Dido Page 4

  She stood up and looked around. Could she duck past the soldiers; make a run for the ships? No, of course she couldn’t. The men (who weren’t really soldiers but looked and behaved and strutted around like soldiers and regarded themselves as Aeneas’ bodyguard) would catch her. Stop her. They’d send her back to the palace, and if the queen found out that she’d been down here wanting to see Aeneas . . . Elissa shivered. Perhaps Dido would banish her. Send her back home. This would certainly be the worst fate she could imagine, for however much she loved Aeneas, she loved Dido too, and to leave her service would be a kind of a death. Her father would punish her for what she’d done when she was only a girl, running away from his house. Now, more than four summers later, Elissa thanked the Gods every day that she was here, in Carthage, serving a beautiful queen and living in a palace that was a wonder of the world.

  She started to cry as she turned away from the harbour and began to walk back to the palace, and the tears flowed from her eyes as though they would never stop. No, she told herself. I’ll keep silent. Say nothing. Aeneas will forget about me. I was nothing to him. He was everything to me. All my prayers to Aphrodite have come to nothing. How she wished that tomorrow she could wake up to find Ascanius standing over her bed almost as soon as the sun was up, saying: Playtime, Elissa. Get up now, Elissa, as he did every day. But the boy was leaving with his father and the two of them would never come back. He’d have Maron to take care of him now, but surely, surely he’d miss her? Maron was more like a boisterous elder brother to the boy, but she . . . she felt herself to be a kind of mother to Ascanius. She sobbed into her scarf. She could tell that her eyes (Oh, Elissa, I could drown in your eyes – that was what he’d said to her, that night) would by now be rimmed with scarlet and bloodshot and surrounded by puffy flesh. She touched her eyelids and of course they were disgustingly swollen after so many tears but still she couldn’t stop crying.

  She made her way back through the silent streets. The sun was lower in the sky now, and in the marketplace she could hear the stallholders talking and laughing among themselves as they cleared up the mess left after a morning’s trading. A scattering of squashed fruit and vegetables was all that remained of the fresh produce that the farmers had brought from the terraces west of the city. Everything good had been sold early in the day, before the sun was at its highest, and now only the worst quality produce remained: flabby-looking fish, bruised fruit and fatty meat. Elissa sat down on a bench near the flower stalls, suddenly feeling sick. She’d been feeling ill on and off for a few days, and wondered how soon she’d be well again. Taking two or three deep breaths, she tried to calm herself. How different, she thought, my life would have been if I’d never come to Carthage and to Dido’s glorious palace.

  The queen had been kind to her from the very first time they’d met, and part of Elissa’s present anguish sprang from that. How beautiful she was when she spoke to me, Elissa thought, on that day four summers ago! Her hair, like burnished copper, was bound up and plaited with silver threads, but Elissa knew that it would spring into waves and ringlets the moment it was untied, set free. Dido’s skin was like ivory and her eyes like dark green glass when you held it up to the sun: a deep, rich colour but full of light.

  Someone from the palace guard had brought her into the great hall and pushed her to her knees in front of the queen.

  ‘We found her hiding behind the stables, lady,’ he said. ‘She says she’s run away from home. Can’t be more than twelve summers old, I’d say.’

  ‘Stand up, child. What’s your name?’

  ‘Elissa, lady. And I’m not a child. I was twelve three moons ago.’

  The queen smiled, and Elissa remembered how she’d felt at the time: as though she’d been cold and uncomfortable and was suddenly in the warmth again, as though the sun were shining on her.

  ‘How strange,’ she said, ‘that we are both named Elissa, even though I have chosen to call myself Dido. Elissa was the name I was given at birth and it reminds me of another life, another time, when I was happy and young and living with a husband who loved me.’

  Those were the queen’s first words to me, Elissa thought, and since then there’s been something between us: some connection. I didn’t say very much when she spoke to me that first day. I was too shy, too scared. But I knew the story of how she’d come to Carthage. Everyone, even in our village, high up in the mountains, knew how the city had been founded.

