Alcestis (9 page)

I ate while the servants slicked my legs with oil and then skimmed it off. They did the same to my belly, my back. The strigil bumped across my rib cage, tickling as it went. Phylomache lifted my hair off my neck as they worked. “You’ll have the ritual bath before the ceremony,” she said. “It should be just your hands, but watch what Admetus does. Just for that part, of course. For the rest of it you’ll have different duties.”

“Yes, I understand that,” I murmured.

Phylomache yanked at my hair a little. “Shush. You can’t talk back to his family like you do here, Alcestis. They’ll throw you out.”

“Maybe Admetus likes women who speak up.”

“No man likes women who speak up.” The servants had finished oiling me. Phylomache let my hair drop and took the clothes from the servant who had brought them. “Now, dress.”

I wore a red bodice, a gold and red skirt with ornamental patches, red smudges on my lips and cheeks again. The body servant had painted a line along my eyelashes with charcoal ground in oil and warned me not to rub my eyes; the stuff lay thick on my eyelids. My hair was tied in a tight braid laced through with ribbons. It felt like I was dressing for any other festival. I wondered when I would begin to feel different, like a grown woman and a wife.

Phylomache waved the servant away and gave the laces of my bodice one last tug.

“Ow.”

“Be glad I let you eat before the bodice went on.”

The process took hours. Finally, when my hair was finished and I only needed to put on jewelry, some of the servants left to serve the noon meal. When they were out of the room, Phylomache turned serious, cupping my shoulders in her hands and looking into my eyes. “Don’t be nervous,” she said. “Use your best manners. Be polite to his parents. Be polite to his servants; they’ll listen better if they like you. Don’t make unreasonable demands.”

“Not until I know them well at least,” I said, earning a glare. “I’m teasing, Phylomache. I’ll be too petrified to make any sort of demands.”

“You, petrified?” Phylomache grinned at me and took my face in both hands, leaning in to kiss my nose—one of the only places she could safely touch without ruining my paint. I made myself sit still for the kiss. “I doubt it.”

“The men are in the courtyard,” one of the servants called from the main quarters.

“Oh,” Phylomache said, pulling back. “Are you ready? Everything must be packed by now. Come on, say goodbye to the girls.”

I kissed the children carefully, Asteropia trying to wriggle away, Antinoe’s blue eyes blinking in confusion. “Goodbye, goodbye,” I said gaily, and then I felt it: the sudden tightening in my belly, a chill traveling beneath my skin. “Phylomache, here,” I said, and we embraced quickly. I laughed as I pulled away, a high, tremulous sound. “Do I have to go?”

“Yes,” Phylomache said, eyelashes damp and sparkling. “You’ll be late. Go, go with them. Goodbye!”

The servants hurried me out of the room. I looked back from the main quarters and saw Phylomache leaning against the frame of the bedchamber door, Antinoe on her hip, Asteropia clutching at her skirt with one hand and waving with the other, a solitary motion, slow and final. I felt with bitter surprise how much I loved them, and wished I could turn and bolt back to the little room where I had been born. But I had been promised elsewhere. I waved once, touched my hand to my lips, and followed the servants down the stairs.

Pelias stood in the doorway to the courtyard, a hulking shadow in a brown tunic. He should have been wearing a bright color, something celebratory. I stopped beside him. “I don’t suppose you’ve forgiven me yet,” I said softly.

He did not move or acknowledge me.

“Well, you’ll be rid of me soon enough.” I walked past him to join the group of guards and servants milling about in the courtyard, wondering with each step if he would stop me, seize my arm, or shout. He did nothing. That stung just as badly, and I paused for a moment, as if to give him a chance to haul me back inside. Finally he walked down the steps and brushed past me, going to the stallion tethered by the gate and barking at a slave to help him mount.

“Goodbye, Father,” I whispered. It felt superfluous to say it then. We had no connection to sever. When should I have bid him farewell? In the moment between my birth and my mother’s death? The day when I first began to bleed between my legs like a woman, or the day before Admetus came, when I had no suitors and no desire for them?

