The lamp had been extinguished, leaving the room in darkness, and it took a moment before he could make anything out in the faint light from the corridor. A table just inside the door was piled with towels. Agamemnon was back in his chair by the bed, asleep and with a mug drooping from one hand and a towel in the other. A water jug stood on the floor at his feet, but whether it was empty or full, Odysseus couldn’t tell.
Menelaos was still stretched out flat, but his breathing was much slower than it had been earlier and his eyes were closed. When Odysseus drew nearer, he could see his friend was still sweating, though not as heavily as before.
He jumped at the scrape of a stool.
“Is that you, Olli?” came Gelanor’s voice.
“Yes.” Odysseus peered into the even deeper darkness behind the door.
“Come, sit with me. When the doctor returns, there’s a good chance he may not notice you here.”
“How is Menelaos? Is he better?”
“The doctor is being cautious, but there is a good chance the main crisis is passed.”
Odysseus sat down on the floor next to Gelanor’s stool, his whole body weak with relief. “That’s amazing news.”
“Very amazing indeed.” Gelanor rested his hand on Odysseus’s arm and gave it a quick squeeze.
“And Agamemnon?” Odysseus stared across at the sleeping figure by the bed. “Why isn’t he awake? Doesn’t he care?”
“Care? Goodness, I’ve never known anyone care so much. The poor man is exhausted. He’s scarcely left that chair for days. And he’s been busy all afternoon, wiping Menelaos down and helping him drink – rather a hard process with someone in that state, but essential now Menelaos is sweating so much. He won’t be asleep for long, I can assure you.”
“Oh.” Odysseus hung his head. He’d been so full of his own fear and misery that, while he’d noticed how unkempt Agamemnon was, he hadn’t thought for a moment what he must be going through. “If Menelaos died, Agamemnon wouldn’t have anyone left, would he?”
“There is a sister.”
“Of course, I forgot.”
“But she and Agamemnon were never close. As for Menelaos …” Gelanor sighed. “I don’t think Agamemnon could ever have dreamed how much he loves his brother.”
Odysseus sat quietly, listening to Menelaos’s steady breath. What would it be like if his own father and mother had been murdered? And worse – what if one had killed the other? Would he come to love his little sister, Kitti, the way Agamemnon loved Menelaos? He half-smiled at the thought. It was possible – maybe.
His mind started swarming with all the old questions. How had Aerope died? Father had told him a version of it, but Father hadn’t been there. Gelanor had, though. And how much had Menelaos seen?
Well, here he was, sitting with Gelanor and no one able to hear them, no one to be offended if he asked.
Menelaos lay still under the damp sheet, the coolness of it like silk on his skin. Part of him wanted to stretch or turn his head to join with the murmur of voices across the room. But he was too, too … not weak, exactly. Too overwhelmed by a glorious, numbing lethargy – the way you felt when a thunderstorm had ended, and the air was light and clean from the rain, and crisp on your tongue.
Olli was talking, full of questions as ever, with Uncle Gelanor answering in his slow, careful, kind way. Had Olli just arrived? No, there’d been something else he’d said. Before. Something about getting better, the words like a lifeline after all that weeping. Had it been Agamemnon crying? Or his father? They sounded so alike.
Olli must have come from Ithaka. He hadn’t been on the ship with Eury or Meges, had he? So, afterwards then. Not that it mattered. It was good, it was very good he was here.
Or, perhaps they had travelled to Ithaka, somehow, he and Agamemnon and Gelanor and that doctor. But the ceiling was the same as the one in his bedroom in Olenos. Maybe they’d brought the bedroom with them. No. He smiled to himself. That was silly. Too silly for words.
“What did Aerope look like?” Olli was asking.
Well, he knew that already, didn’t he?
“And Atreus? Before she died? Did they really love each other?”
Well, he knew that too.
And now Olli was dropping his voice, though the questions were quite clear in the stillness of the room, and the answers too. Not that there were any real surprises.
Poor Mother. Poor, poor father. But she had given him peace, she’d said so herself.
Chapter Fifty-four
Menelaos prised himself onto his right elbow. Was it really only the day before yesterday the fever had broken? It seemed much longer than that.
It was quiet in the bedroom, the chair empty beside him. Agamemnon had been cajoled into leaving his side, to sleep away the afternoon heat in his own room for the first time since the attack.
Uncle Gelanor had delivered a spiel of nonsense this morning about staying in bed for days and days more. He must get his strength back, Uncle had said. What would he know?
Olli ought to be able to think of something – some excuse to get him out of this room; some plot to smuggle him out if that failed. That dragon of a doctor had allowed Olli to visit now and then, but his friend had sat quietly beside Uncle each time, a model of good behaviour. Very disappointing.
Menelaos sat up, steadying himself with a hand on the bedhead. True, he felt weak as a boiled newt but he had to go outside, breathe some real air again, do something exciting. And there was no chance now of running into Palamedes.
