Wrath of the Furies

XXIV

“We should go back now. Especially if you want to get any sleep tonight.”

Sleep was far from my thoughts, though as soon as Samson mentioned it I felt a great weariness descend on me. It was not the weariness of spent muscles but of spent emotions. I had been made to feel more than enough for one day-beginning with the sight of that poor Roman begging for food and being driven from the city, to the sacrifice to Artemis, through my long day inside the temple, to my reunion with Amestris-which by itself would have unsettled my emotions quite enough-and then to the terrible moment when we all watched, helpless, as lovely little Freny was led away, destined for slaughter.

After the queen’s departure, Amestris and her mistress rejoined me in Anthea’s room upstairs. The two women were so distraught they could hardly speak. I would have held Amestris had she indicated any inclination to allow it, but the two women seemed entirely occupied in hugging and comforting each other, so I stood by and watched them, as mute as the man I pretended to be, unable to think of anything I could do or say that would bring consolation.

There was a knock at the door. It was Samson. I let him in and told the women what I had told the doorkeeper, that he was my hired bodyguard. It seemed simpler than explaining the complicated truth.

“How did you find your way to this room?” I asked him.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t seen by the queen and her party-I kept well out of sight. But once they departed I decided to find you as quickly as possible. A small bribe to the doorkeeper brought me here.”

Anthea looked up from her huddled embrace with Amestris. “A bribe?” she said, stifling her sobs.

“By the prophets, I’ve spoken out of turn,” said Samson, looking sincerely abashed. “Now I’ve gotten the fellow into trouble.”

“Why do you care?” I said, and rather harshly, venting my frustrations on him.

“It’s a kind of betrayal,” he said. “A bribe is a bond that works both ways, and unthinkingly I broke that bond just now. Do you not see that, Gordianus?” He shook his head. “You do indeed have much to learn about being a-”

“You are about to speak out of turn again … bodyguard!”

He shut his mouth and cast a glance at the women, looking even more abashed. The long day was beginning to wear on him, too, making him careless.

“But Samson is right about one thing,” I said. “I have to leave now.” How I had rather stay, and spend the night with you, Amestris!, I thought, but the Fates, or Artemis, or some other force-the dreaded Furies?-had decided that such a reunion was not to be.

“But Gordianus, where are you staying?” said Anthea. “You belong here, with us. You haven’t even seen Father yet-”

“Nor should I, I think. Please don’t tell him I was here.” Even as I said the words, I realized how presumptuous they were. What right had I to ask Anthea to conceal something from her father? “I came seeking Antipater, and Antipater isn’t here. So on that count, I’ve failed.”

“When we see him again-”

“Yes, tell him I came looking for him. As long as he’s alive and well, then I haven’t yet failed entirely in what I came to do.”

“How can he find you?”

I shook my head. “I can’t tell you where I’m staying. Nor can I explain the mess I’ve gotten myself into.” If I began to do so, the tale would lead inevitably to the revelation that I was to witness Freny’s death. The sobbing of the two women had finally subsided, and I had no wish to set it off again. “I’ve traveled here under another name, pretending to be someone and something I’m not. I can’t tell you more than that.”

“Very well, Gordianus.” Anthea’s voice was suddenly cold and distant. As I had vented my frustration on Samson, so, I think, she was venting her emotions on me. “If you must go, then go. Perhaps we’ll see you again, or perhaps not. Perhaps we’ll tell Antipater that you came, or perhaps we won’t.”

“Mistress, no!” whispered Amestris, her voice hoarse from weeping. “We can’t be angry with Gordianus. Not after all that he did for us.”

Now it was Anthea’s turn to look abashed. “You’re right, of course. Oh, my lovely Persian dove is always right!” She touched Amestris’s cheek and gazed at her in such a way that I felt a stab of something like jealousy.

Samson tugged at my tunic. I realized I was staring at them and lowered my eyes. “Anthea, Amestris, I’ll leave you now.”

If I expected a parting embrace from Amestris, I was to be disappointed. She remained where she was, seated next to her mistress-too exhausted and distraught even to give me a friendly farewell kiss, I thought. I desired that kiss from her more than ever. It was not to be.

Samson led me stealthily through the house and past the doorkeeper. The man studiously avoided seeing us, even when Samson pressed a coin into his hand-not part of the bribe, I thought, but guilt money for having betrayed the man’s indiscretion to his mistress.

More coins changed hands at the guarded door in the city gate. Samson paid, and I stepped through, but he didn’t come with me. I presumed he was headed back to the palace. Or was he headed off on yet another mission, with some purpose unknown to me?

I followed the Sacred Way. The paving stones seemed to glow very faintly, reflecting the pale starlight. In my yellow tunic, I, too, must have seemed to glow. The recumbent forms that dotted the landscape looked more like stones than people, but from either side I occasionally heard a sleepy whimper or a hushed voice asking if I had food or water.

“Don’t even ask him!” whispered one voice. “He’ll only spit at us, or hurt us.”

How I longed to take off the yellow tunic and find myself a toga to wear, and say to them, “I’m one of you. I’m a Roman, too!” But I had no toga, and I didn’t dare to speak. I hurried on.

At last I came to the temple steps, so crowded with restless sleepers they were almost impassable. The light of two burning braziers at the top of the steps helped me find my way.

Inside, the floor of the temple was likewise cluttered with sleepers. The flickering light of scattered lamps helped to guide me, but still I became disoriented within the vast interior. Weary and confused, I finally found my bearings and came to the hidden door. Slowly, with each footstep heavier than the last, I made my way up the stairs to the secret chamber in the pediment.

Zeuxidemus was where I had left him, snoring softly at the foot of the statue of Artemis.

