Warriors in Bronze (44 page)

"Not in this downpour,' Menelaus mumbled. 'Be soaked to the skin before ... hie, sorry ... he'd gone a step.'

'He may be in the queen's apartments. Steady, Menelaus - hold my arm.'

Dim corridors lit by lightning flashes led to the doors of Pelopia's quarters - the rooms where, years before, we had witnessed our mother's adultery. A bundle like a sack of clothes huddled beside the door post. I tapped on the panels and called. Menelaus, stooping, touched the bundle.

'Agamemnon!'

Bulging eyeballs and gaping mouth, a glistening stain on the marble tiles. A female slave by her garb, one of the queen's attendants. I flung my weight on the doors.

A single oil lamp lighted the bedroom. The flame flared in a wind that soughed through open windows. Pelopia lay on the bed, a lambswool coverlet drawn to her throat. Hair like a flowing black shadow, chalk-white face and dark glazed eyes. She remained so still I believed she was dead. Menelaus, shocked stone sober, rushed to the bedside and shouted, The king! Where is the king?'

A sigh faint as a butterfly's breathing trembled Pelopia's lips, her eyelids fluttered. The pupils rolled and fixed on a point behind us. I turned and ran through an archway. A tremendous thunderclap split the heavens, successive flashes drenched the room with light. I saw what I saw, and choked, and stumbled back to the bedroom, Lifting the lamp on high I returned and stood in the arch. Menelaus peered fearfully over my shoulder.Chairs and tables were scattered and overturned, phials and vases broken. Blood puddled the floor and splashed the walls, flecked furniture and soaked the woven druggets. A rent and red-stained purple cloak dragged half across a body on the flags, a knee drawn up, arms wide.

Whoever had done it had wielded his sword like a butcher cleaving a carcase. Atreus was unrecognizable. Slashes cut his face apart, spilt oozing brains from the skull, sliced open his throat to the spine, hacked ribs in bloody splinters, slit belly from crotch to breastbone and tumbled the entrails out. A tang of blood and bowels clotted the air.

Menelaus gurgled, bent double and spewed. I shuffled to the bedroom. With a shaking hand I placed the lamp on a table, dripped oil on polished ebony. My knees gave way and I fell on the edge of the bed.

I croaked, 'Who ... did it?'

Pelopia's lips quivered. Her eyes stayed fixed on the painted whorls and chevrons adorning the ceiling. With an effort that shook the slender form hidden beneath the fleece she whis­pered, 'Thyestes.'

I rubbed smarting eyeballs. 'You are sure ? How could he pass the citadel gates ? The room is dark, you could be mistaken.'

In a movement barely perceptible she rolled her head from side to side. 'It was ... Thyestes.'

Menelaus staggered to the bed, wiped hand across mouth and rasped, 'Wake up, my lady! The king is dead, your husband murdered. Tell us what you know!'

Pelopia seemed not to hear. Like one who is suddenly pierced by pain her features crumpled. She closed her eyes and breathed, 'He has taken ... his son.'

I looked at Menelaus, saw my thoughts reflected in his face. The terrible shock had addled Pelopia's senses. I said, 'Your son, my lady. Where did —'

'Thyestes' son ... and mine.'

Menelaus took the lamp and went to a cot in a corner. He examined the blankets and linen trailing on the floor.

'No blood here. No Aegisthus either. The boy has certainly gone.'

Thunder rumbled distantly. The storm receded inland over the mountains, lightning glared less fiercely through the win­dow. The lamp wick guttered and spat.Pelopia whispered, 'Hear me. I speak ... truth.' She spoke so quietly, in shallow gasping breaths, I bent my head to her lips. 'My father ... drunk ... in Sicyon. Aegisthus is ... Thyestes' son. This 1 ... swear.'

Horror and fear had so blunted my wits I do not think I realized the abomination she confessed. I stuttered, 'You are overwrought, my lady. Perhaps later—'

‘I am ... dying.' Slowly, with infinite effort, she pushed away the fleece. Naked breasts, a dagger below, her hand on the hilt. A sluggish tendril welled from the wound and crimsoned the bedsheet.

Pelopia's eyelids drooped. 'The pain ... I cannot bear ... draw out the blade...'

Menelaus' eyes met mine across the bed. He nodded once, his countenance grim as death. I unclasped her fingers, gripped the haft and jerked. Pelopia shrieked, her body arched, blood gushed out in a torrent.

