The Return From Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  ‘I know it was,’ Peleus answered, feeling the familiar weight in his hand, and balancing it there as if for the throw. ‘And it was his father’s before him. This spear was given to me by the gods as a wedding gift. The head was forged in the smithy of Hephaistus. This ash-wood shaft was carved by Divine Athena.’

  Unable quite to conceal his boyish awe, Neoptolemus said, ‘You truly stood in the presence of the gods?’

  ‘As we all do, all the time,’ answered Peleus, ‘though not all of us are privileged to see them. Your father once took down this spear from the hooks where it hung beside my hearth. He was no more than a restless boy at the time, younger than you are now. I found him hurling it at a tree for target-practice and was angry with him because he had taken my spear without seeking my consent. But it was on that day that Achilles declared his desire to become a Myrmidon.’ Peleus smiled at the memory. ‘I told him that he should have his wish but that I would keep my spear until I could be sure that I had a son who was fit to wield it.’

  As stiffly as if some insult had been intended, Neoptolemus declared, ‘No man was ever worthier than my father.’

  ‘I know that,’ Peleus answered him, unsmiling, ‘and no father was ever prouder than myself. And now this spear is yours.’

  The youth narrowed his eyes against the wind. The beardless jut of his chin was held high as he said, ‘My hand shall never dishonour it.’

  ‘I trust not, Son of Achilles.’ Gravely, Peleus handed back the ash-wood spear. ‘I am proud to have you at my side,’ he said. ‘I hope to be made prouder still. Now come, let us make our offerings to the gods and to your father’s shade.’

  Many weeks later, some fifty miles to the south, at the city of Crisa in Phocis, another son of the war — a sandy-haired youth with truculent eyes, some two or three years older than Neoptolemus — was practising sword-play with his friend. They wielded only wooden swords and carried fight duelling shields, but both of them sweated from the length of the bout even though a cold wind was gusting off the rugged slopes of Mount Parnassus.

  Growing suddenly impatient of his failure to break through his opponents guard, the sandy-haired youth came at him with a swift series of swingeing blows that drove him back on the defensive; but the vigour of his assault left his shield-arm swinging almost as widely as his sword. Just as he was about to deliver what must be the winning stroke, he felt the blunt point of his opponent’s weapon nudging at his ribs.

  ‘Ha, you’re dead, Orestes!’ cried the darker youth. He gave a gay, slightly mocking laugh that was picked up by the four girls wrapped in brightly coloured shawls who had been watching them from the balcony above. Their clapping set the doves whirring their wings across the court.

  Orestes glowered briefly up at them and flushed.

  ‘Take no notice of them,’ said Pylades, who was the king’s son in Phocis and the most intimate friend to the youth he had just stabbed with his wooden sword. ‘Their applause is as empty as their heads. In any case, it’s you they fancy!’

  ‘It was a lucky stroke,’ Orestes scowled.

  Smiling still, Pylades arched his brow. ‘Even if that were so, you would still be dead. But I was waiting for you to lose control and that’s just what you did.’ Putting down his sword and shield, he wiped the back of his arm across his brow. ‘You’re still far too hot-headed. It’s part of your passionate nature, and I love you for it. But if you want to live long enough to take your vengeance, you’re going to have to rein in that temper of yours.’

  ‘That’s easy enough for you to say.’ Doing his best to ignore the tittering of the girls, Orestes threw down his sword. ‘The gods have always been kind to you. What complaint can you possibly have against this life?’

  ‘None,’ Pylades answered, ‘except that it has treated my friend very ill.’ He took a towel from the heap on the bench beside him and tossed it across to Orestes. ‘Come, let’s take a bath together. Then I’ll give you a game of knucklebones before we eat.’

