‘All right,’ Odysseus called back, ‘let’s find out who they are.’
To his astonishment, as they bore down on the first of the ships, he heard a voice call out across the water, ‘Ahoy The Fair Return! Do you still have Odysseus of Ithaca aboard?’
Gripping a halyard, Odysseus mounted the rail. ‘And if we do?’ he shouted.
‘Then his old friend Diomedes, son of Tydeus, would like to drink to his survival.’
Equally amazed to have encountered one another in these strange waters, the two comrades greeted one another with delight from ship to ship, but as their conversation developed the mood swiftly darkened. Diomedes was rankling with bitterness that he should have fought for so long abroad only to find his city and kingdom stolen from him on his return.
‘I can live happily enough without that bitch of a wife,’ he growled. ‘But having struggled home after war and wounds and shipwreck, that I should be reduced to this …’ He gestured at the little, weather-battered fleet that he and his followers had managed to scrape together from the shipyards of Argos. ‘And what irks me most is that when we gathered at Corinth we couldn’t rally enough support to reclaim what we’d lost. Even Nestor was too old and war-weary to help us out.’
Feeling the breath tighten in his chest, Odysseus said, ‘Was there no one there from Ithaca?’
Diomedes shook his head. ‘If you ask me, you’ve done the right thing in not trying to get back. That bastard Nauplius did a good job of shafting all of us. Agamemnon dead, Idomeneus and me deposed … At least you’ve been spared the humiliation of going back and finding a younger man in your bed.’
‘How do you know that’s happening?’ Odysseus demanded. ‘Do you know it for certain?’
‘Not for certain, no. But the word at Corinth was that the centre of power in the Ionian Islands has shifted from Ithaca to Dulichion. They’re all sure you’re dead by now, and your father isn’t strong enough to hold the kingdom together. I heard there’s some ambitious young prince over there … I can’t remember his name …’
‘Amphinomus.’
‘Yes, that’s him. Well, there’s a strong rumour abroad that he and Penelope …’ Seeing the pain on his old comrade’s face, Diomedes brought his fist down on the rail where he stood. ‘In the name of all the gods, what’s happening in the world? I could hardly believe my ears ten years ago when I was told that Helen had deserted Menelaus for that Trojan dandy, and now look. Clytaemnestra in bed with Aegisthus, Idomeneus’ wife sporting with her lover in Crete, my own accursed slut Agialeia … It curdles my bowels just to think of it. Aphrodite has taken her vengeance on us all.’ He looked across at his friend’s grim face. ‘So where are you bound?’ he asked. ‘Have you taken to roving again or are you looking for some place to settle, like we are?’
In a low voice, hoarse with feeling, Odysseus said, ‘I was making for Ithaca.’
Only then did Diomedes understand the full savage impact of his words on his friend’s heart. ‘Well, it’s up to you,’ he said, ‘but think how much time’s gone by. Someone’s sure to have made a bid for power by now. Penelope’s a good woman, I know, but so was Helen and think what happened there.’ He sniffed and scowled. ‘It seems there’s a whore inside every one of them just aching to break out. Go back if you like, but I very much doubt you’ll fare any better than the rest of us.’
Odysseus was staring down into the blue-green swell between the two ships, thinking of the great bed he had built for his wife and himself. He had carved its posts from the bole of the olive tree around which their whole private apartment had been raised. He had known so many hours of joy there; and so much grief too as Penelope miscarried twice before his infant son Telemachus was brought to term. And then, after Menelaus and Palamedes had come to demand that he honour the oath he had sworn at Sparta and follow them to the war at Troy, Penelope had lain listening to him on that bed for hour after hour. He had known that she no more wanted him to go to Troy than he truly wanted to go himself; yet neither would she seek to manipulate him, fairly or otherwise, into compromising his honour. Ever since those anguished hours, he had tried to think the thing through again and again, and had always ended with the only conclusion that was tolerable to him — that he had been left with no choice. But after all the waste and horror of those years, after all the losses and deaths, he knew now that it simply wasn’t true. He had always had a choice. Penelope had been quietly waiting for him to make the right choice, and he had chosen wrongly.
