Oracle (8 page)

Guards peered down as they entered the gate. One of their own men saluted, and got a wave in return.

The narrow road with its tall walls continued. It would be easy to spear anyone down here, thought Nikko, to capture any enemy of the High King.

All at once they reached two gateways, smaller than the big lion gates. Orkestres turned to go down to the right, with Nikko and Thetis. He waved his hand to their companions. ‘Good rest and good homecoming,’ he called.

‘Wait!’ The most senior of the guards ran down to them. ‘All slaves go straight to the palace. You know the rules.’

Orkestres stared. ‘My good man, these children are only valuable because I can train them. They need to come with me.’

‘The children are tributes, same as barley or goats would have been,’ said the man stubbornly. ‘They’re slaves like any others. The Chamberlain will decide what the King wants with them.’

‘What does the King need most? A couple of untrained slaves, or acrobats to make him smile?’

‘Not my business to decide. Nor yours.’

Nikko put his arms around Thetis. She felt cold, and very still.

‘Very well,’ said Orkestres shortly. He took Thetis’s hand, then Nikko’s, as though to stop the other man leading them away. ‘I will see the Chamberlain myself. Will that suit you?’

The man nodded.

The three of them turned left, and began to walk along the paving stones, up toward the shadows of the palace.

It was growing dark—darker still in the shadows of the walls. On either side Nikko could see through open doorways and windows into rooms, lit by hearth fires; people lying on their sleeping platforms, or eating final hunks of bread. His stomach rumbled. They had missed the midday meal so they could get to Mycenae by dark.

Some of the rooms were dark, with no fires lit. But every building was larger than any in their village; many larger even than the hall where they had stayed on the way, rising up higher than any house he’d ever seen.

The smells were strange too. Along with the normal smells of people—meat being grilled, fresh bread (his stomach rumbled again)—were other scents: animals he had never smelled before and fragrances more powerful than any from the wildflowers on the mountain back home, though there were no flowers to be seen.

The road curved past the palace, its white stone walls still shining high in the last of the sunlight. A massive staircase led upward to what looked like a broad terrace. But Orkestres walked instead to giant wooden door, similar to the doors back at the hall, with bronze hinges and studs, and pulled it open.

It looked like a cave inside, but was bigger than any
cave Nikko had ever seen, and lit by the strange flaming torch things he had seen on the journey here. The shadows ran and twisted and the flames wavered in the breeze as if alive.

Or the shadows of the dead, thought Nikko—thinking of the bones along the road—gathered here to haunt the men who killed them.

But no one else seemed worried by the shadows. Even Thetis leaned forward, more fascinated by the giant room’s contents than afraid. There were huge pots, bigger than Nikko had ever seen, sealed and rubbed shiny and waterproof with beeswax. Cheeses hung from the ceiling. Further in, white shapes were suspended in the darkness. Nikko peered closer. He could make out legs and heads…

For a moment he thought they were men, dead men hung here below the palace. But then he realised they were pigs, ready to be roasted, just like any wild boar caught back at the village was hung up and stripped of guts and bristles.

It was only then he saw the man. He was short, Nikko’s height perhaps, but round as an oil pot. It was impossible to tell his age. His head was bald, his skin too puffed with fat to show wrinkles, blown out like the pig’s bladder the village boys sometimes kicked around the huts. His eyes looked like a pig’s eyes too: small and intelligent. He held a slab of wet clay in one hand and a stick in the other. On either side of him stood two men with bare chests, wearing white kilts, each also holding a clay tablet and stick.

‘So, that makes five hundred pots of barley, and half that of wheat…not enough to see us through winter,
but the ships from Euboea and the other islands haven’t come in yet.’ He glanced up at Orkestres. ‘So, you are back, Orkestres. How was the tribute gathering this year? But what are these?’ He stared at Nikko and Thetis. ‘I gave no orders to bring back slaves this year. Slaves must be fed, and the harvests have been poor. As it is half the looms will be silent by spring, and the weavers must still be fed.’

‘My Lord Chamberlain.’ Orkestres stepped forward. ‘It is all my responsibility. These children have talent. Great talent. Under my instruction they will be a marvel. Surely it is the heart of both our jobs to see His Majesty happy.’

‘It is
my
job to see that no one in Mycenae starves this winter.’

Orkestres glanced at Nikko and Thetis, then at the Chamberlain’s assistants. They were making no pretence of counting the pots now. ‘Perhaps if we discussed this privately?’

The Chamberlain stared, then shrugged. He stepped further into the big room, beyond the light of the torches. Orkestres followed him, gesturing to Nikko and Thetis to stay where they were.

Nikko could hear the ponies nearby; the guards must have been unloading them. One neighed softly, scenting his stable perhaps, and was answered by another down the hill.

