Dido (21 page)

From that time onwards, he'd started to notice that Aeneas was paying less and less attention to Dido and spending more and more time with Elissa.

Before dawn; the palace kitchen

Iopas looked at Elissa. She had finished eating the bread and was now resting her head on her folded arms. She sat up quickly – she must have felt his gaze on her – and turned to face him.

‘Don't stop sleeping, Elissa,' Iopas said. ‘You must be as tired as everyone else. I don't think anyone's resting quietly in their beds tonight, are they?'

To his astonishment, Elissa's reaction to this was to burst into tears. Iopas was used to crying women. Anna often wept, for no good reason that Iopas could make out, and he always knew the soothing words to say. The great secret was not to ask questions, just to murmur and reassure. He wondered whether he dared, and then decided that there was nothing to be lost. He placed one arm around her trembling shoulders. He said, ‘There now, Elissa, please don't cry. It's a sad night, to be sure, but crying won't help Dido. She needs those of us who love her to be strong.'

‘I know,' Elissa wailed. ‘I know, and that makes it harder for me. Oh, Iopas, I'm so miserable.'

Iopas had to stop himself saying something along
the lines of:
Tell me something I don't know
, and said instead: ‘Tell me what's worrying you. It may help you to talk about what's making you unhappy.'

He wasn't convinced of the truth of this last remark, but people said it constantly and perhaps it was true. Elissa sniffed and sat up and wiped some tears off her cheeks.

‘He's gone, Iopas. Aeneas has gone and I can't tell anyone how I feel about that, because we're supposed to be feeling for Dido and she was his wife and I am . . . I'm nothing. Nothing but his son's nursemaid.'

‘Well . . .' Iopas wanted above all for Elissa not to stop speaking. He knew that once you got them started, young girls were apt to tell you all sorts of stuff they didn't mean to let out in the first place. They got carried away with the sound of their own words and secrets poured out of them. He said now: ‘Some people think that our queen wasn't truly married to Aeneas. Not in the way most people get married.'

‘But the cave . . .'

‘That's the story Dido told us on the hunt. You weren't there, Elissa. You were in the palace with Ascanius, but this is what happened. A storm blew up and Dido and Aeneas disappeared into a cave. None of us noticed it, but they must have done. Dido came out a few hours later, by which time we were pretty fed up, and announced that they were married. That Aphrodite herself had married them. Well, you know what that means, don't you?'

Elissa's eyes were wide, so Iopas continued. ‘It means
that the cave . . . That was where they first . . . Where they . . . You can guess what they did in there, can't you?'

Elissa burst into a new storm of tears. ‘I can't bear it. I don't even like to think about the two of them together. It's – it's like a torture to me!'

‘But why, Elissa? Married or not, they've been sharing a bed for more than a year.'

‘But he didn't really want to,' Elissa whispered. ‘That's what he told me. She put a spell on him. He told me that as well.'

Iopas felt as though the breath had been knocked out of his body. Aeneas under Dido's spell? Reluctant to share her bed? What nonsense was this? The girl had clearly taken leave of her senses. He searched around for words that would encourage rather than stem the flow of Elissa's confessions.

‘When did he say such things, Elissa?'

‘Do you promise to tell no one, Iopas? I can't say anything unless you swear.'

He nodded, and that seemed to be enough for Elissa. I haven't sworn, Iopas told himself, I haven't said a word and she hasn't even noticed. She
wants
to speak. He put out a hand and touched her gently on the arm. He took a piece of bread she hadn't eaten and began to nibble at it. It occurred to him that he was more likely to find things out if some of his attention was not on Elissa.

She continued: ‘He told me when we were together, alone. It's been happening more and more lately.
Since the winter he's been coming to see Ascanius. He used to come and kiss him goodnight, but in the last few moons he started spending some of the afternoons with his son. And talking to me. That was when he told me that he was going to have to leave Carthage. I asked him how he'd feel about saying goodbye to the queen and he
did
say it would make him sad, but then he said' – Elissa looked down at her fingers intertwined on the table in front of her – ‘he said he'd miss me too. He told me I was beautiful and that it was a pleasure to be with me and not have to listen to constant complaints and demands and the queen begging him to stay. He said . . . he said I was restful. And then one night he stayed with me till morning.'

