by Peter Tonkin
iv
The meat beneath the black and bitter crust was sweet. I tore off a sizeable mouthful and began to chew. But almost at once a disorientating sensation swept over me. My mouth was full of something that tasted unmistakeably of venison but the venison seemed to be full of sharp bones just like a mouthful of fish. With a certain degree of caution, I eased the largest of these to the front of my mouth and pulled it past my lips. It was a long shard of white bone, much more substantial that even the largest fishbone I had ever encountered. Several other sharp white fragments joined it before I dared swallow. I looked at the shank more carefully, twisting it so that I could see clearly past the tendons to the shaft of bone my first mouthful had uncovered. It was completely shattered. I looked beyond my almost inedible meal to the carcase by the fire. Even stripped of most of its flesh and all of its limbs, it was still a strikingly large animal. One that, sometime during its death and journey here, had managed to break its foreleg so badly that its bone had completely shattered. One animal that might have suffered such an injury sprang immediately to mind – the deer which had crushed Nephele as they fell to the foot of that cliff together.
Deep in thought, I separated the meat from the shattered bone with the utmost care and consumed it slowly, sending a quick apologetic prayer to the Goddess in case I was eating her alter-ego and begging her to forgive the sacrilege if so. As I did this, I revisited in memory that wide track which stretched from the foot of the mud cliff to the cypress at the heart of the sacred grove. It was indeed just such a track as a lame creature might make as it dragged itself along on broken legs. The more I considered the matter, the more the certainty grew on me that we were eating the very deer whose death had started all this; even including the unnatural weather if the High Priestess and her Oracle were right. As chance would have it, if I was careful I might get an opportunity to test my growing certainty, for I was the only person at the feast other than Oikonomos and his cooks who would be going close enough to the fire to examine the remains. This was the kind of freedom, I thought, that Odysseus wanted me to make full use of. The inconsequential, unconsidered and apparently insignificant spy.
Obviously any deer, large or small, being served at Agamemnon’s feast would have been killed or wounded by arrows and may well have sustained a broken leg at some stage of its journey from the forest to the fire, but this particular deer would surely have further damage not unlike Nephele’s. Hers, for instance, might not be the only broken ribs just as hers were not the only broken limbs. I completed my meal of venison, wrapped the broken bone in the flatbread as though the bread were a linen cloth, and slipped it into the bag containing my lyre. Odysseus might find it interesting to see it when he returned, especially if I could prove it did in fact belong to the animal involved in Nephele’s death and perhaps even discover who had killed them both. For someone, sometime during the last few days, must have presented the carcase to Oikonomos for gutting, skinning, hanging and preparing for the feast.
Then, as Kalkhas led the blessings and Agamemnon began the formal round of toasts, I thought through what the shattered bone seemed to reveal, what else I should look for when I got the chance to approach the fire and the carcase beside it, and how I thought Odysseus would proceed in the matter if only he were here and how he would wish me to proceed now that he was not. I was so deep in thought that Oikonomos had to call me twice before I realised it was my time to perform. I opened my bag again, retrieved my lyre, rose and walked towards the fire. What was left of the deer was spitted there, stripped to the bone. This was just the condition that was most useful to me, for I saw with a calculatedly casual glance that several ribs had in fact been damaged. I would only be able to discover the precise detail of the damage with longer and closer examination but this was a good start. I decided that my absent captain would almost certainly try and get a closer look at it as soon as possible; and I would need to find a way to do that myself, therefore.
