Nobody's Princess (15 page)

“But she’s gone now?” I asked. “You’re sure?”

“When I could go back to her camp again—when it didn’t hurt to walk—it was deserted.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

I took his hand. “Come with me, Milo.”

He cringed. “Have I done something wrong, lady? Have I displeased you? Please don’t tell the king that I saw her! He’ll have me killed!”

“We’re not going to see the king, Milo,” I told him, pulling him firmly after me as if he were a small child. “You’ll never have to see the king again.”

In the palace, I questioned one servant after another until I found the person I sought, my uncle’s chief steward. That big-bellied, easygoing man was in one of the storerooms, checking the supply of olive oil, but as soon as he recognized me, he left his work and raised both hands in deferential greeting.

“Lady Helen, what a joy to see you still here!” His voice dripped honey. “I thought that you and your noble brothers were leaving us?”

“We are,” I told him. “But there’s something I want before we can go.”

“What might that be, Lady Helen?” He pressed his palms together. “If one as humble as myself can be of any help to you at all, you only need to ask.”

“The gods will bless you for your kindness,” I said, smiling as I reached up and removed my gold earrings. They glittered even in the dim, dusty light. “There’s something I wish to take away with me when I leave Calydon. I don’t want to trouble my royal uncle with the details.”

The steward’s bright eyes darted from me to Milo and back again. He gave me a questioning look. I nodded and placed the earrings in his plump, soft palm. His fingers closed around them and he beamed.

“Great Lady Helen, you’re as wise as you’re beautiful.” False flattery came easily to him. “There will be no need to burden Lord Oeneus with such a trivial matter at all.”

Later that morning, when we were finally free to leave the citadel, my brothers asked the obvious questions about Milo’s presence beside me in the oxcart.

“I bought him and freed him,” I said casually, as if it were something I did every day. “You know I promised to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Artemis if you did well in the boar hunt. I’ve chosen to sacrifice this boy’s former life as a slave. Artemis should approve. A huntress values freedom.” I patted Milo’s shoulder and added, “He’s going to stay with us, though, at least until he finds a way to feed himself.”

Polydeuces reached out and grabbed Milo’s chin, turning his head from side to side. He frowned as he surveyed the boy’s battered face, then glanced down at the bruises on his body. “A fitting sacrifice, then,” was all he said.

We rode away from Calydon, down the citadel road, past the little pine grove, into the hills where I’d learned how to ride a horse—a little—and where Milo said Atalanta had made her now-abandoned camp.

Is she really gone?
I wondered.
We couldn’t say good-bye, but wouldn’t she wait
somewhere
out there in the forests of Calydon to watch me leave?

As I stared with longing into the trees, trying to read their secrets, I thought I heard the sound of a horse whinnying.
Aristos…Atalanta…
I raised my hand in a gesture of farewell.

“Lady, what do you see?” Milo asked.

“Nothing,” I said, lowering my hand. “Nothing at all.”

         
12
         

AN UNEXPECTED HARBOR

Our trip home from Calydon was to be the reverse of the route we’d taken to go there, sailing east as far as the isthmus of Corinth and then going by land south and west to Sparta.

The voyage was uneventful, with fair skies above and calm waters under our keel. The only bad thing was that we weren’t blessed with favorable winds to speed us along. The crewmen complained loudly as they bent their brown backs over the oars, but I was happy. I loved to feel the gentle roll and swell of the sea, to see gulls and pelicans swooping and soaring overhead, to lean out over the rail and wave to the folk on other ships, and to watch the ever-changing coastline slipping past. As long as I was on the water, I was surrounded by beauty and peace, but once I reached home, I had dreadful news to give to my parents. I’d gladly delay it. I wished the voyage could go on forever.

My brothers, too, were at home on the water. They passed the time talking to the crewmen, asking countless questions about the workings of a ship. How do you steer? What are all the ropes for? Which prayers and sacrifices did Poseidon like best? How do you keep the ship from running aground or going too far from the safety of the coastline and becoming lost? They even insisted on taking a daily turn at the oars. This left some of our Spartan guardsmen ill at ease, not knowing whether my brothers expected them to join them on the rowing benches or just stand by and watch. The ship’s master turned down the few who volunteered. On our third day out, I overheard him remark to one of his crew: “Bad enough trying to sail a ship with no wind and
two
inexperienced newcomers tangling up the oars!” I was so intent on smothering my giggles that I didn’t bother pointing out that my brothers had become very good very fast at the work of sailing.

