Chapter 33 A Gilded Cage
Two weeks after Hermes brought news of Hades and Persephone’s demise, Hera trod the mosaic path through the sprawling central garden, the heat of the stones radiating through her sandals.
Around her, the walls of the palace of Olympus reared into the sky, a seamless monolith of shining marble balustrades and golden columns.
She, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and Demeter had dragged the stone from deep within the earth, sculpting it with the power of their life-threads.
It had taken a decade to complete, and thousands of mortal slaves had been sacrificed, their ichor the Olympians’ chisels.
She paused at the circular building standing in the centre of the garden, its pale pillars a ghostly infantry guarding the ancient treasure within.
‘Gold that grows bears no fruit,’ she murmured.
Since Zeus built the temple, she had never been inside. None but her husband were permitted to enter. Painted across the curving outer wall was a fresco of Zeus touching the head of a mortal with the tip of his gauntleted finger, supposedly sparking life into the first man moulded from river clay.
Remember the truth, said the voice.
She drew a sharp breath.
Zeus’ word was law. The history of the gods that had been passed down to mortals was mirrored in every painting on Olympus, every carving, statue and mural.
Even the divine family were forbidden to question their origins, as though Zeus believed that one day they would simply forget what really happened.
‘I do not forget,’ she whispered.
Olympus was hers just as much as his. They had taken it together.
The air between two of the pillars rippled. Hera stepped back as a pair of crimson eyes blinked from the shadows between the marble.
Her pulse quickened. She turned abruptly and stalked away, striding past a row of pomegranate trees.
As she walked, an old bitterness twisted through her. Zeus and Poseidon should be the ones to deliver the news of Hades and Persephone’s demise, but since Hermes’ revelations they were too absorbed with their secret councils.
As high up as the palace was, the heat was stifling, with no clouds to temper the sun and the wind kept at bay by the high walls.
A bead of sweat trickled down her temple.
She chose the path with the most shade through a grove of laurel trees.
Dappled light teased through the dense foliage above her, which provided momentary relief from the glaring sun.
‘We are closer to the celestial bodies than those creatures that expire in the dirt,’ Zeus had said in the infancy of their reign.
Back when their palace on Mount Olympus was newly constructed, she would stand on her balcony and force herself to stare at the sun.
‘We are the same,’ she would whisper through tears drawn out by the terrible brightness.
‘We will shine together for all eternity.’ But the sun beat down on her here just as it had done when she was a girl, running across the dusty earth with scabs on her knees.
Despite the long years they had endured together, it still drew sweat from her skin and blinded her if she dared meet its eye.
The trees fell away to be replaced with a patchwork of flowers, swirling rainbows of orchids, crocuses, hyacinths and peonies. Nymphs darted between the beds, misting the greedy leaves with watering cans. Hera set her sights on a crop of yellow blooms and strode towards them.
She slowed as she approached the woman sitting on the stone walkway between two crops of narcissi.
Beyond stood three nymphs in blue tunics, their hands clasped behind their backs.
The woman’s unkempt raven hair trailed on the floor.
Wispy tendrils, curled by the heat, were stuck to her face.
She didn’t look up as Hera approached, continuing to stroke the trumpet of a nearby flower.
Hera lowered herself onto the edge of the flowerbed, careful not to drape her purple dress in the soil.
‘Hello, Demeter.’
Slowly, the woman wrenched her gaze from the narcissus and looked bleary-eyed at Hera.
‘I know you.’
‘Yes, darling, it’s Hera.’
‘Oh.’
Demeter returned to the bloom. The structure of her face was so like her brother’s, but there was nothing of Zeus’ metal in her eyes.
Each twitch of his mouth was like the slice of a blade, but Demeter’s features moved like clouds nudged by a benevolent breeze.
Whatever edges she’d had had been eroded a long time ago.
‘That’s a pretty flower.’
‘Mmm.’ Demeter smiled absentmindedly. ‘They’re Persephone’s favourite.’
Hera felt a twinge of pity. Demeter still spoke of her daughter, after all these centuries.
Hera remembered Zeus’ promise, that Persephone would always see the sparkling sky, the light of the sun, the fishes in the sea.
He had spoken those words, yet he knew his brother’s nature.
If it had been up to Hera, Hades would have been executed for what he’d done to Persephone, his own niece, whom he had forced to become his wife.
