Not till the late afternoon of the following day were they ready to set fire to the ruins of the city. All the women who were to be taken into captivity had been led away, wailing, to the ships. Everything of value that the ravaged capital had to offer was stowed in the holds beneath the oar-benches, and what the ships could not carry lay abandoned like so much rubbish on the strand or was dumped overboard in the choppy waters of the bay. Dry timber, bales of wool and straw and other combustible materials were arranged along the wider streets to encourage the spreading of the blaze, while men with scarves at their faces stacked the sullen multitudes of the dead in piles and dowsed them in oil. A wind rising to gale-force from the east promised to make the flames thrive even though the dense, swiftly moving storm-clouds threatened further rain.
Teams of men with torches started fires in every quarter and by dusk the whole noble city of Troy was one vast funeral pyre. The night sky flushed to an incandescent orange-red. The bruised clouds charred to ruddy-black above it. Smoke extinguished half the known stars, while new constellations of sparks gusted on the wind. Meanwhile, even where they stood at a far distance from the blaze to gaze with awe at what they had accomplished, the heat and stink of burning came at men’s faces like a pestilence.
Odysseus was standing on Thorn Hill with his dark-skinned herald Eurybates, looking towards the inferno with shielded eyes when he saw Agamemnon’s chariot hurrying across the plain towards him. As the driver reined in the sleek team of blacks that had once belonged to Paris, Agamemnon shouted up to Odysseus that he wanted to have words. Uncertain whether the tone of his voice was anxious or elated, Odysseus made his way down to where Agamemnon’s horses sweated and fretted, rolling their eyes towards the roar of the inferno.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ Agamemnon shouted. ‘There’s something I need to tell you. Something you need to know.’ Odysseus was able to make out the gleam of triumph in his eyes. ‘We’ve done the right thing. In destroying Troy, I mean. I’m sure of it now.’
‘I thought you always were,’
‘Well, yes, I was, of course.’ Agamemnon frowned at his obdurate comrade. The buckles on his harness seemed to blaze in the reflection of heat from the burning city. ‘But I’ve just had a despatch out of Mycenae and it confirms I was right. The Hittites are on the march. They’re coming westwards, heading for Troy. They’ll be here in a matter of days.’
‘The Hittites? I thought they were still at war in the east.’
‘I’m told that Hattusilis has settled things on his eastern front and now he’s decided to send the whole western half of his army to the aid of Troy. He doesn’t yet know that Priam’s finished.’
Odysseus stood in silence for a time, taking in this unexpected development, thinking quickly. ‘When was the despatch sent?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure. Why?’
‘Because Hattusilis may not have known that Troy had fallen when the pigeon was released, but if his spies are any good he’ll know by now. Presumably he’s not about to risk losing control of the Hellespont to Mycenaean power.’
‘Exactly.’ Agamemnon fixed Odysseus with his smirk. ‘And if we’d stuck with your plan we’d have a big new war on our hands any time now. A war I’m not at all sure we could win. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Odysseus answered dryly, ‘I understand.’ He looked back at where one of the oil magazines under the citadel had just combusted with a whooshing roar of yellow flame. ‘And the fact that you didn’t know this when you decided to kill everyone in Troy is a matter of no moral consequence whatsoever, I suppose?’
Agamemnon flushed with exasperation. He had won a great victory, perhaps the greatest victory in the history of warfare, yet his own brother had frustrated him, his captains were increasingly truculent around him, and this man, his most trusted counsellor and one of his oldest comrades, evidently held him in contempt. Where was the justice in all this? Why would no one honestly acknowledge him for what he had proved himself to be, the King of Men?
‘The fact is, I was right, wasn’t I?’ he demanded. ‘We were stretched to the limit coping with Priam’s western alliance. There was no way we could take on the whole Hittite Empire. So we’ve done well out of this. We’re going back with all the treasure of Troy stowed in our holds. There’s no danger of reprisal from this pile of ash and rubble, and Hattusilis will be content to keep his Asian empire intact. He won’t risk crossing the Aegean to avenge Priam any more than we’re about to outstare him here. By the time his army reaches Troy our ships will be well gone. The Hittites are welcome to what’s left after this fire has burned out!’
