Gershom could not answer him.
‘Reverse oars,’ came the booming command from Zidantas.
The Xanthos, uncertainly at first, began to back towards the beach. Zidantas and two crewmen lifted the steering oar clear of the water, sliding it back along a groove fashioned in the rear deck rail.
Thirty oars dipped into the wine-dark water, the men began to chant lustily, and the stern of the Xanthos surged towards a wide stretch of sand. Close by was a single galley, with huge crimson eyes painted on the bow. Men were stretched out on the sand around it, but many of them stood as the Xanthos approached.
The water was almost still near the shore and the pointed stern of the ship clove the gentle swell like an axe. Gershom grabbed on to the side. The thirty oars dipped in and out of the water relentlessly, the pace and volume of the men’s chanting increasing, the white line of beach hurtling towards them…
Gershom held on tight and closed his eyes.
‘Hold!’
There was a moment of silence as the chanting stopped, the oars poised in the air, then the stern of the Xantbos slid onto the beach, hurling sand and pebbles up on either side with a gritty roar as its timbers scraped over the stony waterline. It ground to a halt. There was a moment’s pause, the ship shifted a little to one side, then settled.
A great cheer arose, both from the crew and from the men on the beach. Xander and Gershom had both been thrown to the deck but Xander jumped straight up again and joined in the cheering.
He turned to Gershom, his eyes alight. ‘Wasn’t that exciting?’
Gershom decided to stay where he was for a bit. Much as he wanted firm ground under his feet, he feared his legs would not carry him there just yet.
‘Yes,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Exciting is the very word.’
There was a bustle of movement on board as men hurried to disembark, laughing and joking with one another as the fears of the day drifted away like ocean spray. The oarsmen were shipping their blades, quickly drying them and stowing them before snatching up their belongings from under the rowers’ benches.
Helikaon was the first over the side and Gershom could see him inspecting the planking on the hull. The hold doors were raised in the centre of the deck and Zidantas and the grumpy shipwright Khalkeus both quickly disappeared into the bowels of the ship, no doubt checking for damage.
The crewman were streaming off the Xanthos, shinning down ropes onto dry land.
‘Come on, Gershom!’ Xander had collected his own small leather bag. The boy was dancing impatiently from foot to foot. ‘We’ve got to go ashore!’ Gershom knew he was in agony lest he miss something.
‘You go. I’ll be a moment.’
Xander stood in line behind several sailors waiting to disembark.
When his turn came, he climbed over the deck rail, took hold of the rope and, hand over hand, lowered himself to the beach. He ran off without a backward glance to where the men of the Xanthos were already building a fire. The great ship was quiet and Gershom was alone on the deck. He closed his eyes and relished the moment of peace.
A shout disturbed him, and he opened his eyes with a jolt.
‘Ho, Helikaon! You can always tell a man of Troy because he presents his arse to you first! Never seen it done with a ship, though.’
A ruddy-faced man in a saffron-coloured tunic was striding down the beach to the Xanthos. He was not tall, but wide and muscular, and his curly beard and long hair were tawny and unkempt. His tunic was dirty and his leather sandals old and worn, yet he wore an elaborately crafted belt decorated with gold and gems, from which hung a curved dagger. Helikaon’s face lit up at the sight of him.
‘You ugly old pirate,’ he called out in greeting and, patting the hull of the Xanthos with evident satisfaction, Helikaon waded to the shore and threw his arms round the newcomer.
‘You’re lucky I’m here,’ said the man. ‘You’ll need all my crew as well as your own to get this fat cow off the beach come daybreak.’
Helikaon laughed, then turned to gaze with pride at the great ship. ‘She rode the storm, my friend. Fearless and defiant. She is everything I dreamt of.’
‘I remember. To sail beyond Scylla and Charybdis, across uncharted oceans all the way to the end of the world. I’m proud of you.’
Helikaon fell silent for a moment. ‘None of it would have come to pass without you, Odysseus.’
