Dido (20 page)

‘It has. And yes, I was hungry. And I can't sleep either, for worrying about our queen.'

‘The Lady Anna has taken her some wine and water,' said Nezral. ‘And some fruit too, I think. Which is good. They say she hasn't touched a morsel since last night.'

Iopas wished Elissa would say something. He'd been feeling a small stirring of hope that perhaps things would be different in Carthage now that Aeneas was leaving. Elissa might be upset at first but that would pass in the end and then maybe he could find a way round the problem of declaring his love. He'd already decided that if everything went well, he'd talk properly to Anna and make up some story about his imaginary betrothed in the city and how she'd fallen in love with someone else. Gods, love was complicated! But he'd work it out somehow. It would have helped a lot if he'd found Elissa by herself.

‘Poor Dido!' said Nezral. ‘I feel so sad for her. They say she hasn't even combed her hair since she woke up.'

‘You'd have to have a heart of stone to look at Dido now and not feel a great sorrow,' he agreed, glancing at Elissa, who still hadn't said a word. She was staring down at her hands and her face was greeny-white, the colour of some cheeses. Her eyes were red-rimmed from too much crying. He went on: ‘I blame Aeneas. How could he treat a great queen in such a way? As though she were any common woman?'

Iopas was clear-sighted enough to realize that his anger was partly a kind of envy. Ever since the Trojan came to Carthage, there wasn't a woman to be found who didn't start swooning every time you mentioned his name. It had become tiresome after a bit and Iopas, who at first had admired the man (and you couldn't deny he had a sure-fire story to tell about the war in Troy – Iopas smiled at his own wit:
sure-fire
story . . . the war in Troy), ended up a little irritated by everything to do with him. Anyway, there Aeneas was, and suddenly no one had eyes for anyone else. Aeneas, on the other hand, had eyes only for Dido. Or at least that was what Iopas thought for a long time, and then he started noticing how much time the Trojan was spending with his child. From that observation a thought sprang up: Would he be spending so many hours in the nursery if the nursemaid wasn't so pretty?

The jealousy he felt became worse than ever. Iopas started to see things. Aeneas looking at Elissa. Elissa looking at Aeneas with such undisguised adoration that it was quite embarrassing sometimes. Once or twice in the last couple of months he'd seen Aeneas
sliding out of deep shadows among the colonnades around the courtyard, and lo and behold, a few moments later, there Elissa would be. Had she been hiding there all along? Had they been snatching a kiss in the dimness during those hours when the sun was at its height? Dido often retired to her bedchamber for a rest after the midday meal when the heat was stifling, and Iopas had observed that during the last few moons she'd started going to her chamber alone. He found himself thinking about Elissa and Aeneas and Dido far too often, and they hadn't been pleasant thoughts.

Elissa stood up from the table in one swift movement and ran out of the room without saying anything. Iopas jumped up to go after her but Nezral put a hand on his arm and said, ‘Let her go. She's on her way to the privy, I think. She goes there a lot . . . She's feeling – well, not herself, shall we say?'

‘What do you mean, Nezral? Why isn't she herself?'

‘I can't tell you, Iopas. She'd kill me. She made me promise not to say a single word and I can't. I really, really can't.'

Nezral was a sharp-nosed girl who wasn't exactly attractive but was clearly clever and moreover had her ear to the ground as far as gossip among the servants was concerned. What to do now? If he bullied her, she'd clam up. And what if Elissa came back and found their heads together? He decided to use flattery and gentleness and see what that might lead to. He slid along the bench a little closer to the girl.

‘You don't have to tell me anything,' he said. ‘I can see Elissa is sad. She was so fond of Ascanius.'

‘You have to be joking!' Nezral laughed. ‘Well, she does love the boy, of course she does, but it's not him she's pining for. It's his father.'

‘Everyone knows that Aeneas and Dido were man and wife,' said Iopas. ‘How does she come to pine for him? Perhaps she's only crying for Dido's sake. She loves the queen like a mother.'

Nezral glanced over her shoulder towards the door, to make sure that no one was approaching. She turned her body towards Iopas and lowered her voice to a whisper.