I would play my part in the wedding ceremony and serve Admetus honorably, and when I was wed it would not matter what my father thought. He would possess me no longer.

The men brought out the rest of the horses and donkeys, several of them laden with my belongings. For all the noise Phylomache had made about packing, I had few possessions. There were only twelve men accompanying us; the rest would stay in Iolcus to guard the palace, Phylomache, and the children.

We rode through the gate with no wailing or crying to send us off. From the middle of the procession, I turned back and saw the women of the household lined up on the steps, leaning against each other as if they needed support. I imagined my sisters standing in front of them: Hippothoe would’ve been near Phylomache, and would perhaps have wrapped a wiry arm about her rounder waist; Pisidice would have stood to the side, alone. But their images vanished like shades, slipping away to death and marriage. The head maid raised a hand and waved as silently as Asteropia had. I did not dare wave back.

I rode one of the quiet mares, my horse’s bridle tethered to a guard’s saddle, my legs on one side of the horse’s back and my rear on the other. My buttocks fell asleep almost at once, but I didn’t care—I was watching the sea pass by, and the juts of rock, and the way plants grew spidery in the cracks of cliffs. These things had always been here, only leagues from the palace, though I had never seen them, and they would still be here, along this road, when I had grown old in Pherae, worn out by childbearing and worry.

We turned inland from the coast, the afternoon sun bathing my left side in warmth. I listened to the clanking of the men’s gear and the horses’ bridles and tried not to think about the wedding or the ceremony or my husband. I thought instead of my sister’s grave, the mound of dirt slowly wearing down to nothingness, the wind gods smoothing her absence away. But oh, I couldn’t cry—Pelias would hit me if I arrived in Pherae tear soaked and swollen. I prayed silently to Hera the white armed, asking her for calm.

We rode first to Pheres’ house, a villa nearly as grand as the Iolcan palace. The courtyard bloomed with torches, lit even during the early evening hours, that gave off trails of pungent smoke. Light-headed, I clutched at my horse’s withers as the convoy came to a stop. The old king of Pherae stood on the steps of his villa with his wife, the servants of the house behind them, their faces indistinct in the dim interior. Beside them: Admetus. He was dressed all in gold and red just as I was, his skin glowing like warm earth and his wide mouth smiling. Heat spread up my throat to my cheeks and the prayer in my head faltered and stopped.

The guard helped me down from the horse, hands strong around my waist, but I still landed with a jarring thump and had to stomp my numb feet so the blood would flow. Pelias turned to glare at me, holding his arm out for me to take. I hurried to his side.

I was beginning to shake a little, tremors starting in my chest and radiating out to my fingertips and toes. The air was not cold, but I couldn’t seem to stop trembling. My teeth chattered, just faintly, and I clenched my jaw shut and tried to smile. Pelias walked in long strides toward the house, dragging me along. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the king and queen and my husband.

“Lord Pheres, brother,” Pelias said stiffly, “I give you my daughter in marriage to your son, King Admetus. He has won her by right. May he have much joy of her.”

Pheres held out his hands. “I bid you come in, King Pelias, brother, Lady Alcestis. Be welcome here. We will have the ritual bath and then the sacrifice. Pelias, your men may wait outside.”

Pelias dropped my arm and walked up the stairs ahead of me. I lifted my skirts to my ankles and took the stairs slowly, watching my feet. The touch of a hand on my arm startled me, and I looked up to see Pheres leaning toward me, a smile beneath his bristly gray beard. There were deep lines etched at the corners of his eyes, like writing inscribed on a tablet. “Welcome, child,” he said, his voice quavery, and folded his hand around mine.

A dip of my hands in the water, Admetus’s fingers brushing mine beneath the rippling surface. Smiles all around, except on Pelias’s face. I felt breathless, light enough to float away. Time slipped by quickly, the sun setting earlier than I expected, as if Helios were conspiring with the men to hurry the ceremony. We stood in the courtyard, staring up at the fading sky, and I listened as Pheres called upon Zeus and Hera. Strange, I thought suddenly, to ask the blessing of the god who slept with every woman he could find and the goddess who had to allow it. Admetus echoed Pheres, his voice a low murmur under his father’s chant.