  The two youths were cousins and had been friends since they were children, though it was not a friendship of which Clytaemnestra had recently approved. Even before the death of his sister Iphigenaia at Aulis, Orestes had become a major source of concern to his mother. His temperament was pugnacious and impatient, his manner verging on the insolent. In a court where everyone else went in fear of her power, Orestes had begun to take liberties, trying her patience in ways that he would not have dared to risk with his father. Yet Clytaemnestra found it hard to be firm with her son, even though she often devastated others with her cruel reproofs.

  From the first, she had always entertained such hopes of him. One day he would marry his cousin Hermione and unite the thrones of Mycenae and Sparta, thus confirming the hegemony of their royal house across all Argos. And he would become the kind of king that her first husband might have been had Agamemnon not murdered him. A king who ruled supreme over a world of artistic beauty and intellectual excellence, a world such as she would have chosen for herself if a strong fate had not willed otherwise.

  Yet with her mind preoccupied with the cares of state, Clytaemnestra had found it impossible to give her son the quality of attention that such ambitions required. She had recruited the best mentors she could find to teach him eloquence and music, to cultivate his aesthetic sensibility and encourage him in philosophical enquiry as well as instructing him in the elements of politics and statecraft. But the plain fact was that Orestes wanted to be at the war. More than that, he wanted to be fighting alongside Achilles — to serve as his cup-bearer or humble armour-polisher if no more glorious role was available. Anything to be close to the man whom he idolized above all others. While Troy still stood and there were deeds of glory waiting to be done, what interest could he have in poring over old clay tablets and the finer points of sophistry?

  And then when Clytaemnestra returned to Mycenae with the bitter news that his father had put Iphigenaia to death on the altar of Artemis at Aulis, the mind of Orestes had taken a darker turn. What was he to make of this — that his sister, whose beautiful face and exquisite singing voice had always been sources of wonder and delight to him, should have been murdered by his father? How could such a thing make sense unless the gods themselves were mad? In his confusion, he raged against his mother. How could she have permitted this to happen? Why had he not been informed of what his father intended so that he could have offered himself up in Iphigenaia’s place? But Clytaemnestra seemed remote and frozen inside her grief, and where Orestes looked to find maternal understanding, he met only silence or the impatient snarl of an injured lioness.

  Eventually he found consolation in the company of his friend Pylades, who had been brought from Phocis to Mycenae in the hope that his companionship might make Orestes’ hours of study less solitary. The two boys had always been fond of one another, but now their imaginations were ignited by the same hopes and dreams. At last Orestes had found someone willing to play Patroclus to his own Achilles; and the cheerful modesty of his friend elicited a greater generosity of spirit from the spoiled prince. The two boys became inseparable. They swore the same oaths of undying love for one another as their heroes had sworn. Secretly they began to sleep in each other’s arms.

  Then the news reached Mycenae that both Achilles and Patroclus were dead.

  For a time Orestes was inconsolable. Not only did victory seem inconceivable now, but life itself seemed a vain and empty thing. How was it that everything he loved was taken from him? How was it that Achilles could have been slain by treachery while his father — a man he barely knew, who had callously put his own daughter to death — lived on and did nothing with all the power at his command?

  Cooler-headed, more pragmatic in temperament, Pylades consoled his friend as best he could. Surely, he said, the best way to honour the shades of their heroes was to become greater heroes still. Together they would make good the loss. Let the war drag on, for soon the two of them must be called to the front. They were the young lions who would car
ry on the fight. Agamemnon would look on with pride as his son Orestes did what even Achilles had failed to do and led his forces through the Scaean Gate into the very heart of Troy.

  Yet before any of that could happen, changes began to take place in Mycenae itself. Pelagon, the court bard who had sung for years of the deeds at Troy, mysteriously died. Familiar figures about the palace were relieved of their posts. Less approachable young men replaced them. Then Aegisthus appeared.

  When his father first left for the war, Orestes had been too young to hear a full account of his family’s history, so the name of Aegisthus meant nothing to him. Nor did he take against the man at first. Handsome and charming, the newcomer appeared to be no more than a further addition to his mother’s ever-growing staff of ministers and officials, though one with whom she spent an unusual amount of time closeted in private. Only on the day when he remarked on the man’s lively wit to Pylades, and he saw his friend glance uneasily away, did Orestes become conscious that something might be amiss.

