The Return from Troy

Then the news reached Mycenae that both Achilles and Patroclus were dead.

For a time Orestes was inconsolable. Not only did victory seem inconceivable now, but life itself seemed a vain and empty thing. How was it that everything he loved was taken from him? How was it that Achilles could have been slain by treachery while his father – a man he barely knew, who had callously put his own daughter to death – lived on and did nothing with all the power at his command?

Cooler-headed, more pragmatic in temperament, Pylades consoled his friend as best he could. Surely, he said, the best way to honour the shades of their heroes was to become greater heroes still. Together they would make good the loss. Let the war drag on, for soon the two of them must be called to the front. They were the young lions who would carry on the fight. Agamemnon would look on with pride as his son Orestes did what even Achilles had failed to do and led his forces through the Scaean Gate into the very heart of Troy.

Yet before any of that could happen, changes began to take place in Mycenae itself. Pelagon, the court bard who had sung for years of the deeds at Troy, mysteriously died. Familiar figures about the palace were relieved of their posts. Less approachable young men replaced them. Then Aegisthus appeared.

When his father first left for the war, Orestes had been too young to hear a full account of his family’s history, so the name of Aegisthus meant nothing to him. Nor did he take against the man at first. Handsome and charming, the newcomer appeared to be no more than a further addition to his mother’s ever-growing staff of ministers and officials, though one with whom she spent an unusual amount of time closeted in private. Only on the day when he remarked on the man’s lively wit to Pylades, and he saw his friend glance uneasily away, did Orestes become conscious that something might be amiss.

‘What is it?’ Orestes demanded. ‘Don’t you like him?’

Pylades merely shrugged and carried on oiling his bow.

‘I agree he seems a bit full of himself,’ Orestes said, ‘and I resent the way he tries to speak to me sometimes as if he thought he was my father. But he’s better company than those other drones that hang about my mother. I mean, which of them ever stops to pass the time of day with us?’

‘I don’t trust him,’ Pylades muttered almost below his breath.

Orestes blinked in surprise. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’ And then, two seconds later. ‘I’d rather not say.’

‘What do you mean?’

Pylades flushed. ‘You must have noticed,’ he murmured, ‘how much time he spends alone with your mother.’

‘They work together,’ Orestes countered, but the back of his neck was suddenly hot. He wanted to demand what his friend meant by that mumbled remark but he couldn’t do it without losing his temper. His mind started to lurch as he watched Pylades put more oil onto the kidskin. Could it be that the friend he loved was imputing his mother’s honour? And why would he choose to do that unless he had good reason?

‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘you had better explain yourself.’

Pylades turned his honest face towards him, ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

‘Are we not sworn to one another?’

‘Whatever might happen? Whatever I might say?’

Orestes saw that they were both trembling a little.

‘Now you’re alarming me,’ he gasped.

‘Then perhaps silence is better.’

‘It’s too late for that. Tell me what you know.’

Pylades looked down at his feet. His knuckles were gripped tight about his bow. ‘Do you remember some time ago when you were ill with a fever and you asked me to bring your mother to you? It was quite late one night.’

‘I remember.’

Pylades swallowed before continuing. ‘I went to the Queen’s private apartment and saw her serving-woman Marpessa admitting Aegisthus to her bed-chamber.’

He watched the colours changing in Orestes’ face. He saw the anger rising in his eyes, but he pressed on, forestalling interruption. ‘I withdrew at once, of course, and came back wondering what reason I could give for not bringing your mother with me. Fortunately you’d already fallen asleep so I didn’t have to explain.’

‘Is that all?’ Orestes demanded hotly. ‘What’s so terrible about that? Doesn’t it occur to you that he might have needed to speak to her urgently? Some matter of state business must have come up. Anyway, if Marpessa was there, they weren’t alone. There need have been no wrong in it.’

But his boyish heart was floundering.

‘That’s what I told myself,’ Pylades answered. ‘I would have put it out of my mind but Marpessa must have spotted me leaving the apartment because the next day Aegisthus came up to me and …’ Pylades faltered there. He glanced away from his friend’s fierce regard, uncertain but not abashed.

