The Outcast

by Laura Gill

  “Other men would have fled abroad or denied their crime, but not you, because there is neither falsehood nor cowardice in you.” She had no idea, none at all.

  “I wish with all my heart I could be with you, and hold your hand and go with you into the darkness.” A knot formed in my throat at her sad, almost envious tone. Did she desire release so badly? “Should I hear the Erinyes refused to absolve you, I will weep bitter tears because my heart is breaking.” I had to pause, take a breath, and fight the moisture misting my eyes. “I am always your loving cousin, Hermione.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I went barefoot to my ordeal. The path leading away from the rear of the sanctuary into the mountain wilderness was rough, bordered by scrub and wild herbs, and summer evergreens. It was the dawn hour, and the morning light was steadily waxing on the mountainside, but in the shade it was still cool and dark. Pine needles carpeted the dirt and rocks; it was inevitable that I should injure my foot, yet the priests, either oblivious or indifferent, would not let me pause for any reason whatsoever. I reached behind me, and wincing, pulled out the needle, without losing my stride. Farther on, I stumbled over rocks half-buried among twigs and needles, until my feet were quite filthy and scratched.

  My mind was blank, except for distant echoes of Hermione’s letter. She loved me, she was with me, and that sufficed.

  Ten yards ahead, a vertical cleft like a woman’s furrow opened against the mountain wall. A tremor of uncertainty passed through me; the priests had not warned me how insignificant and unmanned I would feel, venturing into the damp and enveloping blackness of the primal Mother’s womb.

  Pausing before the entrance, the priests lit resinous torches from the lantern one of them had carried from the sanctuary. One shook out a cloak, and wrapped it about my shoulders. All this was done while maintaining a strict ritual silence.

  That cleft in the mountainside was narrow and long, like the neck of a jar; it was no entrance for grown men. In order to negotiate the cramped space, we all had to shuffle in sideways, with our ribs pressed against the naked rock. I heard the priests ahead of and behind me breathing hard, their sandaled feet scraping the ground, and the hissing of their torches. I bit back the urge to reverse direction, to claw my way out of that claustrophobic space; there was nowhere to go.

  I concentrated on inching along, as the daylight dwindled to a thin bluish ribbon off to the right. Then the constricting passage broadened, opened up like the inside of a jar, and at last we could step away from the wall and face forward. The torchlight revealed a chamber hung with curtains of limestone banded with striations of faint color. Limestone teeth sprouted from the floor. I could not see the far wall to gauge exactly how large the cave was, or even tell whether smaller passages branched out from the central chamber; the blackness encroached on our small circle of torchlight. I could hear the air moving through the space, and the distant drip-drop of water.

  As we navigated past the teeth, an altar stone emerged out of the blackness, its pale surface tinted with darker stains. I swallowed at the sight of the potsherds and broken bones scattered on the ground around the altar, and, behind it, the pillar bulging with the irregular likeness of a woman’s face; she had a broad brow and sunken eyes, and was as pale and ominous as a grave worm. I averted my gaze from the goddess’s primal visage, only to discover the cave was filled with talons and misshapen mouths and cavernous eyes fused into the rock. My throat went dry. My belly roiled with queasiness where earlier it had rumbled with hunger pangs.

  A priest was laying out the fleeces he had brought, while another worked a stout rope through a metal ring fastened to the floor. A third priest touched my shoulder, indicating through signs that I should undress. Didymus had warned me this would happen, but that did not necessarily make it any easier to bear. The priest took my cloak, then my tunic, leaving me stark naked in the freezing air.

  At least they allowed me to cover my nakedness and seek warmth under the fleeces, with the exception of my right foot; the priest crouching by the metal ring grasped my ankle to bind it with the rope. Another priest spat into a little pot, stirred the contents with his finger, and then smeared some dark substance on my brow; it smelled more like blood than the usual red ocher, and probably was.

  The priests unceremoniously collected the torches, while I watched with a steadily increasing terror. Although I had known beforehand that they would leave me to face the Erinyes alone and in the dark, it had not registered until now.