  ‘What is it?’ Orestes demanded. ‘Don’t you like him?’

  Pylades merely shrugged and carried on oiling his bow.

  ‘I agree he seems a bit full of himself,’ Orestes said, ‘and I resent the way he tries to speak to me sometimes as if he thought he was my father. But he’s better company than those other drones that hang about my mother. I mean, which of them ever stops to pass the time of day with us?’

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ Pylades muttered almost below his breath.

  Orestes blinked in surprise. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ And then, two seconds later. ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Pylades flushed. ‘You must have noticed,’ he murmured, ‘how much time he spends alone with your mother.’

  ‘They work together,’ Orestes countered, but the back of his neck was suddenly hot. He wanted to demand what his friend meant by that mumbled remark but he couldn’t do it without losing his temper. His mind started to lurch as he watched Pylades put more oil onto the kidskin. Could it be that the friend he loved was imputing his mother’s honour? And why would he choose to do that unless he had good reason?

  ‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘you had better explain yourself.’

  Pylades turned his honest face towards him, ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

  ‘Are we not sworn to one another?’

  ‘Whatever might happen? Whatever I might say?’

  Orestes saw that they were both trembling a little.

  ‘Now you’re alarming me,’ he gasped.

  ‘Then perhaps silence is better.’

  ‘It’s too late for that. Tell me what you know.’

  Pylades looked down at his feet. His knuckles were gripped tight about his bow. ‘Do you remember some time ago when you were ill with a fever and you asked me to bring your mother to you? It was quite late one night.’

  ‘I remember.’

  Pylades swallowed before continuing. ‘I went to the Queen’s private apartment and saw her serving-woman Marpessa admitting Aegisthus to her bedchamber.’

  He watched the colours changing in Orestes’ face. He saw the anger rising in his eyes, but he pressed on, forestalling interruption. ‘I withdrew at once, of course, and came back wondering what reason I could give for not bringing your mother with me. Fortunately you’d already fallen asleep so I didn’t have to explain.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Orestes demanded hotly. ‘What’s so terrible about that? Doesn’t it occur to you that he might have needed to speak to her urgently? Some matter of state business must have come up. Anyway, if Marpessa was there, they weren’t alone. There need have been no wrong in it.’

  But his boyish heart was floundering.

  ‘That’s what I told myself,’ Pylades answered. ‘I would have put it out of my mind but Marpessa must have spotted me leaving the apartment because the next day Aegisthus came up to me and . . Pylades faltered there. He glanced away from his friend’s fierce regard, uncertain but not abashed.

  ‘What?’ Orestes demanded.

  ‘He threatened me.’

  ‘How? How did he threaten you?’

  Still not looking at his friend, Pylades drew in his breath a little shakily before answering. ‘He said that he knew very well what the Queen did not yet know — that you and I have taken to sleeping in each other’s arms. He said that if the Queen got to learn of it I would certainly be sent away from Mycenae.’

  ‘How?’ Orestes protested. ‘How could he have known that?’

  ‘He must have spied on us while we slept. He or some minion in his pay. I don’t know, but he said that he would say nothing to the Queen about it so long as I too agreed to say nothing to anyone of what I thought I might have seen. He said that if we failed to reach such an agreement, he and I, then the consequences would be very unpleasant for you.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Orestes said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ his friend answered quietly.

  ‘I’ll go to the armoury and take a sword and plunge it in his traitor’s heart.’

