The Thracian king stumbled over a guy-rope and fell to the ground where he lay in torment, shrieking curses at the night. Quickly Odysseus crossed to help him and winced at the hideous sight that confronted him when Polymnestor looked up in the glare from Sinon’s torch. Above the clotted strands of facial hair, the eye-sockets were two craters rimmed with bloody flesh and fringed with broken veins. He could hear Hecuba howling in the night behind him - quick, raucous yelps of triumph or of horror — who knew which? — bayed hoarsely upwards at the moon. He knew then what it was that she held in her hands.
More men were gathering round him. Then he heard the voice of Agamemnon demanding to know what all this commotion was. Out of the corner of his eye Odysseus saw Hecuba’s serving-women cowering together in the shadows of the tent and guessed that their combined strength must have pinned the Thracian King to the ground while, for the want of any more lethal weapon, their grief-crazed mistress had used her bare hands to gouge out his eyes.
Leaving Polymnestor whimpering under the ministrations of a physician, Odysseus pulled away, feeling his gorge rise. But Agamemnon called him back, demanding to know how this thing had been allowed to happen.
‘It happened because we started a war, ‘Odysseus answered bitterly. ‘I doubt now that there can ever be an end to it.’
‘The war is over and won,’ Agamemnon snapped back. ‘Pull yourself together, and get that woman silenced and bound before she does more harm.’
But as the two men turned to look at her, Hecuba disappeared in the gloom between the tents, making for the ships. Calling Sinon to join him, Odysseus ran after her scurrying figure. He had not gone more than a few yards when he slipped on something in the rough grass under his feet. Looking down, he saw the sole of his foot smeared with the jelly of one of Polymnestor’s eyes.
Odysseus was retching as Sinon caught up with him. By the time the two men arrived at the ships, Hecuba had already clambered aboard the nearest vessel, which happened to be The Fair Return. She stood with her hand at the rigging, staring up at the moon, singing the lament for Troy that had come to her as they sailed away from the burning city. Against the plunge of the breakers and the hoarse rattle of the shingle racing back into the sea, her voice was little more than a torn and ragged muttering to the night.
‘The woman’s out of her mind,’ Sinon whispered.
‘And has been, I think, for longer than we know.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
Sinon said, ‘The gods have done their worst with her.’
Odysseus looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘You blame the gods for this?’
Sinon shrugged. ‘We are always in their hands.’
Before Odysseus could answer, a change came over Hecuba’s voice. At first he thought that the Queen was in tears, overwhelmed by the pressure of her grief, but then he recognized the guttural, panting breaths cracking from her throat as a resumption of the barely human noise she had been making earlier.
‘Listen to her,’ Sinon whispered in horrified awe.
‘Hecuba!’ Odysseus called out to whatever might remain of a human soul inside her anguished frame. But for all the notice she took, he might as well have been shouting at a disobedient dog. Hecuba had withdrawn to a region so remote from human reach that she had no use left for language. Only the moon, radiant and cold, commanded her attention. Clutching the rigging in bloodstained hands, she pulled herself up from the deck onto the side of the ship and began to climb towards the masthead. Again Odysseus called out her name. Again, if she heard him at all, she ignored him. Cursing that in his desire to make a quick getaway he had ordered that the mast be left unstepped, he watched her clamber upwards with an agility that belied the frailty of her years.
‘The crazy bitch is trying to reach the moon,’ Sinon said.
And spoke Odysseus’s own thought.
Moments later she was at the masthead, her silver hair blowing like a banner in the breeze, one hand outstretched as though, were she to lean just a few inches further into space, she might have that bright shell in her grasp for ever. Stars glittered among the clouds and went dark again. The surf plunged and boomed against the strand. Queen Hecuba, wife of Priam, First Lady of royal Troy, and among the most tragic women ever to dignify the earth, was still barking like a tethered dog when her fingers lost her grip on the mast and she plummeted — a ragged spectre in the moonlight - to the ship’s deck thirty feet below.
