The Arms Of Hercules Read online

I knew beyond a doubt that my teacher was dead before his body hit the courtyard tiles, as soon as I felt in my right arm and shoulder the small shock of the backhanded, unpremeditated blow and realized, too late, with how much angry force it had been delivered.

  For the space of several breaths, which to me seemed a long, long time, the routine of the surrounding household flowed on just as before. I could hear the steady murmur of incidental sounds. No one else was aware of what had just happened, and I remember realizing that in some sense my world, the world in which I had grown up, was coming to an end. That world had only a minute more to live, and maybe less. I could hear the servants being merry about something, in the direction of the kitchens, and in another courtyard someone pouring water from an urn.

  I remained utterly alone in the small, shaded courtyard, with the body of the man I had just killed. In fact I had never felt so utterly alone in all my life. My right fist with the lyre still gripped in it—I have never much cared to listen to the sound of that instrument since—had caught him awkwardly on the jaw, making a breaking noise that seemed quite loud, and my tutor had gone down on the pavement as if felled by an arrow through the heart. Now he lay with eyes open and his head twisted far over. He might have been gazing at the sky, or maybe at the intervening grapevines on their trellis, and there was such a look of complacency on his dead face that I doubted whether he had had time to feel a thing, much less to understand just what had happened to him and why.

  Fortunately for me, Linus was not a member of the aristocracy, nor was he attached to the king's household. But neither was he an utter nobody, whose shattered jawbone and broken neck might never be noticed, whose death could be practically ignored and forgotten. His only relatives were . . . who were they, exactly? I could not remember at the moment, but I seemed to remember his saying that they lived somewhere far away.

  My trial took place two days later, in an audience chamber of the palace, before Eurystheus the Second, the teenage king of Cadmia.

  Following the advice of my lawyer, who happened also to be a friend of the royal family and of Amphitryon as well, I pleaded self-defense, and on that ground I was acquitted. The whole business took less than half an hour.

  Eurystheus was a cautious youth, still ill at ease being king, feeling his way into a job for which he had never been properly prepared. He was not one of the lads with whom I had grown up. He was somewhat taller than me, and it was easy to see that by the time he was twenty years old he would be fat. His father had fallen unluckily in some minor battle, and he himself was grandson of Eurystheus the First, who had been on the throne when I was born. In those early months of his reign, Eurystheus the Second, a lifelong slave of caution, went nowhere without a guard of picked soldiers in attendance. I think he had nothing to say during the entire trial without first getting advice from the legal adviser who stood just behind him.

  Tiresias was in the room during the trial, along with a score or so of other onlookers, but he had nothing to say.

  In the course of the arguments, my lawyer, one of the cleverer of his profession in the city, had occasion to say several helpful things, one of which was: "The truth is, Majesty, this young man is growing rapidly and he does not know his own strength." My lawyer tended to perspire heavily, and yet in fact he was quite calm and confident under almost all conditions.

  The truth was, of course, that I knew my own strength better than anyone else who was still alive. But I was not going to argue the point.

  The king was only a few months older than I was, and he could sympathize with that. Thinking back, I realize that he also might have had a tutor or two whose violent deaths would not have totally displeased him.

  There was learned medical testimony that Linus's neck had been broken, as were certain bones in his skull and in both his upper and lower jaws. The fatal lyre, itself basically undamaged, was exhibited in evidence, and we all stared at it solemnly.

  Only one more brief whisper from his adviser, and the king was ready to pronounce his verdict. That I was speedily acquitted was, I am sure, partly due to the fact that the king wanted to retain his general Amphitryon as his loyal follower. It also helped that Linus had only distant relatives alive anywhere, and no one of importance was seriously offended by his death—indeed, his abrasive manners probably caused a number of citizens to feel a certain satisfaction.

  Acquitted though I was, it was universally agreed that I ought to go away for a while. As my sixteenth birthday was still almost a month in the future, I was considered still a bit young for the army. The king recommended that I be sent out to tend the herds for an indefinite period—this frequently happened to the youth of prominent families when they grew hard to control. As we were leaving the palace, my lawyer told me confidentially that in practice my stay with the herds would almost certainly be prolonged for at least a year, more likely two or three. But there was no reason why I should not pay brief visits home during my period of exile, provided I was discreet about it. As we returned home after the trial, my mother was in tears, though she could hardly have hoped for a more favorable outcome. Amphitryon was somewhat grim, as usual, and had little to say. But he appeared reasonably well satisfied.

  My lawyer, like most other male adults, was a military veteran, and he shook his head. "Besides, any young man, especially a general's son, who reacts to the first touch of discipline by breaking the neck of someone in authority—that young man would not fare well in the army."

  So my official innocence was declared, and in the same breath my punishment, for it amounted to that, was settled. With the king's verdict gratefully received, and a date for my departure set, the household was caught up in a general sense of relief. I scarcely saw Megan, and I had the impression that she was deliberately trying to keep out of my sight; but I would not have known what to say to her had we had a chance to be alone. The fact that everyone, even my mother, seemed ready to ignore me during my last few days at home did not bother me at all: The less attention anyone paid to me in my current state of mind, the better.

