Nobody's Princess (18 page)

“She told him he should bring you and Castor,” I said dully. “I’ll have to return to Sparta with no one’s help but my own.”

I looked toward the temple, seeking Eunike, but as I suspected, she was long gone.

That evening, my brothers took me with them to the inn where most of our guards were staying, to confer with them about the arrangements that had to be made before they could depart for Iolkos. They ordered the innkeeper to provide a lavish meal, everything from freshly caught fish, to roasted lamb, to raisin cakes laced with honey. They also sent messengers to the other inns, carrying word that similar delicacies were to be served to all of our loyal men. They were in the mood to celebrate.

“I
knew
it was a good idea to come to Delphi,” Castor declared, splashing more wine into his cup. “The gods themselves wanted us to meet Jason, so they saw to it that our paths crossed. When I return from this voyage, I’ll thank them with such a splendid sacrifice that all Sparta will talk about it for years after!”

“We should make an offering before we leave Delphi as well,” Polydeuces said. “We can use the gods’ favor on the road north to Iolkos. And it’s only right that we also give something more to Apollo. The Pythia herself told us that this would happen.” He was always the prudent one.

The seniormost soldier at the table spoke up. “Lord Polydeuces, before you leave Delphi, do you want to send word to Sparta, to let your royal parents know why you won’t be coming back with the lady Helen?”

Before Polydeuces could say a word, Castor barged in. He’d been drinking two cups of wine to his twin’s one all through the meal. “No need for that. This wonderful news should reach them only from our lovely little sister’s lips. You’ll tell them, won’t you, Helen? Tell Father and Mother all about how we first earned glory on the hunt in Calydon and how now we’re off to secure our names as heroes by bringing the Golden Fleece!”

I looked up from my plate. My brothers had heaped it with all the finest pieces of meat, the whitest cheeses, the plumpest olives, and the best-baked breads. I’d taken two bites before I lost my appetite. “Bringing back the Golden Fleece,” I repeated, mocking him. “As if it exists.”

Castor frowned. “What’s biting
you
? Of course it exists! We told you what Jason said. It belonged to a marvelous ram sent by the gods to rescue two royal children, Phrixus and Helle, from their murderous stepmother. A pity it wasn’t a perfect rescue. Phrixus reached Colchis safely, but his sister, Helle, fell off in mid-flight and drowned. Jason says that’s why the place where she plunged into the sea’s called the Hellespont. If that doesn’t prove the story’s true, what
will
satisfy you?”

“Anyone can give a place a name,” I said, rolling my eyes. “When I get home, I’ll name that olive grove near our training ground Wolf Forest and see what happens. A ram with a fleece of real gold, a
flying
ram that could carry the children through the skies to Colchis, where there are dragons, oh yes,
that’s
believable!
That’s
worth risking your lives for on a voyage across the world! I’ll bet you don’t care if that story’s true or not. You just want an excuse to go off chasing fame!”

Polydeuces set a honey cake on my already brimming plate. “There must be something waiting for us in Colchis, little sister,” he said gently. “Maybe not the gold fleece of a flying ram, but
something.
Why would Jason go to the trouble and expense of outfitting a ship for such a long, dangerous voyage otherwise?” He smiled wistfully and added, “You mustn’t worry about us. We’ll come back; we’ll be fine.”

He was right: I was worried about what would become of my brothers on that great adventure. But more than that, I envied them with all my heart. So what if the goal of their expedition was the phantom fleece of a ram that never existed? The fascinating lands my brothers would see and the exploits they’d share would be real enough. And I’d be left behind.

They’ll see marvels I can’t begin to imagine,
I thought.
Maybe they’ll even see that old sailor’s five-legged monster! Meanwhile, I’m going to be trundled home in an oxcart so thickly hedged around by Spartan soldiers that all I’ll see during
my
journey will be spears. It’s not fair! I can handle a sword almost as well as either of them, and I
know
I’m better with a bow and arrow!

