King in Splendour

by George Shipway

  My reflections flowed as an undercurrent to trivial conversation with Merope. Soon I would have to decide whether Ascephalus was a suitable person to continue ruling Boeotia’s dominant city now that Thebes had gone. I had misgivings: it seemed unlikely the fellow’s dandified indolence concealed the ingrained ruthlessness you need for successful government.

  Merope said, ‘Shall we have the pleasure of your company for long, sire?’

  ‘Probably till harvest time.’

  ‘How entrancing!’ A provocative flash from deep blue eyes. ‘We are seldom visited by gentlemen of distinction. Creon, sometimes, in the past.’ She pouted delightfully. ‘A dour, frightening, charmless man. Whereas ...’ Another challenging look, and a smile that dented dimples at the corners of her mouth.

  Brazen enticement, of course, and astonishingly effective. I felt rampant as a stag in rut--the wine, no doubt, and abstinence enforced by a moon on campaign. Tearing my gaze from her jutting breasts I said, ‘I trust, during my stay, I shall afford you better entertainment than that old tyrant did.’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed, ‘age is a crippling handicap.’ Her eyes followed a round-limbed boy who minced across the room. ‘And youth, believe it or not, also penalizes women.’ Merope sipped from her goblet, and eyed me over the rim ‘If you understand me, sire.’

  ‘Only too well.’ Not since I first wooed Clytemnaistra, long ago and far away in Sparta, had I known such overwhelming desire. It was all I could do to keep my hands from her slight and seductive body. I shot a glance at Ascephalus, deep in talk with Alcmaeon of Midea. ‘Surely your lord ensures your life is not too tedious?’

  A pink-tipped finger traced the graving on her cup. ‘My husband finds his own amusements and’--a bewitching smile--‘he’s a tolerant man, averse to interference in other people’s pleasures. Least of all mine.’

  A bard stroked the strings of his lyre and began to intone a ballad concerning Hercules and the Nemean lion. I was compelled for courtesy’s sake to forgo conversation and listen to versified falsehood. (During my childhood I had heard the story from Hercules’ own lips. Exaggerated then, it was now a farrago of lies. The history of our times, one hopes, will not derive from bards.) When he had squawked the final lines I rose from the throne. The company stood. I touched Merope’s hand--my reward a look that sent my senses reeling--and walked from the Hall.

  In the portico I grasped Ascephalus’ arm and said, ‘By your favour, my lord, tonight I should welcome a woman in my quarters. Some young, presentable slave--I have none in my train.’

  ‘Certainly, sire. Will one be sufficient?’

  ‘Yes--provided her stamina can withstand a night-long storm!’

  Ascephalus giggled. A chamberlain preceded me along corridors to an upper room: Ascephalus’ bedchamber surrendered for my use. I told the Hero guarding the door to admit a female visitor, disregarded his smirk and let Eurymedon disrobe me. The squire placed an oil lamp on a coffer and a flagon beside the bed, and withdrew to an adjoining cubicle. I stretched on cool linen sheets; the night air breathed through windows and soothed my heated limbs. Impatiently I awaited the concubine’s arrival.

  I heard a whispered colloquy in the passage. The door creaked open and a shadowy form approached the bedside, draped in a robe that covered the head like a hood. I twitched away the upper sheet and pulled her on the bed, ripped the garment off and found nakedness beneath. So feverish was my passion I mounted straightaway and heaved and rammed and plunged in furious spates of lust. She gasped and bit my shoulder and joined battle like a Hero, meeting my thrusts with exquisite timing and skill. The flood tide burst the dam, I rolled panting off her body.

  She said, ‘You have not disappointed me, sire. I could not wish for more exciting entertainment!’

  I bounded from the bed, grabbed the light and brought it close. Merope’s countenance smiled from the pillow. Shakily I put down the lamp, wiped beads of perspiration from my brow.

  ‘This is madness, lady!’

  ‘Madness indeed, and perfectly delicious!’ She patted the bed. ‘Lie down, my lord. You’ll catch a chill if you stand there exposed to the draught.’

  I looked huntedly at the doorway, at the cubicle’s curtained entrance where my squires had undoubtedly listened, chuckling, to the drumming of our contest.

