Then I gave them their orders.
For a moment both their faces went blank, and I wondered if they were going to make trouble, and which would be the best threat to use if they did. But they are both lesser men than I am — and I yielded to the pressure of Lysander. And in the end, with the help of a golden gift, I had little trouble, except that they were nervous as to how best to do the thing.
Then I rounded on them, and they gave back a hurried step before me. ‘Listen!’ I said, ‘I have bidden you take as many soldiers as you need — mercenaries, not the guards — and kill him. Do it in any way you like; I’ve paid you to do the job and I’m not asking how — so long as it is done!’
‘It will take some planning,’ said my uncle. ‘He’s an ill man to attack — and there’ll be slaves in the house —’
‘Three days from now, begins the Feast of Attis. If the slaves do not all go down to the Temple, you can take care of them in one way or another, and it will only look as though they have slipped off to take part in the ceremonies. Great Lord Mithras! Use your own head a little, my uncle!’
And my young brother said, ‘Satrap dear, you are asking a lot of us and offering no more than — adequate pay. If I do my part of this for you, will you give me the black stallion?’
‘I have paid you enough to buy a black stallion for yourself and scarce lighten your pouch,’ I said.
He said, ‘Yes, but I want Belatrix, I’ve always wanted him.’
‘Take him, then,’ I said. ‘And I hope he throws you and breaks your neck!’
‘But not till the job is done, eh?’
‘Not till the job is done,’ I said. ‘And now get out, both of you, and start gathering your men.’
And they have gone, the little yelping curs, to gather the pack and pull him down.
And presently Prince Cyrus will smile on me and maybe give me a greater Satrapy — unless I decide to tell Artaxerxes, Son of the Sun, the rumours that are going round about the golden bedfellow of Lysander’s. In which case it will be Artaxerxes who will smile on me.
Either way I shall have something to show for having delivered my soul to Ahrimon the Black One.
27
The Whore
The winter passed, and the almond trees before the house put out their first pale flowers among the still bare aspens. And then it was seed time; and the first day of the Feast of Attis and Cybele.
I had gone out on to the terrace before the Hall to bring in some newly saffron-dyed wool that I had drying there, when I heard the distant flutes and cymbals. Melissa is only a small town, really only a village; but there is a Temple of the Mother, and Attis has his altar and his priests there, as often in the country places.
My Lord was sitting on the painted wooden bench beside the door, staring moodily at a lizard that lay basking on the sun-warmed flag-stones at his feet. And Arkadius was hovering in the shadows of the vine close by, whittling a bit of stick. He whittled more and more as the days went by, and My Lord spent more and more of his days just sitting, with his hands hanging lax across his knees. We had been four months in the house on the hillside above Melissa, and he was no nearer to Susa. I knew that Pharnobazus had held out hopes for the spring. I do not think that My Lord had believed him, but there was nothing he could do but wait. And to such as my Lord, waiting eats into the soul.
The flutes and cymbals that had been only a thread of sound, were drawing nearer. I went and knelt beside My Lord, and set my hands on his thigh so that he stirred and looked at me. The lizard was gone in a green flicker of movement and the stone was bare where he had been. I said, ‘They are bringing the Lord Attis to his people, do you not hear them?’
He listened a moment. ‘That clashing and twittering?’
‘It is the Feast of Attis. They will pass along the track under the hill; come with me and watch them go by.’
He shook his head. ‘Not interested.’
But I would not give up. If I could get him to come with me it would use a little time, leave a little less of that one day to get through afterwards. I said, pleading, ‘I have not watched the Sacred Procession since I was a girl in my grandfather’s Hall.’
‘Go and watch it now,’ he said.
‘I do not want to go alone.’
He laughed, and bent suddenly and kissed me quick and hard; then he got up and stretched, and held out his hand to me, and said, ‘Come then, we will go and watch this procession of yours,’ as though he were humouring a very young girl.
We went down the hillside together, still hand-in-hand — it was good to walk with my hand warm in his, pulled along by his stride — until we came in sight of the village, and the painted walls of the Temple among its sacred pine trees, and the crowd of men and women edging the track that led towards it. The people nearest glanced round as we came among them, and made room for us. But their whole hearts and eyes were turned upon the track, and the procession that had just come into sight.
