by Laura Gill
I stared at the table’s edge, loathing him and the condescending way Mother let him talk to me, and would have gone on sulking had she not interjected, “Answer the question, young man.”
Timon, standing among the servants by the wall, started to answer for me. “It is but a brief message, my lady. Prince Orestes merely—”
“I did not ask you,” Mother said coldly. “Orestes has a voice.”
“Yes,” Aegisthus purred, “let’s hear all about this composition.”
My appetite was gone, my throat dry as dust. “I asked Father if he was well and I told him I was working hard at my lessons.”
Aegisthus laughed sharply. “I imagine Agamemnon is too busy sacking cities, and raping and killing Trojans to be interested in such childish courtesies.”
“You’re not fighting!” Elektra exclaimed.
Mother hissed under her breath, and would have sent her straight to her room with a reprimand, had Aegisthus not decided to humor her outburst. “My darling little princess,” he crooned, “your father didn’t invite me.”
“Not all men choose to waste their time fighting a useless war over some faithless slut,” Mother added.
Aunt Helen. My gaze darted to my cousin. Hermione pressed her lips together and bowed her head in shame. Mother should not have done that. Maybe it was true, what people said about Helen running away with Trojan Paris, but Hermione had had nothing to do with that.
Mother once again turned her attention on me. “Orestes, tomorrow you will bring this letter to my chamber.” She flashed me a rigid smile to warn me against disobedience. “You need my seal in order to send it.”
“You also need to eat your vegetables, young man.” Aegisthus shoveled more boiled asparagus, which he knew I hated, onto my plate. “You have to maintain your health, after all, with all the sweet things you eat. I understand you filched a honey cake from the kitchen this afternoon.”
So he knew about that, too! “It was for the altar.”
“Do I not send Kilissa each morning with honey and figs?” Mother’s brows knitted together. “Why should you have to make another offering in the middle of the day? Have you offended some deity?”
Staring glumly at the asparagus spears, I scrabbled for an acceptable answer. Timon would have known what to say, had he been allowed to speak. “No, I...” Think! “I-I asked Lady Athena for help writing the letter.”
At least she believed me. Aegisthus dawdled over his wine, licking dark droplets from his lips. He watched me with an intent gaze that seemed to pierce straight through my flesh. I choked down a morsel of asparagus, unable to decide which disgusted me more, it or him.
After supper, when we were alone, I asked Timon, “How did he know about the letter? Did you tell him?” Pedagogues were supposed to report everything to the parents of their students, but I sensed that Timon often withheld information from Mother.
“No, I did not.” His brows twitched as he pondered the question. “Hmm, we left the door open to catch a breeze. Perhaps his spies overheard us working.”
“He spies on me?” I had not considered the possibility.
Timon did not seem surprised. “You are a prince. Everything you do is subject to scrutiny.”
That night, my bedchamber was as hot and close as the rest of the palace. Kilissa had tacked wet linen over the window to cool the air, but I tossed and turned, knowledge of the spectral boys and the sour aftertaste of Aegisthus’s interrogation roiling my thoughts. Those were his half-brothers. Did they hate me as he obviously did? I lay awake listening for the faintest whispers, the feather-soft footfalls outside my door, but the ghost boys did not disturb me.
The following morning, I finished the letter. Timon inspected it one last time before escorting me upstairs to the queen’s apartment.
Mother was expecting us. She held out her hand for the diptych, opened it, and perused the contents while I tried not to squirm or fidget. I stared at a painted octopus waving its tentacles across the floor beside her foot, which was shod in painted red leather. Her ladies stared at me as though I were a babe whose adorable pink cheeks they wanted to pinch, when I was seven years old and almost a man! It was intolerable.
“Very well,” Mother finally said, snapping the cover closed. Timon bound the diptych with sturdy twine, applied the soft wax he had brought from downstairs, and returned it to Mother for her to impress with her golden seal ring. She said nothing about my laboriously worked signs or the straight, neat lines Timon had insisted upon. I wondered if she had even noticed.
