The Arrow of Apollo, page 17
The eyes of Orestes, haunted and ravaged with sorrow, rested on Silvius’s. The weight that they carried was like a physical force.
‘You are the age of my Tisamenos,’ said the king, softly. Electra, eyes bright, merely glared at him.
‘Meet me at the tombs, when the night is still and the watchman calls the fourth watch.’
Orestes withdrew the sword. ‘Well then, son of the wolf. The King of Mykenai will see what you have to show.’
And Silvius, bowing deeply, backed away, fearing that at any moment Orestes might change his mind. He reached the door, turned and stepped out into the corridor.
As soon as he had done so, he ran. He did not think he could stand Electra any longer.
The moon was a pale disc hanging low in the darkening sky. Among the shadows of the beehive tombs, Silvius stopped to wait, turning everything over in his mind.
He had been alone with his thoughts for quite some time now. Would the plan work? Would Elissa be successful with Erigone?
More than ever he missed Lavinium; its clean newness, and the forest glades of his early life. He wanted to wake up and see the sun dappling through soft green leaves, and hear the pounding of his brother’s horse nearby, not this terrible black stone citadel.
A low whistle made him look up. Instinctively he put his hand to his dagger. A figure approached that resolved itself into the familiar shape of Elissa, and he relaxed. She threw herself down next to him.
‘Erigone is not an easy woman,’ she said, and hugged herself. ‘I wish I had Ruffler here.’
‘Was she suspicious?’ asked Silvius.
In the moonlight he could make out her furrowed brow. Elissa tossed her hair back from her forehead, and shook her head. He was very pleased to see her.
‘I don’t know, but I told her how important it was to be secret – she said she would be here at the appointed time.’ She sighed once more, the air blowing away some strands from her face. ‘And how was he?’ The way she intoned ‘he’ made it very clear that she meant Orestes.
Silvius did not want to tell her what he had experienced. The terror of death, the strangeness of Electra and the ancient power of that royal house. He had felt the blood feuds between them, and also the lines that bound them across the years and generations like a huge web.
If you pulled at one strand, it might threaten to catch you in it too.
So he simply nodded, and said, ‘I told him what I had to. Now we have to wait, and hope that all goes as Tisamenos planned.’
‘It will.’ That flinty voice, coming from nowhere, startled them. Tisamenos appeared slowly from behind a rock. He took his place slightly apart. ‘That, I promise you.’
They sat in silence as the moon rose and silvered the tombs.
They heard the watchman cry out the fourth watch; and then their moods became more tense. Silvius kept drumming his hands on his knees, whilst Elissa looked up sharply at every movement. Only Tisamenos was still; eerily so. It made Silvius uncomfortable.
Every rustle, every sound, might be someone approaching. It occurred to Silvius that either Erigone or Orestes might bring guards, and they might be discovered very quickly.
At last, a woman, muffled up in a long cloak, appeared at the end of the path that snaked between the beehive tombs, carrying a single torch. She paused in front of the door of the second tomb on the left, and placed the torch against the wall.
This was the signal. Elissa gulped.
Silvius flashed Elissa a look of encouragement. She had to keep Erigone here until Orestes arrived. If he didn’t, they would have to overpower Erigone, and that would lead to all sorts of complications.
Elissa approached her softly.
Erigone, on the other hand, did not waste any time. ‘Tell me, then, young Cretan, what your plan is.’ Silvius thought she spoke like somebody who was used to getting her own way, whatever the cost.
‘First you must agree to our terms,’ said Elissa, firmly.
‘Foolish girl,’ snapped Erigone. ‘I will not agree to any terms without knowing what your plan for Orestes is. Or have you brought me out here on a phantom chase?’
‘Not at all,’ answered Elissa. ‘I have what you want.’
‘Then don’t play games with me, young girl. You do not want me as your enemy.’
‘Crete’s power is waning in the Middle Sea,’ said Elissa, stalling. Silvius admired her confidence. He saw Tisamenos watching her carefully. It made him feel protective of her. ‘We need an ally we can trust. Orestes will never make terms with us. But you …’
‘I … as queen, ruling, of course, in place of Penthilos until he is old enough … Yes, I understand. But you see, I have a problem. And that is what to do with Orestes.’