First came the three eunuch priests, their arms and foreheads tattooed with the sacred ivy leaves, and then, led and followed by its musicians, and by all the young men and maidens of the village, the Pine Tree of Attis, propped upright in its cart drawn by garlanded oxen. The sacred pine who some say is the God in his tree form, felled only that morning; and bound among its lower branches, the figure of the God himself, brought out year after year, swathed in fresh grave bands, and with his face freshly painted as we paint the faces of our dead. And both tree and God-figure wound about with garlands of the little dark woodland violets that sprang from his shed blood.
So they bring the God home every seed time, that the harvest may be good and all living things flourish and increase.
The cart passed us, the tree lurching and swinging, steadied by the stay-ropes in the hands of the men who walked alongside; and the carved wooden figure jerked in its bonds — and for a little space, because I was with My Lord, I saw all things through his eyes; the perilously rocking tree and the roughly carved wooden effigy with the woman’s paint staring on the dead face; and I shrank back. But then my own eyes returned to me, and I saw the Dead God hanging on his Tree; and a long dark waft of scent from the violets all about him drifted to me on the little thin spring wind. And the painted eyes looked into mine.
Here and there, a woman began to wail, swaying in ritual grief, ‘Ai! Ai!’ and others and yet others took it up; but there was no great outcry of lamentation. That would come later.
We watched until the dark waving branches disappeared into the Temple precincts. And then Alkibiades took my hand again, and said, ‘Well? Have you seen all you came to see?’
I nodded, and we turned away up hill.
After we had walked maybe the length of an arrow’s flight, My Lord said, ‘The Gods of Hellas, I know, and the Gods of Persia, I know. But what God is this Attis? And why is he dead?’
I said, ‘He was a hunter, and the beloved of Cybele the Mother of all things; and he was killed by a boar he was hunting.’
‘And Cybele in her grief, caused the violets to spring up from the darkness of his spilled blood,’ My Lord said.
I looked round at him, startled. ‘If you did not know Attis, how do you know that?’
‘We tell the same story in Athens, but our hunter is called Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite, and from his blood there sprang up not dark violets but crimson anemones.’
There were small flowers growing on the edge of the cornland that we skirted, and among the rocks; bell flowers and vetch and feathery irises that only live a day; and suddenly at the foot of a stone outcrop, a scattering of brilliant red flowers in the grass. My Lord stooped and picked one of them, and held it out to me. ‘See,’ he said, ‘the blood of Adonis.’
I took it. The petals were blazing crimson, white where they sprang from the stem, and with a heart as dark as night. It made me ache in my throat, like the ache that comes before weeping. I said in foolish rebellion, ‘Why should they have to die?’
‘Because they were
too greatly beloved, and the other Gods grew jealous. Or perhaps love itself can destroy like a lightning flash, when it is too strong for mortal man to bear.’
We climbed a few steps farther in silence, I looking at the crimson flower in my hand. And then he said, ‘In Athens, we hold the Feast of Adonis in the summer — the women hold it; I never knew a man who didn’t dislike the whole thing. They carry figures of him dead and decked for burial on his bier through the streets, and lament for their lost darling until the hair rises on the back of your neck; and they scatter little dark red roses before his bier, that were stained from white by his blood … The streets were scattered so when we marched out for Syracuse, and the women caterwauling at every corner. The feet of the troops mashed the flowers underfoot; — and yet I scarcely noticed it at the time.’
We were in sight of the Hall again, and My Lord began to go more slowly. He said, ‘Zeus! How I hate this place; this waiting —no nearer to Susa than I was last autumn.’
I did not answer; there was nothing I could say. And then he said, ‘I’m getting soft, rooted here. Even my dreams are going soft. Timandra, I had the oddest dream last night; I had almost forgotten it until they carried the Attis past.’
‘What was it?’
‘I dreamed that I was lying with my head in your lap, as I’ve lain so often, and you were painting my face as though I were a woman.’
