The Outcast

by Laura Gill

  Didymus was right, of course, as he always was. I did not swear an oath, only nodded my acquiescence, and lay passively while he fastened the straps across my torso and thighs. “You don’t know how it is,” I murmured. “Look at me. I’m a giant, a warrior, yet I’ve never been able to do anything that ever mattered. When Father was killed, I stood there like an imbecile, a coward, and did nothing. When Elektra was given to the goatherd, I wasn’t there to defend her. Pylades had to rescue her. And now—”

  I felt the pressure of his hand, warm upon my heart. “Stop tormenting yourself for crimes you didn’t commit, and set yourself to the task at hand.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “To Pylades Strophides, regent of Mycenae and dear kinsman: greetings. I am writing to you in my own hand to inform you about the Pythia’s decree concerning my fate.” Holding the stylus tightly in order to form the words, I felt as rigid and inflexible as the grammar I was employing. “A few weeks from now, I will descend as a supplicant into a secret place under the earth, where the local priestesses say the Mother of the Mountains and the Erinyes dwell, and there undergo my ordeal. I know only that it will last a day and night; no other particulars have been divulged to me, except that priests have said that not many miscreants survive this test.” Miscreant. Yes, Eurymakos had used that word, and with some glee. “Therefore, I must prepare for the worst, while praying for the best.

  “Should I die during this attempt at absolution, this letter will serve as a legal testament to my final wishes. You are not obligated to furnish me with a tomb or grave goods, or otherwise concern yourself with the dispensation of my mortal remains, as the priests of Delphi have already told me they will cremate me, so the fire may purify my flesh; they will scatter the ashes. My only request, my kinsman and brother, is that you pour out a libation of wine or oil, to provide a suitable offering for the ferryman on my journey to the hereafter.”

  I did not hesitate in setting down my last wishes; my only trepidation was in thinking about them. “In the event of my untimely death, may Zeus Horkios and the guardian goddesses Hera and Athena bear witness to the words of Orestes Agamemnonides: that my estates, my slaves, my livestock, the product of my workshops and storerooms, my scepter, and the hereditary rights to all my dominions shall pass to my sister Elektra, to be administered by her husband Pylades Strophides, prince of Phocis, on behalf of my nephews, my sister-sons Strophius and Medon. From these holdings, a suitable portion shall be set aside as a dowry for my sister Chrysothemis, against such time as she wishes to marry or enter a sanctuary as a consecrated priestess.”

  There was no need to add any personal observations; he would understand without my having to elaborate. Rather, it was Elektra who would demand more, who would snatch the letter from her husband’s hands, slowly parse it hoping to discover some direct message for her, and beat her breast because there was none. Cruel though it might be, it was better not to address her, lest it sharpen her grief when the time came.

  The ink dried quickly in the hot summer air, allowing me to fold the papyrus so it could be sealed. I regretted not having Agamemnon’s double-lion seal or my personal lion-mauling-goat seal to stamp into the wax; it meant the high priest was able to pry into my correspondence, and decide whether or not he deemed the message worthy of the god’s Delphic seal.

  I drank a little water, then cleaned the stylus and set it aside with the ink and leftover papyrus. Three weeks remained until the actual ordeal, but it would take eighteen days to purge, fast, and prepare to meet the gods. Didymus, seeking to reassure me, confided that the Pythia observed the very same rites each year just before she resumed taking oracles. “Whatever final arrangements you wish to make,” he said, “you must do it during these three days.”

  When he came later with my supper, he brought news; this was with the implicit understanding that once I committed to the rites of preparation, I forfeited my right to interact with the outside world. “This may please you,” he said. “I have just heard that Princess Chrysothemis, your sister, has just wedded your cousin, Prince Aethiolas. Furthermore, she is to inherit the queen’s portion of the Spartan estates.”

  In my current state, and as my elder and her guardian, Menelaus had the right to arrange my sister’s marriage without consulting me. To hear she had married, and well, did not trouble me as much as hearing what she was to inherit. “Those are Hermione’s domains.”

  “The word is that the Spartan assembly rejects the notion of an absentee king and queen, especially when the king in question dwells in far-off Epirus.” Didymus replied. “Sparta demands that its queen reside and perform her duties within Sparta, as she has always done.”

  He perused my letter, approved it, and took it away to present to the high priest. I ate what he left, anticipating the privations to come, but did not sleep well. The night was warm and airless, and numerous cares still concerned me; there were so many things left to be said, and they had to be said with precisely the right eloquence.

  I waited until after the next afternoon’s sleep to embark on the second letter. Possibly it was a mistake to address Menelaus now, when I had never written to him before, but I had unfinished business with him, and there might never be another chance to unburden my thoughts. Now was not the time to hold back.

  “To Menelaus Atreides, elder kinsman and king of Sparta, greetings.” After observing the customary salutations, I did not mince words with him. Others had told me he was plain-spoken and taciturn; he would have to indulge me in the same exercise. “I know you only as the man who broke my engagement to your daughter; your rich gifts and conciliatory messages were scant compensation for the pain of losing her.

