by Laura Gill
“I thought Dorian country was too rugged for livestock.”
“Oh, but there’s Thessaly now, and Magnesia,” Boagrius answered. “I fought the Myrmidons at Iolkos. Fierce warriors.” He showed me a thick scar running down his left forearm where a Myrmidon spear had slipped past his shield and sliced his arm. “I got some good land from it, and count myself fortunate. There are more fighting men among us than estates to go around.”
I would have liked to inquire about the Herakleid chieftains in Doris, but custom demanded that I circulate among the guests. A number of ambassadors who had business with Strophius were in attendance; others were conspicuous by their absence. The Argives sent no representative, which rankled, considering the effusive compliments they had lavished upon me not so long ago.
I sought out the Spartan ambassador. Iphidamas was a regular visitor at court, and over the years had become quite accustomed to my queries about my Spartan kinsmen, indulging me like a fond uncle. “I trust you are enjoying the day?” he asked.
“My only regret is that my lady cousin is not here to share in the festivities.” I motioned a nearby servitor to refill the ambassador’s cup. “Is she well?”
Iphidamas laughed. “Haven’t you recently had a letter from the princess?”
“She could be deathly ill and not tell me.” I lacked the nerve to ask for more intimate details.
“I assure you,” he said jovially, “that Princess Hermione thrives in good health and spirits, though she says to tell you that she regrets not being able to join you on this happy occasion.”
Iphidamas sat near me during the feast, with Kleitos deep in conversation on my right hand with Boukolos. It heartened me to see Kleitos getting along so amicably with the other guests, though I still reserved doubts about his motives; he might yet turn out to be a traitor, albeit a subtler and cleverer one than Alastor. I hoped for his sake and mine that that was not true.
Over the dessert course of melons and cheese, the Spartan ambassador and I discussed Menelaus’s travails abroad. “Is there no chance,” I asked, “that King Ramesses will release him?”
Iphidamas responded with a dismal look. “The Egyptians delight in their torturous bureaucracies. One cannot simply approach Ramesses and ask for favors. Oh, no! The Egyptians believe their kings are incarnations of the gods themselves—an immortal falcon, or sun disk, or some such nonsense.” He tsk-tsked under his breath as he shook his head. “I daresay the Cretan Labyrinth would be easier to navigate, when the gods know how the Knossians like to stand on ceremony.”
A living god. The depths of Egyptian hubris astounded me. Menelaus was in a sorry state, indeed.
Chapter Thirty-five
Throughout the summer, the Corinthian merchants sent messages through their vast network of informants and couriers. Before long, I owned a list of Mycenaean noblemen who had remained loyal to the House of Atreus, and was relieved to find that Kleitos’s name was prominent among them. Thank the gods, he had not lied to me. I breathed a sigh of relief and poured a libation to Zeus and the Two Ladies of Argos in thanksgiving for that hopeful news. Despite his reduced circumstances, Kleitos would make a valuable ally when the time came.
Another list detailed men whose loyalties could be bought, and still a third ranked Mycenaean noblemen who had remained neutral yet somehow free from Aegisthus’s persecution.
In the sultry evening air, with my brother-in-law and best friend wallowing on couches drinking in whatever sea breeze Poseidon afforded us, I drew up a fourth list cataloguing those who had to die. Agathon. Mnessos. Philaretos. Hyrtios. All those who had partaken in or possessed prior knowledge of the plot to murder my father. I would spare their kinswomen except in certain extreme cases, but all their sons, grandsons, brothers, nephews, and male cousins must also die; their paternal lineages must be extinguished. Adding childhood friends like Ipheus and Phereklos to the list pained me, but it had to be done to cauterize Mycenae’s festering cancer.
Pylades nodded his approval when he saw the list, then he pointed out a crucial fact. “Eliminating so many in key positions will leave a dangerous void. We must have loyal, competent men ready to step into their roles.” Yes, he intended to accompany me, to share the danger of this undertaking; his jest that night in Cirrha, that he had to aid me because he was married to my sister, was in earnest, after all.
