.. | the walls of astyanax | chapter 3 Two days later Avicenna saw the pale slave again. He was actually hard to miss in a house full of dark-skinned wretches who had worked fields some time in their lives. He found him in the stables of all places, obviously having crept there to feed one of the prized animals an apple. He stood against the gate with a bare arm over it, rubbing and blowing at the muzzle of a particularly large white stallion. He was oblivious to Cenna's presence behind him. Avicenna, however, growled when he saw it was his prized mount the slave was feeding. Avicenna seized his arm and pulled him back roughly. "What are you doing? You're not supposed to be in this part of the stables." The slave rubbed his wrist and dropped his eyes as Cenna gave a welcome rub to the white stallion's muzzle. "No one races them anymore, and you don't breed this one," the slave pointed out, watching jealously. "Why are they special?" Avicenna wasn't even paying enough attention to chide him. He rubbed his horse's muzzle and let his gaze wander down the row of stalls. At the sound of his familiar voice several heads had emerged from over the gates, each with a pair of small ears upright and listening. Patroklos, his white stallion, was special out of all of them. "No one could race them but my father,” he said. “I will someday, and show people what fantastic beasts they are." "Have you ever driven a chariot at full speed?" Avicenna fixed him with a warning look. "I will race them. Or I will find someone who can." The pale boy mumbled something and rubbed the backs of his arms, watching Cenna coo at the stallion. "You look like a fool doing that," he said. "Rotten wretch. You'll be on the auction block by sunrise," he threatened. But the slave shrugged. "Some fates could be worse," he said. He began to wander off. "Wait." The boy craned his head back, light gray eyes piercing Avicenna's. They had once been dark, in Avicenna's memory. "Explain that. Come here." The boy wandered back to him, his dusky skin gleaming in the afternoon light. He had an exotic look, which told the young Athenian that he couldn't be Greek, though his speech was perfect. Avicenna knew he certainly wouldn't have been a servant if his father were still alive. Lysander would have been sent away much sooner, or would have had to get used to competition. "Nothing. May I go?" "No. What is your name?" "Pyrrhus." "You're not Greek." "I grew up in Lacedæmon." Avicenna raised his eyebrows. "Sparta?" "We were helots. My father's master had no need for me." His tone was dulled, as if he had long resigned himself that the past should be forgotten. Avicenna clenched his fists. His father had told him much about Athens' rival city. He'd once said that Lacedæmon was built on the labor of an entire people- helots that outnumbered them by thousands. Philip had laughed and said that was the only reason why Spartan men were soldiers day and night- if only to keep control over their servants. And they discouraged trade from the outside. That perhaps was the best reason why Philip had hated them so. He said they were lazy and afraid of change. They refused to see life for what it was or to learn the importance of art, philosophy and literature. "They know nothing but war," he'd said once. "It has always been so and they would never wish it otherwise." Barbarians! "And your father?" Avicenna pressed. "Still there I suppose with my mother," he answered. "I don't know." Avicenna watched him for any sign of emotion but the boy's dark eyes held none. It frightened him. "You may go," he said softly. Pyrrhus lowered his eyes respectively and made his silent exit. Avicenna was left with Patroklos, who nickered softly and nuzzled his tunic for hidden treats. Finding none and getting no reaction for his efforts, the stallion snorted and wandered off to the far end of his stall to search for hay. Avicenna stood still, staring ahead of him, lost in his thoughts. He was thinking about the luck of birthright. It could have easily been him there in the place of that boy, born to a heritage of slavery with absolutely no hope of escape other than death. Torn from his father before he was ready. He lowered his eyes. Well, in a way he already had been. With a sigh he turned his face to the open side of the stable where he could just pick out the black coats of mares and foals that grazed in the far paddock. Once again, their movements were lost to him in his brooding. Sparta. That people, the scourge of Greece whose very society was based on thievery and warfare. Who had turned an entire race of people into slaves, just