My hand did not seem to fit in Admetus’s, but he didn’t let me go when I wriggled my fingers, just glanced over at me and smiled. Distracted. His palms were cool and sweaty too, still damp from the ritual bath. Was he frightened? I hoped he was.

Pheres had stopped speaking. I lifted my head and found them all watching me, waiting for Admetus to lead me to the palace. He was smiling down at me again—though he was not tall, he still topped me by a few finger-widths—and he reached out to touch my face, thumb soft on my cheek. “Come with me, wife,” he said. Around us: the torches, the servants, the expectant faces. Pelias had remained in the house. He would not accompany me on this part of the journey; I had passed out of his control and become a woman of Pherae.

The attendants sang as we went, the song I remembered from Pelias’s wedding, and Admetus walked at my pace. His parents followed behind us, though the old king leaned heavily on his walking stick and wheezed when the road sloped up. We came to the Pheraean palace in full dark. Pit fires burned around the edges of the building, casting light up its sides so that it seemed too large and bright to be real, a house for a sun god rather than a mortal palace. I gasped as we came through the gate and clutched at Admetus’s hand. He led me to the center of the courtyard, the center of the waiting crowd, and stopped there, lit all around by the wavering flames, his eyes bright.

“Here we stop,” he said, “so that I may honor the gods who helped bring this day to pass. The goddess Demeter, who delivered my wife from a dangerous birth. The goddess Aphrodite, who instructed Eros to fire his darts when first I saw her. The god Poseidon, protector of her father’s house. The god Apollo, who brings light and healing, who has always aided me. I give you my thanks, deathless gods, for this woman, my wife.” He twisted to address the crowd, calling out, “Welcome your queen, Alcestis of Pherae!”

They startled me with their cheers, for I’d been watching Admetus speak like a king. I tried to smile again, and this time I found that I could, for there were honest smiles on the faces around me. I’d never been celebrated or welcomed like this. Pheres’ wife stepped up and touched Admetus’s arm, whispering to him. He let go of my hand and stepped back, letting his mother take his place. She slipped her hand through the crook of my elbow and led me across the courtyard and into the grand palace, Admetus right behind us. The great hall was dim, the round hearth burning low and the light of the bonfires flickering through narrow windows, and the room was lined with boys and girls who looked no different from the children of my own village. They stared at me as I entered, their eyes hungry and glittery, just like their king’s. They were waiting for the bedchamber door to close behind me so that they could sing and dance and taste wine on each other’s lips. The bedchamber doors were closed now. I walked up to them and stopped, not sure what to do.

Pheres’ wife leaned in and kissed my cheek gently. “You’re a good girl,” she said. Then Admetus was beside me, arm around my waist, beckoning the servants with his other hand. Two men swung the doors open, and the crowd’s chatter grew until it felt like a wall of noise behind us, pushing us into the room. Admetus looked over his shoulder, gave the crowd a lighthearted wave, and pulled me through the open doors.

5

I DIDN’T KNOW what I had expected to see—chains on the wall perhaps, or an altar stained with the blood of virgin girls? The bedchamber looked just like Pelias’s had, better appointed than my own but no more frightening. The thud of wood on wood, the sound of the children raising their voices in song, Admetus’s body warm and solid against me—those things frightened me. But Admetus pulled away almost at once, smiling at me and sitting down on the bed with a heavy sigh. I stared at his feet for a moment, my heart thrumming, trying to think of what to say. Why had he not seized me? What should I do?

“I’m glad that’s over,” he said.

Over? My eyes snapped up to his face. “Is it?” I asked after a long moment. “I believe the people outside the door think otherwise.”

Admetus smiled, that quick grin like a crease of sunlight on water. I didn’t know if I could trust his smile; I didn’t know what it meant. He held out one hand to me and I saw his fingers tremble. “There’s time enough for that, Alcestis. As long as the bedclothes are dirty in the morning, no one cares what goes on in the bedchamber. Here, sit. You must be exhausted.”

