Alcestis (10 page)

I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until the god looked away.

“I’ll be careful,” Admetus said.

“You will do more than that. You will burn this wood and make sacrifices and hope that she forgives you, Admetus, for if she does not, your life will be unpleasant. Burn the wood in the morning. Make it a good ceremony.”

“Don’t be angry,” Admetus whispered. One of his hands twitched by his side, brushing against my hip, half a caress— but he was staring at Apollo with longing and fear.

Apollo shook his head, pushed a hand through his shining hair, a startlingly human gesture. “I am not angry,” he said, but even I did not believe him. There were words in the air unspoken, like the lines of text painted around the borders of murals, writing I didn’t know how to read. Apollo stared back at my husband, and his face reflected like polished bronze: longing and fear, longing and fear. It was like nothing I had seen before.

“Thank you,” I said softly, “Lord Apollo.”

The god turned to me once more. “I’m glad you are not harmed, lady,” he said, and his voice sounded like a choir of mourners all crying out the same sorrow.

I felt Admetus’s eyes on my face and flushed.

“Now, King Admetus, I’ll speak to your people,” Apollo said, some of his glow slipping away, and turned around to push the wide doors open again. Admetus stirred, ready to follow him, but I clamped my fingers around his forearm, as if I could keep his people from seeing what I had seen. To my surprise, he obeyed me, standing quietly as the doors swung open.

The crowd, it seemed, had been milling around uncertainly, unsettled by Apollo’s arrival but not aware of any danger. They turned toward the bedchamber now in small groups, girls grabbing at each other’s hands, a few boys stepping forward as if to challenge the visitor. They chattered to each other, muttering questions and squeaking in surprise when they saw the wood spread out on the bedchamber floor.

Apollo waved a hand at them and they quieted instantly. “Why have you stopped singing?” he called, echoing against the stone walls. “You celebrate this marriage, do you not? Yet you only sing their happiness for the space of an hour? This is no kind of wedding ceremony!”

He lifted a hand over his head and flicked his fingers. The torches flared brighter, setting off pleased gasps throughout the room. “Return to your celebration!” he cried, and one by one the revelers turned away, slinging arms around each other’s shoulders or sidling up close at the hips. The god turned away and lowered his hand, closing the doors without touching them, and looked at Admetus and me. Each gesture was careful and restrained, movement made formal, action given structure and meaning. I realized that we were still standing on the mattress, balancing like sailors on a raft. I didn’t want to let my husband go.

“Come here,” Apollo said to Admetus. “Speak to me a moment and then I must go.”

Admetus went at once, the boughs cracking under his bare feet. I sat down abruptly on the mattress, folding my knees up to my chest and rubbing my ankles. Admetus stood close to Apollo, his hand on the god’s arm, his fingers curled hard against Apollo’s smooth flesh. He spoke in an urgent whisper, but I could not distinguish words—and I was too distracted to listen, my eyes caught by the possessive push of each one of his fingertips, points of heat and contact, familiar touch.

Finally Apollo shook his head once, twice. He spoke quietly, but I heard him.

“I will speak to the Fates,” he said, and I didn’t understand what he meant. Speak to the Fates? But the danger had passed, and we lived—the Fates had allowed it. They kissed once, the god’s lips brisk on my husband’s cheek, and then Apollo went to the window and leapt out with feet so light that the brittle wood strewn on the floor did not crack beneath his weight.

I put my chin on my knees and watched Admetus. He didn’t move for several minutes, stood staring down at the wood-scattered floor as if he expected the boughs to become snakes again and strike at him. As if he wished they would. “Sit, husband,” I said. He looked up, eyes blurry and confused. “It’s all right, I promise. Come sit.”

Admetus walked back toward me and sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched up and his back rounded like a dejected child’s. I didn’t know what to say to him.

“We are safe,” I tried. “They’re gone. It was an oversight, that’s all. The sacrifice will please Artemis and she’ll forgive us. She was only sending a warning.”

He gave me a watery smile but didn’t look any happier. I touched his arm, frowned when he shifted away. “I should collect the wood,” he said dully. “To burn in the morning. She’ll know if I don’t do it myself.”

“I know. Just wait a moment, please. I’ll help you. In a moment.” I crawled around to sit behind him and slid my hands over his shoulders where the muscles bunched. What would he do if he left the bedchamber now? Was Apollo waiting for him in the courtyard, standing below the window like a shepherd come calling for a village girl? If he left, I couldn’t follow him. I had to keep him here, to make him see me again, to make the ritual of the wedding matter.

