Alcestis (5 page)

I pushed away from the wall and shoved through the crowd, jabbing with my wrists and elbows. The girls turned their faces away, but the boys watched me. Their eyes felt like hands reaching out to stroke me.

I burst through the knot of bodies at the door and into the cooler air of the porch, my breath coming fast and shaky. The porch was empty save for the two guards standing watch at the edge of the steps, hands behind their backs, faces half lit by their torches. I looked over my shoulder toward the glow of laughter and heat within the palace, but no one had followed me. I pressed my fingers hard against the beat of blood in my temples. Sweat was drying on the back of my neck; I told myself that was why I was shivering.

I walked to the top of the stairs, between the guards, and looked out toward the grave circle where my sister’s burial mound lay hazy in the faint light of the torches. I was not allowed to visit Hippothoe at night—I wasn’t supposed to visit her during the day either, but I woke early enough to leave the palace and return without being caught. Sometimes I whispered stories over her grave, true stories and false ones, whatever words I thought would delight Hippothoe the most. I would crouch by the burial mound until my legs ached and my night shift grew damp with dew. The grave circle was always quiet and empty: just me and the stone markers and the bones. The servants whispered about dark spirits that hung in the air over grave circles, but I had seen no spirits other than the wind gods who licked up curls of the dust from the ground. No spirits and no sister.

The courtyard was empty, the stable boys probably busy drinking in an empty stall, most of the guards sent outside the gates to patrol and watch the guests’ belongings. The servants were in the house and I had not seen Pelopia or Pisidice since the wedding song had begun. No one would catch me now.

The two guards shifted, heavy belts clinking. The younger one blinked drowsily, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. I gave him a sideways look, and he turned his face away: a guard’s eyes could not linger on me for too long.

“You,” I said and waited for him to look at me again. “Walk with me to the gate.”

“The gate, lady?”

“Yes.”

“I should not leave my post, lady.”

“I know what you should and should not do.” I let one foot fall onto the step below. “Ahead of me, please.”

He lifted his torch reluctantly and stepped onto the stairs. The torch enveloped us in a small bubble of light. The ground felt unusually rough beneath my feet, as if I had drunk too much wine, and I put out a hand to steady myself and grazed the guard’s downy forearm. The shock of it jerked us apart. “Sorry,” he mumbled, his blush visible even by torchlight. “I am sorry.”

I shook my head. My fingers were tingling. “It was my clumsiness,” I said and lifted my head as we stepped beneath the arched gate. “You may stand here and light me.” I walked through the gate and into the grave circle, the low wall curving off to either side of me. Shadows lay soft under the encircling stone.

“Lady, where are you going?” the guard asked, suddenly panicked. “Lady? I don’t—I don’t think you should be in there right now.”

I said nothing. I walked among the grave markers until I came to Hippothoe’s; it was next to my mother’s, though I never visited that stone. The mound of my mother’s grave was hardly more than a gentle rise in the soil now, for the wind gods had carried most of the dirt away. Soon the ground would be smooth, and when the circle was full of graves the men would build a round tomb above it, closing my sister in forever. I knelt between the graves, my blue skirts spilling dark against the ground, and put my hands on the soil. “Hello,” I whispered. I had not seen this place in full darkness since Hippothoe had been buried. “Hello, Hippothoe.”

Only the wind and the distant sound of revels. The woman’s shriek was still loud in my head, and I would have given anything to hear my sister’s voice drowning it out, anything to have her warm beside me, her head cocked down to let me whisper in her ear. I bent closer to the grave. “Pelias is wed, and his wife cried out in his chambers, and it was terrible,” I told Hippothoe. “She’s pretty but brown all over like a goatherd’s girl. She was crying when they brought her in.”

“Lady?” the guard called again from the gate, and I heard the quick, familiar beat of sandals on dirt. I sat back on my heels and waited. The footsteps slowed behind me.

“You aren’t going to shout at me?” I asked.

“I’m too tired to shout,” Pisidice said. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, an aggressive habit so old I found it comforting. “Stand up. You’re getting your skirts filthy.”

