Hand of Fire Read online

  Hand of Fire

  By

  Judith Starkston

  www.Fireshippress.com

  HAND OF FIRE by Judith Starkston

  Copyright © 2014 Judith Starkston

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61179-295-9 (Paperback)

  ISBN -978-1-61179-296-6 (e-book)

  BISAC Subject Headings:

  FIC004000FICTION / Classics

  FIC002000FICTION / Adventure

  FIC027050FICTION / Romance / Historical

  FIC023000FICTION / Mythology

  Cover work by Christine Horner

  Address all correspondence to:

  Fireship Press, LLC

  P.O. Box 68412

  Tucson, AZ 85737

  Or visit our website at:

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  Table of Contents

  Hand of Fire

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  People, Gods and Places

  Chapter One Wind and Fire

  Chapter Two Blossoms and A Groom

  Chapter Three Warriors

  Chapter Four Gold and Blood

  Chapter Five... A Goddess’s Will

  Chapter Six A Wolf Curse

  Chapter Seven Handkerchiefs, Herbs, and Sacred Tales

  Chapter Eight Voices

  Chapter Nine Consequences

  Chapter Ten Visions and Sweet, Seductive Flames

  Chapter Eleven Veiled Wedding

  Chapter Twelve Wool

  Chapter Thirteen Plowing and Fighting

  Chapter Fourteen Hurried Preparations and Divine Silence

  Chapter Fifteen Attack

  Chapter Sixteen Ash, Fire and Arms

  Chapter Seventeen Brotherly Loss

  Chapter Eighteen Wandering in the Shadows of Death

  Chapter Nineteen Kindness and a Pyre

  Chapter Twenty Joined by Fire

  Chapter Twenty One Warriors at Troy

  Chapter Twenty Two The Choice

  Chapter Twenty Three A Bard’s Tale

  Chapter Twenty Four Offering of Love

  Chapter Twenty Five The Rhythms of Life and Death

  Chapter Twenty Six Strong Love

  Chapter Twenty Seven A Too-Brief Feast of Fire

  Chapter Twenty Eight Freedom and Fetters

  Chapter Thirty Holding onto Fire

  Chapter Thirty One Howling in the Dark

  Chapter Thirty Two Wrathful Fire

  Chapter Thirty Three Implacable

  Chapter Thirty Four Burden of Grief

  Chapter Thirty Five Life or Death

  Chapter Thirty Six A Father’s Kiss

  Chapter Thirty Seven Wellspring of Life

  Author’s Notes

  About The Author

  If You Enjoyed this Book

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  Dedication

  Dedicated to my father, Rodman Wilson Paul, 1912-1987, historian of the American West, writer, my greatest inspiration.

  Acknowledgements

  This book has had a long evolution and there are many people to thank. From early on, I banded together with two remarkable women, Diane Benitez and Carolyn Allport. We met over Diane’s kitchen table every other week for years, critiquing and learning to write from each other.

  Without these two friends, there would be no book. I can’t express my gratitude properly for their friendship and guidance. Diane and I continue to read each other’s every word and give the quick cheer or redirect as needed. I’d be lost without her constant willingness to spend time with my tortured prose. Recently I have also been working with a larger critique group under the leadership of MaryLee MacDonald; the group’s comments on several chapters were tremendously insightful and gave a polish towards the end that I couldn’t have achieved on my own.

  Thanks to Amy Dominy for giving me a much needed lesson on how to write dialogue and an orientation into the world of writers. My physician, Robert Bloomberg, read an early draft and clarified many of the medical issues. The information about Bronze Age medicine is scant, and his essential expertise about wounds, injuries and disease combined with that meager scholarship to steer me on a sound path. When I traveled to Turkey to research this book, Sevil Çonka, able archeologist and art historian, skillfully led my family and me around the key sites, including a delightful trip to the area where Lyrnessos is traditionally thought to be—nothing like being asked to take your tour to a mythological city. Several friends read my manuscript and encouraged me on the long and often disheartening path to publication: Rachel Diamant, Dora Diamant, Sue Ochs, Janine Skinner and Patty Carlin. So many writer friends in the historical fiction world gave me advice, space on their blogs, recommended me and cheered me on. I can’t list you all, but you are essential, from all around the world. To my own local writer friends in the Arizona chapter of the Historical Novel Society and in the Desert Sleuths chapter of Sisters in Crime, thanks for your friendship. No writer can write without community.

