The Gate to Women's Country (9 page)

She wound her way through the market, not realizing until she came to the candle makers shops at the edge of the plaza that she had intended all along to come to the wall.

“Stupid, sentimental sop,” she told herself as she climbed the stairs. “What do you think you're going to see down there?”

What Stavia saw was the empty parade ground with its tower and its monument to Telemachus, behind that the carved gables of the barracks buildings sweltering in the sun, and beyond them black specks racing about on the playing fields. The garrison was only half the size it had been when she was a child, and every member of it seemed to be either playing or watching, mostly from low bleachers along the field. Three or four men were looking on from the terrace of the officers' residence. Shaking her head at herself, she found a sheltered corner hidden from the plaza and fished in a pocket for the book. It was warm here in the sun. She would spend an hour or two reviewing
Iphigenia
, then buy herself some lunch at a tea shop before going home to the promised nap. By then she'd be tired enough to sleep, she told herself, leafing through the pages to find the place where she and Corrig had left off that morning.

“T
HE GHOST OF
A
CHILLES
appears upon the battlement,” she read, wondering how Joshua could bear to play Achilles. One would expect some servitor with a broad sense of humor and not much dignity, not someone like Joshua.

A
CHILLES
I seek my servant, Polyxena!

I
PHIGENIA
(Calling from ground level)
Oh, mighty warrior, she is not here.

A
CHILLES
(Petulantly)
She's supposed to be here. They spilt her maiden blood upon my tomb so she would be here.

I
PHIGENIA
But they didn't ask her if she would serve you, Achilles. Now that the warrants of warriors no longer run, she
is
her own ghost.

A
CHILLES
She
is my
slave! It's all been arranged. Spill a maiden's blood, heart's blood, or maidenhead, and she's yours. Everyone knows!

I
PHIGENIA
She is no one's slave, Achilles. In the place of shades, we are all equal….

H
ECUBA
Oh, maiden spirit, what
is
this mouthing?
IPHIGENIA
Achilles' shade stands on the battlement, his member turgid with the fever of his passing, calling for Polyxena.

H
ECUBA
Poor Polyxena.

I
PHIGENIA
She may do as she likes, Priam's Queen. Nothing here constrains her.

A
NDROMACHE
What will Polyxena do if nothing constrains her? Mother, what will she do?

H
ECUBA
I think she'll sleep. Polyxena was ever fond of sleep. Do they sup in Hades? Do they dance? Perhaps she'll eat, or dance. She liked to dance.

If it were me, I'd sleep, thought Stavia. Not dance or eat. Just sleep. She yawned, turning the page.

A
CHILLES
(Descending the stair)
If Polyxena won't attend on me, I'll set myself some other likely game. Are you Iphigenia, maiden child of mighty Agamemnon?

I
PHIGENIA
Well I was.

A
CHILLES
Why then, we are betrothed!

I
PHIGENIA
(Laughing)
Don't play the fool, Achilles!

A
CHILLES
Odysseus bid you come to Aulis to wed me, did he not?

I
PHIGENIA
Pure trickery to get me there, Achilles. They didn't call Odysseus the fox for nothing! I curse him as I curse my father. You knew nothing of
betrothal then. When my mother greeted you as my betrothed, you thought her daft!

A
CHILLES
That's true, but later on I agreed it was not a bad match. You were Agamemnon's daughter, after all. I offered to defend you.

I
PHIGENIA
(With shrill laughter, which echoes from the battlements as though from a horde of female spirits)
Oh, Achilles, Achilles….
(Declaims)

After I died, you said that you admired my courage, though courage it was not! Anger it was, at all you murderous men. Anger which steeled me not to shame myself!

Some poet, hearing of your fatuous words composed a song about the bloody deed, and not content with truth, embroidered it with fulsome lies and patent sentiments. What really happened was, you hid yourself, and stayed in hiding until I was dead.

A
CHILLES
It wasn't you who died. Artemis sent a hind to take your place. Everyone knows….

I
PHIGENIA
What people know is what they want to know.

That was a late-come hind, great warrior, for I was there and never saw it come! Artemis sent no hind. Artemis had more urgent business in some other place. It was my blood spurting upon the stones each time my heart's fist clenched, it was my brain afire with pain, my voice gone dumb, my eyes turned into dimming orbs of sand-worn glass, their youthful luster lost forevermore. Iphigenia, Agamemnon's child, died on that bloody stone, not some poor hind.

