Dido (26 page)

‘Sychaeus gave me this on our wedding day,' she said, ‘and I'm wearing it to spite Aeneas. You know what I'd say to him if he were here?'

Elissa shook her head. How can I go on and on listening to Dido mourning Aeneas? she asked herself. Doesn't she realize how I'm feeling? How much I'm missing him? Just as much as she is, only with no one to help me and comb my hair and make me feel better.
All alone. No one cares about me. No one remembers that I loved him too.

‘That's because you are a child and not royal and have only come into this story by accident,' Hera whispered, and Elissa shivered. The Goddess could read her mind. ‘Aphrodite chose to meddle as usual. She never knows when to leave something alone. She can't resist the opportunity to spread love around. It causes nothing but trouble but she will not be told, and we, the rest of us, have to pick up the pieces. Answer the queen. Go on, child.'

‘What would you say to Aeneas?' Elissa said.

‘I'd say:
See, once I was married to a man who knew my worth
.' Dido turned and took up the phial containing the sleeping draught from where she'd placed it, on top of another chest. ‘I will drink this in a moment, Elissa. Will you carry it for me? We must go and find Iopas and wake him.'

‘Why?' The word burst out of her before she could stop herself.

Dido paused and looked at her and for the first time seemed to see Elissa as someone suffering separately from her. She sank on to a stool and tears flowed out of her eyes and ran unchecked down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Elissa, I'd forgotten. Forgotten how you must be feeling . . . I'm so sorry. But I have no room in my thoughts for anything but what I have to do, and I need Iopas to write something for me.' Dido came to Elissa and flung her arms around the girl. ‘I know you love me and want to help me and I am grateful. Remember
that, Elissa. But you can't write. I need Iopas for that.'

‘I don't understand—' Elissa began, but Dido had already pulled away from their embrace and started to walk down the corridor towards Iopas' room. Where were they going? What would Iopas have to write down? And why?

‘The sleeping draught,' Dido said, pausing. ‘Do you have it with you?'

Elissa nodded and raised the phial a little so that Dido could see it, and they continued through the darkened corridors to Iopas' room. Dido knocked at his door and pushed it open when there was no answer. Elissa almost smiled to see how flustered he looked, how unkempt, woken from a deep sleep. When he saw the queen, his eyes widened and he sat up and apologized and mumbled and also, Elissa could see, was trying to work out what exactly she was doing there.

‘I'm sorry to wake you from your slumber, Iopas, but I need you. Get dressed at once, bring your writing materials and meet me in the courtyard, please.'

‘Yes, my lady,' Iopas said, but the queen had hurried away and Elissa went after her, towards the courtyard. On their way, Dido picked up one of the torches still burning on the wall. She held it in front of her as she went.

‘Wait, my lady . . .' Iopas was running after them. Elissa reflected that he must have got dressed more quickly than ever in his life before. ‘Where are we going?' He spoke to Elissa but she didn't answer. She
had no words for him and wished he didn't have to be here.

‘Did you bring parchment? A pen? Ink?' Dido said.

‘Yes – my writing box. But—'

‘Don't ask questions.'

When they reached the courtyard, Dido said, ‘Can you sit on a bench here and write? Is that possible?'

Iopas smiled. ‘I can write anywhere.' How superior and smug he sounds, Elissa thought. What is Dido doing? Why does he have to write?

‘Then begin:
Dearest Sister
,' said Dido.

‘
Dearest Sister . . .
'

‘Iopas, if you repeat my words, we'll be here too long. Just write. Say nothing.'

Dido put the torch she was carrying into the mouth of one of the urns, where it blazed in the light of the new dawn. ‘
Do not be sad for me, Anna. I know what I'm doing. I've decided to put an end to my life
.'

‘
No!
' Elissa shouted, and ran forward, and Iopas dropped his pen and leaped from his seat.

‘Elissa, be silent! Sit down, Iopas, and know your place. Elissa, dearest, I know you care for me but you can't tell me whether I may die or not. I'm sorry for the pain I'm causing you, but I have to stop my own agony. I am the Queen of Carthage and must do what I think best. Iopas, please write.'

