Hand of Fire Page 8

  Briseis stepped in front of the men. The time had arrived. One way or the other, she’d have to go through with the rite she’d designed. At the mouth of the cave she prayed to Kamrusepa to keep her safe and then led them inside. The air turned chill and the darkness edged in around the torches’ flares as if it were a living presence. The smell of dank mold surrounded them.

  She felt certain they stood at an entrance to the world below. Its cold sank into her skin. The king’s men worked on digging a deep pit next to the spring that rose inside the cave. Its waters would carry away the curse when she buried it there inside the palhi vessel.

  The digging took a long time, and standing with nothing to do but hold the empty vessel, Briseis grew more nervous until finally it was time for her to recite the sacred tale to draw the wolf god into the cave. She placed the vessel in the pit and stepped into the dim light of the torches held in a circle around her. She raised her arms in prayer to the gods. She was shaking hard and looked around at the faces lit by the flickering light to see if anyone noticed. Tension strained them all. Then she closed her eyes and let Eurome’s tale unfold before her in her imagination as she spoke.

  “On a hot day a young man hunted. Exhausted, he stretched out by a sparkling brook to drink and saw a beautiful maiden’s face reflected in the water. How he yearned to touch her hair, soft as robin’s down, to gaze into her eyes, the deep green of the forest. He burned with love despite the cool water on his lips. He turned to embrace her, but the startled nymph—for she was no mortal—ran away.

  “He chased after her. Three times she rejected him. Armed with beauty and his lyre, he sang to her, but she stopped her ears. He brought her the sweetest flowers of the woods, and she cast them aside. He offered tender kisses, but she fled in horror.

  “Desolate, he wandered so far he grew thin. His hair grew long and grey. His teeth hung over his lips. His nose grew into a muzzle, his hands and feet shaggy paws. He ran on four legs. He yearned so much for the beautiful nymph, the immortals took pity on him and transformed him into a god, but he kept the form of a wolf and still sings love songs during the long nights.”

  Briseis opened her eyes. She again saw the dank cave, replacing the world she’d felt deep inside her: the sunny woods and the dark nights on the steppes, full of lovesick wandering. She raised her arms higher and beseeched him to enter the cave, this shaggy god who now lived inside her.

  “Please, god of the broken heart and rough coat, cleanse Hatepa of those vicious wolves, so unlike your own lovelorn self. Will you do this for her, for me? I will remember your story all my life and tell it to my children and grandchildren, and in this way grant you a second immortality, undying fame among mankind. Please, come into this cave and free Queen Hatepa.”

  A glance at Euenos and her father told her they also sensed a benign power around them. Their expressions were intent but exultant. The taut fear they’d worn had melted from the faces around her.

  She removed the handkerchief from a linen sack tied at her waist, balled it up and trapped it between her palms, walking around the cave three times in one direction and seven times in the other. Her steps felt steady and strong even on the rough ground with its slippery patches where the spring left perpetual moisture. She approached the pit and dropped the handkerchief into the palhi vessel. The king and one of his men crouched down and sealed it tight with a lid of lead. The thud of soil echoed against the close walls as the men refilled the pit over the vessel. Briseis let out a deep sigh. She’d overcome the danger.

  She finished with the last words of the rite as the pit grew level with the cave floor once more. “I bury this cloth. I send this curse down to the Gods of the Underworld to lock away. Scrap of linen, I have found you out. Release Hatepa, Queen of Lyrnessos. The vile sorceress Zitha has tricked you. She has sung dark incantations of evil. Hatepa’s breath, fly back to the queen! Be gone, wolves which cannot be seen, into the dark realms of the earth forever.”

  The moon had set, but a soft glow to the east meant dawn had arrived as Briseis, Glaukos, King Euenos and his men made their way down the mountain.

  As they arrived about midway on the trail, Briseis recognized in the distance the huge trees of Lyrnessos’s sacred grove, a dark mass against the lightening sky. At the center of the grove, the priests and townspeople, on the appointed days, conducted the city’s festivals in a meadow that held the circle of stones representing each of the gods.