He’d overheard Agamemnon and Uncle Gelanor whispering. Palamedes had escaped. They sounded angry beyond measure but his heart had sung at the news. Palamedes dead would have been best, but Palamedes far away, never to return, was an excellent second. And Palamedes smothered in nightsoil was a most wonderful thing to dwell on.
Now there was nothing to fear except his uncle. Gelanor had mentioned “using your recuperation to good effect”. That meant mathematics. He’d pleaded a crippling headache but Uncle hadn’t seemed that convinced. Another good reason not to be in his bedroom when Uncle woke from his siesta.
He swung his legs sideways and over the edge of the bed to the floor. So far so good. Grip the bed end, push with the legs and there he was. A human being again, not a flaccid lump under the bedclothes. A naked human being, mind, but finding something to wear shouldn’t be so hard. One of those towels on the table near the door would make a splendid kilt. Not so easy persuading it to stay on, with his left arm still in a splint.
He belted it with one of the bandages next to the towels – it didn’t take long to wind the length around his waist once he found he could hold one end with his teeth. He shuffled to the door and looked out.
The coast was clear.
He waited till the pounding in his head eased before setting off along the corridor and down the stairs. There’d been a few spears displayed on the walls in the hall and it was a spear he wanted. Yes, there they were, somewhat smeared with soot – the wall torches in Thoas’s hall had a tendency to smoke rather much – but perfectly usable.
He eased one off its pegs, fumbled it onto his shoulder and slipped out through the vestibule into the blinding sun.
The walk to the training targets made his head swim, each step jolting the pain behind his eyes, but he gritted his teeth. This would be awkward with his left arm the way it was, but life wasn’t worth living if he couldn’t throw a spear straight any more.
Well, he’d settle for almost straight.
It took him longer than he’d expected to reach the butts and he had to sit down several times. His legs weren’t doing quite what they should. At last he arrived and took a stance at the closest throwing line.
Not as easy as he’d hoped, without his left arm as a counterweight. Maybe he wouldn’t feel like toppling over backwards if he kept moving, and threw the damn spear. He raised his right arm, took a deep breath and hurled.
The spear wobbled down towards the target and bounced onto the dusty
ground a few paces short. Not so bad for a first attempt. He ambled over and picked it up.
“Good afternoon, Herakles. Our headache is too vicious for mathematics, but happy to capitulate for an afternoon of military enterprise, I see.”
Uncle Gelanor. Confound it. “Er, good afternoon, sir, er, well, my head’s still–”
“But you’re on the mend. Excellent. Agamemnon has decided to buy some horses to celebrate your recovery and you can tell me how much feed we’re going to need.”
“Horses?” Menelaos’s eyes lit up. “When are they coming?”
“When he finds the right ones. They’re all the same to me. Four legs, a head, and a tail if you’re lucky. What more do you need? Now, the problem of feed.”
“That’s simple.” Menelaos leaned on the spear. “A horse in work has three grain and four hay feeds a day; that’s one and a half choes of oats, one and a half of barley and three choes of hay. So for a full month, thirty days, we’ll need, er, forty-five choes of oats, the same of barley and ninety choes of hay. In a hollow month it’s a bit less, um, forty-three and a half choes of – What in Hades is that noise?”
“What noise?”
“Choking. Behind that bush.”
“Ah. I believe a certain person may be celebrating the winning of a bet. He said you were brilliant at mathematics but only so long as it had anything to do with horses. I was foolish enough to disagree.” Uncle Gelanor strode over to the offending bush. “All right, all right, you little wretch. And your silly dog. You can come out now, both of you.”
Odysseus emerged with Argos, a broad grin on his face. “Down, Argos! Sit! We met Gelanor just as we were going for a walk. He’d glanced out his window and spied you escaping down here so we joined forces and came after you. Now you’re up, you and Argos and I can find all sorts of mischief. Oh, but I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“The doctor was really clear. Total bedrest, no physical exertion. It’s those fiendish headaches you’ve complained about–”
“Yes, well, er …”
“But you’re looking splendid,” said Gelanor. “Apart from your rather strange attire. We can begin lessons tomorrow.”
Menelaos pulled a face he hoped would be convincingly weak and pathetic. “Actually, Uncle, my head’s quite sore. Very sore, now I mention it. I can scarcely–”
“In that case, we’ll go straight back to the palace and you can have a nice lie down for the rest of the afternoon. No visitors.”
Odysseus seized the spear. “He must hit the target first. I know he can do it.”
“You’re sure?” Menelaos walked back to the throwing line.
“Of course. Stand here. Like this.” Odysseus poked and prodded him into shape. “Don’t hunch your shoulders. Open your chest. Move your arm parallel to the shaft of the spear. Focus on the bullseye–”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“–and throw the damn spear.”