‘What they say is: Aeneas and the queen are no more married than you and I, Iopas. They say that during the hunt – you remember that day – the two of them went into a cave and . . .' She blushed and lowered her head. ‘I don't want to say but you know what I mean . . . And then when they came out, Dido told everyone they were married. Just like that.'

Iopas said nothing. That was exactly the thought he'd had on the day of the hunt: that this was no proper marriage but only two people who'd got a little carried away, what with the storm and the wine and, apparently, the presence of a goddess. He'd been sceptical about the goddess bit, but then later on he found that the inhabitants of Olympus did indeed make themselves known to mortals. He said: ‘But what has this to do with Elissa?'

‘I can't say. She made me swear I wouldn't utter a
word. Let's just say that she has the very best of reasons to wish him still here.'

‘Are you saying she loved him?' Iopas braced himself for the answer.

‘Yes, of course,' Nezral said. ‘She thought she was keeping it such a big secret, but we all knew. Or guessed. I did, anyway. Didn't you?'

‘Perhaps,' Iopas murmured. ‘Yes, I did.'

‘But there's more,' Nezral whispered. ‘She'd kill me if I said a word, but there's much, much more.'

At that moment Elissa came back into the room, her face still white but with less of a greenish tinge and the front of her dress damp. She must have been washing her face, Iopas thought.

‘Come, sit here, Elissa. I'll fetch you some water. And something to eat. Bread . . .' Iopas stood up and went to the shelf where bread left over from the day was kept. He picked up a long flat loaf and brought it to the table, together with some cheese and fruit and a bowl into which he poured some olive oil from a jug standing on the wide sill of the window. ‘You should eat,' he said.

‘Thank you, Iopas,' she said, and he stared at her as she ate, grateful that at last she was speaking to him. He scarcely noticed Nezral leaving the room.

Elissa had been a child when she first came to the palace, but no longer. She had long dark hair that fell to her shoulders, golden olive skin (when she wasn't feeling tired and upset) and dark eyes that were almost purple in certain lights.
Eyes like plums
didn't work as poetry, which was a shame. In those days Elissa was slim
and boyish, with no breasts to speak of. Her figure was very different from Dido's, whose bosom was the envy of women and an object of lust for most of the male population of Carthage. Aeneas tiring of one body shape and wanting to try another – could matters be that simple? Well, even if that was all it had been, he was heartily glad to see the back of the Trojan. Iopas watched Elissa as she sat in front of him. Was he imagining it, or were her breasts larger than they used to be? He didn't know very much about the size of young women's breasts in general, but on the subject of Elissa he was something of an expert and he had looked at her more carefully than he'd ever looked at any other person. He'd always thought of her as having very small breasts, but these looked . . . they were straining against the fabric of her robe. She seemed, in fact, altogether plumper than usual. Had she been eating in secret? Not wanting to interrupt her while she ate, Iopas let his thoughts go back to the night when he realized that the love between Aeneas and the queen was doomed.

Iopas had made it his business to chart the progress of Dido's love affair with the Trojan and it seemed to him that if the hunting party was the proper beginning, then a year and more had already passed since that day. Now he was of the opinion that during the last three moons Aeneas' interest in Dido had begun to wane. Iopas noticed that the Trojan was spending less and less time with the queen. And when they were
together, Iopas often overheard him talking of leaving one day and not staying in Carthage, and how his destiny was to sail away, until you could see that Dido had become heartily sick of hearing about it. She'd almost stopped begging him to stay. Sometimes she simply walked out of the room when the subject arose. You could tell he was restless.

One night, after a feast, Iopas had been on his way back to his chamber when he noticed that the queen and Aeneas were still in the courtyard, sitting on the stone bench he often liked to sit on when the shade made it a cool spot. He could see the two of them together in the bright moonlight that fell through the leaves of the palm trees. The trees were planted in huge round pots, and now it appeared to Iopas that the flowing lines of the patterns painted on them had become real snakes and dragons writhing over their curved sides. Annoyingly, from where he was standing he couldn't catch what the queen and the Trojan were saying to one another and he was about to move away when someone spoke in his ear. He nearly fainted from the shock. A woman, tall and well-built, with white hair piled high on her head and wearing a cloak edged with peacock feathers, was standing at his shoulder. ‘I fear that there is trouble between those two,' said this person. ‘Listen . . .' and she put a peacock feather into his hand.

