The Warrior, page 15
part #3 of Orestes Series
Once Eteokles led him from the chamber, I asked Pylades, “Where did you find that man?”
“In Tiryns, doing menial labor,” he replied. “I was actually watching his overseer, who was a stonemason, but then I noticed this excitable little foreigner, defiantly agitating the overseer like a gadfly while he described everything that was wrong with the wall they were building. At first, I found his rant insolent, but then I saw he was right, the work was shoddy.” Pylades drew his heavy brows together in a thoughtful frown. “So I had him brought to me, gave him some bread and wine, and asked him about his trade. He told me all I wished to know about his training and experience, and many other things, such as the projects he had worked on in Anatolia, and how his ancestors built the walls of Tiryns ten generations ago.”
I scratched my jaw. “So Herakles didn’t bind a race of giants and order them to shift the stones, as the common folk believe?” An ironic snort from my brother-in-law. “What, no great thirteenth Labor?” I gestured to Iobates to bring another chair. “Sapalulmas is not to be allowed to leave the citadel or send messages in his foreign script, not for any reason. Whatever he requires, whether it be building materials or a woman, he must request directly from you or me. I will not have his tongue wagging about this building project.”
“One man is easy enough to contain,” Pylades observed, sitting down, “but how will you silence the workers, or the scores of others bound to see and hear the commotion?”
That bore some thought. “Perhaps we should tell them what we told him.” I glanced over at Thestalos and Aglaos, who were stationed by the door. “Are you listening, noble Companions? This new well is a gift for the queen.”
At length, Sapalulmas asked to be received. He came late one evening, bearing his measuring cord and tablets covered with his people’s wedge-shaped writing. “Forgive me, Great King,” he apologized, bowing low, “but I do not write your Ahhiyawan script. I have taken all the measurements I need, and made lists, and need only your approval to begin the work.”
His drawings, rendered in charcoal on wood, required little translation. “Great King, the ground inside the walls is hardest, and will take a long time to delve through, but outside—right here, on the northeast, where we probed—it is different, much easier to work. Look here. I can give you a cistern, much better than another well, and make the water flow into the citadel.” He spoke confidently, as though he had but to point at the earth and the thing was done. “You need not fear heat or drought, as it will all be covered over.”
“An underground cistern?” His drawings suggested a tunnel delving into the citadel mount, with steps leading down. “A secret water supply, impervious to attack from outside?”
Sapalulmas nodded with excitement. “We will have to extend your walls to accommodate this, but it will be made strong, and you will have room for another storehouse, perhaps, or housing for your sentries.”
I consulted with him three more times, even inspected the proposed building site with him, to make certain he knew what he was doing. My secretary Sama set my official seal upon Sapalulmas’s order for limestone plaster and clay piping, and sent a request to the nearby quarry for laborers, quantities of stone and skilled masons to work it.
One unforeseen obstacle lurked in my own household. Hermione had much to say about my using her name as justification for the project. “When have I ever complained about the wait for my bath water?” she asked. “And why would you even tell the court such a thing?”
Gods above, women harped on the most frivolous matters! “I told my companions that I wished to please you by not making you wait too long for your bathwater to be drawn.”
Her eyes blazed. “Whatever you said, that’s not what people are saying now! Would you have them think me shallow and empty-headed, like...?” Like Helen. Hermione hated any comparison with the version of her mother that the bards had fabricated.
“That wasn’t what I intended at all.” Waving my wife’s handmaidens from the chamber, I crossed to her dressing table where she sat with both arms folded over her breasts, and bent to kiss her; she jerked her head away. “If our enemies attacked tomorrow,” I whispered in her ear, “we would perish of thirst up here on the citadel mount. When the cistern is finished, we will have an abundant and reliable source of water.”
The truth did little to mollify her. “And you have to tarnish my reputation to do it?”