We stood beside the bed and watched the Queen of Mycenae

die. Her passing was hard and tormented.

* * *

In faltering sentences broken by long pauses and the diminish­ing hiss of rain outside the window we decided what had to be done. Menelaus fetched the sentinel Hero, posted him outside Pelopia's room, told him to forbid everyone from entering. I returned to the Hall, now almost deserted, and sent stewards to bring all the Councillors they could find to a meeting in the Throne Room.

There I announced, wasting no words, that somebody un­known had murdered the king and queen and abducted her son. In the stunned silence that followed I glanced furtively at Copreus. He looked astounded as the rest, ashy pale and shaken; unless he was a superb dissembler the news had hit him hard. Perhaps Thyestes' confederates had not expected regicide, perhaps the killing was premature and caught the traitors unprepared. Either factor might give me time, time to sort the faithless from the loyal, to discover the men who would rally behind me as Atreus' successor.

I had to move fast; events were scudding to a climax.

I did not disclose the murderer's identity. Menelaus agreed with me that any uncertainty we could sow in the con­spirators' minds would help confuse their plans. Nor did I mention Thyestes' incestuous rape, the misbegotten conse­quence, saving such revelations for the critical moment when the Elian Host drew near Mycenae. Then by publishing his crimes I might turn the waverers against him. You must realize I was doubtful how far the rot had spread, which Heroes I could count on, how many collaborators the spies had failed to find.

Menelaus sent parties in pursuit along the roads - whence trackways crossed Arcadia to Elis. Nightfall checked the search; at dawn the hunters baulked at rain-sheared landslides blocking roads and streams the storm had bloated to impassable raging spates. They found no trace of the quarry.

Nor did an investigation among guards on gates and palace disclose how an intruder managed to penetrate a closely guarded citadel. The time of day and the tempest had helped Thyestes: gates were not closed till sundown, and sentries seeking shelter abandoned their beats. A spearman gave a vague description of a man slipping in at the height of the storm, a pedlar by his dress, apparently one of many who passed daily in and out, unremarked and seldom challenged. None had seen him enter the palace; none had noticed a man and a ten-year-old boy slinking from Mycenae.

In my capacity as Marshal I decapitated three spearmen, deprived of his greaves and banished the Hero commanding the gate guard. By then it was past midnight, the palace a hum­ming hive, shocked individuals flitting about the corridors, gathering in corners, lingering in the Hall. I ordered slaves to Pelopia's room to cleanse the carnage, wash and prepare for burial the royal corpses. A flustered chamberlain importuned me about the rites for royal funerals; he could recall no precedents in his lifetime because, he mewed, the Heraclids had interred King Eurystheus' headless body near Sciron's Rocks. Wearily I told him to invent a suitable ceremony and shoved him away. (He consulted the Daughters and an aged Hero who had seen as a child King Sthenelus buried.)

I asked Menelaus to sleep in my room; we kept weapons at our bedsides. Talthybius guarded the door, taking the watch in turns with my brother's Companion Etoneus. I reckoned in this crisis his household noblemen and mine were the only men we could faithfully depend on : a couple of dozen in all.

Slaves disrobed me and massaged legs that felt they had marched the length of the land. Menelaus lay prostrate on his bed and cradled a throbbing head - the aftermath of drinking and disaster. I said, 'Tomorrow I'll post pickets on the Arcadian border crossings to bring word of Thyestes' approach. It will give us a whole day's warning. How do you measure our chances?'

'Slim. Although Atreus proclaimed you his heir in Council, Thyestes, as his brother, can claim equal rights of succession. He's also older than you.'

'Can the Council accept a known adulterer banished from the realm?'

'Atreus invited him back, you remember, and cooked his son. Thyestes won a lot of sympathy from that Tantalus affair.'

'When I disclose he begat a child on a daughter who married his brother, the manner of Tantalus' end will pale to insig­nificance !'

'Maybe.' Menelaus pulled the blankets to his chin. 'It really depends on the number of Councillors Copreus has subverted. You've lost Atreus' protection, and I'm afraid you're not too popular among the Heroes - particularly the older men who have seen you grow in wealth and power at their expense. You'll have to be very persuasive when you offer yourself as king.' He yawned hugely. 'Blister my balls, I'm tired! Sleep well, Agamemnon.'