Iopas sat down, and his hand trembled so much that Elissa wondered how he would continue. How can I stop her? she asked herself. How can she throw away her life? Why?

‘Do not cry, Elissa,' said Hera, and suddenly the Goddess was in front of her, wiping her tears away with the end of a peacock feather. She held Elissa's chin in one hand as she did so and turned her face from one side to another.

‘My mother held me just like that,' she told Hera. ‘She wiped my tears away just as you are doing.'

‘You'll need all your courage to watch what is coming,' Hera answered. ‘And Dido will need you to help her. You cannot weep, however sad you feel. You have to stand beside her.'

‘I will. I will. I'll be brave, I promise.'

‘And I shall do all I can too.' Hera stroked Elissa's cheeks with her fingers and sighed and vanished into the shadows around the courtyard.

Dido was still speaking to Iopas. She said, ‘Listen to my words, Iopas, as I dictate them to you. They're meant for everyone, not just for my poor sister, who is the one person who'll miss me.'

‘No, lady, we'll all miss you . . . really. I mean . . .'

‘You'll recover. So will you, Elissa. Anna may not. I don't mean to hurt her. I want to leave her some consolation. Death's so easy for the one who chooses it, and so hard for those they leave behind. So hard. I'm being selfish, I know that. I don't care. I have to look after myself, Iopas. My reputation.'

‘Your reputation stands high, lady.'

‘It does today. Tomorrow, if I humbly submit to this treatment – this desertion, this betrayal – it will be lowered. I'll become like every other woman whose
man has left her. I can't . . . can't allow that to happen. Please write:
You've been the best of sisters and I know that my kingdom will be safe while you live. See to it that you marry someone who will help you to care for Carthage. Be a friend to Elissa. It's not her fault, but I can't live in the same world, let alone the same palace, as a child whose father is Aeneas. If it falls to you to tell him of my death, say that I curse his kingdom with my dying words and wish for our two nations to be forever at war. May his forces be brought low and his lands overrun by enemies. And may he fear the hour of his own death, for I will be waiting for him in Hades and he will not escape my curse. My death won't be painful; rather a way to stop the pain that has been tearing me apart. Continue to love me, Anna, as I will love you from beyond the grave. Remember me.

‘I'll write my own name, Iopas. I have to sign it myself. I've given my royal seal away and there's no time to fetch another.'

She leaned over the parchment and wrote on it the letters of her name. Then she took the torch out of the urn and raised it above her head.

‘My thanks to you, Iopas. You should go now.'

‘Let me stay, lady. I beg you, let me stay.'

‘You won't like what you see.'

‘Nevertheless,' he said, with a break in his voice, ‘I have to see it. To bear witness. So that I can write the truth and everyone will know.'

‘Very well. On one condition.'

‘Anything.'

‘Go over there – beside the fourth column. Do not
move from there in any circumstances. Do you agree to do that? Do you promise?
In any circumstances
. Whatever you see.'

Iopas' face, Elissa noticed, was white. ‘I promise, lady. I give you my word.'

‘Good. I'm grateful to you, Iopas. Stand like a statue. Remember you've given your word.'

Elissa watched as Iopas walked unsteadily to his position beside the fourth column. Dido turned to her and said, ‘Where is the sleeping draught, Elissa? Where is the phial?'

‘Here, lady. In my hand.'

‘Then give it to me.'

Elissa handed the little bottle to the queen, who removed the stopper and took a sip of the liquid.

‘It tastes of poppies and honey. Drowsy. I feel drowsy. I must lie on my bed again. Our bed. Oh, Elissa, this bed . . .'

Dido sank to her knees and leaned against it. ‘Hand me the torch, child,' she said, and because her head was almost buried in the clothes that hung from the end of the bed, Elissa thought she must have misheard.

‘The torch? You want the torch?'

‘Do not hand it to her, girl,' said a voice like knives being drawn across a stone. ‘That is for me to do.'