But she did let me examine her ring. Her seal stone, worked in exquisite detail, encapsulated an entire world. Bare-breasted women in flounced skirts lined up to offer wheat ears and poppies to a seated goddess. Olive trees and a mountain filled the distance, and above that, a sun and moon hung in the sky. It was heavy, owing to the mass of solid gold, and its elliptical surface would have dominated Mother’s hand had she worn it on her finger. I had never held anything like it.
“Don’t expect a speedy reply, Orestes.” Mother wasted no time dashing my reverie. “Your father is too busy murdering and pillaging the Trojan countryside to think about his children.”
I instantly forgot about the wonderful ring. Why did she have to spoil everything with her slanders? I held firm to my conviction that Father would write back, and that he would praise me for writing such a grown-up letter.
Timon released me for the midday meal and sleep. I had no appetite, but closed my eyes and woke in the late afternoon. A few hours of daylight remained, precious idle time for adventures with friends.
Elektra intercepted me on the way to find Ipheus. “There you are!” she exclaimed. “I have something to show you.”
“I’m busy.”
“No, you’re not.” Elektra snatched my arm, pulling me toward the stairwell leading to the royal apartments. “Come on.”
I shook myself loose, determined not to let her drag me around the palace like a baby. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
At that, I halted, dug in my heels. “You tell me where, or you can forget it.”
“We’re going up to the roof.”
“We’re not allowed up there.”
My eleven-year-old sister thrust her face into mine, lowered her voice to a grating murmur. “If we’re smart, nobody has to know. Mother’s reading the ledgers, and he’s still napping. Timon’s probably in his cubicle writing out some boring lesson for tomorrow. Come on!”
Try to walk away from her and she would hound me. “It better be important,” I grumbled.
On hot summer evenings, the servants slept on the roof to catch the cool sea breezes blowing in from the south; their mats and blankets had been left bundled on the stairs. Elektra steered me toward the south-facing ledge, where the building’s horns of consecration formed makeshift crenellations. “Look out there,” she said. “You can see everything.”
Although I had never been this high up and liked the view, she was nevertheless wasting precious time I could have spent rolling dice with my friends, for I could see the Argive plain just as well from the terraces. “Is that all?”
Elektra playfully cuffed my ear. “All? Father used to bring us up here all the time. He stood right where we’re standing now and showed us the whole Argolid, just like this.” She swept her arm across the view, owning the plain, the mountains, and everything else. The late afternoon sunlight burnished her red hair with a bronze glow. “He told us it was all ours, everything we saw, and much more. And then he laughed, a great big booming laugh, like a lion’s roar.”
Now I understood. “He did?”
“Of course!” she said, tossing her head with its unruly red curls. She was laughing. “If he were here now, that’s what he’d do with you. Bring you up here and set you on his broad shoulders to show you this, because one day it will be yours.” She threw an arm around my neck, squeezing me close. Elektra was already tall and strong, and would be an impressive woman when grown.
“Forget about Aegisthus,” she said. “He’s a stupid coward. He loiters about drinking and eating, he does disgusting things with Mother at night, and acts like a big bully in the palaestra. Oh, but he won’t go to Troy. I wish he would. I wish he would go and die a gruesome death. I wish Father would kill him. Smash his face and break all his bones and knock out that oily smile. What would Mother think about that?”
Her aggressiveness rankled me; she became another person entirely when she talked about blood. “He’d kill her, too,” I ventured uneasily.
Releasing me, Elektra heaved her shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “Well, she asked for it.”
“Why do you have to fight with her all the time?” The household would have been a calmer place had she been obedient and placid like Chrysothemis and Hermione. But then, Elektra’s nature always ran contrary to her sex, and I secretly liked the crude jests she made and the pranks she pulled, as long as I was not her victim.
“Because I hate what she’s done. She always has to ruin everything, just for spite.” Elektra answered bitterly. “I hate what happened to Iphigenia, too, but...” Iphigenia was a subject that frustrated her, wounded her in ways she did not talk about. Not surprisingly, she changed the topic. “Did you finish your letter, Orestes? Did you tell Father what’s been going on here. Did you tell him that we still love him?”