‘What?’ Orestes demanded.

‘He threatened me.’

‘How? How did he threaten you?’

Still not looking at his friend, Pylades drew in his breath a little shakily before answering. ‘He said that he knew very well what the Queen did not yet know – that you and I have taken to sleeping in each other’s arms. He said that if the Queen got to learn of it I would certainly be sent away from Mycenae.’

‘How?’ Orestes protested. ‘How could he have known that?’

‘He must have spied on us while we slept. He or some minion in his pay. I don’t know, but he said that he would say nothing to the Queen about it so long as I too agreed to say nothing to anyone of what I thought I might have seen. He said that if we failed to reach such an agreement, he and I, then the consequences would be very unpleasant for you.’

‘I’ll kill him,’ Orestes said.

‘I don’t think so,’ his friend answered quietly.

‘I’ll go to the armoury and take a sword and plunge it in his traitor’s heart.’

‘Think about it, Orestes, Even if you got close to him – which I very much doubt – what would your mother do? How would you explain yourself without disgracing her? And who would believe you anyway? Pylades put a hand to his friend’s trembling shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything, but you asked me and … I don’t know, but there’s something going on in this city that I don’t understand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why have so many of the old ministers gone from the palace? And haven’t you noticed how hard it’s become for ordinary people to petition the Queen? The whole feel of the place is different. Nobody seems to speak their mind any more. I may be quite wrong about it, but,’ Pylades glanced around to make sure they were still unobserved, ‘the only person I trust right now is you.’

Orestes listened to his friend with growing trepidation, for everything he said corresponded to vague feelings that had crossed his mind without ever becoming clear. Yet the implications were so worrying that his heart jumped about his chest and his mind refused to keep still long enough to think.

Pylades looked up and saw the agitation in Orestes’ face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. But it seems to me that the only thing for us to do is keep our eyes and ears open and our mouths shut till things come clearer.’

And that’s what they did for a time in an anxious conspiracy against the world. Orestes found it hard to conceal his newfound feelings of revulsion for Aegisthus. Clytaemnestra felt ever more frustrated by her son’s behaviour, and her daughter Electra resented the way that her brother and his friend excluded her from the secrets they shared. Then the boys’ apprehensions were allayed in the excitement that burst across Mycenae with the news that Troy had fallen and Agamemnon must soon return to the city in triumph.

Yet Orestes found it still harder to sleep in his bed at night. How should he receive his father? Should he greet him, like everybody else, as the great hero of the age, the conqueror of Troy and King of Men? That was what he wanted to do; but he couldn’t free his mind of the sickening thought that this was the man who had put his sister to death in order to further his ambitions. Orestes told himself that the thread of a man’s fate was spun at his birth and there was no avoiding the ordeals that the gods devised for him. Yet that thought brought him no peace for it seemed to turn life into a prison where no one was free to choose for himself. Victory and defeat, courage and cowardice, fidelity and betrayal – all blurred to insignificance in a world ruled by capricious gods.

Lost in such dark contemplation, Orestes lay uneasily awake night after night, or jumped into darkness out of terrifying dreams.

One afternoon he returned from a long, uncomfortable conversation with his mother to find that Pylades had already gone from the city. All his things had been hastily packed and not a trace of his presence remained. Orestes was simply told that King Strophius had required that his son return home at short notice and that the herald who had brought the message would brook no delay.

On the following day Orestes and his sister Electra were despatched into the care of Lord Podargus in Midea. When Orestes complained that, as well as being denied the company of his only friend, he would not even be permitted to witness his father’s triumphant return into Mycenae, he was told, incomprehensibly, that such was Agamemnon’s express wish. No further explanation was forthcoming.

Some days later Orestes and Electra were sitting miserably together in the draughty hall at Midea when Podargus came up to them wringing his mottled hands. Something terrible had happened in Mycenae, he declared. They must brace themselves for a shock, for he could see no gentle way of breaking the news that their father had been assassinated.