  “No!” I howled, and in doing so shattered the ritual silence into a thousand echoes of fear. Not a single priest answered, or even seemed to hear my cry; they turned as a body and withdrew, and took the light. I followed their torches with my gaze, watching them recede ever farther, then vanish altogether. A full and heavy blackness rushed in, along with a dreadful silence broken only by my ragged breathing. I was being left alone, truly alone, with the monsters of the dark, just like one of the tribute children left to perish in Minos’s Labyrinth.

  “No!” The Minotaur had devoured its victims, shredded them with claws and ferocious teeth such as those protruding from the rocks; it had fed on them while they were alive and screaming, and...

  “No! Come back!” I flung aside the fleece to scrabble at the rope around my ankle, but the knot was cleverly made, the ends tucked in against any attempt to undo it. A cry escaped my lips when one of my fingernails caught on the fibers and bent painfully back; the rope might as well have been forged from the same rare iron as the ring.

  It was cold, so cold. I felt around for the discarded fleece, curled into a fetal position, and tucked my hands into my armpits in an effort to get warm. My teeth were chattering. Frissons of cold shuddered through my body. I could hear the drip-drip of water seeping into the cave, and the breath and heartbeat of the mountain. Forming familiar sounds, a name. Orestes. Orestes. Feminine sighs. Gaia whispering into the darkness. Women’s mysteries. The moist smell of decay and mildew.

  Ghosts haunted this space, ghosts as ancient as the bones of the earth. Restless. Talons and crooked mouths and misshapen limbs, and the Mother of the Mountains with her sunken corpse eyes. How long must I wait before the Erinyes came? “Show yourselves!” I groaned. “If you mean to kill me, here I am!”

  My own echoes were the only answer I received. Now I was the fool, demanding the goddesses show themselves. What would I, a mere mortal, be able to see in the darkness? And who was I to expect them to heed my summons? They would come when they wished, I realized, but not before toying with me like a cat with its prey.

  At length, I heard them, whispering back and forth above the watery drip-drop-plop. Orestes. Orestes. A rasping sound like the scraping of talons on rock. Murderer.

  I must be hearing things, conceived in my suggestive mind from the absence of light and warmth, and my own terror. Each labored breath heightened the urge to play the victim and deny everything. Not my fault. I was born cursed. My heart beat like a hide drum. Not to blame.

  Fool! Had I forgotten everything I had learned during those long months of sanctuary? The Erinyes could not only pierce the gloom to see me trembling and naked, they could also see into and through me, because they had always been there. They had been there from the very beginning, when my father had planted the seeds of loathing and destruction in my mother’s womb, and she conceived me.

  Demons or no, they were immortal goddesses demanding fear and respect. I raised my hand to my forehead to salute them; my knuckles brushed against something dry and flaky crusting my skin. I remembered the blood the priest had smeared me with—the blood of the sacrifice, the mark of a matricide, a beacon to summon the devourers.

  And then, the blood seemed to be everywhere. I could not see it, but felt it: those great rusty streaks and smears caked along my arms, drying on my clothes, stiffening on my face and in my beard. A metallic taste like rancid copper filled my mouth. In truth, it had been Aegisthus’s blood, for she had bled very little, except in my nightmares. “Mother
!” I cried. She was there with me, somewhere in the darkness: a sad gray woman with fearful eyes, and in my mind’s eye she kept falling, gasping out my name over and over again—Orestes—and the sword planted in her chest became a geyser of blood.

  “Mother!” I doubled over in agony, quaking with great, breathless sobs. “Forgive me!”

  Pain wracked my every nerve; even my hair ached. I did not feel forgiven, cleansed, absolved, but damned, thoroughly damned. Sweat filmed my pores. I wheezed and gasped, and my pulse raced, harder and faster, till it seemed my heart must explode. The demons swarmed me, rushed through my nostrils and ears and mouth to possess me, and this—this boundless agony—was what it was to be devoured by a god! I shivered violently from the cold, while inside every atom was ablaze.

