Shimmering Splendor Page 4

  Later, after he withdrew from the center of attention, laughingly claiming he had been drained dry and his voice was hoarse, he asked Anerios if he might be deemed worthy to propose himself as suitor for his daughter Psyche. The king nodded. “You are acceptable to me. Whether you will be acceptable to Psyche is much less likely. There are five others here—” Anerios’s eyes flicked to that number of young men, all dressed in gorgeous chitons and overrobes, seated well apart from one another “—whom she has refused.”

  Proud bitch, Eros thought, feeling within himself the small center of angry, pulsing red that was Aphrodite’s spell of obsession. That would tame Psyche’s pride.

  Chapter 3

  In the women’s chambers above the queen’s megaron, Psyche listened to her mother without expression.

  “He is from Cellae in Macedon,” Queen Beryllia said with considerable emphasis. “He said he began his journey here midspring. It is now nearly time for harvest.”

  “I doubt he was pressing on with any haste,” Psyche murmured, her eyes on the hands she had clasped in her lap. “He must have rested as a guest in many places, and for all we know, for considerable time.”

  “I see you are set against him already because you assume he did not rush to throw himself at your feet without pausing to eat and drink.”

  “No, mother!” Psyche exclaimed, looking up with shock marking her lovely face. “I was only trying to understand how far Cellae really is from Iolkas. What good would it do for me to accept the man—” her lips twisted as if she had bit into something very bitter “—if Cellae were close enough to cry blood feud and launch an army?”

  “Well? What do I tell your father?” Beryllia asked, without making any reply to Psyche’s remark. “Do you go down or refuse even to meet the man?”

  “The others will make trouble for him,” Psyche said.

  Beryllia laughed briefly. “I do not think so. He stands a head taller than any of them—and he slew the bear Arktos all alone, without help.”

  Psyche hastily lowered her eyes to her hands again, afraid the spark of interest she felt would show. He sounded a most worthy man—but not for her, she reminded herself. No man, no matter how worthy, would be suitable for her. Even if his city was too far to launch a war on Iolkas, would he not kill her out of jealousy? Why, oh why, had the priestess refused her a haven at Aphrodite’s temple? What if she did hate the goddess of beauty? She had no power to harm Aphrodite.

  Something had to be done. Something. Anything. It had not helped to isolate herself in the women’s quarters. The suitors still came, still threatened her father if he would not force her to come down, still quarreled among themselves no matter how firmly she refused them. Perhaps the priestess of Aphrodite would change her mind when the lack of sacrifices made life in the temple thin and meager.

  Psyche shivered slightly. More likely she would not. Psyche remembered the priestess’s blind-looking eyes as they stared into her, seeing under flesh and bone what Psyche hid from everyone else, remembered her fear when Anerios struck her, and remembered that the fear had not bent the woman’s will. Would it not be better to accept this man, go with him to his far city, and let him kill her? Psyche shivered again. She did not want to die, but if there were no other way…

  “Yes, of course I will go down,” she said to her mother. “To refuse would only delay the meeting for a day or two. I will dress now and be ready.”

  * * *

  The torches in the well-wrought metal stands were alight by the time Beryllia led her youngest daughter and the wives of the other noblemen at court down to join the menfolk. Stools had been set beside and slightly behind each bench, except a low chair near Anerios’s throne for the queen. There was a stir among the men as soon as the women approached, three of the five Anerios had indicated were suitors rising to their feet.

  “Lord Atomos, this is my daughter Psyche,” Anerios said, clearly and loudly.

  Eros turned his head from the three who had stepped forward, but paused when they heard Anerios’s introduction and began to mutter to each other. He raised his eyes to the woman standing beside the king, drew breath, and slowly got to his feet.

  “My,” he said with widening eyes. “Oh, my! You are something else again!”

  So she was. Eros was intimately familiar with the most exquisite beauty, but what he saw was nothing at all like Aphrodite’s scarcely nubile, ethereal face and figure. Psyche was very nearly as tall as he, full breasted and with voluptuous curves that could not be concealed completely by her modest garments. Her large eyes—he could not make out the color in the torchlight—met his squarely. Her skin seemed flawless and very pale; her hair was so black as almost to be an absence of light where it flowed free. The nose was straight and fine but not thin or delicate, the lips—very unlike Aphrodite’s rosebud pout—full, the whole mouth generous, except that it was pinched in at the corners as if to give nothing away. In fact, each feature by itself was not so special; put together, even Eros—accustomed as he was to his own perfect face—was almost overcome.

  The face, which had presented only a frozen blankness, a perfect carven mask, during her father’s introduction, quivered into life in response to his remark, the brows lifting slightly in surprise. “Something else from what?” Psyche asked, taking in the stranger’s dark, thick-browed face.

  There was, amazingly, none of the dazed adoration with which she was all too familiar. Admiration she did see, but that was covered as soon as she spoke by an expression of startled caution. That seemed odd, but Psyche was not sure of what she had seen because Lord Atomos swept an arm across his chest and bowed deeply enough to hide his face.

  He was smiling when he straightened, and he said, “You must know, Lady Psyche, that you are different from every other woman.”

