‘To charm the High King,’ said Orkestres lightly. ‘If you can charm the King you will save us all.’
CHAPTER 8
A girl appeared around the curtain, bearing a tray. Her hair was bound up in a coloured ribbon, and her tunic was of fine white cloth and had a red border at the hem. Her feet were the softest Nikko had ever seen: pink and white with no calluses at the heel, as though she had never walked on anything harder than a floor. Thetis reached out and stroked the tunic, then looked up with wide eyes at the girl.
Orkestres nodded at the server, who laid the tray on the bed platform and backed out, bowing her head politely to Orkestres, and ignoring the two grubby villagers in the goatskins.
There was fresh bread, smelling of honey and figs and softer than any Nikko had eaten before, and dried grapes and cold meat as well as other fruits that Nikko didn’t recognise, and flasks of wine and water and mugs. Even the mugs were painted with black figures dancing around the rims.
Thetis kneeled by the tray, her eyes wide. She looked questioningly at Orkestres, as though asking permission to eat.
‘Yes, start eating. But not too much, or you’ll feel sick when you try to exercise. You can eat more after you have practised.’
Nikko sat on the bed platform. He reached for a honey cake, and broke it in half to share with Thetis.
‘Please, what happens now?’ He tried to make his voice deep and confident, not young and pleading. He looked around the room again, stranger and grander than anything he’d imagined. Only yesterday morning his life had been untouched, his own, just him and Thetis and the goats up on the mountain.
Thetis glanced up at him, then looked back at her honey cake, nibbling it like a bird pecking. Has she worked out more than I have? wondered Nikko.
‘We start with simple exercises to make you limber.’ Orkestres reached for a honey cake too. ‘Then I’ll try to teach you more complicated things.’
‘Did someone train you to do the things you did up in the village?’
‘My father.’ Orkestres gave a small grin. ‘And much more that I wouldn’t waste on peasants.’
Peasants. That’s us, thought Nikko.
Orkestres saw his look. ‘No, you and your sister are different. My joints get sore these days,’ he added. ‘I am like a man who has a pouch of gold, and when he spends it all he’ll have no more. The hardest tricks cause the greatest pain. So I keep them for when they’re needed most.’
He looked at Nikko, then over at Thetis, to see if she understood too. Thetis’s eyes were wide, her mouth open, full of half-chewed honey bread.
‘A good acrobat can amuse a village. But one who shines like gold can please a king. And I was very, very good.’
‘Was?’ put in Nikko cautiously.
‘Yes. Was. I grow old. I can no longer twist as easily as I could. And His Majesty likes new things to amuse him. So now others juggle or dance or sing on the palace’s High Terrace while I perform in villages, so the peasants look at me instead of at the goats and sheep being carried to feed Mycenae instead of the bellies of their children. I accompany the tribute collectors…and I no longer see the King.’
His voice was almost unconcerned. But his hands gripped his honey cake so hard that crumbs fell on the floor.
‘Do you really think we can be as good as you?’ asked Nikko slowly.
Orkestres looked at him without speaking for a moment. Thetis swallowed her honey cake, and stared back at the acrobat, her face intent.
‘If you are only as good as I am now,’ said Orkestres at last. ‘You’ll never be enough to please the King. The King is used to my tricks. You’ll need to think every day what new act will amaze them. You need to plan and watch and see what works, what makes the crowd gasp and the King smile. Can you do that?’
‘I…I don’t know,’ said Nikko honestly. He looked at Thetis, still staring at Orkestres. ‘I can promise we will try. We’ll do our best.’ He bit his lip. ‘What happens if we fail?’
‘If you succeed,’ said Orkestres lightly, ‘you will be beloved of the King. You will dance for him and his most favoured guests and he will give you gold and jewels and slaves to rub your back when your muscles ache. And I will be your trainer, and no longer have to plod beside ponies through the forests where wolves howl, trying to please peasants instead of kings.’
‘But if we fail?’ persisted Nikko.
