.. | the walls of astyanax | chapter 2 When Avicenna turned fourteen, his father died. He was out on the paddock, lying in the grass with the newest foal born to one of their most cherished mares. Teasing the filly’s small fuzzy muzzle, he kept a wary eye on the filly's dam. In turn she watched him right back, slyly under the pretense of her peaceful grazing. He was thinking about his father, who had been away for months now on a trip Avicenna knew nothing about. It would be someday soon, Diocles had said, that Philip would return home, bearing gifts and news. Perhaps if he returned late in the evening and was in good spirits, Avicenna would get to play his lyre for him. Or maybe Philip could be persuaded to listen to the new melodies Diocles had taught him to play on his flute- The approaching sound of pounding feet startled the mare into squealing her displeasure and rounding up her filly to the opposite end of the paddock. Avicenna shot to his feet, ready to admonish the panting servant who'd rushed all the way out here to him. It had taken him hours to get that close! But the news the servant brought so urgently made his knees suddenly buckle from under him and he staggered back in a fight to keep his senses. His knees hit the ground and he remained there, clutching at the grass. It couldn't be. No. The initial shock was overcome quickly, put off by disbelief. In a moment he was sprinting back to the house. What the servant had known was only hearsay. Avicenna learned the whole story from his father's familiar, who had been left behind because of the business nature of Philip's trip. The boy was in tears when Avicenna found him in his father's chambers, crumpled on the ground weeping, doubled over as if praying to his gods. For a moment Avicenna could do nothing but stand over him and watch the boy fall to pieces. A race? His father was killed in a game? That man, that noble, straight-backed man with the lazy dark eyes and large, callused hands had fallen from his chariot? Avicenna suddenly knelt down and shook the boy by his tunic to snap him out of it, but Lysander only fell into more tears. He could hardly get intelligible words out past his trembling lips and frustrated Avicenna so that he thrust the boy away, staring wildly at him with both accusation and disbelief. This couldn't be. Not the man whose stables at home were full of champions from all over Greece- brood mares all the way from Olympia, huge Lacedaemonian warbeasts, even flashy, hairy-footed Boetian drafts of all colors that took several men just to harness. Not this man who had raced every hour of his life almost, who took pride in his prowess behind the reins, and who was very much known for his skill. No, it couldn't be so. Avicenna began to pace, forgetting the collapsed boy for a moment. He ran his fingers back through his hair and bunched it in fists, pulling until his scalp screamed. It wasn't possible. There was no way that his father could have died doing something that was so everyday to him- and so far from home too! The messenger had been sent from his father's companions all the way from Delphi! Even that was a journey that Philip had made hundreds of times before for different reasons, always bringing back odd and rare gifts upon his return. The most prized had been Avicenna's own mount, Patroklos, the white Philip had promised so long ago. But Lysander also had come from Delphi. Avicenna stopped his moving about and fixed his less than sane gaze down on the other boy. He was angered by the boy’s dark imploring eyes; Philip had always called him his elafi, his deer. He had long ago been a gift that Philip had given to himself instead of bringing home another concubine to enrage Avicenna's mother further. Perhaps he thought a boy would be less infuriating to her. Not so. Kassandra would have the boy sent away or killed were it in her power to order it so. Estranged by Philip's absences, they had slept in separate chambers ever since Avicenna could remember. In his young mind he would often wonder how in Zeus's high heaven had he ever been conceived. However, Avicenna, still silent in his narcosis, turned slowly to look again at the crumpled boy weeping at the foot of his father's bed. He had been a kept boy too long. "Stop it," he ordered. Lysander raised his head. "He wouldn't approve of you weeping like a woman." Lysander looked pleadingly up at him, confusion now mixed with grief as Avicenna smiled madly down at him, content in his superiority. Let the boy believe his master was dead. Avicenna knew better. He knew Philip couldn't have died in such a way- He'd had a fall maybe, which wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but he wasn't dead. His father would come back, bringing more gifts of bizarre trinkets and fabulous horses from the circus at Delphi. His mother would know. "Avicenna," Lysander whispered, reaching out for him. He was begging for comfort, some kind word to ease his pain. In silence, Avicenna left the boy crumpled on the floor and fled to his mother's chambers where he found her sitting upright on her divan, staring at the far walls. "Mother," he whispered, falling to his knees and letting his head down into her lap, clutching the soft fabric of her peplos and begging her to tell him the truth. She neither wept nor spoke. She just slowly stood up and sent for his tutor to care for him. Avicenna saw the man coming and shot to his feet. "Tell me!" he shouted, fighting hands that pulled at his arms. "Mother!" Oh how he had hated her in those moments, when she would deny him even a word to soothe his fears. A simple kiss or caress alone would have consoled him at least for a little while. But she gave him what he knew he should have expected from her all along- nothing but silence. Diocles, even in his older age, had hands of iron. Avicenna was dragged bodily from his mother's chambers, weeping and shouting at her to speak to him. If he had somehow squirmed from the old