Nobody's Princess (17 page)

We both know you don’t mean that,
I thought. Aloud, I said, “Then honor me by accepting it as a gift. I only wish there were something I could do for you now to show my thanks.” I coughed as if my throat had gone dry suddenly. “Ugh, what a hard time I had, getting that woman to agree to a decent bargain! I’m ready to die of thirst. Let’s find a wineshop.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” the taller soldier said, sniffing the air. He was right. We came across one before we’d gone thirty steps. It was very small, little more than a storeroom with a serving table full of cups inside and a bench out on the street. I rejected it.

“I don’t want to drink out in the sun,” I said. “I’ll only get thirsty again. Keep looking.”

The next wineshop we found had a shady arbor covered with grapevines next to it, a very comfortable place for customers to take refuge from the sun. I peeked into the shop itself and then rejected this one too.

“Too few amphoras,” I said. “They haven’t got enough wine to sell. I want to drink wine thinned with water, not water flavored with wine!” I caught my guards exchanging a look and demanded,
“What?”

“Oh, nothing, Lady Helen, nothing,” the shorter man said, rubbing his chin. “It’s just that we never expected you to be so…knowledgeable about wineshops.”

“I want us all to share a cup of wine together,” I told him. “It’s to thank you for looking after me so well. I could settle for just
any
wineshop, but you deserve better than that.”

“I thought you didn’t want us to—” the taller man began. He was the one I’d barked at earlier.

“I was being foolish,” I said sweetly. “Now that I’ve seen what Delphi’s like, I know that I’d have been lost if I’d left the temple grounds without you. I want to apologize.”

What could they say after that? They let me have my way, and soon I did find exactly the sort of wineshop I’d been seeking: dark, cavernous, crowded, and noisy. As soon as we were seated at a table, I snapped a little silver ornament off my belt and held it out to Milo.

“Bring us wine, boy,” I said grandly, but instead of placing the silver into his hand, I deliberately missed and let it drop to the floor.

“I’ll get it, Lady Helen!” he exclaimed, falling to his hands and knees.

I uttered a short, exasperated sound. “You’ll
never
find it by yourself.” With that, I ducked beneath the table as well, while my guards laughed.

Safely out of my sheepdogs’ sight and hearing, I grabbed Milo’s hand just as it closed over the silver ornament. “Milo, do you want to help me?” I whispered urgently.

“Yes, always,” he whispered back. “Anything.”

I told him my plan as quickly and quietly as I could, then said, “I just need you to drop the cloak where I can get it and create a distraction so I can slip out. Do you think you can do it? Find some way to distract them?”

Milo smiled more happily than I’d ever seen him do before. “You’ll see,” he said.

I pulled myself back onto my bench while Milo scurried off to fetch the wine. The silver ornament bought more than enough for what I had in mind. Even though he drank with us, as my servant it was Milo’s job to add water to each helping of wine. I drank only one cupful, which was mostly water, but he made sure that the guards drank almost pure wine.

After a while, the tall one exclaimed, “Hey, look at that! Isn’t that his fourth cup?” He pointed unsteadily at Milo.

“So what?” his comrade said. “It’s our fourth too.”

“But he’s—he’s just a boy. He can’t drink like that,” the first man objected.

“Who says I can’t?” Milo thumped his cup down loudly on the table. He sounded ferociously drunk, though he wasn’t. He
had
emptied four cups, but the soldiers couldn’t know that there wasn’t enough wine in all of them together to equal the wine in one of theirs. “I’m from Calydon, an’ in Calydon we know how to drink. Dionysus, god o’ wine himself, taught us how to make the bes’ wine. Song about it. Listen.” He climbed onto the bench, flung his new cloak to the floor, then leaped onto the table and began a frantic dance while singing a loud, vulgar, hilarious song that soon had my guards and every other customer in the wineshop roaring the chorus and pounding out the rhythm on the tables.

While Milo kept them all distracted, I grabbed his discarded cloak, threw it over my head so that my face was well hidden, and slipped out into the streets of Delphi.

I wanted to explore the city on my own terms, but the city decided otherwise. The crowds carried me along like a tuft of feathers caught in a gale. I was jostled up one street, down a second, straight through a third, and from one side of the road to the other. When I pulled myself out of the human current to look at the buildings, it was always in some dull little side street where there was nothing worth looking at. I had no choice but to rejoin the endless rush of people, hoping I’d be able to see something interesting the next time I got away from the crowds.