“All right,” he said, but he didn’t relax under my touch. I cursed silently, thinking of how easy Phylomache had made it sound—just lie back and take it and my duty would be done— and bent down to kiss the curve of his shoulder, pushed my nose against the tight muscle.

“Don’t worry about it, just for a little while,” I whispered, lips moving against his soft tunic. “Please.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.” I pressed up against his side, slipping an arm around his back. I trusted now that he would not hurt me. I just wanted him to touch me, look at me, promise he wouldn’t cast me out in favor of the god. Where would I go as a rejected bride? Pelias would not take me back.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said with a sharp laugh. “He must think I’m a child.”

I sat back on my heels, hovering behind him, thinking. “What did Apollo say?” I asked. “Before he left.”

“You didn’t hear?”

“Not all of it,” I said. “His voice does carry, though.”

“It doesn’t matter what he said,” Admetus said, dropping his head forward into his hands. “He only said it to cheer me up because he knows I feel like an idiot and a coward.”

“You were brave,” I said steadily. “You killed that viper. Apollo answered when you called, Admetus. Do you think a god would do that for any man who happened to ask for help? He favors you, that’s clear enough.”

“You think so?” He lifted his face. “Zeus forced him to serve me. Can you imagine a god obedient to a man, even a king of the Achaeans? But I was kind to him before I knew his nature. That’s the reason he shows me favor. I’m a good host.”

“He likes you. He honors you, Admetus. He didn’t come here out of mere loyalty. He saved you. He saved us.”

Admetus sighed and rubbed at his temple. “He said he’d intercede with the Fates, convince them to spare me once from death, whenever my appointed day comes. They’ll give me a second chance. It’s his wedding gift.” He laughed again bitterly. “Though I don’t think he intended to give it to me on my wedding night.”

“That’s a kingly gift, husband.”

“I know it. I don’t deserve it.”

“You do. And you have another gift waiting, you know,” I said quietly. “A gift it is my duty to give on this night.”

He lifted his head, stared at me with dark, reflecting eyes. For a moment I wondered if he had even heard me, but then he reached out with one trembling hand and touched the smooth slopes of my breasts, the bound plane of my belly.

“Here.” I took his hand in mine, pulled it around my waist to the laces of my bodice. “Help me with these. I can’t get them undone alone.” I could have, of course. But I could not do the rest myself.

“I thought—I thought you wouldn’t want to. After the snakes.”

I laughed. The sound came out sharp, and I worked to soften my voice. “You’ll spoil me with kindness,” I said. “Come here, please, kiss me.” I moved up on the bed, spread out like I had been when the snake had skimmed across my foot, and pulled at his shoulders, urging him to lie beside me, atop me, whatever he wanted.

I rose to catch his lips and he kissed me with bruising pressure, bending my head back on my neck. My teeth cut the inside of my lip, and I whimpered into his mouth, clutching at his shoulders as he leaned into me, body fever hot now and smelling of fear sweat, his hip bones knocking against mine. Another kiss, and another, hard and unyielding, as if I had done something to anger him. Hera, I thought, suddenly panicked, Aphrodite, you got me into this, and now you must help me through it, you must tell me what to do. But the goddesses did not intervene. I could still hear the occasional shout or laugh from the great hall, but the bedchamber was silent except for the wet slide of our tongues and Admetus’s breath on my face when he pulled away from me. With the only lamps in the room behind him, his face was blank and unreadable, a flat gray blur.

“I can’t, I can’t,” he said, a breathless rush of words, and jerked away from me as if I had struck him. I pushed myself up, half sitting, and stared at him with a sick, cold knot in my belly and not even the faintest idea of what to say.

“Tomorrow,” Admetus said, looking away from me. He swallowed, spoke again in a distant voice. “After the sacrifice. Not before then. I can’t. I have to burn the branches.”

“All right,” I said, shaken. “It’s all right. I’ll help you. Let me help.” I sat up and crawled toward the edge of the bed, but he put a hand out blindly to hold me back.

“No,” he said. “You stay here where you’ll be safe.” He got up and took off his belt, his embroidered overtunic. His sheathed dagger thunked heavily on the small table by the bed. He stood there, breathing hard, looking at me. I turned my face away.

“Alcestis,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” he muttered, and went to the doors. The hinges sang as he opened them.

I had no one in Pherae to tell.

