Sacred Bride

by Sacred Bride (retail) (epub)

  ‘Enough!’ Athena shouts, and suddenly she’s right there, her spearhead against Ares’s neck. ‘My champions have my protection, and this is a holy place. Respect that, if you’re capable.’

  Ares goes rigid – because avatars can die, and when they do, their patron gods had better not be inside the body, if they don’t want to be crippled and cast into the void for a very long time. There’s even a chance he might never recover – especially if the tale becomes gospel – that Athena, War-Goddess of Attica, slew mighty Ares.

  Half of me wishes she’d just do it, and damn the consequences.

  But she doesn’t, because there’s too much at stake here, and she, like Ares, is far from invulnerable when inhabiting a human body. It takes several seconds to both call and release a divinity’s spirit, moments in which they are as mortal as you and I. So, like two great predators that come face to face in the wild, they snarl and show their teeth… and then back away.

  My skin is slick with sweat, my heart is racing and my very bones won’t stop shaking. But somehow I summon the strength to grip Diomedes’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, brother,’ I manage to gasp, as Ares stalks backwards, mouthing his fury but unwilling to take the fatal step.

  ‘You kept my disgrace a secret,’ Diomedes whispers. ‘I owe you… brother.’

  There’s no time even to embrace – over on the other side of the garden, Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo and Dionysus are now arrayed with their priests and seers, with the northern champions on one side and the Trojans on the other. A moment later Hermes joins them, but his eyes meet mine as he does so, with a faint shake of the head that could mean anything.

  Poseidon and Hades are watching with open interest, neither obviously taking sides; and their dread presence is somehow enough to quell the spread of violence. For now.

  So that leaves the only one actively arrayed against them as Athena, alone and defiant.

  Interestingly, Hera, like Artemis, hasn’t possessed her avatar…Perhaps the goddess has some compelling reason not to appear? I think I know what it is: while this was a secret meeting in which a pre-arranged mockery of a prophecy would be delivered – one that made marrying Helen to a Trojan prince seem like the will of Olympus – Hera could claim to be working for the Achaean people.

  But now their subterfuge is in the open, she’s afraid to show, knowing that any prophecy that emerges from the Spiral Path will be uncontrolled, and delivered before a volatile crowd of Achaeans, all of whom have been fantasising about murdering each other for days. If someone or something lights the tinder, the whole of Achaea will go up in flames. Today. That will suit Zeus very well but it most certainly doesn’t suit Hera, because why on Earth would Zeus honour his promises to her of post-invasion sovereignty, if her people have butchered each other in a civil war first?

  No worshipper, no worship. And without worship, no goddess.

  Zeus’s promise to her, last night, is worthless.

  I’m breaking out in a cold sweat, because I can see that Zeus, our great Skyfather, is raising his hand, in preparation for the prophecy, waiting to unleash all-out war…

  And then a slender figure steps into the open space by the altar. ‘I shall walk the Serpent Path!’ she cries out.

  It’s Penelope – but her face is alight with a strange, divine radiance. I want to rush over to her, to support her, but before anyone can react she shrieks, as an invisible current of energy slams through her. She flings her arms wide, shaking to and fro like a rag doll caught in the fist of a gigantic, invisible hand, her hair billowing about her as she wails, arms reaching up to beseech the heavens. She sweeps around, lowering one arm to point a finger at Amphithea, who has instinctively blocked her way to the spiral of blood on the ground.

  ‘Begone!’ Penelope cries.

  The Pythia tries to defy her but she’s swotted aside by an unseen force, sent sprawling on the bloodied paving stones and staring up at Penelope in bewilderment. Around me, hardened fighting men are simply staring, mesmerised, their weapons slack in their hands, eyes stretched wide, mouths open. My own heart is pounding, terrified for Penelope and for what her actions may spark – and also from wonder, because I’ve never seen her look so unearthly and potent.

  I steal a glance at the Spartan royal family. Tyndareus has drawn his wife and daughters close around him, all of them kneeling on the ground; even Castor, slack-jawed and frightened, has followed suit. But Helen and Polydeuces are standing erect, staring now at Penelope, now at Zeus. They must be wondering if the promises made them are about to be ripped from their grasp. Helen wants a vast eastern empire to rule; and Polydeuces has been pledged the High Kingship of Achaea. All that now stands in doubt.

  ‘Who are you?’ Zeus bellows, over the rumble of thunder, his robes lit by the jagged glint of lightning through the clouds gathering above.

