24

The Oracle Speaks

THE CROWDS AT DELPHI were dense and impatient. We decided that Ardeste and Zethus would take the donkey and wait for me while I joined the long column that crawled slowly toward Apollo’s shrine, the altar for sacrifices, and the place beyond it where the oracle sat on a three-legged stool over an opening in the earth. More suppliants had joined the line behind me. An old couple seeking advice about suitable husbands for their four daughters had come to Delphi in the past when their four sons were seeking wives, and they were eager to tell me what to expect.

“The oracle is known as the pythoness,” the wife said. “Three women take turns speaking in her voice. They’re women from surrounding villages past childbearing age whose lives are untainted by scandal or gossip.”

“She’s named for the serpent Python who guarded the spot believed to be the center of the world,” the husband explained. “When Apollo was still a little child, he shot an arrow that killed the serpent.”

The column crept forward. Others continued to join it. The couple chattered on. Vapors rose from the cleft and swirled around the pythoness and put her into a trance, they said. While the oracle was in the trance, Apollo possessed her spirit, and she prophesied. The husband said that the pythoness’s speech was like the ravings of a madwoman, impossible for ordinary people to understand, but that the priests of Apollo stood nearby to explain what she was saying.

“She never answers yes or no to a question,” the wife said, “and she always speaks the truth, but it’s often hard to know exactly what she means.”

“You must figure it out for yourself,” the husband advised.

I felt very uneasy. During the fighting, Apollo was on the Greeks’ side and then the Trojans’. Apollo had helped Paris shoot the arrow that wounded Achilles in his one vulnerable spot.

What help could I now expect from Apollo’s oracle?

The column of suppliants wound back and forth like a serpent with its tail far down the slope of Mount Parnassus. Slowly, slowly, the crowd edged forward, climbing the steep path toward the oracle. Dark clouds blotted out Helios in his flaming chariot, and we shivered in the icy wind that clawed through our woolen robes. My feet were cold. My limbs ached. I was hungry. I wondered where Zethus and Ardeste were waiting. My eyes grew heavy. I slapped my cheeks to keep myself awake, to keep moving forward, nearer to the pythoness, until I was close enough to observe the faces of those who had asked their questions and had received answers. Sometimes the look was one of relief, or encouragement; occasionally I saw joy in a face, but just as often I saw profound sorrow. I tried not to think about what my own expression would reveal when my turn finally came.

The other suppliants waiting to speak to the oracle had brought animals to sacrifice to Apollo, and I had only a necklace of gold beads, each bead in the shape of a Greek warrior’s shield. This may not have been the right sort of offering. I looked around uneasily at others, all with the proper kind of offerings of meat. Behind the old couple was a goatherd with a ram, a doe, and three bleating kids, and as my nervousness grew I decided to barter some of my beads in exchange for two of his animals. Surely he didn’t need so many.

The goatherd listened gravely to my proposal, and after some thought he nodded, holding up two fingers. I unstrung two beads from my necklace, and he handed me a rope and walked away. I realized that I was holding the rope with all five animals, and the beads were still in my hand. “Wait!” I called after him. “You forgot the beads!”

Then I noticed his winged sandals as he disappeared.

When I reached Apollo’s shrine, below the oracle’s stool, a priest led my goats away to slaughter. I’d been waiting for a long time, but before I felt quite ready, I was standing before the pythoness. I knelt and clasped the bony knees of an ordinary-looking woman, neither beautiful nor ugly. Her eyes were her most striking feature. She seemed to be looking at me, but I couldn’t tell if she actually saw me. I licked my lips and stated my request.

“I love Orestes, prince of Mycenae,” I told the pythoness, trying not to stammer. “But my beloved has committed a grave deed. His mother murdered his father, and he in turn has killed his adulterous mother and her lover. Now he is pursued by the Furies, who have driven him to madness.”

“I know all this,” the pythoness interrupted sharply. “Apollo advocated avenging the murder of Agamemnon, telling Orestes when he came here that if he did not exact retribution, he would be an outcast of society and prevented from entering any shrine or temple. I instructed him to pour libations of wine next to Agamemnon’s tomb, to cut off a lock of hair and leave it on the tomb, and then to contrive a way to punish Aegisthus and Clytemnestra for what they’d done. But I also warned him: the Furies do not readily forgive a matricide. I gave Orestes a bow made of ox horn to fend them off when they became too much to bear. There is nothing more I can do.”

The oracle’s words needed no interpretation. She wasn’t raving, and her eyes looked straight into mine.

“If there’s nothing more you can do for him, then please tell me what I can do,” I pleaded. “I believe I can save him, but first I must find him.”

“You are married to Pyrrhus. He will be displeased.”

“Yes, he’ll be very angry,” I admitted. “He’s always very angry.”

The pythoness answered sternly. “You have been promised to two men, a cruel one whom you despise, and a kind one who has committed the gravest of deeds. You will find Orestes, and yet not find the man you are looking for. He has two sisters. Trust one, but not the other.”

“Which one should I trust?”

“The one who earns it.”

“But who is the man I’ll find, if not Orestes? How do I help Orestes once I find him? And what shall I do about Pyrrhus?”

Abruptly the pythoness began to speak in a tongue I couldn’t understand. A priest came forward to interpret. “The pythoness says a long road lies ahead of you, and you must follow the road to its end. She has nothing more to say to you.”

He pushed me firmly away. It was not at all clear to me what I was to do. A second priest was already accepting the offerings of the old couple with the four daughters.

I searched for Zethus and Ardeste among the surging crowd, and I was relieved to hear them calling me from where they waited with the donkey. I saw the questions in their eyes. “Later,” I said.

