The king’s palace lay beyond the market square, at the foot of a terraced hill overlooking the sea. At the crest of the hill stood the twin temples of Helios and Hippotades—Sun and Wind—whose priests tended the eternal flame that drew our sailors and fishermen home at day’s end. My child’s mind expected the palace of the king to be something…more. Something with walls, and guarded by men in shining corselets whose cornel-wood spear blades caught the light like the eyes of a predator at dusk. Certainly, I did not expect a comfortable villa with a broad shaded portico screened by trellises of flowering jasmine and rich green ivy, where the sons of Aeolus met in congress to discuss…well, surely nothing my young mind could comprehend. Nor did I expect to be greeted by none other than old King Aeolus, himself.
What is that? Well, of course, child, the King Aeolus you know isn’t old. You have lived under the reign of one king named Aeolus; I have lived under the reigns of four men who have carried the name—the one of whom I speak, his son, grandson, and that wretched cousin who usurped the throne just last year. It is tradition for the man who wears the king’s mantle to wear also the name ‘Aeolus’, after the son of divine Hippotades, who founded the city.
The Aeolus of my youth was by far the best of men. In him, you could yet see a spark of their godly ancestor, but tempered with the age-borne wisdom that is the portion of mortal man. What? Oh, child, you have the right of it. Age does not always engender wisdom, which grows rarer in men with each passing year; no, more often than not age provokes nothing more than bitterness and regret. Heed what I say, now, for it is the same advice I gave your mother: always drink deep of the wine of life, but never drink too deep. And be mindful, for no matter how sweet the fruit is on the vine, it takes but a fleck of mold, a hint of vinegar, to ruin the vintage. Do you understand? No, I expect you don’t. But one day you will, and my hope is you will pass my words along to your own daughters, and your sons, too. Now where was I? Ah, yes…good King Aeolus.
Indeed, I thought the old man who ambled out from beneath the portico was nothing more than a door warden, dressed as he was in stuff no more ostentatious than this himation I’m wearing, now. But this man, armed with a quick smile and a ready laugh, seemed no more kingly than I. So I marched up to him straight away and announced myself.
“Good sir,” I said. “I am Glaukos, son of Lykaon, and this man, my guest-friend, who is called Polyphemus, bears a message for the king.”
As that jumbled speech left my lips I heard my father hiss my name. The sons of Aeolus, drawn from their weighty conversation by my arrival, erupted in good-natured laughter. My cheeks reddened, though I did not know what my transgression had been. I was ever too aware of the opinions others bore of me, even as a lad and young man. I feared making a fool of myself more than I feared death.
But when the old man raised his hand for silence I knew my error. In that moment, I wished by all the gods below that the earth would open beneath my feet and save me from my folly. My father told me later that I went scarlet from toes to crown. King Aeolus, though, took it all in stride.
“It is well, son of Lykaon,” he said with a wink, “that the king is here to listen to this man’s message.” The king came closer. I saw him grimace as he peered into Polyphemus’s ruined visage; gently, he took the fellow’s hand from my shoulder. “Polyphemus, is it? Is that what you’re calling yourself these days, Kyklops?”
Polyphemus bowed. “So the boy has named me.”
King Aeolus draped Polyphemus’s arm in his—the thin, dark-skinned stranger towered over my king, who looked frail in the titan’s shadow—and motioned for me to follow. He led the blinded man to a part of the portico with the deepest shade, where potted hyacinths perfumed the air and from beyond the screen of jasmine came the burble of a fountain; here, the king’s sons brought seats with soft cushions of fringed brocade. Aeolus helped him to sit. Polyphemus twitched his cloak aside, and only then did I behold the wounds he had borne up from the harbor without complaint. He had signs of torture—bruises from being beaten with a knotted rope, strips of skin peeled away from his ribs, craters burned in his bony chest by hot coals; he had a spear wound, crudely bandaged, in the meat of one hip and blood-crusted lacerations on his right bicep. These last were warrior’s wounds, I learned later, when I received much the same at the hands of Phoenician pirates. My friend had not gone quietly. “Fetch my physician,” the king muttered. “And wine.”
Polyphemus sighed. “Thank you, lord.”
