Put to bed? What a sick, evil lie!
Fury surged through Menelaos’s veins. With his one good arm, he swung the spear level as the door flung open and thrust it at the silhouetted figure in front of him. The tip jarred against something hard and he heard a choked gasp.
“Get back in there!” Menelaos tried pushing on the spear, finding he had no strength to do more than hang on to the shaft.
But Palamedes was reeling backwards, clutching his breastbone as a scarlet stain bloomed around his fingers. Menelaos dropped the spear and leaned on the door jamb, fighting for breath, before staggering after him.
Chapter Forty-two
The babble of voices stopped as though severed by a cleaver. Menelaos swayed in the sudden blaze of torchlight. He could only guess at his appearance – hair and face matted with congealing blood, tunic drenched and filthy. He should say something to this crowd of gaping mouths, this sea of frozen limbs, but the words gagged in his throat.
He saw Agamemnon’s wine cup slide through his fingers and crash to the floor, saw his brother stand, transfixed, then rush towards him.
Agamemnon touched his cheek with shaking fingers and swung on Palamedes. “What?” he bellowed, raising his fist. “You murderous wretch. I’ll kill you for this.”
Thoas hustled up behind him, grabbing at his arms, his cheeks wobbling with anxiety. “No, my lord, control yourself. We don’t know–”
“Yes, I do,” Agamemnon shouted.
This is like a puppet show, Menelaos thought, his eyes clouding. Wooden figures jerking and twisting about, their voices high and shrill. He forced his sagging head upright, swallowed down the vomit lurking in his throat. Words still as far beyond his reach as before.
“Look at him,” Agamemnon was screaming, fighting to free himself. “This viper, this worm, I’m going to tear him apart.”
Now Gelanor had appeared, his fingers clenched white on Agamemnon’s shoulders, dragging him back. “Nauplios is too important to us; we can’t make a mistake. Menelaos, can you hear me? Can you tell us what happened?”
Agamemnon twisted round, his breath coming in short bursts. “Well?”
Menelaos fought to pull sense and sound from the jumble in his head. “Palamedes …” he managed at last, the words dragging on his tongue. He wrenched his head sideways to stare Palamedes in the eye. “You …”
Palamedes’s eyes slid back and forth across Menelaos’s face. “It … it … I …” He stopped, gulping, his face a greenish white.
Menelaos felt exhilaration flood through him like a great draught of rich, sweet wine. Olli was right. Palamedes was a coward. His secret was safe.
And the plan had worked.
Or had it? Agamemnon, sobbing with rage, had hurled himself at Palamedes, fists flailing. Palamedes thudded into the wall, his mouth spurting blood, and slithered unconscious to the floor.
Menelaos sensed his legs caving beneath him, the room receding, felt the wet of Agamemnon’s tears on his own face as his brother caught him and carried him from the hall.
Chapter Forty-three
“All my work.” Partway through Eurybates’s report, Laertes had abandoned his stance behind the desk to pace up and down his study. Now it was finished he strode over to confront Odysseus, his face red with anger. “A whole, hard summer’s work, building an alliance, corresponding with Nauplios – all ruined. It was you. You told Menelaos to confront Palamedes, didn’t you?”
“Father, I had to. The hunt – he tried to kill himself.”
“Rubbish. It was an accident. Stupidity. Hunting is like that if you don’t concentrate.”
“Father, please, how bad is he?”
“Who are you referring to? Menelaos or Palamedes?” Laertes grabbed Odysseus’s shoulders and started shaking him to and fro. “And who is Palamedes? Tell me that. Or have you forgotten?”
Odysseus glared back through his tears. “The son of Nauplios.”
“Stop snivelling. And who is Nauplios, his position in Mykenai?”
Odysseus shrugged, his mind blank. Who cared?
“Nauplios,” Laertes gave Odysseus a shake that rattled the teeth in his head, “is our key to Mykenai. The key to the High King’s throne.”
Odysseus squirmed in Laertes’s grip. “Please let me go to him, Father.”
“Go where? To Nauplios?”