My brothers left Delphi early the next morning. They left their traveling chests behind, to be carted back to Sparta along with me. Each carried only his weapons, a waterskin, a cloak, and a small leather sack of personal possessions. We said farewell at the temple gateway, with just one of our soldiers there to witness it and attend me. Prince Jason and the other heroes he’d already recruited weren’t there; Castor told me that they were waiting for my brothers to join them on the road that led north out of the city.

“This trip would be a lot easier if we had weapons bearers coming with us,” he grumbled, toeing his waiting pile of belongings. He looked rumpled, red-eyed, and hurting, not much of a surprise after all he’d had to drink the previous night. “You’d think every lad in Delphi would jump at the chance to join us on a fabulous quest like this.”

“We’ll have weapons bearers when we reach our quest’s start at Iolkos,” Polydeuces told him. “Maybe before. We’ll pass through many cities before we reach Iolkos. Jason hasn’t completed his crew yet.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t find any
now,
” Castor persisted. “It’s a fine opportunity for any boy who hopes to be a warrior someday. They can’t
all
have kinsmen to teach them about the warrior’s life and how to fight. We’d see to it that they learn how to use the sword and spear and shield they carry for us.”

“You don’t have shields,” I pointed out.

“We’ll get them in Iolkos!” Castor snapped, then winced and cradled his head tenderly in one hand. “Just as well I don’t have a shield yet: If that scrawny boy’d had the sense to become my weapons bearer, the weight of it would’ve crushed him.”

“
What
scrawny boy?” I asked.

“Someone with no stomach for adventure, that’s all,” Polydeuces said, resting one hand on my shoulder. “Not like us, eh, Helen?”

I’d meant to be cool and dignified about our leave-taking, wanting my brothers to remember me as a young woman, not a silly little girl. My intentions shattered the instant Polydeuces touched me and I realized that this might be the last time I’d ever see him or Castor alive. I burst into tears and held on to him fiercely.

“Don’t go,” I whispered.

“Shhh, Helen, shhh.” He stroked my back. “We’ll be fine, you’ll see. When we come home, I’ll bring back a tuft of gold from the fleece, just for you.”

“Tell the truth, little sister,” Castor said, tugging a lock of my hair lightly. “You’re upset not because we’re going but because you’re returning home.” He laughed as he swept me away from Polydeuces into his own strong embrace.

I gave him a hug and a kiss before pushing him away and declaring, “If I
did
want to go running off after an imaginary dead sheep, do you think you could stop me? You remember how well
that
worked when you didn’t want Glaucus to teach me how to use weapons.”

“Oh, I learned my lesson there,” Castor replied, feigning humility. “I know better now. If you wanted to win the Golden Fleece, I’m sure you’d find a way to reach Colchis long before we do. No one can stand in
your
way; no one would dare. Now that
that’s
settled, how about one last hug to see us off? Come on, let’s see if you can crack a rib or two for me, Frog-face!”

I thought I’d smother when both my brothers threw their arms around me. When they let me go and started down the street, I stood stone-faced until they were out of sight. Then, without bothering to see if my guard followed, I raced back to my room on the temple grounds and crumpled to the floor at the foot of my bed, sobbing.

I was still crying when a shadow fell across my bed. I looked up to see the Pythia, her moon-white face serene and comforting. She sat down beside me on the tiles and took my hand. “They’ll be fine.”

“That’s what
they
said,” I responded, trying to smile as I wiped away tears with my free hand. “When you say it, is it a prophecy or are you just trying to make me feel better?”

Her lips curved up. “If it were a prophecy, you’d have to make an offering to Apollo first. You know the rules.” She was pleased when her joke cheered me up a little. Then she added, “When do you leave, Helen?”

“The day after tomorrow. I’m surprised you didn’t know. I’m being hauled down to the port, loaded onto a ship, carried to Corinth, then piled into an oxcart and sent home.”

“You make it sound like you’re cargo.”

