The Arrow of Apollo, page 4
‘The games will be in honour not only of our marriage – but of Penthilos, our new son!’
Tisamenos stood up suddenly, knocking a silver goblet to the floor, and left the feasting hall. Nobody noticed him go, and he was glad for that.
He headed towards the entrance hall of the kinghouse. For a moment he hung on the threshold, the cool darkness of the building to his right, the dusty, hot street to his left. The noise of the feasting was rising. A group of beautiful ladies wandered through, their light clothes floating about them, their jewels shining on their forearms and on their elaborately dressed hair.
He turned towards them. One of the younger ones let fall a floating piece of cloth, and as she bent to pick it up she glanced at him coquettishly.
Tisamenos did not return the glance.
Instead, he went out, down the steps, into the street below.
As his eyesight adjusted, Tisamenos blinked in the now bright morning. Above him the sky was cloudless, and around him already were cheese sellers and a fuller’s boy carrying a pail of something that smelled so rank he almost turned back into the kinghouse. But he didn’t.
Swallows. Where did they live? Under the eaves of houses. He looked up, but could see no nests hanging under the kinghouse. A donkey brayed nearby, and a farmer with a goat over his shoulders wandered past, whistling. The goat bleated.
Would he have to look under the eaves of every building in the citadel, from swineherd’s hut to kinghouse? The kinghouse alone had dozens of roofs.
This was a test, he knew it. A test he had to pass. She’d said something about his mother. The knowledge that Hero was offering him was just out of his reach.
He wandered through the market in the agora, which was bustling with stallholders. Huge piles of dates, apples, pears and olives glistened on trestle tables. ‘Get your finest wild boar from here! Killed it with me own two hands!’ yelled a scrawny man who looked as if he’d never been on a hunt in his life.
The city was going about its business, as it had done for hundreds of years, even before the House of Atreos had come to rule, and as it would continue to do until his family were nothing but a memory.
One of the cheese sellers was an old man. Tisamenos watched him, his slow movements as he packed up the cheeses in leaves and straw and parcelled them out to the buyers. It didn’t matter to that man who was in the kinghouse. It only mattered that he made his cheese, and sold it, and kept his house safe.
The old man’s little grandson was playing underneath the stall, and Tisamenos caught his quick, bright smile as he went by.
The sun was drawing back the shadows, and the market was filling up with cries.
A girl was tumbling in the streets, her brightly coloured clothes falling around her in waves. She was mesmerising, graceful, yet powerful. Her skin was a rich dark brown, tanned by the sun, and her gleaming black hair was loose, flowing with her garments.
A large man with a short sword at his fat waist was also watching the tumbler. He had a hog-like face and small eyes, and a peculiar grin.
She tumbled as if she were on her own, thrilling to the movement of her own body. When she finished, she simply dropped to the ground before righting herself, but she walked away with a rippling, liquid gait. The large man grinned. He grabbed her by the arm and spun her round with a rough heave. Her expression was stony.
‘You’re coming with me, my pretty,’ said the man. The girl scowled, and the man forced her forwards a few steps.
And suddenly Tisamenos was rushing towards him, knocking him on the head with the flat of his own sword. The man yelped, letting go of the girl, and turned to face Tisamenos.
‘What fly is this? Buzz off, little fly!’ He spat at Tisamenos, hitting his tunic.
Tisamenos, enraged, hurled himself forwards and began to beat him, with all the skill of the wrestling grounds, and all the hatred that had been building up inside him. His mother’s death, his father’s hasty new marriage, the son born so soon afterwards. He smashed the man on his nose, and a satisfying stream of scarlet blood came out, spotting the man’s hands and the street.
His opponent stood still for a second, appraising him, and then punched Tisamenos with as much force as he could muster. It came suddenly, right in his stomach, and, winded, he was knocked over into the dust. The man gripped the scruff of his neck and pushed his head down.
‘You’re not worth it, little fly.’ He pressed Tisamenos’s face down into the dirt, before releasing him with a dismissive grunt.
