Murder at Mykenai

by Catherine Mayo

  “My lord!”

  “But if my brother dies, I will tear your son apart with my own hands.” Agamemnon stood up again and swept from the room, Gelanor close behind.

  At least, Nauplios thought as he gathered up the gold, he had been spared the indignity of grovelling for it in front of them. And now he could use it to set his other plan in motion.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The man he sought was soon found. They met in a small tavern just outside the walls, a place, he’d been told, where herders and other itinerants frequented. In such a place, there’d be little chance of a strange face being remarked on.

  His accomplice arrived dressed in his working clothes. Nauplios controlled an urge to pull back as the man leaned across the table. He was a mediocre spy; most of the useful information had come from Palamedes. Now was this man’s chance to make amends, his efforts oiled by some of the gold, for it would be a dangerous business.

  They must move fast. Agamemnon and his friends would be alert for any plan if they had their wits about them. Though perhaps not this one. Nauplios fingered the remainder of the gold in his pouch. His next meeting was with the ship’s captain.

  Night had fallen some time ago, and Nauplios could feel his shins cramping as he crouched in a neglected hut near the gate. Would his scheme work? Would the guard be fooled by his disguise? Would they have missed Palamedes yet?

  Confound the man. If he was too slow, they’d be caught. Nauplios had made no secret of that.

  At last he heard the rumble of wheels on cobbles and a rickety high-sided mule cart appeared. He hurried through the shadows, clumsy in his ill-spun cloak and hood, and clambered up beside the carter.

  The stink behind him left no doubt of the cart’s use. Craning his head round, he made out a lurching mass that threatened to spill over the edges. But no sign of Palamedes. Had he been betrayed again?

  A sideways glance showed his accomplice staring ahead, stony-faced in the flickering light of the guardroom torches by the postern gate. No, he had to trust him. After all, he’d suggested the arrangements himself; it was as he had expected it to look. Indeed, as it had to look.

  “Nightsoil, nightsoil,” the carter called as they drew close to the gate.

  A guard shambled over and heaved up one end of the long wooden bar that lay in its brackets, gatepost to gatepost. Even more slowly, he laid his shoulder to one side of the gate. And the other. They creaked open, ever so slowly, to come to rest against the line of the outer walls.

  Nauplios could feel the sweat running down his spine under the coarse wool of his tunic. Would the guard question his presence beside the carter? Would he probe the contents of the cart? Or had the shine of gold done its work?

  The guard held up a torch and stared at them. Nauplios tried not to squirm under the man’s gaze. Was the whole plan about to fail? At last the guard grunted and stepped aside. The carter flapped his reins and the cart wobbled through the arch.

  Nauplios knew enough to expect them to swing right, following the path under the walls to the main road that led down to the bay. There, the Epeian ship lay waiting, ready to take them to Elis. Those low mountains and quarrelling princedoms had hid Thyestes well enough. He and Palamedes were sure to find sanctuary there.

  But the carter kept driving straight ahead, along a rutted track meandering through a scatter of poor houses. “What are you about?” Nauplios cried, grasping his arm.

  “Not so hasty,” said the carter, in that convoluted northern accent of his. “No doubt there’ll be other eyes, up on the ramparts, noting which way we’re gone. And the common midden lies this way. It’s where they expect me to dump my load.” He jerked his head at the stench behind them. “Just be quiet now. All’s well.”

  “But he can’t stay in there long. He’s sure to suffocate.”

  “I’ve stuck a leather bucket over his head, like you asked for, and there’ll be plenty of air in it to last the trip. And the oil-skin bag you gave me is around him and the bucket, all as tightly sealed as I could make it.”

  At that the carter pulled on the reins and the mule swerved off the track and down a narrow lane. “This’ll take us the way we want without too much notice, I reckon.” He snapped his whip and the mule set into a jog.

  All down the hill the muck slopped over one wall of the cart or another. Left, right, back, front, depending on the tilt and twist of the road. Nauplios could feel it seep through his cloak, through his tunic, smear across his skin. By the time they reached the flat land behind the beach, the cart was half-empty and the hunched shape in the bottom clear to see.

