After a mile or two, I included Hera in my beseeching, just as I’d told Perses I would do. Each alternating prayer to Artemis and Hera sent a thrill of power up by spine, even as I blushed with guilt. It was wicked, as Perses had said. I knew that much was true. But knowing didn’t silence me. “Remove Lycus from my path, Huntress,” I whispered to Artemis. And to golden Hera, Queen of Heaven, goddess of marriage, I said, “Make me a widow, that I may be happy again.”
I saw the little house through the trees long before I reached it. The servants had left lamps burning to light the master’s way home. Everyone was abed by the time I crept through the door and into my bed chamber. The warm echo of power still pulsed along my limbs as I undressed and climbed into my bed. The subtle spice of my herbs and potions filled the chamber, lulling me to a satisfied sleep. I had walked off without Lycus; let him and Heliodoros make whatever they would of my audacity. I was already dreaming of Artemis and Hera—their shining faces, the Huntress’s poised and smiling arrow—before I’d fallen asleep.
While I slept, the goddesses granted my petition.
I was wrenched from sleep by the bang of my house’s wooden door and the shouts of Lycus’s men. I lurched up in bed, clutching the linen sheet to my chin. Through the jumble of men’s voices—panicked, angry, tense—I could hear a low, repetitive groan, as of someone suffering in great pain. Then came the cry of the kitchen maid, Ligeia, who had been pulled from sleep as rudely as I. “The master! The master is hurt! What shall we do?”
I slipped quickly from bed and pulled on my chiton, cinching it sloppily with a woven belt. Then I hurried from my chamber, my unbound hair hanging loose over shoulders and breast. Several of my husband’s men clustered in the main room, pale-faced, shoving, jostling, shouting in hoarse voices. One of them saw me approach. “The lady of the house is here. Stand back; make way!”
The crowd of men parted. There before me, curled and cringing on our best couch—soaking it with his blood—lay my husband. His himation hung shredded over one shoulder. Long slashes, oozing purplish blood, furrowed the flesh that showed through. He clutched his abdomen with both hands; I could see fresh blood welling up between his fingers, pooling in the fabric of his tunic.
I rushed to his side. “Lycus! What has happened?”
His face had been screwed up with pain, but at the sound of my voice, Lycus opened his eyes. He glowered at me; the look was feverish, hard and loathing. “Keep that witch away from me!”
His men shifted on their feet, uncertain. I ignored Lycus’s words and dropped to my knees beside the couch. “Move your hands; let me see the wound.”
Lycus gritted his teeth, shaking his head.
“We were attacked on the road,” one of his men told me. “They came out of nowhere—no sound, no warning.”
Another said, “Half a dozen of us, but still we couldn’t fight them off. They seemed to be everywhere at once.”
I swallowed hard and looked again at the long scratches raked down the length of my husband’s arm. There was no need to tell me who—what—had attacked the men. There had been wolves in the forest that night, after all.
“Was he bitten?” I asked the men calmly. “Or only scratched?”
“Bitten, my lady,” someone said. “There, on his stomach.”
“How deep is the bite? Are his innards exposed? Lycus, if you would only move your hands!”
“Nothing vital exposed,” another man said. “Not that I could tell, out there in the darkness. But he’s bleeding badly.”
I stood and brushed my hands together, ready to set to work. “He may take a serious fever from a wolf’s bite. I must treat him now, before any illness can set too firm a hold.”
“I won’t.” Lycus grunted. He shuddered, then tried again. “I won’t swallow any of your brews, you hateful creature.”
“Hateful creature?” I said coolly. “I?”
“Keep that daughter of Hekate away from me,” he rasped to his men. “She’ll poison me!”
I fought to keep my expression neutral, gripped by an overwhelming urge to roll my eyes. “I will do no such thing. You men, keep Lycus still. I will fetch herbs to stanch his bleeding. I’ll need boiling water for the fever potion, too. Ligeia, go and set a pot in the coals.”
It may seem strange to you, to hear how I worked to save my husband’s life, when I had prayed for his death mere hours before. What I did that night, I did from a sense of duty—a wife’s instinct, startling and unexpected. I swear by Iaso, goddess of cures, that I made the poultice and the fever potion with all earnest intent, to the fullness of my ability. But even as I worked, pounding willow bark and one small leaf of dried aconite with my pestle, I knew my remedies would have no effect. Lycus would not recover from his wounds. The most skilled physician could not have saved him. It was the will of the gods that Lycus should perish. My freedom was at hand.
Like the dutiful woman I had always tried to be, I did not leave my husband’s side. For three days and three nights I sat beside his couch, calmly tending his wounds—changing the poultice on the terrible, deep rent across his stomach, washing his body with strong wine to cool the fever I could not keep at bay. Aconite was the best treatment for wolf bites—all my scrolls agreed on that point—but I was careful to use the plant sparingly, as it could be deadly if administered in too high a dose. I watched as the skin around his wounds became inflamed, then oozed a foul greenish humor to mingle with the blood that still flowed now and again. I watched as lines of livid red spread through his flesh, like a demon reaching its claws toward his heart. I was no physician then—nor do I call myself a physician today—but despite my youth and inexperience, I knew what those signs meant. Lycus would not survive long.
I did not owe my boorish, cold husband any kindness, but I offered him some, all the same. When Lycus reached the last extremity of his suffering, I ground a few precious pieces of cannabis, the resinous herb from his native Sarmatia, for which I had traded a valuable pair of earrings at the riverside. I mixed the pungent chaff into warm olive oil and allowed it to steep for more than an hour. Then I trickled it, little by little, into Lycus’s mouth. Soon, his pain eased and his body relaxed for the first time in three days. I sat silent and resolutely straight on my stool at his bedside. I listened to his senseless babbling, wondering whether I ought to hold his hand as he left the mortal world behind.
Two of his men entered the house, smelling of wet earth and cut wood—of the work they still carried on, clearing Lycus’s land, as if someday he would rise, hale and whole, to farm his gifted property. I shook my head, forestalling their questions.
They stood for a moment near the door, watching Lycus wide-eyed as he smiled and whispered to himself. He even laughed weakly, reacting to some jest none of us could hear.
“What has happened?” one man finally asked. “He is…different somehow.”
I watched the workman’s face for a moment. Then I stared at the other. These plain, simple Colchian men. Were they the ones Lycus had spoken to that day when I had seen Pasipha? off to Crete? The ones with whom Lycus had so freely shared stories of our marriage bed—things that should have remained secret and sacred to a husband and wife?
At length, I answered his question. “He is dying. I could not save him.”