‘Don’t worry. Orkestres will keep us safe,’ whispered Nikko. He didn’t know if he was reassuring Thetis or himself.

At last Orkestres stepped back out of the darkness. He nodded to the men with their clay tablets, took
Thetis’s hand, then Nikko’s. He began to march them down the hill.

‘I think…I think it’s all right,’ whispered Nikko behind their trainer’s back. But how had Orkestres convinced the Chamberlain to let them go?

Thetis touched her throat, and then pointed at Orkestres.

Nikko peered up at the acrobat into the darkness. Thetis was right. Orkestres’s gold chain was gone.

The dark was thick by the time they reached the two gates again, though the stone walls and road reflected enough starlight for them to find their way. Down through the right-hand gate now, along another high-walled road, then suddenly their feet no longer trod on stone, but on what felt like soft green grass, the sort that grew by the stream, not the wiry tussocks of the hills.

They were in a courtyard with long buildings on three sides. Most were dark, the doorways and windows shut against the night, but the flicker of flames or slush lamps through the cracks in some of the shutters gave enough light to see.

‘Home,’ said Orkestres softly. ‘Come on. This way.’ He lifted Thetis up, just as a voice called out of the nearest door. ‘Orkestres, you son of a she-pig, is that you? You promised you’d be back half a moon ago. You’d better have brought me a decent gift, this time, or it’ll be a cold bed for you come swallow time.’

The door opened. Beyond it a fire had sunk to glowing coals, with a few hastily thrown sticks beginning to flare in the dimness.

The woman was as fat as the Chamberlain, and even shorter. Her hair was a bright gold, unlike any other hair Nikko had ever seen, plaited and wound on top of her head. She wore trousers like the ones Orkestres performed in, but these were down to her ankles, and of some soft cloth, woven in squares of red and cream and yellow, and her shirt was red as well. A chain of red stones sparkled like the sunlight around her neck. She held up an olive-oil lamp like the ones used back in the hall, and stared at them, looking them straight in the face instead of sideways, with her face modestly averted. ‘Well, what have you brought me?’

Orkestres laughed. He hugged her, taking care to avoid spilling the oil from the lamp, and kissed her round red cheek.

‘A string of pearls as large as pigeons’ eggs, and a bolt of silk as well.’

‘Humph. Time was when that might even have been true.’ She held the lamp up higher. ‘Who are these? Little lambs you’ve brought me for the pot?’

‘These, my dearest Dora, are the children who are going to make our fortune all over again. The girl can leap, the boy can catch. He’s a fair singer too, and makes his own music. The next time the King sends me out it won’t be to squalid villages. It will be to the King of Athens—’

‘And pigeons will lay those pearls instead of eggs,’ said the woman, Dora, dryly. ‘Well, come on, come in, don’t stand there like cracked statues. The girl—what is your name child?—must be frozen.’

‘Her name is Thetis. She doesn’t speak,’ said Nikko.
‘And I am Nikko, her brother.’ Once he would have added ‘son of Giannis’. But not now.

Dora gave them a sharp look, shepherding them into the narrow door. ‘Why doesn’t she talk? Bewitched? Or born like that?’

Nikko tried to think of the safest answer. ‘Our father made her swear she wouldn’t speak,’ he said at last.

‘Why in the name of the Mother’s three faces would he do that?’

Nikko shrugged.

‘That’s men for you. And I include you, Orkestres. Look at you, just one thin cloak and your legs and chest still bare, showing off your muscles like a strutting pigeon for the world and his donkey to see. Tomorrow your bones will be aching and you’ll be calling for me to rub them with myrtle oil.’

She put her arms round Nikko’s and Thetis’s shoulders, and ushered them into the room, shutting the door quickly against the chill.

‘Warm yourself by the fire while I get this dumb ox of mine into a hot bath. There is nothing like hot water for easing sore joints.’ She nudged Orkestres. ‘And I bet you that string of pearls I didn’t get that yours are aching like rats are nibbling them. I always keep a couple of big pots by the fire so there’s warm water in plenty,’ she added to Nikko and Thetis. ‘You can bathe too as soon as Orkestres is out.’

She bustled out through another door, carrying the lamp and pushing Orkestres before her.

Nikko looked round. The fire in the centre of the room was flaring brightly again, lighting the room with
a dim red glow. The walls were painted, like those back at the hall, but they were too far from the fire to make out the scenes. The floor was stone covered with bearskin carpets, warm and soft under his feet. There was a table—he had learned that word on the journey—made of shiny wood and with its feet carved into what looked like lion heads, and another rug under wooden seats. They too shone with polish. A big loom—larger than any he had seen at home—stood at one end of the room, and coils of thread hung from the walls.