I finally got my wish when I managed to put myself behind an oxcart. It was so bulky that it cleared a wide path through the mob, and the oxen walked slowly enough for me to stroll after the cart at a pleasantly unhurried pace, looking around at my leisure. I just had to look
down
from time to time to watch where I was putting my feet, oxen being oxen.

That was how I happened to stumble across the image maker’s house. It stood at the intersection of two paths near the place where the street widened into a market square. This open space was filled with even more merchants than the ordinary city streets, some selling their wares from the doors of the houses, some camped in ramshackle wooden booths, some with their merchandise spread out on a blanket, and some simply squatting in the dust with a basket full of goods.

I let the helpful oxcart go on without me as I wandered up to have a closer look at the house selling the clay images. They stood in rows on a narrow table beside the door, watched over by a dull-eyed girl who yawned with every breath she took.

“What are
you
looking at, you little grub?” she lashed out when she noticed me. “Touch any of my dad’s stuff and I’ll snap your dirty fingers like bean pods.”

I stood as tall as I could and shrugged back my plain-looking, dusty cloak. My brothers had told me to wear my best dress that morning, hoping until the last instant that I’d change my mind and come into the temple with them. Now the gorgeous colors of the tiered skirt, the intricate embroidery patterns on the short-sleeved jacket, the gold and silver charms sewn over everything, all hit the girl with the force of a tooth-rattling slap in the face. Her jaw dropped and she stared at me.

At that moment, a bald, beaming, potbellied man came out of the house to see what was going on. When he saw me, his smile stretched so wide it seemed like the corners would meet at the back of his head. He clutched the stunned girl by the shoulders, shoved her back into the house, and gave me his full attention, apologizing for his daughter and begging me to handle as many of the figurines as I liked. He didn’t need to ask twice.

Oh, they were wonderful! There were images of leaping bulls and placid sheep, goats and doves and donkeys, and many different sorts of men and women. All of them were painted with extraordinary skill and detail. I’d seen plenty of such things before—everyone took clay images to the temples as offerings for the gods—but these were works of art. I picked up one figurine shaped like a priestess of Gaia, the great mother goddess of the earth. She was holding up two snakes, creatures sacred to Gaia because their whole bodies were always pressed against the ground. The potter had painted in every detail, from the serpents’ eyes to the scales covering their backs.

“I’ll buy this one,” I said. “What will you take for it?” I got ready for the haggling to begin.

He was about to reply when a hand slammed down on the boards between us and a brash voice proclaimed: “
There’s
your price, old man!” It was a voice I knew. I looked up as Theseus of Athens lifted his hand from the table. He’d slapped down a strand of silver beads worth enough to buy every image in the shop. Rings of gold and crystal glittered on his fingers, and an enameled silver belt clasping his embroidered tunic gleamed in the sunlight. He looked so splendid that for a moment I forgot just how much I disliked him.

“Well?” he demanded. “Is it a bargain?”

The potter was overwhelmed. His hands trembled as he reached for the silver, as if he were afraid that this would all turn out to be a dream. He jabbered nonstop thanks and blessings at Theseus. Then he picked up one after another of his best figurines, offering them to his new benefactor as humbly and reverently as if he were offering them to a god.

“Give them to the lady Helen, if they please her,” Theseus said. If he was trying to impress me by playing the part of the grand, noble, open-handed king, he failed. All
I
could see was a loudmouthed show-off.

“This one is enough for me, thank you,” I said. “Now I have to bring it to the temple. Good-bye.” I started down the street, trying to melt into the crowd.

“Not so fast, little lady.” Theseus pushed and shoved his way to my side as if the other people were bales of hay. When one man protested, Theseus casually backhanded him so hard that he staggered into a wall. The great hero of Athens planted one hand on the small of my back and forced me to walk beside him. “It’s a good thing I happened to find you,” he said, leering like an ape. “If you want to go to the temple, you’re heading the wrong way.”

I gave him a haughty look. “I’m not taking this to the temple of Apollo,” I said. “I’m going to a little shrine to Gaia. You wouldn’t know where it is; only women can worship there.” I was rattling off one lie after another, hoping Theseus wouldn’t catch on, since he was also a visitor to Delphi.

“But I
do
know the place you mean,” he replied so smoothly that I was willing to bet he was lying too.

“And you’re still heading in the wrong direction. At least let me take you there safely, even if I can’t go in.”

