, meaning to return before any of the attendants noticed I was gone, but I lay down in the soft dirt and inhaled the smell of bark and leaf and flower, feeling as if I was breathing freely for the first time since I’d come to the palace. Then I fell asleep.
When I woke, I was in a panic, with no idea how much time had passed. Afraid the king had already returned to the terrace and my escape had been discovered, I hurried back to the stairs. Stepping in haste between the cemphora bushes, I tripped over the stones edging the path at the base of the terrace stairs and landed face-first in the gravel. The guards looked down at the sound, then turned away, entirely uninterested. As my heart slowed its racing, I limped up the steps, brushing the sharp little rocks off my stinging palms, and settled near the other attendants. Their conversation continued uninterrupted. The king returned a few minutes later, and we went on to his next appointment.
After that, if the king went into the garden, I followed soon after. I did not dare go as far as the kitchen gardens to watch the bees, but thoroughly explored the secret spaces between the hedges and behind the planted beds that only the gardeners knew.
I was lying on my stomach, with my chin propped on my good hand, watching a determined ant arrive home from a long journey between the bushes when I heard “Your Majesty? Your Majesty?” float through the air, and realized my time had run out. I sighed in frustration.
“Duty calls, Pheris,” said the king, behind me.
Taken completely by surprise, I dragged myself around to look for him.
“Or at least, Sotis does,” he added.
He was sitting not far away, with his back against the trunk of a tree and his legs splayed in front of him. He’d been watching me through the leaves. He continued to watch as I struggled to my feet; then he got up, almost as slowly. We dusted off our clothes.
“Now I know why we are both such a mess after these visits,” he said. He still had dirt down one leg of his trousers, and I squatted beside him to wipe it off. He thanked me very s
eriously and led the way, moving no faster than I did, out to where his attendants were impatiently waiting.
That evening, he informed Hilarion that he wanted me to see a tutor. Hilarion laughed.
“Find one of the indentured who’d like a break from the taxes,” said the king.
“Your Majesty is joking?”
He wasn’t joking. I began weekly visits to meet a tutor in the palace library. Medander or Xikos or Philologos would escort me until I decided that the chance to move through the palace alone was worth the risk of revealing that I could find my own way. I had no such internal debate about revealing myself to the tutor. Melisande had taught me too well.
Every week my tutor showed me my letters and every week I pretended not to recognize them. I have deliberately omitted his name here. It was not his fault that I was a poor pupil, nor his fault that I was soon as sick of him as he was of me.
To my continuing surprise, I had not died. That did not mean I expected to live. I was not meant to be my grandfather’s heir, and I did not delude myself that I was beyond his reach. I might dream of being sent home to the Villa Suterpe—to the familiar outbuildings, the wooded hill behind the stable, the pond at the edge of the kitchen garden—but it was only ever a dream. I did not expect to ever learn what had become of the bees that swarmed the day I was taken away, or whether the red mare had borne twin foals. My brother Juridius was the one meant to inherit. My grandfather intended to kill me himself, or have me killed. That is how one disposes of an unwanted heir.
When the king informed his attendants that he meant to visit the temple heights and address the Great Goddess, they said they would arrange for horses.
“I’ll walk,” he said.
“Your Majesty—”
“I remind you, Ion, that I am in the pink of health.”
This was not true. He’d been feverish a few days earlier and was pretending it hadn’t happened.
Ion did not argue, only pointed out how impressed the citizens would be to see their king ride past.
I thought he might be teasing the king about his birthday gift from the queen. Checking the expression on the king’s face, I was certain of it. Step by step, the wiser of the king’s attendants rehabilitated themselves, Ion, Hilarion, and Cleon risking the occasional needling humor that amused him, while Philologos, deeply ashamed at having followed Sejanus’s lead instead of his own conscience, deliberately set aside his self-doubt and took on more responsibility. Lamion, Dionis, Verimius, Sotis—more followers than leaders—did as they were told and took their futures as they came. Medander and the two brothers, Xikos and Xikander, had burned their bridges, or so they must have thought. While they, too, did as they were told, it was always with a hint of derision or contempt. The very same words that were companionable from the lips of Ion or Hilarion were insulting from the three of them.
The court seemed to have accepted the explanation that the king had kept his wayward attendants in deference to their powerful families. I think the king was more forgiving than they realized. There was always a deep conflict in his nature between his ruthlessness and his compassion. Neither characteristic was ever dominant for long.
“You are no doubt right, Ion,” the king said. “Were I going to inspect the construction of the temple, I might even agree. As I approach the Great Goddess in search of wisdom, I’ll walk the Sacred Way, as a humble petitioner should.”
“A humble petitioner, Your Majesty?”
“One can imitate a humble man without being one, Ion. You should try it sometime.” Bowing deeply to hide a smile, Ion went to make the arrangements.
At home, the stable hands had always driven me away from the horses, swearing they would go lame if I touched them. I had snuck back whenever I could, wondering what it would be like to sit on their backs. Secretly, I agreed with Ion that it would be more impressive for the king to ride.