‘Did he . . .' How am I going to say this? Iopas wondered. He swallowed the bread and continued, ‘Did he force you to do anything . . . ?'

‘Oh, no! I'm not sorry for what I did. I don't regret anything. I wish that night could have gone on for ever. You can't imagine what he said to me, Iopas – such things . . .'

Iopas was suddenly cold in spite of the heat of the night. He'd asked and now he was getting an answer, and listening to Elissa's outpourings was hurting him. There was a pain deep under his ribs, as though someone had come at him with a knife. He could scarcely breathe. He wasn't used to such feelings, which were there because he
could
imagine, better than Elissa knew, exactly the words, and worse than that, exactly the sounds and the movements and then the
unguarded noises and the way limbs entwined and twisted and writhed. He could see the two of them – Aeneas and this young girl – and he noticed that his hands had clenched themselves into fists without him being aware of it. He closed his eyes. Should he stop her speaking? Could he bear to hear more? Wasn't this enough? It was – but he had to know if what he had begun to suspect was true.

‘Elissa, may I ask you something?'

‘Yes, I'll tell you everything. There's no point in hiding anything now.'

Iopas went on, ‘Are you carrying Aeneas' child? Are you pregnant?'

She didn't answer, but nodded and then covered her face with her hands. He could hear from the way she was breathing that the tears were coming again. Iopas was filled with unaccustomed emotions. He was used to dealing with desire and with his growing love for Elissa, but these feelings were mingled with anger at Aeneas, disgust when he imagined – and how could he not? – the two of them together, and an unworthy voice in his ear saying:
She'll have less excuse to refuse me now. She's no longer a maiden. She lay with Aeneas. Why shouldn't she also lie with me? I'm her friend. I could look after her. I must try . . .

He said nothing, but put his arm around Elissa's shoulders and hugged her to him. At first she didn't resist and seemed pleased to be comforted. But then he turned her face to his and started to kiss her and touch her breasts, and her reaction took him so much
by surprise that he nearly fell off the bench they were sitting on.

‘
No!
' she screamed, standing up. ‘How could you, Iopas? I thought you were my friend and I've told you my deepest secret, and now here you are, trying to kiss me and . . . I don't know what made you think you could do that. Have I ever shown you that I'm interested in you in that way? Ever? By so much as a glance? You're taking advantage of my position. You know I'm sad. You know I'm pregnant, so of course it follows that I'll just go with anyone who happens to want me. Well, I'm sorry, Iopas, but I'm not interested. I won't ever be, so don't think I will. I'm going to bed now.'

She ran out of the room without looking back and Iopas was left staring at the plate in front of him. At first he was simply offended. What right did she have to refuse him? He wasn't as big and strong and handsome as Aeneas, that was true, but there was nothing wrong with him. Didn't Anna, who was the queen's sister after all, almost throw herself at him whenever she got the chance? If he was good enough for the queen's sister to love, then surely Elissa . . . She'd insulted him. His manhood. His looks. Everything about him. She'd practically said he wasn't good enough for her.

He tore off a piece of bread and stuffed it into his mouth. He was, he acknowledged, hurt by her refusal, but as well as that he found himself almost trembling with rage. Fury. He couldn't remember feeling as
angry as this ever in his life. He began to see what he was going to do. If Elissa thought she could get away with treating him like dirt – Gods, the ingratitude of the girl! He'd befriended her; he'd offered to help her. What was the matter with her? – she was very much mistaken. He knew how to punish her. A plan was blossoming in him in exactly the same way as a poem did: starting out from a tiny seed of an idea and putting out branches and leaves and acquiring weight and substance and a shape. Yes,
that
was what he had to do next. He left the kitchen and made his way to Dido's small chamber. The door was standing open and he looked in.

‘Is that you, Iopas?' Dido sounded as though she had just woken from a sleep. ‘You can come in. I sent Anna away. She insists on trying to console me. I can't bear it. What have you got to tell me? I can see that it's something. Speak to me.'