Electra’s face whitened as though she was about to faint. She uttered a little strangled cry, tried to stifle it further, and then burst into tears. Orestes sat in shock. He felt as if someone had struck him a blow on the back of his head.

Then he demanded, ‘Who has killed him?’

But Podargus merely shook his gaunt head, grim-lipped. The situation in Mycenae remained confused, he said. He had told them the little that he knew. When more information became available he would share it. Now they must prepare to mourn and make their offerings for their father’s shade.

Some time would pass, therefore, before Agamemnon’s children learned that their father’s assassin was their mother. The source of that information was a serving-woman called Geilissa, who was one of the small band of guards and retainers who had accompanied the children on their journey from Mycenae to Midea. She had known Orestes and Iphigenaia since infancy and had been wet-nurse to Electra, but she and Clytaemnestra had often been at odds over the Queen’s cold way with her children. Geilissa never doubted where her own warm loyalties lay, and she had been included in the party against Clytaemnestra’s better judgement only because Electra declared that she would refuse to go without her. Geilissa herself was glad enough to put Mycenae behind her and take care of her charges once more during their sojourn in Midea.

A cheerful soul, she had quickly made friends with the servants of the house, and it was from them that she learned the truth about the death of Agamemnon. With her own secret suspicions now confirmed, Geilissa saw how grave a threat these circumstances must pose to the welfare of the two children. Yet sooner or later the truth must come out. Better that they heard it from her than from some careless stranger.

So once again Orestes was forced to listen while a person he trusted told him things so terrible that he could hardly bear to hear them. Already distraught from the news that her father was dead – a grief that was as instinctive as it was emotional, for the girl had no retrievable memories of Agamemnon – Electra was devastated by this further revelation. She sat with her hand across her mouth, trying to suppress her wailing. Orestes sat beside her, gripping her shoulders as she rocked in his arms.

‘It is Aegisthus,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘The villain has poisoned her mind. It must be his foul hand behind this thing. I should have killed him long ago.’

Anxiously Geilissa hissed, ‘You must keep your voice down, master. Lord Podargus is not of your father’s party.’

Orestes looked across at the nurse in bewilderment as he pieced together the long, manipulative process by which he had been separated from his friend, cut off from contact with his returning father, and sent to a place where he could be held in check. His mind was working quickly now. He was not a guest in Midea: he was a prisoner. His mother would send for him when she was ready. She would tell him that he had a new father and must learn to love and respect him. And if he failed to obey? Orestes remembered what Aegisthus had said to Pylades. He remembered the hostility he had glimpsed in the man’s eyes when he had made his own mistrust for him plain. Aegisthus had no love for him. As far as Aegisthus was concerned, he was Agamemnon’s brat. The man must be living in fear that a day must come when Orestes would seek to avenge his murdered father.

And he was right to fear it.

But for the moment Aegisthus held all the power. Only Clytaemnestra stood between Orestes and death, and Clytaemnestra had already killed her husband. Was she capable also of killing her son?

In an insane world where fathers killed their daughters, it was entirely possible.

For the first time in his young life, Orestes felt consumed by fear. Somehow he must get away from Midea. He must go to Pylades. His friend would take care of him in Phocis. He would know what to do.

It was Geilissa who arranged for his escape. On her way through the market-place, she observed a Sicilian merchant dealing in slaves who appeared to take reasonable care of his valuable human stock. When she learned that he would soon be moving on, it occurred to her that Orestes might be smuggled out of the city among his train. Geilissa discussed the idea with a friend she trusted from the old days in Mycenae – a grizzled warrior who had lost an eye serving at Troy with Agamemnon. When neither of them could come up with a less risky plan, she approached the merchant and quickly discovered that his venal soul had no loyalties in Argos other than to his desire for profit. Once sure of her ground, she set about persuading him that his desire would be well served if he delivered safely to the court of King Strophius in Phocis a certain person whose identity must not be disclosed in Midea or any other city through which they might pass.

‘Including Mycenae?’ the merchant shrewdly asked.

‘Mycenae, above all, is to be avoided,’ Geilissa said.

