The Warrior, page 18
part #3 of Orestes Series
Instead, she hovered at my elbow, her body casting its own shade. “Do you honestly expect me to stand idly by while my brother the king lashes himself with the sting of Helios’s glare for a woman who deserved her fate? Pah! You’re a fool.” Turning, she seized faithful Eteokles’ arm, and shoved him toward the onlookers with orders to disperse them. Then she returned, folded her legs under her, and sat down on the dusty threshold beside me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. “Didn’t I just tell you to go attend your women’s work?”
Elektra brazenly met my eyes, as though daring me to challenge her. “I’m a terrible needlewoman, and hate spinning wool,” she said. “So I think I’ll sit here and keep you company, and observe the anniversary of the day Mother Dia sent us her sign.”
“What sign?” A bead of perspiration rolled down the side of my face. I itched from the ants crawling in the dust; the food offerings left in the sanctuary always attracted them.
“When the old house snake abandoned the sanctuary, and the new snake appeared.” Elektra clasped her arms around her knees. “I found her sunning on the omphalos. I offered her milk, and she lapped it right up, without darting away as most snakes do. That occurred on the very day you went before the priests at Delphi and sloughed off your sins, just like a snake’s skin.
I wiped the sweat away with the back of my dusty hand. “You never told me that.”
Just then, several figures entered the temenos of the sanctuary: my wife’s maidservants and my own companions, carrying staves, cords, and striped fabric to construct an awning above the doorway. “It’s the queen’s orders, my lord,” Iobates explained. “She also bade us tell you that she’ll personally come down if you try to hinder us.”
Hermione had no business interfering, much less issuing orders to my followers which countermanded my own. I shook my head at the jug of water a handmaid proffered.
Elektra stood and took the jug from the young woman’s hands. “The king is determined to be stubborn, Monime.” A sudden shock of cold water drenching my head and shoulders turned the dust to mud, and made me jump.
“Damn you,” I cursed.
“Even the pilgrims who sit day and night on the steps at Delphi cover their heads, and drink something,” Elektra informed me.
I shook stray droplets from my hair. “How would you know that, when you’ve never even been there?”
“I have ears, Brother.” Elektra scuffed the mud with her sandal. “Thebe, bring more water, and a blanket to sit on. The king of Mycenae shouldn’t have to endure the indignity of ant bites on his buttocks.”
“We fail to appreciate your humor,” I grumbled. “This is a sacred occasion, and you’ve turned it into a farce.”
Elektra said nothing until after the awning went up, and the handmaiden returned with the water, two clay cups, and a woolen blanket to keep the insects and dust away. When she did speak again, she took a more reverent tone. “Shall I bring Hekate or the dread Persephone from the altar to observe your vigil?”
I indicated my refusal. “They belong to the darkness.”
“Do you want some other god with you, then?”
“No,” I answered, “but you may stay.” Keeping vigil was a hard thing to do alone.
So she remained on the threshold with me throughout the day, making certain I drank water, and swishing the flies away with a wooden whisk. “Why do you feel the need to do this?” she asked. “It’s unwise to call attention to past crimes and misfortunes.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted, “but it troubles me still. Last night, in the megaron, I sensed her presence. It gave me no rest.”
Sighing, Elektra let her head fall to one side; her hair had strayed from its bandeau, and now straggled across her damp forehead. “Feeding certain ghosts makes them even hungrier.”
As the light vanished, and a horned moon rose, she joined my companions in escorting me upstairs, where my wife waited with a cool bath and a meal with which to break my fast.
Hermione sent away her servants, and with her own hands tenderly bathed the sweat and grime from my limbs before rubbing soothing Egyptian aloe onto my sunburned skin. “Why did you not go into the sanctuary and sit before the altar, away from all the curiosity seekers?” she asked quietly. “Your enemies will talk.”