  He leaped down as they came to a halt by the prow of the Epeian ship and fumbled with the slime-coated knots at the mouth of the bag, his heart thumping as he heard Palamedes groan inside. His son was alive! How he longed to hold him in his arms.

  The bag had leaked.

  If he had not known his son’s love was equal to his own, he might have thought his greeting, when it came, a trace ungrateful.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  “Sail!” Odysseus turned, leaning against the bow rail for balance so he could cup his hands over his mouth. “Ahead, on the port bow.”

  Pirates? Or was the sail too big for that?

  Two figures were standing next to the helmsman in the poop. Father. And Meges, demoted from captain with the king on board, but anxious to show his competence. They started towards him along the narrow gangway that separated the two lines of oarsmen, fifty straining backs wet with sweat from the baking sun, rowing hard against a biting north-east wind.

  Last night a norwester had filled the sail, driving them swiftly across from Ithaka, the white bow wave cutting like an arrowhead through the waves. And while they’d made such rapid progress, the desperate fear Odysseus had felt all through this last, interminable week had been balanced by hope. The gods must have sent a favourable wind to make sure they reached Menelaos in time. And it was the gods, surely, who put those words into Eury’s mouth eight days ago, otherwise Father would never have changed his mind about coming so soon.

  “I’m sure Menelaos’s doctor knows what he’s doing,” Eury had said over breakfast, the morning after his return from Olenos.

  Antikleia had put her bread and cheese down and folded her hands in her lap. “You can’t assume anything of the sort.”

  Odysseus sat staring at the indigestible mess of porridge in his bowl. That very thought and a thousand others had kept him awake all the previous night.

  Eurybates frowned, caught Laertes’s warning eye and turned his attention to his food.

  “I think it probable,” Laertes said, “the man has some experience, at least.”

  “Experience at what?” Antikleia shook her head. “Most provincial doctors are ill-trained quacks. Olenos is unlikely to prove an exception.”

  Eurybates swallowed a half-chewed mouthful. “He was giving Menelaos some wonderful drug against the pain.”

  “Opion?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Antikleia’s lip curled. “Even an army medic can administer opion. From what you told us last night, Eury, this doctor of yours underestimated both the head wound and the infection. ‘All will be well’ – isn’t that what he said? Just before his patient collapsed?”

  Odysseus had a sudden, startling idea. “How would you treat him, Mother?”

  “That would depend on the diagnosis.”

  “So, why don’t you go to him?” Odysseus gave his father a quick look. “Father can take you.” And take me too, he thought.

  Laertes let his breath out through his nose. “Olli, I told you yesterday how much work I have ahead of me. Some of these court cases have been delayed too long already.”

  “Judge the urgent ones and let the others wait.”

  “And besides, this doctor is unlikely to brook any interference, especially from a woman.” Laertes glanced over at Antikleia and cleared his throat as he caught the expression in her eye. “Even from a woman as skilled as y
our mother.”

  “Have I got this right?” said Odysseus. “Mother makes the best healing ointments in Greece, but we won’t do anything to save Menelaos in case some bumbling humbug of a doctor takes offence.”

  Laertes had changed the subject, but from the way Mother pursed her lips, Odysseus knew the conversation was far from over.

  In the end, Mother had thought it wise not to come in person, in order to avoid antagonising the doctor. Ointment and prayers, she said, would do their task with or without her. As he watched his father and Meges approach along the gangway, Odysseus’s hand strayed to the pouch, slung from a thong round his neck, which held the shallow pot she’d entrusted him with. Terebinth, frankincense and myrrh, yarrow and dittany, and a long list of other ingredients. The prayers she’d taught him had been jostling around in his head ever since they’d left Ithaka. Last night he’d thought it would be easy to remember them all when the time came. Last night everything had seemed so certain.

