SON OF ZEUS

by Glyn Iliffe

  ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘Follow me. Tydeus, the king is to have a visitor – please make the necessary arrangements.’

  ‘What about your own safety?’ Tydeus asked, eyeing Heracles’s bulk.

  ‘Right now, I’m probably safer than anyone else in Tiryns.’

  Iphicles strode off towards the gatehouse. Heracles followed, falling under the shadow of the arched entrance and passing between the heavy doors back into the bright sunshine beyond. It was less crowded inside the high walls of the citadel, though there were more soldiers. Beneath the battlements was a long, single-storey building with bare stone walls that acted as the guardhouse. Several soldiers stood in groups outside it, leaning on their spears and talking. Their conversations trailed away at the sight of Heracles, but were taken up again with vigour after he had passed by.

  He ignored the muttered comments and followed his brother, pushing his way through the numerous slaves, richly dressed nobles and haughty-looking officials as they hastened about their business. The broad, cobbled street was overshadowed by the houses of the wealthy, which stood two storeys high and boasted porticoed entrances and plastered walls decorated with murals. Some depicted fleets of galleys, their brightly hued hulls riding uniformly curled waves, beneath which fanciful sea creatures were depicted in varying colours. These were the houses of merchants, celebrating the wealth that the nearby seas had brought them. Other houses were older and had fading murals showing scenes of battle, or well-known stories of the gods that the household wanted to honour. These were the homes of the aristocracy of Tiryns, whose fortunes and power rose and fell by the sword.

  He passed several modest temples, catching the wafted aroma of incense and hearing the wail of prayers. Through their open doors he glimpsed dark, smoke-filled interiors with white-robed priests and the tall, painted effigies of their gods. Outside the temple of Aphrodite stood a young woman, her face and neck whitened with lead and her lips reddened by the juice of mulberries. As he looked at her, she beckoned to him with one hand and with the other opened the folds of her dress to reveal her right breast. He forced his attention back to the street and saw that Iphicles was now several steps ahead of him. He closed the gap with a couple of strides.

  ‘How long have you been serving our cousin?’ he asked in a more conciliatory tone.

  ‘A year.’

  ‘So, what sort of man is he?’

  ‘A powerful one, and one who expects others to show him the respect he is due. You will do well to remember that, Heracles. I know you despise him for receiving the thrones of Tiryns and Mycenae ahead of you, by accident of being born a short while before you were.’

  ‘It was no accident. You know as well as I do that Hera induced him three months before he was due, while stopping up our mother’s womb for a whole day to ensure I couldn’t inherit what Zeus had intended for me.’

  ‘Or so our mother told you,’ Iphicles sneered, striding on and refusing to look at his brother. ‘How typical of her to encourage your sense of self-importance. It wasn’t enough to have made you believe you’re the son of Zeus himself; she had to instil in you the idea you should have been one of the most powerful kings in Greece!’

  ‘Poor Iphicles! You haven’t changed. Isn’t this the same conversation we had the last time we spoke? When was it – three years ago?’

  ‘Two,’ Iphicles replied. He stopped and stared at his brother. ‘Two years since we last spoke, and even that is too recent for my liking.’

  ‘And yet here you are, escorting me into the presence of your master. You could have refused.’

  ‘What, and have you continue your fight with the guards? No, you always get what you want, Heracles – one way or another. As I see it, the sooner you have your audience with the king, the sooner you’ll be gone again.’

  ‘But you’ll expect something in return, no doubt.’

  Iphicles shook his head and turned to continue up the street. Heracles stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Iolaus told me you came to Thebes. Don’t try to deny it. You visited him a little more than two weeks ago, on the night of the full moon.’

  The night he had been struck by madness, Heracles thought. Iolaus had briefly mentioned his father’s clandestine visit, but it was a trivial matter compared to the deaths of his children, and it was only now that he recalled it. Iphicles avoided his gaze.

  ‘What business brought you to Thebes in such secrecy? If you’d sent word you could have stayed in my home. There may be no love between us, Iphicles, but you are still my brother.’