‘Yes – what to do with Orestes?’ A flare of torchlight, and the hollow face of the King of Mykenai was illuminated.
‘Treachery!’ cried Erigone. ‘I tricked this girl here into revealing her plot against your life!’ It was a shocking lie. Silvius wanted to rush out immediately, but Tisamenos restrained him.
‘I go first,’ he whispered.
‘The boy was right,’ said Orestes, his voice heavy with weariness.
‘The boy was.’ Tisamenos now stepped into the torchlight, walking stiffly, head erect, his mutilated hand held aloft as if it were a trophy. ‘I, Tisamenos, was right. Your son.’
Twenty-Eight
The Fury
Tisamenos approached the King and Queen of Mykenai in a circle of tawny light. ‘I was right, Father.’ He saw Elissa, standing proudly beside Erigone. How brave she had been, entering into that nest of vipers.
‘Traitor!’ cried Erigone. ‘He’s called us both here to murder us with his foreign friends and take the throne!’
Silvius placed his dagger on the ground. ‘Not I.’ This rough Italian had something noble in him, Tisamenos thought.
Tisamenos felt his sinews stiffen. ‘Father – Mother. I have to show you something. It is time for the truth to be known.’ He laid a palm on the stone door of the tomb, and then took Erigone’s hand. She flinched, but he held it tightly. ‘Father, please put your hand on your wife’s.’ Orestes, gazing anxiously at his son, did so.
The stones were part of him now. They were in him, and they spoke through him. In the cold halls of his mind, his father and his stepmother now appeared, and they saw what he saw.
He felt an insidious sense of power dancing ahead of them in the corridors, shouting, ‘Follow! Follow!’ They had no choice but to do so, pulled along by the force of the stones, as Tisamenos closed the way behind them.
The stones showed them everything. First, the wicked Tantalos, grinning in his foulness, standing triumphant before a table groaning with slaughter. Then Atreos and Thyestes, clothes and faces spattered with blood.
What came next was closer to home. They paused on the steps of the kinghouse.
It was a hot afternoon. Flies buzzed above an old dog who slept, whimpering slightly, in the shade. A soldier, back from the war, was greeting his daughter, his weary face relaxed at last, marvelling at how she’d grown in the ten years since they’d sailed for Troy.
King Agamemnon was entering into his bathhouse, followed by Cassandra, her Trojan robes bright. He took off his war gear, let himself gently into the bath, allowing Cassandra to wash the back of his neck, his shoulders. Tisamenos saw war being eased away from his grandfather. Cassandra began to sing something, a Trojan lament, and Agamemnon grabbed her hand as if to stop her.
The door opened, a wedge of light spilled across the floor, and then a net was thrown over the king and his concubine. A dagger, and a sword, and the bathwater dripping red.
Tisamenos heard Orestes sob.
But they had to go on.
And now, years later, a boy not much older than Tisamenos, in armour that didn’t fit him properly, was standing in the hall of his ancestors. His sister Electra was goading him onwards. He stood, irresolute, before making a decision and marching into Clytemnestra’s chamber.
There was a terrible cry, and it was Clytemnestra, and it was Orestes too. ‘Snake!’ came a shout from the queen.
A moment later, the boy was staggering out of the room, a bloody mark on his face, his expression aghast; then Aegisthos was rushing into the hall, unarmed, and Orestes was blindly, furiously, slaying him.
‘You’ve seen it now,’ said Tisamenos’s father behind him. ‘You’ve seen what I did.’
Then they saw the daughter of Aegisthos, Erigone, sole survivor of her family, always in the shadows, watching as Orestes married the beautiful Hermione and bore him a handsome son, nursing revenge in her heart.
Erigone, now slipping into Hermione’s chamber, handing her a goblet; Hermione drinking, and choking, foam spattering her gentle mouth; Hermione slumping onto her dressing table, knocking over a jug of clear water.