  Penelope’s eyes roll back as she drops to her knees and plants her splayed hands in the horse’s blood. Then she stands, holding her palms aloft once more before ripping her tunic open and smearing gore over her face, breasts and belly. The path of blood on the cobblestones realigns, as though issuing from her feet, and begins to glow, droplets rising weightlessly around her like a mist. A trio of voices, a blend of youth and age, bursts from Penelope’s throat. ‘WE ARE THE MOIRAE,’ they proclaim.

  The Moirae…The Fates…

  I recoil at the impossibility of it, repulsed by the very concept of fate, of inescapable destinies for myself and my nation. I would rather deny the Moirae’s existence – but at this moment, perhaps, they’re our only hope. So like everyone else here; from the children of Tyndareus to the warriors and priests and kings, to the gods themselves, I just stare in amazement…

  Penelope begins to tread the bloody path before her, her eyes white orbs, her feet lightly placed but sure, moving with a fragile, beautiful grace. The horse blood covering her breasts and belly has writhed into a glowing spiral that matches the path she’s treading. At last she reaches the very centre of the path, and the three voices of the Moirae screech from her throat once more.

  ‘THE BLADE TURNS, AND THE DANCERS TREAD ITS EDGE! THE FLOCK SCATTER, THE SHEPHERDESS LOST, AND THE HOOVES OF THE STALLION PAW THE GROUND! WOE TO EARTH! WOE TO THE LAND!’

  I want to save Penelope from this, to pull her from the grip of the Serpent’s Path and cover her blood-smeared body. But my rational brain is saying: No, this must be heard. I look across at Athena, but she’s as transfixed by this display as everyone else. Does she know the Moirae? Or is she just as shocked as the rest of us?

  ‘THE SEVENTH WAVE ROLLS OVER US, TO LEVEL THE WALLS AND TOWERS, SCOUR THE LAND! NOTHING CAN STAND, FOR THE NAILS HAVE BEEN STRIPPED FROM YOUR HOUSES OF TWIGS AND LEAVES! WOE TO YOU, O LAND!’

  I groan inwardly. Achaea has no hope, that can be the only interpretation.

  ‘WHITHER THE BUILDER? WHITHER THE SHEPHERDESS? LURED AND LOST! WHITHER THE BEACON, THE SCEPTRE, THE CHALICE, THE WINE OF HOPE? GIVEN AWAY! BETRAYED! DIVIDED! SCATTERED! WHITHER THE SHINING BLADE? GIFTED AND GONE! WOE TO THEE, OH LAND!’

  I’m certainly not the only one able to interpret this, and I’m probably not getting all the nuances that better-trained seers can, let alone the gods. But I can see the effects – Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Apollo – they’re lapping it up. Achaea is doomed, and they are vindicated in fleeing her, and seeking to become the gods of the victorious Trojans. Hermes’s face has turned a sickly grey as he tries to conceal his horror.

  Meanwhile Athena is ashen-faced, and even Hades and Poseidon look haggard, like trees lashed by a rising storm wind. And my grandmother Amphithea is on her knees, head in hands. Because she is for Hera, but she is also for Achaea, and the promise of Hera being dominant in a post-invasion, Trojan-dominated Achaea is being exposed as a lie.

  ‘TAKE UP THE SCEPTRE, TAKE UP THE CHALICE, TAKE UP THE BLADE!’ the Moirae cry through Penelope’s tortured throat. ‘FIND THE BUILDER, FIND THE SHEPHERDESS. BIND YOUR THREADS, YE WEAVERS! LIGHT A TORCH, MAN OF FIRE! T
AKE UP THE BLADE! TAKE COURAGE, OH LAND, FOR THINE ONLY HOPE IS HOPE!’

  Abruptly, the Moirae are gone, and Penelope is left, half-naked and smeared in blood, kneeling in a bloody puddle next to the horse’s sprawling body in the centre of the courtyard, surrounded by the gods. Beyond them are the watching priests and warriors – almost all of us Achaean, and most if not all of those theioi present will have understood what we just saw.

  We’ve just heard the doom of Achaea pronounced.

  It’s as if I’m the only one whose limbs still work. I race forward, unpinning my cloak and wrapping it round the bloodied, disoriented Penelope, pulling her to her feet and against me. She looks up at me blearily.

