Oracle

by Jackie French

  He performed a son’s duty for Orkestres that afternoon, as the sun sank in a blaze of red and gold, like the wings Thetis had worn the night before. The guards on the terrace had nodded to him, and two had followed him discreetly. But no one stopped him as he and Orkestres’s old comrades carried the acrobat’s bier out through the Lion Gate, and up to the Hill of Graves. A small crowd of other friends followed them. Orkestres had been much loved.

  Nikko wondered if any of the others noticed the guards.

  The grave had been dug already, and lined with rocks. They lowered the bier into the earth. Orkestres wore his best robe, his gold necklaces, all the grand jewels of his career. Nikko had washed the blood from his body. He had sat with the body, watching him till Orkestres’s friends arrived with his bier, to make sure the Night Ones didn’t take Orkestres’s soul before the old acrobat was laid into the Mother’s earth.

  Nikko bent and scattered the first earth onto his father’s face. It looked peaceful now, almost joyous. Orkestres had not only died performing again for the High King, Nikko realised suddenly, but with his beloved wife by his side, having seen the triumph of the two children he had cared for so much. Perhaps he had never been as happy as he had been at the moment of the earthquake. Perhaps he had heard the fates sing to him: Die now, while your happiness is complete.

  The thought made his death a little easier to bear. Not much, but a little.

  Nikko watched as Orkestres’s friends scattered their handfuls of soil too. The gravediggers filled in the grave, and piled wood on top of it. Nikko added Orkestres’s favourite chair, the ebony table where they’d eaten for so many years and the bearskin from his bed. He took his knife and cut his hair off in ragged chunks, and laid them on the funeral pyre. The other mourners cut a lock of their own hair too, to mark their grief.

  One of the gravediggers handed Nikko a flaming torch. Nikko bent and held it to the wood. The flames flickered, then rose up to the sky. Nikko stood and watched.

  At last the coals turned black. He left the fire then, and made his way back up the road to Mycenae, through the Lion Gate again, and up the broad white path to the palace. The guards followed him, but respectfully, at a distance.

  The Chamberlain and his assistants were making notes on clay squares, counting pots of grain down in the deep storerooms below the high palace. The place smelled of damp and mushrooms, with a faint scent of roasting meat from the kitchen courtyards above, but there were no scuttles in the corners here. The grain pots were sealed with wax and had heavy lids, too big for any rat to dislodge.

  The Chamberlain looked up and eyed Nikko’s smoke-smudged white robe. ‘I am sorry for your loss, Nikkoledes. Orkestres was a good man. But if you have come to ask about your sister again—’

  ‘No,’ said Nikko, glancing down at the bones by one of the storeroom’s pillars. How long ago had this person been sacrificed to help hold up the House of the Lion? When his bones decayed would fresh blood be spilled, to give the palace a guardian of more strength down in the Underworld? Up above he could hear the sound of feasting again, flutes playing and laughter and the thump of dancing feet. They were pretending yesterday’s tragedy had never happened.

  The Chamberlain lowered his stylus, and looked at Nikko properly. ‘You have accepted that she’s gone forever? Banished for her crime?’

  Nikko hesitated. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t accept either of those. I’ll argue with you another time, try to convince you she should be brought back. But that isn’t why I’m here now.’

  The Chamberlain sighed. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ The Chamberlain gestured to the guards and to his assistants, then waited till they had left the chamber.

  ‘Well? I hope you aren’t wasting my time.’

  ‘No. I know your time is precious, especially now. But this won’t wait. I would like to perform at the last feast, before the guests leave.’

  The Chamberlain stared. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘You have an act you think is worthy of His Majesty’s guests?’

  ‘Yes. You know yourself, sir, how important that feast is. The King needs his guests to leave here still drunk on the wine and glory of Mycenae.’

  The Chamberlain hesitated. He had looked old when Nikko had first seen him. He was as bald now as the clay tablet he held, and his skin was much the same colour as it. There were pouches under his eyes. Who are you really? thought Nikko suddenly. How did you get here? Do you work from love or duty, or fear, or the joy of self-importance?

