The Young Lion

by Laura Gill

  Upstairs in my chamber, I undressed while brooding over the disastrous nuptials. Strophius had no intention of annulling the union. Pylades and Elektra would perform their conjugal duty and consummate the marriage tomorrow night, or the night after, once he sobered up and she calmed down, but it did not take an oracle to predict that the damage was already done.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  This letter did not bear Mother’s seal.

  A ram’s head impressed the red wax. “From King Aegisthus, sir,” said the messenger. Strophius’s herald had announced him almost as soon as the last petitioners departed the megaron.

  How dare he! Aegisthus was a usurper and murderer. I restrained the urge to box this man’s ears for the insult of acknowledging my mother’s lover as king, as Timon had once cautioned me that messengers only repeated the words they were given to say; they did not deserve to be punished because of it. And this particular man looked very uncomfortable, averting his eyes as he dropped to one knee before the dais.

  Strophius took pity on him, sending out into the great court to await an answer. I watched him withdraw through the curtain, waiting for him to move beyond earshot before asking, “Why is that snake writing to me?”

  Strophius handed the packet to me. “Let us open the letter and see what Aegisthus wants.”

  As before, he wanted me to read it aloud. I broke the seal and unfolded the papyrus. Aegisthus wrote in a very small but precise hand. In order to read what he wrote, I had to go over to the hearth where the light slanted down through the flue.

  “‘To Prince Orestes, our dearest and most beloved stepson: greetings. Your absence weighs heavily upon us.’” Now Aegisthus was using the royal plural? What insolence! “‘We are bewildered and hurt that you should have felt the need to run away so suddenly. Your mother wore herself out worrying about you for weeks, and she continues to fret about your well-being among those rough northerners.’” He must have thought me an utter simpleton, to expect me to believe that. I squinted over the next line. Damn him for writing so small! “‘We have told her not to expect you back any time soon. Young men can be so irresponsible and haughty. They enjoy reckless adventures and bad company.’”

  Aegisthus’s voice seeped through the page, mingling honey and irony, admonishing me as though he were my father in truth, except it was all a colossal joke to him; his very words mocked similar advice Father had given me some time ago. So he had found those letters, Father’s gifts to me that Mother had not sent on, and read them, soiling them with his foul presence.

  “Is that all?” Strophius asked.

  “No, sir.” I continued reading aloud, though my heart quailed at it. Aegisthus had violated my very memories of Father’s words. “‘As you will, dearest stepson. Obey your relatives. Try not to acquire any objectionable vices. We understand that sweet child Elektra is there with you. It was such a pity to learn of her late husband’s demise. Kiss her on the cheek for us.’” Thank the gods the letter ended there, for a single page of backhanded courtesies was all I could bear. I addressed my uncle. “Are you going to make me answer him?”

  Strophius’s chest swelled with the deep breath he took. “No, Orestes. Your mother is one thing. A rival kinsman and usurper is quite another. To answer him would be to acknowledge him.” He gestured to the herald, standing at polite attention several feet away. “Bring back the messenger.”

  I had resumed my place at my uncle’s side by the time the herald returned with the messenger. Strophius wasted no time informing him that there would be no reply; he also ordered Panthous to make certain the messenger had food and lodging for the night.

  I waited until we were alone to speak again. “If I don’t have to answer Aegisthus, may I write to Hermione instead?

  “Your Spartan cousin?” Strophius mused. “What would you say to her?”

  “I want to tell her that I am safe, and to ask her how she’s doing.”

  Strophius hummed in his throat. “I will think about it.”

  Pylades and I visited the great court after supper. Autumn had shortened the days, and cooled the evenings; the youths in the palaestra had told me that the first snow might begin falling within days. At the court’s rear, a myrtle tree cast its shadow against the deep blue heavens; its branches rustled over our heads, shedding browning leaves as we sat down on a stone bench.

  Pylades and I were still friends, even after the debacle of the wedding feast. He acknowledged that too much wine made him surly. “Which is why,” he said, “you will rarely see me overindulge.”