  “I know nothing of the sort,” she said, her voice gone utterly flat, the warm burr, which had made her surprised question a delight to hear, absent. “I can prove to you in any number of ways that I am exactly like every other woman.”

  “Psyche!” Anerios muttered.

  Her eyes flickered to her father and she caught back what more she had been about to say. Again her mouth felt bitter as gall. All he cared about was that this Atomos lived far enough away so that his people were unlikely to declare war if he should marry her and then go mad with jealousy. He did not care that she would be too far away to be protected by the responsibility of father and brothers to a wedded daughter and sister.

  A burst of laughter brought her eyes back to her new suitor. “And so you are!” he exclaimed, with every sign of delight, “But my reasons for saying so may be very different from the proofs you promised me. So, Lady Psyche, will you not please be seated on this stool and explain to me why you say you are exactly like every other woman?”

  Psyche read amusement and, again, a kind of wariness in him. For the first time in five years, a faint light of hope glimmered through the dead ashes of her dreams. She sat down as he had asked, aware of her father sending the refused suitors back to their seats with questions as to whether they were finished eating and wished to take their leave. Their protests over Anerios’s presenting his daughter to the stranger, rather than offering her a choice of partners, was drowned out in a babble of voices from her father’s men and their women, who had heard the same protests a thousand times over the past few years. Other men stood. The “slighted” suitors returned to their places. Psyche’s eyes came back to Atomos, who smiled at her.

  She looked down at her hands and said, “I must warn you that many of my proofs and arguments are philosophical. You will have to take on trust the fact that my physical parts are exactly like those of any other woman.”

  Now, she thought, he would tell her no proof could make her less than perfect, and thus, by definition, different from all other women, or he would totally ignore what she had said and begin to extoll her beauty. She had not looked up again and thus was totally unprepared for either tone or words.

  “Wel
l—” Somehow Psyche heard laughter, although his voice was grave. “I can see that you have the proper four limbs, but do you not think I should require more than philosophical proof that all of you is really you?”

  Psyche’s astonished gaze leapt to his face to find his eyes were on her full breast. Her lips parted, but nothing came out, and when he lifted his eyes to her face, she found herself blinking with shock.

  “With a proper female guard, of course,” Atomos went on, and she could hear the quiver in his voice that marked his effort to retain his sobriety. Again her lips parted—this time to laugh, although she dared not yet grasp at the hope his teasing manner aroused, and he spoke again, this time with a touch of…contempt?…saying, “I would not wish to damage a reputation as flawless as your face.”

  Psyche swallowed a mingling of indignation and amusement and opened her eyes wide. “Oh, are you planning to bargain for me by the pound?”

  “Holy Mo—Aphrodite, no!” Eros exclaimed. “You would cost a fortune by the pound. Cellae is rich in the red gold sown through the mountains, but there is a limit even to the gold of Cellae. Would you not rather wear it on your neck and arms than have me pay it to your father because you would make two of most other women?”

  A kind of cold shiver had passed over Psyche when Atomos swore by Aphrodite, an icy douche to cool the rush of warmth that followed her astonishment at his answer to her first remark. The little frisson of fear evaporated completely by the time he finished, and she laughed aloud.

  “Clearly I am too much of a handful for you—”

  “Not at all,” he interrupted, holding out his hands. “As you can see, I have fine, large hands. They managed a bear the night before last. I imagine they can manage you.”

  “You plan to shoot me with arrows?”

  To Psyche’s surprise, Atomos blinked as if she had slapped him. But then he smiled and said, “Only with arrows of love.”

  The lightness had gone out of his voice, however, and she shook her head and said, “Love is not for the beautiful.”

  She spoke so bitterly that Eros drew a sharp breath, his heart clenching with sympathy. She understood! And so, was it such an evil in her to hate the goddess of beauty, when beauty had done her so much ill? He remembered the slight flinch when the suitors rose to approach her. Or was he reading into her words what he wished to hear?

  “What else is there to kindle love but beauty?” he asked.

  “Many things that are a great deal more durable,” Psyche snapped, annoyed at having expected more and hearing instead the same trite argument she had been offered more times than she could count, more times, she felt, than there were grains of sand on the shore. “Thank the gods that there are some men with brains left in the world, like the princes of Apheta and Olizon, who saw soon enough that beauty is a shallow thing and courted and married my sisters Enstiktia and Horexea.”

  “But why take second best, even though I am sure your sisters are lovely women, when they could have had you?” Eros asked.

  “They did not take second best,” Psyche replied, even more annoyed. Why had she hoped? This one was like all the others. “My sisters are truly beautiful women, not accursed as I am with an unnatural perfection. Also, my sisters will be of value to their households forever. Horexea is a weaver of surpassing skill, and Enstiktia’s embroidery almost lives and breathes.”

  “I am quite sure that you have skills to equal those of your sisters.”

