The Outcast

by Laura Gill

  I felt no change, and the priest treated me as he had before. “You may wonder,” he said, “why I don’t stay with you every night to safeguard you. I must limit the time I spend with you, according certain sacramental laws.” At night, he wrapped my hands in linen mittens, and smeared them with a foul-tasting substance to prevent my working the ties loose with my teeth. “And I think you must learn to face your demons alone.”

  *~*~*~*

  One afternoon, the winter sun broke the cloud cover to illuminate the cubicle. Lying upon my cot, my bandaged hands useless and crossed over my breast, I observed how the light spilled in a distorted rectangle across the floor, suffusing the air with bluish gold. The shadows sharpened and shifted. I noticed the spider suspended in her web. A pale globular mass hung near her; not the cocooned remains of her last meal, but something else. I sat up, squinted. She had laid an egg sac. My spider-mother had been heavy with child when she went down into Hades, and I had not noticed for the winter darkness.

  On the day when the sac split open, what horrors would it disgorge? I did not want to know. I rose from the cot, crept across the cold floor on bare feet, and reached up to tear the web, to smash the egg sac against the wall with my mittened fist, and crush out her monstrous offspring.

  I beat at the wall again and again, long after the last embryonic egg was bashed and smeared into oblivion. And I wept, while the spider scurried up into the seam where the walls met the ceiling, and the sunlight slowly withdrew behind the clouds, letting the shadows creep in again. I should have smashed the spider, too. I should have obliterated Mother, and sent her back to the underworld, but in the end I could not bring myself to do it. Once had been enough to damn me.

  Chapter Nine

  Didymus strove to keep me occupied during the daylight hours He made me walk for exercise, told me stories, and gave me a spindle and goat fleece, and showed me how to spin. On Parnassus, spinning wool was suitable work suitable for herdsmen and priests, and down by the coast fishermen spun their own thread to mend their nets. Yet my masculine Argive pride balked at undertaking such a task, and I told the priest so.

  However, he did not relent. “Herakles spun fleece as part of his Labors, when he submitted to Queen Omphale.”

  “I’ve heard the story.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “We don’t admire Herakles,” I said sharply, “down in Argolis. He’s remembered there as a troublemaker and an outlaw.”

  He nodded. “I know, but there are still valuable lessons to be taken from his Labors. Most people laugh at that episode, at the hero being humiliated, forced to dress and act as a maid, but not the Dorians who come here to worship. Once, a Dorian warrior explained to me how dressing as a woman and performing a woman’s tasks were an act of utmost devotion to Hera. He told me how many Dorians these days undertake similar such quests, to bring themselves closer to their hero.”

  Dorians were such fools when it came to Herakles; most of the stories were complete rubbish. I sullenly tried the spindle as he had shown me, twisting and pulling the fibers with neither grace nor skill. “Do they immolate themselves on their own funeral pyres, too?”

  “I’ve heard that some do.”

  “Has anyone ever told you how depressing your stories are?”

  “You’re the first, Orestes.” Didymus took back the spindle, demonstrated again how to flick the whorl and draw out the fibers, and returned it. “Work it slowly, as though you were carving a piece of wood.” His chair creaked as he moved. “After the war ended, some men came home twisted and broken inside. All the waiting, all the fear and privation they endured at Troy, season after season, year after year, took their toll. When the citadel was breached, they went mad with the rage Ares inflicts men with, who have lived too long among such horrors. The men who come here seeking cures for their afflictions regularly tell us how they became beasts in the streets of Troy, how they raped and slaughtered indiscriminately, and how when they returned home the demons came with them.”

  There he was, doing it again, with another depressing tale. “I met such a man right after the war, when I was on my way across the water to Krisa.” I did my best to twist an even thread, but it was not going well. “He was restless. Couldn’t sleep at night. Kept seeing horrors, even though the war was over.”