The stones were relentless. They were now in Erigone’s chamber. They saw her meeting with an old wise man who passed her a bottle of poison. They saw her spreading the poison on the tunic. They saw her putting it into the chest in Tisamenos’s room.
That was enough.
Tisamenos, drained, released his grip on Erigone, leaving her holding hands for a moment with Orestes. He left his palm on the door, his lips moving in thanks.
Husband and wife parted.
Erigone was trembling, like a tree in the breeze. She lifted up her skirts. ‘I will go back to the kinghouse now, and I will raise the alarm. These are enemies, helped no doubt by those who hate us. What we saw was some kind of trick, some vision made by a dark wizard.’
Orestes regarded her. He said, softly, ‘I took you in. I married you. I wanted an end to all this! Our son Penthilos, he would be a sign of peace between our branches … But you killed my wife, you exiled my son …’
‘It’s mine,’ said Erigone, unexpectedly softly. Tisamenos saw that her expression had altered. Gone was the pleading innocent; now there was something harder. ‘This citadel, this kinghouse. By holy right, it’s mine. Aegisthos was king here, and I am his daughter! I did only what our family has always done.’
‘It has to stop!’ cried Orestes. ‘It’s like a slaughterhouse … Every day I battle with it …’
‘It cannot stop. Kill me, and in time Penthilos will take his revenge on Tisamenos.’
‘I will not kill you,’ said Orestes.
‘I don’t understand.’ There was a stillness, and both seemed to Tisamenos to be trapped by the weight of the past, by the horror of the present.
In a moment she had turned, and was running out of the tombs.
‘Quickly!’ Tisamenos sprang after her, and the others followed along the stony path.
‘She’ll try to raise the kinghouse against us,’ called Orestes.
They were catching up with her. Soon she was stumbling up the broad steps of the kinghouse, and into its dark, torchlit corridors.
‘Keep her from her women,’ called Orestes.
‘I know where to take her.’ Tisamenos blocked her off from the women’s quarters. She headed down the dank-smelling corridor that led to the cellars. The logic of his mind was taking over, pushing them onwards towards the only possible ending. His kinship with the kinghouse now felt total, as if it was inside him, as if he was also at the same time the house itself, leading Erigone on and on.
Filled now with a kind of exultation, Tisamenos herded Erigone into the hidden corner with the secret door. Erigone, at bay, turned to face her pursuers, Silvius with his sword raised, Elissa poised to block her way if she tried to run.
Erigone’s eyes glinted cruelly in the torchlight. Straight and tall, she did not waver.
‘If you kill me now, in this place, my ghost will haunt you,’ she said.
‘I will not kill you,’ said Orestes. He pressed the spring that opened the door. ‘Go down.’
‘Exile me. Send me away. I will go to the furthest north.’
‘You must go down.’ Tisamenos’s voice was cold and hard now.
She had no choice. She went into the room where the black cube sat, its terrible pictures stark in the flickering flames. This time Tisamenos struck the mechanism, and opened a panel in its side.
‘Down,’ said Orestes.
‘What is beneath?’ Erigone was still proud, and did not betray her emotion.
‘Your fate,’ said Tisamenos. A stench reached their nostrils, rank and strong. Silvius spluttered, and Elissa coughed.
Tisamenos went first with a torch. He could hear the clink of the chain as the beast sensed them. Then Erigone followed him, stiffly, but holding her hands over her mouth against the smell. Orestes followed her, and Silvius and Elissa, looking suddenly small and young, came after.
This was what the stones wanted, and this was how he would end the cycle of horror that had haunted his house.
The chamber below was black as the night sky. Erigone, pride still ringing, said, ‘You cannot do this to me!’ Orestes seized the torch from Tisamenos.
‘See, Erigone,’ he said, ‘see the curse of the House of Atreos.’ Tisamenos watched Erigone as the torch lit up a recumbent form. His stepmother let out a terrified moan as the light touched the Fury, as it unfurled wings, leathery and huge, and twisted round to face them, a terrible distortion of a woman, a lizard, a dragon, a monster, its teeth huge and dripping, its eyes yellow and pitiless. It sniffed the air, and screamed, pulling on its chain.
