The Young Lion

by Laura Gill

  Smiling, Timon told her an outright lie. “Yes, he did.”

  And Chrysothemis, like the fool she was, believed him. “Then Elektra shouldn’t complain.”

  Hermione bent to lift the shield, which sat where Elektra had discarded it, propped it upright, and, sighing heavily, ran her finger along the rim. “I’m sure there was no message for me.”

  She looked so forlorn. I felt bad for her. “Maybe Menelaus has too much to do. Philaretos says the leaders of the contingents are always very busy trying to feed their men and make sure that the Trojans don’t attack the camp.”

  “That must be it.” Hermione offered a sad little smile that said she did not believe a single thing I had just told her. “I just wish he would forget about reclaiming my mother and return home. No one needs her.”

  To hear her say that amazed me, when she had never voiced such sentiments before. Apart from the insult done to his honor, Menelaus ruled Sparta through right of marriage to Helen, which was why he had to recover her. Hermione knew and accepted his reasons for fighting. About her mother, however, she never spoke. “You don’t want to see her again?” I asked.

  It took her a moment to find the right words. “She’s a whore.” That sounded like something Mother would say; she despised her younger sister for triggering the war and the events leading to Iphigenia’s sacrifice. “I know my father is fighting for his honor as a man and king, but she isn’t worth dying for. I don’t want him to leave his bones on some foreign shore because of her.”

  As Hermione contemplated Menelaus’s fate, I considered Father’s. If he perished fighting the Trojans, then he would never come home, and I would never know him. “Talthybius flattered me.” I touched my fingers to the shield rim, as close to hers as I dared. “He told me Father loved me, that I was a shining light in his house, his utmost joy and delight.” Somehow, the words did not sound quite so uplifting when I repeated them. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “That Agamemnon really said those things, or that he loves you?” Hermione asked quietly. Timon occupied an inconspicuous corner, pretending not to eavesdrop, while Chrysothemis attended to her embroidery and remained oblivious. “Those might not be his precise words, but the sentiment surely is.”

  Why did I continue to have such doubts, then? I wished I could simply let my reservations go and enjoy my presents as any other boy would. “Do you really think so, Hermione?”

  She noticed my dilemma. “Why does it trouble you so?”

  “I think because he’s such a stranger,” I admitted. “I don’t remember that much about him.”

  Hermione slid her fingers over to clasp mine. “But he remembered you, Orestes, when he forgot everyone else. How could he not love you, when you’re his only son?”

  Chapter Nine

  Five weeks after the grain harvest, at the start of the month of winemaking, Philaretos took the entire boys’ troupe on an overnight excursion to the Inachos River. An entire day and night out in the wilderness with the other boys, fishing, camping, and hunting. What an adventure! What freedom! Mother gave her permission, knowing the outing was a training exercise, but urged me to be careful all the same. The night before, she presented me with a plain bronze dagger such as Khalkeus crafted from his molds. “You do not want to ruin your father’s gift,” she explained.

  Timon did not accompany me because the excursion was a martial exercise. “Mind whatever Philaretos says,” he urged, “and take care. I will have a new mathematics lesson waiting when you return.”

  We set out: sixteen boys with their instructor, two slaves and a mule cart laden with supplies. Everyone except the driver marched, on the south road toward the sea, through the Argive horse country where everything smelled like grass, manure, and dust, and the slightest tang of the ocean. Argos loomed ahead, its citadel atop the high mound of the Larissa an easy landmark.

  At the road junction, we turned west toward the mountains, leaving the low-lying pastures for hillier scrub. There, we met the river trickling through channels bordered by oaks and wild olives and yellowing grass. “Inachos is a river god,” Philaretos said. “His blood runs deep in the Argive royal line. See here where the channel’s dropped?” He indicated a watermark in the soil inches above the waterline. “It falls like this every year in summer. Poseidon is angry with the river, and punishes him for favoring Hera over him as patron of the Argives.”

