“Perhaps—perhaps thou will marry me instead of thy uncle? I was a prince among my people.”
“Glaucus, I don’t care if you were a murex fisher. Of course I will marry you!” Rung over roseate rung, she climbed her ladder of rainbow into Astarte’s sky.
“Never mind. We will stay with our human friends and sail on this ship beyond the Pillars of Melkart! Wilt thou go with me, Dido?”
“But women on cargo ships offend the gods, Melkart at least, the jealous old man. And inflame the men, I am told.” (Perhaps Little Mothers were not inflammatory?) “Don’t they bring storms and such? Even attacks by Tritons?” She knew that treacherous Tritons and gentle Glauci, though kindred, were mortal foes.
“My friends adore thee,” he said. “Thou art—”
“A girl who acts like a boy and wanders among the seamen in the port.”
“A girl who acts like a girl, soft and gentle, who brings a bounty wherever she goes. Except—older in spirit than years. A sister to some. To others, a mother.”
“And to you, dear Glaucus?” She waited for “lover”, “sweetheart”, even “wife”.
“A sister, I think, and—and—”
“I don’t feel at all sisterly toward you at the moment. I feel like a sacred prostitute.”
“Wife,” he answered at last, though how she had urged and cajoled to evoke the word! “A sister and wife.” (At least he had not said “mother”). “Of course I will wed thee before we begin our journey. That is to say, if thou accept—”
“Let me return to the palace to get some gowns.” She owned an enormous personal fortune—Indian rubies; amber from Hyperborea; images wrought in silver, gold, or electrum; gowns with gold-leaf hems and pectorals sent to her by the pharaoh of Egypt. But what was a fortune to a fleeing bride? And in fact the gowns she intended to choose were linen, not gold-leaf, and as for mirrors, a cosmetician’s palette, or rock crystal bottles of scent—these were for palaces, not for voyages, and never much to her taste. She would have given them to the prostitutes, except that her brother might have noticed their absence and blamed the slaves and extracted a tongue or severed a hand. Yet Glaucus had accurately called her a girl who resembled a girl and not a boy. She was many softnesses bound by a single strength, and the strength was to know, explore, discover the furthest land in Oceanus or the nearest thought in a friend. “And of course my sister Anna…”
Glaucus’ wistfulness yielded to a sigh. “Perhaps the lady Anna will leave us for the Harpies when we pass the Straits of Messina.” Anna was highly unpopular with the fleet (“the old Scylla”); more unpopular in the palace and the port (“the old Gorgon”). She was much too learned to attract a man, and she liked to display her knowledge at every chance and correct those poor inferiors unacquainted with the knowledge of tablets and scrolls. She spoke her tongue to kings or to sailors; beautiful, she might have held their ear. But she resembled a starved giraffe: mottled head, long neck, skinny arms and legs. Only Dido knew the kindness behind the brusqueness and tried—in vain—to reveal the vulnerable being in the shell.
“Anna takes some knowing.”
“I will not live so long. But Harpies are said to live for a thousand years. Perhaps it will suffice.”
No time to take offense. Offenses were useless until one knew the truth. “She will help me with my arrangements. She has always helped me to leave the palace unnoticed. When shall we wed, my dearest?”
“Now.”
A single word from a youth whose conversation resembled a formal speech!
“Now? But I have things to do!”
“My ship sails tomorrow, my princess. Among the Glauci a wedding is brief and simple.” (Unlike their speeches.) “It is a promise more than a ceremony. Our life in the sea does not allow us the leisure of pageantry. Does haste offend thee, my love?”
She kissed him on the cheek. The skin, soft and unlined by salt-wind or garish sun, belonged to a baby instead of a sailor boy.
“Now,” she smiled.
“Wait for me here by the stanchion. I will seek my captain and see to the preparations. Then thou shall fetch thy belongings and thy—uh—your sister.”
She envied the temple maidens, as free in love as Astarte, queen of the sky. She looked with yearning at Glaucus’ retreating form, so different from fat-bellied Baal, or brother Pygmalion, gray as a rotting fish, or Uncle Sychaeus, who only smiled when he fed plump babies to Baal. Like every girl of her age, she knew the mechanics of love, but lifeless scrolls had given her lovers and fed the perfervid dreams inherited from her mother, the lady of the sea, and her exploring father, who had forgotten trade to love a Nereid. Now a dream must guide her into a fact.
“Shall I wait for you here?”
“Yes. No one will touch thee.”
“Hurry, my dear!” (Touch me, touch me, touch me.…)
* * * *
Dido’s wedding was held on the deck of Glaucus’ ship, concealed by a tentlike awning from passersby and the possible eye of the king. Glaucus’ friends, most of them young like him, circled her under a fabric dyed with the purple of the helix violet. The filtered daylight shimmered above their heads, and youthful sailors looked like merest boys. The captain, older than his crew, was also young, for Carthaginian sailors, the boldest in the sea, rarely lived into the toothless time and supped on memory instead of meat. Brown as a Libyan, he bowed and smiled but looked as if he preferred a storm to a wedding rite.
“It’s said that sailors are eloquent men. Well, eloquence leaves them at such a time as this.”
Dido smiled: “The Queen of Heaven will tell you what to say.” She hoped that the words would be brief.
He frowned and seemed to listen for secret words. “I think she tells me that Dido and Glaucus are married in her eyes and joined to my ship. Enduring love is rare, and she is pleased, and they shall attract cool winds and sunny skies wherever we choose to sail. Now then, Glaucus, garland your bride.” He placed a garland in the bridegroom’s hands. “I picked them myself. Oleanders and pomegranate flowers. Princess Dido, are they royal enough?”
“Rarer than pearls.” She smiled. He moved her with his gift. He, a rugged seaman, was not intended for picking flowers. She knelt and received the garland around her neck; she felt her husband’s hands among the flowers; she wanted to clasp them, and him, and prove the reality of the marriage rite, the wonder of wedding Glaucus instead of Sychaeus.
“And I must exchange a gift,” she said. “But here I am barefoot. Ringless. What can I give you, Glaucus?”
“Give me a tear,” he said. Dido’s mother, the sea nymph, had been a kinswoman of Electra, the Nereid, whose tears were the amber droplets tossed by the waves or strung by Sirens on anklets and necklaces.
“I’m much too happy to weep!”
“Sweetest Dido, your cheeks are a flood of tears. And see! An amber drop!”
He plucked it from her cheek and lovingly placed it in the hollow scarab he wore around his neck.
“Now it is time to mend the sails and stir the pitch,” said the captain.
“Elsewhere.” He smiled, and his young but weathered face had the color and friendliness of a scroll which is often unwound to be read and remembered and marked.
* * * *
Dido and Glaucus shared the tent; they, and the silence, an uninvited guest. Glaucus stared