Chapter 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, and he 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 her chiton as 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.’
‘You once said that you would rather be monstrous than beautiful.’
‘I was a child! I have learned now that women suffer regardless.’
‘Mortals suffer, not just women. You all suffer equally.’ The statue that spoke with the voice of equality and glared with the impatience of wisdom held an owl aloft in its left hand and a set of weighing scales in its right.
It was crowned in what was part diadem, part helmet and regarded the queen as though it was acutely aware of every thought she had ever had and everything that she might consider saying. It was unsatisfying. Enraging.
‘Yes. We suffer equally. And in finding equality, we lose equity. You do not see. You are all the same.’
‘Long have I watched you.’
‘Yes. Long have you watched and not helped.’
The stone bird flapped its wings. Once. ‘I helped when I could.’
The queen repeated words she had said, long ago. ‘It was not enough.’
‘I wanted to see if you lived up to the name you were given. It seems that I was disappointed.’
‘I am a queen, I have ruled over many, many men.’
‘I do not mean that name.’
The queen’s breath caught in her throat. Here, at last, an acknowledgement. ‘I have lied every day. Every day since I lost her.’
‘The name did not only mean liar.’ The queen knew this. Cunning. Deceiver. ‘And I cannot help one who will not help themself.’
‘I cannot help myself more than I have,’ the queen tossed back, mutinously. ‘I have created happiness for myself. I am a good and just ruler. I have done what I can.’
‘It is not enough.’
She ground her teeth, reached for the pouch at her belt and squeezed it tight. ‘What would you have me do? What does it matter to you?’
‘I named you victor at your birth, and I do not like to be wrong. Not all battles are fought on fields by the arms of men. True strategy is the kind that is not sung about by bards. It goes unnoticed and undetected.’
‘I have no interest in what the bards say about me. I will not be here to hear them.’
‘Yes.’ The grey face nodded, solemnly decisive. The temple was cool, the sun high above it, just cresting its peak before beginning its noonday descent. A bird called somewhere, loud and true. The queen heard it, picked up some thread of its message and started.
‘You have spoken to my grandmother?’
‘Yes. She is well. She thinks of you always.’
‘And I her.’
‘She thinks of your mother too.’
The queen’s stomach clenched like her hand around the pouch. ‘I used to admire the stars, but they are quite ruined for me now.’
‘They do not all suffer as she does.’
‘She suffers?’
‘Yes.’ The single syllable was devastating.
‘Is there – is there nothing that can be done?’
‘There is.’
The queen looked up at the statue. ‘What? How? You have not said.’
‘You have not asked.’
It was an exercise in restraint, not sending the statue careering into pieces. ‘What must I do?’
The owl flapped its wings again. The queen blinked.
She had not noticed the statue expanding; she was sure it had not always been that size, that warm and glowing.
It had happened in her peripheral vision, as the goddess had always existed, and now the air tasted of ringing metal and was so cold that it bit.
‘She burns too hot, she must share her heat with another. She hangs upside down, she must be turned and kept upright. She must be joined by another.’
‘I will go,’ the answer came immediately, ‘I will do it.’
‘You are alive. You would leave your children?’ The goddess tutted, impatient once more. The statue pointed an arm that surely had not always been so massive and gestured at her belt. ‘You carry pieces of stars with you now.’
The queen’s hands went protectively to her middle. ‘No. They are keepsakes, only.’ She pulled out two carved hippos, one fashioned in brown from wood, the other in red from coral.
‘I do not mean those.’
Slowly, tremblingly, the queen fished out the fragments of rock that had once been the monster that tried to devour her.
‘These are not pieces of stars.’
‘Not yet.’
The queen stared into her hands. Hunks of grey and infinitely precious. ‘You would put these beside my mother?’
‘They would keep her upright for half of the year. They would not weight her entirely. But they would borrow her shine and burn together. Turn her pain into a poem for the bards to write. It would be better than nothing.’
The queen swallowed with difficulty. The trembling had spread and she shook where she stood.
‘And she—’ she held up the stones, she had not said the name in ten years, now would not be the first time, ‘she would burn too?’
‘The burden would be shared and so lessened. A dull sort of heat. And the sea monster’s hide was thick.’
‘She was not always a sea monster. Her skin was soft.’
The goddess considered this for a while. It was a long while.
‘It is only the sea monster that would accompany your mother. The Nereid is elsewhere.’
The queen shook so violently that her teeth chattered. She closed her hands tight around the pieces, so afraid was she that they would rattle out of her palms.
‘Elsewhere?’
‘Yes. Some part of her remained, so I am told. In the Coral Kingdom.’
The queen sank to the ground. The pieces of stone dug into her hands and she anchored herself to the sensation. It enabled her to ask, ‘She is alive?’
The goddess shrugged. ‘What is alive? What is not? She is not mortal but then neither was the Gorgon. She is something.’
‘You did not say.’
‘You did not ask.’
Games and lessons and lessons and games, the queen was quite mad with it. She fisted at her hair and gritted her teeth. She tried to breathe, she fought the tearing, it had been so long since she had felt such a vicious pull.
‘I did not know there was a question.’
‘Well. Now you do.’
‘Tell me,’ the queen did not ask this; she ordered it between pants, ‘tell me how to get to her.’
‘She is not free.’
‘What is free? What is not?’ The queen spat the words in sarcasm but the goddess smiled.
‘Ah, see, there at last! You are asking!’
‘Tell me!’ the queen demanded.
‘You must go to the sea and then beneath it. If you leave those pieces here, I shall do as I said. The rest you know already.’
The queen was on her feet then. She laid pieces of the stones, quick but careful, organized in the shape of the serpent in motion. She put the hippos away and whirled, ready for flight. She faced the goddess one final time. ‘What? What do I know already?’
The statue leaned forward. She spread so wide now that the queen was sure she must take the roof off the temple, must crush the columns to twigs. The goddess asked the question almost casually, but the owl shrieked as her mouth opened to form it.
Grey eyes met brown. ‘Who are you?’
And I look back. ‘Meda,’ I say. ‘I am Meda.’