  She laughed without mirth. “None that a man would think would fit me to be a wife. I have a very ready tongue, but I have found that little valued by men.” Her lips twisted. “In fact, it is the one thing that can sometimes clear the glaze from their eyes. I have some learning about the beasts and birds and plants in the wild, but men who prefer to immure a wife inside the house think that unwomanly. And I have a substantial knowledge of spells—” She hesitated, cocked her head, as if waiting for an expression of horror, and when Eros only smiled, went on wryly, “Only the spells are useless because I have not the power to bring them into full potency.”

  That was true, Eros thought. There was not a flicker of magic about her. He was rather surprised that her astonishing perfection had not reminded him to “look” and “smell” for sorcery, but she was so different from what he had expected, with her ready sense of humor and her feelings—so like his own—about what she called her unnatural perfection. Then he remembered what Damianos had told him was the reason for her study of sorcery.

  “But to me what you offer is very precious,” Eros said gently. “There are servants and slaves who can weave and embroider, but the winter nights are very long in Cellae, and a woman with a ready tongue would be a great prize. And in Cellae, we do not confine our women. You would be free to hunt and fish and gather, if you desired, so you would benefit my household much through your knowledge of the plants and animals. I am not certain what use your spells would be if they do not work—perhaps to teach others of greater power?”

  Teach me? Eros wondered, realizing that he had barely substituted the name Cellae for Olympus when he said her skills would be precious—realizing, too, that he had been feeling, truly feeling, since his first moment of astonishment when he had looked at Psyche and instead of accepting his remark as incense on the altar of her beauty she had almost laughed. He had been speaking more for Eros, a man going wooing, than the minion of Aphrodite seeking for what would most hurt one who had offended her. Mother help me, Eros thought. I want her.

  Psyche stared at him for a moment as if she did not believe her ears. “Do you mean—” she began, and then laughed. “I dare say you would find my learning less precious if it were stored behind a different face.”

  Of course he would, for she would not have learned the bitter lesson of the evil inherent in superlative beauty, but he could not tell her that. It would be ridiculous coming from a man with Atomos’s face.

  “I do not know,” Eros replied. “And the point is moot, because if you did not have the face of a goddess, rumor of you would not have flown all the way to Cellae. But I admit I would not have come so far to look at a woman with a ready tongue.”

  “More the fool you, for learning and a quick wit will last through a whole life, whereas the shape of eyes and mouth will change, hollowing and falling in with the passing years.”

  “Many years,” Eros said, smiling. “By that time a man might have been dead of old age, or illness, or accident. The more fools the princes of Apheta and Olizon who yielded up the golden treasure of your beauty for the silver coin of your sisters’ skills.”

  “A gilded phantasm, oh foolish Atomos, not a golden treasure. How long would a man who lived with me see my face? Have you never had a companion of surpassing ugliness? A friend with a terrible scar? If you loved those men, did you see the scar or the gross features after a few days?”

  This time it was Eros’s mouth that opened and closed without producing words. It was true! Unless some special reason made him look at her, he hardly saw Aphrodite. And she watched his expression, not his features. He shook his head, not in negation but in a kind of wonder at Psyche’s keen perception.

  She misunderstood the gesture and sighed wearily. “A man can sell weavings and embroideries and still enjoy the warm pleasure of a wife who loves him and who takes joy in creating more weavings and embroideries for his good and the good of his household. Beauty is a cold and sterile thing; it finds no room within itself for the love of others. Any man who took me would have nothing but what he could see, and that would become meaningless in a few days or a few weeks at the most.”

  Again Eros’s gut twisted. Was he so full of his own beauty that he had no love, no warmth to offer? Could it be that those to whom he had responded—some out of pity for their anguish, some out of his own physical need—had felt the lack of love in him and were thus driven to jealousy and to inflicting fury and misery upon him until he abandoned them? But Psyche could not know that, unless his mask was slipping and she had caught a g
limpse—

  “But I, Atomos, do not believe you are cold and sterile,” he said hastily, and knew his disguise was still perfect. There had not been even the faint quiver of draining that he had felt when he had said that name in the bath earlier. So, likely she had spoken in simple pride, knowing herself matchless and unwilling to take less than her equal. “I think the right man could awaken within you a warmth to match your matchless beauty—”

  “I hope not!” Psyche said, laughing. “If that warmth was as excessive as my beauty, my lover and I would both go up in flames.”

  “The flames of love,” Eros said, lips twitching, “are rarely fatal. And no matter how painful, that agony is equally joy.”

  “If you do not mind,” Psyche snapped, “I prefer a well-wrapped hot brick in my bed in the winter, not a shovelful of lighted coals.”

  Eros choked and then roared with laughter. “I too,” he gasped, then added plaintively, “but a few coals to light the fire to heat the bricks would not be amiss.”

  Psyche put out her hand. “Perhaps not—” she began.

  There was a cry from the benches to the right. Psyche snatched back her hand, stiffening, and her eyes flashed toward the five suitors. The nearest, who had not joined the general conversation, had leapt to his feet. Now he rushed around the seated folk and came to stand beside her, glaring down at Eros.

  “Psyche,” he said, “do not listen to this man’s blandishments. Cellae is a poor, miserable collection of mud huts, and Macedon is full of nothing but savages who wear animal skins and eat their meat raw. If you go with him, he will harness you to his plow like an ox—”