by Laura Gill
“You’re not at all like Helen,” I said encouragingly, though I did not in truth know anything about my Aunt Helen except that she was beautiful and wanton. “Everybody knows that.”
“Thank you, Orestes.” Hermione answered in that vacant way people sometimes did when they were not really listening.
“Paris is dead,” I offered. “That’s something.”
“Is it?” Sadness thickened her voice. “Has anything truly changed? The war still continues.”
Leaving her with further reassurances, I went downstairs to sit in the deserted palaestra and to dabble my bare toes in the warm sand. Fading sunlight slanted across the buildings in shades of gold and russet. An enticing aroma of frying onions and garlic hung in the air.
Wars should not take nine years to fight, or cost so many lives to win. Hermione was right about that. The hot sand felt good around my feet, but otherwise the afternoon was too close, even though the day was ending. How miserable it must be for Father and his warriors, fighting on the Trojan plain in such stifling heat! Or in the winter cold, when the rain fell and bitter winds blew down from the north. The messengers who brought news had said that Troy was particularly windy and marshy; it did not sound like a very pleasant place to dwell at all.
Nightfall offered scant relief from the heat. Even with my shutters left open, no air circulated in my chamber. So I took my bedding and climbed to the roof to sleep among the servants, who welcomed my arrival by shifting their pallets over to make sufficient room.
A scrub maid showed me where to find the latrine buckets while informing me that Timon, as was his habit on such nights, had elected to sleep on a cot outside his door where it was quieter and more familiar. With all the close, sweaty bodies cramming the rooftop, I was tempted to join him.
“Look!” A man’s voice called out, raising the alarm somewhere behind me. “Up there on the mountain!”
Others began to exclaim, too. I turned and looked up to see a bonfire blazing upon Charvati’s summit.
Had that not been enough to startle my wits, another shout rang out, and now everyone swarmed to the south ledge. Far off in the distance, a pinprick of flickering light announced a second fire blazing from what must have been the Larissa of Argos.
Were enemies coming? No, I did not think so. Had there been danger, the other watchtowers would have given warning.
It came to me then. Over the channel to Attica, and here to Charvati. And from Charvati on to the Larissa. That was the litany the sentries had recited a year ago on my visit to the watchtower. “The beacons!” I cried. “The beacons are lit!”
Those burning beacons meant the war was over. Father had been victorious. People shouted the news from the citadel rooftops and all along the circuit walls where the sentries called a salute into the night. Denizens of the citadel swarmed into the warm night carrying lanterns like so many fireflies, to share the news and celebrate the Hellene victory at Troy. I could hear the laughter and tears of joy piercing the darkness. On a nearby rooftop, an old man broke into song, while on the terrace directly below a group of women young and old linked hands and started to dance to the rhythm of clapping hands.
I raced downstairs, past idling servants and sentries shirking their duties, past excited court ladies in their thin nightdresses, straight to the women’s quarters.
Elektra saw me first. “Orestes!” She caught me up in her fierce embrace. “Father’s won! He’s coming home.” She linked elbows with Chrysothemis and Hermione, and they danced right there in the corridor.
An unwelcome figure stormed around the corner from the royal apartments, bringing an abrupt halt to our celebration. Aegisthus wore a loincloth and a black scowl at having been awakened. “What’s all this noise?” he demanded.
“The beacons are lit!” Elektra crowed. “Father’s on his way home.”
Surely Aegisthus already knew about the beacons. Even the dead in their tombs below the citadel must have heard the alarm. Nonetheless, he feigned ignorance to irritate us. “Is he now?”
Elektra barked with scornful laughter. “You’d better run, you coward!”
Aegisthus did not oblige her, but turned calmly on his heel and walked back to the queen’s apartment.
Mother sent for us the following morning to inform us that the beacons had been lit, as though we were all ignorant children who had no clue as to what last night’s clamor had been about. She had no further news, and, with her advisors waiting in the vestibule, dismissed us from the megaron as swiftly as we had arrived.
