The Young Lion

by Laura Gill

  A sudden rumble and movement of the earth cut him short, as though Zeus had sent a thunderbolt rolling under the earth, then I heard ceramics crashing and breaking, and people screaming as they ran outside. The awning under which we stood was swaying. It took a moment for me to comprehend that it was Poseidon, not Zeus, whose wrath was shaking the earth.

  The temblor lasted but a few seconds, but it somehow seemed longer. People milled about, shaken and confused. Laodokos began to inspect the damage. I followed him back into the workshop, even though he urged me to remain outside on open ground in case there were aftershocks.

  Inside, things were knocked askew, and bits of plaster had flaked from the walls. The woman artist was agitated, as she tried to dab an accidental smear from the pyxis; her children were sweeping up debris around her.

  “Intolerable!” Kteatos cried.

  Laodokos silenced him with a gesture, then solicitously inquired after the woman and her children. “It’s all right, Manto. It can be fixed.” He nodded toward the pyxis as though her mistake was part of the original design. “Take the children outside for now. Poseidon might shake the house again.” Skilled workers like that, he later told me, were much too valuable to lose, no matter what petty officials like Kteatos thought.

  In the governor’s residence, hairline cracks in plastered walls and stuccoed floors sent Laodokos’s wife into a frenzy. Lady Ianassa harassed the servants, who were already busy trying to sweep up the mess, and descended upon me with a matronly furor, inspecting me for cuts or bruises. I endured her ministrations, while assuring her to little avail that I was fine. Laodokos and Kteatos resumed their earlier argument in the great court.

  The priests brought the cult idols outside, and that same day Laodokos sacrificed three bulls to appease Poseidon’s anger. He asked me to pour out the libation of blood and wine, because a king’s son was considered a better intermediary with the gods.

  People slept outdoors that night, on the ground away from the buildings where it was safe. Berbati’s priests tended the altar all night. Periodic aftershocks kept everyone alert and anxious.

  I returned home the following afternoon to discover the citadel had weathered the earthquake, too. It was a familiar scene of cracked plaster, broken pottery, frayed nerves, and servants scurrying around trying to clean up the mess. There was, thank the gods, no serious damage.

  Mother sent for me the moment I arrived. She forestalled her usual questions to inspect me head to toe for broken bones, lacerations, and bruises, which she certainly never did even after the worst of my training exercises. “I’m not hurt!” I insisted, for what felt like the hundredth time in two days. “I was outside when it happened.”

  Then she hugged me tightly, which was a most curious sentiment coming from her, and sent me to see Kilissa. “She worried all yesterday and last night about you.”

  Kilissa subjected me to another, more thorough examination, making me remove my clothes and submit to her probing despite my numerous protests that nothing was bruised or broken.

  Once she was satisfied, she let me dress, then showed me what damage the god’s wrath had wrought in the chamber. A hairline crack had appeared across the boxing youth Castor’s face. “I’m sure the queen will send someone to repair it,” she said reassuringly. “A few things fell over on the altar, but nothing was broken, and I straightened it out—oh, except one small item.” Kilissa indicated the corner, where cushions had been arranged on the floor below the offering table to catch the idols should the earth shake them loose again. “Everything was all right before, but later I found your cup lying broken on the floor, when nothing else was damaged. I honestly don’t know what happened.”

  At a loss, she had deposited the pieces on the offering table. Not much was left. My heart sank, then my mood turned utterly black. For Father’s kylix had not simply tipped over and broken—it had been smashed as though someone had taken a mallet to it. Ground-in pigment stained the floor where it had fallen. Poseidon might knock down walls and objects down in his fury, but he did not grind potsherds into the floor with his divine heel. A human hand had been at work here.

  I showed Elektra, when she came to ask whether I had felt the quake in Berbati. She rubbed the pulverized ochre between her fingers and scowled. “Aegisthus.” She hissed the name like a curse.

  “He saw the cup when he was here,” I confessed.

  Elektra knew about that incident. Like a lioness tracking her prey, she always knew where Aegisthus was. “Never mind him,” she huffed. “Surely we can glue the pieces back together.”