  We made camp in a flat, treeless area where the river ran calmest. Philaretos demonstrated for the younger boys how to choose the best sites for our tents, away from the thickest rocks and scrub, and showed us with his walking stick how to beat the grass, how to avoid or flush out snakes. That was not our first lesson about serpents; he sometimes talked about them when taking us out to the practice field, because in warm weather snakes coiled under rocks or sunned themselves in ditches. He taught us which ones were venomous and which were harmless, when and where they hibernated and shed their skins, and how to treat bites.

  That afternoon, he instructed us how to stake goatskin tents. Then we collected stones from the riverbank to build a hearth, and gathered twigs for kindling. The two slaves went to work; one collected water from the river, and started a fire, while the other started digging a latrine trench downwind. By then it was mid-afternoon, but a few daylight hours remained for fishing.

  Philaretos reined in our youthful enthusiasm by reminding us to offer libations to Poseidon and the river god. “Even when you’re outdoors away from the sanctuaries and doing small things, you can never forget the gods.”

  Some boys had brought their own tackle, while others borrowed fishhooks from Philaretos and dug their own worms.

  Ten-year-old Nireus wanted to hunt, as he had sighted a hare when setting up his tent, and he took out the javelin he had brought from home. Damn him! This was my very first outing. I wanted to try both hunting and fishing, and hated having to choose between the activities.

  Kleitos saw my dilemma and motioned me over, while mouthing at me to be very quiet. He gestured for me to kneel on the ground beside a burrow, then crouched down and sprinkled crumbs of honey cake all around the burrow’s entrance. Slowly, without making a sound, Kleitos palmed a fist-sized stone and indicated that we should wait.

  It took a while. Animals were not as stupid as some claimed; they had a special, god-given sense that often warned them what humans were about, and it was only through great patience and cunning that men outwitted them.

  I did not know what we were hunting, except that it was not a snake; the hole was too large, and only foolish men dared the wrath of Mother Dia by harming her messengers. My muscles started straining from maintaining a crouching position. I dared not breathe, for fear that whatever lurked below would be alerted.

  Then, movement. An inquisitive head appeared, first the light brown ears, then a twitching nose and whiskers. A hare, come to investigate the bait.

  Kleitos exercised patience, letting the hare emerge fully, and start nibbling before he raised his stone. When he did, he did not hesitate, bringing his makeshift club down with a single, decisive blow. I heard the skull crack, and saw the hare collapse. It twitched a little, its limbs making involuntary little tics. Kleitos grabbed the carcass by the scruff, and showed it to me. “It’s better to club it than shoot it with an arrow,” he said. “It won’t damage the fur that way.”

  He handed me the stone, smeared with fresh blood. “Your turn,” he said. “Be patient. Hunting like this takes practice.”

  I watched him walk back to camp with the brained hare swinging in his grasp, while ten feet away Nireus prodded another burrow with a javelin with the conviction that he could somehow get a hare to magically leap onto the point, or reach far enough to impale one in its den.

  So I gathered the leftover cake crumbs, found a third burrow, and, after arranging everything as I had seen Kleitos do, uttered a prayer to Artemis, Mistress of the Animals, and knelt down to wait.

  Time crawled by. The afternoon light shifted
; sunset would not be long in coming. Should I abandon the effort, and try to salvage my luck with the river god? I did not want to surrender so quickly. I was not a quitter, and besides, it seemed wrong to give up after having just prayed to Artemis. The gods sometimes answered prayers when a supplicant was patient and sincere.

  Movement down below. A head emerged from the shadows, first the whiskers and nose, then the eyes. Should I do it now? My muscles ached and trembled from the effort of staying still. Kleitos had waited until the hare fully emerged, and was distracted with nibbling on the bait.

  When I finally took my chance, it was a clumsy, glancing blow, stunning rather than bludgeoning the hare, which leapt and tried to sprint away. I threw my body forward, hoping perhaps to pin it down and break its neck. Although I fell short by mere inches, I scrabbled around in the dirt and somehow managed to block the hare’s escape back down the hole. I seized its hind leg, holding on with one hand while it twisted around, kicking, biting, and scratching. Two whacks to the head with the stone finished the job.