  ‘Can a father not speak to his own son in private, if he wants to? Do you have to know all the boy’s affairs?’

  ‘He isn’t a boy any more, and he’s my squire. What did you want with him?’

  ‘What will you do, Heracles? Beat it out of me?’

  ‘Throughout all our boyhood I never laid a finger on you, Iphicles. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction then and I won’t now. But if you don’t want to tell me, then keep your dirty little secret to yourself.’

  ‘I asked him to come with me here to Tiryns, to serve King Eurystheus in whatever capacity he wished – even becoming one of the captains of the guard, if that’s what he wanted. I told him that being your squire was too dangerous, that you would lead him to his death.’

  ‘But he refused to come.’

  ‘I begged him to return with me. I even ordered him as his father, but he was immovable. He is too much your son now!’ Iphicles’s lip curled back in scorn. ‘Damn you, Heracles. Damn you! You took our mother’s love from me, and now you’ve taken the affections of my only son.’

  ‘Taken his affection?’ Heracles countered, rising to his full height and glaring at Iphicles. ‘All I did was show an interest in the boy, which is more than you ever managed. You were too busy advising King Creon on crop yields and wine stocks to show any affection to your own son. Iolaus asked to become my squire because you barely noticed he existed. He was thirteen and he needed a father, but you drove him away with your coldness.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to, don’t you see that? I never recovered from his mother’s death; every time I looked at Iolaus I couldn’t forget she’d died giving birth to him. He was a constant reminder that she was gone, and I blamed him for it. But the moment he left I realized what a fool I’d been. When I saw him with you, I knew he should have been looking at me like that, not you . That’s why I came here to Tiryns, to escape the evidence of my own stupidity. But I’ve stopped trying to run from it now, and I want Iolaus to realize that I’m different. That’s why I want you to send him back to me.’

  A troop of soldiers marched down the street, driving the brothers apart. After they had filed past, Heracles saw that Iphicles had continued up the thoroughfare towards the acropolis, where the king’s palace was situated. This was separated by another ring of battlements, though Heracles could not see an entrance in the face of the high, sloping ramparts. He strode after his brother, pushing aside slave and citizen alike. Iphicles now followed the circuit of the wall eastwards until it bent south and ran parallel with the outer wall of the lower citadel, forming a narrow channel in which attackers could be caught in a deadly hail of arrows, spears and rocks from the defenders above. Heracles’s footsteps echoed as he followed Iphicles up a steeply inclined path towards a small gate.

  ‘And if I refuse?’ he called to his brother.

  Iphicles turned and waited for him, conscious of the guards at the gate and on the parapets above. His small dark eyes were filled with barely contained rage.

  ‘I will take you before the king, if that’s what you want. And I don’t expect you to order Iolaus to return to me. What effect would that have on him? I saw how stubborn he has become under your influence, and there’s no making him do anything he doesn’t want to any more.’

  ‘He will soon be a man, Iphicles. He’s learning to take charge of his own life, and he will no more obey me in this matter than he will you.’

  ‘Bu
t he…he respects you, at least,’ Iphicles conceded, the pain of his admission written on his face. ‘You could persuade him to return to me.’

  ‘Why? I remember how he was when he came to me, and I know how much stronger he is now. Why should I encourage him to return to you?’

  ‘Because I’m different now. I’ve remembered my love for him. And…and you know what it is like to lose your children.’

  His voice trailed away to a whisper. There was fear now in his face – fear of Heracles’s reaction – and he could not hold his brother’s gaze for long.

  ‘So, you’ve heard,’ Heracles said, quietly. ‘Perhaps you weren’t surprised, you who’ve always said my strength and my temper would be my downfall. And if another man had dared speak to me like that I might have let my weaknesses get the better of me and ripped him limb from limb. But I can hardly do that to you, can I? What was it you said to Tydeus? You’re the safest man in Tiryns?’

  ‘Then you will speak to him?’

  Heracles looked up at the guards on the walls as he collected his thoughts.

