The Divine Mortal

Hercules

By Lilo S. Drandoff

Prolog

Part I: Conception

In the beginning there was light. Light that poured down on to Alcmena’s face as she waited everyday for a ship to return home. Later there were just clouds, and then rain and wind. It had been in the season of storms and the wind had been so wild that the mired cypresses which surrounded the palace had whipped about as the waves did upon the sea. As she had every night for the past years Alcmena waited upon the high cliffs of Thebes, waiting for the ship that would bring home her husband. The fine woman of Creon, regent of Thebes, constantly begged her to wait elsewhere-perhaps on the fine balcony connected to the rooms she and her husband had been granted. They meant well, though in truth Alcmena knew they cared more for the soft cloth of her garments being damaged by the salt spray of the sea then for her own troubled mind. They did not mind the solitude she kept and the ever increasing sacrifices to the great Hera and Zeus, but they knew that when her husband Amphitryon returned he would be off put by the way her delicate face had been tanned and roughened by the wind and sun and the way her once blue eyes had been reddened by the flow of ocean tears. He had waited many years, after all, they said to themselves, and he would not want to find his bride an old woman when she was still in teens.

 When Alcmena heard them she smiled. She did not care how her husband would perceive her. She had decided on the day he left Thebes to hunt down her brother’s killers in Taphos that she would not love her husband. How could she love him? He was a large man, Amphitryon, and not dull of wit. But he had killed her own father. Avenging her brother’s deaths was the condition she had put upon him for marriage-yet daily she prayed to Hera that his ship would sink to the bottom of the sea after he had completed his deed. Then both her father and brothers could rest easy in Hades.

 But this was not to be. As she stood in her constant vigil Alcmena spotted a ship making its way home to the harbor of Thebes. She cursed the rain driving into her eyes that obscured the finer details of the crew. But in her heart a sinking sensation grew. He had come home. There was no doubt that her brother’s killers were dead, for she had told Amphitryon that she would not lie with him until her avenged her family honor. He would not have returned to her if he had been unable to accomplish his task.

 Alcmena watched with dread as the ship pulled out of the lashing wind and into the calmer harbor, which was protected by the stony cliffs she stood upon. As she saw the first man, dressed in heavy armor of a kind only a wealthy man could afford, she turned from the sea and fled into the muted glow of the palace.

 She burst into her rooms in a whirl of noise and she dropped her salt sodden robe on the floor, waking her old nurse. ‘He is come!” she shrieked, panting from her dash with brown hair flying about her head in crazed tangles. “Amphitryon is here!”

Elpis stared at her young charge-a girl of only 16!-and thought how old she must be to have lived to the night of her darlings wedding. She rose slowly from the chair where she had been dozing and reached to straiten Alcmena’s tunic. “You knew my daughter” she said, using her own term of endearment for the girl she had raised, “that this day would come.”

“No!” yelled Alcmena, throwing of Elpis’s hands and storming around the room. “I wanted him dead! He killed my father! I do not care if he has avenged my brother’s, I will not marry him!”

Elpis gathered up Alcmena’s cape from the floor and brushed off the wet sand clinging to it. “It was an accident my dear” she said, referring to when Amphitryon threw a club at a wandering cow and struck Almena’s father, “and before his death your father signed a marriage contract with this man. You have no choice.”

 “Choice!” Alcmena screamed as her voice climbed the scale. “I am a princess! My father was a king, and my brother would have been but for his murder! This man you would have me marry can never be a King-he has been banished from Mycenae for killing my father and if I marry him I to will be forever banished! My sons will not sit on the throne of their own country!”

 Elpis stood up stair and draped the blue wool over an unlit and empty oil lamp. She struggled to keep her voice under control. All of her life had been spent raising the royal children of Mycenae-from the time she had been handed a two month old prince at the age of ten and told to care for him to the day when she, along with Alcmena and Amphitryon, had fled to Thebes after the accident with the club. She had loved the old King, Alcmena’s father, for she had raised him. She had insisted to Amphitryon that he hold his bargain to kill the Mycenae’s prince murderers before he took Alcmena’s virginity. She would see the children of this match gain their destiny, whether or not it was to rule.

 “Because you are a princess you must keep your father’s word. He would want it of you.”

Alcmena stared aghast at her oldest companion. All that had kept her alive these years of exile in Thebes had been the thought that once Amphitryon had fulfilled his promise and died himself she could return home. Now any minute he could burst into her chamber and demand his rights as a husband. Her eyes winded as she looked at the old couch covered in rough wool blankets that had served as her bed since coming to Thebes.

