Warrior in Bronze

by George Shipway

  ***

  Hercules, Jason and the Heroes the king had chosen departed for Iolcos. When Hercules tried to insist on taking his ragbag following Jason tersely specified Argo’s strict capacity: fifty men and stores were all she could embark. Hercules growled and submitted. Hyllus and Iolaus led their retinue to Tiryns; Atreus watched them go and tweaked his beard. ‘We’ll have to evict those rascals before many moons have passed,’ he reflected aloud. ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult now the figurehead has gone.’

  The linchpins of Eurystheus’ realm were Tiryns and Mycenae. Tiryns now lacked a Warden. The king accepted Atreus’ suggestion and nominated Thyestes.

  Menelaus was one of Thyestes’ squires and must accompany him to Tiryns. We had never before been separated; both of us felt the wrench. I asked him, while he packed his gear, whether he enjoyed serving Thyestes.

  Menelaus shrugged. ‘I don’t. Damnably free with his whip if you make a mistake. He’s surly and unapproachable, and keeps his household nobles at a distance. Even his family fears him. The only person Thyestes likes is a ten-year-old daughter, Pelopia, and he dotes on the brat.’

  I said, ‘That curious creature Plisthenes lives in his household. Do you ever see him?’

  ‘Now and again. Most of the time he stays secluded in his rooms. He’s going with us to Tiryns - and I’d rather he wasn’t. Fellow gives me the creeps.’

  Thyestes and his retinue departed on a beautiful springtime day, warm and glorious, the light so clear you could see spears glint on Argos’ faraway hilltop. Atreus stood on the tower that guarded the Northern Gate, and contemplated a vanishing dust cloud pluming the Argos road. Thyestes’ migration plainly brought to a fruitful conclusion some devious design he concocted, and I expected him to be pleased. Atreus’ demeanour, on the contrary, was grave and forbidding. When the column disappeared from sight he murmured under his breath, Thyestes and Plisthenes gone. The way rolls clear ahead. The time has come.’

  He turned and laid a hand on my wrist. ‘You believe me to be your father?’

  I stared, astounded. ‘Of course. What else --’

  ‘Such was my intention. So I have ordained it over the years since Plisthenes...’ He stopped. His grip tightened, vivid blue eyes held mine.

  ‘Prepare yourself for a shock, Agamemnon. I am your grandfather, and I’m going to marry your mother.’

  My throat went dry, my legs were straws. ‘You’re my ... I don’t understand. Then ... who is my father?’

  ‘My son Plisthenes.’

  Atreus guided me firmly down the steps. The compassionate tone he had used to soften the revelation melted from his voice, and he said brutally, ‘Pull yourself together! The heavens haven’t fallen; nothing is changed. Sit on this bench -and stop snivelling, boy!’

  I collapsed on a stone bench some long-forgotten builder had provided at the foot of the tower’s steps. Atreus propped his shoulders against the rampart’s massive stones, and looked at me balefully. ‘Feeling better? Nothing, as I said, has changed. Since infancy you have believed me to be your father. In all but name I am. One generation divides us. What does it matter?’

  ‘But ... Plisthenes,’ I stammered. ‘Why have you ...’

  ‘Shut your mouth, and listen. When I was sixteen years old I married a woman called Cleola, who bore me Plisthenes and died before she saw him. I brought him up - as I’ve brought you up - and taught him all the elements of statesmanship and war. He was tall and strong, radiantly handsome and, unlike your typical Hero, extremely intelligent. He was born to be king - or so I decided. Even Thyestes liked him, and made him something of a protégé.’

  A chariot rolled past on its way to the gate. Atreus absently acknowledged the Companion’s salute.

  ‘I looked round to find him a suitable wife, and settled on a daughter of the Cretan royal House: Aerope, Catreus’ child. I brought her back to Plisthenes, and she bore him you, Menelaus and that girl - what’s her name? - Anaxibia. Then I let Plisthenes go with Hercules to Thrace to buy horses for Eurystheus. It seemed a harmless expedition - but I hadn’t allowed for Hercules. Rather than disgorge the ox-hides and bronze the king had provided for payment he decided instead to raid the herds, swooped with his ruffians and stole what he could and fled. Not fast enough - a warband overtook him. Hercules won the fight that followed and escaped unscathed.’

  Atreus paused and bit his lip. ‘Plisthenes was not so lucky. He returned as you saw him, grievously wounded, the wits bashed out of his head. The years I spent in teaching him were wasted.’

