The Outcast

by Laura Gill

  Didymus finished bathing the wound, and was now patting it dry. “Amphiaraos knew what his wife had done. On the eve before his departure, he took his two sons aside and urged them to avenge his death.”

  “But he must have known what would happen to them when they avenged him.” As surely as my own father must have realized the path he was setting me upon, that day in the bath. Agamemnon, dying from half a hundred mortal wounds, could be forgiven that lack of forethought. Amphiaraos, though... Perhaps he, like his sons, had no choice; the laws of gods and men had decided for him.

  “As with any story, there are always questions left unanswered.” Didymus opened the small clay jar containing the ointment. “I don’t know what happened to the younger son after the pair slew their mother, only that Alcmaeon went mad with guilt, and fled Argos. He didn’t seek sanctuary, as you did, but wandered in the wilderness for some time. It might have been as long as three years, before he emerged from the woods of Arcadia, and came to the house of Phegeus, who was king there in that little valley. Phegeus took him through the rites of purification, and then gave him his daughter’s hand in marriage.”

  What he said astounded me. “I didn’t know a king could absolve a matricide. My uncle told me it was too great a crime.”

  “And he’s right.” Didymus swiped his finger inside the pot, gathering a smear of pungent ointment. “Perhaps Phegeus undertook the rites out of ignorance, because he’d never encountered a matricide in that isolated place, or perhaps he truly believed he was pious enough to remove the young man’s impurity. Alcmaeon was taken into the king’s house, and became the king’s son-in-law, and all seemed well, but then the harvest failed, and a blight struck the livestock. Alcmaeon was driven out.”

  He leaned closer, traced my wound with the finger bearing the ointment. “Alcmaeon came here. I was eleven years old then, serving as an acolyte. I remember: it was just after dawn, and it was spring. I was sweeping the aithousa—they wouldn’t let me eat until I finished my morning chores—when a disheveled man came stumbling up the path. He was mumbling under his breath, asking for sanctuary, but I don’t think he ever saw me, because he shuffled right past me, into the sanctum where the priests were making the morning offerings. Afterward, when the priests learned the man had spoken to me, and breathed upon me, they made me undergo purification. Hah! So I was the first one to see Alcmaeon, and the first to see the god cast his protection over the son of the High King Agamemnon. How our lives come full-circle.” He uttered a warm, ironic laugh. “Anyway, Alcmaeon asked to consult the Pythia. Of course he wasn’t allowed to go before her in his polluted state, but the high priest acted as his proxy.”

  Didymus wiped the ointment from his finger on the linen washcloth. “The Pythia told Alcmaeon to find and settle in a land that hadn’t existed when he killed his mother and became polluted. So he left Delphi, and wandered again, and at length we heard he’d found a little island in the delta of the river Achelous, where the priest-king of the region purified him. Later, Alcmaeon married the man’s daughter, Callirhoe.” He caught my bewilderment, winked at me. “Yes, he took another woman to wife, without settling affairs with the first. One should never discount women, especially when they want something, or they’ve been scorned.”

  I nodded vigorously. “Indeed.”

  “Most unfortunate. Callirhoe learned about the robe and necklace of Harmonia, and wanted Alcmaeon to fetch them for her. Rather, I think she must have nagged him over it, because returning to his first wife and father-in-law was, as you will see, the worst thing he possibly could have done. But he went, and lied to them, saying he needed the robe and necklace to dedicate to Apollo the Healer. I don’t know what went wrong, or how Phegeus learned the truth, but when he did, he sent his sons to murder Alcmaeon. Callirhoe never forgot, though. She groomed her sons to avenge their father, pushed and prodded them as driven parents will do. When she judged them old enough, she sent them on their way.” Didymus held up his finger. “And when I say old enough, I mean they had a bit of fuzz on their cheeks and their voices had just broken. Yet somehow they managed to kill old Phegeus, his wife, and the two men who had slain their father. I saw how young they were when afterward they brought Harmonia’s robe and necklace here to dedicate to the god, and told us how the tale ended.”

  How had I never heard this story before, when it resonated so strongly with me? The matricide hero, the sons sworn to vengeance when they were but youths, the violent end. “Alcmaeon was doomed.”