  He glanced at the Chamberlain again. No, he thought. Whatever the reason is, it’s not the latter.

  The Chamberlain put his hand on Nikko’s arm. Nikko almost jerked back in surprise—he had never seen the Chamberlain touch anyone with affection before.

  ‘Don’t worry, lad. No one is going to sell you to the galleys—or send you to entertain the villages either. In fact,’ he added, ‘you won’t be leaving Mycenae again, even to perform for the King of Athens, just in case you decide to try to find your sister. But that doesn’t mean your life at court has finished.’

  He paused again. ‘Your voice is acceptable, and your playing as good as any man in the palace. I’ll give you another summer, to practise, then you can play for the King. You can even keep your rooms.’

  ‘Play music in the background, while men feast?

  The Chamberlain smiled. ‘You are not good enough for more, boy. And it’s no bad thing to be in the background, not too high to fall too low, just high enough to keep your comforts and respect. Trust me, boy. I know.’

  Nikko tried to think. His mind still felt bruised, from grief and lack of sleep, as though the column last afternoon had fallen on him, not on the High King’s throne. I need to be sharper, he thought.

  At least he wasn’t being sent away. Though if he had been, it might be easier to escape, to follow the trail to wherever Thetis and Dora had been taken. But if he’d been sent from Mycenae he’d have left Euridice alone.

  The Chamberlain stroked his chin. He was the only man in Mycenae who shaved his chin, as well as his chest. ‘And yet…What did you have in mind, boy? You’re right. The King would be—pleased—with any performance that stunned his guests at his last feast. Can you really give a performance that will wipe the memory of your sister’s…lapse?’ He sighed. ‘Why of all times did the girl have to remember how to talk last night?’

  He doesn’t even remember that she foretold the earthquake, thought Nikko, that she saved the High King’s life up there. He only remembers what matters to him now. He tried to keep the thought from his face.

  ‘It won’t just be me. It will be Euridice too—the horse girl. I’ll ride a horse—a real horse—as her catcher, just as I was for Thetis. Not near the King—we’ll be too far away for the girl to touch him, even if she wanted to. She’s learned her lesson, sir.’

  The Chamberlain stared at him. ‘Really?’

  Nikko met his eyes. ‘Yes, sir. The horse can gallop across the courtyard under the terrace while we perform on horseback. She’s a trained horse dancer—she won’t fall. And I have enough experience not to try more than I can manage. They’ll never have seen anything like it. And there’s no risk of her escaping,’ he added. ‘Not with guards, and with the Lion Gate closed.’

  The Chamberlain gazed at him a moment. ‘A live horse act. No, they won’t have seen that before. Perhaps…’ He nodded suddenly. ‘You have permission, boy. But on two conditions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That the horse girl wears your sister’s costume. The Butterfly. And that she yells out, as your sister did. But this time she will cry that Atreus the High King and the Lion House will live forever.’

  ‘Nothing lives forever.’

  The Chamberlain smiled. His face changed when it smiled, falling into unused patterns of wrinkles. ‘Of course they do. Every High King lives forever—until he dies.’

  ‘And the second thing?’

&n
bsp; ‘She will be chained. Long chains, so she can move. But chains, none the less.’

  ‘No.’

  The Chamberlain gazed across the dimness at him. To Nikko’s surprise his voice suddenly held a note of humour. ‘You know, I can’t remember when anyone last said that word to me.’

  ‘Chains won’t work. She could trip on them, or get tangled, especially if they’re long. I might get caught on them too. And chains would spook a horse. A moment of mistiming…then what will His Majesty’s guests see?’

  ‘A dead Butterfly, or a dying one.’ The Chamberlain stroked his bare chin. ‘You’re right. No chains. But give the girl my warning: there will be guards around the square. The horse will be brought in at the last minute.’

  ‘But we need to practise with a real horse, at least once!’

  The Chamberlain raised an eyebrow. ‘You may practise, with three guards to escort you, out beyond the city. The girl can practise with the wooden horse. If she is as good as you say she is, she’ll know what to do already.’

  Guards, thought Nikko. As though three guards could stop me. But Euridice was right. He needed to stay in the palace till he knew which way to go.