  Dido’s – Elissa’s – husband, Sychaeus, had been killed – murdered by her own brother. This wicked man wanted Sychaeus’ gold and treasure for himself, and was quite ready to kill his own sister to get it, but the ghost of Sychaeus appeared to Dido in a dream and warned her, telling her where the treasure was hidden. She fled by night on ships laden with gold and jewels, accompanied by her sister, Anna, and many followers. And now, even though she had created the city of Carthage, which was a wonder among the rulers of the surrounding lands, Elissa knew she yearned for Tyre, her real home. Before Aeneas arrived she was sad for the loss of the man she loved and always aware that she had the duties of a monarch to fulfil. She had to act in every way so as to further the interests of her new city and make it as strong in the region as all the other states that surrounded it. Stronger, even. Then the Trojan sailed into the harbour and everything changed.

  Elissa knew nothing about being a queen, but she recognized the need for strength. There had been times, on the road from her home to the coast, when her courage had almost failed her. She’d left her father’s house at dawn one day, carrying nothing more than a bundle of clothes and some stolen bread. She was the eldest child of five, born to a mother who loved her but spent so much of every day cleaning, cooking, tending the smaller children and working to placate her husband that she was like a cloth soaked and wrung out too many times. Elissa and her younger sisters and brothers did what they could to help her, but it was not enough. There was the land they owned – not much of it – to be ploughed and sown with seed, and then the harvest to be gathered and stored and sold in the market. And poor Ma had to help with that as well, Elissa reflected, so it was no wonder she had no time to care for us, to shield us. Worst of all, her father had plans for her to marry. He’d chosen a monster called Shillek. Elissa recalled his slack, loose lips which he licked constantly, leaving them coated with a kind of horrible gloss; his unthinking cruelty to small animals and children: all he could talk about was hunting – what he’d killed today and what he hoped to kill tomorrow. He thought his skill with the spear made him a hero, but to Elissa, even though she knew the community depended on its hunters for food, this made him boring as well as cruel, and very ugly. Why should animals die a bloody death to put food into the mouths of brutal young men? She ate the meat along with everyone else, but dwelling on how it came to her plate disgusted her. Just thinking about Shillek and that meat now was making her feel ill again.

  She stood up, thinking: I’ll go and find Tanith and Nezral. They’re my friends and we’re used to one another. It didn’t matter that Nezral had a sharp tongue, nor that Tanith was sometimes absent-minded and forgetful and lost in her own world. They talked about everything with one another and shared their most secret thoughts. They’ll try and comfort me, she thought. I wish I didn’t feel so ill.

  Anna

  Sometime after midday; a small bedchamber

  ‘PLEASE, SISTER. PLEASE listen. You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t eat. If you don’t stop weeping. You haven’t touched anything all day long. Here, take a morsel. A mouthful only.’

  Dido was lying as still as a corpse on the bed. Her eyes were closed.

  Anna said: ‘I can see you want me to stop talking. I’m the chatterbox, I know it, and you’re the quiet one. That’s how it’s been all our lives, hasn’t it? People used to say it aloud when we were girls, and nothing has changed.’

  ‘If you know so much, how is it you’re still making such a racket? When you can see that I’m— my head aches and your voice isn’t helping.
You can’t bear silence, can you? Isn’t that true? And silence is what I need. What I crave. You’ve known me your whole life and you don’t understand anything. I want to be on my own. I don’t need you to look after me.’

  ‘But look, Dido – at last you’re speaking to me. I thought you might never stop weeping, you know. Is that possible? Could someone weep for ever, d’you think? Anyway, I’m glad you’ve calmed down a little. We can talk of other things. And I don’t care if you are angry with me. That’s fine. I’m happy to see that you’re beginning to sound a little more like yourself. If you’re yelling at me, you can’t be as sad as you were.’

