Black Ships (4 page)

T
HERE IS SOMETHING
dreamlike about that winter in memory, as though while the world stirred and grew, I remained in silence and quiet. I had reached for Her and She was silent. Now I waited.

I spent much time in the caves that winter, descending belowground to walk without a lamp in the deep places. I explored passages I had not learned before, counting carefully so that I would not get lost, one hand trailing along icy stones wet with the faintest slick tracks of the rain that fell above.

Only it was not this season’s rain. Perhaps last year, perhaps when I was a child, this rain had fallen on the mountains and slowly, very slowly, trickled down into the caverns. Perhaps I would be as ancient as Pythia had been before it found its way to the river and tumbled at last over rounded stones in the green light. Perhaps I would be long dead.

I felt as ancient as mountains, and as still.

Dolcis worried, I know. I hardly spoke, and when I did it was nothing of consequence. Long before the Feast of the Descent she cleared her throat one evening and suggested that we go down to Pylos, to stay at the temple of the Lady of the Sea. “They’d be happy to have us,” she said. “She Who Was Pythia used to do that sometimes, before you came to us. There’s company there, and any who want to find us will know where to go.”

I looked up at her over the fire. “Maybe,” I said. “Perhaps later.”

Should we leave the anteroom because our Mistress was long absent? I went back down into the caves. I slept on the wolf skins in the great empty chamber. Lying alone in the dark, I felt no hint of Her presence, nothing to tell me what I must do. So, like a dim-witted handmaiden who has not been directed in her work, I simply did nothing. I waited.

Spring came. Country people came seeking Pythia for omens about babies, marriages, good harvests. I told them each what I thought was best according to my wisdom, and hoped that I did not err.

The Feast of the Descent came. Dolcis and I went to Pylos, and I slept beneath the linen awnings of the temple. I had grown so pale from spending time in the caves that Cythera gasped when she saw me and urged me to eat.

“Surely you have been ill,” she said, but I shook my head.

The truth was that I could not cast off this silence, this sense of unreality, as though I walked only half on this side of the River, but could not reach the other shore. I hoped to find this missing half in the Feast of the Descent. I painted my face carefully, and Dolcis arranged my hair in the elaborate pins, the thin veil over it all. I sat with eyes downcast waiting to speak, waiting for that coldness along my spine, waiting for Her touch. But it did not come.

The time came, and I spoke my words cleanly and clearly, as She Who Was Pythia had taught me to do, but there was no sense of Her about me. I did not feel Her presence. It was only me, saying the words as I was prepared to.

Afterward, Cythera sat with me in the temple and tempted me with almond cakes. “You have been so long away from town,” she said. “Will you stay awhile?”

“No,” I said. “We will do the Farewell tomorrow, and then we will return to the Shrine.”

“You should stay longer,” she said, her keen blue eyes resting on me. “It would do you good.”

“I do not know what would do me good,” I confessed. “I am waiting, but I do not know what I am waiting for. It is as though everything is still, or that I am still while the world moves around me.”

“Are you with child?” she asked. “I felt like that with my first daughter. As though I were a drowsy cow out in a field, sleeping through the summer.”

That elicited a smile from me. “I can’t see you as a cow. But no, I’m not with child. How could I be? I’ve never known a man.”

She raised her chin. “Perhaps that’s the problem, then. You are not forbidden a lover, only a husband.”

“I belong to Death, not life,” I said.

“You are a young woman,” Cythera said. “Not a goddess. You are something more than a passive vessel for Her.”

“There is no one I desire,” I said. And it was true. I could not think of anyone I had looked upon who kindled any desire in me, except in dreams. And how should I love some Achaian farmer, full of awe for Pythia, or worse yet a man like Neoptolemos, who saw me as nothing but a prize to be taken and discarded at will?

As though she had read my thoughts, Cythera changed the subject. “Neoptolemos is back,” she said.

“I had heard,” I said wryly.

“He has come to raise an army,” she said. “Come to the feast tomorrow at the palace and you will see.” I began to demur. “You must come,” she said. “It is your Lady’s business, and you have every reason to know what passes.”

And so I went. I had no part in that feast, or indeed in the Blessing of Ships. That is Cythera’s role, and she did it well. I wore my plain black chiton with the mantle, and did not speak.

Afterward there were sweet fruits and roasted pig, the palace doors thrown open so that everyone could walk inside. Last year’s wine was opened and amphorae were tilted and the hearth was heaped higher. Musicians played in the firelight.

I stood at the back, watching the warriors.

I could hear Neoptolemos over other voices. “We will raze our old enemies’ citadel to the ground!” he said, a double-handed cup in his hand. “We will avenge our fathers, the heroes who fell before the walls of Ilios! And we will return rich in gold!” Around him, four or five young men cheered. “We will win our share of glory!” he continued.

There was a knot of people around him now, young men who had never seen battle. And the Young King, Idenes the son of Nestor, who had much to prove.

It was to him that Neoptolemos addressed himself. “Are we not of the same good bronze as our fathers? Shall we not be fit to stand in the brave company of their shades when we cross the River? Do we not want honors and women of our own? What keeps us then from venturing across the seas as they did?”

I leaned back against the wall. The colors were bright and the wine strong, but I felt nothing except a little sick. No one paid any attention to me. If any noticed me they did not recognize me without the paint. A woman of the town. Or one of the palace slaves.

I edged away, toward the passage that ran to the storerooms. Another was there before me.

Triotes’ eyes glimmered in the firelight. There was no joy in his face either. And he knew me.

I felt the faintest touch of a night breeze, Her hand on my sleeve.

“Leave Aren here,” I said. “If you take him to shed the blood of his mother’s kin the Furies will pursue him all his days. And if you go, you will not return. The fish will eat your flesh.”

