Prologue They knew the child''s name only because her mother died cursing it, clutching at the bloodied bedclothes and spitting out the word as if it tasted sour on her tongue. After a few minutes her tongue stilled, and her limbs too, until she lay on the bed gray and cold as stone. The servants stood around the bed in a rough circle, looking down at the tangled mess the queen had made and thinking of the rituals her death would require, the sacrifices, the burning herbs nailed in clusters to the mud-brick walls. The room smelled of copper and sweat, as if a great battle had been fought within it. Anaxibia had warred with death and lost; for the moment, at least, her baby daughter had won. They''d wiped the babe off, tied the cord, and swaddled her in a blanket. She squalled at fi rst, face purple with incoherent rage, but then she lay quietly in her cradle as her mother''s body hardened and cooled. She knew nothing of death.
She came into the world as any girl might, unexpected, tolerated. If she hadn''t been a royal child, she might have been left alone on a hillside to die nameless beneath the summer sun. As it was, Pelias had no time for the naming of girl children. The king would abandon the palace after hearing of his wife''s death, taking a group of his best fi ghting men to hunt boar for the funeral feast, and would not return until the morning of her burial day. For two days the palace would be empty except for the children and the servants and the slaves and the animals and the body of the dead queen, swelling in the heat. The queen''s spirit had already departed, trailing after the god Hermes like a cloak in the dust. The god had looked down at the baby in her cradle, a long, silent look, but she had not seen him--or if she had, she had not cried at the sight. But now the baby wriggled, bleated like a lamb.
The queen''s body servant sighed and wiped her bloody hands on her shift. Stirred out of reverie, the other women shook their heads and blinked in the low light. The women leaned down and rolled Anaxibia''s body over so they could strip the linens from the bed. The queen lay slumped on her side, her brown braids mussed and tangled, her face smooth. She was twenty-four years old. The baby girl in the cradle was her fi fth child, and the other children had been waiting for hours, clustered outside the bedchamber, to see their mother and new sibling. Their thin voices slipped into the room beneath the closed door. The women looked at each other.
"Go on," said the head maid, nodding to two of the others. "They must be told. And the king too." The chosen messengers left. After a moment, the children began to wail outside the door, their cries fading as the maids hurried them out of the women''s quarters. The head maid turned back to the dead queen, then looked at the serious faces of the two other serving women who''d stayed behind, looked over at the baby in the cradle. She bent down to pick up the child and balanced the baby''s small damp head against her shoulder. "Alcestis," she said and looked to the others for confirmation.
"That what you heard too?" Dry eyed and solemn, they nodded. They''d seen this bloody struggle too often to weep. "Alcestis," said Anaxibia''s body servant, and looked at the baby, who had fallen asleep in the head maid''s arms. "Poor thing." The head maid put the baby down on her back in the crib. She sent a servant to fetch the kitchen maid who''d just borne a son, sent another to call the men to bring oils and cloths. The wet nurse took some time to arrive, but Alcestis did not cry. She lay in the cradle and listened to the skim and slap of the women''s hands spreading oil on her mother''s fl esh, the silky whispers as they combed out and rebraided her mother''s hair.
She breathed in the smell of the room, the bodily stench of failed combat with the gods, the reek of a thread snipped. The women watched the baby with nervous eyes as they worked. The two who lived to hear of Alcestis'' death--if one could call it death--would recall her birth then, and mutter to each other about the way the girl had opened her tiny mouth to suck in the fouled air as if it could replace her mother''s milk. Perhaps she''d grown used to death then, they''d say. Perhaps she''d been hungry for it all her life. I don''t remember those moments, those sounds, those smells. But this is what I imagine from what I was told as I grew older. This, said the maids, the servants, my sisters--this was how your story began.