  But before I turned my back on home and went to learn to be a herdsman, I decided to make a greater effort than I ever had before to probe the uncertainty of my own origins. I waited until I could feel reasonably confident of having Alcmene to myself for a quarter of an hour, and then approached her, when she was alone and reading, or perhaps weaving or spinning.

  It did not seem to me a good omen that this meeting was going to take place in the same courtyard where I had killed Linus, but I refused to put off the business any longer.

  "Mother?"

  She raised her lovely eyes with slow reluctance. "What is it, Hercules?"

  "I want you to tell me the truth about the snakes."

  There was a long silence, during which my mother refused to look at me at all, and picked at her woman's work with nervous fingernails, and, I suppose, dropped or made a stitch or two. Then at last she raised her eyes to mine again and asked: "What snakes?"

  When I only waited wordlessly, standing with hands clasped behind my back, she fell silent again, and it seemed a long time before she sighed. "You've heard the stories."

  Of course I had been hearing them, in several garbled and fragmentary versions, from the servants, from my playfellows, year in and year out, from the time that I was old enough to understand any stories at all. Still I said nothing.

  At last she gave in, and set aside the fabric she had been holding in her lap. Folding her well-kept hands, she said: "Of course you have. Well, I suppose your father and I should have told you the truth about it all much earlier."

  The many stories I had been hearing all my life were of course concerned with more than snakes. My father? I thought. I have never seen the face of my true father, nor heard his voice. But I said nothing. I wanted to take things in order, and now it seemed that I might hear the truth about the snakes at last.

  Another sigh from Mother, another pause. Then at last she began. "It happened in this house"—she turned
her head—"in what is now my sewing room, which was then your nursery. There were two snakes that came in—into the house—somehow. One day when you were no more than ten months old."

  "How did they come in, Mother?"

  "We were never able to determine that. The doors had all been closed, or so the servants swore. There were the drains, of course, but everyone agreed the snakes were too big for the drainpipes. When they were dead the servants measured them, and one was fully eight feet long, the other almost ten." And she repeated: "You were ten months old."

  "Some enemy sent them, to attack me? Or could it possibly have been an accident?"

  "I don't know." She shook her head and sighed. "No, that's not really true. I was sure from the beginning that it was not a—not a natural event. We've never been able to determine any reason. That anyone would have had."

  "Did you try?"

  "For a time we did. I consulted soothsayers, but they could tell me nothing."

  "Tiresias?"

  "No." She shook her head. "I suggested going to the king's prophet, but your father didn't want to consult him."

  "You mean it was Amphitryon who didn't want that."

  "That is what I said."

  "He is my father?"

  My mother was silent.

  After waiting awhile I asked: "Of what species were the snakes?"

  "I think they were not natural snakes, but monsters. Although they might have been vipers of some kind, I suppose. I have never learned much about snakes, but I have no doubt that they were poisonous. I saw their fanged heads later." Alcmene's face was still almost calm, but she made a strange, small noise in her throat. "One of the magicians cut their heads off, so he could use them in his rituals. But he was able to find out nothing."

  "Tell me exactly what happened," I pressed her. My mother sighed loudly, as at a painful but familiar sight. "There's no doubt about it, the serpents were coming after you. There was a servant's child, an infant, in the room as well, but they ignored her. Their path into the room took them directly past the cradle where she lay, and they came past it, straight to you. We could see the slimy trails they'd left—not natural snakes, but monsters. And you were still too young to walk. But somehow you had caught one snake in each of your two hands. You grabbed each one just behind the head, just as if you knew that was the proper way."

  My witness had tilted her head back now, and her eyes were closed. "Snakes never die quickly, and they were still thrashing about when we—when I heard the noise and came running into the room. Their thrashing had pulled you from your cradle, but you still held on. Your little fists did not seem big enough to grasp those scaly bodies properly. But when we tried to pry them away from you, we saw how deep your tiny fingers had dug in through skin and scales, how you had crushed bones."

  I did not know what to say. Of course I could remember nothing.

  "You were not crying, Hercules," my mother said. "You were laughing, as babies laugh. You thought it was a game."

  There was silence in the courtyard for a time. Finally Alcmene said: "That was when your father and I knew how truly—how truly special you were, Hercules. Though we had begun to suspect, even earlier."

  "My father?"

  My mother's eyes came open, and their look was sharp. "Hercules, you know who I mean. The lord Amphitryon has been a father to you."

  So, it was true. I nodded slowly. "More or less. Most of the time. Some of the time, anyway." I knew boys who had suffered much worse treatment in their homes, and from true fathers; I had seen their bruises and heard their stories.

  "He has not been cruel," I had to admit. "But I think he will be glad when I am no longer living in this house. But, Mother, now that you've started to tell me about the snakes, tell me more. Please. Every little detail that you can remember."

  While Alcmene talked, confirming what had seemed the wildest rumor as cold fact, I stood before her listening carefully, but most of the time I did not look at her. Instead I looked down at my own hands. They were well kept, sunburned, but not at all callused—it seems that I never develop calluses, or blisters, either, even from hard manual labor. For a youth of fifteen my hands were not particularly large or muscular, though they were no longer childish.