Then I drove all such thoughts from my mind, crossed to where the rhapsode’s stool had been placed and sat. I wedged the lyre into the club of my left arm and closed my left fist firmly on it, closing my eyes in apparent sympathy as I allowed my song to fill my mind. I struck the strings with the fingers and thumb of my right hand and sang the epic of my own composition, following Hercules in my memory and with my words on his fatal path from the Trojan docks toward the Citadel, the Palace and the doomed King Laomedon, King Priam’s father. The song retold the tale of how the notoriously parsimonious King Laomedon made the fatal mistake of trying to trick Hercules by breaking his word and reneging on a deal he had sworn to fulfil after the Hero rid the kingdom of a terrible lion. In his rage, the cheated Hercules killed the old man on the spot – and so King Priam succeeded to the Trojan throne. It wasn’t quite the same as stealing the King of Sparta’s wife, the High King of Mycenae’s sister-in-law, the woman who many of the most powerful men in Achaea had sworn to protect at any cost, but it was close enough:
‘Sing, Muses, of the anger of Hercules, black and murderous, costing the Trojans terrible sorrow, casting King Laomedon into Hades’ dark realm leaving his royal corpse for the dogs and the ravens. Begin with the bargain between the old king and Godlike Hercules. Strong promises the old king broke calling forth the rage of the son of Zeus…’
***
‘An inspired choice,’ said King Diomedes. ‘If you ever get tired of traipsing around after Odysseus, there’s a nice comfortable place for you at my court in Argos.’
‘Agamemnon was extremely pleased with it,’ emphasised Nestor, joining Diomedes beside me as the feast began to break up. ‘I’m sure he’ll want to hear more of your songs. Well done!’
I gaped at him at a loss for words. I had been sufficiently pleased by the fact that he had not interrupted my performance with one of his stories this time.
‘You seem to know the back-streets of Troy suspiciously well,’ added a cold, sneering voice. ‘It makes one wonder….’
I looked up to see Palamedes standing close by with the shorter, slighter figure of Aias of Locris at his side.
‘… about spies and double agents and so-forth.’ Aias finished his companion’s sentence, echoing his unpleasant tone.
‘If you’re worried about people who know Troy too well,’ snapped Nestor, ‘then I suggest you have a word with Kalkhas. He was born and raised there!’
The pair of them turned away together and as they did so, Oikonomos appeared. ‘The High King wishes me to inform you that he very much enjoyed your song,’ said the steward. ‘He had commanded that I give you this as a token of his appreciation.’ As he said this, he handed over a silver handled dagger in a jewelled scabbard. ‘The High King looks forward to hearing more of your songs.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, a little overcome. ‘Please thank the High King for me. I will be honoured to perform my songs for him at any time…’
Oikonomos nodded companionably and turned to go, but I recovered my wits quickly enough to call him back. ‘Excuse me, Oikonomos, but do you happen to know which hunter brought in the deer we have just been eating?’
He turned and looked at me, eyebrows raised. I had to admit it was an unusual question. But I had no sooner asked it that I realised both Nestor and Diomedes were also focused on the answer the steward was about to give because they both knew precisely why I had made the enquiry in the first place. The steward’s gaze moved from one of us to the other, the faintest of frowns wrinkling his brow. ‘Why yes,’ he said. ‘That carcase was brought in several days ago – just as the storms started. It has been prepared and hanging in preparation for tonight’s feast.’
‘And which hunter brought it in?’ prompted Diomedes.
‘Not one hunter but two,’ answered the steward. ‘Prince Palamedes and Prince Aias brought it in together.’
‘Two of them,’ said Diomedes as the steward walked away. ‘That complicates matters. I wonder which one of them killed it? As I understand matters, that will be the ma
n the Goddess is after.’
‘What’s the matter, lad?’ asked Nestor. ‘You look surprised.’
‘I am, Your Majesty,’ I replied. ‘I was with King Odysseus when he went over the ground with Ikaros, the man who found the body – a hunter who had become a servant of Artemis. And at no time did either of them say that there had been two men involved. One set of footprints; one set of hoofprints. I followed them myself. It was one man…’
‘What does that mean?’ wondered Nestor.
‘At first glance,’ said Diomedes, ‘either Odysseus and this tracker Ikaros got it wrong, and there were two men involved in the death of the priestess and the sacred stag – and if I had to suspect anyone it would be those two. Or Palamedes and Aias killed an entirely different deer and that’s what we’ve been eating tonight.’