“How does it tarnish your reputation when people marvel at how much your husband dotes upon you, that he’s willing to knock down his north wall and build a cistern just so you can have clean water?” I retorted. She sometimes clung to such ridiculous fancies! During the war, when she had had to endure the slanders about her mother, that I could understand. And later, dogged by undeserved rumors that she had arranged her first husband’s death, of course she would be hurt and angry. This was nothing, though, a simple cistern to channel water into the citadel. “I have ears, too,” I said, “and no one at this court would dare dishonor your name.”
Hermione remained sore, nevertheless. That night, I lay with Chione, but dismissed her early and got very little sleep. I dreamt that my wife had ordered her bathtub filled with blood, and knelt down beside it to soak her hair in the gore like a demon of the darkness. So it was with bleary eyes and an irritable disposition that I toured the work site the next morning.
Sapalulmas’s Cretan overseer had laborers opening the north wall just wide enough to allow access to the ground the engineer had marked out with staves and colored cords; the man claimed to have worked for Idomeneus at Knossos, which I doubted, but he was able to decipher Sapalulmas’s drawings and cuneiform notes, and confirmed that the workers would break ground on the actual cistern in another three or four days.
The citadel mount echoed with the knock of chisels and the grunts of men laboring under the hot sun. Dust filtered the air. Arkados had extra sentries on the site; my Captain of the Guard could guess at the cistern’s true purpose, but was more concerned with the danger of breaching the wall. I saw him patrolling the ramparts, savagely reprimanding any errant sentry he came across.
On the way back to the megaron, I slowed my stride and drew my valet aside, while indicating the companions should remain at a discreet distance. “What do the people say about the queen?” I asked him.
But Eteokles hesitated with his answer. Had he heard something slanderous, then? “Tell me the truth,” I urged. “Do they find Queen Hermione haughty and vain, like the queen of Sparta, or do they revere her? Do they think me a lovesick fool for doting on her?”
A bright red flush told me how little he liked finding himself in this embarrassing situation. “People say you’re smitten with a beautiful woman, my lord, and will do anything for her. They also say that the queen is gracious, quite the opposite from your...” Eteokles realized what he was about to say, and he swallowed back the words.
I knew the name he had been about to utter, but did not press him about it. Pylades had said far worse about Elektra when the mood struck him. I waved the valet’s concerns aside as inconsequential. “And what gossip have you heard about this building project?”
Eteokles covered his nervousness with a little cough. “No one believes that you’re building a cistern for the queen’s bath, my lord. Everyone knows the citadel mount has only three wells and gets dry in summer, and that it’s time something was done about it.”
As a matter of fact, I saw no reason why Atreus should not have furnished the citadel mount with a more reliable water source decades ago when he had extended the original Perseid fortifications. Had he run out of funds? “Very well, let’s be on our way.” I nodded toward Eteokles, and nudged him along.
That evening, my wife grudgingly accepted my apology, though not, to my dismay, my gift of gold beads. “Think first,” she said sharply, “before you do such a thing again.”
Her continued emphasis on her reputation irked me. Had I used her name for some nefarious purpose, as Father had used Achilles to lure Iphigenia and Mother to Aulis? “You worry over nothing,” I told her. Right away, as though she had not heard me, she started to protest. “I made inquiries this morning. No one thinks you vain or demanding.”
Hermione set down her comb. “Do you honestly think they would tell you the truth?”
“You are a queen,” I reminded her. “Why does it concern you so?” I deposited the gold beads on her dressing table. “A vain and selfish woman would have snatched these directly from of my hand and asked for a matching bracelet, and that you are not. From what I heard, no one believes my absurd story about the cistern and your bath water.”
Hermione gave the necklace a troubled look. “Then you made yourself look foolish for nothing.”
“Then let them laugh. Let them call me young and untried and foolish, if that’s what suits them. In the end, I will make fools of them all.”
But she did not share my carefree spirit. “Orestes,” she said, sighing heavily. “Once a rumor begins, it never dies. You know that.” Picking up her ivory-handled comb, she resumed running it through the shining fall of her red hair.
