Memnon

by Oden, Scott

  “Wait,” Patron said, nodding back toward the gate. Memnon followed his gaze. A woman stood in the shadow of the wall, her peplos stained with soot and dust. Loose strands of graying hair escaped from beneath her fringed scarf. In her hands, she clutched a terracotta votive statue, rubbing it as though the gesture would make her wishes reality.

  “I know her,” Memnon said, picking his way back to her. “Cleia?”

  The sound of a voice speaking her name startled the woman. She blinked and glanced about, like an innocent soul awakening before Hades’ throne, afraid of what she would see but unable to look away. Memnon said her name again, softly. This time, Cleia focused on him. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, Memnon! Have you seen my husband? They wouldn’t let us in to look. Have you seen him? I begged him not to come, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s fond of your father. Have you seen him, Memnon? Have you seen my Bion?”

  “I haven’t, Cleia, but I’ll help you look,” Memnon said, offering his arm for the woman to lean on. Other women, too, crept through the gate. Patron detailed men to help them as they sought familiar faces among the dead: brothers, sons, husbands, and fathers. Wails of grief accompanied each success. The eldest among them, matrons well acquainted with Death, hushed their cries and set about tending to the bodies with quiet dignity.

  Memnon found Cleia’s husband a dozen feet from the gate. Though three times Memnon’s age, Bion had fought with Spartan ferocity until, his shield hacked and broken, a spear thrust had ended his life. Cleia sank down beside him. “Oh, Bion.”

  Memnon tried to think of something to say that would ease her grief, provide comfort, and give her hope all in the same breath. He could think of nothing, save his own father. Timocrates’ body lay amidst the wrack and ruin, waiting with the infinite patience of the dead for someone to uncover him. Memnon could feel it in his marrow. He—

  “I’ve found a survivor!” Patron, near the wall, bellowed. All semblance of thought fled from Memnon’s mind as he left Cleia and rushed across to his captain’s side.

  “Who is it? My father?”

  “No,” Patron said.

  Both men crouched and prized up a charred timber. Memnon saw a familiar swatch of faded blue fabric, part of a himation, as he lifted his end. The young Rhodian gagged at the stench of seared tissue, blood, and bowel that rose from the uncovered body. “Glaucus.”

  A shower of fiery debris, including a timber from the gate, had fallen crosswise over Glaucus’s body, its weight pinning him to the ground and roasting his flesh in smoldering increments rather than all at once. One eye, boiled like an egg, had ruptured; fluid wept down his cheek. Night’s veil must have hidden him from trophy-seekers, since he still possessed both hands—though the heat left them charred and blackened.

  “He’s still alive?”

  In answer, Glaucus struggled to move. Blood and liquefied fat seeped through cracks in his skin as he fought to form speech. “W-Water …”

  Memnon knelt and cradled Glaucus’s head, careful not to touch the burnt flesh. “We’ll get you some water, Glaucus. Rest easy, now.”

  He clutched at Memnon’s arm. “W-we looked for you … we h-hoped you would c-come and lead us. T-Timocrates kept asking after y-you … w-we hoped …”

  Memnon bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Glaucus. I tried to fight through. I tried.”

  “H-Have you s-seen T-Timocrates …?”

  “I cannot find him, Glaucus. Where is he?”

  Glaucus coughed, bloody foam flecking his lips. The secretary’s grip on Memnon’s arm loosened. He whispered something, and with a last rattling breath, Glaucus’s spirit departed on the long road to Tartarus. Memnon exhaled and stood.

  “Where?” Patron said.

  Memnon didn’t hear him. Turning away, the son of Timocrates strode toward the squat bulk of the house.

  AFTER THE MOB’S BATTERING RAMS COMPROMISED THE EXTERIOR GATES, the defenders must have fallen back on the villa itself. The gentle, tree-lined slope where Memnon played as a child was scorched and bloody, littered with the corpses of his father’s friends. He stepped over the bodies of men who had bounced him on their knees, men whose sons he had scrabbled with in the dust, and he felt nothing. He saw nothing, save the delicate iron and gold-filigreed gate that should have barred the entrance to the villa. No one had tried to close it; Memnon doubted that it could be closed—its hinges were useless from a generation of neglect and exposure to salty air. He touched the rough iron as he passed.

