Song of Princes (Homeric Chronicles #1) (8 page)

THE RETURN HIKE
covered miles of quiet farmland and empty spaces. Occasionally, a stray cow or goat crossed his path. Birds flew above looking for freshly sown fields to plunder with eager beaks. When the sun hit its searing zenith, Agelaus began to worry about strangers, or worse, people he actually knew stumbling across him and little Paris. In his rush to retrieve the baby, he’d given little thought to the future or the suspicious talk that would certainly surface. Everyone he did business with knew that Lexias was not with child. How would he explain the sudden appearance of the infant? He began concocting a story as he walked.

“I am returning with my cousin’s child. She died and…thank you, you’re very kind. Well, Lexias insisted that we care for the orphan. Unusual I know, but you know Lexias...” He practiced the lie over and over, adding a convincing
what-can-I-do-about-it shrug.
After a mile of practice, Agelaus convinced himself he could answer anyone’s questions.

It wasn’t long before his resolve was tested. A farmer’s cart lazily approached from the opposite direction. Despite his earlier resolve he jumped off the road to hide behind a tree as the farmer passed. “By the balls of Zeus, I’m such a coward,” he whispered into the tree trunk.

Just then, a woman’s silver voice rang clearly in his ear with am icy air:
You are brave to take this child. Fate is served.
He shook off the chill, but the words lingered, ripening like a fig in the hot sun.
Brave? Foolhardy, maybe.
The words
Fate is served
weighed ominously in his heart. He as yet had no idea why the child stood condemned before the world. He received no premonitions, no messages about why the child must suffer and die. Then it struck him. He recognized the voice as the same he’d heard when he first saw the silver bear. Agelaus sighed, reluctantly accepting that he’d likely never know why King Priam commanded such a harsh judgment on the child.

When the farmer’s distance created safety, Agelaus pulled the baby off his back to rest. “Just a few more miles little one. Just a few more miles.” He held his new
son
in his arms. Holding babies came naturally for him. The brood he and Lexias continued to raise provided all the practice a man needed for gentle fathering. Over the years, Agelaus realized that his temperate prodding and corrections produced the desired actions of his children. The harshness his father lashed upon his backside while he grew to manhood made him seethe with hatred not respect. “Time to get you home to your
mother
, little Paris. You’ll get a feeding soon enough. Can’t have you bawling in my ear.” Agelaus wrapped the infant securely onto his back again and began the last leg of their journey home. He hoped Lexias wouldn’t feel too over burdened. Sometimes, when he grew exhausted and wished only for rest, his wife still rushed around with wind in her sails. Her vigor amazed him. He hoped she wouldn’t keel over from exhaustion one day leaving him to raise the two, now three, children alone. 

LEXIAS SQUATTED NEXT
to a goat for its evening milking. “Come girl. Let’s get it done with.” Lexias placed the pottery jar under the low hanging milk gland. She pushed the backs of her hands firmly into the engorged udder. Fresh warm milk whizzed into the jar. “There’s a good girl.” She repeated the process on the opposite side. “You give the best milk for cheese of all the goats.” She scruffed the goat behind the ears before slapping its hind quarters. The goat skittered off into the herd of nannies.
One down, four to go
.

She stood up wiping the sweat from her face. She scanned the horizon for the fifth time that morning. Low and behold, in the distance, she caught sight of her husband. He trudged along at a steady pace. She wondered if he’d found the remains of the child or not. She hoped that whatever he came across wasn’t too gruesome.

“Hello, husband!” She waved with one hand, the other knuckled at her hip. Agelaus waved back. His paced quickened at the sight of her. Milking the goats didn’t feel so pressing with the anticipation throbbing in her temples.
Hurry up old man. The wait keeps me from my chores and my stomach in knots. My head!
She couldn’t make out whether he carried a small bundle or was slumped over with exhaustion. “Hurry old man!” she hollered.

“Wife! I bring you a miracle!” he shouted as Lexias came within earshot.

“Oh, Zeus. What a greeting! How are bleached and pillaged bones miraculous?” Lexias mumbled to the goats. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him hike the last stretch of dirt path.

As Agelaus came nearer, his smile broadened. “Look! Lexias! Look, what I have brought home.” He turned showing Lexias the rounded bump wrapped across his back.

Lexias frowned. “What are you doing? Why so—” A muffled cry sounded from the backpack sling.

He faced his wife and grabbed her by the shoulders. “He’s alive, Lexias.”

“But how can that be?! Are you certain it is the same child?”

“Of course! The same cloth binding I was given by…well…it is the same.” He pulled the dirty purple linen threaded with gold from his pack. The sun glinted off the metallic threads shining the truth of her husband’s words.

She ripped the cloth from his grasp and stuffed it into her waist band. “By the balls of Zeus put that away! Let’s see the child. Hurry up. Surely, he’s in need of attention.” She helped unknot the backpack sling. The rounded bundle of child lay securely in her arms as the sling fell away. Clouded blue eyes squinted in the sun and he began to cry.