Odysseus stood in silence, letting the bluster blow past him. When it was done, he turned away and called up to his herald. ‘Do you hear this, Eurybates? It seems that the High King has come to crow over me.’ Then he glowered back at Agamemnon. ‘Is that it?’
‘No, that’s not it,’ Agamemnon scowled. ‘I came here as an act of friendship. I came to tell you this because I thought it might ease that delicate conscience of yours. Think about it, man. Can you believe that Antenor and the Dardanians would have stayed loyal to your treaty once the Hittites turned up with a force large enough to drive us into the sea?’ Before Odysseus could answer, he pointed upwards over the Ithacan’s shoulder. ‘Look! Do you see what that is?’
Odysseus turned his head and saw where a bonfire had burst into a bright conflagration against the blackness of the night sky on the summit of Mount Ida.
‘It’s the first of the chain of signal fires.’ Agamemnon’s eyes were themselves smouldering with pride. ‘In a minute or two the detachment on Lemnos will see it and light their fire, and from there the signal will leap to the rock of Zeus on Mount Athos, and then it’ll be passed on from beacon to beacon till all Argos knows that Troy has fallen.’ Agamemnon looked back with a smile of satisfaction. ‘The gods know that we’ve done what we came here to do.’ But when he failed to find any sign of assent in the anguished intelligence of the face across from him, he shook his head impatiently. ‘You’re a dreamer, Odysseus! You’re a dreamer and I’m glad of it. I doubt there’s another man on earth who could have thought up the stratagem of the wooden horse. So everything we’ve loaded in our ships we owe to you and your imagination. I don’t deny it for a moment, and I thank you for it. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But admit it, man — if we’d tried to handle things the way you wanted, we would have ended up with nothing. We’d have been lucky to save our skins from the Hittite host. So remind yourself of what’s stowed in your ships and be grateful for your good fortune. Then go back home to Penelope in the knowledge of a job well done. That’s what I came to say. If you’ve any sense, you’ll sleep well tonight because of it.’
Without waiting for a response, Agamemnon signalled to his driver to turn the chariot away. Odysseus watched it speed across the plain, a fleeting dark shadow against the fierce, incendiary glare in which, hour by hour, the city of Troy was vanishing from the face of the earth. Meanwhile, high at his back, the beacon on Mount Ida proclaimed to the world in tongues of flame that the King of Men was victorious and nothing would ever be the same again.
The Ghosts of Mycenae
The drowned body of the bard Pelagon was found washed up on the shore of an uninhabited island in the bay of Argos. The last time he’d been seen alive he was in the company of a young Corinthian poet of conspicuous beauty who had come as a pilgrim to the court at Mycenae declaring himself to be a passionate admirer of Pelagon’s art. At the young man’s suggestion the two bards had taken a small boat out onto the gulf for a pleasure cruise. But some misadventure must have happened, a freak gust of wind driving them onto a shoal perhaps, for the wreckage of their craft was discovered later that day with no one aboard.
Because the Corinthian’s body was never recovered, a degree of mystery and scandal surrounded the affair. But Queen Clytaemnestra ordered a time of mourning in Mycenae, not least because the chief bard’s regrettable death left unf
inished the great Lay of Agamemnon on which he had been working for many years. The High King’s eventual return from Troy would be, she insisted, the poorer for the lack of it.
Not long afterwards a traveller turned up in Mycenae, bearing rich gifts and asking for an audience with the Queen. Aegisthus had been only a boy of twelve when he fled the city more than twenty years earlier, so no one recognized this suave, intense stranger as the son of Thyestes, who had ruled Mycenae for a number of years until Agamemnon and Menelaus, the vengeful sons of Atreus, had returned with the Spartan army at their backs to reclaim their father’s throne. So if there was some surprise that the stranger was speedily granted the private audience he sought, there was no immediate understanding, even among the better-informed citizens, that the blood-drenched course of Mycenaean history was about to undergo a further violent change.