The Sicilian opened his hands. ‘I look to do good business in Mycenae.’

‘And doubtless you will,’ Geilissa answered, ‘on your return from Phocis. King Strophius is a wealthy man. He will compensate you well for the delay.’

‘And what assurances do I have of this?’

Geilissa unwrapped from a cloth the casket in which were gathered all the jewels and golden ornaments that Electra had insisted on bringing to Midea. ‘These are already worth more than all your slaves. You shall have the casket when you leave the city with my friend safely concealed in your train.’

‘Let me think about this a little.’ Smiling, the Sicilian made a self-deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘I am a timid man.’

Geilissa watched him stroke his beard. ‘Think too long,’ she said, ‘and you may begin to wonder what there is to prevent you from taking the casket and then betraying my friend to those who mean him harm. You should be aware, therefore, that were you to do such a thing, there are those who will not rest till they have hunted you down and cut your tongue out of your throat and divided your manhood from your loins.’

The merchant studied her for a long moment with a ringed hand at his mouth. Then he lowered the hand to reveal a sour smile. ‘You reason like a Sicilian,’ he said. ‘But I will do this thing for you. Pray tell your friend that this humble merchant is at his service.’

That evening they untied the long hair that Orestes wore clubbed at his neck, dressed him in one of Electra’s gowns and wrapped around his head and shoulders a shawl that she had embroidered with figures of prowling lions and winged griffins. Geilissa started with shock when she looked at the finished effect, for in the unsteady light of the oil-lamps, it might have been his dead sister, Iphigenaia, standing demurely there.

So Orestes escaped from Midea early the next morning as one among a coffle of slaves. Unaware that the son of Agamemnon was slipping through their guard with a kitchen knife clutched under the folds of his pretty shawl, the sentinels at the gate paid scant attention to the train. Almost a month later he was welcomed to safety by Pylades with tears and open arms. Denied their chance of glory in Troy, and with the world at home turned hostile round them, the young lions began preparing themselves for the day when they too would play a significant part in the continuing drama of the long catastrophe that was the Trojan War.

As the reader will recall from my account of the day when Dolon the fisherman brought us the news that the war had ended, Ithaca also had a number of young lions frisking about the streets, and even before Troy fell, they had already begun to make a nuisance of themselves. That’s how we thought of it at first – as no more than a nuisance, for we Ithacans might have our feuds and quarrels and grudges, and blood might even be shed at times, but murder was rare on the island and we lacked any talent for evil on the grand scale with which it flourished in Mycenae and the other great cities of the world. So King Laertes and his ministers did little more than sigh over the noise of drunken revelry in the streets of the town at night. But out of small neglected troubles larger problems grow, and soon there were signs that Antinous and the gang of young men who followed his lead were getting out of hand.

The first of the truly bruising encounters between Telemachus and Antinous took place at the Feast of Pan in the spring of the year after the war had ended. At that time the mood of the island was gloomy and apprehensive. Diotima, who had been priestess of Mother Dia’s shrine on the island for longer than anyone could remember, had died during the course of a hard winter. Because she was already very old, her death came as no surprise, but she had outlived all the women who knew the ways of the snake well enough to succeed her, so the power of the shrine itself began to wane.

No one took her death harder than King Laertes and his wife Anticleia. They too were old, and each day that failed to bring news of their son increased their grief and anxiety. Laertes had been eager to lay down the burdens of kingship for many years, and the business of exacting tribute from men younger and more ambitious than himself, and of giving justice among quarrelsome islanders, was increasingly a trial to his soul. So to Queen Anticleia’s concern for her son was added the further strain of watching her husband’s strength fail. Her nights were sleepless and her appetite poor. Never a large woman, she began to shrink visibly, both in weight and stature. Soon people began to mutter that if her son did not return she might simply die from grief.

In these circumstances, Penelope had to be strong for everyone and her faith did not fail. Whatever private anxieties troubled her nights, she remained ever hopeful, refusing to allow any other possibility but that her husband was alive and on his way home. Yet she had not seen Odysseus for more than ten years, and there must have been times when she had difficulty remembering what he had looked like then, let alone imagining how he might have been changed by war.

