Some time would pass, therefore, before Agamemnon’s children learned that their father’s assassin was their mother. The source of that information was a serving-woman called Geilissa, who was one of the small band of guards and retainers who had accompanied the children on their journey from Mycenae to Midea. She had known Orestes and Iphigenaia since infancy and had been wet-nurse to Electra, but she and Clytaemnestra had often been at odds over the Queen’s cold way with her children. Geilissa never doubted where her own warm loyalties lay, and she had been included in the party against Clytaemnestra’s better judgement only because Electra declared that she would refuse to go without her. Geilissa herself was glad enough to put Mycenae behind her and take care of her charges once more during their sojourn in Midea.
A cheerful soul, she had quickly made friends with the servants of the house, and it was from them that she learned the truth about the death of Agamemnon. With her own secret suspicions now confirmed, Geilissa saw how grave a threat these circumstances must pose to the welfare of the two children. Yet sooner or later the truth must come out. Better that they heard it from her than from some careless stranger.
So once again Orestes was forced to listen while a person he trusted told him things so terrible that he could hardly bear to hear them. Already distraught from the news that her father was dead – a grief that was as instinctive as it was emotional, for the girl had no retrievable memories of Agamemnon – Electra was devastated by this further revelation. She sat with her hand across her mouth, trying to suppress her wailing. Orestes sat beside her, gripping her shoulders as she rocked in his arms.
‘It is Aegisthus,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘The villain has poisoned her mind. It must be his foul hand behind this thing. I should have killed him long ago.’
Anxiously Geilissa hissed, ‘You must keep your voice down, master. Lord Podargus is not of your father’s party.’
Orestes looked across at the nurse in bewilderment as he pieced together the long, manipulative process by which he had been separated from his friend, cut off from contact with his returning father, and sent to a place where he could be held in check. His mind was working quickly now. He was not a guest in Midea: he was a prisoner. His mother would send for him when she was ready. She would tell him that he had a new father and must learn to love and respect him. And if he failed to obey? Orestes remembered what Aegisthus had said to Pylades. He remembered the hostility he had glimpsed in the man’s eyes when he had made his own mistrust for him plain. Aegisthus had no love for him. As far as Aegisthus was concerned, he was Agamemnon’s brat. The man must be living in fear that a day must come when Orestes would seek to avenge his murdered father.
And he was right to fear it.
But for the moment Aegisthus held all the power. Only Clytaemnestra stood between Orestes and death, and Clytaemnestra had already killed her husband. Was she capable also of killing her son?
In an insane world where fathers killed their daughters, it was entirely possible.
For the first time in his young life, Orestes felt consumed by fear. Somehow he must get away from Midea. He must go to Pylades. His friend would take care of him in Phocis. He would know what to do.
It was Geilissa who arranged for his escape. On her way through the market-place, she observed a Sicilian merchant dealing in slaves who appeared to take reasonable care of his valuable human stock. When she learned that he would soon be moving on, it occurred to her that Orestes might be smuggled out of the city among his train. Geilissa discussed the idea with a friend she trusted from the old days in Mycenae – a grizzled warrior who had lost an eye serving at Troy with Agamemnon. When neither of them could come up with a less risky plan, she approached the merchant and quickly discovered that his venal soul had no loyalties in Argos other than to his desire for profit. Once sure of her ground, she set about persuading him that his desire would be well served if he delivered safely to the court of King Strophius in Phocis a certain person whose identity must not be disclosed in Midea or any other city through which they might pass.
‘Including Mycenae?’ the merchant shrewdly asked.
‘Mycenae, above all, is to be avoided,’ Geilissa said.
The Sicilian opened his hands. ‘I look to do good business in Mycenae.’
‘And doubtless you will,’ Geilissa answered, ‘on your return from Phocis. King Strophius is a wealthy man. He will compensate you well for the delay.’
‘And what assurances do I have of this?’
Geilissa unwrapped from a cloth the casket in which were gathered all the jewels and golden ornaments that Electra had insisted on bringing to Midea. ‘These are already worth more than all your slaves. You shall have the casket when you leave the city with my friend safely concealed in your train.’
‘Let me think about this a little.’ Smiling, the Sicilian made a self-deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘I am a timid man.’
Geilissa watched him stroke his beard. ‘Think too long,’ she said, ‘and you may begin to wonder what there is to prevent you from taking the casket and then betraying my friend to those who mean him harm. You should be aware, therefore, that were you to do such a thing, there are those who will not rest till they have hunted you down and cut your tongue out of your throat and divided your manhood from your loins.’
The merchant studied her for a long moment with a ringed hand at his mouth. Then he lowered the hand to reveal a sour smile. ‘You reason like a Sicilian,’ he said. ‘But I will do this thing for you. Pray tell your friend that this humble merchant is at his service.’
That evening they untied the long hair that Orestes wore clubbed at his neck, dressed him in one of Electra’s gowns and wrapped around his head and shoulders a shawl that she had embroidered with figures of prowling lions and winged griffins. Geilissa started with shock when she looked at the finished effect, for in the unsteady light of the oil-lamps, it might have been his dead sister, Iphigenaia, standing demurely there.
So Orestes escaped from Midea early the next morning as one among a coffle of slaves. Unaware that the son of Agamemnon was slipping through their guard with a kitchen knife clutched under the folds of his pretty shawl, the sentinels at the gate paid scant attention to the train. Almost a month later he was welcomed to safety by Pylades with tears and open arms. Denied their chance of glory in Troy, and with the world at home turned hostile round them, the young lions began preparing themselves for the day when they too would play a significant part in the continuing drama of the long catastrophe that was the Trojan War.
As the reader will recall from my account of the day when Dolon the fisherman brought us the news that the war had ended, Ithaca also had a number of young lions frisking about the streets, and even before Troy fell, they had already begun to make a nuisance of themselves. That’s how we thought of it at first – as no more than a nuisance, for we Ithacans might have our feuds and quarrels and grudges, and blood might even be shed at times, but murder was rare on the island and we lacked any talent for evil on the grand scale with which it flourished in Mycenae and the other great cities of the world. So King Laertes and his ministers did little more than sigh over the noise of drunken revelry in the streets of the town at night. But out of small neglected troubles larger problems grow, and soon there were signs that Antinous and the gang of young men who followed his lead were getting out of hand.
The first of the truly bruising encounters between Telemachus and Antinous took place at the Feast of Pan in the spring of the year after the war had ended. At that time the mood of the island was gloomy and apprehensive. Diotima, who had been priestess of Mother Dia’s shrine on the island for longer than anyone could remember, had died during the course of a hard winter. Because she was already very old, her death came as no surprise, but she had outlived all the women who knew the ways of the snake well enough to succeed her, so the power of the shrine itself began to wane.
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