The Songs of the Kings (14 page)

3.

When Macris had delivered the message at the palace, he made his way to his quarters and called a servant to bring him water. He washed and combed his hair and changed his tunic, sweated and dusty from the hunt, for a clean one. He wanted to make sure that the main gate and the sally ports were properly manned and the men there decently turned out; and he could not do so looking unkempt himself. Despite the openness and apparent nonchalance of his manner, Macris was a reflective and practical young man, much given to considering his situation and prospects. He took very seriously the duties delegated to him by his father, as he did all duties, not because he saw any inherent virtue in doing so, but because such things were noticed, they gained a man credit. In the same spirit he sought always to follow the precepts of his father that one should strive not just to command but to be living proof of fitness to command. One should always be an example to others, always to the fore whenever there was hardship and danger and the prospect of spoils, just as one should take care to be clean and well turned out, with weapons in good order, when requiring these qualities in inferiors. Not to do so might get you a black mark, it might be remembered against you. However, though Macris loved his father, he knew that these precepts were not enough. His father, in fact, was a living proof that they were not enough. Years of danger and service, and he was left here as Agamemnon's man of trust while everyone who counted was on the way to Troy to make his fortune. His father was too loyal, a fault which Macris did not intend to let linger on into the next generation. He wanted more than to be a man of trust, much more: he wanted fame, he wanted wealth, he wanted Iphigeneia.

He began at the main gate and adjoining guardhouse. There was a permanent guard of four men here, relieved every six hours. They took turns, in pairs, to do lookout duty at a roofed post outside the gate, beyond the bastion, from where the western approaches could be surveyed—this western limit of the citadel, though the highest in altitude, was the easiest to approach, the slopes being gentler. The guardroom was built against the wall and open on the side of the gate, but there was still a haze of smoke inside and a smell of frying oil. The men on guard, in company with the three resident hounds, had just eaten the midday meal of beans and eggs. With considerable severity Macris told them to clear out the dogs and make sure they were wearing helmets and carrying spears when they went to unbar the gate to the visitors. “I've told you about these animals before,” he said. “And I've told you to keep that lookout post manned at all times. If you fail in it again I'll put the lot of you on punishment drill. First impressions are extremely important. We don't yet know who these people are. I don't want them to see bareheaded guards stumbling about, with dogs underfoot. I don't mean to say you should wear your helmets at all times, I realize they are hot in this weather. But you must wear them when you are in public view, they are part of your equipment.”

The men listened to him without expression. They were disgruntled, he knew, because he had come upon them unexpectedly. The duty officer normally inspected them only at the changing of the guard. A ridiculous practice, in Macris's view; if they always knew when the officer was coming, what kind of inspection was it? The fact that there had been no war fought on Mycenaean territory in living memory was no reason for slackness. He kept such opinions to himself, however—no sense in making oneself unpopular when there was nothing to be gained from it.

Next he went to take a look at the sally port in the northern wall. It was from the guard post on the ramparts here that the famous eagles had first been seen, haunting the spear side of the palace walls. So his father had told him—at the time he had been at sea with his uncle, somewhere east of the island of Melos. The usual regret came with this thought, the sense of having missed a chance. He knew himself to be brave. He had been trained to arms since his boyhood. He did target practice with the javelin every day and had bouts with sword and buckler whenever he could find a partner. He made a point of doing fifty press-ups every morning and working out with weights to keep in shape. And here he was, checking guard posts, trying to instill some sense of discipline into men who basically couldn't care less.

Men without ambition, he thought. The worst fault of all. Men like that would end up on the scrap heap. Troy was where the action was, Troy was the opportunity of a lifetime; her riches were celebrated by singers wherever people were gathered together; she had provided an honorable cause for quarrel, blessed by Zeus through the eagles. A returning hero, laden with booty; it was his only hope of being taken seriously in the marriage stakes. With Iphigeneia as his bride there would come royal rank, large grants of land. After that, the way was open. Agamemnon might not survive the war. Orestes was the only son, and he was already, at the age of ten, showing marked signs of mental instability, talking to himself and seeming to see presences in empty rooms. At that rate he would be off his head altogether by the time he came of age.