I stood.

“You should not have come here tonight,” Pisidice began, but stopped when I waved a hand at her. “What?”

“Leave it,” I said, and felt pleased when she gaped at me like a fish. “Yes, it’s terrible luck to be in a grave circle during a wedding. The grave spirits will eat me. Not every word that comes out of the head maid’s mouth is the truth of the gods, you know.”

I had hoped to provoke her into yelling, but Pisidice just closed her mouth and smiled a bit. “I know,” she said.

“I don’t see why I can’t come visit her whenever I want.”

“On a wedding night?”

“Father’s wedding night,” I said. “Where else should I be, in the bedchamber with him?”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Pisidice said, but there was no heat in it. She scrubbed her hands over her bare arms; she was shivering a little, like me. I wondered what she’d been doing in the palace to cause the slick of sweat on her forehead. Had she been tucked into a corner with one of the cheering boys?

“I just wanted to tell her about it,” I said. “You know she loved tales.”

Pisidice came closer. I could smell the thick flower scent the women had soaked into her clothes. There were creases forming by the edges of her mouth and the firelight deepened them until she looked like an old woman. She bent down, a lock of hair tumbling from her careful braid, and drifted her fingers over the dirt of Hippothoe’s grave. Then she rose, and her face was smooth as the gravestone, the line of her mouth straight as the join of two blocks. “You’d have lost her anyway,” she said. “In a year or two she’d be married and you’d never see her again.”

I lifted my eyes from the grave, coldly angry. “That’s not the same. This way—she doesn’t miss me. It’s better. You don’t understand. I’m glad she’s dead. She’ll never have to be pawed by one of Atreus’s stupid sons just because Pelias wants a good match.”

“You’ll—you’ll never see me again.”

“You want to be married,” I said, though I knew she was right. I didn’t like to think of her actually wedded to some distant, unknown man. “Hippothoe didn’t.”

“Hippothoe was a child,” Pisidice said, and there was the bitterness I had expected, the sour grimace. “She never grew up. I want to get out of this house. I want to live somewhere where I can eat food that doesn’t crunch with sand in every bite. I want to live in a palace that isn’t ruled by a Mycenaean cow.” She spat the last word.

“She’s not a cow,” I said, startled. “She was pretty, I thought.”

“She lows like a beast, though.”

For a moment we were both silent, equally shocked by the cruelty of Pisidice’s words. Then Pisidice snickered, slapped her hand over her mouth, and began to laugh hard against her palm. I stared at her, and then the laughter caught me too, clenched my throat, and tightened my stomach until it felt like crying, like one of Hippothoe’s attacks, and I wheezed with each breath.

“Oh, by the gods,” Pisidice whimpered. “Oh. I can’t stop.” She threw out a hand and I caught it reflexively, leaned against her for balance. Then Pisidice pulled her hand away, wiping delicately at her eyes, still trembling with laughter. She looked at me and shook her head to clear it. “Stay still,” she said, and reached out to brush tears from my cheeks without ruining the lines of paint around my eyes.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I pity her,” I said. My voice was rough now, like Hippothoe’s. “Don’t you?”

“Wait three years,” Pisidice said. “See if you pity her then.” She turned to look back at the palace. Her arm pressed hot against mine through the slightly damp fabric between us, and then she shifted away just when I would have leaned into the touch. Air sneaked between our bodies again—cool, impermeable space. With Pisidice, I always had to consider what I wanted most: to accept the bits of love she gave or to push her for more, to gain another tiny crumb of affection and then be shoved away.

I remembered what it had felt like to snuggle against Hippothoe’s side, to have my sister’s skinny arm wrapped around me while I listened to the rhythm of a living heart—but I remembered it distantly, the exact sensations fading, sinking in the honey of nostalgia. Had she really smelled so, and felt so, and made such a murmur in her sleep? I remembered my dead sister’s touch as better than any touch I’d had since: better than the casual pats of the servants, the accidental slips of Pisidice’s fingers, the occasional furtive brow kiss from my brother. Pelias did not even kiss my forehead at dinner anymore. I’d hated that ritual, until it stopped.

