The Penelopiad Read Free Page A

done then: where there were weddings, there were arrangements. I don’t mean such things as bridal outfits, flowers, banquets, and music, though we had those too. Everyone has those, even now. The arrangements I mean were more devious than that.
    Under the old rules only important people had marriages, because only important people had inheritances. All the rest was just copulation of various kinds – rapes or seductions, love affairs or one-night stands, with gods who said they were shepherds or shepherds who said they were gods. Occasionally a goddess might get mixed up in it too, dabble around in perishable flesh like a queen playing at milkmaids, but the reward for the man was a shortened life and often a violent death.Immortality and mortality didn’t mix well: it was fire and mud, only the fire always won.
    The gods were never averse to making a mess. In fact they enjoyed it. To watch some mortal with his or her eyes frying in their sockets through an overdose of god-sex made them shake with laughter. There was something childish about the gods, in a nasty way. I can say this now because I no longer have a body, I’m beyond that kind of suffering, and the gods aren’t listening anyway. As far as I can tell they’ve gone to sleep. In your world, you don’t get visitations from the gods the way people used to unless you’re on drugs.
    Where was I? Oh yes. Marriages. Marriages were for having children, and children were not toys and pets. Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.
    If you had an enemy it was best to kill his sons,even if those sons were babies. Otherwise they would grow up and hunt you down. If you couldn’t bring yourself to slaughter them, you could disguise them and send them far away, or sell them as slaves, but as long as they were alive they would be a danger to you.
    If you had daughters instead of sons, you needed to get them bred as soon as possible so you could have grandsons. The more sword-wielders and spear-throwers you could count on from within your family the better, because all the other noteworthy men around were on the lookout for a pretext to raid some king or noble and carry away anything they could grab, people included. Weakness in one power-holder meant opportunity for another, so every king and noble needed all the help he could get.
    Thus it went without saying that a marriage would be arranged for me when the time came.
    At the court of King Icarius, my father, they still retained the ancient custom of having contests tosee who should marry a nobly born woman who was – so to speak – on the block. The man who won the contest got the woman and the wedding, and was then expected to stay at the bride’s father’s palace and contribute his share of male offspring. He obtained wealth through the marriage – gold cups, silver bowls, horses, robes, weapons, all that trash they used to value so much back when I was alive. His family was expected to hand over a lot of this trash as well.
    I can say trash because I know where most of it ended up. It mouldered away in the ground or it sank to the bottom of the sea, or it got broken or melted down. Some of it made its way to enormous palaces that have – strangely – no kings or queens in them. Endless processions of people in graceless clothing file through these palaces, staring at the gold cups and the silver bowls, which are not even used any more. Then they go to a sort of market inside the palace and buy pictures of these things, or miniature versions of them that are not real silver and gold. That is why I say trash .
    Under the ancient customs, the huge pile of sparkling wedding loot stayed with the bride’s family, in the bride’s family’s palace. Perhaps that is why my father had become so