The Blood Star (52 page)

He looked very much as if he would have been
just as happy not to, but the sight of it greatly delighted
Selana.

“It will be like living next to a god,” she
said.

That afternoon we dropped anchor near a small
settlement named, perhaps providentially, after Kephalos’
birthplace.

“Naxos!” he declared, throwing up his hands
in mock surrender. “So you have caught me again at last. Now I know
we have reached the place where I will lay down my bones.”

“Then you can have no objection to selling
the ship—she should fetch a good price, for the Phoenicians are
skillful builders, and it will give us more to invest in land and
seed.”

Poor Kephalos, he looked as if the cage door
had closed on him forever.

We were spared the trouble of deciding where
to stay, for there was but one tavern in Naxos, a village not any
larger than its namesake. I slept soundly that night, glad to be on
the solid earth, believing that a new life was opening for me and
that I had left the past behind me forever.

The next morning I was up and breakfasted
well before sunrise, for I wished to undertake a walking tour of
the surrounding countryside and see if this place of exile, chosen
almost at random, would answer my hopes for it.

What struck me at once was its great beauty.
The bay was shaped like a crab’s claw, and immediately behind its
white sand beach rose the gently sloping, tree-dappled hills,
leveled off here and there to form plateaus and hiding in their
midst valleys full of tall grass and wildflowers. And behind them
all, vast and solitary, a trail of thin black smoke rising from her
summit, was Mount Aetna. Selana had been right—it would be like
living next to a god.

And the soil was good. The volcano, I had
been told, scattered its fertile ash like a benediction all over
this side of the island. I could pick up a handful of the dark,
fragrant loam and it would cling to my fingers, almost alive.
Anything would grow in this, I thought. A man might have grain,
vines, fruit trees, anything.

I had only to look about me and my heart
swelled with happiness. The god had brought me to a paradise. That
night I made inquiry of the tavern keeper about purchasing
land.

“Most of the better sites nearby are
occupied,” he said, pulling his beard and regarding me mournfully
through watery blue eyes. Like most of the Greeks who had settled
here, he was from Euboea. “There is plenty of good, well-watered
land not two days’ journey from here, though you will have to pay
something to Ducerius, king of the Sicels, if you want to be left
in peace. He is an old thief who has never reconciled himself to
our presence here yet is afraid to make open war against us. We
find it wisest to offer him token submission and pay the taxes he
levels, for neither are we strong enough to drive him out. Look
south and you will find what you want. And, while you are about it,
consult the sibyl. She will be on your way.”

I must have looked puzzled, for he
laughed.

“You talk like an Athenian. Have you no
sibyls near Athens? This one is mad, mad since childhood. She
killed her mother being born and came into the world with her right
hand closed in a fist—no one has ever succeeded in getting her to
open it. She sits under a chaste tree, talking gibberish to
herself, but sometimes, if you leave an offering of food and wait
until sunset, she speaks with the voice of Phoebos Apollo. Though
mad, she gives good advice when the fit is on her and can be
trusted.”

“Where will I find her?”

“As I said, on the trail south. If you leave
when the sun rises you will find her in plenty of time before it
sets again. It is a pretty place she has chosen for herself, and
good land, though no one would dare to claim it while she is
there.”

“I will do as you recommend, my friend. I
thank you.”

As soon as I had mentioned the sibyl, Selana
was eager to come with me. And if Selana went, it meant that Enkidu
would follow, and finally even Kephalos agreed to accompany us,
which meant that Ganymedes had to come. Thus we decided we would
make it into an occasion. We would bring food and wine for five
days and sleep in the open like soldiers.

The next morning, while the sky was still a
pale gray, we left Naxos and followed the line of hills south. It
was an easy walk and the trail was well marked and crossed here and
there by small streams the waters of which were always cold and
delicious. Every few hours Kephalos would complain most bitterly
that he had to sit down and rest, yet in spite of these
interruptions we kept to a good pace.