  A number of scholars gave me votes of confidence about my research conclusions or answered key questions: Susanne Ebbinghaus of Harvard University, Harry Hoffner, Jr. of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Billie Jean Collins of Emory University, and Eric Cline of George Washington University. I had a series of editors on this project and they dedicated countless hours and creative energy to refining my book. I am so appreciative of their generosity: Jennifer Sawyer Fisher, MaryLee MacDonald, Tinney Sue Heath, Bonnie Pike and Nancy Bilyeau. Thanks go to Susan Spann for donating her expertise in finalizing my contract with my publisher. And thanks also for the goodwill and spirit of the staff at Fireship Press. And then there’s the man who has given me support of all sorts, my dear husband, Bob. Thank you, most of all.

  People, Gods and Places

  Briseis’s Family

  Briseis: daughter of Antiope and Glaukos, healing priestess of Kamrusepa, betrothed to Prince Mynes

  Antiope: wife of Glaukos and mother of Briseis, healing priestess of Kamrusepa

  Glaukos: husband of Antiope, father of Briseis, Chief Counselor of King Euenos of Lyrnessos

  Bienor: oldest brother of Briseis

  Adamas: middle brother of Briseis

  Iatros: youngest brother of Briseis, 16 yrs old, one year older than Briseis

  Eurome: Nursemaid of Briseis

  Milos: Glaukos’s metalsmith

  Maion: Glaukos’s oldest servant, retired overseer of the estate, knows plant lore

  Royal Family of Lyrnessos and Temple Staff

  Euenos: King of Lyrnessos, ally of Troy

  Hatepa: Queen of Lyrnessos

  Mynes: Son of Euenos and Hatepa, betrothed to Briseis

  Maira: Hatepa’s maid servant

  Zitha: Resident priestess/servant of Kamrusepa

  The Greeks

  Achilles: greatest Greek warrior, leader of the Myrmidons; half-immortal son of Thetis, goddess of the sea, and Peleus, King of Phthia

  Patroklos: warrior, best friend of Achilles

  Agamemnon: warrior, king of the Mycenaeans, most powerful of the Greek kings

  Menelaos: warrior, younger brother of Agamemnon, king of Sparta, husband of Helen

  Odysseus: warrior, king of Ithaca, best negotiator among the Greek leaders

  Phoenix: aged warrior, father figure to Achilles since infancy

  Machaon: Greek healer, son of the Greek healing god Asclepios

  Podaleirios: Greek healer, son of the Greek healing god Asclepios

  Aias: strongest of the Greek warriors after Achilles, cousin to Achilles

  H
elen: queen of Sparta and wife of Menelaos, taken by Paris to Troy

  Iphis: Patroklos’s captive woman

  Chryseis: Agamemnon’s captive woman, daughter of a priest of Apollo

  The Trojans

  Priam: elderly king of Troy

  Hector: oldest son of Priam, greatest Trojan warrior

  King Eetion: ally of Troy, king of Thebes (a town near Lyrnessos not to be confused with the more famous Thebes in Greece), father of Andromache; killed by Achilles on a raid of Thebes along with his seven sons

  Andromache: wife of Hector, daughter of King Eetion

  Paris: youngest son of Priam, who has brought Helen of Sparta to Troy

  Gods and Goddesses

  Kamrusepa: Lyrnessan goddess of healing, childbirth, fertility of herds and fields

