Goddess of Yesterday Read online

  “Maybe a thousand,” I said, using my new word.

  But the queen shook her head. “The feast is beginning. Come. There is much to rejoice in. The king is safely home, he has brought riches, the gods will be pleased, and no man was lost.”

  I was not safely home. I was not rich. I was afraid of their gods and my family was lost.

  Down the stairs, out of the palace and into the town we went, Callisto carried in a chair. I saw that I did have something to rejoice in. I was not frozen like Callisto and the boy of stone.

  Through the Curved Gate was brought a creature so massive I could not believe it submitted to men. Its four great legs moved slowly and its wide dark eyes looked ahead without anger. Very large horns curved from the sides of its great white head. I was awestruck. “What is that?” I whispered to Callisto.

  “It's an ox. Have you never seen one pulling the plow?”

  I had hardly even seen a plow. Our fields are narrow strips of dirt terraced on sharp hills.

  Behind the wondrous ox came six horses. I had never seen a real horse, only pictures on vases. Father captured horses now and then, when he took a foreign city, but carrying horses on a ship was difficult and feeding them on a ship was worse. He never brought one home, for we had no place for a horse to run and no grain to spare. Besides, horses had weak backs, Father said, even though they looked strong. Donkeys were better.

  Two of the horses pulled a real chariot, and beside the driver stood the king, splendid in purple.

  Callisto sang the invocation, her voice high and warm like a wooden flute. “Listen, daughters of thundering Zeus. Listen, sons of great gods. Dance in honor of golden-haired Apollo.”

  The ox was brought to stand over the marble altar and how clearly now I saw the difference between a mere chieftain and a real king. My father made things holy with a little lamb, but a king made things holy with a beast so great and calm.

  The priest lifted his double-sided ax while the people lifted their voices. Grasping the ox's horns, the men pulled its head back and with one great plunge the priest slit its throat from side to side. There was so much blood it overran the hollow and spilled out into the basin below, and when that had filled, a second basin was brought.

  No wonder their fields were so green. No wonder their sheep were counted with that number thousand. When they diluted this holy blood with water and walked the fields, scattering it drop by drop, how blessed would be the soil.

  One by one, we dipped our fingers in the holy blood. I raised my hands high to the goddess of my island, that she might not be omitted from this event. “O goddess of yesterday,” I sang.

  The crowd fell silent to hear me. I was frightened, but having addressed the goddess, I had to go on. I pitched my voice to carry across the sea. “Hear my cry. Stay with me. Be also my goddess of tomorrow.”

  A pair of swallows swooped above me. Nothing is more holy than the flight of birds, for they cross the divide, equally at home in heaven and earth. It was a good omen.

  “You are strong in the magic, Anaxandra,” whispered the queen. She marked my forehead with her bloody thumb. “There,” she said, kissing each side of the print. “Your goddess who was with you yesterday will be with you tomorrow and every tomorrow to come.”

  And so I feasted with the people of Siphnos, and danced among them, while the blood print crusted and dried. I wondered just how blessed I was, marked by a woman from whom the gods had taken five babies.

  THE KING AND QUEEN had buried the babies in the wall between his bedroom and hers. We did not do that on our island, preferring graves far removed from houses. I never quite got used to having their little sets of bones inside the wall, just beneath the plaster. For a whole year, I slept in a ball to keep my feet safe.

  Every morning when I rose, I smoothed away the impression of my body from my mattress. Otherwise evil might lie down in my shape and wait for me. I opened the bedroom door carefully to allow Night and Day to trade places without tripping over me. It made Callisto laugh. “Nobody does that anymore,” she would tell me. “Not even the peasants in the hills.”

  In this place called a palace, they took a knife to their bread, slicing their loaves instead of tearing hunks off. A knife is a weapon. A blade should never attack bread, the most important gift of the gods.

  The king himself would wade through a creek without first washing his hands. What could the water think, knowing that even the king did not care if he was pure? I thought a family whose only daughter was crippled and whose five sons had died in infancy should take more care.

