by Laura Gill
Elektra naturally heard about the Argive ambassadors, and wanted to know every detail of that morning’s interview. “Did they bend the knee to you and pledge their support?” she asked me.
Pylades and I exchanged looks. “It’s a complicated matter,” I began.
She was too stubborn to see otherwise. “What’s so complicated about it? You’re the rightful king. Nothing else matters.”
“I’m a king without an army.” I truly did not want to have this argument with her, because there was no winning, even when I raised my voice to silence her. “The Argive assembly is useless. They’re indecisive old men who will throw their support behind the man who emerges the winner, but they won’t lift a finger to help his cause.”
Elektra drove on, anyway. “Then what are they doing here, when they could be at Mycenae kissing Aegisthus’s feet?”
“Aegisthus’s followers are wreaking havoc on Argive lands,” Pylades explained sternly. “The Argives want Orestes to solve their problem for them. But you shouldn’t be concerning yourself with these matters.”
“So I should simply shut my mouth, go nurse the baby, and leave it to you men?” she challenged. I sighed, sensing a colossal fight on the horizon. “Let me speak to these Argive dotards.”
“Elektra!” My reprimanding tone commanded her attention. “The Argives won’t do anything, and that’s that. If I am going to find supporters, they will have to come from elsewhere.”
She sat with her spinning on her lap, fingering the spun thread while her narrowed gaze and flaring nostrils betrayed thoughts of blood and vengeance. I did not want to contemplate what she might have said to the Argive ambassadors.
Chapter Thirty-four
I stared at Hermione’s goddess seal, unable to decide whether I truly wanted to read her response. She must despise me for my tactlessness and impudence, and had written to chastise me.
At last, the tension grew too great to bear. I broke the seal and unfolded the letter to peruse her elegant hand.
I skipped over the salutations. “Dearest Orestes,” she wrote, “your flowers arrived quite dead, but I like them all the same.” What was this? Where was her outrage with me? “They remind me of the old days when you used to come home from your adventures with a bunch of wilting primroses and daisies crushed in your fist.
“Let me get the unpleasantness out of the way first, so you can enjoy the rest of this letter.” Now it was coming. She had opened the letter with a polite observation because etiquette and her gentle breeding demanded it, but now she was going to vent her full fury. “You know as well as anyone how Aegisthus tries to goad you. Do not give him the satisfaction.”
I jumped down to the next line, only to discover she had changed the subject entirely. Was that it? I sat there, dumbfounded. Hermione had expressed neither surprise nor anger, simply advising me to ignore Aegisthus. It was too little, and all wrong, as though she was holding something back. I bit down on my lower lip to keep my doubts from surging forth. Why did she treat the matter so lightly? Why did she not express some shame or outrage, or make some denial, however small?
Hermione was not a whore. She could not be.
I shared the letter with Pylades, who failed see any difficulty. “What do you expect her to say? Would you have her admit to being violated—if she was, in fact, violated—so you can lose your head again and rush off to your doom?” He refolded the letter and handed it back to me. “I think she knows you too well.”
Nevertheless, several hours passed before I felt confident enough to read what else Hermione had written. “Next time you write,” she said, “I want to hear more about your visit to this strange sacred cave and the things you found there. Last year, a woman from Mount Taygete showed me a little fertility figure her great-grandfather found in a cave up on the mountain. It was very crude, a pregnant woman with large breasts and thighs, and like nothing I ever saw before. It was not a kourotrophos, because it held no child, but the woman told me the people in her village worshipped it as Eleuthia. Was that what you saw?” I smiled, despite my lingering uncertainties. “If so, you may be quite right in guessing those things came from the time before Prometheus.
“Grandfather likes hearing about your mountain climbing and other adventures.” Then why did Tyndareus not write to me, or answer my letters? “He is starting to lose his eyesight, and does not move around as much as he used to. It makes him short-tempered, so anything that lifts his spirits will be appreciated.” Tyndareus could go deaf and blind, lose his wits and all his teeth, and become incontinent for all I cared.