‘But if that’s the case,’ said Nestor, ‘then where is this sacred stag?’
‘And if that’s the case,’ I echoed, ‘it’s surely quite a coincidence that another dead stag turned up just as the weather turned bad. Because that’s what betrays the hand of the Goddess. That’s what has got us all stuck here. That’s what got King Odysseus involved in the first place…’
‘Is there any way we can check further, I wonder?’ said Diomedes.
‘Only one way I can think of at this point, Majesty,’ I answered.
v
The huge camp settled to sleep. The lights went out as lamps and candles were snuffed. The embers of the watch-fires glowed or guttered. The still air was as clear as spring water, though still heavy and hot. The sky was huge and packed with stars all clustered round a fat moon a few days past full which was on the rise behind the spiky ramparts of the forested hills where Artemis reigned supreme. I paused on the cool sand beneath Thalassa’s forepeak and looked up at them, wondering superstitiously whether the Goddess was there herself tonight. I hardly needed the lamp I had taken along with my new dagger and the arrow-head Odysseus had left aboard in the belief that the ship was safer than his tent, all packed in a stout leather bag – except for the lamp which I carried carefully though it was as yet unlit; I didn’t want to lose all the oil before I found what I needed its bright flame to examine. I crept out of Thalassa’s shadow pretty well-laden therefore as I started on my secret mission but if I was going to spend any time in close examination of my objective, I would have been foolish to rely on moonshine. And creeping through the camp right up to the edge of the forest, I would have been foolish to rely on my old, wooden-handled weapon when this gaudier but deadlier alternative had come into my possession.
Spending time on Thalassa rather than in my family home brought me to a new understanding of the fundamental practicalities of life in a camp this size. Thalassa’s crew performed their ablutions and dumped their rubbish over the stern which still sat in shallow water swept by currents strong enough to carry the effluent away. The beach was also trenched with carefully maintained latrines that were scoured clean with each high tide. Further inland, there were cess-pits. But as though the entire army was one great living thing, it produced other waste products that required disposal in places other than the sea. Each contingent of every army had a midden heap where camp waste was piled – everything from rags of uniform gone well beyond mending to the bones and offal of animals and fish consumed at feasts such as the one I had just attended. These stood like a series of hillocks in the empty zone between the upper edge of the encampment and the lower fringes of the forest. These tips were piled high and noted for their stench, especially now that the sun was heating up the days. A little more fearsome sunlight and they would start to burn – either spontaneously or lit by tidy-minded soldiers who didn’t want their nostrils offended any further. It was a simple enough matter to work out which of these piles contained the waste from Agamemnon’s tents. It did not require the logical reasoning of my captain to be certain that the carcase of the deer would be one of the most recent additions to it. I just hoped that the heap would not be too high and that the bones I wanted to examine were not right up at the top if it was. It never really occurred to me to worry about what else might be interested in the rubbish, which showed how much I had yet to learn about life in the sprawling camp – and the life in the forest that crept out at night to feed on its refuse.
This ignorance simply arose from the facts that I had spent the recent nights either in my family home in Aulis or aboard the beached Thalassa. I had not slept in a tent out here. As soon as I moved away from the grumbling surf-line, the stillness of the windless night was broken at first only by the snoring, mumbling and muttering of thousands of sleeping men. There were no guards posted and no security patrols. We were, after all, nowhere near enemy territory as yet. However, despite the fact that I was surrounded not by one army but by many, I suddenly started to feel alone and lonely. As I moved along the makeshift pathways up the hill towards the High King’s tent, so nature began to establish itself. Cicadas sang more loudly, it seemed, with every footstep I took. Then there were snufflings and the occasional howl of wild cats singing to the moon. Half-wild dogs panted and growled but ran away as I approached them. As it had been with the deer when it was cooking, all I had to do was follow my nose from Agamemnon’s tent and it led me to the refuse dump, though this time the odour was anything but appetising, especially as it intensified with each step I took towards it. Worryingly, both my nose and my ears also began to warn me that there were other, larger, animals foraging the pile of waste matter. This was a moment of mild revelation, for I had not considered the matter properly. My own song came back to haunt me – for there were lions this side of our sea that were just as big as the lion Hercules killed for king Laomedon of Troy; though to be fair they were few and far-between these days. There were, however, bears, almost as sacred to the Goddess as her beloved deer. There were, as the scar on Odysseus’ leg attested, huge wild boars.