  My hostage father the king loved feasting and celebration. Every time a ship of his came back safe and rich, he roasted a ram for the gods. Every time we had guests, I stayed up late to listen, hoping to hear news of my parents, Chrysaor and Iris, but I never did.

  Sometimes I cried myself to sleep, and although I buried the sounds in my fleece, Queen Petra knew and came to rock me. More than one night she slept beside me because I would not let go of her hand. Petra said that my fate had come from the gods and could not have been avoided. “When you are born,” she said, “Zeus takes his two jars and shakes them, the joyful and the sorrowful. Your fate is poured out. No one escapes.”

  Yet not a day went by that I didn't escape in my heart. When I was under the sky instead of the roof, I was closer to home. I explored hollows and hills. I ran along slender beaches and brought back just the right sea stone for Callisto. I followed the sheep and the goats up hillsides too steep for crops.

  I was drawn to an empty silent meadow with a single olive tree, old as time.

  It was a hideous tree. In some distant decade, farmers had cut the trunk almost to the ground, and out of the great flat stump had grown massive side trunks, now rotting and split around the table of the stump. In each decaying knot and elbow were staring eyes and open mouths that screamed silently, like Medusa.

  The shepherds, who were teaching me to use a slingshot, warned me away from this tree. “Beneath that olive, take no rest, Anaxandra. Pan, god of chaos, visits there.”

  But I thought myself braver than any shepherd or warrior, for I swam underwater into caves. I poked my bare fingers into a rotted mouth and left my mother's jewels in the olive tree for my goddess.

  I explored every tiny lane in Siphnos town, with its alleys as tangled as fishermen's knots. The town huddled nervously inside its high white walls, and the doors of houses looked around, worrying, as if knowing that their king did not properly honor the sacred places.

  I played with all the animals, especially the dogs, but I never had one of my own again. On our island, people slept on raised platforms in the same room as their sheep, so they were always warm, although a bit smelly. But in Siphnos town, the doors on the ground floor led to separate rooms for animals, while families entered their homes from the porches in the air.

  Whenever I could, I went to the stable to admire the king's horses. “You have more horses than anybody, don't you?” I said to him one day when we were feeding them windfall apples.

  Nicander laughed. “I have six horses. Menelaus, the king of Sparta, has fifty. And in Troy—they have a thousand horses twice the size of mine. They scorn our horses and call them ponies. Trojans tame wild horses and ride on them.”

  “No, they don't,” I said. “Men don't ride on horses.”

  “In Troy they do. And farther east, around the Third Sea, the one called Black, all the people ride horses. Even the women and children.”

  I could not believe that. Horses went too fast. You would fall off. And how could you get up on a horse to start with?

  “The Trojans stand on a stone,” Nicander explained, “so they're high enough to swing a leg over the horse's back. The rider clings with his knees and knots his hands in the mane. The horse goes so fast a man's hair streams out behind him.”

  A donkey won't go any faster than you could walk. What would it be like to move so swiftly that your hair streamed out behind you? My father, Chrysaor, had long h
oneycolored hair. He preferred it loose, but when he was fighting, his slave braided it.

  Every memory of my father made my heart peel away from my ribs and thump in a lonely place. “Anyway, horses eat far too much grain,” I told the king, with the voice used by the queen when she scolded him for keeping six useless creatures. “How could those Trojans feed a thousand of them?”

  “Around Troy the grain fields stretch for miles, uninterrupted by rock and cliff. Troy does not have to buy wheat. They really can feed a thousand horses.”

  Talk of Troy made men's eyes distant and full of memory. “Troy's walls,” Nicander said, “are as high as a cliff. The houses are three stories high and the watchtowers two stories higher than that. I have one main gate; Troy has four. I have a brook that runs only in the spring; Troy has two rivers of her own and the Hellespont as well. I have two thousand sheep; Troy has a hundred flocks that large.”

  I pressed my cheek against the horse's beautiful neck. I did not believe any horse could be twice her size.

