2
NARRATED BY
When my new kingdom of Thessalia was in order and I could trust those I left behind me in Iolkos to deal properly with my affairs, I went to the isle of Skyros. Weary, I craved the company of a friend, and as yet I had no friend in Iolkos who could rival King Lykomedes of Skyros. He had been lucky: he had never been banished from his father’s realm, as I had; nor fought tooth and nail to carve another kingdom for himself, as I had; nor gone to war to defend it, as I had. His forefathers had ruled his rocky island since the beginning of time and Gods and men, and he had succeeded to his throne after his father died lying in his own bed, surrounded by his sons and daughters, his wives and concubines; for the father of Lykomedes had adhered to the Old Religion, as did Lykomedes – no monogamy for the rulers of Skyros!
Old Religion or New, Lykomedes could look forward to the same kind of death, whereas my chances were not so assured. I envied him his tranquil existence, but as I walked with him in his gardens I realised that he had entirely missed a great many of life’s pleasures. His kingdom and his kingship meant less to him than mine did to me; he carried out his work thoroughly and conscientiously, being both a softhearted man and an able ruler, but he lacked utter determination to hang onto what was his because no one had ever threatened to take anything off him.
I knew in full the meanings of loss, of hunger, of desperation. And loved my hard-won new kingdom of Thessalia as he could never love Skyros. Thessalia, my Thessalia! I, Peleus, was High King in Thessalia! Kings owed me allegiance, I, Peleus, who had not set foot north of Attika until a few years ago. I ruled the Myrmidons, the Ant People of Iolkos.
Lykomedes intruded. ‘You think of Thessalia,’ he said.
‘How can I keep my thoughts away?’
He waved a white, languid hand. ‘My dear Peleus, I am not endowed with your powerful enthusiasms. Whereas I smoulder sluggishly, you burn bright and clear. Though I am content to have it so. Were you in my shoes, you would not have stopped until you owned every isle between Crete and Samothrake.’
I leaned against a nut tree and sighed. ‘Yet I’m very tired, old friend. I’m not as young as I once was.’
‘A truth so obvious it doesn’t bear mentioning.’ His pale eyes surveyed me pensively. ‘Do you know, Peleus, that you have the reputation of being the best man in Greece? Even Mykenai has to notice you.’
I straightened and walked on. ‘I am no more and no less than any other man.’
‘Deny it if you must, but it is true all the same. You have everything, Peleus! A fine big body, a shrewd and subtle mind, a genius for leadership, a talent for inspiring love in your people – why, you even have a handsome face!’
‘Continue praising me like this, Lykomedes, and I will have to pack up and go home.’
‘Be still, I’m done. Actually I have something I want to discuss with you. The paean of praise was leading up to it.’
I looked at him curiously. ‘Oh?’
He licked his lips, frowned, decided to plunge into troubled waters without further ado. ‘Peleus, you are thirty-five years old. You are one of the four High Kings in Greece, and therefore a great power in the land. Yet you have no wife. No queen. And, ah – given that you subscribe absolutely to the New Religion, that you have elected monogamy, how are you going to ensure the succession in Thessalia unless you take a wife?’
I could not control my grin. ‘Lykomedes, you fraud! You have a wife picked out for me.’
He looked cagy. ‘I might. Unless you have other ideas.’
‘I think of marriage often. Unfortunately I don’t fancy any of the candidates.’
‘I know a woman who might appeal to you strongly. She would certainly make a splendid consort.’
‘Go on, man! I’m listening avidly.’
‘And with your tongue in your cheek. However, I do mean to go on. The woman is high priestess to Poseidon on Skyros. She was instructed by the God to marry, but she has not. I cannot force so exalted a prelate to obey, yet for the sake of my people and my isle I must persuade her to marry.’
By this time I was staring at him in astonishment. ‘Lykomedes! I am an expedient!’
‘No, no!’ he exclaimed, face wretched. ‘Hear me out, Peleus!’
‘Poseidon has ordered her to marry?’
‘Yes. The oracles say that if she does not marry, the Lord of the Seas will break the earth of Skyros open and take my isle down into the depths as his own.’
‘Oracles in the plural. So you’ve consulted many?’