Elissa recognized Hades, standing beside her in his grey cloak, with his head uncovered. She shrank from the God, frozen by the chill mist that surrounded him. His eyes burned black fire in the hollows of his skull
and the hand that he held out for the torch was nothing but white bones. Hades grasped the burning torch and turned to the queen.

‘Come, Dido. Stand up. Give me your hand.'

Dido rose from the ground and said, smiling, ‘Oh, Hades, how I've longed to see you. You'll never desert me. Stay with me. Help me.'

‘I will. I'll take care of you now.'

Elissa couldn't move. She wasn't sure whether what she saw was happening, or whether she was in a kind of wakeful dream. The God held the torch to the clothes on the bed, and bright tongues of fire began to lick at the wood and leap and shine and move through what was piled on the mattress, and she saw one thing after another begin to glow and burn and flicker and blossom into glowing flowers that spread and billowed and turned into sheets of flame. After a while Elissa could scarcely make out where the queen was. She peered through the smoke and caught a glimpse of Dido's face. Her eyes were closed and she was lying as though asleep on a pile of silky cushions. Perhaps she feels nothing, Elissa told herself. Perhaps she's already dead. Hades is with her. He must help her. Tears fell from Elissa's eyes and she sank to her knees near the bed. ‘Please, kind Hades,' she sobbed, ‘help her feel no pain. Let it be a soft bed for her.' Perhaps she imagined it, but she could hear Hades speaking.

‘Take the sword, Dido,' he said. ‘Aeneas' sword will cut the swiftest path to my kingdom. Don't wait for the fire.'

How will she hold the sword? Elissa wondered. She's too weak. She's fainted away. She may even have died already. All at once the smoke cleared and there was Hades, standing over Dido like a lover, and Elissa could see the blade of Aeneas' sword shining so brightly that her eyes hurt from the shining, and she closed them, and in her head she heard the queen's voice saying:
Do it. Plunge the blade into my heart. I want you to. Please, dearest Hades, take me to your kingdom
, and there was a single terrible cry, shrill and sharp as a stabbing sword, and it must be Dido shrieking, Elissa thought, and she cried out too with the sorrow of it, and then she covered her head with her arms and rocked from side to side, and beside her the bed and everything that was on it flared and blazed and roared with the voice of fire, and just as Elissa was about to turn and run away from everything, she heard someone speaking, and the words sounded cool and sweet and like no other words she'd ever heard, as though each one were coated with silver and honey and soothed your ear as you heard it.

‘I have come, Dido,' said this voice. ‘I am Iris, Hera's messenger. She has always looked to your care. I will take your soul to the Elysian Fields, dear Queen. Rest now. There will be no more pain. Never again. See, I am cutting a lock of your hair to free you of your body for ever.'

Elissa watched as Iris' wide, wide, opalescent wings beat a soft rhythm, and then it seemed to her that Dido was being lifted up and carried: encircled and held
tight, soaring and safe. Hera's messenger flew up and up and out of the palace, and a stream of glowing sparks fell to earth behind her. Behind them. Is that truly Dido she's bearing in her arms? Elissa asked herself. Or perhaps I'm imagining it and the poor queen's body is still there, nothing but ashes now and blackened bones. A bitter taste rose in her mouth and the tears flowed from her eyes unchecked. The bed, devoured by leaping ribbons of scarlet and gold, was already reduced to a pile of blackened wood. Looking up, Elissa saw something like a scarf of shimmering fabric drop from the sky, and she knew, with complete certainty, that this was Dido's life leaving her body and falling to the ground in gentle folds as Iris carried her away to the Elysian Fields.

She tried to speak, but every word she'd ever known had vanished from her mouth and she stood silently beside what was once the royal bed, not wanting to move, and with ashes drifting down on to her from somewhere high above her. They left grey marks on her skin when she tried to rub them away, like small bruises. She imagined Aeneas' black ships sailing out of the harbour, even as the apricot and mauve of the new day broke over Carthage. I won't think of that, Elissa told herself. There's the child I'm carrying. Better to fix my mind on my baby. If a girl is born to me, I shall name her for the queen.