Dido (10 page)

‘Of course I will. I'm very grateful for your help with Ascanius.'

‘It's about Tanith . . . is that her name? The curly-haired dark girl?'

‘Yes, Tanith . . . What about her?' Elissa smiled and
added: ‘As though I can't guess. You want me to put in a good word for you, is that it?'

Maron ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. He said, ‘Yes, that'd be great. If you don't mind.'

‘Of course not. And now you're the one who's blushing.'

‘Naah . . .' said Maron. ‘Not really. It's a hot day. I've been in the sun too long. I burn very easily. It's having red hair, you know. But thanks. For your help, I mean. Have fun with Ascanius.'

He ran ahead of her and winked as he disappeared into the shade of the colonnades.

Elissa smiled.
Have fun
. Maron was good at fun. He went through life enjoying everything. Some God must have smiled on him when he was born.

The early part of the night; the maidservants' bedchamber

That was the first day, she reflected, lying on her back on the bed. Tanith and Nezral were breathing deeply but Elissa gazed into the darkness, still unable to fall asleep. I did a good thing for Tanith. I told her what Maron said and she was so happy about it. Or maybe it wasn't a good thing at all, because now he's gone and she's sad. But she wouldn't have wanted
not
to love Maron. I'm sure of that. And I was right about Aeneas too, she thought. He
had
been smiling at me, and what I understood in that look was there. It was. It truly was.

Later in the night; Iopas' bedchamber/the courtyard

IOPAS STOOD AT
the window of his bedchamber, looking down at the city and, beyond that, the harbour. The moonlight fell on a landscape of roofs, which during the day made a complicated pattern of russet brown and gold and white and black, with the gardens of the larger houses showing like splashes of green. Now, clouds lay in wispy strands along the horizon and he could see the whole of Carthage, with its fine houses and temples and shops and workshops and markets spread out around the bay, leeched of their colour and seeming to be a uniform silvery grey. Points of light, like tiny yellow flowers, shone from the windows. Down on the sea, Aeneas' ships waited for the dawn tide. Small figures, probably guards, stood at the entrance to the harbour. The Trojan was leaving. Well, Iopas thought, I for one was expecting it. There isn't much I don't know of what goes on in this place.

Because of his quietness, the natural shyness that
made it difficult for him to speak much in public unless he was performing, he had managed to learn a great deal. If he came into a room, for the most part the people in it didn't stop talking on his account. You could discover a great many secrets like that, and you could also contrive to spend time in places which you'd normally steer clear of. He didn't mind being the way he was except when it came to Elissa. Iopas knew that he'd missed an opportunity earlier, when they'd been sitting together on the bench in the corridor. Perhaps he should have been braver and said something about his feelings. For a long time he'd been able to see that she was besotted with Aeneas, but no one else seemed to realize so he said nothing. Even now that he was gone, she wasn't ready to speak about it. He sighed.

When Elissa first came to the palace, he'd been struck by her beauty, and the fact that she'd run away from home made him feel protective. She was no more than a pretty child then, but over the years she'd spent as a servant in the palace, she'd become a young woman and Iopas had noted the changes carefully. As she grew, so did his affection for her. Now, he told himself, it would be true to say I love her. He never spoke either to Elissa or to anyone else about his feelings but she was always quite friendly. I
was
jealous of her crush on the Trojan, he thought, but no one would have known just by looking at me. He sighed. For a long time, whenever he found himself dwelling on Elissa's admiration for Aeneas, he'd had to keep himself
carefully under control. The last thing he wanted was anyone feeling sorry for him, or thinking that Elissa actually preferred someone else. Anyway it was completely ridiculous for a mere servant to nurse a passion for someone so far above her in status. Madness. Aeneas was not only a prince, but the man who shared the queen's bed, although it was true that lately the two of them had been more distant and were even heard to quarrel on occasion. Elissa hadn't seemed to mind talking to him today, even though she was obviously feeling bad. It could be, he told himself, that with Aeneas gone, I might be in with a chance.