‘Even the Pythoness at Delphi and the oak grove at Dodona. The answer is always the same – marry her off, or perish.’
‘Why is she so important?’ I asked, fascinated.
His face became awed. ‘Because she is the daughter of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea. As such she is half divine by blood – and divided in her loyalties. Her blood heritage belongs to the Old Religion, yet she serves the New Religion. You know what a state of flux our Greek world has endured since Crete and Thera toppled, Peleus. Take Skyros! We were never as dominated by the Mother as Crete or Thera or the kingdoms of the Isle of Pelops – men have always ruled by right here – but the Old Religion is strong. Yet Poseidon is of the New Religion, and we lie under his thumb – he is not only Lord of the Seas which surround us, he is also the Earth Shaker.’
‘I take it,’ I said slowly, ‘that Poseidon is angered that a woman of the Old Religion is his high priestess. Yet he must have sanctioned her appointment.’
‘He did sanction it. But now he is angry – you know the Gods, Peleus! When are they ever consistent? Despite his earlier consent, he is now angry, and says that he will not have his altar served by a daughter of Nereus.’
‘Lykomedes, Lykomedes! Do you honestly believe these God-begotten tales?’ I asked incredulously. ‘I had thought better of you! A man or woman claiming a God for parent is usually born a bastard – and mostly by courtesy of the herdboy or undergroom into the bargain.’
He flapped his arms like an agitated fowl. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I know all this, Peleus, yet I believe! You have not seen her, you do not know her. I have, and I do. She is the strangest creature – ! One look at her, and you will know beyond all doubt that she comes from the Sea.’
By this time I was offended. ‘I can hardly credit my ears! Thank you for the compliment! You want to palm some strange, mad woman off on the High King of Thessalia? Well, I won’t have her!’
Both his hands went out to clasp my right forearm. ‘Peleus, would I serve you a trick like that? I put it badly – I meant you no insult, I swear it! It’s just that as soon as I set eyes on you after so many years, I seemed to know in my heart that she is the woman for you. She doesn’t lack noble suitors, every well-born bachelor on Skyros has offered for her. But she will have none of them. She says she waits for one whom the God has promised to send with a sign.’
I sighed. ‘All right, Lykomedes, I’ll see her. However, I commit myself to nothing, is that understood?’
Poseidon’s sacred precinct and altar – he had no temple as such – lay on the far side of the island, the less fertile and more sparsely inhabited side; a rather peculiar location for the principal shrine of the Lord of the Seas. His favour was vital to any isle, surrounded on all sides by his watery dominions. His moods and his grace determined whether prosperity or famine prevailed; nor was he the Earth Shaker for nothing. I myself had seen the fruits of his rage, whole cities laid flatter than gold under a smith’s hammer. Poseidon was quick to anger and very jealous of his prestige; twice within knowledge Crete had come crashing down beneath his vengeance, when its Kings had grown so puffed up with their own importance that they forgot what they owed him. So it had been with Thera too.
If this woman whom Lykomedes wished me to see was rumoured to be the offspring of Nereus – who had ruled the seas when Kronos ruled the world from Olympos – I could understand the oracles’ demanding her removal from office. Zeus and his brothers had no time for the old Gods whom they had overthrown – well, who could easily forgive a father who ate one?
I came to the precinct alone and on foot, clad in ordinary hunting garb and leading my offering on a length of rope. I wanted her to deem me humdrum, not to know that I was the High King of Thessalia. The altar was perched on a high headland overlooking a little cove; I made my way softly through the sacred grove of trees in front of it, my mind dizzy with the silence and the heavy, suffocating holiness. Even the sea in my ears was muted, though the waves rolled in slowly and crashed down in white bubbles on the rocks at the scarred base of the precipice. The eternal fire burned before the square, plain altar in a golden tripod; I came closer to it, stopped and drew my offering to my side.
Almost reluctantly she emerged into the sunlight, as if she preferred dwelling in a cool and liquid filtration of day. Fascinated, I stared at her. Small, slender and womanly, she yet owned some quality that was not feminine. Instead of the customary dress with all its frills and embroidery she wore a simple robe of the fine, transparent linen the Egyptians weave, and the colour of her skin showed clearly through it, pale and bluish, streaky because the material was inexpertly dyed. Her lips were full but only faintly pink, her eyes changed colour through all the shades and moods of the sea – greys, blues, greens, even wine-dark purple, and she wore no paint on her face save for a thin black line drawn around her eyes and extended outward to give her a slightly sinister look. Her hair was no colour at all, ashen white, with a gleam to it that almost made it seem blue in the dimness of a room.