  My first kill! I had done a clumsy job, but Artemis had nevertheless answered my prayers and granted me success. Nireus, who had watched the whole thing, threw me a jealous look.

  Kleitos tended my scratches with hot water and honey, then showed me how to give thanks to Artemis for the kill. After we tossed the goddess’s portion into the fire, he demonstrated how to eviscerate and skin the carcass, and how to preserve the hide by scraping the blood vessels and gristle from the underside. We trimmed and sharpened twigs to make spits, then basted the meat with olive oil and some wild herbs Philaretos had found growing nearby.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked.

  “You mean, club a hare?” Kleitos washed the blood from his hands with river water. “That’s an old trick. There are plenty of hares in the hills above my father’s estate. I used to catch them whenever I went out to watch the goats.”

  Behind him, I saw Nireus trudging toward the river, dragging his javelin in the dirt behind him. I hoped he did not plan to apply his ineffective method to fishing. “You herd goats?”

  Kleitos laughed. “Of course I do! Any man who owns animals knows what to do with them, whether he’s a nobleman or not. My father owns herds of goats, sheep, swine, and cattle, as well as horses. I know which she-goats give the best milk for making cheese, what slops to feed the pigs for the most succulent pork, how best to hold down a ewe for shearing. You’ve never done any of that?” His heavy brows twitched with astonishment when I shook my head no. “But your father owns a very large estate near Midea. I assumed you would have...” Then he grew silent and thoughtful.

  I looked at the meat roasting on the spit; the fat sizzled and dripped onto the coals. My mouth watered. Kleitos tidied up his gear. “Forgive me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s all right,” I answered.

  Kleitos grunted. “If it’s worth anything, it’s been two years since I last saw the estate, since my father sailed to Troy.”

  I poked the hot coals with a stick. “Do you wish you were there with him?” Kleitos would be old enough to join his father overseas in two or three more years, if there was still a war to fight.

  “Not really.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s as Philaretos says. There’s not much going on right now. A few skirmishes here and there, some raiding, a lot of foraging, mostly sitting around the ships waiting for something to happen. I’ll return to the estate once my training is finished. I’ll be much more use to my father there, looking after my mother and sisters.”

  I had never thought about it that way, that staying home and protecting the hearth and one’s women might be more useful and important than fighting for glory. It would be many years, of course, before I was old enough to have to worry about choosing between war and home, and by then Father would have returned, but that did not keep me from ruminating on what he would have wanted from me. Naturally, I should assert my manly authority, evict Aegisthus from the palace—even kill him—and bring Mother to heel. Oh, it was so frustrating, being so young and powerless!

  Autumn days were short, and we had spent the better part of it hiking to the campsite. The late afternoon light sharpened, became tinged with blue and violet shadows, and a cool breeze stirred the trees.

  As the sun began sinking, Philaretos marshaled the other boys up from the riverbank. I saw a few boys bringing in a catch, maybe seven or eight small fish between them; Philaretos had warned us that the river was not as bountiful in autumn as in spring. The slaves brought water for washing, the boys laid their fish on the ground, and Philaretos had us younger boys gather around for a lesson in gutting and scaling.

  The hare was almost done; the savory aroma set my belly to growling. I had not eaten since breakfast, except for a handful of olives and some spring water around noon.

  Alastor crammed in next to me. “Are you going to share? I didn’t get anything,” he complained. “Fish snagged the worm right off my hook.”

  Philaretos overheard him. “Poseidon doesn’t give you a bite every time.”

  We gave thanks to Poseidon and Inachos for the catch, even those of us who had not fished. After we cleaned the fish, we rinsed down the ground and discarded the scales and guts far from camp, lest we attract scavengers. Philaretos rubbed the fish with wild herbs, then passed around sharpened sticks to impale and roast them over the fire.

  The evening chill deepened with the moon’s rising. We brought out blankets and fleeces to keep warm while we ate, talked, and told stories. Klymenos had brought along his four-stringed lyre; he sang a song about a sloe-eyed girl and an olive press that I did not quite understand when the older boys and men obviously did. A girl smearing virgin oil all over her thighs did not sound very interesting.

