by Peter Tonkin
Ikaros stepped forward and the reason for his shyness struck me at once. So far we had only seen him in his hunting attire of dark-furred skin jerkin over substantial tunic with heavy skin-bound boots and thick woollen cloak as conditions required. Now he was dressed as an acolyte to the Goddess in a pure white tunic and golden sandals, his hair oiled into neat curls and encircled with a wreath. Even his beard looked as sleek as the back of an otter. Without a word he resumed the station in which, I assumed, he had been standing, at the foot of the table which bore the corpse.
Odysseus spent some time in silent contemplation of the dead girl, his concentration and silence so deep that he might have been praying to the Goddess himself. Karpathia stood watching him with equal intensity. After a while, however, he stirred and turned to the High Priestess. ‘I thank you for your courtesy,’ he said quietly. ‘And I apologise if we have interrupted any important rituals.’
Then he turned and led the way out to his waiting chariot.
***
‘It’s almost enough to make one believe in the power of the Goddess,’ he said as Elpenor guided the horses back towards Aulis.
‘What is?’ I wondered.
‘The way that child has been preserved, so long after her death. Consider – there has been time for the deer that died with her to be skinned, gutted, hung until it was tender and mature, for it to be prepared, cooked and eaten – and all that some days ago. Yet the child who has lain there all that length of time appears merely to have fallen into the lightest slumber. But I hope you observed that on the level above the first level where her pyre is being erected, a sacrificial altar is also being built by Kalkhas; closer still to the sky-dwelling goddess.’ He gave a perplexed sigh. Then he continued – as he often did – with a question that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with what we had just been discussing. ‘Do you think your father will be at home?’
‘If he’s not at home he’ll be at the main warehouse on the docks,’ I said. ‘Though home is more likely given the weather. His ships can’t sail any more than Agamemnon’s can.’
‘Very well. We will leave Elpenor to take care of the chariot when we reach the agora and then you will guide me to your parents’ house.’
We alighted in the agora as the morning ended and Hephaestus high above us guided his golden horses towards the apogee of noon. As soon as the house was in sight I hurried ahead to warn Father and Mother about their royal visitor. Father met Odysseus at the door and welcomed him with quiet courtesy while Mother offered food and drink as xenia, traditional hospitality, demanded. Odysseus accepted gracefully complimenting Mother on the quality of her baking, the tartness of her olives and the sweetness of her figs. Again, this was as tradition demanded but it became clear at once that the captain was after information rather than sustenance. ‘When I first met the High Priestess,’ he said as soon as the courtesies and the light meal were completed, ‘she said she had just come from visiting the unfortunate Nephele’s parents. Can you tell me where they live? I would like to ask them a question or two.’
I could have done that without disturbing my parents but I didn’t say so. Odysseus rarely did anything without good reason.
Instead, ‘Of course,’ said Father, guardedly. ‘I can take you there myself.’
‘That would be most kind.’
Both men stood up.
I stood up as well but Odysseus said, ‘I want you to stay here while I do this. I’m sure you have many things you want to talk to your mother about.’
And that was that. Mother and I discussed parental concerns. These were mostly about what it was like working for such a famous king as Odysseus – and might there be room aboard Thalassa or in the court at Ithaka for one or more of my brothers. Which I said I doubted thus pleasing Mother not at all. Father returned to find me pacing, confused and impatient. ‘Why wouldn’t the captain let me come?’ I demanded.
Father shot me a dark look. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘your captain thought it improper for a young man to observe his much respected father caught on the horns of a dilemma from which the only possibilities of relief are to break a solemn confidence or tell an outright lie!’ He snorted with vexation sounding a little like a startled horse. ‘However, he asked me to inform you he wants to discuss matters with you aboard Thalassa as soon as you can get there.’