  Dido sat up, and even though Anna had heard some of her elder sister’s displeasure in the words she spoke, she hadn’t understood till that moment the full extent of her fury. It’s her eyes, she thought. Why can’t she have eyes that stay the same colour, like those of almost everyone else in the world? Dido’s are sometimes green and sometimes blue, but when she’s angry they flash a kind of turquoise fire. And her hair – well, it wasn’t fair to judge that now, when she’d spent hours thrashing about on that ridiculous bed and hadn’t changed her garments since she retired last night. It was a mess, standing out around her head like a fiery cloud. What colour was Dido’s hair? No one, Anna reflected, is in any doubt about what colour mine is. It’s brown. I have dark, shiny brown hair which falls straight to my shoulders and which men – some men – have admired, but anyone who sees Dido’s hair for the first time is entranced, amazed; they can’t quite believe the glory of gold and red that springs from her head and falls over her shoulders like a fiery waterfall.

  ‘Oh, the rubbish you talk, Anna! Why would I feel less sad than I did an hour ago? I spoke to you because there was something I wanted to say. I wanted to tell you to go. Leave me alone.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ said Anna, and she sat down on the end of the bed.

  Dido sighed loudly, turned over and buried her face in the pillows. ‘But I want you to. I don’t want to speak to anyone.’ Her voice was muffled and Anna leaned forward, straining to hear the words.

  ‘I don’t care what you want. I’m staying. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll speak to you. I’ll do what we used to do when we were girls, remember? We’d tell one another stories. I was good at it.’

  ‘Not so good that I want to hear another of your tales now. You don’t understand.’ Dido had turned round again and sat up. ‘I don’t want to be distracted from my pain. You want me to think about something else and I refuse to. I want to think only about him. About Aeneas. I want to remember everything. D’you recall how he came to the court? I must have been crazed to allow that rabble of Trojans to land here. They looked like what they were: refugees. I ought to have pushed the whole lot of them back on to their patched-up ships and left them to fend for themselves on the ocean. They’d have drowned or been murdered by pirates and I’d have been spared all this.’

  ‘You couldn’t have done it. You’re too kind.’

  ‘And much good it did me. I was stupid. Taken in by a handsome face and a hard-luck story.’

  ‘You had so much in common with him. Of course you were sympathetic. You, too, had fled your home and your country and everything you knew. And you were curious. Admit it. We’d heard such stories of the war in Troy, and there he was, straight from Priam’s palace, and right on our doorstep. How could you possibly have turned him away? What a day that was! I remember everything about it.’

  Anna was sitting in the courtyard of the new palace with Iopas, the young man whom Dido had recently appointed as court poet and singer. Part of her was uneasy. Would a person who wasn’t a servant – never that – but perhaps not quite high enough in the court hierarchy to be a courtier be considered a suitable companion for the queen’s younger sister? There’s also the matter of his age, she told herself. He’s younger than I am, though it’s hard to guess by how much. If he is eighteen, then I’m nearly ten years older than he is. And I know nothing about him. He didn’t seem like a married man, but you couldn’t tell just by looking. At least, she thought, he’s grateful to me. It’s thanks to me Dido chose him. She would have gone for someone dignified and grey-haired, but I pointed out to her that only youth had the passion and fire to create poems and songs that would do credit to Carthage. ‘We’re a young city,’ Anna told her sister. ‘We need a young court singer. And look at him, Dido. He’ll be an asset to us, truly.’

  Dido had smiled. ‘I can see you admire him, Anna,’ she said. ‘Very well, for your sake . . .’

  Anna looked at Iopas and decided not to worry about his age until she had to. Still, here was the perfect opportunity to find out a little more about this enigmatic young man. He was skinny, and not exactly handsome in any traditional sense, but his eyes were kind and fringed with long dark lashes, and there was a sweetness about his smile, when he did smile, that made Anna feel as if she wanted to put out a hand and stroke his smooth light-brown hair. She said, ‘Are your parents alive?’

  ‘No, they’re both dead. My father used to have a small shop in the city, and died only five years ago, but I never knew my mother. She didn’t live very long after I was born.’

  ‘That must be a sadness for you. Have you always written poems? Sung songs? My sister was especially impressed with your playing of the lyre. She plays a little herself, you know.’

  Iopas nodded and blushed. ‘I find it easier to write and sing than to talk. I can be someone different from my real self then. And bringing music out of those instruments . . . it makes me feel’ – he paused and smiled at Anna – ‘powerful.’

  ‘That must be wonderful indeed, but is being your true self so difficult?’

