The Song of Troy by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page A

her. Though she was dearer to me by far than my mother had been, she was always conscious of the difference in our stations. I gripped her so hard between my fingers that she writhed and whimpered.
    ‘What about the Queen? What does she do?’
    ‘Murders your sons.’
    I rocked. ‘Thetis? My sons? What is this? Speak!’
    Her frenzy dwindling, she stared at me in dawning horror as she grasped the fact that I knew nothing.
    I shook her. ‘You had better go on, Aresune. How does my wife murder her sons? And why? Why? ’
    But she folded her lips one over the other and said nothing, eyes in the flame terrified. My dagger came out; I pressed its tip against her loose, slippery old skin.
    ‘Speak, woman, or by Almighty Zeus I swear that I will have your sight put out, your nails ripped from their beds – anything I need to do to unstopper your tongue! Speak, Aresune, speak!’
    ‘Peleus, she would curse me, and that is far worse than any torture,’ she quavered.
    ‘The curse would be evil. Evil curses rebound on the head of the one who casts them. Tell me, please.’
    ‘I was sure you knew and consented, lord. Maybe she is right – maybe immortality is preferable to life on earth, if there is no growing old.’
    ‘Thetis is mad,’ I said.
    ‘No, lord. She is a Goddess.’
    ‘She is not, Aresune, I would stake my life on it! Thetis is an ordinary mortal woman.’
    Aresune looked unconvinced; I did not sway her much.
    ‘She has murdered all your sons, Peleus, that is all. With the best of intentions.’
    ‘How does she do it? Does she take some potion?’
    ‘No, dear lord. Simpler by far. When we put her on the childing stool she drives all the women from the room except me. Then she makes me put a pail of sea water under her. As soon as the head is born she guides it into the water and holds it there until there is no possibility that the child can draw breath.’
    My fists closed, opened. ‘So that’s why they’re blue!’ I stood up. ‘Go back to her, Aresune, or she will miss you. I give you my oath as your King that I will never divulge who told me this. I will see she has no opportunity to do you harm. Watch her. When the labour begins, tell me immediately. Is that clear?’
    She nodded, her tears gone and her terrible guilt drained away. Then she kissed my hands and pattered off.
    I sat there without moving, both lamps foundered. Thetis had murdered my sons – and for what? Some crazed and impossible dream. Superstition. Fancy. She had deprived them of their right to be men, she had committed crimes so foul I wanted to go to her and run her through on my sword. But she still carried my seventh child within her body. The sword would have to wait. And vengeance belonged to the Gods of the New Religion.
    On the fifth day after I had spoken to Aresune the old woman came running to find me, her hair streaming wild in the wind behind her. It was late afternoon and I had gone down to the horse paddocks to watch my stallions, for mating season was close and the horse masters wanted to give me the schedule of who would service whom.
    I loped back to the palace with Aresune perched upon my neck, something of a steed myself.
    ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked as I lowered her outside Thetis’s door.
    ‘Come in with you,’ I said.
    She gasped, squealed. ‘Sire, sire! It is forbidden!’
    ‘So is murder,’ I said, and opened the door.
    Birth is a women’s mystery, not to be profaned by any masculine presence. It is a world of earth owning no sky. When the New Religion overcame the Old, some things did not change; Mother Kubaba, the Great Goddess, still rules the affairs of women. Especially everything having to do with the growing of new human fruit – and the plucking of it, whether immature, at perfect ripeness or withered with age.
    Thus when I entered no one saw me for a moment; I had the time to watch, to smell, to hear. The room stank of sweat and blood, other things foreign and appalling to a