  ‘You’re right; I know how painful it is for a father to lose a child. But after what I did, I doubt Iolaus would listen to anything I said to him anyway. I don’t know what caused me to kill my own sons, but the guilt is still mine to bear. The woman I love refuses to even look at me; her father has exiled me from Thebes, never to return; and Iolaus, my own squire, can barely bring himself to speak to me. He may have saved me from taking my own life, but that was before he understood what I had done. Now – like the rest of the world – he despises me. If the gods allow me to see Iolaus again, I promise to speak to him for you. But that is all I can say. Now, will you take me before Eurystheus?’

  There was no sympathy in Iphicles’s eyes as he regarded his brother – indeed, there was a hint of triumph – but he nodded.

  ‘I will do as I promised,’ he said, and signalled for the guards to open the gate.

  The entrance was barely wide enough to permit a chariot and team to pass through. It led to a second narrow courtyard with a further gate at its far end. Again, a wave of Iphicles’s hand was enough to see them into the next part of the acropolis. They entered a small, walled area with stables large enough for a dozen or so horses to the left, and a building with a roofed portico to the right. This led to a larger courtyard surrounded on all sides by two-storey buildings with colonnaded fronts. To Heracles’s left was a temple, grander than any he had seen so far. On a plinth before it was an effigy of a goddess, seated on a throne. Her carved wooden robes were painted purple and on her head was a golden diadem, one of the symbols of Hera. In her left hand was a golden sceptre and in her right she held a pomegranate, denoting her role as the patron of childbirth. Appropriate, Heracles thought, considering the goddess’s ability to accelerate Eurystheus’s birth had made him king of Tiryns and Mycenae.

  ‘No time to linger, Brother. The king is expecting you.’

  Iphicles summoned him through an entrance to the north of the courtyard. The sentinels here wore armour of hooped bronze that covered them from their necks down to their groins, with tall, oxhide shields and plumed helmets set with boars’ tusks around the dome. There were four of them, each with a tall spear and a long sword hanging from baldrics looped over their shoulders. They looked at Heracles with hostility, but were quick to step aside at Iphicles’s command.

  The square courtyard beyond was cloistered on all sides, with another pair of large doors at the northern end. These were guarded by four more soldiers, who opened the doors as Iphicles approached. Heracles followed him through into a large hall. Torches burned in iron brackets, their light glimmering off the spear points and armour of the fifty or more guards who lined the walls. Several were armed with tall bows, arrows fitted and ready. In the centre of the chamber two dozen nobles sat in high-backed chairs on either side of an oblong hearth, the flames from which cast long, flickering shadows about the room. Eight tall columns supported the lofty ceiling, where a smoke vent let in a thick, slanted column of dusty sunlight. This lit upon a figure seated on a dais at the far end of the hall.

  Eurystheus wore a golden crown that glinted in the firelight. Despite the heat, he was robed in a double cloak of the finest wool, dyed blue and bordered with golden thread. His throne was high-backed and of impressive size, but the effect was somewhat marred by the fact the king’s legs did not reach the floor and dangled a little way above it. Eurystheus slouched slightly as he stared at the newcomer, one hand resting on the mound of his stomach, the other clutching the stem of a golden cup.

  ‘Step forward into the light, Heracles, son of Amphitryon,’ he said.

  Doubtless, the offence was intended. But if he was to be released from his guilt, Heracles knew he would have to endure more than a few insults before his time as a slave was served. He stood at the far end of the hearth and looked at Eurystheus through the heat haze. The king was pale with bulging eyes and thick, wet lips. His beard was thin and his black hair was receding, enough to make the crown sit a little too loosely on his head. He stared fixedly back at Heracles, though Heracles could sense his unease as they faced each other for the first time.

  Iphicles walked behind the seated nobles and joined the king on the dais. As he stooped to speak in Eurystheus’s ear, Heracles noted Tydeus and three other figures standing in the shadows beside the throne. One was a priestess, her white robes tinted orange by the light of the hearth. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with small breasts and braided yellow hair that was fastened into a bun behind her head. She was young for a woman of her rank, and her features were cold and arrogant as she stared at Heracles.

