Alcestis (4 page)

“You’ll be all right, Alcestis,” he murmured. “Eat something now. You don’t want to worry anyone.”

It was bad luck not to eat at a funeral feast, so I forced a bite of boar into my mouth. The noise in the room was rising, men filling their bellies with wine before they ate, and their voices battered at my ears. I put down the piece of meat and leaned back, slipping out from beneath Pelopia’s arm. He turned, startled, and I braced myself against an expected yank, but he didn’t grab me. His eyes were sad. “Go on then and be quick about it,” he said. I scrambled up from the bench and fled the great hall.

Pelias called after me, but I rushed through the entry hall and down the steps to the courtyard. Through the gate, I could see the men standing around Hippothoe’s grave, some leaning on sticks while the others held torches. The night had grown cool, and in their gray-brown woolen cloaks the men looked insubstantial, only outlines against the darkness. Gooseflesh rose on my arms. I took a hesitant step toward the gate, and one of the men looked up, his face a blur beneath his hooded cloak.

I heard footsteps on the stone behind me and shot a glance over my shoulder. Pisidice stood on the porch, eyes hard, hands on her hips.

“Well done,” she said. “You’ve got us both sent upstairs now.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You are not.” Pisidice came down the stairs one determined step at a time and reached out to grab me. “Come on, unless you fancy being stuck in the room for a week.”

I ducked away from her, toward the gate and Hippothoe’s grave. “Don’t,” I said, suddenly anguished. “Pisidice, don’t you—don’t you miss her? Don’t you?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I miss her.” Pisidice’s voice had gone quiet, but it was not soft.

“I miss her so much,” I said under my breath. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the stretch of ribs beneath skin. The head maid had told me of a boy who’d died when she was a child, who’d sat by a pool in the woods and stared at his own reflection. He had so loved the beauty of his own face that he couldn’t look away from the image, not even to eat or drink, and finally he had withered away to nothing, just some flower petals and a name. Narcissus, the head maid had called him. Now I thought I understood him better. Hippothoe was there in the ground; she would be there for years and years, and if I stood over the grave and looked down long enough, perhaps the earth would open and swallow me, pull me down to the underworld like a sea nymph pulling a pretty sailor over the side of a ship. I could chase Hippothoe, maybe even catch her, and surely the underworld would not be so terrible with my sister by my side.

My eyes were wet. I swiped the heel of my hand across my damp eyelashes and lifted my face.

“Come in,” my living sister said, and turned back toward the entry hall without waiting for me to follow. I looked over my shoulder once, but I could hardly see the mound of Hippothoe’s grave, the curve of dirt hiding my sister from my sight.

2

THE SHIP FROM Mycenae arrived in the early evening, sails unfurled, skimming in from the horizon with the ease of a dream. Along the rocky shore, watch fires flared bright, sparking as the men threw chunks of salt into the flames. At the window in the women’s quarters, I braced my palms on the cool stone sill and arched my back to let the body servant tighten the laces on my blue maiden’s bodice. My breath came short, stirring the fine hairs that had escaped my braid, and my cheeks felt fever hot.

I was watching my father marry, surveying the tiny figures on the shore from high above like a god. Pelias was a dark, tall smudge flanked by smaller gray smudges, his bride a white blot surrounded by her brown-robed attendants. The two groups met, shifted in a ripple of bows, moved away again. The dark smudge and the white blot walked to the edge of the gray-green sea and bent down, dipping their hands into the water; I couldn’t see the details of the motion from above, but I imagined the slap of the waves against their wrists, the uncertainty of putting one’s hands into Poseidon’s power and knowing they might be captured in his bronze-hard grip. I couldn’t hear the speeches Pelias made, but I knew the pattern of the ritual from villagers’ weddings my father had blessed. First he would thank his sea-god father for bringing the woman safely ashore, then the local gods for the gift of good weather, and finally he would ask the permission of Artemis and Zeus and Hera, and they would grant it, or not.

Even Pelias, godlike king, went still as he finished speaking, waiting for an answer from the gods. None of the blots moved. I held my breath, hoping for a lightning strike from the clear sky—but the sea did not stir with snakes, the day remained cloudless, no ravens flew near to croak a warning. The wedding would proceed.

At the window above, I let out a disappointed sigh. The body servant gave my laces one last yank and went to join the group of servants helping Pisidice dress. I dropped my head for a moment and peered down at my chest, the still-surprising mounds of my breasts pushed up high by the bodice. I was twelve years old and just beginning to grow a woman’s curves and heaviness. I was glad of the body servant’s shy manner; the head maid had a disturbing habit of patting at my chest and telling me I looked just like my mother. I had no memory of my mother, not her breasts or her hair or the tilt of her eyes, and I didn’t care to be compared to the woman who had left me alone with Pelias. But I didn’t care for this wedding either. Pelopia had told me of Pelias’s betrothal and I’d hardly had time to get used to the idea before the woman’s ship had arrived.