Burying himself in his work had helped with his frustration. When he was performing at a feast, or at a smaller gathering, he knew he pleased those who heard him; they would never have guessed at the feelings he was suppressing. His official duties as court poet and singer meant that he had to be on the alert for everything. There were old men in the palace who'd tut-tutted when he was first appointed, but Anna had said:
Who better than a boy of eighteen to write of battles and love and glory?
And the queen had agreed with her in the end. He'd done his best for Dido, honoured and pleased to have been chosen from among those who came to the palace to be examined and looked at and tested. In order to write the songs, Iopas had to know the truth about a great many things, including the feelings of the queen. He felt privileged, almost like a son to her, and enjoyed expressing some of her emotions in his poems. Here was one (he
picked the parchment up from his table) which he'd written in honour of the queen and her sister, Anna.

The queen often took him into her confidence. But Anna (he smiled at the thought and congratulated himself on putting it so wittily, even if he didn't have an audience to appreciate the wordplay) would far rather have taken him into her bed than her confidence, and did not think of him as a nephew. He'd had to be very diplomatic keeping out of her clutches. She was pleasant enough, and her favour meant that all sorts of perks came to him, one way and another, but he'd resisted her attempts to woo him. He'd invented a girlfriend in the city to whom he'd promised his love and devotion, because you couldn't just come out with it:
I'm sorry, madam, I don't fancy you
. No, the treats and privileges would have dried up for sure if he'd confessed to that, so he kept up the appearance – reasonably successfully, he thought – of someone who would, but for his feelings towards another, have liked nothing better than to make love to the queen's sister.

This lie, which had sprung up all at once when he was defending himself from Anna, had now caught him in a kind of trap. That would be another reason
for keeping his feelings for Elissa quiet, he realized. Because of the rapid circulation of gossip in the palace, Anna would soon find out and wonder what had happened to his previous lover and so it would go. For all I know, he thought, Elissa already knows about my ‘fiancée' down in the town. Maybe that's one reason why she's a little distant. He sighed. Telling lies led to so many complications. Perhaps now that Aeneas was leaving them, things could be different.

Before finding Elissa on the bench, Iopas had walked around the palace, wondering at the movement and disruption. Anna had closeted herself with Dido for a long time, but Iopas had seen her leaving and hurrying through the palace towards the sewing room. Soldiers had stomped through the corridors moving things and there was now a gigantic bed in the middle of the courtyard, flanked by flowerpots and shaded by tall palm trees. Maids and menservants had spent almost the entire day bringing clothes and weapons and bed linen and coverlets and cushions and piling them on to the bed. A boy whom Iopas recognized as one of the kitchen lads who turned the spits and carried the heavy bags of vegetables from the market – they called him Cubby, and with good reason – sat on the bench beside the bed, not doing much of anything as far as Iopas could see. He wasn't really capable of challenging anyone who had theft in mind, and was in any case unarmed. As soon as he saw him sitting there staring into space, like a pudding on a dish, Iopas decided he no longer felt like exploring
the piles of belongings heaped on the bed. He would have had to speak to the boy and didn't fancy that. Perhaps Cubby had that effect on everyone, and that was why he'd been left there. Not a bad plan when you looked at it that way.

Now there was silence everywhere. Iopas felt it was safe to leave his room and walk about a little. He wasn't sure whether there was anything of interest going on, but if there was, he wanted to be around to see it. Some lines came into his mind and he spoke them to himself as he crept through the darkened corridors:

He'd written them a long time ago, but they seemed particularly apt in the present circumstances. Dido must be thinking just such thoughts.

