Last of the Amazons (39 page)

45

A RITE OF REMEMBRANCE

B
orges kept his word. He permitted Eleuthera and her party, including my sister, to withdraw north through the Gate of Storms.

Theseus likewise honored his pledge. The posse returned to Athens without him. In his absence, stewardship of the state had been conveyed to Prince Lykos, seconded by the barons Peteos, Menestheus, Stichios Ox, and others who had earned preeminence by their valor in defense of the city against the Amazons and by their service to her in the succeeding years. With the ships' return without Theseus, the Assembly formalized this disposition. The democracy retired, such as it had been, replaced by rule of the princes. These governed sternly but well. Within a twelvemonth, report arrived of Theseus' decease, in a fall from a cliff on the island of Skyros, where he had taken refuge. Whether this end came about by an enemy's hand or his own, none could say.

It was Father who recovered most swiftly from events. Restored to the land, he resumed with joy the rounds of the husbandman. He held Mother in more tender regard than ever, and she returned this affection. It was never even discussed that I would be raised apart from them.

Damon tried his best to stand the sire's vocation. But settlement life had never suited him; now with the loss of Selene, he could endure it even less. He shared Father's tutelage of me till I reached the age of marriage. At that time he quit Attica to follow the restless life his soul had always favored. He returned to Athens once a year only, for the festival of the Boedromia.

At fifteen I was betrothed to Prince Atticus. I went uneager and served his house without joy, though he was the best of men and had acted with no slender intrepidity, taking a bride to whom such notoriety attached. In later years I came to love him dearly. Initially, however, in the aftercourse of my rejection from Amazonia, I cared for nothing but this grief. Why had I been cast out? Why had Eleuthera banished a child of her race, who wished only to live and die in her service? Why had she let my sister stay, yet sent me home?

At seventeen I was delivered of my first babe. With what bitterness did I endure my term! For I reckoned that with the birth of this child I would be bound beyond disseverment to my husband and to the race of men.

Then you came, Alcippe, my eldest, whom I named, inspired by heaven, after that great champion, “Powerful Mare,” of Amazonia. Succeeding you came your sisters—Enyo and Adrasteia, Xanthe and Glauke, Skyleia and Stratonike. Watching you grow and thrive, at last I understood.

You were why Eleuthera had sent me back. You, my daughters, seven without a son, for such has been heaven's will. And you seven have likewise borne only daughters, that the city marvels and looks on you with fear and awe.

Now daughter, Alcippe, eldest of our line, rise and take up the antelope-skin sheath before you on its stand. Bear it to me. Unbind its bands.

There. The
pelekus.
Selene's own, the double axe of Amazonia.

Withdraw the weapon. Display it before your sisters and daughters. I have honed it to a razor's keenness.

Now come you forward, daughters. Kneel, each in order. Receive the iron.

We make this cut by our own hand, that no enemy may say he drew first blood. Take this on your tongue, whetted edge of your mothers, which is Selene's, which is Eleuthera's, which is Antiope's and Hippolyta's and all of tal Kyrte's.

Blood to iron

Iron to blood

Here was Eleuthera's object, mandated of me as she and her last clans withdrew beyond the Gate of Storms. That by the blood of my mother, Selene, borne forward by me and all I would bear, would the nation of Amazonia not perish but endure, here, in the belly of the beast.

Blood to iron

Iron to blood

Attend now and never forget! The blood of champions courses within you. Be worthy of them! Draw strength from them! They are your flesh and sinew, indisseverable, ineradicable down all the tracks of time.

46

AMAZONEUM

N
ow crows the cock. The moon is down.

Night withdraws.

Day approaches.

Now must we rise and take our stations.

Bathe and garland yourselves, my daughters. Dress in your finest. Form in procession as I have instructed you. March with me and all Athens to the Temple of the Amazons, the Amazoneum. There the priests of the state will initiate the festival of the Boedromia, honoring their fathers' conquest of the army of women. We too shall observe this. But not as they.

Hear me, daughters. Stand in your places today. Let the nation see you. They will part before you, in awe and trepidation, and draw you to them at the same time. Take no satisfaction of their honors; rather, pity them. God has bent them to His will no less than ourselves.

When I was twenty and had borne my third child, a message came to me from the East. Its author, through his courier, bade me commit it to memory. I obeyed. Each year on this day I recite for myself and for you its text, which has come to comprise our order and our benediction.

Damon to his daughter, greetings.

It was my wish to return to Athens, as I have each year in this season of the Boedromia. A wound, which I fear shall prove fatal, detains me however. You will be the last of our line, my child, you and those you bear. Instruct them as I tell you. Serve with them as my surrogate in this day's ceremony and all to come. Hear, please, with my ears, see with my eyes.