I put my hands up to my face. My hair hung in tangles, pulled free of its tight braids, and I prized out the pins and the ribbons until it fell onto my shoulders in a heavy, oil-scented mass. My scalp burned. My mouth stung, scored by my own teeth. I felt filled up with words, things I was aching to say, a torrent in a dry canyon. I missed Hippothoe. I missed Phylomache. I missed the head maid.

I heard the hinge cry again and scrambled for the other side of the bed as the door swung slowly open. By the time my husband had come in with the slaves I had swaddled myself in bedclothes like a corpse, my back to the door and my body perfectly still. I listened as he whispered directions, listened to the hollow scraping sounds as they gathered the dry wood into bundles and carried it out of the room. The celebration in the great hall had changed; Admetus must have told them of the goddess’s anger, for the village children were singing a song of hunting for deer in the forest, of bathing alone among quiet trees, of skin unsullied and solitude true.

The doors closed. The room was dark without the slaves’ lamps, but someone—Admetus—had not left. I heard him moving about, his clothes rustling. Shocking how loud one man could be, when trying to be silent. More scraping on the floor, a faint curse when he dropped an armful of boughs, a long silence. Was he looking at me, at my shape under the covers? He took a gulping breath, another, and then he began to weep.

I felt Artemis’ arrow in my chest. I wanted to go to him, but I could not. I knew it as suddenly and certainly as I had known Hippothoe was dead. If he knew I was awake to hear him, he would never forgive me. I closed my eyes in the darkness and listened to my husband cry.

The tears lasted only a matter of moments. He drew a shuddering breath, the branches creaked as he lifted them, and the door opened and closed as he left. But still I waited, my body sore with the effort of stillness, until I knew he was gone. Then I sat up and rubbed my hands over my face, pushed my hair behind my ears, and rolled up one sleeve of my blouse. I clambered across the bed, keeping watch on the door, and slid my husband’s dagger out of its leather sheath.

I ran the blade over the soft flesh behind my elbow. It bit easily into my skin, and I flinched, pulling it away and cupping my hand below the shallow, stinging cut. It gave me the blood I needed. I wiped the knife on my red bodice, slipped it back into its sheath, and pushed my bloody hand between the sheets where it would be sure to leave a stain.

6

ANOTHER SLIDE, A slip, a choked-off cry. His teeth in my shoulder. I was shaking again, trembling as he pushed into me, a long, slow shove that stopped my breath. I arched against him, overwhelmed by the feeling, rough as sand and glorious bright like the sun on a cresting wave. It had been too long, and it hurt, and still I didn’t care. I moaned and closed my eyes when the echo of my voice came back to me, the low, wounded sound of a sacrifice.

“Oh,” he panted against my skin, “oh, oh, yes.” A frenzy of pushes, and then he seized up and shouted and thrust into me once, twice, a third time before slumping to lie with his cheek on my shoulder. The warmth in my belly faded, a hot, receding tide. I put a hand up to cup the back of his head, to stroke the curls stained darker with sweat. The air in the bedchamber did not move, heavy with the smell of sex and scorched dirt, draped over our bodies like a hot cloth. Admetus stirred against me, dragged in a long breath, and settled with a drowsy noise. The back of his neck was slick, my fingers slipping as I stroked him quiet. “Alcestis,” he murmured, and I whispered back: “Yes.”

Sometimes my husband called on Apollo while he moved within me. The first time he had tried to apologize, awkwardly, but I’d stopped his mouth with a kiss to quiet him. The next time he had said nothing afterward. Even after a year we hadn’t learned how to speak of the god, but with every tongue-slip Admetus grew sweeter to me, reaching out to touch my hip when I walked by or stroking hair back from my face as I fell asleep. I learned to feel thankful for these touches. And I prayed for children to come.

But they had not come yet. A year had passed, studded with nights when I had rubbed up against Admetus’s side, slipped a hand beneath his tunic, let him bend me over onto my elbows so he did not have to watch my face. I liked to watch his face when I could, to see the pleasure sweep through him like a wave of riders across a plain, drumming the earth like thunder. I liked the way his eyes squinted tight, as if he were looking at the true form of a god, finding, somehow, a little of Apollo’s brightness hidden inside me.