  Her arm was draped around the shoulders of a girl. The child was perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, with large eyes and full lips that clearly distinguished her as Eurystheus’s daughter. There was a restless intelligence in her expression, as if she would rather be anywhere than on ceremony in a room full of stuffy, self-important men. However, Heracles’s arrival had awakened her interest, and she eyed his height and bulging muscles with fascination.

  The third figure was a short man with greying black hair. He was grizzled-looking and stern, with a long black cloak and a polished staff that he leaned on as he stared at the newcomer. He had the bearing of an old warrior, and Heracles noted that the third finger on his right hand was missing. The hilt of a sword jutted out from the folds of his cloak.

  Iphicles finished his whispered conversation with Eurystheus and retired to stand beside Tydeus. The king raised his cup a little, and a slave stepped onto the dais to refill it.

  ‘So, Cousin, we finally meet,’ he began. ‘You look every bit the brute Iphicles said you were. He tells me you used to despise me when you were growing up, simply because I inherited the thrones of Tiryns and Mycenae ahead of you. What was it, Iphicles? Some old nursemaid’s tale about Hera stopping up Alcmene’s womb, while advancing my mother’s labour pains? Do you really believe such nonsense?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Heracles asked. ‘I saw the temple to Hera, Goddess of Childbirth. The grandest of all the temples in Tiryns, and the only temple on the acropolis.’

  Eurystheus smiled and sipped at his wine.

  ‘Nursemaid’s tale or not, it doesn’t change the fact that all you see about you belongs to me. I hope you haven’t come here hoping to stake some belated and illegitimate claim to my throne?’

  ‘I don’t covet anything that belongs to you, Eurystheus.’

  ‘You will address the king as my lord !’ Tydeus said.

  ‘You were born first, my lord,’ Heracles said, forcing out the last two words. ‘As far as I care, Tiryns and Mycenae will always be yours.’

  ‘Then I can’t imagine what such a renowned warrior wants to speak with me about. We know of your crimes, Heracles – the news of what you did to your own children is already spreading to every corner of Greece – and I understand you are now an exile from Thebes. If you were hoping we in Tiryns might welcome you to our city, or that I m
ight find a place for a wild adventurer like you among my captains, then you have badly misjudged the obligations of our shared blood.’

  Heracles felt his loathing for the real Eurystheus to be much more powerful than his previous dislike of the cousin he had never met. It made what he was to say next even more difficult.

  ‘I have not come to ask for a position in your court, my lord. I have come here at the command of the gods, to offer myself to you as…’ He hesitated, his fists clenching involuntarily at his sides. Then he thought of the oracle and forced the words out. ‘As your bondsman.’

  The hushed mutterings and quiet fidgeting of the officials and guests in the hall stopped and a still silence descended. Even Eurystheus’s gloating sneer and the aloof contempt on Iphicles’s face were replaced by expressions of muted disbelief. The king was the first to compose himself again.

  ‘Are you being absurd? Is this some sort of joke designed to mock me? If it is, you’ll soon realize I don’t take well to teasing!’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes,’ Heracles spat. ‘After the death of my sons, I travelled to the oracle on Mount Parnassus. The priestess told me there was only one penitence to relieve the pain of my guilt: to become your slave. She said you would give me ten labours, and that once I had completed them all I would find peace again. And so I offer myself to you, to command me as you see fit. My lord .’

  The words echoed inside his head, repeating the burning humiliation. As he looked at his cousin’s simpering face, the last of his pride screamed out in protest. He wanted to take back what he had said and storm out of the great hall, smashing aside anyone who tried to stop him. But he knew he could not. The innocent blood on his hands cried out against his conceit. It did not matter that he was the son of Zeus himself, or that he had liberated a city almost single-handedly. All that was gone. The only thing that remained was the disgrace of his crime. He deserved to be shamed. He had to be humiliated.