King in Splendour

by George Shipway

  Menelaus said sceptically, ‘So we need a romantic cause to spur our laggardly Heroes. Can you suggest one?’

  A despicable expedient kindled in my mind, glowed briefly into life and brightened the way ahead. I looked at my brother’s honest face and trampled on the embers. ‘No. None at all. We’ll simply have to hope the kings fulfil their pledges. Let’s return to camp.’

  Despondently we trudged across the flower-deckled plain.

  * * *

  While breaking camp next morning a spearman brought to my half-struck tent a fellow dressed in a tattered tunic, grimed by travel and reeking of hides--the mark of a tannery hand. He cowered at my feet and begged audience in private.

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded.

  ‘I am sent by ...’ (He named the Spy.)

  I dismissed the spearman. ‘Say your message.’

  He swallowed a lump in the throat and anxiously searched my face. I felt a discomforting qualm. The man carried unwelcome news which he hesitated to reveal lest I vent my rage on his head. (Bearers of bad tidings sometimes die unpleasantly: Thyestes, years ago, flayed a messenger alive.) I said tautly, ‘Speak out, man! You shall not be harmed.’

  He recited in a shaking voice staccato sentences learned by rote. ‘The lady Merope is dead. She died two days since. Unwittingly she swallowed poison.’

  The ground rocked underneath my feet; wagons, horses, hurrying men careered in a crazy dance. I steadied myself on a chariot wheel and shook my head like a boxer dealt a shattering half-arm jolt. Gradually my vision cleared. In tones I did not recognize: ‘Who ... gave her the poison?’

  The tanner stammered, ‘Forgive me, sire. I can’t tell you any more. I say only what my master has commanded.’

  I kicked him away, shouted for Talthybius, strode to my chariot. Grooms backed bay Kolaxians under the yoke, buckled harness and fastened reins. I cursed the men between my teeth, bidding them speed their fingers. My Companion came running, whip in hand. ‘Mount!’ I commanded. ‘We’ll reach Mycenae’s gates before sunset else you, Talthybius, will be breaking stones in the quarries!’

  He took one look at my face, said nothing, and cracked his whip. We stormed from the encampment, swerved through wagons and animals, baggage and men, galloped along the stony road that led across the Isthmus. I gripped the guard rail and stared ahead, balancing from habit against the lurchings of the chariot.

  Merope gone. A lover and friend and confidant lost, a woman I valued and cherished. My mind was numbed. The pain would rack me later, an unbearable ache in the heart.

  The wind of our going sang a dirge in my ears, a lament for the dead, for Merope I loved.

  Talthybius took the perilous road past Sciron’s Rocks at a canter. A precipice scraped the offside nave, the nearside sheered to sea-lashed crags a hundred feet below. I was hardly aware of the danger, saw nothing before the Isthmus Wall that reared like a long grey cliff athwart the road. Corinth’s citadel reared on a steepling mount, the road thrust into the mountains, climbed and fell and twisted. Bronze-tyred wheels crunched pebbles, the stallions’ clattering hoofbeats echoed and re-echoed from the faces of the defiles.

  Merope poisoned. By whose hand? I bit my lip and felt no hurt. Like visions seen in nightmares faces danced before my eyes, transparent pictures painted on the mountains’ tree-hung slopes. Faces always the same: green eyes, slanting eyebrows, scarlet lipped and sultry.

  Surely she would not dare. She would not dare!

  Talthybius drove like a man pursued by furies, his bony face a mask of concentration, skidding one-wheeled on the turns, cracking his whip and racing the straights, taking risks impossible for any save the cleverest whip in the world. My legs were weary from resisting the chariot’s buck and sway, the guard rail’s polished figwood lifted blisters on my palms. He spoke but once in the course of that breakneck drive, saying as we passed Nemea, ‘You’re unarmoured, sire. Are we heading for a fight?’

  I said grimly, ‘We are indeed. My weapons will be other than sword and spear and shield.’

  We galloped beneath the shoulders of Saminthos and saw Mycenae’s mighty walls washed gold by the setting sun. Talthybius nursed his failing team up the winding road to the Lion Gate. The horses were so exhausted that they could not climb the ramp; they stopped at the foot with drooping heads and snorted blood-flecked froth. I mounted the ramp on leaden legs, threaded the path to the Great Court’s stairway, brushed wordlessly past Heroes who hastened to greet their king. Through vestibule and Hall, along dim twilit corridors I strode to Merope’s chamber.

