Written and Illustrated by Peter Huby With that abhorred dismay that follows wilful bloodshed still, their fortune being to slay those whose blood cries out for theirs From George Chapman. Book 24. Homer’s Iliad. 1611. Children of Pelops We must start somewhere, so we shall start here, though it is not the beginning. Picture a road crossing an empty plain, not a road exactly, a track. In the distance, high hills rise steeply out of the flatlands, not quite mountains, though there is snow in winter. Arcadia, the ark of god. The track is little used, though in springtime shepherds follow the same route when they move their flocks up to the hills from the plain for the summer, and in autumn, after the first rains, they return. Sometimes merchants may be seen, usually travelling in the company of other merchants because it is safer that way. Today there seems to be nothing on the road. High up, scarcely visible, birds of prey circle among gilded storm clouds. But there is something on the road, no more than a speck at first on the endless plain, a solitary two wheeled vehicle pulled by four horses. A faint dust rises behind it. The vehicle is a chariot, the kind of thing you might see in a race, lightly constructed, and in a race the four horses would run four abreast but today they are harnessed in two pairs, one pair behind the other, as if this were a carriage, and they are not running, but walking at an easy pace. The horses are of no particular colour, though they are not country nags. Sinews run like ropes beneath the skin and their eyes are wild. Pelops is nursing his team across this landscape, stopping to let them rest where there is a little grass or water. Pelops has friends in high places, and these horses and this expertly built car were given to him as a gift. Black moonless night finds him high among shattered sum- mits. Somewhere a brigand’s fire winks in the vast darkness. Pelops sits with his cloak about him, listening to the small movements of his horses in the darkness: the shake of a head, the rattle of a hoof against a dislodged stone. Somewhere, a thousand feet below him as he sits against his invisible outcrop, the plain lies tiny and remote. Pelops is on his way to a race. 9 Peter Huby King Oinomaos rules over the city of Pisa beyond the highlands of Arcadia, and he is mad. His city sits within its ancient ruinous walls, in a broad stony valley where the Alpheos and Kladeos riv- ers meet among sand banks and braided channels. Oinomaos has two passions in life and one is his passion for horses and the breeding of horses, in particular the breeding and training of chariot horses. Herds of brood mares swirl across his stony pastures, or stand in the shallows of the Alpheos river suck- ing up the dragonfly larvae, and restive stallions fret and kick in their shit filled stables. The king’s other passion is for his own daughter, Hippodameia. Oinomaos is married with grown sons and cannot act upon his obsession with his own child, but neither can he contemplate the thought of her body possessed by another. Hippodameia is a beau- tiful woman, no longer a girl, but she is still unmarried because her father never permitted her to marry. He could not have said: she will never marry because I lust after her, my own daughter, and it has driven me mad, but he has made sure nonetheless that she has never married. Through these years he has committed no wrong upon his daughter‘s person, even though he is mad. You might say that she has suffered no harm by her father’s obsession, but there are many forms of harm. His wife, Sterope, knows and doesn’t know. His grown up sons know nothing, being young men. They race horses and study their father’s sudden rages. There is another story which says that the king would not allow his daughter to marry because an oracle had proph- esied that whoso married Hippo- dameia would kill her father Oinomaos. Which do you prefer? Children of Pelops Twelve or fifteen years ago, a young man called Marmax was the first to ride through the narrow gate into the city of Pisa seek- ing Hippodameia’s hand in marriage, when she was yet a girl. Like all young princes in that part of the world, Marmax has heard of mad king Oinomaos the horse lord, and his beautiful daughter. Apart from a few hutments on the river terraces, the city has never expanded beyond its walls and the place is a warren of shad- owed lanes. The king’s crumbling palace gives on to a narrow way, and Oinomaos steps out into the street to greet the new arrival, dressed in his stinking horsehide coat, with his beard uncombed and his hair a birdnest, because he cares less than a fig. First he takes in the horse that the boy sits astride and then the four mares behind, before his glance flicks up to the open faced youth. It does not cross his mind to offer him any kind of hospi- tality, nor even to ask him his name, nor to invite him to get down from his horse, because he knows why he is here. He reaches up and grasps the bridle of the boy’s horse with such violence that the horse rears, almost unseating its rider, and shouts up at him: ‘You are here for my daughter. I know why you are here. You want to inherit my kingdom. You want to fuck my only daugh- ter. She is thirteen, a child, and you want to fuck her. Am I right? Am I right?’ The boy is at sea and babbles pleasantries like a fool. ‘Now listen, boy, you can have my kingdom, you can have my daughter, but first you must race me. Can you drive a chariot?’’ Despite his confusion, Marmax’ head goes up dismissively at the question. ‘Listen everybody,’ Oinomaos shouts at the gathering knot of his people and other interested parties. ‘Listen. This young man has come for Hippodameia, he has come for my daughter. He wants to marry my daughter, and he wants my kingdom. What I say is this. He can have my daughter, he can have this land, but only if he beats me in a race. He must race me twice around the city walls in a four horse chariot and if he wins then he shall have what he seeks. In this race my daughter will stand beside him in his chariot and I shall stand beside Myrtilus, my charioteer.’ Now everybody who is listening, except the young suitor him- self, understands that he has no chance at all because Oinomaos’ life 13 Peter Huby Children of Pelops is devoted to the breeding and training of chariot horses. He has recognisably human, some not. Twelve headless bodies rot in the the best horses anywhere, and his charioteers and his jockeys win same ditch and no one goes near, only dogs, rats. big money at the games in Olympia and Nemea. The other thing Why did they come, these silly boys, over so many years? If there they understand is that Myrtilus the king’s charioteer, is unbeatable. is no law but the king’s law and if the king is mad, then there is no No time is lost. Oinomaos is an impulsive animal. He likes to law at all, no protection. What is it that drew this sad procession of get things done and brooks no delay. princelings to their deaths? Some surely came with a high regard The sun is beginning to set over the distant sea before two char- for their own skill and the quality of their horses, convinced they iots and their restive teams are lined up outside the city wall. would win. Young men are strange, seeing only themselves in the world’s mirror. They think themselves immortal. Years ago, the king made a sort of hippodrome, a racetrack, which runs around outside the walls of the city and it is here that This time it is different, and the people of the city stand at their he trains and races his horses and his chariot teams. People enter- doors to mark the passage of the avatar. It is Midsummer’s Eve. ing or leaving the city along the roads which pass into any one of Oinomaos has grown older, madder, through the years, and its four gates have learned to look both ways before crossing this looks like a scarecrow as he gimps into the street. Hippodameia is racetrack: it is not unknown for the king’s chariots to run down older too, and a great beauty. Who can know how these years of hapless travellers as they try to cross. her father’s madness have marked her? Twelve times she has under- Oinomaos steps down from his car and walks over to where gone this thing, twelve times she has watched her father kill young Marmax is standing on the footboard of his own chariot with the men who came to marry her. She has stood on the footboard of a reins clutched in his hands. Hippodameia, a stick straight girl, who dozen chariots and watched her father eviscerate a stranger. She is familiar with her father’s fits and eccentricities, stands next to has watched the foul smokes rising from the hecatombs of butch- the young man, holding on to the rail, transfixed by apprehension.