The Outcast

by Laura Gill

  The sun had risen, spreading rose and gold veils across the eastern horizon. A cold salt breeze blowing from the southwest raised whitecaps on the dark blue water. The priests flanked the sacrificial animal, a splendid black bull draped in garlands of red and yellow and orange autumn wildflowers. Incense competed with the tang of salt, rank seaweed, and pitch; bluish smoke rose from the braziers, pale against the rapidly lightening sky. Sailors gathered around to witness the bloodletting and reading of the entrails. The three pentekonters with their precious cargo hulked like beached whales on the drier sand above the tide-line; the eyes sweeping their prows glared out, white and red against tarred planks. Poseidon was watching.

  An old priest poured cold water over my hands; it trickled between my fingers to darken the sand at my feet. Another handed me the sacrificial knife, its metal glinting dully in the morning light. If the bull should struggle, if I should misjudge the fatal cut, if the entrails should be diseased... I forced myself to breathe, to watch the bull as the priests removed the garlands. He was placid, sluggish from the drugs mixed with his feed. Yes, I thought. Here was a king bull who would consent.

  A triton sounded, blaring out toward the water to summon the god. I listened to the waves rushing in and sucking out, and, tense with anticipation, waited for the right moment. A heartbeat passed. Now. I lifted the knife to the sky. “Poseidon, Father of the Sea! Here is your servant, Orestes Agamemnonides, about to set out across the water. Receive this offering, this fine black bull. Find favor with this gift. Grant us safe passage through your domain.”

  Priests grasped the bull’s horns, dragged back his great head, while others held him fast. I did not hesitate, but set my left hand upon the beast’s throat to find his pulse, then slashed with the blade in my right, deep and swift to sever the artery. Steaming blood flowed, jetting out, and then slowing as the bull dropped to the sand. He lowed once, and the light faded from his great dark eyes.

  I moved back to let the priests do their work. A novice collected the blood in a vessel to anoint the ships and make the libation. Even as the bull twitched and snuffled his last, the priests were upon him with their knives and cleavers to open his belly, to draw forth the entrails, and quarter the carcass. I washed my hands again, dried them, and waited for the omens to be read.

  It did not take long for the diviner to call out the good news; the entrails were without blemish. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  The sun had crept above the eastern horizon; the clouds were rose-colored ribbons against a field of blue. Before the ships could be launched, they must be anointed. With a bundle of reeds lashed together, the eldest priest went from vessel to vessel, slapping bull’s blood onto the hulls. Another priest waded barefoot into the surf to nourish the god with a libation of blood. Other priests wrapped the bull’s thigh meats in fat and bundled them into reed baskets to be taken onto the ship for the offering of the deep; the remainder would be burned on shore.

  I went aboard before the gangplank was drawn up, and the pentekonter loosened from its chocks and hauled down into the water. Princes might heave and labor alongside the crew, but it seemed that kings were forbidden such honest work; the captain steadfastly refused to countenance my wading thigh-deep in the sea with a stout rope at my shoulder. Nor would he let me ship an oar, set the mast, or do anything aside from performing the offering of the deep, which, he averred, was the proper business of kings. I spent the crossing in utter boredom, with nothing to do except watch the coastline, and the fishing boats and merchant boats plying their trade along the gulf.

  Ten hours later, as the afternoon shortened, we landed below Corinth, where a delegation had been appointed to await our coming. Kleitos’s lieutenant oversaw the unloading of the cargo and animals. The lord of Corinth, having had warning from his lookouts, had laid out a splendid feast to which the entire court, plus several visiting lords from Eleusis and Athens, had been invited.

  Would that we had arrived in darkness, to the simple delights of a meal and bed! The last thing I wanted that evening was to be feted in that smoky hall, and have to endure the presentation of half a hundred nobles and their wives when I must be awake and on the road early the next morning.

  “This must all be quite a bit for you, my lord.” Capreus’s eyes twitched wider, and he moved to add, “Of course, your forefathers were great men, heroes even, and you yourself have proven your mettle, but to be a king so young...”