“Do not be so quick to thank me.” The king sat opposite of Polyphemus. I found a perch to the right of the king—a small stool one of his sons had brought for me—while my father and the men of the harbor arrayed themselves around the portico’s edge. Old King Aeolus did not stand so much on ceremony. “For a score of years, you have dwelt as an exile at the edges of my land,” the king continued. “You have preyed upon my people, ignored my emissaries and spurned my offers of friendship. Yet it is only now—now! —after some ill has befallen you, that you seek the hospitality of my city? The son of Lykaon has done right by you, Polyphemus. But he is just a boy who carries nothing of the weight of the world on his shoulders. Not yet, at any rate.” Aeolus smiled at me, once more. A reassurance that I had done nothing wrong. “Why should we not turn you out, at best? Or make an example of you, as my fishermen would have me do?” A chorus of assents rose at this. I did not hear my father’s voice among them.
A breeze picked up, causing the city’s Etesian chimes to sing. I watched Polyphemus’s long face. There was a serenity in it, as though the chimes sang only for him. A servant brought him a cup of wine and placed it in his hand. It trembled as he raised it to his lips, drained it, and held it out for the servant to refill. Polyphemus wiped his bottom lip with one thumb, and then smoothed his silver beard as the music of the chimes faded away.
“There is a saying among my people,” Polyphemus said, after a moment. “When a man dies, they say of him that he has gone to meet his ka. I believe your people have a saying that means much the same, that a shade has gone to cross the River, no? That is how I come to you, lord. I come as a man who has gone to meet his ka. I bring a warning, a tale of woe. After that, I am like the dead man left unburied by the side of a road—what care does he have for meat or drink or the hospitality of his fellow men when he will never reach the paradise that is the Sekhet-Aaru?”
“A warning?”
The man I knew as Polyphemus nodded. I’ve often mused upon what his true name must have been. It was only much later that I discovered he came from an ancient land, called Aegyptos, for he never mentioned it himself. What? Have I seen it? Oh, once, child. And once was enough for my tastes. It is a strange place where traditions of hospitality do not exist. Every man there is a slave to their king, and their gods have the heads of beasts. The memory of it makes me shiver, even on a warm day such as this.
King Aeolus was skeptical of him. “What warning do you bear?”
Polyphemus leaned forward. There was something unreadable about his eyeless face, with its scars and its faded tattoos, something that bordered upon the inhuman. “Beware the Achaeans!” he hissed. “They are the ones who did this to me! Their fleet lurks in these waters, as Setesh lurks in the desert, still reeking of the sack of Troy and the slaughter of the Ismarians—or so they boasted! The one who leads them is a serpent who wears the skin of a man! Odysseus, he is called, the son of Laertes, king of Ithaca!”
The name provoked fierce whispers, like drops of water sizzling on hot stones. King Aeolus held a hand up for silence; reluctantly, the sounds faded away. He, too, leaned forward, and the look on his face was neither affable nor kindly; it was the narrow-eyed glare of a warlord.
“Tell me this tale,” he said.
And this is the tale Polyphemus told…
* * *
3
* * *
“You are familiar with the land wherein I dwell, lord,” Polyphemus said, “it lies around Cape Pachynos, east and north, past the Isl
e of the Quails. It is a rugged land, a hard land, but it bears the bounty of the gods—freshets of sweet water, tall pines and oaks, vines that grow of their own volition and a plenitude of green meadows where flocks can grow fat under the summer sun. In truth, it is too fine a land for the dregs which inhabit it: exiles like myself and desperate men who cannot meet in simple brotherhood for fear of one spilling the others blood. So we live apart, in caves protected by great stones or atop naked hills, behind palisades of boulders and rough-hewn trees. With a spear ever poised to strike, we maintain a banner of truce—you do not steal from me and I will not steal from you. Amun-Ra must have smiled upon us, for somehow we thrived.
“And this is how that wretched Odysseus found us: a scattered and solitary people in a land too rich by far, all of us ripe for the harvest.”
