Neoptolemus declared, ‘No man was ever worthier than my father.’
‘I know that,’ Peleus answered him, unsmiling, ‘and no father was ever prouder than myself. And now this spear is yours.’
The youth narrowed his eyes against the wind. The beardless jut of his chin was held high as he said, ‘My hand shall never dishonour it.’
‘I trust not, Son of Achilles.’ Gravely, Peleus handed back the ash-wood spear. ‘I am proud to have you at my side,’ he said. ‘I hope to be made prouder still. Now come, let us make our offerings to the gods and to your father’s shade.’
Many weeks later, some fifty miles to the south, at the city of Crisa in Phocis, another son of the war – a sandy-haired youth with truculent eyes, some two or three years older than Neoptolemus – was practising sword-play with his friend. They wielded only wooden swords and carried light duelling shields, but both of them sweated from the length of the bout even though a cold wind was gusting off the rugged slopes of Mount Parnassus.
Growing suddenly impatient of his failure to break through his opponent’s guard, the sandy-haired youth came at him with a swift series of swingeing blows that drove him back on the defensive; but the vigour of his assault left his shield-arm swinging almost as widely as his sword. Just as he was about to deliver what must be the winning stroke, he felt the blunt point of his opponent’s weapon nudging at his ribs.
‘Ha, you’re dead, Orestes!’ cried the darker youth. He gave a gay, slightly mocking laugh that was picked up by the four girls wrapped in brightly coloured shawls who had been watching them from the balcony above. Their clapping set the doves whirring their wings across the court.
Orestes glowered briefly up at them and flushed.
‘Take no notice of them,’ said Pylades, who was the king’s son in Phocis and the most intimate friend to the youth he had just stabbed with his wooden sword. ‘Their applause is as empty as their heads. In any case, it’s you they fancy!’
‘It was a lucky stroke,’ Orestes scowled.
Smiling still, Pylades arched his brow. ‘Even if that were so, you would still be dead. But I was waiting for you to lose control and that’s just what you did.’ Putting down his sword and shield, he wiped the back of his arm across his brow. ‘You’re still far too hot-headed. It’s part of your passionate nature, and I love you for it. But if you want to live long enough to take your vengeance, you’re going to have to rein in that temper of yours.’
‘That’s easy enough for you to say.’ Doing his best to ignore the tittering of the girls, Orestes threw down his sword. ‘The gods have always been kind to you. What complaint can you possibly have against this life?’
‘None,’ Pylades answered, ‘except that it has treated my friend very ill.’ He took a towel from the heap on the bench beside him and tossed it across to Orestes. ‘Come, let’s take a bath together. Then I’ll give you a game of knucklebones before we eat.’
The two youths were cousins and had been friends since they were children, though it was not a friendship of which Clytaemnestra had recently approved. Even before the death of his sister Iphigenaia at Aulis, Orestes had become a major source of concern to his mother. His temperament was pugnacious and impatient, his manner verging on the insolent. In a court where everyone else went in fear of her power, Orestes had begun to take liberties, trying her patience in ways that he would not have dared to risk with his father. Yet Clytaemnestra found it hard to be firm with her son, even though she often devastated others with her cruel reproofs.
From the first, she had always entertained such hopes of him. One day he would marry his cousin Hermione and unite the thrones of Mycenae and Sparta, thus confirming the hegemony of their royal house across all Argos. And he would become the kind of king that her first husband might have been had Agamemnon not murdered him. A king who ruled supreme over a world of artistic beauty and intellectual excellence, a world such as she would have chosen for herself if a strong fate had not willed otherwise.
Yet with her mind preoccupied with the cares of state, Clytaemnestra had found it impossible to give her son the quality of attention that such ambitions required. She had recruited the best mentors she could find to teach him eloquence and music, to cultivate his aesthetic sensibility and encourage him in philosophical enquiry as well as instructing him in the elements of politics and statecraft. But the plain fact was that Orestes wanted to be at the war. More than that, he wanted to be fighting alongside Achilles – to serve as his cup-bearer or humble armour-polisher if no more glorious role was available. Anything to be close to the man whom he idolized above all others. While Troy still stood and there were deeds of glory waiting to be done, what interest could he have in poring over old clay tablets and the finer points of sophistry?
And then when Clytaemnestra returned to Mycenae with the bitter news that his father had put Iphigenaia to death on the altar of Artemis at Aulis, the mind of Orestes had taken a darker turn. What was he to make of this – that his sister, whose beautiful face and exquisite singing voice had always been sources of wonder and delight to him, should have been murdered by his father? How could such a thing make sense unless the gods themselves were mad? In his confusion, he raged against his mother. How could she have permitted this to happen? Why had he not been informed of what his father intended so that he could have offered himself up in Iphigenaia’s place? But Clytaemnestra seemed remote and frozen inside her grief, and where Orestes looked to find maternal understanding, he met only silence or the impatient snarl of an injured lioness.
Eventually he found consolation in the company of his friend Pylades, who had been brought from Phocis to Mycenae in the hope that his companionship might make Orestes’ hours of study less solitary. The two boys had always been fond of one another, but now their imaginations were ignited by the same hopes and dreams. At last Orestes had found someone willing to play Patroclus to his own Achilles; and the cheerful modesty of his friend elicited a greater generosity of spirit from the spoiled prince. The two boys became inseparable. They swore the same oaths of undying love for one another as their heroes had sworn. Secretly they began to sleep in each other’s arms.
Then the news reached Mycenae that both Achilles and Patroclus were dead.
For a time Orestes was inconsolable. Not only did victory seem inconceivable now, but life itself seemed a vain and empty thing. How was it that everything he loved was taken from him? How was it that Achilles could have been slain by treachery while his father – a man he barely knew, who had callously put his own daughter to death – lived on and did nothing with all the power at his command?
Cooler-headed, more pragmatic in temperament, Pylades consoled his friend as best he could. Surely, he said, the best way to honour the shades of their heroes was to become greater heroes still. Together they would make good the loss. Let the war drag on, for soon the two of them must be called to the front. They were the young lions who would carry on the fight. Agamemnon would look on with pride as his son Orestes did what even Achilles had failed to do and led his forces through the Scaean Gate into the very heart of Troy.
Yet before any of that could happen, changes began to take place in Mycenae itself. Pelagon, the court bard who had sung for years of the deeds at Troy, mysteriously died. Familiar figures about the palace were relieved of their posts. Less approachable young men replaced them. Then Aegisthus appeared.
When his father first left for the war, Orestes had been too young to hear a full account of his family’s history, so the name of Aegisthus meant nothing to him. Nor did he take against the man at first. Handsome and charming, the newcomer appeared to be no more than a further addition to his mother’s ever-growing staff of ministers and officials, though one with whom she spent an unusual amount of time closeted in private. Only on the day when he remarked on the man’s lively wit to Pylades, and he saw his friend glance uneasily away, did Orestes become conscious that something might be amiss.
‘What is it?’ Orestes demanded. ‘Don’t you like him?’
Pylades merely shrugged and carried on oiling his bow.
‘I agree he seems a bit full of himself,’ Orestes