I felt as though a little cold wind blew on me out of nowhere. Then I laughed and said, ‘That should not seem strange to you, who have lived in Sardis. Your eyes were trimmed with kohl the first time ever I looked into them, love.’
He pulled me to him by my hand that he still held in his, and kissed me so hard that he bruised my lips. ‘Nikias had all his soothsayers to interpret his dreams for him, but I have you, little vixen, and you are sweeter in the kissing than any soothsayer.’
But it was as though a little shadow ran before me on the grass, and lingered to meet me on the threshold, and would not be brushed away.
And then it was the Third Day, when they cut the dead God down from his Tree at early morning, and lay him in his piled rock tomb.
The Soldier
This evening Alkibiades came in out of the dusk when the lamps were lit and the evening meal on the table. But instead of sitting down to eat, he went to the olivewood chest where his sword lay, and picked it up and turned back to the door with it.
‘Where are you going?’ Timandra said.
‘Only just outside. I thought I saw someone moving among the bushes.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said, getting up. I didn’t have to reach for my sword, I’ve worn it day and night, these past three days. I don’t quite know why; probably just the drums and horns in the village, soft with distance, but always there when one listens. Timandra cried sharply, ‘Don’t go outside!’
And we both looked at her in surprise. ‘Why not?’ Alkibiades said.
She recovered herself and laughed. ‘Because the fish is getting cold, and I cooked it for you myself. It will have been only the slaves, if you saw anybody at all. They have all gone down to the village for the last of the sacred dancing, and the rejoicing when there is enough blood on the altars, and they open the tomb and find it empty.’
But I thought she spoke a little too quickly, a little too urgently.
Alkibiades shrugged. ‘Maybe. Or maybe it was nothing but the wind swaying the bushes. Those drums and horns are worse than the women wailing for Adonis, for giving a man the twitch.’ He hesitated a moment, then came and sat down at the table. But I noticed that he kept his sword with him.
Two days ago, Timandra brought in a just-open anemone flower; the one flower, by itself, as though it meant something. and set it in a silver cup on one end of the chest. It was drooping a little now, so wide that the petals were curling back and the blue-black pollen smudging all around its eye; but the petals were still brilliant, and looking at it, suddenly I thought of Astur. I don’t think of him very often nowadays. It’s not that I have forgotten, one doesn’t forget; just that he has sunk into the dark inner places of memory. I suppose it was because I’m so tired. Lord Poseidon! I’m so tired! No sleep for two nights, and not enough to do in the days. Damn those drums! I remembered the crimson anemones breaking out from the bare limestone by the entrance to the quarries; and the sudden blinding pain of knowing that I was leaving Astur behind me, dead and rotting with the maggots in his eyes.
Alkibiades reached for a raisin cake and said, ‘Arkadius? You look as if you were seeing ghosts.’
I looked round, and the old pain went back to where it belonged. ‘Did I? It was the drums.’
He nodded. ‘They have a way of waking things better left sleeping. We all have our ghosts, of one kind or another. Gods! what old-woman’s talk! I said I was getting soft, mewed up here. Soon I shall begin to grow fat.’
‘You’ve a way to go yet,’ I said, looking at his big lean body and the harsh bones of his face. His eyes were sunk back into their sockets, but they were as blue in the lamplight as I have ever seen them. And then he saw me looking, and smiled, the old lazy smile that could charm a finch out of an arbutus tree.
We sat a good while over the meal, talking of plans for reaching Susa and gaining the ear of the Great King, which I think we both know now will never come to anything. And then suddenly he said, ‘If the whispers are true, and Cyrus means to make a bid for the Sun Throne, there’ll be hard fighting before all’s over; and there was never yet fighting without a handful of Greek mercenaries mixed up in it somewhere. If it comes, shall we take our swords and head for active service again, Arkadius?’
‘On which side?’ I said, grinning.
‘Black King or Golden Prince? Who cares, Arkadius? That’s the glory of it, who cares?’