Tisamenos’s head was spinning. He managed to pull himself upwards, but the man had already gone. Then he blushed, as he noticed that the girl was watching him steadily.
‘I didn’t need you,’ said the girl, flatly, reaching out her arm.
She was close to Tisamenos now. Her chest was heaving. He ignored her offer of help, and stood up by himself.
‘I – I wanted to help you.’
‘I don’t need a child’s help.’ She spat. Tisamenos found it shocking. ‘Especially a soft, useless one like you.’ He was more insulted by her calling him a child. She was hardly older than him, he guessed, though her eyes had the hard wisdom of the streets in them.
‘I … I’m not a …’
She turned to leave, and her tunic rode down her neck. Tisamenos saw, tattooed there, the tiny outline of a swallow.
‘Wait!’ he called.
She ignored him, and he rushed after her, grabbing her wrist. Irritably, she shook him off.
‘Hero. Where is she?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
She ran away to the edge of the agora, where a street led between some low houses. She looked over her shoulder at him, and the look was unmistakeable. It said: follow, if you dare.
Then she was off, darting away like a butterfly.
That was enough for Tisamenos.
He dashed after her.
Five
A Breach of the Walls
LAVINIUM, ITALIA: HOUSE OF THE WOLF
The whip lashed down onto Silvius’s upper back for the eleventh time. The pain was becoming almost unbearable, burning fiercely. It wasn’t close, he reminded himself, to what the casket had felt like. Somehow that helped him.
Yet beads of perspiration were running down his forehead and hitting the ground beneath him. They made dark patterns in the dust.
He heard the noise of the soldier pacing backwards, and steeled himself for the twelfth, and final, stroke.
It was the pauses that were the worst. At least if the strokes were regular, then he could anticipate the next. But his punisher was biding his time.
He watched the shadow of the man on the ground. He relaxed, and then the whip snapped with greater force than any of the previous strokes. Silvius was determined not to show any sign of pain.
But it was hard, and his mind filled with a hot brightness that threatened to spill out into a cry.
In the end, he couldn’t keep it in, his voice echoing around the courtyard.
‘Finished,’ said the soldier, and gave him a hand to pull him up. Silvius wobbled up from his knees, and let out a prayer of thanks to the household gods. He wiped away a tear with a knuckle. The soldier shoved his helmet back onto his cropped head, and sauntered out without another word.
Afterwards Silvius let his mother bathe his wounds in his small room, whilst his little brother Brutus fidgeted about on his bed.
‘Why were you whipped?’ asked Brutus, twisting his fingers in the thick blanket. Brutus’s hair was curly and brown, and he looked much more like Lavinia than Silvius did. He stuck his thumb in his mouth, and gazed directly at Silvius.
‘Because I did something wrong,’ answered Silvius. ‘I deserted my post. And I directly disobeyed Aeneas.’
‘I don’t think people should get whipped at all, ever,’ said Brutus, thoughtfully, pulling his thumb out of his mouth with a pop. ‘I’ll tell Father what I think!’
‘Hush, Brutus. You’re only a little child who’s not lost his first milk tooth yet.’
Brutus pouted, and then started pretending to be a wolf, howling with such a tiny noise that Silvius could not help but laugh.
Lavinia shushed his little brother, then carefully put a clean tunic on over Silvius’s thin white torso and gave him a wooden beaker of refreshing water from the well to drink, which she’d drawn herself.
She waited till he had finished, then said, ‘Well, you have borne your punishment with courage. But go now. Your father wants to speak to you.’
Aeneas was in the inner chamber of the house, a windowless room with only a small fire in the hearth to give light. There, in a recess, were the little carved wooden statues of the ancestors and the household gods that Aeneas had saved from his palace in Troy and brought over the seas to Italia.
He was kneeling before them. He didn’t hear Silvius approaching.
‘… for my sons, for my people, for their safety and their honour.’
Silvius only caught the last part, and then stood in silence. It was only when Silvius had been there for some time, and shifted his weight, that Aeneas looked up, his brow furrowed, his greying gingery hair seeming sparse, his cheeks hollow and wrinkling.
