Just then, Lilli stirred on the couch next to Animone before drifting away once more into unconsciousness.
“It has been an evil month,” said Myrina, sitting down on the floor by her sister’s feet, which were as dirty and worn as they had been that day long ago, when she and Lilli had first arrived at the Temple of the Moon Goddess. “And I doubt the gods have finished with us yet.” She looked around at everyone in turn. “Let me ask you this: If we sail away without Kara, will we ever be able to arrive anywhere else?”
The only one who met her gaze was Egee. “What are you proposing?” she asked. When Myrina did not respond, Egee leaned abruptly forward. “Have you lost your wits? You saw that place! I am telling you: Kara would not have gone back for us. And especially not for you.”
Myrina sighed, her head drooping under the burden of all this trouble. Then she straightened and said to Egee, “Had you been trying to convince me to go, you could have made no better case for it. The only thing holding me back is the danger, not to me, or to those brave enough to come with me, but to the men who have saved us all—the men asleep below. If we fail and perish, it was our choice to do so. But they have not been consulted and should not be held hostage by our fortune or lack of it.”
“Even now,” said a bitter voice, “your thoughts are for him and not for us.”
Amazed, Myrina turned her head and stared at Animone, who had never before spoken out against her in front of the others. “If my thoughts were not for my sisters,” she said, her voice hoarse with disappointment, “I would not be sitting here, proposing an impossible venture—”
“Why not?” Animone stuck out her chin, her eyes red with emotion and fatigue. “What better way to secure his admiration than to rush forth on yet another mad hunt?”
“Enough!” Myrina rose on legs weak with exhaustion. “Let us go to sleep, all of us, before we choke on our own poison.”
She left the room as quietly as she could, although she felt like yelling out her frustration. Finally outside and away from the staring eyes, she walked over to the railing to fill her lungs with night air. They had come so far, accomplished so much … and yet she tasted bitter failure in her mouth. Somewhere in the darkness, beyond the Argos Plain, a woman whose face she knew was being killed, slowly but certainly, by a man who should have been struck dead long ago, had there been any mercy in heaven.
“So what is the plan?” asked Pitana, coming up to lean on the railing next to her. “We still have some hours before sunrise.”
“No one would have to know,” said another voice behind them. “There is a way of getting past the palace guards.”
Myrina turned to see Klito standing there, her hollow cheeks even more pronounced in the darkness. “You would go back?” she asked her. “When you have finally escaped?”
Klito nodded. “If any of the palace slaves are about, the sight of a familiar face will calm them. They all hate their masters.”
“It is a long walk.”
“Not as long as the rest of my life.” Klito tried to smile, but her mouth had forgotten how. “Unless it ends tonight.”
Myrina bit her lip. “If anything goes wrong—if someone sees us—we cannot return to this ship. We will be separated from the others, perhaps forever.”
“Come now,” said Pitana. “Everyone would assume she had run away on her own. No one would accuse the Trojans of such an act of madness.”
“Perhaps not.” Myrina took a deep breath. “And you are right, it is madness. But sometimes, madness is the only path forward. Let us—” She fell silent as the night guard walked past.
“That was Idaeus,” whispered Pitana. “I will ask Brianne to distract him. He has a sweetness for her, poor man.”
ONCE THE DECISION WAS made, the three women pushed aside every scruple and fully devoted their thoughts to the venture ahead. They must be armed, of course, yet travel light. After some deliberation, Myrina opted to carry the double-headed ax from Crete instead of her spear. “It is very useful,” she explained to Klito, “and gives an advantage to weaker arms.” She did not mention where the ax had come from, nor her suspicion that it might have been the very weapon that had killed Neeta.
“But your arms are not weak,” countered Pitana, strapping on her quiver. “At sea you arm-wrestled Paris, and I saw the sweat on his brow.”
