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“The people.” He looks proudly at me. “What they’re saying.
Aphrodite, I hear the crowd murmuring. The murmur grows in a wave, bigger and bigger. The children are on their fathers’ shoulders, cheering. I think some of the small ones must believe I’m the real Aphrodite, their eyes are so big, their faces so dazzled and euphoric. Even some of the women look quite overcome, dabbing at their eyes; some even bow and curtsy as we pass. I had thought to face some hostility out here, families who wanted their own daughters chosen for this day or for Yiannis Demou’s hand, but it seems everyone is content to stareand murmur—or cheer, or weep. I want to remind them that it’s all just silly pageantry. I don’t want my fellow citizens to forget, even for a moment, who I really am: just a local girl, Councilman Andreos’s daughter, nothing more.
“We all knew you’d be chosen,” Hector says proudly, turning my way. “More beautiful than Aphrodite herself, that’s what my father says.”
“Hush, Hector!” I resist the urge to clamp a hand across his mouth, and feel a cold breeze wrap around my neck. Such words are dangerous. At least Hector’s were lost in the shouts of the crowd, and no one heard him but me. I just hope his father and others like him have not been too indiscreet.
I do not mean to be ungrateful, if it is as Father says and my beauty is a gift. One should be grateful for gifts. But I wonder if it is not so much a gift as a simple matter of accident. Perhaps gods scatter beauty among humans the way a handful of grain is scattered among chickens, with no meaning, no intent. Or perhaps the intent is amusement: to watch the chickens peck and fight, making chaos over what the gods have strewn.
Beauty is a currency like any other, I suppose—and for the most part, it is the only currency a woman has in our world. With it we can buy things: some security, perhaps, or a little independence. A husband; a house of our own to run. Sometimes we can buy a little respect. But sometimes it feels as though I am nothing but a face; nothing but my limbs and breasts and hair. Nothing but what they see. Whether I am good or brave, righteous or deceitful, my face can tell you nothing of that. Sometimes I feel I would like to peel back my skin and see inside of myself. Sometimes I wonder, if I were ugly, would I have figured out more about who I really am by now?
But I wave and smile, wave and smile, as we pass through the Agora. Here is where my new charioteering skills need some extra help, as we parade in a circle around the center for all thecrowd to cheer. I wonder how many hundreds of people are here. Perhaps a thousand or more. It smells of sweat and scented oils, mint and oregano, and alcohol. I look for my sister’s face but don’t see it. The reins slip a little and burn my hand, but at least the horses don’t bolt. The burn on my hand is nothing. I am a fast healer; it will be gone before tomorrow, and stings only a little. I’m more concerned about my dress, which I have to tug at to keep it inside the chariot—it’s so long, I’m worried about it getting caught under the wheels and pulling me with it.
The dressisbeautiful, though I would have preferred to be the one creating it, instead of the one wearing it. Father says my mother had a great talent at the loom, and the one she used still sits in our house, in a little room where no one hardly goes but me. I think if I’d been born a man, I should have liked to be a great artist—a potter, perhaps—but instead, as a woman, I may weave: that isourway of storytelling. Of creating.
The dress I’m wearing now, though, was not made by anyone in Sikyon. Yiannis’s father, Kirios Demou, is a trader, and imports the most exquisite fabrics: this dress is made from the sheerest, finest linen, woven from flax imported all the way from the Egyptian lands, dyed in the most exquisite blues and golds, and fastened with gold brooches. I’ve never seen anything like it: so gauzy, so light, so ethereal. Surely when Aphrodite emerged from the oceans in a gown of sea foam, this is indeed how it would have appeared. Tiny pearls stitched into the gown catch the sun like beads of rolling water. No expense must have been spared.
A woman grabs my hand and kisses it. The impulse seems to start a trend as others follow suit. They mean no harm, but my skin crawls as another pair of lips presses against my hand and I hear the murmur ofAphroditegrow in another great wave. Surely they understand I’m only here to honor the goddess, not to be honored myself.
I see the king watching in the middle of the square, raised up on a palanquin of red silk. I can’t see his face but I hope he’s pleased with the spectacle. If he’s not, we’ll know it soon.
