Black Ships (2 page)

“There,” Pythia said. “Look into the fire and tell me what you see.”

My eyes itched. It was hard to keep them open. They watered. The smoke wavered. The tiny glowing lines of coals blurred. I didn’t know what to say.

She was still talking, but I wasn’t really hearing her. I was looking at the darkness between the glowing lines. At the blackness in the heart of the fire.

“Black ships,” I said, and I hardly knew my own voice.

“Where?” Pythia said.

“Black ships,” I said. I could see them in the darkness of the coals. “Black ships and a burning city. A great city on a headland. Some of the ships are small, not much more than one sail or a few rowers. But some of them are big. Painted black. They’re coming out from land, from the burning city. But there are other ships in the way, between the black ships and the sea.”

My voice caught with the emotion of what I saw. “There are so few of them! I can see them coming, rowing hard. The one in front has seven stars on her prow,
Seven Sisters,
like the constellation. That’s her name. The soldiers on the other ships have archers. They’re shooting at them.”

One of the sailors was struck in the eye by an arrow. He screamed and plunged into the sea. One of the ships’ boys was hit in the leg and went down with a high, keening sound, his blood spurting across the deck.

One of the small boats was rammed and capsized.

“There are people in the water. They’re not sailors, not on the little boats. Children. Women.” I could see them struggling. The archers were shooting them in the water.

“One of the big ships is turning back. She’s turning around.” I could see the dolphin on her prow, white and red on black.

There was a girl in the water, her slim, naked body cutting through the waves like a dolphin herself. She was almost to the big ship. Now she was there. One of the rowers shipped his oar as she reached for it, stretching her arms up the shaft. She got one foot on the top of the paddle, pulled herself half out of the water. Hands reached down to haul her aboard.

“
Seven Sisters
has come about,” I said. “She’s bearing down on one of the ships of archers, and they’re hauling at the oars to get out of the way.”

Seven Sisters
swung past, close enough that I could see the young man at her tiller, his sandy hair pulled back from his face with a leather thong, lips set in concentration, the wind kissing him.

“They have fire arrows,” I gasped. “The blockaders. They’re lighting them.”

One fell hissing into the sea. Another dropped on the foredeck of
Dolphin
and was quickly extinguished with a bucket of water. A young man with long black hair was hauling one of the children from the fishing boat aboard.

The rest of the fishing boats were either sunk or out to sea, sails spread to catch the land breeze carrying them away.

I heard shouted words, saw the captain of
Seven Sisters
waving.

A fire arrow struck the captain of
Dolphin
full in the chest, his beard igniting. He fell away from the tiller, his face on fire and his chest exploding. The young man with black hair swung the child into the shelter of the rowers’ rail and leaped for the tiller.
Seven Sisters
swung away, her course between
Dolphin
and the nearest blockader.

Dolphin’
s sail unfurled, red dolphin painted on white. It filled with the land breeze. A moment later
Seven Sisters’
spread, black stars against white. Behind them the city burned. Ahead was only open sea.

I was aware of a new sound. It was my own sobs.

Pythia lifted me up as lightly as my mother. “Enough, little one. Enough. You have seen enough and more for the first time.”

She laid me on a pallet of soft sheepskins and covered me with her own cloak. “Rest, little one. Rest.”

And I did, and dreamed no more that night. I did not doubt that I should stay here.

THE ORACLE

W
e were not isolated at the Shrine. Someone came every few days, usually country people with offerings and questions. They brought last year’s apples, sacks of grain, fresh-baked bread, and olives packed in their own oil. I had never thought much before about where offerings go. You bring them to the gods and then what? They are subsumed into air?

The offerings were for our maintenance, and we ate what they brought with our goats’ milk and the strong cheese Dolcis made from it. There were five white goats on the slopes below. There was a boy from a farm down the mountain who came and tended them. He was twice my age, and did not talk to me, thinking it rather beneath his dignity.

Sometimes nobles would come, in procession with their chariots and fine horses, bronze lances polished to reflect the sun. They would bring salted fish in great jars, amphorae of red wine, and once that summer ten lengths of fine linen, dyed as black as night. I fingered the cloth, wondering if it was flax that I had harvested with my mother and the women of Wilusa.

“Here, let that alone,” one of the servants snapped, seeing my small fingers handling his master’s gift.

Pythia snorted, “Oh, that is just our Linnea, fascinated with the fine cloth.”

Linnea was what she called me, and it stuck, Linen-Girl, the girl from the river of flax. They did not call me Gull in my own tongue, as my mother did.

Often that first summer my mother came up the mountain, but less frequently as the rains began and her work was greater. Also, Aren was bigger, and he had to be watched constantly as he began to walk so that he would not stumble away and drown in the shallows of the river.

When the rains came so did a chariot from the king’s own house, to carry Pythia to the rites that marked the Great Lady’s return, the weeklong celebrations of the Thesmophoria, the Feast of the Return. She went alone, and did not bring me with her. She said I had not yet learned enough to serve her without shaming her. This should have stung, but it did not. I knew I was not fit to serve before people. I was still clumsy and awkward.

