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in her head that they were two black sockets, her eyes oozed tears.
    ‘It was a son, sire, but he never lived long enough to breathe air. The Queen is safe. She has lost blood and is very tired, but her life is not in danger.’ The skinny hands wrung together. ‘Sire, I swear I did nothing wrong! Such a big, fine boy! It is the will of the Goddess.’
    I could not bear her to see my face in the lamplight. Too stricken to weep, I turned and walked away.
    Several days passed before I could bring myself to see Thetis. When finally I did enter her room, I was amazed to find her sitting up in her big bed looking well and happy. She said all the correct things, toyed with words expressing sorrow, but none of it was meant. Thetis was pleased!
    ‘Our son is dead, wife!’ I burst out. ‘How can you bear it? He will never know the meaning of life! He will never take my place on the throne. For nine moons you carried him – for nothing!’
    Her hand came out, patted mine a little patronisingly. ‘Oh, dearest Peleus, do not grieve! Our son has no mortal life, but have you forgotten that I am a Goddess? Because he had not breathed earthly air, I asked my father to grant our son eternal life, and my father was delighted to do so. Our son lives on Olympos – he eats and drinks with the other Gods, Peleus! No, he will never rule in Iolkos, but he enjoys what no mortal man ever can. In dying, he will never die.’
    My astonishment changed to revulsion, I stared at her and wondered how this God thing had ever been allowed to take such hold of her. She was as mortal as I and her babe was as mortal as both of us. Then I saw how trustingly she gazed up at me, and could not say what I itched to say. If it took the pain out of her loss to believe such nonsense, well and good. Living with Thetis had taught me that she did not think or behave like other women. So I stroked her hair and left her.
    Six sons she gave me over the years, all born dead. When Aresune told me of the second boy’s death I went half mad, could not bear to see Thetis for many moons because I knew what she would tell me – that our dead son was a God. But in the end love and hunger always drove me back to her, and we would go through that ghastly cycle all over again.
    When the sixth child was stillborn – how could he be when he had gone to full term and looked, lying on his tiny funeral car, so strong despite his dark blue skin? – I vowed that I would dower Olympos with no more sons. I sent to the Pythoness at Delphi and the answer came back that it was Poseidon who was angry, that he resented my stealing his priestess. What hypocrisy! What lunacy! First he doesn’t want her, then he does. Truly no man can understand the minds or the doings of the Gods, New or Old.
    For two years I did not cohabit with Thetis, who kept begging to conceive more sons for Olympos. Then at the end of the second year I took Poseidon Horse Maker a white man foal and offered it to him before all the Myrmidons, my people.
    ‘Lift your curse, bless me with a living son!’ I cried.
    The earth rumbled deep in its bowels, the sacred snake shot from beneath the altar like a flash of brown lightning, the ground heaved, spasmed. A pillar toppled to earth beside me as I stood unmoving, a crack appeared between my feet and I choked on the reek of sulphur, but I held my position until the tremor died away and the fissure closed. The white man foal lay on the altar drained and pathetically still. Three moons later Thetis told me that she was pregnant with our seventh child.
    All through those weary times I had her watched more closely than a hawk watches the ground bird’s chicks; I made Aresune sleep in the same bed every night, I threatened the house women with unspeakable tortures if they left her alone for an instant unless Aresune was there. Thetis bore these ‘whims’, as she called them, with patience and good humour; she never argued or tried to defy my edicts. Once she made my hair