  But this morning, when the ship rounded the bladed cliffs of Oxia Island to head towards the Gulf of Korinth, his optimism had taken a battering. The wind, which had been so kind to them all night, had veered north-east to meet them head on, slowing them to a crawl.

  Odysseus had rowed with the rest of the crew since dawn, trying to work off some of his pent-up frustration. Every heave on his oar, he told himself, was carrying him a stroke closer to Olenos, to Menelaos. A stroke closer to knowing if his best friend were alive or dead.

  At last, with the sun high above them, he’d been given the task of lookout. Argos was helping him, or so the dog thought, his paws up on the rail and his eyes blinking the spray away. For a while there’d been nothing to see, but now this sail had flickered into view, barely visible over the sand dunes that guarded the entrance to the Aitolian Gulf.

  He wriggled his aching shoulders and stared again.

  Pirates were the greatest danger. Their low-built craft still lurked in the Aitolian archipelago, remnants of the Taphian sea robbers his father had defeated years ago. But this was too big a sail for a skiff like theirs. There was always a chance Thyestes’s ships might venture through the Narrows, further away again in the east. Would the entrance to the gulf be a good place for an ambush? He glanced to starboard. Ugly clouds were gathering over Elis but Father would have noticed those.

  “Sail?” Laertes joined him on the small foredeck, nudging Argos down from the rail. “Where? How big?”

  “It’s a way off still, Father, over the port bow. There, just inside the archipelago, near the mouth of the channel.” Odysseus pointed at the flash of white on the far side of the sandhills. “A large ship, I think – fifty oars even.”

  “Have you counted every one?” asked Meges, laughter lurking in his voice.

  “No. Only because it’s disappeared again.” Odysseus stuck out his tongue. “Who do you think it might be, Father?”

  Laertes shook his head. “There’s a good chance it will be Nauplios and the Epeians returning from Olenos,” he said. “But it’s a good four days since he headed north, if our spies have it right. I thought Agamemnon would give him no more than the briefest consideration.”

  Odysseus twisted Menelaos’s bracelet round and round his arm. “With any luck Agamemnon will have cut his head off.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Olli. We considered Nauplios crucial to our cause, a loyal servant to Agamemnon. He may still be of use.”

  “What of Palamedes then?” Odysseus felt his face redden. “He should be killed. That’s the law. Then see what loyal service your precious Nauplios gives us.”

  “Odysseus, if Nauplios has persuaded Agamemnon to accept a ransom–”

  “Never.”

  “Not everyone shares your simplistic approach to international politics.”

  “This isn’t politics, Father. It’s murder.”

  “Attempted murder. Indeed, until Palamedes is offered a fair trial, we cannot know what charge he might face. Odysseus, look at me – I said, look at me. I want you to swear an oath.”

  Odysseus knew what was coming. Why was Father so blind?

  “If, against all chances,” said Laertes, “Palamedes is on this ship, you must swear not to touch him.”

  “Or?”

  “Swim home.”

  Odysseus clenched his fists and glared at the deck.

  “I mean it.”

  “Very well,” Odysseus said at last, teeth gritted against his anger. It was as though all the storm clouds over Elis had poured themselves into his head. Was Menelaos merely a pawn, his life worth so little? “I swear,” he said, forcing the words out.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The woman had returned. She stood before him, her sandalled feet only a handspan above the grassy hillside where he sat. Her long black ringlets hung to her waist, her kohl-rimmed eyes gazed out over wide cheekbones and her soft lips smiled at him in greeting.

  And now, at last, Menelaos knew who she was. Aerope. Mother.

  “Speak to me,” he pleaded. “Say my name. Let me feel your hands on mine.”

  “No, my child,” she said, “for I am dead. We are parted by death.”

  Death, death, death. The words echoed around him.

  “Come to me,” he cried. He stretched out to touch her but she floated away from his fingertips.

  “No, come to me,” she replied, beckoning. “I can take away your pain. I can give you peace. As I gave your father. Your poor father, how he blamed himself.”

