Dido (2 page)

Maron had come into the kitchen on the very first day after the Trojans arrived and spoken to Cubby just as if he were a normal person who could chat and exchange jokes and banter like anyone else. Maron, Cubby thought, always said a pleasant word whenever he happened to bump into you. And now he wouldn't do that any more. Yesterday he'd come specially to see him. They'd sat down together on the bench near the kitchen door and Cubby couldn't stop thinking about what they'd said.

‘We're friends, aren't we, Cubby?' Maron smiled at him. He had very white teeth and always seemed happy. He smiled a lot and his hair was gingery and stuck up all over his head.

Cubby nodded. Maron said: ‘I'm going to tell you a secret, Cubs, but you mustn't say a word, right?'

‘I won't,' Cubby said.

‘That's why you're such a good person to tell things to. You don't blab, do you?'

Cubby shook his head. Maron went on, ‘I've come to say goodbye. We're leaving tomorrow. And I didn't want to go without saying something. Didn't want you to find out about it later on.'

Cubby felt as though someone had come along and scooped out his insides. He'd seen the cooks pulling the innards out of lambs and chickens and wild boar but those animals were dead. He was alive so it really, really hurt, and when he'd got used to how much it hurt, he felt a hollow space where his guts used to be. He wanted to say:
Why do you have to go?
But somehow the words didn't come into his mouth in time, and Maron just carried on speaking. Cubby only half listened because it was hard to concentrate when you were feeling so bad.

‘He says he has to go because the Gods have told him he must over and over again. Hermes has come to him many times, he says. Actually, I thought I saw Hermes once, just flying along down by the ships, but maybe I was dreaming. Anyway, we're off. And I have to go too. Ascanius . . . he's got attached to Elissa while we've been here, but before that I was like a kind of brother to him – know what I mean? And Aeneas will need some help with the kid, right? He's getting bigger every day and boisterous as a young puppy. You know that, Cubs.'

Cubby nodded. He would miss little Ascanius too. The child didn't seem to care that no one thought very much of Cubby and he used to come to the kitchen quite often, sometimes with Elissa, and if there were sweet cakes in the larder or just out of the oven, he'd steal one for the boy and move the others around on the tray so Cook wouldn't notice that anything was missing.

‘So . . . I'm going to say goodbye now.' Maron stood up. ‘We're off very early in the morning. Before you're awake.' He held out his hand and Cubby took it and they stood there for a bit, and then Maron flung his arms around Cubby and hugged him, and then he left the room and Cubby hadn't seen him again. He hadn't slept well and now he felt tired and sad because he knew Maron wasn't coming back. Not ever.

But then the master of the guard came to find him in the kitchen. He'd been right in the middle of bringing in some heavy sacks of flour from the storehouse, ready for the morning's baking, and when he'd finished doing that, there were the carcasses brought down from the market to dismember and hang up in the meat pantry. This was the coolest place to be because it was underground, but it smelled of congealed blood and you started to feel sick if you stayed there too long.

‘You! The fat boy – I need you,' said the master of the guard.

‘Me, sir?'

‘You heard me. Drop what you're doing and follow me.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Best wash your hands first.'

Cubby dipped his fingers into a bowl of water that didn't look altogether clean but had to be a bit cleaner than his hands. The master of the guard said: ‘That'll do. Come along. Haven't got all day.'

Things were mad after that. Not like daily life –
more like a dream where one thing happens after another with none of them making much sense. First he was led into the palace. He was almost pushed along the dim corridors, where flaming torches still burned in holders on the walls even though the sun had risen, and into a vast chamber, which was quite empty apart from a bed, standing in the middle of the floor. This was enormous. Four or five people could sleep in it, Cubby reckoned, and not bump into one another all night long. It was made from black wood, and the high bedhead was carved with patterns of flowers and leaves and other stuff he couldn't quite make out from where he was standing. Seven soldiers stood around the bed, which was spread with a fur coverlet and heaped with cushions at the end where someone's head might rest. He'd never seen such cushions in his life before. They were plump and soft and embroidered in threads of every colour, and just looking at them made Cubby want to lay his head on one of them and sleep for hours.