The rubbish pile was at the centre of a clear area up-hill from the camp and close to the undergrowth that spilled out of the forest in low, dark waves. The restless movement of the scavengers interspersed with the occasional grunt, snap or snarl together with the intensity of the stench explained its careful isolation well enough. Although the moon was high now and bathing everything in a cold silver light, I paused, pulled out flint and steel and lit my lamp, gripped by an unnerving suspicion that I was being watched, and not by a friendly Goddess.
***
The circle of golden brightness cast by the steady flame in the still air was enough to disturb the nearby animals and I held it high, peering into the darkness all around until I was satisfied that there was nothing large enough to hurt me nearby and that the feeling I was being spied upon was a simple case of nerves. Then, turning back to the pile of rubbish, I focused the lustre of my lamp-flame on the nearest slopes. I managed to find the remains of the stag without too much trouble and approach it without having to climb the rotting hillside on which it lay. As the Fates would have it, the ribs I needed to examine were uppermost. The ribs reached out in a rounded shape like the struts supporting the sides of Thalassa, but the ones I was most interested in did not follow exactly the same curve as their closest companions: instead of bowing out, they bowed inwards. Moreover, my closer inspection showed quite clearly that the two ribs lying close together at the centre of this slight indentation each had a groove or nick in their opposing edges. These two marks were immediately opposite each-other. I didn’t need Odysseus to tell me what they were. I transferred the lamp to my left fist and held the club of my almost useless left arm high so that I could see the damage clearly as I reached into my bag and pulled out the arrow head. Trembling with tension, I pushed the broad barb of the projectile towards the damaged area. It slid between the ribs, the outer edges of the triangular head fitting precisely into the grooves in the bones. Experimentally, I jerked the arrow back in the way I assumed Nephele would have done, trying to escape as the pair of them went over the cliff. The head would not come out as easily as it had gone in. I
t caught on the inner edges of the curved bones and refused to move. Fascinated, I looked closer still and saw for the first time the marks that ran down the curves from top to bottom, where a knife-point had scored the bones as the arrow-head was cut free. And not any arrow-head either. This arrow head. There could be no doubt.
But then it seemed the Goddess herself took a hand, for the way I tugged at the arrow made the skeletal torso move. And, there beneath it, also stripped to the bone, lay a skull. My lamp shed sufficient brightness for me to see at once that it was the skull of a deer, though the antlers had been removed. The lamplight caused something to glitter, however, and I stooped to look closer still. At the place where the antlers had joined the skull were two circular ridges of bone raised the width of my smallest finger above the curve of the cranium. My lamp-flame struck glitters of light from specks of gold in tiny valleys all around the raised bone circles. The antlers might be gone, but some of the gilding still remained on their foundations. Even had the arrow not fitted so neatly between the ribs, I thought, this was proof positive. Proof, like the shattered foreleg, that I could show Odysseus on his return. Breathless, I retrieved the arrow then pulled the skull free. Straightening, I managed to drop them both into my bag before I started to turn.
‘Well now, Arouraios,’ said a quiet sneering voice behind me, ‘It looks as though they were right. Some people just can’t let sleeping dogs lie. Or sleeping stags for that matter.’
I straightened fully, gasping with shock, and turned to see two men I had never met before. Yet there was a certain familiarity about them: I knew the tone and the air of menace they brought with them. I had met it that night on the dockside at Troy and had been lucky to survive the encounter. It looked very much as though I was not destined to be so fortunate this time. The speaker, a huge man with the battered face of an unsuccessful pugilist, stepped towards me, pulling a dagger from his belt as he came.