by Laura Gill
Anaxibia arranged for a modest funeral and burial in a rock tomb near the citadel. I presided over the rites, made the blood offering, and poured out the libation. Later that day, I held a funeral feast to which I invited Timon’s scribe friends and some of his neighbors, who assured me that they would feed the two cats. I also commissioned a splendid larnax to hold Timon’s bones for when the time came to return him to Mycenae; the expensive purchase cemented my vow to him, and, in a macabre way, gave me something to look forward to.
A week later, Strophius formally granted me permission to leave court and visit my estate. I took a chariot and four guards, with no promise of a swift return.
Summer’s heat baked the land. A small inconvenience for a grieving man who found solace in strenuous labor. I spent my days tending the vines and ripening grain, mending fences, breaking wood, and watching the flocks. At night, I slept on the roof with the farmhands, and woke before dawn to begin the day anew.
Despite all this, I could not fill the void Timon’s death had left inside me. I wrote long letters to Hermione which I never sent; the thoughts which spilled from me were too wild and passionate. My candor would have embarrassed her.
I led my guards on the boar hunt in the forested hills, taking the tusks for my growing collection. I killed deer and hurled javelins at wild dogs, but there were times when my spirit craved supple flesh rather than blood. For that, I went to Amphissa. The tawdry girls plying their trade in the agora were skilled enough, but I ultimately found them hollow and interchangeable, mere bodies with which to perform a mechanical act. I found no solace among them.
Anger ruled me. And sorrow. My nature ran alternately hot and cold. Sometimes I wanted to murder the entire world. Sometimes I wished the earth would open up and swallow me whole. I wanted to run away, far away from Phocis, and farther still from Mycenae. I wanted to stop being Orestes. Parnassus had first brought those impulses to the fore, waking within me a desire for escape, for serenity, for utter oblivion. I could have fled Krisa, yes, assumed a new name and a livelihood as a sailor or mercenary, fought on distant shores, and seen the world, but there would have been no escaping the gods or my father’s ghost. They would have hounded me to the edge of the world and beyond.
I drank sour wine to excess, until my guards had to drag me home. When I did not frequent the brothels and wineshops, I wandered the agora, searching the stalls for something, anything to fill the emptiness.
I lingered over jewels and embroidered cloth, perfumed oil and ivory trinket boxes. Strophius had urged me against sending Hermione rich presents, on the grounds that it was inappropriate, that no date had been set for our wedding, and that our betrothal would probably be broken. Rebellious impulses churned inside me. Everyone was a naysayer. To Hades with them all! I would buy the entire agora and send it to her, and let Strophius and that old fool Tyndareus stew.
In the end, I restrained myself. Even drunk and angry, I knew better than to take that risk.
One afternoon, I found myself at a gem cutter’s stall, browsing among the seal stones. Strophius had promised me my own seal next year. Who was he to make me wait on his approval? Just an uncle by marriage, my guardian, not even my real father. I was seventeen years old, old enough to bear arms and manage my own property. Why should I not have an emblem of my own authority?
As if in answer to my rebellious longing, a lion carved in rock crystal appeared among the seals. And not just any stylized lion, such as one often saw on seals, but a lion mauling a goat. A sign from the gods, the young lion of Mycenae slaying Aegisthus the goat. I bartered for the seal, and in the end probably let the gem cutter swindle me, but that mattered little. I had to have it.
My spirits might have mended then, had a ghost not begun to assert its presence in my house. Even after many years, I recognized that sensation of unearthly cold, that sentient chill. At first, I assumed it to be the spirit of a long-dead servant, but then, to my astonishment and dismay, the haunting intensified, yet only I could sense or see the shade which manifested throughout the various rooms of the house. A stern man, his bearded face graven with cruel lines, disfigured from the many wounds which had caused his death. I had not thought that shades could leave those places where they had died or were buried, had not suspected that people themselves could be haunted, but when I saw that ghost looming in the shadows beyond the flickering hearth, I knew. My frustration, as well as my mutinous thoughts of escape and oblivion, had awakened and drawn him like a wasp to its nest.