  But I doubted it could be fixed now, with so many shards smashed and maliciously ground into powder.

  Later, Elektra gave me the lion fragment to console me. “It’s not right that you don’t have anything of his,” she said.

  I hid the treasure away in a cloth pouch under my clothes, and took it out only at night when no one else was around.

  *~*~*~*

  Two days later, a letter arrived for me. There was no royal herald this time, no presentation in the megaron. Mother summoned me to her apartment to read the missive aloud in her presence. Why did she have to be so nosy? Her scrutiny made it impossible for me to truly savor the words.

  Father wrote with a clumsy hand—I knew it was his script only because Mother confirmed it was so—yet those were his actual words. He had really sat down in his tent and taken the time to write rather than summon a scribe to take his dictation, and that was all that mattered.

  “‘You are almost a man now, Orestes. I continue to hear good reports about you. We will spend time together, when this war is over, and talk about the many things a man should know. Continue with your lessons. Look after your mother and your sisters. Avoid bad company. A hero’s son does not mix with lechers and wine drinkers.’”

  Mother’s face betrayed no emotion. “He calls himself a hero, does he?” She harrumphed.

  Father’s praise gladdened me, but I would have liked him to tell me about himself. I wrote back, composing my letter after my other lessons were finished. “To Agamemnon Atreides, High King of Mycenae, Argos, and Achaea, dearest Father: greetings. Thank you for your letter. I am attending to my lessons, as you ordered. I am good at geography and mathematics. I look after my sisters, too. You will be pleased to know that Elektra no longer torments Chrysothemis with spiders or snakes, even though she still sneaks worms into Aegisthus’s—”

  “Orestes,” Timon warned, “cross that out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that is not something one says to a king,” he answered. “And mentioning Aegisthus will make him angry.”

  I reluctantly rubbed out the reference to snakes and spiders, even though it was interesting, and I felt certain that Father would have chuckled at Elektra sneaking creepy-crawlies into Aegisthus’s shoes. “Please inform Uncle Menelaus that I am looking after Hermione, and that she prays every day to Athena to watch over him. She is very pretty and very nice.”

  Timon also made me cross out those last two sentences, because he said they were superfluous. All he was doing was ruining my letter. “Please tell Uncle Menelaus,” I wrote, “that Hermione prays every day to ask Athena to watch over him. When you are not so busy, please tell me everything you do. Tell me about the encampment and the battlefield, about the ships and all your followers. Have you gone on any raids? Do you have many friends among the warriors? I wish I was old enough to visit you.” Timon started to protest again, no doubt to instruct me to rub out that final sentence, but I refused. “I said I wanted to visit him, not fight.”

  He humored me, as mine was an idle wish. No father in his right mind would ever summon his nine-year-old son to the battlefield.

  I set aside the diptych with its rough draft for tomorrow. Had I wished, I could have retired upstairs to sleep, or spent time with my friends, but instead I chose to stay and help Timon clear up the earthquake clutter, because I knew how his arthritic joints made it hard for him to bend down.

&nbs
p; “Why don’t you have a wife?” I fetched a broom to sweep the dust and debris. “You should get married so a woman can keep everything clean for you. Why, you could marry Kilissa!”

  “And let her throw out my tablets so she can move in her loom and all those foolish trinkets women like?” Timon snatched a potsherd from the dustpan. Getting him to discard anything was a challenge. “Kilissa’s already married, young man. Her husband and children live in the town. And she hates cats. She would drive Kirros away.”

  “All right, so get yourself a woman who likes cats and won’t throw out your tablets,” I said.

  Timon grunted, “Listen to you! Do you think finding a wife is like going to the agora and getting a new stylus? It’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Besides, what woman wants a skinny old scribe like me?”

  “Have you ever tried?” Timon did not answer; he did not always tell me about his personal life, claiming that it was irrelevant or none of my concern. “You could at least have a woman come and clean for you,” I insisted. “I could have Hermione ask among the servant women.”

  As always, though, Timon refused. It saddened me to think that one day he would probably die among all that clutter.