“Let them.” I closed my eyes to concentrate on her fingers smoothing the aloe over my right shoulder. Perhaps today had been a mistake, as she and Elektra intimated. I felt no particular relief, only a nagging disquiet, as though a door had been left unlatched, or something important had gone undone. “The sanctuary is dark, like the cave, and the gods stare.” Her silence disturbed me. “No, I am not mad, not hearing voices.”
“Orestes,” she said, like a mother sighing over a beloved yet unruly child. “Find some other way to honor her, some way that will not set tongues wagging.”
When Hermione finished, she kissed my cheek and blew out the lamp to let me rest. The air was motionless, stale, but less fraught with restlessness than it had been last night.
One lingering thought occurred to me just before I sank into unconsciousness: Pylades had not come to the sanctuary, had not even questioned my actions. No, he would not, because he had no need. In the way that men who had shared an ordeal had with each other, he already knew.
*~*~*~*
As autumn arrived, bringing with it cooler temperatures and the festival of the vines, Hermione expressed a curious desire to bed down in the women’s sanctuary in order to be closer to the gods. Absolutely not. The lower citadel was filthy and noisy, and less easily guarded, hardly fit for the queen of Mycenae.
“Look at my ankles!” she groaned. “I waddle like a duck.” Hermione was beached among the cushions her women had tucked against her back. “How am I supposed to tend the altars when I can’t even manage the stairs?”
“You’re tending them just fine.” I gestured to the libation cups and countless votive offerings scattered atop her private altar. “Elektra will make certain the gods in the cult house are satisfied.”
“Elektra!” Hermione’s voice broke as she flung back her head. “Elektra does everything, and I do nothing!”
Her fragile nerves meant she wept easily, and for no sound reason. I tried to avoid upsetting her whenever possible, because that meant agitating the child, too. “You’re carrying the future king of Mycenae, and that’s just as important as managing the storehouses and tending the altars. Have your women play music and rub you with soothing oil.” I scoured my mind for suitable suggestions. “Would you like me to send for your mother?”
Lifting her head from the cushions, she gazed at me, then morosely shook her head. “She can’t travel this late in the year, even if my father allowed it.”
She was right: autumn brought roughening seas, and dropped snow in the high mountain passes linking Sparta with Argolis. Any visit from Helen or Menelaus would have to wait until spring. “Then send for the priestesses,” I said, “and have them bring the idols so you may honor them as you see fit, but I won’t have you going down all those stairs to the cult house.”
Although I did not tell her as much, I wanted her and the child secure in the palace, now that I had stirred a hornet’s nest with the Nemeans. Chromios had done exactly as expected, and sputtered his outraged refusal at Nearchos, who had the unenviable task of reporting his every expletive back to me. I threw a tantrum of my own, swore at my councilors, and perfected the guise of frustrated anger to confound Melandros, who demanded on his king’s behalf—as though he owned that right!—to know why I had antagonized Nemea.
My courtiers shook their heads at my naïveté. Elektra looked at me askance, perhaps fearing that I had been hearing voices, and Hermione could not believe my recklessness, especially when I had told her right after our wedding that it was far too early to antagonize anyone. No, what I had actually said was that it was too soon to challenge the Argives. Oath breakers, traitors, and wayward vassals were fair game.
Perfect. Everyone except those in on the ruse believed I had blundered. If Chromios anticipated a reprisal, he doubtlessly expected an open attack during the late spring or early summer, when men typically went to war. Well, I might have been young, but I had not neglected my studies. My grandfather had perfected the art of stealth raids. Atreus had captured Midea on a winter’s night with sixty men, and had drilled them for months by leading them on night marches in all weather. What he had done decades ago, I could do now, with my experience in leading predawn raids on brigand dens.
All I needed to bring about Chromios’s capitulation was a traitor within the citadel to open the postern gate.
*~*~*~*
“What do you know about tholos tombs?”
On a gray, blustery day, I brought Tekton from the citadel to inspect the unfinished tomb I had designated the Lion Tomb. Thyestes had begun it decades ago, and Aegisthus, hoping to inter his father’s bones there, had completed all but the decorations, ceremonial dromos, and dome.