  Iopas took some time to answer. ‘No, not difficult, but the person I really am isn’t . . . well, he isn’t the heroic, brave, confident and eloquent person I’d like to be, so it’s just as well I’m allowed to pretend as often as I like to be another sort of person altogether.’

  ‘Well,’ said Anna, ‘you’re still very young and might well become all those things – heroic, brave, confident and so forth – when you’re a little older, don’t you think?’

  I’m flirting with him, she thought. But Dido isn’t here to chide me and Iopas is so pleasant and he likes me. I know he does. If matters progress, there will be time enough then to speak to my sister. Anna knew that Dido was ceaselessly conscious of station and rank and dignity; and she’d made quite certain from the very beginning of their time in Carthage that everyone knew that she was in control; that her word was law. That she was to be obeyed. Anna was almost sure that this applied to her as much as to anyone else and wondered sometimes about how her sister saw the world. Dido was clear that she ranked higher than most men, but they, of course, found this attitude strange and uncomfortable. Once, she’d even asked Dido about it, and she, who went through her life seemingly with no doubts about anything, had answered: ‘It’s my kingdom, Anna. I’ve been given this land. Fairly. It’s mine. And I intend to make the city great. A force in the world. Everyone will wonder at it. And at me.’

  Dido had wasted no time. She’d had the local chieftains in the palm of her hand. They were all besotted with her and some of them must have thought she would make them a good wife. They’d talked to their own builders and farmers and carpenters and engineers, and soon a whole army of workers was labouring to create this city that had sprung up on the shores of the ocean. Also, Anna reflected, Iarbas helped us. This man, a chieftain from the neighbouring territory, had been eager from the first to assist the young woman who’d suddenly found herself so powerful. He, like some of the others, had hoped Dido would be grateful and marry him, but there had never been any sign of her doing so, and Anna wondered how dangerous that was. He was the most persistent of the suitors. When they first came to Carthage, Dido pleaded promises made to Sychaeus. Iarbas was not repulsive to look at, even though he was no great beauty: a big ox of a man with twinkling blue eyes and a hearty laugh. He was friendly for the moment, b
ut he could just as easily turn from a friend into an enemy, and that would be difficult. How would Carthage survive if it was surrounded on all sides by its enemies, by people who wanted nothing more than to take Dido’s kingdom for themselves, by force if necessary?

  And when we first came here, we were refugees ourselves and on the run, Anna thought. Poor Sychaeus! To this day she wished that she had paid proper attention to what she had seen only moments before his death, but there hadn’t been time. It had all happened too quickly.

  She’d been sewing, as she often did during the long afternoons, in the gardens of Sychaeus’ palace in Tyre. The cedar tree that grew in the palace garden sheltered her from the worst heat of the sun. Her head was bent over her work, and suddenly she became aware that a shadow deeper than the shade of the tree had fallen over the fabric in her hands. She turned at once and jumped to her feet when she saw that a man was standing behind her.

  ‘Who are you? How did you get past the guards at the gate?’

  She felt suddenly icy cold and thought: I’m frightened. That’s why I can’t feel the heat of the sun any more. The man was tall – taller than anyone she’d seen before – and he wore a grey cloak even though this was the height of summer. He had a pale face, half hidden by the hood of his garment. When he spoke, his words came to her ears as though he were standing a long way away, and yet she could have put out a hand and touched him.

  ‘I am Hades, the God of the Underworld. Of Death. I have come to warn you.’

  ‘Warn me? Warn me of what?’ Anna trembled, terrified.

  ‘You will see. I must go to the appointed place.’

  She watched the grey figure striding away and stood rooted to the spot, unable to move for what seemed like an eternity. When she recovered, when she found the strength to move again, she ran into the palace and found her sister, Dido, lying on the ground near the butchered body of her husband, weeping uncontrollably, the hem of her garment stained with the blood that pooled round Sychaeus’ lifeless corpse. Their own brother had killed him. Of Hades there was no sign, and yet the day was no longer warm and sunny. A shadow had fallen over everything and Anna could tell that the God was still somewhere near them, hidden, waiting.