I liked this time too, this quiet, when I did not have to listen to him talk about brigands on the borders of Pherae, about the poor olive harvest, or the likely-looking crop of young men who would soon join his guard. I didn’t mind listening—I was thankful, in fact, that he told me anything about the state of my village—but it could grow tiresome after a while, for I was rarely allowed to answer back. Admetus liked me receptive and quiet. I would nod when he wanted a response, smile, let him talk through the decisions he’d already made. I’d once heard him telling his steward that he’d been lucky to find such an intelligent wife, one who could advise him and help him rule wisely.

This is how I help him, I thought, folding my palm over the bump of his shoulder blade. It was the same thing, really. Receiving him. Letting him do what he wanted, like Phylomache had told me before my wedding night. Not making trouble.

After a few minutes he pushed up and rolled off me, dropping a kiss on my shoulder as he went. I didn’t move. It was too hot to move, and sweat funneled through every crease of my body. I watched him dress, a pattern I knew by heart, the tunic and the belt and the sandals, the scrape of fingers through his messy hair.

“Maybe the anniversary will bring us luck,” I said, half hopeful. “Maybe Demeter will bless us.”

“Maybe.” He glanced back over his shoulder, smiled. “You needn’t worry, Alcestis. A child will come in time. You’re still fresh and young.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“I am,” he said. “Come, we can’t miss dinner.”

“You can miss dinner whenever you like, my lord,” I said. He shook his head, but he was smiling as he straightened his tunic and slipped his dagger into his belt. I waved him away when he looked at me again. “The maids tell me I shouldn’t stand up for a while after. It doesn’t help if it all runs down my leg.”

He blushed. Today I found it endearing. “Alcestis,” he said, drawing out my name, “you talk like a man.”

“I talk like a maid,” I said. “You should be glad they watch their tongues around you, my lord. They’re good girls, but they do go on.”

“You’d know if they were not behaving well, wouldn’t you?” he asked, the question utterly casual.

The liquid sweetness in my muscles vanished, and I propped myself up on my elbows, watched him carefully as I answered to make sure I chose the correct words to please him. “My lord, they are pious women who do good service to your house. I wouldn’t keep them on if their behavior disappointed me or dishonored you.”

He nodded, flashed me another bright look. “Of course. You know I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“Mmm,” I said, and lay back on the mattress. Admetus walked over to the bed and stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at me. I closed my eyes and smiled, knowing my smile would please him, convince him that he could leave me alone for a while.

“Stay here if you prefer,” he said. “I can send a maid with some food. Would that suit you?”

“It would, husband.”

He bent down to kiss me, a quick friendly pressure on my forehead, where the sweat had dried. I opened my eyes to watch him leave, closed them again once he was gone. Later we would have to talk about the plans for the anniversary feast, the food and the guests and the sacrifices. Apollo had made Admetus swear that he would hold the feast in Artemis’ honor, to soothe her again for the slight we had dealt her on our wedding night. I had not been Artemis’ creature since the night a week after the bonfire of wooden snakes, when I’d pulled Admetus down onto the bed and told him he was shirking his duty to me as a husband. I worried over her anger, but distantly. More often I worried that Admetus would tire of me and find some village woman capable of pushing out sons for the honor of Pherae. I understood why Phylomache had looked so tired and nervous during her first year in Iolcus. In the long waits, the weeks when Admetus ignored me in favor of a visiting group of hunters or a promising guard in training, I collected herbs and built tiny fires in honor of the goddesses of childbearing in the corner of the bedchamber, watching the stack of leaves and sticks sputter and melt into ash. I bled every month and swore as I wrung out the cloths.

Admetus was unbothered by the wait for children, or so he told me. I wondered what he told the men in the drinking room. I’d thought Pelias entertained often, but Admetus had a group of constant companions who spent nearly every night in the palace. Like all men, he was most comfortable among his own kind. He usually brought me in to make a brief appearance in the evenings, kissed me in front of the men, and kept a possessive hand on my hip while the guests shouted advice or made muttered offers. It was a ritual, like slitting a beast’s throat or burning grain: they reached out for me, Admetus glared, and I smiled demurely at the floor. Once the ritual had been observed, I was allowed and expected to leave. I spent my nights in the empty bedchamber, watching the striations of light from the courtyard torches wriggle on the star-painted ceiling. Supervising the kitchens occupied me for part of the evening, but the servants knew how to handle Admetus’s guests and grew frustrated if I lingered there for too long.