  ‘I… I heard…’ she groans, ‘I heard… from far… away…’

  She sags against my shoulder, so exhausted her legs are giving way, and I have to loop an arm under her armpit to hold her up. To have done what she just did must have taken a reserve of strength beyond my imagination.

  ‘It’s a prophecy of disaster,’ someone wails – a priestess from among Hera’s retinue.

  ‘No,’ I shout out. ‘It’s a message of hope!’

  Zeus turns to face me, his majestic face livid to find me still underfoot, still defiant. ‘How so, mortal?’

  ‘“Find the builder, find the shepherdess, bind the threads, light the torch”,’ I reply defiantly. ‘The Moirae exhort us to unite! The Fates are not Trojan or Hittite gods – they’re Achaean, like us! “Woe to the Land”, they cry, for it’s their land also! They are telling us that our only hope is unity!’ I throw out a hand – pointing straight at Helen. ‘There is the Chalice!’ And then Polydeuces: ‘And there the Shining Blade! Will we give these precious talismans away – to our enemies the Trojans?’

  ‘No!’ shout a few voices – led by Diomedes, Menelaus and Bria. But soon they are joined by a swelling chorus: the suitors and the Achaean priestly retinues on both sides of the shrine – people both of the Peloponnese and the North. ‘NO!’

  Iolaus the Heraclid is silent, though, his eyes fixed on Zeus, as though waiting for some sign. I glance across at Hermes. Has he noticed? Is this enough, subtle as it is, to convince him of the nature of the betrayal the Moirae just spoke of?

  ‘Where is the Builder and the Shepherdess with her sceptre?’ I ask. I look up, right into the eyes of Zeus the Skyfather, challenging him, and then glare at my grandmother, who has regained her feet but looks like a corpse. ‘Have they gone over to our enemy? Or are they still with us?’

  Renounce your path, or renounce us.

  Zeus knows – he sees exactly what has happened. His overarching authority has been challenged by the Moirae. And I’ve just given him both an ultimatum, and a way out – right here where his human avatar is vulnerable.

  He could just depart his avatar and run. But surely it’s too soon to abandon Achaea completely. Even though he’s now in Troy as Zeus-Tarhum, if he abjures us, he’ll risk becoming just another minor deity in the overcrowded pantheons of the east. Here, he’s the big dog. Can he afford to abandon us yet?

  But that means backing down and at least pretending to side with Achaea. It means abandoning Helen to an Achaean wedding: a setback to his Trojan allies, and a failure to be marked against him in their eyes.

  I spare a glance for the others behind him. Ares is sullen and watchful – he understands. So too does Aphrodite, whose glittering, divine eyes want to burn me to ash. Apollo is seething, his impossibly handsome visage contorted with hate for Penelope and me.

  Hermes is watchful, calculating. But he doesn’t act, despite all he’s just seen and heard – the Moirae, the presence of the Trojans and of Iolaus. Is the Messenger God still in Zeus’s hands?

  Then, after what seems like an eon but can only be a few heartbeats, Hermes sidles up to Zeus and whispers something in the Skyfather’s ear, and the King of the Gods nods slowly, his expression falling into blank resignation.

  ‘I am the Builder,’ Zeus says in a thick, menacing voice. ‘I am your Father, Achaea, and I give you my daughter, Helen of Sparta, in token of my love for thee, Oh, Land.’

  Hermes finally meets my eye – momentarily – before kissing Zeus’s hand, the loyal keryx advising his master. But whatever he’s said may just have spared Achaea from disaster, and given us back control of our fate.

  ‘And I am the Shepherdess,’ a woman calls – the avatar of Hera, transformed at last into her goddess, finally taking sides now the outcome is known. She strides down the centre of the garden, through the blood of the sacrificed stallion. ‘I am the Goddess of the Earth, and of the Land. I shall never abandon my people.’

  Bravo, I think scornfully. Though her skill in conspiring for war then switching sides, just in time to take credit for peace, isn’t to be sneezed at, I suppose.

  With all the pomp and grandeur Hera can muster, she takes the hand of her unwilling ‘husband’ and raises them both high. ‘It is time for unity, among the people of Achaea. We the gods are as one, watching over you all.’

  ‘Aye!’ calls Athena, her grey eyes glinting.

  ‘Aye!’ the other gods chorus, in voices laced with false triumphalism.

  Even golden Apollo and too-pretty Dionysus, the most eastern of them, feel compelled to follow the lead set them. They have little choice – their small Trojan retinue is standing mute and helpless – and the avatars containing them must surely be close to exhaustion by now. One day the gods may emerge to battle openly for supremacy, but it won’t be here and now.

