The Songs of the Kings: A Novel Page 17

  Here in the open they were in the full flood of the moonlight. The torches were extinguished and after this silencing of the flames there was at first only the scrape of their steps on the rough ground. Then came the wavering music of the flutes, eclipsing other sounds. Sisipyla was grateful that the goat remained silent. She had, as usual, mixed the dried juice of the poppy fruit into the mash of its last meal. This was a matter of careful judgment: too much, and the beast would stagger; too little, and there was the chance, when it came into this open space, that it would forget it was a captive, get a whiff of some exciting possibility in the night air or the stirred dust under its feet, utter some sound of complaint or belligerence which would sully the sacrifice and be taken as a bad omen. And this, since she had chosen and prepared the animal, would reflect on her.

  She felt a slight shudder, the impending presence of the goddess. The soft darkness that lay within the light, the blended notes of the flutes, the scent of thyme and mint from the slopes beyond the walls, all things that, separate, were familiar matters of sense on a summer night, now flowed together into a stream on which her mind floated. She watched the slight sway of Iphigeneia’s body, the rigidly held shoulders, the arms and hands motionless at the sides. The princess was walking with Artemis.

  The sensation of weightlessness increased. Her ears were closed now to the sounds of the night. Her steps did not falter, but her judgment of the distance from the ground of her raised foot grew less certain, she felt a slight threat to her balance and knew these for signs of the nearness of the goddess, who took from those who approached her the certainties of the body so as to fill this unsureness with the sureness of her presence. She could scent now, acrid in her nostrils, the dead ash heaped around the altar, sweepings of old fires. The moonlight lay in intricate patterns on the stone of the altar table, bright where it was clear, darker where it was splashed with old blood.

  The two youths who were sweepers at the palace and assisted in the care of the shrines marked out the circle that would contain all those present, beginning back to back and keeping the altar at the center. The flute players fell silent. Sisipyla followed round, holding up her basket, the water bearers keeping pace behind her. Now the circle was sealed off from the world outside. The people stood grouped around the altar and held out their hands for cleansing, and those with the water jars went from one to another.

  All was now ready; but the goat gave no sign, neither looking down in submission nor looking up in eagerness, but staring straight ahead, its pale eyes unblinking, moonlight gleaming on its gilded horns, on the ribbons of white silk that Sisipyla had so patiently fastened in the long hair of its flanks. It was necessary that the goat too should signify assent; without this the sacrifice was marred. Iphigeneia was standing beside the altar. She turned on the water bearers the white, unchanging oval of her mask and raised a bare arm and fluttered her fingers rapidly, the sign for rain and the pouring of water. The nearer man stepped forward and sprinkled the neck and back of the animal, which still made no sound, but jerked its head with the shock of the water as if nodding up at the moonlit sky. It was the sign needed. Those within the circle took grains of barley from the basket and held them ready. Iphigeneia raised her arms to the moon and uttered the words she had learned from her mother, the prayer, the invocation, the wish and the vow. In the silence after her voice ceased there was no sound but the pattering of the grains as these were cast over the altar.

  Then Sisipyla offered the basket to Iphigeneia, who took the narrow-bladed knife, now lying there exposed. The porters took the goat by its legs and turned it and lifted it up, exposing the throat. Raised thus, gripped in strong hands, there was no cry nor struggle. The goat looked up at the sky and the moonlight made amber of its eyes. Iphigeneia cut hairs from its forehead and let them fall, to signify that the life was violated, the victim ordained to the goddess. She raised the lustrous moon of her face to the face of the goddess, now high overhead. For a brief while sacrificer and victim both gazed upward, as if asking jointly for blessing. Then Iphigeneia looked down and her arm swept across her body in a single movement from right to left and the blade flashed and dulled and the blood came, as the men struggled to hold the beast in the convulsions of its death, spurting from the severed throat onto Iphigeneia, who still held the knife, and Sisipyla, who still held the basket, and over the men holding the beast, and over the altar.