It’s a relief when the cheers reach their peak and the parade leader gets the signal to move on. Now we must draw our chariots around in a final circle, then out of the Agora and up the mountain pass to Eros’s temple. We carve our way slowly out of the square and through the last street in town, which gives over to a steep uphill path. I flick the reins now to nudge the white horses forward, following the chariots ahead of us as we slowly begin the ascent.
The white rocks kick from under the horses’ feet as we climb up the steep mountainside. It’s high summer, and my hands slip a little on the reins, so sticky are they with sweat. Flies buzz. Hector plucks at his outfit: they’ve dressed him up in a suit of gold, and it looks much heavier than my sheer frock, poor boy. The crowds are behind us now: they will follow on foot, carousing already, until they reach the temple. Instead of the awestruck murmurs of the crowds, now there is the sound of flies buzzing, and from back in the town, the yapping of dogs travels on the wind. Heat comes up from the ground, washing over us. Hector pants and wipes his brow.
“It’s too hot! I need water.”
I wish I had brought some for us. My headache is stronger now.
“Soon we’ll be out of the sun,” I promise. The crowds following us on foot won’t be bringing water, though: they’ll be bringing wine, barrels upon barrels of it, four men to a barrel, hauling them on stretchers to the foot of the temple. When we get there, one of the priests will call the gods’ attention and dedicate the wine to them, and then our king will break the first cask and everyone will begin their merry-making.
It’s going to be a long night. At least Hector and I and the other performers won’t be expected to stay past the opening ceremony. Men’s hands become freer the more they drink, I know that by now.
Then one of the horses stumbles, sending a rush of rocks cascading down the hillside behind us. Sweat prickles my neck as I grab the reins hard. I feel like those rocks—precarious, unbalanced, much too near to the precipice. Then the horse shies, kicking, and I fear for our chariot; it could easily lose a wheel here. We bounce hard, and Hector is flung back; I grab him by the collar, keeping the reins in one hand. A wind blows through the dusty air.
“Are you all right?”
He pants and nods, and climbs back onto his feet.
“Hurry,” he says. “We’ll be late.”
And indeed, I can hear the crowds on foot close behind us, and ahead, the chariots are all but out of sight. I breathe deep, the hot summer air thick in my lungs, and flick the reins again.Eros, watch over us,I think. I’m not much given to prayer usually, but the feeling of foreboding is strong today.
And then the horses round the last bend, and the temple looms before us in all its fearful splendor, high as twenty men and brilliant in the sun. I try to shake the feeling that something in there is watching me.
Chapter Three
I don’t know how many pillars make up the temple, but it is certainly more than a thousand. Perhaps many thousands. Now in the sun, it glows like fire, the most imposing thing I’ve ever seen. They say that some gods spend all of their time on Olympus and hardly venture into the mortal world, while others like to reside in their temples from time to time. I think that if I were Eros, I would like to live in this temple. It is a sacred place. Even on the stillest mornings they say a wind tears through here, like a herd of wild horses galloping.
“Shade at last,” I say to Hector. “Perhaps the priests will have water for you.”
For the priests are starting to emerge from the temple. Their gold and white robes shine in the sun, and the High Priest and High Priestess lead the way. They move easily, although both of them are blind. Whether they were born blind or suffered some childhood illness that left them so I do not know, but it has always been this way at the temple. They say it gives them better vision for the realm beyond ours. When I was little, I was friends with a girl who was blind. I am told she is one of the young priestesses here now.
The priests descend the steps slowly, a dozen of them moving in elegant formation. Our carriages are all drawn to a halt, waiting. The temple stands on the crest of the hill, ringed around by olive trees and rows of vines, its painted marble bright against the green and yellow land. It smells of rich earth here, and of wine.
The crowds behind us are close within earshot again now, laughing and ready for the party. I turn around and search the crowd, just now emerging over the rocky summit. There’s the king in his red palanquin—I don’t envy the servants who had to carry it up this hill. There’s Yiannis and his parents, and that horrible Vasilis. Even from here I feel I can see his watery eyes on me, fixed on the parts of my body where they shouldn’t be.
There’s my father and, behind him, her pretty face pulled into a bored pout, Dimitra. Tall, thin, beautiful, her dark hair shining in the sun. A cheer goes up as the king reaches the foreground of the temple and joins us, and the crowd surges up behind him.