VII
The Lost Hero
Odysseus looked at the young man, and was amazed to find he was at a loss for words. His sudden embarrassment was covered by the arrival of several members of his crew, who rushed forward and gathered around Helikaon. They clapped him on the back or embraced him, then drew him back to where other men waited to greet him.
Odysseus gazed back at the great ship, and remembered the little raven-haired child who had once told him, ‘I will build the biggest ship. And I will kill sea monsters, and sail to the end of the world, where all the gods live.’
‘They are said to live on Mount Olympos.’
‘Do any of them live at the end of the world?’
‘A terrible woman, with eyes of fire. One glance at her face and men burn like candles.’
The child had looked concerned. Then his expression hardened. ‘I won’t look at her face,’ he said.
Time flew faster than the wings of Pegasus, thought Odysseus. He suddenly felt old. At year’s end he would be forty-five. He drew in a deep breath, his mood becoming melancholy. Then he saw a young lad running from the Xanthos. He was looking around, awestruck, at the fires and the stalls and the throngs of people.
‘Where do you think you are going, little man?’ asked Odysseus sternly.
The tawny-haired youngster looked at him. ‘Is this your beach, sir?’ he asked.
‘It might be. Do you not know who I am?’
‘I do not, sir. I have never sailed before.’
Odysseus kept his expression fierce. ‘That is no excuse, boy. Was I not described to you in tales of wonder? Were the legends of my life not told round your cookfires?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered the boy honestly. ‘You haven’t told me your name.’
‘I am the king of Ithaka – the warrior king of Ithaka. The greatest sailor in all the world. Does that offer a clue?’
‘Is this Ithaka?’ asked the lad.
Odysseus shook his head. ‘No, this is not Ithaka. I can see your education has been sadly lacking. Go on, now. Enjoy the delights of Blue Owl Bay.’
The boy swung away, but then turned back. ‘I am Xander,’ he said. ‘I am a sailor too.’
‘And a good one. I can tell. I am Odysseus.’
Xander stood very still, staring at him. ‘Truly?’
‘Indeed.’
‘I have heard of you. Grandfather says you are the greatest liar in all the world, and you tell the best stories. He told me the one about how your ship was lifted by a great storm and left on a mountainside, and how you cut the sail in half and tied it to the oars and flapped them like wings so that the ship flew back to the sea.’
‘For a while, though, we were lost in the clouds,’ said Odysseus, ‘and I had to be lowered on a rope to guide us back to the water.’
The boy laughed. ‘I am sailing with the lord Helikaon,’ he said. ‘We went through a great storm, and I nearly fell over the side.’
‘I sailed with Helikaon once,’ Odysseus told him. ‘He was about your age. I used my magic to teach him how to fly.’
‘He can fly?’
‘Like an eagle. Perhaps I’ll tell you about it later. But for now I need to piss, and I hate to be watched, so be away with you.’
The boy ran off. Odysseus, his good humour returned, strolled along the beach.
He sat down on a jutting rock and looked back to where Helikaon was surrounded by crewmen from the Penelope. They were – he guessed – talking about old times.
Old times.
It was twenty years since Odysseus had first laid eyes on Helikaon. Twenty year
s! Sometimes it seemed merely a few trading seasons had passed. Odysseus had been young, and at the height of his strength, and he remembered vividly the first time he had trodden the steep path to the hilltop fortress of Dardanos.
The rocky fastness had become the capital of Dardania under Anchises the king, Helikaon’s father. He was said to be wealthy with ill-gotten gains and, more importantly to Odysseus the trader, had a beautiful young wife. Thus he climbed the steep rock-strewn hill accompanied by three crewmen and two donkeys laden with rare perfumes, jewels and gold, rich textiles and trinkets such as might appeal to a woman of taste.
At the fortress gates he had joked with the royal guard while weighing up the defences. The gates were thick, but far too broad, a foolish vanity on the part of the king no doubt. But the walls were high and well made, blocks of limestone fitted cunningly together without mortar. The guards at the gate looked well fed and alert. They eyed him curiously, which was only to be expected. He had already made a name for himself, even in this distant northern domain.
Suddenly an excited young voice behind him cried, ‘Sir, sir, is that your ship?’