Odysseus commanded that Hecuba’s remains be buried beneath a funerary mound on a headland of the peninsula that forms the northern shore of the Hellespont across the water from Troy. Ever afterwards the place was known by the name that Sinon gave it - Cynossema, the Bitch’s Tomb.
Some days later, the fleet was beating along the Thracian shore past the tribal lands of the Cicones when Sinon’s ship, The Jolly Dolphin, struck a rock on a shoal concealed beneath the swell and sprang a larboard strake.
Heavily burdened with loot, the vessel was already riding low among the waves. Now she was shipping so much water that she must surely sink unless they could raise the damaged timber above the water-line. Cursing his ill-luck, Sinon watched from the helm as his crew frantically bailed with skins, jars and helmets — whatever they could find. Most of those men were as little able to swim as he was himself and he had quickly signalled for aid, but the sluggish progress of his over-laden ship had left him some distance behind the main body of the fleet. He could see no choice now but to start dumping his precious cargo into the sea.
The Fair Return had immediately put about in speedy answer to the signal. She hove alongside the Dolphin just in time for Odysseus to see a golden effigy of Aphrodite topple over the side and plunge beneath the waves head-first in a dispiriting inversion of the manner of her ocean birth. A few minutes later it became clear that the damaged vessel had been saved but only by dint of shedding the vast bulk of her cargo. It was equally clear that she had no hope of coping with heavy seas without first putting in for repairs. But the swell was too high to risk making a run for the distant island of Samothrace, and when Odysseus looked towards the nearer mainland shore, he could make out the Ciconian city of Ismarus perched on its mountain. The Cicones had always been staunch allies of Troy. Were he to leave Sinon’s ship unsupported on that hostile coast, his cousin and crew would soon be cut down.
Odysseus cursed beneath his breath. Almost from the first moment he had climbed out of the belly of the horse, everything seemed to have gone wrong for him. He wanted nothing more now than to reach Ithaca as soon as possible, yet with every day that passed, his homeland seemed to recede into a hazy region of serenity and peace from which he might be forever excluded. The ravages of the war had left him in command of only twelve ships - a mere fifth of the sixty he had led out of the Ionian Islands ten years before. Many of his friends were dead. The ghost of Hecuba seemed to haunt his ship. And now it seemed he was opposed by the unpredictable power of Poseidon himself.
Signalling to his other ships to follow, Odysseus ordered his helmsman Baius to put the prow about, and made for the Thracian shore with The Jolly Dolphin limping behind. Meanwhile, several miles away by now and unconcerned over the mishap, the rest of the Argive fleet vanished into the afternoon mist.
They made landfall in a sheltered cove along the coast from Ismarus. Odysseus felt confident that the Ithacan force was strong enough to deter anything other than a large and well-organized attack, but they would be holed up there for at least another day before the damage was repaired, so he sent out scouts to assess the strength of any likely opposition. Meanwhile, bored and restless, the other crews grumbled resentfully when Sinon declared that it was only just that they should give up a portion of their booty to compensate his crew for their loss.
Their fellow Ithacans grudgingly assented on condition that everyone else agreed to do the same, but the men of Dulichion and Zacynthos grew vociferous in their resistance to the idea. Sinon’s hoard had not been
lost as a result of their faulty seamanship, so why should they be made to pay for it? Old rivalries and grudges quickly flared. As insults flew, Odysseus was beginning to worry that things must come to blows when one of the scouts returned, sent back with the report that they had found Ismarus surprisingly ill-defended.
‘There’s our answer then,’ said Meges, leader of the Dulichians. ‘Let Sinon’s men lead us in a surprise attack and he can load his ship with Thracian gold.’
‘It’s not worth the risk,’ Odysseus demurred. ‘There’s enough in our holds to make us all rich for life. We should make for home with what we have.’
The more sober of his followers agreed but Sinon was not among them. ‘I need to salvage something from this bloody war,’ he insisted, ‘or ten years of misery will have gone for nothing.’
‘They will have gone for less,’ Odysseus said, ‘if you end up skewered on a Ciconian spear.’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ his cousin countered. ‘Who will back me?’