If the ship’s master didn’t know what to make of two princes who wanted to be sailors, he would have been even more perplexed if he’d known how much I wanted to do the same. As it was, I managed to share a little of their lessons on seamanship by listening and lingering nearby. That was easy. It was a small ship.

After each day’s voyage, once the ship had been beached for the night, we all lay out on the shore, under the frosty swirl of stars. My brothers and Milo were soon snoring, but I thought that the night sky was far more interesting and enchanting than any painted palace ceiling. I’d have time enough for sleep when we got home.

One of the ship’s crew noticed my wakefulness and my fascination with the stars. He was a friendly, talkative old man with leathery brown skin and the only hair on his head a short white beard that traced his jawline. He delighted in filling my ears with tales of the beings—human and animal, beast and hero—whom the gods had placed among the stars as reward or punishment. I knew most of those stories already, but I enjoyed hearing him retell them.

“Who knows, my lady?” he said. “Maybe one day when you’re a grown woman, your beauty will make Zeus himself fall in love with you and put your image up there as well, for us ordinary men to see and envy.”

“I can think of better reasons to end up among the stars,” I said, smiling at such harmless flattery.

Milo didn’t share any of my brothers’ or my pleasure aboard the little ship. Sailing didn’t agree with him, except when he took shelter in sleep. My new friend, the seasoned sailor, took pity on Milo and offered one infallible cure for seasickness after another. None worked.

“I can’t understand it,” he said as the two of us watched Milo giving the latest potion back to the sea. It was our fourth day on the water, and the poor boy was limp and green as seaweed. “I even put in
three
extra anchovies, just to make sure it would take effect.”

“Well, it did,” I pointed out. “Just not the effect we were hoping for.”

The old man shook his head over this latest defeat. “That last tonic saved my stomach back when I was just a lad aboard a trading ship bound for the tin mountains of Hyperborea! Here we’ve got easy sailing across a gulf that cradles our ship and steals the teeth of serious gales, but may Poseidon never send you beyond the Middle Sea, my lady. The waves out to the west are ferocious things that’ll devour your ship out from under you. And before that happens, you’ll be so miserably sick that you’ll pray for the mercy of shipwreck and drowning!”

I did my best to look suitably terrified at the very thought of those western storms—the old man took such joy in seeing his tales have their intended effect!—but secretly I was thrilled at the possibility of riding wild waves.

“What’s going on, Helen?” Polydeuces came up behind us, followed closely by Castor. They’d been working hard down among the oarsmen again, and it was no pleasure to stand too near them on that windless day.

“The usual, from the look of things,” Castor said, glancing at Milo’s sagging body at the rail. He gave the boy an encouraging pat on the back. “Try to drink something, even if you can’t keep your food down, lad,” he said. “Shall I bring you a little watered wine?”

Milo lifted his sallow, haggard face and tried to thank my brother for his kindness but had to turn away quickly and spew over the side again.

Polydeuces sighed. “How can he still do that? I haven’t seen him eat a bite of food since we boarded. You’d think his gut would be empty by now.”

“Maybe it’s a sacred mystery and only the gods know the answer,” Castor said, smiling. “Like the horn of the she-goat who suckled the infant Zeus, the horn he broke off and blessed as soon as he was king of the gods so that it poured out a never-ending stream of food and drink.”

“I always thought it was a strange way to thank the poor beast, breaking off one of her horns,” Polydeuces said. “But it’s not my place to question the gods.” He, too, patted Milo’s shivering back and added, “So, boy, how does it feel to be pouring out a never-ending stream of—?”

“Stop that!”
I scowled at my brothers as I shooed them away from Milo. “How can you make such jokes in front of him?”

“To be honest, the only thing in front of him right now is the sea and the supper he ate three days ago.” Castor’s grin got wider.

Polydeuces was contrite. “We mean well, Helen. We’re only trying to make him laugh. A good laugh might take his mind off being so ill.”

“It’s a shame we’re bound straight for Corinth,” the old sailor said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Since nothing else seems to be working for this lad, could be that a short rest on dry land would steady his stomach.”

“You think we’d ever be able to get him back on board afterward?” Castor asked.

The sailor shrugged. “What would he have to say about it? He’s your slave, isn’t he?”

“He’s our sister’s slave, or was,” Castor replied. “She freed him as soon as she bought him.”

“And still he came onto this ship with you, sick as seafaring makes him?”

“This is his first voyage,” I said, stooping beside Milo to place one arm protectively around him. “He didn’t
know
he’d get sick.”

