The Young Lion

by Laura Gill

  Sober agreement all around. I flushed. Seeing all those troubled faces tightened my throat, making it hard to swallow. She’s still alive! I suppressed the urge to shout. I’ve done nothing yet.

  Pylades defended me a second time. “We’ll decide what’s to be done when the time comes. Perhaps the gods will be kind and take Clytaemnestra through some illness or accident, or Aegisthus might become too greedy for power and do away with her.”

  “One must always plan for the worst,” Korainos said.

  “Indeed, but one shouldn’t automatically assume that it will happen.” Pylades drank a shallow draught from his cup; it had only been refilled once, he indulged so sparingly. “As I said, we’ll deal with the matter when the time comes.”

  “‘We?’” Aetios asked. “Do you intend to help Orestes recover his throne?”

  “What choice do I have? I’m married to his sister.” Everyone laughed at his quip. “Korainos!” he cried. “Our cups are empty.” The servants circulated with the wine jugs, replenishing the gift of Dionysus. Pylades refused a refill. Following his example, so did I.

  Impotence dogged my dreams that night. People kept ignoring me, drowning out my every utterance with howls of laughter. They pawed through my belongings, tore the clothing from my back, threw out my furniture. My limbs refused to obey me when I tried to assert myself and stop them. I could not shout loudly enough to be heard, because my throat was as parched as dust.

  I carried my gloominess down to the beach the next morning, and inevitably lost my focus during my exercises, which did not please my brother-in-law at all. Pylades exhorted me to greater efforts, setting his biggest companion against me for boxing. “Wake up! You didn’t drink enough last night to be drunk.”

  Arisbas pummeled me right and left before I shook off the doldrums enough to lash back, cuffing him under the chin, and tripping him by the ankles, which was technically a wrestling move, but there were no rules in warfare, as I retorted when Arisbas and Pylades both demanded to know what I was doing.

  Afterward, I sat on the sand hugging my knees to my chest, while staring out at the waves.

  “What’s bothering you so much that you find the ebb and surge of the sea so fascinating?” Pylades loomed over my left shoulder. “Was it something someone said last night?”

  “They treat me like a child,” I muttered.

  Pylades nudged me with his sandaled foot. “Come on, get up. Let’s go for a swim before heading back.”

  “Are you even listening?”

  “Yes, I heard you,” he replied, “but here you are, almost fourteen years old, sulking disconsolately because the old men ignore you. Why shouldn’t they? What battles have you won? What great deeds have you done? You might have bedded your first woman and killed your first man, but that doesn’t make you a hero. It doesn’t make you a man. Respect is something you have to earn.”

  The tinkling of approaching harness bells claimed our attention, distracting me from the heated response I was about to make. A chariot was pulling alongside our own. Its lone occupant, the charioteer, waved to us, and leapt down from the platform to race the short distance across the sand.

  “A message from the king, my lord!” the man said, bowing. “I’m to tell you that your wife has gone into labor.”

  Pylades stared at him, dumbstruck. “Now?”

  Elektra was having her baby. I resented the intrusion into our holiday, yet was also curious and a little concerned. One of the young laundresses in Timon’s courtyard at Mycenae had died in childbirth, as had the wife of the smith Thestor. Of course, Elektra had the best midwives in Phocis, and Anaxibia had assured us that she should have no trouble, but when we left she had been so big and uncomfortable, and everyone said that childbirth was a very hard thing.

  About these matters, Pylades said nothing, maintaining his usual laconic silence. We drove straightaway to the governor’s residence to change our clothes and take our leave. Polyxenos offered his congratulations, as though the child had already been born. Had it? Surely, given the time it had taken the messenger to reach us, the news must be old by now. Pylades dashed upstairs long enough to wash and dress, and to leave instructions to send our belongings after us. Within the hour, we were on the road, headed north for Krisa.

  Pylades kept the horses going at a gallop, easing them into a canter only when they started to pant and lather; he never halted for a rest. Had we not reached Krisa when we did, several hours later, as the sun sank below the horizon, he almost surely would have killed the team.

