Black Ships (32 page)

“This is your son,” Anchises said. “He waits here to be born. When the time comes he will cross the River and open his eyes in your world.”

The boy did not look up, or even seem to see us.

“My son,” Neas said, wonder in his voice. “Wilos’ brother.”

“Yes,” Anchises said. “They will govern the People between them, the People of the sea and the People of the hills, and there will be no quarrel between them.”

“And after?”

“Who can tell what the future holds?” I said. “So much depends on what we do. Whether we falter or not.”

Anchises smiled. “And yet there are things that may be, a proud line and a proud city, son of Aphrodite. No, these things would not be if you flung yourself into the sea tomorrow, but you will not do that. I say to you the only thing one can say to a king. The things you desire may yet be.”

Neas bent his head. “And that is the greatest burden of all. To desire.”

“If you were free of desire you would not have tried Night’s Door,” Anchises said. “If you were not filled with longing.”

“And then what should I have?” he asked, and his eyes were calm and blue.

“Peace,” Anchises said. “Here, free of desire, is peace.”

Neas looked about. “In these endless fields where nothing ever changes?”

“Yes,” his father said gently.

Neas looked about, and I saw his face relax, his jaw unclench as though a fever slipped away, like a man terribly injured who has at last died, and with the final relaxation of muscles has passed beyond pain. I caught my breath.

Neas looked at me and smiled. “That’s not for me,” he said. “Better the pain and the joy too.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Anchises said.

I let out a breath I did not know I’d been holding.

“Come and walk by the River,” Anchises said.

I did not know if the invitation included me too, but Neas held out his hand to me and I took it. It was warm and real, flesh, not fantasy.

All along the riverbank people were walking. Sometimes one would slip away, shouting farewells, exchanging embraces, joyfully promising remembrance. They stepped into the River, and its waters washed over them, pearl and silver streaming. And then a breeze took them, and they floated clear and light toward sunlight streaming down from above.

“What is happening?” Neas said.

“They are being born,” I replied, and my voice was filled with wonder. “Twice we cross the River. When we die we cross the Styx, and come to the lands beneath and dwell here for a time. Then we cross this River, which is Memory, into the world above.”

“They do not remember?” he asked.

“No,” I said, and shook my head sadly. “Not even you. Not even me.” I looked up at the light. “But that is not how we will leave this place. We will leave by the Gate of Horn, from which come true dreams.”

I felt us rising up, saw the Gate of Horn before us, shimmering with a nacreous sheen. “We have dreamed in this place, my dear king. We have dreamed things that are true, and now we must return to the world above.”

The light was blinding, and I clung to him. Brighter and brighter, until at last I closed my eyes.

I
OPENED THEM
.

I lay across Neas’ naked body in the front chamber of the cave at Cumai, looking up at the bright sun pouring in through the cleft in the ceiling.

I pushed myself up on one elbow. My mouth was dry and my breasts were aching with the need to nurse Markai. I heard a moan.

Xandros was lying in the light coming in through the door, one hand almost in the ashes of the fire pit. He rolled over and threw up.

“Xandros?” I crawled over to him. “Are you all right?”

He nodded but did not speak. The color was coming back in his face, and his hands were steady.

I stood and went over to Neas. “Neas?”

He opened his eyes. For a moment they were blank, but then memory came flooding back. “Sybil?”

“Yes,” I said. “Can you sit up?” I helped him sit.

Xandros called out to me. “I can’t wake Maris!”

I stood again, more steady now, and went to him. I knelt down beside them.

“What is it?” Neas said from across the chamber.

“Maris is dead,” I said.

We mourned him and crowned Neas at the same time. For Maris there was a great pyre on the beach. Not only had he been
Pearl
’s captain, but he was the sacrifice that sealed Neas’ kingship, the man who had willingly gone into the darkness beside his prince and taken the death that waited. The rest of the incenses of Egypt went on his pyre, and we all wailed for him, his young wife, Idele, gray with grief, her belly swollen with the child he would never see.

I sang the Descent in a choked voice. Perhaps if I had not steeped the concoction so strong, or if there had been less...

He is mine,
She whispered at my elbow. His heart was not so strong as his body. He gave himself for his king, a death he chose. He did not have to come.

I bent my head and let the smoke wash over me.