‘That you were powerful I already knew,’ said Aegisthus, settling himself on the proffered couch, ‘and King Nauplius warned me at some length that you are also formidably intelligent. But he neglected to inform me that you have the further advantage of being a very beautiful woman.’
Knowing that she was some years older than the refined man across from her, and that he must already have enjoyed much success with younger women on whose faces the cares of state were not indelibly inscribed, Clytaemnestra raised a languorous hand to brush the remark aside. ‘There is no appetite for flattery here,’ she said. Yet it was evident in her smile that she was not displeased.
Exiled from power by his father’s defeat and death, Aegisthus had clearly learned that the attractive exercise of charm might supply many deficiencies of a fugitive’s life. His vivid blue eyes were still smiling as he said, ‘Nor was there any thought of flattery here. On the contrary, I understand very well that my only hope of leaving Mycenae alive resides in your respect for my honesty as one who has also suffered at your husband’s hands.’
‘So you believe you have my measure already? And what if you are wrong?’
‘Then at least I will have died proudly trying to recover what is mine.’
‘Rather than running from bolt-hole to bolt-hole ahead of Agamemnon’s men?’ Clytaemnestra gave a little, humourless laugh. ‘My husband left me with very clear instructions. Aegisthus is as dangerous as his father was, he warned me. Hunt him down while I’m gone and, once you have him in your power, show him no mercy. ’ And then, almost as though this were a matter on which she should take his advice, she asked, ‘Was he right, I wonder? Is that what I should have done?’
Opening his hands, Aegisthus said, ‘Doubtless that would have been the proper course, if you were no more than an obedient wife. But I imagine you have always prided yourself on being rather more than that.’
‘Yet you should understand,’ Clytaemnestra arranged the many folds of her viridian gown, ‘that once my agents traced you to the court of that sickly weasel on Euboea, you would not have lasted long if I didn’t have a use for you.’
Unfazed, Aegisthus studied her with admiring eyes. ‘I always considered Agamemnon a fool. Now I know he was never more so than when he failed to secure your loyalty.’
There was no arrogance, merely a casual acceptance of simple fact, in the Queen’s nod of assent. ‘Yet there was a time when he could count on my absolute support,’ she said, ‘in matters of state at least.’
‘But Aulis changed all that?’
Clytaemnestra sighed. ‘It began long before then, but yes, at Aulis everything changed.’
‘Not only the wind,’ he dared.
‘No, not only the wind.’
‘And you are no longer obedient?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but not to Agamemnon.’
‘Then to whom?’
‘Not to any man, I assure you.’
‘A god then?’ He paused for a moment over the severity of her frown. ‘Or a goddess perhaps?’
Though she said nothing, he caught a glint of acknowledgement in her eyes.
‘I confess that my own devotions are to Divine Artemis,’ he volunteered. ‘I intend to make offerings to her while I am here, in the hope that she will look with more favour on Mycenae.’
For a moment Clytaemnestra had felt transparent under the glitter of those eyes, as if he had looked into the cold cave of her heart and seen the altar at which she worshipped there. Only then did she understand just how dangerous this man might be. Beneath his charm lurked a soul that had been forged in a dark smithy. It further occurred to her that the two of them together resembled the twisted serpents on the ring she had given him for a pledge, the ring which Aegisthus was fingering conspicuously now as he smiled across at her. It was time she took control of this conversation.
‘You must not imagine,’ she said coolly, ‘that I am unaware of your following here in Mycenae. I know that not everyone in this city rejoiced when my husband overthrew your father. There are those here who still think of you as their rightful prince.’ She paused before adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘Their names are known to me.’
Because some instinct of his survivor’s soul had already detected a kindred air of corruption in this woman, Aegisthus smiled. It was to that corruption he spoke when he answered with a lightness that surprised her, ‘But not to your husband?’
‘Not yet. Their lives are in my hands, not his. As is, of course, your own.’
The smile dissolved at his lips. He waited for a moment, gazing at her with an intensity that she would have found impertinent in any other man. ‘Then I think,’ he declared quietly, ‘that it has found its destined home.’