“To Menelaos.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
A little late? Odysseus staggered, the implication hitting him like a battering ram.
“He’s going to fall.” Eury’s voice behind him, another set of hands on his shoulders.
Laertes’s grip tightened. “I have good hold of him, thank you.”
Odysseus felt himself be guided to the desk. He groped at it with one hand and eased himself onto the edge, breathing hard.
Laertes bent down to eyeball him. “Firstly, you’re not going anywhere without me, young man. I don’t trust you. Second, it may have escaped your attention while you were destroying everything I achieved this summer, but I have a country to run. Court cases to hear. A navy to maintain. Levies to collect. Craftsmen to supervise. I have weeks of urgent work ahead of me. He shook Odysseus again, though more gently than before. “And what good would you do at Menelaos’s bedside? You’d only be in the way.”
Bedside? “So he’s not dead?” Odysseus said, his heart leaping.
“Not yet.” Laertes stood up.
Eury peered round Laertes’s shoulder. “He was unconscious for a day then he rallied. The doctor believed all would be well but as our hopes rose, he relapsed again. Seizures. Another coma. Then the head wound festered and a fever overwhelmed him.”
“But most people have a fever if they’ve been wounded.” Hope rose again in Odysseus’s chest, like an eagle taking flight. “And they survive.”
Eury shook his head. “The doctor said he’d never seen one as fierce as this. Olli, you must try to be brave.”
“No. He can’t die. It’s not possible.”
“Listen to me.” Eurybates laid his hand on Odysseus’s arm. “Olli, he’d lost so much blood after the attack. He was already terribly weak when the fever struck.”
Odysseus looked up at his father. Laertes’s face seemed to shift and dissolve as fresh tears blurred his eyes. “Is there any chance?”
“His life is a thread that fate could snap at any moment,” said Laertes. “Use your breath to pray. Not much else will help.”
Chapter Forty-four
The room was thick with the stink of burning skin. Nauplios coughed as the acrid smoke bit his throat and thrust another fistful of sliced-up parchment into the brazier, jerking the poker through the coals. The heat was almost unbearable but it was the only way he could dispose of so much incriminating material in the short time he had left.
All his hard work for Thyestes, all those clever lies, and this was to be his reward. Swept aside – or worse – now his son was no longer able to spy on Agamemnon. He might still be imagining things. But the signs were all too familiar – the removal of eye contact, the inability of certain people to hear when spoken to, the way the crowd melted away when he walked through the great hall. The decision had been made to grind him underfoot.
So he’d returned to his office without further delay. Five more sheets to destroy. How idiotic to have kept all these letters from Agamemnon. Future reminders of past favours? A death sentence, more like. If Thyestes saw them, he could expect the slowest and nastiest of executions.
The bag filled with gold was resting by the hole long since made for it under the floor. All he’d left to do, once the letters were burned, was place it in the breast of his tunic and climb out the window. How wise of him to have sent his younger son down to his wife in Argos all those weeks ago. They should both be well out of Thyestes’s reach. Though they counted for little.
Palamedes. The best son a man could ever hope for. He’d almost fainted when his spies told him what had happened. Dear, darling Palamedes, lying
in a pool of blood with his jaw smashed. Smashed. And by Agamemnon. Oh gods.
All because of that young fool Menelaos. Hovering on the brink of death, the spies had said. A wild exaggeration no doubt, rumour building on hysteria. The boy was lazy; he needed to be beaten.
Nauplios hacked away with the knife, imagining this page to be Thyestes, that one Agamemnon. Cold-hearted tyrants, both of them. It was only last night the news had come, only this morning he’d cast himself down before Thyestes, clasping the wretched man’s knees and begging him to help save his son. It wasn’t much of a ransom he’d asked the High King to provide, after Palamedes had provided such excellent service. But Sipylos had been standing there, smirking over the king’s shoulder. He must already have twisted Thyestes’s ear.
Heavy footsteps were approaching the door. Nauplios thrust the remaining shreds of parchment down the front of his tunic. Now the bag. He gave the brazier a last, hasty stir and clambered over the windowsill.