There was no crown, of course. The crown of Wilusa was plunder for the Achaians a generation ago. They crowned him with vine and summer flowers, toasted him with full cups of the local vintage.

Neas drank, and then they acclaimed him. “Aeneas! Aeneas! Son of Aphrodite!” They began the snake dance then, winding round and round the fire. I sat, and the wine was vinegar in my mouth.

Xandros came with our son in his arms, gave Markai to me and put his arms around me, his cheek against mine. “Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t grieve for him.”

“He was so young,” I said. “It is my fault.”

“I almost stayed too,” he said. “I wanted to. I could have stayed with Ashterah. I could have been healed of all this grief and pain. It was my choice.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

Xandros rested his chin on my shoulder. “Well, there’s Neas and you and Markai. I think I’ve got plenty of time in the future to be dead.”

I smiled at that. “I suppose you do.”

Xandros shrugged. “And so do you.”

“The whole time I was singing the Descent I was thinking that I’m so glad it wasn’t you. That’s so wrong of me. To wish this grief on Idele and her child instead of on me...”

“That’s the problem with love,” Xandros said. “It makes you care more about one person than another.”

“I can’t not care anymore. I can’t pretend that I don’t feel more for Markai and Kianna than the other children. I can’t pretend that I don’t value your life more than other men’s. And that’s wrong in a priestess. Wrong, Xandros.”

Xandros touched my face, the wet track of a single tear. “It’s human. You can’t help it. Only the gods can love everyone the same.”

I buried my face against his neck. “I am so glad it wasn’t you,” I whispered. “That it wasn’t you She chose to keep.”

“Me too,” said Xandros.

AB URBE CONDITA

W
e sailed on the fifth day, a gorgeous summer day with a following wind to urge us northward up the coast. The great bay disappeared behind us, the mountain sunk into the distance. We followed the coast. Fields were ripening and poppies blooming. The weather was perfect. There was a faint chill in the air at night that spoke of autumn, a lowering of the sun on the horizon. Summer was ending, and the harvest was coming in.

It seemed strange on
Dolphin
without Kos. Maris’ second in command was much less experienced, and had only been at the helm since we left Egypt, so Neas promoted Kos as
Pearl
’s captain. It was true he was of low birth, but he had proved himself again and again. Xandros began teaching Bai how to steer. He already knew the chants, but when to use which orders was not something he could see from the first oar, since the bow hid the sea ahead from him and he could not see any other rowers. Xandros let him take the tiller under his eyes, instructing all the while.

We stopped and traded a little, but for the most part the villages were scarce. Perhaps there were settlements inland, but we did not see them. At one tiny place, scarcely more than a collection of five or six houses and a couple of boats, we were ashore trading for fresh bread. I was walking Markai. He fretted sometimes, and we were walking along the edge of the field.

“See the flowers?” I picked one red poppy, golden centered, and held it up for his grasping hand. “Red is pretty.”

Now,
She whispered behind me.
Now. You must sail up the coast. Now.

It was like the night in Pylos before the ships came, a dreadful certainty that something was about to happen.
Now.

With the flower still in my hand I all but ran back to Neas.

“We must sail,” I said.

He took one look at me and turned to his men. “Everyone back to the ships! We sail immediately!” Xandros looked up in the middle of the trade, one eyebrow rising. Then he concluded it as quickly as possible.

“Where are we going?” Neas asked.

It embarrassed me a little to see everyone running for the boats as though an enemy were at large. “North,” I said. “North until She tells us to stop.” I shifted Markai on my hip. “I don’t know why. I’m sorry, Neas.”

“Your word is enough for me,” he said simply. “Xandros! Get
Dolphin
loaded! We sail!”

North, with a following wind. We sailed for two days without stopping, without beaching at night. And the shore passed beside us, golden and ripe.

The second night a fog rolled in, and we could not have seen
Seven Sisters
and
Pearl
if we had not all hung lamps at our sterns, something we had learned in Egypt.

Neas called over, and soon we all three came alongside.

Wordlessly, I handed Markai to Tia, and Xandros swung me across the gap between ships.

Kos climbed over
Seven Sisters’
rail on the other side. “We can’t go on like this,” he said without preliminary, and I thought how far he had come from the first council he had attended, when he had been too shy to speak. “I can hear surf off to my right. I have no idea how close it is, or how steeply the coast draws away. At this rate we’re going to run up on rocks. We need to anchor and wait out the fog.”