  Kamrusepa held honor with the oldest stele, the carvings worn and darkened by the libations each generation poured over it. As Briseis pictured the stele, she felt drawn to it. With her need to grow closer to the goddess, she dared not ignore this sensation. She hoped Kamrusepa had helped her in the cave, but she didn’t feel sure of the goddess’s presence—only the support of her wolf god felt certain to her.

  “Father, I would like to spend some time alone in the sacred grove—by Kamrusepa’s stone. I know the way home from there.”

  Her father turned to her in surprise. “I can’t leave you alone in the forest, especially not today. If you need to commune with Kamrusepa, I can wait outside the grove. Your mother often needed time with the goddess.” Glaukos’s shoulders sagged. The dark circles under his eyes made them look bruised.

  Euenos took Briseis’s hands. He looked less bleary-eyed than her father, but he had not regained his usual color, and his sallowness echoed his wife’s complexion. “You have great courage and presence, Briseis. On behalf of my wife, I thank you.”

  The royal group went on alone. Briseis knew her desire to spend time in Kamrusepa’s grove was not like her mother’s. Despite the goddess’s healing powers that Briseis had seen first hand, she had not yet found her mother’s intimacy with the goddess. Tonight, however, the wolf god had allowed her into his heart—she could feel it. Perhaps now Kamrusepa would do the same. She could outgrow the confusion she felt with the goddess, find comfort from her presence. She’d always loved telling stories, but now she had discovered the recital of sacred tales was her gift as a priestess. At the Spring Festival she would be able to tell Telipinu’s story—her own protective god—with the same conviction she’d had tonight and make the crops and herds flourish as they had when her mother told it. She had not felt such a lightness of heart since her mother died. She didn’t have to be her mother: she could be herself.

  Gradually the trees grew larger as she walked with her father through the sacred grove to the meadow where the gods’ altar stones stood. The gray light fluttered in the upper branches of the huge pillars of pine and oak, yet the path was easy to follow, soft underfoot with fallen pine needles and dried leaves. Briseis heard the awakening birds calling to each other.

  At the meadow’s edge, her father sat down and leaned against a tree trunk. His eyes closed even before she walked on.

  The meadow glowed with a saffron radiance as though all the light that could not break through the trees had settled in this one unobstructed expanse. She walked into the center of it, her heart rising with the brightness around her. In her mind she could hear the prayers of each seasonal festival, the rhythms she’d absorbed over and over, a myriad of voices to a pantheon of gods. Aloud in the meadow, she joined in until gradually the others faded and hers alone recited Kamrusepa’s prayers. Her own voice, clear and confident.

  She understood. Kamrusepa did not speak directly, but her own voice connected her to the goddess’s. Kamrusepa had been in her voice, her stories, her prayers all of her life. If her mother’s place to hear the goddess had been the temple, hers was the grove on Mount Ida.

  Briseis knelt and embraced Kamrusepa’s ancient stele. She let the rough stone press into her forehead and the flesh on the inside of her arms, a tangible connection with the goddess. Perhaps the stele absorbed the heat of her body, but it seemed to share with her a warmth of its own.

  She kissed the stele and walked back to her father.

  He snored softly, his head tilted back against the trunk. She sat down next to him and let
her nearness wake him.

  “Ready?” he said.

  She nodded.

  In the early morning light they took a shortcut down to the highest of the orchards on the estate.

  Within sight of the house, she noticed Maion, the old servant who had taught her plant lore, climbing toward the orchards, out to greet the morning in the company of his trees. He used a stick to steady himself, and his back, bent with age, caused his head to tilt downwards so that when he wanted to look up the slope ahead, he had to turn his neck to the side a little. He looked frail, with his almost bald head speckled with irregular splotches and his hands and joints knobby, but he still had skill with the pruning hook amidst his fruit and olive trees. He could be heard chatting with them as if they were human friends. This morning he wore a torn, old tunic with mysterious smudges staining it that made Briseis shake her head. She’d woven a soft replacement for him, but he had yet to decide he needed a new one. No one’s knowledge of medicinal plants matched his now that her mother was gone.

