SON OF ZEUS

by Glyn Iliffe

  Standing, she turned towards the altar and the statue of Hera. Two small clay lamps guttered with the last of their oil, giving the effigy a baleful appearance amid the deep shadows. She ran over and dropped to her knees before the figure of the goddess.

  ‘I don’t understand, Mistress. What does it mean?’

  Go to Copreus. He will know.

  The voice was distinct. Though she knew it was only in her head, she also knew it was not her own. She had heard it many times before. The voice of the goddess she served.

  She pushed herself to her feet and, not bothering to find her sandals in the darkness, ran out of the temple into the courtyard. The two guards at the gate were rolling dice across a piece of cloth as she hurried towards them. They leaped to their feet and ran to open the double doors. Charis pushed between them and through into the outer courtyard of the palace. More men guarded the entrance to the great hall. One was asleep where he stood, leaning against a column. The other snatched up his shield and spear from against the doorpost and blocked the way.

  ‘Let me pass,’ she insisted.

  ‘You can’t go in,’ the guard said.

  The second soldier jerked himself out of his slumber and took her arm.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Take your hands off me !’ the priestess snapped, pulling free and raising herself to her full height. ‘Do you realize I can pray to make your wives barren?’

  ‘That’d be a blessing, my lady,’ said the first guard, winking at the second. ‘I’ve got nine boys, and that’s enough. But you know our orders: no one enters after midnight.’

  She huffed in exasperation and stepped back, looking up at the darkened windows above and contemplating whether to shout to whoever may be sleeping within. Then one of the doors opened and a man thrust his head through the gap.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Copreus!’ Charis said. ‘I need to speak to you. It’s important.’

  Copreus sighed and opened the door wider, waving the guards aside.

  ‘Come through.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so late in the evening,’ she began, following him as he limped across the hall, leaning heavily on his staff.

  The hearth had burned low and the torches had been extinguished, leaving the echoing chamber in deep shadow. A single slave stood in attendance beside the dais, and Iphicles sat in one of the high-backed chairs before the hearth.

  ‘You haven’t disturbed me,’ Copreus replied, though there was a hint of impatience in his voice. ‘I sleep little, and after our visitor today I’ve had much on my mind. Iphicles and I were just discussing—’

  ‘Copreus, I know what the first labour is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Iphicles asked. ‘How could you possibly know what the first labour is? We’ve barely begun to discuss it ourselves.’

  He looked angry, though whether that was because she had interrupted them, or as a result of his discussion with Copreus – they had never seen eye to eye – she could not tell. Copreus pulled back a chair, its legs scraping noisily on the flagstones.

  ‘Sit down,’ he commanded.

  The urgency and excitement of her message withered under his hard stare. She took her seat, feeling like a naughty child brought before a stern nursemaid. Copreus lowered himself into his chair and leaned his staff against his knee. He gestured to the slave, who ran over and refilled his wine cup, then did the same for Iphicles. No one cared to ask if Charis was thirsty.

  ‘Well?’ Copreus asked. ‘What do you think the first labour should be?’

  ‘It’s not what I think it should be. My mistress revealed it to me in a dream.’

  Copreus gave her a sidelong glance, while Iphicles tossed up his hands in a despairing gesture.

  ‘So you dreamed it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I dreamed it!’ she snapped back. ‘The gods often talk to their servants in dreams.’

  ‘So what did you see?’ Copreus interjected, trying to appear patient. ‘Your dream – what did Hera tell you?’

  Charis lay back in the chair and took a calming breath. She thought about the first vision, of Echidna and the birth of the two monsters, but realized this was just for her. The second dream was for Copreus to hear.

  ‘I was in a forest on a mountainside. It was dark and I found myself in front of a cave, and out of the cave…’ She paused, remembering the stark horror of the beast and realizing for the first time what it was. ‘And out of the cave came a lion.’

  ‘A lion?’ Copreus repeated.

  ‘Yes. My mistress wants Heracles to kill the beast.’

  ‘Copreus,’ Iphicles said, ‘this is pointless. A lion ? Heracles has killed at least one lion that I know about, so it’s hardly an impossible labour for him. I say again, we should harness his strength and humiliate him with menial tasks. Repair some walls, rebuild some bridges, clean out the pens where the king keeps his livestock…’

  ‘A lion is not a challenge for a man such as Heracles,’ Copreus agreed, looking at Charis.

  ‘But building a few walls and cleaning out some pigsties is? You said yourself earlier, we need to be rid of him. There’s more chance a lion will do the job for us than a bit of manual labour and a dose of humility! Besides,’ she added, her tone more conciliatory, ‘the goddess said you would know the meaning of the dream, Copreus. That you would be able to interpret it.’

  ‘I’m not one for interpreting dreams. Aren’t there other priests who you can speak to about such things? What about Apollo’s man, in the lower citadel? That’s it, Charis, you must go speak to him.’

  He took hold of his staff and made to stand, signalling that the brief audience was over.

  ‘Wait,’ Charis said. ‘There was something else. I remember the name of the mountain in my dream. Tretus – it was Mount Tretus.’