because they lived where the Spartans chose to make their city. Even their women were warriors. Avicenna had heard countless stories of when the young men would wrestle in the nude, their women were right there with them! Disgraceful. It was not like Athens. Here, Avicenna had known nothing other than a rich, peaceful life, bathed in the enveloping pride of his father. A sound, solid life for the most part, full of education, music and art. And he had learned early on to hate the Lacedaemonian barbarians as his father did. It hit him in a soft spot, this boy's story, and he pitied him. Avicenna couldn't recall ever having pitied anyone in his life. Even Lysander’s unfortunate state had never elicited such an emotion from him. He saw Pyrrhus frequently after that. Though the boy was often off doing his chores, he somehow managed to catch Avicenna’s eye sometime in the day and give an easy smile, brave now that he knew the Athenian’s threats about the auction block were empty. And as time went on, when he wasn't studying, Cenna began to spend his time in the company of the pale young servant. He soon found Pyrrhus’ company to be welcome relief from Diocles's lectures or some odd activity that Euchenor would come up with for him to do. There came a time when he was thankful for having a friend in the world, even if he was just a servant. Friction had begun to develop between Avicenna and his uncle, though he was never quite sure what set it off. He already despised the man for whose place he had taken, but now more so due to Euchenor’s obvious lack of intelligence when it came to managing a home. Euchenor was a very tall man; taller than Philip had been. His hair, cropped short and curled like any respectable citizen, was thin and dark, except for a slight graying at his temples. He was a gaping ten years Philip's senior. And as life went on in their seemingly peaceful home, Avicenna grew to hate the man more and more. His uncle had usurped the money exchange from the breeding stock, as well as the profit from the vast grain fields that surrounded their stead, and spent it on the gods-knew-what else other than the new servants that appeared throughout the household- exotic boys, fair-lipped girls. At first Avicenna detested the man loading his bed in such a way, until he realized that Euchenor didn't take concubines or familiars. Instead, his abstinence was noted all through the household. As the tension between them grew, Avicenna, in fits of rage, would surmise that the man was a eunuch and unable to satisfy the needs of either sex, but he grudgingly knew this was not true. Eventually, because of his lack of humility to the man of the house, Avicenna was confined to the courtyard on his uncle’s orders, where Diocles had been instructed to keep him until he could recite his teachings line by line. Avicenna went quietly seething, knowing his freedom to roam had been taken. So he immersed himself in his studies, with the knowledge that there was not a thing he could do in retaliation gnawing at his insides, or else he might incur an even harsher punishment. His mother said nothing as always. But what sealed Euchenor' fate in Avicenna's eyes was when the day came that because of his debts, he decided to sell Philip's prized racers. Before his very eyes the four whites were sold off on the auction block as a team. They fetched a high price, though not even near befitting to what they were worth. There in the middle of the Agora square, Avicenna watched the last of his father’s prized possessions being lead away, tossing their heads and prancing about in nervousness under new hands. When they were gone from sight Avicenna spun and pounded his fists against the limestone walls of the nearest building, raking his knuckles down the rough stone. He ignored Pyrrhus's hands that tried to pull his shoulder back. That moment was when the thought crossed his mind for the first time, but certainly not the last. He was going to kill him, he was going to kill that man. Later, as he sat upon his bed with Pyrrhus kneeling between his knees, bandaging his hands up, Avicenna quietly voiced his thoughts. The slave paused only minutely in his ministrations before continuing silently. When he finished, he put his hand on Avicenna's knee. "Cenna," he said softly. "You shouldn’t say such things. It is too easy to follow through with a decision like that." He shook his head solemnly. "You get so angry,” he whispered. The silence hung about them heavily. "You've been at your wine again," Pyrrhus continued softly. "You used to hate it. You would never even think such