Priam decided to wait. On the surface Hektor seemed to accept his father’s verdict philosophically, but I knew the Heir better. It was Achilles he most yearned to meet, yet his father’s fear of that selfsame man defeated him.
Achilles… I remembered encountering him outside Lyrnessos, and wondered which was the better man, Achilles or Hektor. They were about the same size, they were equally martial. But somehow I seemed to feel in my bones that Hektor was doomed. Virtue is overrated in my opinion; Hektor was so virtuous. Now I, I burned for other things.
When I left the Throne Room it was in a mood of disquiet. Because of that hoary old prophecy which said I would rule Troy one day, Priam had alienated himself from me and my people. For all his civility since my arrival, the veiled sneer was still there. Only my troops made me welcome. But how could I possibly outlive fifty sons? Unless Troy lost the war, in which case it was feasible that Agamemnon would choose to put me on the throne. A nice dilemma for one whose blood was the same as Priam’s.
I walked into the great courtyard and paced up and down, hating Priam, wanting Troy. Then I became aware that someone was watching me from the shadows. The back of my neck grew icy cold. Priam hated me. Would he sin by murdering a close relative?
Deciding he would, I drew my dagger and crept behind the flower-decked altar to Zeus of the Courtyard. When I was no more than an arm’s length away from the watcher I jumped, clapping my hand across his mouth, my blade at his throat. But the lips pressing softly against my palm were not a man’s, nor was the bare breast below my dagger. I let her go.
‘Did you take me for an assassin?’ she asked, panting.
‘It’s stupid to hide, Helen.’
I found a lantern on the altar step and lit it from the eternal fire, then held it up and looked long upon her. Eight years had passed since last I saw her. Incredible! She must be thirty-two years old. But lamps are kind; later, in better light, I was able to see the mild ravages of age in the faint lines about her eyes, the slight subsidence of those breasts.
Gods, she was beautiful! Helen, Helen of Troy and Amyklai. Helen the Leech. All the grace of Artemis the Huntress flowed in her pose, all the delicacy of features and wanton attraction of Aphrodite shone in her face. Helen, Helen, Helen… Only now as I looked at her did I fully realise how many nights her image had torn my dreams asunder, how many times in my sleep she had unlaced her gem-studded girdle and let her skirts fall about her ivory feet. In Helen was Aphrodite born to mortal form, in Helen I recognised the shape and countenance of the Goddess mother I had never seen, only heard about in the ravings of my father, who had been driven mad by his amorous encounter with the Goddess of Love.
Helen was all the senses incarnate, a Pandora who smiled and kept her secrets, enslaved and enslaving; she was earth and love, wetness and air, fire mixed with an ice fit to crack a man’s veins open. She dangled all the fascinations of death and mystery, she taunted.
Her polished nails gleaming like the inside of a shell, she put her hand on my arm. ‘You’ve been in Troy for four moons, yet this is the first time I’ve seen you, Aineas.’
Revolted and maddened, I dashed her hand away. ‘Why should I seek you out? What good will it do me with Priam if I’m seen dancing attendance on the Great Harlot?’
She listened to this unmoved, eyes lowered. The black lashes lifted then, her green eyes looked up at me gravely. ‘I agree with all of that,’ she said, settling herself on a seat, shaking out her frills and ruffles with little chiming noises. ‘In the eyes of a man,’ she said composedly, ‘a woman is a chattel. A piece of solid property he owns. He may abuse her as he sees fit without fear of reprisal. Women are passive creatures. We have no voice of authority because we are not deemed capable of logical thought. We bear men, though that is forgotten.’
I yawned. ‘Self-pity doesn’t suit you,’ I said.
‘I like you,’ she said, smiling, ‘because you’re so turned in upon your own ambitions. And because you’re like me.’
‘Like you?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m Aphrodite’s bauble. You’re her son.’
She came into my embrace with eagerness and dizzying caresses; I lifted her into my arms and walked with her through the silent corridors to my own private room. No one saw us. I suppose my mother ensured that, the vixen.