For a time, everyone’s spirits were lifted by the news that a Zacynthian sailor called Axylus had returned to his island, having walked hundreds of miles overland from Euboea where he had been cast ashore after his ship went down. Summoned to Ithaca, he reported that he had been among the survivors of a disastrous raid on Ismarus in which many men, including the brother of Prince Amphinomus, had been killed. He was certain, however, that Odysseus had managed to escape from the skirmish on the Ciconian shore, though how he had fared in the storm that had wrecked his own ship, Axylus was unable to say.

This was the first definite news that Penelope had received and she preferred to let it strengthen her hopes rather than darken her fears. Telemachus chose to share her optimism and draw strength from it; but when Amphinomus returned to Ithaca after his time of mourning was complete, and the boy watched his mother receive her friend, weeping, with open arms, his mood turned sullen again.

Though he tried to elicit my sympathy, I saw nothing wrong in the friendship. Sitting side by side at the high table or walking together on the cliffs above the expansive glitter of the sea, Amphinomus and Penelope might have been taken for a brother and sister who shared a lively affection and were always sensitive to each other’s shifts of mood and feeling. So it seemed to me there was something excessive in the way Telemachus kept watch, like a prick-eared dog, over his absent father’s wife. Only after a time did I come to see that his heart was riven with a kind of jealousy. Perhaps he couldn’t bear it that anyone – least of all this handsome prince out of Dulichion – should be more intimate with his mother than he was himself? Whatever the case, sooner or later his anger was going to turn violent. It happened at the Festival of Pan.

The Spring Feast is always a bawdy and boisterous affair. Shepherds come from all over the island and, once the sacred offerings have been made, there is much eating and drinking and many hours of dancing and singing of songs. Commonly enough, a fair proportion of the children born each year are sired during the course of that night, not all of them in wedlock. Because the winter had been bitter and everyone had been miserable for so long, the revelry was wild that year. The heat of the sun lay heavy on the afternoon, the wine was strongly mixed, and fathers looked to their daughters as Antinous and a gang of randy young men paraded around the awnings with long leather phalluses protruding from the goatskin clouts they wore.

I was in luck myself that day – a plump young woman from a village over by Mount Neriton sat near me as I sang. She had honey-brown skin and thick hair, and an encouraging way of dipping her eyes. Later we found our way to a sunlit glade beneath the trees. She was my first, and it wounded my heart to discover a day or two later that she was already pledged to a prosperous shepherd in her own part of the world; but I have sometimes wondered whether his firstborn son has the gift of singing verses too. In any case, being so pleasantly occupied, I didn’t learn what had happened elsewhere until Peiraeus told me after the event.

Waiting till late in the day when all the royal party apart from the prince had retired, Antinous asked Telemachus if he would judge the merit of a satyr play that he and Eurymachus were improvising for the people’s entertainment. To my friend’s astonishment, Antinous took the part of a woman overwhelmed by the blandishments of her lover, who was played by Eurymachus. Speaking in a high-pitched voice and fluttering his eyelids, Antinous allowed his hand to stray towards the grotesque codpiece protruding from between Eurymachus’s thighs. Only when he released an amorous sigh and squeaked, ‘But what if my husband should return, Amphinomus?’ did the true nature of the game become apparent.

Before anyone realized what was happening, Telemachus had thrown himself at Antinous, knocked him off the wine-stained trestle-table where the young man reclined like a whore on a couch, and fastened his hands about his throat.

By the time Eurymachus and Leodes pulled the boy away, Antinous was choking and retching for air. Telemachus was still much smaller than the man he had attacked, and left to his own malevolent devices, Antinous might have inflicted a terrible beating on him. But some of the less drunken shepherds had been disgusted by the play, and many of them had no love for the family of Eupeithes. Three stood up from their benches making it plain that no harm would come to their prince as long as they were there to prevent it. Two of them were very burly. The other, an older man with a broken nose, thoughtfully weighed the curve of his crook in his hand.