Dido Page 8

  Burying himself in his work had helped with his frustration. When he was performing at a feast, or at a smaller gathering, he knew he pleased those who heard him; they would never have guessed at the feelings he was suppressing. His official duties as court poet and singer meant that he had to be on the alert for everything. There were old men in the palace who’d tut-tutted when he was first appointed, but Anna had said: Who better than a boy of eighteen to write of battles and love and glory? And the queen had agreed with her in the end. He’d done his best for Dido, honoured and pleased to have been chosen from among those who came to the palace to be examined and looked at and tested. In order to write the songs, Iopas had to know the truth about a great many things, including the feelings of the queen. He felt privileged, almost like a son to her, and enjoyed expressing some of her emotions in his poems. Here was one (he picked the parchment up from his table) which he’d written in honour of the queen and her sister, Anna.

  Two sweet birds in one small nest,

  two fair flowers on one green stem,

  fruits from the same tree: honoured, blessed.

  Dido and Anna: praise to them!

  The queen often took him into her confidence. But Anna (he smiled at the thought and congratulated himself on putting it so wittily, even if he didn’t have an audience to appreciate the wordplay) would far rather have taken him into her bed than her confidence, and did not think of him as a nephew. He’d had to be very diplomatic keeping out of her clutches. She was pleasant enough, and her favour meant that all sorts of perks came to him, one way and another, but he’d resisted her attempts to woo him. He’d invented a girlfriend in the city to whom he’d promised his love and devotion, because you couldn’t just come out with it: I’m sorry, madam, I don’t fancy you. No, the treats and privileges would have dried up for sure if he’d confessed to that, so he kept up the appearance – reasonably successfully, he thought – of someone who would, but for his feelings towards another, have liked nothing better than to make love to the queen’s sister.

  This lie, which had sprung up all at once when he was defending himself from Anna, had now caught him in a kind of trap. That would be another reason for keeping his feelings for Elissa quiet, he realized. Because of the rapid circulation of gossip in the palace, Anna would soon find out and wonder what had happened to his previous lover and so it would go. For all I know, he thought, Elissa already knows about my ‘fiancée’ down in the town. Maybe that’s one reason why she’s a little distant. He sighed. Telling lies led to so many complications. Perhaps now that Aeneas was leaving them, things could be different.

  Before finding Elissa on the bench, Iopas had walked around the palace, wondering at the movement and disruption. Anna had closeted herself with Dido for a long time, but Iopas had seen her leaving and hurrying through the palace towards the sewing room. Soldiers had stomped through the corridors moving things and there was now a gigantic bed in the middle of the courtyard, flanked by flowerpots and shaded by tall palm trees. Maids and menservants had spent almost the entire day bringing clothes and weapons and bed linen and coverlets and cushions and piling them on to the bed. A boy whom Iopas recognized as one of the kitchen lads who turned the spits and carried the heavy bags of vegetables from the market – they called him Cubby, and with good reason – sat on the bench beside the bed, not doing much of anything as far as Iopas could see. He wasn’t really capable of challenging anyone who had theft in mind, and was in any case unarmed. As soon as he saw him sitting there staring into space, like a pudding on a dish, Iopas decided he no longer felt like exploring the piles of belongings heaped on the bed. He would have had to speak to the boy and didn’t fancy that. Perhaps Cubby had that effect on everyone, and that was why he’d been left there. Not a bad plan when you looked at it that way.

  Now there was silence everywhere. Iopas felt it was safe to leave his room and walk about a little. He wasn’t sure whether there was anything of interest going on, but if there was, he wanted to be around to see it. Some lines came into his mind and he spoke them to himself as he crept through the darkened corridors:

  Take me with you, over the sea.

  Let me sail on the ship that’s leaving.

  How can I bear to stay on the shore

  and spend the rest of my days in grieving?

  He’d written them a long time ago, but they seemed particularly apt in the present circumstances. Dido must be thinking just such thoughts.

