The Amazon and the Warrior Read online

  Play stopped. Full of childish giggles, they rushed to her and Hippolyta for a hug or a pat on the head from either sister. How happy these children were. Carefree. As Damon had said he was. Someday, when her duty to Themiskyra was fulfilled, she wanted as many children as the goddess would grant. She would marry and stop using the fennel potion and sponges that usually prevented conception. At this moment, the children’s closeness suddenly made her rather wish she had taken time to bathe.

  Hippolyta tugged Pentha’s arm. Pentha turned to find herself looking into the disapproving face of Euryclea, who had just come out of the Great Hall. Along with Gryn and eight other women, Euryclea served as a member of the Women’s Council. The children, perhaps seeing Euryclea’s cross look, scampered back to their game.

  “What a scandalous way to dress,” said the woman who had passionately wanted her own daughter, Marpessa, to win the contest to be Warrior Queen.

  The tall, gaunt woman wore a lovely ankle-length, yellow linen gown, bare over one shoulder and clasped at the waist with a green and yellow girdle. Dark hair swirled in curls on top of her head, the tresses bound with ribbons matching the girdle. And she blocked their path.

  Pentha stiffened.

  Euryclea actually appeared to sniff in their direction. “Clearly you’ve been hunting. The two of you, you look like you’ve come right off the mountain.”

  Hippolyta said, “If we hadn’t been summoned to Harmonia, I would love to hear about Marpessa. I have not seen her lately. But we are expected. Urgently.”

  This won a smile. “It’s nice of you to notice, Hippolyta, that Marpessa has been away. She is still serving on the southern border.” She frowned again as she looked at Pentha. “A Warrior Queen needs to set a good example. What will all these children think, Pentha, when you show no respect and come here in such a state?”

  Euryclea didn’t wait for explanation or answer. She clasped and twitched her skirt in a show of pique, passed them both, and strutted off.

  Pentha looked at Hippolyta. They chuckled.

  From the temple came the sweet sound of priestesses singing a familiar paean to Artemis. They entered the Great Hall and moving swiftly down a long side corridor, came to the living quarters of the High Priestess, Themiskyra’s Hearth Queen.

  The woman attending the chamber’s entry bowed her head and said, “Go in, Pentha. They’ve been hoping you might arrive in time.”

  Pentha respected Harmonia who, like her room, always projected a confident welcome and flawless taste. The room was a long rectangle with a round hearth at its center. A clerestory let in light and let out smoke. In winter, the hearth blazed continually, but now, in summer and with the day already warming, the heart of the room lay at rest. Bearskin rugs warmed and softened the gray, slate floors. Murals in earth tones with splashes of bright reds and yellows gave the walls life, scenes of Artemis bunting—deer, lion, and boar.

  The real leopard always found at the side of a Themiskyran Hearth Queen reclined next to the hearth, the tip of its tail twitching. Seeing it, Pentha’s thoughts flew again to the mysterious Damonides and his own animal companions—falcon and wolf. I want to see him again.

  Gryn sat before an ivory-inlaid oak table upon which sat a slate draughtboard. She held an ivory playing piece in her hand, but she was watching Harmonia. Harmonia paced, head high and back stiff, holding an ebony playing piece.

  Harmonia stopped and looked at Gryn. “I simply cannot imagine what Priam was thinking!” Their Hearth Queen spoke with a slight lisp. “Surely Hekuba had no part in such a folly. I have been told repeatedly by Semele that Hecuba is a clever woman.”

  Priam. Hekuba. Troy’s king and queen. A flicker of buried rage warmed Pentha’s cheeks. Did this sudden meeting somehow involve the Acheans? Eight years now the Acheans had blockaded Troy, the royal Achilles among them. And only a short time ago she had imagined the pleasure of killing him.

  Harmonia wore a simple linen gown of white with a blue shawl over her shoulders. At her ripe age of fifty and five she often found it difficult to keep warm. Her dark hair, shot with gray, was let down in a simple style one would have in private with a close friend. Nevertheless, she wore the tiara of interwoven arrows, the symbol of Artemis, that indicated her status as Hearth Queen of Themiskyra.