Xandros nodded. “I’m out on the seaward side, but I don’t like this running without being able to see either. And there’s a strange current here, closer inshore. I think we should wait.”

Neas looked at me. “Lady? Prudence dictates that we wait, and seamanship demands it. What do you say?”

I felt nothing. She did not speak. The sense of urgency that had been pushing me was gone. I reached, and there was quiet. “We should wait,” I said. “I do not see any danger in doing so.”

Neas nodded, and Kos gave a visible sigh of relief. They had been willing to go on if Neas asked it, but they were glad not to. “Drop anchor!” Neas yelled. “We’re going to wait out the fog!”

“It should go in the morning,” Xandros said. “As warm as it’s been, the sun will burn it off in no time.”

Bai took the watch. Xandros came to stay beside me in
Dolphin
’s bow cabin, and while Markai slept, made love to me as quietly and gently as one can when trying not to disturb a sleeping baby a handbreadth away. Afterward, I curled onto his shoulder, and let the sea rock us both.

Perhaps it was the quiet, or the release of lovemaking after long waiting, but Xandros slept past dawn. I left him sleeping, Markai curled up in a little bundle near him, faces wearing identical expressions of repose. It was almost funny, I thought. They looked so much alike in sleep, damp black hair clinging to their foreheads. I went out on deck.

Dawn was coming and the sky was streaked with pink. The fog lifted off like a veil.

We stood out from a river mouth where a broad stream met the sea. It flowed between banks green with summer, and behind it rose slopes thick with trees, rolling hills and the shades of distant mountains on the far horizon. Seagulls cried on the winds. They dodged and dove as the sun rose above the hills, golden and brilliant. I watched, my heart leaping at the sheer beauty.

Neas stood on the deck of
Seven Sisters,
his arms upraised, the light gilding him.

Not wanting to wake people by calling, I climbed across to him. He saw what I was about and caught me under my arms, lifting me when the ships swayed apart. For a moment we stood like that, his arms around me, feeling the sun lift us both.

“Look!” he said. “That’s not a water bird. What is it?”

Something large was winging toward us, scattering the seagulls in their diving. It flashed across us at mast height, its shadow dashing over Neas.

“It’s a young eagle,” I said.

The light caught its talons as it turned inland, flashing like gold.

Neas looked at me and I at him. “Yes,” he said.

I nodded. “We should go upriver, my king.”

As soon as the rowers were all awake we started upriver,
Seven Sisters
going first and very slowly, sounding the way ahead with a knotted rope weighted with stones. The river wasn’t terribly wide, but it was deep enough and smooth enough for us to glide along. Away from the seashore there were trees and meadows, limbs bending down over the stream.

I stood with Xandros in the stern of
Dolphin,
for he would trust no hand but his on the tiller in the confines of the river. “Look there!” I said. “It looks like smoke from cooking fires.”

Ahead, beyond a turn in the river, there were a few thin streaks of smoke.

Seven Sisters
halted and drifted against the current, and Xandros yelled for our oars to still. We were within easy calling distance of
Seven Sisters
and
Pearl
behind us.

“Water’s getting shallow,” Neas called back. “We’re going to try to find a channel on the left-hand side.”

They crept forward again, only two oars beating.

“It’s the dry season,” Xandros said. “See along the bank there? The water is higher at other times. This river’s perfectly navigable if it’s still possible to get a warship up here in dry weather.”

Neas found the channel, and we followed.

Along the bank the trees gave way to fields of barley and grain, ripe and waiting for the harvest. A vineyard was behind, grapes heavy on the vines, purple and dark. Beyond were patches of other vegetables, all unharvested.

“There’s something wrong,” I said. “Where are the people? The grain is sitting ripe in the field and there are no reapers.”

Xandros nodded. “There.” He gestured with his chin.

One small corner of the field was mown, the stalks broken off haphazardly, as though by clumsy workers who took little care. Beyond it, an orchard of almond trees showed green in patches. Some of the trees had been burned.

They were shipping oars on
Seven Sisters,
gliding into the bank. As we came near we saw what they had seen. There was a fortified town just ahead. Before it docks came down to the shore, and gray stone walls rose up. It was a small place, no larger than Pylos, perhaps, with a plain wall and a pair of watchtowers no greater than four times a man’s height. A few tendrils of cooking smoke rose, and I could smell bread baking. The gates were closed.