  ‘And if the horse girl tries to escape—or does anything, no matter what, to displease His Majesty—I will sell her as a whore over on Aegina. She may be able to gallop her way across the mountains, but I doubt she can swim from an island. You understand?’

  ‘I understand.’ Nikko hesitated. ‘Sir—is there anything at all you can tell me about my sister?’

  ‘No.’ The Chamberlain barked out an order. The shapes of his assistants glided in from the shadows, and began to count again.

  ‘Is she safe?’ urged Nikko.

  The Chamberlain looked at him with what might almost have been sympathy. ‘As far as I know, she is safe.’ The old man looked down again at his clay tablet, and lifted his stylus to write. The audience was over.

  ‘Please. Did you ever have a sister? A family?’ Nikko was desperate.

  The Chamberlain looked up at him, once more surprised. ‘Not that I can remember. I was a tribute child, like you. I worked my way upward—as you’ll do once again in a new capacity, if you have any sense. The palace is my world, my family. I have never wanted more. Now you may go.’

  Nikko stepped between the grain pots, past the greying bones, and into the sunlight of Mycenae.

  CHAPTER 34

  The morning of the High King’s final feast dawned fine, with only a thin thread of cloud across the horizon. This afternoon’s feast would be the grandest yet—even grander, perhaps, than the Chamberlain had previously planned, to wipe out all memory of Thetis and the earthquake.

  Sheep bleated from the dairy huts, and cows gave mournful cries, disturbed by the smell of freshly slaughtered beasts, when Nikko passed them on the way to the stables. As always now his guards plodded a discreet distance behind. At least, he thought, they were giving him the illusion of freedom.

  Already Nikko could smell roasting meat wafting across the walls from the kitchen courtyard. Small boys would be turning the biggest animals, which took the most time to roast on spits above glowing embers; other boys would be lugging firewood, brought by cart from far away from the bare hills about Mycenae. The women were likely baking a steady stream of breads under the big baking stones: fig bread, honey bread, and barley cakes to eat with honeycomb after the main meat course.

  Pots of fresh cheeses soaking in brine would be hauled from the cool storerooms beneath the palace; goat’s cheese, sheep’s cheese, cow’s cheese, mare’s cheese for the northerners, and fermented mare’s milk too, to go with the wines and honey beer.

  He had smelled yet another animal smell before he left the palace this morning—fresh entrails, from the two white kids and the black calf that had been sacrificed on the big public altar by the palace just as the sun’s first rays climbed into the sky. The augurs had read the signs in the bloody hearts and kidneys, and still-steaming intestines. They’d predicted a grand feast, and a grand day for the greatest of kings, and a year of plenty to come.

  Nikko wasn’t surprised. No augur would dare risk the High King’s displeasure today, of all days.

  Nikko’s skin prickled. The augurs prophesied good times; Thetis had cried out the opposite.

  But Thetis doesn’t prophesy, he thought. She had never learned to study entrails—or not as far as he had known. Thetis watched, and thought, and understood.

  Who was right then? The augurs, or the girl who watched, and who had seen a sign that another earthquake was coming? He walked around, trying to read the signs himself. Still no birds—but perhaps the crowds of visitors had frightened them away. And he hadn’t seen a dog for days, he realised. Even the old boarhound who slept near the kitchens had vanished.

  His skin felt cold at the thought of another quake. Those moments when the firm earth suddenly was no longer safe beneath your feet were terrifying; not for just the death that they might bring, but because they showed how all you took for granted might be lost in a moment.

  He wondered suddenly what Xurtis’s auguries had been when she had fed the house snake this morning. Had the snake come out and lapped its milk, or eaten its mouse? Or had it failed to appear? Did Xurtis tell her brother the truth, Nikko wondered, as Thetis would have done? Or did she take a pinch of truth and mix it with a bowl of honey to make it palatable for the High King?

  The horses were crammed into smaller pens today, to make room for all the tribute animals that would be eaten through the winter. Would the horses run to the hills if they were free?