Hesitantly, I sat.

“Did you think I’d leap on you as soon as the doors were closed?”

I looked up at him sideways.

“You did,” he said. “Oh.”

“I believe that’s how it’s usually done,” I said stiffly. “Not that I’d know.”

“Me either,” Admetus said absently, then blushed, color shading up over his cheekbones. “I mean, I’ve never been married before.”

“I hope not.”

He made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, a noise I’d never heard before. Soon I would learn all of his noises, his private language, the way I’d learned my sisters’. Or would I listen for him as I’d listened for Pelias, breath held and heart stopped? “You mustn’t be frightened,” he said, though he didn’t sound confident. “I won’t force you. I’d never do that.”

“It wouldn’t matter if you did,” I said, thinking of Phylomache’s wedding night. “No one would know.”

“I won’t.” He reached over and picked up my hand, folding it between his. “Alcestis. Wife.”

He sounded like a king beginning a speech, but I was the only audience and he didn’t have to make pretty speeches to get my clothes off. He’d earned that right, even if he was reluctant to take it. “Admetus,” I said. “What is it?”

“I’m glad I won you,” he said, leaning closer, his thigh warm against mine. He smelled like a man, the hot tang of oil and leather, but beneath those scents was a hint of herbs and sweetness, as if his tunic had been pressed and stored with flowers. I had not realized that men could smell different, had never been this close to a man who wasn’t a father or brother.

“I’m glad too,” I said, then softly, “but I don’t see why you did.”

He pulled back, squinting. “What do you mean?”

“Why you were so determined to win me,” I said. “Pelias was cruel when you came. I did not think you’d come back.”

“He was not any kinder to you.” His warm fingers curved more tightly around mine. “I was told of your worthiness—and I saw it was true. I loved you when first I saw you. Pelias did not treat you well, Alcestis. Everyone knows he blames you for his wife’s death.” He watched to see if I would flinch at that, but I did not; I knew it too.

“Will you treat me well then?” I whispered.

“I will.” His fingertip brushed against the curve between my thumb and wrist. Outside the door the boys were singing their chorus, shouting out the last few words of each line. I looked up, and Admetus was watching me through lowered eyelashes, shy as a girl. I still felt quivery and strange, as if I had left a part of myself behind in Iolcus and its absence had made my body light.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered, and closed my eyes.

He settled my hand on his knee carefully, like releasing a stunned bird. His skin felt hot and dry, furred with small, crinkly hairs, softer than those between my legs. I rubbed my thumb across the round bump of his knee, the long line of sinew on the side of his thigh, and the muscle beneath the skin trembled at my touch. I jerked my hand away, my eyes flying open, and gasped to see Admetus’s face only inches away. His eyes were closed too, though they fluttered open now. Flecks of green in the brown of his irises, like sparks sinking beneath his heavy eyelids. “Shhh,” he said, leaning in. “I said I wouldn’t hurt you.”

A hand curved around my thigh, hot through the cloth of my skirt, then Admetus’s mouth grazed my jaw, my cheekbone. He skimmed his knuckles across the plane of my cheek. I sat still, breathing shallowly through my mouth. I sound like Hippothoe, I thought. This is silly. I picked up my hand and put it back on his leg with the same sort of determination I would have used to touch a spider.

My husband pulled back, smiling, and I could tell that he meant the smile to be reassuring. He kicked his sandals off, and I did the same; Phylomache had said I should mimic him. He murmured, “Come here,” and stretched a hand out to pull me farther up on the bed. We lay down in the middle of the mattress, knees bumping, a hand-width of space between our bodies. I felt like I was leaning out through the window of my bedchamber, safe only because of my fingers gripping the frame.

“Admetus,” I said, but he hushed me with a finger over my lips then leaned in to kiss me. He had a warm, clinging touch, his lips soft and undemanding. I opened my mouth a little and stroked my tongue over his lips. Let him do what he wants, Phylomache had said, but I was never going to bear him children if all he wanted to do was kiss me chastely as a girl.