Although there had been no formal repast, my share of the food and drink Mother had offered Odysseus easily replaced my usual midday meal. I hurried out of the house, planning to go through the agora and out of the southern gate therefore. But in the market place itself, I changed my mind. I was bored with all that tramping through the Argive camp. Instead I headed east, to the dockside packed with slack-sailed merchantmen, many owned by Father, before I turned south and followed the shoreline down onto the beach. I hurried past the familiar fleets, anchored in the bay or beached with their forecastles snugly in the sand while their aft sections sat in the shallows, or also high and dry on the sand if the tide was particularly low. Like Thalassa, even the beached ships had pairs of hawsers reaching down from their bows to stakes hammered into the sand, designed to hold the vessels in place even should the weather deteriorate and the tide rise.
So I hurried along the track on which Achilles had outrun the chariot on the morning which now seemed so long in the past. First was the massive Prince Ajax’s fleet from Salamis, then the Taphians, the Euphians, the Aeneans’ twelve ships – the same number Odysseus was to supply; Nestor’s Pylonians came next, then the High King’s one hundred Mycenaeans, co-commanded by his brother, Aias’ Locrians, the Beoetians, the Athenians led by Theseus’ son Acamas, the Argives, Thalassa and the other late arrivals – Achilles’ Myrmidons – beyond. But as I rushed southward, so I became aware of something else. Something almost intangible; something I was only aware of because I had enjoyed so much of my misspent youth at sea. There was a change in the air. There were the faintest white wisps feathering the solid blue bowl of the early afternoon sky. There was new weather coming. Frowning, I thought back to the conversation the captain and I had held with Karpathia. There was a new moon on the rise and whether or not that meant the Goddess was walking closer to the earth, it often meant the weather was about to change.
Full of this revelation, I hurried towards Thalassa and my meeting with Odysseus. Only to be distracted by the sight of Achilles, back from the forced march to Marathon, resplendent in his full gilded armour, his face containing more fury than a thunderstorm, walking purposefully up from the Myrmidon camp. ‘Where are you going, majesty?’ I asked, hesitantly, taking advantage of the fact that he seemed to like me – and he certainly liked and respected my captain.
He didn’t even look at me but he answered. ‘To see the High King. It’s time we sorted this all out!’
I paused for an instant, torn. Would Odysseus wish me to join him or to follow Achilles? In the end my actions were not dictated by the answer to that question but by my own curiosity.
iii
As I followed Achilles up the hill from Thalassa towards Agamemnon’s tent, he strode on in angry silence. But after a while he started speaking. At first I thought he was talking to me but eventually I realised he hardly registered my continued presence at all. He was allowing his thoughts to boil over into words, like molten gold in a red-hot crucible. And he was forming those words into the conversation he was planning to have with the High King. ‘The forced march to Marathon and back you ordered has proved more than you expected,’ he muttered. ‘It has established once and for all that the Myrmidons are at their peak. They are as fit and well-prepared as they can possibly be. They know it themselves now. They’ve started challenging me, asking why we’re not finding some way of setting out for Troy. They’re burning to go to war and all you can offer them is a wedding!’ He lapsed into silence once more. We reached Agamemnon’s tent. He stopped, drew himself up, ran his fingers though the golden mane of his hair and then strode forward once again.
The entrance wa
s guarded but as Achilles approached, he ordered, ‘Let me pass!’ in that ringing, battlefield voice of his. The guards, of course, stepped back at once. He disappeared into the shadows, all gleaming gold, like a shooting star vanishing across the night sky. I, however, was forbidden entry. Apparently idly, but with my ears pricked, I went round to the side of the tent where I had managed to overhear secret conversations in the past. It was still unguarded. I sat, pulled out my lyre and began to tune it, pretending once again to be just an unworldly rhapsode rehearsing.
At once, I heard something I was not expecting. There came the sharp double-clap with which Queen Clytemnestra attracted servants’ attention. A moment later a group of them came scurrying out of the front and I assumed any others went out through the megaron into the domestic quarters at the rear. For Clytemnestra clearly wanted a private word with Achilles as their conversation was to prove.
‘Prince Achilles,’ she said, her tone honeyed. ‘I recognised your voice at once.’
‘I’m sorry,’ answered the young prince stiffly, his mind clearly elsewhere, ‘but I’m not sure I know who you are.’ A little late in the day, he tried for some charm and gallantry. ‘Though I must admit I’m surprised to find someone so lovely in the middle of this huge army.’