Myrina busied herself with her sandals. Jester that he was, Paris had let her think she was winning over him, allowing her to press down his hand until it hovered an inch over the table … only to laugh and force hers over backward, laying it gently down on the wooden boards beneath his own. And until that moment, the only one who had been sweating was Myrina.
“Yes, well.” She struggled to purge any thoughts of Paris from her mind. “The palace guards are a different kind of beast. Most men are. Even the fat, lazy ones have more power in their arms than we. Nature made them that way, I suppose, so that they could more easily overpower us. How else would humankind reproduce? And that is why”—she stuck the ax in her belt, letting it hang from the double head—”you must never put yourself within arm’s reach of a man unless you know how to make up for the unfairness of nature.”
Klito eyed the ax enviously. “I could have used that many times. To think I used to long for the touch of a man.” She grimaced. “As you say, nature taunts us with our weaknesses.”
Myrina took Klito by the shoulders. “It is not a taunt, but a challenge.”
Once ready, the three women made their way down the gangplank to the deserted pier, glancing back now and then to make sure Idaeus the night guard was still fully preoccupied with Brianne. But just as Myrina thought they were safely away, she heard running feet behind them. Spinning around with a gasp of guilt, she was relieved to see that it was Animone.
“Please!” The woman caught up with them, out of breath, pressing her hands together. “I want to come with you.”
Myrina merely nodded and touched a finger to her lips.
As they headed out across the Argos Plain yet again, this time without the advantage of horses, Myrina tried hard to outrun her own doubts. Here they were, discussing how to sneak into the palace and, if need be, kill the guards. Less than a year ago, these very women—Pitana, Klito, and Animone—had been so fainthearted they barely dared follow her into the temple basement to see the dead serpent in the pit….
“Have no worry,” said Klito, as if reading Myrina’s thoughts as they ran. “Anyone who has seen and felt what I have, believe me, is ready to swing that ax of yours.”
Behind them, Animone gasped out her agreement. “All these weeks, I have been imagining what I would do to the boar who—” She broke off with a growl. “For his sake, I hope he does not try to stop us.”
Myrina winced at these words, but said nothing to discourage her friends as they egged one another on with visions of revenge. She had not been through what they had, and could only guess the depth of their hatred.
Not until they arrived at Mycenae did Klito and Animone finally fall back into nervous silence. In the pale light of a waning moon, King Agamemnon’s abode resembled, more than ever, a ghostly growth of poisonous mushrooms, and Myrina felt her stomach turning at the sight.
Gathering her courage, she headed up the road toward the great stone gate … but was stopped when Klito put a hand on her arm and whispered, “This is where we take the other road. The shrine where Lilli laid down her jackal for all of us is up there, near the summit.” Klito pointed up the hillside to the left of the palace. “As I said, there is a secret path from this holy place to the palace kitchen, through a hole in the garden wall. The masters don’t know of it, but the slave women use it all the time to steal out and lay down gifts to the gods in the hopes of deliverance from this place.”
As they followed Klito’s lead up the hillside, Myrina heard Pitana whisper in a tone of disbelief, “If you could leave the palace so easily, why did you not run away?”
“And go where?” Klito threw out her arms as if to
emphasize the desolate quality of the hills all around. “Live in the wilderness where they would delight in hunting us down?”
“Wicked, wicked, wicked people,” spat Animone.
Again, Myrina kept her silence, but a long look from Pitana told her she was not the only one struck by the paradox. Their enslaved sisters had been bold enough to sneak out of the palace and pray for salvation, yet were not bold enough to flee. But then, as Myrina knew only too well, it is the loss of hope that kills the prey—the loss of will to keep struggling. Perhaps that, more than anything, was why she would not leave Kara behind; Kara had never stopped believing she should be free.
THE SECRET PASSAGE TO the palace kitchen went through an herb garden with beehives and dormant fruit trees. Even this time of year, far from the hum of summer, the place was so well tended and filled with sweet scents it was difficult to marry its loveliness to the crudeness of the Greeks.
