The she-creature roared with him, its head tossed back to send the name into the star-flecked heavens. The torchbearer stooped and tore the hood from the head of the bound figure. It…it was a man, child. A Sikelian, I believe. Thin and disheveled, perhaps a laborer snatched from beneath the eaves of a wine shop. Galatea wrenched him upright and fairly dragged him over to Polyphemus. She pressed a knife into his fist…oh, child. So much blood! So much blood.
No, Eirene, dear, you need not fetch your mother. I am all right. It is no spasm that afflicts me, just a clarity of memory that strips away Time’s soothing veil. I had forgotten that poor man’s fate, you see. They butchered him, collected his blood, and offered it to that she-creature in exchange for wrecking vengeance upon Odysseus.
Some years ago, when I was still hale and hearty and the master of my own affairs, those affairs took me to the mouth of the River of Aegyptos, as I have said. Yes, the Nilus. I see you’ve been paying attention to this old man’s maunderings, eh? Well, during my time there I befriended a man called Amenophis. This dead Sikelian yet haunted my dreams, and I woke one night gripped by blinding terror. Like a river in spate, the tale of his death flowed from me and into the sympathetic ear of Amenophis, who was my host. Afterwards, I felt as limp and wrung-out as an old cloth. Amenophis prepared me a draught of wine laced with a few drops of poppy juice. As I drowsed, he revealed to me the truth of what I’d seen as a boy. It was an old rite, he had said. Poorly done, and long since fallen out of fashion. You saw theater, my friend. He claimed I had witnessed a sacrifice of blood in hopes of drawing the attention of the Lady of Vengeance, blessed Sekhmet. The lion-headed woman was, he told me, just a woman who sported a mask of the Goddess. Amenophis was a fine man, but I know what I saw.
And bloody-handed maenads or no, I ran from that place and did not stop till I reached my sleeping pallet.
* * *
5
* * *
I woke the next afternoon in the grip of a fever. When I’d finally slept early that morning, my dreams were awash in blood, with mad-eyed women in scarlet-spattered white trying to plunge their daggers into my heart. I must have cried out, for the next thing I knew my father was there. Concern etched itself across his brow; later, he told me how frightful I looked—all pale and clammy, yet burning to the touch. He blamed the wine and the late night carousing. Like most harbor folk, he did not trust the physicians of the upper city. He sent for the wise woman who lived in the next street, followed her directions to the letter, and stayed at my bedside—my own mother, the great-grandmother whose name you bear, dear Eirene, died giving birth to me; I never knew her, beyond what my father told me. But I feel she would have approved of you. My father never took another wife, and thus I grew up bereft of brothers or sisters. So if ever I needed a woman’s care he was not shy about it. He could dab my forehead with a soft cloth or croon a lullaby with more tenderness than many a-woman I’ve known.
When next I woke, it was to my father’s weary smile.
“Papa,” I said, my voice cracking from thirst. He helped me drink, and then pressed my hand to his lips. I realized he was crying. “What’s wrong, Papa?”
“I should not have let you go about with some god-cursed foreigner, boy,” he replied. “Those night-born sisters who hound him, the Eumenides, nearly took you off by mistake.” The image of the three furious Erinyes, goddesses of vengeance and retribution, brought to mind Galatea and the two other women, blood-soaked and fey. I shivered and sank back onto my pallet. But the young mind has a wonderful elasticity, child. It can be stretched nigh to breaking one day, and resume its shape seemingly overnight should the right poultice be applied. For me, that poultice was my father.
I’d been unconscious for three days after that evil night beyond Geryon’s Well; I spent another two days recovering, eating sparingly at first and then with all the voraciousness of Tantalus, freed from his bondage. Cousins and uncles checked in on us and word of my recovery spread; neighbors wandered over and left honey cakes or loaves of bread. Even the Tyrrhenian envoy came calling, having first secured passage back to his homeland. By the next day—the sixth since the king’s supper—I was up and ready to be about the thousand little mischiefs of boyhood.
But, before I could run off with my mates, I had a duty to discharge. “I must see him,” I told my father, meaning Polyphemus. He had sent no word, either to inquire about my well-being or to offer sympathy over my illness (which, my father mentioned later, even the king was kept abreast of). Even so, he was my guest-friend. “I must see him,” I repeated. After a moment, my father nodded.
“Yes, you’re right, boy. You can’t just let it lie. That wouldn’t do. But there is a way to do such things so as not to offend the gods. I’ve heard he has taken up the king’s hospitality and shelters now in the palace. Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” I said after a moment’s reflection. “I took this burden of my own accord, so I should also lay it by of my own accord.”
My father smiled, eyes crinkling with pride. He put out my best tunic—it was blue, if I recall, with a tasteful amount of embroidery around the hem; with the king’s gift on my wrist, I cut quite the dashing figure.
I bear no shame by admitting to you, child, that I had no desire to see Polyphemus. The memory of him bellowing the king of Ithaca’s name before slaughtering that helpless man in an effort to bestir the Lady of Vengeance sickened me. He was xénos, a foreign barbarian. But, propriety trumped emotion. I had made the first gesture; now, it was upon me to make the last.
My father saw me off. A bit of weakness yet lurked in my legs and my stomach griped over the bread I had earlier, its hard crust made soft by dunking it in a cup of watered wine. But I went slowly, returning the myriad greetings thrown at me—mostly by those who had attended the king’s supper; I was the harbor’s darling, it seemed.
Ascending to the high city, I did not drag my feet crossing the market square despite the carnival of sights and sounds it offered. That was hard, but I had come on a man’s business; I’d leave the business of boys for later. I presented myself at the doors to the palace, told them my errand, and followed one of the king’s stewards. He showed me to a small, private garden on a terrace that overlooked the sea. There, beneath an awning of heavy fringed linen and surrounded by beautiful foliage he could not see, Polyphemus sat alone.
His head tilted; he heard our footfalls as the steward brought me near and cleared his throat.
“The son of Lykaon, called Glaukos, sir,” the man said.
“By the lights of heaven,” Polyphemus said. He turned his head to look in my direction. A scarf woven from soft saffron-colored fabric hid the empty sockets that were once his eyes; his bare skull gleamed, and even his wiry beard was oiled and well-kept. “Yours is a name I did not expect to hear in my presence again, young sir.”