  Gryn answered, “The Trojans, so I’ve been told, don’t listen much to their women, wives, or mistresses. So for Hekuba, being queen may not give her words much weight. Besides, they say Helen is not just beautiful, but charming. They say she’s won the hearts of both Priam and Hekuba.”

  Pentha’s pulse quickened. Yes! This was definitely about Troy!

  10

  WITH HIPPOLYTA BESIDE HER, PENTHA ENTERED Hannonia’s chamber. The two older women turned to them.

  Gryn wore a long simple gown of dark green. Her chestnut hair, once the same color of chestnut as Hippolyta’s, was now nearly white. She usually wore it bound at the back of her neck, but it hung to her waist, as if she had spent the night with Harmonia.

  She was thick in the middle with the age of fifty and four and with having delivered four children, but otherwise still fit and agile. Strong, high cheekbones and clear, gray-green eyes composed a face that radiated the good will at her core.

  Pentha strode with Hippolyta to their mother and kissed her.

  “I’m so very glad you came in time,” Harmonia said, looking at Pentha.

  Harmonia called to the woman at the door. “Go fetch that little Hittite merchant at once!” The woman set off briskly.

  Harmonia strode to the table, slapped the ebony piece next to a game board, and looked back at Pentha with fire in her eyes.

  Pentha approached the leopard. The beast yawned, showing glistening white fangs. Pentha squatted beside her, cupped both hands behind her ears and rubbed hard on the soft fur to massage the muscles of her neck. For reward, Pentha received a wet, scratching swipe of tongue across the wrist.

  “The merchant, Muttalusha, has brought word from Troy,” Harmonia said. “I want you to hear it from his own lips if he hasn’t already started back.”

  Harmonia was rarely out of sorts, but clearly at this moment, she was in high dudgeon.

  “How was the hunting?” Gryn asked.

  Hippolyta arched an eyebrow and smiled. “Pentha got caught.”

  “Caught?” Harmonia gave Hippolyta a sharp look.

  Would Hippolyta now tell everyone they met how she had foolishly been trapped, hung upside down for all the world to gawk at, even if the world had only been one man and her woman friend?

  She cast a glare toward Hippolyta.

  With a positively wicked grin, Hippolyta said, “She stepped into a loop trap, and the most unusual man came to our rescue to help me cut her down.” She turned to Gryn. “It was Damonides, mother.”

  “That recluse?” said Harmonia.

  “The very same,” Hippolyta answered.

  Before this exchange could become even more embarrassing, with Hippolyta graphically describing how the poor, wounded Pentha had been carried to safety in Damon’s arms, the merchant hurried into the room.

  The small man sported a long, gray-streaked beard. Tiny, close-set eyes of a weasel took in the room. Pentha knew him so far only by reputation. Although his name was Hittite, he claimed no country, only to be a seller of wares. Because of the nature of his life, traveling widely, he was privy to all sorts of information. And he’d never yet been caught claiming to know something that later proved untrue.

  “You know our Warrior Queen,” Harmonia said.

  He bowed low to Pentha.

  “I want you to tell her exactly what you told us. Leave nothing out.”

  He nodded to Harmonia. “As you wish, great Queen.”

  “We have been hunting for days,” Pentha said. “I prefer to sit.”

  She took a place next to the draught table. Hippolyta and Harmonia took seats by the hearth.

  “Speak,” Pentha said to him.

  “There has, off and on, bee
n discord among the Achean kings laying siege to Troy.”

  Pentha felt the skin at the back of her neck prickle. She reached next to the game board and picked up an ebony draught piece shaped like a three-quarter moon and began to roll it.

  Muttalusha hesitated.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Their High King, Agamemnon, apparently wished to end the war. Before this war season’s first battle, Agamemnon sent a page to Priam. Agamemnon offered to convince his forces to take their ships and leave those lands and return to their homes if the Trojans would meet three conditions. They must give back the wealth that Helen and Paris took with them when she left her husband, the Spartan king Menelaos. They must pay a rather hefty tribute to the Acheans. And they must surrender Helen to Menelaos.” He paused.

  “And?”

  “Priam refused.”

  “Can you imagine,” Harmonia burst in, leaping once more to her feet. “Priam must be the world’s greatest fool. All this bloodshed and waste could have ended.”