The Hittite turned a complete circle where he stood, squinting to evaluate the quality of the workmanship via the daylight spilling in through the circular opening above. For now, wooden scaffolding buttressed the stonework inside, while the earthworks mounding the finished courses from the outside kept the structure from collapsing under its own immense weight.
“Corbel construction,” he mused, “similar to what we are using to support the passage leading into your cistern. It needs only the uppermost courses.” Tekton then nodded toward the great lintel above the doorway, and the holes bored into the doorjambs; the pins had not been set, as the doors themselves had not yet been commissioned. “What is the Great King’s wish?”
“We wish for it to be finished according to our specifications,” I replied. “Have you worked on a tomb before?”
Tekton nodded. “On chamber tombs, yes, but this is not much different, only larger. Does the Great King wish me to set men to laboring on this project? Autumn is not the right season to begin new work, but we may accomplish a little before winter comes.”
Tempting as it was, I nevertheless knew where my priorities lay. “It is vital that you continue working on the cistern, but next year we may ask you to finish the dome and earthworks. Will you be ready?”
Tekton bent double, his ridiculous Phrygian cap almost touching his knees. “Whatever the Great King commands, I will obey.”
When Hermione learned I had engaged the Hittite’s services to finish the tomb, she handed me a string of gold beads and a silver bracelet set with chunks of amethyst. “These should pay for the stones.”
Astonished, I refused. “I won’t have my queen emptying her jewel box to fund my projects.”
Yet she would not take them back. “Orestes,” she said slowly, “I want you to take these. They came from your father’s spoils, to buy my silence after his murder.” The grim set of her features only accented the dark circles under her eyes; she was not sleeping at night.
If Aegisthus had given her the gold, then that was different. “In that case, my dear, I will do whatever you wish with it,” I said lightly, kissing her cheek. Her bedchamber had become a nesting place for kourotrophoi, and was redolent with the frankincense and myrrh she burned on her little altar.
Hermione smoothed a protective hand over her belly; the infant kicked her day and night. Whenever I touched her there, I could feel him—it must be a boy, to be so strong—moving through her skin, rebelling against the confines of his mother’s womb. Those signs of life engendered in me an overwhelming urge to leave my chamber for hers, to set my shield and spear against her wall, and to protect her and the child with my every waking moment, but she could not bear any company in her bed. “I can’t find a comfortable position,” she lamented, “and then when I do, I have to rush to the privy to empty my bladder. I would only keep you awake at night.”
So I left Hermes with her, and appointed an extra guard and a midwife to her service. Elektra might be midwife enough for twenty women, but she was not always present, and I did not want Hermione left alone for a second, especially when I had to leave the citadel.
Five nights a week, I led sixty men into the dark, cold wilderness around the citadel. I ordered them to dress in leather corselets, and bring bucklers and swords; armor and spears would be too cumbersome on the rough terrain, when the goal was speed and stealth.
My men worked at moving quietly through the darkness of the Chavos ravine. They held their tongues, and endured the season’s freezing wind, rain, and their own muttering discontent. I intimated that brigands haunted the mountains—which they no doubt did—and explained that Atreus had trained his most elite warriors to fight regardless of the season, day or night, on rough terrain.
Words, however, only carried my will only so far. Warriors cared little about wayward vassals, treaties, and tribute, or expansion and the practical necessities which drove that apparatus. Their motivation was simple: prestige and material gain. I promised them gold, cattle, and women in abundance, commensurate with their efforts, and let my glowering displeasure with their continued grousing suggest forfeited estates and the loss of precious honor.
Only Pylades and the Mycenaean assembly understood that those night marches formed the backbone of my plan to capture Nemea. As for the men themselves, they would be told when the time came. Any secrets they did not know, they would not be able to betray.
