Amazon Moon (9 page)

"Celeste, the warrior who was stabbed in the side during the attack on Malgon's squad, isn't healing properly. She's burning with fever and can't rise from her bed. All the Amazons are preparing to sacrifice goats and pray for her."

Eila, the tall warrior-priestess who had played Aphrodite to my Eros, stood at her open-air shrine with its three goddess statues, welcoming women worshipers. Her tall headdress added more height to her sway over the gathering. Amazons led three white goats to three altars. The bleating animals were festooned with the brightest ribbons available in the village to make them pleasing to the goddesses. From the slave quarters, we could hear the women praying and chanting loudly, begging the goddesses to spare Celeste. I looked at craggy Octos and asked:

"Do you really think that Hera, Aphrodite and Artemis will heal Celeste because goats are stabbed on their altars by their statues?"

"Fairy tales," he replied with a sour grin. "It's all fairy tales. Every Greek prays his rump off to different gods, and covers their altars with blood, and consults the oracles, but it never produces any results. It's just mumbo-jumbo that the priests use to exalt themselves over everyone else."

I grinned with him. I admired old Octos because he saw human follies.

Two days later came news that Celeste had died. Mournful Amazons carried her to the burial knoll. I was among slaves sent to dig her grave. When I returned, I looked at Octos knowingly.

"You were right about the god magic. Didn't help a bit."

He shrugged.

But I wasn't quite as skeptical as Octos. As a young seeker of truth, I puzzled over baffling questions. The next day I voiced my perplexity:

"Octos, the ferns on the creek bank have perfect symmetry, like lace. They are pure green beauty. And acorns in the oak trees are wonderful little creations, bearing future giant oaks within them. And butterflies in the horse pasture have marvelous patterns. And the union of a man and woman produces a tiny baby of such flawless design that it may grow into Alexander the Great or Aristotle or Helen of Troy. What made all these wonders? If Zeus didn't do it, who did?"

The one-legged slave looked at me with respect, knowing that I was wrestling with a profound quandary. He spoke carefully and slowly:

"I don't know. Nobody really knows. Priests claim to know, but they don’t. An honest person can say only that nature makes many miracles, but we cannot know what created nature. We simply must accept it as a mystery beyond our grasp."

His reply didn't answer my puzzle, yet it gave me comfort.

* * *

The War Queen trained her fighters almost daily. In the morning coolness, they ran up embankments, leaped across gullies, climbed trees, bounced in calisthenics, practiced archery and javelin-throwing, and drilled in mock combat with wooden swords. Occasionally they saddled horses and practiced galloping warfare.

One morning, near their hillside training place, I gathered firewood for the bakery. As the perspiring women rested during a break, I heard the queen lecture them:

"Never forget: male warriors are selected from the biggest brutes in the land. They are twice as heavy and twice as strong as you. If you fight them directly, you will be killed. That is why we use cunning. We attack at night when they are unclothed and unarmed. In daytime fighting, always avoid one-on-one combat. Use arrows from a distance, or javelins. If you cannot stay out of a man's reach, attack in pairs from two sides. If he turns to face one of you, the other can strike him from behind."

After their drill, the women went to the pool, peeled off their damp clothing, and washed it as they frolicked in the water. From a distance I watched their shiny wet bodies.

On some evenings the Amazons gathered for communal dinner outside the Home Queen's quarters. Then the warriors entertained everyone with combat competitions. Jewelry from caravan raids was awarded as prizes to the best archer, best javelin-thrower, and the like. We slaves watched from afar. The competition with wooden swords was violent. We saw the trainee Mitha knocked unconscious by a ferocious sword whack that slipped past her shield. The War Queen poured water on her from a gourd, then the group cheered as she sat up, groggy.

* * *

One afternoon, as I sat in dirt weeding the bean patch, I was approached by both the Home Queen and War Queen.