* * *

Four days later we buried the monarchs of Mycenae.

Embalmers had done their best with the king's mutilated corpse, drawing out brains and entrails, stitching flesh. A mask of beaten gold fashioned in some resemblance to Atreus' living features covered a face beyond their skill to repair. They had arrayed him in a gold-tasselled purple cloak, gemmed and gold-embroidered, sword and dagger by his side; a golden diadem crowned his head. A green silver-threaded garment clothed Pelopia's body from neck to ankles, her face exposed, skin like alabaster daubed scarlet on lips and cheekbones. Heroes carried the bodies on biers across the Great Court, down steps to the palace gate, and laid them reverently side by side on a four- wheeled wagon harnessed to grey Kolaxian stallions, the king's most treasured horses.

Atreus in state regalia started his final journey.

Daughters clad in loose white robes preceded the wagon. A watery sunlight burnished unbound tresses. Among them stumbled a naked man and woman, shivering with fear and cold, wrists shackled in golden chains, heads garlanded with laurel. Royal Companions guided the horses through the citadel gates where an armoured guard saluted, spears aloft. I and Menelaus flanked the wheels. A lengthy cortege followed: Heroes in full mailed panoply, blue and yellow horsehair plumes nodding on tusked and brazen helmets; Companions in studded corselets, squires wearing sleeveless woollen tunics. A group of noble ladies in flounced and resplendent dresses wailed and beat bare breasts. Slaves at the column's tail herded a mingled collection of cattle and sheep, pigs and goats - all picked as the finest specimens the royal herds contained. Behind them a huntsman led on leashes Atreus' favourite boarhounds. Silent, grieving citizens thronged the roadsides: whatever Atreus' faults his reign had afforded them peace and prosperity.

A vast dome of beaten earth, plastered and painted white, pinnacled the hill where the king had made his tomb. The cortege curved round the foot of a spur, entered the mouth of a narrow cutting walled by square stone blocks and hedged by spearmen ranked elbow to elbow. As the procession penetrated the heart of the hill the walls rose higher on either side. The shadows deepened. Serried ranks of slaves silhouetted the crests of the cutting; behind them sloped banks of soil. There was a smell of dank raw earth, and a shuddering chill. Tall stone columns flanked a tremendous doorway. Great bronze doors, gilt-studded, swung wide as the Daughters approached.Chanting incantations, they passed inside. The wagon halted. Heroes lifted the bodies shoulder high across a threshold sheathed in bronze. Slaves holding spluttering torches ringed the sepulchre's circular floor. The walls leaned inwards like the interior of an enormous beehive, hewn grey stones in course upon course climbing to the peak of a dome lost forty feet above in utter darkness. Torchlight glittered on a thousand gold ros­ettes which decorated the stones, the brilliance diminishing tier by tier and vanishing completely in the gloom of the upper courses. A golden carpet sparkled in the centre of the floor; here the bearers lowered Atreus' bier. They carried Pelopia into a side chamber walled by alabaster tiles.

Heroes, Companions and ladies thronged the tomb, gazed their last on Atreus' golden mask. Slaves unloaded a cart, brought vessels of food, flagons of wine, jars of oil and ungu­ents, swords, daggers, spears, a waisted shield, bow and arrow- filled quiver and laid them in decent order around the bier. The Daughters' dolorous keening echoed hollowly in the vault. While they sang a hymn of lamentation I stepped to the bier and saluted, back of the hand to forehead, stooped and kissed the mask. I stared at the remains of a mighty king, a magnifi­cent man, and knew a loneliness so desolate the tears ran down my cheeks. A lifelong friend and counsellor was gone, a father I feared and honoured - and realized now I loved. Without his caustic precepts to sustain my resolution the way ahead loomed dangerous and drear.

I took a sword from the pile, set a foot on the blade and bent it, releasing the weapon's soul to battle for its lord in the vulnerable period before the flesh dissolved and his phantom fled to the dark.

Slaves conducted the beasts to a space at the body's feet. A wrinkled white-haired Daughter slew them one by one, cutting their throats with a sharp stone knife. Terrified by the scent of blood the animals bleated and bellowed, plunged against the tethers, tripped the slaves who held them. An indecorous pro­ceeding, I decided, deftly dodging a heifer's flailing hooves.