“Not again,” Xandros said. He smiled at me. “I’m getting tired of coaxing people out to trade who think we’re here to loot them and burn them out.”

Neas and several others went over the side of
Seven Sisters
and walked back to us. “Think we should trade?” he asked.

Xandros nodded. “They seem to have plenty of food.”

I leaned over the rail. “Neas, something is wrong. Why haven’t they harvested? With that fog last night you’d think they would have wanted to get everything in before the damp comes.”

The rest of the men were getting down from
Seven Sisters,
arms at the ready in case there was a misunderstanding. It had happened more than once, that we’d had to stand to arms before it was clear we wanted trade.

Neas looked across at the fields, and it occurred to me that he and Xandros had probably never actually harvested grain. They were seamen, not farmers. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s strange.”

There was a glint of metal on the walls, light glancing off helmets.

“Arm up,” Neas said, and went back to
Seven Sisters
for his equipage.

I helped Xandros fasten his breastplate, his new sword at his side, his new shield on his arm.

Tia came and stood beside me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

I showed her what we had been looking at, at the fields unharvested and the partially burned orchard.

Our men formed up. Xandros was calling something to the walls. I could see several armed men upon the wall, but they did not reply. Perhaps the language here was too different from Shardan.

“Why would the fields be unburned if they were attacked by an enemy? And if they haven’t been raided, why aren’t the fields harvested?” I wondered. “It doesn’t make sense. Why haven’t they done it?”

Tia gripped my arm. “It’s the women. They haven’t got enough men to harvest. So they’ve done only that one little corner. Someone attacked and they’re planning to come back, like leaving a rabbit warren where it is and using it to trap a few when you want them. Why burn the fields and lose the food? They can leave them and come back for them when they’re ripe. It’s not like they can go anywhere!”

“Yes! I think you’re right.” I swung Markai against me and climbed over the rail, splashing into the mud and hurrying up to Neas.

He was not in bow shot of the walls, but he looked irritated with me. “Sybil, you’re in too close. Back up. They’re not answering our hails, and that fellow over there keeps shaking his spear at me.”

“How many men do you count?” I asked him.

“Five on the walls,” Neas said. “I’m guessing the rest are massed behind the gate and are going to come rushing out at any minute. You need to get back. And Tia too.” He glanced behind me where Tia had followed, Kianna on her shoulder.

“I don’t think there are any more men,” I said. Quickly I explained what Tia had said.

Neas shook his head. “You may be right. Or you may not be. But they’re not acting like they want to talk, and if they’ve got the number of men a settlement like this should have, we’re outnumbered if they charge us. Get back on the ships.”

“We have to talk,” I said. “Let Xandros go forward and try again.”

“They’re not answering him,” Neas said. “If he goes into bow shot he’s going to get hit.”

“Then let me go,” I said, raising my chin. “They can see what I am. I’m a woman with a baby, and not an enemy who can attack them if they let me get close. Let me go with Xandros.”

Neas opened and closed his mouth.

Xandros came up quietly. “Gull, are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said with a quick glance at Tia. “I’m sure.”

I arranged Markai on my shoulder so he was more visible, and took a step forward.

“Me too,” said Tia. She stood beside me, Kianna on her hip, her long bare legs dangling. “If one is good, two are better.”

“Those are your children,” Neas said, and I could not tell if his voice was disbelieving or indignant.

“Yes,” I said. And we started forward.

Xandros followed bare-handed, his shield against his back, ready to swing forward and cover me and Markai at his expense. “Oh love, you’d better know what you’re doing,” he whispered.

Lady,
I thought,
I hope I do too.

We approached the beetling walls. Xandros called out in Shardan, “People of this place, we mean you no harm! We are traders, honest men with families, as you can see! We want only to speak with you! Let there be no misunderstandings between us!”

There was a long silence. We saw them talking together on the wall, heads bent close. Then a voice called back in Shardan, though the accent was strange. “We see you and your children. But we do not want to trade. You have nothing we want. Get in your ships and leave.”

Xandros looked at me.

I raised my voice. “We have men who can harvest your crops, and will trade their labor for a share of the grain.”