  ‘Is he quite ... mad?’

  ‘No. Plisthenes has lucid moments when he’s apparently sane as you or I. He has become entirely biddable, and will obey to the letter any command you give him.’

  Atreus levered his shoulders from the wall, put a hand beneath my chin and glared into my eyes. ‘Get this into your head, Agamemnon: I intend one day to rule Mycenae !’

  ‘But’ I gulped, ‘you ... we ... are not of the reigning House. King Eurystheus has five sons. How can --’

  ‘You’re damnably obtuse today, young man! Wake your ideas up! Don’t you see? Backed by the Host and influential nobles I shall seize the reins of power when Eurystheus dies, -- banish his sons -- I may have to kill them - and rule in his stead. There’ll be a dynastic upheaval: except for the sons and that villain Hercules - who doesn’t count - Eurystheus is Perseus’ last descendant. An alien ruler will take the throne, a man of Pelops’ line. To make the usurper acceptable his successor – a suitable heir - must be assured.’

  ‘And Plis... my father is --’

  ‘An imbecile who had to be hidden from the sight and memory of man. Thyestes was still fond of him and pitied his condition. I persuaded my brother to accept him in his household and then re-cast my ideas. My obvious successor was one of my grandsons, either you or Menelaus, boys just out of infancy. I kept an eye on you both, and made my choice,’

  ‘You are that heir, Agamemnon!’

  I held my head in my hands. An ant crawled over my sandaled foot and bit; I hardly noticed the sting. ‘And the centrepiece,’ I said, ‘of a horrible and dishonourable design.’

  ‘Youre talking nonsense! Scrub these stupid scruples from your mind! Any expedient, any ruse, every crime in the catalogue justifies the enterprise of kings!’

  ‘And you propose to wed my mother. Why? I don’t understand...’

  ‘It looks better,’ said Atreus patiently, ‘if a man is married to the woman who has borne his heir. Besides, whatever you or anyone else may think, I’m very fond of Aerope.’

  Atreaus stood, and patted my cheek. The grim expression faded from his face. He smiled, and said, ‘The shock has numbed your brain; you simply aren’t thinking straight. I shall send you from Mycenae, and give you time to recover.’

  Chapter 2

  Briskly and efficiently Atreus organized the arrangements. He bent the rules a little and obtained the king’s permission to grant Heroic status to Diores. A Companion, strictly speaking, cannot become a Hero until he has killed his man in battle: always a difficult feat because unless a charge is broken and he has to fight on foot a chariot driver seldom meets a foeman blade to blade. Although Diores had been a Companion for several years - he drove for a Hero who held an estate near Argos - he had not yet won his greaves.

  The Marshal also persuaded Eurystheus to grant Diores Rhipe, an out-of-the-way demesne in the foothills which owed an annual tribute of three oxen, thirty sheep and a jar of olive oil. When the king called a levy of arms the holder had to provide three spearmen, a scout, his Companion and himself both fully armed and armoured.

  The reason for so paltry a tribute lay in the manor’s remotness: a factor of little account in olden days before the Goat men started seriously encroaching. Now they regularly decimated Rhipe’s flocks. Eurystheus, and King Sthenelus before him, sent warbands to comb the area; after every expedition the troubles stopped for a while and then recurred. The Hero last holding Rhipe had begged the king for a demesn
e in easier reach of Tiryns or Mycenae. He was not alone; the outlying estates suffered similar depredations.

  The king granted Rhipe to Diores with injunctions to restore the farms and make it pay. Being a reasonable man he recognized the dangers and drawbacks and, because the holding had been abandoned for several years, provided breeding stock and seed corn, twenty sturdy freemen and a band of male and female slaves. With an eye to my safety Atreus added from his retinue a half-dozen seasoned spearmen who normally worked on his lands. He also gave me some personal slaves and, unusually, a Scribe: a youthful, serious fellow named Gelon. ‘He’ll keep Rhipe’s accounts,’ the Marshal said, ‘and teach you the economics of husbandry. Gelon’s a clever young man; if you listen to him carefully you may learn a good deal more.’