He’d been leaning against the palace wall, talking at me while I worked the spindle and distaff. Our father was going to be married, he’d said, but he didn’t know the woman’s name or age, knew only that she came from the south, from the lands held by Mycenae. He’d scowled over my head as he talked, eyes on the horizon.

Acastus had gone to Mycenae less than a year before, bearing tribute to Atreus. Perhaps, I thought, he had gone to fetch our father a woman. I hadn’t dared say this to Pelopia; he’d taken a bad fall from his horse in the spring, and the resulting injuries had left him with a tendency to favor his left leg and to snap at comments that would once have amused him. I’d asked instead if the woman Pelias intended to marry was royal.

Pelopia had shrugged. “Suppose not. But that doesn’t matter. He’s got Acastus.”

“And you.”

My brother had laughed. “Yes, he’s got me to visit his distant holdings and collect a few animals from every poor shepherd I see. Important work.”

“Pelopia.” My fingers had stilled in the tangle of wool. “Anyone could hear you.”

“Calm down, he’s not here. Not like it’s a secret either.”

“Not if you complain so loudly, no.”

He’d looked down and given me a grudging smile, nearly hidden by his long hair. It had been growing since he’d hurt his leg, wild curls hanging down in messy ringlets, and sometimes when I saw him out of the corner of my eye I thought he was Hippothoe, grown tall and stiff, walking away from me. “You do talk back, sour mouth.”

That was not a warning, not quite. I’d looked down at my distaff, the mess of wool around the smoothed stalk of bone. “Do you think Acastus will bring her? He’ll have to come back soon. He must marry in a few years, or at least be betrothed.”

“That’s for Atreus to decide.”

“Atreus meddles.”

“He’s king of Mycenae, Alcestis.” There, a flash of manly disapproval.

“Oh, stop,” I’d said. “That doesn’t make him less of a meddler, making Acastus wait to marry until he gives permission. Acastus isn’t his son. They’re all like old women sometimes, I swear it.”

“He’s already given his permission for Pisidice to wed,” Pelopia had said, and nodded unperturbedly when I looked up at him. “She won’t be running the household any longer when the new bride comes. You know how well she’ll like that. I wager Pelias knows it too.”

He’d laughed, and I’d laughed a little then too, at the thought of my imperious sister being displaced. But now, in the women’s quarters, I leaned my hips against the windowsill and watched Pisidice snap at the servant who was trying to work one last ribbon into her heavily decorated hair. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement or fury—hard to tell with Pisidice. Hard to tell if I would miss her. Before Hippothoe had died I’d cared little for her, but since then I had grown so used to her presence, her fine features and graceful movements, stylized like a dance. Living with Pisidice was like living with a cranky painting—she was all temper and bright surface. Losing her would make the women’s quarters quieter, but darker too.

Before he left the porch that day, Pelopia had stared at me the same way I was staring at Pisidice now, as if I had transformed beneath his gaze. I’d asked him what was wrong, why he looked strange, and he’d said: “Three years, sour mouth. Till it’s your turn. If he even waits that long.” He’d glanced around the courtyard, darted down to kiss the crown of my head, and wiped his mouth surreptitiously as he’d straightened up. I wore my hair in a heavy oiled braid like Pisidice’s, and his lips had come away from my head gleaming. I smiled now, thinking of the look on his face.

Pisidice, who had been watching me, caught my smile and slowly, hesitantly, smiled back.

A shout came up the stairs: the wedding party was approaching the palace. The women made a hasty line at the door, splashing their fingers in the bowl of water there. When I got to it, a sheen of oil slicked the water’s surface, a thin gloss of woman. I swirled my fingertips in the water and ran after the others, leaving damp smudges on the stone wall of the stairwell.

Had Pelias been a young and purely mortal man, the marriage would’ve been celebrated with a great feast held at the house of his father. But Pelias’s Olympian father could not host a gathering in his realm under the sea; his mother was estranged and her mortal husband dead. So Pelias hosted his own wedding. The whole household had to be arrayed to meet the Mycenaean bride. I rushed through the great hall to the porch, stumbling among the servants until I found my sister. Pisidice rolled her eyes and grabbed my arm, pulling me down to stand on the lowest step. “I expect you’ll be late for your own wedding too,” she said. I folded my hands together and tried to look contrite.

The wedding party came over the edge of the hill, the light of the lowering sun striking their faces, flattening their features into beaten gold masks. Pelias towered ruddy as a god above the others. His new wife’s eyes were obediently lowered. The woman wore no veil and no bodice, as if she were younger than I, and a murmur went through the Iolcan crowd at that—in the north, brides were always veiled, and the Mycenaean woman’s skin was dark as a shepherd’s, though even from this distance I could tell that she was beautiful.

Her attendants sang the wedding song as they walked, their mouths like dark caves in their browned faces. I’d hummed that melody as a child, unaware of its meaning, and had wondered at the servants’ smiles. At the gate, the attendants halted, and Pelias stepped away from the procession to join his family and subjects by the porch steps. The sun had slipped to the horizon. The palace guards lit torches and passed them to the woman’s servants, who hefted them without missing a phrase of the wedding song, and the glow of the torches spread over the courtyard, brushed the faces of the attendants, shadowed their eyes and lips. I hadn’t seen such a group of silent men with torches since Hippothoe’s funeral. I felt a throb of her absence in my stomach, a flare of the constant mournful ache.