I found a coverlet and some pillows and collapsed to the floor. Almost at once I fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

My slumber was filled with strange dreams.

I dreamed that I was not asleep at all, but lying awake amid the pillows at the feet of Artemis, with the young priest snoring nearby. Suddenly the goddess above me gave a sigh. She broke from her stiff pose, stretched her back, and shook out her arms. She looked down at me, and then leaned forward. The pendulous, fleshy orbs adorning the front of her body hung above me, swaying slightly, like heavy fruit from a tree.

“Gordianus,” she said, in a soft, pleasing voice. “They tell me you’ve come to ask a favor of me. They say you’ve gone mute and want your voice back. But you aren’t mute at all, are you?”

“No, goddess,” I said. It seemed a proper way to address her. “O great Artemis” would be too formal, while “Artemis” alone would be too familiar.

“But there is something you desire, is there not?”

I was suddenly heartsick and filled with dread. “Yes, goddess-that we all should be safe from harm.” I meant Antipater, but also Bethesda, and Amestris, and little Freny, and my father back in Rome.

I didn’t say their names aloud, but Artemis knew my thoughts. “That would be too much to ask. You must give up one of them, I think.”

“Then … if one of them dies, all the others will be well?”

“They must all die, sooner or later.” She shook her head. The motion caused the dangling orbs to sway, and now they were not fleshy at all, but more like dried gourds. They made a hollow, clacking noise that set my teeth on edge.

“Must Freny die, then?”

“Can you imagine any way that her death might be stopped? I can do nothing to interfere. She is not being sacrificed to me, but to them.” She made a gesture with one hand, seeming to indicate others who were behind her, out of sight because she blocked the view. By some magic, space itself was bent for an instant, so that I caught a glimpse of the dark things that lurked beyond her-things unspeakably hideous, hungry, and hateful. I heard a slithering of batlike wings and a shrill cackling.

I opened my mouth to cry out, but Artemis put a finger to my lips. “We must not name them,” she whispered. “Even to speak their names is to invite their wrath. That is why the poets of olden days called them Eumenides, ‘the Kindly Ones’-the very opposite of what they are.”

The rasp of slithering wings diminished, and the cackling faded. Suddenly we were no longer in the temple, but in a wood beside a stream. The goddess was no longer the Artemis of Ephesus, but Diana as I had grown up knowing her, a beautiful young maiden dressed for the hunt in a flimsy, loose-fitting tunic, tanned and tawny, bare-limbed and holding a bow. A warm breeze sighed through the sun-dappled wood, carrying a sound that came from far away, not the cackling of the Kindly Ones but something nonetheless disquieting, but still so faint and far away I paid it no attention as I stepped away from the goddess, toward the brook, where a little waterfall emptied with a babbling noise into a small pool surrounded by mossy stones. There in the pool stood Amestris, her nakedness lit by beams of sunlight and by glittering flashes of light bouncing off the water-naked as I had never seen her, for when we made love she had come to me by night and departed by dawn. I felt a stab of heartsickness and a desperate longing, for she was more beautiful than anything could be in the waking world. She radiated a kind of beauty that can be seen only in a dream, a beauty that brings pure bliss.

The disquieting noise carried on the warm breeze grew closer, and louder, but with the splashing of the waterfall in my ears I couldn’t make it out, and paid it no heed.

I stepped into the water, and realized that I was naked, too. The water was cold around my feet, while the fragrant breeze from the forest was warm upon my arms and legs. Patches of sunlight were all around me, on the mossy stones and on the leaves of the trees, on the splashing water and on the wet, glistening flesh of Amestris. I imagined that we were creatures made of sunlight, Amestris and I, and I longed for us to merge together into a single, pure beam of light. But when I reached out to touch her, she was flesh, and I was flesh, and then I wanted our flesh to touch, everywhere and all at once.

The baying of the distant hounds grew louder.

Then I realized it was not Amestris in the pool, but Freny. Still holding her by the arms, I looked over my shoulder, and saw that Diana, standing on the bank where I had left her, was very angry.

“How dare you gaze upon the virgin naked in the bath?” she shouted. “How dare you touch her?”

“But … I only wanted to save her,” I said.

The hounds were now very near, and very loud.

“Ha! Save yourself, Actaeon-if you can!” said Diana. “Run, Actaeon! Run!”

The hounds were almost upon us. I could see them in the woods beyond Diana. Freny slipped from my grasp. I looked all around and saw that she had vanished.

I ran. Naked and barefoot I bounded through the woods. Branches and twigs scraped my flesh. Brambles bit my ankles. Thorns stabbed my feet. I ran into a mass of hanging vines, which slithered around me like writhing snakes. I was trapped like a wild beast in a net, and then the hounds were upon me, tearing at me with their claws and their fangs-

“Have mercy on me, Artemis!” I cried. “Have mercy! I beg you!”

Then I remembered the talisman that hung from the chain around my neck, my lucky lion’s fang. I laughed aloud with relief, for as long as I possessed it-at least in the dream-no harm could come to me. I reached up to grab hold of it-only to find that it was gone!

I was naked and defenseless against the ravening hounds. Blood spattered my face. Thrashing in agony, I looked around me and saw that the leaves and vines were covered by a shower of blood, as if the sky had opened and poured down red rain. There was so much blood, it could not all be mine. No single mortal could contain so much blood! The rain grew even heavier, flooding the earth. There was such a rush of blood that it swept the hounds away, and the mesh of vines released me, and I found myself awash on the grisly current, wounded and weak and about to drown in a sea of blood-

“By sweet Artemis, wake up! Wake up!” someone said.

It was Zeuxidemus, shaking me awake. Above and behind him loomed the Artemis of Ephesus. The statue stared straight ahead, as stiff and silent as ever, but now silhouetted by bright sunlight.