  “I do not know what virtues you saw in that weakling from Pylos that you were willing to bestow upon him the most precious jewel in your house, and make him king of Sparta. Nor can I comprehend how it is that you cannot seem to safeguard your wife or your daughter from the predations of other men. It disturbs me that you would fight a war for the faithless Helen, yet would not lift a finger to recover the chaste Hermione.”

  In rereading those passages, I winced at my overweening presumption, though I neither tore up the letter nor altered a single word. Of course, my caretaker’s jaw dropped when he read it. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

  “Do I sound like I’m joking?”

  “You’re a fool to insult your betters so. I guarantee you that Eurymakos won’t set the god’s seal on this.”

  And yet, he later took the letter away with him, and never mentioned it again. “I intend to write to Hermione,” I told him.

  “I think the heat has impaired your judgment,” he observed. “She’s a married woman now.”

  “I’m her kinsman, not her lover.”

  Nonetheless, he shook his head. “It’s not what you are, but what you were to her. See you take more care in writing to her than you did to her father. Her husband is likely to read the letter.”

  Neoptolemus was nothing to me. Let him fume. I stared at the supper tray on the table, taking in the fried bread and cheese without seeing either. Perhaps that was the wrong attitude to take, with his well-known propensity for hotheadedness, and my beloved his captive queen. I would not have him mistreat her on my account.

  Again, I waited until the next afternoon, as I had done with the letter to Menelaus, to grant myself sufficient time to compose my sentiments. Before leaving me to the afternoon sleep, Didymus gave me some cautionary words of advice. “Don’t say anything the lady would blush to let anyone else read, and above all, don’t talk like a dying man. You’ll upset her.”

  When the moment came, I had to breathe, and flex my fingers for several moments to calm their quivering, all before I could even handle the stylus.

  Almost at once, I found myself playing the lovelorn idiot. “I heard about your abduction and marriage.” It probably would have been wiser not to mention it, but then she would think I knew nothing about her situation. “I find it impossible to believe that N
estor’s son did not value you enough to pursue you. Believe me, I would have gone to the very end of the world to get you back. Menelaus assures me that your husband treats you well.” That lie was strictly for her sake.

  I should have rent the papyrus in two and started over, not written to her at all, or let someone else do it for me, but once the dam broke, my sentiments rushed out in a flood that was altogether candid, loving, and completely and unabashedly reckless. “Neoptolemus had better love and honor you, because if he mistreats you I will either haunt him as a shade or land a Mycenaean host on his shore and kill him myself.”

  Hermione might never even see the letter; her husband would probably intercept it and tear it to shreds. She might never know how much I truly loved her; she might never hear that I would have come after her.

  I did not give a damn what Neoptolemus thought about my outpourings or threats. Didymus was right, though; it was unseemly to embarrass my beloved in this vein. “Forgive me for sounding like such an insolent brute. I am about to stand trial, and am terribly anxious, or I would never snap at you like this. And since this may be the very last time I ever write to you or anyone else, there are things I do not want to leave unsaid.”

  My mind went blank. It had all seemed so clear during the night. If she ever saw the letter, then she was likely to ask the messenger for news about my trial which he would not be able to give her. I had to tell her outright what was to come, so she would not fret with uncertainty, and so others would not fill her ears with lies afterward.

  “I will have to meet the Erinyes where they dwell, deep under the earth. Not everyone survives that ordeal, because when a guilty man has truly offended the gods, then the Erinyes devour his substance and cast his shade down into Tartarus.” Hermione as a high priestess would already know about those sacred mysteries; there was no need to coat my explanation in honey. “If that is to be my fate, then let the double curses on our house go with me. I will go consenting. I have already made my funeral arrangements. Pylades will rule as king at Mycenae.”

  I did not pause to reread that last paragraph, just dipped the stylus again and kept going. “I am prepared for this, and will accept whatever the outcome may be. And you will be with me, just as you have always been with me, watching over me every moment since we last saw each other. I am yours, until the waters of Lethe steal away my memories of you. Orestes.”

  As I suspected he would, Didymus objected to the content. “I cautioned you not to address her like a lover.”

  “Do you expect me to lie and congratulate her on this marriage, and pretend she means nothing to me?” This time, he was not going to interfere, and refuse to send the letter. “I won’t take back a single word.”

  He shoved the papyrus back into my hands. “You’re a grown man who would be king of Mycenae, yet you act like a hotheaded youth. Every time you address the lady, you embarrass her and yourself.”

  A lecture was the very last thing I needed. “You know nothing about what it means to be a king!” I shouted. “You call me hotheaded and irresponsible, and accuse me of wanting to die. You fool. I want to live!” I gesticulated in his face with the letter, while he remained closemouthed. “But a king consents to the sacrifice when he’s called, and the gods are calling me.”

  His eyes narrowed, but when he spoke his voice was soft and gravely earnest. “You haven’t been called, only told that you’re to face the Erinyes.”

  “I know what I know.” I jabbed my left thumb into my breast. “Four generations of bloodshed and treachery, and now it comes to it, an ordeal before the goddesses of vengeance. I will have to pay the blood debt in full. My blood for all their crimes—Father, Mother, Atreus, all of them—because they never paid!” Pain thickened my throat. My breast heaved, my heart beating wildly. It could not be any other way; we both knew it. “Neither you nor anyone else is going to begrudge me these last words to Hermione.”