man's grasp he knew he would have found a knife and done her away with it. How dare she not grieve! But he could not get free of them. Struggling madly, with tears staining his face, he was pulled into a throng of confused servants who only knew to keep a hold on the child who'd gone mad in his grief. The days began to pass. Avicenna had not been allowed to attend the funeral, by his mother’s creed. By her order he was to remain home, not to leave her should she need him. About it, Avicenna could do nothing. But he refused to show how ravaged he was on the inside. Instead, he dried his tears, and consoled himself in nursing the silent simmering hate that had begun to overtake him. During those first few days meanwhile, Kassandra had disappeared into her inner chambers. She didn't come out for three days. It was only the passing of her maid-servants, as Avicenna kept an eye on her double doors from around the corner, that assured anyone that she was even still alive. So it was that for the sake of his own sanity, Avicenna pushed the news of his father to the back of his mind to be grieved over later. After his initial reaction to the news had subsided into quiet tears, he now frightened the servants with his silence. Even Diocles could not rouse him. And worse yet, there were things that now needed taking care of. With the patriarch dead, new rules of the house would need to be made. Neither of Avicenna’s parent's parents still lived. Who then, would take over matters, if either of his parents had no male family left alive? But until Avicenna was old enough to do the business his father dealt with on a daily basis, he was still powerless for a good six more years or so of schooling. Handling money, buying and disciplining slaves, managing the stables and their brood mares and studs that brought in money for their family would have to fall into someone's hands. But whose? His mother would surely remarry... The thought made Avicenna grit his teeth in contempt. Avicenna made his new home just outside the portico wall where he could watch his mother's rooms for any sign of her. He would sit all day there, sometimes dozing, against the wall until Diocles would come and drag him away, entreating him to eat, get some proper sleep. Lysander was inconsolable, when he could be found. As well he should, he lived in fear of Kassandra without her husband's presence. Avicenna would offer him no comfort nor afford sympathy. The boy would surely be sent away now that there was no need of him in their house any longer. Once or twice during his stakeout by his mother's chambers Avicenna had caught the young Delphian boy watching him. When Lysander looked at him, his eyes were those of a person who had been used all his life, he had never known anything but. They held pleading. And suffering. Avicenna soon refused to even look at him. Three days later, Kassandra had emerged from her chambers. She was fresh and beautiful with hair spilling down over her shoulders, even though the mass of it was pinned up. Within two weeks later, Lysander was gone. Avicenna vowed to himself that he would never keep a boy, if he was to ever have a family of his own. Time passed slowly at first, too slowly for Avicenna to shake the loss of his father completely. The ache of repressed sorrow within him began to take its toll as he matured. Though there were still those in the house that remembered him as a sweet young boy, the bitterness he nourished within made that innocence all but disappear. He grew tall and strong, lean and agile as his father had been. However, his colors- cinnamon auburn hair, rare green eyes, remained very much like his mother’s. Along with them he retained a few of her less-redeeming personality traits. "Cenna! Stop your daydreaming and pay attention!" His father had been dead and gone for two years. Life had gone on. His mother still lived and blossomed in the open, sunlit portico gardens where she walked and spoke to her maidservants in haughty, shrill tones. There seemed little left in her life now to cause her pretty face to scowl; she was always smiling nowadays. Avicenna, not long after his father's funeral, had seen her with a strange man who had offered her comfort. This man was his father's brother, who had lived further south than Philip had ever been on the isle of Crete where he had made Knossos his home. Avicenna had never known he existed. He was called Euchenor, and he had moved into their home to take over his father's duties as was his right. It was unnerving to have him in the house in that he resembled Philip very much, though they were two completely separate minds. Avicenna found himself quickly detesting the man for not being more like his brother. "Are you listening to me? Pay attention!" Diocles again. "Your voice puts me to sleep," Avicenna answered, popping another grape into his mouth. Diocles cuffed him on the ear. Grumbling to himself, the old man retreated to his bench and took up the manuscripts he'd been reading from. "You grow more like your mother every day, child," he growled. "A shame you are too old to be taken across the knee." Avicenna finished his vine of grapes and rose to stretch his cramped legs. "Perhaps you'll whip me as if I were a Spartan wretch?" He tweaked his teacher's white beard. Diocles' eyes twinkled with laughter held in check. "I should, you rascal. It's amazing your other teachers can put up with you-" "They're old and blind," the young Athenian yawned, "If they could actually see me, then I would get the whipping of my life." The old man rose as well and called for the servants to bring him some watered wine. "You've never been whipped in your life," he pointed out. “You wouldn’t know what hit you.” "I'm not a dog. Whipping is for barbarians." Diocles raised an eyebrow. "Barbarians now is it? It seems you've your father in you yet." Avicenna turned to face him, his face suddenly fallen. "I am half of what he was," he said softly. "And I am half of