“That’s what I feel like.” I clasped my arms around my updrawn knees and rested my chin there. “I wish you could stay with me until then, Eunike. I miss my brothers already, teasing and all, but it hurts less when I can talk to someone.”

The Pythia’s green eyes filled with regret. “I’d be happy to stay, Helen, but I’d be poor company. I have to be ready to answer at any time that the god calls to me. My life’s not my own.”

“I know what that feels like,” I said.

My friend stood up and stretched. “Maybe I can’t help you, but someone else can. I have to go.” And, that simply, she was gone.
Everyone leaves me behind,
I thought.

Not long after, as I sat sunk in lonely misery, I heard soft footsteps behind me and a voice I knew well. “Lady Helen?” Milo stood in the doorway of my room, looking unsure of his welcome. The old priest who’d carried the fly whisk was with him.

“Go on, boy, it’s all right,” he said, giving Milo a gentle push forward. To me he said, “Your servant will be permitted to stay within the temple grounds, to escort and attend you wherever you choose to go during your remaining time in Delphi. Your guards and my fellow priests here have been informed of this.”

“And they didn’t object?” I asked. I didn’t want to get my hopes up and then find out that Eunike’s decision could be overruled by someone else. “No one objected, not even the other priests?”

The old man shrugged. “What would be the use of their objections? The Pythia has spoken.”

I raised my hands in reverence. “Bless the Pythia,” I said solemnly, holding back my joyful smile.

         
15
         

THE PLOTTERS AND THE PLAN

The following day, my last full day in Delphi, I woke up at dawn, determined to take advantage of the precious gift that Eunike had given me. Apollo’s shrine was already busy. The sun god’s servants always rose to greet their divine master’s first appearance in the east. Milo was up with the rest of them, having been given sleeping space with the shrine’s other male servants.

“What can I do for you, Lady Helen?” he said happily. “Bring you something to eat? Clean your room? Get your things ready for tomorrow?”

“Come with me somewhere that isn’t inside city walls, Milo,” I said. “Delphi’s amazing, but I miss seeing trees.”

Milo flew to fulfill my wishes, and soon, with some helpful information from the old priest, the two of us were sitting under an oak tree not too far beyond the gates of Delphi. A pair of our Spartan soldiers loitered in the shadow of the city walls, keeping watch over me at a distance, but if I turned away I could pretend they weren’t there. For a time I just sat, feeling the warm breeze on my face and listening to the song of the leaves overhead. I’d once heard a visitor to Sparta tell about his trip to Zeus’s oracle at Dodona, where the god spoke to mortals through the rustling branches of his sacred oak trees.

If I really were Zeus’s daughter, would he speak to
me
that way?
I mused.
Would he even listen?

It was good to be there with Milo. When had I stopped thinking of him as merely the slave boy I’d freed and started thinking of him as a friend? The question was, did he think about me in the same way? I didn’t know how to tell. I’d never had many friends, not even back home in Sparta. When I wasn’t spending time with my brothers and sister, I preferred to keep to myself or to practice the lessons Glaucus gave me rather than share the company of the nobles’ daughters. Those girls and I had nothing to talk about.

It was different with Atalanta and Eunike. I could talk to them, but with Atalanta gone and Eunike so busy, I’d have to look elsewhere for friendship. That left Milo. He’d proved his devotion to me that day in the wineshop, but did he distract the soldiers just because I’d told him to or because he really wanted to help me? I glanced his way, watching the dappled shadows of the oak leaves play across his face. He saw me looking at him and smiled.

“Do you need anything, Lady Helen?” he asked. (Would he laugh if I said, “A friend”?)

“No thanks, Milo. It’s just nice to be out here, lazing in the shade. There’ll be no more time for it once we get on the road tomorrow. It’s a long, long way back to Sparta.” I sighed loudly.

Milo sat up attentively at the sound. “Why are you troubled, Lady Helen?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy to be going home?”

“I am,” I replied. “And I’m not. I’m sorry if that sounds like nonsense.”