‘What is that?’ Silvius’s horrified face was like a mask.
‘It is from the Underworld …’ Elissa spluttered.
‘So it is true …’ Erigone gasped. The Fury pawed at the ground, its claws scraping. ‘They said there was a Fury here … I did not think it possible …’ Her voice was trembling now, betraying her fear.
She tried to run up the stairs, but Tisamenos grabbed her by the elbow. She snarled at him, scratching with her long nails. He held firm.
Orestes approached the Fury. With a low growl, it slunk aside for him, its huge shape retreating and coiling round like a snake. Releasing Erigone, Tisamenos saw his father take the box from its place on the ledge. He lifted it up in triumph, and showed it to Erigone.
‘This is what they seek. I do not know what is in it, but this is what will save us. I have the trust of the gods. I have kept it, as a mark of my pride, and as a mark of my shame. The Fury will allow anyone pure in intent to take it from its place. Erigone, I challenge you. I challenge you to take the box.’ He returned it, slotting it back, and then stepped aside. ‘If you do it successfully, you will be pardoned. If not – then death.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘A public trial, a public shaming, a public execution.’
‘I will take the box.’
Determined but trembling, Erigone slowly approached the Fury. It curled its lips, showing its sharp, pointed teeth. But it remained still, only pawing slightly at the ground.
With a quick lunge, Erigone went for the box. She closed her hands on it, and an expression of cold pride passed across her features. ‘It’s mine! I have it!’
The Fury drew back.
But it was only gathering its strength. Quick as a hawk, it reared, its wings eclipsing everything, and Erigone barely had time to shriek once as it enveloped her with its snapping teeth and tearing claws.
There was a terrible moment of hideous movement.
And then there was silence. The Fury, slowly, furled its wings along its back, and turned its head to regard Orestes and Tisamenos.
‘The pattern is broken …’ it hissed. ‘The curse is lifted.’
Then it bowed its head, once; and where there had been a Fury, there was suddenly nothing but an empty space.
Silence gripped the room like a fever.
They stood, unable to move, gazing for what seemed like an eternity. Tisamenos rested his hands gently against the stone wall. He was met by a sense of peace.
‘The Fury has gone,’ said Tisamenos. ‘Our house is free.’
Orestes was weeping. He grasped Tisamenos and buried his head in his shoulder. ‘Can it be true?’ he said, voice muffled. ‘All those years of blood, everything, it has finished?’
‘It has, Father,’ replied Tisamenos. ‘It has. We did not kill Erigone – the Fury did. The cycle is finished. Penthilos has no cause.’ He was just a little baby, sleeping innocently in his wooden cradle.
And now Tisamenos, the weight gone from his mind, wept too, clutching his father as he had not done since he was a tiny boy.
Twenty-Nine
The Bearer of the Bow
Elissa watched the Achaean king and his son, together in their embrace. The darkness around her seemed less threatening now. She could make out the outlines of the stones in the walls, pools of water collected in the cracks of the floor, moss growing tenaciously.
Elissa felt a sudden pang. She couldn’t remember ever having met her father, let alone hugging him. She felt awkward, but at the same time wanted them to stay together, and sensing Silvius’s impatience, she placed a gentle hand on his.
Father and son parted. Orestes, standing back a pace, stroked Tisamenos’s cheek, and paused when he came to the stone part of his head. A frown passed over his features.
‘What’s this?’
‘I have a lot to tell you, Father,’ said Tisamenos. There was a note of pride in his voice, but also a quiet respect. It seemed to Elissa that Orestes was looking at his son with new eyes.
‘But first we must do what we came here for,’ Silvius cut in, stepping forwards and taking the chain from his neck. ‘What is in the box?’ His eyes were glistening brightly, and he looked feverish and flushed.
‘I do not know. But I know that it is for you.’
Orestes solemnly opened the lid, which shone now with a white light.
Elissa edged forwards to look into it and for a blissful moment she felt the beauty of Apollo’s light. She heard Orestes gasp, and then her eyes adjusted.
