The Golden Gryphon Feather

It had all started innocently enough. The first day out from Phaleron we had all huddled together amidships while the crew labored at the oars, and when we moored that night near the sea god’s temple at Sunion all of us were too tired and dazed to talk much. But as soon as we got beyond the Cape the next day the oars were shipped and the sail was raised, for there was a hard, steady wind from the North. The farther we got from land the higher the seas rose and the more violently the ship moved. Every summer since I was a child I had sailed to my mother’s home on the island of Aegina and I can never remember having been seasick. Soon I was the only Athenian not lying in the bottom of the ship and moaning or else hanging miserably over the side. Soon after that the men who were our guards and their captain were moaning and retching along with their charges and the crew and I were left to enjoy the dazzling sun and the steady wind which blew away its heat, the sparkling waves and the exhilarating plunging of the ship.

As I knew from my voyages to Aegina, sailors not only admire a novice who is not seasick, they treat the person with a touch of awe. To be free of seasickness means that you have the blood of some god, probably a sea god, and anyone close to the gods is a person to keep on the good side of. So, as on previous voyages, I soon became a mascot with the crew, free to roam all over the ship and talk to anyone who was not busy with some task that interfered with talking. The difference between this voyage and my voyages to Aegina was my overwhelming need to know all I could of our destination and what awaited us there. I spent little time with the friendly sailors who only spoke a few words of Danaan and a great deal of time with the captain, who spoke it as well as I did, plying him with questions about his language and his country.

I was fortunate in two ways. The officers of the sea king’s ships are the captain, the sailing master and the steersman. Ordinarily each has his own apprentice and the six form a tight little group that does not welcome outsiders. But on our ship the group was not so tightly knit. The sailing master was a grizzled, silent man whose apprentice was his younger brother, equally grizzled and equally silent. The two spent most of their time together, checking the sail or playing complex and interminable games. The steersman was a gentle, friendly old man who left most of the handling of the steering oar to his apprentice, a nephew, who was young and shy. And by what turned out to be a stroke of luck for me the captain’s apprentice, his oldest son, had broken his arm just before the ship sailed and the ship had sailed without him. Thus there was an empty stool in the little stern shelter and an empty place that I little by little began to fill.

But I was luckiest of all in the fate that sent P’sero as the captain on this voyage. Physically he was quite unlike my father, being short, dark and lithe, whereas my father has reddish hair and is tall, lanky and clumsy in matters not related to his work. But like my father P’sero was a complete master of his chosen trade and like my father he treated me simply as a person, not as a child, though I blush now when I think how childish I still was, not as a member of a dangerous and alien sex, but simply as a person.

In this P’sero was unlike even most of his fellow Kaphtui. No proper Danaan male, of course, regards a woman as an equal or even as fully a person. In Kaphtu women have respect but it is a respect mingled with fear. No man of Kaphtu forgets that the Mother is older than the Kings or that his land was once ruled by women. But P’sero and my father both looked at men and women, old and young, as people, to be liked and respected if they deserved to be, not judged by their age or sex. So I soon slipped into very much the same relation with P’sero that I had with my father. The other officers took their lead from him and this little interval between my old life and my new one was cushioned for me; from being the daughter of my father’s house, I became for a little while the youngest of P’sero’s little family afloat.

At first my compatriots were in no condition to notice. P’sero drove the ship mercilessly, taking full advantage of the favorable wind. He did not moor the ship until the light began to fade and if the wind had not died down at dusk he would have sailed by night, inconceivable as that would seem to mainland sailors. When we moored even the crew was grateful enough to eat a little food and tumble into sleep. Bracing yourself against the plunging of the ship was almost as tiring as walking all day. But seasickness does not last forever and as my companions began to sit up and take notice the first thing they noticed was me, trying out my growing stock of Kaphtui words on the sailors or sitting at P’sero’s feet holding long conversations. At first these were in Danaan, but since our major topic of conversation was Kaphtu, he began to slip more and more often into his native tongue and by the end of the voyage although I will not say I was speaking Kaphtui, I was certainly not speaking Danaan.

To the others it seemed that I had simply gone over to our captors’ side. When the guards got over their own seasickness they took their cue from the crew and I was soon chattering with them as freely as with the sailors. The chatter was mostly composed of commonplaces about wind and sea and the laughter was mainly at my mistakes in using their language, but to the other Athenians I seemed to be currying favor with the enemy. There were spiteful remarks which I was meant to overhear when I lay down to sleep near the other girls, and toward the end of the voyage one of the boys tried to warn me away from associating with the Kaphtui.

He was a tail, dark boy with a big nose; his name was Euphoros and he gave himself airs among us because he was the son of one of the concubines of someone fairly important on the Hill. At times I still found it useful to act younger and more innocent than I actually was, and I simply looked at him wide-eyed and said: "But I’m learning their language. Don’t you want us to be able to deal with people there when we reach the end of the voyage?" If I had been defiant, he might have blustered, but he had no answer for childish reasonableness, and the reminder that the voyage would soon end aroused his fears. I had no idea then how terrified the others were.