  Iopas tiptoed past the courtyard and glanced at the bed: Cubby was nowhere to be seen. That surely wasn’t right. Someone was sitting on the bench nearest the bed and it wasn’t him. Who could it be? What had they done with Cubby? He approached the figure without fear because he could tell that it was a woman. She’d covered her head with some kind of scarf, but how had she persuaded the fat boy to disappear? A movement over by the colonnade made Iopas turn and he caught sight of the kitchen lad, peering round one of the columns. There wasn’t much light in the courtyard, but even at this distance you could see the kid looked a bit uncomfortable. He decided to go over and find out what was going on. If it involved conversation with Cubby, that was too bad. He found himself whispering as he spoke.

  ‘What are you doing here? Aren’t you meant to be guarding the bed?’

  ‘Yes, but the queen told me—’

  ‘The queen? The queen is fast asleep by now, I’d have thought. What’re you talking about?’

  Cubby nodded his head towards the figure of the woman in the courtyard. ‘No, she’s not asleep. That’s her on my bench. She told me to go away. I came over here. I didn’t want to go away because the master of the guard put me in charge.’

  Iopas heard the pride in the boy’s voice. ‘Quite right. You stay where you are. That seems best. Till she goes to bed. Are you quite sure it’s the queen?’

  Cubby nodded. ‘Yes. It is. But she didn’t look like she normally looks. She looked sad. And her hair was a real mess.’

  ‘I’ll go and speak with her.’

  ‘She said she wanted to be alone.’

  ‘The queen and I,’ Iopas said, unable to resist boasting, ‘have a very special relationship.’

  Cubby nodded. Iopas wondered if he knew the word relationship and concluded that he probably didn’t. He stepped out into the courtyard. In the dark, the palm trees, planted especially to create shade when the sun was at its highest, were like a forest composed of shadows and the shadows of shadows. I must remember that, he told himself. Shadows and the shadows of shadows – it would do for a poem.

  ‘Madam,’ he said quietly as he came up behind the queen, ‘is it you? Can I do something for you? Help you?’

  ‘Iopas!’ Dido turned round, and in the dim light of the stars and a quarter moon he could see that she was smiling at him. ‘Am I in need of help? Oh, you cannot imagine how much help I need! All the help in the world.’

  ‘Can I fetch you some wine or food? Call your sister? Your attendants?’

  ‘No, Iopas, I thank you. But sit here for a while and talk to me. There are some things I want to discuss with you. I meant to send for you, but I’ve been . . . indisposed. Sit there, on that bench, so that I can see you.’

  ‘Madam,’ Iopas said, ‘you sound distracted. Not yourself. Are you certain you don’t want me to call someone?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Dido raised her voice. ‘Since this morning I’ve had nothing but people creeping and crawling about and wanting to do something for me and thinking they’re helping me when everything they do irritates me beyond all reason. Just sit there and listen. It’s true I’m not myself. I was someone till today and now I have to turn myself into . . . I don’t know what I have to become. It’s painful. I don’t know if I can live like this. In this pain. I looked down at my city earlier this afternoon. At the buildings and the houses and the temples and gardens, and I cared as little about it as if it were a collection of coloured bricks put together by an infant, which I could kick over with my foot. That’s how important Carthage is
to me now. Meaningless. Nothing means anything now. Not food, nor air, nor water, nor power, nor riches, nor the future. The only thing I want is my memories of him. I want him and he’s gone, and there’s nothing under the blue dome of the sky that’s worth a dried fig. I came here thinking: If I sit by the bed, I’ll be calmer. It will remind me of better days. But everything I look at is like a knife entering my heart. Everything you see on the bed is something that belonged to Aeneas and I can’t bear to look at what’s there.’

  Iopas was on the point of saying: Then why come here and torture yourself? Why not keep away? But he understood that that would infuriate Dido.