  We went outside when the scattered dust became too much. Timon brought out a footstool, and we sat under the portico where it was cool, contemplating the laundry hanging over the terraces to dry. Laundresses and scrub maids dwelled in that courtyard, meaning that there was no shortage of skilled, amiable women who might keep Timon’s cubicle for him. Stubborn man! I would have gladly asked among the laundresses and maids, had he but permitted me.

  In the center of the courtyard, a makeshift altar had been erected and decorated with shells, wilting flowers, a bit of painted ceramic someone in the palace had thrown away, and a fig attracting flies. I chewed a hangnail. “Do you know why Poseidon shook the earth?”

  “I do not know,” Timon admitted. “Perhaps someone neglected to honor him with a libation, or defiled one of his sanctuaries.”

  After several days, the high priest announced that the people were impious, which was his answer for everything. Thirty-five bulls would be brought to the altar, and six horses, including the handsome bay I had been tending as part of my equine training. I wept at the prospect of losing Arion even after the Master of Horse explained how fortunate the stallion was to have been selected.

  “You see how he consents?” Melanippos indicated Arion whickering and tossing his mane. Lying fool. Arion saw me and knew he was about to go out for his daily exercise. I brought him an apple and spent time combing and stroking his pelt. Tomorrow morning, the priests would take him away with all the other sacrificial animals to be prepared for the ceremony.

  There would be a human victim, too. Human sacrifices were very rare events, but even so the priesthood kept special slaves for just that purpose. No one ever saw those men and women, because they were housed in three little rooms inside the lower citadel’s cult house complex, and were apparently brought up from infancy to welcome the altar and the sacrificial knife. I could not imagine such an existence as that. No names, no freedom, and no future except to die.

  As summer waned, human sacrifices died throughout Argolis. Messengers brought details of the grisly deaths. In Argos, a virgin girl had her throat sliced, while in Tiryns the Argive queen beheaded a young man with the labrys. Nauplia’s lord gave a young man and woman to the sea by hurling them from the heights onto the foaming rocks below.

  I was not looking forward to witnessing the sacrifice, even though others were anticipating the spectacle with a pious glee. All I could think about Arion, then, inevitably, about Iphigenia as she had looked that last day, robed in white, and garlanded in wheat ears and red poppies. I imagined her bound on the altar, terrified and weeping before ten thousand warriors who were as eager for her to perish as the Mycenaean courtiers now were to watch the priests give a victim to Poseidon. I imagined the scene as it must have been: Father standing above her in his gleaming armor, holding the knife in his hand, only there was a last-minute switch, and it was me lying upon the stone slab at windy Aulis, and it was my throat he was about to cut.

  There was still time for Father to send word ordering the priests to sacrifice his son. Mother would not protest. Of course, it was absurd—but no more so than sending for his beloved daughter with lies and promises of marriage and then killing her to gain a favorable wind.

  I stared at the place where the kylix had stood; the damage had been beyond repair. Despite the warmth of the evening, the chamber was ice cold; the ghost children sensed my unease.

  Chapter Eleven

  “There he is.”

  “Look at him!”

  The priests kept the sacrificial animals corralled in a field at the southern end of the town, near the monumental tomb of Atreus. Bulls occupied one enclosure, horses the other. I could not bear to visit Arion, with the sacrifice only two days away.

  A splendid bull, an enormous cross-bred aurochs, would go to the altar after the human victim. On the morning of the sacrifice, the priests would gild his great, curving horns, adorn him with fragrant garlands, and lead him out. Given the foul nature of his breed, the priests would probably have to drug his feed to secure his compliance.

  “I heard Melanippos say he’s a Cretan bull,” Kleitos observed, “the kind they use for bull-leaping.”

  I watched the sacrificial bull flicking his tail like a fly whisk over his flanks. He occupied his own corral, away from the other bulls, a sign of singular honor as well as a precautionary measure. He snorted, scenting strangers in the air, and when he stamped his hooves he left prints the size of a man’s head. “Wherever he came from, he’s a king bull and knows it.”