  Nikko led Dapples out of her pen. The big horse seemed nervous. An earthquake, he wondered, or did she sense the grand performance to come? He asked the horse master for the highest-sided saddle that he had.

  The horse master grinned. ‘Afraid you’ll fall off?’ Only children and women used saddles. His face softened. ‘I’m sorry about Orkestres, lad. He was a good man. And about your sister.’

  If a crumb fell from the High King’s table the gossips knew about it, thought Nikko.

  ‘You didn’t hear where they sent her?’

  The horse master shook his head, his face carefully blank. But he’ll know how far his horses have travelled when the guards bring them back, thought Nikko. The guards may even tell him where they’ve been. The guards would have needed horses, even if only to take Thetis and Dora down to a port to sail elsewhere. Sometime I’ll ask him again. Or he’ll tell someone who’ll tell someone else, and I’ll hear the whispers…

  ‘I need the saddle for a perfomance, to keep me steady. Euridice will balance on my shoulders.’

  ‘The horse girl? On a live horse? I’d give my best fighting rooster to see that.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe I’ll find some reason to be inside the city walls this afternoon.’ He looked over at the tack wall, then pulled down a big, red-dyed saddle. ‘This do? I can get the girls to sew on some glitter if you like.’

  ‘Turquoises?’ They’ll gleam bright in the autumn light, thought Nikko. He had a bowl of them back in his chambers.

  ‘Got any garnets?’

  Nikko nodded. The Chamberlain would give him what he needed.

  ‘Bring them down. The girls can sew them on the reins too.’ The horse master slapped Dapples’s rump. ‘You’ll give them a good show, won’t you, girl?’ She whinnied at him, either offended or hoping for a hunk of bread. Nikko pulled a fig from his pouch and held it out to her. She whickered at his fingers.

  ‘When do you rehearse?’

  ‘We don’t. Euridice isn’t allowed beyond the walls, and there’s no way we can hide Dapples without anyone seeing.’

  The horse master stared. Nikko knew as well as he what the penalty would be for a second public failure before the High King.

  ‘I would think the horse would need to rehearse as much as those on her back,’ he said at last.

  Nikko stroked Dapples’s nose. She whinnied at him again, hoping for another fig. ‘She knows me. She’ll try to do what
I want. And Euridice knows horses. If Dapples turns skittish she’ll manage.’

  At last the horse master shrugged. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, lad. I’ll bring the horse up when the sun is three fingers down.’ He looked at the big mare assessingly. ‘She’s large, but she’ll fit through the Gate right enough. All right?’

  Nikko nodded.

  His life as a whole no longer seemed to fit him. It felt like a borrowed robe that had taken its true master’s shape. This plan, at least, felt right.

  CHAPTER 35

  Nikko checked his appearance in the big bronze mirror in his room. He had dressed as a lord of Mycenae today, not as a tumbler. He wore his best kilt, dark blue with gold flounces, a gold belt, and all the gold he possessed on his neck and wrists and ankles. Even his hair was held back with a gold circlet, studded with sapphires, a gift from King Atreus.

  It had felt strange to paint his own face. Dora had always done it before.

  He had painted Euridice’s face earlier. It shocked him how much one girl’s face resembled another once the black and ochre was applied about the eyes, the red on lips and cheeks and heels, the hair in a black cloud above the silken costume, a new one quickly made to resemble the one Thetis had worn. The Chamberlain had sent jewellery for her to wear, too, as Thetis had taken her own.

  The guards followed him as he slipped along the palace corridors to see how the feast was progressing. The laughter in the feasting chamber this afternoon was the loudest ever heard in Mycenae; the wine was being handed around unwatered. The guests had been given their gifts too. This was the last feast of careless plenty before the kings and headmen left to face the winter, doling out stores to keep their people alive till the first crops of summer. They were making the most of it.

  Roast after roast had been carried up from the women’s courtyards; kids still with their heads and tails, their blackened eyes still staring from their skulls; great haunches of venison dripping juice onto the tiles; whole fatty sheep; long poles of skewered sparrows, pigeons, quail stuffed with eggs, pheasant stuffed with pomegranate seeds; and giant platters of breads to soak up the juices.