Polyphemus sighed and sipped his wine. After a moment, he continued: “My own holding lay hard by the sea, near the rocky beach where the Lord of Chaos, cursed Apophis, cast me after I fled my homeland. I made my home in a cave, lord. The fearsome Kyklops, as you name me, lived in a hole in the ground.” Blind Polyphemus chuckled, though I knew not why. “It was not dank or wet as you surely imagine, but spacious and well-ventilated, with shafts that allowed fresh air in and smoke from my cooking fires out. Near the entrance I had pens for my flocks—I’m a shepherd, you see—while I dwelt deeper inside, with a wife I’d bought from Phoenician traders and a pair of former slaves who had run away from their Sikelian master, and who served me for wages. It was a decent life. More than that, no exile in a foreign land could ask.
“Then, a fortnight ago, a man came to us.”
Polyphemus stood; King Aeolus leaned back, watching him through eyes gone cold as he paced in a tight circle.
“An Achaean, he was. A bedraggled fellow with an unkempt beard, who stank of brine and pitch. He named himself Aristaeus, and he demanded hospitality—xenia, as you call it—for him and his mates, who sheltered on an island not far from shore. He did not ask it, mind you! He did not sweeten his words with the honey of flattery, or even employ simple good manners! No! He demanded cheese of me, and milk, and dripping joints from a dozen of my best lambs! He added to the insult he paid me by demanding that I send my woman among them, to sing and dance for their amusement!” Polyphemus’s lips curled into a snarl of contempt. “My spear stood close at hand. This fellow looked from it to me; he bared his teeth and boasted of his prowess before the walls of Troy. Aristaeus told me how many shades he had sent down to the river of the underworld. He thought me an impotent shepherd—never reckoning that I’d lost my eye in service to Pharaoh ere his bitch of a mother had ever shat him out. He believed himself quick-handed as he reached for my spear.”
Polyphemus stopped.
“He paid for his folly, and died with my knife in his heart.”
Murmurs of outrage arose from the onlookers. Polyphemus cocked his head, his ears marking the sound. “Aye, I struck the impudent wretch down even as he stood on the threshold of my own home! What of it? My gods are not your gods; they do not bid me take in every cast-off and every stray who crosses my path, in vain hope it is not some black-hearted robber I let sleep under my roof, but blessed Horus in disguise. What rubbish! The gods of my homeland do not walk, either seen or unseen, among mere mortals. This man got his due. I bid my servants take his body down to the shore and cast it into the sea, as a warning to his comrades: let neither god nor man come to me as an insolent beggar!
“Alas.” The blinded man resumed his seat, suddenly weary beyond measure. “Perhaps I should simply have knuckled under and granted his ridiculous demands. For when the Achaeans came again, they came for blood.
“To my everlasting shame, I was not there to greet them when their black prows smote the rocky beach, when the first ruddy-cheeked Achaeans boiled over the strakes to claim my land like a spear-won prize. I was inland, tending my flocks and spreading news of the Achaeans to my neighbors. It was one of these, his woman cackling like a stormcock, who drew my eye to a smear of black against the blue vault of heaven—the smoke of a burning.
“I sprinted back, but did not arrive in time to save them, my makeshift family. The Achaeans brought fire with them, and murder. My servants they butchered in the garden close at hand to the mouth of my cave, jointing them like lambs and leaving them unburied, their shades cursed to wander. They stole everything of value, from cheeses and crocks of sweet whey to the bundles of shearling from last season’s sheep to the frame my woman used to weave carpets.”
Polyphemus grew silent, his scarred brows drawn together. Finally, he continued: “I found her, my woman, at the well, where she’d gone to draw water for a bath. Nefer, I had called her, and she seemed well-pleased with this name. I found her…and the three Achaeans who had slain her, but only after sating their crude lusts. They sat by her corpse, drinking water and laughing.
“I came upon them like a storm. The eldest I caught as he rose to meet me, the blade of my spear splitting his liver. His life fled upon a torrent of dark blood. The second had the naked chin of a youth, though the tongue in his head cursed like a salty old knot. He clawed for the hilt of his sword. Ere he bared a hand-span of bronze, though, I struck. Low did my spear-point dart, beneath the edges of his linen corselet; it ripped through the meat of his inner thigh, severing the great artery, there. I left him to die as he’d left my dear Nefer. The last wretch turned his back to me and tried to run. I caught up to him in three strides and tripped him up. He crashed to the ground, begging his gods to save him. There was no softness in my heart, only a fierce red fury. He cried out for mercy as I stabbed down at him—my first blow pierced his side; my second cracked open the keel-bones of his chest; my third blow cut the sinew of his neck, laying open those channels in the flesh that freighted blood between heart and head. His pleas for mercy became wordless gurgling as he drowned in a tide of gore.