He made another interesting noise somewhere in his chest and slid his arm over my hip, yanking me closer and deepening the kiss. There, I thought, and then I thought: Oh. He was so warm and close, our hips pressed together and legs entwined. I felt a smooth touch on my foot, sliding up past my ankle. I laughed involuntarily into the kiss and pulled my foot away. “That tickles, you know,” I whispered against his cheek.

“What tickles?”

“My foot.”

He looked confused.

“Didn’t you just—”

There was an odd sound, a hiss like concentrated wind.

We leapt into a frightened upright tangle, standing pressed together in the middle of the mattress. Admetus had an arm around my shoulders and he crushed me against him, his nose against my cheek, muttering, “Don’t move, don’t move.”

Snakes lay in twisting knots across the bottom of the mattress. Not just there—I could see scales glinting in the lamplight, piles of long bodies littering the floor between the bed and the doors. Tens of them, hundreds? I couldn’t tell, couldn’t even count them, all the tangled skeins of flesh. Which god had done this? My heart thudded in my chest and I couldn’t catch my breath. O Artemis, I thought. O Athena, O Hera, O Aphrodite. O Poseidon, Grandfather, call them away!

The snake that had touched my foot slid across the mattress: a pale brown viper with darker patches, its body as thick as my calf, mouth open as if it were scenting us. Its eyes looked like small gray jewels set in its wedge-shaped head, sparkling and opaque. It had touched me—touched me, and I’d thought it was Admetus. Revulsion shook me, knotted me up under Admetus’s hard hands.

“Don’t move,” he said again. “It’ll bite you.”

“I know,” I said, and the words came out calm but squeaky. The snake twisted its head away. “We have to get out. Admetus. There has to be a way out. I can get around it—”

His breath was coming in little puffs against my ear. “Don’t,” he said, “just don’t touch it, let it keep going.”

Oh no, I thought, it won’t keep going, not if we’ve angered a god—but it did, skimming over the mattress and skating down off the bed, joining the mass of writhing bodies on the floor. The other snakes on the bed followed it, like cows trailing after the leader of their herd. I’d never seen snakes behave like that. I’d never seen so many snakes. Admetus clutched me harder, and we were both trembling, passing a shudder back and forth. I tried to struggle out of his arms, and he let me go with a shake that made me bite down sharply on my tongue. I stared at him, shocked, but he wasn’t looking at me.

“You stay here,” he said, and edged toward the side of the bed, peering at the snakes on the floor. The motion attracted them, and some of them began to sway up, hissing and flicking their tongues toward the bed. My chest froze, and my fingers went numb, as if I were turning into a statue.

“They’ll kill you,” I said, grabbing at his arm. “Call for help.”

“They won’t hear over the singing.” His face had gone white and his eyes wild. He bent and blew out the lamp beside the bed, darkening the room further, and hefted it as a weapon. Several of the snakes let out violent hisses. “I have to go.”

I looked down at the blanket of vipers, untameable creatures. “Who helped you with the lion and boar?” I asked, talking so fast my words ran together.

“What?”

“What god helped you? You’re a brave man, but you didn’t harness those animals yourself.”

He stared at me, the warm brown of his eyes a thin ring around his dark pupils. His nostrils were flared in fear like a horse’s. “Apollo,” he said finally, stumbling over the name. “Apollo caught them and trained them to the whip.”

So the god who’d let my sister die would save my husband now. It was the kind of poetry the gods liked. But I had no choice. “Call on him to banish the snakes,” I said urgently. “If a god led them here, another god can drive them off. Call on him now.”

“But I can’t,” he said, child simple. “He isn’t here.”

“He’ll hear you.” I clasped a hand around his elbow and shook it a little, the way I might have done to reassure Asteropia. “Admetus, come, please call him.”

“You can’t listen,” he said, pleading suddenly, his voice gone low and rough.