“Come to the house my dear,” Agelaus encouraged.

Lexias stood unmoved checking his little body for injury. She looked up at Agelaus, her eyes rounded by surprise. “Not a mark on him. Not a scratch. And he’s fat!”

Agelaus smiled back and shrugged his shoulders. “The gods, Lexias. They intervened.”

“We must never tell anyone, Agelaus. No one!”

“I’ll not speak a word. You believe I wish myself dead?”

“I believe I wish all of us a long life. What will we call him?”

Agelaus took him from the cradle of his wife’s arms. He tucked the sling around him. “I’ve named him Paris.”

“Your sense of humor astounds.” Lexias shook her head. “I’m to raise a son named after the sling he arrived in?”

“There now, Paris, mind not your mother’s saucy tongue.”

“I’ll give you saucy tongue if you speak of me in such a manner again, you old man.”

“I jest, Lexias. Come, let’s get inside.”

“What do we tell everyone?”

“That my long lost cousin died, leaving us caretakers of the infant.”

“You have thought this out. Well done, old man.”

Agelaus grinned. “Old woman.”

Lexias playfully slapped his arm. They walked into the house never once looking back, the future the only path from that day forward. Paris’ parentage was safely sheltered in the secrecy only a husband and wife share, for their futures entwined until death.

“SIRE A BASKET
has arrived for you with instructions that your eyes alone should view the contents,” Damianos said.

“Who is it from?” asked Priam.

“Agelaus, the herdsman. He claims you alone will know the meaning.”

“Fetch me the basket.” Dread pounded through his veins upon hearing the ominous message. Had Agelaus done the deed? Troy must be saved. His heart cried out for his son. The mask of king did not protect him from himself. Damianos returned with the basket held casually in his hands.

“Where is the queen?” Priam asked, taking the bundle from his slave.

“I do not know, my lord.”

“Leave me.” Priam commanded. The slave disappeared on silent feet.

Whatever the basket held the weight of it hefted little more than air. A rough spun cloth lay neatly tucked around something. He unwrapped the contents noticing small traces of crimson on the cloth.
Blood. Stains of blood.
A slender piece of meat fell onto the floor. He picked it up between two fingers. It was stiff and bumpy.
Is this some jest of Agelaus
? Priam’s throat soured the back of his throat when he realized it was not just a piece of bloody meat, but a small tongue. A child’s tongue. His son’s tongue. He quickly rewrapped the gory bit in the cloth and hid the basket where no one would stumble across it by accident. He’d burn it and scatter the ashes to the wind...his son was gone as a passing breeze through this world, through his life. He’d obeyed the god and killed his son. The proof documented in flesh by his faithful servant.

When Priam entered Hecuba’s chambers later that evening, he hoped his wife was in a more forgiving mood than the previous evening. He found her standing on the balcony over looking the upper citadel and the city and harbor below. Her hands entwined behind her accentuated her long, narrow back. Her dark hair was pinned up in simple coils exposing the gentle curve of her neck. Priam thought of all the kisses he had planted there. He approached quietly, tentatively.

“Wife,” he said tenderly.

“What do you want?” she said without enthusiasm or turning to face him.

He stepped closer. “Join me for dinner, my love.”

“I am not hungry, Priam.”

“You must eat. Little Hektor is asking for you.” Priam stepped behind her, slipping his arms around her waist still swollen with the roundness of childbirth.

She stiffened at his touch. She spoke. Her voice low and controlled, “You think I wish to sit across from you? Look into your eyes...” She turned her head toward his. “And see the very eyes my son had? The son you stole from me?” Anger and grief mingled together in hot tears. “You have broken me, Priam.” She looked out, again, at the sprawling polis below at the clay tiled rooftops, the stone lined streets beyond, and the hazy blue horizon stretching past sight. “All the Trojans are safe tonight because you believed our son a threat to them all.”

Priam dropped his arms helplessly to the side. “It was Apollo’s word, not my will, Hecuba.”

“I do not care.” When she looked up, her face twisted anew with heart break. “He was my son, Priam! Mine!” She wrapped her arms around middle, hugging the swell of where her son used to be. Her shoulders shook slightly at first and then with violence. “Mine,” she wept over and over. The queen slid to her knees weeping tears that the stone cutting into her flesh drank like drops of rain. Priam stooped to hold her in his arms, wishing to comfort her, but she pushed his hands away. “My son...and you took him from me...” Her words turned to a wordless howl. 

Priam straightened and gazed across the balcony ledge to the buildings below the citadel and out across the Trojan plain to where the foothills rose in waves surrounding the base of Mount Ida miles in the far south. He knew his son had perished there. He believed in the gods. He believed in protecting his kingdom. He hoped that his wife may one day forgive him. All he could do now was stand as sentinel over her grief.