Both voice and eyes were so patently sincere that she was astonished by the utterance. Either this man was a consummate actor or, and with every moment this began to feel more likely, he had been brought here not merely at her behest but by his own unshakable sense of destiny. Not a word she had spoken had surprised him. Still less had it made him afraid. By some divinatory power born of a lifetime spent on the perilous edge of things he seemed to know her soul almost as intimately as she did herself.
Already they were deeply complicit, twinned serpents capable of renewing each other’s life, or of ending it with a toxic kiss.
Her own instinct had been true then. Here was exactly the accomplice she needed for the most dangerous enterprise of her career. And if, for a moment, she had almost been in awe of this man, Clytaemnestra now felt an equivalent power rising inside her like a snake.
From a silver mixing bowl chased with a design of nymphs and satyrs, she poured wine into two goblets and crossed the room to sit closer to Aegisthus. ‘Now you will tell me about yourself,’ she smiled. ‘I want to hear your whole story. In particular I wish to know what feelings passed through you as a child on the night when you murdered King Atreus.’
‘But I cannot tell my story,’ he returned her smile, ‘without also telling my father’s; and that cannot be done without raising all the ghosts of Mycenae.’
‘Then raise them,’ she said. ‘Let me hear what they have to say.’
So nightmarish was the story Aegisthus had to tell that, when she thought about it afterwards, Clytaemnestra was uncertain whether his cool, ironical voice made it harder or easier to accept its appalling truth; for in the dangerous smile on his handsome face could be seen the latest flowering of a curse that had haunted his family since his grandfather’s time. So much power had accrued to old King Pelops that most of the mainland of Argos was eventually named for him, but that power was won by treacherous means, and the curses he invoked were passed on, like evil seed, from one generation to the next. So Aegisthus told how even before the death of Pelops, his estranged sons, Atreus and Thyestes, who had fled the shadow of their imperious father to seek fortunes of their own, were set against one another by that legacy of curses. Their quarrels came to a head when Atreus was made king of Mycenae. Furious at being cheated of his own claim to the Lion Throne, Thyestes exposed his brother’s wife Aerope as his whore, thus calling the paternity of Agamemnon and Menelaus into q
uestion; and though Atreus eventually recalled his brother from the banishment to which he consigned him, it was only with the intention of perpetrating the most horrific act of vengeance that his mind could conceive.
Thyestes, of course, was unaware of this. Delighted by his brother’s change of heart, he returned to his wife and children in Mycenae. That night he was treated as the guest of honour in the banqueting hall of the Lion House and made a good meal of the delicious stew that was served up for him. Assuring him that he had not yet tasted the daintiest portions, Atreus pressed him to eat more. Another salver was placed before him and, when the lid was lifted, Thyestes found himself staring in bewilderment at a neatly arranged pile of little hands and feet. They lay in the blood that had leaked from them, small bones and severed gristle protruding from raw, vividly red flesh. Then his eyes were caught by the splashes of silver paint on the tiny fingernails that his four-year-old daughter had held up for his admiration on his arrival home in Mycenae only a few hours earlier.
‘Can you imagine how Atreus smiled as the colour drained from Thyestes’ face?’ Aegisthus said. ‘Think how cold his voice must have been when he said, “Console yourself with this thought, dear brother - the confidence that my sons are indeed my own has been stolen from me; but from this hour forth, you will never be in any doubt that you and your children will always be one flesh.” But by then, I suppose, Thyestes must already have been out of his mind with the shock of what had been done to him. And what loathing for his own body must such knowledge have stirred? Yet he was condemned to live with it as he fled from Mycenae. Nor did Atreus himself emerge from that hideous banquet with his mind unscathed. Increasingly he grew obsessed by guilt at the thing he had done. His dreams became so troubled that he scarcely dared sleep at night. Then his anxieties increased when a long drought parched the countryside for miles around the city. Weeks passed without rain; the crops withered in the fields. When the harvest failed and famine threatened everyone’s survival, Atreus succumbed to the general belief that his dreadful crime was the cause of the disaster. Under pressure from the city’s priesthood, he was driven to consult the oracle at Delphi for guidance on how best to cleanse himself of the pollution of that crime. He was told it could be done only by recalling Thyestes to Mycenae.’
The Return From Troy Page 12