Pisidice looked at me. “We must go in. They’ll finish soon.”

“They won’t finish till dawn.”

My sister gave me a sharp look. “And you shouldn’t have been outside the palace walls at all. We must go in.”

I gave her an ungracious nod and looked back at Hippothoe’s grave. My stomach was still shaky with the remnants of laughter, but the sight of the grave caused a heaviness in my belly, a great quiet: the absence of Hippothoe’s life. I felt that the best part of me had been cut out like a sacrifice to the gods. I said a small prayer to the gods of the underworld, asking them to care for her. I did not know how well they would listen.

When I lifted my head, Pisidice was watching me. She had her arms crossed over her chest again but her expression was not unkind. “Come on,” she said, and turned away. I followed.

The courtyard seemed huge in the darkness. The palace loomed heavy and bright before us, and within it the bedroom song was fading now, voices going ragged with overuse. A breeze stroked my hair like the touch of a ghost. I watched Pisidice’s feet on the stairs, the arch of her ankles, the sway of her skirts. I wondered if she would teach me how to walk like a woman— and I felt myself straighten a little, my shoulders going back and my eyelids lowering. We went through the entry hall and through the great hall. All around, boys and girls had paired off to kiss under the watchful eyes of the servants; I heard Pisidice mutter something rude under her breath. We passed a group of boys who stood outside the bedchamber doors, arms linked, shouting out the last boys’ verse of the song and grinning at us as we went by.

In the hall beside the kitchens, some boys slept along the walls, and I had to step over their splayed limbs. Their faces were hidden in shadow, but I could guess how old they were by looking at the size of their hands: some nearly twenty, some no more than twelve. The absence of touch was a hollow hurt, but I could not imagine wanting any of those hands on my skin.

I followed Pisidice into the women’s quarters and paused to dip my fingers into the bowl of water by the door. The room was empty of servants, the beds smooth and neat. Pisidice stood across the room, arms bent awkwardly as she reached for the ties on the back of her bodice. I wiped my hands on my dirty skirts, walked over, and pushed Pisidice’s hands away.

“I can do it.”

Pisidice let her hands drop. “Go on then.”

I tugged the lacings through each hole in the bodice and listened to the breaths Pisidice let out when the cloth loosened. My sister’s skin warmed the fabric, sent out heat to my moving hands. We stood in the women’s quarters, removed from the noise and laughter still ringing in the great hall, the fading bursts of merriment. By the time I pulled the last lacing free, we were both holding our breath, silent in the silent room, waiting. Pisidice was waiting for me to finish, waiting for her own wedding, waiting for her life to begin, and I was waiting for her to pull away from my touch.

I will miss you, I thought. But at least you’ll be alive.

3

I SAT ON the porch alone, distaff and spindle lying untouched by my feet, sandals dangling from my toes. It was late afternoon, and the low-angled sun spread out warm over my feet like a sleeping dog. Asteropia was napping upstairs next to Phylomache and the men had gone off to hunt. I put my elbows on my knees, leaned down to rest my chin on my hands, then rubbed at the warm grit of exhaustion under my eyelids. Phylomache hadn’t slept well the night before, complaining that the baby she carried was restless, stirred by some night spirit. I’d had to light lamps and place them in the corners of the room, setting up a glow like a tamed sun to chase the ghosts away.

I’d spent nearly three years alone in the big bed, stretched out like a spider in the middle of the mattress. Three months ago I had turned fifteen and Phylomache’s daughter, Asteropia, had turned two, and Pelias had sent the child away from her pregnant mother, telling her she was old enough to sleep with me. Asteropia sobbed nightly, writhing in the bed as if she’d been poisoned and smearing her wet face on my bare arms, and I began to fear that her constant crying would keep the god of sleep from both of us. Three weeks later, Pelias had ordered Phylomache out of the royal bedchamber because her constant shifting kept him awake. Asteropia was delighted; Phylomache fumed and took to bed in a sulk as if she could gain revenge through laziness. She would struggle out of bed to go downstairs for the evening meal if she felt well enough, but for the rest of the day and night she would lie on the mattress, stroke her mound of belly, and ask, in a sweet voice, if I’d mind doing just one small thing for her.