  Too much wine made me lightheaded and drowsy. Unlike Pylades, I could not blame any flashes of temper on the gift of Dionysus. “Then why did you get drunk on your own wedding day?”

  “You make it sound as though it was a wonderful occasion.” Pylades stretched out his long legs. “If I had known what a bitch Elektra would be, I would have left her with the goatherd.”

  I ground my teeth. “You’re insulting her, and me.” A brazier burned on the aithousa, illuminating the megaron’s great doors. I smelled the burning coals, and the crisp scent of curling leaves from the trees on the citadel mount. This was a conversation I did not want to have with him. “So maybe Elektra isn’t the best wife, but I won’t tolerate you calling her a Mycenaean hell-bitch in my—”

  “That’s because she is one!” The bruise on his cheek was fading, but fresh marks and scratches marred his flesh; I did not care to speculate on where or how he had gotten them. “Don’t make excuses for her, Orestes. Demons dwell inside her. All that hate and anger.” Glancing to either side, listening carefully to the night’s noises, to make certain that we were truly alone, he lowered his voice to a near-whisper and added, “Who do you think killed the goatherd?”

  That was a strange yet unsettling question to ask. “I assumed you did.”

  Pylades shook his head. “Oh, I had every intention of killing him, once Elektra was safely away from him. A great hairy man, the ugliest brute you ever saw.” A harsh laugh escaped his throat. “The first time I laid eyes on her was her peering out from his doorway. Gods, a man never saw so much hate twisting a woman’s face. My men and I were nothing more than insects to her. She reminded me of the brigand women that haunt the mountain passes here on Parnassus.” He gave an audible shudder. “So while I was arguing with the herdsman, ordering him to step aside for his betters, she was creeping from the house onto the porch. I assumed she was going to escape, run into the hills like a typical woman, but that’s certainly not what she did. And that’s why she’s a woman to fear. She lifted the bronze axe from the woodpile, and then she moved so quickly that she had that axe blade buried in his skull before the rest of us realized what she had done.”

  I was dumbstruck, once again picturing Mother butchering Father in the bath with the labrys. For a woman who hated our mother as much as she did, Elektra had taken a substantial cue from her. “She’s never done anything like that before,” I croaked.

  “You wouldn’t have known it to have watched her cut him down.” Pylades rubbed his beard. “It took us almost an hour to make her to understand that we were Phocians, that I was her kinsman, and then to pry away the axe, because she would have gladly taken us all on. A sensible woman would have shown a little gratitude and leapt into my chariot, but all she wanted was to go to Mycenae and murder her mother. When I refused to take her, she cursed me with such shrieks that she might have awakened the dead. I had to gag her so she didn’t raise the alarm, and lash her arms and legs to my chariot to keep her from escaping or gouging out my eyes.” Pylades expelled a heavy sigh. “It didn’t help when I ordered her to stop struggling, because she and I were going to be wed. So much for courtship! I think it made everything worse.”

  Elektra was a fool. Aside from the meanness brought on by overdrinking—which he would not have done had she behaved like a proper bride—Pylades was young, good-looking, and courteous. And he was right: she should have been a sensible woman and grateful for the rescue.

/>   Gratitude was not, however, a concept which Elektra readily grasped. Nor was contentment. When I visited her later, she was attacking the raw fleece on her carding comb with all her pent-up aggression. “You keep your mouth shut about my marriage,” she growled. “It’s not your affair.” Her face was flushed red with exertion, her teeth were clenched. “You know nothing.”

  “I know you killed the goatherd,” I said.

  “What of it?” A cruel smile twisted her mouth. An ordinary woman would have demanded to know who had told me that. Any residual anger I might have carried toward Pylades for insulting my sister on her wedding day evaporated in an instant. “He was nothing, just a dumb brute who deserved to die.”

  “Pylades would’ve killed him for you, you know.” Elektra’s knuckles stood out, white against her freckled skin; she grasped that carding comb so hard that it was a wonder it did not snap. “He came to rescue you.”