  “Now look up there, boys.” Philaretos motioned to the night sky, a deep blackness powdered with stars. “Orion the Hunter. Three stars in his belt, a blazing red star upon his shoulder. He strides the autumn and winter skies, always pursuing the Seven Sisters. You see them, the Pleiades, riding the horns of Taurus? And there’s Perseus, who was set among the stars after his death.”

  “If that’s Perseus, then who’s buried in the old grave circle at Mycenae?” Ipheus inquired, amid sniggers and whispers to shut up.

  Philaretos let his irritation show. “Boy, you must be moon-touched to have such nonsense constantly rattling around your skull.”

  More like, he did not know the answer. Yes, Ipheus was a colossal idiot, but he sometimes made astute observations. “It makes sense, though, doesn’t it?” I asked. “A man can’t be in two places at once.”

  Alastor shushed me. Phereklos reached around Ipheus to give me a friendly shove. Philaretos rubbed his chin stubble thoughtfully, then shrugged his shoulders and barked out a laugh. “Who knows what the gods do? We live in a strange world. I hear in the north the Herakleidai have convinced the Dorian chieftains that Herakles has become a god.”

  The Herakleidai were the hero’s trueborn sons and grandsons, and through him direct descendants of Perseus. Herakles would have ruled Mycenae had his cousin Eurystheus not been born first, and some Argives still considered the Herakleidai the rightful heirs. Atreus had forbidden his bards to sing about Herakles, as had my father. Aegisthus insolently and cheerfully violated that ban, ordering Kretheus to sing episodes from the Twelve Labors of Herakles at least twice a week.

  “Heroes can become gods, can’t they?” Ipheus asked.

  Philaretos ignored the question. “When my father was a young boy in Tiryns,” he said, “he once saw Herakles in the flesh. A big brute of a man, with yellow teeth like a horse, bloodshot eyes, and wearing a lion skin smelling like goat piss. Hah! Mad as a rabid dog. He and his ruffians would carry off whatever women or young boys they liked, and do as they pleased.”

  Later, I bedded down in a goatskin tent beside Alastor. The rough ground made for awkward sleeping. A stone dug into my left knee, lumps and bumps prodded me everywhere,
and everything was hard, but the day’s exertions canceled all that out, and brought on a quick sleep.

  How wonderful it was to lie out in the open under the stars, far away from palace intrigues, after feasting on fresh game and wine, and listening to stories! This was how men were meant to live, how they had lived long, long ago when the world was covered with ice. Kretheus’s songs told how there had been no villages then; the people wore animal skins, and roamed as nomads, following the great herds. Then Prometheus had come and led men to warmer lands, where he showed them how to farm, tame animals, and build houses—all the secrets the gods did not want mortals to know.

  I wakened to a commotion in a nearby tent, a boy’s fearful cry cutting through the gray dawn. “Get it off me!”

  By the time I stumbled outside, sandy-eyed and wrapped in my blanket, everyone else had preceded me. I had to push my way through their crowded bodies to see what the fuss was about.

  Hippasos sat upright in his blankets, staring at the dead snake on the ground next to him; its head had been bashed in with the rock lying in his lap. “It was in my blanket!” he cried.

  No one could blame him for reacting like that. Most people feared serpents, even though they were holy messengers, and many species were harmless. Philaretos took no chances, though. Before he allowed any of us to eat breakfast, he made Hippasos offer libations to Artemis and Mother Dia.

  Morning mist lingered about the hills when we broke camp and set out, following the river back to the Argive plain. All along the way, Hippasos’s unwitting sacrilege remained a topic of discussion.

  “Maybe the goddess had a message for him.” Alastor talked in low tones so that Hippasos, walking several paces ahead, would not overhear.

  “Yeah,” Diokles snorted. “To stop breaking wind and stinking up the tent.”

  I covered my mouth to hold in the laughter. Alastor turned bright red.

  “You weren’t afraid, too?” Phereklos asked.

  Diokles shook his head. “Not of the snake, no. He’d already killed it with the rock by the time I realized what was going on.”