  A slave woman crouched at the doorway, robe drawn over her head. Shutters darkened the windows, a solitary oil lamp guttered on a marble dressing coffer. Ladies in waiting stood beside the bed, heads bowed and faces tear-stained. A stench of putrefaction soured the air.

  The room was dark and silent, the women still as statues, the only sound a splutter from the lamp. Merope lay on the bed. An embroidered coverlet drawn to her chin outlined the slender body. Death had not erased the agony from her face--lips drawn back from small white teeth, the rictus straining her throat. A faint blue tint of corruption crawled beneath her skin. I gazed on the features I loved, and drew from the wells of memory her vitality and tenderness.

  I dragged the coverlet over her face. ‘When did she die?’

  ‘Two days ago, sire,’ a lady whispered.

  ‘The cause?’

  ‘She ate some honeyed figs. Soon afterwards the pains began.’

  ‘How long did she take to die?’

  The woman began sobbing. ‘From midday until dusk, my lord. It was ... terrible. We had to ... hold her down.’

  ‘You summoned a physician?’

  ‘At once. He forced purges down her throat. They ... worsened the torment.’

  ‘This fruit. Whence did it come?’

  Her hands made a helpless gesture. ‘A platter is always kept in the room. Slaves fill it from palace kitchens, maybe from the markets ... I don’t know.’ She hid her face in her hands, broke down in a storm of weeping.

  No more could be learned here. ‘Call the embalmers, prepare your mistress for burial.’ I went from the room, met Mecisteus--Regent in my absence--looking grey and frightened in the passage. He started stuttering excuses; I cut him short and said, ‘Find (the Spy), send him to my quarters. Hurry!’

  I waited on a balcony above the Great Court, clenched fingers on the balustrade and struggled to control the rage that shivered my frame from head to heels. A squire announced the Spy, who folded his hands and bowed to the floor. He was white in the face and shaking with terror. I said roughly, ‘Calm yourself. You have nothing to fear. Now--who provided the poisoned fruit?’

  In shaking tones that steadied as he talked the Spy told me that platters and baskets of fruit were commonly kept in ladies’ rooms--articles familiar as the furniture and hangings. Slaves refreshed the contents daily from the kitchens. Through agents among the palace slaves he had tried to trace the origins of the platter that killed Merope. The figs and quinces had passed through several hands.

  ‘Can you identify those hands?’

  The Spy bobbed his head. ‘Indeed, sire--though in the shops and kitchens there are many who could tamper with the fruit.’

  ‘Be they numberless as sand grains on the shore, more obstinate than mules, mute as stones--I’ll wring from them the truth!’

  I sent for my chief executioner, a stalwart Thracian, expert in the arts of extracting confessions. (I inherited him from Atreus, who first recognized his talents.) The Spy quoted a list of names: traders in fruit and herbs who provisioned the palace, kitchen cooks and servants, Boeotian and Mycenaean slaves who had waited on Merope: thirty or forty in all. ‘Assemble your men,’ I told the Thracian. ‘Arrest these people, take them to the store rooms beneath the palace, put them to the question.’ I paused, and added tonelessly, ‘There need be no survivors.’

  The terror that shook Mycenae during the next three days will be remembered in hushed voices
long after I am gone. The rooms of inquisition lie deep beneath the palace; yet anguished shrieks and moans were heard on the topmost floor. Noblemen and ladies, squires, stewards and slaves trod tiptoe round the passages and shut themselves in rooms. Neither by day nor night did the sounds of suffering cease. The Thracian came each evening and reported; blood and viscera clotted his arms to the elbows.

  Nobody confessed to poisoning the fruit.

  The third day’s nightfall ended the investigations. None save executioners emerged from the rooms alive. They had not found the proof I wanted, the evidence pinning the crime on the breast of the one who had murdered my sweet Merope.

  I avoided Clytemnaistra during those dreadful days. Like others in the palace she confined herself to her rooms. I buried Merope on a hillside near Atreus’ tomb--a state funeral the Daughters conducted, every Hero in the citadel following the procession--and went on lagging feet to Clytemnaistra’s quarters.