The window opened into a small cul-de-sac, a blank wall at one end and a midden blocking the other. He’d prepared for this as well. He pulled up a concealed plank near the bottom of the rubbish heap and wriggled into the odorous cavity beyond, letting the plank drop behind him. There was a flask of water in there somewhere, and the copper tube he’d inserted through the layers of muck should let in clean air.
Let the fools gallop round the countryside searching for a fleeing chariot. He’d hide here a day or so and slink away when the chase had spent itself.
And then? Go south to join his wife? No, Thyestes would be expecting that. He’d make his way west through the mountains and across the gulf to Olenos. Was there enough gold in the bag to buy Agamemnon’s goodwill? Could he play on his detestable marriage to evoke some sympathy?
A thin, sour stream of water dribbled onto his temple and trickled into his ear. Rain? But the sky had been quite clear a moment ago.
“Come, there’s no time for that” said a voice, close by. “He’ll be gone for sure if we don’t get a move on. From the state of that brazier, he’s not far away.”
“Hold yer horses,” said a second voice, closer still. “I can run a lot faster if my bladder’s not bursting.”
Nauplios gagged as the truth dawned. The temptation to wipe the piss from his face was almost overwhelming.
“Who’s expecting this jumped-up bureaucrat to run?” said the first voice. “They only use their legs for kicking slaves when they drop one of their precious clay tablets.”
“What’s he done, anyway?”
“Spying for Agamemnon, so they say.”
“Well, he’s not here. Maybe he’s escaped over the rubbish heap.”
“Then one of the other patrols will pick him up. Our orders are to give this place a good going over.”
“Yes. I suppose.”
Nauplios froze as a spear shaft probed the midden just by his head.
“Come on,” the first voice said again. “He won’t be in there. None of that high-class lot would bury themselves in this slush. Especially now you’ve watered it.”
“What about the roof?”
“Bit active for the likes of him. Still, I suppose we should take a look. Give me a leg up, will yer?”
Chapter Forty-five
They visited him often – Atreus, silver-haired, his face gaunt; Nurse, clutching a bundle of clean tunics, wagging her finger and nodding, “Such a good boy, Menelaos, the best child you could ever hope to look after, I always said so, I always said so …”
And now a beautiful woman lay before him, a woman unknown to him yet inexplicably familiar, floating on her back as though riding on an invisible river of air. Her long black ringlets trailed below her head and her white face stared up at the sky through unseeing eyes. The gold on her wrist was as bright as the sun, her dress the colour of the sky on a fair winter’s day.
Distant. Untouchable.
How he longed to bury his head in the dazzling, engulfing blue of her dress, hear the warmth of her voice caress him. But as he drew close, the light flared, blinding him and he clenched his eyelids tight against it.
When he opened them again he found himself standing in a valley rich with flowers and fruit of all kinds. And all the way through it a glistening river flowed, red as pomegranates, rolling and sighing towards great mountains, their tops so high his head could scarcely stretch back to see them. A huge silver-scaled dragon towered before him, a golden apple gripped in its talons. Its jaws opened and green flames gushed out and enveloped him, scorching his flesh, burning, burning …
The vision faded, and the darkness and pain came lapping in again.
Menelaos lay, too weak to move, under the damp clinging sheet. From the corner of his eye, he could see Agamemnon sitting beside him in the darkened room. He tried to lift his head and a wave of dizziness hit him.
“Lie down. Lie down. Can’t you follow the doctor’s orders from one day to the next?” Agamemnon fussed with the sheet, drawing it up tight under Menelaos’s chin and tucking it firmly under the mattress. “There. Don’t move. Do what you’re told for a change.”
“The boy won’t remember a word anyone’s said.” Uncle Gelanor’s voice approached. “The fever sees to that.” A hand rested on Menelaos’s forehead. “Ah. So hot,” Gelanor said. “Feel how his skin burns.” A cold wet cloth brushed across Menelaos’s face.