‘Ah. Of course; there has been no formal introduction. I am Clytemnestra, wife and queen to High King Agamemnon. Mother to his son and daughters.’
‘I’m flattered that you want to converse with me, Majesty, but we are alone in private and that is hardly proper. It does not reflect well on your honour nor on mine. Besides, I am here to see your husband on matters to do with the war.’
‘So, it’s not proper to be talking to the mother of your wife-to-be?’ Clytemnestra’s tone was at once knowing and teasing. Intimate. Strangely out of place, I thought. ‘But we have so much to discuss and agree and so little time in which to prepare your wedding!’
There was a short silence in which I assumed Achilles was as stunned at this news as I was myself. ‘But I’m not getting married, Majesty,’ he said at last, sounding like a man recently struck by one of Zeus’ larger thunderbolts. ‘There must be some mistake. I have never proposed to your daughter, never talked to either of the sons of Atreus about any such thing. Besides, although we haven’t formalised anything as yet, I have a wife, the Princess Deidamia, King Lycomedes of Skyros’ daughter. She’s with my mother Queen Thetis in Phthia, awaiting the birth of our child.’
‘Indeed there must be some mistake!’ Clytemnestra’s tone was no longer honeyed. On the contrary, it shook with gathering outrage. ‘I find what you are telling me as hard to comprehend as you clearly find what I am telling you! I appear to have been feverishly preparing for a wedding that isn’t going to happen!’
‘And I have apparently been making proposals I never intended to make. It seems to me, Majesty, that we are both the victims of some sort of plot; though what good anyone could hope to gain from making us both look so foolish I can’t begin to guess!’
***
I found myself on my feet before I knew it. My hands were sliding my lyre into its bag apparently of their own accord. Then I was off as fast as I could run, heading for that meeting aboard Thalassa for which I was already late. The first person I bumped into on the way, however, was Diomedes returning from his general officer duties. ‘It’s Achilles!’ I gasped.
‘Achilles?’ Diomedes looked around, expecting the Prince of Phthia to appear.
‘That Iphigenia is here to marry!’ I said as he fell in beside me. ‘Except that she isn’t!’
‘I’m not sure I’m following this,’ he said. ‘She is and she isn’t…’
‘Queen Clytemnestra’s brought her here because she was told Achilles was proposing marriage. But he wasn’t. It was a trick!’
‘Who on earth would gain anything from making Clytemnestra and Achilles look foolish?’ he wondered.
‘No,’ I gasped. ‘Don’t you see? The plan wasn’t to make anyone look foolish. The plan was simply to get Iphigenia here!’
‘But why?’ demanded Diomedes.
‘Because of Artemis’ curse,’ said Odysseus a few moments later as the three of us sat in the thick-walled forecastle of Thalassa. ‘The man who killed the stag was advised to bring a child of his own here in case what the Oracle and the High Priestess said was true.’
‘But that means the man who shot the priestess and the stag was Agamemnon himself!’ I gasped.
‘Precisely,’ said Odysseus.
‘How long have you known?’ demanded Diomedes.
‘Almost since the beginning. Think about it: Agamemnon was the only one who could have arranged everything in the way it was done. He must have told Menelaus, brother to brother, and Kalkhas the soothsayer, especially when the High Priestess told him why the wind and weather were behaving as they have been. And eventually he told Oikonomos who got rid of the stag – bribed by the golden antlers. But Agamemnon’s initial reaction must have been panic. Motivated by shock and horror he acted, probably on the advice of Menelaus and Kalkhas, and certainly before he thought things through. He sent the one message he knew that would get Clytemnestra to bring Iphigenia here – the most flattering proposal of marriage he could imagine. But of course he couldn’t tell Achilles because the whole thing was a lie. He came to his senses almost at once and sent the second message. But someone stopped that getting through.’
‘Menelaus,’ I said. ‘If Artemis wasn’t satisfied then he could forget about reclaiming his wife.’
