The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [10]
“Do you ride?” I ask him.
“No, sir,” someone calls. It’s a groom who’s been mucking out the straw. “That other one brings him here sometimes and lets him sit in a corner. He’ll sit quiet for hours that way. He hasn’t got the balance for riding, though. Doesn’t need another fall on the head, does he?”
I lead Tar out into the yard and saddle him. It’s raining again. I get Arrhidaeus’s foot in my cupped hands and then he’s stuck. He’s stopped laughing, at least, and looks at me for help. I try to give him a boost up, but he’s too weak to heft himself over the horse’s back. He hops a little on one foot with the other cocked up in the air, giving me a view of his wet crotch.
“Here,” the groom says, and rolls over a barrel for the boy to stand on.
Between the two of us we get him up alongside the horse and persuade him to throw a leg over the animal’s back.
“Now you hug him,” the groom says, and leans forward with his arms curved around an imaginary mount. Arrhidaeus collapses eagerly onto Tar’s back and hugs him hard. I try to get him to sit back up, but the groom says, “No, no. Let the animal walk a bit and get him used to the movement.”
I lead Tar slowly around the yard while Arrhidaeus clings to him full-body, his face buried in the mane. The groom watches.
“Is he a good horse?” he calls to Arrhidaeus.
The boy smiles, eyes closed. He’s in bliss.
“Look at that, now,” the groom says. “Poor brained bastard. Did he piss himself?”
I nod.
“There, now.” He leads Tar back to the barrel and helps Arrhidaeus back down. I had expected the boy to resist but he seems too stunned to do anything but what he’s told.
“Would you like to come back here?” I ask him. “Learn to ride properly, like a man?” He claps his hands. “When are we least in the way?” I ask the groom.
He waves the question away. His black eyes are bright and curious, assessing, now Tar, now Arrhidaeus. “I don’t know you,” he says, without looking at me properly. He slaps Tar fondly on the neck.
“I’m the prince’s physician.” I rest a hand on Arrhidaeus’s shoulder. “And his tutor. Just for a few days.”
The groom laughs, but not so that I dislike him for it.
EURIPIDES WROTE THE Bacchae at the end of his life. He left Athens disgusted by his plays’ losses at the competitions, so the story goes, and accepted an invitation from King Archelaus to come to Pella and work for a more appreciative (less discriminating) audience. He died that winter from the cold.
Plot: Angry that his godhead is denied by the Theban royal house, Dionysus decides to take his revenge on the priggish young King Pentheus. Pentheus has Dionysus imprisoned. The god, in turn, offers to help him spy on the revels of his female followers, the Bacchantes. Pentheus, both fascinated and repulsed by the wild behaviour of these women, agrees to allow himself to be disguised as one of them to infiltrate their revels on Mount Kithairon. The disguise fails, and Pentheus is ripped to pieces by the Bacchantes, including his own mother, Agave. She returns to Thebes with his head, believing she has killed a mountain lion, and only slowly recovers from her possessed state to realize what she’s done. The royal family is destroyed, killed or exiled by the god. The play took first prize at the competition