No, the prospects were there for the man who was man enough to seize them. And that man he felt himself to be. Apart from everything else, she was a beautiful girl with a great figure. He thought of her again now, as he had seen her at their meeting near the gate, her face framed by the scarf, the way she had met his eyes and glanced aside, the smile she had given him, teasing, yes, but not only that, there had been kindness for him in it. Thinking of this, spurring his horse forward, he felt capable of anything. It was not too late. Some dream was clouding the mind of his father, or some bad augury. But the old man would come round, there would still be time to join the army. In his heart was the hope, naturally unconfessed, that the adverse wind might last just a little while longer, just until he could get to Aulis.

The men at the sally port had seen the mounted party pass below them, had seen the red-and-white banners of Mycenae carried by the foremost. The riders had already started the ascent, they would soon be at the gate. Learning this, Macris stayed only moments, just long enough to assure himself that all was in order. He was making his way towards the cluster of stone houses on the south side of the citadel, one of which was used as a mess for the officers of the garrison, when he met on the road a small detachment of his father's people, clan members from the home region of Dendra. Their leader told him they had been detailed to await the visitors outside the gates, where the road drew level with the bastion.

Macris accompanied them and waited there at their head. They heard the horses' hooves striking on the stone of the road. Then the first riders came into view and Macris at once recognized Phylakos, the commander of Agamemnon's personal guard. Riding beside him was a man he did not know, some dozen years older than himself, very erect in his bearing, with strongly marked, impassive features. Behind these two came others whose faces he knew, all men under Phylakos's command. The numbers were less than had been reported—he counted fourteen.

He waited there as they advanced, two abreast now on the narrow approach between the bastion and the outer wall. His own people waited in a group, slightly to the rear of him. So long as he was there, they would not move without his order. Phylakos raised a hand in greeting but did not immediately slacken his pace, and for some moments it seemed as if he were expecting those before him to give way without further ceremony.

But Macris, apart from returning the salute, did not move. There was a procedure to be followed with strangers, even when they came accompanied by people known. Macris believed in procedures, and he saw no reason to relax the rule for the sake of a man whom he neither liked nor trusted.

Phylakos was obliged to rein in his horse and displeasure at this was written on his face. The man beside him eased forward a little in the saddle but made no other move. He was dark-bearded, with a high-bridged prow of a nose and a curving scar on his forehead. The dust of the journey lay on the riding mantle he wore over his shoulders. “We have ridden far today,” Phylakos said in his harsh, dragging voice. “We are in haste to see the Queen. Have them open the gate.”

Still Macris did not move. The blood had risen to his face at the other's tone, at the implication that he was not important enough to have the identity of the stranger announced to him. He took care to show nothing of this, however. “I do not know who it is that is with you,” he said.

“This is Diomedes,” Phylakos said, anger still in his voice. He made a brief gesture towards the youth before him. “Macris, son of Amphidamas.”

Both men laid hand on heart and slightly bowed their heads. Macris turned away quickly to order the gate opened. He was afraid it would show in his face, which always showed more than he liked despite all his striving, how impressed he was at this illustrious name, announced so brusquely. It must be a matter of first importance to have brought such a man from Aulis. Diomedes, whose father Tydeus had joined the expedition of the Seven against Thebes and been killed before the walls of the city. Diomedes, who at an age hardly greater than his own had marched against Thebes, together with the other sons of the Seven, the Epigoni, and razed it to the ground in vengeance for his father's death. Diomedes, who had provided eight ships, who headed the combined forces of Argos, Nauplia and Troezen. Macris was relieved to see that the men at the guardhouse moved briskly and were wearing their helmets and that there were no dogs in sight. It would be seen that he knew how to keep a guardhouse. It was not much to set against a record like that, but it was something.