  ‘Think about it, Orestes, Even if you got close to him — which I very much doubt — what would your mother do? How would you explain yourself without disgracing her? And who would believe you anyway? Pylades put a hand to his friend’s trembling shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything, but you asked me and … I don’t know, but there’s something going on in this city that I don’t understand.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why have so many of the old ministers gone from the palace? And haven’t you noticed how hard it’s become for ordinary people to petition the Queen? The whole feel of the place is different. Nobody seems to speak their mind any more. I may be quite wrong about it, but,’ Pylades glanced around to make sure they were still unobserved, ‘the only person I trust right now is you.’ Orestes listened to his friend with growing trepidation, for everything he said corresponded to vague feelings that had crossed his mind without ever becoming clear. Yet the implications were so worrying that his heart jumped about his chest and his mind refused to keep still long enough to think.

  Pylades looked up and saw the agitation in Orestes’ face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. But it seems to me that the only thing for us to do is keep our eyes and ears open and our mouths shut till things come clearer.’

  And that’s what they did for a time in an anxious conspiracy against the world. Orestes found it hard to conceal his newfound feelings of revulsion for Aegisthus. Clytaemnestra felt ever more frustrated by her son’s behaviour, and her daughter Electra resented the way that her brother and his friend excluded her from the secrets they shared. Then the boys’ apprehensions were allayed in the excitement that burst across Mycenae with the news that Troy had fallen and Agamemnon must soon return to the city in triumph.

  Yet Orestes found it still harder to sleep in his bed at night. How should he receive his father? Should he greet him, like everybody else, as the great hero of the age, the conqueror of Troy and King of Men? That was what he wanted to do; but he couldn’t free his mind of the sickening thought that this was the man who had put his sister to death in order to further his ambitions. Orestes told himself that the thread of a man’s fate was spun at his birth and there was no avoiding the ordeals that the gods devised for him. Yet that thought brought him no peace for it seemed to turn life into a prison where no one was free to choose for himself. Victory and defeat, courage and cowardice, fidelity and betrayal — all blurred to insignificance in a world ruled by capricious gods.

  Lost in such dark contemplation, Orestes lay uneasily awake night after night, or jumped into darkness out of terrifying dreams.

  One afternoon he returned from a long, uncomfortable conversation with his mother to find that Pylades had already gone from the city. All his things had been hastily packed and not a trace of his presence remained. Orestes was simply told that King Strophius had required that his so
n return home at short notice and that the herald who had brought the message would brook no delay.

  On the following day Orestes and his sister Electra were despatched into the care of Lord Podargus in Midea. When Orestes complained that, as well as being denied the company of his only friend, he would not even be permitted to witness his father’s triumphant return into Mycenae, he was told, incomprehensibly, that such was Agamemnon’s express wish. No further explanation was forthcoming.

  Some days later Orestes and Electra were sitting miserably together in the draughty hall at Midea when Podargus came up to them wringing his mottled hands. Something terrible had happened in Mycenae, he declared. They must brace themselves for a shock, for he could see no gentle way of breaking the news that their father had been assassinated.

  Electra’s face whitened as though she was about to faint. She uttered a little strangled cry, tried to stifle it further, and then burst into tears. Orestes sat in shock. He felt as if someone had struck him a blow on the back of his head.

  Then he demanded, ‘Who has killed him?’

  But Podargus merely shook his gaunt head, grim-lipped. The situation in Mycenae remained confused, he said. He had told them the little that he knew. When more information became available he would share it. Now they must prepare to mourn and make their offerings for their father’s shade.

  Some time would pass, therefore, before Agamemnon’s children learned that their father’s assassin was their mother. The source of that information was a serving-woman called Geilissa, who was one of the small band of guards and retainers who had accompanied the children on their journey from Mycenae to Midea. She had known Orestes and Iphigenaia since infancy and had been wet-nurse to Electra, but she and Clytaemnestra had often been at odds over the Queen’s cold way with her children. Geilissa never doubted where her own warm loyalties lay, and she had been included in the party against Clytaemnestra’s better judgement only because Electra declared that she would refuse to go without her. Geilissa herself was glad enough to put Mycenae behind her and take care of her charges once more during their sojourn in Midea.