“I am sending you instructions on how to properly press flowers, so you do not have to keep apologizing for mangling them, and I can keep them forever. Your loving and faithful cousin, Hermione.”
And there it was, on a scrap of papyrus tucked into the letter’s bottom crease: a recipe inscribed in her neat, flowing hand.
She meant to end on a lighthearted note, as she always did, but this time her words failed to cast their familiar enchantment over me. Oh, I loved her still, and had she been there beside me I would have taken her in my arms and kissed her soft lips, and uncovered her beauty to worship her. Pylades must be correct. She had not made further answer either because the charge was false, or because it was beneath her dignity as a princess and high priestess of Sparta to respond to such slanders.
But Aegisthus had slid between us like the snake he was, poisoning everything with his venom. Even if he had not touched her with his hands, he had soiled her with his vile words, and for that he would pay.
*~*~*~*
Late spring and early summer became a season of visitors. Three days after the Spartan envoy delivered Hermione’s letter, a steward informed me that a young nobleman from Mycenae awaited me in the queen’s megaron.
I trusted no one from home. Mycenae had become a nest of traitors and sycophants. “Who is he?” I asked.
“Lord Alastor,” answered the steward, “son of Agathon.”
So Alastor had come crawling to me, for whatever reason. The taste of his father’s betrayal soured my throat. I dressed, then sent for Arisbas. “Watch this man Alastor very carefully,” I instructed. “He may have been sent to kill me.”
Alastor had never been tall, and even now he had to tilt his head to look me in the eye. His youthful beard grew in dark, rough patches, giving him a shifty look, and he was well on his way to becoming hirsute. “Prince Orestes,” he said, inclining his head. “It’s good to see you again.”
I maintained a civil manner, greeting this traitor’s son as custom demanded, yet simultaneously holding myself aloof. Servants brought wine, water, and sweetmeats. and together we made the traditional libation.
Alastor ate and drank, until he realized that I was not partaking.
“Why have you come?” I asked. Now that he had honored the household gods and broken his fast, it was permissible to inquire about his business.
“To see you, of course, Orestes.” Alastor’s heavy black brows twitched. “I brought gifts.”
“Have you?” I raked him up and down with my gaze, noting the fine silver-studded dagger he wore. Arisbas hovered close enough to breathe on me; he would see the man dead before that dagger ever left its sheath.
Alastor laughed anxiously.
“It’s quite a way to travel just to visit,” I said. “Did your father send you, or was it someone else?”
“Orestes...” Alastor’s smile vanished. “Why do you assume my father encouraged this visit? I am eighteen now, old enough to travel when and where I will. Quite simply, I have longed to see you again.”
But he could have sent a message long before that, and had not. And his mannerisms hinted at some ulterior motive. I sighed heavily. “Now that you have said all that, tell me why you are really here.”
Alastor sat up straighter. “Is this how Phocians welcome guests?” His indignation sounded forced. “I told you why I came.”
“And you’ve forgotten that I know when you’re
holding something back,” I pointed out. “You were always terrible at keeping secrets.”
Alastor huffed. “Oh, very well. My father sent me to try to persuade you to come home.” He fingered with his wine cup, avoiding my gaze, which told me more about his enterprise than ten thousand words would have done. “The situation at Mycenae isn’t as it should be. Your mother has become withdrawn as of late. Aegisthus now manages everything, oversees the tallies, and it’s ruining us. He lets his ruffians run amok throughout Argolis, antagonizing the Argives, and his bastard son is little better than a wild beast.”
“Yes, I see.” What he said was all true, as I knew from other sources, yet Alastor steadfastly refused to look me in the eye. “And now Agathon sends you to air the people’s grievances to me?”