  She sat alone in the day-room, spinning thread, put away the work and said, ‘Greetings, my lord. You have delayed a long time in seeing me since your unannounced return.’

  ‘I had other business to attend.’

  ‘So my ears informed me--not to mention the smell.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘The palace resembled a slaughterhouse--to no purpose, as I’m told.’

  ‘To no purpose. You have been very clever, my lady. You hide your tracks more artfully than a hunted hare.’

  Green eyes opened wide. ‘I? Do you suggest that I contrived your Boeotian trollop’s death?’

  ‘I suggest nothing. I state cold truth. You killed Merope certainly as sunrise follows night.’

  An evil little smile touched the corners of her lips. ‘Supposition, my lord. Show me proof.’

  I said heavily, ‘You know very well the evidence is wanting. I cannot take your life for Merope’s--the retribution a crime so vile deserves. You’re safe, for a time, from my vengeance. Don’t look so pleased, my lady: I promise you’ll be punished in the end.’

  She picked up her spinning, suspended the weights. ‘We now know where we stand; no more need be said. Farewell, my lord.’

  I looked at her with hatred, and left the room.

  * * *

  A dark and stormy winter deepened my depression. I slept badly, and passed entire nights staring into the dark and searching my mind for ways of avenging Merope. I could find no valid excuse for getting rid of Clytemnaistra: she had not been taken in adultery nor caught in plotting treason--both acceptable reasons for killing a wife or at least dispatching her in disgrace to the family whence she came. Unfortunately such a course was certain to estrange Sparta’s and Mycenae’s royal Houses, shatter the alliance and finish my plans for Troy.

  At some time during those miserable days Menelaus and Odysseus reached Mycenae. My precipitate departure from the camp near Megara had created consternation, the reason then unknown. I now endured well-intended sympathy, gruffly cut their condolences short, and said we would call the kings to Sparta in the winter for a final conference before mustering at Aulis. Menelaus departed; Odysseus stayed in Mycenae, observed my surly reticence and kept well out of the way.

  After the new year’s birth I joined the conference of kings. Invitations had gone to every ruler who promised his aid against Troy; two-thirds, in the end, showed up. All the southern rulers gathered--Diomedes, Nestor, Agapenor, Agasthenes of Elis. Ajax came from Salamis, Achilles from Phthia, Idomeneus sailed from Crete; and two or three minor chieftains from Euboia and Aitolia.

  Our discussions dealt with ways and means and lasted many days. We sifted strengths and supplies, debated strategy and tactics. Throughout the talks an unenthusiastic lethargy afflicted everyone except Nestor and Menelaus. (Achilles breathed fire and blood, bragged about his Myrmidons, evaded strict commitments and was generally vague.) Their forces were pledged; they were unwillingly committed; but they doubted the necessity and sullenly grudged the means.

  The birth pangs of our enterprise,’ Menelaus said despondently after one indecisive meeting, ‘will produce a stillborn infant unless we kindle ardour in our lackadaisical allies!’

  A gathering so distinguished demanded royal entertainment. Menelaus provided a succession of banquets, hunts and games. The kings’ retinues packed the palace and spilled across the purlieus in a sprawl of tents and huts; the festivities started at noon and continued till dark. The revels jarred my mood: Merope’s aching loss and, judging by appearances, the impending collapse of the Trojan project soured my temper. I was poor company at dinner in the Hall, and broodingly observed uproarious drunken Heroes carousing at their tables. Helen was placed invariably on Menelaus’ left; I noticed Paris’ promotion to a seat on her farther side. The pair spent most of their meals completely engrossed in each other.

  Menelaus, an unobservant, unsuspicious man, either failed to perceive this open dalliance or felt so sure of his wife he chose to ignore it. The couple flirted brazenly, Helen ever radiant and dazzlingly lovely, Paris handsome and amusing, exerting all his formidable charm. I saw him pick up her goblet and set his lips to that part of the rim from which she had drunk. I saw him dip his fingertip in wine and trace a design on the table top; on the pretext of easing my bladder I passed behind the table and recognized a crude portrayal of lips pressed closely together.

  A shocking performance, I thought. Should I warn Menelaus? Then the seed which had lain in my mind for moons flowered like a blossom in the spring. I descried, bright as a beacon, an irresistible incentive that would drive romantic Heroes, bellowing for blood, across the seas to Troy.