Aegisthus was not present. With Father coming home, perhaps Mother would do the proper thing and evict him.
“I hope Father runs him down and kills him like the dog he is,” Elektra said later, upstairs.
Hermione tried to shush her. “Please, no more talk about killing.”
Save for that brief moment when she had danced with my sisters in the corridor, she did not join in the celebrations. I knew she was thinking about her father, and what he might have done with her mother.
Chapter Fifteen
When the beacons burned out, the good omens went up in smoke along with them.
Autumn arrived with unseasonably dark skies and fierce tempests which deluged the workers trying to harvest the vines. Rain sleeted down during the festival of Dionysus, which was usually sunny and warm, and to everyone’s alarm a rattling wind shook loose the ivy and ribbons garlanding the great court; it blew the smoke back down the flue into the megaron to choke the priestesses who had gathered there to make the first offerings. Even Elektra looked frightened, when she later came up to change her raiment after the rites. “They say the god rejected the sacrifices. I don’t know what it means.”
Then, on days when the rain ceased long enough for mortals to observe the skies, there were the red sunsets, when the setting sun spread its colors across the horizon like a bleeding egg.
Reading the entrails and other signs, Hyrtios declared that Zeus was angry, without further elaboration. He knew nothing, because the gods told him nothing. Any man draped in a fringed robe could have made that announcement. But I was still afraid, for even without the priest’s pronouncement it was clear that something was very wrong. Once again, my bedchamber turned spectral cold. Not even extra fleeces and a brazier could keep me warm. The ghost boys fed on my agitation. I wondered whether they enjoyed my distress, or whether my fears troubled them as much as they did me.
Even those who had faith in the High King’s triumphant return remarked that Queen Clytaemnestra had been a disobedient and unfaithful wife, and must therefore be punished. I knew that Father would deal harshly with her, because such blatant disloyalty was not tolerated in our family. Atreus had drowned my adulterous grandmother in her bathtub. Before that, Pelops had banished and, some said, strangled my great-grandmother. Yet I could not imagine the household without Mother. She deserved it, perhaps, but surely Mother Dia would take offense at the execution of her incarnation and high priestess. Maybe Father could banish her, send her back to my grandfather Tyndareus in Sparta.
Others speculating about the omens said that Aegisthus had abused his guest-right by seducing the queen and staying too long at Mycenae; it was time for the son of Thyestes to depart.
Aegisthus sent a black bull to the altar, but otherwise did nothing.
Zeus Thunderer revealed his wrath through his storms, and thunder and lightning. Poseidon, too, had been offended, though no one could say how or why. His anger did not, however, bring an earthquake. He let his brother’s storm rage across the sea, where those merchants and fishermen fortunate enough to weather the tempests reported swells higher and more treacherous than any they had seen in a generation.
One messenger managed to race ahead of the weather to bring news about the fall of Troy. Phokas was a plain-spoken warrior, not a bard, but anyone who could crammed into the megaron to hear him.
After Paris’s death, Odysseus and Diomedes had reconnoitered the Trojan walls and discovered a way inside thro
ugh a culvert. Attrition meant fewer Trojan archers manned the bastions now, and many within the besieged town had grown weary of the incessant bouts of disease, shortages, and deaths. “Odysseus is a clever bastard,” Phokas said, “but even he couldn’t have found that culvert without help from a traitor. And he and Diomedes surely couldn’t have known where in that crowded, stinking town to find the cult house if someone hadn’t led them there.”
Together, the two kings had stolen an ancient wooden idol of Athena, and brought her over to the Hellene side. “Once the Mistress of Battles deserted the Trojans, the Earth-Shaker came over to us, too.” Phokas nodded his satisfaction. “Struck Troy hard with an earthquake that rolled right under our huts and tents, and buckled the citadel wall on the western side. Started some fires in the citadel and town, too, but the Trojans managed to put most of those out.”