A
NDROMACHE
Oh pity. Pity.

I
PHIGENIA
And though by now all poets gloss it o'er to make it seem a different, kinder thing, there was no great Achilles at my side, no goddess-given hind to take my place. I made no offer of myself as sacrifice, though all the songs in Hellas say I did.

H
ECUBA
What are you saying, spirit?

I
PHIGENIA
I am attempting to explain to the warrior
that those who took my life murdered me, though every poet in Hellas sings it otherwise.

“Halloo there,” said a voice in Stavia's ear.

“Hah!” Stavia grunted, jolted out of a half doze. “Who… what… what's it?”

“Joshua, Stavvy. What are you doing up here, falling asleep, getting yourself sunburned?”

“Josh? I didn't mean to fall asleep, though every poet in Hellas says I did….” Her voice trailed away, not yet awake. “When did you get back?”

“An hour or so ago. Nobody was home. I went to the hospital and your mother said you were having lunch or a nap, but I thought I'd find you here. Though, from the looks of you, you ought to be in bed.” He sat down on the parapet and gave her a hard stare, the light behind him making his gray braid shine like a silver rope across his shoulder. The lines around his eyes were squeezed deep in concentration. “It was really bad, Stavvy?”

“Well, I knew how it would feel, but then I lied to myself a lot,” she confessed, as she would have confessed to no one except Joshua or Corrig. “I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about Dawid, wondering what I might have done differently. Remembering when I was a kid, when things started. You know. How did you find me? You couldn't see me from down there.” The words were out before she thought, then she flushed. Of course he had known where she would be.

Joshua took the book from her lap, scanning the section of the play she had been marking with her finger. “Stavvy, you knew there wasn't a chance in hell that boy would do anything but what he did. Think of Achilles. That's Dawid. T can't offend my friends, but you won't really die, mommy. Athena will send a hind.' Warriors all think like that or they wouldn't stay in the garrison. The trouble is with you, you've been creating playlets in your head. ‘Dawid's change of heart.' ‘Dawid overcoming his heritage and environment.' ‘Dawid being blinded by the holy light.' Come on, Stavvy.” He turned away from her, and she, seeing the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching, realized that he was trying to keep her from seeing the broken expression on his face. So. Despite his harsh words, he had loved Dawid, too, just as he
had loved Jerby and Habby and Byram. He had hoped, too.

“I wish you'd been here to talk some sense into me before I went down there,” she said softly. “Or after.”

“I wasn't here for very good reason, as you know. Now quit breaking yourself up over Dawid. He may be half yours, girl, but it's the wrong half. Come on, I'll take you to lunch.”

He half dragged her to the sausage shop, settling his face into a cheerful expression, giving evidence of enjoyment at a plate of mutton links heavy with basil and garlic and a dish of rare, wonderful rice. Around mouthfuls of sausage he told her stories, making her almost laugh. When he had eaten half of what was before him, he asked, “Why are you studying old Iphi?”

Stavia, who was only playing with a salad of early lettuce, looked down at the dog-eared book. “I'm doing the lead this summer. Morgot has refused to do it again, and they're all very flattering. They tell me I'm the only Council member who can look convincingly girlish. Don't laugh. I know what I look like today. Morgot told me.”

“Summer's quite a time away. I'm doing Achilles, but I don't intend to look at it for weeks yet.”

“I'd be surprised if you had to look at it at all! You've been playing the part for ages. I thought if I read it over every week or so, I'd pretty much learn it again without having to labor over it.” Sudden tears filled her eyes and she gasped at a remembered pain so intimate it was like childbirth.

“Stavvy?”

“I'm all right, Josh. It's just… I was really reading it to distract myself, but I keep finding things in it that apply to me. Like Iphigenia being tricked to come down to Aulis. To get married, they said, when all they wanted to do was use her. You know that, you know all about it, and yet you let yourself….”

“They wouldn't be acting it out every year in every city of Women's Country if it weren't applicable to something.”

Stavia picked at her salad, the tears drying in the corners of her eyes, wondering at herself once more. “Things happen to you when you're young. And you
think you know what it was that happened, but you really don't. Then later, sometimes years later, you suddenly understand what was really going on. And you feel such a fool because it's too late to do anything about the mistakes you made. I keep thinking of examples. Like the day Beneda and I were on the wall, and Chernon came up on the armory roof to see us. I was so excited. I thought he liked me. It seemed so casual, so fortuitous. I hadn't any idea what was really happening.”