‘Cornelia?’ Medusa said, her eyes scanning the sea of faces that swam in front of the temple. ‘Quickly, quickly. Get inside. You should not have waited out here.’
She wrapped her arms around the figure and ushered her inside the temple walls, her eyes still moving from side to side.
‘Does he know where you are? Did he follow you?’
The woman shook her head. ‘No, no. I do not think so. I came on foot. No one will have recognised me. I told no one in the house.’
‘You came by foot all this way?’ Medusa felt a heavy ache in her chest. She could only imagine the trail of blood that had been left on the stones. She reached a hand down to the woman’s shoulder.
‘Show me,’ she said.
Cornelia’s breath was laboured as she slipped the brown shawl down around her waist. A small gasp erupted from behind them. Medusa spun around, stifling the shock of the other priestess with a wave of her hand.
Beneath the beggar garments, Cornelia wore robes of silk, stained with brown and red. Around her wrists were bracelets and bangles, not only of gold and silver but also of black and purple that were still growing. The marks around her neck and arms mimicked so clearly the handprints made by a child in the mud. Thumbs and fingers and nails having carved out divots in her young flesh.
‘What happened?’ Medusa asked, taking a bowl handed to her by another priestess.
‘I found him with … I found him.’ She stopped herself, needing no further explanation. ‘I did not mean to, I swear.’ Her voice quivered. ‘I was not spying. I was not snooping. I merely entered the chamber and ... and ...’ Her trembling shook loose the tears brimming in her eyes.
As gently as a butterfly on a petal, Medusa laid a cloth around the woman’s wrist and began wiping away the blood.
‘I believe he wished me dead,’ she said.
‘I fear that may be true,’ Medusa agreed.
This meeting was not their first. Medusa had been present at the wedding of the girl some four years prior as an indication of Athena’s approval towards the pairing. Given that the child was the same age as Medusa had been when the suitors came calling, it was impossible not to feel a bond. The betrothed was a military leader, an honourable man and, as such, it had been seen an extremely favourable arrangement. That day had been filled with wine, so much so that few were standing by the time Medusa had left. Laughter and music carried from the wedding as she draped her evening shawl around her shoulders and headed back to the temple. But the joy did not touch Medusa. For when, during the blessing, the young woman’s eyes had looked at Medusa, they conveyed only fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the known, but not yet experienced. Fear, possibly of the experiences so far. It was not an unusual response, Medusa knew. Most women looked fearful on the wedding night, and those who didn’t generally showed no emotion at all.
But months passed, and the look did not fade. The child, when Medusa saw her, would recoil into the shadow of her husband. Even when her belly grew big with child, she did not beam and grin the way so many did when they were to bear their first, or any offspring. And when the child arrived, it was as though her will detached from her body altogether. Over the past two years, she had often arrived with bruised cheeks and blue ribs, although none so dark as these.
‘Is there not somewhere you can go?’ Medusa asked, rinsing the red cloth in the bowl and wringing out the bloody water with her hands. ‘Is there not a brother, an uncle?’
Cornelia shook her head.
‘No. Maybe. Perhaps.’
‘You have family?’
Her brow creased before she gave a single nod.
‘I have a cousin. On the island of Cephalonia. But what would I do there?’ she said. ‘I have no training. No skills. My husband would find me.’
‘You do not know that. You are young. There is time for you to learn.’
‘So, when he finds me, he will kill a skilled woman? And my daughter, what sort of life would she have by growing up on the rocks of an island?’ She shook her head, the action causing a spasm of pain to twist upon her mouth. ‘It is better I come here,’ she said. ‘To the temple of the Goddess. No husband can beat a woman for coming to a temple, can he?’ She spoke with the smallest of laughs, although her eyes continued to betray her fear.
‘We will get you clean and find a place for you,’ Medusa said. ‘I will find you a place.’
Medusa lifted her hand to guide the woman to the chambers behind the temple, but she did not move.
‘Cornelia?’
The young woman’s eyes fell to the marble floor. Her toes pressed together.
‘There is something else,’ she said.
A chill ran the length of Medusa’s spine, and she muttered a prayer to Athena. The sounds of caterwauling from the city streets masked the silence as the Priestess waited. She knew what would come next. Slowly, Cornelia unwrapped the shawl from around her hips. The blood stain reached her knees.
‘I was with child,’ she said. ‘I was with another child. But I fear it has gone. My child has gone, hasn’t it?’
Medusa stayed silent, for she knew there were no words that could stem such a pain.
Once the wounds were washed and wrapped, they dressed the woman in the garb of the priestesses. The bleeding had not stopped and would not for many days, an older priestess had told her. But should the pains persist past the next moon, she was to return and bathe in the fountains of the Goddess. She was fortunate it was early; the older priestess had said as she pinched the