things otherwise." Avicenna fixed bleary eyes on him. "What else have I got to think about?" he asked. Pyrrhus rose to his knees to be at eye level. He gently pushed the young Athenian's knees apart further so that he may lean in a bit closer. "Me?" he whispered, hesitantly running his fingers over the top of Avicenna's thighs and under his chinton. "A lowly slave who wishes to save you from yourself?" When Avicenna arose the next day, his mind was no less settled than it had been the night before. He sat up and held his head, cursing to the gods the pounding in his temples. Beside him, Pyrrhus moaned softly as a child in sleep, his arm draped lazily where Avicenna had been lying. Even the slave's somewhat... expert comforts could not alleviate the ugly hate rising in him. With each day, each moment he had to cross paths with that man, it grew. What aggravated him most of all was that he seemed to be the only one who noticed how their home was falling apart. On the outside, his uncle was a genius, with his smiling and handsome face, dealing civilly with his dead father's friends and traders. He seemingly ran the household as smooth as marble, with nary a skipped beat in the progression of everyday life, and threw grand symposiums in the andron that lasted well into the night. They were always full of wine and laughter and arguments shouted over the soft music from the flute girl who danced about. Little did any of them see that Euchenor was slowly selling off his birthright to fund such things, piece by piece. Avicenna never attended such gatherings. He was confined to the airy rooms within the house only to listen to the muted sounds of the gathered men's arguments and enjoyment. On one such night, he called for wine, again in the mood to get blissfully drunk in his lonely misery. Pyrrhus brought it to him. The pale boy stepped into the darkness of the room with some hesitation, though Avicenna didn't give him any notice. He remained where he was, laid back over his bed with an arm cast over his eyes. "Cenna?" "Leave the wine and go," he snapped, not in the mood to speak with anyone. The slave knelt down in front of him, carefully setting the oinochoe of wine on the cold stone floor. "Cenna, that man-" Avicenna sat up. "Don't speak of him to me," he growled. "I don’t want to hear a word about him." The slave dropped his gaze for a moment. "That man," he repeated, an air of defiance emerging in his eyes, "sleeps in your mother's bed this night." Avicenna's head shot up, his body going somewhat numb. "What?" "It's true. He had me oil him tonight in the baths and follow him with linens to her chambers-" The young man's eyes narrowed on his slave. "You? Why you?" Pyrrhus lowered his eyes. "He... favors me, Cenna. I have no choice." So much he said in those words. Avicenna gritted his teeth. Abstinence! No, there never had been any. Euchenor was just clever enough to cover his tracks and choose bedmates carefully. And included in those was his slave! His train of thought stopped for a moment. When had he started taking possession over Pyrrhus like that? When just a moment ago he had snapped at the boy to leave him be? Gods, he was loosing his mind. He put his face in his hands. Pyrrhus poured the wine, lifting the cup to Cenna's lips and silently urging him to drink with a hand coming to rest on his knee. He had come to know that wine could ease his young Athenian's mind. "You must go there," he said quietly, turning imploring eyes up to his master. Avicenna sputtered on the wine the slave was practically pouring down his throat. "You're saying this to me? You, who before had to 'save me from myself'?" Pyrrhus nodded, his eyes suddenly blazing like Avicenna had never seen. "It's a matter of honor, Cenna! Would you have a brother by a different father? Unmarried as well?" Avicenna shook his head and glared balefully at the wall, his ears filling with the muffled sounds of the symposium. Euchenor must have made an early evening of the dinner if he had retired to Kassandra's chambers so quickly. The slave poured more wine into the skyphos. It was the biggest drinking vessel he could find. "Like you say, Cenna, it's the gods' nectar," he reasoned softly. "Water can make you ill as of late, I've seen it in the servant's quarters." Avicenna drank, knowing that he should keep his head. But the taste of it was too sweet on his tongue. As he drank the skyphos down, Pyrrhus began to plant kisses on his cheeks and neck, his hands roaming over Avicenna's chest. Strangely out of breath, Avicenna suddenly dropped the cup with a gasp, and covered his flushing face