Sappho's Leap (19 page)

“I hope you are not speaking of me,” I said.

Aesop gave me an ironic look.

We finally roused our captain and made our vessel shipshape again, but I must admit I rather missed the obstreperous Rhodopis. The boat seemed empty and sad without her and Delphi somehow seemed a duller destination than Babylon. I would have liked to see the fabled Hanging Gardens myself.

Wild women astride their horses' wings

Ride on the moon's pale rings.

—
T
HE
A
MAZONIAD

O
NCE MORE WE WERE
bound for Delphi. Officially our mission was to represent the pharaoh and hear a prophecy for him. Secretly, of course, I wished to find Alcaeus and win his stubborn heart. Why I thought I'd find Alcaeus in Delphi this time when the last time I had not, I do not know. Perhaps it was because Rhodopis had met him in Delphi and that made me think I would too. It made no sense at all. In my fantasy I dreamed that when I met Alcaeus. I would tell him Cleis was his daughter and we would return to Lesbos together to confront my mother and Pittacus and claim our child. None of it made much sense. But do even the most vivid dreams make sense? Aesop was too wise not to feel the weight of things I was not telling him.

“Who waits for you in Delphi, Sappho?”

“No one but the Pythia and those who serve her.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“Because you think too much, Aesop. You never take things as they are.”

“Because I know that things are seldom what they seem. You and Rhodopis seem to be linked in love—if not for each other, then for some man. He is my rival for your love. Who is he?”

“There is no man. Don't be absurd.”

“Rhodopis is a beauty who subdues every man who looks upon her. She has the capriciousness of Aphrodite and her golden looks. Doesn't that rankle?”

“Not at all. My mother was a beauty. Where did it get her? An unfaithful husband and the love of a tyrant. Even Aphrodite found beauty a trap. I would rather sing of her than
be
her.”

So I said, but when I looked into my heart, I wished I resembled Rhodopis. She was tall and stately where I was short and twisted, golden and shining where I was dark, full-bosomed where I was flat. If I had my power to sing and Rhodopis' beauty, the whole civilized world would be mine for the taking. I had done well for a plain girl, but I never forgot I was a plain girl. If I were more beautiful, Alcaeus would not have sailed away from me. That was the whole point. I thought of Rhodopis bound up like a sacrificial lamb and I laughed.

“Why do you laugh such an evil laugh?” Aesop asked. “Are you thinking of your nemesis, Rhodopis?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Beware of what you wish for—you may get it!”

“Not this, not ever, even the gods cannot grant it.”

“The gods resent such challenges,” Aesop said, “and they delight in showing them to be false.”

“When did the gods appoint you to be their prophet?” I asked Aesop.

“When they appointed you. We share that fate.”

“Ridiculous,” I said and stared at the sea.

And yet I thought if Wily Isis were here, she might make a lead figurine bound hand and foot and inscribe it
Rhodopis
. Then we could chant evil curses upon it to make sure Rhodopis never came out of slavery again.

Rhodopis would have to be clever indeed to get free of the great Nebuchadnezzar, who was said to be mad. Yes, his Hanging Gardens with their blossoming terraces of trees would someday be judged one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but he was ruthless and bloodthirsty and he spared no one—man or woman—his rage. He had defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish. He had captured Jerusalem and laid siege to Tyre for thirteen years. He was said to be planning a great wall in northern Babylonia to keep out invaders. He was building great high piles of rocks everywhere in the hopes that piles of rocks conferred immortality—if this wasn't a form of madness, what was? The Egyptians preserved the flesh through mummification, the Babylonians built great ziggurats, and Aesop and I hoped our words were immortal. What foolishness! I began to despair. What was I doing on this great gray sea, far from my daughter and Alcaeus? Where were the ones I loved most dearly? Thoughts of Rhodopis had polluted my mind. I was consumed with jealousy of her and the desire to curse her. Every curse I dreamed up came back against me and blackened my mind.

Even absent from me, she was present. This is the paradox of jealousy; it feeds more on phantoms than on reality.