  Zeus glances at me again, and he whispers into my mind, ‘I will punish thee for the rest of time for this. I will nail you up beside Prometheus and watch you scream for all eternity.’

  Then suddenly the avatars are all emptied, a row of mere men and women, utterly drained by their efforts. The gods have gone, not just because their avatars can’t be possessed any longer. They can’t risk tarnishing their golden auras of infallibility by remaining amongst us. And, I am absolutely certain, they simply can’t stand to be with each other a moment longer, either. But as their avatars reel in the aftermath, it’s as if the air has been sucked out of all our lungs and we’re all left gasping for breath.

  Penelope stirs beside me, giving me a quick smile as she regains her balance. ‘Thank you,’ she says, with firm assertiveness. ‘I’ll be all right now. I must stand alone.’

  I’m still concerned for her, and very doubtful that she’s half as recovered as she pretends. But there’s still a touch of the Moirae about her, and I do as bid, though I allow myself to hover at her shoulder, just in case. Inside the cloak I’ve loaned her, she’s visibly trembling.

  Those around me look as though they’ve just been shaken out of a coma, such is the intensity of being in the presence of the gods. Tyndareus is clutching Leda, who is weeping with renewed loss. Polydeuces is gaunt-faced, one hand grasping his brother Castor’s arm with whitened knuckles and staring into the void. And Helen – gorgeous, ramrod-straight and sharp-eyed Helen – is slumped like a discarded doll, emptied of volition, defeated, her dreams of empire broken before her eyes.

  Agamemnon and Menelaus are sharing a shaky, incredulous look, chests heaving in relief. Amphithea is crouched by Hera’s colonnade, too frail and broken to stand unaided. Even Bria looks pale, and if there’s anyone who’s seen it all, it’s her.

  In the aftermath of the gods, we mortals struggle to cope with our own reality. And in moments of bewilderment, often it’s the person that speaks next who wins: I make sure it’s me.

  ‘My King,’ I say loudly, directing my words at Tyndareus, ‘The Gods have spoken. Will you choose a good Achaean husband for your daughter?’

  The King of Sparta looks like he’s too confounded to think. That’s fine, I’ll do it for him. When he nods vaguely, I turn that gesture into words, turning to face the shrine and shouting, ‘Thank you, Great King. Let us take counsel together, and choose Helen a husband, here and now. I nominate—’

  I break off, because a figure has just emerged fro
m the crowd, a Trojan with a javelin, and before anyone can react, he hurls the weapon with its gleaming, wicked-looking head.

  I see his face, in the instant that he throws: it’s the assassin, Korakis.

  But the javelin flies not at me, but at Princess Helen.

  ‘No!’ I shout, turning in horror as the shaft hurtles past me…

  …and skids across Menelaus’s armoured shoulder as he throws himself at Helen, bearing her to the ground and covering her with his body.

  ‘Take that man alive!’ I shout, but I’m too late. Blades are already drawn, and the closest men lunge in. Swords flash up and down and Korakis is dead in an instant, hacked, slashed and stabbed, before being cut almost in two by the giant Aias of Salamis.

  Then they turn their swords on the watching Trojans.

  ‘No! No!’ I shout, terrified for Kyshanda. ‘No more killing!’

  Thanks be, this time I’m heeded – along with those others that take up my cry, principally the local priests that have just seen their holiest shrine desecrated with human blood. That doesn’t prevent the Trojans from being seized and dragged roughly forward, then thrust to their knees before Agamemnon, who takes charge.

  ‘Unmask them,’ he shouts, and their cloaks are pulled away from their faces.

  There’s a dozen of them; most just soldiers, I deem. But Parassi, Skaya-Mandu and Kyshanda are known by a few here. All three have cast their eyes down, but now Kyshanda raises her head to look at me – standing oh-so-close to Penelope.

  Her eyes well up, and tears run down her face. I can only blink my own away.

  Why Helen? Why did Korakis attack Helen, and not me?

  Logic answers me: I might be a nuisance, but Helen is the Sacred Bride, the woman whose husband will rule the Aegean. Korakis tried to kill her, to prevent any Achaean from possessing her. Possess the twain and rule. If a Trojan couldn’t have her, no one would. But did he come to that conclusion alone – or did Skaya-Mandu order it?