"We are going to reprieve you from the mud for half of each day," Hella said. "We need your scribe skills. We want you to record our Amazon history, and also teach our women and girls to read and write. No Greek females are allowed such learning, but we are nobler than the Greeks. Mornings, you must continue field work; afternoons, you will be scribe and teacher."

The War Queen added:

"When you teach, remember that you are a slave. Address each student as 'my lady.' Do not show arrogance toward your pupils or you will regret it."

I replied that lengthy preparations would be needed: I must make parchment from the sheep flock grazing in hills above the village. And I must make ink and reed pens. They consulted each other and said they remembered such supplies among booty from caravan raids, including my own materials from Commander Malgon's troop. They led me to a storage shed. There was my leather bottle of ink, two pens, and sheets of papyrus. Even better, a trove of caravan loot contained a stoppered gourd of lampblack, ready to mix with gum tree sap to make ink, plus a treasure: fifty perfect sheets of the finest parchment I had seen.

They assigned me to a room near the Home Queen's bedroom.

"When your day duties end, you won't have far to travel for your night work," Hella said with a grin.

I arranged benches and set up a classroom. On twenty-four sheets of papyrus, I inked large images of letters of the alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega. With thorns from a honey locust, I pinned the sheets across the front wall. My learning room was just like the one attended by apprentices of the high scribe of Kavopolis.

Soon I began teaching clusters of pupils: girls as young as six and women beyond thirty. As the assistants in my former scribe school had done, I pointed to each letter, using my cane, and the pupils repeated the names aloud, childish chirps mingling with adult female voices. They memorized the letters and we held competitions in reciting the alphabet. Next they learned how letter sounds combine in words.

Then I taught them penmanship. I showed them how to cut reeds at the proper slant to make writing tips, how to squeeze and release them in the inkpots so they filled properly, and how to hold them with correct pressure to emit just the right amount of ink without making ugly blots. Soon my trainees could write letters, words and sentences on papyrus, then read aloud from their work. It impressed me that women and girls learned just as fast as we male apprentices had done at the scribe school. I looked at them with newfound respect.

The Slavic sisters, Litha and Mitha, came to my class intermittently. Their golden-tan hair stood out in the room of black heads. I felt drawn to Litha's lovely face. Amid the group, I could not keep my eyes off her. After a session, I waited by the door and asked her why they missed some lessons.

"I spend many days at the shepherd cottage on the hill, watching the flock," she said. "And Mitha often is assigned to sentry duty above the cliff at the entrance of the valley, when her warrior training sessions are over."

I had another question, but wasn't sure I could ask it. Finally I said:

"My lady, some women of the village order me to their beds at night. I wish that you—"

She flushed deep red.

"I am still a novice among the Amazons," she stammered. "I cannot give commands."

Then she blurted apologetically: "I am a novice in bed too."

We looked at each other, feeling a deep bond between us.

11

Eventually I was ordered to begin writing the Amazon history. I was called before the two queens and the village council. The War Queen began:

"I am the senior member of this village. I was born here forty-two years ago, daughter of the warrior Estia, who was killed in fighting along the Black Sea shore when I was ten. From her and other older women, I learned our story, which I have related many times."

I begged Saria to speak slowly as I scribbled hasty notes on papyrus. Later, alone in my teaching room, I carefully inked her account onto parchment, then read it back to the council at our next meeting. Herewith is the War Queen's tale of the origin of the Amazon village:

"Many years ago, Arab slave traders purchased thirty Greek women in Thessaloniki and marched them eastward in a caravan along the Black Sea, heading for the slave markets of Arabia. The women were tied together by leather thongs around their necks. Each night on the trek, the traders pitched tents, built fires, fed themselves and their human merchandise, and posted guards. Then they stripped a few women naked and untied them to be their bedmates.

"During the days of marching, the women conspired furtively in whispers, plotting escape. On the fateful night, shapely women enticed the guards by baring their breasts. As each guard lowered his weapons and seized the seemingly eager female, he was clubbed from behind by a lurking woman and killed with his own dagger. Thus armed, the escapers cut off their neck straps and burst into tents, dispatching other slavers who were distracted in the midst of sex. A few Arabs resisted briefly before they were subdued. At the end, two women slaves had been killed and all the traders.