  Through the entry, a short dark tunnel opened on an inner courtyard ringed in a peristyle of timber, black with age, whose tall red-daubed columns supported a roof of baked clay tiles. On either side of the entryway, clumps of damp earth and fragments of terracotta were all that remained of a pair of poplar seedlings, doubtless ripped from their pots to serve as fuel for the fire. At the center of the inner courtyard stood the household altar to Helios, the patron god of all Rhodes, the Charioteer who drives the stallions of the Sun across the heavens to the Isles of the Blessed. Here, Timocrates would have asked the god’s blessing for his family, offering in return gifts of bull’s blood and wine.

  All around the courtyard Memnon saw touches of his father’s personality: a high table brimming with empty pots and gardening tools; an overturned couch of sun-faded wood, its legs carved in the likeness of a horse’s hooves; niches in the right-hand wall held small statues and busts of men, heroes, and gods. On the left-hand wall, between a pair of doors leading to his father’s offices and Glaucus’s apartments, the russet-colored wall bore a painted copy of Parrhasius’s Demos, depicting the goddess instructing Theseus in the ways of demokratia. Seeing the painting again brought back a flood of memories: a soft twilight; warm air laced with the smell of hyacinth and wet brick; his father sitting on the couch, weary from unknown struggles, nursing a goblet of watered wine. He would stare into the depths of the painting until the light faded, as though searching the pigments for the answers to his questions. “Always surround yourself with great art, Memnon, for great art is like a mirror that only shows us the best in ourselves.”

  “Father!” Memnon crossed to the door of Timocrates’ offices and peered inside. Empty. He whirled … and felt his blood turn to ice. In the sun behind the altar, a body lay like a suppliant abasing himself before the god. Memnon edged forward. Folds of bloody soot-fouled white cloth, edged in Tyrian purple, clung to the corpse’s splayed limbs. “Father?”

  True to their word, the oligarchs had taken his head. Memnon stared at the whitish vertebrae protruding through the ragged flesh, at the pool of blackening blood, and felt his gorge rise. He spun away, retching.

  Memnon staggered to the couch. He righted it, sat heavily, and cradled his head in his hands. Time lost all meaning. How long he sat there, the sun burning his shoulders, he didn’t know. His mind kept replaying the arguments of the past few months. Every look of disappointment and caustic remark drove the sharp spike of guilt deeper into his heart.

  A shadow fell across Memnon; he felt a hand stroke his hair. “Do not mourn too much, dear boy,” Cleia said, her voice a soft hum. “He is with your mother now, beyond the Styx, beyond the grim halls of Tartarus, in the eternal springtime of Elysium. Imagine your father’s joy at seeing your mother’s face once again.”

  Memnon said nothing for a long time. The muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched; his knuckles whitened around the sword hilt. Twice he seemed on the verge of speaking, only to exhale through flared nostrils. When finally found his voice, it emerged as a cracked whisper. “We … We did not part on the best of terms. I fear he went to his death believing me to be a disappointment.”

  “All fathers want what’s best for their sons, but few take the time to ask what their sons want because no one asked them,” Cleia said. “I believe Timocrates wished only to spare you the hardships he’d endured in his youth. In his heart, I think he knew you could no more follow in his footsteps than he could sprout wings and fly.”

  Memnon stood. “We’
ll never know, though.”

  “What will you do with your father?”

  He glanced up at the cloudless azure sky. “A pyre. Father always said he wanted to be placed on a pyre, so that after death his shade could wander the earth on wings of smoke. I’ll send Glaucus with him, ever-faithful.”

  “And Bion?”

  “Would he wish it?”

  Cleia sighed. “Our sons are dead, our daughter, too. Once I pass on there will be no one left to tend his grave. I think Bion would be honored to mingle his ashes with those of your father.” Memnon looked away. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

  “You do him great acclaim.”

  Cleia took Memnon’s hand. “Come. Let’s make them ready for their last journey.”