At last, in the middle of the afternoon, we
came to a place where a large patch of high, level ground was
surrounded on three sides by meadow. Behind it was a long slope
leading up to a chain of rocky and forbidding looking mountains. To
the east, perhaps a two hours’ walk, was the sea.

In the center of the plateau was a tree with
at least seven trunks, each twisted about at odd angles like the
tentacles of a sea anemone. I was sure I had never seen another
like it, and still it seemed strangely familiar.

Beneath the tree sat hunched a filthy
creature, fleshless as if from long starvation, half-naked in a
tunic of greasy rags, watching our approach through eyes that
seemed to burn like embers. She could have been any age between
fifteen and fifty—it was difficult even to be sure she was a woman.
She was the sibyl.

“She frightens me,” Selana murmured, clinging
to my arm as if preparing to hide behind me.

“Then she must belong to the gods, for I did
not think any mortal creature was able to frighten you.”

“She does.”

We set down our packs at a suitably
respectful distance and waited. At last, at sunset, I took out a
pair of wooden bowls, filling one with wine and the other with
dried meat.

“This I will concede to you, Master.”
Kephalos relieved me of the open wine jar and lifted it to his
lips. “I too dislike the look of her and, besides, you have had
more experience than I with these sacred mysteries. I would not
dream of interfering.”

I took the bowls in my two hands and
approached the sibyl. When there were perhaps three paces
separating us I knelt on the ground and set the bowls down before
her. All the while her gaze never left me—she did not even glance
at my offerings. Her clenched hand she carried to her breast. She
stared at me through her tangled hair as if somehow she had been
expecting this visit but was not sure whether I had come for good
or ill. Neither was I.

“Holy One, I am here as a petitioner,” I
said, opening my hands in supplication. “If you have any word for
me, speak it.”

Almost at once her eyes went wide, as if with
the most appalling terror.

“Ashair!” she shouted breathlessly. “Ashair!
ASHair!”

It was the birthmark she saw, the bloody
stain on the inside of my right palm. I know she only wanted to
call it a star, but in her strange, strangled voice it sounded as
if she called the god’s name.

“Ashair.”

Slowly, the hand came down from her bosom
until she seemed to hold it under my gaze. This hand, which had
been clenched since birth, then began to open.

Each finger loosened, as if by a separate act
of will. If I had pried them apart with the point of a sword I
might have been acting in kindness, for the very bones seemed to be
breaking under the strain. As her hand opened she whimpered in pain
and the tears rolled down her face like drops of blood.

At last the sibyl looked up into my face,
half to reproach me and half beseeching my pity, and a gold coin
the size of a man’s thumb rolled out from between her fingers and
fell to the soft earth.

Will this be enough? her eyes seemed to ask.
Is this the task the gods have set for me?

I picked up the coin, turning it over. On one
side was the image of a coiled serpent, and on the other an
owl.

And the tree had been the one I had seen in
my vision, my waking dream. An owl had perched in its branches and
around its base had coiled a serpent. It was all fulfilled now. I
had been granted the sign for which I searched.

“Thank you, Holy One—you have answered my
every hope.”

The coin, since it was a sacred thing, I
dropped into her lap. Then I rose and went back to the others.

“We need go no farther,” I told Kephalos.
“Tomorrow we will return to Naxos, and the next day I shall see
King Ducerius and I shall purchase all the land that can be seen
from that tree. I will not disturb the sibyl, but it is here that
the god intends me to settle.”

“It seems you have disturbed her already,
Lord,” Kephalos answered. “Turn and look.”

Sure enough, she had risen to her feet and
was making her lame way toward the mountains.

There was a farmer who claimed to have seen
her a few days after we did, and local legend has it that she
climbed up Mount Aetna and threw herself into the fiery crater. I
cannot speak for the truth of these stories. I only know that I
never set eyes on her again.

XXII

In those days Sicily boasted many kings.
Ducerius, who called himself Master of the Sicels, claimed
sovereignty over the eastern half of the island, but other kings
ignored his pretensions and he was able to maintain his authority
only within the territory between Mount Aetna and the sea, and
hardly at all over the Greek settlers who had been arriving in a
steady trickle for the last fifty years.

