‘Yes,’ he looked suddenly wounded, ‘but surely I am not so tyrannical that you cannot say if my absence is … is hard on you.’
‘No, my lord. I simply meant you have your duties andI have mine.’ She tried to smile reassuringly. ‘The children amuse me. And I have your mother, and my women. And there is much to see to here.’
‘Yes, and you see to it well.’ He paused, tried a different approach. ‘The ambassador for Aethiopia will arrive soon. To discuss when we intend to send Perses to your father.’
The queen thought of her sweet, sensitive boy. He was so desperate to be like his father but his rivers ran as deep as hers and he was wounded easily. Her other children were more like their father; it would have been kinder if Gorgophone had been born the eldest boy, but then it was better that she had not. She reminded the queen of her own mother and thrilled at the thought of the world in her daughter’s hands.
‘We will not send him yet. He is a boy still.’
‘Very well.’ Perseus felt as though he was prising open an oyster, but the shell was made of sturdier stuff than even his most determined knife. ‘You have not visited Athena’s temple since it was built at Mycenae. My mother says wisdom is melancholy’s salve.’
‘Your mother is ever the optimist,’ said his wife with a wry smile.
‘You are not one for prayers.’
‘I give Zeus thanks for you often, my lord,’ she said hastily. This was true. He had spared her. ‘And I have thanked Hera for our family.’
‘But is Athena not some kin of yours? Your grandmother’s cousin?’
‘Yes.’
‘It might bring about ill fortune if you do not pay your respects.’ The thought occurred. ‘Come with me next time Igo to Mycenae. I will be busy in the city but you might visit the temple and the markets and hear the musicians play.’
‘The children—’
‘Will be fine with my mother. And your women. It will only be a few days!’ He took her hand. ‘If you seek the goddess’s counsel, should she show you the path to your happiness … I would have you know that … that I wish for you to seek it.’ He scrunched his brow deep in thought. And then added, ‘I have seen you, with your body, feed seven of my children. I would … I would know that you feed yourself, also.’ She wondered when he had come to be so wise. She wondered when she had come to love him.
She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Perseus.’
And he smiled back.
23
Mycenae
The queen did not want to go to the temple. She dawdled in the markets, enjoying the solitude of her own company. The lone guard who accompanied her was a favourite for his silence. She so rarely was able to go anywhere or do anything without a child at her hip and her women in tow, dictating messages and hearing about developments across their expanding terrain. Even rarer still was her informal presence among her people. She had known admiration in her life, even adoration, but the affection that she experienced now had been earned. She had toiled for them, she had built and laboured for them, as she had done in Tiryns, and they loved her for it. They pressed spiced olives into her hands and hailed her, offering samples of perfumes and cheeses. She stopped at almost every stall and when they tried to turn her coins away, she slipped them among their wares.
If she had not been entrusted with a task by her husband, she would have considered remaining there all day. She was sure her guard would not reveal that she had not visited Athena after all. But he held the bag that Perseus had given her, instructing her to bring it to the temple’s altar as a votive gift. They had been cautious. Closed eyed and precious, andhe had passed her the head of the Gorgon with a whisper of, ‘Careful, wife. As fine as a statue of you would be, I prefer you quick and warm.’
It had been a long time since she had faced the goddess who had watched her all her life. When she had been a young girl, she had visited the temple in the palace compound and had dreamed of the grey-eyed lady coming to her, instructing her in civility and queendom. Who better to instruct her than justice herself? But dreams and prayers lived in the riverbed with other dead and discarded things, and she was that girl no more.
She hiked up herchitonas she descended the acropolis to where the temple stood on its outskirts, surrounded by an olive grove, its back to the sea. The breeze tickled her scalp, exposed by her braids, and the skin along her arms and legs pimpled. The temple was built as most were, uniform and symmetrical, a kind of deference to the supposed order meted out by the gods. It was smaller than ones devoted to her husband’s father in the centres of Mycenae and Tiryns, but it was still splendid. Light sandstone columns stood sentinel in rows that propped up the sloping roof, each reaching so high that she had to squint to look up at them. They reminded her of her home, somewhat. Though nowhere near as ornate. Simple. Humble.
The shrine inside was comprised of twin antechambers and a treasury, where the votive offerings were stored. The main space was taken up by the altar and the cult statue. The guard waited outside while the queen passed into the temple’s shadows. She would leave the bag with the Gorgon’s head and be gone, she would mumble the prayer quickly, her feet would not even pause.
But she stood before the statue, at last looking into the face from her peripheral vision, and found she could not stay silent and busy here.
‘It seems you, too, met the Gorgon, grey lady.’ The words bounced off the columns, off the floors and landed squarely on the statue’s bosom. ‘It is no more than you deserve, having punished her as you did for a crime that was not hers.’
It was no great surprise to the queen when the statue spoke back. In truth she had feared that something like this would happen.
‘You know it was no punishment, granddaughter of Achiroe.’
‘To be turned into a monster?’
‘I gave my priestess a way of protecting herself.’
‘Yes,’ the queen snapped, pointing to the bag at her feet, ‘and here she is. So protected.’