But he was Zeus’ blood, and that meant never leaving the Underworld had been his punishment.
A barb of satisfaction shot through Hera’s chest. Until the dragon had done its work.
Hera reached out to clasp a stem between her fingers. ‘May I?’
Demeter sucked in breath like she’d been scalded and furiously shook her head. The nymphs in blue stepped forward.
‘It’s all right.’ Hera glanced at them. Then she smiled at her sister and withdrew her hand.
The Goddess of the Harvest giggled and cupped a trumpet in her fingers.
‘I have something to tell you –’
Demeter stroked the flower. ‘The bees have come.’
A faint crease formed between Hera’s brows. ‘It’s about Hades.’
Demeter’s eyes snapped up, and Hera thought she glimpsed a shard of clarity before the fog settled back across the other woman’s gaze.
‘I have a brother by that name. He’s strange.’
‘Darling, he’s dead.’
Hera held her breath as Demeter’s alabaster forehead crinkled into a frown. Then she laughed. ‘No, silly, he is their king.’
Hera had admired Demeter once. The woman had been an extraordinarily talented botanist. Once, there wouldn’t have been a plant in all of Greece that Demeter couldn’t name or recite the properties of.
Now, she lived in a world of misted dreams, all the sharp lines of reality blurred by the lotus-flower concoction Hera had been making for her since Persephone was abducted.
What a waste of a mind. Of all that potential.
Hera briefly closed her eyes and summoned the courage for what she must do next.
‘Persephone too no longer walks with the living.’ As she spoke, she noticed the nymphs behind Demeter tense, ready to spring forward and restrain her if needed.
Hera held her breath, watching the shifting terrain of Demeter’s face, a strange land with unpredictable storms. She waited for the inevitable tide of grief, but it did not come.
Instead, Demeter reached out and petted Hera’s hand.
‘I know.’ She paused. ‘The Mother whispered to me in my dreams. My Kore is with Gaia now.’
Hera stared at her, then sharply drew back her hand and rose to her feet. She nodded to the nymphs in blue and hurried away down the path, her sandals slapping on the stones.
As she reached the shade of the laurel trees, she hastily wiped her cheeks dry.
Then a nymph came hurrying towards her.
The girl bowed. ‘My queen, your son requests your presence in the War Room.’
Hera sighed and flicked her hand. The nymph scurried away.
The War Room was Ares’ domain; a large chamber nestled deep in the belly of the palace.
No pillars or statues filled the space, no mosaics adorned the stone floors, and no chandeliers hung from the ceilings.
Bronze braziers, thick as branches, flamed from holders nailed to the walls illuminating a vast mural spanning all four walls, painted over the grain of the rock.
The greatest war of all: the Titanomachy.
Or at least the version that Zeus had decreed truth.
The depiction of the Titans was grotesque; Gaia’s chosen twelve cast in the image of the primordial giants that walked the earth when the world was young.
Their naked bodies were corded with strength as they battled the golden-clad Olympians, mounted on sky-borne chariots drawn by a fleet of winged horses.
The ground beneath the Titans’ feet bled, rivers of molten rock spewing from the cracks their huge fists wrought upon the earth.
Some held boulders in their hands, some trees and some entire mountaintops, all turned as weapons against the gods.
Zeus led the Olympian charge against these beasts, his eyes gleaming like the sun, a bolt of lightning poised in his hand.
Hera’s lip curled as she gazed at the fresco.
The scene was intended to be imposing, yet it seemed almost comical to her now.
The real fight for Olympus had been a cowardly ambush.
She, Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter and Hades had moved like wolves amongst a flock of sheep, slaughtering the Titans before the sun crested the sea. It had almost been too easy.
She’d believed her future set when Zeus gave her a bite of ripe golden fruit.
She could still remember the blinding brilliance of that apple, so bright it hid the rot within.
For decades she lived in a daze, consumed by love and power.
Until the voice that had awoken with her divinity whispered, Your husband’s appetites are insatiable.
She didn’t want to believe it, but one night she’d followed Zeus to her temple in Argos and found him fucking one of her priestesses, Io, at the stone feet of her statue.
A lesser woman might have revealed herself.
Not Hera. She lingered in the shadows, watching until the deed was done and her husband flew back to Olympus.
Then she burned Io alive on her own altar, like a sacrificial heifer.