  ‘Tretus? In Nemea? I have heard rumours about a mighty beast ravaging the countryside there.’

  ‘The Nemean Lion,’ Iphicles added. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it. Nursemaids’ tales, mostly. A brute of monstrous size and fox-like cunning – the offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna, if you will! Invulnerable to weapons, some say. Breathes fire and has wings, if you listen to others.’

  ‘Then that is the meaning of the dream,’ Charis said, looking at Copreus. ‘Hera has spoken: Heracles’s first labour must be to destroy the Nemean Lion.’

  Iphicles laughed.

  ‘You presume too much. All we’ve heard is a lot of gossip, made up by superstitious peasants and embellished by travelling merchants. This mighty beast could be nothing more than a wildcat for all we know.’

  ‘Charis is right,’ said a voice from the back of the hall. Eurystheus swung the side door shut behind him and crossed the floor to take his throne. ‘If this Nemean Lion is the dread creature the stories say it is, then it’s the answer to our problem. None of us wants Heracles sitting on our doorstep. He’s far too dangerous, and – oath or not – my instincts tell me he wants my throne. So we send him off to fight this lion and let the monster get rid of him for us.’

  ‘First we must be sure the rumours are true,’ Copreus said. ‘There’s no sense in sending him off to kill a creature that doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Of course it exists,’ Charis said. ‘Hera showed it to me. We should let her be our guide in this.’

  Eurystheus raised his hand to prevent the argument escalating.

  ‘You’re both right. Hera will guide us in these matters. But if I send him on a wild rabbit chase then I’ll look foolish, and when a king looks foolish his authority is undermined. I will send horsemen to Nemea to inquire of these stories, and in the meantime I will put my cousin to work. Idle hands soon find trouble, they say, but a back bent by burdens stays bent.’

  Chapter Six

  Facing the Past

  Megara stood before the house that had once been her home. Her hands were trembling at her sides and she felt like vomiting. But Iolaus had been right. She had to go inside and face the nightmare
s that were haunting her. If she could just cross the threshold then there might still be a chance she could return to being the person she once was.

  The porch was modest. One of the doors was slightly ajar, and immediately she wondered whether it had been left that way by Iolaus, or if others had entered since then. The thought that strangers had been trampling over the ruins of her life upset her, and she felt her resolve begin to crumble.

  ‘Do it now, or you never will.’

  She forced herself up the steps and onto the porch. She tried not to look down, but saw the brown stain of Heracles’s blood on the stone. She had not seen him try to take his life – indeed, she had not seen him since the night of his madness, when he had hurled her against a wall and left her for dead. It was Iolaus who had told her what happened afterwards: how he had arrived in his chariot at dawn, having heard the reports from the household slaves who had fled to the nearby city; and how he had pushed aside the blade that Heracles had been about to drive into his own heart, so that only the flesh over his ribs was sliced open. Megara closed her eyes and pushed against the door.

  There was a faint smell of smoke and burned fat, and the air in the room – always so warm in her memory – was cool and still. Slowly, she opened her eyes. The black stumps of torches hung on the walls, and the circular hearth was grey with old ash. The only source of light was the square aperture in the ceiling, through which a shaft of yellow sunshine stabbed down at an angle. The walls were hung with some of the shields and spears Heracles had taken from his many victims, alternating with the narrow tapestries that she and her maids had spent years making. She was shocked to see that one had been pulled down and lay in a heap at the foot of one wall. Had Heracles done that? Or was it the work of vagabonds?

  She should not have come alone, she thought. Maybe she should not have come at all.

  But here she was. She pushed herself away from the door and walked carefully towards the hearth. A few tables were set against the back walls, which the servants pulled out whenever there were feasts. She saw her chair next to the hearth and realized it had not been moved since she had sat on it that final evening in the house. But Heracles’s chair – so much bigger than her own – lay on its side, strangely misshapen. As she came closer, she realized three of the legs and one of the arms had been torn off. The charred stump of one of them lay on the flagstones beside the fire.

  The ash was several days old at least, she guessed. Whatever wanderer had chosen to make his bed in the ruins of their home had long since departed. Perhaps he had sensed the awful tragedy that had turned a family home into a mausoleum, and had moved on.

  She sat in her chair and looked around at the modest hall, trying to force memories into her head of the children playing with each other, or of herself and her husband when they had been left alone by the fire. But the memories would not come. All she was aware of was the emptiness in her soul.

  She stood, knowing now that to come here had been a mistake. She looked across at the doors she had entered by, with the bright sunlight shining through the seams. A few moments ago it had taken all her willpower to enter the house. But now, suddenly, it seemed she could not leave. The desire to run away had been overcome by the need to see more. Her memories of that night and the morning after were a confused jumble that kept returning to her at unexpected moments, in disorientating flashes that horrified and tormented her. If she was to live with the events of that night, she had to try to understand them. That need, ultimately, was what had brought her back. And to do that she had to go upstairs, to the room she had shared for seven years with Heracles. The room where he had tried to kill her. Worse, she had to return to the children’s bedroom, where she had found their bodies, but could not remember doing so. The festering memory, which had buried itself deep inside her mind, had to be drawn out and faced if she was ever to reach the summit of her grief.