‘Right. Let's move it. We're late already,' said the master of the guard. ‘Orders are: out of here and into the central courtyard. Pick it up, men. You' – he pointed at Cubby – ‘you go there, near the middle. Ready? One, two, three,
lift
!'

Cubby couldn't imagine why the queen would want a bed moved from a bedroom into a public courtyard, but he did know why he'd been picked. He was strong. They needed one more person to carry this thing. Fine, he was up for that. Made a change to be doing
this instead of some boring task he'd done a thousand times before. Also, it took his mind off thinking about Maron. And he was with the soldiers so he could pretend to be one of them. For a moment a crazy dream filled his head. Maybe he'd do so well at this bed-moving lark that the master of the guard would say:
Leave the kitchen and come and be a soldier. I'll train you myself.

So taken up was he with imagining his glorious career in the military that at first he didn't really notice where they were going. It was just one step after another, and as strong as he was, and even with seven other men bearing their part of the weight, this bed was a monster. His shoulder felt bruised already and they'd only just lifted the blasted thing off the ground and got it into the corridor.

Down one passage, then round the corner into another – it seemed to Cubby as though they were walking through a kind of maze. He'd never been any further into Queen Dido's palace than the kitchen and the corridors around it, and he'd never realized that it had so many rooms and turnings and spaces and halls. After taking what seemed like thousands of steps, they were in the courtyard. This was a giant version of what you'd have found in a normal house. It was so huge that it took quite a long time to walk across it from one side to the other. Cubby made up his mind to count his steps next time he wasn't carrying a bed. The courtyard was crowded with statues. Cypress trees and palm trees grew there in gigantic glazed earthenware pots,
and right in the middle there was a raised circle paved with flat stones. In the middle of the circle, a fountain spilled its water into a wide stone basin. Cubby and the others manoeuvred the bed into position beside the fountain. Now that they'd got rid of the weight, the soldiers started whispering to one another:

‘Seen some action, this bed, so they say . . .'

‘Surprised it's still in one piece.'

‘But what's she doing getting rid of it? She must be getting rid of it or why would she put it out here, eh? It's in good enough nick for a few more shags, I'd have thought.'

‘There won't be much of that. He's buggered off. She's in despair. That's what I heard.'

‘Yeah, but how long will that last, eh? Someone else'll come along and then what'll she do without a bed?'

‘It's not the only one in the palace, bonehead.'

‘No, but it's
the
bed. Right? It's, like, the
main
bed. The bed of beds.'

‘What'll happen to it now? That's what I want to know. Who puts a bed in the middle of a courtyard? Ridiculous, that is. She could have done anything with it. Moved it to a guest room. Made a gift of it to a poor family. It'll get wrecked out here. Criminal waste, I call it.'

Cubby sat down on one of the stone benches that were set under the trees. He rubbed at his shoulder, which was going to have a massive bruise on it, for sure. He hadn't realized till that moment how sore it
felt. Suddenly he became aware of someone standing behind him and he sprang to his feet. He knew it couldn't be one of the soldiers, for they were all down near the bed, laughing and talking, happy to have got shot of their burden. He turned and saw a woman leaning against one of the columns that rose from the marble floor to the roof of the colonnade. How could that be? Who was this? Cubby had never seen anyone half as beautiful in his life. Even the queen looked quite ordinary next to this lady. He gulped and shuffled his feet.

‘Don't bother to speak, boy,' said this princess. She had to be at least a princess, Cubby reckoned. He had no intention of speaking, but he could see that the lady was crying. She was doing it very neatly. No bawling or red eyes for her, whoever she was. She just had a line of tears, like little pearls, creeping down her cheek. She lifted a corner of the flimsy-looking scarf she wore over her head and brushed them away.

‘There! I've stopped crying now. There is no point in tears. Zeus has had his way again and that's all there is to it. Don't look so puzzled. You're too stupid to understand the ways of the Gods. I've spoken to you before – don't you remember? Never mind. You've clearly forgotten our last meeting. Dullards find it hard to keep any memory in their heads of the Gods they meet.'