As we planned to take Mycenae from within—the only way the citadel could be taken--Strophius drew my attention to a more dire and immediate concern. “Your ability to recruit support may ultimately rest on your intentions toward your mother. No god-fearing man will follow an avowed matricide.”
Hearing him state the obvious nevertheless agitated me. “I have sworn an oath. She must die.”
“Of course she must,” he agreed, “but there is killing, and then there is justice. You cannot lay violent hands upon her, no matter what your obligations to your dead father’s ghost. She must be persuaded to take her own life.” It would be easier to coax the Styx to flow backward. Mother would stand her ground. She would force my hand, compel me to murder her, and then she would call down upon me a curse, as she had done to Father long ago when Iphigenia died.
“Does it matter in the end?” I asked. “If I command her to commit suicide, then the blood guilt is the same. The gods make no distinction.”
“Not quite.” Strophius gazed at the flickering lamp illuminating his chamber. “You would have to leave Mycenae and seek sanctuary at an altar. If the priests took you in, you would have to submit to an ordeal or other grueling trial to be purified, but it could be done. King Cyanippus of Argos as a priest-king could absolve you, if you can persuade him to take your part.”
Except that I had no faith in the Argive king or his councilors. “Could you perform the rites of purification?”
“You would be better advised to seek out the Argive king,” Strophius replied. “Yes, I know he sits on his hands and does nothing to help your cause, but if you mean to become king of Mycenae, sooner or later you will have to deal with the Argives.”
I drew a heavy breath, suspecting that my uncle wanted nothing to do with the situation. “And if I ask you to purify me instead?”
Strophius’s heavy brows furrowed. “Commit the lesser sin and, yes, I will grant you sanctuary and perform the rites of purification.” I started to speak, to thank him for his assistance, when he held up his hand for silence. “But if you disobey, then the doors of this house will be shut upon you, and your name will no longer be spoken at this hearth. All god-fearing men will turn their faces from you and deny you sanctuary. You will be driven into the wilderness to dwell among the outlaws, if they will have you, and any man may kill you with impunity. That, Orestes, is a matricide’s fate.”
An icy perspiration stood out against my brow, despite the warmth and closeness of the air.
This final matter I kept from Elektra. Upstairs in her sitting room, she brooded over her spinning, gloomy with the news that she was once again pregnant. “I’m nothing but a broodmare,” she grumbled. “Eleuthia delights in my torment.”
She vented her frustrations upon her virile husband. They argued almost every night now, over the most foolish things imaginable, from Medon’s milk teeth to the mismatched dye lots with which her women had colored her threads. Elektra upbraided Pylades for ogling the servant girls, for drinking too much wine before he came to her, for climbing into bed with unwashed feet. I considered it a marvel that Pylades had managed to get any children on her at all.
At least she did not harass me during those long, dreary autumn and winter months. Elektra was satisfied to leave me be, as long as she could measure my progress in the grueling hours I spent training in the palaestra or conferring with my brother-in-law and other select members of my intimate circle. Mothering three children with a fourth on the way left her far too busy to pry into my correspondence, or to insist on eavesdropping during my conferences with my co-conspirators.
In late spring, my sister gave bi
rth to a second daughter, named Charis. Often, I found her with the infant at her breast, staring out into space with an enigmatic smile curving her lips. She might have been musing over the joys of motherhood, or pondering the intricacies of murder.
Her contemplative silences unsettled me as much as my own private misgivings. She lavished love on her new child. I struggled with the implications of killing our mother. Elektra saw things in black and white, right or wrong. She felt no connection with Mother, no filial obligation to the woman who had borne us, because she had shoved us away. I could never unburden myself to my sister, lest she view my pangs of conscience as weakness.
One afternoon, as we left the palaestra for the bath, I asked Boukolos, “If I slew my mother, would you despise me?”
Frowning, he dragged the towel from his shoulders. “I would turn my face from your crime out of piety and necessity, but not from you as a man.” His answer offered no solace, because there was no separating the man from his crime.