Alastor nodded, at last lifting his head and smiling. “Father knows we are friends.” Were. We were friends. “People pray for your return. King Cyanippus of Argos is old and feeble, and does nothing to intervene. The Argive assembly wishes to see the son of High King Agamemnon restored to his rightful throne. If you will but return, my father and other likeminded high nobles of the court will grant you all the support you need.”
Did he take me for a fool, in that I would succumb to a few pretty words and the lure of an old friendship, and cast my lot with the first nobleman who pledged me his support, or pretended to? Agathon and the other Mycenaean nobles now serving Aegisthus had already betrayed one king. A man who broke his oath once could never be trusted to swear and keep another.
“No,” I said quietly. “Lord Agathon helped those who murdered my father. He is a traitor.”
“Orestes...”
“That is ‘Prince Orestes,’ to you, Lord Alastor.” I bulled right over him, growling my anger. “Your father is a traitor, and you are the son of a traitor. However, because you have guest-right, I will let you walk away from here with your life and limbs intact. But make no mistake. If you and your father want to live, then you will gather what you can and run, and keep running as fast and as far as you can, because when the time comes I will come for you both.”
There was nothing more to say. Without denying the charge of treason, and without begging my forgiveness or mercy, Alastor awkwardly excused himself from my presence and quit the citadel that very afternoon. I kept his gifts of gold and bronze as the price of his presumption.
Calling him out did little to sate my anger, though. I took my frustrations out in the palaestra, and on the unfortunate Boukolos, who had agreed to spar with me without realizing what that would mean.
“I shouldn’t like to ever feel the full brunt of your rage, Orestes,” he gasped. “You’ve fists that could drive a man’s teeth through the back of his skull, and I prefer to keep my good looks intact.”
Strophius said nothing about my audience with Alastor, except to observe that using a childhood friend to lure me to my death was a particularly low ruse. He had no idea just how low Aegisthus could sink! “I hear you handled it well,” he said, “and kept your temper. If I were you, though, I would expect my enemies to try it again.”
*~*~*~*
My name day eve brought another face from my childhood, albeit a graver one bearing no gifts but a pair of snow white ewes. When he saw me, Kleitos humbly bent his knee like a peasant. I was shocked at the change in him, for though he was but twenty-four, his face was etched with deep worry lines, his hands were rough and callused, and his clothes had seen hard use.
“Prince Orestes,” he said quietly, “thank you for receiving me despite my lessened circumstances.”
Alastor had been so disingenuous as to be transparent. Kleitos was taciturn, subdued through what appeared to be hard living. I offered him food and wine as custom dictated, and together we poured a libation to Zeus.
Kleitos set aside his cup without drinking. “Forgive my bluntness, Prince Orestes. I do not wish to waste your time with idle talk.”
Had Alastor warned him against trying my patience with praise and promises? All I could do at this point was weigh Kleitos’s words and manner. “Then why have you come?” I asked.
“Because my family has fallen on difficult times.” Shaking his head emphatically, he looked me straight in the eye. “No, I am not here to prey upon your sentiments or generosity. By Zeus Thunderer, I ask nothing of you except that you listen and consider what I have to tell you.”
If Kleitos was a spy or potential murderer, then he was certainly a soft-spoken, self-effacing one. “Very well, I am listening,” I said.
Kleitos picked up his cup and stared into the dark depths of his wine. “I do not know whether I ever mentioned that my father was close to your father the High King at Troy. They fought together. My father was always there during the councils of the kings, standing sentinel by the High King’s chair. He was there that day in the megaron when your father was murdered.”
“He was one of the companions?” Kleitos was right in that he had never mentioned it , and certainly had never boasted about it to anyone else. But I knew his father’s name, and the names of all the men and even the Trojan woman who had died with Agamemnon, and saw that it was no lie.
Kleitos nodded, then tasted his wine. “Your mother gave all the companions a magnificent funeral. They were cremated on pyres and buried in urns inside the royal tholos. She even provided the animals for the blood offering and wine and milk for the libations. A great honor, except that we were never allowed to see the corpses of our loved ones. We were not allowed to wash and anoint their bodies, and lay them out in the traditional manner.” He drank again, sparingly. “Messengers from the palace informed us that the queen’s own servants would take care of everything at the queen’s own expense, that it was the least she could do to help us in our grief.