When I was eight years old, I lived with my sisters in the stuffy upper quarters of the palace at Iolcus. We had a small room to ourselves, a chamber that adjoined the female servants'' quarters, big enough to hold the bed, a bench, and a small table. It was the room we''d all been born in, the room our mother had died in, though only Pisidice was old enough to remember the disaster of my birth. The room no longer held any traces of our mother. It was a girls'' room now, temporary and unembellished, a place for princesses to sleep and grow until we were old enough to be married and carried away. I slept with Hippothoe and Pisidice, jammed in the middle because I was the smallest. Pisidice came to bed smelling of crushed fl owers and wet linen and kicked in her sleep. Hippothoe smelled of garlic and sweat, but it was a warm smell, not unpleasant, and on this night I''d fallen asleep curled up against her bony shoulder with my nose pushed into her skin.
The bedchamber was dark and quiet when her writhing woke me. I felt the hot point of her elbow in my chest, quickly withdrawn, and then a light hesitant touch on my arm. I sat up half alert in the darkness and scrubbed at my face with my palms. Hippothoe looked up at me, eyes panic-bright, hands fluttering between us in time with her wheezing breath. She shook her head once and I understood. She was always sorry for waking me, always spent her regained breath on apologies I didn''t need. She had these panting fits often, sometimes only nights apart, and I knew we would both be limp and lazy in the morning--but it was my duty to get help, like Hippothoe''s own little goddess of health, and I''d grown so used to the role that I almost enjoyed it. I squeezed her hot hand, climbed down from the bed, and stumbled off to wake the servants in the outer room.
The head maid sighed when I touched her, a low, miserable sound, as if she could not bear being dragged from sleep. But she hauled herself out of bed and followed me into the bedchamber to fetch Hippothoe. My sister sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched and heaving, the ends of her hair brushing her hands as they twisted in her lap. She leaned on me to stand, her body shaking as we walked, and I felt strong as a tower beneath her arm. The head maid led us bleary eyed to the hearth, stepping over slaves sleeping in the halls. We stumbled down the stairs and past our father''s empty throne. In the kitchens the head maid boiled water so Hippothoe could breathe the steam and rubbed cut garlic under her nose as she gasped and coughed. The air grew thick and my shift clung to my body, clammy with steam and fear.
The head maid and I prayed to Apollo, running through the chant we said so often that I worried the god would tire of our entreaties. I believed then that he listened to me when I prayed. I imagined him stealing silently among us, reaching out to touch Hippothoe''s chest with one golden-glowing hand, calming her, fixing her. I held my breath when Hippothoe choked and let it out only when her wheezing smoothed and slowed. In the bedchamber, Pisidice still slept heavily, only muttering a little when Hippothoe and I collapsed onto the bed and tucked our damp bodies together. I put my cheek against my sister''s shuddery chest and my arm along her neck. We looked like one gray-limbed creature, one divine monster, one flesh. I thought we would never be separated.
"Sorry," Hippothoe whispered to me as faintly as if she spoke across a great distance, while I stroked her forehead. "Alcestis, sorry." * In the morning Hippothoe''s breath smelled faintly sweet, like a baby''s, from the honey the head maid had given her for her roughened throat. I lay beside her, my back to Pisidice and my cheek hot on the linens. I had to pee. I''d been thinking of getting up to use the privy by the kitchens before the heat made the smell too terrible. I liked to walk through the quiet palace, to watch the servants and slaves twitch in their dreams like puppies, to watch my sisters snort and toss in the bed. But I waited, for I wanted Hippothoe to wake enough to pet my hair.
On some mornings she''d drift into sleep again with a hand curved around my skull while I listened to her heart thud beneath her ribs. Now she stirred, restless and exhausted, and I felt Pisidice bolt into alertness with an allover twitch of her limbs. My eldest sister yawned, rolling, and kneed me in the back. Then she slipped out of bed and went to sit by the narrow window, settling in to watch the shepherds in the distant fi elds and gaze hungrily at the road as if she expected a visitor. Pisidice did this every morning. She was twelve years old and desperate for marriage. "No one''s coming, you know," Hippothoe said, and coughed hard, jarring me. She rested her thin hand on top of my unruly head.
"No suitors today, Lady Pisidice," I echoed, emboldened by Hippothoe''s words. Pisidice did not look away from the window; I wasn''t worth her attention. She''d left her comb and jar of oil on the sill and now she rubbed the oil between her palms and smoothed it over her hair, combing it through while she looked out over th.