  I lifted a crystal goblet and pensively studied the clear red wine. So underhand a plot, with all the complications, looked impossible from the beginning. Where to start? How to implant a suggestion in the minds of the guilty lovers, fan it into action, provide the means? Whom could I employ to execute the plan? Odysseus? An excellent choice: he took delight in convoluted conspiracies--but a man well known as my friend could not be used. My hand must never become apparent, for this would be the most intricate and dangerous intrigue that ever I engaged in.

  For days I observed attentively my brother’s queen and his Trojan guest. Paris accompanied Helen abroad wherever she went, drove her to hunts in his chariot, escorted her at games and inter-city battles. She was obviously besotted, madly in love, doted on her gay and attractive adorer. I could not be quite so certain about Paris’ response--any pretty woman was a target for his venery--but he seemed from all appearances to reciprocate her passion. The affair went not unremarked in the Spartan court: ladies giggled and whispered, gentlemen exchanged salacious glances. Nobody, I gathered, took the liaison seriously, assuming a transient amour that would end when Paris departed.

  After racking my brains I summoned the Spy from Mycenae.

  I interviewed him in my opulent apartments--Sparta’s hospitality set standards few could match--dismissed attendants, closed the doors.

  ‘What I shall say has never been said. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course, sire. Such are the rules of my trade.’

  ‘Observe them carefully, else the skin will be torn from your living body! Can you find me an agent who may pass as a native of Troy?’

  The fat face smirked. ‘Certainly, sire. A Trojan, taken years ago from a merchantman your galleys sank, and since employed on a stud farm near Mycenae. I have used him for spying in Elis--a reliable, intelligent man.’

  ‘Good. Now listen carefully. This is what your Trojan has to do.’

  The slave, I said, would sail from Nauplia on a galley I would provide, land at Prasiai and travel to Sparta. Pretending himself a clandestine envoy from Troy he would seek a secret audience with Paris and say King Priam feared invasion under Menelaus’ leadership and had also learned of the affair between Helen and his son. Paris therefore, must persuade his paramour to elope to Troy. Once there she’d be held hostage, her life in fee for Achaean attack.

  The spy gaped wider and wider as he listened to my orders. ‘
I shall do as you command.’ He patted his paunch, avoided my eyes and continued, ‘Policy, sire, is above my head--I’m only a humble dealer in hides. But do you truly believe Lord Paris will swallow so implausible a story, however convincingly told?’

  ‘Paris is feather-brained, irresponsible and woman-mad. If he finds no obstacles put in his way he’ll jump at the chance of abducting Helen--particularly when he believes he obeys his father’s behest. Such considerations,’ I said, ‘are none of your concern!’

  ‘True, sire, true,’ he stammered. ‘Are you certain--forgive me, sire--Queen Helen will consent?’

  ‘Yes. She’s a butterfly trapped in the web of Paris’ enchantment. Have you,’ I added acidly, ‘any more impudent questions?’

  Mutely he shook his head.

  ‘Another thing. I want an agent inserted in Paris’ retinue, and a second in Queen Helen’s household. Is that possible?’

  ‘Easily, sire. Two are already in your train: a chambermaid and a stable-hand. They don’t,’ he went on hastily, ‘pry in your affairs.’

  ‘They’d better not!’ I slipped from a finger the ring with my personal seal--a jasper bezel portrayed my ancestor Zeus grappling a lion in either hand. ‘Your warranty to the Master of the Ships. Tell Periphetes I command him to provision a fast penteconter under a master who’ll ask no questions. The ship will carry your Trojan slave to Prasiai and stay there ready to sail at the flick of an eyelash. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, sire.’

  ‘Then return to Mycenae fast as your horses can gallop. Go!’

  Shaking a bewildered head he waddled from the room.

  * * *

  In truth I was quite unsure the stratagem would work. I gave Paris an incentive for Helen’s abduction and provided a vessel for flight: whether he and his lady-love screwed up their courage lay in fortune’s lap. They also needed the right opportunity. Menelaus delighted in Helen’s company and became irritably uneasy if she vanished for long from his sight. Her disappearance would instigate instant inquiries and the couple might be caught before they reached the ship. I brooded the problem; and could not discover any method of removing my brother from Sparta long enough to give the lovers a start.