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No matter what people said, that woman was no refugee.
The servants could tell it, from the moment she had stepped in. Their city had taken in many who were fleeing misfortunes; from hordes of anonymous beggars who badly lied when asked if it was plague they were fleeing from, to the children of the famed Heracles themselves. But rich or poor, young or old, pleading or overbearing, they all came to the city drenched in the stink of shame and desperation; it clung to them like sweat to a messenger after long chase under the merciless sun.
But she did not. There was a quiet confidence to her, a self-assuredness that was so complete, so perfect that it felt no need to assert itself at all. She was here and here she would stay until she felt need to leave, and that was all. She felt no more embarrasement at having to come over and ask for stay at the palace, than olive trees felt need for permission to grow around the city.
It was widely agreed that she didn’t come to beg for audience with the king. That she had walked in, her hands still wet with blood, and simply asked him to honor terms of their agreement. Others claimed that even that was below her, and that she had one day simply been discovered in palace, in the room nobody had ever seen before.
There were those who claimed that the king had done ill to take her in. That the sheer miasma of her deeds ( even if they did not yet know the extent of them) would bring plague at their heads, the same way Oedipus’s unknown crimes had called it forth to Thebes. Others had claimed that he had no choice, for had he broken the bargain he had struck with her, surely she would have sought vengeance.
(And if gods did not punish her for crimes committed against her own kin thrice over, why should they hound her for striking down an oath-breaker?)
He didn’t have to marry her, however.
They said many things about their new, foreign and infamous queen. That she was a harlot, a traitor, the ruiner of husbands; that she knew how to entice lust by both her body and by her drugs, until man could not think clearly but only follow her around like a dog. That she was an unmatched hedonist, that she organized wasteful feasts, throwing wine in fountains, that she wore enough jewelry to feed ten families. That she whispered poison in the king’s ear, turning him against this or that merchant, passing on whichever new law annoyed people.
This, the women of the palace, who harbored no love for the queen, could not help but at least consider denying; feeling guilty for both harboring such thoughts and then for not acting on them.
For the new queen seemed as far from sensual and affectionate, as grave is far from stars. She seemed by nature insensate and too firm for such things; it was as if she was formed from the stone, and some would say that no warm breath coursed through her, but only cold midnight fog. To the king she spared no sweet glance, and seemed utterly unconcerned by his presence or absence. Some suspected that the king had married her more for her skills and knowledge than need for wife, though she did bear him a healthy son in the end, whom nurses quickly took away.
She wore only the most plain and unadorned dresses, unusually simple in their structure, unlike layered skirts of the rest of Hellenic lands, slate gray or rarely, chalky white. But she didn’t need anything else, not truly, when her hair was like a waterfall of sizzling, molten gold snaking down her back, her eyes gilded and crimson and as orange as sunsets.
She kept to herself, and asked for nothing of the treasury, no gifts from the king, save sometimes going out and buying some odd book, or harvesting a bundle of herbs.
And so, with resignation only passage of time, and disappointment at the lack of further scandals, the people of Athens learned to accept their new queen.
Besides, they had Crete to focus their hatred on.
And so, with time, the queen had settled into Athens, though it couldn’t be said that she called it home. She respectfully attended feasts and festivals, though she never spoke a word. At night, some claimed to have seen her walking the hills and forests conversing with the snakes, and this was probably true, but since only good harvests and pleasant seasons followed her arrival, nobody complained much about that, especially since her lack of secretiveness and commonality of her excursions made story lose it’s sauciness.
The prince grew normal, though he had been born to such a strange mother. Perhaps it was true what some said, that mother contributes very little if anything to the child, and that she is simply a vessel in which man’s seed germinates. Whatever the case be, child was as ordinary as one could be, and she rarely approached him, rarely spoke with him, though she would sometimes stand concealed in a shade and watch him with unreadable gaze.
Still, the tale of what had happened in Corinth remained in back of everybody’s minds, and they dreaded and anticipated what would happen when the king sired a bastard. But the queen didn’t appear too much worried.
’’It will happen as it must happen. Each of us must play out their story, and once the grand deed is done, we must be satisfied with few fading echoes, a small reprisals for sentimental audience. Still, I do not intend to make it easy for him when he comes, even if I must flee at the end. When the son of Poseidon comes to be seated at the throne here, in this city built in Athena’s honor.
Heh.
It will be amusing to watch, at least, as I finally act appropriate and natural. So much easier being a stepmother. Less resentment there is within us then, for one to contend with.’’