  “I don’t need him to do anything for me.” She screwed her mouth shut, except to mumble an obscenity under her breath as the comb’s teeth encountered a particularly dense tangle.

  “Elektra!”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to stop being angry and accept your lot. I told you before, Pylades is a decent—”

  Voicing my thoughts was, apparently, the worst thing I could have done other than striking her. “Shut up!” she hollered. The next thing I knew, the wooden carding comb went sailing past my head to hit the wall. “You know nothing about men, nothing about being married!”

  “I’m your brother!” I shouted back. “You will do what I—”

  Elektra shot to her feet, lunging at and shoving me straight into the wall. At seventeen, she was half a head taller than me, and freakishly strong for a woman. The impact was not enough to crack my skull, but sufficient to jar me from head to foot. “You’re a nothing boy, Orestes,” she spat. “Nothing!” Thank Mother Dia that she did not have an axe or any other weapon to hand, the demon possessing her was so evident. “And as long as you remain a boy and a nothing, and do nothing, and have nothing, then you’re not going to tell me what to do.”

  I seized her wrist to try to push her away from me. What a fool I had been to confront her alone. “That’s enough!”

  Angry tears flooded her eyes. “Get out, Orestes.” She wrenched herself free from my grasp, and moved away to jab her quivering finger at the doorway. “Get out and leave me alone.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Elektra’s temper had always been mercurial, but as autumn deepened and turned to winter, it worsened. She terrorized her handmaidens, cursing and pinching them, and hurled objects at her husband when he tried to reason with her. Once her rage was spent, she succumbed to hysterical sobbing, declaring herself to be the most miserable woman in the world—oftentimes all within the space of a single hour.

  Near the winter solstice, she became ill again, nauseous almost every morning, with a greenish pallor, and almost no appetite on those rare occasions when she appeared to join the family for the evening meal.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

  Anaxibia answered for the grumbling, brooding woman slumped in the chair directly across from Pylades, who pretended not to notice her. “Nothing is wrong with her, Orestes. Elektra is going to have a baby.”

  So it was a baby growing inside her, and not some mysterious and virulent wasting illness! Elektra sat hanging her head, refusing food and praise, when she ought to have been celebrating. “That’s wonderful!” I exclaimed.

  “Then you carry it!” Elektra snarled. A second later, when she burst into an irrational flood of tears, one of Anaxibia’s maids had to escort her from the chamber. I noticed that none of them vied for the honor.

  Anaxibia, forcing a smile, attempted to smooth over the outburst. “Sometimes women become foolish and fretful when they are with child.”

  Pylades and I exchanged knowing, sympathetic looks. Merciful gods forbid that we should have to endure nine months of such madness.

  Strophius announced his daughter-in-law’s pregnancy to a gathering of the Phocian assembly. I stood beside Pylades near the royal dais, and watched my uncle sacrifice a young goat before the hearth. Neither Anaxibia nor Elektra attended the rites; the only woman permitted in the megaron was a middle-aged priestess of Eleuthia, who collected the blood in a painted vessel and mixed it with dark wine to pour out the libation. “Great goddess of quickening,” she intoned. “The House of Aeacus expresses with these offerings of blood and wine its gratitude for the seed you have planted in the womb of Elektra, daughter of Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon.” Despite Mother’s crimes, during such rituals the mother’s name always took precedence. Elektra would have shrieked a violent refusal had she been present. “May she ripen to the fullest and bear fruit.”

  In the women’s sanctuary, additional rites to which we men were not invited were underway; we heard the ecstatic chanting echoing around the terraces. That evening, kourotrophoi—ceramic mother-and-child figurines meant to ensure fertility—began appearing throughout the palace. The future of the kingdom hinged on the child gestating in my sister’s womb.

  Elsewhere, the attitude was more irreverent. Whenever a man wanted to disparage a woman, he did it among other men, in the palaestra. Pylades and I held our tongues about Elektra, because well-bred men did not slander their kinswomen, but others indulged their opinions.