I advanced, leading my offering. ‘Lady, I am a visitor to your island, and I come to offer to Father Poseidon.’
Nodding, she extended her hand and took the rope from me, then inspected the white bull calf with an expert eye. ‘Father Poseidon will be pleased. It is a long time since I have seen such a fine beast.’
‘As horses and bulls are sacred to him, lady, it seemed proper to offer him what he likes best.’
She stared intently at the altar flame. ‘The time is not auspicious for a sacrifice. I will offer later,’ she said.
‘As you wish, lady.’ I turned to leave.
‘Wait.’
‘Yes, lady?’
‘Who shall I tell the God offers to him?’
‘Peleus, King of Iolkos and High King of Thessalia.’
Her eyes changed rapidly from a clear blue to dark grey. ‘Not an ordinary man. Your father was Aiakos, and his father was Zeus himself. Your brother Telamon is King of Salamis, and you are of the Royal Kindred.’
I smiled. ‘Yes, I am son of Aiakos and brother of Telamon. As to my grandsire – I have no idea. Though I doubt he was the King of the Gods. More likely a bandit who fancied my grandmother.’
‘Impiety, King Peleus,’ she said in measured tones, ‘leads to divine retribution.’
‘I fail to see that I am impious, lady. I worship and offer with complete faith in the Gods.’
‘Yet you disclaim Zeus as your grandsire.’
‘Such tales are told, lady, to enhance a man’s right to a throne, as was certainly true of my father, Aiakos.’
She stroked the white bull calf’s nose absently. ‘You must be staying in the palace. Why did King Lykomedes leave you to come here alone and unheralded?’
‘Because I wished it, lady.’
Having tethered the white bull calf to a ring on the side of a pillar, she turned her back on me.
‘Lady, who accepts my offering?’
Looking at me over her shoulder, she showed me eyes of a cool and neutral grey. ‘I am Thetis, daughter of Nereus. Not by mere hearsay, King Peleus. My father is a great God.’
Time to go. I thanked her and left.
But not to go very far. Careful to keep out of sight of any watcher from the sanctuary, I slithered down the snakepath to the cove below, dumped my spear and sword behind a rock and lay down in the warm yellow sand, shielded by an overhanging cliff. Thetis. Thetis. She definitely did have a look of the sea about her. I even found myself wanting to believe that she was the daughter of a God, for I had gazed too deeply into those chameleon eyes, seen all the storms and calms which affected the sea, an echo of some cold fire defying description. And I wanted her for my wife.
She was interested in me too; my years and tally of experience told me so. The crux of the matter was how strong her attraction might be; within myself I felt a warning of defeat. Thetis would no more marry me than she would any of the other eligible suitors who had asked for her. Though I was not a man for men, I had never cared overmuch for women beyond satiation of an urge even the greatest Gods suffer as painfully as men do. Sometimes I took a woman of the house to sleep with me, but until this moment I had never loved. Whether she knew it or not, Thetis belonged to me. And as I upheld the New Religion in all aspects, she would have no rival wives to contend with. I would be hers alone.
The sun beat down on my back with increasing strength. Noon came; I stripped off my hunting suit to let the hot rays of Helios seep into my skin. But I could not lie still, had to sit up and glare at the sea, blaming it for this new trouble. Then I closed my eyes and sank upon my knees.
‘Father Zeus, look favourably upon me! Only in the moments of my greatest abandon and need have I prayed to you as a man might seek the succour of his grandsire. But so I pray now, to that part of you kindest and most beneficient. You have never failed to hear me because I never plague you with trivialities. Help me now, I beg! Give Thetis to me just as you gave me Iolkos and the Myrmidons, just as you delivered the whole of Thessalia into my hands. Give me a fitting queen to sit on the Myrmidon throne, give me mighty sons to take my place when I die!’