Iopas tiptoed past the courtyard and glanced at the bed: Cubby was nowhere to be seen. That surely wasn't right. Someone was sitting on the bench nearest the bed and it wasn't him. Who could it be? What had they done with Cubby? He approached the figure without fear because he could tell that it was a woman. She'd covered her head with some kind of scarf, but how had she persuaded the fat boy to disappear? A movement over by the colonnade made Iopas turn and he caught sight of the kitchen lad, peering round one of
the columns. There wasn't much light in the courtyard, but even at this distance you could see the kid looked a bit uncomfortable. He decided to go over and find out what was going on. If it involved conversation with Cubby, that was too bad. He found himself whispering as he spoke.

‘What are you doing here? Aren't you meant to be guarding the bed?'

‘Yes, but the queen told me—'

‘The queen? The queen is fast asleep by now, I'd have thought. What're you talking about?'

Cubby nodded his head towards the figure of the woman in the courtyard. ‘No, she's not asleep. That's her on my bench. She told me to go away. I came over here. I didn't want to go away because the master of the guard put me in charge.'

Iopas heard the pride in the boy's voice. ‘Quite right. You stay where you are. That seems best. Till she goes to bed. Are you quite sure it's the queen?'

Cubby nodded. ‘Yes. It is. But she didn't look like she normally looks. She looked sad. And her hair was a real mess.'

‘I'll go and speak with her.'

‘She said she wanted to be alone.'

‘The queen and I,' Iopas said, unable to resist boasting, ‘have a very special relationship.'

Cubby nodded. Iopas wondered if he knew the word
relationship
and concluded that he probably didn't. He stepped out into the courtyard. In the dark, the palm trees, planted especially to create shade when the sun
was at its highest, were like a forest composed of shadows and the shadows of shadows. I must remember that, he told himself.
Shadows and the shadows of shadows
– it would do for a poem.

‘Madam,' he said quietly as he came up behind the queen, ‘is it you? Can I do something for you? Help you?'

‘Iopas!' Dido turned round, and in the dim light of the stars and a quarter moon he could see that she was smiling at him. ‘Am I in need of help? Oh, you cannot imagine how much help I need! All the help in the world.'

‘Can I fetch you some wine or food? Call your sister? Your attendants?'

‘No, Iopas, I thank you. But sit here for a while and talk to me. There are some things I want to discuss with you. I meant to send for you, but I've been . . . indisposed. Sit there, on that bench, so that I can see you.'

‘Madam,' Iopas said, ‘you sound distracted. Not yourself. Are you certain you don't want me to call someone?'

‘Stop it!' Dido raised her voice. ‘Since this morning I've had nothing but people creeping and crawling about and wanting to do something for me and thinking they're helping me when everything they do irritates me beyond all reason. Just sit there and listen. It's true I'm not myself. I was someone till today and now I have to turn myself into . . . I don't know what I have to become. It's painful. I don't know if I can live
like this. In this pain. I looked down at my city earlier this afternoon. At the buildings and the houses and the temples and gardens, and I cared as little about it as if it were a collection of coloured bricks put together by an infant, which I could kick over with my foot. That's how important Carthage is to me now. Meaningless. Nothing means anything now. Not food, nor air, nor water, nor power, nor riches, nor the future. The only thing I want is my memories of him. I want him and he's gone, and there's nothing under the blue dome of the sky that's worth a dried fig. I came here thinking: If I sit by the bed, I'll be calmer. It will remind me of better days. But everything I look at is like a knife entering my heart. Everything you see on the bed is something that belonged to Aeneas and I can't bear to look at what's there.'

Iopas was on the point of saying:
Then why come here and torture yourself? Why not keep away?
But he understood that that would infuriate Dido.

‘
Love
,' he ventured (quoting one of his own lines of poetry and hoping that the queen wouldn't recognize it – he'd sung the song at a feast a few moons ago), ‘
fills us with madness, fills us with
—' He stopped, realizing that the next word was
joy
. The queen was the very opposite of joyful and it would be tactless to remind her of happier times when she was in this state. He altered it just in time and said instead: ‘
grief.
'