  “Only through his foolishness in listening to a vain and greedy woman.” Didymus started binding my wound with a strip of soft linen. “Remember, he did his penance and was purified. His death had nothing to do with his crime.” He fastened the knot behind my ear, and tucked in the ends. “Now, don’t harm yourself again, or we’ll have to tie you down.”

  *~*~*~*

  Once, Pylades and I had gone down into Thebes. In my nineteenth summer, he had invited me to climb Mount Helikon with him. From the mountain heights, our gazes had turned north across the fertile Boeotian plains toward Orchomenos and Thebes where the accursed House of Cadmus had risen, ruled, and fallen.

  On a whim, we ventured down into Boeotia. A farmer showed us a filled-in ditch where the dead had been laid out after the last battle against Creon. Father had fought here in his youth, alongside Diomedes and his Argives. A somber air haunted the plain, despite the abundance of the land and the warm spring season. Dread plagued the atmosphere, and a faint undercurrent of decay, as though a dead animal were rotting somewhere nearby.

  Although the farmer insisted there was nothing to see in Thebes, we pressed on; in the end, he was right. The Epigoni had demolished the fine walls with their seven gates, burnt the acropolis, and plowed it under with salt; the people dwelt in decent houses of mudbrick and plaster, but the wooden stockade and earthwork ditch that defended them were pathetic. Even their king, a mere youth of sixteen, was little more than a vassal bound to Orchomenos. He received us warmly, though, and warned us to avoid the ruins, upon which there was a curse that the acropolis should never again be occupied or trod upon.

  I had smelled the dread and decay there, and smelled it now in my sanctuary cubicle; it triggered terrible memories, raised the specters of the dead. Oedipus had murdered his father, wedded and bedded his mother, and slew her through the shame of it all. If he could fall unwittingly, then what mercy could I expect from the gods? Mortal frailties counted for nothing with them.

  Oedipus lurked in the shadows near the door, an amorphous mass slouched near the place where I had had to scrub the doorjamb clean as my penance; his face was a cavernous blackness where in his madness and guilt he had ripped out his eyes. Alcmaeon was there, too, just as the priest had described him: wild-eyed, mumbling, distracted.

  Oedipus. Alcmaeon. Herakles. All murderers, all punished through madness, all consumed; not a single one had escaped his fate. And I was now to join them. I would be sacrificed—the matricide, the madman, the outcast, too young to die, when my life had scarcely even begun.

  It was not fair. But then, no mortal man, not even a king, had a right to expect fairness from the gods.

  *~*~*~*

  I was drugged again, suspended in a cocooning fog, staring at the white ceiling for hours—or days, it was so hard to distinguish—oblivious to the drool wetting my chin, and the sour tang of urine.

  Didymus cleaned me with warm, wet cloths and rubbed my limbs with oil whose scent recalled a vast bed with huge scarlet and blue cushions, and a man’s protective arms and hearty laugh. I closed my eyes to drink it in, yet it was so vague, so elusive.

  Fingertips impregnated with the oil anointed my brow; the scent went straight into my nostrils. “I call upon the god by his sacred names: Apollo, Paian, Pythius, Epikourios, Apotropaios. Let him set his serpent rod over Orestes, son of Agamemnon. Let him drive out the demons of sickness and madness.”

  “Did...” It was so hard to stitch sounds together. “Didymus.” I took the deepes
t breath possible, drove my vocal cords over the name like a cart over the crest of a hill. “Stay.”

  “I’ve set up a cot next to yours,” he answered. “I won’t leave you until this spell passes.”

  Once, he bundled me in thick wool and fur, and, with two other priests laden with amulets, got me upright and wobbling down the passage until we were outside in the cold white air. My every breath turned to smoke. Snow flurries landed on my eyelashes. I caught them on my tongue.

  “You must have exercise and fresh air, or you will never become well.” Didymus motioned to the sentinel crags above the sanctuary, which were wreathed in pale gray mist. “Look there. Zeus has washed the mountainside in white. Snow is how the gods purify the land, and make it ready for spring.”

