Free Nobody's Princess by Esther Friesner Page A

that she’s losing her babies.”
    “That’s true,” another added. “Didn’t you hear about what she said to the ambassador? He wanted our princess to come to Mykenae before winter, but the queen refused.”
    “What does she think
that
will do?” a third snapped. “Children grow up and leave us. That’s how it is, even for queens. Does she think she can stop time by—”
    Her voice dropped abruptly into silence. A hush fell over the room. The women around me were laying down their work and rising like a flock of herons taking flight. Even my sister stood up from her bench at the great loom and turned, making a graceful gesture of respect. Queen Leda had come.
    I scrambled to my feet and made a quick, clumsy bow, holding up my hands to greet her. In public, even when the only other people present were slaves, we royal children had to salute our parents with the same reverence we would pay to the gods.
    Mother acknowledged all of us with a curt nod, then pointed at my discarded distaff and spindle. “Helen, pick those up and come with me.” Her voice was almost as sharp as when she’d reprimanded the Mykenaean ambassador. My stomach turned sour.
What have I done?
    We walked down the hallways of the palace in silence. I was almost too frightened to breathe. She led the way up a blue-and-crimson-painted stairway and brought me to the bedroom she shared with my father. It had a window that looked out over a small thicket of bright flowers and sweet-smelling herbs.
    Mother sat down on the bed and motioned for me to sit beside her. The air was still and warm. I could hear the bees buzzing as they drank nectar from the courtyard flowers. Without a word, Mother took the spindle and distaff away from me.
    “Is this the way you’re always going to handle troubles, Helen?” she asked, her voice soft and kind. “By running away?”
    I blushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    She patted my hand, then without warning grabbed it and turned it over so she could examine the palm. One of her fingers traced the signs that the sword hilt had left on top of the calluses I’d already earned from the wooden spears. Six days hadn’t been long enough to erase them.
    “Oh, but you do,” she said. “Why do your hands look more like your brothers’ than Clytemnestra’s? Tell me the truth.”
    “You already know it, don’t you,” I said. There was no need to make it a question. My mother nodded. “Who told you?” I asked.
    “No one had to tell me,” Mother replied. “I saw you practicing with the sword on the day Lord Thyestes’s ambassador went back to Mykenae. I’d had enough of him, so I left your father to handle the ceremony of farewell without me and went off to hunt rabbits.”
    “Hunting rabbits?” I stared at my mother as if she’d grown a pair of horns.
“You?”
    She laughed, and twined a lock of my hair around one finger. “Your father loves rabbit stewed with onions. He says the ones I catch just for him taste best.”
    I tried to picture my tall, elegant mother crouching in the underbrush to set a snare. “Who taught you how to make rabbit traps?” I asked.
    “Traps?” she echoed. “I haven’t got the patience for traps.” She got up and reached under the big chest at the foot of the bed. The long wooden box she dragged out was painted with curls of ivy, garlands of pine boughs, and a pattern of wild boars, tusked and bristling. When she opened it, I gaped at the black bronze-banded bow and the arrows fletched with pheasant feathers.
    “This is what I use to hunt,” Mother said, grinning as she strung the bow. She did it as naturally as breathing. “Not just rabbits. I bring home game birds too, and deer, and even foxes, when I can outsmart them. The first time I saw your father, I’d just come home from the hunt. The forests of Calydon are thick with game, but the deer are so clever that it was the first time I’d managed to bring one down. I was so proud of what I’d done that I