  “She’ll bear a boy.” Once again, Sthenelus was loitering among the younger men. “She’s too mannish to be carrying a girl.”

  Periphos remarked, “If her son inherits that temper of hers, then he’ll turn out a hero.” Satisfied assent all around. Phocis might win great renown through the exploits of a hero king.

  Then that idiot Hippomachos opened his mouth, “Or maybe he’ll turn out a simple goatherd.”

  Absolute silence attended his comment. Periphos, Boukolos, and several other youths scowled. Sthenelus sucked a hissing breath between his teeth. I slowly and deliberately rose from the bench, crossed over to where Hippomachos was seated, and punched him square in the face.

  Blood streamed from between his fingers. “You broke my nose!” he wailed.

  “I ought to break every bone in your body,” I said coldly.

  At that moment, Pylades entered the room. Having been drawn by the heated commotion, he took in the scene with narrowed gaze and clenched jaw, while everyone, including me, stood around waiting on his reaction. “Is there some question about my wife’s virtue?” he asked coolly. Men shook their heads all around. “I found her a maiden on our wedding night.”

  No one believed him, of course, but no one dared contradict him to his face, either. Turning to me, he casually tossed me the towel slung over his shoulder. “You have blood on your hands, Orestes.”

  Elektra heard about the fight, minus the lewd details. “At least you won.” She jabbed her needle through the woolen cloth stretched across her embroidery hoop. As usual, her work was clumsy. I had no idea what the pattern was supposed to represent. “You showed them that no one trifles with the House of Atreus—no one!”

  Her moodiness contributed to my doldrums. I found that winter on Parnassus was a breeding ground for ill humors. My wound ached. Insomnia plagued me, despite my intense desire to close my eyes and sleep the world away. At night, I stared at the walls. I paced the floor until the small hours. Aktaia provided no pleasure, and I often sent her away untouched. I sought escape through exercise and study, but with Father dead and my sister slowly going insane, there was no respite from my jumbled and raging emotions. I did not speak of it to anyone, because I sensed that to others my ailment was an old and wearisome complaint. Anaxibia would mother me, Strophius would consider taking me to Delphi to exorcise my demons, and Pylades would admonish me to swallow my childish tears and be a man. In addition, Timon had already weathered more hardship on my account than any pedagogue or elder ought to have done. The correct thing to do, I surmised, was to conceal my affliction by day,
and secretly vent my anguish by night.

  I had not counted on my sister.

  *~*~*~*

  “I brought you something.”

  I had no appetite, either for my sister’s company or the steaming ox-tail broth she attempted to press on me. A cold rain sleeted down outside. The palaestra was deserted. Timon’s chilblains had forced him to abandon today’s lesson early. Quite simply, I had too much leisure amid too much dampness and gloom, and it had driven me to curl up beside the brazier in my chamber and brood. “Go away.”

  Elektra persisted, anyway. When her demons did not plague her, she could be reasonable, more like my sister of old. At such times, I almost felt comfortable with her. “Anaxibia says you didn’t eat breakfast.”

  I heard her sigh, then the wooden spoon clink against the bowl as she set it down upon the little bedside table. Her large hand brushed aside my hair to feel my forehead, just as Anaxibia had done earlier. “Well, you don’t feel feverish,” she said. The chair she occupied creaked as she settled back. “But something’s eating at you. I can tell. It must be Father’s death. You know, this is the first winter without him.”

  When Elektra was rational, there was little she failed to miss. I wished then that her morning sickness would return if only to keep her bedridden and away from me. “Stop. You don’t have to tell me.”

  For a woman who exercised such good common sense in practical matters, she did not seem to realize that the blunt, abrasive manner she applied to things did not work so well with people. “I know how you feel, Orestes. I haven’t stopped thinking about that day. I dream about the shouts and screams.”

  I shut my eyes. “You didn’t see the blood.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled between us. I felt her gaze crawl along my back. “What did you see?” she asked.