Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (10 page)

T’érsite dropped his gaze.
“Idé,
no, I am mistaken!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “It is a boy, after all! Looks just like his daddy, too! Now, let me carry the sweet, young lamb around the hearth. Then, perhaps the gods will help me think of an auspicious name for the dear child.”

He turned his back to Diwoméde and leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Climb on, baby,” he urged, in his high voice, “give me our little nephew, Mélisha dear.”

Dauniya’s baby had been watching the scene intently, her finger in her mouth, bouncing up and down with excitement. At T’érsite’s invitation, she toddled over, raising her arms to be lifted. “No, no, Flóra, he told her. “You are a big girl. No, I am going to carry the little, tiny baby standing there in the doorway.”

The child stared at him with a puzzled frown. She turned and looked at Diwoméde, stared back at T’érsite a moment, and turned again to Diwoméde, completely confused. She knew what a baby was, but she had not seen one. “A baby go?” she asked, wanting to know where the “baby” was.

“Come now, baby,” the big Argive urged, waving his backside right and left. “Climb on so I can carry you.”

Hesitantly, Diwoméde leaned forward, over the bigger man’s back. T’érsite took hold of the younger man’s legs, bringing them around his wide middle. Groaning dramatically, exclaiming at how big the “newborn” was, he plodded around the hearth three times, in the direction of the sun, while St’énelo counted with a frown on his face. Dáuniya came to the door of the hut to watch with the other women, smiling. Panting from the effort, T’érsite released Diwoméde’s legs and straightened afterward. “Now,” he huffed, “what should I name the little puppy?” the toothless man wondered aloud, scratching his head. He peered into the deepening shadows and announced, “It was the great Díwo who drove the
dáimons
away that were lurking around my hut, so I think I will name the boy after him. But what should it be?”

“Diwogéne?” Dauniya suggested. “Born of Díwo?”

T’érsite pondered deeply, but finally shook his head. “No, people would think he was a bastard if I called him that. Every girl who finds her belly growing before marriage claims that she got it from Díwo’s seed, while she was sleeping. What about Diwokléwe?”

Now it was the “mother” who shook her head. “Díwo’s glory? No, no, that would be boasting and might invite Díwo’s Evil Eye.”

“
Ai,
you are right. We would not want that,” the broad-chested Argive agreed. “Let me see. I could honor the Divine Child and call him Diwonúso-méde! Yes, that is an excellent name for a boy, Diwonúso’s Counsel. It is a fitting name for a child born at the time of Diwonúso’s season of fire. It is most auspicious.”

“An honorable and noble name it is, indeed,” Dáuniya echoed. “Diwonúsomede, he is. We will call him Diwoméde, for short.” No one objected, although St’énelo, alone, was not amused. “Now, leave him with me, T’érsite,” the woman added. “Everyone must go up to Diwiyána’s shrine now. Leave a few stones there, where the sacred spring rises from the rock. Take an oath that we will make her a proper offering of milk and honey, just as soon as we can find some. She must decree a kind fate for the newborn.”

Diwoméde felt his knees giving way. He sat beside the outdoor hearth, watching his concubine giving orders, no longer comprehending anything. How respectfully the others regarded her! They seemed to hang on her every word. But the mention of the holy place appeared to catch them by surprise. Even T’érsite was astonished at Dáuniya’s directive. Still, he and the others obeyed, without demur, even enthusiastically. The proud “uncle” urged them all to carry firebrands up the steep hill as they went. “It will be dark by the time we reach the sacred spring,” he observed. “Besides, Diwiyána will be pleased to see the holy flames, at this time of year. Who knows?” he shrugged. “If the goddess approves of what we did here, she may even see fit to provide us a real offering for her blood-thirsty daughter. We might even surprise a rabbit, on the way, or a duck, perhaps!”