"In the darkness, the surviving women took everything in the caravan—tents, wagons, food, horses, weapons—and fled up the Thermodon Valley. During daylight they hid in forest and discussed how they might survive as fugitives. They made a pact to bond together as sisters to resist recapture. Each stood and pledged aloud to fight for the group. Even death, they agreed, would be better than returning to slavery.

"In the distance they saw a small farming village. They dressed a young woman as a boy and sent her to reconnoiter. In a cottage at a fringe of the town, the spy found an old widow living alone, tending her vegetable garden, her only means of sustenance. The widow was amazed to encounter a girl traveling freely like a man. As they talked, it became clear that the woman resented the helplessness imposed on females. So the girl revealed that a band of runaway women waited in the forest. She asked for guidance.

"The widow pondered, then offered a wonderful suggestion: A half-day farther up the Thermodon, she said, in a side-valley overgrown by brush, lies a former farm village that was abandoned after plague swept its inhabitants. As families sickened and died, the village priest had offered many sacrifices to appease the gods, until the community's livestock was gone. Then he sacrificed a child in a futile attempt to end the divine wrath. Finally he proclaimed that gods had cursed the valley, and he led survivors in fleeing the blighted spot. Nobody knows where they went or whether they managed to stay alive.

"The widow's tale gave the fugitives hope. When night fell, they proceeded up the Thermodon and found the side-valley. After daybreak, with nobody in sight, they crept through the thorny foliage until they emerged at the abandoned village. Its buildings were in disrepair, but its grape arbor and olive and fig groves still thrived. They ate the awaiting fruit and began restoring the structures. Enough seeds remained in a barn to replant fallow fields and gardens. They dammed the creek, making a bathing pool. They watered the thorn thicket and planted new shoots, creating a green barrier that concealed their presence.

"Thereafter, the women occasionally sent spies at night to visit the widow who had steered them to their hideout. She kept their secret. Eventually she became the first covert station in a network of such clandestine homes that guided runaway women to the sanctuary. It was decided that volunteers in the network would hang two pots of vines together on the sides of their homes as a secret sign to fugitives.

"Also, women in the hidden community sent horseback spies dressed as men to watch from high ground along the Black Sea, to spot approaching caravans. Upon seeing one, a lookout would gallop back to inform the colony, and the strongest women would arm themselves for a raid. Caravans were struck at midnight when most men were asleep. If any slave women or concubines were in a caravan, they were allowed to choose whether to join the band of female rebels or be liberated on their own, to go wherever they wished. The freed females usually became Amazons, because they feared the prospect of being alone on foot, defenseless in a strange land.

"Slowly the culture of our community grew, with bold women warriors making raids and capturing wounded male slaves, while other women under the Home Queen tended the village."

Hella, the Home Queen, joined the record-telling: "Most of us have heard Greek tales of rebel women called Amazons, and we heard rumors that other hidden colonies of Amazons exist, but we never met any sisters-at-arms."

Saria resumed with a derisive laugh: "Once, among caravan loot, we found a wagon full of bowls painted with scenes of Greek warriors killing Amazons. We used the bowls for javelin practice until all were shattered."

This account of the origin of the Amazon hideaway was pinned outside the Home Queen's front door, where my pupils read it aloud as part of their training.

12

Next the council ordered me to record testimonies of various Amazons. I listened to the women and wrote the following personal tales:

ALETHA

"My mother was a consecrated woman among hundreds in the great Aphrodite temple at Corinth. I grew up among the sacred prostitutes who offered their bodies in service to the gods. Men came in droves, many of them sailors bringing cargoes to the Corinth port, and paid to share joy with temple women in the shrine's curtained alcoves.

"When I was thirteen, I too was pledged to serve men in behalf of the gods. I was young and comely, and was chosen many, many times, often bedding as many as ten visitors per day. I earned great sums for the temple.