Free Dido by Adèle Geras

climbed on to his father’s lap and clung to his neck.
    â€˜Shouldn’t he be asleep?’ Anna whispered.
    â€˜He was. I don’t know what happened. He woke up. I was sitting on the stool next to his bed and I think I must have dropped off too, because I’m sure what I saw was a dream.’
    â€˜What do you mean? What did you see?’
    â€˜Aphrodite – the Goddess of Love. She was floating above the ground . . . Oh, of course I must have been dreaming. She said something to Ascanius. She smelled of roses and her dress . . . It looked . . . well, it didn’t look like plain cloth, but like a garment made of mist.’
    â€˜Did she speak to you? Say anything?’
    Elissa shook her head. ‘No, she was whispering to the boy. And then he got up, and she . . . I couldn’t see her any longer, though I could smell her perfume. I suppose that proves she was real, but—’
    â€˜Don’t be a silly girl. Of course she was real. Everybody’s real.’
    â€˜Maybe it wasn’t the Goddess. She didn’t speak to me. Perhaps she was a ghost.’
    â€˜Nonsense. Whose ghost?’
    â€˜The boy’s mother.’
    Anna had to concede that the child’s mother was very likely to return to gaze at her child, even speak to him, after death. She said, ‘Well, perhaps, but never mind that. What happened then?’
    â€˜He got up and wouldn’t let me put him back to bed again. I thought perhaps he was looking for Maron because he’s used to being put to bed by him, but he ran out of the room and I followed him here, and nowhis father will be angry with me, won’t he?’ Elissa’s eyes glittered with unshed tears.
    â€˜He seems very happy to see his son, my dear,’ Anna said. ‘Don’t worry any more. Go to your room. I’ll attend to the child when he needs to go back to his bed. You’ll be rising quite early with him in the morning, I predict.’
    â€˜Thank you, madam,’ Elissa said, and almost ran out of the room, grateful to hear that she wasn’t in trouble.
    The flames in the lanterns were guttering. Black shadows moved in the corners of the room and flickered on the walls, and at the table only Dido and Aeneas were left talking. And me, Anna thought. And now Aeneas’ son, who had climbed down from his father’s lap and run off to explore this new place he found himself in. I’ll keep an eye on him, she thought. My sister and the Trojan seem more interested in one another than in the child. Before Ascanius arrived in the room, Anna had wondered whether she ought to go and leave the two of them alone together but had decided she ought to stay. It would be . . . what was the right word?
Unseemly
– yes, unseemly without a doubt – for the Queen of Carthage to show such great favour straight away to someone who, for all his good qualities, was a stranger to them. Her attention was caught by Ascanius, who’d collected date stones from the platters and was playing a complicated game on the benches with some wooden spoons he’d taken from the end of the table.
    Then she saw her: the ghost, or Aphrodite, orwhatever she was, hovering near Ascanius and bending down to whisper in the boy’s ear. She was just as Elissa had described her: pale, floating garments edged with silver bells that tinkled and chimed as she moved. Anna blinked, stood up and backed away, thinking to call someone – a guard; anyone – and see who this person was, drifting about the palace without announcing her presence, and then she saw that the child was bathed in a blue light and the woman was handing him something – what was it? An arrow? How could that be? Who would do such a thing? Giving a child that age a weapon of any kind! She forgot at once about calling the guard and ran across to where Ascanius was sitting. By the time she’d knelt down beside him, the woman – ghost or goddess or