  “I have a question for Maion. Zitha gave Hatepa an herb I don’t recognize, but the queen said Mama used it awhile ago.” Her father nodded, and they joined the old man on a bench among the olive trees.

  Briseis pulled the alabaster vial that held the sample from her belt. She offered it to Maion. “Do you know what this is?”

  The old man sniffed and drew back his head with a wrinkled nose. “Not a smell a man can forget. Henbane. That’s what that is.” He glanced at Glaukos. “A priestess like our Briseis is maybe allowed to have it, but henbane isn’t never meant to be used outside the temple.” He put his hand on Briseis’s arm. “Sacred to the Stormgod—that’s what your grandmother told me years ago.”

  “My grandmother? Did you ever speak to my mother about it?”

  “Back before you were born, Lady Antiope asked me about henbane. I told her that in her mother’s day, people still used it for healing.”

  “Why did my mother ask you about it?”

  Maion hesitated. “Your mama was fearful about some things not sitting right with her, and she come to me even though some of it were temple rites I had no business with. If you’re tangling with henbane, I’d best tell you, now that she can’t. I—” He looked at Glaukos for approval. A sliver of worry worked into the well-being Briseis had brought down from the sacred meadow.

  Her father nodded. “Antiope told me a little about this—that she didn’t like henbane. Briseis needs to know anything you can tell her.”

  Maion shifted uneasily on the bench and rested his stick against the plank they sat on so he could gesture with his hands. “Lady Antiope weren’t but about your age when those priests at the temple talked her into being what they called ‘the servant of the Stormgod’s voice.’ That all meant, they burn some of that.” He pointed to the alabaster vial with a gnarled finger. “The whole leaves, though, not ground like that.” He held his thumb and index finger apart a little to indicate the size of leaf he meant.

  “They made Lady Antiope breathe in the smoke. A fearful thing, if you ask me. She was afeared, all right. Then when she’s taken in the henbane smoke, they ask their questions and whatever she says back is the god’s answer.”

  His frown deepened. “Antiope come to me, weeping and saying she couldn’t no more hear the goddess’s voice after breathing that henbane. I tried my best to calm her. Told her what her mama said about the healing henbane can do for a cough or a pain. She’d be herself when it passed. The next time those priests called on her, she said no. She was Lady Kamrusepa’s priestess and wouldn’t serve no other god.”

  Maion rubbed the palm of one wrinkled hand with the crippled fingers of the other. Briseis sifted what he’d told her. There seemed to be some sense in Zitha’s use of henbane if it healed a cough, but her mother’s fear unsettled her.

  “Mind you,” Maion added, “while that henbane has some gentle uses, your grandma told some old stories of priestesses who breathed in too much and it killed them dead away.”

  Briseis looked from Maion to her father in alarm.

  “Your mama said now they only use a priestess who hears the voice with a little henbane so that won’t never happen, but even so. I can see why they went stopping others from using it, gentle uses or no.”

  “Did my grandmother say how the priestesses had died, in those old stories?”

  “No, and that weren’t my place to ask.”

  Briseis twisted the alabaster vial back and forth between her fingers and watched the green powder shift and fall with the movement. What secret did it hide?

  Maion hesitated. “I’d best tell you one more thing. A good deal later Lady Antiope asked me to say all I knew from her mama about using henbane for a cough.” Briseis looked up from the vial and gazed at Maion intently.

  “The queen was sickly, over sickly, and cranky about her cough. Worried about Her Majesty, Lady Antiope asked permission for henbane of the Stormgod’s priest. Protecting the queen was protecting the whole city, she told me, and the priest agreed. Only for a time, though. Then he got afeared the god would be angry and made her stop. I don’t think she minded. Better the queen’s fussing than that herb. She hated that herb.”

  Briseis let out her breath. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding it. Her mother had used this on the queen in an open fashion and left off for good reason. Whatever darkness this powder might hide, it did not overshadow her mother.