Perhaps to compensate, his rule over his own
subjects was rapacious and cruel. So harsh was he that the native
peoples often preferred slavery under the Greeks, who hold all
other races in great contempt, calling them “barbarians,” to
liberty under their own lord. The Greeks, they said, at least
allowed them bread to eat.

And it was to Ducerius I went to buy the land
wherein the god had pledged I was to lay down my bones.

Like the Greek kings of antiquity, he dwelt
in an acropolis, a stone-walled fortress atop a bare, rocky hill.
It was an ancient structure, perhaps dating from a time when his
ancestors could call themselves Masters of the Sicels with a better
right, and the soldier in me could not but admire its defenses.
Over the main gate was carved a pair of female lions fighting over
the carcass of a dead faun. It seemed a fitting enough emblem.

As I crossed the central courtyard I was
struck by the noise of the place. It sounded like the Street of
Adad back in Nineveh, and I had only to look about me to see why.
Between the main watchtowers there were at least six forges
scattering sparks over the hardpacked earth, and the beat of the
metalsmiths’ hammers made the air tremble like the surface of a
pond across which the wind blows. Within these walls Ducerius
controlled the working of bronze inside his domain, and this was
both the source of his power over his own subjects and the reason
for his cautious hostility toward the Greeks—the Sicels he could
overawe with his weapons, but the Greeks understood the art of
working iron.

I walked through the great wooden doors of
the palace—so safe did Ducerius feel himself here that they were
not even guarded—and, after elbowing my way through the usual mob
of courtiers, idling soldiers and favor-seekers, I presented myself
to a gray-haired chamberlain who stood absently scratching his
bosom with a bony right hand as he stared into space. When I spoke
to him he seemed vexed at the interruption, and his eyebrows almost
crossed in annoyance.

You are a petitioner?” he asked, in a voice
like a reed flute, his tone suggesting that an answer in the
affirmative would justify him in dismissing me from existence.
“What is it you wish of the Great King?”

My friend the tavern keeper had explained how
matters stood at court, and so I was prepared. The chamberlain had
a large pocket in the front of his tunic and into it I dropped a
small leather purse containing the prescribed number of silver
coins.

“I wish to purchase a tract of land,” I said.
“I hope to farm it and live there by my own labor.”

The chamberlain wrinkled his nose, as if at
the offensive odor of sweat.

“You are, of course, a Greek.”

I nodded. I even smiled, although doubtless
his object had been to insult me—what else could he have imagined I
was, since our whole conversation had been carried forward in that
tongue?

“I will inquire whether the King will consent
to an audience. Be patient, for he is occupied with affairs of
state. Doubtless it will be some little time.”

He was not mistaken, for I waited for several
hours there in that vast and crowded hallway, the walls of which
bore the painted images of men in armor and women dancing naked in
front of strange and terrible gods, before I was finally admitted
into the royal presence. But at last, in the middle of the
afternoon, when my legs ached from standing, the gray-haired
chamberlain returned and, without a word, beckoned that I should
follow him.

The king sat on a wooden throne in a room no
wider than ten or twelve paces. He was dressed in a blue robe that
looked as if it had come from the loom that morning, but his black
hair and beard were matted and greasy looking. He had the face of a
man in late middle age who had kept his strength, with a heavy brow
and cheekbones that stood out as brown knobs.

His eyes, however, had that haunted look I
have seen before in rulers who know no law but their own will and
cannot govern even that. They were the eyes of a man who would
condemn a peasant to die for holding back five measures of grain to
feed his family.

“What is it you want of me?” he asked
sulkily. There was a half empty cup of wine on a table at his right
hand and a slave waited behind him with a jar, yet the king, it
seemed, did not drink to make himself merry. He glowered at me
savagely from beneath his eyebrows, as if with the next breath he
might order my head struck off.