Even when the depths of her passion shook me to the core of my being, there was a part of her which didn’t even know that she was possessed, some corner of herself withdrawn and secretive. I met her in an agony of pleasure, but while she drained me of all my spirit she kept her own locked fast in some hiding place, and I had no hope of ever finding the key.
21
NARRATED BY
Agamemnon
Battle orders had long been issued to the army, but Priam remained within his walls. Even the Trojan raiding parties ceased to plague us; my troops fretted from uncertainty and inaction. Having nothing to discuss, I called no council until Odysseus appeared.
‘Sire, would you call a council for noon today?’ he asked.
‘Why? There’s nothing to say.’
‘Don’t you want to know how to lure Priam out?’
‘What are you up to, Odysseus?’
Came a brilliant, laughing look. ‘Sire! How can you ask me to reveal my secrets now? As well might you ask for immortality!’
‘Very well, then. A council at noon.’
‘Another favour, sire?’
‘What?’ I asked warily. He was using that irresistible grin he saved to get what he wanted. I weakened; I could do nothing else when Odysseus smiled like that. One had to love him.
‘Not a general council. Only certain men.’
‘It’s your council, ask whom you like. Give me their names.’
‘Nestor, Idomeneus, Menelaos, Diomedes and Achilles.’
‘Not Kalchas?’
‘Least of all Kalchas.’
‘I wish I knew why you mislike the man so much, Odysseus. If he was a traitor we’d know it by now, surely. Yet you insist upon excluding him from every significant council. As the Gods bear the man witness, he’s had innumerable opportunities to give our secrets to the Trojans, but he never has.’
‘Some of our secrets, Agamemnon, he knows as little about as you do. I believe that he waits for the one secret worth his betraying where his heart belongs.’
I chewed my lip, huffed. ‘All right then, no Kalchas.’
‘Nor can you mention it to him. More than that, I want the doors and windows sealed with boards once we’re assembled, and guards posted outside so thickly they touch each other.’
‘Odysseus! Isn’t that going too far?’
He grinned wickedly. ‘I’d hate to make Kalchas look like a fool, sire, so we have to finish this business in the tenth year.’
The handful of men Odysseus had asked for came expecting a full council, and were curious when they understood they were all.
‘Why not Meriones?’ asked Idomeneus a little peevishly.
‘And why not Ajax?’ asked Achilles truculently.
I cleared my throat; they settled down. ‘Odysseus asked me to call you together,’ I said. ‘Just the five of you, him and I. The noises you can hear are guards boarding up this room. Which will tell you more emphatically than I could how secret our business is. I require your individual oaths on this: whatever is said here can’t be repeated outside these walls, even in sleep.’
One by one they knelt and took the oath.
When Odysseus began, his voice was soft; a trick of his. He would commence so quietly one had to strain to hear him, and as he outlined his ideas his voice would rise, until at the end it resonated among the rafters like beating drums.
‘Before I begin to talk about the real reason for this very small council,’ he said almost inaudibly, ‘it’s necessary to tell some of you what others among you already know. Namely, the actual function of that jail of mine in the hollow.’
I listened in growing anger and amazement as Odysseus told the
rest of us what Nestor and Diomedes had always known. Why did it not occur to any of us to investigate activities in that hollow? Perhaps because, I admitted in the midst of my outrage, it had suited us not to enquire; Odysseus had removed some of our worst problems, which had never returned to plague us. Not, I learned now, due to weary prison sentences. They were his spies.
‘Well,’ I said at the end of it, tight lipped, ‘at least now we know how you can predict what Troy is going to do next so uncannily! But why the secrecy? I am King of Kings, Odysseus! I was entitled to know from the very beginning!’
‘Not,’ said Odysseus, ‘while you favoured Kalchas.’
‘I still favour Kalchas.’
‘But not the way you did, I suspect.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps. Go on, Odysseus. What have your spies to do with this meeting?’
‘They haven’t been as idle as our army,’ he said. ‘You’ve all heard the rumours as to why Priam has made no move to come outside his walls. The commonest one is that his reinforcements haven’t come up to expectations – that he lacks our numbers. That isn’t true. At this moment he has seventy-five thousand men, a figure not including almost ten thousand chariots. When Penthesileia of the Amazons and Memnon of the Hittites arrive, he’ll outnumber us drastically. Added to which, he’s under the misapprehension that we’ll be lucky to field forty thousand men. You may take it all of this is accurate. I have people in the confidence of Priam and Hektor.’