Boukolos wiped the sweat from his the back of his neck. “Perhaps you should consult the Pythia.”
Yet one did not simply travel to Delphi and automatically expect an audience with Apollo’s most holy oracle. Pilgrims from far and wide sought the Pythia’s wisdom, knowing that few could ever expect to be admitted to her presence. Priests sorted out the petitioners, sending most away with a quick yes-or-no answer obtained through the rolling of a colored pebble or bean. Even then, after the initial culling, legitimate pilgrims had to wait an indefinite length of time, regardless of whether they were peasants, craftsmen, or royalty who arrived bearing splendid offerings to the god.
Because my situation was unique, and my high rank and splendid gifts rated their attention, the priests thought the better of making me wait, and escorted me to a neighboring sacred house to question me further. The high priest and his subordinates expressed concerns that my presence would somehow pollute the Pythia, even though I had not yet committed any crime. I did not bother to point out this incongruity, as it seemed to me that their so-called concerns were but a veil concealing their desire to have nothing to do with what was an impossible circumstance.
“Then you are denying me the right to consult the god and hear his divine will?” I pressed.
High Priest Eurymakos narrowed his eyes. “Apollo’s oracle is open to all petitioners, although...”
Here was a man who savored the trappings of priestly authority yet who possessed no divine vocation, who was deaf and blind to the gods. Just like Hyrtios. “Should I perhaps take my offerings and petition the oracle of Zeus at Dodona instead?”
That did it. Eurymakos accepted my petition with the air of one who was doing me a colossal favor, but all that mattered was his consent. He ordered his acolytes to prepare me to meet the Pythia. I fasted for an entire day and night, and submitted to a bracingly frigid purifying bath in water from the holy Castalia spring. A priest sat down with me the evening before to rehearse my question. It had to be very precise, as the oracle was known to give ambiguous answers.
An hour after dawn, I set out for the sanctuary. Priests and acolytes bearing laurel branches escorted the garlanded bull along the main route, past the pilgrims thronging the pathway to the sanctuary. Everyone took notice, staring and pointing and muttering my name; they probably knew why I had come. I walked behind the priests, dressed in unbleached linen, bleary-eyed from a restless night, and my stomach in knots.
Inside the cool dimness of the sanctuary, I watched the acolytes bind the bull upon the altar and cut its throat. Blood was collected in deep basins to wash down the exterior altar stones. I waited anxiously through the examination of the entrails. A satisfactory result would allow me to venture deeper into the sanctuary, while a bad omen in the form of a diseased, engorged, or missing organ would see me turned away. From where I stood, I could not watch their movements, could not ascertain whether the liver they examined came from my bull or some other, less fortunate animal. Would the priests lie at the god’s own altar to prevent me from proceeding, to save face while allowing them to keep the offerings, or would the bull’s entrails tell true?
“Lord Apollo blesses this animal with an unblemished heart and liver!” The priest performing the examination announced the verdict loudly enough that his voice carried throughout the sanctuary. “Let the petitioner proceed within and hear the god’s judgment through his most holy Pythia.”
Eurymakos clearly disliked the verdict, but swallowed his displeasure and escorted me further into the sanctuary, through claustrophobically narrow corridors. A sweet fragrance pervaded the air; this was like no costly incense I had ever inhaled before. I started to feel lightheaded.
We entered a small chamber lit by multiple braziers, where the strange aroma was strongest. Eurymakos withdrew. An attending priest directed me to the woman seated in the center of the chamber, above a cleft in the naked rock floor. The god’s essence was said to emanate through this crack, to bestow holy prophecies upon the priestess who breathed in the vapors.
The Pythia was veiled against my curious gaze. All I saw of her were white arms tattooed with twining serpents in blue and black and scarlet. Her hands, folded in her lap, appeared youthful and unlined, and when she spoke, hers sounded like the muffled voice of a young woman.
“Orestes Agamemnonides, son of the High King of Mycenae,” she intoned, “what question would you ask of Apollo Far-seer?”
