The child, pressed to her side, felt her breath drawn in and in. Blindly he waited for the unknown storm to break from the lowering sky. His fingers clenched on the blanket. He knew himself forgotten now, and alone.
The storm broke. “A soldier, was it, they made you there? And what else? What else?” He could feel her ribs convulsed with rage. “You went south at sixteen, and by then already the country all around was full of your by-blows, don’t you think I know who they are? That whore Arsinoe, Lagos’ wife, old enough to be your mother…Then the great Pelopidas taught you all the learning Thebes is famous for. Battle and boys!”
“Be silent!” roared Philip, loud enough for a battlefield. “Have you no decency before the child? What does he see in this room? What does he hear? I tell you, my son shall be brought up civilized, if I have to…”
His voice was drowned by her laughter. She drew back her hand from the child, to thrust her body forward. With her arms and open palms propping her weight, her red hair falling forward over her naked breasts and the child’s open mouth and eyes, she laughed till the high room echoed. “Your son?” she cried. “Your son!”
King Philip breathed as if he had just run the long-race. He strode forward and raised his hand.
Starting out of a perfect stillness, in one flash of movement the child threw off the curtain of his mother’s hair, and stood upright on the bed. His grey eyes, dilated, looked almost black; his mouth had whitened. He struck at the lifted arm of his father, who from mere astonishment withdrew it. “Go away!” screamed the child, glittering and fierce as a forest wildcat. “Go away! She hates you! Go away! She will marry me!”
For three long breaths, Philip stood rooted, mouth and eyes gaping, like a man clubbed on the head. Then diving forward, he seized the child by both shoulders, swung him through the air, let go with one hand while he wrenched the great door open, and tossed him outside. Taken unawares, rigid with shock and fury, he did nothing to help himself. His sliding body reached the head of the stairs and began to tumble down them.
With a great clattering din, young Agis let fall his spear, dragged his arm out of his shield-straps, and taking the stairs in threes and fours leaped forward to catch the child. At the third stair down he reached him, and picked him up. His head seemed not to have been struck, and his eyes were open. Up above, King Philip had paused with the door in his hand. He did not slam it till he had seen that all was well; but of this the child knew nothing.
Caught up along with him, startled and bruised, the snake whipped free of him as he began to fall, poured itself down the stairs, and was gone into the dark.
Agis, after his first start, had seen what it was. The child was enough to think about. He carried him downstairs, and sitting at their foot took him on his knees, looking him over by the light of the torch in its wall-sconce. He felt stiff as a board, and his eyes were turned up to show the whites.
In the name of all gods below, thought the young man, what shall I do? If I leave my post, the Captain will have my blood. If his son dies on my hands, the King will. One night last year, before the new favorite’s reign began, Philip had looked his way, and he had pretended to be dense. Now he had seen too much; his fortunes, he thought, would sell dear at a sack of beans. The child was looking blue about the lips. In the far corner was Agis’ thick wool night-cloak, ready for the cold small hours. He picked it up, wadded a fold between the child and his own hard corselet, and wrapped him round. “Come,” he said anxiously. “Come, look, all’s well.”
He seemed not to be breathing. What to do? Slap him, like a woman in a laughing-fit? It might kill him instead. His eyes were moving, and focusing. He drew in a crowing breath, and gave a violent scream.
Deeply relieved, Agis loosed the cloak round the struggling limbs. He clucked and muttered as if to a frightened horse, not holding him in too hard but letting him feel firm hands. In the room above, his parents were calling down curses on one another. After time Agis did not reckon—he had most of the night before him—these sounds died down, and the child began to weep, but not for long. Having come thus far to himself, soon he fell quiet. He lay biting his lower lip, swallowing, and gazing up at Agis, who tried suddenly to remember how old he was.
“That’s my young captain,” he said gently, moved by the almost manlike struggle on the childish face. He dried it with the cloak, and kissed it, trying as he did so to picture what this golden boy would look like when he was old enough for love. “Come, sweetheart, you and I will stand guard together. We’ll look after one another, eh?”
He enfolded the child and stroked him. After a time, the quiet, the warmth, the unconscious sensuality of the young man’s caresses, a vague awareness of being more admired than pitied, began to heal the enormous wound which had seemed his whole and only self. It began to close, sealing in all within it.
Presently he put out his head from the cloak and looked about. “Where is my Tyche?”
What did the strange child mean, calling upon his fortune? Seeing Agis’ face look blank, he added, “My snake, my daimon. Where did he go?”
“Ah, your lucky snake.” Agis thought the Queen’s pets entirely loathsome. “He’s hiding awhile, he’ll soon be back.” He wrapped more cloak round the child; he had begun to shiver. “Don’t take it to heart, your father didn’t mean it. It was only the wine in him. Many a clip on the head I’ve had from mine.”
“When I’m big…” He paused to count on his fingers, up to ten. “When I’m big, I’ll kill him.”
Agis sucked in his breath through his lower teeth. “Ss-ss! Don’t say such a thing. It’s god-cursed to kill a father, it sets the Furies after a man.” He began to describe them, but broke off as the child’s eyes widened; he had had more than enough. “All these knocks we get when we’re young, that’s how we learn to bear our wounds, when we go to war. Look. Move over. Look what I got, the first time I fought the Illyrians.”
He pulled back the kilt of scarlet wool from his thigh, and showed the long ridged scar, with a pit where the spearhead had plowed through almost to the bone. The boy gazed with respect, and felt it with his finger.
“Well,” said Agis, covering it again, “that hurt, you can guess. And what kept me from yelling out, and being shamed before the Companions? My father’s clips on the ear. The fellow who gave me that never lived to boast of it. My first man, he was. When I showed my father his head, he gave me my sword belt, offered up my boy’s girdle-cord, and feasted all our kindred.” He looked along the passage. Would no one ever come by, and take the child to his bed?
“Can you see my Tyche?” he was asking.
“He’ll not be far. He’s a house-snake. They don’t wander. He’ll come for his milk, you’ll see. It’s not every boy can tame a house-snake. That’s the blood of Herakles in you, I daresay.”
“What was his snake called?”
“When he was a newborn babe, two snakes crept into his cradle—”
“Two?” His fine brows drew together, frowning.
“Ah, but these were bad ones. Zeus’ wife Hera sent them, to choke him dead. But he grabbed them by their necks, one in each hand…” Agis paused, silently cursing himself. Either it would give the child nightmares, or, and maybe likelier, he would go off and try to throttle a viper. “No, this only happened, you see, to Herakles because he was the son of a god. He passed as King Amphitryon’s son, but Zeus had begot him on Amphitryon’s Queen. So Hera was jealous.”
The child listened alertly. “And he had to work. Why did he work so hard?”
“Eurystheus, the next King, was envious of him, because he was the better man, a hero, and half divine. Eurystheus was only a mortal, you understand, and Herakles had been meant to have the kingdom. But Hera caused Eurystheus to be born first. That’s why Herakles had to do his Labors.”