So what right did he have to expect her to wait for him year after year, wasting her youth and beauty as she pined over the memory of the husband who had betrayed their love? He had no right. No right at all. Or if he had ever done so, he had surely forfeited it by becoming the man of blood that he was.
This chance encounter with Diomedes on the high seas had quite extinguished whatever confidence had been briefly restored to him by the rites on Aeolia. Odysseus heard himself utter a little bitter laugh. Only a god so cruel and capricious that he lacked all compassion for the vulnerable human heart could have arranged for such a meeting to happen. Or perhaps after all there were no gods to preside over the affairs of men, perhaps only the fierce, impersonal forces of wind, weather and the unstable earth governed a universe in which human beings coupled with the lust of animals and devoured each other the same way.
‘Why not join forces with us?’ Diomedes was calling across the water. ‘We’re heading northwards up the coast of Italy. I’m told the people are still tribal there — a patchwork of small chiefdoms living a hundred years behind the times, and either quarrelling with one another or holing up out of harm’s way. We could build a new empire there together, you and me. What do you say?’
Odysseus stared across at where the familiar figure of his old comrade bobbed and swayed with the motion of his ship. ‘I’ve heard enough talk of empires.’ The wind picked up his words and scattered them. ‘I’ll take my chances at sea.’
But the encounter had an unsettling effect on the crews of both Odysseus’s ships, many of whom were disgruntled by the realization that their leader no longer intended to make the run home for Ithaca. That afternoon they made landfall on the coast of Sicily. The two ships tied up side by side among the rocks of a gloomy cove that was sheltered from both wind and sun by the high cliffs all around. While scouts went out to survey the surrounding terrain, Odysseus and Demonax conferred together and agreed that the most sensible course was to sort the men into two groups — those still eager to go home, who would put to sea in the Swordfish the next day, and those who, for one reason or another, preferred to sign on for the roving life with Odysseus.
The scouts returned with the news that they had landed in the country of the Laestrygonians, a primitive, sheep-rearing people who, as far as they could gather from the halting exchanges with the woman they had interrogated, were descended from an aboriginal race of giants.
‘How big was this woman?’ Odysseus asked.
‘She was big enough,’ his chief scout answered.
‘To eat you?’ Demonax joshed him.
‘Well, I don’t know about that. But she was big.’
‘She was probably just trying to scare you off,’ Odysseus said. ‘But it sounds as if there’s nothing to keep us here anyway. We’ll take as many of their sheep as we need and the two ships can go their separate ways tomorrow.’ He looked across at his other captain. ‘What about you, Demonax? Will you stay with me or take the Swordfish home?’
Demonax pensively stroked his beard. ‘I wish I didn’t have to choose,’ he said.
‘But you do,’ Odysseus answered. ‘I’m not going back to Ithaca.’
Demonax considered the discomfited group of men who were missing their wives and families and farms back home, or had simply grown tired of war and wandering. ‘There isn’t a decent navigator among that lot,’ he grunted. ‘If I’m not there to pilot them, they’ll end up back in Libya or run aground on a lee shore. It looks like we’ve come to the part
ing of the ways, old friend. I think we should get very drunk tonight.’
And that, after they had rustled the sheep they needed from the grazing flocks, was exactly what they did. There were many sore heads and a lot of heavy hearts when they woke next day in the chilly light of the cove and prepared themselves for parting. The narrow strand was so rugged that most of the men had decided to sleep on board ship, and they were still there, stowing away their bedding and making ready to row out to sea when the first of the rocks came hurtling over the edge of the cliff.
It was so large a boulder that it must have been prised loose with levers. Colliding with the rocks below, it smashed into the Swordfish, splintering her planks, breaking through the rail and cracking the mast. The morning was loud with the screams of injured men and the great booming shouts of triumph that came from the top of the cliff. Odysseus looked up and saw a gang of huge figures up there carrying what looked like a tree-trunk to the next boulder, while others began pelting the stricken Swordfish with smaller rocks. He was ordering his own crew to push off as quickly as they could when he saw Demonax fall to the deck with his skull shattered by a stone. A moment later the damaged mast of the Swordfish creaked and swayed for a moment; then it collapsed over the ship in a tangle of sailcloth, spar, pulley-blocks and ropes.