She took me the next year. I had just turned eight, and had grown until I needed all new robes, black, without borders, just turned under in a simple seam. Pythia fussed over it while Dolcis sewed, and I knew that I would be taken with her to the Mysteries.

The robe was long and almost hid my foot.

“Bind it up with a cord,” Pythia said, “or the child will not be able to walk.”

Dolcis took a fine black cord and bound it around my waist, pulling the fabric loose above it so that it hung in graceful pleats. “There. It must be long for her to grow yet. She’s got a lot of growing to do.”

“I think not,” Pythia said. “She will always be small. She will never have my height.”

I had not thought of Pythia as tall. But I supposed her taller than my mother, and said so.

“Ah,” said Pythia, “it’s the blood of the old shore people, those who were here before my fathers came with horses and bronze. Little and dark, like the islanders. People of the sea, not people of the chariot.” She lifted up my long hair, thick and heavy. “You will not need the wig when it is your turn. I’ve always had it. My hair was as red as Dolcis’ face when I was a girl. The wig is heavy and it itches. But you’ve fine thick hair, as black as a raven’s wing. You’ll not need it,” she said with satisfaction.

“My turn for what?” I stammered.

She turned her blue eyes on me. I don’t know why I had thought they were black at our first meeting. “When you are Pythia after I am gone.”

“Me? Pythia?”

Pythia touched the side of my face lightly, curled one strand of black hair around her finger. “Do you think we live forever, child? Since before time began there have been the Shrines, some greater, some lesser. And at each there has been Pythia, She Through Whom the Lady of the Dead Speaks. She is always Pythia, though Pythia may age and die. She is the vessel for the Lady, to speak with her mouth and use her hands. For how else may the Lady of the Dead speak clearly to the living, or act above the earth? When I am gone, you will be Pythia.”

“But Dolcis...”

She shrugged. “Dolcis does not have the sight. The Lady marked you as Her own so that you might be brought here where you belong, to serve Her rather than to be a slave all your days.”

“Am I not a slave now?” I asked.

“No more so than we are all Her slaves,” Pythia said.

“But...” I began.

“Even kings must bow to Death,” Pythia said. “Even they, in their fine chariots with their arms so bright must go down into the shadowed lands and stand before Her throne, where She sits with Her Lord, sovereign of the shades. The young warriors with their dogs and bows will go before Her, and She will show them mercy or not, depending on Her will. And Her husband will answer Her pleas for clemency, should She make them, as He did in the case of the kitharist. You remember that?”

I nodded, for I had not forgotten the story of Orpheus, who went to plead with the Lady of the Dead for his bride.

“She has chosen you,” Pythia said. “She has chosen you as Her voice and Her hands. You will be dedicated at the Feast of the Return, the Thesmophoria, as is proper. And from that time forward you cannot do as the living do. You cannot shed blood, or watch it shed. You cannot cut flesh with a knife, or wear the colors of the sun. You belong to the Lady, and to the shades beneath.”

“But Dolcis kills pigeons,” I said. “And she butchered the goat that died.”

“Dolcis is not Pythia, nor will be,” she said. “These restrictions are for you, not for Dolcis. You will follow them from your eighth year, as I have.”

I said what I wondered without thinking. “Does that mean I shall never have a husband or children?”

Pythia’s face tightened. “You belong to the Lady, and belonging to Her you cannot belong to any man. For Her vessel to be a man’s possession would be the gravest blasphemy. Kings have broken that law before, and even now we see the workings of the curse they called down upon their houses.”

Dolcis looked up, startled. I thought she was surprised that Pythia had spoken so plainly, but I did not know of what she spoke. King Nestor had committed no blasphemy that I knew of, and all was well in the palace of Pylos.

Pythia continued. “You will never be a wife, and you will never know a home besides Her Shrine. That is not to say that you cannot know a man, for the Lady is not virgin the year round, but you can never be his wife.”

“And children?” I wondered, for this was not so strange to me. Not one of the linen slaves had a husband, though there were a handful of children.

“Any daughters of yours are daughters to the Shrine, or may marry if it is clear that Her hand is not on them. Sons may not sleep beneath Her roof after the third year of their birth.”

“What then?” I asked.

“They go to their fathers,” she snapped and turned away. “Go on, Linnea. I have much to do.”

I dreamed that night that a fair-haired boy like my brother lay at Pythia’s breast, that he rode away behind a tall man with bronze-colored hair, leaning over the back of the chariot, crying and reaching for her. I did not tell her of this, though usually I told Pythia all of my dreams.

Instead it was I who stood beside her in the back of the chariot, steadying her on the curves of the road, leaning against the driver’s corded leg. I had not ridden in one before, and it was strange to see the world from so high up.