Iopas sat on the floor next to Dido's bed and began to speak. Softly, word after word came from his mouth and wound itself into a story. Dido listened. She might be marble, Iopas thought, looking at her as she lay completely still on the narrow bed. When he finished speaking, silence hummed and swelled in the room, and Dido lay there, saying nothing for a long time.

When she spoke at last, she said: ‘You may go, Iopas. I don't want to see or speak to anyone.'

More people, Iopas thought, ought to wake up before it was properly light and enjoy the beauty of the violet
shadows and the dove-grey glow that filled the corridors and made the dark corners of the palace look mysterious and strange. The silence was soothing too, and as he walked towards the maidservants' quarters in search of Elissa, he turned over in his mind the first lines of a poem about dawn and the dark time that came just before the light burst from behind the mountains to the east. He almost jumped out of his skin when someone spoke his name in a whisper.

‘Iopas? It's me . . . Anna.'

‘You startled me,' he said. She was sitting on one of the stone benches set into the recesses that lined the main corridor. ‘What are you doing here before daybreak?'

Aware that he'd spoken sharply, more from shock than anything else, he added more gently: ‘I'm sorry . . . I didn't think anyone else would be awake.'

‘Who can sleep on such a night? I'm sick with worry and can't rest. Will you sit beside me for a moment? It would comfort me, Iopas.'

He sat down and sighed. I don't need this, he thought. It's too late. I'm exhausted. He looked at her, with her straight brown hair hanging down on either side of her pale face. Dark half-circles under her eyes looked like bruises. Her thin lips were almost colourless. Her clothes, in which she took such pride, were creased and looked as though she'd been wearing them too long, and her perfumed oil, which reminded Iopas of jasmine flowers when he was feeling particularly kind, tonight called to mind something
not quite fresh – dead flowers, perhaps. Maybe that was a poem too. She said, ‘Where have you come from?'

‘I've been with the queen. I had something to tell her. And' – this occurred to him all at once as a good excuse for leaving Anna quickly – ‘I have to speak to Elissa at once so I can't sit here, I'm afraid.'

Anna put a hand on his arm. ‘Just for a moment longer. Oh, Iopas . . .'

Iopas could feel anger flaring within him. How could he be rid of this woman who loved him too much and whose love he couldn't return? If she'd been almost anyone else, he'd not have hesitated this long. He'd have been brutal right from the beginning. Told the truth:
I can't love you. I couldn't ever love you. Go away. Leave me alone.
Perhaps in those very words. But Anna was the queen's sister, and because he wanted to remain at the palace as the court poet, he had to put up with this cloying attention. He said suddenly, ‘I've just told your sister something. It's not generally known but I felt I had to say something to Dido.'

‘Can't you tell me, my dearest one?'

Iopas thought:
My dearest one . . . Oh, Gods
, and sat up straighter and moved slightly away from Anna on the stone bench. He said, ‘I don't really think . . .'

Anna looked so downhearted that for a moment Iopas felt quite sorry for her. Then an idea came to him and he couldn't stop himself. He didn't know exactly why what he planned to do was such a pleasant prospect but suddenly he felt powerful: like a kind of god who could take someone and change their life
and their fate for ever. He said: ‘I told her that Elissa's pregnant.'

Anna swayed slightly, bending forward over her knees and making small sounds like an animal in pain, hiding her mouth with her hand. Iopas was ready for her to faint or vomit, but she collected herself and said: ‘Are you sure?'

‘Quite sure. I have to go and find Elissa now, Anna. I'm sorry.'

‘Wait! Wait!' Anna cried. ‘Tell me who the father is, Iopas, I beg of you.'

Iopas smiled. ‘Oh, I can't tell you that, Anna. I gave my word to Elissa.'

‘Does my sister know?'

‘I can't tell you more, Anna. I have to go. Now.'

‘I can guess, Iopas. Everyone in the palace can see that you're devoted to Elissa. Who else could it possibly be? Who else does she see all the time? Oh, Iopas, I beg you . . . Don't lie to me. I can see it on your face. It's dark but I can tell you're blushing. It's
you
, isn't it? You're the father of Elissa's baby . . . Oh Gods! Tell me, Iopas. Please.'