Steep Wilusiya (Age of Bronze) (9 page)

On her lap, she held a wooden tablet, hinged in the middle.  Wax, colored yellow with orpiment, covered the inner surfaces of the tablet.  With a small, pointed stick, the queen scratched a series of symbols into the soft wax.

"What are you doing, Mamma?" asked a slender boy at her knee.  "Are you writing to Pappa?"  He leaned over to see the marks she had made, idly scratching his thigh through his short kilt.

"No, Orésta, I am not writing to your father," the wánasha answered impatiently, waving him back.  "This tablet will go to my cousin, queen Penelópa.  Now, stop pestering me."

The boy stepped back.  Orésta thought hard, one hand rising to his head, shaved but for a long lock of childhood at the back of his head and a shorter lock over his brow.  "I do not remember Aunt Penelópa.  Did I ever see her?"

With an exasperated sigh, Klutaimnéstra raised her head to look at him.  He squirmed under her gaze, dropping his eyes to his sandals, wiggling his toes.  The queen forced a smile.  "Yes, my son, but you were very small.  I do not expect you to remember.  But Aunt Penelópa is married to that dreadful pirate, Odushéyu.  You have heard your father and me speak of him."

Orésta's round face brightened.  He hopped in place, fingering the ends of the leather strap that held up his embroidered kilt.  "I remember Uncle Odushéyu.  He brought me a toy grinding woman from Mízriya.  And he told me that on one of his islands there lives a giant man with only one big eye in the middle of his forehead."  He made a circle with his thumb and index finger and held it to his forehead to demonstrate.

The wánasha frowned.  "You should not listen to that man's lies, my son.  It'ákans are people like us.  Queen Penelópa rules them now, while king Odushéyu is away, just as I rule Argo and Lakedaimón, while your father and Uncle Meneláwo and Aunt are across the sea.  Now stop asking questions.  Go play with your sisters.  I have important things to do."

The boy pouted and pulled at the long topknot growing from the back of his head.  "I do not like to play with Lawódika," Orésta whined.  "When we spin our tops, hers always knocks mine down.  And K'rusót'emi says she is too big for that sort of thing."

"Orésta, I am busy," Klutaimnéstra snapped.  "Where is your cousin, 'Ermiyóna?  Ai, never mind.  She must be taking her nap by now.  Ask your nursemaid to take you for a walk."

"Let me stay and watch you, Mamma, please," the boy begged, trying to sit on his mother's knees.  "I will be quiet, I promise.  I will sit on the hearth and I will not make a sound."

Klutaimnéstra sighed, pushing him off her lap.  "All right, my son.  But, no questions, no matter what you see or hear."

"Yes, Mamma," Orésta smiled and he bounced toward the platform of plastered brick in the center of the room.  He sat on the floor beside the smoke-blackened hearth and leaned his narrow shoulders against one of the four wooden columns that supported the opening in the roof over the fireplace.  With busy fingers, he reached up to tap the discolored bronze sheets that sheathed the lower end of the pillar.

A tall man entered the throne room, the dark whiskers on his chin long and oiled, his upper lip recently shaved.  Thick, woolen robes draped his thin shoulders, covering him from his throat to his toes.  At the sight of the kilted child, the man frowned.  Deep lines creased his cheeks.  "Wánasha Klutaimnéstra, you sent for me?"

The queen's eyes did not leave the tablet in her hands.  She continued to press her stylus into the yellow wax as she spoke.  "Yes, Aígist'o.  I have important business for you to do.  You are Agamémnon and Meneláwo's cousin.  As their closest kinsman, you must help me to administer the kingdoms of Argo and Lakedaimón."  As she spoke, she finished her scratching in the yellow wax.

"I will do whatever you desire, wánasha," Aígist'o answered.  "Of course.  But are matters of state fit for the ears of little boys?"

Klutaimnéstra raised her head abruptly.  The motion set the strings of beads clattering in her long, reddened curls.  She turned cold eyes on the robed man.  "It is for me to say what is fit for the ears of my children."

Aígist'o ground his teeth, but bent his head submissively.  "Yes, of course, my lady."

"Now," the queen continued brusquely.  "I have written to the wánasha of It'áka.  You must see that this tablet reaches her before the first festival of vines this winter.  I will write another letter that you must send to Médeya in Kep'túr.  We must take advantage of the time while these godless kings with their newfangled ways have left our lands.  This may be our last chance to restore the holy ways of our ancestors.  If we do not act now, all of Ak'áiwiya's children will face misfortunes unlike anything we have yet known, especially our daughters.  Too many harvests have been spoiled by the impiety of the wánaktes.  The people are restless.  They can see that the gods are displeased with the changes Ak'áiwiya has seen.  Go now, Aígist'o, find a trustworthy messenger.  Then return to me.  We must plan an appropriate homecoming for Agamémnon."

Orésta shivered by the hot fire at the coldness in his mother’s voice.  He opened his mouth to speak to her, but found he did not have the courage.  Quietly, he crept from the hearth to his bed chamber and began to cry.

"What is the matter, Orésta?" asked a soft voice.  The boy wiped tears from his eyes to see a girl of twelve entering the room, her short curls now growing between her long childhood locks.  She was as plump as her brother was slim.  She wore a bodice like the queen's, her budding breasts showing above the red-dyed linen, a simple, blue skirt dropping to her small ankles.

Orésta ran to his sister and threw his arms around her.  "Ai, Lawódika, Mamma and Pappa are fighting again."