  Gripping the fence, Hippasos clambered up for a better look. “Hail, mighty king of the bulls!” Whistling, he waved his arm.

  “What are you doing?” Diokles hissed.

  Nireus tugged his friend’s arm. “Get down!”

  Several others echoed his admonishment, including me. Someone would surely see Hippasos hanging there like an imbecile and report it to the priests. Then we would all be in trouble, because we were not even supposed to be there.

  The king bull swung his great head around and seemed to nod his acknowledgment. Hippasos cried, “You see?” He sounded triumphant, elated. “Poseidon’s blessed him. He knows us.”

  Excited by the commotion, the bull started moving toward us, swishing his tail, his dewlaps swaying with each lumbering stride. While he was a magnificent beast, I did not necessarily want him to come closer.

  “Look, he’s coming over!” Nireus cried.

  “Hippasos!” Kleitos said sharply. “Get down from there.”

  The bull dipped his horns and bellowed. I knew that stance well enough to be alarmed, and instinctively moved back.

  “He’s going to charge!” Alastor cried.

  “Get down!” Kleitos started to reach up to physically haul Hippasos away from the fence. Then the world went crazy.

  Lumbering forward, the bull launched his enormous mass into the fence, ramming it so hard that Hippasos flew backward with a scream. He crashed into Kleitos, knocking him to the ground. Everything was a blur. Terror lurched through me, rendering both thoughts and prayers incoherent. There was only the thunder of the bull ramming the fence, my own pounding heartbeat, and the urge to run.

  Somehow, the fence held up under the assault, despite the splinters the bull’s horns gouged in the wood. Tail thrashing, he lowed at us one last time, and, losing interest, trotted away.

  I blinked, trembling, uncertain whether the bull would charge again, and needed a moment to regain my equilibrium.

  Kleitos stumbled to his feet, prodded Hippasos, who still lay on the ground. “Look what you did,” he grumbled.

  Hippasos struggled groaning to his knees. A scarlet stain had blossomed on his tunic, right below the heart. Stunned from the fall, he did not notice until he saw our faces and looked down at his chest. He went ashen
. Kleitos caught him as he crumpled, and then bent over him to try to stop the bleeding with his hand, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do. Hippasos took a single, labored breath, then closed his eyes and went slack. He never said a word.

  Rattled, astonished, we stood there. Dead. Hippasos was dead. I comprehended the scene piecemeal. Out in the enclosure, the bull wore a red smear on his left horn. Just like that. Dead.

  A young sentry hurried over. I recognized him as the man who had earlier cautioned us not to disturb the animals; he had let us get close only because we were noblemen and had promised not to make trouble. He must have witnessed or even heard the commotion, for the bull’s bellow had been deafening.

  “What’ve you done?” His voice shook as he knelt over Hippasos to check for a pulse. Obviously he found none. “Stay right there, boys. Don’t move,” he told us. “I’ll get the captain.”

  Others shortly arrived to survey the scene and secure the enclosure. A cart appeared. Two sentries carefully lifted Hippasos’s body onto the cart bed and covered him with an old blanket. The captain of the guard assigned to the sacrificial animals ordered us to accompany him to the citadel and cult house. Now that the shock was starting to wear away, we were truly frightened. We had meddled with Poseidon’s own sacrifice. The priests and our elders would have something to say about that. Mother would send word to Father. She would order Philaretos to lash me raw.

  High Priest Hyrtios let his displeasure show. A gaunt, balding man, he stood rigid and white-lipped with fury as the captain and Kleitos as the eldest boy present explained what had occurred. I shrank back among my friends, praying he would not call on me to speak. Hyrtios noticed me, anyway. “Prince Orestes, you witnessed this sacrilege. What do you have to say about it?”

  My tongue had turned to wool in my mouth. Sacrilege. “We told him to get down.” Now Father would almost certainly order me to take the human victim’s place at the altar. Poseidon would demand my death as Artemis had demanded Iphigenia’s. My whole body trembled as hard as my voice. “Kleitos tried, but the bull charged and...”