  “Take me!” I was hoarse from screaming, and breathless. Those two words, forced through chattering teeth, cost me dear. I had to wait, gather my strength, before calling out again. “I consent!” That fathomless darkness swallowed my voice, and threw them back as a tenfold echo, as if the demons themselves were mocking me.

  No answer. After a time, the pain subsided a little. Raw and weak, worn down from hunger and fear and sleeplessness, I huddled in the fleeces and closed my eyes. I drifted in my own physical and spiritual misery, sometimes twitching, other times mumbling or groaning, imagining my every breath curling away from me like gray smoke.

  Smoke. I was so cold. Let the priests return and wrap me in rich fat and thigh meat, and light the fire. A clean, bright, hot fire to consume everything. I could practically smell the fat and meat sizzling, and feel the heat licking my flesh. Had I not come to be purified, had I not given my consent? So let them purify me, then.

  This numbing, leaden cold must be what it was to be dead. Had I ever walked under the sun and felt its rays kiss my face, or swum in the ocean, or climbed a mountain to see what the eagles saw? I could not recall now, save in fragments. Hermione’s glorious copper hair framing a face as white and smooth as alabaster. Driving a chariot past the dusty vineyards at the end of summer. I drank in the remembered colors and sensations, knowing it would all disappear once I drank from Lethe. Parnassus’s heights blanketed in falling snow. Catching snowflakes on my tongue, and inhaling the mountain’s crisp, resinous scent. Seeing for the first time the cavorting blue monkeys on the walls of my childhood room, and admiring the two lithe boxing youths over my bed.

  A blazing yellow light suddenly split open the darkness; it pierced my eyes and made them burn and water. I had not thought there would be light. A presence loomed above me. Hands drew back the fleeces, and nudged my bare shoulder. “Rise,” a man’s voice said. “It is time.” Hermes. No one had told me he would come; they had all led me to believe that the Erinyes would consume everything, and hurl the remainders into the pit of Tartarus.

  A warm robe fell around my shoulders, and the rope binding my ankle melted away. I could not see the god for the too-brilliant light, but felt his sturdy arms around me as he helped me to my feet. I was blind and helpless but for my immortal guide’s direction, and my entire body shivered with such cold that my every limb ached.

  There was darkness, then a soft bluish light, and it was warm again. What was this? It took me several moments to process my situation. I was lying naked and snug under crisp linen sheets, staring up at a plastered ceiling. A delicious lassitude weighed down my limbs, tempting to close my eyes and surrender myself once again to oblivion.

  To move would be to shatter this blissful dream, for it could not be anything but a dream, a fantasy of warmth and comfort conjured from my own desperation. I was already dead, the Erinyes had devoured my substance, and I was now wandering in the perpetual gloom of the fields of Asphodel, or languishing somewhere in the bowels of Tartarus.

  At last, curiosity impelled me to move my arm, slide it out from beneath the rustling sheet, and hold my hand up to my face. I saw solid flesh, then the pinkish scars on my knuckles and thumb where I had broken the skin in my delirium. I flexed my fingers, made a fist. A shade could not do that, which meant...

  Astonished, I shoved back the sheet and sat up. I was lying in my familiar cubicle in the sanctuary of Delphi, and, to judge from the quality of the light falling through the open window, it was mid-afternoon. Had I died and drunk from Lethe, I would not have known where I was. “I am Orestes.” Yes, I knew my name. I remembered that there had been darkness and cold, and an ordeal. “I am alive.”

  I rose naked from the cot, wobbled, and stumbled toward the curtain. Alive I might be, but I was also as weak as a babe.

  An old man servant peering through the curtain to see what the shuffling and bumping of furniture was about found me holding onto the bedside table; he at once steered me back to the cot. “You shouldn’t be moving around,” he said. “Stay here. I’ll fetch someone.”

  Only when he was gone did it occur to me that he had not only spoken to me, but had touched me, too, and without hesitation. That, I did not understand. Was I not still a matricide, an anathema?

  When the curtain parted again, my caretaker entered wearing a broad smile. “So you’re awake,” Didymus observed.

  “What happened?”

  He laughed, “You survived, that’s what happened.”