Eyes closed, I stayed on my knees for a long time. When I rose I found nothing had changed. But that was to be expected; the Gods do not work miracles to inculcate faith in the hearts of men. Then I saw her standing with the wind blowing her flimsy gown behind her like a banner, her hair crystal in the sun, her face uplifted and rapt. Beside her was the white bull calf, and in her right hand she held a dagger. He walked to his doom tranquilly, even settled himself across her knees when she went down on them in the edge of the lapping waves, and never struggled or cried out when she cut his throat, held him while bright ribbons of scarlet coursed over her thighs and her bare white arms. The water about her became a fainter red as the shifting currents sucked the calf’s blood into their own substance and consumed it.
She had not seen me, did not see me as she slid further out into the waves, dragging the dead calf with her until she was deep enough to sling his body around her neck and strike out. Some distance offshore she shrugged her shoulders to release the calf, which sank at once. A big, flat rock jutted out of the water; she made for it, climbed out of the sea onto its top and stood silhouetted against the pale sky. Then she lay down upon her back, pillowed her head on her arms folded behind her, and seemed to sleep.
An outlandish ritual, not one condoned by the New Religion. Thetis had accepted my offering in the name of Poseidon, then had given it instead to Nereus. Sacrilege! And she the high priestess of Poseidon. Oh, Lykomedes, you were right! In her lie the seeds of destruction for Skyros. She is not giving the Lord of the Seas his due, nor does she respect him as Earth Shaker.
The air was milky and calm, the water limpid, but as I walked down to the waves I trembled like a man with the ague. The water had no power to cool me as I swam; Aphrodite had fastened her glossy claws hard enough in me to lacerate my very bones. Thetis was mine, and I would have her. Save poor Lykomedes and his isle.
When I reached the rock I fastened my hands in a ledge on its side and jerked myself upward with an effort that cracked my muscles; I was crouching above her on the stone before she realised I was any nearer than the palace above Skyros Town. But she was not sleeping. Her eyes, a soft, dreamy green, were open. Then she scrambled away and looked at me black-eyed.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ she said, panting. ‘No man dares touch me! I have given myself to the God!’
My hand flashed out, stopped barely short of her ankle. ‘Your vows to the God are not permanent, Thetis. You’re free to marry. And you’ll marry me.’
‘I belong to the God!’
‘If so, which God? Do you pay lip service to one and sacrifice his victims to another? You belong to me, and I dare all. If the God – either God! – requires my death for this, I will accept his judgement.’
Mewing a note of distress and panic, she tried to slide off the rock into the sea. But I was too quick for her, grasped her leg and dragged her back, her fingers clawing at the gritty surface, her nails tearing audibly. When I took hold of her wrist I let go of her ankle and hauled her to her feet.
She fought me like ten wildcats, teeth and nails, kicking and biting silently as I clamped my arms around her. A dozen times she slipped through them, a dozen times I captured her again, both of us smothered in blood. My shoulder was sheared, her mouth split, hanks of our hair blew away in the rising wind. This was no rape, nor did I intend that it be; this was a simple contest of strength, man against woman, the New Religion against the Old. It ended as all such contests must: with man the victor.
We fell to the rock with an impact that knocked the breath out of her. Her body pinned beneath me and her shoulders held down, I looked into her face.
‘You are done fighting. I have conquered you.’
Her lips trembled, she turned her head to one side. ‘You are he. I knew it the moment you came into the sanctuary. When I was sworn to his service, the God told me that a man would come out of the sea, a man of the sky who would dispel the sea from my mind and make me his Queen.’ She sighed. ‘So be it.’
I installed Thetis in Iolkos as my Queen with honour and pomp. Within our first year together she became pregnant, the final joy of our union. We were happy, never more so than during those long moons waiting for our son. Neither of us dreamed of a girl.
My own nurse, Aresune, was appointed chief midwife, so when Thetis began her labour I found myself utterly powerless; the old crone exercised her authority and banished me to the other end of my palace. For one full circuit of Phoibos’s chariot I sat alone, ignoring the servants who begged me to eat or drink, waiting, waiting… Until in the night marches Aresune came to find me. She had not bothered to change out of her birthing robe, its front smeared with blood, just stood huddled within it all withered and bent, her seamed face webbed with pain. So sunken in her head that they were two black sockets, her eyes oozed tears.