 “Elpis, please, if you love me at all do not let him near me,” she felt her knees grabbing at the old woman’s gnarled hands and pressing them to her chest, “I will die if he touches me.”

 Elpis knelt, slowly and painfully, so that she was level with Alcmena. “As a servant you learn many things,” she said to the girl as tears trickled down her face, “and one of them is that destiny is not something you can avoid. The gods decreed you would marry this man and bear his sons. I cannot stop it.”

 Alcmena dropped her head in despair, hands reaching to tear at her hair in grief. Elpis stopped her hands and spoke soothingly. “My little love”, she said, wiping away a tear from Alcmena’s salt stained face, “you must have dignity in this as befits your station as the rightful ruler of Mycenae. Tonight you shall truly be wed, and we must make you ready.”

 In a state of shock Alcmena nodded. Her nurse was correct. She was royal and must act it, if only to show Amphitryon she was not scared of him. She rose slowly from the floor and went to open her one chest of fine clothing-all that had been saved when fleeing from her home. The garments that had been made for her wedding were now far to short-she had grown since they were tailored. Yet her wedding tunic had been made overly large, as though for someone else, and would still suffice. She gathered up its green silk in folds and brought the delicate cloth to her nose.

 ‘There is no rot.” She announced to her nurse. “I must bathe and prepare a sacrifice for my marriage.”

Elpis nodded. She took the gown from Alcmena and shook it out. Two maid servants-having seen the ship coming into the harbor arrived in the un-delicate room and announced that Creon had sent them to prepare Alcmena. She rose to go with them to the bathing chambers, looking back at Elpis with slight fear in her eyes, but a regal bearing.

 “When you return my lady” Elpis said, “we shall get you dressed.”

~*~

Alcmena was not unfamiliar with the Theban way of bathing having been so long in the country. She was immersed in scalding hot water for several minutes until one of the bath attendees, an older bastard daughter of Creon with long red hair shrieked that her skin was beginning to wrinkle.

 “Silly fool” the girls mother said, “She must be wrinkled before we can scrub off all of her dead salt skin!”

Alcmena slinked lower in the large tub and tried to avoid the many hands that poked and scrubbed at her with rough pumice stones. Perimede, her half brothers wife, yanked at her hair and scrubbed it until Alcmena thought her very scull would become detached.

 “This is shameful!” Perimede exclaimed while dosing Almena’s hair with oil, “the glory of you was once your hair-now what will by brother think when he returns to find we have had to cut it like a sheepherders!”

“I would rather worry what my own brother, Licymnius, your husband, thinks to have found you have so mistreated his sister!” Alcmena fumed as she was dragged out of the hot water and chaffed by the rough fabric of the drying cloths.

 Perimede clucked and grabbed the wedding tunic from Elpis who waited nearby. Draping it over Alcmena’s head she paused and stopped to smooth the fine fabric over Alcmena’s thin shoulders. “We shall be sisters twice now,” she said, “I hope we may truly act it, if only for the sake of our husbands.”

 Alcmena stared at her sister in law in wonder. Not once had she had a kind word to say to her. The whole while her brother was away she had guarded Alcmena to make sure her virginity was not given to anyone but her true husband. Tonight with the odious task coming to its end she felt a sense of relief and slight pity. She had been lucky in her husband. He was wise and kind, not foolish like Alcmena’s murdered brothers, and he truly cared for her and their children. She could only hope that her brother would be kind to his young bride-and that she would be kind in turn.

 Finally prepared, with skin softened, hair oiled and arranged and wedding dress draped becomingly Alcmena led the way to the harbor mouth with Elpis and Perimede trailing after her. They watched as lamps flickered on board the ship as rain pelted the sailors and they attempted to reach the shore. Alcmena visibly trembled each time the ship made headway but overall it appeared the men made no progress in landing.

 She gripped a pillar with curling marble vines around it for support. “I will go” she said, not looking at the other women but towards the sea, “to make the sacrifice for a fruitful union. Perhaps it will help the man land.”

 In her head she added that perhaps they would still sink in the turbulent waters and die at the bottom of the harbor.

 Elpis opened her mouth, clearly ready to protest, but was stopped by a scathing look from Perimede. Alcmena released her death grip on the pillar and left a run, fleet as a deer in the forest, for the temple of Hera.

~*~

 It was an old temple, a place only woman went. Alcmena had discovered it the day Amphitryon had left to exact her vengeance. It was nearly lost in the forest and had been almost totally reclaimed by the plant life. Once a marble dome had lofted over the alter made of a large branch of a living tree but that had long since fallen to ruin. Now the rain poured in and made the packed dirt floor of the temple a sea of mud, accepting the alter which was guarded by overhanging branches. Alcmena knelt in front of it, holding the silk of her dress in her clenched fist so that only the skin on her knees was covered in mud.