  ‘Speak quietly,’ I whispered, ‘and explain yourself. I asked Ascephalus for a slave, one of his concubines--’

  ‘Impossible. He has none.’

  ‘Nonsense! Every man keeps women for his pleasure.’

  ‘You’re not blind, sire. You’ve seen his tastes are ... exotic.’

  ‘How did you know I’d asked him?’

  ‘Your request left my husband in something of a quandary. There are concubines in the palace, but you can’t, at such short notice, commandeer another man’s property. He confided the problem to me.’

  ‘And you ...’

  ‘Yes. I--er--volunteered.’

  I collapsed on the bed. ‘That’s better,’ Merope sighed. Her hand caressed my body in a place I will not specify.

  ‘So Ascephalus knows?’

  ‘Indeed. He is, as I mentioned before, a remarkably tolerant man.’

  A wind gust wavered the oil lamp’s flame. The sentinel’s spear butt scraped the corridor floor. I restrained her wandering fingers and said, ‘He must be astoundingly complaisant. None the less, conducting negotiations with a ruler aware I’ve horned him is going to be embarrassing.’

  Merope snuggled close and murmured in my ear. ‘You have destroyed Thebes, my lord; and all her dependencies lie prostrate under your heel. You are by repute a pitiless man; Ascephalus fears he may be dispossessed and banished, even killed. If he can place you under an obligation, establish, so to speak, a family connection--’

  ‘The Lady save us!’ I exploded. ‘Are you a bribe?’

  Her lips were warm on my cheek. ‘A very attractive inducement, don’t you think?’

  I dropped head on pillow and collected my scattered wits. I had been tricked into bedding a noblewoman who was, moreover, the wife of the lord of Boeotia’s principal city. Such illicit liaisons, in my experience, invariably brewed bad blood: a fount of feuds and fighting. I intended to make Boeotia a tributary realm, the imposts Thebes had exacted henceforth paid to Mycenae. A permanent military presence to enforce subjection was beyond Mycenae’s manpower resources; therefore I had to rely on fair dealing, reasonable arbitration and goodwill.

  Goodwill. A wronged husband in a powerful position, meditating revenge and plotting insurrection, was hardly a sound foundation for obedience.

  I said, ‘How can I be sure Ascephalus won’t harbour a grievance, however ... broadminded ... he shows himself at the moment?’

  Merope said earnestly, ‘You don’t know him, sire. He’s a pederast to the marrow, my sex an abomination. He had to have heirs, and forced himself to sow his seed in me. Afterwards, each time, he spewed. He’ll be thankful a king is quenching my fire, lest I fall in the bed of a slave!’

  ‘I hope you’re right. We have to agree treaties, tribute, governance together, and if he won’t--’

  ‘Politics!’ Merope’s arms embraced my body, her hands seductively active. ‘So dull! Leave them till morning, my lord, and meanwhile waste no time ... Oh, you’re ready!’

  It was a strenuous night. The shade of Dionysus could have admired my performance.

  * * *

  Ascephalus remained courteous and unfailingly polite during the industrious days that followed, and actively assisted my designs. He was popular among his nobles--not altogether surprising, they being mostly of his bent--and well liked by the common folk: freemen, farmers, artisans and tradesmen. He had a way with people that tumbled reserve and won their trust. After an initial constraint--deceiving husbands is for me an unaccustomed role--I gradually became enmeshed in the spell of his lazy charm and made him privy to all my plans. Nevertheless, I doubted he was fit to rule Orchomenos.

  I started with a survey o
f the lake. The country’s economy depended almost entirely on yields from Copais’ cornlands. With Ascephalus in my chariot I circled the plain--the journey took all day--while he enlarged upon an amazing engineering feat.

  Two rivers and several streams flowed into the Copais basin. Every winter they had flooded their banks and turned the whole area into a large shallow lake which, by the spring, was twice a tall man’s depth. During the summer the lake became a swamp. Some four generations back (around Perseus’ time, by Mycenaean reckoning) the Orchomenians conceived a bold and simple idea: to confine the water between the river banks after these had been diverted, widened and strengthened. So they built a system of dykes and embankments and, at the lake’s extremity, dug a long underground tunnel to carry the overflow into the sea.