  At the moment they were resting on the back of a heavy wrought-iron chair, the top of the chairback formed by a bar of curving black metal half an inch thick. I thought the bar must have been bent into its present shape when it was red hot, by the blows of a heavy hammer in the hand of a skilled smith. That rod of iron was cold now, and many a strong man could have held it over his knee and strained and groaned and not been able to wrench it out of its congealed shape by so much as the thickness of a fingernail. I knew I could easily—easily!—have tied it in a bow, but I did nothing of the kind. Not for many years had I performed any truly extraordinary feats in my parents' sight, or in the presence of anyone who was likely to report to them. The story of the snakes was deeply interesting, but now that words and thoughts were flowing I had even bigger questions that I wanted answered.

  When my mother fell silent again, I asked her: "How often have you seen my father? When was the last time?"

  Her eyes went closed again, and her head was shaking slowly, side to side.

  She said: "Hercules, enough. It will be better if you don't try to dig into such matters."

  "What will be better? How can it be better?" Receiving no answer, I drew a deep breath, and persisted. "When was the last time you saw my father?"

  For a moment I feared that my mother was going to faint. But at least she did not pretend not to know whom I was talking about.

  She said: "I have had one meeting with Zeus in my entire lifetime, and you seem to know about that. I suppose there is no possibility that you could not. I swear to you, Hercules, that since that night I have never seen him, or heard from him again. Not ever."

  "I believe you," I told her. "Yes, I believe you, Mother." My throat was dry. I had never seen him or heard from him at all.

  She nodded. "Amphitryon has always been suspicious, but I have sworn to him again and again, as I swear to you now: That night was the first, and last, and only time."

  "I see." After a while I added: "I thought that there could possibly have been some message. Some word for me, even passed on indirectly. Maybe after I was born—?"

  "Nothing." Mother shook her head emphatically. "Never again the slightest communication from him, the god we are speaking of. You must understand that, Hercules. I have no reason to think that he, your true father, even knows that you exist, or would care if he knew."

  My hands were tightening on the iron chairback, and I could feel it begin to give a little, like soft wood, or something no harder than the body of a snake. I knew that what I was doing would leave fingerprints. "Someday I mean to find him, Mother."

  Alcmene had been upset by my questions, but now, for the first time, she was frightened. "Hush!"

  "I mean to find him, Mother. Find him, and talk to him, and learn from him what he knows and cares about."

  "Hush, I say!" And she started from her chair.

  On the day after that interview with my mother, I left home to be a herdsman.

  At that time, most of the locally owned cattle were grazed in a district called Nemea, miles from the city. Herds of cattle, mixed in with lesser numbers of droms and cameloids. The animals and the herders who followed them spent eight or nine months of the year wandering among treeless hills, with ribs of rock protruding here and there through a thin skin of soil and grass. If the winter promised to be mild, the stock might be kept out in these fields all year round.

  Once again, on the morning of my departure, my mother expressed her great relief that the king had declared me not guilty, and that my punishment had not been more severe.

  "You must be thankful, Hercules. A man who strikes a fatal blow by accident sometimes has his right hand cut off."

  I was in no mood to be told how I should feel. "I don't suppose that happens very
often to any son of any family as important as ours. And I doubt it could happen at all to any son of Zeus."

  I remember how she stared at me then, aghast at my dangerous pride. "Perhaps we have spoiled you in bringing you up—spare the rod and spoil the child."

  Alcmene had to stop there, probably remembering the day when Amphitryon had tried to beat me. And I suppose she was also thinking of Linus, who had not believed in sparing the rod—not as long as his hand held it.

  At last my mother was able to continue. "Hercules, you have a princely pride. But you must remember that you are not a—prince." She hesitated just slightly before the last word, and I thought, with an eerie sensation down my spine, that she had been on the point of warning me that I was not a god.

  "I know what I am not, Mother. But what am I?"

  She could not tell me that. But I was determined that some day my father would.

  Chapter Three

  A Real Lion

  It so happened that my twelve-year-old nephew Enkidu, the son of my half brother, Iphicles, was also scheduled to take a turn at herding. I had managed to avoid that sort of duty until now, but Enkidu already had a year's experience in minding cattle. Of course when the summer ended I would be required to remain in exile with the herds, while he would return to Cadmia to go to school and to begin his military training.

  My nephew was tall for his age, only a few inches shorter than I, and of wiry build. His hair was curly black, and most of his skin, like mine, had been burned dark by the sun. He might have been considered handsome, were it not for the fact that his ears stuck out outrageously. The difference in our ages was small enough, and we saw each other frequently enough, that my attitude toward him was what it might have been to the younger brother I had never had.

  There I was, at the age of sixteen—my birthday overtook me on the road—undertaking what was really my first unsupervised trip away from home. Propelled by the well-nigh irresistible force of a royal suggestion, armed with my mother's blessing, and with a bow and arrows presented to me at the last moment by Amphitryon, I put on sandals and a herdsman's long shirt and started out into the countryside, with Enkidu at my side.