We sailed and sailed and sailed. Black as my mood was, no mishap came to us on this portion of the trip. The captain informed us that we should eventually be stopping at the island of Crete, where the great civilization of the bull-dancers and their labyrinths now lay crumbled to unceremonious dust. I had heard the legends of Theseus and the minotaur and thought them as little based in fact as the legends of the amazons or the legends of the cyclops whom Odysseus met and blinded. But I was to be proven wrong.

Early one morning, when fog crept over the face of Poseidon's realm, we came ashore on a rocky coast alive with birdsong. The men dragged our galley up upon the strand, and Aesop, Praxinoa, and I set about searching for fresh water while the men cleaned the ship and mended the sails and rigging.

We walked a narrow rocky path, which wove along the coast. Sometimes the path turned into wading stones and beneath the surface of the shallow sea we could see what seemed to be the drums of fallen columns. Golden mosaics glistened under the water. There were the remains of an ancient town under our feet.

A sudden thunder of hooves at the top of a little hill and there appeared a girl on horseback holding the mane of a snow-white horse. Her hair was as silvery white as her horse's. Her toes glistened with golden rings. She wore a chiton of silver chain mail that winked at the sun. As she came closer, it was clear that she had but one breast. And her mare had tiny wings upon its flanks—or was this some sort of ornate harness?

She raised her spear as if to throw it straight at my head. Then she stopped. She shouted a volley of words in a strange tongue and three other warriors rode up behind her, dressed as she was dressed, brandishing spears.

“We mean no harm!” I shouted. But it was no use. The women warriors advanced, dismounted, bound our arms behind our backs, blindfolded us, and dragged us onto the backs of their horses. They galloped us around and around in circles—clearly to confuse whatever sense of direction we had—then carried us over hill and meadow until we were bruised and dazed from the ride. We were then dragged off horseback and stowed in a dank cave like so much meat for winter.

I heard groans.

“Praxinoa? Aesop?”

They were there—but barely able to do more than whimper.

How long we remained in the damp I cannot say, but when we were finally dragged from the cave, the sun was high in the sky and we were parched. My eyes stung from the sun when they were unbandaged. The beautiful woman warrior stood above me. In a circle surrounding us were at least twenty little girls of eight or nine who were clearly getting a lesson in the treatment of prisoners. One of them came up behind me and started to unbind my hands.

Suddenly Aesop found his voice. “And they say there are no amazons!”

The woman warrior found her Greek.

“They say the amazons were defeated! But as you see, we flourish!”

I had a million questions. My mother had been a great teller of tales about amazons. Now I wondered if she had ever met one.

“I was named Penthesilea after our great queen who fought in the Trojan War,” said the beautiful warrior. “But of course she was slandered, as women always are. Achilles did not kill her. On the contrary, he fell in love with her and sought to make her his concubine. She preferred to die. Her women prepared a mock death for her—with herbs they alone knew. She was due to be awakened at a certain hour and revived. But the Greeks captured her maidens in order to rape them and she stayed in a stupor past the appointed hour and perished needlessly. I will make sure nothing of the sort ever happens to me. In those days the amazons lived near the Black Sea. Some migrated as far as Lesbos, Chios, and Samos and intermarried with the native peoples. They lost their faith. They forgot the cruelty of men. Our nation settled here in Crete after Theseus returned to Athens. We never forgot how he abandoned Ariadne, who had given him the secrets of the labyrinth, and we vowed never to let ourselves be tricked by the sweet words of men.”

“But where do you get your children?” I asked Penthesilea.

“Girl babies are exposed on hilltops all over the Greek world,” she said. At that moment I heard Praxinoa gasp. “There is no dearth of them—only a dearth of those that treasure them. Disguised amazons are busy rescuing these girl babies on every island, in every
polls
, on every seashore. Sometimes we capture a man and get him to be our breeder.” She looked knowingly at Aesop. “We have ways.”

“And what do you do with the boy babies who are born?”

“Why do you suppose that
any
boy babies are born? We have gone far beyond that primitive stage of civilization!”

“Then what do you do?”

“Oh, there are pessaries to filter out the male seed. We have our ways.”

I looked at her in disbelief. Praxinoa looked at her in wonderment.