‘It was a son, sire, but he never lived long enough to breathe air. The Queen is safe. She has lost blood and is very tired, but her life is not in danger.’ The skinny hands wrung together. ‘Sire, I swear I did nothing wrong! Such a big, fine boy! It is the will of the Goddess.’
I could not bear her to see my face in the lamplight. Too stricken to weep, I turned and walked away.
Several days passed before I could bring myself to see Thetis. When finally I did enter her room, I was amazed to find her sitting up in her big bed looking well and happy. She said all the correct things, toyed with words expressing sorrow, but none of it was meant. Thetis was pleased!
‘Our son is dead, wife!’ I burst out. ‘How can you bear it? He will never know the meaning of life! He will never take my place on the throne. For nine moons you carried him – for nothing!’
Her hand came out, patted mine a little patronisingly. ‘Oh, dearest Peleus, do not grieve! Our son has no mortal life, but have you forgotten that I am a Goddess? Because he had not breathed earthly air, I asked my father to grant our son eternal life, and my father was delighted to do so. Our son lives on Olympos – he eats and drinks with the other Gods, Peleus! No, he will never rule in Iolkos, but he enjoys what no mortal man ever can. In dying, he will never die.’
My astonishment changed to revulsion, I stared at her and wondered how this God thing had ever been allowed to take such hold of her. She was as mortal as I and her babe was as mortal as both of us. Then I saw how trustingly she gazed up at me, and could not say what I itched to say. If it took the pain out of her loss to believe such nonsense, well and good. Living with Thetis had taught me that she did not think or behave like other women. So I stroked her hair and left her.
Six sons she gave me over the years, all born dead. When Aresune told me of the second boy’s death I went half mad, could not bear to see Thetis for many moons because I knew what she would tell me – that our dead son was a God. But in the end love and hunger always drove me back to her, and we would go through that ghastly cycle all over again.
When the sixth child was stillborn – how could he be when he had gone to full term and looked, lying on his tiny funeral car, so strong despite his dark blue skin? – I vowed that I would dower Olympos with no more sons. I sent to the Pythoness at Delphi and the answer came back that it was Poseidon who was angry, that he resented my stealing his priestess. What hypocrisy! What lunacy! First he doesn’t want her, then he does. Truly no man can understand the minds or the doings of the Gods, New or Old.
For two years I did not cohabit with Thetis, who kept begging to conceive more sons for Olympos. Then at the end of the second year I took Poseidon Horse Maker a white man foal and offered it to him before all the Myrmidons, my people.
‘Lift your curse, bless me with a living son!’ I cried.
The earth rumbled deep in its bowels, the sacred snake shot from beneath the altar like a flash of brown lightning, the ground heaved, spasmed. A pillar toppled to earth beside me as I stood unmoving, a crack appeared between my feet and I choked on the reek of sulphur, but I held my position until the tremor died away and the fissure closed. The white man foal lay on the altar drained and pathetically still. Three moons later Thetis told me that she was pregnant with our seventh child.
All through those weary times I had her watched more closely than a hawk watches the ground bird’s chicks; I made Aresune sleep in the same bed every night, I threatened the house women with unspeakable tortures if they left her alone for an instant unless Aresune was there. Thetis bore these ‘whims’, as she called them, with patience and good humour; she never argued or tried to defy my edicts. Once she made my hair stand on end and my flesh prickle when she began to sing a strange, tuneless chant out of the Old Religion. But when I ordered her to cease she obeyed, and never sang so again. Her time grew imminent. I began to hope. Surely I had always lived in proper fear of the Gods! Surely they owed me one living son!
I had a suit of armour belonged to Minos once; it was my most treasured possession. A wondrous thing, it was sheeted in gold atop four separate layers of bronze and three of tin, inlaid with lapis and amber, coral and crystal depicting a marvellous design. The shield, of similar construction, was as tall as the average man and looked like two round shields joined together one above the other, so that it had a waist. Cuirass and greaves, helmet and kilt and arm guards were made to fit a bigger man than me, so I respected the dead Minos who had worn it as he strode about his Cretan kingdom confident that he would never need it to protect himself, only to show his people how rich he was. And when he did fall it was no use to him, for Poseidon took him and his world and crushed them because they would not subscribe to the New Religion. Mother Kubaba, the Great Godesss of the Old Religion, Queen of Earth and All High, always ruled in Crete and Thera.