As I walked along in his unwanted company, he tried to keep up a conversation. I let him yap away, hoping he’d give up and shut up. No such luck. He was one of those people who adored the sound of his own voice.

“Ah, Lady Helen, look at you today, dressed the way you should be. It suits you. A far cry from the rags you wore when you were that insolent boy Pirithous and I met during the hunt, eh? I knew it was you. I figured it out not long after you ran away from us, waving that silly little splinter you called a sword. Where’d you get that toy, anyway? Filched it, I’ll bet. No man in his right mind would give something that dangerous to a girl.

“You’ve got spirit, and that’s all right. I like a woman with spirit, in moderation. But what were you thinking, tagging along on a boar hunt? You could’ve been killed or, worse, the boar could’ve ruined that pretty face of yours. You’ll be a beauty someday, Lady Helen, even if you are still a wild little thing. Well, a few more years and a good husband will make you settle down.”

That did it. I didn’t know which was worse, his lies about my looks or his gall about dictating what my future
had
to be. I stopped dead, digging in my heels the same as when I’d helped Atalanta spear the boar. Theseus tried to push me forward, but I held firm, lifted my chin, and said, “I don’t know why you’re blabbering silly flattery about how
pretty
I am, but you can stop now, before you make an even bigger fool of yourself. I didn’t ask for your company and I don’t want it. Go away and leave me alone.”

He smirked and nodded at the priestess figurine cupped in my hands. “Is that any way to talk to me after I gave you such an expensive gift?”

“You bought this, not me,” I said. “Take it.” I thrust it at him, and if I just
happened
to drive my fist into his belly while I did it—

That was stupid. No matter how well I could handle a sword or a spear, I was still just a fourteen-year-old girl, and a blow from my fist against a grown man’s well-muscled gut hurt him about as much as the flick of a hound’s tail. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it until I dropped the figurine into the dirt. I cried out in pain.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have to wait a few more years for a husband,” he said. “Someone needs to teach you how a
good
woman behaves.”

I screamed and thrashed and kicked, but he wouldn’t let go of my wrist, and no one in the street made any move to help me. Who’d dare interfere with a man who was so obviously rich and strong, especially when the victim was just a girl, even if she was well dressed herself? How I wished I had my Spartan sheepdogs with me now!

“What are you doing to her? Stop at once!” The words cut through the air like the crack of a whip. Theseus’s grip went slack, though he still held me. I saw the astonishment in his eyes: The voice that had just commanded him to let me go was the voice of a young woman.

         
14
         

VISIONS FROM THE GODS

The young woman was standing in the street before us, flanked by two frail, white-haired men. One held a blue-fringed red sunshade over her head, the other waved an oxtail whisk to shoo away flies. She was half a head taller than I, with waist-length curls of hair so black it gleamed with blue highlights. She had the whitest skin I’d ever seen, as if it never saw the sun. Her almond-shaped face was as carefully painted as any of the old potter’s images, lips and cheeks reddened with dots of carmine, emerald-green eyes outlined with a heavy black border of kohl. The flounced layers of her skirt were so elaborately decorated with gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones that walking must have been like wading through muddy water. The laurel wreath on her head was made of gold.

When Theseus didn’t obey, she strode forward, eyes blazing. I know it was impossible, but I could have sworn that they grew larger, changing from green to midnight black laced with a sudden flash of crimson fire. “Son of Aegeas,” she intoned. “Your father is dead, the princess who loved you is gone. How many more will you lose? Son of Poseidon, free the daughter of Zeus or lose more! Friend, mother, son, city—”

“Hear the voice of Apollo!” one of the old men cried out in his shaky voice. “Hear the Pythia!”

But Theseus didn’t stay to hear any more. He dropped my wrist, held up his hands as he babbled an apology, then wheeled around and ran. The young priestess solemnly watched him go and stooped to pick up the clay figurine he’d forced out of my hand. “Oh, good, it’s not broken,” she said as she handed it back to me. “It’s very pretty.” Then she burst into giggles.

The priest who carried the fly whisk approached us. “You are the lady Helen of Sparta, yes?” he asked me politely while his companion hastened to shadow the Pythia with the fringed sunshade.

“Yes, I am,” I replied. “How did you know? I’m afraid I don’t remember meeting you.”

He had a kind smile. “You didn’t. I saw you and your brothers arrive at Apollo’s shrine yesterday, that’s all. I don’t pretend to have
her
blessed powers.” He nodded at the young woman who’d rescued me.