again. "I can't breathe. I need air-" Pyrrhus grabbed his arm and helped him stumble up and past the anteroom to the courtyard. "You like the wine too much when you’re upset,” he said softly. "Too much to be sensible in matters such as these." "You've made me drunk," Avicenna growled, leaning against the pillar and taking air to cool his burning cheeks. The wine hadn't been watered at all as he was used to drinking it. He pressed his forehead to cool marble. The slave stood a bit away from him, gazing up at the sky. Light from the rooms surrounding the courtyard barely lit his dusky skin and made him into Ganymede by the soft glow. He turned his eyes back to Avicenna. "Cenna-" He leaned intimately close, touching his master’s jaw in a seductive caress. "It opens your eyes so that you may see what the gods see. Look at what he has done to you." Avicenna lashed his gaze up at the slave. His freedom. His father's horses. His father's life! And now his mother. Pyrrhus's gray eyes softened when Avicenna didn't answer. Perhaps a different tactic to get some sort of reaction. "I told you he favors me. Does that not make you angry?" The young Athenian broke his stare. "It is not my choice. Nothing is," he gritted through clenched teeth. "Shall I tell you what he does to me then?" Pyrrhus suddenly bit out. "Do you want to hear it?" The slave's voice was compressed to a brusque hiss and his face was of someone who had been so abused that he had been pushed past acceptance of his servile means. "He's cruel Cenna. If he treats me so, I cannot bear to think how he treats your mother-" "Stop!" Avicenna shouted, covering his ears. He desperately tried to force through the wine-induced haze that sifted through his thoughts and made them incoherent. All he knew was his hate. He couldn't think of his father, tall and proud, and how he would have handled this. Avicenna shut his eyes and tried to focus, ignoring the slave who rubbed his back. Pyrrhus had nothing to do with this. Even though he had been abused and violated, neither of those was improper for a master to do to a slave. But Pyrrhus was his slave, rightfully or no. To think that man had been where he had sickened him beyond coherent reason. The haze on his brain had heightened his possessiveness as much as it heightened his hatred. He swung out and hit the solid wall with his fist. And to think that man was now where his father had been! Whatever the relationship between Kassandra and Philip had been, the man had no right to usurp his bed as well. Avicenna tore at his lower lip with his teeth, churning in his conflicting emotions and trying desperately to find the right decision. He had surmised once before that he should kill that man. What was stopping him? The tiny inkling of common sense that the wine could not drown and the slave could not seduce. He shoved Pyrrhus away from him more harshly than he'd meant to. No matter his hatred for the man, he would not commit such a crime against his conscience and his gods. Were Philip still alive while Kassandra trysted with his brother, then he would have felt justified, though he still wasn't sure if he would have been able to go through with the deed. No, that would have been his father's responsibility. And then his mother would be disgraced before their household and peers. Such a crime for a married woman was enough to get her banished from their polis. But Philip wasn't alive. He was dead and gone, leaving his house, his son, and his wife in the care of his brother. Pyrrhus remained where Avicenna had pushed him. He lowered his head as if he were admitting his defeat, though the manner about him was no less fierce. "I can't gain revenge for you," Avicenna growled. "It is not my place any more than it is for you to object to his attentions. He legally owns you, not me. You have no say in what he does." He met the slave's carefully shrouded expression. "I thought you knew this already." "I know it," Pyrrhus answered. "But I could never accept it. Not totally." With renewed passion he pushed himself away from the pillar he had come to lean against. "I might have been like you," he accused, waving his hands wildly at Cenna. "I could have been a rich man's son! I could have been in your place, been tutored to appreciate fine art and history. Recite poetry and learned to play the lyre and that damned flute of yours. I could have owned my own stallion to ride about with rich silver-plated saddles and bridles, and come home to drink honeyed wine and enjoy the attentions of my own house slave." He paused, heaving. "But instead I am here. Damned by whatever vengeance