"How can they fight?  Pappa has not come home, has he?" asked the girl, pushing her brother away.

"No, but Mamma is in the mégaron talking to Uncle Aígist'o.  She is saying bad things.  I think she hates Pappa."  Orésta began to cry again.  "Owái, I wish he would come back soon."

Tears came to his sister's eyes too.  But she was angry.  "Pappa did a very bad thing to our big sister.  I hate him, too, just like Mamma."

"Do not say that!" the boy shouted.  Orésta hit his sister again and again, making her scream.  "Pappa did not kill Ip'emédeya.  He did not!"

Lawódika fled into the dark corridor shrieking, her brother close behind her, still trying to hit her.  An older girl came running from the women's apartments at the sound.  She took Lawódika by the arm and reached for Orésta with her free hand, trying to keep the two apart.  "Sister, be still.  Be quiet, little brother.  You will wake your cousin.  'Ermiyóna is sleeping."

In her bed, at the back of the chamber that the older girl had just left, 'Ermiyóna sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and unseeing.  "Mamma!" she cried in sudden terror, backing against the wall.  "Mamma!  Mamma!"  Like a wild animal, cornered in the hunt, she struck out blindly when her cousins tried to comfort her.  Kicking, scratching, biting, the little girl held the older children at bay, rending the air with frenzied screams.

Unable to cope, the older girls ran weeping to the mégaron.  "Mamma," Lawódika wept, "The maináds have caught 'Ermiyóna again.  Make her stop screaming.  Mamma, please make her stop."

Klutaimnéstra went with her daughters, sighing in exasperation at the interruption.  But 'Ermiyóna fought her aunt's embrace as well, screaming and kicking with all her childish strength.  "Sweet Diwiyána," the Argive wánasha exclaimed, as she struggled to hold her sister's frantic child.  "What am I to do?"

Little by little, 'Ermiyóna's cries subsided.  At length, she accepted the soft arms and sobbed on her aunt's shoulder, clinging to Klutaimnéstra's hair with white-knuckled fists.  The queen soothed, "Hush, little one, hush.  Your auntie has you.  No one will hurt you.  You are safe here, 'Ermiyóna.  I will not let anyone harm you."

Lawódika clung to her older sister in the doorway of the bed chamber, both girls crying.  When Aígist'o came up behind them, they threw their arms around him, begging him to do something.  "I will do what I can," he told the children gently.  "'Ermiyóna should be sent away to the sanctuary at Put'ó, where the priestess of oracles can train her to listen to whatever dáimon is possessing her.  I am a priest and I know about such things.  'Ermiyóna has a gift.  It must not be wasted."

Klutaimnéstra frowned at Aígist'o over the shoulders of the weeping child in her arms.  "Perhaps," the queen said.  "Yes, in another year or two…when things are settled…perhaps I will do just that."

Beside his mother on the bed, Orésta patted 'Ermiyóna's trembling hands.  Wiping away his own tears, he told the little girl, "When I grow up, I will marry you, 'Ermiyóna.  I will always protect you.  I will never let any pirates carry you away when you are my queen."

'Ermiyóna lifted her red face and turned her dark eyes to her cousin's face.  "Do you promise?"

aaa

When the sun was well up in the sky, men filed from encampment and city alike in long streams to collect their dead.  Above the fortress and the plain, the air was thick with flies and the hillsides echoed to the barking of wild dogs and the cawing of carrion birds.  All the living were sick at heart, contemplating the magnitude of the task.  They ate little that morning, and spoke less.  After two days in the fields, unattended by men, the corpses were swollen from the heat, torn by bronze and by the teeth and beaks of furred or feathered scavengers.

Many bodies turned out to be unrecognizable, even after the blood and dirt was washed away.  A procession of women bearing jars upon their heads trailed from the river to the plain throughout the day.  Work-roughened hands poured out jar after jar of water as the survivors tried their best to discover the identities of the fallen.  The bodies, some with their heads or limbs missing, were lifted into wagons, or carried on the backs of donkeys.  But vehicles and animals were few by then.  Many of the dead were simply dragged by the feet or carried on the shields and on the shoulders of their kinsmen, some to the shoreside camp, others to the citadel on the hill.  Men of each side were preoccupied with their own losses and did not care whether their enemies thought them weak.  Tears fell from the eyes of Assúwans and Ak'áyans alike, despite the orders of their kings not to show their grief.

By midday, many pyres were burning alongside the fortified citadel that dominated the plain, one for each of Wilúsiya's ten clans.  Kashánda worked steadily in the marketplace of Tróya, leading the women as they sang lamentations, calling upon the protecting deities of Assúwa.  Her arms were soon bloodied past the elbows, as she parted the water birds' entrails, trying to read the enigmatic messages of the gods, and to apportion the meat among the kinsmen of the dead.  As the sun god's chariot wheel dipped into the western sea at the end of the day, the people gathered at their clans' pyres.  They called the names of their fallen loved ones, shearing a lock of hair to honor each one.  It was the only individual attention each dead man received, as meat and milk were scarce.  A single offering had to serve all the slain of each clan.  The ashes of the fallen were gathered into large urns, a mix of kinsmen's remains, to be stored until a proper burial could be afforded them all, with a proper funeral feast complete with libations of wine, and the blood of sacrificial victims.  Subdued, oppressed by sadness and fear of the future, the Wilúsiyans ended their rites at sunset and went to their homes, their bellies empty, their hearts unsatisfied.