The Outcast

by Laura Gill

  He sent for a brazier, and thyme to ease the congestion. “I myself sometimes start itching and wheezing when spring comes,” he said hopefully. “Persephone often brings such maladies with her when she returns from Hades.”

  But the herbal vapors did not alleviate my shortness of breath; my condition persisted into the next day, and the day after, even though I remained indoors.

  A physician came to examine me on the evening of the third day. Of course, he came loaded down with amulets, and even then did not want to interact with me; he limited his contact to a handful of tentative touches while addressing all his questions to my caretaker. “Well, it’s not a spring fever. There is no rash, no swelling or watering of the eyes.” I noticed how afterward the physician fastidiously washed his hands in vinegar and wiped them on a linen cloth, which he then held to his nose. “I know you give him drugs to help him sleep and keep him docile.” An insistent clearing of the throat. “I have also heard the queen of Sparta sent a most curious Egyptian potion. Do you know what’s in it?”

  “Athos says it’s a weak infusion of opium and other herbs.” Didymus and the physician moved toward the doorway. “I know there is a secret ingredient, which Queen Helen wouldn’t divulge.”

  “So he is short of breath and feels nothing,” the physician said quietly. “Does he sweat profusely?”

  “Last night, yes.”

  “And you are giving him the exact dose Athos prescribed, no more, no less?” A grunt passed for yes. “We had better talk to him, then.”

  Didymus later told me that the secret ingredient was probably belladonna. “It is a poison, yes, but when the gods give us thorns, they also give us roses. Belladonna can be beneficial in small doses. Athos has agreed to lessen the dose.”

  The next day, he read me the remainder of Hermione’s letter, from the point at which she mentioned Chrysothemis and Erigone; she described the latter as small and timid for her age, because Mother had forced her to dwell as a servant below stairs, where the other scrub maids had terrorized her. Hermione’s easy acceptance of Aegisthus’s daughter did not surprise me, for she had always been wise and kind-hearted, but I did not care what befell Erigone. She could go on living as a servant, sail to some distant land, or fall sick and die, as long as she caused no trouble.

  Although I felt more lucid, and breathed easier, I could not concentrate long enough to express my thoughts on wax or papyrus; my attempt to write back was a rambling mess. The priest hung like a pedagogue over my shoulder, pointing out errors in my spelling and syntax until, disheartened, I surrendered the task over to him.

  Pylades wrote a second time, a month after the equinox. I was, by then, able to read his letter without help, even if it took longer than it should have.

  “To Orestes Agamemnonides, king of Mycenae and kinsman: greetings. All is well. There has been a rich olive harvest, the grain has been sown, and the omens at Plowistos were favorable. Your household continues to prosper, although much work remains to be done settling old disputes and balancing the treasury. However, you must not concern yourself with these troubles! I have these matters well in hand.” Then he should not have mentioned it. I turned the thought over in my head, processing it over the course of a half-hour, before finally accepting that it was in my brother-in-law’s nature to be that meticulous.

  “All those within your domain pray daily for your swift recovery. I have placed Apollo in the sanctuary, and appointed a priest to tend him. There have been some sidelong glances from the priests, who are unused to his worship, and disregard him as a Trojan idol. I have assured them that Zeus and the Two Ladies of Argos will continue to receive their allotted offerings. Therefore, there is no harm in allowing Apollo to be housed and honored within the temenos as you decreed.”

  My focus wavered, making it impossible to continue further. I set the letter to one side and came back to it after the afternoon sleep. Although only two hours had passed, I found myself having to skim the previous paragraphs to remember what Pylades had said. Yes. All was well in the kingdom and household, despite lingering legal matters and deficits in the treasury. Apollo’s kouros had been set up in the sanctuary.

  Pylades continued from there: “Our cousin Aethiolas left Mycenae at the equinox.” Again, I wrestled with the fog that was my memory, vaguely recalling Pylades having mentioned such a visit in his earlier letter. Hermione had also said something to that effect, had she not? “I sent him home with messages for King Menelaus, as well as the customary gifts, and let Princess Chrysothemis and Lady Erigone leave with him.