“Through here!” hissed Klito, ducking through a prickly hedge. “Quiet!”
They sat for a while hunched in the shrubbery, listening for any sounds of workers in the servants’ quarters. Above, in the darkness, a bird made a warning squawk. Below was a rodent bustle in the dunghill. Otherwise, all was quiet.
Crawling on all fours, Klito stretched to look around the corner, across the kitchen yard, at the small building where Kara was held captive. Then she fell back, gasping with excitement, and whispered, “The guard is gone. That means the prince is in there with her.”
“Oh no!” Animone shifted nervously on the damp ground. “Now what?”
“Wait here.” Klito rose to sneak through the shadows along the hedge until she disappeared from sight. When she returned, her eager gestures told the others she had good news. “No sounds,” she hissed. “They must be asleep.”
“Oh no,” said Animone again.
“Oh yes,” countered Pitana, pulling the knife from her belt. “The prince may never wake up.”
“Wait.” Myrina held Pitana back. “We cannot all go in there. Four silent people make a terrible noise. Klito and I will go, while you two stay here.”
“But if the door is barred—” protested Pitana.
Klito tightened the scarf around her face. “There is a window. Small, but always open. Since the building is sunk into the ground, a slim person could probably get in from the outside, but no one can get out from the inside: It is set too high above the floor.”
After a cautious approach through the shadows, Myrina sidled up to the door and tested it with her hand. To her relief, it yielded readily to her touch. Glancing at Klito, she saw they were thinking the same thing: Would that this small token of carelessness was left by a man far gone in drunken oblivion.
At first, Myrina could see nothing of the room inside, but after a few blinks her eyes adjusted to the narrow beam of moonlight that leaked in through the open window. What she saw confirmed what she had already smelled—the presence of two bedraggled bodies, nesting in their own excretions.
Lying on the same bed, they could have been a pair of lovers … except that the prince, fast sleep, was resting comfortably under a sheepskin while Kara—highborn Kara, daughter of a chieftain—lay naked beside him, her arms tied with thick ropes to a bedpost.
Nodding at Klito to guard the door, Myrina undid her scarf and tiptoed ahead to wake their unfortunate sister. To her surprise she found Kara’s eyes already open, staring blankly at the ceiling. Feeling a twinge of panic, Myrina reached out to find the pulse on a neck that was cold and sticky to the touch.
She was still alive.
Only then, as Myrina went on to feel her face, did Kara blink and turn her head. But even though she looked straight at Myrina, she showed no sign of recognition. In fact, she showed no sign of thought whatsoever.
Myrina tried to smile. “It is your sister, Myrina. We have come to save you. Come—” But as soon as she took out her knife to cut the ropes, Kara pulled back in fear and started sobbing.
“Shh!” Myrina pressed a hand against her mouth. “Be quiet.”
But her plea had the opposite effect; as soon as Kara’s hands were free, she used them to push and slap at Myrina as hard as she could. “Go away! I don’t want you here! Go!”
“Quiet!” hissed Myrina, pulling at the unwilling arms. “Come! Hurry!”
“No!” Kara screamed the word at the top of her lungs, crouching against the bed that must have been her home for many days. “Leave me!
At last, the prince stirred.
Sitting up in bed, he peered into the darkness until he caught sight of the three women, now stone still, and noticed the frame of light around the half-open door. Then, with a roar, he reached down to grab his weapon. Myrina, acting by instinct as she would against a charging predator, pulled the ax from her belt and flung it at him with all the force of her fear.
The blow hit the prince right in the chest and threw him off the bed and onto the floor, his deadly cries no more than a beastly final wheeze.
“Disaster!” Myrina was not sure whether she said the word out loud or merely thought it. Their plan to come and go without a trace was thwarted. Had it been any other body they might have tried to hide it, but this was King Agamemnon’s son. “Let’s go!” she urged the others. “Quickly!”