I drew the priest a little aside and murmured for his ears alone, “Is that
really
the Pythia?” He nodded, still smiling indulgently. “But why is she
here,
walking through the streets just like anyone else?”

“Because she has already spoken this morning to those who sought Apollo’s words, including your brothers, Lady Helen. After she has prophesied, she always enjoys breathing fresh air.”

I remembered what I’d heard about the Pythia’s vapor-filled lair; I couldn’t blame her for wanting to escape it. “I’m just surprised that she
walks,
” I said. “She’s the Pythia; shouldn’t she be carried wherever she wants to go?”

“You can’t see anything when you’re being carried along in a litter,” the Pythia said, coming up behind me. “I
like
walking, Lady Helen, and now I’d like to walk with
you.
”

I couldn’t have asked for a safer escort back to the temple precinct. When the Pythia went by, people drew back, raised their hands to their foreheads in prayer, fell silent, or spoke in whispers. I kept silent too.

“Lady Helen, what’s the matter? Why won’t you talk to me? Have I offended you?” The Pythia linked her arm through mine as if we were sisters.

“I—I didn’t know if I should,” I answered. “You’re the god’s voice.” I hadn’t believed it that morning, but after seeing firsthand evidence of her abilities, I was ready to change my mind.

She tossed her hair, making the gold leaves tinkle. “My
name
is Eunike.”

“You saw my brothers today,” I said.

She nodded. “They talked about lots of things while they were waiting to hear me, including you and how you were growing up to be the most stubborn woman in the world. Lord Castor told the man waiting next to him that you were lucky to be so pretty or you’d
never
find a husband.”

“
Now
Castor claims I’m pretty?” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe he’d said that. I knew it wasn’t true. I still remembered what that Calydonian noblewoman had said about my looks.
That
I believed. “Everyone else at home
used
to say I was pretty, but when I was five he’d call me Frog-face, and even Polydeuces once called me a toad.”

“What brothers say to tease their sisters has nothing to do with what they really think of them,” Eunike said.

“I don’t care about Castor’s opinion of my chances at marriage or my looks. I’m just surprised that he chose to talk about me when he was in your presence. It’s disrespectful to you and Apollo. Polydeuces must have been ready to kill him!”

“Oh, he didn’t tell me himself,” Eunike said. “First the priests bring the pilgrims into the sacred underground chamber and let them wait there, while they kindle the brazier and make sure that my tripod is properly positioned above the crack in the earth where the god’s breath rises. I wait in another room, well aboveground, until they come to fetch me.”

“Then how did you hear what Castor said about me?” I asked.

“Sound travels very well inside Apollo’s house. Even when people think no one else can hear them, my priests always do, and they always make sure to tell me what they’ve overheard.”

“Is that where your prophecies come from? From whispers and spies?” I’d really wanted to believe that there was something truly divine at the heart of Delphi, in spite of my encounters with those first two greedy priests. I narrowed my eyes at Eunike. “Why are you telling me this, about how you and the priests fool everyone?”

“I didn’t say that.” The Pythia’s lighthearted expression became more serious. “Now
you’re
interpreting my words to suit yourself, just like some of the priests do. I’m telling you about what happens in Apollo’s shrine because you’d figure it out for yourself, sooner or later. You never simply accept what you’re told, Lady Helen. You ask questions. You challenge things as they are.”

My mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “Is that something you saw in a vision or something else your priests overheard my brother Castor say?”

“I won’t lie to you: It didn’t come from any vision. The priests insist on telling me everything they hear, whether I want to know it or not,” she replied.

“Well then, I hope both of my brothers paid your priests enough to buy themselves a lucky prophe—”

The words died on my lips. Eunike was staring at me. I swear I’d never met another human being with such intense eyes. They went from emerald to onyx in an instant and held an inner glow that was unnerving to see. Their vision penetrated straight to the secret places of my heart, to the dreams where I wasn’t tied to a skirt or a loom or a throne or any future but the one I’d make for myself.

“What I learn from spies and whispers isn’t what I prophesy,” the Pythia said gravely. “The priests don’t need to translate my words for the people. Some of them do try to persuade our visitors that if I say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ it really means, ‘Your wife will give you five sons,’ but only the most foolish pay to hear such nonsense.