  He went on to explain why he had released the women, and in this abandoned his usual brusqueness to circumvent giving the most direct answer, which was that Elektra had wanted them gone. To be more precise, it was either send the girl away or risk a convenient accident, and Pylades was not about to allow his wife to stain her hands with the girl’s blood. As for Chrysothemis, her uselessness was a hindrance, her bizarre insistence on championing Aegisthus’s daughter a source of contention between sisters, to the point where sending her and the girl to Sparta seemed the most prudent option.

  Even this inconsequential business overwhelmed me. I waited until the next day to tackle the letter’s final paragraphs. Pylades informed me matter-of-factly that Tyndareus was dead; understanding my sentiments toward my maternal grandfather, he gave me the details without wasting time expressing his condolences. “It has also come to my attention that Menelaus recently invited Nestor of Pylos and his younger sons to his court, to negotiate a possible alliance between our lady cousin and one of the Pylian princes. My sources tell me Menelaus favors Peisistratus, Nestor’s youngest son, though he has no great deeds to his credit.”

  Hermione was to wed, then. A cloudy memory of her face remained to me: a pale oval framed by rich auburn hair, her almond-shaped eyes blue like the sea in summer, her mouth... I could hold onto neither the image nor the recollection of her voice; she had become a phantom from a long-ago time. Once, the thought of losing her had been unbearable, yet now it was as nothing to me.

  “I might as well have drunk from Lethe,” I told Didymus. “I am the walking dead.”

  In the evening, he brought two priests to the cubicle. Their white robes were banded with scarlet and blue, with gold-threaded embroidery, and more gold and silver hung around their necks as amulets. As they approached, they shielded themselves with upraised hands, making the sign against evil. “Orestes,” Didymus said. “High Priest Eurymakos and the Priest-Physician Athos wish to talk to you.”

  By lamplight, the high priest, with his dark, receding hairline and prominent beak of a nose, cast an ominous air; he towered over me like the specter of Hades. “We have been told you are losing your memory as well as your capacity to experience emotion.”

  I did not respond, for he had not asked a direct question. Nor did I react when he snapped his fingers in my face to command my attention; he was very lucky the nepenthe had dulled my senses, else he might have ended up clutching a broken wrist. Instead, I contemplated his amulets, which bore the winged serpent wand of Apollo and the Medusa aegis of the Athena, and became lost in the glitter of the precious metals in the mellow firelight.

  “It’s as we have heard,” the other priest, the physician, said. “He can’t focus.”

  “That was true of him before this Egyptian concoction,” barked the high priest. “There must be an end to this. He can’t be judged if he can’t remember his crime, or punished if he has no proper fear of retribution. It’s an offense against the gods.” Eurymakos once again snapped his fingers at me. “Speak, murderer!”

  I could not marshal my thoughts or command my tongue under such pressure; he demanded too much, and too quickly. “I—”

  “If you would allow,” Didymus interjected, “perhaps a more effective test of his memory would be to inquire about High King Agamemnon’s murder. Prince Orestes was there that day when the queen and her lover did the deed. He told me the tale not long after he came to us.” Hearing
Father’s name stirred sluggish misgivings, a dull ache in my breast, but nothing more—and that was wrong, so very wrong.

  Then the mattress shifted, and my caretaker was sitting beside me. “Orestes, you must focus.” What did they expect me to be able to tell them? I could not even recall how many years had passed since the murder, or in what season it had occurred. Although I tried my utmost to listen, to follow his instructions, the lamplight and the glittering amulets and the hovering priests confused me. So I closed my eyes, and waited for Didymus to ask the first question: “Do you remember where you were when your father was killed?”

  “In a room.” I squeezed my eyes tighter, as though squinting into the dark and musty corridors of memory.

  “Do you recall what room?”

  Had there been decorations on the wall, or furnishings? “It was small. That’s all I know.”