  Here was a man who kept circling the subject, who yearned to ask for the sordid details about the coup at Mycenae and my ordeal at Delphi, yet who was equipped with neither the courage to inquire outright, nor the tact to keep his desires hidden. “We have been prepared for this since childhood.” A simple answer. I would grant him no more, not so easily, for then others would expect the same openness. Sooner or later, however... I marked the furtive sidelong glances from the gathered nobles and dignitaries, noted their hesitation, and fear; it would be the same everywhere. Nemea. Mycenae. Argos. My stubborn silence would simply nourish the rumors, and breed new ones.

  Boukolos’s advice stayed with me. Give them something else to talk about. As Capreus continued to ramble, my thoughts wandered to the musicians playing near the hearth. Soon, the bard would come out with his lyre, and sing the deeds of the heroes. Perseus. Jason. Herakles. Achilles. Songs of Troy. I remembered the bard Damastor, old and blind, but god-touched, weaving his song about my father’s murder; he sang it as though he had been there, he had breathed life into each cruel treachery, each cut of the knife. I was a fool to think other bards would not sing behind my back of the monstrous son who had stalked up to the palace covered in a stepfather’s blood to cut off his mother’s head—or open her belly to let her entrails spill forth, or cut her throat, or choke her with his own hands. Liars who were never there, who did not understand it was all a tragic mistake. Exaggerators who, no doubt, would denounce me as a wicked son, and a raving lunatic foaming at the mouth.

  I observed the musicians, and nursed my wine along with my private thoughts, while Capreus prated on about trivial matters. A skilled bard could destroy a man’s reputation, or elevate it. Damastor had died years ago, but Kretheus might still be alive, and still playing the lyre at Mycenae. From henceforth, he would sing what I told him to sing, and in his singing it, it would become the truth.

  Kleitos and his lieutenant attended to the pacing and provisioning of our procession, leaving me once again with nothing to do. “It all depends on how quickly everyone can move. I’ve had reports that the roads are good,” he said, “so we should make excellent time. We ought to arrive at Kleonai late tomorrow, and at Nemea the day after.”

  Kleitos also assigned me a charioteer. “A king isn’t a king without one,” he said.

  “I can drive myself,” I argued.

  “Indeed you can, my lord.” He answered with a good-natured bow. “But the word has already gone out that King Orestes of Mycenae is passing through Corinthia. People who see the Atreid double lions and flock to the roadside expect a show. Alas, you must stand at the rail with your gold ornaments gleaming, and your purple cloak streaming out, and look kingly while Ixion drives!”

  Ixion the charioteer was sixteen, tall and lanky, confident with the horses but otherwise excessively shy. Crimson flushed his pimply cheeks when I climbed into the car beside him. “Now, Lord Kleitos says you are the best charioteer at Mycenae,” I told him. “Let’s see what you can do.”

  I liked the way he handled the reins and maneuvered the chariot; he was a born horseman, owing, he anxiously confided, to Thracian ancestry on his mother’s side. Kleitos and ten armed men went before us, flying the red Atreid lion on a field of black. Behind us lumbered the carts and animals, servants and the rear guard.

  It was a cool day, the sky above pallid blue. The morning hours leisurely rolled by as we passed fallow fields and vineyards, groves green with ripening olives, and shepherds in the meadows tending their flocks. The air smelled of falling leaves, dust from the road, and t
he animals in our train. As Kleitos had predicted, people sighting the procession left their tasks to gather by the roadside; the children were running, pointing at the Atreid lion on the black banner, while the adults were silent, curious, wary, like the pilgrims who had watched me leave Delphi weeks earlier. Reflexively, I tightened my grip on the chariot rail.

  Toward late afternoon, we reached a village near a stream, and sought hospitality among the elders, who met us in the agora. Hearing our errand, and noting our high status, they welcomed us in the name of Zeus Xenios.

  One could see, though, that they balked at the prospect of having to feed so many men and animals. “Good people,” I told them, “we shall not impose upon you. Our servants, draft animals, and herds carry ample provisions, and will sleep in the fields.” Even in the fading afternoon light, there was something vaguely familiar about this village, in its views toward the meadow and stream, even in the arrangement of the buildings. I turned to the foremost elder. “Good sir, what village is this?”

  “Chalkion,” he answered.

  Chalkion. I remembered it now as the village where Timon and I had waited while I recovered from the wound to my thigh. “Then we have been here before. Where are the old shepherd and his wife, Poimenos and Rhene?”