  Calm now, she stood and walked to a door at the back of the room. It opened onto a small, cloistered garden. A shrub-lined path led to a circular lawn and a stone seat. The lush green grass that she remembered had not been watered and was turning brown. The flowers on the shrubs, too, had shrivelled and shed their petals, which were curled up in dry husks on the flagstones. In the left corner of the garden, the plants were broken and trampled. A piece of white clothing lay discarded on the floor, but she dared not look at it in case it belonged to one of her children.

  She walked around the cloister to a door on the opposite side of the garden. This had been left ajar, and led into a dark, windowless passageway. As she followed the gloomy corridor, she suddenly felt as if a great weight were pressing down on her shoulders. Her breathing became strained and she felt her legs weaken. The shadows closed in on her and she slumped against the right-hand wall for support. She felt her way along, and the cold stone gave way to a door. It swung open and she fell into a large room, fainting before she hit the floor.

  She awoke some time later. Her mind was dull and confused, and her eyelids seemed reluctant to open. When they did, she saw bright sunlight on the stone floor and a chair lying on its side. Had she knocked it over, she wondered? She pushed herself up on the palms of her hands and knelt.

  A door at the back of the room had been left wide open, allowing daylight to flood in. She recognized the kitchen, with the hearth to one side, the large table in the centre of the floor, and another, longer table against the side wall. The ashes in the hearth were a whitish-grey and there was a fine layer of dust on the cauldron that hung over it. It also carried the musty smell of rotten food, tinged with another pungent odour that made her nose wrinkle in disgust.

  The long table was cluttered with bowls and platters that had not been cleaned and were still stuck with pieces of green meat and mouldy bread. The water in the large pithos in the corner of the room carried a film of fine dust. Crossing to the table, she was forced to cover her mouth and nose with her hand. Several small fish had been gutted and boned, and the flesh had turned putrid. A few flies still flitted over it.

  But the pungent smell she had noticed did not come from the rotting food. It came from a small bowl of mushrooms at the corner of the table. She would often go out into the woods to find some for her husband, but these had not been picked by her. Indeed, they were not of any type she had seen growing in Thebes. She lifted one up – its decaying skin slimy between her fingers – and sniffed at it.

  The stench made her gag. She dropped it back in the bowl and crossed to the open door, breathing deeply of the clean air outside. She looked out at the orchards opposite, and had a sudden urge to run out into the sunshine and be free of the house and its reek of death. But she knew she could not. Reaching out, she pulled the door shut and returned to the darkened corridor.

  Something about the sight of the world outside had renewed her strength. She was determined to look again on the scene of her husband’s madness – if madness it was – draw out those memories and face them. She would never be herself again unless she could conquer the darkness that had slipped over her soul. Despite the awful sickness in the pit of her stomach and the stink of the mushrooms lingering in her nostrils, she pushed on into the shadows.

  She saw the steps that led up to the next storey and almost ran towards them, afraid she would lose her resolve. She was halfway up before she lifted her eyes and saw the wall of the passageway above. The passage was bright with the light from an unseen window, and on the white plaster was a mark. A brown smear ran at waist height, ending in an unmistakable handprint. It had been left by a large hand – the hand of her husband – but the blood belonged to her children.

  Megara’s vision blurred with tears. Wiping them away, she rose to her full height and continued up the flight of steps. To the right, the passage led to her bedroom. To the left – the direction from which the bloodied hand had been dragged – it led to her children’s bedroom. As she followed it, she felt as if she were in a dream, barely conscious of anything other than what she could see before her.

/>   And then she remembered. She remembered running along the corridor, her dress torn and bloodied. Great bellows of grief – not anger this time – were echoing through the house, filling her with the most terrible dread. There was pain too, in her back and her head where he had thrown her across the room the night before, but it was nothing more than a dull ache compared to the panic and terror that were gripping her. Then she had turned the corner of the passage that led to the boys’ room. And she had known her worst fears had come true.

  She turned the same corner now – or was she still locked in the memory of that dreadful morning? At the end of the passage was an open doorway, the door itself torn from its hinges and lying on the floor. The room beyond was brightly lit, with white curtains streaming inwards on a gentle breeze. An overturned cot lay on the floor, its blankets ripped out like the intestines of a sacrificial lamb. She remembered the silence, the terrible silence. And walked forward to face the phantoms of her destroyed life.

  Chapter Seven

  The First Labour

  The mason finished smoothing the block of stone and slipped his chisel into his leather apron. After a last look – closing one eye and running the flat of his hand across the newly levelled surface – he stood and signalled to Heracles. Ignoring the guard appointed to watch over him, Heracles walked to the block of stone and squatted before it. A small group of onlookers – mostly citizens and slaves from the inner part of the city – jeered and mocked his preparations, but he ignored them too. He worked his fingers beneath the stone, and with a grunt lifted it from the ground and pulled it onto his sweat- and grime-covered chest. The thick cords of muscle in his legs tightened as he stood and turned towards the wooden structure that had been erected against the city wall.