‘I wonder …’ said Aeneas, quietly; he seemed about to say something, and then he changed his mind. ‘Do you know why I brought you in here?’
Silvius looked around. He could see only the statues of the gods. There was nothing else there.
‘To remind me of my duty to my family,’ said Silvius, humbly.
Aeneas nodded, slowly. He shifted himself upright, still strong.
‘Always remember, Silvius.’ He caught his son’s arm, and Silvius saw the depths of sadness in his father’s eyes. ‘Always remember what the Achaeans did to us. They tore us from our lands, ruined our city, made us homeless. Troy was ancient and powerful. And yet they took everything from us, and now we are here, in this strange, barbarian land …’ He faltered. ‘Troy …’ he whispered, and let Silvius go, and, without looking back, he strode away.
Silvius went out into the town. He saw Elissa running around the forum, playing with a wolf cub. She beckoned to him, her dark face dancing with glee.
He did not want to talk to her now. His father’s words were echoing around his mind. Elissa did not know what it meant to have that burden. She would not understand. He shook his head, and trudged on, leaving her looking puzzled, stroking the top of the cub’s head.
All around him were the sounds of building work. He wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, but found himself in front of the blacksmith’s. The door was ajar, and he stood watching intently from the threshold.
Even though it was day, inside it was dark. Light came from the forge, and from torches on the walls. The blacksmith was making a sword. His boy was at the bellows, pumping the flames white hot. Blaeso was a thin man, with cropped black hair, bristles showing on his pointed chin; and when he grasped the molten bronze in its container with his tongs, his strong arm muscles showed. Blaeso hissed approvingly through his teeth.
It was hot inside the smithy, and Silvius, though half outside, still had to wipe the sweat off his brow. The movement caused the blacksmith to look up.
‘You again?’ he said, not unkindly, pouring the molten bronze into its stone mould. ‘You’d better get off home. Aeneas will be wanting you, surely?’
‘I just wanted to see my sword being made,’ said Silvius. The cuts on his back still burned. ‘I will need it in Achaea.’ He said it with a note of importance, hoping the blacksmith would pick up on it. But Blaeso simply continued his work.
‘You’ll see it when it’s ready,’ the blacksmith grinned. ‘Now, off.’ He made a shooing gesture with his big, blackened hands, and Silvius shuffled back into the street.
He spent the rest of the morning just wandering about the streets, knowing that he wasn’t meant to, that he should be engaged in something useful. And people did give him curious glances as he went by. But somehow he felt that he was allowed these few moments of peace. He would know what was required of him soon enough.
As the sun began to slide down from its zenith, Silvius returned home and into the cool first courtyard with its fig trees and their juicy fruits. The centaur was standing solemnly by himself in its shade, the Arrowhead in its casket around his neck on the golden chain.
Silvius thought, with a shudder, of the strange, dark coils of Python he’d seen when he’d touched it. The huge form of the beast, seeming to take up the space of an entire plain, almost as high as a mountain, with eyes red and pitiless. And the voice that insinuated its way into his mind.
He didn’t want to experience that again. The light of Apollo had come as a relief, like rain after a drought. He longed for more.
Aeneas was there already. Iulus, conspicuously, was not, but one of his companions, a dark-eyed, slim young man, watched silently. Elissa was in the far corner, playing dice with Brutus. She brightened when Silvius entered, and hurried towards him.
‘I saw the centaur eating this morning – he swallowed down two whole sacks of oats!’
Silvius raised his eyebrows. He’d been whipped, whilst Elissa had been playing with the centaur. And, though he hadn’t quite understood it, she had been in his vision of Apollo too, surrounded with a great light. The welts on his back stung. ‘You didn’t!’
‘I did.’ She folded her arms, challengingly. ‘And a whole suckling pig. You should have seen the look on that old chinwag Chickpea’s face! Anyway, they’re going to decide what to do now,’ she whispered, her whole dark face alive with excitement.
Silvius felt annoyed. She had a freedom he could never have, and now she seemed to know more about this mission than he did.