And then I saw Timandra’s face, and felt that I was an intruder
Anyway, it was late, and time to break up for the night. Alkibiades got up and stretched, then strolled off to the inner chamber, still carrying his sword with him. Timandra lingered a moment, filling a last cup with wine to take in to him as she generally does; and I whispered to her, ‘Why did you let all the slaves go into Melissa?’
‘I did not,’ she whispered back. ‘Suddenly they were gone. It makes no difference, there is not one of them that we can trust.’ Then she went after Alkibiades into the inner room.
I spread my rugs before the door and sat down on them for a while; hearing the murmur of their voices and a smothered laugh, and then only the faint throbbing of the drums and horns and cymbals from the village, coming and going on the little wind that rose at twilight. The rhythm grows faster and more wild; it seems inside my head, beating with the beat of my blood. Down there in the Temple precincts the priests will be whirling into their final frenzy, gashing themselves so that their blood spatters the altar — I have heard this kind of rhythm before, it always means blood; I have seen the rites of Dionysus in my time.
It might be as well to take a look round. Quietly with the door bar in case they’re asleep. How white the moonlight is — a white fire of moonlight; and the wind brushing the bushes up the wrong way. — If they were a cat’s fur they’d give off sparks. You can hear the drums more clearly out here, but there’s the wind and the moonlight — easier to keep awake.
If I sit down with my back against the door, I can stay out here for a while. The moon makes a rippling like water on my sword-blade laid across my knees. Mustn’t look at the bright web of it, or I’ll get sleepy. Look into the dark places under the bushes; the places that might cover a crouching man …
It is good out here — no lurking figures, nothing moving but the wind; no reason to be so jumpy — jumpy as a cat — it’s just lack of sleep, and those accursed drums. The wind sounds like the sea — hushing on the shore where the galleys are dragged safe above the tide-line and the cooking fires of dead tamarisk scrub burn before the tents …
Must get up and walk about a bit or I shall go to sleep. Must get — up —
/> Astur! What are you doing here? Do you remember the night we took Selymbria? No you weren’t there, you were dead. Funny, I thought you were dead; I thought you were — dead — Astur …
The Whore
I woke to feel the bed-rugs being flung back and My Lord leaping up from beside me; and the room full of smoke eddying in through the doorway hangings. For an instant, seeming still caught in some dream, I saw him standing naked in the slow swirls of it that the night lamp turned to amber. Then he swept the curtain aside and plunged out into the main hall. I was on my feet too, by that time; I snatched the coverlid from the bed and flung it round myself and went after him. I cried out to him, ‘Don’t open the door!’ But he was already flinging it back. Someone had unbarred it; but I suppose they were afraid to come in and kill him, hand to hand. He hurled it wide, and a sheet of flame poured in from the blazing brushwood that had been piled against it. He leapt back and ran to gather up the bed-rugs. I helped him fling rugs and cushions on the flames, damping them down, though the red tongues licked through and crackling brushwood sparks flew up in showers.
He darted back once more, snatched up his cloak and wrapped it round his left arm for a shield. ‘Keep close behind me,’ he said, ‘and the instant we are through, jump aside and run for the darkness; it’s me they’re after, not you.’ He caught up his sword.
I cried to him, ‘Wait! There may be a whole pack of them outside —’
He shouted at me almost exultantly, ‘Do you think they’d dare come against Alkibiades except in a pack?’ I must have been clinging to him, for I felt him shake me off. The flames were eating through the bedding and beginning already to roar up again.
He drew back to gain speed, and ran for the doorway and the curtain of fire.
I was close behind him as he sprung through. The flames burned my feet, sparks clung to me, and the heat was like a blow, searing and choking me. All the world was flame. And then there was a moment of darkness; and against the dark, men outlined in the glare of the fire. They scattered and fell back as he leapt among them, as I have seen hunters scatter before a charging boar. He gave a great war-cry as though to burst the heart out of his breast, and sprang forward to kill and be killed. But they dared not come at him, they dared not stand to his rush; they scattered farther into the dark, and swerving aside as he had bade me, I heard the twang of a bowstring. The fire in the doorway behind him gave them shooting light.
The Flowers of Adonis Page 46