  LATE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT FLOODED THE INNER COURTYARD WITH GOLDEN radiance, illuminating every crack and flaw in the plastered walls. The body of Timocrates lay on the couch with his feet facing the door, covered in a white linen bier cloth. Cleia had gone to look after the other bodies, leaving Memnon alone in the shadow of the peristyle. He sat grim-faced, his chin resting on the pommel of his sheathed sword as he contemplated the corpse of his father. Timocrates had been an elemental force in the young man’s life—a god to be appeased; a tempest who thrived on struggle; a taskmaster who demanded excellence from his sons. Though Memnon longed to be free of his influence, Timocrates’ passing left a bewildering void, a tainted sense of freedom.

  I should have stayed with him instead of running off to Thalia’s. After the brawl in the Assembly, his natural inclination had been to seek out a safe place where he could regroup and gather his thoughts. The speed of the oligarchs’ response had surprised him, true, but it wasn’t unexpected. He should have been prepared; instead, he created a lull in the fighting where none existed and it had cost his father his life. Is this how I’ll act in the Troad? If battle is offered, will I scamper away to hide in my mistress’s skirt?

  From beyond the open gate leading to the heart of his father’s villa, the sounds of men arming—coarse jokes, muted laughter, the jangle of harness—broke his concentration. He heard footsteps on the paving stones. “Memnon?” Patron called, his voice echoing in the entryway.

  “In here.”

  Circe’s captain ambled into the inner courtyard, glancing at the makeshift bier as he walked over to where Memnon sat. “Come, it’s getting late. I’ve picked ten men to go with you to this damnable parley. Zeus! I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Memnon’s eyes hardened. “Philolaus owes me his life. I go to collect.”

  “A wise man,” Patron said, shaking his head, “would knock you senseless and haul your carcass back to the ship. I should be the one going, not you.”

  “No, Patron. This is something I must handle on my own.” Memnon’s leather armor creaked as he stood and looped the baldric of his sword over his shoulder. The weapon settled on his left hip; he slid the blade partly from its sheath, loosening it. “As you said, it’s likely I go to an ambush. If that’s true and I don’t return, will you see to my father?”

  “If that comes to pass I’ll see to the both of you,” Patron said. “But, no matter what happens, lad, don’t trust anything that comes from Philolaus’s mouth. Accept no promises from him, and promise nothing in return. His cause isn’t served by bargaining with you.” He glanced again at the bier, at the shrouded body, and exhaled. “My father died a few years back. I wasn’t there for it.”

  “I pray he died with more pride in his heart for his son than my father had for me,” Memnon said.

  “I wouldn’t wager coin on that. When I was your age, my father arranged for me to apprentice with a counting house in Phocaea. He thought I should make my fortune selling Chian wine to merchants out of Naucratis.”

  Memnon raised an eyebrow. “You? A trader’s apprentice?”

  Patron smiled. “I know, but the old man had a dream. I had a dream, too. So, one night I slipped from my bed, gathered my things, and fled down to the docks. By sunrise I was an oarsman on a galley bound for Taenarum in the Peloponnese. He never forgave me, and he died ‘ere he could see me at the tiller of my own ship. I don’t doubt his shade wanders the grim landscape of Hades’ realm, unable to forget the bitter disappointment I caused him.”

  Memnon extended his hand. “I swear to you, Patron, on my honor, when I meet your father across the river I will set him right on that score.”

  Patron took the proffered hand and tugged the younger man into an embrace. “Do nothing foolish, you damnable pup,” he said, “or, on my honor, I swear I’ll send you across the river myself.”

  4

  IN THE FADING LIGHT OF DUSK, MEMNON LEFT HIS FATHER’S VILLA AND ascended the hillside. Behind him, the Argive brothers Lycus and Sciron, with eight others of Circe‘s crew, followed in silence. The road approached the acropolis from the north, its slope gentler than the dramatic cliff face that loomed over the great harbor. Around them, groves of cypress, olive, oak, and poplar provided shade for fields of fragrant violet and narcissus, hyacinth and wild thyme. Amid this pairidaeza, on stepped terraces whose retaining walls were of dressed stone and timber, rose the temples and public buildings of the Rhodians.