  The elders glanced at each other in surprise. “We didn’t know that you knew them, lord,” the chief elder answered. “They’re both dead now.”

  Disappointment washed over me. I had vowed to return, to repay their kindness, never dreaming they would not survive to receive their reward. “You may not recall,” I said, “but eight years ago, Poimenos found an injured youth lying near death by yonder stream.” I raised my voice like a bard’s to let everyone hear the story. “He and his wife took us in, and nursed us back to health. It saddens us to discover that we cannot repay their generosity, and tell them that the wounded herdsman’s boy they saved is now the king of Mycenae.”

  Poimenos and Rhene had been well-liked among their neighbors, and the villagers remembered the injured youth and old man who had been their guests years ago. I slept in the house of the chief elder, whose wife brought me a soft but faded woolen blanket that she claimed was Rhene’s handiwork. “She died first,” she said. “Went gently in her sleep one night. Poimenos was quite lost without her. His heart gave out not two months later, poor man.”

  At sunrise, I broke my fast and prepared to leave. My host walked with me to my chariot. “Great king,” he said. “May Hermes the Traveler guide your—” A dog barked over the old man. “Guide your steps, my—” Another bark, more insistent. Irritated, the elder glanced over his shoulder, made a shooing motion. “Get on with you,” he hissed.

  A waifish dog covered in matted fur and flea bites stood on shaky legs, wagging his tail as he barked. “Go on, get!” The old man waved his walking stick. “Damn nuisance!” A nearby youth scooped up a pebble, hurled it at the dog to chase him away. The dog whimpered, shied away a few paces, but then returned to bark most insistently at me and my followers. He did not appear vicious, merely curious about the strangers in his territory.

  A second pebble struck the animal’s rump, eliciting a yelp. I could tell he was old as well as neglected, a herding dog by breed. “You, stop!” I shouted. The youth, who had a handful of rocks in his fist, and was preparing to throw another, stared slack-jawed at me. Prompted by some impulse, I bent down, held out my hand to the dog, and whistled. “Hermes!”

  Yes, it was! The old shepherd dog came over, licked my hand, and sat, obedient and attentive, when I commanded. His eyes were runny, his muzzle crusted, his ribs showing through his coat. Straightening, I confronted the elder, the boy with his pebbles, everyone who had gathered to watch. “This dog belonged to Poimenos. Why has he been neglected?” I demanded. “Who has charge of him now?”

  Three dozen blank expressions and mumbled denials pleased me not at all. No one took responsibility for the dog; he had clearly been abandoned after his master’s death, left to starve and suffer.

  “A great-nephew, my lord, a tanner...”

  I cut the chief elder short. Too little, too late. “You invoked Hermes, and so he has come.” More empty looks. “Poimenos would be horrified to learn how his neighbors have left his beloved dog to rot upon the dung heap, when he once saved a prince’s life.” I turned aside, found my charioteer staring up at me. “Ixion, bring me a rope.”

  Whether the tanner was in the crowd watching, it did not matter; he was too much the coward to risk my wrath and claim his dog, which was his no longer. Ixion brought me the rope. I looped and knotted it, and fashioned it into a lead. “Come, Hermes!” I said. He was only too happy to obey.

  But he could not climb into the chariot without assistance. I lifted him onto the platform myself, and tethered the lead to the chariot rail, while no one in the crowd said a word. Cowards. “This faithful animal is now my dog,” I said. “Through his neglect, this tanner, whoever and wherever he is, has forfeited the right to keep him. Hermes shall thenceforth enjoy the reward his master Poimenos did not live to see. This is the judgment of the king.” I climbed into the chariot. Ixion ascended after me, took up the reins.

  Like his namesake, Hermes was an excellent traveler. At midday, when we stopped to rest the horses and take refreshment, I lifted the dog down, untied his lead, and gave him food and water. “Ixion,” I said. “You will make certain that Hermes is washed and looked after when we reach Nemea.” The youth’s eyes betrayed his distaste for this task which was, apparently, beneath his dignity as a nobleman. “Do as you’re told, and try not to look so grim about it,” I said. “This animal is god-touched. Hermes the Traveler will repay your kindness to him.”

