Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

CHAPTER NINE

KING LAOMEDON

THE KING WALKED OVER to a table and poured himself a cup of wine. He did it with deliberate slowness, like a great beast deciding its next move.

When at last he looked up, he asked, “What is your name, daughter of Otrere?”

“Hippolyta,” she answered. “Princess of the Amazons.”

“But not the oldest of Otrere’s brats,” he said.

“Second oldest,” she admitted.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment but drained the cup of wine halfway. Hippolyta felt every bit of the time stretching out, like a leash around her neck.

“Otrere,” Laomedon mused. “Lovely copper hair. Amber eyes. Nice smile. We spent some time together. Twice.” He grinned, and the wine glistened on his lips.

Hippolyta hated the way he spoke of her mother, as if she were a broodmare he’d owned.

“We last met some months ago, on the Phrygian border by Aphrodite’s grotto.” The smile grew broader as he remembered. “I asked her to stay longer, for she matches me in spirit. I like that. But she would not. You Amazons are a restless lot.” Now the smile was incandescent, like a candle before it burns down a house. “Take her my warmest regards when you go.”

“She needs more than your”—Hippolyta spit out the next two words as if they were some filth in her mouth—“warmest regards.” Drawing in a deep breath, she said, “She needs more because of that child of yours.”

“The child you brought?”

He’s toying with me, Hippolyta thought. He knows very well the child is his. But she couldn’t think why he should be doing so.

“Yes,” she said, “your son. Do you deny that he is yours, King Laomedon?”

He shrugged, finished the wine, and set the cup back on the table. “I saw a resemblance to her. Not to me. Still, she has no reason to lie about such a thing. So, you’ve brought him to his father’s house, as is your custom. Very well, princess, you’ve done your duty. If you go to the kitchens, they will feed you before you leave.”

He reached across the table to a bowl of grapes and plucked several, ready to pop them into his mouth.

Hippolyta walked over and almost put her hand on his arm, before thinking better of it. “My mother needs your help,” she pressed. “The mother of your son, Podarces, needs your help.”

He paused, a grape halfway to his lips. “My help? Amazons never ask for help from men. They just use them to beget children and leave.” There was an undertone of anger in his voice, as if some anger with Otrere’s refusal to stay with him lingered.

“Because Mother wouldn’t sacrifice the boy on Artemis’ altar but sent him here instead, she’s been cast in prison,” Hippolyta told him.

This time the king looked at her with great interest. “But when she sent me Tithonus, there was no such trouble,” he said.

Tithonus! That little … brat? The other brother? Hippolyta could not believe it. But she had to answer quickly and not show her surprise.

“It’s against our laws for a queen to bear more than one live son,” Hippolyta said, her voice barely a whisper. She would not tell him why.

A mocking smile lit Laomedon’s handsome face and changed it horribly. “Now we come to it! You Amazons thrive on superstitions, like crows feeding on dead flesh. Ha!”

Why, he’s just as brutish and selfish as any man, only with a prettier face. Oh, Mother, how could you have let that face seduce you? Hippolyta thought. But then she realized she was being unfair. Her mother had sought out a king to her queen, power to her power, beauty to her beauty. Her only interest had been to bring forth a strong, handsome child. She had not expected a boy.

But Laomedon was still Hippolyta’s only hope. She would have to put aside her disgust for him and beg for her mother’s life. “Queen Otrere has been stripped of her throne and will be tried for sacrilege.”

He popped a grape in his mouth. For a moment he savored the grape. “It is of no interest to me.” He glanced down, savoring the look of astonishment on her face. “And what would you have me do, little princess? Lead an army into Amazon country and set Otrere back on her throne? Leave my own city unguarded, my people unprotected, to march my troops through our enemies and into a barbaric country to settle a quarrel between savage women? Do you think I’m mad?”

“My mother has given you a child,” Hippolyta cried. “No, she has given you two children.”

“So have many women. I will not go to war for them.”

“So she means nothing to you?”