“At first, we were left alone. A few wise families took their goods and livestock, and escaped to Lerna or across the border into Arcadia, but the rest of us were blind, lulled by assurances of goodwill from the palace. Then, that autumn, the scribes came, said that we had failed to meet the tithes, that we had cheated the king. So they took everything, and drove us out. My ancestral estate is now occupied by some savage Arcadian cutthroat who pledged his allegiance to Aegisthus, while my mother and sisters have to scrape and break their backs like peasants.”
It was hard not to feel sympathy for an old friend fallen on misfortune, but was the tale even true beyond the fact that Kleitos’s father had been among the slain companions? Those graven lines framing Kleitos’s mouth and furrowing his brow had not manifested themselves overnight, yet that did not necessarily mean that he had not turned against me in exchange for gold and a new estate. Even a good friend might sink to such depths, if he was desperate enough. “Have you taken your case before the Argive assembly?”
“More than once,” he answered, “but to no avail. Men come to my hut in the dead of night to terrorize me and my family. King Cyanippus’s councilors do nothing but bob their heads and promise to look into the matter, but theirs are empty words.” Then he sighed, put down the cup again. “I’ve taken an immense risk in coming here. I’ve left my family alone, undefended, and could return to find them all murdered, and my house burned.”
I watched the servant setting out a tray of bread and soft goat’s cheese. “Was your need to see me so great as to warrant that risk?”
“Yes,” he stated. “I will not pretend that Aegisthus’s agents have not approached me offering me gold and cattle, even land, to come here and murder you.” Poised at my elbow, Arisbas stiffened his stance. Kleitos’s gaze darted to him, then back to me. “No, I refused. Those traitors murdered my father as surely as they helped murder yours. I came to see what sort of man you had become, whether you were a prince worth fighting for.” A thin smile creased his mouth. “I still remember how fearlessly you used to lead the charge up the training wall. It’s hard to believe that was only ten years ago.”
“And what have you found?” I asked quietly.
“A better man by far than the one
who rules now.” Kleitos grimaced. “My father and grandfather both served the House of Atreus. Betraying you would be dishonoring them.” He gazed down at his callused, weathered hands. “I make my living as a herdsman now. I have nothing to offer except my two best ewes and my loyalty, if you will accept them.” Then, his eyes met mine, and some spark of the old, vital Kleitos returned. “Should you ever decide to return and reclaim your birthright, look for me in the hill country above the Inachos. I still remember how to fight.”
I believed him enough to receive him as a royal guest, with all the courtesies and gifts due his station. The bath attendants were ordered to wash and anoint him, and replace his threadbare clothes with fine new garments, at which he balked. “I have no use for this raiment, my lord. Allowing me to drink wine with you was gift enough.” He flashed me a smile. “That was the best vintage I have drunk in years.”
“You cannot attend my name day feast in the rags you were wearing,” I told him, “but when you leave, I will replace these fine garments with more serviceable ones if you wish.”
Kleitos looked aghast. “Is today truly your name day feast? Gods, I had forgotten, except that it was sometime in the summer.”
Together, we went downstairs, where my kinsmen, members of the Phocian court, and distinguished guests of the king bestowed upon me their felicitations. I introduced Kleitos to Pylades and Boukolos, leaving him in their company while Strophius ushered me about the megaron.
He presented a Dorian chieftain who was on pilgrimage to Delphi to thank Apollo for sparing his life in battle. Lord Boagrius’s prayers obviously did not include his lost eye; an angry scar seamed his left eye socket where a physician had stitched shut the gaping wound. I found him a surprisingly civilized representative of a people said to sleep among their goats, although he spoke with in thick, nearly unintelligible dialect. “Some foolish skirmish over a head of cattle,” he admitted.