In later years I have seen many great cities, and I can say that it was not one of them, but Pylos seemed a great city to me at the time. In a chariot, it was only an hour’s ride from the Shrine, built about a natural harbor where the flax river met the sea. The buildings were of several stories, in the old style of the islands, with tapered columns painted red and black. The palace was beside the sea, and there was no wall, save a ceremonial one that kept livestock from wandering into the courtyard. There were temples and a handsome open one with a broad reflecting pool for the Lady of the Sea. It was there that we stopped.

The priestesses who served Her temple greeted us with wine and delicate honey cakes, brought a stool for my mistress, and sat with her under linen stretched against the afternoon sun. One of them was my mother’s age, but had the look of Pythia about her, blue eyes and sharp nose, red hair fading to terra-cotta. Her daughter? I wondered. I ate my honey cake and considered until she called her aunt.

They talked until the evening came, and I learned much from their words that I had not known before. Pythia was the half sister of King Nestor himself, by a younger wife. She had been dedicated with all ceremony when she was eight, in days when men were more pious and kings gave their daughters to the gods. Cythera, for that was her name, was the daughter of Pythia’s sister, who was likewise given to the Lady of the Sea.

I licked the last of the honey off my fingers and watched the mosaics on the floor seem to move, the octopus tentacles shivering like a living thing against painted waves. Like waves moving over the floor. Or shivering in a fire.

“Fire,” I whispered. “They will come.”

I heard Cythera’s startled voice, the clatter as she dropped her cup.

“Peace,” Pythia said. “Sometimes it comes on her this way, the hand of the Lady.” She knelt beside me, not disturbing my field of vision. “Linnea, what do you see?”

“Black ships,” I said. “Fire.” Her hand was on my arm, but I hardly felt it. My voice sounded older—stronger and deeper. “I have traveled before, from the islands and the lands that lie beneath the waves. I will not stay here, for darkness is upon the land and the blood of the young doe cries out against the hands of her father, slain to raise the wind!”

I fell forward off the stool, slamming against the cool mosaic.

Pythia raised me, Cythera at her side.

“I’m sorry, mistress,” I said. “I sat too long and fell asleep.”

“She’s bleeding,” Cythera said.

I looked stupidly at my hand, where blood welled from a long cut.

“She has cut her hand on a shard of your cup,” Pythia said. “Come, Linnea. I will bind that for you and you may go to your pallet in the room there. You are tired from the journey, and the young need more sleep than the old.”

I laid down in an alcove off the courtyard, watching the first stars appearing in the autumn sky. Sothis rode proudly in the heavens.

“How did she know?” Cythera asked. “There is little enough said about the sacrifice of poor Iphigenia. Or of the curse her death has called down upon her family, one slain after another. Will that wrath pursue us all?”

“Death waits for us all,” Pythia said. “Sometimes as a hunter, sometimes as a mother. We are in Her hands.”

I
HAD NO PART
in the Thesmophoria that year, except to stand and watch, and to help Pythia prepare for her part. I was tremendously proud that I wore Pythia’s black linen bag about my waist, with its brushes of fine horsehair and small silver mirror, twin alabaster pots filled with paint of black and white. Sometimes, in the space between parts of the rite, she must reapply the paint where it had smudged.

I suppose I thought less of the solemn nature of the rites than of the crowd, of being in a city with people I did not know. I shared honey cakes made with almond flour with two of the acolytes of the Lady of the Sea, watched the great procession, and even went into the palace itself when the Old King opened his doors to welcome the Lady. I followed after with the other children, singing the “Anados Kores.”

“She rises in beauty. She delights us. Golden maiden! Golden one!” We followed the procession through the wide doors and into the courtyard, where the great round hearth was surrounded by people, the bright warriors multiplied by the ones painted on the walls. Above, the oculus opened to the sky, mirroring the hearth below.

I could not see the king, as I was short and there were many taller people in front of me, but I heard his voice, and it seemed aged but firm. There was another voice after, a clear tenor, which I assumed to belong to his son, Idenes. “Now is the time of joy,” he said. “Let us all eat, and share in Panegia’s joy!”

Slaves brought forth great platters of meats, of olives and fish roasted above sweet woods, of the verdant herbs of spring, the sharp young bulbs of onions roasted with rosemary. Like the rest of the children, I stuffed myself.

Later, last year’s wine flowed freely and not so well watered as I was used to. I wandered out to find the privy.

Behind the palace were the great storehouses, with their storage bins of clay half as tall as a man, sunk into the ground to keep fresh the peas and grain. I asked a woman for the way to the privy, and she answered me in the tongue of Wilusa.

I stopped. “Mother?” I asked, but it was not her.

“No, little one,” she said. I did not know her face, but her hair was light brown and her eyes were blue. Her tunic was the rough one of a slave, and her hands were reddened from the work of the kitchen. I felt the sweetened cakes like a weight in my stomach. “It is that way,” she said, and directed me.

Afterward I did not return to the celebration, but walked the other way, the way I had not gone before.

Here the laughter was louder, but a child clad in black mingles with the shadows. The houses along the harbor were lit with lamps, and shadows moved against them, dancing and coupling in the night. It was not the beauty of the Lady they praised, but of Her daughters.