  Later, while the men were skinning the animal and building up the fire in preparation for the burnt offering and the feast that would follow, Iphigeneia did something that no one there had ever seen done before on the public occasion of a sacrifice: she slipped off her girdle from beneath the bloodstained apron and laid it on the fire and watched it burn.

  Waiting FOR Iphigeneia

  1.

  At Aulis the burden of waiting was felt in different ways, as all such burdens are; but for everyone the nature of the waiting had changed, because it was known that the wind would not cease— could not cease—until Iphigeneia came. The wind itself had a different voice now, it was sighing or groaning or screaming for Iphigeneia to come. She occupied the thoughts and dreams of a thousand men, few of whom had actually seen her. Her face and body were imagined with intensity as the men lay through the nights of the growing moon; they saw her white throat, bared for the knife; and they felt the rigid blade, and the stabbing urge, in their own restless loins.

  The knife was ordered early. First requesting the presence of Menelaus and Idomeneus and Chasimenos as witnesses—with the latter having the additional responsibility of close liaison with the Singer—Agamemnon sent for the bronzesmith, who entered with a single guard immediately behind him. He had come from his forge and wore the leather breast piece and long apron of his trade. He was squat of build and thick at the shoulders. His head and face were shaven and streaked with healed spark burns.

  He stopped at some distance, abruptly, not waiting for an order, obliging the guard to stumble to a halt. He bowed his head briefly but said nothing, simply stood waiting, looking steadily at the King. He carried the power and mystery of the bronze with him and all felt it. The center of his forehead was tattooed with concentric circles of red and blue, the eye of Cyclops, emblem of his guild and cult mark of Hephaestus, the god of smiths. The smell of fire and metal hung about him, he was answerable only to the master artificer who was his god.

  “His name is Palernus,” Chasimenos said. “He is from Crete.”

  Agamemnon looked closely at the man, in what seemed an attempt to beat his gaze down. When this failed, he said, more loudly than was needed, “I want a knife specially made, made to order, a sacrificial knife.”

  “I understand, yes. A special knife for a special person.”

  Hearing this, Chasimenos felt a glow of satisfaction. He had primed the Singer with the promise of a warm cloak for winter, and the Singer had responded well: if the smith already knew who the knife was for, then everybody else would too. He glanced at the King’s face in the hope of finding some awareness of this, or even encountering an approving glance.

  But Agamemnon’s attention was fixed on the smith. “It must be like no other knife that you or any smith has ever made before,” he said. “No expense is to be spared, only the very best quality of materials is to be used, pure and unadulterated. The copper and the tin must be smelted by you personally, and they must be virgin metals. Nothing used in the making of this knife must ever have been used to make anything before. I have plans for the design. I intend both blade and handle to have expensive and state-of-the-art decorations. Chasimenos, you will report these words of mine to the Singer. No one will say I skimped on this, no one will say I failed in munificence, in honoring my house and my name.”

  “A special knife for a special person,” the smith repeated, in exactly the tone he had used before. “That is what Agamemnon desires and that is what I will fashion for him. But only a god can fashion a knife that is unlike any other knife. This one is for a sacrifice, as I understa
nd the matter?”

  “Yes, I have said so.”

  “Your sacrificial knives, now, have certain things in common by virtue of their use. No one can make a sacrificial knife that does not resemble in some ways all other sacrificial knives. The King will desire a knife with a blade no wider than this.” He raised a blackened hand and made a small gap between forefinger and thumb.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “A narrow blade is customary for your sacrificial knives so as to reduce accidental wounds if the victim happens to be struggling. Your sacrificial knives will need to be a certain length, not too short, a short blade may fail to find the vein, not too long, a long blade is dangerous in confined spaces, I have seen an innocent bystander get his eye put out.”

  “All these are details, I was speaking of the quality.”