the gods have felt necessary to curse upon me to wander this house doing the bidding of men who would otherwise have been my equal were my people free! Tell me, Cenna! Why am I here? Why was it me who was chosen to play this part?" Avicenna leaned back against the wall and lowered his head for a few moments. It was the first time the slave could remember his master ever looking humble before him. He had expected Avicenna to leap at him, or strike him at least and order him to leave for such an outburst. Instead, Avicenna was there, looking for all the world like a lost child. But his apparent defeat didn’t last long. "I didn't bring you here," Avicenna said finally. His tone was soft but stern. He looked up and faced the slave, once again becoming a young master of the house, no matter how much Euchenor had seemed to shame and subdue him. "Do you understand that?" he demanded. "It was not I who decreed you be born to slavery in some wretched Spartan house! Great gods, if only it were me in your place!" Avicenna knew his voice could probably be heard from across the paddock. He could care less about that. Instead he cared only that he would go so far as to beat it into the boy's head that he would not, could not be his salvation. If he were to exact revenge, it would be for his own reasons! The slave's naked shoulders were heaving as if he were out of breath. Gods! If only Pyrrhus didn't have those oxen eyes that beat into him like a pounding mallet. Lysander had had the same look, though never with the boldness that Pyrrhus possessed. "Do you care for me, Cenna?" Pyrrhus asked suddenly. "What?" Pyrrhus's hands clenched into fists and he stepped closer. "Do you? Care for me?" He bared clenched teeth. "Or perhaps you're just using me as he does-" "Never compare me to him!" Avicenna shouted, actually raising his arm as if he would strike the slave. Pyrrhus cringed away from him and took several steps back. "You are," he breathed. "You're just like him." He took a few steps back, as if in disbelief. Then, he turned and fled. Long into the night, Avicenna had taken to his drink again as if he had not already had enough. He paced the length of his marble chambers, the oinochoe of wine itself in his hand, trying desperately to drown the buzz of the slave's accusations in his mind. He didn't love the boy, if that was what Pyrrhus had been asking. Care for, yes, but love? He shook his head as if convincing himself. No. If he even knew how to love, it wouldn't be a slave like Pyrrhus, no matter what comfort the boy had offered him in the past. Avicenna doubted it would even be a boy he would love, though at his age it was not uncommon. He was still ripe to be somebody's boy. Gods, he could have been just that. Shipped off to be taught the world's ways in exchange for his looks by a man older than he. But his father had refused to go that far with it, instead, calling for Diocles to teach his son in a tutor's way. And if he had been even younger when Euchenor arrived? What would have been his fate then, when the man acquired all the power he needed to do with Philip's son what he wished. Avicenna knew he could not have expected a word about it from his mother if Euchenor had decided that Philip's son was but a burden. Ah, he was still thinking too clearly and that would never do. Avicenna brought the painted pitcher to his lips again. The gods' nectar indeed. If it would silence his thoughts into incoherencies then it truly was a godsend. He had been at it for quite some time when he finally dropped onto his bed to escape the boredom of pacing. His mind was floating, just as he liked it. He no longer cared about anything but the thoughts on the surface, like how fascinating the ceiling was from this angle and how he could make it seem to move if he stared long enough at it. Pyrrhus slipped into his rooms and found him this way. The slave crawled up onto the bed and in one smooth movement he tugged the clay vessel from Avicenna's hand, saw it safely to the floor, and pushed the Athenian to lie on his back in the linens. "Cenna," he said softly. He never finished. Instead, he kissed Avicenna's pliant mouth once, twice, and framed his turned-away face with his hands. Pyrrhus's kisses were silent apologies and Avicenna accepted them. Hands that had been chilled from the outdoors warmed against his flesh as they pushed the shoulder of his chiton down. He let the slave lean down to nuzzle his chest, his flushed cheeks searing hot. It was what he needed. Avicenna slowly closed his eyes and let Pyrrhus take over his mind. part 4 | back to part 2 | back to main