Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey Read Free Book Online Page B

braided hair was pinned into a black-and-silver crown that, in the harsh classroom lighting, assumed all the menace of a hoplite helmet. Her arms were bared to the shoulder and muscles bunched ominously under dark, smooth skin as she flung her hands about, all flowing yellow skirts and passion. I wondered, for a moment, what La Gribaldi might think of Lysander’s line about ugly Ethiopes. She was Eritrean by birth, not Ethiopian, but I thought the two countries were related somehow. I made a vague attempt at chasing the memory down, but it faded when she started reading from Homer’s Odyssey .
    The original text was well beyond us. Mansfield offered Latin as a language option (mostly for the prestige; hardly anyone actually took it), but not ancient Greek, an appalling oversight that clearly enraged La Gribaldi. But she’d won the battle to use Chapman’s Homer instead of a more literal translation, informing us on the first day that, ‘Translation can never do more than approximate, so we shall, at least, be gloriously inaccurate.’ Today, her voice became Circe’s voice, her American drawl transmuted into the witch’s clever seduction. Not even daydreams about Mark Nolan’s eyes could intrude very long into that.
    Which was just as well. ‘Ms Spencer,’ she snapped, flashing her rings at me. ‘What is the obvious thematic parallel in the presentation of Circe weaving?’
    â€˜With Penelope,’ I said, and waited to see if more was required. She folded her heavy arms over the bulk of her breasts and lifted an eyebrow, inviting expansion. ‘Well, Penelope’s presented as the faithful wife, always with her loom,’ I said slowly, giving myself time to work it out as I went. ‘But Penelope’s only weaving during the day and secretly undoing it at night so that she doesn’t have to marry one of her suitors. So she’s doing the work of a wife, but then she’s destroying it, so no one will make her his wife. Oh, but she’s just making ordinary cloth. Circe is weaving enchantments. And Circe’s cooking is filled with herbs that transform men to beasts. She does complete the housework, but it’s, uh, twisted.’ That sounded reasonably clever. Best to leave it there. ‘So, uh, yeah,’ I concluded masterfully.
    â€˜The sorcerous seductress as the perverted housewife,’ La Gribaldi said, slapping the book onto her desk. Her braided crown threatened to tumble down with the violence of the gesture. ‘Excellent, Ms Spencer. Mr Nolan, something to add?’
    â€˜Circe’s pretty selfish,’ he offered, lowering his hand and glancing at me. ‘Penelope’s selfless, but Circe just wants to control men. She gets what she wants from them, and then she doesn’t care.’
    I wasn’t going to let even a cute guy get away with that. ‘She wants to be safe,’ I argued. ‘You think the men would let her get away with being powerful? She has to protect herself. There’re all those lines about her house being made of stone, and the wild animals under her command. Security precautions. Penelope wouldn’t need to unpick her work every night if she had some other way to keep those guys off her back. But the Greeks didn’t like women with magic – look at what happened to Medea and Ariadne.’
    Mark leaned forward. ‘They didn’t really like anyone with magic.’
    â€˜Orpheus is a magician as well as a musician,’ I pointed out. We were twisted in our seats, now, facing each other. The rest of the class was watching with interest. ‘But he’s a good guy. When he goes into the underworld to rescue his dead wife, we’re supposed to cheer for him, and sympathise when he turns to look at her before he’s fully completed the walk back out. You’re never supposed to cheer for women who use their magic to actually do anything. Naiads and dryads are