The other men and women loudly expressed their doubts about that. But, it was certainly time to build fires at the top of the hills and to jump through the purifying flames, they also began to note to one another. Eventually, after much discussion, they agreed to take the torches, as suggested, and to perform both the naming and the summer rites at the same time. Young Askán also agreed to bring his leather sling and a few rounded pebbles, collected at the shore, just in case a squirrel or rabbit should happen to appear. Ainyáh observed that he had his knife at his side, if it should be needed, although he could not resist expressing his doubts that it would be. With T’érsite at their head, the rag-tag band finally trooped up the steep hillside as the sun’s lower rim touched the hilltop. As they went, the Argive regaled them with a raucous song of the joys of drinking undiluted wine and of lying in the bushes with a
mainád’s
arms and legs wrapped around one’s waist.

The blue-eyed child took a couple of hesitant steps after the revelers. She then looked around and, seeing that Dáuniya remained by the hut, returned to her mother’s side with her arms raised. The woman lifted the baby to her hip and beckoned to Diwoméde. With an effort, he stood and limped after her into the hut, which was, by then, very dark inside. Lying down again on the pallet of fleeces, he listened silently as Dáuniya sang her little girl to sleep beside him. When the toddler’s breathing was slow and regular, his concubine whispered, “Do not worry, beloved. You will be safe, now. No one will demand your blood after this. T’érsite will find a deer and offer it to the goddess in your place.”

“How can you be sure?” he asked, his head swimming.

Although her face was in shadow, he could hear the smile in her voice as she answered. “T’érsite found a fawn beside the spring the same day he rescued little Flóra from the
maináds
. He tethered the little deer in a thicket up there and he has been feeding it every day since then. We thought that the others might need a small miracle to convince them that Flóra was not a danger to them. Her eyes are an unlucky color, you know. But everyone has accepted her. So, the fawn will be for you, instead. You see?”

Diwoméde understood nothing. But, overcome with anxiety and weariness, he did not question the woman further.

“Flóra is our child, beloved,” she went on, “yours and mine. Do you remember the baby that I had when you were enslaved to the poppy, back when you returned from all that fighting? I lost that one, remember? But that baby was different from the others. The whole time I was pregnant, my heart told me that she would live, that she would be strong. I kept her in my womb for the full ten cycles of the moon. She was bigger than any of the others, too, and she lived longer. But, just like the rest, she sickened and shrank away.
Owái
, lady Préswa has always held a grudge against my children. She has taken all of them from me, one by one.”

She was silent for a long moment. He felt her soft cheeks, damp against his own as she drew him to her. “Still,” she went on, “something told me that it was a different goddess who took that child from me. The baby changed so quickly. She was fat and healthy and smiling at me one day, and the next morning she was pale and listless and her face was covered with scratches. Mélisha told me that she and T’érsite had lost one that way. She said that the marks were from the claws of a
dáimon
, a
lámiya
that was sucking my little girl’s blood. But I just knew it was not true. No, it was the
maináds
who had come in the night, not the
lámiya
. It was the tree spirits who came and took my daughter away, leaving one of their own weaklings in her place, a spirit that looked like her but was different, one that could not live no matter what I did. You remember, I was not so sad when that baby died. I hardly cried at all. That was why. I knew that my real child was not really dead, you see. She had just been carried off by the
maináds
.”

Diwoméde remembered the child. No, she had not wept much for the baby, just put it in a wide-mouthed jar and buried it without much ceremony. But she had done the same with each of them, T’érsite had told him. That was best, Mélisha had assured him. Dáuniya was level-headed and knew that it was unlikely that her babies, born too soon, would ever live long. She did not allow herself to love them, knowing they would not survive. That way, it did not hurt much when they died, as expected.

But now, Dáuniya’s tears were on his face, and he had seen how warmly and tenderly she looked at the blue-eyed girl. “Then T’érsite found this baby wandering alone among the trees, here on Kep’túr,” his concubine continued in a whisper. “I knew she was mine the moment I saw her.”