‘Then you will be a slave, fetching wood in the palace perhaps, if you are lucky and the Chamberlain likes your looks.’
Nikko tried to keep his voice steady. ‘If he doesn’t?’
‘If he doesn’t, you will quarry stone to build new terraces for the palace, dust on your back and in your mouth for a few summers, till you die of hunger and exhaustion. Or you will be sent to the galleys as a rower, and an even shorter life.’
‘And my sister?’
‘She will be a servant till one of the King’s guests fancies her, and when she is no longer pleasing she will be sent to the looms, to weave or spin all day until her eyesight fails and her fingers become twisted.’
Nikko felt his skin prickle. No, he thought. Never. No matter what I need to force my body to do, I’ll never let that happen.
The acrobat raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you prepared to work?’
‘Yes.’ Nikko felt Thetis nod beside him.
‘Good.’ Orkestres put down his honey cake. ‘Then we will begin.’
Nikko had expected Orkestres would see if they could twist their bodies as he had done, back on the mountain. But instead he made them stretch their hands up high, then bring them down to the floor; then walk their hands first one way and then the other while they bent over. It didn’t seem hard at first, but as Nikko stretched he realised there were muscles he’d never known he had.
‘Excellent.’ Orkestres looked pleased. ‘I knew the girl would be supple. Youngsters nearly always are. But you still move well too. Now stand up straight again, hands down to the floor…now up!’
Nikko felt Orkestres grab his feet and pull them up, so he was left standing on his hands.
‘If I let go will you fall?’
‘Yes…no!’
‘All right.’
The hands released him.
I am a reed, thought Nikko, forcing his body straight and still. I am a tree, its roots deep in the ground. If I keep my legs still they cannot fall—he glanced over at Thetis—and fell in shock. Thetis had flung herself upside down too, standing unaided on her hands beside him as though she had walked this way all her life. She grinned at him, and bent her legs down to the floor till her feet once more took her weight, just as Orkestres had done, then her hands grasped her ankles with her body bent above.
Nikko picked himself up and sat cross-legged. ‘How can she do that?’
Orkestres didn’t reply. Instead he fingered the gold at his ears, and smiled, almost to himself.
They practised till the sun hung low above the olive trees. Girls brought in three tubs of water, steaming gently, and more wood for the fire. Nikko stared as Orkestres stripped and began to wash, then gestured for them to wash too. He was about protest it wasn’t seemly for Thetis to be seen naked, when one of the serving girls smiled, and held up a cloak as a screen.
It was strange to sit in warm water. He had only washed his whole body in a stream before, and had never sat right in the water. This water smelled of flowers, and there was a soft cloth to scrub the dirt away as well.
It felt even stranger to be so clean, with no fleas or other itches left.
Then there was food again, and sleep.
They practised in the room for the next two days. Nikko and Thetis never left the room—the girls even brought pots for them to relieve themselves in, to save them going out among the trees or fields. Orkestres left only to perform for their host. Almost every waking moment he had them working.
By the second afternoon Thetis could leap onto Nikko’s shoulders without help, then somersault so she stood with her hands clasping his shou
lders. She could twirl on his shoulders, dancing to the music as he clapped and sang.
It was the same song he had sung the morning Orkestres had found them. The song still had no words. There are no words, thought Nikko, to express what he felt now.
Wolves haunted his dreams; wolves with his father’s face or, even more terrifying, a wolf who hunted them both but when it caught them had only emptiness for a face.
‘I am the High King,’ whispered the faceless wolf. ‘You are mine, to eat or discard as I wish.’
Orkestres never smiled now. Even though they managed to do everything he asked, it seemed to Nikko sometimes that the acrobat had hoped for something more. His eyes were filled with pain and hope.
Only Thetis seemed happy, free of responsibility, throwing herself into the exercises as though they were games, nibbling the new foods and stroking the soft pelts of their bed platform, watching the exciting scenes out the window, having the attention of Orkestres and Nikko, and one afternoon a serving girl, who stood mouth open and amazed when she came in to see Thetis finishing a backflip.