  Seeing my difficulty, Didymus again extended his hand for the spindle. “Watch. You can fix the thread, just so.” He worked the lumpy wool between practiced fingers, smoothing and evening it out. “Yes. And there were many others who came home from the war and quarreled with their kinsmen and neighbors, because they couldn’t return to their lives as they had lived them before. Some committed murder, even matricide in a few cases. They were driven out, forced to seek refuge in local sanctuaries, and undertake ordeals. Some succeeded, and survived their trials, and were purified, and later they came as pilgrims to make thank-offerings to the god.”

  “Have the priests ever turned a man away for such a crime?” I asked.

  Didymus folded his hands in his lap, over which he had laid a sheepskin rug; it was cold in the cubicle, despite the brazier. “It isn’t for us to judge, or deny a man the chance to lay his petition before the god.”

  So he claimed. “The priests tried to drag me away from the altar. They would have thrown me out, and let the Erinyes take me.”

  Sighing, he shook his head. “They were afraid. When a peasant commits a crime against the gods, he and his village suffer, but when a king does it, the pollution and punishment are so much greater. Whole kingdoms are stricken with plague or famine, and all Hellas trembles. And we here in the sanctuary aren’t immune to divine wrath, either. The gods have been known to turn most cruelly upon their servants.”

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  When he hesitated, I knew the answer. And to his credit, he did not deny it. “You endanger me through your pollution. I’m your intermediary with the world, but I can’t always be with you, because otherwise I would absorb so much of your blood taint that I couldn’t interact with the servants or the other priests. As it stands, I have to purify myself every day after I leave you.” I hung my head, nodding. Didymus noticed the gesture, and addressed it. “Ah, you must be thinking, what a wretch you have become, that no man or god cares for you! Stop pitying yourself, Orestes. I never said I despised you. We had this discussion before, you know, when you first arrived, and I told you then that I despised the sin, not the man.”

  I concentrated on my spinning as an excuse not to look at him; what he said struck a raw nerve. “You make it sound so simple, to keep the man and his crime separate.”

  “It isn’t always that way,” he said. “Some men are tied to their crimes with inextricable bonds, twisted together like the wool in your hands. They’re born vicious, without scruples or respect for the gods.”

  I snorted under my breath. “I was born under a double curse.”

  To my utter surprise, he disagreed. “That doesn’t matter. I’m well aware that you weren’t born to kill, but forced into it by circumstance. I also know that you tried to prevent committing the ultimate sin, insofar as you could, but lost control at the last minute. Of course, you must pay the price for that lapse, yet your crime isn’t due to any inherent viciousness in your nature.”

  What a lengthy and torturous explanation! No other priest would have bothered to examine the case in such detail; the double curse would have sufficed for them to have dismissed me as a monster. “Then you’re different from every other priest I have known.” Twisting the wool fiber between my fingers kept them warm; that was about all the good that came from the exercise. “The high priest who instructed me at Mycenae was false. I could see it right away. He didn’t know how to listen for the signs.”

  “He wouldn’t be the only one,” Didymus replied. “Some who enter the priesthood do so because it is the family tradition, or they do it to gain power or prestige, or the wealth that flows into the sanctuaries. I admit, I enjoy the rewards that come from
being a priest of Delphi, but I know my place in the world, and would be content serving in any sanctuary, great or small.”

  “Have you ever left the sanctuary?”

  In the cold air, his breath smoked with each syllable he uttered. “Sometimes I visit other shrines around the mountain, or go down to Krisa on temple business, as the god and the high priest require.” He laughed then. “I’ve lived my entire life on Parnassus.”

  I stopped the spindle whorl long enough to examine my thread; it was not as thin or even as the priest’s, but somewhat better than before. “You were born on the mountain?”

  “My blood kin live in Krisa, but I haven’t seen them for many years.” He relaxed in his chair, made comfortable by the exercise of pleasant reminiscence. “We are a priestly family. When I was a boy, we lived in a large house with two pomegranate trees in the courtyard. Father served Poseidon, but he never let me accompany him to the sanctuary to see him work, because the high priest didn’t like children hanging about. Yet I remembered how splendid he looked in his festival robes, with his gold fringes and amulets and his high blue and gold headdress. My oldest brother was an acolyte, and assisted him with the vessels and sacrificial animals. I suppose he has since followed Father in the priesthood.”