Early the next morning, the king, with all of his attendants, crossed the plaza toward the Sacred Way. It was a long journey around the palace and then back and forth up the hill to where the temples overlooked the city, a sign of the Attolians’ wealth and power as much as their piety. I was tired when we reached the heights, though not nearly so much as I had been the first time I’d made the climb.
The workers had been given the day off and the area around the temple was deserted, the double wooden doors to the treasury closed and unwelcoming. When the king nodded, Lamion and Xikos pulled on the doors’ bronze rings, putting their backs into it, slowly swinging them open to let the sun pierce the darkness within, revealing an acolyte standing with her hands raised as if to welcome the light.
The king rolled his eyes.
“No knock, Your Majesty?” asked the acolyte. Her voice was ordinary, if condescending, without the oracular tones of Hephestia’s high priestess.
“Insellia,” the king said, addressing her by name. “I’m sure the Great Goddess needs no knock to be aware that I have come again to petition at her altar.”
Insellia frowned and put out her hand. “I will take your petition to the Oracle, and she—”
“Thank you,” said the king, ignoring the hand. “But I would be loath to disturb her. I will carry the petition myself.”
“Very well.” The acolyte turned her rejected gesture into an invitation, though a reluctant one. If any man could approach the gods, what need would there be for priests and priestesses? She eyed the crowd of guards and attendants behind the king.
“I would not see the sacred space before the altar overcrowded,” said the king politely.
“A single companion, then.”
To everyone’s surprise and the acolyte’s outrage, the king pulled me forward. “You said one. He is hardly even half of one.” The king steered me around her and into the dark entryway of the treasury.
The inside of the treasury of the Great Goddess is no mystery, though it is a place few have seen. Once the king and I had circumnavigated Insellia’s obstruction, we moved to the left through a heavy black curtain. When it fell closed behind us, we were in pitch darkness. The king knew his way and guided me to the right, into more curtains, soft and heavy, and this time with no obvious opening between them. In rising fear, I batted my hands in front of me.
“Shhh,” said the king, bending close to my ear. “There is no opening, and if you step on the bottom of the curtain, you are fighting against yourself. Slide a foot forward, yes, like that, now again.” Step by step, we pushed on, the king’s hand firm at my back. The soft heavy curtain slid up past my face, and I found myself in the central room of the treasury, lit by the smoke-filled rays of light that came through the lenses set all around the base of the dome in its ceiling. Four pillars supported the dome, and between them was the altar of the Great Goddess.
Her statue sits facing away from the doorway where Insellia had awaited us, looking in the opposite direction from the enormous statue that now occupies the center of the completed temple. The larger statue of the Great Goddess lifts her staff. The smaller avatar of Hephestia keeps her staff against her shoulder and raises the orb of Earth to the heavens instead. Around her feet, the smoke from smoldering coleus leaves, constantly renewed, pours over the lips of their braziers.
As the king began to walk around the pillars to the altar in front of the Great Goddess, I followed until yanked back by the collar by the acolyte, who’d followed us through the curtains. At my squawk, the king turned to frown at us both. Then he waved me to a bench along the wall. The acolyte sat beside me. She nodded with approval as the king placed a small bag on the altar, with the deliberate clink of coins.
“I am Eugenides, by the will of the Great Goddess high king over Attolia and Sounis and Eddis, and I have come to ask . . . if war comes to my people, should I not lead them in battle?” He dropped to his knees and from his knees to his stomach and laid himself out very gracefully on the stones before the altar. The smoke from the braziers drifted over him in irregular billows, as if moved by a breeze I could not f
eel. The king breathed deeply and did not cough.
After a while, I assumed he had fallen asleep. Increasingly bored, I examined everything I could see in the dim light. There were shelves on all the walls, some of them already bearing treasures dedicated to the goddess. There were pitchers for pouring out libations, some gold and some silver, one shaped like the head of a lioness. There was a matching set of gold cups, figured with bulls and flowers. My bottom hurt. I shifted uncomfortably and the acolyte frowned.
I studied the Great Goddess, shining in the darkness. The treasury was new, but her statue was much older; the wood from which she was carved showed through the gold leaf. The pillars supporting the dome were tree trunks, smoothed of their bark and inverted, so they were wider at the top than at the ground. They too were older than the treasury, had once held up some other dome in some other temple of Hephestia.
The sunlight shifted while I sat, illuminating the orb of the Earth from a slightly different angle. It had phases, then, like the moon, and could have been read like a sundial if I had been sufficiently familiar with its aspect. Distracting myself from the growing ache in my hip, I figured how one might estimate the time. My feet did not touch the ground. It was an increasingly painful way for me to sit, and every time I moved, the acolyte’s frown deepened.
I had long since begun to regret being chosen, wishing Xikos in my place, when between one heartbeat and the next, Moira appeared. She stepped into view from behind a pillar too narrow to have concealed her, and I sat straight up in surprise. The acolyte hissed, and I turned to her in disbelief. Did goddesses appear every day?
Goddess of scribes and messenger of Hephestia, Moira was robed all in white, except for a shawl over her shoulder, which was a thousand different colors. Her coiled hair was held in place with silver wire. Her feather pen was tucked into her belt. She smiled at me, and I was stunned like a rabbit hit with a stone.
Return of the Thief Page 5