“I paused to look at the violated body of my woman, my Nefer. And that moment where my heart cooled, where grief replaced fury, proved my undoing. A bronze-headed javelin pierced my hip even as a stone, hurled from a sling, brought me down.”
Polyphemus looked up. “Shall I recount the litany of tortures perpetrated against me by these pitiless Achaeans? Shall I relive for you the ignominy of being strung up by my ankles, or the cold terror one feels when a knife’s blade touches your manhood? Or shall I wax poetic about the excruciating pain of having strips of skin peeled away? No? Then let me at least share with you how they blinded me.
“The Achaeans had sported with me for long enough. They were eager to be away. My cave they had ransacked, my lambs they had stolen, my sheep they had slaughtered. What wine I had they’d drunk, and my provender, meant to see me and mine through the wet winter months, was now in their bellies—or in the belly of their ship. They were finished with me. The chief of my tormentors was a man called Eurylochus; he had a knife at my throat and would have sent me willingly to my ka had his captain not came upon us. I do not recall much about this captain, save that he was solidly built, though small in stature, and sported a once-dark beard now shot through with the silver of age, hardship, and worry. His eyes, though…his eyes were the eyes of a lion.
“Do not kill him, he said, and Eurylochus stayed his hand. Even though he refused us the small boon of his hospitality, I would not sink so low as to murder our would-be host. No, my friend. We must instruct him. Do you like riddles, Kyklops? Answer me this, then:
The cost of making only the maker knows,
Valueless if bought, but sometimes traded.
A poor man may give one as easily as a king.
When one is broken pain and deceit are assured.
“I confess I did not even try to discern the answer. At my best, I have little regard for riddles; they are like cracklings of fat pared from the meat of divine wisdom: a man might ingest them, but they do not leave him full. In an hour, he is as hungry as the man who had none. I spat the first thing that came to mind.
“Life
, I said. For that is what you thieves and brigands are after, is it not?
“The captain looked askance at me. This whole time, he had kept his hands busy by whittling a point to the end of one of the olive wood stakes I kept for growing beans. He held it up, gauging his handiwork.
“The riddle’s answer is what we were after.
“I shrugged, for I was in no mood for games.
“He tsked. An oath. We sought an oath of friendship from you, and you instead broke one of the most sacred oaths, that between traveler and host. A man with but one eye should not be so quick to judge what he sees, nor so quick to draw a blade against a man whose friends are near. The captain nodded. Before I could react, Eurylochus wrapped his hairy, stinking arms around my head, holding it immobile. And though I struggled and roared, I could no more halt that stake’s descent into my one remaining eye than I could the rising of the sun.
“The pain,” Polyphemus touched the raw socket where his eye had been, “the pain was beyond words, lord. I lost consciousness in a haze of red and woke to eternal darkness. I heard the captain’s voice as he withdrew back to his ship, faint but unmistakable. He said: Kyklops, if any man asks about the shameful blinding of your eye, tell them it was Odysseus, the sacker of cities, who did it; Laertes’s son, who is king in Ithaca. Tell them, when next an Achaean asks for hospitality you will surely offer it.”
Polyphemus sighed. “A neighbor found me. They claimed my cave and my lands as theirs; though I begged them to send me to my ka, they nevertheless bound my wounds and sent me away. A fisherman took pity upon me and brought me here, to the Court of the Winds, where I pray my warning does not fall on deaf ears.
“Beware of the Achaeans, lord! They haunt your waters like the spirits of the restless dead—men who left their souls beneath the walls of Troy, their good and common decency winnowed away by the threshing flails of endless strife! If they come here, lord, do not entreat with them. Let my plight be as a guide for your own wisdom. Can any man who would do this be content to return home and take up the plough?
A Sea of Sorrow Page 9