He took a little turn about the room, sparsely populated and therefore free of obstacles. ‘Before I go any further, I must talk about the King of Troy. Priam is an old, old man, and prone to the doubts, vacillations, fears and prejudices of the very old. In short, he’s no Nestor. Never think he is. He rules Troy with a far more autocratic hand than any Greek king owns – he’s literally king of all he surveys. Not even his son and Heir would dare to tell him what to do. Agamemnon calls councils. Priam calls assemblies. Agamemnon listens to what we have to say and heeds us. Priam listens to himself and whoever echoes what he’s thinking.’
He stopped to face us. ‘This is the man we must outwit, this is the man we must bend to our will without his ever suspecting it. Hektor weeps as he walks the battlements, counting his own men and seeing us sitting on the Hellespont shore like fruit ripe for the plucking. Aineas chafes and burns. Antenor alone does nothing, because Priam is doing as Antenor wishes – Priam too does nothing.’
Another march around the chairs; every head followed him. ‘So why exactly is Priam unwilling to commit himself when he has more than a good chance of driving us out of the Troad right now? Does he truly wait for Memnon and Penthesileia?’
Nestor nodded. ‘Undoubtedly,’ he said. ‘That’s what a very old man ought to do.’
Odysseus drew a breath; his voice was swelling. ‘But we cannot allow him to wait! He must be lured from the city before he can afford to lose men by the countless thousands. My sources of information are much better than Priam’s, and I can tell you that both Penthesileia and Memnon will arrive before winter closes the passes from the interior. The Amazons are horsed, so they count as cavalry. With them, Troy will field over twenty thousand cavalry. In less than two moons she’ll be here, with Memnon hard on her heels.’
I swallowed. ‘Odysseus – I hadn’t realised – couldn’t you have told me earlier?’
‘My information is just now complete, Agamemnon.’
‘I see. Go on.’
‘Does Priam hold off purely from prudence, or is there more to it?’ Odysseus asked of no one. ‘The answer isn’t prudence. He’d give Hektor permission to come out at this moment were it not for Achilles and the Myrmidons. He fears Achilles and the Myrmidons more than the rest of our troops put together with all our other leaders. Part of his fear is rooted in certain oracles about Achilles – that he personally holds destruction for the flower of Troy. Part of it stems from the general feeling within the Trojan ranks that the Myrmidons are unbeatable – that Zeus conjured them up out of an army of ants to dower Peleus with the best soldiers in the world. Well, we all know what ordinary men are – superstitious and gullible. But both parts combined mean Priam wants a scapegoat to pit against Achilles and the Myrmidons.’
‘Penthesileia or Memnon?’ asked Achilles, face grim.
‘Penthesileia. There are mysteries surrounding her and her horse warriors and they bring women’s magic with them. You see, Priam can’t let Hektor face Achilles. Even if a Trojan victory was guaranteed by Apollo, Priam wouldn’t let Hektor face the man his oracles say holds destruction for the flower of Troy.’
There was no joy in Achilles’s face, but he said no word.
‘Achilles has rare gifts,’ Odysseus commented drily. ‘He can lead an army like Ares himself. And he leads the Myrmidons.’
Nestor sighed. ‘Too true!’
‘No need to despair yet, Nestor!’ Odysseus answered cheerily. ‘I still possess all my faculties.’
Diomedes – of course he was in on it already, whatever it was – sat grinning. Achilles watched me and I watched him, while Odysseus watched both of us. Then he brought the butt of the Staff down on the floor with a ring that made us jump, and when he spoke, his voice boomed like thunder.
‘There must be a quarrel!’
We gaped.
