“Am I ready?” I asked. I yearned to pick up Eunike’s mirror and see what I looked like, but she wasn’t yet satisfied with what she’d done to me.
“I’ll let you know when you’re ready,” she said, reaching for the pot of kohl on her table. I had to stand perfectly still, not even daring to sneeze and definitely not daring to blink while she painted my eyes, then traded kohl for carmine and painted my lips. Last of all, she dug a third jar out of the open chest and told me to put out my hands, palms up. “Henna,” she said, tinting my fingertips a deep, rich red, then working the colorful dust through my hair.
She stepped back and considered the results for a while, then nodded. “Yes, that will do; that will do very well, I think.” She glanced out the open doorway. “And just in time too. Dawn is almost here.”
I never did get to see what I looked like in my borrowed glory. Eunike insisted that there wasn’t enough time for that. She herded Milo and me out of her room and across the grounds to Apollo’s temple. We were climbing the steps when a young priest came out to bar our way.
“Halt! Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded. Then he realized whom he was confronting.
“Holy Pythia, forgive me, I didn’t know you were—” His words froze. He’d seen me. His hands seemed to rise on their own in a gesture of reverence. “Lady, how may I serve you?” he asked in a voice so worshipful it frightened me.
“Summon the others,” Eunike snapped at him, yanking his attention away from me. “The god has spoken concerning the lady Helen of Sparta. Tell the gatekeeper to let no visitors enter the sacred ground until I have revealed what I know to you all. The only exception will be the lady Helen’s guards, when they come for her. Bring them into the temple the instant that they’re here. Go!”
The priest bolted down the temple stairs, and the three of us went up as fast as we could. Eunike hurried Milo and me into the same small room at the back of the temple where we’d found her yesterday and shut the door behind us. The room had a window set high on one wall. It let in enough of the predawn light for us to be able to see one another’s faces dimly.
“I’d ask you to sit down and rest until it’s time,” Eunike said, waving at the lone chair that was the only piece of furniture in that room. “But I’ve worn that dress and I know you can’t sit down in it. You can’t even have a sip of water; you’ll smear your lip paint.”
“I can wait to rest and drink,” I said. “How soon do you think everyone will arrive?”
“Soon enough. You know what you’re supposed to do?”
“Stand there and look pretty,” I said archly. “I ought to know: It’s my plan, after all. What about you? Do you know what you’ve got to do?”
“Stand there and speak for the god,” Eunike replied just as playfully. Her expression turned suddenly earnest. “But I won’t lie, Helen. Remember that. I like you and I want to help you, but I won’t, I can’t dishonor Apollo with lies.”
“I wouldn’t want you to,” I replied.
“Holy Pythia?” Milo ventured. “You would never lie, I know it, but…well, just now, when you told the priest you’d had a vision about the lady Helen—”
“I never said I’d had a vision about her,” Eunike replied. “I said that the god has spoken concerning her. I didn’t say which god or what form his words took or that he’d spoken to me. The gods are always speaking to us. Some people are just better listeners.”
“It sounds to me as if you’ve been listening to Hermes the trickster as well as Apollo,” I told her fondly.
“And why not? Hermes was an infant when he stole Apollo’s cattle and forced them to walk backward into a cave. The backward hoofprints fooled Apollo into thinking that they’d come out of that cave and gone who knows where. He finally did catch Hermes at his tricks, but the new god bought Apollo’s pardon with the gift of a lyre, an instrument Hermes had created himself from a tortoise’s shell. All this on the very day that he was born! Apollo will pardon me too, as long as I don’t lie outright.”
“May Apollo and Hermes both help you, Lady Helen, and bring you everything you want today,” Milo said gravely.
I felt someone give my hand a brief, reassuring touch in the small, dark room. Milo? No, impossible. I wouldn’t mind if it were him, but I couldn’t imagine him finding the courage to do that. It must have been Eunike, I thought.
A faint clamor sounded from outside. The Pythia cocked her head, listening as the sound got louder. “They’re coming,” she said. “We must be waiting for them.” She opened the door, directed Milo to take a hiding place behind a pillar in the darkest corner of the temple, and led me forward to stand beside her before Apollo’s altar.
The god received his sacrifices on a painted stone slab at the top of three shallow steps. Standing there, I had a wonderful view looking east out of the temple door. The dawn sky was streaked with peach and pink, purple and gold, as the priests brought my Spartan guardsmen into the temple. My men looked extraordinarily ill at ease, as if they were being led into a mountain pass where an enemy army lurked in ambush. They murmured among themselves and darted suspicious glances into every angle, every shadow, every face, including mine.
I met their wary, unhappy looks calmly. In my mind, I pictured the statue of Aphrodite that stood in the rooftop shrine at home, the one I’d loved from childhood. I also thought of the smaller figure of the goddess, the one that the old sailor had carved from a monster’s tooth and given to me. I tried to hold myself as coolly and elegantly as those images.
Eunike stepped forward and raised her arms to the dawn. “Hear me, servants of Apollo, men of Sparta!” she cried.