She had indeed grieved, Diwoméde realized. The losses had stung her heart, after all. She had only hidden her thoughts from him all those years before. Without warning, his own eyes brimmed with hot tears and the salty liquid spilled over his cheeks. He clung to Dáuniya, pressing his face to her full breasts, shaking with sobs that he was powerless to hold back. “I helped kill a child once,” he wept, “a blue-eyed child like this one, in T’ráki.”

Dáuniya held him tightly. “I know,” she murmured, rocking him. “You did it at Agamémnon’s order. You did it for your king, for your true father. The blood-guilt is not yours but his.”

A cry of anguish escaped his lips, though he tried to hold it in. “I killed a child just like Flóra and I let my father die. I betrayed my king…” He could not go on. He wanted to tell her that he was cursed, that perhaps St’énelo was right and that his blood too should, indeed, be spilled.

“Hush,” the woman crooned, only clasping him more tightly to her bosom. “You did not kill the T’rákiyan boy. The Tróyan princess did that for the sake of revenge, and you served her at your king’s command. As for Agamémnon, you would have saved him if you had been with him when he was attacked. But you were a captive in Attika when he died. It was he himself who sent you there, on a hopeless mission. You could not help your father. You did not betray him. You did your best to avenge him, years later, after he was gone, when you had the chance. I know that you did. His spirit knows it, too. Be still, beloved, do not cry. Everything will be all right.”

Before, he had not doubted her words. But now, he was not so sure. “It will never be all right for me again,” he gulped. “I blight everything that I put my hand to. I always thought that I was doing the right thing…fighting at Troya…taking orders from Agamémnon…joining his son, Orésta…but the gods have always been against me. I only made enemies all around the Inner Sea. Why do you still want me, Dáuniya? Why?”

“Hush,” she soothed, rocking him, kissing his head, stroking his cheek. “The goddess loves you and so do I. Everything will be all right. You will see. T’érsite and I will take care of everything.”

To the astonishment of the gathered populace at the top of the hill, T’érsite found and sacrificed a young hind at the sanctuary of the goddess. No further proof was needed, even for St’énelo, that the goddess favored them. Diwoméde was a
qasiléyu
again in the charioteer’s eyes. Despite his odd appearance, the dark stubble on his head and limbs, the half-healed welts on his back, despite it all, everyone treated him with the respect and deference due his former high rank.

“Where do you think that we should go,
qasiléyu
?” St’énelo asked him cordially, over the day’s single meal, the next evening. “Dáuniya says that we should go west, to her native land. But it is a long way and I have heard terrible stories. There are evil things out on the western edge of the world. There are huge, one-eyed giants that eat the flesh of men, monstrous goddesses that inhabit the seas, and suck down the largest ships into whirlpools, to drown mortal men in their cities under the waves.” His overly slender frame shook violently at the thought. “I do not want to meet the Divine Throat with her three heads.”

“Mm, sailor’s lies,” Diwoméde concluded quietly, with a wry face. It was enough for him that he was among friends and could rest. He volunteered no further opinion.

Peirít’owo was not so reticent. Taking a warped walking staff in hand, he stood by T’érsite’s hearth and addressed the others with an unnecessarily loud voice. “It is time we settled this, once and for all. Where are we to go? Now, I am an Ak’áyan and the son of a great
wánaks
,” he reminded the assembled refugees, who began to groan and turn their faces away. He squared his narrow shoulders and spoke even more loudly and forcefully. “So I, for one, have no intention of going west to live among barbarian tribesmen, who chase down their food like a pack of wolves! Then let us hear nothing more about that foolish idea. As for Kep’túr, it is tainted by the blood of my kinsmen, or I would stay here and claim the throne that my father held before me.”

Askán rose and grasped the stick. “
Ai
, we are sick to death of hearing how your father ruled this miserable island. His people drove him out for being such a terrible king, and they would do the same to you if you tried to retake the throne.”