Iopas took it and had the presence of mind to say: ‘Thank you . . . but who are you?'

‘Hera, wife to Zeus and friend to Aeneas and the
queen of Carthage. This love is doomed, you know.'

Iopas found himself nodding. Hera continued, ‘You'll know when you've heard them speak. Keep hold of the feather.'

He opened his mouth to thank her again but she had gone. Perhaps I imagined it, he thought, but then where did this feather come from? He held it, and suddenly became aware that he could catch what the couple on the stone bench were saying to one another, even though they were speaking in low voices and were sitting far away on the other side of the courtyard. He held the feather a little in front of him and raised it in the air, and as if it was catching the words and bringing them to his ear, he could now hear them even more clearly. It was as though he were sitting beside them. Aeneas began to nuzzle Dido's neck. Iopas saw the queen relaxing, and she turned and kissed her lover on the lips. ‘This is the best time, Aeneas,' she murmured. ‘For a baby. The wise woman says so – the moon is full. We'll have a baby . . . the next King of Carthage . . .'

Aeneas pulled away from her. You'd have thought a bee had stung him. ‘What are you talking about? What baby? I don't want a baby. Who told you I wanted children? I have my son and he's enough for me. How can I have a baby with you?'

‘Why are you so angry? You've never spoken to me like that before.'

‘You've never tried to trick me into making you pregnant before.'

‘How can you say that? It's not a trick. Cast your mind back, Aeneas. Didn't it occur to you that all our lovemaking might produce children? Isn't that what marriage is for?'

‘Zeus and Hera and all the Gods, give me patience! For the last time, Dido, I'm
not
married to you! I'm not married to anyone. We got a bit carried away in the cave, I grant you, but marriage? It's completely ridiculous. You're crazed.'

‘Your own mother sanctioned it. She was there, I tell you. I saw her. She told me.'

‘I've heard this from you many times, Dido. It's madness. What you saw was a kind of dream. We were . . . You've forgotten how we were.'

‘How do you dare to call me mad? What about the bed? Prepared and lined with wool and fragrant leaves – that was her work.'

Aeneas laughed. ‘You're naïve, beloved. That hollow – probably been used by shepherds and passers-by for generations. Could even be a well-known feature of the area – the place everyone goes when they want to be alone. How could it possibly have been Aphrodite? Don't you think she would have managed a little more luxury for us?'

‘We didn't need luxury, Aeneas. You're the one who's forgotten what it was like, up in that cave. Suddenly what happened there means nothing to you.'

‘It does
not
mean nothing! It means what it
was
.
Really
was. You're enough to drive a man crazy with
your fantasies. What it meant was I wanted to make love to you. And that's what we did. We made love. End of story.'

‘Oh, no. Not the end of the story at all. Who are you to decide where it ends? It's my story as well, and part of that is children. I want an heir to take over my kingdom when I die.'

‘Not from me, though. I don't need that complication. My life's difficult enough as it is.'

Iopas had to hold the feather away from him. He hardly needed it any longer because Dido began to shout, shrieking at Aeneas like any common fishwife. Anyone who happened to be awake would have heard her from the other side of the palace.

‘Difficult? How can you say that? I've done everything for you. Saved you from a miserable death on the sea and given you shelter and protection. Built you ships and let your men live in my city and bestowed on you all the riches at my command, to say nothing of my love. You're an ungrateful bastard and I don't care if I never see you again. Go. Go and don't come back. I hate you, Aeneas, and I must be mad, as mad as you say, to have fallen in love with you in the first place.'

The queen stood up then and ran away to her bedroom. Iopas wondered whether he should stay there and see what Aeneas did, or whether he should follow the queen. In the end he did neither. He went to his bedchamber and took the peacock feather with him. He distinctly recalled putting it on his writing table
before he sank onto his bed, but in the morning, when he woke up, it had vanished.