The party passed through the gate and onto the ramp. Phylakos and Diomedes at once took the road to the palace. The remainder clattered down to the garrison barracks. Macris followed more slowly. He longed to know the purpose of the visit; but it would be a mistake to start questioning inferiors, to show oneself not only more ignorant than they but vulgarly curious into the bargain. These were points a man had to watch if he was in the business of establishing a reputation.

4.

The afternoon was almost over when the summons came for Iphigeneia. She and her younger sister, Electra, and Sisipyla and an older woman who had once been nurse to the princess were playing a game of throw and catch in the small open courtyard adjoining the south staircase. For the ball, Sisipyla had been sent to fetch an old cloth doll, a limp survivor of Iphigeneia's earliest childhood that still had a place in the box of old playthings in the princess's bedroom.

The nurse was on the heavy side and rather unwieldy, and she had not really wanted to play. They had found her spinning wool in a shady corner of the courtyard and Iphigeneia had coerced her into it. “We need four people,” she had said. “Less than four is no use at all.” And she had narrowed her eyes and looked intently at the nurse, in the way she had when meeting with opposition.

Sisipyla, watching this briefest of contests—the nurse did not resist long—had known at once why there had to be four players. The yard was square, the game had to be square too. She had long ago, while they were still children, recognized in her mistress an imperative need for things to match up and to be perfect; not only particular things, like her makeup or the combs in her hair, but forms and arrangements too, things you couldn't touch or really see, a puzzling matter for Sisipyla. She had watched, with the familiar sense of puzzlement, while Iphigeneia stationed the players in positions exactly corresponding to the angles made by the corners of the walls, forming an exact copy of the square.

The thing that gave the game its edge, however, was the opposite principle of disorder. None of the players could know whether the doll was to be thrown her way or not; it was permitted, it was even required, to make feints and pretended throws and to change direction at the last moment. The game had begun with a great deal of laughter but then deteriorated fairly quickly. Iphigeneia was getting crosser and crosser, first because the nurse dithered and fumbled, and this slowed the game down, then because Electra, in her eagerness to be tricky, would try to change direction at the very moment of throwing, and this made her aim erratic, so that the doll went flying at an impossible angle and could not be caught however quick one was.

“How could anyone be expected to catch that?” Iphigeneia demanded furiously, after the doll had come flailing at her knee-high. “Why don't you learn to throw straight?”

“Well, that's that,” Electra said, she too flushed and furious. “I won't play this game anymore, not ever.”

These words brought a certain pause; even at this early age she was known for one who kept her vows. The doll lay with arms outflung at Iphigeneia's feet. She had started life as an elegant doll, a luxury product, with black silk hair and slanting eyes made of dark amber and a cloth-of-gold dress with ivory buttons, naming-day gift of a vassal chieftain from the island of Cythera, off whose shores Aphrodite was said to have risen from the sea. But the doll was hairless now and she was blind—there were only the stitch marks where her eyes had been. Her gold dress was gashed here and there and the stuffing showed through.

Iphigeneia bent to pick the doll up. “You won't get your hands on Maia again, that's for sure,” she said.

“Who cares?”

“You won't touch her again.”

Sisipyla was swept by a rush of sympathy for her mistress. Whatever the others might think, she knew without needing to find the words in her mind that it was not Electra's erratic aim or scornful manner that was upsetting Iphigeneia now, but self-blame, the sudden sorrow of seeing her doll, the familiar companion of childhood, disheveled and defenseless, with her limbs sprawled out. She was trying, too late, to protect Maia and make things up to her.

“Whoever would want to touch your smelly old doll?” Electra said.

At this difficult moment, a woman named Crataeis, one of Clytemnestra's companions, entered the courtyard. She had been looking for the princess high and low, she said. The Queen required her presence immediately, was awaiting that presence even now in her apartments. Alone, the woman added, with a hostile glance at Sisipyla. What the Queen had to say was for her daughter's ears only.