‘The Trojans aren’t strangers to the spy system,’ Odysseus went on in more normal tones. ‘In fact, Trojan spies in our camp have served me almost as well as my spies inside Troy. I know every single one of them, and feed them selected morsels to take back to Polydamas, who recruited them – an interesting man, this Polydamas, though not appreciated as he ought to be. For which we must thank the Gods who side with us. Needless to say, his spies take back only what I let them take back, such as the paltry number of soldiers we have. But for the past moons I’ve been encouraging them to send one certain snippet of gossip to Polydamas.’
‘Gossip?’ asked Achilles, frowning.
‘Yes, gossip. People love to believe gossip.’
‘What gossip?’ I asked.
‘That there is no love lost between you, Agamemnon, and you, Achilles.’
I think I stopped breathing for longer than I should, for I had to suck in air audibly. ‘No love lost between Achilles and me,’ I said slowly.
‘That’s correct,’ said Odysseus, looking pleased with himself. ‘Ordinary soldiers gossip about their betters, you know. And it’s common knowledge among them that there have been differences between the pair of you from time to time. Of late I’ve been fanning the rumour that feeling between you is deteriorating very rapidly.’
Achilles got to his feet, white-faced. ‘I don’t like this gossip, Ithakan!’ he said angrily.
‘I didn’t think you would, Achilles. But sit down, do!’ Odysseus looked pensive. ‘It happened at the end of autumn, when the spoils from Lyrnessos were divided at Andramyttios.’ He sighed. ‘How sad it is to watch great men topple over a woman!’
I clutched the arms of my chair to stay in it and looked at Achilles in mortified comradeship; his eyes were quite black.
‘Of course it’s inevitable that such a degree of ill feeling should come to a head,’ Odysseus continued chattily. ‘No one will be in the least surprised when the two of you quarrel.’
‘Over what?’ I demanded. ‘Over what?’
‘Patience, Agamemnon, patience! First I must dwell a little more fully on events at Andramyttios. A special prize was given to you as a mark of respect by the Second Army. The girl Chryse, whose father was high priest of Sminthian Apollo in Lyrnessos. He donned armour, picked up a sword, and was killed in the fighting. But now Kalchas is saying that the omens are very inauspicious if the girl isn’t returned to the custody of Apollo’s priests in Troy. Apparently we’re in danger of the God’s wrath if Chryse isn’t returned.’
‘That is true, Odysseus,’ I said, shrugging. ‘However, as I told Kalchas, I fail to see what more Apollo can do to us – he’s completely on the Trojan side. Chryse pleases me, so I have
no intention of giving her up.’
Odysseus clicked his tongue. ‘Tch! I’ve noticed, however, that opposition annoys Kalchas, so I’m sure he’s going to renew his exhortations that the girl be sent to Troy. And to help him out, I think we’d better have an outbreak of plague in our camp. I have a herb which makes a man very ill for about eight days, after which he recovers completely. Very impressive! Once the plague breaks out, Kalchas is bound to increase his demands that you give up Chryse, sire. And, faced with the full force of the God’s anger in the form of disease, Agamemnon, you will acquiesce.’
‘Where is this going?’ asked Menelaos, exasperated.
‘You’ll see very shortly, I promise.’ Odysseus focused his attention upon me. ‘However, sire, you’re no petty princeling to have your legal prize so arbitrarily removed. You are the King of Kings. Therefore you will have to be compensated. You might argue that, as the Second Army gifted you with the girl, the Second Army must replace her. Now from the same spoils a second girl was allotted – rather highhandedly – to Achilles. Her name is Brise. All the Kings plus two hundred senior officers saw how much our King of Kings would have liked her for himself – more than he wanted Chryse, as a matter of fact. Gossip travels, Agamemnon. By now the whole army knows that you preferred Brise to Chryse. However, it’s also widely known that Achilles has developed a very deep regard for Brise, and would be loath to part with her. Patrokles, you see, goes round with a woefully long face.’
‘Odysseus, you’re treading a very thin line,’ I said before Achilles could speak.
He ignored me, swept on. ‘You and Achilles are going to quarrel over a woman, Agamemnon. I’ve always found that disputes over women are accepted without question by all and sundry – after all, let us admit that such disputes are extremely common, and have caused the deaths of many men. If one might presume, my dear Menelaos, one could include Helen in the catalogue.’