“Not to me,” Milo said. “When Calydon was my home, I was happy to be there with my mother, but even then I wished I had the freedom to go elsewhere. The palace kept me safe, but it also kept me imprisoned.” He peeled a bit of bark from the oak’s root. “After my mother died, it became a cage.”

“Things will be different for you when we reach Sparta,” I said. “I promise.”

He looked at me closely. “Except you don’t want to go back there. You want to go to Iolkos and sail on to Colchis with your brothers.”

“Who are you, the Pythia?” I said. “How do you know where I want to go?”

“It’s where I’d go, if I could.” He twirled the strip of bark idly between his fingers. “When I used to sneak away from the palace in order to bring things to the lady Atalanta, she’d thank me with tales about her travels, her exploits, all the places she’d seen. I’d repeat those stories to myself all the way back to the citadel gates, pretending I was the one who’d done those deeds and seen those sights. She talked about you too. Whenever she finished telling one of her stories, she’d always say, ‘I wish Helen could have been there with me. She’d have enjoyed it! That girl’s as hungry for adventure as I am.’”

“She said that about me?” I leaned toward him, eager to hear more.

Milo nodded. “She said that until she met you, she thought she was the only woman alive who’d ever wanted something more than a husband, a family, and a hearth fire. Was she wrong?”

I shook my head. “I hate it that my brothers are sending me home like a bundle of old clothes. I’ve had the same training from the same weapons master they did, even if they had a few extra years of lessons. I know how to handle a sword, how to use a bow, how to hunt and ride. I never used a boar spear before we went to Calydon, but I learned how.
I
should be on the road to Iolkos with them!”

“Yes, you should,” Milo said in his sensible, soft-spoken way. “Lady Helen, I know what you did on the boar hunt. You were wonderful. But if you went to Prince Jason and told him how you were trained to fight just like your brothers, how you were taught to hunt and ride, if you found people to tell the prince about all your deeds during the boar hunt and showed him the trophy Atalanta gave you with the boar’s blood still on it”—he took a deep breath and looked at me steadily before concluding—“what do you think he’d say?”

We both knew the answer to that, but I had to say it. “That I shouldn’t bother about any fleece, golden or not, unless I was going to spin it into thread for weaving.” I hit the tree trunk with my fist. “It’s not fair, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“It’s probably better this way,” Milo said, gazing up into the tree’s leafy crown. “Maybe if you were older—”

“Most of the men are taking weapons bearers with them. You can’t expect
heroes
to fetch and carry and clean up after themselves. I saw those boys in my uncle’s palace, before the great boar hunt. Some of them were younger than me!” I slumped against the oak and sighed again. “I could have gone with my brothers and done that kind of work for them from here to Colchis! They didn’t have to leave here without even
one
weapons bearer to serve them while they chased after the fleece. Castor said that no one in Delphi wanted the opportunity that you or I would die to have.”

“Why didn’t they ask two of the guards to go with them?” Milo asked.

“A soldier’s not a servant,” I told him. “The most loyal Spartan warrior would be insulted if he was asked to be a weapons bearer, even for a prince. It looks like Castor and Polydeuces will have to take care of themselves.”

Milo looked away from me. I was puzzled by this sudden shyness and tried to catch his eye, but he deliberately avoided my gaze. He reeked of guilty secrets.

“You’re the one,” I said. “You’re the scrawn—the boy Castor asked to go with him.” His silence was the same as shouting
Yes!
I knew it. “You just told me you
wanted
to join the quest for the fleece. You could have done it: Why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t,” he mumbled.

“Why not? Because it’s safer to talk about dreams than to try making them real? What are you so afraid of?”

“Nothing!”
He yelled so fiercely that a pair of oxen grazing in a nearby field snorted and moved farther away from us. It was the first time I ever saw fire in Milo’s eyes. “I’m no coward. That’s not why I wouldn’t go with your brothers. I have to go with
you.
”

“Who said so? You’re
free
now, Milo. Don’t you know what that means? You can come and go anywhere you like. You ought to appreciate it.”