  ‘Love,’ he ventured (quoting one of his own lines of poetry and hoping that the queen wouldn’t recognize it – he’d sung the song at a feast a few moons ago), ‘fills us with madness, fills us with—’ He stopped, realizing that the next word was joy. The queen was the very opposite of joyful and it would be tactless to remind her of happier times when she was in this state. He altered it just in time and said instead: ‘grief.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dido answered. ‘Grief. That’s it exactly. As though the object of your love had died. I know all about grief, Iopas. My first husband, my beloved Sychaeus – he died. Did you know that? He was butchered by my brother. Can you imagine anything so terrible? My love, lying on the floor of our bedchamber with blood bubbling out of his throat, his eyes like the eyes of a dead fish on a marble slab. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t touch him – the man whose every word used to fill me with happiness, the taste of whose lips had been a kind of divine nourishment for me. I ran away. I woke my sister and my servants and we fled like robbers. Till I came to Carthage I didn’t know a moment’s peace, and even here, though there were many who helped me and were kind to us, though I was occupied with the building of the city, my heart . . .’

  Dido made a fist of her hand and struck herself below her left breast, over and over again, till Iopas wondered whether he ought to stop her. Take hold of her arms and prevent her from hurting herself. Surely she would be bruised from such blows? He started up from the stone bench, and the queen smiled suddenly.

  ‘I can see you’re worried, Iopas. You think I might harm myself in my sorrow. Well, I might, and I wouldn’t care if I did, and neither should you. But you’re a gallant soul. I knew that when I chose you to be the court singer. I was right to do so. I’m very satisfied with all your work. All the songs . . .’

  ‘I hope I may write many more for you, madam,’ Iopas said.

  ‘I’ll come to that.’ Dido smiled at him. ‘But I want to know: those first few days after Aeneas arrived on our shores – how well do you remember them?’

  ‘As if they’d just happened.’

  ‘Tell me. Tell me your memories.’

  Iopas took a deep breath. Was there anything he should avoid saying? He hadn’t been entirely honest with the queen. It was true: he could summon up a fair amount from those days (which, after all, were only two summers ago), but there was sure to be much that he’d forgotten, and maybe those were exactly the things the queen wanted to revisit. Well, hesitating wasn’t going to help him. He had to say something.

  ‘The whole palace was like a busy market, that’s what I remember. So many people bringing things to the kitchen. Suddenly we seemed to need a great deal more food.’

  ‘Thirty people. That’s not a couple of unexpected guests, is it? After the first few nights we found quarters for most of the men with families in the city, who were happy to have them. I paid, of course, for their food and board. It’s amazing how much you can achieve with gold. But Aeneas . . .’

  ‘You gave orders that he was to be put in the main guest bedchamber. Your sister brought in extra seamstresses to embroider the linens and window drapes. I think she worked on the more delicate pieces herself.’

  Iopas didn’t want to dwell too long on the sewing room. In those days Anna had been in the habit of summoning him there just as the sun was setting, saying that her work would be much easier if he sang to her as she sewed. That was a pretext. Iopas knew her real reason for wanting to get him on his own, and avoiding being caught by her in an embrace took a great deal of manoeuvring. Once, he’d not been quite quick enough and found that Anna had placed herself between him and the door as he was on his way out, and she’d actually put her arms around him and pressed herself against him, and her lips were on his before he knew it, and what was he meant to do? He was only human, and she was pleasant and he liked her and her mouth tasted good and he responded for a moment and allowed himself to hug her back and kiss her rather more enthusiastically than he ought to have done. ‘Oh, Iopas,’ she’d breathed. ‘I knew it. I knew you had a fondness for me. I can feel that you do—’

  ‘No, madam . . .’ He’d been quick to spring back and dodge round her body, and go and stand with his hand on the door, ready to escape. ‘I can’t – I mustn’t. Please don’t tempt me. My future father-in-law will hear of it and then I don’t know what might happen. I hate saying this to you, madam, but we mustn’t – truly. I’m so sorry. You’re right, I do have a fondness for you, but I must forget that and put it aside and not endanger my true love.’

  To her credit, Anna had behaved very well. She was kind, it occurred to Iopas, and he’d been grateful to her. But whenever she could, she still found ways to be alone with him. She came to the door of his bedchamber from time to time, and he had to go and stand on the threshold – otherwise, he was sure, she’d have invited herself in and sat on his bed and then contrived to kiss him, and who knows where that would have led? He had to be on his guard all the time. It would not do to offend the queen’s sister in case she complained to Dido about him, and then he would find himself thrown out of the palace. Dido would send him packing with no thought or regret for any work he’d done. He sighed and tried to remember what those first few days had been like.