With the armour of Minos I had placed a spear of ash from the slopes of Mount Pelion; it had a small head fashioned from a metal called iron, so rare and precious that most men thought it a legend, for few had seen it. Trial had proven that the spear flew unerringly to its target yet felt a feather in my hand, so after I ceased to need to employ it in war I put it with the armour. The spear had a name: Old Pelion.
Before the birth of my first son I had unearthed these curios for cleaning and polishing, sure my son would grow to be a man big enough to wear them. But as my sons continued to be born dead I sent them back to the treasure vaults to live in a darkness no blacker than my despair.
About five days before Thetis expected to be confined with our seventh child I took a lamp and trod the ragged stone steps leading into the palace’s bowels, threading my way through the passages until I came to the great wooden door which barred off the treasury. Why was I there? I asked myself, but could find no satisfactory answer. I opened the door to peer into the gloom and found instead a pool of golden light on the far side of the huge chamber. My own flame pinched out, I crept forward with my hand on my dagger. The way across was cluttered with urns and chests, coffers and stored sacred gear; I had to pick my path carefully.
As I drew nearer I heard the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping. Aresune my nurse was sitting on the floor cradling the golden helm which had belonged to Minos within her arms, its fine golden plumes streaming over her crinkled hand. She wept softly but bitterly, moaning to herself and breaking into the mourning song of Aigina, the island from which she and I originally came, kingdom of Aiakos. O Kore! Aresune was already weeping for my seventh son.
I could not leave her unconsoled, could not creep away and pretend I had never seen, never heard. When my mother had ordered her to give me her breast she had been a mature woman; she had reared me under my mother’s disinterested gaze; she had trailed through a dozen nations in my wake as faithful as my hound; and when I had conquered Thessalia I raised her high in my household. So I went closer, touched her very gently on the shoulder and begged her not to weep. Taking the helmet from her, I gathered her stiff old body close and held her, saying many silly things, trying to comfort her through my own suffering. At last she fell quiet, bony fingers plucking at my blouse.
‘Dear lord, why?’ she croaked. ‘Why do you let her do it?’
‘Why what? Her? Do it?’
‘The Queen,’ she said, hiccoughing.
Afterwards I realised that her grief had sent her a little mad; otherwise I could not have prised it out of her. Though she was dearer to me by far than my mother had been, she was always conscious of the difference in our stations. I gripped her so hard between my fingers that she writhed and whimpered.
‘What about the Queen? What does she do?’
‘Murders your sons.’
I rocked. ‘Thetis? My sons? What is this? Speak!’
Her frenzy dwindling, she stared at me in dawning horror as she grasped the fact that I knew nothing.
I shook her. ‘You had better go on, Aresune. How does my wife murder her sons? And why? Why?’
But she folded her lips one over the other and said nothing, eyes in the flame terrified. My dagger came out; I pressed its tip against her loose, slippery old skin.
‘Speak, woman, or by Almighty Zeus I swear that I will have your sight put out, your nails ripped from their beds – anything I need to do to unstopper your tongue! Speak, Aresune, speak!’
‘Peleus, she would curse me, and that is far worse than any torture,’ she quavered.
‘The curse would be evil. Evil curses rebound on the head of the one who casts them. Tell me, please.’
‘I was sure you knew and consented, lord. Maybe she is right – maybe immortality is preferable to life on earth, if there is no growing old.’
‘Thetis is mad,’ I said.
‘No, lord. She is a Goddess.’
‘She is not, Aresune, I would stake my life on it! Thetis is an ordinary mortal woman.’
Aresune looked unconvinced; I did not sway her much.
‘She has murdered all your sons, Peleus, that is all. With the best of intentions.’
‘How does she do it? Does she take some potion?’
‘No, dear lord. Simpler by far. When we put her on the childing stool she drives all the women from the room except me. Then she makes me put a pail of sea water under her. As soon as the head is born she guides it into the water and holds it there until there is no possibility that the child can draw breath.’