  Purify. I heard that word, and nothing else. Like a seed, I, too could lie down under that pristine white blanket, be made numb, and sterilized; the thought emerged full-blown, with a sudden urge to stumble toward the snowdrifts at the rear of the court, and burrow into them. Yet I did not move. For the snow was wet and bone-chilling; it agitated the old scar running across my thigh. I shivered through my wool and fur coverings, and it was from more than just the cold. To lie down under Zeus’s winter mantle was to die, when, even in my miserable and sluggish state, I wanted to live.

  Inside, the priest stripped away my damp coverings, wrapped me in a linen sheet and warm fleece, and led me up and down the passage, again and again, until he was satisfied I had exercised enough. In the evenings, after the other priests finished their devotions, he arranged a seat for me near the altar, so I could commune in the god’s shadow.

  At first, I was reluctant to linger too long, despite the wonderful warmth and light and color of the innermost sanctum. “I’m polluting this space.”

  “As long as you stay beside the altar, and don’t touch or breathe upon anything else, you may stay,” Didymus assured me. “After we leave, the high priest will burn incense to purify the air.”

  I huddled under the fleece, somnolent from the drugs I had been given. Because the priest was sharing the cubicle with me, tonight I could have the brazier; its rich honey-mellow light would soften the stark walls, and lend some semblance of coziness to the place. “Why isn’t there any color in my chamber?” Had I asked that question before? It seemed I must have, for the tolerant look he gave me, but if he had, I had forgotten the answer.

  “It’s easier to wash and purify the space when it is bare,” he explained. “And it’s kept thus to remind you that you dwell outside the world. With nothing to distract your eye, you must turn your thoughts inward.”

  Yes, it sounded somewhat familiar. I felt ashamed for having wasted his time. “I can’t seem to remember things.”

  “That’s because your senses have been dulled.”

  He could not keep me insensible all the time; too much soporific made me dependant on it, and to keep increasing the dosage would have been to endanger my life. So he withheld it, except in the direst circumstances, which left me at a complete loss. Agitated, I spent sleepless nights pacing the cubicle and muttering to the shades crowding the corners, trying to engage them in my rambling monologue. Or curled among the fleeces, shaking helplessly, and gnawing at the root of my thumb to draw blood to appease the demons of the night. Blood. Sacrifice. I obsessed over it.

  “You mustn’t do this again.” In the morning, Didymus washed the wound in wine and bound it with linen. He did not understand, priest though he was. Oedipus tearing out his eyes. Great Ajax falling upon his sword, Herakles climbing onto his funeral pyre. The Erinyes demanded suffering, the scourging of both mind and body.

  He secured the bandage by wrapping the ends around my wrist. “Don’t touch these bindings, Orestes. I’ve set a healing spell over the wine and ointments, and won’t have you undo it.” I marked the sharpness in his voice. “Swear you’ll behave and not maul yourself, or I won’t give you the letter which has arrived for you.”

  His reproving tone irked me. I was not a child to be told what to do, and yet... “What letter?”

  “From Prince Pylades. He sent his messenger overland across the Isthmus from Mycenae.”

  Pylades. How long had it been since I last thought of him? In but a few short months, I had utterly forgotten the outside world, ceased to care about anything beyond my stark white cubicle and the tumultuous realm of my mind. “What does he say?”

  Didymus removed a packet from his robe, but withheld it. “Swear, Orestes, and I will read it to you.”

  His adamant stance left me torn. My thumb throbbed under the bandage. How odd, when it had not hurt before. Tasting the blood still, I knew I could not keep my word, knew the Daughters of Night would drive me to gnaw and claw and draw blood again. Perhaps the message was nothing. Pylades simply wished me well, sent courtesies and mundane family news. But the weather... Who would send a messenger on such an arduous trek in the winter unless it was important? I grumbled under my breath, “I swear.”

  “Properly,” the priest insisted, “so the god can hear you.” I gritted my teeth, and lifted my hand. “On your testicles, young man.”

  Fuming, I did as he bade. “I, Orestes, swear not to injure myself again.”

  “May your brains leak from your ears if you violate this oath.”

  “May my brains leak from my ears—”

  “And your entrails spill out.”