If Poseidon had fought for the Hellenes, then why was he so angry now? I held my tongue in the desire to hear more.
Father had made plenteous thank offerings to Poseidon—again, why was the god so angry?—then tried to exploit the compromised western fortifications by employing a great Assyrian ram. It might have worked, but the Trojans rallied long enough to bombard it with flaming arrows. Phokas explained, “We covered it with hides to protect it and the men inside, but then the Trojans shot at the oxen dragging it, and the men we sent out when the oxen fell. We had to abandon the whole thing short of the wall, and barely got the men out before the Trojans torched it.”
“Then how were the walls breached?” Mother asked.
Phokas smiled, showing large brown teeth. “Odysseus devised a ruse.” He laughed. “You can always count on him to outwit the enemy. He had carpenters build a great wooden horse with the most marvelous decorations. Painted it red with white eyes, gave it a black woolen mane and tail, and hammered gilt onto the hooves. Then, when it was done, Odysseus persuaded the High King to disband the entire camp, to pretend we were retreating. We pulled down the tents, doused all the fires, even knocked down the huts and stockade—everything. Then we put out to sea in the remaining ships, except for one clever man we lashed and half-starved and beat up and left behind with a few corpses to convince the Trojans how their plague god had wasted us. Hah! He did his work well. The Trojans thought we’d fled in terror, and that we’d left the horse to placate their gods.”
Many years later, I heard another version of this story, in which the gift horse was hollowed out, and large enough to hide armed men inside; some bard most likely confused the gift horse with the great Assyrian ram. So when the Trojans took that splendid horse into the town, the Hellenes inside waited until nightfall, until their enemies exhausted themselves with their celebrations. Then they crept out, overcame the guards, and opened the gates. I rather liked that version, however impractical it was. Someone would have moved, or sneezed, or coughed throughout the many hours the men would have had to wait, and given themselves away. And surely the Trojans themselves would have noticed a trapdoor concealed in the horse’s belly.
The story Phokas told was somewhat like that, minus the men inside the horse. While Troy lay in a drunken stupor thinking victory was theirs, Odysseus and Diomedes led thirty-eight men through the culvert into the lower town and opened the gates. From there, it was a small matter to breach the citadel.
“And did Menelaus recover his treacherous wife?” Aegisthus asked.
“He most certainly did,” Phokas answered. “Found her in her new husband’s house. Slashed the man to ribbons in his own bed, but when he went to do the same for that slut, they say she let the blanket fall and showed him her tits. So he spared her.”
All the lords and ladies seated around the hearth muttered at this. Hermione turned ashen-white and wrung her hands in her lap.
Aegisthus alone laughed. “So, one sword goes down, and the other goes up!” Mother sent him a warning look.
Phokas read the tension between them. “Well, the High King ordered Menelaus to execute her, but Menelaus refused to do it. I heard they quarreled, and then Menelaus went aboard his ship with the woman and his share of the spoils, and set sail. He might be back home in Sparta this very moment, if he managed to outrace the storm.”
Mother looked angry. “I see.”
“And what is Agamemnon doing now?” Aegisthus inquired.
“Receiving honors and building altars to the gods,” Phokas said. “And he’s dividing the spoils. I don’t envy him that task. There’s so much it’ll take weeks to count and distribute it all. You never saw so many gold and jewels, rich cloth and fine weapons, and chariots and women. Everyone will come home rich.”
Not until spring, though. Six months was a long time to wait, and to think about what would happen next. Perhaps Mother had a change of heart, because at midwinter she sent plasterers, carpenters, and painters upstairs to repair the king’s apartment. She let me watch the men at work, and even allowed me to assist in selecting vessels and hangings, and themes for frescoes that I thought Father might like. Perhaps she hoped to reconcile with him, even though I thought it was far too late to undo the damage she had wrought.