  The merchant continued. “The Acheans subsequently lost the first engagement. Rather badly. Although their encampment in the bay south of Troy was still quite secure when I left.”

  Pentha had the strangest feeling. The merchant claimed that Agamemnon offered to go home and take his thousands of warriors with him—and she had felt a jolting stab of disappointment. Almost anger.

  If the Acheans went home, Achilles would surely go with them. And then, under no circumstances she could imagine, could she enjoy a bloody revenge. She could never make him pay for her mother or for Derinoe. Of course, there was no way she could do that now, but this strange disappointment made clear that a place in her heart clung to the possibility of revenge.

  She asked, “Do they continue their blockade of the Hellespont?”

  “Yes, Queen Penthesilea. No one passes into the straits without paying the Acheans now. Including myself. They are enlarging their coffers quite nicely.”

  Harmonia asked, her dark eyes burning, “Have the Acheans learned the secret of its navigation from the Thraceans?”

  He shook his head, a nervous jerk, as if he expected that Harmonia might hold him personally to blame should this disaster have occurred. “The secret of that great feat,” said the merchant, “still lies with the Thracian family of Grammeron. Only their clan knows how to guide a ship so as to defeat the winds, the treacherous currents, the shoals. This very last trip. I will tell you. It was the worst ever! The rocks. The waves.” He put his hands to his head, a gesture dramatically emphasizing alarm and thus his own bravery. “I was certain the Furies were coming for me.”

  Pentha felt no worry about an Achean attack by land. Long distance and rugged terrain separated the Acheans from Themiskyra, the reason the People of Artemis had been spared the eight years of Achean savagery inflicted on cities and kingdoms along the Aegean coast. And although passage south through the straights was easily done, passing north, without whatever secret the family of Grammeron possessed, was impossible. But if the Acheans could bring their ships through the straits and the Sea of Marmora and then into the Euxine Sea itself, no more than a few days stood between them and Themiskyra.

  Muttalusha continued while looking around from chair to bench as if hoping someone would invite him to sit. “The Acheans seem willing to let it remain the Grammerons’ secret, so long as it’s the Acheans, not Priam, who collect the taxes from ships allowed to pass. And so long as the Grammerons don’t pilot any ship in league with Troy.”

  Harmonia sat again by Gryn, who put a comforting hand over Harmonia’s.

  Pentha stood, and still turning the draught piece, took Harmonia’s place at pacing.

  To the merchant she said, “Have the Thracians broken their vow to Priam? Are they piloting Achean ships?”

  “Not to my knowledge, most honored.”

  So Themiskyra was still safe. A weight like a boulder of iron oar lifted from her shoulders, and that pleased her. At least her desire for revenge didn’t extend so far that she would have Achilles and his horde attack here just so she could enjoy the personal satisfaction of killing him.

  Harmonia asked, “Have you further questions, Pentha?”

  She shook her head.

  To Muttalusha, Harmonia said, “You are dismissed.”

  He bowed deeply, turned, and scurried out.

  Harmonia stood again. “I have never liked Priam. He opposed us and supported Bellerophon against us.” Her voice expressed grief now, not anger. “He was very young then, but I doubt he’s changed much. He does not like me, and I think that now I must detest him. Why didn’t he give back the woman and her wealth? Why not end this nightmare for his people and for all the country that surrounds Troy?”

  Gryn sighed. “For us, at least, the news is good. The Acheans still have no access to the Euxine Sea. Although I am tempted to say something that may sound shocking.”

  Hippolyta patted her mother’s hand. “Say it.”

  “Sometimes I almost long for serious battle. I remember glorious days when I was young, when Iobates set Bellerophon on us and we ventured with our men out of Themiskyra.”

  Pentha felt a jab of surprise. What a strange thing for mother to want. To fight alongside men!

  “I admit we had terrible losses,” Gryn continued. “That’s why, of course, I say my feelings are shocking. But …” Her eyes had a wistful look. “I think I miss the excitement. I miss the tight companionship we had with the men. Now our horsewomen are enough to police the western and southern borders, and we still have peace in the east. The men are left to their lives, and we to ours.”