  I glowered up at him. “And my entrails spill out, and my blood boil, and my eyeballs turn to jelly—” Didymus quirked a critical eyebrow. “—if I should ever violate this oath.” There, it was done. “Now, old man, what does Pylades have to say?”

  Instead, he tucked the packet back into his robe. “Patience, young man.” What infernal game was he playing with me? He turned to the washbasin, scooped some clean water into a clay cup, and thrust it toward me. “You have blood in your mouth. Rinse it out first.”

  I did not take the cup. “Stop toying with me.”

  Nevertheless, he did not waver. “I won’t have you sitting there like a beast. Only men read letters, and while there’s blood in your mouth, you’re not a man.” I took the cup from him, so abruptly that water sloshed out, and grudgingly rinsed my mouth to his satisfaction.

  At last, he rewarded me with the letter, opening the packet, and reading the contents aloud, “‘To Orestes Agamemnonides, king of Mycenae, kinsman and brother-in-law: greetings. I hope this letter finds you in good health under the watchful gaze of Pythian Apollo. All is well here. Your house has been set in order for your return, according to your wishes.’” I struggled to recall what those wishes had been. The Argive lords wanted their estates restored, yes, but had there been anything else? “‘Elektra is here with the children, who all ask about you. Eleuthia has blessed us with another daughter, Anaxo.

  “‘Elektra has assumed management over the household. Lords Kleitos and Atymnios have proven their worth as loyal and astute advisors, and Menon has done his part by putting down any resistance. Arkados commands the citadel guard with a firm hand. I have reviewed the kingdom’s accounts and restored estates where appropriate, in order that revenues should increase within the year. There is gold and silver in the treasury, though there are discrepancies in some of the tallies.’”

  Such talk made my head ache. “Does he say anything else?”

  Didymus skimmed the papyrus. “Yes, here: ‘Our Spartan kinsman, Aethiolas, son of Menelaus, is our hearth-guest for the season. He arrived before midwinter with a congenial message and gifts from King Menelaus, and instructions to report whatsoever he finds here. I can assure you that neither he nor his father will have cause to complain, or a pretext to interfere.

  “‘Your sister Chrysothemis is in good health and spirits. Kleitos assisted her in arranging your mother’s funeral. All the correct rites were carried out; you need not worry about the matter.’” I had not given it much thought. Regardless of the ceremonies and quality of the grave goods, Mother’s shade would not rest until she was avenged. “‘Also, C
hrysothemis has taken the Lady Erigone under her protection, and is most adamant about safeguarding the girl from harm.’”

  “Erigone?” The name was somewhat familiar, yet it took me several moments to attach any meaning to it. “Does he mean the daughter of Aegisthus?” I had utterly forgotten about her. Should I write back to Pylades and order him to put the girl to death? I glanced at my bandaged thumb. Could I hold a stylus to write, or form the signs, or even organize my thoughts. “Go on,” I said.

  “There’s little else, save a few closing courtesies.” Didymus handed me the letter.

  I skimmed the text, laid the papyrus aside. “Pylades will want a reply.”

  “I’ll see to that,” he said. “High Priest Eurymakos has charged me with overseeing your correspondence, as you aren’t yet well enough to concern yourself with outside matters. I will inform Prince Pylades that his letter was received, that you were glad to hear from him, and that you will write when you are better.” Didymus gave me a knowing look, nodded. “Which you won’t be unless you cease doing yourself harm.”

  To make sure, each night that he could not stay with me, he tied my right wrist to the cot’s heavy frame. When the compulsion took me, I fumbled with the knots with my left hand, but he had made them cunningly, tucking in the ends so I could not loosen them. Frustrated, I turned my efforts to my left forefinger, biting down on the skin between the knuckle and joint.

  The priest noticed the bite marks, but said nothing; he did not even remind me that I had sworn a dire oath. On the second day, in stern silence, he undid the knots to let me relieve myself, eat, and bathe, but straightaway after, he made me strip and lie down again. Along with my breakfast, he had brought with him cuttlefish ink and a brush, with which he painted signs upon my heart, my brow, and all four limbs. The sacred labrys, because that which was protected by the holy double-axe could not be killed. The dove, to calm me. And Pa-wa-jo-ne, the name Paian written out in signs, to drive away the demons.