Among the survivors of the war were a hard-bitten bunch of men who had grown so inured to the exertions of fighting that they were left fractious and ill-at-ease by the onset of peace. Enough of them raised their hands to leave the rest feeling paltry.
‘We were all pirates before we were warriors,’ Meges grinned, ‘and I’ve heard that Ismarian wine is among the best there is. I look forward to trying it.’
When his Dulichian followers nodded along with him, it was clear that Sinon had his raiding-party.
They fell on Ismarus after dark while most of the unsuspecting citizens were dining. Odysseus had insisted that there should be no indiscriminate slaughter and this time there was no one to countermand him. But those among the Cicones who had time to reach for their weapons mounted a stiff resistance and many of them had to be killed before the others surrendered. Shocked and despondent, the disarmed men looked on as their palace and temples were stripped of their treasures. A band of Dulichians discovered a vast wine-cellar beneath the citadel and many amphorae of the best local vintage were loaded on to the requisitioned ox-wagons with all the gold, silver, copper and bronze that could be quickly gathered. Only a few hours after the raid had begun, and having taken no losses, the elated looters were back in the cove getting very drunk.
That might have been the end of it had not two of the outraged citizens of Ismarus ridden throughout the night stirring up support from the neighbouring cities, towns and villages. Early the next day, when the drunken raiders were barely coming to their senses again, they found themselves confronted by a superior force of Ciconian warriors gathered on the cliff-top above them.
Odysseus and his followers would almost certainly have been wiped out if the narrowness of the cliff-paths had not prevented their enemies from bringing their full force against them in a single attack. Even so, the top-knotted Ciconians fell on them in numbers. Their shouts and ululations panicked the long-horned oxen that had dragged the loaded wagons to the cove, and the Ithacans were caught up in a desperate skirmish across the strand as they tried to cover the retreat to the ships.
With his unseaworthy vessel still propped on the beach, Sinon died in that fight as did most of his crew. Meges was among those trampled beneath the hooves of the terrified long-horns. The black skin of Odysseus’ herald Eurybates was torn into a vivid gash where a slingshot grazed his brow. Other men were brought down by archers as they scrambled aboard their ships. Odysseus himself was lucky to escape with his life when a brawny axe-wielding barbarian bore down on him in the fray. A youngster called Elpenor who had slept aboard The Fair Return that night saw the ruffian coming and let fly an arrow that pierced his lung before the axe could fall.
Somehow the Argives managed to run their ships out into the sea but it soon became clear that every crew was depleted by losses. As his own vessel rose on the heavy swell, Odysseus looked back from where he strained at his oar and saw the Cicones finishing off the wounded. Further along the beach others were reclaiming the pile of spoil that lay shining in a patch of sunlight near to where the fractured belly of The Jolly Dolphin lay careened on the strand. Then the scarlet prow of The Fair Return plunged into a trough and when it rose again the sunlight had faded from the beach.
Out across the sea, dense thunderheads rose black against the sky. Odysseus sensed their menace in the change of the light and the smell of the wind. The ship rolled among green breakers. Seabirds canted along the channels of the air. Around him, dismayed by the abrupt alteration in their fortunes, men gasped and groaned. Odysseus tried to fix his mind on the image of his wife Penelope waiting for him at home on Ithaca; but with each pull on the oar he felt himself drawn deeper into Poseidon’s grip, and deeper still into despair.
Cassandra
A knocking at the door of her bedchamber woke Clytaemnestra from her sleep. Cautioning Aegisthus to lie still and be silent, she left the bed, crossed to the door, opened it, and listened as, in a voice trembling with excitement and apprehension, Marpessa, the trusted old beldame who aided the furtive comings and goings of Aegisthus, broke the news.
Aware of the sudden agitation of her heart, Clytaemnestra said, ‘There can be no mistake?’
‘I had it directly from the watchman,’ Marpessa answered. ‘The beacon fire was lit on Mount Arachne less than an hour ago. I came to wake you straight away.’
