Free Alcestis by Katharine Beutner Page A

air. All the men except for the guards must have gone inside to eat and drink wine. Admetus would be sitting in the great hall with my father, suffering Pelias’s rude talk or rude silence. I wondered if Admetus was thinking of me—I wondered what Admetus was thinking of me. Did he blush at the thoughts, wipe his sweaty palms against his clothes, look up to see my father staring at him with godlike eyes, furious as a speared boar?
    Some light flickered in the courtyard: a lamp, an oil lamp, bright in the body of the Pheraean king’s chariot, shining on golden hair. The chariot driver had chosen to stay in the rig rather than enter Pelias’s house with his master? I stood at the window staring down at him, lonely in the cool air, and a shiver skimmed my body. I remembered the effortless way he’d managed the horses, the grace of his hands on the reins. He had turned them like a god turns the wind.
    The golden head lifted, slow as a sunrise. I drew back so fast I scraped my palms on the stone and stood panting in the dimness of the bedroom. In the courtyard, the light winked out.
    “Alcestis,” Phylomache called from the outer room of the women’s quarters. “Could you come here for a moment?”
    I stepped back from the window, scrubbed the heels of my hands over my eyes, and went to help. When I woke in the morning, I crept to the window to look out over the courtyard, but the king, the charioteer, and the men were gone.

    .TWO WEEKS LATER we had another birth in the little bedchamber. I sat by Phylomache as she panted and cried, giving her sips of cool water and putting a wet cloth over her forehead. Everything went exactly as it had for Asteropia’s birth: the labor was short, the afterbirth came out easily, Phylomache tore but did not bleed too badly. The baby was a girl, though healthy. The servant women wiped her clean and daubed her purple skin with oil, chanting thanks to Eileithyia, Hera’s hard daughter, for the mother’s health and the baby’s life. Phylomache lay limp and triumphant on the bed and watched.
    Pelias didn’t leave the palace this time, as he had when Asteropia was born, as if he’d thought he could prevent his new wife from dying by allowing her to give birth alone. He came into the women’s quarters after the new baby was washed and fed, ignoring the protests of the servant women. The baby was sleeping, but Phylomache handed her up to Pelias without comment, though she frowned when the child began to cry. She smiled when Pelias looked back at her, though, the child held in the crook of his arm. “We shall name her Antinoe,” he said, and Phylomache was still smiling, nodding, her dark hair tangled around her ruddy face. No one spoke of sons.
    Antinoe was quieter than Asteropia had been, less fussy. Phylomache spent days cradling her with one arm and letting Asteropia snuggle up against her other side, singing softly to the children and calling them sweet names. She stayed in bed far longer than she needed to, and the head maid began coming to me for approval of meals and with requests for trade goods. Pelias didn’t notice. He came to fetch Phylomache and the children some days and took them out to the courtyard to sit in the sun. He smiled when he saw Antinoe, and the smile stretched out to include Asteropia and Phylomache.
    I had never seen him happy before. I told myself that I was glad of it. Pelias, distracted, had said nothing about suitors for weeks. When he did speak to me, his voice was slightly softer, his fierceness muted. Enjoy it while you can, I told myself. He’ll forget this happiness before the baby ever grows to be a girl.
    I was right.
    Within three weeks of Antinoe’s birth, I heard Pelias shouting at Phylomache in the great hall. I was in the kitchens directing the butchering of a lamb, my hands slick with blood. I wiped my hands on a cloth and ran out into the hallway, ducking around slaves carrying food.
    The shouting stopped before I reached the hall.