Only the tower captain remained, muttering angrily to himself as he sat at a table. Clearly in a quandary, he was staring at a trapdoor in the floor. Expecting someone he thought he should be there to greet? I slipped into the room and leaped on him from behind, stopping his cry with my hand. He died as quickly as the rest and joined them in that dark corner between the path and the tower wall. Then I sat down outside to wait, deeming it better that, if the expected visitor did appear, he should see no one in the guardroom.
Not long afterwards Odysseus whistled his variation on the nightlark’s song – how clever he was! Had he not thought to vary the usual trill, a real nightlark was bound to have decided to sing right near the watchtower. As it was, no real nightlark was in the offing; all I had to hope was that no visitor was either, for I couldn’t warn Odysseus.
I opened the trapdoor in the guardroom and shinnied down the side of the ladder to find Odysseus waiting at the bottom.
‘Wait!’ I whispered, and went outside to scout around. But the streets were quiet, lampless and torchless.
‘I have her, Diomedes, but she weighs as much as Ajax!’ said Odysseus when I returned. ‘It’s going to be hard work dragging her up a twenty-five-cubit ladder.’
She – the Palladion – was perched precariously across the back of an ass, so we lugged her into the downstairs chamber after sending the beast scampering off. Awestruck, I stared at her in the lamplight. Oh, she was so old! A crudely recognisable female form carved out of some dark wood too grimed by the passage of aeons to be beautiful, and beautiful she was not. She had tiny, joined, pointed feet, huge thighs, an obscene vulva, a distended belly, two bulbous breasts, arms clamped against her sides, a round head and a pouting mouth. She was also enormously fat. Taller than me, she was heavy. The pointed feet might have enabled her to spin like a child’s top, but she couldn’t stand on them; we had to support her.
‘Odysseus, will she fit inside the conduit?’ I asked.
‘Yes. The bulk of her belly is no bigger than your shoulders and she’s rounder. So’s the conduit.’
Then I had a bright idea. I searched the room for a piece of rope and found it in a box, then looped it under her breasts, tied it, and had enough left over to hold on to. I went up the ladder first dragging her on the rope, while Odysseus put one hand on her huge, globous buttocks and the other inside her vulva, and shoved from underneath.
‘Do you think,’ I gasped when we reached the guardroom, ‘that she’ll ever forgive us the liberties we’ve had to take?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, lying flat on the floor alongside her. ‘She’s the first Athene, who is Pallas, and I belong to her.’
Getting her down the conduit was actually easier; Odysseus had been right. Her roundness bumped along more easily than I could with my wide shoulders and masculine angles. We kept her roped, which proved a second boon once we were on the plain; we dragged her to the grove of trees and Ajax’s four-wheeled car. There, groaning from our final effort, we hoisted her aboard and collapsed. The half moon was westering, which meant we still had sufficient time to get her home.
‘You did it, Odysseus!’ I crowed.
‘I couldn’t have without you, old friend. How many guards did you have to kill?’
‘Five.’ I yawned. ‘I’m tired.’
‘How do you think I feel? At least your back is whole.’
‘Don’t talk about it! Tell me what happened inside the Citadel instead. Did you see Helen?’
‘I duped the gate guards beautifully, so they let me into the city. The sole guard on the Citadel gates was asleep – I just picked up my chains and stepped over him, dainty as you please. I found Helen alone – Deiphobos was off somewhere. She was a little taken aback to find a bloodied, filthy slave prostrating himself at her feet, but then she saw my eyes and recognised me. When I asked to go to the crypt, she was out of her chair in an instant. I think she was expecting Deiphobos. But we escaped, and as soon as we could find a quiet spot she helped me rid myself of my fetters. Then we went to the crypt.’ He chuckled. ‘I have an idea it proved very handy when she was intriguing with Aineas, because she knew it like the back of her hand. Once we were down there she plagued me with questions – how was Menelaos? – how were you? – how was Agamemnon? She couldn’t hear enough.’