One of the servants did not carry a flame. He stepped forward and held his arm out to the bride as if she needed help to cross the flat courtyard. I frowned, staring at the woman. She was still young, only a few years older than Pisidice, and she had been crying, as if she were going to her grave rather than her marriage bed. Her servants had braided her hair into a thick black crown and had reddened her cheeks and lips, but her eyelids were swollen and sore looking. Her eyes glittered blue-green in the torchlight like sun on the sea.

Pisidice made a soft, scornful noise. Startled, I glanced over at her—I had almost forgotten her presence. She did not look back at me. Her eyes were on Pelias’s bride and her mouth had twisted into a knot of bitterness and envy. She could have been married a year before if Pelias had been willing to give her up. Now she would be displaced before a husband had come to claim her.

Pelias held out his hands to his bride. From the side, his expression looked gentle; he was less fearsome when he wasn’t speaking. I looked again at the girl’s teary face and wondered what my father had said to her during the rituals on the beach. Now, though the wedding ritual did not call for it, he spoke one word: “Phylomache.” The crowd flinched again.
Battle lover
: an odd name for a girl, though maybe not so odd considering Atreus’s warlike court. The girl stepped forward and put her hands in Pelias’s, palms up, as if waiting for an offering.

The wedding song ended abruptly on a high, ringing note that lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Pelias closed his hands around the girl’s and led her through the crowd to the palace. The Mycenaean servants followed them, still carrying their torches, and the rest of the crowd surged up the stairs, girls and boys, palace servants and townsfolk and royalty, pushing me along. My breath caught in my throat, and I hiked my skirts up to my knees and ran with them, following my father and his bride.

We rushed through the great hall and to the doors of the king’s bedchamber, and there the group stumbled to a halt, knocking me into the light-haired girl in front of me. Someone kicked me in the ankle and muttered a quick apology. I stood on my toes to look over the girl’s shoulder as bodies pressed me forward. Ahead, the bedchamber doors opened, and the boys and girls stared into it, holding their breath, a giant swell of air in their chests, expanding like love. The servants had lit lamps within the room and the large bed seemed to hover in the glow. Light picked out my father’s form and the edges of the woman’s insubstantial gown, gave her honey skin a sacrificial brilliance. Pelias raised their entwined hands, then turned and led his bride into the bedchamber, and a hoot went up from the crowd, a baying whoop like the call of wolves.

The doors closed, and the boys began to sing, a wave of sound starting near the chamber and spreading through the crowd. All around me voices leapt into the chorus. I didn’t know the words to this song; I didn’t want to know them, but I couldn’t help hearing, for the village boys and girls pronounced the words clearly, with devotional ease. The boys sang of prowess and protection, the girls of virtue and fruitfulness. Faith and honor till I die, they sang.

The girls began a dance, or perhaps the boys did, a circling pattern of clasped hands and swinging legs. Several of the girls held out their hands as they passed me, forgetting who I was, forgetting that they could not touch. They were giggling, spinning, the words of the song fragmented by mirth. Faith . . . honor . . . I die. One girl managed to grab my wrist, and I yanked it back hard and ran toward the edge of the great hall. I reached the wall panting and leaned my head back against the cool stone.

All my life I had been given warnings: eyes down, voice soft, knees together. You’re different, the servants had told me. You are not like us. We are not like you. A royal girl must lie like an undiscovered island, quiet and empty, skin clear and pure as miles of open shore just waiting for that first footprint, the rut of the hull in the sand, the press of discovery.

I’d listened, and I’d believed them, but I had not cared. Purity came easily to me—I was young and alone and untempted. But as I watched the dancers, I thought I saw what the serving maids had meant. I was meant for marriage. I would marry, but I could never reveal to a man what was damp and hungry in me, not like these girls, these laughing children, destined to be shepherds’ wives or sailors’ mistresses, to die bearing or beaten or old. I leaned against the wall and I felt the skin of my inner thighs brush, the dry slide of hot skin and tiny hairs.

Over the boys’ singing, I heard a distinct female cry from within the bedchamber.

I twisted to look back at the closed doors—but there were no more noises, no disruptions in the song. Had I imagined it? I stood on my toes, looking for Pisidice, but couldn’t see her in the crowd. Just braided heads and curly heads bent together, all the same, all oblivious—but no, there was a girl with narrowed eyes; there was another who had stopped singing and stood with her head tilted, listening. Their faces were exposed, like unpainted walls. They’d heard the cry too. They knew.

One by one they turned their eyes to me. Their faces were no longer friendly and laughing but cold, sharp, slightly panicked. They were thinking not of the Mycenaean woman but of my father—of what he might be doing to make her cry, of what that sound promised for them. They slipped other faces over his, and they felt other fears, but I had no other faces to conjure. I thought all kings must look as he did and rage as he did, and I, Alcestis, I would marry a king.