“I have not forgotten you!” I exclaimed.
Kusamenos and others sometimes overheard my utterances. I did not tell them that the ghost of Agamemnon had followed me into exile.
*~*~*~*
“Brigands, sir!” Polybos the herdsman’s boy breathlessly dashed into the courtyard as the cry went up from outside.
Rallying my guards, and ordering all the women inside, I grabbed my spear and shield from their place alongside the hearth, and hurried out to meet the intruders.
My other farmhands had already gone to confront them. Axios lay injured on the path, while the other two were at a loss, being ill-equipped to handle armed raiders who outnumbered them four to one. I saw five men in the sheep pen rustling ewes, and another three were advancing on the house, blades drawn.
“Stop!” I shouted.
All three did a double-take, seeing me with my spear and shield, and the warriors with me. So they thought this was an undefended farmhouse, did they? I chose my target and balanced the spear, when the man turned and ran. No matter. Ares exulted inside me. There would be no mercy.
I hurled the spear. It sped through the air and took the coward through the back, dropping him to the dust. Machaereus on my right took his man through the shoulder with enough force to pin him to the ground.
Another man emerged from the sheep pen to hurl his spear. I raised my shield, as my guards raised theirs, but the spear flew wide and struck the doorpost. One of the women screamed from within. Spurred to action, the farmhands started lobbing pebbles at the other raiders.
Recovering my spear, I joined the guards and farmhands pursuing the outlaws to the boundary stones. Let them turn and fight like men! Arisbas speared one through the spine, so that the bronze point emerged from his belly; the man’s intestines spilled to the ground seconds before he did. I took great satisfaction in slicing his throat to finish him.
Three more dead and two injured awaited us. Kusamenos and the women ran out to aid Axios, while a wounded brigand, clutching his bleeding arm, tried to stagger away. We intercepted him, but now my bloodlust took a different turn. I ordered the guards to drag him into the barn, throw him down by the chopping block, and hold him. His blood loss notwithstanding, he struggled and pleaded, thinking he was about to be beheaded.
I struck him a hard blow to the temple, then, with a curt nod, stood back and let Machaereus take the axe to the man’s right hand; it dropped free with a single blow. His screams filled the barn, redoubling when Ankaios seared the bleeding stump closed with a burning brand. I gave orders for the women to come out, wash and bind the wound, and give him strong wine for the pain.
After he stopped screaming, I addressed him. “Stop your sniveling, lest I change my mind and kill you.” I seized him under the chin to force him to meet my eyes. “When you return to your friends, tell them Orestes Agamemnonides, son of the High King of Mycenae, Argos, and Achaea, let you live.” His astonishment showed, and he started to make a whimpering apology. I cut him short. Words meant nothing. “Cause me any further trouble, and I will have all your heads on stakes.”
Ankaios bound him so he could not escape before I allowed it, and he and the other guards took turns watching him through the night. In the morning, they took him to the boundary stones and released him, to let him stumble down the road past the corpses of his comrades. No one ever claimed those dead villains. Their rotting bodies remained throughout the end of summer, feeding the vultures and dogs, a stern warning to anyone who dared
cross me.
In this manner, I came to realize what it was to defend one’s own, whether it was an estate or a kingdom.
*~*~*~*
I spent the grain harvest on the estate, rising well before dawn to join the farmhands scything the wheat and barley, working past sunset. It was hard, satisfying labor.
On the fifth day, a scribe arrived from Amphissa to assess the tallies. I welcomed him with the first fruits: fresh vegetables, lentils, and bread baked from new-milled wheat. He inspected the storeroom and threshing floor, then calculated the tithes owed the king. I pressed my new seal with pride into the clay, and saw him off before heading out to inspect the vineyards. In a few weeks, we would harvest and stomp the grapes, and celebrate the gift of Dionysus.
Two days later, a messenger arrived from Krisa with a letter from Pylades.