If so, why did she not evict Aegisthus? He remained at her side, went about his usual business, and even continued to visit her bed. Mother could not simply command a guest to leave, but she could have persuaded him better than she did—if she did at all. I nursed my doubts. Surely Aegisthus must have realized his precarious position. If he left now, with Mother’s assistance in evading Father’s agents, he could be far, far away, as far as the Thracian lands, by the time Father came home.
Elektra took exception to his nonchalance. She scented blood, relished it, and spent the short winter afternoons stalking up and down the galleries anticipating the coming storm.
Chrysothemis and Hermione shut themselves away with their women’s work. Chrysothemis hated the rumors of unfavorable omens, angry gods, and quarreling parents; her answer to every problem was to ignore it and hope it vanished on its own. And Hermione was waiting for her father to send for her; she wanted to leave Mycenae before Father came home and the recriminations began. I did not know how she felt about her mother, because she refused to talk about it.
At winter’s end, when the royal apartments were refurbished, Mother had the megaron aired out, the great hearth scrubbed, and the columns repainted. Then she sent for me, to discuss what might happen when Father returned. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be here for the triumph,” she suggested.
I could scarcely believe what she was saying. “No!”
“Orestes,” she said patiently. “Your father will be very angry with me. There may be ugliness. I don’t want you to see or hear anything that may upset you. I could send you to our ambassador in Argos. It would only be for a short time, until matters calm down.”
“I’m not a child,” I declared.
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
How could she even contemplate sending me away, when she knew how long and anxiously I had waited for Father? “I’m staying.”
We never discussed the matter again.
So Mother ordered me new clothes: a tunic with purple and gold embroidery, a gold bracelet, and leather shoes. Then she took me into the lustral bath adjacent to the megaron, a place I had never visited before, and showed me the altar near the tub where the kings of Mycenae purified themselves whenever they returned from war. “Your father will need the finest lamb for the sacrifice,” she said. “That will be your task, Orestes, to choose the best animal from the herd, and to prepare the knife.”
Chapter Sixteen
When Father’s ship landed the week of the spring equinox, he did not come home directly. Instead, he remained at Tiryns to sort out certain recent troubles there, and sent Talthybius to inform Mother that he would arrive three days hence.
Father’s message stirred the citadel like a stick in a beehive. Mother issued orders to the stewards, who roused the servants to greater efforts. Carts arrived bearing flowers for the garlands destined for
the megaron, and foodstuffs and amphorae of wine for the banquet. Livestock were slaughtered, dressed, and spitted in great pits outside the kitchens. The head cook had all she could do directing the activity. The laundresses and scrub maids who dwelt in Timon’s quarter worked from morning till night sweeping, scouring, and airing out every room and courtyard in the palace.
I remembered my responsibilities, and went to the cult house to consult the high priest about the purification offering. Hyrtios escorted me to the enclosure where a flock of twenty sheep had been corralled for the thanksgiving sacrifices, and together we selected the best one. Hyrtios might not know the gods, but he did know his animals; the lamb he suggested was unblemished, a pure white, as it ought to be.
“The High King will want the royal knife,” he said.
He meant the king’s sacrificial knife, an heirloom of the royal house dating from the time of Pelops. Its blade was decorated with elaborate gold and niello work depicting a lion hunt. Father had not taken it with him to Troy because it, like the holy labrys, must never leave Mycenae.
*~*~*~*
Just before sunset, I found Elektra standing sentinel on the megaron roof. Kilissa had told me that she had been up there all day, watching and waiting. And there she was, clutching her shawl around hunched shoulders in the breeze that ruffled her unbound hair. “What are you doing?” I asked. “You can’t see Tiryns from here.”
She kept staring straight ahead, scanning the hills and plain of Argos as though she did not believe me. Perhaps she did not. She could be as irrational as she was stubborn. “Father will be home in two more days. Then everything will be made right again.”
For her, ‘made right’ meant only one thing. “Elektra, leave it alone.” Amid all the preparations, I was doing my best not to think about the inevitable ugliness Mother had mentioned.