  The dykes, fifty paces across and twenty feet high, surrounded a huge area that measured eighty thousand paces around the perimeter and confined the floods to two main streams which islanded the land reclaimed. Basically a simple scheme but, as I saw for myself, a concept involving enormous labour. The tunnel alone was a superb technical achievement unmatched, so far as I know, by any engineering work in all the world.

  I gaped silently at these wonders and recalled, concealing humility, my petty reconstructions at Mycenae. Ascephalus reminded me that sixty years earlier, when Thebes took Orchomenos, young Hercules under King Laius’ command had wantonly broken the dykes, destroyed sluices, blocked channels and again inundated the plain--one of many demented deeds that beefy idiot performed. Lams’ successor Oedipus authorized reconstruction. ‘But,’ Ascephalus observed ruefully, ‘modern engineers lack the technical skill their predecessors owned, and the works have to be constantly inspected and repaired.’

  Within the dykes a golden sea of ripening wheat and barley rolled beyond the horizon. Peasants’ wooden shacks dotted the cornfields; stone watch towers at intervals spiked the embankments. I regarded the towers thoughtfully.

  ‘Are you often raided?’

  ‘Now and again. We’re near the borders of Phocis and Locris, and suffer occasional forays aimed at cattle and slaves. A large peasant population lives within the dykes, and makes a tempting target. The Locrians, in particular, run a slave trade through Euboia.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘All. Our neighbours were frightened of Thebes, which could, and did, retaliate.’ I met a speculative look from the heavy-lidded eyes. ‘We may be harassed rather more in future. Mycenae’s far away.’

  I frowned. ‘Can’t Orchomenos discourage raids?’

  Ascephalus plucked a wheat ear (we had dismounted on one of the paths that gridded the cornlands) and shredded the grain with a thumbnail. ‘I feel, sire, you don’t appreciate the political, military and economic chaos arising from Thebes’ destruction. To repel your invasion Creon mustered levies from all his tributary cities: the best of Boeotia’s warriors now rot on Asopos’ banks.’ He waved a hand at the cornfields rippled by wind. ‘Creon directed the harvest’s disposal, so much for every city, so much for export, so much saved for seed. Six decades’ direction has suddenly disappeared. The realm is lost and drifting, like a crewless ship in a gale.’

  ‘Your Scribes can follow precedent and keep the economy running.’

  Ascephalus nibbled a wheat grain. ‘Scribes work to orders. They won't initiate policy.’

  True enough. The sect obeys strict rules, faithfully carrying out their lords’ commandments, avoiding political involvement like disease, advising within their spheres but never, under any conditions, taking hold of the reins. Instruments in their masters’ hands, passive as the bead-strung frames they use for calculations. Probably a reason for the Scribes’ survival over the centuries. Gelon says they originally came from Egypt, captives of alien kings who ruled in a place called Avaris till the native Egyptians rose and cast them out. The routed dynasty crossed to Crete with their hook-nosed slaves who had mastered the art of writing; and later, when Thera exploded. Zeus and his followers brought the Scribes to Achaea. Gelon swears his homeland lies in a far-off country the Phoenicians rule.

  Whatever the truths of Scribal origins they are undoubtedly outlanders, a swarthy mysterious people who never marry outside the sect, won’t eat pork and worship a peculiar god who lives in a casket they call an ark. They alone in Achaea can write, and so account the finances of every kingdom.

  * * *

  I left the Host at Orchomenos and took Argos’ war-band on a show of force from end to end of Boeotia (Diomedes was muttering about going home; I used the tour to stop him fretting.) My inspection revealed a fertile, well watered land inhabited by small farming communities living in widely dispersed cities--if you can apply such a term to humble dwellings clustered round weak stone forts--whose inhabitants lived by pasturing cattle on grassy plains and shallow valleys that nestled among the hills. There was no political cohesion; the communities existed in a void of mutual suspicion, united only in subservience to Thebes. Occasionally they raided a neighbour’s herds, and were themselves attacked by marauders from over the borders.

  I summoned Gelon and a scribal team from Mycenae. Not that I distrusted the local Scribes’ integrity--a Scribe would be grilled alive before he fudged his figures--but rather the competence and flexibility of men who for years had worked within the narrow limits Theban kings imposed. I wanted new brooms, an unprejudiced outlook, and a complete examination of Boeotia’s resources, her financial system and military capability. Gelon duly arrived and tracked my steps to the farthest frontiers, probing, assessing, accounting.