She took the pomegranate that Elpis had given her just before she left the palace and with shaking hands pulled off part of its rough skin. The red juice from the seeds gushed out onto her hands, staining them purple in the sporadic light the lightning slashes gave off. This was a good sign she knew. The more juice in the pomegranate, the more fruitful the marriage would be. With shaking hands she pulled out a portion of the seeds and placed them on to the alter. With one hand flat on each side of the small pile of seeds she tried to allow the peace of Hera move through her and bless her with many children to come. But though she tried the only images that came to mine were of her husband dieing before he could claim her. “I cannot do it!” she cried aloud in desperation, “I cannot marry my fathers murdered, even if he has avenged my brothers!”

Suddenly from behind there was a sound of as twig cracking. Alcmena, still on her knees, whirled around to find her husband striding through the trees towards her. He seemed to be taller than she remembered and as he got closer she could make our gray in his beard where there was none before and an angry red scar that ran down his right arm. He stopped halfway into the grove and stared down at his bride. She seemed to a child in her mothers dress crouching on the ground. Though dressed and made up for a wedding her eyes were rimmed with red as though she had been crying.

 “It will not be so bad” Amphitryon said, sounding very sure of himself, “I have it good authority that the next child born to a woman of Mycenae shall rule the country.”

Alcmena rose to feet dropping the hem of her gown to obscure her muddy knees. “You kneed not remind me of my duty my lord” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, “whatever the fate of our children you and I are bound to be wed.”

“So we are” said the tall man. Alcmena saw that he carried a wine skin in his hand. He gestured with it. “Come drink of our wedding cup my wife, and I shall tell you of the battle.”

Alcmena looked around the grove nervously. She had thought that she would face Amphitryon with her friends around her and brother beside her to insure he behaved. Carefully she reached out for the skin. It was heavy with liquid and raising it her mouth she found that it had been laced with honey. “Yes tell me.” She said after passing it back to him, “are my brothers avenged.”

“They are and more” her husband replied, taking a drink of his own and wiping the liquid out of his beard with his hand. “You may be assured that your brothers rest well in Hades, and I have fulfilled by promise to your father. Now I shall take my prize.”

Alcmena started to shake slightly, and backed away into the shadows so he would not notice. No one said the terrible name of the lord of the underworld if they could avoid it. “I am glad for the sake of my brothers” she said, “but if you want the throne of Mycenae you should not stop here to rest-that prize will not be easy to take.”

“I do not want your country” said Amphitryon, making his way slowly towards his new bride. He reached out his hand to touch her cheek. “Such rough skin” he murmured. “You have waited long by the sea for your husband.”

“I have waited long to know my brothers were avenged” she said, casting her eyes down, suddenly afraid to look the man in the eye.

Amphitryon grinned wickedly, startling Alcmena, who did not remember her husband ever being humorous. He reached out and grasped her arms, pulling her close to his massive leather covered chest. Alcmena noticed that he did not smell of sweat or blood or rancid meat-or any of the things that sailors smelled like. Instead he smelled of flowers.

As he ran his hands down her hair, praising its shine and beauty Alcmena began to feel dizzy. Lighting flashed overhead, almost on top of the very tree she was standing under.

“I think the gods are angry at us” he husband said, though he did not seem worried.

Sinking into a haze Alcmena gasped at the thought of the wrath of the gods. “Why?” She cried softly, “I am honoring my bargain as you did yours. Vengeance for marriage.”

Amphitryon bent his head down so his forehead touched Alcmena’s. “They are angry” he whispered into her ear, his warm, breath smelling of wine and flowers, “because we are not yet wed.”

He kissed Alcmena and swept her off her feet and into her arms. Though her mind was whirling as if she had taken the poppy juice for pain she thought in a lightning flash that her husband’s short brown and gray hair became long and golden and his flat brown eyes became as blue as the sea of Thebes. As he lowered on to the alter of Hera the last thing she heard was his whisper: “Our son will rival the gods themselves!”

~*~

Alcmena rose dazed when her husband left her in the grove. She gathered the torn pieces of her gown and staggered to her feet still feeling drugged. The lightning had stopped overhead, although the rain continued to lash down upon her face.

The wet drops brought her back to herself. She fumed with anger towards Amphitryon. How dare he desecrate a sacred temple in such a way? How dare he treat her like a common prostitute who could be taken in the fields? She was a princess and the rightful ruler of Mycenae. The mere fact that he was her husband meant he must treat her with the dignity befitting her as his wife.