  The architecture bore the stamp of Doric simplicity: baseless columns with wide shallow flutings, plain capitals, and friezes of unadorned marble suffused with the crimson glow of twilight. Memnon led them past the Odeion, the music hall where wealthy choregoi prepared their singers for the great festivals of Greece; they skirted the Prytaneion, the symbolic home of Rhodes, where priests tended to the sacred flame of Helios, and cut through the deepening gloom of a columned stoa. Ahead, above the dark boughs of Athena’s hallowed olive grove, the red-tiled roof of the Assembly glistened as though drenched in blood.

  Sciron caught Memnon’s arm. “Wait. Let us scout it out.” He gestured to his brother, and the two Argives sprinted off, vanishing under the trees. They returned minutes later, barely winded.

  “How many?” Memnon asked.

  “Only ten,” Sciron said. “Mainlanders; Carians, most likely. I couldn’t get close enough to tell if any were hiding inside. The bastard looks to be keeping his word.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.” As a group, they left the shelter of the stoa and plunged into Athena’s grove. Fingers of ruddy light pierced the leaf canopy. Under the trees, the cooler air of dusk mingled with the warmth rising from the ground, intensifying the smells of freshly spaded earth and crushed olive husks. Memnon followed the main path, passing the bench where he and Timocrates had spoken the day before, and emerged near the entrance of the Assembly.

  Sciron gestured. Light spilled out from between the columns of the Assembly and striped the shadows with bands of pale gold. Opposite the main entrance, seven men in bronze-scaled corselets lounged in the grass, their spears planted upright. Three others stood together, watching the grove. One of them spotted Circe‘s crew; the others clambered to their feet, their movements deliberate, non-threatening. The spotter acknowledged Memnon’s presence with a wave of his hand then withdrew with his mates to the other side of the building.

  The son of Timocrates returned the wave. In a low voice, he said, “Wait here in the grove. The trees will give you cover if they have any archers hidden about. Should something happen to me—and I mean anything—get back to Patron. Understood?” Memnon looked at each man in turn; though he was the youngest of Circe’s crew, the past few hours had given him gravity beyond his years. Nodding to himself, Memnon turned and strode down the path to the entrance of the Assembly.

  Beyond clumps of torn sod and flattened grass, Memnon saw no signs of the past day’s violence. Where were the swatches of bloodstained turf? Where were the mounds of severed hands or the makeshift tables where Philolaus’s paymasters would have disbursed their coin? He had expected some outward display of the shift in power, but the grounds of the Assembly remained virtually unchanged.

  Memnon made his way to the stairs and peered inside. At the center
of the sunken chamber Philolaus sat alone, his forehead bandaged, his fleshy legs dangling over the edge of the plinth. A wooden platter of food rested next to him, along with a clay jug of wine and a pair of cups. The oligarch selected the wing of a small fowl from the plate, stripped the flesh from it with his teeth, and tossed the bone into the shadows. With the same relish, he raised a cup of wine and drained it. He caught sight of Memnon standing in the doorway. Grinning, Philolaus wiped his face and hands on a linen napkin and hopped off the plinth.

  “Blessed Zeus! You came! Eumaeus made it sound like you’d see me chained to a wheel in Tartarus first. I’m pleased you’ve agreed to talk. Can I offer you some—” Philolaus’s voice trailed off as he noticed the hard line of Memnon’s lips, the naked fury in his eyes.

  The younger man’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword; metal rang against metal as he tugged the weapon free, stalked down the stairs, and crossed the limestone floor of the Assembly.

  “Don’t be foolish, Memnon,” Philolaus said, frowning. “This is a parley, not a duel.”

  “This? This is neither. I have a loose end to tie up before I leave Rhodes. I saved your life yesterday because of my own misguided sense of fair play. I see now I was wrong. I’ve come to set the balance straight.” Lamplight glinted on the edge of Memnon’s blade.

  Philolaus backed away, his hands away from his body, away from the knife belted about his waist. “If you mean to kill me then there’s little I can do to stop you, but at least hear me out before you put me to the sword. I called this meeting to offer atonement for your loss. I’ve brought you your father’s slayer.”

  A grim smile twisted Memnon’s lips. “Indeed.”

  “You have it wrong. I didn’t kill Timocrates. For all our differences, he was a worthy adversary and an honorable man. I wished him no harm.”