He swung round and saw a boy of seven or eight with night-dark hair and brilliant blue eyes. The boy was pointing down to the beach where the Penelope had been drawn up, looming large over the fishing boats around her.
‘What if it is, you ugly little dwarf?’ he growled.
The boy was taken aback but he stood his ground. ‘I’m not a dwarf, sir. I’m a boy. I am Aeneas, the son of Anchises, the king.’
Odysseus glared at him. ‘Expect me to believe that? You don’t look like any boy I’ve ever seen. All the boys I’ve met have had four arms. Don’t try to fool me, lad. You’ll regret it.’ He placed his hand on his dagger and stepped forward menacingly.
The boy was uncertain still – until he saw the wide grins on the faces of the palace guards and laughed.
‘My father told me Odysseus of Ithaka would be our honoured guest and that he is a fine teller of tall stories. Will you tell me about the boys with four arms, sir? How many heads did they have?’
Odysseus gave him a grudging smile. ‘We’ll see, lad,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’
At that moment a harassed-looking middle-aged woman appeared behind the lad.
‘Aeneas, where have you been? I thought I’d never find you. I’ve been all the way down to the beach looking for you. Come. Come here. Your mother wants you.
You’re a bad boy,’ she added as an afterthought.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him up the path towards the royal apartments.
Aeneas grinned over his shoulder at Odysseus then suffered himself to be dragged up the stone steps to a side balcony where a slender, beautiful, dark-haired woman in blue robes waited. She knelt down to embrace the boy, who, glancing at
Odysseus again, rolled his eyes.
Odysseus met the king in Anchises’ megaron, the great stone hall where he received guests and ordered his daily business. The man was pale-skinned and grey-haired, his ice-blue eyes resting coolly on the trader as if he were no more than a palace servant.
Odysseus was well used to jumped-up brigands like this. He liked to think he was flexible in his dealings and he had an arsenal of weapons to call on, ranging from outrageous flattery through charm to scarce-concealed threats. This king, though, was cool and remote, and the trader found him hard to read. They discussed the state of trade on the local coasts, sipping well-watered wine, and Odysseus told a couple of stories to make Anchises laugh. But his best stories –
even the one about the virgin and the scorpion – scarcely creased the king’s stern features and his eyes remained cold.
Odysseus was almost relieved when Aeneas, barefoot and dressed in a linen tunic, came running into the megaron and skidded to a halt in front of the king.
‘Have I missed everything, father? Am I too late?’
‘Missed what? What are you talking about, Aeneas?’ asked Anchises impatiently, his icy eyes turning to the dark-haired woman who followed the boy into the chamber.
‘The stories, father. Of wild beasts and two-headed boys and adventures on the high sea,’ he said, his face creased into a frown of anxiety. ‘I had to do my lessons,’ he explained to Odysseus, who watched him with amusement.
‘I’m tired, lad, and I’ve run out of stories for the day.’
‘Come, Helikaon, don’t trouble your father and his guest,’ said his mother and she took him gently by the arm. She was a woman of fragile beauty with delicate pale skin and, Odysseus thought, eyes which seemed to gaze on a different horizon. It was a look he had seen before, and he regarded the young queen with renewed interest.
‘I have told you before,’ said the king, harshly, ‘to call him by the name I gave him. Aeneas. It is a proud name.’
The queen looked frightened and began to stammer an apology. Odysseus saw the boy’s expression change, then he pulled away from his mother and said: ‘I’m going to build the biggest ship in the world when I’m older. I am to be a great hero. The gods told mother.’
A pretty frown creased the woman’s brow. She knelt before her son and embraced him again as Odysseus had seen her do on the balcony. She looked into the boy’s eyes as if searching for something there. Odysseus was impressed with the lad.
He was very young, and yet he had sensed his mother’s distress, and had spoken to distract his father’s anger.
‘I know the hearts of men and heroes, boy,’ he said, ‘and I think your mother is right.’
‘Go now,’ said the king, and flicked his fingers at mother and child, as if dismissing servants.