I put my hands over my ears, which at least kept out the hissing of the snakes. I could still hear the low rumble of the revelers in the great hall, oblivious to the danger within the bedroom. Shadows sculpted Admetus’s face, and I turned away too, but not so far that I couldn’t watch his mouth move. Most of the words blurred into incoherence, but I caught a few things: help and please and honor and love, Apollo, please, please. My heart pounded harder. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought of the chariot driver, always standing beside Admetus or behind him, murmuring in his ear. He would come. He had to come.

Something bumped against the back of my heel and I let out a shriek. Admetus stopped midword and caught me as I stumbled toward him. The snake hissed and lunged just as he swung me up into his arms, and he did a strange frantic dance, kicking the thing and jumping on it until he crushed its head beneath his heel. His face was twisted up and for a long, horrible moment I thought he’d been bitten.

“It’s dead,” he said, breathless. “It didn’t get me—”

The doors crashed open. Admetus’s breath rushed out, a snakelike hiss by my ear. I squirmed in his grip and turned to see Apollo standing in the doorway and, behind him, the startled faces of the children, frozen in their dance. He looked like the chariot driver and yet unlike him, as if the form of the chariot driver were a set of clothes he’d only half finished putting on. His skin absorbed the torchlight and magnified it. The doors slammed shut again behind him, and that light began to flare, a brilliant pure white brighter than the sun. Admetus’s hand wrapped over my eyes, but the light crept through his fingers, stabbing at my eyes until I cried out. All around I could hear the snakes hissing—and then suddenly the hissing cut off and the light winked out like a snuffed torch. The room was quiet. The entire palace was quiet—no noise from the children outside, from guards or servants running to their aid. I could hear Admetus panting.

I reached up and pried Admetus’s hand off my face. I tried to look at Apollo, but he was still too bright, a halo lingering around the edges of his body. Then I saw the snakes, or what was left of them. Their bodies remained, but Apollo had altered them, hardening them into long brown shapes that I recognized after a moment as boughs of wood. He had saved us.

The god sighed. When I glanced at him this time, his skin did not burn my eyes, but I saw sun in every crease of it, every neat strand of his hair. He gave Admetus a look that I did not understand, a look that made my stomach grow hot. “Admetus,” Apollo said, and his voice was like weary music, holy and disappointed. “This was unexpected. I did not think you would call so soon.”

Admetus set me down slowly, slipping his arm from beneath my knees. I flexed my toes on the mattress and kicked a wooden snake off the bed. My heart was still rabbiting in my chest.

“I’m sorry,” my husband said. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know why they came. I must have done something wrong.” He sounded like a woman apologizing to her husband, but he didn’t move toward Apollo, and Apollo’s expression did not change.

“To whom did you sacrifice when you married her?” the god asked calmly.

“You. Demeter. Aphrodite. Poseidon. Zeus and Hera, in the ritual at my father’s house.”

“You forgot Artemis.”

My husband’s mouth moved, but he said nothing. I bit the inside of my lower lip to keep quiet and stared down at the bed. How had I not noticed that my husband had not thanked the goddess for giving up a girl to marriage? Had I been so terrified? Now I stood in the bedchamber with my husband and a god, married but not bedded, the thump of my heart quieting in my ears, and my cheeks went hot with shame. I should have noticed. How the goddess must have laughed when I prayed to her for deliverance. How she must have smiled in triumph!

“Admetus,” Apollo said. “You must be careful. More careful than this. I heard you this time, but I cannot always protect you.” I’d lifted my gaze when he spoke. He looked at me, his eyes as bright as his skin, and did not smile. His stare had a weight that a mortal’s could not possess, almost palpable, like a heavy blanket draped over my body. I gazed at his beautiful face, unsure what to do—I’d seen Hermes and my grandfather, Poseidon, but nothing in my training had extended to the proper greeting of gods when met in the bedchamber. Was I even supposed to look at him? He was my cousin, after all, and my husband’s friend, as well as Hippothoe’s betrayer. Would he even know her name if I asked him?