  “I have never been inside the gates of Troy,” said Nicander. “They are careful of their gates.”

  “Because the city is so full of treasure,” I said eagerly. “What if a sea captain like you refused to give them a share of his cargo?”

  “You could not outrow or outsail Troy's warships. They'd ram you. Then they'd have your cargo, your ship and you.”

  “Could Troy be taken?” I asked.

  “What a little warrior you are. Chrysaor must have grieved that you were born a girl. Taking Troy would require a vast fleet. Every king on the Main Land and every king from every island would have to join the attack. Such a thing has never happened. And an attack must have a general. To what man would kings submit? And even if such an army were put together, Troy would just sit behind her walls and wait till winter came.”

  “You could fight all winter and starve them out.”

  “Where would you get your own food? Your own firewood? You can't sail during the winter, so you couldn't go get what you needed. How many shiploads of supplies would it take for so huge an army? How could you man all those ships? If you built winter quarters, you'd have to bring tents and lumber, grain for flour, women to bake the bread. And what about the families you left behind, unguarded? While you froze on the beaches of Troy, your people would run out of food and be attacked by some other enemy.”

  I was impatient with details. “But these Trojans who ride horses,” I demanded, “are they good warriors or do they just have a good place on the water? Could you whip them?”

  Nicander grinned. “I would love to bring sobs and groaning to Trojan wives. But I do not think that I or anyone else can whip Troy.”

  Shortly after that, Nicander took half his fleet and sailed for the Third Sea, the one called Black. The queen said it was because I had talked too much about Troy.

  Then she found out that the shepherds had taught me to use a sling.

  The sling is a tiny leather hammock with two cords the length of your arm. You place a small smooth stone in the sling, swing it in hard fast circles and release the cord. The stone flies with great force.

  A shepherd could bring down a partridge for dinner with his sling. In war, of course, a good shot between the enemy's eyes would kill him. It took me a year to learn how to aim at all. But to aim well—to bring back a wandering sheep by kicking up the dust in front of its grazing face— this is a great skill.

  The queen was not impressed and ordered me to the women's wing for good. There I sat, as the women worked looms and the girls spun. A whole day's spinning makes thread for only one hour of weaving. I liked the rhythm, tossing my spindle into the air, feeding fiber into the twist. My spindle was a gift from Petra, polished and painted. Petra said that Helen, wife of King Menelaus, had a spindle made of solid gold. Petra loved to speak of Queen Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and of the one time they had met.

  “A gold spindle would be too heavy to use,” I objected.

  “Anyway,” said Callisto, “I don't believe a queen such as Helen ever actually spins. Helen is the daughter of a god.”

  “Every woman spins,” said Petra, “god child or no.”

  When we weren't spinning or weaving, Callisto and I played with dolls. A girl plays with her dolls until she is married. Callisto and I never admitted it, but both of us would play with dolls forever. Marrying Callisto, only child of the king of Siphnos, would bring a man power, but no children, for Callisto was too weak to bear them. No man wants wealth more than sons. As for me, a hostage whose family no longer cared to redeem me, I had nothing to offer any husband and never would.

  The king was gone for a year. The queen heard petitioners, helped the poor and settled estates. The throne was plastered into the floor to show that the king was attached to his world. Petra never sat on the throne.

  When Nicander came home at last, he brought back the usual treasure: grain, women, lumber; a necklace of deep mysterious blue for Callisto, strange shimmery cloth for Petra, a vase painted with Trojan horses for me, and for himself, a mining engineer.

  “No, Nicander,” said Petra. “Please do not return to that mine.”

  The king laughed. He was very excited. He could hardly wait to show the engineer the old mine shaft. “I made my peace with Apollo,” he told his wife. “Now it merely remains to find a new entrance to the gold.”

  She caught his arm, but he shook her off and with long strides set off for his ruined mine.

  Almost immediately, the sky blackened at the edges. The air took on a strange smell, as if we were biting tin. But the king and his engineer walked on.