“To my brother-in-law and kinsman Orestes Agamemnonides: greetings. I hope this message finds you in good health and improved spirits. Elektra grows concerned over your prolonged absence. She has not said so outright, but I believe she regrets her unkind words about Timon.” Then she could tell me so herself, though I doubted she ever would. “She has just borne a daughter, whom we will call Antiklea. Give the messenger your solemn word that you will come home for the tenth-day feast, or I shall be forced to fetch you myself.”
I sent the messenger back with the desired word, then went to Amphissa to purchase suitable gifts for a girl: coral beads and a cloth doll. While there, I was drawn to a pair of painted wooden soldiers complete with miniature boar tusk helmets and ox-hide shields. I bought those, too, for young Strophius and Medon.
Antiklea sported her mother’s red hair. I held the gurgling infant for a few moments, then handed her back for my sister to nurse.
“Had the baby not arrived when she did,” Pylades soberly confessed, “I would have brought you back, anyway. The court was beginning to complain about your absence.”
Not that I cared what Strophius’s courtiers thought. “There was much to do on the estate,” I said. “There was also some trouble with brigands. I slew four, mutilated a fifth, and drove the rest from my land. They’ll think twice about trifling with me again.”
Gazing at me over her newborn daughter’s head, my sister regarded me with obvious pride. I could see the path along which her thoughts raced—for mine had wandered in exactly the same direction—as she contemplated a greater estate where usurpers and ruffians ran rampant, and where my firm hand was needed.
My nephews chose that moment to visit their mother’s sitting room. I had given them their presents before going to my sister’s chamber. Medon, in his nurse’s arms, was already teething his wooden soldier’s head, while young Strophius banged his against my knees and cried, “Restes!”
“He missed you,” Elektra said.
When I lifted him up, young Strophius threw his arms around my neck to cover me with kisses. It surprised me how much I had missed him and his brother, and their childish antics. “So he has.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Holding aloft the torch, Pylades ventured first into the cave. I hunched over a moment later and edged after him through the dark opening, a rocky gash in the mountainside half-obscured by brush, and heavy with rank moisture. Its remoteness and the overgrowth snarling the goat path leading up to it indicated that it was probably not being used as a brigand den or sacred cave.
Inside, the cave was chilly and dank. Moisture permeated the limestone to seep down ragged walls, and fierce storms had blown in debris. Animal bones littered the floor.
“I don’t know why you bother. One cave looks like another.”
Pylades did not dignify my complaint with an answer.
We gathered dried brush and built a fire near a ring of stones that we discovered at the center of the chamber; we were not the first humans to have ventured there, after all. Give me sunshine and wide open spaces any day. The wombs of the earth were places of death. I half-expected to find the bones of the first occupants heaped in a corner, and to see their angry specters materialize in the misshapen faces and fantastic forms suggested by the malleable limestone.
As we broke our fast on bread and dried fruit, Pylades worried a dirt-encrusted bit of stone from the earth between his feet. “Now we’ll see what sort of treasures our ancient forebears have left us.”
The object was a broken arrowhead fashioned from stone. “The bards say men once dwelled in caves such as this,” Pylades explained, “long ago when the world was dark and covered in ice. Prometheus hadn’t yet shown our ancestors how to build houses, or harvest grain, or smelt bronze, so they used stone for their tools, wore animal skins, and followed the herds.”
“Is that what you seek here?” Like my fascination for mountains, my brother-in-law’s interest in caves stretched far back into his childhood. “Relics of those long-ago times? Proof that the tales are real?”
Pylades set down the arrowhead. “I’ve heard stories about strange caves covered in paintings, and burials containing strange men, almost human, with sloping heads and large brows. I’ve never come across such things, though.” He shook his head solemnly. “If the stories are right, our ancestors must have been very primitive creatures before Prometheus came.”
“There’s no sense in dwelling on those distant things.” I suppressed a shiver. Though the air outside was warm, and despite the crackling fire we had built within, the chill was pervasive. An alien and ominous presence lurked in that cave, perhaps the agitated ancestors whose dwelling place we had disturbed, or even the Mother of the Mountains herself. Machaereus and Arisbas must have sensed it, too, because they were silent and brooding, obviously uneasy. “They must have been,” I said, “because I don’t see how anyone would choose to dwell in a place that never sees the sun.”