  A long, tense silence fell between us. Didymus stared stone-faced at me, but then he exhaled and finally relented enough to take the letter with him when he left. He did not address the subject again except to inform me that, although he, too, heartily disapproved, Eurymakos had affixed the Delphic seal to the letter and given it to a messenger.

  That night, sleep came easily, in spite of the dense, stale air. I stirred but once, prompted into wakefulness by the sensation that someone stood above me, a shadow against the darkness. A masculine fragrance of oiled leather and horse, and expensive saffron. I inhaled, took in the memories the scent awakened in me: a nursery, a man’s lap, his rich laughter.

  It will end soon, Father. Half-conscious thoughts riding upon a sea of calm. Morpheus and Hekate had decided to be kind to me that night. It will all be washed away. I imagined water splashing against flagstones, rinsing down the black blood congealing there, as the slaves always did after the bull sacrifice. And I was not afraid.

  *~*~*~*

  Just before the end, I revisited the lustral bath where the priests had scoured me that first chaotic afternoon, and thus came full circle. The same priests who had shunned me for the last eleven months were now everywhere, scouring me with great sea sponges and depilating me, shearing my hair and shaving my head and beard, and giving me purgatives that sent me cramping to the privy. I could not eat or drink at all after that, except for water brought from the Castalia spring.

  I was allowed to take the air and light, for all that it might be the very last time. So I sat alone in the rear courtyard, letting my bare feet soak in the heat from the sun-warmed stones, and pondered what it meant to be purified. Hunger pangs, certainly. A tremulousness from the emetics and laxatives that was also in itself a kind of anticipation. I expected to be more frightened than I was. I certainly did not expect the curious sense of eagerness tingling through my freshly plucked skin. At last, at last. I was weary of striving against demons and disappointments. The ordeal would be hard, it might end badly, but at least there would be an end.

  That final night, I did not sleep. The priests brought me into the inner sanctum to keep vigil with the kouros. They made me kneel on the hard floor before the altar, with my back straight as a rod; a priest with a staff stood at my elbow at all times to prod my spine the moment I started to slump. Eurymakos gave me certain prayers to recite, based on the changing hours of the night, and appointed a priest to monitor that, also.

  What form would the ordeal itself take? I would be alone down there in the dark, with no priest to make me drone the prayers—oh, Apollo, blessed Healer, lord of Light—or sit ramrod straight. Down there, in the womb of the earth, the abode of women, who often used the juice of the poppy in their rites. Poppies. I always saw such terrible things when the drug opened the gates of my senses. I did my utmost not to think about it, to concentrate on the monotony and physical strain of the here and now, for however long remained until the sun rose. That’s why they don’t let me sleep. Lying in bed encouraged thoughts to drift and coalesce, and resolve themselves into terrors.

  A pressure between my shoulder blades; my minder with the staff. I adjusted my posture, tried to focus harder on the prayers, which had become little more than a collection of repetitive sounds stripped of their meaning. Strange, how words could lose their shape when uttered too often.

  It was still dark when the high priest came in his formal robes to relieve me. “Rise, unclean one,” he intoned. “Today, you descend into the world below. Today, you face the powers of retribution.”

  My body, stiff from maintaining my supplicant’s stance, refused to obey; the minder and chanter had to take me by the arms and haul me to my feet, and help me stumble from the sanctum. They gave me a little water to revive me, then let me go into the privy to relieve my bladder; I had to brace my hand against the wall while making my stream. On the other side of the curtain, I heard priests gathering in the passage. It could not be long now before they led me outside, and down the path leading to the sacred cave.

  Afterward, I washed my hands and face, and change
d in a little side chamber dark but for a single oil lamp; a thin, grayish-blue light visible through a chink in the shutters presaged the dawn. I shivered a little as Didymus instructed me to remove my loincloth and don the flimsy tunic he handed me.

  I felt something else tucked within the linen. Didymus moved closer, reached for the loincloth with a sidelong glance to make certain no one else was looking, and whispered, “Read it quickly.”

  A letter, its seal already broken. I had to shift my body ever so subtly toward the lamplight and squint, but the letter itself was short, and the handwriting familiar. Hermione. I had not thought to receive a reply within three weeks—or, to be honest, at all.

  I sensed the impatience of the priests waiting at the door, and overheard muttered comments as to why I was not already dressed. I had to be quick, then, if I hoped to read through the letter.

  Didymus shielded my back from prying eyes. “No, you can’t wear a loincloth under the tunic,” he said loudly, to delay the priests. “You won’t need it, down below.”

  I ignored him, instead turning my attention to the words on the page. “Dearest Orestes,” Hermione wrote, “let swift Hermes deliver this in time for you to read it. I am not unhappy here in Epirus. Right now, my only tears are for you.” She was lying, I knew it in my bones. Neoptolemus was making her miserable. “I am very glad you are ready to face your trial. It will mean an end to your torment, and I have no doubt that you will meet the Erinyes with all the courage and conviction you have shown these many long years.