“Timon wouldn’t let me say anything about Aegisthus.”
“Idiot,” she muttered.
“Father already knows those things. His spies tell him,” I pointed out. “And besides, Mother read it because she had to put her seal on the letter to send it. Except she said he wouldn’t write back.”
Elektra heaved a sigh. “Father never answers my letters.” I had no idea until she admitted it that she had even tried writing to him, her skills were so poor. “Mother probably burns them all because she’s afraid of what I might tell him. And I would tell him, too! But he’ll write back to you, Orestes. I know he will.”
“It wasn’t a very interesting letter,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter. You’re his son.”
It was hot on the roof, with the sun mercilessly beating down on us, and no shade. Nevertheless, I was in no hurry to leave, because it was a good place to be alone together and share secrets. I might even have told her about the ghost children, except that it was too awkward, too terrible to mention aloud.
“Elektra,” I began hesitantly. “Do you think Father would like me?”
Elektra threw me a quizzical look. “What a stupid question! Of course he would like you. He would adore you.”
“I don’t remember him much.” Only the laughing man in the nursery, and the godlike warrior in his gleaming armor.
“But he remembers you,” she said. “You’ve no idea how he celebrated when you were born. I never saw such a splendid feast, or such athletic games.” She chuckled wryly. “I hated you, getting all that attention just because you were a boy. I can fight and climb trees, too, you know.”
“Ipheus’s father always shakes his head and asks what did he do to deserve such a thickheaded boy,” I said. “You don’t think Father would say the same about me?”
“Ipheus is thickheaded! I don’t know what you see in him,” Elektra snorted contemptuously over my friend. “But you’re smart and strong, a true prince of Mycenae, and when you start your battle training, you’re going to become the best fighter there is. That’ll make Father proud.”
Chapter Seven
“All right, boys. Line up!”
Philaretos the Master of Arms liked to shout, and often.
All sinew and gristle, his left cheek seamed by an old scar, he wasted no time with greetings or introductions. “You raw recruits are going to take a beating,” he barked. “You’re going to stagger out of here black and blue. You’re going to wish you were dead. And then you’re going to do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, until you learn to give as good as you got.”
Predawn cold sent goose pimples shivering down my naked arms and legs, and my belly growled. We wore almost nothing in the palaestra, and were forbidden to eat until after our drills. I had lain awake half the night burning with excitement at the prospect of at last starting my military training.
Philaretos made us stretch and flex our limbs to warm up, then set us to running laps around the court. The older boys jostled me with their elbows as they jogged past; my rank made me a target.
Twenty laps later, we stumbled, panting, into a ragged line according to age. Philaretos numbered us and paired the novices with the older boys for boxing.
“Here, show me what you’ve got.” Thirteen-year-old Kleitos tossed me some worn himantes, strips of ox-hide that boxers wound around their hands and knuckles when they sparred.
Play-boxing with my friends had taught me the basic moves, but this was in earnest. I limped away from my first exercise with a split lip and bruised shoulder. “Not bad,” Kleitos said.
We switched partners. Kleitos took on Alastor, while Ipheus’s initial partner, a husky brute called Phereklos, swaggered over with squared shoulders, and gave me a little shove. “I’m going to give you a beating,” he boasted.
I blocked his initial jabs, but his greater height and longer reach kept me from striking back. Then, he moved left. I followed, fists poised to block him yet again, when he suddenly feinted right to catch me in the ribs.
“Moron!” he taunted. “Don’t you know how to bob and weave? That’s how Theseus got the Minotaur. He ran circles around him to tire him out, then moved in for the kill.” Another jab.
Block. “You’re the moron,” I flung back. “Theseus was a wrestler. Got the Minotaur in a chokehold.”
Philaretos called a halt. I saw Ipheus on all fours, spitting out a bloody wad that looked like the loose milk tooth he had shown me the other day; his partner gave him a contemptuous shove with his foot. The other boys milled around, regarding the scene with scorn.