  He rose and stumbled towards her, eager to hear more, but she drifted into the wind, her smile fading like a cloud dissolving in the sun.

  She was gone and he was left alone, consumed by longing. Darkness like the deepest sea surrounded him, full of gibbering voices, and the void beneath his feet sucked him down, down, down.

  No, not yet, he cried, struggling against the pull of nothingness. Not without you, not like this, not yet.

  Somewhere nearby a man was weeping, the sound strangely familiar, wrenching at his heart even as he fought.

  Chapter Fifty

  “Where’s that ship now?” said Meges.

  Odysseus started. The ship. His mind had been so full of loathing for Palamedes, he’d forgotten all about it. He stared ahead at the sand dunes, willing the sail to reappear.

  “Something’s happened,” said Laertes.

  “Gone aground, poor brutes,” said Meges.

  “Epeian sailors are too skilful for that. It’ll be pirates, more like. Whichever way it is, they need our help.” Laertes strode down the gangway. “There’s a ship in distress, just inside the channel,” he called over the splash and suck of the oars.

  Yet another delay. Odysseus cursed under his breath. He was wrong, he knew, to feel like this but it seemed as if every god and goddess in Greece were throwing whatever obstacles they could find in their path.

  Laertes halted by the mast. “Now men,” he bellowed against the gusting wind. “You’re Ithakans. I know what you are capable of.”

  The ship surged forwards as the caller increased the tempo. Laertes leaped back up onto the foredeck. “Still no sign?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” said Meges.

  “Father, those clouds over Elis are getting bigger.” Odysseus pointed to starboard. “The storm’s coming up fast.”

  Above the rolling hills on the other side of the gulf, a thundercloud was heaving up into the sky, tier building on tier even as they watched.

  “I think we’ll barely catch the edge of it,” said Laertes. He rubbed his hands together. “A south wind. Excellent.”

  “A gale to blow us straight onto the shore,” said Meges.

  “Nonsense. The helmsman knows his job and we’ll keep the port side rowing against the push of the wind. Unless things change, we should clear the sand spit on this side of the channel. Meges, tell the men to arm. We’ll set the sail but we’ll reef it hard.”

  Father must be mad, sailing a ship as though it were a racing chariot, with fifty men’s lives in the b
alance.

  But Meges was pacing up and down the gangway, shouting orders. The yard with the still-furled sail was hoisted up the mast in readiness, helmets and leather caps were crammed onto heads, corselets and greaves laced, shields hauled out, swords slung over shoulders or leaned against the rowing benches. Odysseus tied Argos up out of the way, with the ointment pot to guard. A sea battle was no place for a dog.

  If only Menelaos were here to fight beside him. At the thought, Odysseus’s stomach tightened even more than it had at the prospect of a fight. Please gods, let Menelaos still be alive.

  In a few moments the sailors were back heaving at the oars but the mood of the whole ship had changed. The men chanted in time with the stroke, all of them braced for the rush of the storm and excited by the chance of bloodshed.

  “Here comes the wind,” shouted Laertes from the prow. “Prepare the sail. Ready oars.”

  The starboard oars came inboard with a clatter as the wind struck, a blinding wall of rain and wind-driven spray blotting out everything around them. The rigging shrieked like a pig being slaughtered, every timber in the ship groaned, the mast bucked and bowed under the pull of the sail, while lightning blazed and thunder boomed around them.

  The port oarsmen fought against the surge of water, their oars plunging deep into the sea as the ship heeled, and above them the helmsman rode high in the stern, throwing all his weight against the huge blades that held the ship on its mad, bucketing course.

  On the port bow the foam intensified into a churning, raging mass.

  “The sand spit,” screamed Odysseus, his words blown back unheard into his throat. “We’re going to hit it.”

  The foremost of the port oars were thrown up and back, tangling with the ones behind, the ship jarred and jumped and then somehow, by all god-given miracles, they were past the pounding surf and racing through deeper water as the storm passed over them and the helmsman slewed the ship round into the channel.