  Strophius descended to the lower citadel to meet us. In the falling twilight, his disapproval over his son’s careless treatment of the horses showed. Pylades shouted orders to the stable hands loitering in the shadows even as he acknowledged his father. “I got the message.”

  “So I see.” Strophius raised a placating hand. “There was no need to rush like that. Elektra’s just delivered a fine baby boy.”

  I heard Pylades gasp in the dusky half-light. So the baby had already been born. We made haste for nothing. “I must see him!”

  Instead, Strophius steered us toward the megaron. “Let the midwives anoint him with oils and say the prayers, then you can see him.”

  Court officials and courtiers crowded the megaron, while the women tended my sister upstairs. “Is she well?” Pylades asked. Men were gathering around to offer their congratulations, which he was too flustered to acknowledge. So much for his usual self-discipline!

  “It was a short labor. Elektra’s a sturdy girl.” Strophius offered us food and wine. Pylades was too anxious to touch anything but the wine, and then he drank almost nothing. I watched him shift his feet, and cross and uncross his arms while his father urged him to relax. “You’re wound in knots, boy!” Strophius thumped him heartily across the back. “And for no good reason.”

  For me, knowing my sister was safely delivered sufficed. I ate enough for us both, and joined in the general conversation while we waited for my aunt and the priestess of Eleuthia to bring the child downstairs.

  Boukolos discovered me loitering by the hearth. “Ah, there you are, you lovely boy!”

  I chuckled. Months ago, we had reached an understanding in which he, respecting my preference for women, no longer wooed me. That did not prevent us from engaging in affable banter, though. “Are you going to let me eat my supper,” I asked, “or are you going to spoil it with your lustful drooling?”

  Laughing, he answered, “How can I resist, when you’ve come back looking so fit and tanned?”

  A hush abruptly fell over the megaron. Boukolos gave me a nudge. I heard distant applause coming from the stairwell, then, closer, from the aithousa. Anaxibia was coming with the infant.

  All eyes went to the vestibule doorway where my aunt stood in her paint and jewels, cradling a swaddled bundle. Her four handmaidens ranged behind her, and at her side walked the same priestess of Eleuthia who had made the propitiatory sacrifice eight months ago. Courtiers and officials alike shuffled aside to create an aisle, while trying to catch a glimpse of the royal infant as the queen carried it to the dais. Strophius assumed his seat upon the throne, but not before he hustled Pylades into the seat of honor beside him.

  It was the tradition for the mistress of the house to bring each newborn of the family before the patriarch, to let him inspect it and decide whether it should be kept and raised, or exposed on the hillside; this was done even when there was no question about the outcome. Pylades sat pale and tense, his jaw clenched, and his gaze riveted on the bundle in his mother’s arms. I did not see what he was so worried about. Strophius had said it was a healthy boy.

  “My lord,” Anaxibia announced, “your son’s wife has borne a son.” She extended the newborn to Strophius, who took him in his arms and unwrapped the swaddling clothes to examine him.

  There could be no doubt about the infant’s gender; he was even sporting a tiny erection. He howled and furiously kicked his naked limbs at the indignity of being stripped bare and prodded by
a strange man. Pylades leaned forward. I could see him clutching his armrests, trying to bring his nerves under control. He ought to relax, as his father had told him to do. There was nothing to worry about.

  After a few moments, Strophius wrapped the baby once more and, cradling him in his arms, stood up to address the crowd. “The House of Aeacus has a new prince.”

  Amid the applause, Pylades heaved a visible sigh. Then he rose to take a better look at his firstborn child.

  “Listen to that boy,” Boukolos commented. “He’ll have a mighty war cry, with such lungs.”

  Anaxibia noticed me sitting by the hearth, and invited me to look at my nephew. I thought him quite ugly, red, and wrinkly, even when my aunt informed me that all newborns looked the same. “How is Elektra?” I asked.