In the three days the Penelope spent in Dardania the child had followed Odysseus around like an exuberant shadow. Odysseus tolerated his company. The boy was sharp, intelligent, curious about the world around him, friendly to all comers, yet reserving an independence of thought the trader found unusual. He was fascinated by ships and he extracted a promise from Odysseus to return to Dardania one day and take him on a voyage on the Penelope. The trader had no intention of keeping his word, but it satisfied the boy, who stood on the beach on the last day waving the trading ship goodbye until it disappeared over the horizon. That same summer Anchises’ wife died, in a mysterious fall from a cliff. Sailors gossiped about the tragedy. One story had Anchises, known to be a cold-hearted king, hurling his wife to her death. Others said she killed herself after years of suffering at Anchises’ hands. A few told more elaborate tales, saying that the queen had been possessed by Aphrodite. Odysseus dismissed that one out of hand. The idea of the Goddess of Love falling for a dry, dull brigand like Anchises was laughable. No, he had seen the queen’s eyes. She had been swallowing opiates. Many highborn women belonged to mysterious sects, taking part in secret revels. When young – around twelve – Odysseus had risked execution in order to spy on one such gathering in Ithaka. The women there had behaved with glorious abandon, dancing and singing, and flinging their clothes to the ground. At one point a small goat had been brought into the clearing. The women had fallen upon it with knives, hacking it to pieces, then smearing themselves with its blood. Odysseus had been shocked and terrified, and had crept away.
Anchises’ wife was said to be a priestess of Dionysus, and in that role would have experienced no difficulty in acquiring narcotics. They had undoubtedly unhinged her.
Odysseus stopped in Dardania several times over the following seven years, but they were overnight rests only. He saw nothing of the king or the boy and had no interest in them, until one day on the isle of Lesbos he got into conversation with a Kretan trader who had recently sailed to the Dardanian coast. He told Odysseus the king had married again.
‘A dull and unpleasant man,’ Odysseus said musingly, ‘yet I suppose even a cold fish like him must have a wife.’
‘Yes,’ said the Kretan, ‘and the new queen has given birth to a son and heir.’ ‘A son?’ Odysseus remembered the small black-haired boy on the beach waving as if his arm would fall off. ‘He
has a son. Aeneas. I had not heard he was dead.’ ‘As good as,’ replied the Kretan. ‘Almost a man and yet frightened of everything, they say. He stays in his room all day. The king has no time for him. As I wouldn’t,’ he concluded.
Odysseus had no reason to return to Dardania, but questions about the boy had lodged in his mind from that moment. He could not shake them free, and found himself, a month later, walking the steep path again to seek audience with Anchises. This time his reception at the gates was hostile, and he was left kicking his heels for several hours outside the king’s megaron. He was fighting mad by the time Anchises deigned to receive him. Quelling his anger with difficulty, he accepted the wine cup the king offered and enquired after Aeneas. The king’s stern face darkened. His eyes turned away. ‘You are here to sell me something, no doubt, and I am in need of a supply of tin.’ After lengthy dickering, they reached agreement. Odysseus returned to the Penelope with the intention of leaving at dawn, but was surprised to get a late-night request from the king to see him again.
The megaron was icy, almost in darkness, lit by the light of a single fire, and Anchises virtually invisible in the shadows of his great carved chair. He gestured Odysseus to a seat and offered him a wine cup. The wine was warmed but the trader shivered and pulled his woollen robe closer round him.
‘His mother killed herself,’ Anchises said suddenly. ‘The boy has not been the same since. The stupid woman told him she was the goddess Aphrodite, and that she was going to fly back to Olympos. Then she leapt from the cliff. He saw her and tried to follow, but I grabbed him. He refused to believe she was insane. So I took him to the body, and he saw the ruins of her beauty, broken bones jutting from her flesh. He has been… useless to me since. He is frightened of everything. He speaks to nobody and goes nowhere. He will not ride a horse, nor dive or swim in the bay. So I have a proposition for you.’
Odysseus raised his eyebrows in question.
‘He is fifteen now. Take him with you,’ said the king.
‘I am in no need of crew. Especially cowards.’
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