But Thetis never spoke.
Is it because of her promise? wondered Nikko as they took a break that afternoon, sipping the red liquid Orkestres said was watered pomegranate juice, eating bread and cheese and watercress—no meat, today. Too much meat, Orkestres said, made a dancer slow.
Thetis had promised Nikko she wouldn’t speak in front of a King’s man—and Orkestres was above all a man belonging to the High King. She had promised their father too that she would never speak at all.
But their father was far away. Nor were there any secrets that needed to be hidden from Orkestres. There was no need for silence now. Should he urge her again to speak?
But Thetis’s words caused trouble. I have enough to worry about, Nikko thought as he finished his pomegranate juice, without tensing every time she opens her mouth. But he still felt guilty as Thetis smiled, or gestured, but never made a sound. Even her feet and hands were quiet as she flipped and somersaulted across the floor.
Orkestres glanced out the window. ‘That’s Kersites and his men come back, with a fine mob of goats, and barley too, by the look of it. Those ponies can hardly walk. We’ll be on our way tomorrow then. No more riding for us now. We walk the rest of the way, and my knees will pay for it.’ He stood up. ‘Stay here,’ he added. ‘If I’m not back till late get what sleep you can. I must pay for our suppers again tonight.’
They watched as he painted his face, marking around his eyes and brows with charcoal, using a tiny piece of polished bronze to examine his refection, then rubbing a red salve on his lips and cheeks, followed by oil on his arms, legs and chest. The red fingers of firelight highlighted his shining muscles, making them leap even while he stood still. He carefully slid loops of gold into tiny holes in his earlobes, then put gold chains about his wrists and ankles and even twisted them in his newly oiled and plaited hair.
Orkestres smiled at Nikko. ‘Too much finery would make the men of your village think the High King had no need of their tributes. But here, Lord Pittaneous wants the honour of a performer who wears gold.’ He added a necklace of red stones, fixed on his public smile, and went out through the curtain.
Thetis flung herself over to the window and peered out. She looked back at Nikko and gestured for him to join her. He kneeled on the bed platform beside her.
He still couldn’t get over how big this place was, and how much was happening all the time. The open space was dotted with big old trees, the nearest some distance from their own window. Over there a woman was draping washing on bushes by the river. Down in the pens the big cattle beasts with their pointed horns bellowed and shoved at each other. In the goat pen, the mothers called for their kids, lost among the crush of legs. And everywhere there were the High King’s men with their shiny tunics, the dark polished leather of their shields, their bracelets and their braided hair.
It was all as unlike home as it was possible to be. And that felt good.
He had expected to miss home. He didn’t. When the stories were told around the fire on the feast days, they had always been of heroes dreaming of the land of their birth, longing to see their mothers or tend their fathers’ graves.
But he felt nothing. No, that wasn’t right. Despite the uncertainty ahead he felt free—free of all the stares, the whispering, the memories of everyone who knew what he had done. Somewhere deep inside anger also burned like coals after the wood had flamed away. He hoped the village did go hungry this winter. He hoped Aertes stumbled like a skeleton and his father’s stomach caved in with hunger, while down in Mycenae he and Thetis ate honey cakes and figs and sipped at pomegranate juice.
If the High King liked them.
If Orkestres was telling them the truth.
‘Thetis?’
She turned to look at him again, her face bright as a bird’s.
‘Do you think we can trust Orkestres?’
Thetis frowned a second, then nodded.
‘Do you think the High King will like us?’
She smiled. Nikko had never seen her smile quite like that, like a bird about to leap into the sky. She nodded again. Suddenly he couldn’t bear to be responsible for her silence.
‘You can talk,’ urged Nikko. ‘Please. You can talk when we are alone. It doesn’t matter what you say if it’s just to me.’
She looked at him consideringly, then shook her head again.
‘Won’t you ever speak?’ There was desperation in his voice now. He hadn’t meant to rob Thetis of her voice again, only to make her stop and think before she spoke. But their father had wanted to stop her forever.