She’d give birth in a month at most, and when she performed her daily rituals to Demeter and Eileithyia for a safe and fruitful labor I prayed with her. If she delivered a boy child, even a sickly one, Pelias would take her back. Until then I slept on Pisidice’s side of the mattress, crowded to the edge of the bed.

Today the palace was empty of men. Pelias and his steward were away with the hunters again, and Pelopia was collecting tribute from the men of Iolcus. Acastus had still not returned from Mycenae, though Pelias had received word that he was wintering in Corinth to add men to his party, having heard tales of bandits north of Athens. He might be home within a year. He’d stay with every lord or king who invited him to stop and rest, for such hospitality could not be refused, and I’d almost certainly be married and gone by the time he arrived in Iolcus, just a memory to him, a little girl with a messy mop of hair and coppery eyes like our mother’s, another sister gone.

I sat up tall on the stool, lifting my arms over my head, pointing my toes toward the gates. My feet were browned from sitting in the sun, paler strips of skin running beneath the straps of my sandals. If I leaned back and twitched my skirts up just enough, the sun god stroked my ankles and calves. I eyed the road beyond the gates, knowing that Pelias would shout at me for baring myself if he saw my skirts bunched up. I was too old to think that the men of the palace did not see me as a grown woman, ready for marriage, ready for bed.

I saw the cloud of dust on the western horizon just as the sentry shouted, and I bolted up from my seat in fright, staring at the dark mass at the center of the swirling dust. My father’s men, returning from the hunt, would not stir up so much earth. Once a pack of wild boars had raced toward the palace in just this way, turning aside at the last moment before entering the gates—Artemis had been angry with Pelias over some slight I couldn’t even recall—but these were not boars. These were horses, at least thirty, led by a chariot. From this distance they looked like carven toys.

Iolcus had never been attacked while I was alive. I didn’t know what to do. Were the horses armored? Were the men? The chariot did not belong to any family I knew, but the whole party was coming down the road at an almost processional pace. It didn’t look like an attack. If they knew that Pelias was gone, however, they had no need to rush. They could seize me whenever they liked.

Artemis, I thought frantically, hearing the approaching beat of hooves. Artemis, O goddess of chaste girls, protect me from them!

In a moment they’d reach the gate. I jammed my feet into my sandals and fumbled with the straps, flicking my eyes back up to the road. Men ran from the stables to answer the sentry’s call, light glancing off the hilts of their daggers. The chariot was close now, wheels rattling on the packed dirt, the thunder of hooves resolving into the sound of individual horses—jangling tack and air forced through flared nostrils. I stumbled over the distaff and spindle and kicked them under my stool. I could imagine the weight of a dagger in my own hand, the heft of sharp-edged metal, and wondered if I should have prayed to Athena instead.

The sentry stepped into the arch of the gate and held up a hand, nodding when the chariot pulled to a halt. His other hand was curved around his dagger hilt. He said something to the men on the chariot; I couldn’t hear the words. But there was a pause, and his hand fell away from the dagger, and I watched in fearful disbelief as he stepped back to let the chariot enter the courtyard.

Two young men rode the chariot, one driving, the other gripping the rails as if he expected to be thrown off at any moment. They were not wearing armor. I had expected them to, and they looked small without it, almost girlish. The driver had golden hair, wavy and shining in the afternoon sun, but I could not see his face. The man beside him looked up as the chariot came to a perfect halt, his eyes skimming over the sentry and finding me where I stood alone on the palace steps. Even at that distance, I saw his smile, a pale flash in his dark beard.