My fists closed, opened. ‘So that’s why they’re blue!’ I stood up. ‘Go back to her, Aresune, or she will miss you. I give you my oath as your King that I will never divulge who told me this. I will see she has no opportunity to do you harm. Watch her. When the labour begins, tell me immediately. Is that clear?’
She nodded, her tears gone and her terrible guilt drained away. Then she kissed my hands and pattered off.
I sat there without moving, both lamps foundered. Thetis had murdered my sons – and for what? Some crazed and impossible dream. Superstition. Fancy. She had deprived them of their right to be men, she had committed crimes so foul I wanted to go to her and run her through on my sword. But she still carried my seventh child within her body. The sword would have to wait. And vengeance belonged to the Gods of the New Religion.
On the fifth day after I had spoken to Aresune the old woman came running to find me, her hair streaming wild in the wind behind her. It was late afternoon and I had gone down to the horse paddocks to watch my stallions, for mating season was close and the horse masters wanted to give me the schedule of who would service whom.
I loped back to the palace with Aresune perched upon my neck, something of a steed myself.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked as I lowered her outside Thetis’s door.
‘Come in with you,’ I said.
She gasped, squealed. ‘Sire, sire! It is forbidden!’
‘So is murder,’ I said, and opened the door.
Birth is a women’s mystery, not to be profaned by any masculine presence. It is a world of earth owning no sky. When the New Religion overcame the Old, some things did not change; Mother Kubaba, the Great Goddess, still rules the affairs of women. Especially everything having to do with the growing of new human fruit – and the plucking of it, whether immature, at perfect ripeness or withered with age.
Thus when I entered no one saw me for a moment; I had the time to watch, to smell, to hear. The room stank of sweat and blood, other things foreign and appalling to a man. Labour had clearly progressed, for the house women were in the act of conducting Thetis from her bed to the childing stool while the midwives hovered, instructed, fussed. My wife was naked, her grotesquely swollen abdomen almost luminous with distension. Carefully they arranged her thighs on the hard wooden surface to either side of the wide gap in the stool’s seat designed to free the birth canal’s termination, the place where the baby’s head would appear and its body follow.
A wooden bucket slopping water stood on the floor nearby, but none of the women spared it a glance because they had no idea what it was there for.
They saw me and flew at me, faces outraged, thinking that the King had gone mad, determined to drive him out. I swung a blow at the closest which knocked her sprawling; the rest cowered back. Aresune was hunched over the bucket, muttering charms to ward off the Evil Eye, and did not move when I chased the women out and dropped the bar on the door.
Thetis saw everything. Her face glistened with sweat and her eyes were black, but she controlled her fury.
‘Get out, Peleus,’ she said softly.
For answer I shoved Aresune aside, walked to the pail of sea water, picked it up and tipped the water upon the floor. ‘No more murders, Thetis. This son is mine.’
‘Murder? Murder? Oh, you fool! I’ve killed no one! I am a Goddess! My sons are immortal!’
I took her by the shoulders as she sat, bent over, atop the childing stool. ‘Your sons are dead, woman! They are doomed to be mindless shades because you offered them no chance to do deeds great enough to win the love and admiration of the Gods! No Elysian Fields, no heroic status, no place among the stars. You are not a Goddess! You are a mortal woman!’
Her answer was a shrill scream of torment; her back arched and her hands gripped the stool’s wooden arms so strongly that their knuckles gleamed silver.
Aresune came to life. ‘It is the moment!’ she cried. ‘He is about to be born!’
‘You will not have him, Peleus!’ growled Thetis.
She began to force her legs together against all the instinct which drove her to open them wide. ‘I’ll crush his head to pulp!’ she snarled, then screamed, on and on and on. ‘Oh, Father! Father Nereus! He tears me apart!’
The veins stood out on her brow in purple cords, tears rolled down her cheeks, and still she fought to close her legs. Though demented with pain, she strained every last fibre of will and brought her legs inexorably together, crossed them and twined them about each other to lock them in place.
Aresune was down on the sopping floor, head beneath the stool; I heard her shriek, then whinny a chuckle. ‘Ai! Ai!’ she screeched. ‘Peleus, it is his foot! He comes breech, it is his foot!’ She crabbed out, got up and swung me round to face her with the strength of a young man in her ancient arm. ‘Do you want a living son?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes!’