  That evening, Nemea’s lord served fresh news along with a splendid feast. “Just this morning, a runner brought word that Phocis and Eprius have reached an amicable settlement. The Epirote regents will send gold, cattle, and horses to Delphi to placate Apollo.”

  What interested me more was the astonishing number of lion motifs in the megaron: winged lions flanking the dais, reposing lions woven into the rich wall hangings, rampant lions adorning the ivory plaques set into the lord’s own chair. Lions: a royal symbol, the prerogative of a powerful king, displayed abundantly here in a second-rate citadel, but a day’s hard ride from Mycenae. Dour old Chromios, it seemed, had dynastic pretentions.

  At present, however, he took his cue from the lord of Corinth in his eagerness to please. “We have also heard your cousin Queen Hermione has left for Sparta.” A strained smile revealed his uneven brown teeth. “We assure you, no one here in our court believes the outrageous slanders which have gone before her. The daughter of Menelaus and granddaughter of Atreus is too noble and gracious a lady to merit such talk.”

  That he mentioned it at all told me that he and his household were all too ready to believe Hermione was an unfaithful wife who had engaged a lover’s help to murder her husband. “Indeed,” I grumbled. Firelight from the hearth cast glowing shadows onto a fresco depicting a lion reposing among waving papyrus fronds; its presence irked me, as did my host’s insistence on using the royal plural. “Delphic pilgrims and guards slew Neoptolemus for his presumptuous blasphemy, and no other reason. Do you think the Epirote regents would have agreed to King Strophius’s price had it been otherwise?”

  Chromios sipped his wine. “And yet, it’s hard to believe the young man could make such an ignoble end.”

  Fool. Was it easier for him to believe that a Spartan lady of irreproachable reputation had conspired to murder him? “Alas, it’s true.” I even managed to sound sorry. “As to those rumors, we swear upon our own father’s honor that we shed no blood in Apollo’s holy sanctuary. We were not even present.” An uneasiness filtered through the atmosphere of roast meat and hearth smoke and conversation, an acrid tang of disappointment and doubt; this was not what the court wished to hear, when petty lies offered more entertainment than solid truths. Heat crept into my face, along with an urge to hurl my cup at the offending fresco. “So
, Lord Chromios, let’s discuss more pleasant matters. Tell us about the lions.”

  “Lions?” Chromios sat up straighter. “Ah, yes. Lions are sacred here. Long ago, when there were kings in Nemea, they chose a maiden by lot each year, took her up into the hills, and left her as an offering for the Nemean Lion.”

  More lies, no doubt. I had never heard such a story. “And that was same Nemean Lion that scourged the countryside in Herakles’ day?”

  Chromios bobbed his head. “Yes, indeed. By his time, we had forgotten the old ways, neglected the altars, and thus we angered the gods. Zeus turned the Nemean Lion against us, and scourged us with it. Herakles showed us our error.”

  “So now you’ve gone back to leaving young girls in the hills?” I waved aside the wine bearer.

  Gold and silver rings flashed on Chromios’s fat fingers as he dismissed the notion, laughing nervously. “Of course not, my lord. These days, we keep a sacred lion in the temple of Zeus to honor him. But the hills all around are still lion country. Kings come here to hunt and take trophies.”

  From what I had heard, the Nemean hill country had been hunted dry decades ago. Perhaps a few lions had returned. Or perhaps, and far more likely, Chromios and his nobles had grown over-bold in the years since my father went to Troy, and bore watching.

  I retired early, citing exhaustion and a need to rise with the sun. Upstairs, I found Hermes sprawled on the floor near the brazier; his ears pricked up, and his tail wagged as I entered the room. Ixion had done as ordered. Hermes’ black and white coat was clean and smooth, though no amount of grooming could repair his scrawniness; only good food and care could accomplish that. I bent to ruffle his ears; he turned his head and licked my hand. “Do you remember me?” I asked softly. Since boyhood, I had wanted a dog, a companion and protector. Where I had dreamt of a great Molossian mastiff, the gods had sent a shepherd’s dog. Ah, but how intelligent he was, and eager to please! Shame on those who had neglected him so! “You knew me as Alastor, but that’s not my real name. I am Orestes the king. You will dwell in my house, where no one shall stone or starve you.”