Odysseus joined his bewildered men in the struggle to get The Fair Return out into deeper water before the next boulder fell. He could hear men crying out to him for help as his cutwater crunched clear of the strand. With no need for orders, Baius was working the steering oar to turn her head out to sea, but as Odysseus stared back up the cliff he saw the next rock topple over the edge and hurtle towards him. He heard the Laestrygonian giants give another great shout, but half-way down the cliff-face, the boulder was deflected from its course by a protruding neck of rock. It plunged into the water three yards wide of The Fair Return yet close enough to drench him with the great fountain of water it raised. Then his crew were at the oars, pulling away from the strand with all their might.
Odysseus lay in his hammock aboard ship that night wondering whether a man had ever been so cursed by misfortune. Fearful of venturing ashore again in those parts, they had dropped a stone anchor some distance offshore in a sheltered bay and he had given orders for two men to be on watch at all times. The ship lazed in quiet waters making barely a sound, and he could hear some of his men muttering together further forward of where he lay.
Not for the first time that day, young Elpenor was remarking on the good luck that had brought him back to The Fair Return to collect a bag he’d forgotten when otherwise he might have been crushed under the stone that smashed into the Swordfish. But most of the crew were shocked and demoralised by the loss of their comrades. Someone growled that Elpenor should stop going on about his luck and there was an uneasy silence before the muttering began again.
Though not all their words were distinct, it came clear to Odysseus that some of his men were now questioning his judgement. Such a thing had never happened before in all his years of command, but who could blame them for it? Each time he took a decision it seemed only to invoke a hostile fate, and the wind that had blown them from Aeolia was more constant than his own tormented mind. His heart stretched like a drum-skin inside him each time he remembered that the men killed aboard the Swordfish were the ones who most dearly wanted to go home. Better that his own ship had been sunk, for he and his crew were already dead to their homeland. But that was not the way of things in this universe of storms and monsters. And he, who had always prided himself on the strength of his mind, could no longer trust it.
Eventually Odysseus fell into a thick and troubled sleep. When he woke again, hours later, the ship had swung about on its anchor. The wind had veered in the night and a stiff gale was buffeting his ship out of the south. So much, he thought, for Aeolus and his magic.
Only when he went under the afterdeck to take a change of clothes from his sea-chest did he see the goatskin bag lying beside it with the silver twine unloosed around its neck.
White-faced with rage, he picked it up and ducked his head back into the light.
Who in the name of Zeus has dared to lay hands on this?’ he demanded. The crew stared back at him, most of them bewildered, a few of the others shame-faced and shifty.
‘Grinus,’ he shouted to the nearest man, ‘what do you know about this?’
Fat Grinus shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, but Odysseus did not miss the baleful glance he cast at Elpenor.
Eurylochus said, ‘If you don’t own up, Elpenor, I’ll throw you overboard myself.’
Sickly-faced and stammering, Elpenor stared down at his feet as he confessed to having got drunk and taken a peak inside the captain’s bag.
‘It was only out of curiosity,’ he pleaded. ‘I never meant to take nothing. Anyway, there’s no great harm done, is there, sir? I mean, there was nothing in there but air, which struck me as an empty sort of gift for a king to give a guest.’
Odysseus stood shaking before the frightened young man. Had he not known and loved Elpenor’s father all his days he might have struck the young fool down there and then on the spot. But what was the point? No point at all. No point even in explaining the harm that had been done, for his own decision not to sail home had already refused the magic by which Aeolus and his priests had confined all the countervailing winds inside that goatskin bag.