I dismissed the blood-drenched imagery of last night’s dream from my mind, while reflecting that had she flouted her beauty more than she did, it would not have bothered me overmuch. “You were never this concerned in Sparta,” I said. “Are the ladies of the court troubling you with their loose tongues?” As much as she enjoyed holding her women’s court, I knew full well that the noblewomen who brought their spinning and embroidery, advice, and chatter also attempted to prey on her sympathetic nature in order to win favors for themselves or their kinsmen. That I would not tolerate. A man lacking the courage and breeding to come out from behind a kinswoman’s skirts had nothing to recommend him, doubly so when he had the nerve to harass my queen.
Hermione slowly shook her head. “Elektra hovers over me like a lioness, and would gouge out the eyes of any lady who tried.” A second little sigh escaped her. “But I think I understand now why your mother never held a ladies’ court.”
*~*~*~*
When the Hittite engineer undertook a task, I discovered, he obsessed over it. “He eats, breathes, and sleeps building,” Pylades reported, scratching his beard in amazement. “He refused the woman I sent him two nights ago, and most days he has to be reminded to take his meals and leave the site when darkness falls.”
The next morning, when I decided to visit the site, I found Sapalulmas at the center of his manmade maelstrom. His black hair powdered with dust, his measuring cord hanging from his belt, Sapalulmas was chastising a worker who had lost his chisel; the man towered above him, but the diminutive engineer’s invective of rapid-fire Hittite continued unabated, ceasing only when he saw me.
Stunned, his sweat-and-dust-stained face brightened, and he bowed low. “Great King!”
I waved the workers, who had fallen respectfully silent, back to work. “Show us what you have done.”
I followed him to the edge of a hole descending no more than ten feet into the earth and rock. Laborers gathered the dirt into large wicker baskets to toss into the ravine, but kept back the more substantial debris to use as fill. As a boy, I had learned enough about architecture to understand Sapalulmas when he explained how he would construct the cistern. Once the tunnel was deep enough, and the first shipments of limestone arrived, the masons would line the passage walls and start raising the supporting structure to take the weight of the corbel vaulting required to roof over the entrance passage. His calculations also told me roughly how much the stones would weigh, and how many men and oxen it would take to move them. “How far down must you delve?” I asked.
“The passage will have to turn, and turn again,” Sapalulmas replied, “to follow the line of cords along the hill. There will be corbel vaulting here, then saddle roofing along the next section. To dig is easy, Great King, but to make the building strong is what takes the longest time. That is because the earth shakes here, as it does in the Lukka-lands where I was born. All must be done carefully.”
I nodded agreement. “How long have you dwelt among the Hellenes?”
Sapalulmas was taken aback at being asked a personal question. “Ten years, Great King.”
“And you have no other name?” Sapalulmas would be with me a long time, I could see, and it would not do for to continue stumbling over his foreign name.
He shook his head, his bewilderment growing over the odd turn in the conversation. Pylades was right; he lived only for his work. “My mother,” he said, “named me for a Great King of Hatti.”
Foreign kings meant nothing to me, unless they sent their ambassadors to my court. “Then we will call you Tekton,” I told him. “It means ‘builder’ in the Hellene tongue.”
Sapalulmas mouthed the name, considering it, then pressed his dusty hand over his heart and nodded. “Great King,” he murmured reverently.
Brushing the dust from my clothing, I found my brother-in-law’s secretary waiting with an urgent message about news that could not wait.
I found Pylades in his cubicle, frowning over a document I recognized as the agreement I had signed and sealed with Tiryns.
“Cylarabes has sent his agent to collect the monthly upkeep for your ships.” Pylades tightened his jaw. “He’s is charging you the same amount as before, and has instructed his emissary to tell you that if you can afford to indulge your wife’s whims, then you can certainly afford to properly maintain your fleet.”