 She managed to pull her clothing together so that she was decent and began the trek back to the palace. She stuck to walking in the shadow of the forest so that no one would see her and know her disgrace. When finally she reached the palace of Thebes she went strait to her room where Elpis was waiting.

“You were gone long child.” said the old nurse as she took Alcmena’s finer things out of storage.

Alcmena showed her the torn dress. “I was away because my husband found me in Hera’s grove” she said, “and decided that it was a fitting place to consummate our marriage.”

Elpis made a disapproving sound, and merely said, “I thought the ship had not yet come to port. How did he come to be on land?”

“Perhaps he swam” said Alcmena, throwing herself down upon her bed and pulling a blanket high over her rain chilled skin. “In any case it is done. Though something was odd.”

“What?” asked Elpis, who had heard her share of wedding night stories and dearly hoped it had not been a horror like some, “did he hurt you badly?”

Alcmena looked thoughtful. “No”, she said sounding surprised. “He was rather gentle. But he did tell me he had been told the next child born of a woman of Mycenae would rule the land.”

Elpis clapped with joy. “He must have heard it from an oracle to repeat such news!” she cried, “Oh my lady, perhaps now you carry our future king!”

Alcmena stared down at her flat stomach in shock. She hadn’t thought that a possibility. But Elpis was correct. Only if the source was good would anyone repeat news so important. She smiled, suddenly at peace. Her son would bring them all out of exile, and at last she would rule as she should. All would be well. Elpis ran around gathering blankets to keep her charge warm and healthy, so that the baby would grow strong.

Neither of them knew that down in the harbor the ship carrying Amphitryon was battling through high waves and had come no closer to shore. Eventually the men gave up and decided to try again in the morning when the storm was blown over. This troubled Amphitryon, who was anxious to finally make Alcmena his bride. But he had waited years and could perhaps wait one night more.

~*~

On Mt. Olympus, alone in the chamber she shared with her husband Hara seethed. As a goddess of domestic harmony she was supposed to embody peace and calm, but tonight, after the scene she had witnessed in Thebes she was boiling with rage. Her light red hair snapped around her head like snakes and the very air around her was charged with static. The very mountain shook with her anger. She had ignored her husband’s infidelities in the past, but this was different. This time he had the gall to take a woman, a mortal, in a place dedicated to his own wife. It was past bearing. She knew a child would result from this union. A child of Zeus.

A child that would do well to beware Hera.

I admit that I probably understand very little of what is really happening in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Lately I do not want to watch the news and hear the anchors speak of how justified the Israelis are in their actions, and how they are defending their country. Even the Daily Show, so faithfully correct and appropriately funny has been offensive lately. There is nothing funny in what is happening.

I admit that is natural to want to defend your nation and people, and to act with rage and violence after an attack. My journal entry on 9/11 2001 speaks of wanting to go to war in Afghanistan and condemns my brother for not feeling the same. But that feeling passed, and became instead a rational desire for the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin to be punished for their crimes. They day we first bombed Afghanistan, a November Sunday, I cried for the innocents being killed in our lust to hunt down a small group of very dangerous people.

Israel seems not to have gotten past their initial anger. I know that there was a change of leadership and the new Palestinian faction is much more extreme and dangerous than the last. But the way Israel is bombing the Middle East is as if we bombed all of Texas, every city and suburb and airport, to kill off the KKK. It would be effective, but morally wrong.

I am sickened by the fact that no one, not even the US, will even ask Israel to stop the bombings. We have become a world were preemptive action is military gold. We have allowed our fear to take the forms of mast unjustified attacks that kill mostly innocent terrified people. Not enemy armies.

The rallies of support in New York and the comments of Senator Hilary Clinton troubled me greatly. I understand that as a vastly persecuted people Jews are given some free passes in the world-and I’m Jewish, so I do know this for a fact-but it does not justify this massacre in the name of security. Where is Israel’s CIA or FBI to hunt own these people? It would be slower, it would take more careful attention but for the sake of any god you believe in it would save lives.

I know the terror Israelis have to go through every day is something I cannot comprehend. Suicide bombers, car bombs and crazy fundamentalist plague their existence. They were given land after WW2 that was not available to be given and now some compromise must be reached with the Palestinians or no peace will ever exist for them. But the way to go about is not this forced terror upon every around them. An eye for an eye is legal logic abandoned with the new age of compassion, understanding and treaties. Not this. Never this.

This is wrong.