Rather than row against the strength of the gale, Odysseus decided to let it blow him northwards and, as if by an ironical reversal of the magic that had brought him from that place, the wind blew his ship back to Aeolia. But the island had changed almost beyond recognition in his absence. Not physically so, for the smoke still drifted from the fire-mountain and the marble quay glinted as brightly as ever; but the faces of the people were so stricken by grief that pestilence might have returned to the island. Yet he could find no one willing to speak of the cause of their sorrow till he came to the palace and found his wish for an audience with the king blocked by the herald who rose from his seat at the door to the royal apartment. Having expressed his surprise at seeing Odysseus again, the herald declared gravely that it was a time of mourning on Aeolia. ‘We have been visited by great tragedy,’ he said, ‘and my lord the King has made it plain that he wishes to see no one until he has come to terms with his loss.’
Wanting at least to leave some appropriate message of condolence, Odysseus tried to persuade him to say more about the nature of that loss, but the herald glanced away, saying that he preferred not to speak of it.
‘Is it the king’s son?’ Odysseus pressed. ‘Has he lost his heir?’
Uneasily, the herald shook his head. ‘No, Macareus still lives.’
‘Then his daughter? Has some mischance befallen Canace?’
‘No mischance,’ the herald answered. ‘Yet Canace is dead.’
Odysseus recalled the young woman, vivid with life — he had used those very words of her — uttering the wondrous strains of her song before all the people. There had been no indication of illness anywhere about her. He simply could not conceive how anything other than a terrible accident could have taken her life.
‘But how?’ he protested as if this diligent officer of the court was responsible for an offence against all reason. ‘How could it have happened?’ When the herald grimly shook his head and turned away once again, Odysseus raised his voice with all the royal authority he could command. ‘King Aeolus is my friend. He was there beside me in my own hour of need, and I will not leave this place till I have been given the chance to offer him such comfort as I can.’
‘The King will see no one,’ the herald said, but at that moment the doors of the apartment opened and Aeolus was standing there, his robes torn, his long white hair dishevelled, his face a mask of fury and grief. He raised a quivering hand and pointed it at Odysseus. ‘Get your accursed presence from my land,’ he cried. ‘I sent you once from here with a fair wind at your back, little knowing what evil omen you had laid on me when
you saw my daughter in her blood. If you are here again, Odysseus of Ithaca, it can only be because the gods have turned their faces against you as they have done against me. Get you from my sight.’
Shocked by the vehemence of the assault, Odysseus stared at him aghast.
‘I have done nothing to wish your majesty harm,’ he protested. ‘If I am here on Aeolia again it is only because an ignorant fool among my crew meddled with the gift you gave me.’
‘It is through our folly that the gods work justice on us,’ Aeolus retorted.
‘It may be so, but I swear that I had no hand in your daughter’s death.’
‘This,’ — Aeolus held up his trembling right hand — ‘this is the hand that struck my whore of a daughter down. I found them together on the night that you sailed. They were plotting in their lust, waiting for me to die so they could bring the goddess back into her power and rule in the Egyptian manner - king and queen, brother and sister, equal on their thrones as in the foulness of their bed.’ Aeolus looked up, panting, from the diseased vision that possessed his mind. ‘And in my love for them,’ he gasped, ‘I was too blind to see it.’
Tears were pouring from his eyes, but the only love evident there was the insane, contraverted love of an old man who had endured too much grief and found himself overwhelmed by more primitive emotions he could not control.
‘Your vision of blood spoke true, Odysseus of Ithaca,’ he snarled at the dumbstruck man across from him. ‘Now get you gone from my island lest the gods find other ways to infect me with the curses that you bring.’
Before Odysseus could speak, Aeolus had turned away and slammed shut the doors behind him. Odysseus glanced helplessly at the herald, who merely shook his troubled head and averted his eyes. An appalling silence filled the hall.
When he returned, still reeling from the shock, to his ship,
Odysseus found his crew still puzzled and dismayed by the desolation of the island. Eurylochus was playing knucklebones with the Libyan boy Hermes who had insisted on coming with him out of Zarzis. Others lounged about the deck, grumbling over their fate. Odysseus was about to climb aboard when a figure wrapped in a dirty white robe came running from an alley-way between two buildings off the quay, threw himself at his feet on the marble wharf, and grasped him by the legs.
The Return From Troy Page 31