Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault Page A

agony; the chorus sang; then the Messenger brought the news. Pentheus had climbed a tree to spy from; the maenads had seen him, and in their god-crazed strength uprooted it. His mad mother, seeing only a wild beast, had led them to tear him in pieces. It was over, and as Phoinix had said, need not be seen. The mere telling had been enough.
    Agave was coming, cried the Messenger, with the trophy of her kill.
    They ran in through the parodos in bloody robes. Queen Agave carried the head, spiked on a spear as hunters did it. It was made of the Pentheus mask and wig with stuffing in them, and bits of red rag hanging down. She wore a terrible mad mask, with an agonized brow, deep staring eyes and frenziedly grimacing mouth. From this mouth came a voice. At its first words, he sat as if he too had seen two suns in the sky. He was not far above the stage; his ears and eyes were sharp. The wig of her mask was fair; but in its streaming tresses live hair was spilling through, the dark red showed clearly. The Queen’s arms were bare. He knew them; even their bracelets.
    The players, enacting shock and horror, drew back to give her the stage. The audience began to buzz; they had heard at once, after the sexless boys, that this was a real woman. WhoÉ whatÉ? The boy seemed to himself to have been hours alone with his knowledge, before questions began to get answers and the word ran round. It spread like a brush-fire; good eyes insisting to dim ones, the women’s high chatter and outraged sibilance; the deep ebb-shoal murmur from the men above; from the seats of honour, a stunned dead silence.
    The boy sat as if his own head had been transfixed. His mother tossed her hair and gestured at the bleeding trophy. She had grown into the dreadful mask, it had become her face. He broke his nails, gripping the edge of his stone seat. The flautist blew on his double pipes; she sang.
    ‘I am exalted
    Great upon earth!
    Let men praise me -
    This hunt was mine!’
    Two rows down, the boy saw his father’s back, as he turned towards a guest beside him. His face was out of sight.
    The curse in the tomb, the black dog’s blood, the thorn-pierced mammet, had all been secret rites. This was the Hekate spell by daylight, a sacrifice for a death. The head on the Queen’s spear was her son’s.
    It was the voices all around that roused him from the nightmare. They waked him into another. They rose like the hum of flies disturbed from carrion, almost drowning the actors’ lines.
    It was of her they were talking, not of Queen Agave in the play. They were talking of her! The southerners who said Macedon was barbarous; the lords and farmers and peasants. The soldiers were talking.
    A sorceress they might call her. The goddesses worked magic. This was another thing; he knew these voices. So the men of the phalanx talked in the guardroom, about a woman half of them had had; or some village wife with a bastard.
    Phoinix too was suffering. A steady man rather than a quick one, he had been stunned at first; he had not thought even Olympias capable of such wildness. Without doubt, she had vowed this to Dionysos while giddy with wine and dancing at her rites. He began to put out a hand for comfort; looked again and refrained.
    Queen Agave came out of frenzy to knowledge and despair; the relentless god appeared above, to close the play. The chorus sang the tag-lines.
    ‘The gods have many faces.
    And many fates fulfil,
    To work their will.
    The end expected comes not;
    God brings the unthought to be,
    As here we see.
    It was finished; but no one stirred to go. What would she do? She made a revere?nce to the cult-statue of Dionysos in the orchestra, before sweeping out with the others; some extra picked up the head; it was clear she would not return. From high up in the faceless crush of men came a long shrill whistle.
    The protagonist came back to take absent-minded applause. He had not been at his best, with this freak on his mind; however, it had been made well