Iphigeneia began to follow the woman across the courtyard, but realizing that she was still holding the doll, she turned back and handed it to Sisipyla. “Look after Maia for me,” she said, exchanging looks with her sister that were unforgiving on both sides. “You can keep her with you till I get back.”

Sisipyla, bearing the bedraggled Maia back to her room, thought how similar the sisters were in some ways, and wondered what Clytemnestra could have to communicate to her daughter so urgent that it could not keep till the evening hour, when Iphigeneia always attended on her mother. Something to do with the riders she had seen, half shrouded in dust, with the pennants flying above them. But they were from Aulis, she had heard. What possible message for Iphigeneia could come from men about to embark for war?

Maia lay on the narrow bed in an attitude of ruin and abandon. Light from the high window fell on the pale patches where her eyes had been and on her pulpy nose—Iphigeneia, when she was teething, had gnawed away at Maia's nose and reduced it to a mangled stump. After a while Sisipyla began to feel a certain horror at Maia, and did not want to look her way anymore. She waited, listening for footfalls, sitting on the floor with her back to the bed. While she waited the sun sank behind the horizon and the brief summer twilight came down. The old slave woman, whose task it was, came with a long-handled pan of fire and lit the lamps in the vestibule and in Iphigeneia's apartment.

Darkness had come when the princess returned, and she was accompanied by two attendants who had lighted her way with torches. Iphigeneia was standing between the bearers, and the torches were still burning when Sisipyla passed through into the vestibule, so that her first impression, coming from the dimness of her room, was of the leaping and trembling of reflected flame, on the walls, on the bronze standards of the torches, on the face of Iphigeneia and the silver threads of her bodice. The princess's expression was serious and exalted and she held her head high. She dismissed the torchbearers and waited till they had gone shuffling away in the loose felt slippers that all palace servants wore. Then she turned to Sisipyla and moved towards her, as if she wanted to speak low. Sisipyla saw her mistress's expression change, now that they were alone together, saw it become more openly and tensely excited, and was carried back in memory, in these moments before Iphigeneia spoke, to the radiant face of the six-year-old princess and the questions and the laughing men.

“They have come with a proposal of marriage,” Iphigeneia said. “You will never guess who it is.”

She paused for a moment, it seemed for effect rather than in expectation of guesses. In any case, Sisipyla made no attempt to reply. Her hand had risen in an unconscious movement to clutch loosely at the waist of her skirt.

“It is Achilles. He thinks of me day and night. He wants me—he can't wait till after the war. He wants me to come to Aulis and be married before the whole army. Just think of it, a thousand spectators. My mother is full of joy. That generation always exaggerates everything of course, but she says he is quite the most eligible hero alive today. And there is also the fact that he is of divine descent on the mother's side.”

Becoming aware now of Sisipyla's silence and stillness, she looked more closely at her companion's face, and saw there an expression that she altogether misunderstood. “Do you mean to say you didn't know that? No, it's no use, I can tell from your face that you didn't. Good heavens. His father was Peleus of Phthia, and he married the sea goddess Thetis. All the gods came to the wedding, which was a great distinction because it is very rare where a mortal is concerned. When Achilles was a baby Thetis dipped him in the river Styx to make him immortal, but she must have been thinking of something else at the time, she kept hold of his heel, so he is immortal in every part but that. My mother says I must have made a tremendous impression on him when we met, though it was only once and I was only in my tenth summer at the time. You were with me, you saw him too.”

Sisipyla had moved her hands to her sides now and she stood very straight. “I don't remember him,” she said.

“Don't remember him? A marvelous man like that? You really are hopeless. I remember him perfectly. There was something in the way he looked at me, even then—you can always tell. What I think myself is that he must have been repressing it all these years and now he is about to go into danger it has come bursting out, no longer to be denied. It's very romantic. He probably thinks, you know, there isn't much time, make hay while the sun shines. We must start to get ready, there is going to be a banquet in honor of Diomedes, he is the one that brought the proposal, he is a close friend of Achilles. My mother offered to send some of her women to help me dress, but I said I only needed you.”