Pylades reclaimed his torch in order to explore the rear of the cave. Having found the arrowhead, he expected to discover more evidence of past habitation. And he did. Eerie handprints in fading red ochre began to appear upon the walls. When he tentatively fitted his own hand to those ghost marks, the weight of untold centuries pressed down upon me. “We should leave,” I said.
Pylades, however, would not abandon a cave unless it was too dangerous to continue exploring, and this one contained only two shallow rear chambers. Hugging my arms for warmth, I remained by the fire as he ventured into one of the chambers. Arisbas and Machaereus, both of them who shared a pious foreboding about Mother Gaia’s sacred places, stayed with me.
“Look at this!” Pylades waved us over, indicating a natural rock shelf. “I’ve never seen anything like her.”
The goddess stationed upon the shelf was crude, squat, and pregnant, with enormous breasts and thighs. Offerings of animal bones and shells coated in thick dust were scattered below her, just as the ancestors must have left them centuries ago. She might have been Eleuthia, but she could as easily have represented Mother Gaia or the dark goddess Hekate. “Pylades,” I said shakily, “let’s leave. This is a sacred cave.” Arisbas and Machaereus were already backing away, averting their eyes from the little stone idol.
Pylades would not depart, though, until we fetched the wineskin and performed a libation. Drenched with wine for perhaps the first time in a thousand years, the goddess appeared even more grotesque and forbidding. I heaved a profound sigh of relief once we emerged from that cave into the clear daylight. The sun felt warm on my skin, and the air smelled like pine resin and wild thyme. Why my brother-in-law would willingly trade this blessing of the gods for the gloom below was beyond me.
For the time being, Pylades abandoned the notion of exploring additional caves, and instead led the way up to an alpine plateau where wildflowers grew in profusion. I gathered some daisies and campanula for Hermione, who in her letters had expressed amazement that anything could grow at such elevations.
Returning home, we found Elektra in a ferocious temper. A colicky Antiklea had kept her up all night, and now she released her frustrations on me, rummaging through my pack
and tossing aside the wildflowers. “What foolishness is this?”
I snatched the pack from her as she started to upend it. Searching for more trash, as she called it. “Leave me alone.”
Elektra turned on her husband. “You let him pick posies when he should be training for war?”
“I believe those are for Hermione,” he answered calmly.
“Don’t daisies grow in Sparta?” Elektra hurled the flowers to the floor to stomp them. “Let her pick her own posies.”
“Mind your own business!” I pointed to the door, and kept pointing until she took the hint and left. Pylades followed to silence her grousing. I retrieved the flowers from the floor, laid them out on my table, and went to bathe.
A servant found me dressing after a restful massage. “This came for you this morning, sir.”
My relaxed mood evaporated the moment I recognized Aegisthus’s seal on both the parcel and letter. What did the old goat have to say now? I broke the wax with my fingernail and unfolded the papyrus.
“From Aegisthus Thyestides, king of Mycenae, to Orestes, his most precious stepson: My dear boy, it has not escaped my notice that you will shortly turn eighteen. So soon a grown man! How swiftly the years have flown by!” It makes you anxious, doesn’t it? If the gods are just, then you lie awake at night imagining all the horrible ways you might die at my hand.
“No doubt you hope to wed your Spartan sweetheart. Alas, she is getting old now.” What did Aegisthus care about Hermione? “I feel I would be doing you a disservice not to confide in you that she is not as pure or wholesome as you believe.” My face grew hot. What slanders were these? “Once you fled, she was quite eager to accommodate me. You will find the proof of our enjoyment in this gift to...”
I could not bear to read any more of his lies. Hermione was a maiden. Aegisthus had nothing with which to torment me but slanders and gall. What about his so-called gift? My fingers fumbled with the knot sealing the parcel, then, in my increasing agitation, snapped the string and opened the linen, which was itself the gift. Concealed within its folds were old bloodstains, fading brown against the white cloth. What was this, this blood, this impurity? What had he done?