Nobody's Princess (2 page)

         
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A SACRIFICE TO ARTEMIS

I grew up with the gods all around me. When the dawn came, it was because the goddess Eos brought it. The sun was Apollo’s chariot, and the crescent moon was the hunting bow of his sister, Artemis. Every river had its god, and so did each of the winds that blew from north, south, east, and west.

Ione was the first person to teach me about Zeus, king of all the gods; his queen, Hera, who blessed marriages; his brother Poseidon, who was master of the great ocean; and his other brother, Hades, who lived deep under the earth and ruled the dead. But most of her stories were about Demeter, the goddess who gave us bountiful harvests. That was understandable. Ione was a farmer’s wife.

Even though we were supposed to revere all of the gods equally, most people honored some gods more than others. Why would a fisherman bother making a sacrifice to Hephaestus the armorer, god of the forge, when he could be praying to Poseidon for smooth seas and full nets? Why would a metalworker waste time worshipping Poseidon when he could be asking for Hephaestus’s blessing?

Everyone did it, including me. Ever since the dedication of the rooftop shrine, Aphrodite was my favorite. When I was five, I made a little clay image of her and set it on a table in the room I shared with my sister. When Clytemnestra saw it, she sniffed. “What’s
that
supposed to be?”

“Aphrodite,” I told her.

“It can’t be Aphrodite. It’s
ugly.
” She sounded pleased with herself. “Throw it away.”

“It is
not
ugly!” I cried, reaching out protectively for my little goddess. Unfortunately, I moved too quickly. Instead of cupping the image safely between my palms, I knocked it off the table and sent it tumbling to the floor. The unbaked clay shattered to bits and I burst into tears.

“You’re such a baby, Helen,” Clytemnestra said. “Why are you crying over
that
ugly thing? If you want a real Aphrodite, just tell Papa. He’ll get you a
good
one.”

But I still cried, because I didn’t want an image of the goddess that someone else had made. I wanted a statue that was
my
goddess. The next day, I made another Aphrodite and hid it in the bottom of my clothes chest, safe from my sister’s sneers.

By the time I turned seven, I’d learned that Ione had been partly right about the gods. They weren’t all as kind as Aphrodite. Just as some people liked one god more than another, some of us
didn’t
like certain gods at all.

My father, Tyndareus, didn’t like Artemis, goddess of the moon in heaven, the hunt on earth, and the dark powers of magic from the underworld. I first heard him speak against her during a great banquet that took place ten days before the feast of the huntress. This was a yearly festival when my mother, Queen Leda, led a procession of maidens to the temple of Artemis and offered up the sacrifice while they danced and sang for the goddess. It was the one shrine in all Sparta where the queen worshipped alone and the king never set foot.

The banquet was being given to honor a group of very important guests, envoys from the island kingdom of Ithaka. I sat beside my mother and heard her tell one of our guests about the coming celebration.

“No men? Really?” the guest replied. “Well, if that’s what pleases Artemis, I suppose you don’t have any choice.”

Even I could tell that he was just making polite conversation. He didn’t really care about the goddess.

My father
did
care, very much, in his own way. “Oh yes, we must give Artemis exactly what she wants,” he said. He was smiling, acting as if he was joking, but there was something serious under the light words. “She’ll show us no mercy if we don’t. If you ask me, she doesn’t know the meaning of forgiveness.”

“What makes you say that, Lord Tyndareus?” one of the guests asked.

“Oh, the proof’s there, in the stories. Take the tale of the nymph Callisto, for instance. Now, if a goddess chooses to remain a virgin, like Artemis and Athena, I can’t complain about that. I have nothing against virgins.” He paused and winked at the other grown-ups at the banquet. Most of them laughed, including my mother; I had no idea why. “And if Artemis wants the nymphs who hunt with her to be virgins as well, fine. That’s her choice too. But nymphs are beautiful, and the gods love beauty. The gods are also used to taking what they want, even when what they want says
no.
What chance does a nymph have against a god? Artemis adored Callisto until Zeus forced her to be his lover and left her with child. It wasn’t Callisto’s fault, but did the goddess care? Did she accept the fact that the nymph was Zeus’s helpless victim? No, she just punished her by turning her into a bear! And
that
is why I leave other people to make sacrifices to Artemis, because I have kinder goddesses to honor.”

“Lord Tyndareus, be careful of what you say!” The icy words rang out through the great hall. The man who dared to admonish my father in his own palace was one of the Ithakan envoys, a terribly serious stick of a man, young in years but old and bitter in spirit. I’d never seen anyone with such a vinegary face. I thought that if he’d ever smile, he’d crack his jaw. I’d seen how his heavy brows drew into a scowl while my father was talking about Artemis, how his mouth became small as an olive pit until at last it burst open with angry words. “The lady Artemis will not be insulted, not even by kings! She demands payment for all offenses, and no one has the power to refuse her.”

“You mean that she’ll take revenge on me? That would only prove my point.” My father chuckled. He made it clear that he was joking, teasing that pompous creature. Everyone else laughed with him.

“Wait,” the man said ominously. “Wait and see what comes of your sacrilege. The huntress’s arrows never miss their target. Remember Niobe!”

My father stopped laughing. He stood up suddenly, his face dark as a thunderhead, and jabbed one finger at the Ithakan. “You
dare
to talk to me of sacrilege? In my own house, at my own table? You speak Niobe’s name in the presence of my
children
? The sacred bond between host and guest is all that’s keeping me from snapping your neck right now! Get out of my sight.”