Whether it was due to the vapor-laden air playing upon my suggestible brain, or the manifestation of divine power moving within the inner sanctuary, I felt a chill of foreboding move through me. My tongue turned to wool, unable to articulate the question I had so diligently rehearsed the night before.
A priest had to prompt me, to nudge and bring me back to myself so the words could flow. I remembered then what I wished to know, and spoke, though with great difficulty, through the perfumed fog. “Great god, will these hands of mine murder the womb that bore me?”
Leaning forward over the cleft, the Pythia lifted her veil just enough to inhale deeply from the fumes. I waited with the priest, fighting my dizziness and apprehension, as the god began to possess his priestess.
She began to twitch and groan. Her breast swelled with an agonizing breath. An apparition materialized from the vapors, and coiled into her. I did not imagine that! Apollo filled that slender woman’s body, though I did not see how her mortal flesh could possibly contain his essence. All I knew was that mortals were not meant to witness the epiphany of a god. I had enough presence of mind to raise my hand, palm facing outward, to my forehead to salute Apollo’s godhead, but I was trembling, both humbled and terrified.
The Pythia’s head lolled to one side, and she uttered a low, unearthly moan. She mumbled several unintelligible words, and then, to my mingled horror and awe, she began speaking in a voice not her own.
“Orestes, only living son of Agamemnon, listen to this pronouncement, and listen well. You are doomed to take death from the woman who gave you life.” The Pythia forced each word out with a concentrated effort, as though her very breath cost her dear. “You are doomed to an existence of torment, doomed to the scourge of madness, doomed to wandering in the darkness.”
Doomed. I could not cry out, not in that place, with the sacred fumes fogging my brain and the god’s awesome presence as heavy upon my being as the weight of Parnassus herself. Doomed. Numb, I allowed the attending priest to conduct me away from that chamber, away from the sanctuary itself, and back to the cult house, where the acolytes bathed my face and hands in cold spring water to revive me, and bade me sit on the aithousa where the clean mountain air would chase any lingering vapors from my fevered brain. Doomed. The word resounded in my head like a dolorous drumbeat.
Pylades joined me an hour later. He had not been allowed to attend me during my purification and fasting. “Did you receive your answer?”
“Yes,” I croaked, staring out at the bright Delphic vista, seeking the tranquility which normally inhabited that view. Doom
ed to an existence of torment, doomed to the scourge of madness, doomed to wandering in the darkness. I should never have come, never have petitioned the god. All along I had known what the penalty was for the crime I was about to commit. Having my sentence pronounced beforehand extinguished the possibility of hope, and made the anticipation worse.
I had not reckoned on the power of hope, that seemingly insignificant remnant in Pandora’s box of ills.
All the blood in my body rushed to the pit of my stomach and settled there. Father’s shade seemed to hover at my elbow, obscuring the brightness of the sunlight, driving the life from me.
Chapter Thirty-six
When Strophius heard about the oracle, he summoned me to his private chamber. “So you think that you are a dead man, that you are doomed to suffer no matter what you do.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Nevertheless, you will do as I instructed, and commit the lesser sin of ordering your mother to commit suicide. Strike her down with your own hand, Orestes, and the doors of this house shall be barred not only against you, but also against my son.”
At last, something pierced my apathy. I could consign myself to death, having known and accepted from the start that my vengeance would exact a terrible price, but I could not subject my brother-in-law to the same fate. “You cannot do that to him.”
Strophius remained immovable. “I cannot forbid him from helping you, because he swore long ago that he would remain steadfast, but his fate rests in your hands. I cannot have him bringing your blood pollution into this house, and with it tainting your sister and her children.” A flicker of emotion moved across his face, betraying his inner turmoil. “The Phocian assembly would never accept him as their future king with the stain of aiding a matricide on his hands.”
I felt his hand clasp my shoulder. “I am also thinking of you, Orestes. A man who believes himself doomed before the battle even begins is fated to die. If you will not spare a thought for your own life, then perhaps consideration for your sister, her husband, and her children will force you to focus.”