“It wasn’t always like this. Some of the women who served Apollo before me needed to know as much as possible about each visitor so that, when they spoke, it would seem as though the all-seeing sun shared his infinite sight with them. But some of the Pythias were like me: I
see
things, Helen. I don’t know why or how, but I do. It doesn’t only happen when I breathe the god’s breath. My visions come when and where they will.”

“What about the things you said to Theseus?” I asked, curious to learn more. “It’s no secret that his father’s dead. Everyone in Lord Oeneus’s palace knew that. But what about the rest? The lost princess…?”

“Lady Ariadne, King Minos’s daughter,” Eunike said. “Visitors from Crete said she and Theseus fell in love when he made a raid on their island. They ran off together, yet when he finally came home to Athens, there was no Cretan princess on his ship.”

“Do you think he—?” I didn’t want to finish the awful thought. Theseus had shown me that he had no qualms about hurting people, but I couldn’t imagine him as a murderer.

“His eyes fill with tears when he remembers her,” Eunike said. “Whatever became of her, he mourns her memory. His hands are clean.”

“Ah.” Much as I despised Theseus, I felt relieved to know that. “And I’ll bet Poseidon’s
his
father the same way Zeus is mine,” I said sarcastically.

“He’s not the only man to pretend he was fathered by a god. They think it adds to their reputation as heroes. But the other things I said to him…” The Pythia sighed like someone carrying a heavy burden.

“Those were what I
saw
waiting for him, whether or not he let you go. His mother, his son, his city, he’ll lose them all.” And she began to cry.

The priest with the fly whisk hurried forward to take her into his arms and murmur words of comfort in her ears. I was afraid he’d blame me for her tears, but when he looked at me it was only with kindness.

“This happens to her all the time,” he murmured. “Sometimes the god’s breath lingers on her lips after she leaves the temple. When she sees a truly dark future for anyone, it breaks her heart. Let’s walk on. She’ll be herself again soon. Won’t you, child?” He gave the all-seeing Pythia a hug. I wanted to hug him myself, for his goodness to her.

Eunike recovered her cheerful manner before we reached the temple. Just as we were entering the grounds, she clutched my arm, dragged me aside, and whispered, “Do you want to know what’s going to happen to
you
?”

I hesitated. It was tempting, in spite of all my protests that morning.
Maybe I
ought
to ask her for my fate,
I thought.

“Tell me,” I said softly.

The Pythia clasped my hands in hers. Her eyes were shining, but they stayed green. “You’re going to grow up rich and beautiful, you’re going to meet a handsome man who’ll change your life, and you’re going to go on a long voyage with him.” Then she burst out laughing. “Isn’t that what every girl wants to hear?”

“Very funny.” I gave her a hard look.

“If you can’t take a joke, say so,” she said lightly.

“But really, Lady Helen, I haven’t had any visions about you, so all I can tell you about your future is this: You’re going to have to get back to Sparta with no one’s help but your own.”

“What?” The Pythia had tossed her ominous words at me as if they were a trifle. “How can you say—?”

“Helen! Thank Apollo, there you are!” Castor came sprinting out of the temple precinct gate, lifted me off my feet, and swung me around. He was so ecstatic to see me that it was as if the Pythia and her attendant priests were invisible to him. As I whirled in Castor’s arms, I saw Eunike smile and move silently back through the gateway with her escorts, heading for Apollo’s temple. My brother was so focused on me that he was never aware of their presence.

“What kind of a trick was that to play on Hippomenes and Arctos?” Castor demanded when he set me down again. I held his arm to steady myself. My brother’s enthusiastic welcome had left me dizzy.

“They went crazy when you gave them the slip. You wouldn’t have been so quick to pull that stunt if you’d seen their faces when they came back here, dragging poor Milo between them. All three of them smelled like the bottom of a grape vat! None of them had any notion of where you were, but the men were convinced Milo did know and wasn’t telling. I had to stop them from kicking an answer out of him.”

“If they laid one finger on him—” I growled.

“Milo is fine,” Castor said. “Forget Milo. Helen, listen, I’ve got something fantastic to tell you. Today, after Polydeuces and I saw the Pythia, we met Prince Jason of Iolkos. He’s calling together a crew, even more men than Lord Oeneus summoned for the boar hunt, to make the greatest voyage anyone ever heard of, from Iolkos all the way through the Hellespont to Colchis, on the shores of the Euxine Sea, a voyage of
heroes
! Jason had gone to see the Pythia too, and she told him the names of the men he must bring if he wants his quest to succeed. Oh, Helen, you’ll never guess what she said!”