The Ithakan opened his mouth, but one look at the king’s face was enough for him to seal his lips and rush out of the hall. Even though the road from Sparta to Ithaka was long and dangerous, he didn’t wait for his fellow envoys. He was gone by next morning.

The day after the rest of the Ithakan envoys left us, I asked my father why he’d been so angry. He wouldn’t tell me, but when I went to my mother’s room with the same question, she gave me my answer. “Niobe of Thebes was a great queen but a foolish woman. She mocked Leto, mother of Artemis and Apollo, because the goddess had only two children while she had seven sons and seven daughters.” My mother picked me up and held me close, as if I were still a baby. “For her offense, the divine twins slaughtered all her children in a single day. Their arrows cut them down, every one, even when the queen threw herself across the body of her youngest child and begged Artemis and Apollo to take her life instead. There was no mercy, and when Niobe’s children all lay dead, there was no end to her weeping. The gods finally took pity on her and turned her to stone, but her tears for her children still stream down the face of the rock.”

I began to shake. My mother was shaking too. “Don’t be afraid, dear one,” she said, giving me a tight squeeze. “I know it’s a terrible story, but you mustn’t worry. Artemis won’t touch you or Clytemnestra or the boys. Even though your father won’t worship her, I do. You’re safe.” With that, she gave me a kiss and told me to go back to my nurse.

I refused. I faced my mother and declared, “That’s not fair! Father’s right, Artemis
is
cruel. It’s bad enough that she and her brother punished Niobe for one mistake, but then they made it worse. They had to turn her into a
lesson.
It’s not even a
good
lesson! If they really wanted Niobe to learn from what she’d done, they could have brought her children back to life and said, ‘Now do you see what can happen if you’re too proud?’ I bet she’d never have been proud again after that, because she’d want her children to live.”

“And I don’t want to risk your life even once,” Mother said, laying her fingers to my lips to hush me. “Don’t anger the gods, Helen.”

“You want me to be afraid of them,” I said.

“I want you to
respect
them,” Mother corrected me.

“I thought I was supposed to love them.”

Mother gave me one of her gentle smiles. “Can’t you do both, my darling? You know you’re supposed to respect Papa and me, but you love us too, don’t you?”

I admitted this was true. “But not because I’m scared of what you’ll do to me if I
don’t,
” I pointed out. “And that’s why I’m never going to love Artemis,
ever.
Just like Papa!”

Mother sighed. “I respect the moon goddess, but I must admit, I don’t…feel as fond of her as I do of some of the other goddesses. Still, there are some things that we must do, whether we like them or not. That’s true for queens as well as other women; remember that, Helen. I don’t think Artemis cares if we love her, as long as we worship her in the proper way. I hope that you and Clytemnestra will be good girls when you come with me to the huntress’s shrine for the festival.”

I made a face. “I don’t like Artemis and I’m not going.”

“We’ll see,” said Mother.

I knew what
that
meant.

My mother dragged me to the festival along with Clytemnestra and the other girls. I sulked through the whole thing, unlike my twin.

Clytemnestra and I were born together, but everyone said we didn’t look alike—aside from both of us having the same thick, long black hair as our mother—and we certainly didn’t act alike. The more I turned my back on the rituals that Mother and the old temple priestess were performing for the goddess, the more Clytemnestra behaved like Artemis’s most devoted worshipper. She copied our mother’s every gesture at the altar, and when the priestess nodded approvingly and some of the women began to murmur words of praise for her piety, she began to invent worshipful gestures of her own. Pretty soon she was raising and lowering her arms to the image of Artemis so vigorously that Mother finally intervened.

“That’s enough, dear,” she said. “I know you want to honor Artemis, but you look like a goose trying to fly.”

Clytemnestra stuck out her lower lip and glared. “You wouldn’t say that to
Helen,
” she whined. “
She
does everything
right.
”

“Nonsense. She hasn’t done anything at all,” Mother replied briskly, returning her attention to the altar.

My sister gave me a nasty look and started to stick out her tongue but quickly thought better of it and clamped her mouth shut. She smirked for just an instant, then walked to the altar and tugged at Mother’s skirt.

“Mama?” she asked in her sweetest voice. “Mama, can
I
make an offering to Artemis? All by myself, to show the goddess how much I love her?
Please?
”

Once again the other women witnessing the rites began to speak softly about what a
good
girl Clytemnestra was. My sister’s gloating smile grew wider and wider with every compliment she overheard until I thought she was going to burst with glee.

But she didn’t burst. She was squashed.

“What a wonderful idea, Clytemnestra!” Mother exclaimed. “I think that you
and
Helen should do it together.” She meant well, but her words were like a dipper full of cold water flung in my sister’s face.

“
Her?
Why her? It was
my
idea!” Clytemnestra objected strenuously.

“Me?” I was just as angry as she was. “Do I
have
to?”

Mother’s suddenly stern face was all the answer either one of us received. Without speaking a word, she let us know that we would behave like Spartan princesses or we’d suffer the consequences at the hands of Sparta’s queen.

Mother could make me sacrifice a few crumbs of incense to Artemis, but she couldn’t make me do it
right.
After my sister dropped her pinch of incense onto the coals and stepped away from the altar, it was my turn. Expressionless, I held my chubby hand over the brazier, opened my clenched fingers, and then…I missed. I’d held the pinch of incense very carefully, and then at the last instant I threw it away. The old priestess gave a little gasp as the costly crumb of sweet-smelling tree gum fell to the ground and tumbled down the temple steps, but neither she nor my mother nor the dancing maidens made any move to fetch it back.