Chapter Fourteen
Dark clouds brought the first winter rains. Pine logs burned on the great central hearth as I conducted the morning audiences; their crisp, resinous scent recalled memories of my paternal uncle Strophius’s court at Krisa, in the foothills of Mount Parnassus.
The herald announced the first litigants, and the nature of their case. I had to endure yet another dispute over a stolen pig. Gods, did these peasants have nothing better to do in the winter than quarrel among themselves? I had seen both men before, and had marked them as habitual troublemakers. “Perhaps,” I said sourly, “we should take you from your homes and employ you as laborers. A season or two hauling stones and digging ditches might improve your dispositions.”
Both men gawped at me as though I had reprimanded them in a foreign tongue. “My lord—” croaked the defendant.
“Enough.” I cast my gaze sidelong, to signal Eteokles to bring wine, but the young man was strangely and irritatingly absent. When I looked toward him, Sama shook his head, indicating his ignorance. Huffing, I glared again at the litigants. “Slaughter the pig as a sacrifice to Zeus Horkios, and swear upon its blood and thigh bones that you and yours will dwell in peace together. Once you have burned the god’s portion, my deputy will divide what is left equally between you, and that will be the end of it.”
The defendant bowed his head in agreement, but his neighbor cared not for the ruling at all. “I refuse to share my prop—”
“Another word out of you,” I bellowed, “and the animal will become our property!” Gods, where had Eteokles gotten to? I needed wine. Sama bent over his tablet, his stylus moving furiously as he recorded the verdict. “Do you question our right to judge in this matter?”
At last, Eteokles appeared from the vestibule, and edged around the benches as the deputized steward hustled the two litigants from the megaron. Yet he was not carrying the desired wine, nor did he apologize for his unauthorized absence, but knelt down to murmur in my ear, “My lord, the queen has gone into labor.”
Labor. My man’s mind conjured workers swarming over a building site, chiseling stone, and digging ditches; it took me several bewildered moments to realize that Eteokles meant a woman’s labor, childbirth. Hermione’s child was coming. Now, when it was so early in the day? Fool! Yes, now! My face had begun to burn with consternation, and a shiver passed through my body. Eleuthia had entered the citadel according to her will, was with my wife in the birthing chamber, and I could do nothing about it.
When Pylades entered the megaron behind the next petitioner, his demeanor suggested he had already heard the news. As the herald summarized the petitioner’s business, my brother-in-law mounted the dais to speak quietly with me. “Eteokles has told you?” I nodded. “Do you want to cancel the day’s business, or proceed as usual? It will be some time before she delivers.”
That I knew from Elektra’s many lying-ins, and thus tried to return to the morning’s business, only to find myself unable to concentrate. This was a time to offer sacrifices and pray, not dither over petty disputes. It was not long before I changed my mind, and had the herald clear the megaron.
Eteokles ventured out again, returning shortly thereafter without the news I craved. “Forgive me, my lord, but when I tried to inquire after the queen, the princess shut the door on me.”
Pylades cleared his throat. “Go back upstairs,” he said coldly. “Pound a fist on the door and when she answers to box your ears, inform my stubborn wife that her brother the king demands news.”
Eteokles scuttled out wearing a look that said he would rather face a hundred well-armed Trojans than confront Elektra again.
News traveled fast inside the citadel, and it was not long at all before noblemen and court officials began drifting into the megaron with wine and food to keep vigil with their king. The rain hammered down outside, yesterday’s ominous clouds yielding their torrents, and the air smelled wet and rank. Every time the double doors swung open to admit the latest newcomer, a damp gust flapped through the vestibule curtains and licked at the hearth.
A jovial atmosphere filled the megaron, although I did not share in the celebration. I had listened too closely to the women’s chatter that had filled my childhood; I knew of a dozen or more mishaps that could occur. At twenty-nine, Hermione was old for a new mother. She might deliver a stillbirth or a malformed child, or worse, she might die during the labor. I clenched my fist. Women sometimes bled to death on the birthing stool, or were torn, or took fever, making me wonder how any survived at all.