my mother too." He slumped down onto his bench and rubbed his face. "And each half of me hates the other, just like my parents." "Philip was a man to be admired. Kassandra is a woman to be feared," Diocles said gently. "Both good qualities respectively." "I'm not so sure." Avicenna heaved himself up again and began pacing. "She hated him. She's never spoken of him since the accident. I know she despised him when he brought home that concubine from Pella. She despised him when he got Lysander." "Both elements of what he is entitled to as a man." "I know. But sometimes I think she even despised me for being his son." The old man put a gnarled hand on his shoulder. "You will not be like either, Cenna. True, your anger rises too quickly and you are prideful as well, but," his eyes softened, "you will learn to control both when the time comes." "It's always, 'You will learn!'" Avicenna suddenly outburst. "What if I want to know now? I don't want to wait anymore. Tell me where I can find answers. How I can be the man my father was teaching me to be?" Diocles hobbled a step back at his eruption of emotion. It was almost uncanny; the young man that stood beseechingly before him was most definitely Kassandra's son. Interrupting their uneasy silence was a slave that entered with the oinochoe of wine. Unaware of what had just passed, he knelt at Diocles's feet as he offered it. Avicenna's eyes narrowed as he watched the boy, not recalling ever having seen him before. He noted the slave's fair skin, a rare quality, and figured that Euchenor must have spent a fair amount on this one. He seemed to take pleasure in stocking the house with beautiful and rare things. "Ah, thank you Pyrrhus. Cenna? Wine?" "Hmm? No, I don't want any." Diocles shrugged and handed the clay oinochoe back to the slave. The young boy rose to his feet. As he did so, he dared to raise his dark eyes to Cenna's for a moment. Avicenna raised an eyebrow at him and held his gaze, intrigued. Not all were bold enough to do that unless they were old and beloved, like Diocles. The pale boy made his exit swift. "Cenna?" Diocles's voice held a touch of amusement as he drank his wine and reclined on the padded divan. When Avicenna didn't answer, he shrugged again. "No matter. Off with you now. Go tend your horses and do things that people with young legs do. I don't expect Patroklos has had any exercise as of late?" "My stallion gets the exercise he needs," the young man answered softly. Despite his haughtiness, he was obviously thankful for the opportunity. "Oh, and your mother wished to see you before you went out," the old man amended, sipping his wine thoughtfully. Avicenna nodded his head politely to his tutor and strode out, his bare feet slapping loudly on the tile floor. It was still early afternoon, by the look of the light that found its way through open partitions and columnar doorways of their extensive home. What to do now? Run about to the courtyard and frolic with his colts, or perhaps make a trip down to the gymnasium to seek his peers? Or maybe he would go out for a ride... But only after he paid that damn summons of his mother's. He sighed as he walked. What did the woman want now? It hurt him to see her, to see the look of hooded, not-quite-hostility in her eyes when she gazed upon him. Nevertheless, he was bound by his family bonds to respect her, though that was the only reason, and had been for some time. He bounded off the raised dais and whistled a small tune, ignoring the servants who bowed their heads as he passed. He wondered vaguely if it would be meet to make an appearance in his mother's chambers at this hour. Undoubtedly, she would be lazing on her divan, perhaps playing at coin or chatting with the ladies of the neighboring villas. "Here, I'll take that." He grabbed the oinochoe of wine from a slave about to enter the women's quarters and nudged him to go about his business. The gynaeceum was no-man's land, and Avicenna knew this. However, it was unthinkable that she would come out of the secluded women's quarters just to meet him and leave her little party unattended. He accepted the stares of the neatly robed ladies who lounged back on couches with a formal nod, immediately making for the dais where he had spotted a flash of familiar, dazzling red hair. Curious how they seemed to get so made up with ornate hairstyles and jewelry only to impress each other. "What's this?" Kassandra gazed up at him, having paused in her conversation with several dark-haired ladies. The wine showed in her eyes and her ruby cheeks. He knew he could be bold when she was so blissfully drunk. "Has that deceitful old man now made a servant of my son?" Laughter as she held her kylix up for him to fill. "Now I know it is time to marry you off." More twittering and blushing faces. One of which, wasn't her son's. Marry indeed. He was not yet twenty. "Shall I be a fit husband if I can pour wine better than I may sit a symposium or throw a javelin, Mother?" She laughed richly and raised an arm to touch his cheek. The gold jewelry around her long wrist jingled. "Ah, we'll make a woman of you yet. I should say that pouring wine is more useful than talking philosophy in this day and age. As well as throwing a javelin." The women giggled. Avicenna allowed himself to smile, knowing he should probably make his exit soon before his mother began taking bids for marriage. "You called for me, Mother?" She took another sip of her wine. "Yes, tell me, where is Euchenor? Has he returned from the city yet?" Avicenna caught his darkening expression before the ladies could. He made his tone civil, in required respect for his mother before her guests. "I know not," he said shortly. "I haven't seen him lately." But despite the tricks he played behind masks, she saw his eyes too well and her expression darkened in turn. Then she too made herself civil. "Very well, off with you now before you are the talk of the town." part 3 | back to part 1 | back to main