  “She is resting comfortably,” Anaxibia replied. “You may visit, if you like, but do not tax her.”

  Elektra’s bedchamber was thick with the sweet-stale reek of blood and the herbs the women were burning to fumigate the air. Kourotrophoi and amulets crammed my sister’s dressing table. She looked flushed, with dark circles under her eyes, but content. Anaxibia placed the swaddled infant on the mattress beside her, so she could see and hold him to her breast. Elektra was too exhausted to do much more than that, and she said very little. After wishing her well, I left her to rest. Pylades remained at her bedside, inquiring about her health and admiring the infant.

  Aktaia awaited me in my chamber with a steaming bath and fragrant oils. “The baby is handsome,” she crooned.

  I was too tired and preoccupied to bother with her advances. “Have you even seen it?”

  “All babies are nice, my lord.” She leaned forward to nuzzle my cheek with her lips, giving me a view of her breasts down her thin shift. “I could give you a baby,” she whispered hotly in my ear.

  As though I would plant my seed in that stupid slut! I really had to dismiss her. “Are you going to rub me down or not?”

  At dawn, the men assembled in the great court for the thanksgiving sacrifice. Twenty-five fine bulls had been selected beforehand, so now it was simply a matter of herding them through the citadel gate to the altar. Anaxibia wielded the labrys to honor Mother Gaia. Strophius and Pylades took turns wielding the knife. Acolytes washed down the stones and quartered the carcasses. The smell of blood mingled with the frankincense which the priests burned to purify the air, and the rich fat and thigh meat sizzling upon the altar. That night, we dined on roast sirloin and drank red wine, and counted the days until the tenth-day naming ceremony.

  For some odd reason, Pylades and Elektra had not chosen a name, which now caused trouble. “I have no idea what to do,” Pylades confided to me. “She wants to call him Agamemnon, but that isn’t a name appropriate for the House of Aeacus, not to mention that it would be tantamount to declaring open war on Aegisthus. He might try to do away with the child.”

  I had not considered that. “Did you explain it to her?”

  “Of course. At least she sees reason, but now she insists on a worthy alternative.” Pylades showed me a tablet upon which he had listed several possible names. I had nothing useful to add, the whole business being outside my experience, and suggested he consult his father.

  But Strophius had left the decision in his son’s hands. And Pylades was now in a quandary because Elektra decided she hated all the names on his list. “I ought to choose something and leave it at that, as a sensible husband would do, but you know how she is. A name she doesn’t like will be one more thing to argue about.”

  I recalled my nurse’s tales of the days-long argument between my parents regarding my own name. “Call the boy Alektryon, after his mother.”

  “She doesn’t want a Perseid name.”

  His indecision aggravated me. I would not be such a fool when I became a father. “You’d better make up your mind before the week is out.”

  In the end, Timon offered the most sensible solution. “A Phocian prince should have a name befitting his station. Why not call him Strophius?”

  I thought it an excellent idea, even though I could see where my brother-in-law might balk at asking my sister to favor one grandfather while rejecting the other. Yet he somehow managed to appeal to her vanity as the mother of a future king, and thus convinced her to allow their son to become young Strophius.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The tenth-day naming feast dawned cloudless and hot. Nobles arrived from throughout the kingdom for the occasion, swelling the citadel’s population almost beyond capacity. The Delphic high priest sent a priestess to bestow Apollo’s blessing upon the new Aeacid prince. Gifts arrived, yet none was finer than the magnificent cradle my uncle had ordered. It was crafted from pinewood, inlaid with ivory, lapis lazuli, and gilt, and furnished with purple bedclothes.

  Elektra insisted on holding her son throughout the ceremony. Motherhood softened her not at all. Woe to the wet nurse who forgot to wash her teats first, or to the servant who absent-mindedly left a window open, or to the slave who made the infant’s bath water too hot or too cold!

  Pylades held his son and rocked him, as she insisted he do. I refused to try. Young Strophius was too small to be interesting, and he had an unfortunate tendency to spit up and soil his diapers.