  “I gathered that much, but...” I spread my hands, staring at them as if to convince myself that their flesh was real. “The last thing I remember is the cave, and a bright light, and Hermes telling me to get up.”

  “Hermes?” he chuckled, and took the footstool beside me. “Did the god visit you?”

  “I thought he did.”

  “It might have seemed so to you, but it was the priest who helped you out of the cave. The light you saw came from his lamp.”

  The old servant brought warm porridge and goat’s milk, and the priest stayed with me, watching approvingly while I ravenously attacked the fare. “A good appetite is a good sign,” he said. “You haven’t eaten in four days.”

  I did the arithmetic. “I was in the cave for two days?”

  Didymus shook his head. “Only a day and night, but you’ve been asleep almost as long.” He handed me the linen napkin. “Expect visitors soon. Eurymakos will send priest-scribes to question you about your ordeal in the cave.”

  An hour later, the old servant tended me in the bath, oiling and scraping my skin until the dirt came loose in long gray rolls, rinsing me down, and dressing me in fresh linen garments. He should not have touched me, for although I had survived the ordeal, I had not undergone the rites of purification. So this new human contact both comforted and unsettled me. I did not speak to him, even to inquire about his willingness to attend me. Bringing it to his attention might drive him away.

  I returned to bed before sunset, yet though my body was weary, sleep did not claim me right away. Lying under the cool sheets, I drank in the late afternoon birdsong, and watched the subtle interplay of golden light and blue shadows against the far wall. I noticed also that the gray spider had vanished from her usual corner; her web hung in tatters.

  The air was warm, though not overbearingly so, and fragrant with the sage and fennel growing outside. Simple pleasures, made sharper and more satisfying after the darkness and cold at death’s door. I closed my eyes, my last conscious thought being how wonderful it was to be alive.

  *~*~*~*

  Three priests came in the morning to question me. I answered them with an air of detachment, recounting the events and sensations of my ordeal as though relating the details of a particularly vivid but fading dream. The priests were relentless in their drive to know everything, yet divulged very little in their turn. Questions, and more questions, but no answers, not even a hint of whether or not I had been absolved.

  Would surviving my ordeal with life and wits intact suffice, or would the priests force me to endure the stygian cold and blackness a second time? Some deep-seated instinct told me that they could send me underground again, and again, as often as they wished, but the goddesses of vengeance were finished wit
h me.

  Even Didymus could do little but speculate on what would happen next, but he was positive. “I’ve never heard of a supplicant having to undergo a second ordeal if he completes the first, so I wouldn’t worry about that. If I had to guess, I would say you’ll soon be summoned to the inner sanctum to receive an official ruling. First, Eurymakos and his advisors must deliberate.”

  Priests always had to consult omens, whisper among themselves, invent some story. “How long can it possibly take them to decide? I’m alive and sane, as they can well see.”

  Didymus endured my restlessness with good humor. “Patience. These deliberations are but a formality. It’s no small thing to absolve a future king of Mycenae of matricide and release him into the world again. It’s a public affair, where men and gods will be watching, and where all the proper forms must be observed.”

  Perhaps so, but I would believe his assurances only when the verdict came down once and for all in my favor, allowed me to receive purification, and leave the sanctuary to claim my dominions. Pylades would have to be notified right away, so preparations might be undertaken for the journey home and the lavish ceremonies that attended the investiture of a great king.

  I passed the time writing letters home, exercising in the mornings when the air was cool, and reading the scrolls I was now allowed to borrow from the high priest’s own library; he must be planning to absolve me, otherwise he would not have permitted me to touch those documents. I also reread Hermione’s final letter to me, while refraining from the urge to answer. As much as I wanted to give her the good news, and tell her to dry her tears and smile, I knew I could no longer afford to be so heedless with my sentiments. Since I must live, and become a king, I must also reap the consequences of my words. Gods forbid, I might even have to put on a smile and endure that boor Neoptolemus.

  Four days went by before I heard another word about the deliberations. A temple servant suddenly appeared to fetch me from the rear courtyard where I was boxing with Didymus. “They have a verdict,” he said.