‘Gods? What're you on about?'

It occurred to Cubby that the woman might be drunk. Or mad. Who else would be wandering around
the palace courtyard? But now that she mentioned it, she did look a bit familiar. He tried to think where he might have seen her before, and for a few moments something fluttered at the edge of his memory, but then it was gone and no matter how hard he racked his brains, he couldn't remember a thing. He decided not to worry about it.

‘You have no idea who I am, have you?' she said. ‘I'm Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. My sister, Hera, and I fostered this love and now Zeus has sent his messenger, Hermes, to speak to Aeneas, and that's that. He's seen to it that it's all over. He's taken him away from her.'

‘Who? Taken who away?'

‘Fool! You're nothing but a dimwit. My son, Aeneas, and his men and ships will leave Carthage very soon and it's Zeus' doing. Dido is bereft. That's why she's given orders for the bed to be brought out here.'

What did
bereft
mean? Cubby had no idea but knew it couldn't be anything good from the way she said it. Perhaps it just meant that Dido would be sad because Aeneas was leaving. Everyone knew who he was. He'd been part of life at the palace for ages. Maron had explained on the very first day that his master was a prince who came from far away, from somewhere called Troy. You couldn't live here and not know that, but how come this creature who said she was a goddess also said she was his mother? She didn't look old enough to be anybody's mother. Cubby was feeling more confused than he usually did when people told him things, and that was saying something.
He asked, ‘What's going to happen to it – to the bed?'

The lady came to sit next to him on the stone bench. He blinked. Perhaps, he thought, I'm asleep and this is my dream. There was a kind of music in the air as she moved, which came, he realized, from silver bells sewn on to the hem of her dress. He could smell her now too: a fragrance like roses and almond blossom. If I put out a hand, Cubby told himself, I could touch her scarf. He imagined how it would feel under his fingers, like mist or a stream of water, but pale green and pink and threaded with gold.

She shouted at him, right in his face: ‘You're stupid and witless and shouldn't be here at all. This is wasted on the likes of you. Nothing good will come of it, you can be sure of that.'

Cubby blinked. When he opened his eyes, she'd gone. The beautiful lady was nowhere to be seen.

‘You!' The master of the guard was shouting at him again. ‘Back inside now. Look sharp. Plenty more to bring out here. This bed's just the start of it.'

Cubby plodded along behind the other men, frowning and trying to remember what she'd said her name was. Aphra-something. What else was there to bring out? What did that mean? When would he be getting back to the kitchen? He was starting to feel a bit sleepy and stared down at his feet as they covered the ground back to the bedrooms. One foot in front of the other. Suddenly it came to him where he'd seen her before. Aphrodite – that's her name, Cubby told himself, and felt quite clever for a change, because he'd
remembered after all. It made him go red in the face just thinking about that day. He was glad the light was dim and was pretty sure the others, the real guards, hadn't noticed him blushing like a silly girl. He'd tried to put everything that had happened then out of his mind, because thinking about it made him feel confused and wobbly inside. Mostly he succeeded, but bits of what happened on the day he met Aphrodite sometimes came back to him, and then he felt a mixture of shame and a sort of longing for something he didn't quite understand. He tried to concentrate on what he was doing. He counted steps and tried to make a list in his head of all the bits and pieces he'd carried from various rooms to put on the bed, and soon the beautiful lady he'd met in the courtyard and everything she reminded him of had been pushed firmly to the back of his mind.

Early morning; a palace corridor/a small bedchamber

THE QUEEN HAD
hidden herself in a small room, right at the end of one of the longest corridors in the palace, and Elissa had been sitting just outside it on a wooden bench for what seemed like a very long time. Anna, the queen's sister, had told her to stay there just in case Dido wanted anything. Elissa was wondering if she could slip away for a while and go down to the harbour. How could she let Ascanius go without kissing him goodbye? Her eyes filled with tears as she imagined the boy being dragged on to the ship and begging his father, asking over and over,
Where's Elissa? I want Elissa
. . . She could hear his voice clear in her head, as though the child were beside her. She was so deep in thought that she didn't see Iopas till he was standing in front of her.