Alcestis (7 page)

“Alcestis,” Phylomache called from the outer room of the women’s quarters. “Could you come here for a moment?”

I stepped back from the window, scrubbed the heels of my hands over my eyes, and went to help. When I woke in the morning, I crept to the window to look out over the courtyard, but the king, the charioteer, and the men were gone.

.TWO WEEKS LATER we had another birth in the little bedchamber. I sat by Phylomache as she panted and cried, giving her sips of cool water and putting a wet cloth over her forehead. Everything went exactly as it had for Asteropia’s birth: the labor was short, the afterbirth came out easily, Phylomache tore but did not bleed too badly. The baby was a girl, though healthy. The servant women wiped her clean and daubed her purple skin with oil, chanting thanks to Eileithyia, Hera’s hard daughter, for the mother’s health and the baby’s life. Phylomache lay limp and triumphant on the bed and watched.

Pelias didn’t leave the palace this time, as he had when Asteropia was born, as if he’d thought he could prevent his new wife from dying by allowing her to give birth alone. He came into the women’s quarters after the new baby was washed and fed, ignoring the protests of the servant women. The baby was sleeping, but Phylomache handed her up to Pelias without comment, though she frowned when the child began to cry. She smiled when Pelias looked back at her, though, the child held in the crook of his arm. “We shall name her Antinoe,” he said, and Phylomache was still smiling, nodding, her dark hair tangled around her ruddy face. No one spoke of sons.

Antinoe was quieter than Asteropia had been, less fussy. Phylomache spent days cradling her with one arm and letting Asteropia snuggle up against her other side, singing softly to the children and calling them sweet names. She stayed in bed far longer than she needed to, and the head maid began coming to me for approval of meals and with requests for trade goods. Pelias didn’t notice. He came to fetch Phylomache and the children some days and took them out to the courtyard to sit in the sun. He smiled when he saw Antinoe, and the smile stretched out to include Asteropia and Phylomache.

I had never seen him happy before. I told myself that I was glad of it. Pelias, distracted, had said nothing about suitors for weeks. When he did speak to me, his voice was slightly softer, his fierceness muted. Enjoy it while you can, I told myself. He’ll forget this happiness before the baby ever grows to be a girl.

I was right.

Within three weeks of Antinoe’s birth, I heard Pelias shouting at Phylomache in the great hall. I was in the kitchens directing the butchering of a lamb, my hands slick with blood. I wiped my hands on a cloth and ran out into the hallway, ducking around slaves carrying food.

The shouting stopped before I reached the hall. Phylomache brushed past me, sobbing, and ran up the stairs. A young servant woman followed, red faced, with Antinoe crying in her arms and Asteropia clutching at her skirt.

I touched the woman’s arm. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

“The queen tried to tell the king whom he ought to choose as your husband,” the servant said in a whisper. “The king didn’t like it much.” She shifted Antinoe on her hip, looking uncomfortable. I held out my arms and the servant gave me the baby with a grateful smile. “Thank you, lady.”

I nodded. “I’ll take them up. Come, little one,” I said to Asteropia, stretching my hand down to splay my fingertips on the girl’s head.

Inside the bedchamber, Phylomache lay crumpled on the bed, taking great quavery breaths. I sat down beside her, holding Antinoe against my shoulder and patting her as she quieted. Phylomache looked up with a shuddery gasp then buried her face in her hands again. Asteropia climbed up onto the bed and attached herself to her mother’s legs, eyes solemn.

“You were pushing him to accept Admetus, weren’t you?” I said, voice quiet so I wouldn’t startle the baby braced against my chest.

Phylomache nodded without lifting her head.

“Oh, Phylomache. I could’ve told you that wouldn’t work.”

“You saw,” Phylomache said, voice rising. “He never listens to me.”

“He never listens to anyone,” I said. “Don’t try to talk to him about me. He’s happy with you and the girls. He’ll forget about it in a few days.”

“I don’t know why he won’t let Admetus court you. It’s not as if the house is full of suitors.” A pause, and then Phylomache lifted her teary face, suddenly aware of what she’d said. “I didn’t mean—”

I smiled. “They’ve been waiting until you had the baby. Pelias says he’ll have a feast in honor of her and Demeter before the next full moon.”

“He will?” She sat up, wiping at her face.

“He’ll want to have the wedding after the harvest. The feast must be soon, and now there’s a birth to celebrate.” I cupped the back of Antinoe’s head, feeling the warm, thin skin stretched over the baby’s soft skull. The child’s eyes had closed, her pink mouth open and slick with saliva. I wiped my thumb across the wet skin beneath her lips and kissed a wisp of feathery hair.

“Oh,” Phylomache said, a little exhalation of air. “So there will be others.” She held her arms out for her baby.

I laughed, though it sounded sour in my ears, and gave Phylomache the baby. “I’m sure of it.”

“And nothing of—”

“Nothing of Admetus.”

PELIAS HELD THE feast two weeks later, on a cool night. Fall had settled in slowly, browning the mountainsides and stirring the gray sea into a pitchy froth. The western wind licked at the coast with his great rough tongue, changing its shape little by little, lap by lap. Pelias had burnt two white goats in the courtyard in the hope that his father would hold back the sea storms for the week of the feast, and Poseidon indulged him. On the day of the feast, the sea lay bright and sparkling, deceptively calm.

