“Careful there,” he said, righting himself. “Do you want the crew to think I’m more than just your servant?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, joking back. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to get out of the palace.” I heard raised voices outside the pavilion, heard the creak of timbers and the groan of ropes. “What’s going on?”
“It’s dawn. We’re sailing.”
“So you nearly were left behind.” I shivered.
Milo’s hand touched mine in the dark. “But I’m here now.”
I made a fist and pulled my hand away from him. “He’ll pay for what he’s done,” I said, my jaw tight.
“Who?”
“Karos, Argus’s accursed stepbrother. Even if he is Aetes’ grandson, he must be punished for murdering—”
“Karos is innocent, Helen,” Milo said gravely.
“What? Argus was drinking a lot of wine. Karos must have slipped some poison into his goblet.”
“No. Listen. I was in the kitchens when Argus died. We all ran as soon as we heard the news, but I was the only one headed for the palace gates. I was going so fast, I ran right into her, a little slave girl, bruised and crying in the dark like a wild thing. I spoke kindly to her, and that set her tongue loose. She had to tell someone the reason for her misery. She was supposed to bring a gift to the king’s feast, a gift for an honored guest. But she failed to fulfill her mistress’s orders. She just left the gift at the guest’s place and ran away without making sure that it reached the person who was supposed to have it.”
“A gift…”
“A wreath of roses woven by the lady Medea’s own hands.”
11
MEN AND MONSTERS
The ship that carried us back toward the setting sun covered the distance in far less time than the Argo. It was thanks to the Phoenicians’ skill and experience at navigating by night as well as by day, in all weather except outright sea-churning storms. We reached the port that served Athens on a chilly day. Summer was gone.
Once ashore, I gave Milo several of my remaining gold charms and asked him to find us another ship, one bound for Delphi.
“And what will you be doing?” he asked.
I lifted my eyes toward the heights of the nearby city. “I’m going to make a thanksgiving sacrifice to Poseidon. I owe something to Apollo as well, and Aphrodite, who’s always been good to me, and it’s never wise to ignore almighty Zeus. Above all, I need to make offerings to Hades.”
When I mentioned the lord of the Underworld, Milo made a small sign meant to ward off bad luck. “Why him?”
“For Hylas. For him, and for Argus, too.”
I picked up two amphorae of wine at the nearest tavern and began seeking the gods. They’d all receive libations, but I’d have to offer Hades more than a sip of wine. The lord of the dead had to have meat and honey cakes as well, to sweeten his temper and make him treat Hylas’s and Argus’s ghosts with kindness.
Poseidon’s shrine was near the water, but I had to turn my footsteps uphill, into the heart of Athens, to find the other gods. Rather than haul two heavy amphorae around while I wandered the city, I found an old man loitering beside one of the public fountains, told him where I wanted to go, and asked him to be my guide to the temples.
“Ah, you’re a pious young fellow,” he said, pleased, and soon led me from Zeus’s temple to Apollo’s, then on to Aphrodite’s, and finally Athena’s. He told me how the goddess of wisdom had earned her place as patron of Athens by giving mortals the olive tree. It would have been a serious mistake to visit her city and not honor her.
Athena’s temple stood at the very top of the tall, rocky hill, where the city clung, the doorway guarded by a pair of carved owls, her sacred bird. As we left the sanctuary, I turned to the old man and said, “Just one last shrine for me to visit and then I hope you’ll let me reward you with a good meal and a few cups of wine.”
His eyes twinkled. “Well, it wouldn’t be polite to say no. So, where is it you want to go?”
“The temple of Hades,” I replied. “But first I need to get more wine for the offering.”
The old man edged away from me and made a warding-off sign when I named the lord of the Underworld, but after that he brought me to the house of a gray-haired woman who was happy to provide me with wine, honey cakes, a fistful of black rooster feathers, and a bright red pomegranate as gifts most likely to please Hades. She packed all this into a basket and I gave her a large amber bead and two bits of silver in trade, then looked around for my guide.
“Oh, he’s gone,” she told me, smiling as she led me back onto the dusty street. “Slipped away on the quiet. He whispered to me that at his age, the farther he keeps from the lord of the Underworld, the easier he breathes. Don’t worry, the shrine’s not far. Go past the temple of Athena toward the palace gate and when you’ve taken thirty steps or so, you’ll see a cypress tree to your left. Go behind it, out of sight of the gateway, and seek the place where the earth slopes down sharply, as if a god had pressed his finger deep into wet clay. Look for it well or you’ll miss it. A freshwater spring bubbles up at the bottom of that notch in the earth, and there’s a flat stone with a carving of Cerberus, Lord Hades’ three-headed watchdog, with the monster’s feet hidden in the mint plants that grow all around the water’s edge.”
“Why would anyone dedicate a god’s shrine in such a hidden spot?” I wondered. “Is that place sacred to Hades for some reason?”
She shook her head and looked sad. “It’s sacred to our king. He built it after his father died, so that it would be convenient for him to make daily sacrifices for the comfort of Lord Aegeus’s spirit.”