  “Then how did you become a priest of Apollo, when your family served the Earth-shaker?”

  “That’s easy: Apollo saved my mother from a terrible fever, and Father had sworn an oath to dedicate a son to the god in exchange for that miracle. Thus, a month after Mother recovered, a priest came to take me to Delphi. I was eight years old, and hated leaving home, until I came here and saw what it was like.” His smile broadened. “Apollo’s holy aura clothes this valley. That makes it very easy to forget the world beyond.”

  I understood him perfectly. “A god dwells on Parnassus, that’s why.” I abandoned the spindle on the coverlet, and withdrew my hands into the warm cocoon of the fleeces muffling me from feet to throat. “There are only demons at Mycenae.” I stared at the spindle, the plain ceramic whorl, and the uneven thread; it was no work for me. “Have you written to Pylades? You didn’t tell him about my nightmares and strange spells, did you?” Having the world know would be an embarrassment not only to me, but also my royal house.

  “Any reply will have to wait until spring allows messengers to travel once again, so there’s still time for you to recover and write to him yourself, and tell him whatever you wish.” His heavy gray eyebrows twitched, and his eyes widened, as though he had just remembered something. “And King Menelaus. A messenger came through a few weeks ago to inquire about your health.”

  Menelaus, who had denied me my heart’s desire in breaking my betrothal to Hermione, and who had not lifted a finger to help me avenge Father’s death, although his feud with Aegisthus had been as great as mine. So I was not particularly interested in any letter from him, except, perhaps, to know why the priests had withheld it from me. “Have there been any other messages?”

  “King Strophius and Queen Anaxibia receive regular reports about your health, by their request,” Didymus said. “A Phocian nobleman, Lord Boukolos, has sent several ewes and jars of oil and grain on your behalf, and begs for news. And your kinswoman, the most gracious princess of Sparta, has done the same.”

  “Hermione?” I sat up straighter. “Is there a letter from her?”

  “It was addressed to the high priest, as is proper.” Then, acknowledging my excitement, the priest’s mouth crinkled, became a smile, and he chuckled. “Is she your beloved?”

  I flushed, without answering; it was not his place to tease me over my infatuation with a royal kinswoman. It cheapened my sentiments, and besmirched her honor.

  “Orestes,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, “you may write to her, or anyone else, if you wish, though your correspondence will have to be vetted by the high priest. I can take your dictation, if you can’t write yourself, or bring you writing materials. You have but to ask.”

  The next afternoon, he brought me a wooden tray with a stylus and a blank clay tablet. It smelled like the wet earth, like my late pedagogue Timon’s cramped cubicle where I had spent countless hours painstakingly forming signs to make new words.

  I picked up the stylus to score horizontal lines across the first tablet, but got no farther than the opening salutation. The words would not flow, and worse, I could not hold my hand steady long enough to shape the signs; the salutation was a childish-looking mess. Didymus observed my pathetic efforts, urged me to relax and take my time, for all the good it did. Then my mind just went blank. It hurt to think about politics or trade, and something inside me simply did not care anymore.

  When my hand began shaking uncontrollably, I let the stylus go. Didymus gathered it up, removed it and the tray with the clay tablet. “You have time. Try again tomorrow.”

  It began that evening with a sore throat, and by midnight the ache had moved into my limbs, and into my head, where even the slightest movement or sound caused me pain. Didymus spent the night with me, lighting two braziers to warm the chamber, and piling on an extra coverlet. I sweated, tried to throw back the stifling covers, only to reach for them again moments later when my teeth started chattering.

  And then came the demons. Ghosts conjured from the flickering shadows that stood over my cot and leered at me with pointy white teeth; the priest never seemed to notice them. One had red hair, the other was dark, and both were smeared with blood, children’s blood, kindred blood. When they knelt beside the cot to touch me, my very bones howled with agony; it felt like butchers’ knives were hacking through my extremities, like the shades were cutting me into pieces for the cauldron while I was still alive. I cried out for them to stop, stop, but Atreus and Tantalus ignored my pleas, bent slavering over me to shove great gobbets of raw flesh into their mouths, carved away at my body which had become a sacrificial offering, and now I was screaming and coughing up blood, and shouting that I was Orestes—Orestes their own descendant—and it was wrong, wrong, and against the laws of gods and men.