Raising an eyebrow, he said with slow deliberateness, “My horse means something to me. When he dies, I will get another. I value my sword, my shield, my guard.”

Hippolyta couldn’t contain her anger any longer. The man had mocked her, her mother, her people. She lashed out an arm and knocked the bowl of fruit from the table. Grapes flew in all directions.

“You’re no king!” Hippolyta raged. “The lowest beggar in the streets has more honor than you.”

“Guards!” he thundered. But even before the doors could be flung open, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the floor. “I am the king, and I will decide what is honorable here in Troy.”

She looked up, more surprised than hurt. “May the gods curse you, King Laomedon.”

His face darkened. “They already have.”

Just then the guards burst in.

Laomedon ran a hand down his tunic, smoothing it. “Take her to the cells.”

The guards seized Hippolyta by the arms and yanked her to her feet. She struggled against them, but they were too strong.

“You needn’t be gentle,” the king said as the men bundled her out of the door. “She’s an Amazon, which means she has no tender female sensibilities to injure.”

They hauled her out of a back entrance and across a bare yard where soldiers were practicing with their spears. She tried to kick at the men who held her, but they were used to such tactics.

One of the spear handlers yelled out, “Leave her with us for an hour, Caracus, we’ll show her how to behave.”

But the guards didn’t reply, merely dragged her to a large stone building standing on the other side of the courtyard. There they hauled her through a thick wooden gate and on inside.

A stiff-legged jailer led them past a long row of locked cells from which hooting and cursing voices called out.

“Let her go!”

“Bring her here!”

“May your wounds never heal, jailer!”

“The gods look down on your injustice, Laomedon!”

They stopped in front of a heavy wooden door, which the jailer opened with a large bronze key. Then the two soldiers threw her inside.

Stumbling forward, she remembered at the very last minute to tuck in her head and roll. She fetched up against the far wall, humiliated but unhurt. She heard the soldiers laugh uproariously as they slammed the door shut.

Struggling to her feet, Hippolyta felt a twinge in her shoulder, where it had struck the wall. The roots of her hair stung where Laomedon had grabbed her. She must have twisted her ankle slightly when she tumbled into the cell. But what hurt most was her pride.

She limped over to the cell door, glad no one could see her, and looked out of the small grille. She could see neither soldiers nor jailers.

Which doesn’t mean there’s no one there, she reminded herself. Only that I cannot see farther.

Wrenching herself away from the grille and the light, she began to pace the confines of the cell. It was a much bigger place than the one her mother lay in, back in Themiscyra. But that cell at least had been clean. This one was disgusting. The walls were dank, the floor scattered with a thin layer of dirty straw.

Hippolyta tested the door with its small barred window.

Thick, sturdy, unmovable.

She felt along every inch of the walls.

Even thicker, sturdier.

She sat down on the floor to think. But every thought led back to one: I have no friends here, no allies. I am at the mercy of a heartless king.

In the evening—she knew the time only because the jailer told her so—she was given a bowl of thin, cold gruel. An armed guard stood by her as she ate, to prevent any trouble.

“Eat up,” sniggered the jailer. “We want meat on you for tomorrow.”

She dashed the empty bowl at him, but it missed, and the guard struck her in the chest with the butt of his spear. She fell backward, managing to miss hitting her head on the wall. But she lay there, pretending to be knocked out. That way she could avoid more of a beating, and quite possibly she might hear something to her advantage.

The sniggering jailer said, “Spirited all right.”

The guard grunted. “Not that it’ll do her any good. She’s scarcely a bite as it is.”

They left, locking the door behind them, and darkness seeped into the cell.

Scarcely a bite! What did they mean? She’d heard of kingdoms where prisoners were thrown to wild animals. Or maybe Laomedon was that vilest of creatures, one that devoured his own kind.

She shivered and started to whimper. Then she stopped herself. “Amazons do not cry,” she whispered.

But she was cold, hurt, lonely, scared, and a long way from home.

She didn’t cry. But in her sleep, something wet ran down her face from her eyes. She wiped it away without ever waking.