THE MORNING OPENED
dark and gray. Rain threatened. It mattered not what weather fell from the gods, the bulls needed tending and so did the farm. Agelaus’ family relied on the financial surplus his knowledge and skill provided in raising the sacred beasts for sacrifice and the bull arena. The extra coin he earned from king Priam’s patronage and his expertise supplemented his family’s world, providing more than a meager herder’s existence. He tended to the fields, small orchard and the bulls. He longed for the day when his sons attained enough years to watch the fields and cattle without his company.

Lexias looked after the chickens and goats and their sons…and little Paris Alexander. The boy grew at a rapacious rate, growing faster than the other boys at an equal number of passing moons and suns. Lexias lamented almost daily that Paris would be the death of her and the cupboards. At the age of three, Paris stood as tall as her hip. He never refused a meal and often snuck whatever morsels he scavenged from the wooden cooking table. Once, Lexias found him eating raw onions from the gathering basket. Upon being scolded, he smiled broadly. His breath stank for three days afterward, so much so that Lexias could barely bring herself to kiss him goodnight.

“Paris?! Paris?! Where are you?” Lexias only took her eyes off him to gather the eggs. She still needed to milk the goats. “That child,” she muttered. She searched the stables, looked behind the bales and storage pots. “Where in Hades is that boy?” A snorting bawl caught her ear. She stood straight up and bolted toward the bull pen.

She skidded to a complete stop, sending dirt flying and breaking her sandal strap. She kicked off her shoe hanging like a shackle from her ankle never taking her eyes from the young child walking without care among the bulls corralled for the next day’s sacrifices. “Gratitude Apollo, at least you didn’t send him to the roster house to get pecked to death. Yes, better he is stomped to bone and guts by bulls!” she said to herself, not caring if the god could hear her. She didn’t hold the gods in as high esteem as her husband, yet superstition ran deep, so she mocked them quietly when situation presented. Agelaus, on the other hand, lived and breathed by signs and omens, made worship and sacrifice, and lived truly to serve and honor his patrons. The real world pressed her with constant need and the unseen world of the divine gave her small pause.

“Paris! Come out of there!” she demanded. She feared approaching the beasts too closely. They might startle and knock the boy over.  Paris caught the sound of her voice. He looked over his shoulder grinning with fascination as he reached up and tugged the tail of the bull in front of him. Lexias nearly fainted.
Where is Agelaus?

“Paris, stop that,” she kept her voice forceful but low. When the boy’s grip released, the massive animal flicked its tail and meandered away as if it nothing more than a fly pestered it. Lexias rolled her eyes into the back of her head. Her entire body began to sweat. “By the gods! How do I get him out in one piece?” She watched in horror as Paris moved deeper into the thick of dark hides and hooves of death. She dropped to the ground so she could follow his feet.

“Lexias?”

“AHHH!” She jumped up, brushed stands of stray hair away from her face. Tears immediately filled her eyes at the sight of her husband. Her mouth contorted without words.

“What’s wrong? Lexias are you well? Why do you lay in the dirt?” Since Paris began walking, Agelaus often found his wife in these panicked states. Then, it hit him, “Where is he this time? What has he done?”

Lexias pointed toward the corral and sank to her knees sobbing, “I can take no more.”

Agelaus moved toward the bulls. He heard the sound of his son babbling, but couldn’t catch sight of him. “Paris? Paris? Come here.” Agelaus’ voice remained calm and even. He knew the dangers of walking among the skittish beasts. The safest action required he get the boy out without having to disturb the beasts.
Strange they are not bothered by his presence.
“Paris Alexander, come here.”  A rounded face peeked from under a bulging muscled neck. “There you are. Come.” Agelaus held his arms out. “Come here, son.” Paris moved toward the edge of the pen. Agelaus moved closer. Relief relaxed his apprehension. Then, in a flash, Paris bolted back into the corralled herd. The beasts stomped around scattering wildly. One bull bucked at another. Lexias screamed.

Agelaus sprang for the corral. He leapt over the fencing, landing hard on his feet. His left ankle immediately throbbed. He ignored the burn shooting up his leg. Agelaus hobbled this way, then that. Trying to keep his eye on the boy and on the giants he not so gently shoved aside. A cacophony of heavy bellowing and snorting ensued.  Then, by the grace of Apollo, the boy’s head popped up in front of a bull next to Agelaus. He snatched Paris up by the arm so hard, the boy began crying which agitated the bulls more than the frantic pushing and shoving.

Lexias ran to the corral and pulled Paris over the fence from her husband’s grasp. She hugged the boy close enough to suffocate him. She sobbed hysterically into his black curls. Agelaus climbed the barrier between danger and safety, bruised and rattled with an ankle swollen to the size of an apple.
I have too many years on my bones to keep pace with this child.

“I can take no more of this, Agelaus. No more.” Lexias’ voice hitched every other word. “Do-you-hear-me? He-is-too-wild. Reckless.”

Agelaus watched his wife alternating between fussing, crying and kissing the boy. Her words were unintelligible through her sobs. It was the last day Agelaus left his son in the care of his mother. Agelaus feared not so much for the boy, but that his wife might die of fright or worry. So, Paris became his primary responsibility from that day forward.