“I appreciate
you,
Lady Helen!” Once Milo raised his voice, he couldn’t stop. He shouted so loudly that the two oxen trotted to the far side of the pasture as fast as they could move their massive bodies. “You’re the one who gave me my freedom. If I live to be fifty, I’ll never be able to repay you!”

Milo’s uproar attracted the attention of the two guards, but I waved them back when I saw them coming toward us. “Do you think you could be grateful
quietly
?” I asked. “This is between us, not us and all Delphi. You owe me nothing. Listen, if you leave now, you might still be able to catch up to my brothers. I’ll ask the Pythia for help. There must be at least
one
of Apollo’s pilgrims heading north today, one who’s going on horseback. If she tells him to carry you with him, you’ll overtake Prince Jason’s party in no time! I’ll give you whatever you’ll need for the road and—”

“Then I
will
be in your debt,” Milo countered. “If you say I’m free, why aren’t I free to stay with you, if that’s what I want?”

“Because it’s
stupid
!” I forgot my own caution about keeping our voices low. I’d decided that if I couldn’t win our argument with facts, I’d do it with volume. “Don’t you see, Milo? This is a better opportunity than anything that’s waiting for you in Sparta! What could you become if you went there? A potter, a tanner, a metalsmith, maybe a farmer’s boy or a shepherd. But if you sail to Colchis with my brothers, you could be—”

“Seasick,” Milo finished for me.

I raised my eyebrows. “Is
that
why you won’t go? Not even if it means passing up a once-in-a-lifetime chance for adventure? For a
real
future? I’m disappointed.”

Milo folded his arms. “Why don’t you just
command
me not to be seasick?
Command
me to go away and leave you, while you’re at it.
Command
me to join your brothers. It’s not what I want, but I guess that doesn’t matter after all.”

I was about to launch into another list of reasons why he should rush after my brothers when his words stopped me.
Lord Oeneus was open-handed with commands,
I thought.
And it was worse for Milo when his hand closed into a fist. I shouldn’t bully Milo into joining the quest for the fleece just because I wish I could do it myself.

In that instant, a happy inspiration struck me with the force of one of Zeus’s own thunderbolts:
Why can’t I?
I found an unripe acorn lying on the ground beside me and flicked it at Milo.

“All right,” I told him. “You win. You can stay with me.” A look of utter relief spread across his face until I added, “But I win too. You’re going to go with my brothers.”

“But how can I do that if—?”

“And so am I.”

Milo and I went back to Delphi, back to Apollo’s shrine. While Milo waited in the portico outside my room, I dove into the baggage my brothers had left behind. It didn’t take me long to find enough clothing for the trip ahead. Castor and Polydeuces were traveling light and had taken their newer garments and their best sandals, but I was still able to scrounge up a couple of tunics, a spare loinwrap, and the much-used pair of sandals that Castor had abandoned. Leaving the sandals aside, I spread a spare blanket from my own chest on the floor and on top of it laid out all the things I’d taken plus the riding garment Atalanta had given me. When the clothes were in place, I fetched the spearhead from the great boar hunt from my own chest. I placed it at one edge of the blanket, then rolled the whole thing up and tied it with leather lacings.

Before I hid this package back in my chest, on top of my sword, I had to dig out the tunic I’d worn on the boar hunt. I’d kept it at the very bottom of my traveling chest, folded inside a cloak. It still stank of blood and sweat. When would I have had the chance to get it cleaned? I was lucky that the smell hadn’t gotten into the rest of my clothes. But it didn’t matter now. In fact, it was a good thing, adding to the illusion I was building. I exchanged my dress for that reeking garment, clubbed back my hair, smeared my face with a dab of olive oil from the clay lamp on my table with a little dirt from the floor mixed in, then decided to add an extra touch of soot from the lamp’s blackened wick. I had a passing worry that I might have overdone the whole business of hiding my face with a mask of grime, but I shrugged it off.
More’s better than less,
I thought.
And safer.