He stepped down from the chariot. My hands ran over my skirt out of habit, smoothed out wrinkles in the fabric. Stupid, I thought, so stupid, he doesn’t care what you look like. But it was as if I had been possessed by a god—I couldn’t stop the rush of blood to my cheeks as the men approached. And then I could not stop staring, for the man who had stepped down from the chariot, the man leading the others, was beautiful.

It was the kind of beauty that seems unremarkable at a distance but gorgeous in fine detail. The man was slender, only slightly taller than Pelopia, and might have been ten years older than I, but his face was boyish beneath his beard, his straight brow uncreased. His red tunic was as fine as my clothing and just as wrinkled. He stopped a respectful distance from the steps and inclined his head. The charioteer stayed behind, but several of the mounted men came through the gates and stood in a loose phalanx behind their leader. Men now stood behind me too, stable boys and guards, thrumming with nervous energy. I heard them breathing. I heard the rasp of my own breath.

I stared at the handsome young man. He was still smiling, gracious and polite, as if we had just been introduced at the Mycenaean court. He was not a god, that much was clear— I had always thought somehow that if I were to be snatched away, it might be by a god’s hands, as my grandmother had been—and he had not come to kill me. Now there were two ways this encounter could turn: toward rape or hospitality.

“May the gods keep you so beautiful, lady,” he said. His voice was pleasant as a bard’s and he didn’t lean toward me as he spoke. His hands stayed open and relaxed at his sides, not twitching toward his dagger or clawing out to grab me. “You are, I expect, the lady Alcestis?”

He was supposed to say,
May the gods keep you well.
“I am,” I said, keeping my eyes on the ground. The young man wore well-made sandals, covered in road dust that crept up to his knees. “I regret that my father, the king, is hunting and cannot welcome you now, but if you care to come in, my servants can offer you whatever you may need.” The formal words came haltingly to my tongue, like a language I had heard before but never spoken.

“Pelias is away?” the young man asked, startled. He furtively wiped one palm on his hip. Was he nervous? I waited for him to exchange a glance with his men, to command them with his eyes, but he only looked at me, reddened above his beard, and looked away. “I should have thought he would have returned home by such a late hour.”

So it would be hospitality. I opened my lips to let out a long thread of air. My chest felt like it might cave in, but I was on surer ground now, the words coming easily, my duty clear. I twined my hands together in front of my belly and looked down as I spoke. “Often he returns past sunset. Please, I bid you come in, and your men as well.”

“I thank you.” The man knelt quickly before me, his eyes flicking up to make sure I was watching as he bent forward. His hair tumbled into his face. “I am Admetus, king of Pherae,” he said. “Your father is my uncle. I am come to earn your hand in marriage.”

I looked down at the crown of his royal head. I wanted to put my hand in his hair and curl my fingers over the round of his skull. This was my cousin Admetus, son of Tyro’s mortal son, Pheres? This was the first man to court me? The syllables of his name were familiar, but that was all. I’d never seen him. I’d never imagined that he would come to woo me—or that he would be lovely. I took a short breath and the early fall air seemed to ignite in my chest.

Admetus looked up and our eyes met again. I tore my gaze away, my cheeks gone so hot they felt chilled. I could not stare at him in the view of the men. “Welcome, my lord,” I said in a rush and retreated into the palace, the group of Iolcan guards parting to let me pass. “Make him wait just a moment,” I muttered, my fingers brushing a guard’s tunic. When they blocked the door behind me, I broke into a run, dashing among the pillars and beneath the great arch of the entry hall. The great hall was silent, the throne empty, and my voice echoed cold and high pitched off the stone walls as I called for the head maid, the kitchen slaves, Athena, any woman to serve as a chaperone. A male slave burst out from the kitchen hall, his hands pale and grimy with flour, and stopped, breathless, when he saw the shadows of men in the doorway.

“Lady, who are these men?”

“Men from Pherae, with their king. I require a chaperone— the head maid. Where is she? Tell the kitchen there are thirty men outside who’ll need food this evening. Good food, the best of what we have. Wine and meat for the sacrifice.” I looked toward the entry hall where Admetus now stood, waiting patiently behind two of my father’s men. He had a regal stance, though his smile just crested the men’s shoulders.