‘But the Palladion – how did you manage to move her if your only helper was Helen?’ I asked.
His shoulders shook with laughter. ‘While I said the prayers and asked the Goddess for her consent to the move, Helen vanished. The next thing, she was back with the ass! Then she led me out of the crypt straight into the street below the Citadel wall, where she kissed me – very chastely! – and wished me well.’
‘Poor Helen,’ I said. ‘Deiphobos must have tipped the balance against Troy’s interests.’
‘You’re absolutely right, Diomedes.’
Agamemnon erected a magnificent altar in the assembly square and enthroned the Palladion inside a golden niche. After which he summoned as much of the army as he could fit into the area, and told the story of how Odysseus and I had kidnapped her. She was given her own priest, who offered her the finest victims; the smoke was white as snow and lifted so quickly into the sky that we knew she loved her new home. How she must have hated the cold, dank blackness of her Trojan home! Her sacred snake slithered into his house below her altar without a moment’s hesitation, then stuck his head out to lap at his saucer of milk and swallow his egg. An imposing and happy ceremony.
Odysseus, the rest of the Kings and I followed Agamemnon to his house when the ritual was over, there to feast. None of us ever refused an invitation to dine with the King of Kings; he had by far the best cooks. Cheeses, olives, breads, fruits, roast meats, fish, honeyed sweetmeats, wine.
The mood was lively, the conversation larded with mirth and jests, the wine excellent; then Menelaos called for the harper to sing. Maudlin by this time, we settled down comfortably to listen. The Greek was never born who loved not the songs, the hymns, the lays of his country; we would rather have heard the bard than bedded down with women.
The harper gave us one of the Lays of Herakles, then waited patiently for the slightly hysterical applause to die down. He was a fine poet and a fine musician; Agamemnon had brought him from Aulis ten years before, but he came originally from the North, and was said to be descended from Orpheus himself, the singer of singers.
Someone asked for the Battle Hymn of Tydeus, someone else for the Lament of Danai, and Nestor wanted the Tale of Medea; but to every request he smilingly shook his head. Then he bent the knee to Agamemnon.
‘Sire, if it pleases you, I’ve composed a song about events much closer to us than the deeds of dead Heroes. May I sing my own composition to you?’
Agamemnon inclined that imperial, whitening head. ‘Sing, Alphides of Salmydessos.’
He passed his fingers tenderly across the stiff strings to draw out his beloved lyre in slow melodic pain; the song was sad and yet glorious, a song of Troy and Agamemnon’s army before its walls. He cast us rapt for a very long time, for such a titan of a poem isn’t sung in two or three moments. We sat with our chins on our hands, and not an eye was open or a cheek dry. He ended with the death of Achilles. The rest was too sorrowful. Even now we found it hard to think of Ajax.
‘All gold in death, he who was always gold in life,
His beautiful mask wafting thin and unfluttered,
His breath gone forever, his shade dissolved away.
Heavy his clasped hands sheathed in golden gloves,
All his mortality melted, his glory become mere metal,
Peerless Achilles, his brazen voice struck to silence.
O divine Muse, lift my heart, let me give him life!
Through my words let him be clothed in living gold,
Let his footsteps ring hollow with fear and dread,
Let him stride across the plain before sullen Troy!
Let me show him shake back his long golden plumes,
R
emember him gleaming like the splendid sun above,
Running tireless through the dewed grasses of Troy
With the ribbons on his cuirass nodding the rhythm,
Glorious Achilles who was the lipless son of Peleus.’
We praised the harper Alphides of Salmydessos long and loud through aching hearts; he had given us a taste of immortality, for his song was sure to live far longer than any of us. I think it was that we still breathed, yet were in the song. The load was too heavy to bear.
When the applause finally ended I wanted to be alone with Odysseus; a gathering of men seemed alien to the mood the harper had inspired in us. I looked across at Odysseus, who understood without having to defile the moment with words. He got up, turned towards the door, and gasped audibly. Because a sudden silence had fallen on the room, all our heads turned his way. And we gasped.