“We try to keep our secrets from the world. I should be more circumspect. It was fine in the old days when we had a large supply of flying horses to subdue our enemies, but now the horses' ranks are much reduced. They give birth to fewer and fewer colts and many of those are born without wings or with only vestigial winglets. This is the plague that most concerns us. If we still had our equine allies, all would be well. But I have told you too much already.”

With that she gave a sign to the little girls, who swarmed around Aesop and led him away to another cave. Praxinoa and I were left with Penthesilea, who began to rage.

“If you saw those stunted winglets, your heart would break. We believe that someone is poisoning the mares' milk, but we have no way to prove it. Who would harm a winged mare? Only a beast would do that—or a man.”

“Then are there no good men?” Praxinoa asked eagerly.

“I don't want to debate that old, old question. It bores me. It should bore us all by now. Let's just say they are a different species. We have decided that life is easier without their distractions. We fight for survival. They fight for glory. We fight for our daughters. They fight against their sons and fathers. If you have lived too long in their world and have adapted to it, you may not even see their follies. I pity you. Come, let me show you our world.”

Aesop and I were fascinated with the amazons, but Praxinoa was even more intrigued. Her eyes widened as Penthesilea spoke. She was utterly dazzled with amazon lore from the first.

We were to discover that the amazons lived in the most elaborate caves we had ever seen, caves dug deep into their craggy landscape, caves decorated with pictures of their victorious exploits, caves more beautiful than the houses of the greatest aristocrats in Lesbos or in Syracuse. From the outside of these caves, you could see nothing of amazon civilization, but within, all was beauty and refinement. Many of the caves extended far, far into the bowels of the earth. The amazons always anticipated attack from the world of men, and their caves were their protection.

Penthesilea led Praxinoa and me into a special cave where infants were nurtured in a communal nursery. The walls were hung with the whitest linen. The floors were thickly padded with sheepskins so the infants could crawl. Dozens of babies crawled on fluffy sheepskin rugs. Young women, each of whom was responsible for three babies, tended them. Seeing the infants, I ached for my own Cleis.

“We believe that mothers should visit and love their babies but not bear total responsibility for them. They love them better when they are less burdened. The daughters also have less need to renounce their mothers when they reach the terrible age.”

“What is the terrible age?”

“The terrible age is thirteen. From thirteen to seventeen, our girls are not allowed to see their own mothers. They are paired with a substitute, whom they call
Demeter
, and she becomes mother, mentor, teacher to them. If they must fight against an older woman, they learn to fight against her. There are rules for fighting—very specific rules. We allow both verbal and philosophical debate, but we also teach the martial arts. Our young women learn to wrestle with their Demeters and debate with them. They learn that disputes may be resolved with words or with physical contests and they may choose either—as long as the rules that govern the contest are strictly obeyed.”

“How wise! How wonderful!” exclaimed Praxinoa.

Penthesilea picked up one of the crawling babes and put her in my arms. She was a round little thing of six months, with golden curls and green eyes. I smelled the damp ringlets at the back of her neck and I began to cry.

Penthesilea looked at me incredulously. Praxinoa explained. “Her own baby was kidnapped at a few months of age.”

“And where is she now?”

“In Mytilene with her grandmother.”

“It is probably the best thing that could have happened to you both.”

She put her arms around me. “Now you can learn to be an amazon mother—loving but not clinging on to your daughter for dear life,” she said.

“I suppose I might have been an amazon,” Praxinoa said triumphantly. “For I was found on a hilltop!”

“It's not too late!” Penthesilea crowed.

She took us next to the amazon temple, a circular structure surrounded by fluted columns. In the center was a heroic sculpture of the amazon goddess Melanippe. Carved out of the blackest basalt—a skill I had believed only the Egyptians knew—it was an image of a nubile woman with the head of a beautiful mare. Her mane was made of golden strands, soft and supple as real hair. Around her waist, she wore the magic amazon girdle of purest gold—the one that Hercules supposedly stole from Hippolyta. Instead of feet, she had hooves with golden horseshoes. From her back grew gigantic golden wings. White-haired priestesses who offered her fruit, honey, loaves of barley bread, and golden cups of dark red blood attended her.