  Telipinu: Lyrnessan warrior god, son of the Stormgod; his return from anger is reenacted each year, bringing fertility to the herds and fields

  Zeus: Greek king of the gods

  Thetis: sea goddess, mother of Achilles, daughter of Nereus the ancient sea god

  Apollo: Greek archer god who sends illness with his arrows, intervenes on Troy’s behalf in the war

  Hephaistos: Greek blacksmith god

  Chiron: Greek immortal centaur (half man, half horse), who instructed Achilles in healing skills

  Places

  Lyrnessos: city on the far side of Mount Ida from Troy, allied to Troy, Briseis’s home

  Mount Ida: a tall central peak around which spreads a wide mountain range along the southern side of the plain of Troy

  Troy: most powerful city on the western coast of Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age; controls the passage of ships and trade through the narrow water course called the Hellespont, which separates the Aegean from the Black Sea region; controls an area called the Troad, a group of nearby towns, cities and islands

  Phthia: kingdom in Greece ruled by Achilles’ father, Peleus

  Chapter One

  Wind and Fire

  Antiope’s breath rasped like a distant wave scouring a rocky shore. Too faint to sustain life. Briseis squeezed her mother’s hand, then balanced her mother’s limp hand on her own, shifting each finger until the two matched up. When had her fingers grown as long as her mother’s? It didn’t mean she was ready to take on her mother’s work alone. She rubbed gently, but Antiope’s hand remained slack. Briseis shifted closer to her mother on the bed and adjusted the fleeces cushioning her mother’s shoulders from the leather straps pulled across the bed’s wooden frame. No response. What should I do, Mama? Tell me how to save you. You’ve taught me to be a healer from birth, but I don’t know this, the one thing I have to know. Tell me.

  Briseis leaned over to kiss her mother’s forehead. Her lips pressed Antiope’s skin—cool as bone—and Briseis’s red-gold hair brushed against her mother’s ashen cheeks. She shuddered at the contrast. The fever was gone. The single worry line had smoothed. These signs, reassuring at other times, tightened the knot in Briseis’s chest—intimations of withdrawal, not healing. Her mother had let go.

  Months ago she’d discovered her mother’s secret illness. She’d begged her to fight it, tried every cure she could discover, even though her mother refused to offer advice, saying there was no point. Nothing Briseis did slowed her mother’s decline. Now, Antiope would die if Briseis didn’t strengthen that ragged breath.

  Why hadn’t her father and two oldest brothers stayed home today? The king had summoned them, but still …. All had seemed as usual in the morning, her mother no worse than any other day among the many she’d been ill. This sudden downturn had taken Briseis by surprise. Wake up, Mama, you can’t die now. I won’t let you.

  Briseis glanced at the youngest of her brothers, Iatros, seated on a stool at the far side of her mother’s bed. He twisted the hem of his tunic first in one direction and then in the other. Normally, she would have pulled him close and told him not to worry—she couldn’t today. His fear was well founded. She turned toward her old nurse, Eurome, waiting for something useful to do, her soft, round figure sagging against the doorframe. What else can I try? Briseis felt the familiar tightening at her temples. She willed away the threatening headache. Not now. I need to think.

  The storm that had blown in so suddenly threw wind and rain against the closed shutters of the clerestory windows. So late in the winter no one had expected such bad weather. Would it prevent her father and brothers from returning home? The pounding against the shutters sounded like some beast trying to break in—no ordinary storm. She imagined the squall building up force in some distant, dangerous place like Greece, blowing across the Aegean Sea and flinging itself against Mount Ida’s flanks. The frenzy outside mocked her mother’s stillness. Inside, the flickering light came from clay oil lamps, causing the geometric patterns frescoed on the mud-brick walls to lunge and recoil.

  “She’s barely breathing. What do we do?” Iatros said, leaning in to be closer to his mother.