He looked at me levelly. “Is that your word, Pythia, or Hers?”

“Hers,” I said. “And mine. But it is true.”

Triotes looked at me again, searching my face for something. “Aren will stay here,” he said. “I must go.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because my king will command it,” he said. With a last glance at the Young King arm in arm with Neoptolemos, he turned and went down the passage.

I went out through the main gates into the night. I walked away from the revelers, down toward the harbor. The stars were bright and clear over the sea.

The sense of presence was gone. She was gone. I stood under the starlight, watching the waves lapping against the shore, and felt nothing.

“Great Lady,” I said. “Why will You not guide me? Why are You not with me? Am I not truly Pythia yet?”

Wait,
the silence said.
You must wait.

“What am I waiting for?” I asked.

The waves beat against the shore and receded. A ship moored against the dock creaked with the rise and fall of each wave. The stars shone in the blackness. And absolutely nothing happened.

I
RETURNED
to the Shrine. The days lengthened; the harvest was all gathered in. The poppies withered and went to seed.

When the grain was all safely belowground, Idenes sailed. He took six ships and all the men of his house, all the warriors and their arms. He sailed with Neoptolemos and the other ships he had raised. They sailed for Millawanda, where they would meet the men of Tiryns that Neoptolemos had likewise recruited. And then they would sail for Ilios.

Triotes went with his king. Aren, I imagined, wept bitterly at being left behind. He was thirteen, and doubtless thought more of the adventure than the battle at the end.

All was quiet at the Shrine.

Shepherds came with ewes that were ailing—there was some disease that ran among the sheep this year. I recalled something that Pythia said once, about a similar thing in her grandmother’s day.

“Take the sheep that are ailing away from the others,” I said. “Dedicate them and sacrifice them properly. Share out the flesh among your household, even among your slaves. But do not think you can cheat the gods by keeping them among the others, for if you do this surely all your sheep will be stricken.”

And it was so. Those farmers who obeyed lost some valuable animals. Those who tried to cheat the gods lost almost all.

When it was done, and half the land feasted on mutton, I went into the deep caves. I had no part of the slaughter or preparation— I could not shed blood nor see it shed. So I went into the darkness.

The chamber with the wolf skins was silent. The air did not move except at my passing. “Lady,” I said, “will You not speak to Your servant? What am I waiting for?”

The caves were silent and gave me no answer.

Wait.

A
T THE HEIGHT
of summer Idenes returned with five ships laden with loot and slaves. One ship was lost on the return, the one that Triotes captained. He was lost at sea with all his men.

Dolcis told me this. I had no desire to go to Pylos and see the captives, to see the men of Pylos celebrating with the wealth of Wilusa.

“Forty slaves,” Dolcis said, wiping the sweat from her brow from the long trek up the mountain. “And more that they sold on the way home at Millawanda for gold and silver from Egypt. Idenes is a wealthy man now, a king of some consequence.”

She remembered who I was only when I got up without a sound and left the room. I went into the caves where she didn’t dare follow me.

I sat on the wolf skins in the dark.

“Lady,” I said. “I am Pythia, Your servant. But I was once a girl named Gull.”

And I cried there in the dark as I had not since Pythia died. For the captives, perhaps. For my kinswomen I had never known who toiled by the river or in the kitchens of the palace. For my mother. For Aren, now twice orphaned. For myself. I do not know. But I cried until I slept.

T
HE HEAT SHIMMERED
on the land, the air thick and heavy. It was hot, more so than summer expected. Usually there were breaks in the heat, but this lay oppressive on the land day after day.

Even the honeybees were still and the afternoons free of their buzzing.

Three weeks after Idenes came home he sailed again. Neoptolemos had the idea to raid up the Illyrian coast north of Ithaca before the sailing season ended. Pylos had no quarrel with those people, but drunk on victory nobody cared.

I remembered what Cythera said about being like a cow in a field. I felt gravid, sleepy. The heat lay unrelenting. At night, lightning played in the north, but the storms never came here. The heat never broke; the rain never fell.

Four nights later I lay on my pallet beside the hearth. The coals were raked so that there would be little heat. I dreamed.

In my dream I slept beside the river, in the hut I had shared with my mother and Aren when he was a baby. Everything was cool and quiet. I could hear the sound of the river flowing over stones.

My mother came to me and she was lovely, her black hair combed on her shoulders. “Wake up, Gull,” she said gently. “It’s time for you to get up.”

“But why?” my child self asked.

“I have work for you to do,” she said. “Come, little one.”

“It’s not morning,” I said.

“I know,” my mother said. “But you must be at the bend of the road when morning comes. Get up, Gull. Come with me.” She smiled, and I reached out my hand to her. When she took it I awoke.

I was lying on my pallet in the cave. It was hours yet until dawn. The sky had just begun to lighten. Sothis was riding high in the blackness, as sharp and as bright as a blade, the star that had shone on my birth.

The air was cool.

I stood up.

Dolcis was snoring softly.

Suddenly I was seized with energy. I must be at the bend in the road when the sun rose.

I put on my black chiton and pinned up my hair. I had intended to just tie it at the back of my neck, but the copper pins were in my hand. So I put it up, the high knots and pins intended for feast days. I reached for the alabaster pots. It was dark in the cave, but I knew which was which by scent, and I had no difficulty moving in the dark. I had moved in darkness for years. I painted my face to the whiteness of bone, outlining eyes and lips with kohl. And all the while I felt the urgency pulling at me.
Hurry. Hurry. I must be at the turn of the road when the sun rises.

I took the black bag and wound it around my waist, as I had no handmaiden. I put in the alabaster pots, the brushes, the little silver mirror. The clay jars that held the herbs for the brazier. As though I were going to Pylos. As though I were going on a journey with Pythia and must carry her things.