Thetis thought for a moment, and then she smiled once more. She lifted up her hands. It was an easy gesture to read.
It meant I don’t know.
CHAPTER 9
It was late when Orkestres returned. There had been singing, and people playing the lute and pipes, and a great fire in the middle of the town, with a whole roast ox turning on a spit, and townsfolk scrambling to get a slice of meat. Nikko supposed Orkestres had performed, because when he finally pushed past the curtain into their room, even the glowing coals were enough to show his face was white with pain. He lay down without bothering to wash off the paint. Nikko heard a small moan as he rolled over on the hard bed platform.
Nikko closed his eyes again. Tomorrow they would set off again. Three more days to Mycenae. What would it be like? It felt strange to be so cut off from his past, but not to know his future either, almost like he and Thetis were hanging in midair.
He tried to think of good things. A grand palace, like this but twice as long. A High King who looked like Orkestres but with a gold beard, who smiled at them and cheered…
When he opened his eyes, Orkestres was washing his face in a bowl of water, and there were honey cakes on the table. One of the serving girls must have come in when he was still asleep.
Thetis was awake already. She kneeled on the bed platform, staring out the window.
‘What is it?’ Nikko rubbed the sleep from his eyes and perched beside her.
Thetis pointed.
Down in the courtyard, men washed their faces in the tubs the cattle drank from, and women baked bread under the bread stones outside their houses, poking twigs into the flames so the bread cooked faster. The sky was streaked a pale white and grey.
Nikko shook his head. ‘What’s so special?’
Thetis bit her lip. She pointed again, here…there…then shook her head.
‘You mean, you’re showing me what’s not there?’
Thetis nodded. Her small face looked intent, and worried.
‘Hurry up.’ Orkestres sounded impatient. He was wearing his good wool cloak with the gold border, and his gold chain and bracelets again. ‘We don’t want to keep the others waiting. And in the names of the three faces of the Mother, pull a comb through your hair, both of you, before anyone sees you. You look like you’ve been pulled through a hedge backward. You may still dress lik
e peasants, but at least your heads can look respectable.’
‘Sir, I think there’s something wrong. Thetis can see something…’
‘Then why can’t the child—’ Orkestres strode to the window.
It was that which saved them.
CHAPTER 10
The earth groaned. When Nikko looked back on that morning he was sure the earth spoke first, a deep shriek as though the very rocks had pulled apart. It was low as a growl and high as a bird’s cry at the same time.
A beam rattled in the ceiling. And then the whole hall shivered. The floor began to heave. A beam fell, and then another; a wall began to crumple. The world was crunching walls and dust.
‘Jump!’ Even as he spoke, Orkestres dived out of the window, like a kestrel swooping down after a hare.
Nikko stared. Orkestres’s body rolled like a ball below him, tumbling over and over, then suddenly he flipped again, straightened, and landed, almost gently, feet first.
Another wall crumbled behind them. He could hear other walls falling, deep within the hall, a noise like floods battering rocks in a spring torrent.
They were going to die if they stayed here. They would die if they jumped from a height like this. He knew it even as he grasped Thetis’s hand and pulled her up onto the window ledge beside him. The ground was too far down. Every bone in their body would crumple as they hit the paving stones. They couldn’t tumble like Orkestres, breaking the momentum of their fall…
The earth still screamed around them. Or was it people screaming? He took a breath, perhaps to scream, perhaps to say goodbye.
He jumped.
Hands caught him, wrists grasping wrists, breaking his fall. Orkestres lowered him onto the ground. Nikko looked around frantically, hunting for Thetis. Surely she had jumped with him! The window was empty. As he looked in vain for his sister, the wall around their bedroom collapsed backward in a rolling thunder of sound and movement.
The ground still shook under his feet—then suddenly it stopped. But walls still fell, and rocks tumbled. Only the groaning of the earth itself had ceased. The room they had spent the last two days in was dust and rubble.
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