At first the likeness was uncanny; with the spell of the song still strong on us, it was as if Alphides of Salmydessos had conjured up a ghost to hear his music. I thought, Achilles has come to listen too! But who has given him the blood to allow his shade substance?
Then I looked more closely and saw that he wasn’t Achilles. This man was as tall and as broad, but he was many years younger. The beard was hardly stiff and the stubble a darker gold, the eyes more amber. And he owned two perfectly formed lips.
How long he had been standing there none of us knew, but from the suffering in his face it must have been long enough to have heard at least the conclusion of the song.
Agamemnon rose and went to him with arm extended. ‘You are Neoptolemos, son of Achilles. Welcome,’ he said.
The young man nodded gravely. ‘Thank you. I came to help, but I set sail before – before I knew my father was dead. I learned it from the harper.’
Odysseus joined them. ‘What better way to learn such awful news?’ he asked.
Sighing, Neoptolemos bowed his head. ‘Yes. The song told it all. Is Paris dead?’
Agamemnon took both his hands. ‘He is.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘Philoktetes, with the arrows of Herakles.’
He tried to be polite, to keep his features impassive. ‘I am sorry, but I don’t know your names. Which is Philoktetes?’
Philoktetes spoke. ‘I am he.’
‘I wasn’t here to avenge him, so I must thank you.’
‘I know, boy. You would rather have done it yourself. But I happened on the rogue by chance – or with the connivance of the Gods. Who can tell? And now, since you don’t know us, let me introduce us. Our High King greeted you first. Next was Odysseus. The rest are Nestor, Idomeneus, Menelaos, Diomedes, Automedon, Menestheus, Meriones, Machaon and Eurypylos.’
I thought, how thin our ranks have grown!
Odysseus, an ecstatic Automedon and I took Neoptolemos to the Myrmidon stockade. It was a longish walk, and news of his arrival had preceded us. All along the way soldiers emptied out of their houses, standing in the bitter sun to cheer him as wholeheartedly as they had used to cheer his father. We discovered that he was like Achilles in more than looks; he acknowledged their wild joy with the same quiet smile and careless wave, and like his father he lived unto himself, he didn’t spread his character lavishly on everyone he came in contact with. As we walked we filled in the gaps in the song, told him how Ajax had died, told him of Antilochos and all the others who were dead. Then we told him about the living.
The Myrmidons were drawn up on parade. Not a single cheer until the boy – he couldn’t have been more than a bare eighteen – had spoken to them. Then they pounded the flats of their swords against their shields until the noise of it drove Odysseus and I away. We strolled to the other end of the beach and our own compound.
‘And so it draws to an end, Diomedes.’
‘If the Gods know the meaning of pity at all, I pray it draws to an end,’ I said.
He blew a wisp of red hair out of his eyes. ‘Ten years… How curious that Kalchas was right about that. I wonder was it a fluke, or if he really did have the Second Sight?’
I shivered. ‘It isn’t politic to doubt priestly powers.’
‘Maybe, maybe. Oh, to shake the dust of Troy from my hair! To sail the open seas again! To wash away the stench of this plain with clean salt water! To go somewhere the air is windless, and the stars shine without competition from ten thousand campfires! To be purified!’
‘I echo all that, Odysseus. Though it’s hard to believe too that it’s almost over.’
‘It will finish with a cataclysm to rival Poseidon.’
I stared. ‘You’ve worked out how to do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me!’
‘Before the moment? Diomedes, Diomedes! Not even for you! But it won’t be long until the moment.’
‘Come inside and let me bathe those lash stripes.’
Which made him laugh. ‘They’ll heal,’ he said.
The following evening Neoptolemos came to dinner.
‘I have something in trust for you, Neoptolemos,’ said Odysseus after the meal was over. ‘It’s my gift to you.’
Neoptolemos glanced at me, puzzled. ‘What does he mean?’
I shrugged. ‘How can any man know except Odysseus?’