  Harmonia shook her head. “Dear Gryn, I’m indeed amazed that you should think such a thing. The whole point is that by our defense we live at peace. We don’t need our men to waste themselves on war.”

  Gryn sighed. “Yes, I know. It was just son … .”

  With only half her attention, Pentha followed what the two women shared about the “glorious days.” Finally a nagging fear found its voice. “Do you think Muttalusha is telling the truth? That the Acheans are still barred from the Euxine?”

  Both gazes fixed on her.

  To Harmonia she said, “What word does Semele send you from Troy with the pigeons?”

  “Messages come weekly. It has been some time since she has sent any word concerning the matter of the Hellespont, but if there were any significant change, she would have informed me at once.”

  Semele served as priestess of Artemis at Troy. Once the most honored of all the divinities in Troy, Artemis had fallen from that high pinnacle. Sadly, Trojans once faithful to Artemis had accepted the horror of the submission of women, an evil common now in much, perhaps most, of the outside world. So they strayed from worship of the goddess who was women’s greatest champion. Semele served faithfully, but to only a handful of worshippers. Apollo’s temple sat now in the Trojan citadel’s most honored place. And another temple by the palace honored Athena. The same Athena the Acheans claimed as their greatest champion among the gods.

  Pentha stared at the floor, a beautiful day having somehow slipped into gloom. To no one in particular she said, “I pray that Grammeron and his family remain faithful to their oath to Priam. I pray they continue to refuse to bring Acheans into the Euxine Sea. But oaths, as we all know, even ones taken by good men, can be broken.”

  11

  THE DRESSMAKER FITTING HER FOR A NEW DANCING gown of an exquisite golden color had been delayed so Derinoe, dressed in a suitably conservative dark blue gown that matched her eyes, hurried uphill on Troy’s main thoroughfare toward the citadel, dodging heavy foot traffic and the curtained and gilded litters of the wealthy.

  Troubled thoughts crowded her mind as she passed through the citadel’s southern gate and into the royal precinct. One of the few donkey carts allowed inside cluttered noisily past. Empty clay wine jars rattling in it bore the mark of the palace stores.

  The owner lashed the poor donkey with a willow rod and cursed. Derinoe would
curse too if she thought it would do any good. Instead, she was meeting on this early summer day with Cassandra to pray.

  The wine vendor headed downhill over the cobble toward the gate and the city beyond. His residence and warehouse would be there, as were her two modest rooms. She passed a royal bakeshop and her mouth watered at the smell of fresh bread.

  After so many years of the Achean blockade, the general air she always felt from the Trojans when passing along Troy’s streets or visiting shops was somber. The sad mood lifted for short periods after Trojan forces struck a victory, but sunk again when the war went badly. In three days, Hektor would once more lead his men against the Acheans. She and Hektor’s sister, Cassandra, would sacrifice at the temple to Athena for Hektor’s success. Or if not success, she thought, at least his safe return. He must come back safe.

  The bronze gate of the home of Cassandra, daughter of Priam, king of Troy, stood twice as tall as a man. Its builders had affixed owls to the bronze work, perched solemnly or in flight and rendered in silver. Owls were Athena’s symbols, and Athena the goddess who owned Cassandra’s passionate devotion.

  Today the gateposts, faced with polished white limestone, reminded Derinoe of whitened bones. She entered the reception courtyard and immediately heard children’s laughter. Her son and daughter would be playing with them.

  Cassandra let Derinoe’s children spend their days with the children of Cassandra’s lady-in-waiting because Cassandra was Derinoe’s mentor and friend, and because Derinoe’s daughter by Hektor was Cassandra’s niece. Derinoe had shared the secret of her pregnancy with Cassandra as soon as Derinoe knew she carried Hektor’s child. She owed her very life to Cassandra. She would not have lied even if she had wanted to. Fortunately, Cassandra had been pleased, not at all alarmed or distressed, by the news.

  Cassandra loved her brother dearly. For that matter, so did everyone in Troy. Priam’s oldest son, the heir to Troy’s throne, was widely regarded as a man of high honor and great courage. So it wasn’t surprising that Cassandra wanted his child—even if a secret child got of a mistress—to be well cared for. Derinoe had often heard Hektor express gratitude to Cassandra for her thoughtfulness to Derinoe and both of her children.