“Wait.” Klito was by her side, spear raised. “We have to make sure he is dead.” She bent closer to poke at their victim. “You disgusting plague … do you know what the punishment is for defiling a priestess?”
From her state of petrified dumbness, Kara now sprang into being. “Stop!” she cried, trying to wrest the spear from Klito’s hands. Then she added, somewhat belatedly, “Please don’t hurt him—”
“Enough of this!” Myrina stepped across the man’s body to dislodge her ax from his chest. As she did, she saw there was no need for Klito’s spear; he was quite dead. “We must be away before he is discovered.”
Their retreat, intended to be so silent and full of joy, was the opposite. Wailing over the sudden death of her capturer, at first Kara refused to leave the room, spewing curses at her sisters. Then, when they made moves to depart, she bounded after them with cries of panic.
“Quiet!” Klito clasped Kara’s head and mouth between her hands, desperate to silence her. “You will wake everyone—”
But it was too late. Back at the hedge, where Animone and Pitana had been hiding, they were met by an assembly of at least a dozen house slaves—all women—engaged in a furious exchange of whispers and hand gestures.
“I think they want to leave with us,” explained Pitana, grimacing.
“Tell them they cannot,” said Myrina to Klito, who claimed to have gleaned the rudiments of the Greek language during her brief captivity. “Just say we will all be hunted down and butchered alive.” Without waiting for Klito to impart the message, Myrina continued through the herb garden, dragging along Kara, still sobbing and reluctant.
It was all too confused, too clamorous, and Myrina feared that within moments, there would be men afoot to stop them. “Pull yourself together!” she ordered, tying her head scarf around Kara’s shivering nakedness. “We came to save you, and now your hysteria may get us killed.”
Expecting they would be intercepted by the palace guards, Myrina hesitated in front of the hole in the garden wall, not understanding why no one was there. Having little choice, she pushed Kara through the hole and proceeded to pull her down the hill as fast as they could both go.
It was not long before she heard voices growing louder behind them. Stopping and turning, she saw that the entire cluster of women was still coming along, despite Klito’s ardent attempts at stopping them. Groaning with frustration, Myrina waited for them to catch up, then said as loudly as she dared, “I am sorry. You cannot come with us. Escape if you will, but we have no room for more.”
“Please,” Klito held out her folded hands to Myrina. “I know these women. They are all good, and are all suffering. Can we not—?”
Myrina clutched her head. “We cann
ot empty the palace of slaves. Do you wish to start a war?”
Klito turned to the women once more, explaining as best she could, but their appeal was so pitiful even Pitana was swayed. “Must we really leave them here?” she said under her breath. “Their faces will haunt me forever.”
Myrina straightened, angry to have her logic besieged by emotion. “Very well. Those who wish may come with us. But tell them they must follow the rules of our sisterhood. They must never again consort with men, must learn to kill rather than love, and”—she paused for inspiration, determined to come up with yet another condition that would surely discourage them all—”they must subject themselves to having one breast seared off, in order to better pull the bow.” She nodded firmly at them all. “Such are the conditions for joining us. Now, who wants to come?”
Klito’s translation caused a whimper of horror throughout the group, and no one came forward.
“I thought so.” Glumly satisfied, Myrina turned to go.
“Wait!” a fawn of a girl, hardly even a woman, stepped toward Myrina, fists clenched with conviction. “I will come.”
Myrina glanced at Klito, who stared at the young girl with a puzzled frown, as if trying to recognize her, but failing.
“So be it.” Myrina turned to go, making a face at Pitana. “Small as she is, they will never even realize she is missing.”
THEY RETURNED TO THE harbor just as the Sun appeared in the eastern sky, driving his golden chariot through the rosy veil of dawn. Even at this early hour the pier was abuzz with activity. The Trojans were hauling on board the last water barrels before departure, and men were running up and down the gangplanks yelling instructions.