  ‘Take your time,’ Dido said. ‘There’s no rush.’

  Iopas had never known the palace to be so full of people. Everywhere you went, you tripped over one of the new guests – men who’d come ashore with Aeneas and who in another life had been Trojan soldiers. Their manners were not exactly delicate and they were very noisy and boisterous, and some of them rampaged through the corridors making such a racket that the master of the guard had been forced to turn them out into the gardens for most of the day. The only person who’d bothered to speak to him was Maron, who was not much more than a boy but seemed a pleasant fellow. He’d come into Iopas’ room on his first day at the palace and said, just as though he were a long-lost friend: ‘Hello! I know who you are – the poet who sang to us last night. Iopas, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Iopas, echoing the word, though it wasn’t the kind of thing he said naturally.

  ‘Maron, that’s me. I’ve been given a room just down there’ – he pointed towards the end of the corridor – ‘but I thought I’d do a bit of exploring. Don’t you get bored, writing poems all day long?’

  He’d come into the room and somehow settled himself on Iopas’ only chair, even though he hadn’t been invited to sit down. Iopas, still standing, said, ‘No, I don’t. There are so many things that ask to be written about.’

  ‘Like . . . ?’ Maron smiled up at him. ‘Read me one of your poems. I can’t read myself, but I like a nice song. You don’t have to sing if you don’t feel like it. But I’d like to hear a few verses.’

  ‘Oh!’ That was one thing Iopas couldn’t resist: someone asking to hear his words. He picked up a piece of parchment and said, ‘Well, I won’t sing this one – my lyre is over there but one of the strings needs changing. This is about great men being brought low.’ He cleared his throat and began to speak:

  ‘Even the straightest and the tallest tree

  which stands above the rest and lets its leaves

  provide cool shadows on the hottest day –

  why, even that tree can be cut and felled

  by fatal strokes from one man’s silver axe.’

  �
�That’s not bad,’ said Maron, looking as though he really meant it. ‘The tree’s supposed to be like the man, is that it? You’re saying that however big a hero someone is, there’s someone else even bigger and fiercer who can cut him down to size.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Iopas. The boy may not have been able to read, but he was clearly very intelligent.

  ‘Well, it’s good to meet you. I’ve got to go and find Ascanius now, or he’ll be getting into some kind of mischief.’ Maron stood up and went over to where Iopas’ lyre was lying on the table. He ran his fingers over the untuned strings and Iopas winced at the sound. ‘Sorry,’ said Maron. ‘Couldn’t resist!’

  He was gone before Iopas could object.

  After that first day Dido and the Trojan fell into the habit of going on long walks through the city and Iopas thought that she did this to show off for his benefit. Whenever he could, he accompanied them as part of the train of courtiers and guards who followed the queen wherever she went. In the streets of Carthage, as she passed, everyone bowed almost to the ground, and she smiled at them and made a sign with her hand for them to stand upright, and then they’d wave and smile and she would bow her head, and the servants who walked behind her and Aeneas carrying sunshades had to keep well out of the way so that everyone got a good view. Every so often she and Aeneas would stop and speak to a shopkeeper, or a builder on one of the many new sites around the city where yet another splendid building was rising out of the earth. Iopas could see, from the way the queen leaned towards Aeneas, that she was in love with him. He’d had enough experience of seeing common people in the throes of passion and it was a little disappointing to realize that royal personages were no different. Dido tossed her head flirtatiously, looked up at the Trojan through her eyelashes and licked her lips to moisten them. Iopas wasn’t close enough to overhear any words, but laughter carried to him on the air, and even though the heat was often intense, when they stopped to admire anything, they stood very close to one another. Sometimes Aeneas gave Dido his hand as they moved from one spot to another, as though she were in danger of losing her balance and falling. The queen, who was famous for her calm and stately demeanour; who had all the neighbouring chieftains in awe of her cool head, her intelligence and her dignity, was running about like a schoolgirl, practically giggling. Something, some magic potion or spell must have been at work, because this had happened so suddenly.