He came back wheeling a huge tripod, on it spread the golden armour Thetis had begged from Hephaistos Fire. Neoptolemos jumped to his feet stammering something I didn’t understand, then reached out and touched the cuirass delicately, lovingly.
‘I was angry,’ he said, tears in his eyes, ‘when Automedon told me you’d won it in debate with Ajax. But I must ask your pardon. You won it to give it to me?’
Odysseus grinned. ‘You’ll fit it, lad. It should be worn, not hung up on a wall or wasted on a dead man’s relatives. Wear it, Neoptolemos, and may it bring you good luck. However, it will take some getting used to. It weighs about the same as you do.’
We got into a few minor skirmishes during the five days which followed; Neoptolemos got his first taste of Trojans, and licked his lips. He was a warrior, born to it and hungering for it. Only time was his enemy, and that he knew. His eyes told all of us he understood that his was to be a minor role in the closing moments of a great war; that the laurel wreaths would be woven for other brows, brows which had endured the full ten years. Yet in himself he was the deciding factor. He brought hope, fury and renewed enthusiasm; the eyes of the soldiers, Myrmidon or Argive or Aitolian made no difference, followed him with doglike devotion as he rode in his father’s chariot wearing his father’s armour. To them he was Achilles. And all the while I continued to watch Odysseus, avid for the summons to council.
It came half a moon after Neoptolemos arrived, from one of the imperial heralds: the next day, after the midday meal. I knew it was useless to try to pump Odysseus, so after we finished supper together I assumed a completely disinterested air as I listened to him pick a subject up and toss it as lightly and deftly as a tumbler his gilded ball. He took my attitude very well, only collapsing into helpless laughter when, very dignified, I took my leave of him. I could have kicked him, but I still smarted from that whipping more than he did, so I refrained; I made do with a pungent description of his ancestors instead.
They all came to Agamemnon’s early, like hounds on the leash sniffing fresh blood, dressed carefully in their best kilts and jewels, as if they were going to a formal reception in the Lion Room at Mykenai. The imperial chief herald stood at the foot of the Lion Chair calling out the names of those present to an underling whose job it was to commit them to memory for posterity.
‘Imperial Agamemnon, High King of Mykenai, King of Kings;
Idomeneus, High King of Crete;
Mehestheus, High King of Attika;
Nestor, King of Pylos;
Menelaos, King of Lakedaimon;
Diomedes, King of Argos;
Odysseus, King of the Out Islands;
Philoktetes, King of Hestaiotis;
Eurypylos, King of Ormenion;
Thoas, King o
f Aitolia;
Agapenor, King of Arkadia;
Ajax, son of Oileus, King of Lokris;
Meriones, Prince of Crete, Heir to Crete;
Neoptolemos, Prince of Thessalia, Heir to Thessalia;
Teukros, Prince of Salamis;
Machaon, Surgeon;
Podalieros, Surgeon;
Epeios, Engineer.’
The King of Kings nodded to his heralds to leave, and handed Meriones the Staff of Debate. He then spoke to us in the very stilted language of formal pronouncements.
‘After Priam, King of Troy, did break the sacred covenants of war, I did commission Odysseus, King of Ithaka, to devise a plan to take Troy by stealth and trickery. I am informed that Odysseus, King of Ithaka, is ready to speak. You are all called upon to witness his words. Royal Odysseus, you have the floor.’
Smiling at Meriones, Odysseus got up. ‘Keep the Staff for me.’ Then he took a rolled-up piece of soft pale hide from the table in the centre of the room and walked to a wall we could all see. There he flipped the hide open and pinned it securely to the wall with a little jewelled dagger in each of its four corners.
To the last one we stared at it blankly, wondering if we were the victims of a hoax. Admittedly well done in its way, it was a drawing etched thickly on the hide in black charcoal: a sort of a horse done very large, and to one side of it, a vertical line.
Odysseus looked at us enigmatically. ‘Yes, it is a drawing of a horse. No doubt you’re wondering why Epeios is here with us today. Well, he’s here with us today so that I can ask him some questions and he can give me some answers.’