  “Your sacrificial knives, now, must be single-edged, with a groove down the—”

  “You may return to your forge,” Agamemnon said. “I will pay you in gold for the work, if it is well done.”

  When the smith had gone he turned moody eyes on Menelaus. “There’s an earthbound fellow if ever there was one,” he said. “A mind that can’t rise above petty details, incapable of taking flight.”

  “No vision,” Menelaus said. “Bolshie too, he was talking as if one victim were as good as another. It’s this new class of technicians, they have no respect for authority, no sense of tradition. For two pins I’d have given him a kick up the arse.”

  “You’d better get along to see the Singer,” Agamemnon said to Chasimenos. “Just a general announcement, no need to go into details of design at this stage, I haven’t worked them out yet. Just tell him the knife will be a masterpiece.” He paused for a moment and something like a smile twisted his lips. “Calchas will take him my plans for the design. I’m going to make Calchas responsible for supervising the work from day to day.”

  And so the fashioning of the knife became an element in that longing for Iphigeneia which was the longing for release from pain and travail, puffed up and spread by the wind, which veered from north to northeast and varied in intensity but never died away, rustling in the scrub of the hillsides, whispering among the pebbles of the shore, slapping at the hulls of the moored ships. Sounds became rumors: the whole thing was just a story to keep people happy, Agamemnon was playing for time, the Mycenaeans were secretly planning to leave, Iphigeneia wouldn’t come, she would come but only to sacrifice an ox to Zeus in token of repentance, it didn’t matter whether she came or not because Palamedes was preparing a coup that would put an end to Agamemnon’s leadership and the curse of the wind at one stroke. Dark glances and knowing looks proliferated. It was a good time for those who could claim to know more than others did, they were listened to, they dominated conversation; and there were some who remembered the importance they achieved at this time as a highlight in their lives.

  In face of these contradictory stories, the priests of Zeus circulated among the army by day and night, with their oak staffs and insignia of eagle heads, their banners bearing the colors of blood and sky and their one unvarying interpretation of events: the justice of Zeus required the sacrifice of the witch, the wind would not abate until her lifeblood splashed the altar.

  Such certainty at a time of doubt made easy converts. The retinue of Croton swelled from hour to hour until it formed a long double line that wound its way through the camp, at first to the sound of oboes and kettledrums only, but then a sort of choric chanting was developed, certain phrases were shouted loudly and repeatedly. Croton, in the lead, would raise his right arm at regular intervals, and when he did this all those following also raised an arm and shouted one of two things, either WE LOVE ZEUS or ZEUS HATES WITCHES. It happened quite often that some members of the procession shouted one slogan and some another; but this did not matter, it was volume and fervor that counted. For those at a distance the music and the shouting were strangely hollow and distorted, making it seem as if the wind had added one more to its repertory of voices; but those who were shouting felt that they were among comrades, they found the experience exhilarating and developed a taste for it. Croton was praised by the Singer, in a series of inspired verses, as the originator of civil liberty, the right to free assembly and the peaceful expression of the people’s will.

  The rumors, the slogans, the wind, the prospect of a spectacle, these became a state of things that might go on forever, might be the very nature of life itself—and indeed, those who survived and returned home remembered this period of waiting as much more protracted than it really was; it became in the minds of many the nature of life before the war.

  There was no way of checking, no way of verifying anything. It was dangerous to ask. There were those in the army who had seen Iphigeneia grow up, those for example who had done regular guard duty at the palace. There must have been a desire among these men, among some of them, that the sacrifice might be averted. Certainly, no one could warn her, even if prepared to risk his life to do so. There was no way of commandeering a ship and leaving by sea, not without concerted action and substantial numbers, and these were lacking. A permanent guard was kept on the ships and checkpoints were maintained night and day on all roads leading from Aulis, manned by archers faithful to Odysseus or the Cretan Idomeneus, who had made themselves jointly responsible for security. Of course, if someone, alone or perhaps accompanied by one or two others, had slipped out from the camp by night, on foot, using mountain tracks that were loose-surfaced and treacherous even in daylight, they might escape detection. But traveling thus, how could they have vied with the official delegation, already departed, in their swift ship, favored now by the wind, how could they have reached Mycenae in time to prevent the princess’s departure?