Menelaos felt better already, his headache forgotten. As he threw, his arm and the spear were at one with the clear line in his mind’s eye, all shooting straight down to the target like a bolt from a catapult. The spear struck just below the middle of the target, the head thwacking deep into the straw.
“Well done,” cried Odysseus, shaking his fist in the air as Argos danced around them, splitting the air with a cacophony of barking.
“Not bad, eh?” Menelaos grinned back. “I wager you couldn’t do better with one arm. Why don’t I strap you up and see if I can win my bracelet back?”
Acknowledgements
This book has taken me on a great journey. While I’ve encountered a few monsters on the way, the list of well-met friends is very long. The late Barbara Leonie Picard launched my ship many years ago with her wonderful retelling of The Odyssey; she and Homer triggered my love of Ancient Greece and my desire to tell my own versions of the Odysseus story.
For the writing process I owe thanks, first and foremost, to William Taylor, mentor extraordinaire. Without you, Bill, I’d still have a pile of overwritten pages instead of a book. Thanks, too, to Tina Shaw and Barbara Murison for their help through the NZSA assessment programme, to Sue Welford for helping me empower Menelaos, and to Liz Hegarty for steering me away from the lotus land of irrelevant subplots on my first leg of the voyage.
I’m incredibly grateful to the fabulous team at Walker Books and especially to my editor, Nicola Robinson, who has turned the editorial process into such an exciting and creative adventure. Together we have battled many unwelcome monsters – POV shifts, weak characterisation, plot inconsistencies and the like. And many thanks to Nicole Onslow for her glorious cover image and to Gayna Murphy for her great design work.
I’m still amazed at the kindness of a number of scholars. All of them had far better things to do than to answer my questions, as I charted a dangerous course between the many-headed Scylla of Greek mythology and the swirling Charybdis of archaeological debate and disagreement.
I decided from the start that I would write a historical novel based in the Bronze Age, rather than a myth-driven story with Bronze Age accessories. In striving after this goal, I owe the archaeologist Dr Elizabeth French an enormous debt; with alarming generosity she read the whole manuscript and has saved me from a number of embarrassing bloopers. Thanks are also due to Prof. Anne Mackay for her invaluable help with the spelling and pronunciation of Ancient Greek names, and for her commonsense approach to mythology. Dr Robert Arnott sent me his collected papers on Bronze Age Greek medicine, and Dr Sarantis Symeonoglou provided me with a vivid reconstruction of the Cave of the Nymphs. All mistakes still lodged in the book are entirely mine.
The list of books and papers I’ve read is far too long to give here, but I would like to single out Richard Hope Simpson’s summary of Bronze Age archaeological sites, Mycenaean Greece. Michael Wood’s brilliant BBC series In Search of the Trojan War is available on DVD, and its companion book, especially the second edition, gives an up-to-date and accessible account of Greece and its neighbours at the time of this famous war. Another excellent and detailed examination of the period is The Aegean Bronze Age by Oliver Dickinson, which opens the door to more specialised publications. WB Stanford’s The Ulysses Theme provides a fascinating exploration of Odysseus’s character as seen through the ages.
Many other people have added to this book through their expertise, notably John Anderson for his knowledge of horses and harness racing and Pam Sims for her understanding and skill with medicinal herbs. My hardworking writing group has been a source of strength, encouragement and good, honest criticism.
Last but not least I’d like to thank my husband Alan, for believing in me and giving me time and space to live my dream.
Catherine Mayo
Auckland, 2013
About the author
Catherine Mayo grew up in Auckland and was a compulsive reader and dreamer. With academics in her DNA (her dad was a research scientist and her grandfather a professor of philosophy) it was taken for granted she would go to university. She studied many things at Auckland University – history, philosophy, geology, French, music, performance violin and art history – before life took an unexpected turn and she began an apprenticeship in violin-making and restoration. About ten years ago she started writing, urged on by the stories and dreams that filled her head since she was a child. She has since won several prizes in short story competitions. Murder at Mykenai is her first book.
First published in 2013
by Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd
Locked Bag 22, Newtown
NSW 2042 Australia
www.walkerbooks.com.au
This ebook edition published in 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Text © 2013 Catherine Mayo
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherw
ise – without the prior written permission of the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Mayo, Catherine, author.
Murder at Mykenai / Catherine Mayo.
For young adults.
Subjects: Young adult fiction.
Odysseus (Greek mythology) – Juvenile fiction.
Agamemnon (Greek mythology) – Juvenile fiction.
Mycenae (Extinct city) – Juvenile fiction.
A823.4
ISBN: 978-1-922244-02-4 (.ePub)
ISBN: 978-1-922244-01-7 (e-PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-922244-03-1 (.PRC)
Cover image © 2013 Nicole Onslow
For Kippy, staunch friend and brave critic.
Murder at Mykenai Page 20