Elissa tied up her hair surprisingly neatly. ‘Ready!’ she sang out, and scampered to the centaur’s side.
‘We begin,’ said Stargazer, simply. ‘Come near so that you can see. I will open the casket. Do not touch it.’
They gathered round him at arm’s length. Silvius pressed in front of Elissa. Their arms touched briefly. Stargazer held the box in the palm of his left hand, and with a swift movement, pressed a catch and lifted the shimmering lid.
Inside was an arrowhead. At first, it looked just like any other old arrowhead, hewn roughly out of flint, coming to the point of a triangle.
As they gazed at it, though, a blackness shadowed it from the edges, and it began to pulse faintly. Soon it was entirely jet black.
A change came over the atmosphere in the courtyard. Even the sun seemed to darken, and Silvius found himself wanting to reach out and touch the Arrowhead. His mind filled with images of that giant, tightly sprung, snake-like beast, which then, appallingly, folded itself into the form of a man.
He was tall, and moved smoothly, and his skin was covered in scales. Silvius felt his gaze searing through him. There was a dark power there.
The Arrowhead called to him, for its other half, for violence and destruction. All he had to do was take it.
The centaur snapped the lid shut.
The vision went. Silvius was still stretching out towards the casket. There was a hunger in Elissa’s eyes, but she stood with her arms hanging limp by her sides. Aeneas’s hands were gripped tightly together, and when the box closed, he released them. He was shaking a little.
‘You see?’ Stargazer spoke quietly. ‘The Arrowhead is a weapon in itself. It took on some of the attributes of Python when it brought him down. You must not use it. The casket must be kept closed at all times.’
‘This is a hard task,’ said Aeneas, carefully. ‘Silvius, I think you are too young for it. And Elissa, you too.’ He considered for a moment longer, then made up his mind. ‘There is no way that you can undertake this mission. It needs someone more experienced …’ A babble of worried chatter began.
‘I have to go! I saw Apollo! He … he showed me the way!’ It was true, up to a point. He’d seen the god’s light, as if at the end of a long tunnel. Silvius tried to catch Aeneas’s attention.
‘Are you sure it was a true vision?’ said Aeneas. ‘The gods have been silent to me in the past few months … It might have been a lie, or a trick. Sometimes, to win us, the things of darkness deceive us.’
‘It was him! I swear it! And …’ He remembered the flutter of wings, the curve of an unexpected smile. ‘I saw Hermes, too. The messenger.’ He turned towards Elissa, seeking her approval.
She stepped in. ‘It’s true,’ she added softly. She glanced closely at Silvius, as if to confirm something, and nodded. ‘Apollo told me too. We both have to go.’
‘You can’t.’ Lavinia’s hands were crossed against her shoulders. Her forehead furrowed with anxiety.
‘I can!’ Silvius was determined. ‘Iulus was in charge of the whole Trojan army when he was my age! He travelled with Aeneas, he saw everything …’
‘That was different,’ said Lavinia. ‘They had no choice. And see what has become of him.’
The tension was building inside Silvius. His mother was ready to plead with him.
‘I have no choice either! I told you! I saw Apollo. I saw him and he told me …’ He faltered. He glanced at Elissa. And then in a quieter voice, he said, ‘He told me I needed to go, and Elissa had to go with me. Look, you’ve always told me to obey the gods. Now we have a direct order from Apollo himself! It’s my duty, isn’t it?’
A glimmer of resignation passed over Aeneas’s eyes. He seemed about to say something. Silvius had never before seen his father lost for words like this.
They were interrupted by a shout, and the sound of feet pounding the ground. A soldier, lean and tall, sprinted into the courtyard.
He hurried to Aeneas, and spoke breathlessly, panic in his eyes.
‘Aeneas! We’re under attack – come quickly!’ He caught his breath.
Immediately, Aeneas’s body straightened, and he narrowed his eyes. ‘Stay here, Silvius, and you too, Elissa.’ Aeneas spoke commandingly. ‘It will be some raiders from the north – we’ll deal with it easily. Etruscans, probably.’