  The earthquake hit just as they reached the old shaft. They were thrown to the ground, but not into the hole. The kitchen wing of the palace fell in, and five slaves died. The horses were in the paddock but they broke through the gate. Five ran safely into the fields, but the sixth in his terror galloped off the cliff.

  How the king and queen argued over the meaning of that horse's death!

  “Apollo wants his gold left alone,” said Petra, furious and afraid.

  “Now, my dear,” said Nicander. “Sometimes an earthquake is just an earthquake. It is my gold and I am taking it.”

  THE DAY CAME WHEN half my life had been spent on Siphnos, and most of that in the prison of the women's wing. That morning, Petra and Callisto were braiding flowers of beaten gold into each other's hair. They had hair as dark and beautiful as pines in shadow. I remembered suddenly how fondly my mother used to tell me that my hair was the color of a wild hyacinth.

  I drifted out of the room and slipped down the stairs to the courtyard.

  There were no men around. Half the men were pirating with Lykos and the other half were digging yet another entrance to the gold mines. They'd gotten down some twenty feet into the rock, but water was seeping up to meet them. Nicander had not given up, although the queen had asked him to. Every day he marched a mile north of Siphnos town in the hope of gold.

  I went out the Curved Gate and headed for the hills. I threaded through the apple orchard, where orchardmen were painstakingly watering each tree. I leaped over stone walls and scrabbled up a sloping field where longhaired sheep grazed, and I waved to their shepherd, a boy of six. There were no wolves on Siphnos, so the task of a shepherd was to keep his flock from falling off cliffs. We did not waste grown men on this task.

  I climbed even higher than the ancient olive, up a crag that broke under my fingers like dry sand and twice sent me tumbling almost to my death. I wanted to reach the highest place on Siphnos, for places closer to the gods are sacred. When I reached it, sweating and gasping, I kissed the feet of the ancient idol there and faced the dot in the sea I believed to be my island. I knew in my heart that there were many islands tilting in the Aegean, and that the isle of my birth was four days' sail and far over the horizon. Nevertheless, I waved to my mother and father, as if a wave of the hand could cross the waves of the sea.

  A row of little red oblong sails b
obbed in the water like flowers. Our fleet was returning. There were more ships than had sailed away a few months ago. This meant that our men had commandeered ships from some other harbor, and we were richer, and Nicander was stronger.

  My hostage father did not actually care for trade, although his men did exchange leather for wheat and purple dye for bronze. There is no honor in trade. What poet can sing of your excellent exchange of pottery for rope? Whereas, were you to pirate some great city like Smyrna or Antissa, what songs would be sung of your valor!

  I made my way down to the sunburned meadow and my tree as old as time and called a prayer to my goddess. On Siphnos, gods possessed names. The king and queen prayed to Athena and Apollo, to Demeter and Dionysus, to Poseidon and Zeus. On my birth island, we were distant from the knowledge of so many gods and goddesses.

  I stood on tiptoe on the old stump and reached into the small hole where I kept my mother's jewels. Yes, they were still there. They would always be there. Nobody but me dared poke bare fingers into Medusa's scream. Then I climbed up a fat and twisty branch to curl myself in the very best arm of the tree. I dropped my sandals onto the stump table and wiggled my bare toes.

  Out of the silence of the lonely meadow came a whisper.

  I sat very still, remembering that sensible men never came near this tree.

  Across the blue kettle of the sea raced the ships. Nicander's white octopus was now visible on the closest sail. The sails of the conquered ships, also red, wore a different sign, but from this distance, I could not make it out.

  Suddenly every ship lowered sail at the same instant, and out came the oars, and their white shafts feathered the water. Oars control a ship better than sails. It struck me as odd that the ships were approaching so quickly. The harbor itself wasn't on this side of the island and ships heavy with plunder should have been going to the harbor where donkeys and carts awaited. But they were rowing full speed toward the palace side, where cliffs fell hundreds of feet and the only way up from the sliver of beach was a narrow twisting footpath.