When you come to the Amazoneum today, stand not with our tribe of Athens but take station at the crown of the Hill of Ares. Mount to that eminence from which you can see the mound of Antiope before the Temple of Mother Earth and the crescent-shaped barrow of Molpadia, our Eleuthera, with the line of Amazon graves receding toward the Itonic Gate.

Attend the speeches of the politicians. Bear with patience their trivialization of events and their citations offered of men and women whose worth they can never know.

Look you now to the footbridge at the northern limit of the marketplace. Don't see the manicured grounds and cane-swept square. Turn instead with the inner eye. See with me. See what I would see, were I standing at your shoulder. Perceive this site not as she stands now, rebuilt and reconfigured, but as she appeared on that eve succeeding the terminal truce, when the race of free women withdrew forever into history.

There where the road now leads to the Ceramic Gate spread a field of rubble. This was our Athenian camp. A tent hospital occupied the west-facing slope. Before this sprawled staked ditches, hide-and-timber palisades, and the anticavalry trenches called legbreakers. Behind extended the kitchen kennels and a picket line for the horses (twelve) and mules (fifteen), which comprised the totality of Athens's mounted brigade. A breastwork of stone ran from the Eleusinion, itself rubble, to the facility that had housed the Custodians of the Market. Tent flies and laundry lines bedecked this position; some four thousand manned it, none of whom had bathed other than in their own spit for months. The footbridge of Cranaus was a pile of rocks with boards spiked atop. The springhouse was a hole in the ground. Where the plain abutted Market Hill, more lines of our troops extended.

The oaths of peace had been ratified the morning before. Still the war was not over. Still all held to arms. Watch discipline was maintained. The company of which Elias and I were a part held the post at the western shoulder of the Hill of Ares, where the Amazon camp had stood. Directly above us was the temple the warrioresses had erected to their progenitor, the god of battles, roofless as all their cathedrals. Our troops had preserved it intact, fearing heaven's wrath.

On the next hill west extended the lines to which the Amazons had withdrawn.

The hour approached evening. I was dead asleep, anticipating my watch, which was to commence at sunset.

Someone shook me awake. Such was the state of anxiety within which all dwelt at that time that I sprang to my feet in alarm, groping for spear and shield. No one else moved. I drew up. Every face had turned west toward the enemy camps.

The Amazons were pulling out.

Along the length of our lines, two miles from end to end, every jack of Athens rose and stood in silence.

The Amazons passed out on horseback in column of twos. The Corps of Mounted Archers comprised the center, with their male auxiliaries, the
kabar
, on foot at either flank. The day was dry and dusty; the parched plain gave up clouds beneath the horses' tread. The descending sun struck these, rendering the column in profile, silhouetted against the sky.

Warrioresses and novices advanced by nation, Themiscyra first, then the Lycasteia, Chadisia, and Titaneia. Those of us who knew them, which by this point meant the defending force entire, could reckon each by the standards they bore and the way they sat their ponies. The column ascended into view on the east-facing collar of the Hill of the Pnyx, tracked across this, then down the saddle at the border stone of Melite, from which it mounted to and traversed the Hill of the Nymphs. The corps skirted Market Hill, inclining east to the Ceramic Road, by which it continued north in the direction of Acharnae. Into view ascended a seemingly endless procession of horses and warrioresses. These bore their totems at battle height, eagle and bear, lion and wolf, aurochs and griffin and ibex. Each rider advanced in armor, burnished to a mirror's sheen, with her helmet likewise dazzling, bow and quiver at her knees and her axe in its sheath between her shoulders. I have never witnessed a spectacle of such splendor or such despair.

Down our lines someone loosed a cheer. The men picked it up. Three great hurrahs arose in honor of the column.

A hymn commenced, from our countrymen manning the ramparts beneath the Rock. I turned to Elias. The anthem swelled. “Fall of the Titans,” the same we had heard the Amazons themselves encant upon the pursuit to the Tanais.

Now the hour of their passing

Younger wait to take their place

Even they weep, who have them vanquished,

Never more to see their face

All evening the column remained in view. Elias and I took horses and followed along the Acharnae Road. At Holm Oak Hill we drew up. Flanking the march, remnants could be seen of other wild tribes, males, razing what little remained intact after their months of depredation. The Amazons with great solemnity passed on, leaving the province unmolested, until at last they vanished over the Leuconoe grade.

All that remained visible, from where Elias and I reined, was the churned impress of the column's track in the clay. Upon this now descended shore birds in their multitudes, seeking the grubs and beetles harrowed up by the horses' tread. In moments, it seemed, these had picked the trace clean. Then wheeling in the failing light, they too receded, leaving darkness to close upon the wake of the free women, effacing in its fall the furrow of their passage.

         

AUTHOR'S
NOTES