“Go,” I said to the slave, not looking toward Admetus, not smiling. “Now.” The air beside me moved as the slave bolted into a run.

“Come in, my lord,” I called, and, to the guards, “Let him pass. Welcome, Lord Admetus.”

Admetus walked into the hall, and as he came forward I heard the slave barking orders in the kitchens and then a shriek—the head maid hearing news of strange men in her palace. Admetus looked toward the kitchens, confused by the sound. I bit down fiercely on the inside of my cheek and stared at the floor until the urge to laugh had passed. I felt dizzy and empty-headed with relief, giddiness bubbling in my belly.

The head maid hurried over, patting at my arm as if to reassure herself that I was still alive, unharmed, unraped. She shot a suspicious look at Admetus, and her protectiveness warmed me, but distantly, like watching a bonfire from my chamber window. Already I was forgetting my own suspicions. I had imagined occasionally what it might be like to have a man court me in my father’s palace, and I’d guessed at my own feelings for a suitor, substituted Pisidice’s determination or Hippothoe’s childish distaste. In my mind the man had always been a vague shape, indistinct at the edges, built from bits of men I’d seen: a stable boy’s pretty mouth, a shepherd’s broad hands. Dark eyelashes curling against brown cheeks. But now the king of Pherae was here, small and slight, taking hesitant steps into the hall under the head maid’s glare, and he blotted out my imagined men.

I waited for him to speak. Admetus took one more step toward me, and the head maid frowned and yanked me back. There was a long, tense silence.

“Is there—is something wrong?” he asked, sounding as uncertain as a child. It was strange to hear that tone in a man’s voice; Pelias was never unsure.

I smiled and smoothed my hands over my hips, feeling the cloth move against my skin.

“We must wait for my father,” I said. The head maid huffed a breath and gave me a sharp pinch on the soft flesh above my elbow. I twitched my arm away. “He may be some time,” I added, looking at the floor.

“I thank you for your hospitality,” Admetus said. His dark eyes were soft and entreating, like a hungry calf’s. He looked away from me, then looked back, looked away again. It was a pattern; I saw that now. Our eyes could not meet for too long a time, but he could flutter his gaze over me like a bird’s wing, and I could watch blood rise above the line of his beard and spread hot down his throat, where the skin stretched silky and fine.

He was waiting for me to say something else, I knew it, but I could think of nothing to say to him, especially with the maid standing beside me. If he were my brother, I could’ve prodded him for news of Mycenae and the other kingdoms, but I did not know how to speak with a suitor. I was not supposed to know how to speak with a suitor. I did know about the workings of a household, and these days, thanks to Phylomache, I knew a fair amount about the workings of babies, but I didn’t think a king would be interested in a discussion of colic. Should we speak of the coming harvest, the god-blessed weather? Silence sprawled between us, broken only by the murmur of our breath.

“Will you not speak?” he asked. “Please?”

Too importunate—the head maid shifted uneasily beside me. I could see lighter lines around the corners of his eyes where the skin had folded when he squinted into the sun, and wondered how it would feel to smooth those creases with my fingers. “I cannot entertain you without my father’s consent,” I said. “I am sorry I cannot speak to you, but I would not incur his anger. ”

“No,” Admetus said instantly. “No, lady, I would not have you anger him. You must forgive my insistence. We shall await your father.”

We awaited my father for hours, both of us silent, listening to the sounds from the kitchens and the courtyard, the servants talking and his men laughing together outside. I stood until my back began to hurt. When I called the servants to bring in couches, Admetus sat down with an ill-disguised sigh of relief. He reclined on the couch as if he were at a party with my father, propped on one arm, one leg sprawled out along the couch and the other bent. His tunic slid above his knees. The skin there was paler, soft looking, and when he moved a hand to twitch the fabric back into place I stared at the contrast between his sun-darkened hand and his pale thigh, vulnerable as a woman’s flesh.