Clytaemnestra stood quite still in the night. After all the uncertain days of waiting and scheming, time was accelerating round her. Impossible at this hour, at this news, to sustain the studied calm that was her customary cold manner. Once again her heart became a cockpit of emotions. She gripped Marpessa in a fierce embrace, unable to repress the surge of elation that came with the news that the Argive host had triumphed in the greatest war the world had ever seen. How many hours had she and Agamemnon spent planning for this victory — prising the warlords of Argos out of their comfortable lives, requisitioning the ships, haggling over the price of supplies, making sure that the troops were well-armed, dealing with the countless logistical problems thrown up by the unprecedented task of moving a hundred thousand men from one side of the Aegean to the other? And there were so many setbacks, defeats and disappointments across the years that there had been times when the whole enterprise felt futile and absurd, a hubristic fantasy of two ambitious minds. Then a catastrophic storm had blown the fleet back to Aulis, and with that had come the atrocity of her daughter’s death. Later Achilles had been slain, and Ajax too had died among countless lesser losses. Yet despite everything, Agamemnon had won through. The unbreachable walls of Troy were breached. Priam must be dead already, and the richest city in Asia looted and in flames. It was impossible, utterly impossible, for her heart not to sway with exhilaration at the titanic scale of what had been achieved!
Yet since the day that Aegisthus had come at her bidding to Mycenae, the prospect of Agamemnon returning to her bed in triumph had become more loathsome to her mind and senses than it had ever been. Whatever else he might be, he remained the slayer of her children still. There were crimes on his head that could never be forgiven. So along with the excitement came an almost breathless trepidation at the thought of what she planned to do.
Through an invisible effort of the will, Clytaemnestra stilled the dark elation in her heart. ‘Very well, Marpessa,’ she said quietly as though the woman had just informed her of some minor success in the domestic arrangements of the palace. ‘This news is good. But return to your bed now. There will be time enough to celebrate tomorrow.’
Wondering once more at the strange implacability of the mistress she served, Marpessa nodded and turned away. Clytaemnestra lifted the oil-lamp from the sconce by the door and crossed back through into her bedchamber where Aegisthus was sitting up against the pillows with a wry smile on his face.
‘You heard?’ she said.
‘The Lion of Mycenae is Lord of Asia at last.’
‘For the moment — unless he lingers too long and the Hittite legions push him back into the sea.’
‘He must have received your warning by now.’
‘No acknowledgement has come. We cannot yet be sure.’
Aegisthus smiled, pulling back the covers for her. ‘Not that it makes a great deal of difference. Either way, he’s a dead man.’
‘It makes a great deal of difference. I want him to bring home the treasure of Troy before he crosses to the Land of Shades.’ Clytaemnestra put down the lamp but she did not yet return to the bed. ‘How long do you think it will take him to get back to Mycenae?’
‘That rather depends on how much time they spend arguing over the spoils. And then there’s the weather, of course. The seas are running high on this side of the Aegean and the wind is out of the east, so conditions are not likely to be any better over there and may be worse. I would guess we have at least a week to wait. Probably rather longer.’ Aegisthus lay down in the bed again with his hands crossed beneath his head. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be a nerve-racking time.’
Gathering a shawl about her shoulders. Clytaemnestra sat down beside him, her eyes narrowing in thought. ‘We should send the children away tomorrow,’ she decided. ‘Helen’s girl must go back to Sparta to await the return of Menelaus. I shall put Orestes and Electra in the charge of old Podargus at Midea until things have settled down here in Mycenae.’
‘The boy will be difficult,’ Aegisthus said. ‘He’s sure to want to witness his father’s triumph.’
‘Orestes will do as I tell him.’
‘Which is more than I can say. He grows more insubordinate every day.’
Though she felt the heat rising to her throat, Clytaemnestra kept her voice calm. ‘He’s a tethered bull-calf,’ she said. ‘He’s young, and frustrated that he’s missing the war. Be patient with him. Orestes has no great love for his father. He’ll come round well enough in time.’
The Return From Troy Page 16