No one helped Ipheus crawl to his feet. Once he was standing, Philaretos barked at him, adding to his humiliation. “You’re shit, boy!” Red-faced, Ipheus kept bawling. Philaretos spat at his feet, muttering something about babies and swaddling clothes, then turned to us. “Pay attention! This is how it’s done.”
He arranged his body into the boxer’s starting stance, then made us copy him. “Ipheus, stop your sniveling and position your arms! Alastor, straighten your spine! Phausias, Orestes, eh, that’ll do.” Someone snickered. “Hippasos! Care to share the joke? Then shut your mouth. Klymenos, come here.”
The eldest student, a tall fourteen-year-old, stepped forward to help him demonstrate a basic feint. “Remember,” Philaretos said, “your opponent knows how to box, too. He’ll be watching your every move, every twitch of your muscles, every change in mood, anything that will help him predict what you’re going to do next.”
So saying, he feinted to the left. Klymenos blocked the attempt and delivered a strong uppercut to the jaw. Even though it was but a demonstration, Klymenos’s blow was genuine enough. I heard the smack of leather himantes and knuckles against flesh. But Philaretos absorbed the shock as though it were nothing. “Get it right the first time,” he said afterward, flexing his mandible, ignoring the bruise forming under his trimmed beard. His toughness impressed me. “You have no second chance in a real fight.”
We spent an hour air boxing, jab-jab-jab first with the right arm, then with the left, shifting our stance and making corrections wherever Philaretos, walking down the line with a rawhide switch, directed us. My spine and shoulder muscles ached by the time he called an end to the exercise, but I would have gone on just for a chance to become as hardened and fierce as him.
Midmorning brought the heat. The sand under our feet lost the night’s coolness. Philaretos allowed us some water, but kept us going. He paired us off a second time. I had Phereklos again. Ipheus’s partner did not want him, and grumbled sourly when Philaretos barked at him to shut up and obey.
We ended the
morning practicing how to read our opponents. In a short time, I learned how Phereklos’s left eye twitched just before he sprang a false feint. “You’re quick,” he said, panting after the fourth block.
Upstairs, Kilissa made a scene over my cuts and bruises. Elektra overheard the commotion, and came straightaway to see what was amiss. With all the dignity she could muster, she ordered my nurse to bring water and ointment so she could tend me herself. “Mother’s women wouldn’t let me watch.” She made a sulky face. “I hope you gave whoever did this as good as you got.”
“Yes.” I winced at her clumsiness, then added, “Ipheus lost his milk tooth today.”
Elektra finished dabbing my split lip and turned to the scrape on my knee. “Did he cry about it?”
“Yes.”
“Hah!” she snorted. “Did you?”
“Cry?” My lower lip throbbed. Kleitos hit hard. “Of course not! Princes don’t cry.”
*~*~*~*
Sometimes after our morning lessons, when the older students withdrew to rest before their afternoon weapons training, Philaretos led the novices on excursions to educate them in martial matters. We saw the stable where the chariots were kept, and watched as two men explained the various components as they assembled a vehicle. We toured the fortifications around the Lion Gate to learn how the citadel’s defenses repelled invaders. Another time, Philaretos took us to observe Mycenae’s master sword smith at work in the forge.
The smith was a burly, dark-haired man perpetually coated in grime, whose real name was Aithalos, though everyone simply called him Khalkeus, the Smith. “In order to be a first-rate warrior,” he informed us in a voice hoarse from shouting over the din of the forge, “you have to know your weapons.”
Knowing one’s weapons began with bronze, which was comprised of eight parts copper to one part tin. Copper ingots came from the Aegean islands, Cyprus, and eastern ports like Miletos and Ugarit, but one had to go even farther afield, far to the north and west, for tin. Khalkeus demonstrated how he kept the ox-hide shaped ingots wrapped in thick fleeces to protect them from corrosion, then showed us the various clay molds he used for casting blades, spearheads, and other implements.