  He re-allocated Copais’ tremendous corn yield--the true object of the Followers’ campaign--and reduced exports to northern realms to a politic minimum. I considered it unwise to cut supplies completely, thereby starting famines and resort to desperate measures--I did not fancy a Followers’ War in reverse. The bulk was sent to Mycenae’s granaries for export to kingdoms in southern Achaea--a useful weapon for exerting diplomatic pressures. The levers of power Creon had pulled stemmed from Copais’ corn; since the battle of Asopos they were firmly in my grasp.

  From the treasure won at Thebes--despite rumblings from Diomedes, who saw his share reduced--I made grants (you could call them bribes) to influential nobles. They remembered Creon’s brutality, recalled grandfathers’ tales of Laius’ savage repression, and were gratefully astounded by clemency from a king they’d believed more ruthless than either. I took hostages, of course, to guarantee good behaviour--sons and close relations who would go in my train to Mycenae.

  These complicated arrangements kept me travelling or working from sunrise until dark. At night I recuperated--if that is the proper word--in Merope’s arms. She came to my chamber directly I retired and we gambolled happily all night long. The liaison could not be concealed: from lowliest slave to frost-haired Councillor the entire palace savoured a scandalous titbit. Neither by word nor demeanour did Ascephalus betray his knowledge; his attitude stayed friendly and relaxed. Meanwhile, apart from enjoying Merope’s frolics, I became fonder of her than was prudent.

  I have loved only once in my life: a slave of noble birth, my first and sweetest concubine. Clytemnaistra? The deceptions and crimes I committed in winning her hand derived from sheer carnality, political expedience and ambition. There was never a trace of love in our relationship; mutual hatred has since replaced the guarded tolerance that reigned in earlier years.

  Now, a middle-aged man near forty, I realized with misgivings a springing of true affection for a lascivious, flighty creature twelve years younger.

  No woman I have pleasured, before or since, matched Merope’s sensuality and the delicate skills she displayed in our bedroom capers. Otherwise she seemed completely empty-headed, entertained no ideas beyond fashions in clothes and feminine gossip, and lived entirely for the day. Politics and war--my own absorbing interests--she refused to discuss, asserting they bored her speechless. Mentally we trod no common ground and yet, as summer waned and reapers quartered the cornfields, I anticipated n
ightfall ever more keenly, yearned for sinuous limbs entwined with mine, for Merope’s brainless chatter while we rested between our bouts. I found in her embraces a freedom from responsibility, a relaxing of cares and worries, a haven of tranquillity. Perhaps this lenitive gift was my reason for loving the witch.

  Merope had a store of anecdotes about Orchomenos’ nobles and ladies which, from a slanted angle, gave an insight on the character of a somewhat peculiar city. The Theban vice, it appeared, was almost universal. Orchomenos kept pretty boys as we keep concubines. Married ladies were breeding machines, mortality among daughters exposed at birth uncommonly high. None the less my observations disclosed that Ascephalus’ Heroes, riddled by perversion, were no less courageous and tough than mine and Diomedes’, for ever practising athletics, chariot racing or martial exercises. In games we organized to keep our warriors busy they could out-run and out-throw my men, wrestled our champions flat, drove faster teams on the courses. I called to mind Thebes’ deadly Scavengers, pederasts all, and unwillingly concluded that sodomy and hardiness could travel hand in hand.

  Ascephalus himself, though an artist with the reins, tended to avoid all sweaty sports. I saw him almost daily, for he provided valuable advice in re-modelling Boeotia’s government to accord with Mycenaean precepts. I began to like him. He also had a fund of amusing stories, told in a throwaway style; and his indolent mien concealed a shrewd intelligence. He persuaded outlying cities to accept my rule; his experience helped me and Gelon in building robust economic foundations. I decided, in the end, he should not be superseded.

  Harvesting was under way; Diomedes fidgeted. ‘My war-band is superfluous,’ he complained. ‘The country’s settled; the cities acknowledge you as tributary lord. There’ll be no more fighting. It’s time I returned to Argos.’

  No word had come from Odysseus on the progress of our plot, so Diomedes’ departure would be highly inconvenient. Anticipating the crisis I had conceived a valid reason for keeping the King of Argos far from home.