  “Orestes!” I heard them laughing, screeching my name, and suddenly Didymus was leaning over me, banishing the shadows and the knives. I felt his hands on my shoulders, shaking me hard. “You’re dreaming.”

  “No, no!” My throat burned, and my teeth rattled. Atreus and Tantalus might be gone, but I could still smell their fetid breath, and the blood, all that blood. “They’re devouring me!”

  Didymus’s fingers dug into my flesh. “Is it the Erinyes?”

  I did not have the breath to recount the vision, to warn him against the ancestors with their knives. Later, he helped me sit up, and forced a bitter liquid between my lips. I lay back, with him sitting sentinel on the edge of the mattress. Darkness closed over me.

  Although my fever broke soon after, I remained weak, wanting only to sleep. Didymus indulged me only so far. Twice each day, at dawn and dusk, he had me bend over a tripod to inhale herbal vapors to loosen the congestion in my lungs. Then in the afternoon, he dragged me from my snug nest to shamble up and down the corridor for exercise, after which he compelled me to bathe, and eat bread and hot broth. Sometimes, late at night, he took me into the inner sanctum to sit with the kouros and pray for my good health.

  One afternoon, when the skies were slate gray, and the mountain still powdery with snow, he told me it was the festival of Plowistos, the day the king sacrificed the finest bulls in his herd to Poseidon to open the sea lanes. “Spring will be here in a few more weeks,” he said. “I’ve already written on your behalf to your regent and other kinsman to thank them for their good wishes.”

  It did not feel like Plowistos. At Mycenae, the plain of Argos would already be green from the winter rains, and if the season had been mild enough, the sun would be shining, and the air pregnant with the promise of warmer days to come. How I craved that warmth and light! And, like everyone else, I anticipated Apollo’s return to Delphi so the Pythia could tell me what I must do to appease the Daughters of Night.


  I slept, and in sleeping dreamt again. Father came to me, as he had come to Iphigenia, to bind my limbs for the sacrifice. We were outdoors, under a windswept blue sky scoured of all clouds, and it was cold. A great host waited below, eager for the bloodshed. I heard Father whetting the sacrificial dagger; everywhere the gleaming bronze touched the altar stone, it left obscene smears of scarlet. “The wind must blow, Orestes,” he said. “The fleet must sail.”

  “You gave them Iphigenia.”

  “But you’re the one they want,” he explained. “You were born under the curse. Your mother never wanted you. She won’t seek vengeance for you.”

  Could he not see that the damage had been done, that the war had ended, and that Mother had murdered him? He was already dead, and all this was a dream. I was no longer a boy, but a grown man, and it was far too late. All I could squeak out was a single word: no. I did not consent to the sacrifice. Only, he did not hear me; he raised the knife anyway, because he did not want to hear.

  Then we were alone together in the megaron. I was still bound, and he came to dine upon me as my grandfather and great-great-grandfather had done. “Lie still, Orestes,” he grumbled, juices streaming from his mouth to soak his beard as he chewed. “I can’t slice the meat with you squirming.”

  It is an abomination! My whole being screamed with revulsion, yet my mouth was parched, my voice mute.

  Agamemnon grunted, as though he heard me. “We’re all an abomination, Son, and you the worst. Hmm, I can taste it in the meat. Yes, well-seasoned.” His jaw worked, masticating my flesh, savoring the morsel. “You’re an Atreid, Orestes. Herakles won’t come to break your chains.” I heard him swallow. “Once you are devoured, it will all go with you.”

  I woke in a panic, to find my arms and legs truly bound. Oh, gods! It was no dream at all! Now my voice worked. I cried out for help. A servant poked his head through the curtain; curled his lip in disdain, told me to shut up, and vanished. He must have fetched the priest, because it was not long before Didymus burst into the cubicle to calm me.