  Maion shook his head and patted Briseis’s arm. “Don’t you let those priests talk you into being the Stormgod’s voice. You stand up to them like your mama. Stand up tall.”

  Briseis laughed. “I don’t have much choice, do I? I always stand up tall.” Her brothers teased her about being too tall for a girl.

  “Don’t ever be the Stormgod’s voice. It scared your mama.”

  “I won’t. I like my own voice.” That was true, but despite her experience in the grove, she didn’t feel confident anymore. Zitha had given the queen a dangerous herb; Zitha, who didn’t have her mother’s knowledge about how much was safe and all the ways a medicine could go wrong. Was this green powder the source of the queen’s terrors? Briseis didn’t know what to do except to put all the queen’s supply of henbane back in the temple where it belonged.

  Chapter Nine

  Consequences

  Briseis gathered up her healing satchel for attending to the queen, and Glaukos gave orders to the grooms to harness a horse and cart. They headed toward the palace on the wagon road into Lyrnessos that passed by her father’s wheat fields and then went through a neighboring estate’s land. They talked about what Maion had said. Glaukos was convinced that his daughter had banished the terror however Zitha had caused it. In these difficult times they should not bother Euenos with complications. Briseis wasn’t so sure, but she said nothing. Euenos liked certainty. Exhaustion made it hard to think with any clarity.

  Briseis sat in the cart beside her father and wondered. Where did all this leave Zitha? The woman had been hostile toward her, but she’d also been right about Briseis’s discomfort with Kamrusepa. Even the henbane might have been meant only as a cure. Briseis stomped her foot in frustration against the floor of the cart.

  Her father looked at her in surprise. “What is it?”

  “Papa, what did you learn from Zitha last night? Did she admit placing a curse?”

  Her father looked away. “She denied it—through it all she denied it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘through it all’?”

  Glaukos evaded her eyes. He shifted the reins from one hand to the other and back again and cleared his throat. “When I came into that barn, I was frightened for you, Briseis. I demanded to know how she’d placed the curse. When Zitha said she hadn’t cursed anyone, I let the men… hurt her… Then she began to say hateful things about you—you had always had everything, you had no right to be a priestess, the goddess loved only her, Zitha…” He looked down at the reins wrapped around his hands. “The men stopped her saying those things. Stil
l she denied making a curse. She said she’d done nothing but try to help the queen. She begged to be allowed to serve the goddess—she would scrub the temple floors forever if we would let her return. We finally left, knowing nothing useful.”

  “Then why did you think she’d placed the curse?”

  “Who else? This is Zitha’s fault, however she caused it. Let it be, Briseis.”

  The air had turned colder and gray clouds gathered behind Mount Ida. Briseis pulled her cloak close. They passed through the city gates. Somewhere over to her right must be the storage barn where they had locked up Zitha.

  She turned to her father. “I want to know what Zitha did. Take me to her. She might talk to me, especially now that I know about the henbane.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t insist. We’re going to the palace.”

  Briseis laid her hand on her father’s arm. He rarely said no to her. “If I don’t know what caused the danger, then it can turn against me. Do you want that?”

  Her father glared at her. “All right. I’ll take you.” He slowed the horse and then turned off the main road down a smaller lane.

  They came to a long, low storage barn with mud-brick walls in need of repair. The outer mud plaster had worn away leaving exposed bricks to melt under the force of rain and wind. The logs and branches supporting the roof had bleached to a gray brittleness.

  “I’ll speak to her alone,” Briseis said.

  “I am sure she doesn’t want to see me again.” Glaukos jumped from the cart, gave Briseis a hand down and spoke to the two guards leaning against the wall by the door. They pulled back the heavy bar.

  The only light inside came from the open door. A musty smell rose from the dirt floor and crumbling walls. The ceiling was lost in darkness. In a far corner Briseis saw a huddled form. It moved. Briseis walked toward it. “Zitha?”

  Zitha’s head rose from the floor. She raised a hand to shield her face. “Lady Briseis?”