‘He could wave goodbye to his standing, reputation and honour into the bargain,’ added Diomedes.
‘I agree,’ said Odysseus. ‘Menelaus is desperate enough.’
‘And he seems to have recruited Aias,’ I added, ‘who in turn recruited the Rat and his associates. As we learned from the wound in Sophos’ throat and the dagger that made it.’
‘And when Clytemnestra appeared so unexpectedly,’ said Odysseus, ‘his first reaction was to send Achilles and the Myrmidons on their forced march to Marathon – hoping no doubt that he’d be able to come up with a solution before Achilles returned. Logical but ineffective, in the final analysis. Especially now that Achilles is back, as you say, and he and Clytemnestra know that the proposal was a ruse.’
‘And I’d say he’s run out of options,’ said Diomedes. ‘The fiction of a wedding is dead in the water now. Both Achilles and Clytemnestra must be outraged. I can’t speak for her but we both know how touchy Achilles is in matters of honour. And as attacks on his honour go, this is just about the worst I can imagine. We were quick enough to work out what was really going on when we learned the truth about the wedding. You can bet we’re only the first by a whisker if we’re the first at all! It won’t take any time for people to start working out the truth and if he doesn’t offer Iphigenia as a sacrifice to Artemis pretty quickly, he’ll have a major mutiny on his hands.’
‘Well,’ I said, shaken to my core by the fatal danger sweeping so swiftly towards the lovely young Princess, ‘he’ll have to do some really quick thinking. As we learned from Karpathia herself, the sacrifice and the funeral will both take place on the night of the new moon when Artemis’ bow is drawn in the sky itself and her footsteps walk close to the earth.’
‘We’ll need some quick thinking and fast action too,’ said Odysseus decisively. ‘You!’ he pointed at me. ‘Get back to your post outside Agamemnon’s tent and keep your ears sharp. I want a detailed report on what the High King is planning to do next!’
iv
‘So it was lies! All of it!’ Clytemnestra snarled as I eased back onto the dry grass outside the High King’s tent, took out my lyre once more and made a show of tuning it, which was just as much of a ruse as Agamemnon’s message about the wedding. ‘You wanted Iphigenia here because of this madness with the Goddess. Were you really thinking of sacrificing her? In exchange for the life of a stag? A stag?’
‘It was a sacred stag,’ the High Priestess said. ‘It had golden horns�
��’ Agamemnon’s voice trailed off in a way I had never heard it do before.
‘Sacred foolishness!’ snapped Clytemnestra. ‘Even Artemis isn’t vengeful enough to demand the life of a child in exchange for that of a stag!’
‘There was a priestess too…’
‘Gods give me strength! You killed a priestess as well? Had you run mad?’
‘It was an accident,’ the High King’s tone was almost that of a sulky child. ‘The stupid girl threw herself in front of the stag just as I fired!’
‘So you concocted this pack of lies to get your beloved daughter here so you could kill her to appease the Goddess. A princess in exchange for a priestess!’
‘Yes! Or Artemis would chain up the winds and we would never get to Troy. And it breaks my heart! How could it not? I love the girl more than anyone else alive. And yet the curse is happening! Don’t you see? Can’t you feel? Has there been a breath of wind since you got here? No! And I can tell you it was just as dead calm during all the days before you arrived. And, I suspect, Artemis is by no means standing idle – she is sewing discord through the armies. If we do not move soon then all is lost! They may even turn on us and kill us into the bargain. We have to act or we are likely to die! And the only way we sail for Troy is if Artemis releases the west wind.’
‘No matter what the cause,’ growled Achilles. His continued presence in the royal tent came as a surprise, especially given the tone of the conversation between husband and wife so far. ‘No matter what the cause, you used my name to bring the princess here. That touched on my honour. You and your lies have put me in a position where I must behave as though I really have asked for permission to marry her. Therefore you, Kalkhas, or anyone wishing to lay violent hands on her, even to offer her to the Goddess in the hope it will break the curse, will have to kill me first.’
‘Ha!’ sneered Clytemnestra. ‘You’ll need your entire Argive army to do that, husband!’