  “You’re a dreadful uncle, Orestes,” Elektra observed.

  She coddled her child enough for us both, but to her dismay, her milk never came, and her maternal contentment gave way to a dark postpartum depression. Pylades once more avoided her company. Her maidservants were not so fortunate.

  Mother heard about the birth and sent gifts for the child, which only exacerbated my sister’s foul melancholy. Elektra hurled the linen diapers and embroidered blankets from the upper gallery, then, shrieking obscenities, marched downstairs to the court where they had fallen, gathered them up again, and burned them on the kitchen hearth.

  I never told her that Mother had also written to me, and sent the usual woolen mittens, cloaks, and linens for my name day. Aegisthus sent red leather himantes and a fine kylix decorated with bulls.

  Hermione sent me gifts, also: a green cloak trimmed with fur and embroidered bands to adorn my clothing, yet that was nothing compared with her letter. She thanked me for the ribbons and beads, and passed along good wishes from her brother Aethiolas. She also related news from abroad.

  Menelaus had not yet returned home. Repairing storm-battered ships was no longer the issue, but a serious diplomatic misunderstanding which threatened to detain him indefinitely. Last year, sea-going raiders had attacked the Nile Delta. The Egyptian king, assuming we Hellenes were a single nation united under one ruler, held my uncle responsible. “Father had nothing to do with the raids,” Hermione wrote. “Odysseus and his Ithacans carried out the attacks, but Ramesses will not even receive my father to let him explain the situation. I have written to Ramesses to plead for mercy, but there has been no reply. I am not even sure he bothered to read the letter.”

  I was genuinely sorry to hear that, and not just for her sake. Had some munificent god granted me the chance to meet any person still living, I would have chosen Menelaus. My grandfather Tyndareus never answered my courteous inquiries; it was clear through his correspondence with Strophius that he dismissed me as an exiled prince with no prospects, as well as a future matricide, and was simply waiting for Menelaus to return to break my engagement to Hermione.

  Hermione said nothing about these matters. It rankled to contemplate a future without her as my wife. No one else was as beautiful or as wise or highborn enough to rule beside me as my queen and bear my sons.

  Menelaus might view matters differently, when at last he returned home. As my father’s brother, he would understand my impossible position. Surely he would offer consolation or assistance. For how could he sit there idle and let Aegisthus and my mother sully the honor of the House of Atreus?

  All I could do was wait, and pray for his swift return.

  *~*~*~*

  Agony.

  It had come up
on me suddenly during the night, with vomiting and diarrhea. I had managed to get to the corridor to call a servant, who then roused my aunt and brought the physician. As dawn broke, I lay spent and shivering with fever, too sick to my stomach to get any rest. Ainios subjected me to a full examination, which included studying my vomit and tasting my urine, only to conclude that bad melons were the cause of my distress. I did not believe the diagnosis, as we had all eaten melons the night before, and both he and Anaxibia informed me that no one else was ill.

  Elektra insisted that the servants taste the food before serving it, but my guardians dismissed her demand as excessive, and her suggestion of poison absurd. “All our servants are loyal,” Anaxibia said. “It surely must be a summer fever. No one here would dare harm Orestes.”

  Strophius agreed, refusing to hear any more talk about poison. At his request, a priest came from Delphi with water from the sacred Castalia spring and a serpent amulet of Apollo which he placed around my neck as he chanted spells and wafted cloying incense over me. I took no comfort from his remedies.

  When I slept, my fever dreams bred the taste of death in my mouth, and visions of maggots spilling from my bowels. I was transformed into Prometheus chained upon a rock of rotting corpses, and the eagle that tore open my liver in the night’s darkness wore my mother’s face.

  Timon kept vigil over me for as long as his health allowed, patiently spoon feeding me gruel and bread sopped in goat’s milk, and never once complaining, even when I vomited all over him. “Forgive me,” I said, through chattering teeth. “I would rather be dead.”