  “Do you recall how you got there?”

  An impatient cough. “Enough with this pointless exercise.” Not Eurymakos, but the physician-priest Athos. “He had nothing to do with that murder.”

  Not true. A small inner voice pierced the fog to warn me the priest was wrong. Patricide. Anathema. Yet I felt neither horror nor remorse; it might as well have been some other man’s crime. It must be, for although at one time I had known the scene in intimate detail, now I could not even conjure Father’s face, or remember where or quite how he had perished, or even if he had spoken to me. I must be broken, indeed, for such memories to spill out so freely and leave me so empty.

  “Athos,” Eurymakos said, “you will lessen the dose even further. He must be coherent when the time comes.”

  “Has a date been set?” Didymus asked.

  “The Pythia hasn’t even been consulted. She sends word that she will undertake the oracle in two weeks.”

  I did not see another draught of nepenthe again for a full day, by which time my mind had begun to clear somewhat. Fragments of memories and nightmares mixed in my head, tinged with just enough apprehension to dread being able to sort through the jumble. “Will I be there when the Pythia takes the oracle?” An uncertain recollection of claustrophobic passages, a nauseating smoke, the god’s essence mingled with the sharp tang of my own fear came to me.

  “No,” Didymus answered. “I’ve told you before: you can’t go before her while you’re still unclean. High Priest Eurymakos will act as your proxy.”

  I stared at the blank wall. Now that spring had come, I wished there was some color in the room. A woven hanging, some flowers from outside. All this white was stark and cold, sterile as an icicle, or a shade from Hades. Even the cup in my hand was white, while the draught steaming inside was dark. “The high priest doesn’t like me. Do you think he would lie, condemn me, and say the gods willed it?”

  “No.” Didymus did not sound entirely convinced, though. “Apollo watches over everything his priests do. Eurymakos would never dare such a sacrilege.”

  When a man became impious, when he was blind and deaf to the gods, he started to doubt their existence, so then the sacrilege came easy. This I knew, without having to dwell overmuch on it.

  When we went outside into the warm daylight, I remembered the starkness of my chamber, and harvested bright blooms from the rocks, fumbling to loosen the alpine daisies and campanula with my clumsy fingers, while struggling with an emerging memory of having done this many times before, culling flowers in the meadows and high up on the mountain for someone. It must have been Hermione. Hermione, with a gracious smile and half-crushed cornflowers and wilting daisies in her hair, and it was sweet and bitter and sad, like the scent of the blooms themselves. “Ah!” I groaned. “I remember.”

  Scent was a powerful trigger of memory, and spring certainly brought fragrance in abundance. With the retreat of winter to all but the highest elevations, the mountain air was crisp and cool, redolent with the smell of evergreens and alpine flowers and earth; it took me back to those adventuresome days when Pylades and I had climbed to the very summit of Parnassus and gazed down upon a patchwork of greens, browns, and blue sea that was the mortal world far below.

  Didymus allowed me to line my windowsill with the flowers, and lay them on the floor against the walls, so the room was not so sterile and oppressive. “It’s good that you’re taking an interest in the green gifts of the earth,” he observed. Sometimes he brought me flowers that the women of the town grew in hanging pots.

  One afternoon, he entered with a length of bright blue cloth draped over his left arm. “For you,” he announced, “from the princess of Sparta.”

  Of the softest wool, the cloak exuded the perfume of costly lilies and cassia, mingled with the scent of her own skin, which must have saturated the fibers as she worked the fibers between her fingers. I gathered the material to my nose and inhaled deeply, welcoming the sweet memories the smells elicited, as well as the twinge of desire stirring in my loins. How I had forgotten what it was to desire a woman!

  “There is also a letter.” Didymus’s voice cut through my reverie.

  “Give it to me,” I said.

  “Perhaps I should read it aloud to you.”

  “I can do that myself now.” His reluctance, however, hinted at more than my perceived inability to concentrate. Slowly, I lowered the fragrant cloak, settled it across my lap. “Is something wrong?”

