When she spoke it was so softly that she didn’t know if Morgot would even hear her. “Reindeer,” she said as consciousness fled away. “Reindeer.”
STAVIA AS IPHIGENIA AND JOSHUA AS ACHILLES AND all the rest of the cast—including the director, who had finally decided what it was she wanted from the performance—were walking through a final, afternoon rehearsal. The performance would be given that evening. The summer theater was gay with banners, and the food kiosks were already steaming with flavorful things to be sold when dusk came. The small cast was going through the play in costume and makeup, a final run-through to get used to the just-completed set, speaking their lines over the sound of the chorus practicing across the grass. The walls of Troy tumbled in wreckage about them. Hecuba huddled with Andromache. Halfway up the walls of Troy, Achilles knelt, weeping. Stavia as Iphigenia leaned down to him as directed, her hand on his cheek.
IPHIGENIA Achilles, why are you crying?
ACHILLES It’s gone, all gone. My honors and my glory. Thetis, my mother, said my name would be immortal as the name of Jove himself, yet here I am beside these broken walls, alone, alone….
IPHIGENIA I’d not have said alone.
ACHILLES Who’s here? Is my friend Patroclus here? Is Ajax here? Where are those of the Argive host who died? All my brave Myrmidons, where are they?
HECUBA What is he saying, Agamemnon’s child?
IPHIGENIA He cries for heroes, Hecuba. He cries for his friends or any other dead Greek to keep him company.
HECUBA Lonely, is he? With us here to attend him?
POLYXENA Ungrateful of him, isn’t it? Achilles! We are here to keep you company. Tss, why should you be lonely?
ACHILLES (Passionately) What have women to say to a warrior?
CASSANDRA Oh, a woman might say much, if he would listen. Men do not listen, though. They disregard the things we say as though we were caged birds, singing our songs by rote. For instance, I’ve told Agamemnon what fate awaits him, but he laughs….
IPHIGENIA (Tittering) He never listened to good counsel before. Why should he now?
ACHILLES (Continuing, as though there had been no interruption) Yes, what have women to say to a warrior? And what has a warrior to say to women?!
ANDROMACHE Why, you might tell us how you made us love you. I had a father once in goodly Thebe, the city of the Cilicians. You came there, warrior. You sacked the place, slaying my father and his seven sons. What fame you brought my brothers, great Achilles, slain by such a man as you. You could speak of that.
IPHIGENIA Or speak of your wooing. Tell how you killed the menfolk of Briseis. Tell how you raped her there inside your tent while calling her a “fruitling of your spear.” Warriors have much that they could say to women if they would use their tongues….
ACHILLES It’s not my fault she longed for my embrace. She threw herself before my sandaled feet, reaching with ivory arms to feel my thighs. What you call rape was only that sweet violence the trees well know when, lashed by summer storm, they crash together in the wilderness….
IPHIGENIA What storms these were in which so many died! What summer tempests leaving all those dead! So many husbands, fathers, brothers slain! No doubt they were struck down all tenderly, caressed by loving blades.
POLYXENA If Briseis threw herself at your feet, she might have been pleading for mercy. Had you considered that?
ACHILLES (Sulkily) If Patroclus were here, he’d understand. We men understand one another.
IPHIGENIA Well, Patroclus has gone on down to Hades along with all the rest of the dead Greeks.
HECUBA And Trojans….
IPHIGENIA And Trojans. You’ll have company enough when you come there. I’ve been there and I know.
POLYXENA That’s true! For you were slain ten years ago.
IPHIGENIA Ten years, such little time. But long enough to learn the way to Hell and back again.
“Stavia,” said the director uncertainly, seeing her stagger. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Stavia said, feeling the flood of momentary emotion depart. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
It had been ten years from the time she had taken Dawid to the warriors until the night a few weeks ago that he had chosen to remain with the garrison. Time enough to learn the way to Hell and back again.
STAVIA’S HEAD INJURY HAD BEEN WORSE THAN they thought. The chief surgical officer had drilled holes in her skull and lifted a piece out, like the lid of a teapot, removed the clot which pressed against her brain, then laid the bone back with the scalp neatly stitched across it and white bandages to cover it all. Through it all, Stavia dreamed again of the deer, over and over again.
There was a long time during which voices spoke in other rooms, a time when everything was far away and nothing was important enough to look at or listen to. She did not really hear the conversation between Septemius and Morgot as they sat by her bed, watching her breathe, breathing for her when she forgot to do so, though the substance of it entered her, as the dreams had done.
“How did you find out?” Morgot asked.
“Ah.” Septemius thought about this. “I would say through the innocent eye, madam. Through untutored observation, in which we do not perceive the fabric of your lives, worked into the pattern you are accustomed to showing others. We are therefore free to make other patterns from the threads we see. We unraveled all your threads and from their substance rewove the truth. Our attention focused, for example, on the amount of medical attention given women before and after carnival….”
“To prevent disease,” Morgot said quietly.
“There was rather more to it than that. After all, we itinerants have had