I was ordered to wear my finest bodice, the red one with bright yellow stitching, and to let my body servant rub red juice on my cheeks and lips. I didn’t ask what the liquid was; it tasted foul, and that told me enough. The body servant yanked my hair into a tight, intricate braid, binding it with bits of yellow linen until I felt like a cow being prepared for a festival sacrifice. Phylomache was allowed to wear a shawl, and I begged for one, complaining of the cold as if I were as delicate as Pisidice had been, but Pelias ordered the head maid to leave me bare armed to show off the whiteness of my skin.

The kings began arriving after noon. Princes, warlords with no palaces or lands—I hardly recognized any of them, though I thought a few of them might have been Acastus’s friends as children. Some of them brought entourages of fifty men; some came with only a few attendants. Each tried to anticipate what sort of behavior would best please Pelias: deference or defiance, boldness or restraint. I watched them from the bedchamber window, counting their horses and guards, hoping the kitchens were adequately prepared for this onslaught of stomachs. Pelias would kill thirty cows for sacrifice, and the meat kept for mortals would have to suffice.

I looked for Admetus, looked for his slender brown body and ready smile, but he did not appear. The courtyard filled with men, all slapping at each other in that mock-friendly way, slinging arms around each other’s shoulders and shouting out their surprise when they saw old friends. I began to wonder if we should’ve hidden the wine rather than stockpiling it for this night. Already the courtyard and the palace were thick with the smells of horses and men, sweat and hot urine, oatcakes and burnt oil, road dust floating in the air.

Phylomache and I had been told to stay inside until the slaughtering was done. I couldn’t see the bonfire from the bedchamber, but I knew when the sacrifice began—the men quieted as if stoppers had been put in their mouths and the chosen cows began to low as the slaves led them in from the pen beyond the gates. Pelias shouted out an invocation to the gods, dedicating the feast to Demeter for the safe delivery of his child. Distance blurred his words, but I could hear that it was a man’s prayer of thanks for birth, not a woman’s, and not only because he didn’t mention Eileithyia. He never spoke of Phylomache by name. Antinoe he named three times, though he did not mention her sex. I wondered what Demeter thought of being honored for the birth of female children.

The animals’ dying gurgles came to us only faintly, but we could hear the thud when each cow fell to the dirt, knees buckling as its blood sprayed over Pelias’s hands. I didn’t need to see the slaughter to imagine it; I’d watched so many creatures die by the knife that it hardly bothered me anymore. The calves— sometimes they upset me, especially when they called for their mothers. I doubt I ever called for my dead mother as a child—I hadn’t known what a mother was until I was old enough to speak and understand my siblings—but the helpless desperation in their animal voices left me unsettled.

“I hate listening to this,” Phylomache groaned, shifting on the bed. “I wish they’d do it somewhere else.”

“They’d still be killing cows whether you heard it or not.” I turned my back on the window.

“If I couldn’t hear it, I wouldn’t have to think about it,” Phylomache said, and put her hands over her ears carefully, so she wouldn’t muss her hair. When the sounds stopped, I touched her arm, and she smiled at me, grateful.

“We should go to them,” she said, settling her shawl around her shoulders. “Are you ready?” She looked lovelier than she had when she married Pelias, pink with health and still plump from pregnancy, her unbound breasts full above her feast-day bodice. She wore a gold necklace with beads shaped like ivy leaves, a thin glitttering rope across her collarbone. I looked down at my own body, unbreached.

“I’ll never be more ready,” I said.

The men had become loud again by the time Phylomache and I reached the courtyard. They’d collected the portion for the gods and set it aflame, and the column of smoke drifted into the dusky sky above the palace, reaching up to Olympus. The courtyard smelled of blood and burnt flesh. I coughed into my sleeve then grabbed Phylomache’s hand. We walked along the long table until we found the empty places beside Pelias. A skinny man with black tattoos twining around one arm moved down the bench to give us even more room.

Pelias did not announce us, but the men turned to watch us as we sat, a row of eyes following our movements. Phylomache smiled demurely, but I could not; I pressed close to her, our hips jammed together, and stared determinedly at the table. “Move over,” Phylomache whispered. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared,” I said faintly. I moved away, just a little.

Pelias stood and waited for the men to quiet before speaking. The wine in his cup sloshed over his knuckles when he lifted it. “Men of honor, I have called you here to my home to celebrate the birth of my child, Antinoe, and to praise the gods who bless us with this birth. May they live in strength and glory forever and lead us to strength and glory as well, for our children and our children’s children.”

“May it be!” one of the kings called, thrusting his cup into the air, and the others let out a series of full-throated cheers.

“May it be,” Pelias repeated. “I offer you the hospitality of my house. I am glad you have come. You have been invited here not only to celebrate the birth of my child but to compete for the hand of my elder daughter, Alcestis. She is old enough for marriage, and I will find a lord for her before this harvest season ends. I will find the best lord for her.” He paused and looked around at the men as if daring them to cheer again. Wisely, they remained silent, though many of them were grinning at me, their teeth flashing in the low light. None of them looked remotely like gods. I felt them watching, and my cheeks heated beneath the red dye. I considered how far I might be able to run from the table before Pelias caught me and dragged me back.

“I know what you must be thinking,” my father continued, genial now that the men were behaving themselves. “With such fine men courting her, how will I be able to choose?” Here the men did shout in answer, ribald suggestions about the length of their dicks and the strength of their arms. Pelias laughed, swinging his cup down to take a long drink of wine. “For my part,” he said after wiping his mouth on his arm, “I’d have any one of you.”