  I took my concubine Clymene. About a year before I had begun to experience the usual sexual urges. Lightly-clad slave girls serving in the Hall or encountered in palace corridors excited fervid pricklings which resulted, on occasion, in hurried secret gropings and fumblings- in corners. Someone must have reported these skirmishes to Atreus. I had been allotted a separate room in the squires’ wing - a cubby-hole just large enough to accommodate a cot - and a lovely seventeen-year-old whom Hercules took at Pylos and sold in the Nauplia market. Though still a little shaken by the shock of a violent sack in which her family perished, Clymene became in time much more than a sheath for tumescence; she stayed for years my counsellor and friend. She was the first of a long procession of concubines, and the only one whose memory I cherish to this day.

  On a windy dawn in spring we departed for Rhipe, a long column of men and carts and animals. I rode with Diores in a travelling chariot, for he had not yet chosen a Companion. ‘Nice to be made a Hero, though I almost feel ashamed to wear my greaves. Everything has happened in a rush.’ he explained smacking his whip at a fly on the offside horse’s withers. ‘I’ve barely had time to collect a household, let alone find a decent driver who’s willing to live in Rhipe.’ He wriggled his shoulders beneath a new and shining cuirass. ‘Damned bronzesmith has boxed the job: shoulder plates don’t fit. Cost me forty fleeces and eleven jars of oil. Take me years to breed enough sheep and press enough olives to pay him.’

  We followed the road till noon - a military way between strongholds, and therefore paved - and diverged on a stony track which led to Rhipe. Derelict byres and tumbledown walls signified the outer fringes of Diores’ new estate. Glumly he surveyed the evidence of neglect: winter-withered weeds choking the vines, olive trees unpruned, ploughland smothered in deep rank grass, undrained pastures reverting to marsh. ‘Enough work for a multitude,’ he declared. ‘I’d hoped to teach you driving, but there won’t be a chance for moons. We’ll all be labouring from dawn till dusk.’

  Diores touched a sore point. His promotion and my relegation to Rhipe had ended for a time my training as a warrior at a most important stage: the art of handling a chariot in battle. Any fool can drive on a road; to swerve and turn and check at a gallop and lock your wheel with an enemy’s is a different slice off the joint. But I was old enough to realize the transition Atreus ordered likewise belonged to a Hero’s education. From boyhood they herd flocks on the hills, graduate later to care for precious cattle and learn the skills for tending vines and olives, ploughing and planting and reaping wheat and barley.

  Husbandry is really a Hero’s life; to the end of his existence he spends more time in shepherding than riding battle chariots. During daylight hours in peacetime it is hard to find a Hero; they are all away working the land or watching flocks. By nightfall at any season your Hero, like his peasants, is gobbling lentil broth in a ramshackle stone-built farmhouse and wondering where the blazes his missing wethers have gone. Royal household men fare better, of course; they can use the palace amenities. But this humdrum side of a Hero’s career the bards don’t often sing.

  Rhipe proved to be an extensive domain. We marched till sundown before reaching Diores’ manor perched on a rocky hillock protruding from a plain. Forested ranges cleft by valleys surrounded the plain; beyond them soared the mountains. A massive wall of rocks girdled a two-storied house hugged by thatch-roofed hutments like a hen among her chicks. The place resembled a minor fortress, an appearance common to every settlement sited far from a citadel.

  Diores looked more cheerful. ‘Solid defences at least; no one will break in easily.’

  We led our retinue through a gate whose oaken doors sagged tiredly on the hinges - ‘That’s the first job,’ Diores commented - and assembled in a crowded mass in a courtyard before the house. Diores stamped through the buildings and allotted quarters. ‘Offload baggage, turn the animals out to graze, mount guards. Clear the place up. Get moving!’

  Before darkness fell we were fairly well settled and eating a meal. Robbers had ransacked every building. All metal articles the former holder may have left were gone - cauldrons, tripods, pots and pans - but a scattering of plain wood furniture remained. We found some wooden ploughs, hayforks and the like still littering the outhouses.

  Goatmen don’t use chairs and tables, nor do they till the land.

  After posting a sentry on the gate tower Diores returned yawning to the Hall and stretched himself on a fleece-covered cot his slaves had found. The rotten twine fragmented and thumped his rump on the floor. He swore like a Hero, snuggled into a cloak and lay beside the hearth.

  Tomorrow,’ he said sleepily, ‘we start putting Rhipe to rights!’