There was no bed platform. Nikko sat on one of the chairs, and lifted his hands to warm them by the fire. Thetis sat on the rug at his feet.

‘They seem kind,’ he whispered.

Thetis thought for a moment. She nodded, but held her hands up too in a
who knows?
gesture.

There were noises all around them, now they had relaxed enough to hear: far-off sounds of laughter and music, stools being scraped on stone, a man yelling in anger. In the next room Nikko could hear low voices, water being poured into a bath, and then Orkestres’s sigh. The scent of something fragrant filled the room, like herbs up on the mountainside.

Dora came in again, her small fat feet surprisingly quiet. They were soft white feet, with smooth heels. The feet of someone who has never had to push a plough or gather wood, thought Nikko.

‘Well, let’s have a look at you. Food first I’d say, and then baths too. Who knows what bugs you’ve picked up on your travels and I’m not having fleas in my good
blankets. I’ve filled the pots to warm again. You sit here while I bring back some food.’

She laughed at the expression on their faces. Her teeth were good, with only a few missing at the sides. ‘No, I’m not going hunting to bring you back a deer to roast. There’s food in the palace kitchens for anyone who wants it, after the King has been served of course. You sit here and rest, hmmm?’

Nikko nodded. Thetis’s head already leaned against his legs. She was almost asleep.

His eyes were closing too when Dora slipped back, shutting the wooden door behind her to keep out the autumn draught. She put her bundles down on the table and threw another log on the fire from the pile on the corner.

‘Orkestres not come in to eat? That one has the sense of a swallow. If he’s gone to sleep in the cooling water he’ll be too stiff to move tomorrow. Oh, there you are.’ As Orkestres wandered out, wrapped in a red wool cloak with a green border.

Nikko stared. Suddenly Orkestres’s hair and beard were grey, not black, and his eyes seemed smaller too.

Orkestres saw the stare. ‘I will rub the colour back in tomorrow, or Dora will. She has a better hand with dyes than me…Ah, it’s young men the audiences want to watch, not greyheads like me.’

‘But your eyes?’

Orkestres smiled. ‘Tricks to make you beautiful. Dora will show you those too. Now what have we got?’

‘Roast meat—mutton, I think—and wheat bread—the fancy breads had all gone—I was lucky to get this.
And figs and grapes and pomegranates.
I
had stewed quinces,’ Dora added with satisfaction, ‘and roast piglet too. It serves you right, coming back so late. You deserve to get so little.’ Dora handed Orkestres a pitcher of wine as she spoke.

‘So little?’ whispered Nikko. Thetis was awake now, staring at the food. Dora stroked her hair, then handed her some bread and meat. ‘You eat up, child, then we’ll get you to bed. And there’s no need to gulp it down, either.’ Thetis looked up at her, automatically chewing more slowly. ‘Poor half-starved little lamb. There’s all you want to eat from now on, so you can take your time and chew it slowly. Oh, we live well here,’ to Nikko. ‘Food, cloth, oils, wine, firewood and rooms to live in. Everything we need, we servants of the High King.’

Nikko thought of the prisoner who’d died that afternoon. He put down his meat, and picked up bread instead, and grapes. He felt he would be sick if he ate more.

‘We’ll have pallets brought down for you tomorrow, but the furs should be here any moment; you can snuggle up in those beside the fire—’ She broke off at a scratching on the door. A man came in, wearing the burnished kilt of a soldier, furs piled high in his arms.

‘Welcome back, Acrobat.’

Orkestres nodded.

He’s keeping his face away from the fire light so the soldier doesn’t see him with grey hair, thought Nikko. Suddenly he was glad Thetis was silent. How much would she have seen and spoken of already?

For a second he had an image of her small body hanging bleeding and lifeless by the road that was so clear he shivered.

‘Time for baths, and then for bed,’ said Orkestres quietly, as the sound of the soldier’s footsteps faded away up the cobbled road.

‘Exactly,’ said Dora. She reached up on tiptoe and kissed her husband’s cheek. ‘I think I am happy with my little lambs,’ she said softly. ‘Far better than that rope of pearls.’

The furs were soft, and thicker than any he’d ever felt. Maybe from one of those woolly animals, the sheep, thought Nikko. He could hear murmuring from the room next door, where Orkestres and Dora must be getting ready to sleep. Thetis was curled up against him, her breathing soft and steady. Her hair smelled of flowers from the bath, and from the scented oil Dora had combed through as it dried by the fire. He had just plaited his, without waiting for it to dry. The bath had made his body feel fresh and rested at the same time, and his stomach felt at peace with the good food.

Life here seemed full of luxuries…

…as long as you pleased the High King.