I could have begged the maids for tales about the men, but they knew little more than I did, and I would not weaken my position by relying on them for gossip. The maids liked me well enough; the girls made irritating sympathetic noises about my monthly bleeding, but some of the older women would snap at them and say that I was young enough to wait a few years and would be glad of the reprieve when my babies came. The slaves gave me no trouble. I had an enviable position, Phylomache would’ve said. The gods had given me a kind husband and a comfortable life.

Apollo had visited eight times during the year.

Once I had come back to the bedchamber in the middle of the day and overheard them arguing, Admetus shouting and Apollo responding in low, measured tones that sounded no less angry. Admetus was saying something about a nymph, about a loss of dignity. I heard Apollo say, “What do you know of dignity?” before the room went silent—a heavy, muffled silence, like movement beneath blankets. I thought they were in our bed together, and my throat closed. But when I pressed my face to the just-open door and peered through the crack, they were standing upright in the middle of the room, Admetus’s head on Apollo’s shoulder, Apollo’s hand glowing pale against my husband’s dark curls.

I’d stood and watched them for a long time. My husband’s face, turned toward me, was calm and smooth, his eyes closed and one corner of his mouth curled up, a child’s expression he wore in sleep. I leaned against the door frame with a hand on my stomach, unable to pull my eyes away. I knew Apollo must have been aware of my presence, but the god’s eyes had been closed as well, their brilliance shuttered.

Lying on the bed alone, I looked over at the spot where I had seen my husband and the god. I was sweating again. I sat up, making a face at the inevitable liquid dribble, and reached out for the cloth on the bedside table, wiping down my forehead and neck before I swiped between my legs. “I hope that was long enough, Mother,” I muttered to Demeter. “I can’t sit here and soak in it all day.”

The goddess, predictably enough, did not answer.

I got out of bed and smoothed down my skirt. I went to the window and hitched one hip up on the sill, ignoring the twinges in my thighs. The stark hills of Pherae rose up around the palace, furred with browned grass and marked with juts of gray rock. I didn’t love it the way I had loved Iolcus; I didn’t stare out at the lines of the hills and dream about walking them alone, stealing a horse and racing down the road to the beach. The ocean was too far away to see from my window in Pherae, and the sky capped the edges of the hills like a lid on a jar.

Men would come over those hills in the morning, three days hence, to begin the feast. Admetus had sent messengers to invite the lesser kings of neighboring villages, his parents, his friend Creon. I had met Creon only once, though the servants said that he had been a regular visitor before Apollo came. He reminded me of Acastus, a handsome and serious man with a passing resemblance to a deity. Admetus had sent no messenger to Iolcus, though he had instructed the others to invite my brothers if they ran across them. Acastus, still traveling home from Mycenae, would not come, and Pelias would never let Pelopia spend the time away. The palace would once again fill with men I did not know, Achaeans gathered to celebrate our marriage and to honor Artemis, to placate her, to keep her distant and benevolent.

It might work, it might not. Gods did as they liked, and mortals struck or kissed or killed each other without knowing why then sat in the dust of battle and talked until they were hoarse, trying to explain the actions of Olympians. Misunderstand the meaning of a bird’s flight or the shape of a cow’s intestines and you could lose immortal favor; walk in the woods or by a river and you might be stolen away.

I lived as we all did, with a constant edge of fright. Caring for strangers improved your chances; having children worsened them, though children were needed to uphold the glory of the Achaeans, to carry our ways over the mountains and seas. Children would succor you when you grew old, if you were lucky enough to grow old, if they hadn’t knifed you first. Snakes became wood, wood became snakes, girls became trees. A sea or a river might rear up as a dripping god and seize a girl in watery arms, as my grandmother had been seized. Only a year or so ago I had heard of a giant swan that had seized a woman from the ground and coupled with her in the sky in full view of her people, the woman screaming and the swan’s wings buffeting the air. The woman had birthed a monstrous egg from which two small children had stepped, perfect in every way. They were beautiful children, yes, and they were hers. And yet they were the swan’s, and they would make the woman think of the swan, of Zeus, every time she saw them. Always she would think of the egg pushing out of her body, the inexorable, smooth force of it. The thought made me shiver in horror and envy. I was right to be afraid.

The feast of Artemis would begin with games held on a plain not far from the palace, and the men would return covered in sweat and oil, calling for wine. Then would come the libations, the sacrifices, beasts slaughtered, and bonfires lit. The celebration would go on until the sky paled in the east, and I would spend nearly all of it in this room, just where I was now—looking out across the courtyard to the hills, the walls of my world, and hoping I never had to cross them again.