‘Then unlock her legs, sire. He is coming out feet first, his head is unharmed.’
I knelt and put my left hand upon Thetis’s top knee, slid my right beneath it to grasp her other knee, and pulled my hands apart. Her bones creaked dangerously; she reared her head up and spat curses and spittle like a corrosive rain, her face – I swear it as I looked at her and she looked at me – her face gone to the scales and wedge of a snake. Her knees began to separate; I was too strong for her. And if that did not prove her mortality, what could?
Aresune dived under my hands. I closed my eyes and hung on. Came a sharp, short sound, a convulsive gasp, and suddenly the room was filled with the wail of a living infant. My eyes flew open, I stared incredulously at Aresune, at the object she was holding head downward from one hand – a grisly, wet, slippery thing jerking and threshing and howling to the roof of the heavens – a thing with penis and scrotum bulging beneath the envelope of membrane. A son! I had a living son!
Thetis sat quietly, her face empty and still. But her eyes were not on me. They were focused upon my son, whom Aresune was cleaning, tying off the cord, wrapping in fresh white linen.
‘A son to delight your heart, Peleus!’ laughed Aresune. ‘The biggest, healthiest babe I have ever seen! I drew him out by his little right heel.’
I panicked. ‘His heel! His right heel, old woman! Is it broken? Is it deformed?’
She lifted the swathes of cloth to display one perfect heel – the left – and one swollen, bruised foot and ankle. ‘They are both intact, sire. The right one will heal and the marks fade.’
Thetis laughed, a weak and shadowed sound. ‘His right heel. So that was how he breathed earthly air. His foot came first… No wonder he tore at me so. Yes, the marks will fade, but that right heel will be his undoing. One day when he needs it firm and sinewy, it will remember the day of his birth and betray him.’
I ignored her, my arms outstretched. ‘Give him to me! Let me see him, Aresune! Heart of my hearts, core of my being, my son! My son!’
I informed the Court that I had a living son. The exultation, the joy! All Iolkos, all Thessalia had suffered with me through the years.
But after everyone had gone I sat upon my throne of pure white marble with my head between my hands, so weary I could not think. The voices gradually died away in the distance, and the darkest, loneliest webs of the night began a-spinning. A son. I had a living son, but I should have had seven living sons. My wife was a madwoman.
She entered the faintly illuminated chamber with her feet bare, dressed once more in the transparent, floating robe she had worn on Skyros. Face lined and old, she crossed the chill flagged floor slowly, her walk speaking of her body’s pain.
‘Peleus,’ she said from the bottom of the dais.
I had seen her through my hands, and took them now from my head, lifting it.
‘I am going back to Skyros, husband.’
‘Lykomedes won’t want you, wife.’
‘Then I will go somewhere I am wanted.’
‘Like Medea, in a chariot drawn by snakes?’
‘No. I shall ride upon the back of a dolphin.’
I never saw her again. At dawn Aresune came with two slaves and got me to my feet, put me into my bed. For one full circle of Phoibos’s endless journey around our world I slept without remembering one single dream, then woke remembering that I had a son. Up the stairs to the nursery, Hermes’s winged sandals on my feet, to find Aresune taking him from his wet nurse – a healthy young woman who had lost her own babe, the old woman chattered. Her name was Leukippe: the white mare.
My turn. I took him into my arms and found him a heavy weight. Not surprising in one who looked as if he was made from gold. Curling golden hair, golden skin, golden brows and lashes. The eyes which surveyed me levelly and without wandering were dark, but I fancied that when they acquired vision they would be some shade of gold.
‘What will you call him, sire?’ Aresune asked.
And that I didn’t know. He must have his own name, not someone else’s. But which name? I gazed at nose, cheeks, chin, forehead, eyes, and found them delicately formed, more in the mould of Thetis than me. His lips were his own, for he had none; a straight slit in his lower face, fiercely determined yet achingly sad, served him for a mouth.
‘Achilles,’ I said.
She nodded, approving. ‘Lipless. A good name for him, dearest lord.’ Then she sighed. ‘His mother prophesied. Will you send to Delphi?’
I shook my head. ‘No. My wife is mad, I take no credence in her predictions. But the Pythoness speaks true. I do not want to know what lies in wait for my son.’