For the briefest of moments the icy water gave him relief. Then the heat returned two-fold, penetrating his body like a thousand knives. He writhed, groaned, the sound like a cawing crow in his ears.
“Listen to him. The pain must be excruciating,” Menelaos heard Agamemnon cry. “Where is that confounded doctor with his drugs?”
“Yes, poor lad, pain and fever together. He must be due another dose. I’ll go. You stay here with him.”
Menelaos felt the room weigh down on him, the air too thick to breathe. Then a bustle of feet, and a hand slid under his head. A cup pressed against his lips full of a bitter liquid. He swallowed what he could and lay back exhausted.
They had moved away and he strained to hear the murmur of talk. “Fever lasting far too long … a dreadful wound … and the arm … so much blood lost … brown, stinking pus, always an evil sign. The major crisis is still to come … I’m doing all I can, but only the gods … keep your voices down … I can’t stress too much …”
The doctor’s voice had ceased; he must have left the room.
“I’ll sit with him, if you like,” said Uncle Gelanor.
“No, thank you,” snapped Agamemnon.
“You’re very tired.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Nonsense. You’ve kept his side for days.”
“And I have no intention of leaving it now.”
“You must rest. We don’t want both of you at death’s door.”
“I’ve never felt better.”
“I could call you if there’s any change.”
“Leave me be, man.”
Their voices, grumbling and expostulating, faded to a blur as blackness claimed him again.
Chapter Forty-six
Nauplios wriggled his toes inside his borrowed boots. He longed to adjust this wretched tunic – it was too wide in the shoulders, too long in the arms and far too short altogether. He looked foolish. He felt foolish. He was certain the Aitolians were laughing at him behind their hands.
And there sat Agamemnon, behaving as though this were Mykenai, not odorous little Olenos. With that interfering busybody Gelanor whispering in his ear, just as he’d always done with his father. Not that it had helped Atreus much.
They’d kept him waiting two days, some lame excuse about that boy, Menelaos, being too ill to leave. What did one pay doctors for? And now he’d been granted only the merest amount of time to state his case.
Agamemnon seemed tired, haggard even. It must have dawned on him that his hopes of returning to Mykenai were in shreds. No doubt he, Nauplios, was being held responsible for this self-inflicted twist of fate.<
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And then Agamemnon had blamed his distraction on his brother’s condition – and the lad only his bastard half-brother, if rumour was believed. So what if most of the recent talk had followed from the inspired creativity of his own pen? It might still be true; who could say?
What an excellent speech he’d given them – one of his best. Lauding Palamedes’s loyal service, hinting at the sanctity of that ill-fated link with his wife – with due measure of subtlety, of course – before skirting elegantly around the consequences of his son’s little misadventure. And now Agamemnon and Gelanor were whispering together, no doubt eyeing the bag of gold in his hand. There was more than enough there. He’d borrowed from the Epeians to supplement what he’d brought from Mykenai.
Time for the next move. Nauplios hurried across the floor and threw himself down to clasp Agamemnon’s knees, placing the bag of gold in his lap as he did so. “Beloved High King,” he said, cursing the quaver in his voice, “have mercy, I beg you. Accept this small token as a heartfelt attempt to make right my son’s mistake.”
There was a stunned silence, broken by a jangling thud behind him. He twisted his head round. The far wall had acquired a fist-sized dent and below it the bag lay burst open with the gold spewed around it.
Agamemnon leaped to his feet. “My brother is not an ox, that his life can be bought and sold with a few lumps of gold.”
Nauplios peered up. The man was frothing at the mouth.
His first instinct was to quibble. There were rather more than a few lumps – couldn’t Agamemnon count? But no, until he had his beloved son back in his arms, he must watch his words. “My lord,” he said, “since your royal father’s most unspeakable murder, I have risked my life every day in your service. Can there be no reward for that?”
Agamemnon slumped down in his chair, Gelanor leaning into his ear once more. Then Agamemnon cleared his throat. “You are right. I must not forget what loyalty you yourself have displayed. I will offer you this. If my brother lives, I will give Palamedes a quick and painless death.”
Murder at Mykenai Page 17