We had started down the slopes of Mount Parnassus on a rough path somewhat parallel to the main path leading up when I twisted my ankle on the loose stones and injured it. Zethus insisted that we stop to rest on a jutting rock. Far below us was a bustling port on the shores of a sea so large I couldn’t see the opposite shore. Small fishing boats bobbed among bigger ships anchored in the harbor.

“What is this town?”

“Krisa,” Zethus said, “ruled by King Strophius. This is the Sea of Corinth.”

I knew about Krisa. Orestes had come here as a child to stay with his best friend, Pylades. He’d often spoken of it. I wondered if he’d come here when he consulted the pythoness at Delphi.

Ardeste volunteered to continue on down to the beach to trade some of my silver spangles for fish. “Shall I inquire about some sort of lodging for the night, mistress? You shouldn’t walk far with your injured ankle.”

Zethus insisted on staying with me, hovering nearby but leaving me with my thoughts: What man does she think I’ll find? What about Orestes’ sisters? How will I know whom to trust?

A fleet of black ships had entered the harbor. They were so close that I could also make out the emblem painted on the bow: the horns of a bull on a rayed star. Pyrrhus’s emblem.

I called to Zethus. “What are these ships? Where did they come from? Pyrrhus destroyed what was left of his fleet when we first arrived in Iolkos.”

Zethus squinted at the ships. “I don’t know, but I’m afraid he has come searching for you.”

I shuddered. Pyrrhus must have learned where I was going, asked questions, perhaps even tortured people to tell him. I thought of Ardeste’s cousin, the wife of the sandal maker, and worried what she may have suffered until she’d been forced to confess that she had helped me escape.

Ardeste returned, breathless from her climb up from the beach. Her eyes were large and frightened. In her basket were grilled fish and a loaf of bread, but my hunger was forgotten when we heard her news.

“Those are Pyrrhus’s ships! I heard the fishermen talking. He went to Iolkos, looking for you. The blind minstrel directed him there. As you know, the minstrel hears everything, his sense of smell is better than an animal’s—he knew we’d left together, and he deliberately sent Pyrrhus and his Myrmidons off in the wrong direction, to Iolkos. That bought us time, but not enough.”

“But the ships? What have you heard about them? I saw his entire fleet go up in flames!”

“The fishermen said that Pyrrhus and his men seized ships from merchants at Iolkos and sailed to a port on the Saronic Gulf, left the stolen ships there, and crossed the narrow strip of land to Corinth. Then Pyrrhus demanded that Corinthian merchants surrender their vessels. “No one dared to defy him. Pyrrhus had his emblem painted on the stolen ships and sailed for Krisa.”

“And now he’s come here to claim me! I hardly think I’m worth his trouble. He’s convinced that I’m barren. It’s Andromache who gave him a son.”

“He’s enraged,” Ardeste said. “Not only at you for leaving him, but at Apollo, too. He blames Apollo for his father’s death.”

Hordes of men were streaming off Pyrrhus’s pirated ships and onto the beach below us. I could easily pick out Pyrrhus himself, preparing to climb the path to the oracle. Behind him the seamen were attempting to herd a pair of fat oxen up the path still crowded with cold, weary suppliants.

“He may be too late to speak to the pythoness before the time of prophesying ends until spring,” I said. “I wonder what he’ll do then.”

“Hard to imagine,” Zethus said. “But when he hears that somebody has been trading silver spangles for food, he’ll guess that it’s you.”

“I spoke to a fisherman willing to let us stay as long as we wish in his hut a little way from the beach,” Ardeste said.

“Then let’s go now,” Zethus said. “We’ll be safer there.”

He helped me onto Onos’s back, and we picked our way cautiously down the steep, uneven path toward the beach. I was careful to keep my hair covered, hoping that no Myrmidon would happen to recognize me.

Word was being passed along from the oracle’s priests that this was the final day of prophecy. Whoever had not reached the pythoness by sunset would be turned away. I was relieved that I’d had an opportunity to consult her, even if I still didn’t understand the prophecy I’d received. Follow the road to its end. But what road? And to what end?

The clouds parted. Helios’s flaming chariot was already low in the western sky. Pyrrhus had no doubt heard the warning and surmised that he would not arrive in time—unless he eliminated all those suppliants ahead of him. He shouted an order, and his men charged ruthlessly through the anxious crowd, shoving aside any who blocked the path and sending them tumbling down the steep slope.

Pyrrhus forced his way to the head of the line, and his oxen were led away for slaughter. “I demand satisfaction for the death of my father, Achilles!” he bellowed. “It was Apollo who killed him, disguised as the cowardly Paris—Apollo’s and not Paris’s arrow that found its mark in my father’s one vulnerable spot! And I demand the return of my lawful wife, Hermione!”

We were close enough to hear Pyrrhus raving, but not close enough to hear the pythoness’s response. Whatever she said to him, Pyrrhus flew into a rage and issued another command to his Myrmidons. With fierce cries they surged forward and invaded Apollo’s sacred shrine. They plundered it, seizing gold and silver and gems brought there as offerings. Myrmidons seized the butchered carcasses of the two fat oxen and carried them off. At another order from Pyrrhus they set fire to the shrine. It was a shocking sight, a scene of complete chaos.

“What can Pyrrhus have been thinking?” Zethus murmured. “To insult the great god Apollo in such a way!”

Tongues of flame consumed the sacred shrine. Pyrrhus raised his arms toward the orange-tinted sky and shouted curses at Apollo as the sun began to slip below the horizon. The pythoness seated on her tripod and the priests of Apollo surrounding her appeared unable to move, as if they’d turned to stone.

The sun disappeared, and the pythoness stirred. The priests pressed forward. One of them drew a sacrificial knife from his belt and plunged it into Pyrrhus’s chest, stopping his beating heart.