  Poimenos, knowing the wishes of his master’s heart, possessed by notions of heroic achievement derived from the Singer, offered to make the attempt. “I can find my way through the passes,” he said. “It is summer, there is no snow. One mountain is like another. I was often in high places when I tended the goats and I didn’t have such good strong sandals then, I didn’t have any sandals at all, I wrapped my feet in rags. Traveling night and day, going by the sun, it could be done.”

  Calchas regarded his acolyte for some moments. The boy, in the glow of his idea, had turned to look eastward—the wrong direction. He had no idea of geography at all. He had no idea where Delphi was, and that was where he came from, let alone Mycenae. There was such radiant enterprise on his face, such a blaze of imagined glory, that the diviner felt his eyes almost shocked by it, as at the assault of some strong light. Simplicity like that burned away the accumulated fat of his own doubts and anxieties and obstinate logic, returned him to primal harmony and clarity, where the will of the gods and the meaning of their messages could be known with certainty. It was what he needed, it was what Poimenos gave him. Perhaps it was simply hope. Why was it that now, in these days of his isolation and the King’s disfavor, when he most needed hope, he felt this impulse to destroy it?

  “Judging by the direction of your gaze,” he said, “you are proposing to jump into the sea from the top of Mount Ocha and swim across to the island of Chios.” With gratification and sorrow he saw the light fade on the boy’s face. “You should be looking that way,” he said, pointing. “And ships travel night and day too, you know, especially with a favoring wind, and then they will have horses and a good road. Even on the moral plane you would be outdistanced. Those with the impulse to destroy will always travel faster than those with the impulse to save. That is a lesson life will teach you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  There was no inquiry in this, only a note of finality, a curtness of tone that Calchas had not heard in the boy before. Compunction came to him for the hurt he had given, the damage to the youthful sense of what daring and devotion might achieve. “I could not let you go,” he said. “I want you with me, I cannot be without you, not even for a morning, let alone whole days and nights. You are my consolation.”


  This was the truth, more so now than ever, when Agamemnon no longer called for him, when he was held in contempt by all, when only the sacred duty of supervising the making of the knife gave him protection—the terrible protection of the King’s hatred.

  But the words had come too late. The boy’s face was closed against him, the eyes were lowered. And now a certain kind of fear came to Calchas, and in the grip of this he blundered further. “There are lions on those mountains, you know,” he said, attempting a jocular tone. “You would make a tender morsel. Those good strong sandals would be all that was left.”

  Poimenos smiled a little and nodded, because it was not in his nature to disappoint the maker of a joke; but he still had not looked at his master; and it was now, perhaps to avoid further claims on his understanding or sympathy, that he retailed the piece of news he had picked up earlier that morning. “The dogs dug up a body during the night,” he said. “Farther along the shore, beyond the camp.” He had been out early, at first light, to gather kindling for the morning fire, and he had heard this from others similarly engaged. “On that side,” he said, raising a hand to point. “Towards the narrower water. He was buried in the shingle.”

  “It must have been a shallow grave,” Calchas said. “I suppose it’s the body of the Boeotian, Opilmenos, he who was killed by the dancer.”

  “The Boeotian was buried by his own people, not near the shore, higher up. They put stones on the grave, heavy stones that no dog would be able to move.”

  “Then who?”

  “They say he is a Mycenaean.” Poimenos paused briefly, then added, “He has been partly eaten.”

  The certainty of who this must be came to Calchas suddenly, like a memory, some knowledge possessed long before. “Let us go and see this offering of the dogs,” he said, and thought he saw a shadow pass over the boy’s face, something like reluctance or disappointment, as if he had been planning something else, or hoping for it.