Damn him! I clamped down against the urge to punch the wall. Gods above, a day would shortly come when no one would dare double-cross me, and then the warden of Tiryns would be a very sorry man, indeed.
After a moment, I slumped onto the inlaid chair across from Pylades, and growled, “Ignore the order as if you never received it, and send the agreed-upon price. The agent can protest all he likes, but be sure to tell him to tell his master that if he disapproves, well, then he’s welcome to come himself and settle the matter with me directly.”
*~*~*~*
Chione entered the bedchamber with downcast eyes and her arms hugging her breasts. What was this? She was never reluctant to come to me, until tonight. I beckoned to her. “What’s the matter, young lady?”
She swallowed hard, and, without meeting my eyes, answered in a small voice, “My lord, I have a child.”
A child—it must be mine, conceived after my return from Sparta—and yet she acted as though she expected me to thrash her. “Are you certain?” A short nod confirmed it, which made her fear even more inexplicable. I thumped the mattress, for she had not advanced much beyond the doorway. “Come over here, and let me gaze upon you.”
Her fertility imbued her with greater desirability, although she was, as I understood these matters, too early for the lushness of breast and thigh Hermione had begun to show. And for some strange reason, pregnancy made Chione as timid as she had been on our very first night together, afraid to incur my anger even as I fondled her breasts and thighs; it took considerable persuasion to get her to comprehend that her condition pleased me.
“Then, my lord, you don’t want me to take the medicine?” Chione looked dumbstruck.
It took me a moment to grasp the euphemism women used for that particular business. “Absolutely not! I forbid it.”
“But, my lord...”
“But, what?” A sensible woman would have shut her mouth. “You’re carrying the seed of a king.”
Chione flushed bright red, and her eyes grew moist with burgeoning tears. Gods, I had summoned her for my pleasure, not her weeping. “The queen is with child, my lord,” she explained. “She’ll be angry.”
“The queen is not your concern,” I told her irritably. “Now, dry your eyes and spread your thighs.”
I made certain not to ride her too hard that night, and before sending her away cautioned her to eat well and rest for the child’s sake.
Hermione would hardly welcome the prospect of a bastard son or daughter, but she would obey my command and see to it that Chione was not mistreated; with time she might even realize how useful a natural child could be. A son could be molded into a loyal soldier, perhaps even into a competent captain, or he could be educated, turned into a scribe or priest. A daughter could be reared in the palace, and, once she was old enough, given away as a wife to seal an important alliance. What nobleman or lesser king would refuse a chance to marry into the House of Atreus? I could disperse my offspring throughout Hellas, as Pelops had done.
Two days later, my wife and sister came to inform me about the pregnancy. “Husband, we have heard that you are to be father again.” Hermione adopted a very formal stance. She had even brought a strand of beads for Chione, but when she attempted to force a semblance of cheerfulness into her voice, her composure deserted her; her eyes were not smiling. “Your concubine has—”
“Chione is with child,” I finished gently.
In sharp contrast with my elegant spouse, Elektra made no secret what she thought about the matter; she scowled and snorted her disgust. “If that lowly slut has troubled you with her—”
“That ‘slut’ is my property,” I reminded her, “and she is carrying my seed. Furthermore, dear sister, I am aware that she and the other women are under your supervision, so it falls to you to make sure that Chione isn’t abused or forced to relinquish the gift I have bestowed upon her.” Hermione stiffened in the chair she had taken. “Make certain Chione has enough to eat and that she rests if she’s ill or gets too tired.”
“The girl’s a slave, not your wife.”
Hermione’s obvious distress, coupled with my sister’s defiance, frayed my diminishing patience. “Do you object?”
Elektra, as was her wont, bulled past the warning. “You’ve no need for a bastard.”
“Then you’re as ignorant as you are stubborn.” I wanted this argument finished, to spare my wife’s pride; to upset her so was to risk the all-important heir she was carrying. “You would do well to remember that our authority here is absolute. Now, do as we command and see to the girl’s health.”