  ***

  At the first whisper of dawn Diores and I rode out to explore the demesne; freemen appointed as bailiffs followed the horses on foot. Diores allocated fields to be ploughed for the sowing of barley and wheat, selected cattle pastures, hillside grazing for sheep and, on the higher slopes where trees began, foraging grounds for swine. He defined an extensive tract as common land where peasants would grow subsistence for themselves and the slaves and craftsmen - bronzesmiths, weavers, carpenters, potters and fullers - who must help make Rhipe self-sufficient.

  It took us all day to ride the whole perimeter. Back at the manor I found Gelon, using a goose quill dipped in ink distilled from charcoal, scratching mysterious marks on a sheet of the paper Egyptians make from reeds. ‘I’m working out the daily ration scales for our workmen,’ he told Diores, ‘in the proportion of five to two to one for men, women and children respectively.’ (A babble of brats accompanied the slaves, and some of the freemen had brought their families.) ‘Do you approve, my lord?’

  ‘Whatever you think best,’ said Diores. ‘I’ve no head for figures. Tally the supplies we’ve brought and fix your calculations to make them last till harvest, four moons hence. Then, if The Lady is kind, we’ll start living on what we produce.’

  ‘Very well.’ Gelon compressed his lips. ‘I warn you, my lord, we shall have to live frugally through the summer.’

  Intrigued by my first acquaintance with scribal skills, and remembering Atreus’ injunction, I craned over Gelon’s figuring although, like anyone not a Scribe, I had no slightest knowledge of writing and considered the art to be something approaching magic. Scratching and squiggling busily, tongue between teeth, Gelon assured me the calculations were simple: he applied to Rhipe in miniature a system which prevailed throughout the realm. ‘Every person below noble rank receives a fixed allocation of barley, wheat and oil based on the kingdom’s total resources divided by the population count. Achaea, densely peopled, can’t grow the food she needs; hence corn is shipped from Sicily and Crete.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I said in wonder. ‘Surely, on a country-wide scale, a most complicated business?’

  ‘It is. That’s what Scribes are for. Without us the economy would collapse.’

  Gelon uttered a simple truth. Scribes are ubiquitous; a coterie exists in every city and town. They control administration and regulate the economy; every ruler depends on a senior Scribe’s advice - I remembered King Eurystheus’ Curator at Mycenae. Their power resides in knowledge of writing, a jealously guarded monopoly whose
mysteries outsiders are never allowed to learn. (Not that Heroes nurse any desire to master an art so horridly cabbalistic.)

  It is commonly averred that the Scribes’ origins are Cretan, although in appearance and characteristics they are very unlike that good-looking, easy-going race. The distinguishing mark of a Scribe, besides the long grey robe he always wears, is a hooked nose dominating swarthy features. They forbid marriage outside the sect, and worship a private god whose name, so far as I can pronounce the throat-stopping syllables - Gelon told me this - is something like Jahwah. Which worries nobody: all sorts of obscure divinities are honoured in rustic Achaea. In urban neighbourhoods the Daughters, not surprisingly, severely discourage unorthodox cults : on The Lady’s pre-eminence depend their own estates, granted by kings for Her worship. They also fight a tendency, mostly in the cities, to elevate as deities our ancestors: those mighty Heroes of olden time, founders of royal Houses, Zeus and Poseidon.

  But I digress - a tedious vice belonging to ageing men.

  Within a couple of days Diores and Gelon between them organized the running of Rhipe out-of-doors and in. I was given a hundred sheep and banished to grazing grounds a morning’s march from the manor: my realm for seven moons, a spreading river valley ramparted by hills. My companions, besides the sheep, were two spearmen and a surly-tempered dog: the spearmen a condition that Atreus commanded; he had told Diores I was not to be left unguarded while shepherding the flocks. We repaired dilapidated folds and huts which commanded grazing areas, rebuilt walls and roofed the huts with tamarisk fronds on olive-wood rafters.

  So began an idyll I gratefully remember, a happy, carefree interlude never to be repeated. I saw to the year’s first mating, ensured the rams shirked none of their work and favoured all the ewes. Spring drifted into summer, hot sunlight faded the flowers - hyacinth and crocus, violet and lily - and sucked aromatic scents from herbs and grasses. I discarded my woollen tunic, wore deerskin boots and knee-high leggings to guard against the thorn scrub of Rhipe’s rocky hillsides. A short spear and dagger completed my equipment - everyone, slaves excepted, always has a dagger at the belt: an all-purpose implement for shaving, hair-cutting, carving food and whittling during idle afternoons.