  Didymus produced the letter from a fold of his robe; its seal was already broken. Who had authorized him to do that? “The lady is to be married,” he said gravely.

  Married. I forgot my rising indignation at the tampering, even my delight with the woolen garment bearing her scent. I was frozen, grasping for words, for some reaction, and was at last able to choke out but one word, “Who?”

  “Peisistratus, son of King Nestor of Pylos.”

  Peisistratus. Yes, I seemed to recall that his name had been mentioned before, in some previous letter, but knew nothing else about him. He has no great deeds to his credit. Who had said that? I would have to search through my correspondence, which the priest kept for me, but that disparaging remark sounded nothing at all like Hermione; it must have come from Pylades. Could Peisistratus read and write, or do figures, as I could? Did he have the substance to defend his bride against the enemies, as I did? I clutched the blue wool so tightly my veins stood out. Did he love Hermione, or was she merely his trophy, the gold-decked woman who went with the throne of Sparta?

  Surely Menelaus would have chosen the best man for his daughter. My lip curled in disgust. Menelaus was not a man known for his good judgment regarding women. “Read me what she says.”

  Didymus went over to the window, cleared his throat, and started to recite. Hermione, however, expressed few sentiments about her betrothal or her future husband; she was far too tactful to rub salt in my wounds. Her main concerns were my health and situation, where she urged me to remain strong. “Set aside your nightmares and make amends with the gods. Let go your guilt and grief, so you can live again.”

  How could she be so blind, saying that when she knew—surely she had to know—that I could not live without her? I should have been the one standing beside her at the betrothal feast, not buried alive here at Delphi, shackled by this blood-taint. I should have been the one carrying her across the threshold of her father’s house, which, as future king of Sparta, would one day be my house; and the one lying down with her on her wedding night. Disgusted, I flung aside the cloak, and covered my face with my right hand, pressing my fingers against my eyes to stop my tears. My jaw ached from the effort of choking back sobs.

  I heard the priest move toward me, felt him sling an arm over my quaking shoulders. “Love stings.” He breathed a wistful sigh. “Do you wish me to stay, or will you be safe left alone?”

  I caught his warning. “I knew this was coming, that she would marry someone else.” My eyes and cheeks were sticky with tears; my nose was starting to run. “I won’t lose control or beat my head against the wall, but...”

  “You wish to be alone with your thoughts,” Di
dymus finished. “Yes, I understand.” He withdrew his arm. “But remember, the princess loves you. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have taken the time to write or send a gift made by her own hands. It’s simply that she has no choice in the matter.”

  That changed nothing, when all that counted was that she was forever lost to me. The most beautiful, perfect woman in the world, a goddess on earth, my first and only real love, and she now belonged to another man. I imagined her with him—that stripling youngest son of Pylos with no deeds to match his royal name—him using her, and breeding her, and sitting upon the throne of Sparta, which was all he cared about, and which should have been mine.

  I bit down on my knuckles to hold in the sob burning my throat; the skin broke, despite my most solemn vow not to hurt myself, and the metallic taste of blood salted my tongue. Menelaus was a fool, giving his throne and only daughter away so cheaply.

  I tried to remember her face, the sound of her voice, the sight of her sewing or working the loom, or combing out her glorious hair, and then other memories, drawn by the maelstrom, rushed into the void. How Aegisthus used to leer at her when he knew Mother was not looking, the oily tone he took with everyone he considered beneath him, the filthy jokes he liked to tell.

  I bit down harder, taking the pain along with the recollection. Yes. Now it was clear. I had been in the privy that day. Father’s face came back to me: grim and weathered, spattered and smeared with gore. Mother had cast the net over him, then came the axe, and finally Aegisthus with the knife.

  My hot breath moistened the skin above and below my knuckles, to mingle with the blood. Father’s last breath had contained his last words, and they were for me: “Orestes, avenge...” It still hurt, even now, even worse than what I was now inflicting on myself, because even after eight years the wound had not healed, and would never heal.