“Oh, he’d have come along even if he’d known that a sea monster was waiting to gobble him up,” Castor said, with another of those annoying, conspiratorial winks to his twin. “Anything rather than be separated from
you,
little sister.”

Polydeuces eagerly took up his brother’s game. “That’s true,” he hastened to tell the old sailor. “If you could have seen the way he’s been gazing at her, all the way from Calydon!”

“Can we blame him, Polydeuces?” Castor asked with mock sincerity. “Our little sister is the most beautiful woman in the world.” They collapsed laughing into each other’s arms.

Milo made a great effort and pushed himself away from the rail, away from me. He took two staggering steps, fists clenched. “She
is.
” Then he spun around and lurched for the ship’s side once more.

My brothers exchanged a look of pure astonishment. The old sailor chuckled. “He may have been a slave, Lady Helen, but he’s braver than many a free man, to talk back to princes that way! But it wouldn’t be the first time a man found courage he never knew he had until he met the right woman.”

My face flamed. I wanted to thank Milo for putting an end to my brothers’ teasing—whether or not it was all in fun, I still found it annoying—but I was strangely tongue-tied.

Fortunately for me, the old sailor chose that moment to say, “That’s not something you see every day, a mouse trying to take a bite from a lion’s tail. Mark my words, this lad has the makings of a great hero. Why, if I had it my way, I’d put in at the next port and carry him all the way to Apollo’s temple at Delphi, just to see what marvels the Pythia would have to predict about his future.”

“Delphi?”
my brothers echoed as one.

We all knew the name of Delphi, we just hadn’t realized it was so near. The town was a famous place of prophecy where Apollo’s chief priestess, the Pythia, foretold the future. The poets who’d sung of Delphi in our father’s hall told how she answered questions and made her predictions in a small room under the sun god’s temple, a cave where a crack in the rocky floor released strangely scented vapors from the earth’s core. Seated in a giant tripod set above that crevice, holding a twig from Apollo’s holy laurel tree, she inhaled the rising mist, then spouted a jumble of weird gibberish. Only the priests of Apollo could interpret it for you.

Now my brothers felt the inescapable need to hear what the Pythia might have to say to them. So that was why, after a short conversation with the old sailor and a shorter one with the ship’s master, we all came to be put ashore at the port just south of Apollo’s sacred city.

The old sailor who’d become my friend insisted on carrying me from the ship to the land, so I wouldn’t wet my feet. As we said our good-byes, he gave me a leave-taking present, a little carving he’d made out of a smooth, creamy white nub of material too hard to be wood, too soft to be stone. When I asked what it was, he told me, “That’s the tip of a genuine monster’s tooth, a beast that was a gray, five-legged mountain! I saw it with my own eyes in the lands south of the Middle Sea.”

“
Five
legs?”

His head bobbed emphatically. “Four where you’d expect ’em to be and the fifth not so much a leg as a long, boneless arm growing right out of the middle of its face.”

I smiled at him. “Now you’re teasing me as badly as my brothers.”

He held both hands out, palms upward, as if to show me he was hiding nothing, not even the truth. “Lady, if I’m lying, may Poseidon the earth shaker, ruler of the seas, make this my last voyage! The world is full of marvels, if you’re willing to travel far enough to see them.”

I looked at the carving he’d given me. It was the image of a goddess, her feet resting on the back of a dolphin.

“Do you like it?” he asked eagerly. “That’s Aphrodite.”

“I know,” I whispered. My goddess had found me. I wondered if this meant that someday she’d bring me luck enough to see even one of the world’s marvels.

Once we were ashore, it didn’t take long for our escort of Spartan guardsmen to attract the attention of one of Apollo’s priests. The sun god’s shrine kept several of them on daily watch down by the waterside solely to deal with the arrival of unexpected, important guests. The man who hurried forward to place himself in our service was overjoyed to learn that Delphi was about to be honored by a visit from the royal house of Sparta. He wasn’t much older than my brothers, fresh-faced, and struggling gamely to grow a beard that was only coming out in tufts and patches. He took a slender branch of sweet-scented laurel leaves from his belt and used it to direct the three temple servants attending him. One wave of that branch and our travel chests were hoisted onto their backs, one word of command and they were heading up the road to Apollo’s shrine.

“Lady Helen?” Milo spoke my name timidly as we fell into line behind the priest’s entourage. Even though his health and appearance had improved miraculously the instant he’d stepped onto dry land, now his large eyes were filled with distress. “There’s nothing left for me to carry.” He pointed at the servants’ slowly retreating backs.