  Briseis shook her head. Though already sixteen and a year older than she was, he had a small, tense body and round cheeks, never yet shaved with a scraper. His gentle brown eyes and dark curls, startling against his worry-blanched face, deepened Briseis’s dread of carrying on without their mother. Antiope had always sheltered Iatros in a manner unlike her treatment of his brothers. How would he fare without that guidance?

  Briseis rubbed her eyes and blinked back the pain pressing behind them. Her hair, escaped as usual from its bronze butterfly clasp, annoyed her and she pushed it out of the way. Can’t you give me a sign, Mama? We always worked together. Not anymore. Her mother’s silence crushed down on her shoulders.

  “What should we do?” Iatros said again.

  Briseis looked at her mother’s slack face. “We give her strength.”

  “If she doesn’t breathe, how can she be strong?” Iatros walked around the bed and stood beside his sister, staring down at the still figure.

  What have I missed all these months? Any moment, that small breath will stop. I have to do something. Briseis hunted in her mind for a way to make her mother strong again. She sifted through the teachings she learned from Antiope, rites and cures handed to generations of women in her family directly from the healing goddess Kamrusepa. She and her mother both served as priestesses to the goddess, and though Briseis herself had not yet grown comfortable with the temple rites, her mother always expressed closeness to the goddess, especially in the temple. Until the last year, Antiope’s life vibrated with Kamrusepa’s presence. This illness was inexplicable.

  Briseis noticed a twitch at her mother’s temple, then nothing. She pushed off the bed, straightening to her full height, taller than most men.

  “We will have to help her breathe.” She turned to the doorway and saw Eurome’s eyes brighten. For as long as Briseis could remember, her nursemaid Eurome had been part of her life—pampering, scolding, teasing, teaching—constantly chattering, but always reassuringly there.

  “Eurome, we’ll light the brazier. Mama hates foul smells, so I haven’t used this cure before, but I don’t care now. We’re going to make a plaster of wax and spices to strengthen her breath. That’s what she would do.”

  Eurome rushed downstairs for a coal from the hearth, agile despite her weight.

  Briseis reached for her mother’s satchel, full of healing materials, and laid out supplies on a table beside the bed. She measured mustard seed and sulfur into a mortar and ground them. She glanced at her brother, his narrow shoulders hunched forward.

  Briseis passed Iatros the satchel. “Find the ball of beeswax and soften it on the brazier.”

  Eurome returned with a coal in a long-handled bronze cup and lit the kindling in the brazier. She put an empty pot on to warm and then rubbed one of Antiope’s hands, the smoothness of the sick woman’s hand contrasting with the wrinkles of age and work. “Take my strength, Lady Antiope, all you need.”

  Iatros worked the wax in the pot and then used the edge of his tunic to pull it off the fire. “It
’s ready.”

  Briseis nodded. “Mix while I pour this in. Careful. It will sting your eyes, but that’s why it will awaken Mama and strengthen the intake of her breath.”

  “Shouldn’t I do that?” asked Eurome.

  Iatros shook his head. “It’s my job.”

  When they’d blended the yellow powder into the soft wax, Briseis undid the braided tie at the neck of her mother’s sleeping tunic and exposed a small area. She touched the frail, ashen skin and Briseis’s breath caught—her strong, proud mother so diminished now. Despite the powerful fumes that made their eyes water as Briseis spread the plaster on her mother’s chest, Antiope’s breathing did not deepen. Her eyes, however, fluttered open and she crinkled her nose in disgust.

  Her mouth moved. Briseis bent close to hear the sighed fragments. “No more, daughter.... The hardest lesson... is accepting death.” Antiope’s chest rose and fell softly as she caught her breath. “No more for me to do. Your training… as healing priestess… is complete.”

  Antiope paused. “My need... to escape this pain is greater than your need… family’s need… for me. I served the goddess… Now… you, Briseis.” She turned her head toward Iatros. “Son…” He took her hand in both of his and kissed it. “You and your sister help each other.” The bones along Antiope’s cheeks drew her skin to a fragile thinness, almost translucent.