The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

by Iliffe, Glyn

  ‘And if the oracle says he will never return?’

  ‘Then I will choose a new husband within the year.’

  Antinous stood up angrily.

  ‘I protest. She’s trying to delay –’

  ‘Shut up and sit down,’ his father ordered.

  Penelope saw the doubt in Eupeithes’s eyes and held out her hands imploringly towards him.

  ‘Think about what I’m saying. If any new king is to hold power, he must have unassailable legitimacy. If I remarry in two years’ time, the people might accept my husband for a while, but won’t their eyes always be gazing towards the distant horizon, wondering when the true king will return? But if we consult the Pythoness and she says Odysseus will never return, or if he doesn’t come back by the prophesied date, then everyone will know the new king has the approval of the gods. They’ll accept Odysseus is never coming home and will welcome my new husband openly.’

  Eupeithes’s eyes narrowed as he pondered Penelope’s words, but he did not have to think for long.

  ‘You speak wisely, my queen, and I accept your condition. Antinous and Mentor will go to Mount Parnassus, escorted by an armed guard. That way, there will be plenty of witnesses to the oracle and no-one can change the Pythoness’s prophetic words to suit their own ends. Agreed?’

  Penelope nodded and sat down again, hoping her gamble would pay off.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  PRISONER OF APHEIDAS

  Eperitus woke slowly, drawn out of his dream by the mingled aromas of woodsmoke and the scent of flowers. He heard the crackle and spit of a fire and beneath it the whisper of soft voices. His eyelids were heavy – too heavy yet to open – and he could detect little or no light through the thin layers of skin. There was a throbbing ache inside his head that seemed to be faintly echoed by every muscle in his body, and as he felt the warm furs across his naked chest and the pliant mattress beneath him he wondered whether he was back in his hut in the Greek camp. But as his confused mind began to read and order the signals his senses were feeding it, a deeper instinct informed him that he was not in his hut or anywhere else he recognised. Then the lazy fumbling of his senses was trumped by the recollection of his father’s face, charging at him with his sword drawn. His eyes flashed open and he tried to sit up.

  It was as if a strong man was holding each of his limbs, pinning them to the table and defeating every effort he made to rise. As he fought his weakness for a second time, the figure of a woman appeared above him. She laid a gentle hand upon his chest, easing him back down to the mattress, and with her other hand placed a damp cloth on his temple.

  ‘Be still,’ she said firmly in accented Greek. ‘Your wounds have weakened you. There is no point in fighting them.’

  Her face was old and soft, though lined with concern, and her grey hair was tied up in a bun at the back of her head. She was kneeling beside him and high above her he could see a shadowy ceiling, where faded murals of the moon and stars were barely visible through a fine haze of smoke. He could also see the tops of the four wooden pillars that supported the roof, as well as the upper reaches of plastered walls where paintings of tall, indistinct figures twitched in the firelight. It was a hall of some kind, confirming to him that he was not back in the Greek camp. The woman’s accent, he noted, was Trojan, but that meant little when almost all the slaves owned by the Greeks were from Ilium.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You are in Troy, in the house of my master.’

  Troy. The word had a crushing effect on his spirit. Somehow, he had been captured and taken back to the city of his enemies. For all he knew, the battle could have ended in a Trojan victory and his countrymen might all be slain, prisoners like himself, or sailing back across the Aegean to Greece in defeat. If that was the case, he hoped that Odysseus and the rest of the Ithacans had been able to slip away in time.

  ‘Then the battle was lost and the Trojans were victorious?’

  The old woman shook her head.

  ‘It ended in the same way as all its predecessors – the plain full of dead men and both armies licking their wounds behind the safety of their respective walls. And don’t ask me to tell you what happened,’ she said, intercepting his next question. ‘I don’t know and I don’t much care.’

  ‘Then tell me your name.’

  ‘I am Clymene,’ the woman said.

  The name was common enough, but Eperitus followed his instincts.

  ‘Palamedes’s mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, a little surprised that he knew of her. Then her attitude stiffened. ‘You Greeks stoned him to death.’

  Eperitus felt a pang of guilt as he recalled how Odysseus had brought about Palamedes’s execution, after discovering the Nauplian prince was secretly passing Agamemnon’s strategies to the Trojans. Only as Eperitus had escorted him to his death did he reveal that his mother was a servant woman in Troy – a Trojan herself – and that Apheidas had threatened to kill her if Palamedes did not betray his fellow Greeks. As the offspring of Greek and Trojan parents himself, Eperitus had sympathised with Palamedes, despite his treachery.

  ‘I had no part in his stoning,’ he said, ‘though I was the one who escorted him to his execution. It was then he told me about you and how he had been forced to betray Agamemnon for your sake. I pitied him and he made me promise to protect you if the Greeks ever sacked Troy.’

  ‘Then his last thoughts were of me,’ Clymene said. There were already tears in her eyes at the mention of her dead son. ‘Tell me, was his death –’

  ‘It was quick,’ he said, recalling how the rocks hurled by the Greek kings had split his skin and cracked his bones until he was no longer recognisable as a human being. They were silent for a while before Eperitus spoke again. ‘Tell me something, Clymene: are you still Apheidas’s servant?’

  She looked away uncomfortably and nodded. ‘Yes, my lord, and you are a prisoner in your father’s house. He brought you back from the battlefield, even while his horsemen were still covering the long retreat to Troy. You had many cuts and bruises, gained falling from a horse – or so he told us – though by the blessing of some god your bones were not broken. You also had an arrow wound in your leg, and that was more serious. He gave you into our care and threatened us both with death if we did not save you; so we have tended your wounds for two days and a night while you slept, and you are already making a quick recovery.’

  ‘Then you have my thanks, Clymene. But you say there were two of you.’

  ‘Mine was the knowledge that healed your wounds, but the care – the love – that tended to them without resting was –’

  ‘Was mine.’

  Eperitus recognised the voice, and this time as he struggled to sit up Clymene helped to lift him onto one elbow. He looked around the shadowy hall – by the darkness he knew it had to be late evening of the day after the battle – seeing the fire blazing in the hearth and noting the armed guard standing at a nearby doorway. And then he saw her.

  Astynome stood in the shadows a few paces behind Clymene, dressed in a simple white chiton that did little to hide the outline of the tall, slim body he knew so intimately. Her hair hung down over her shoulders in broad black tangles, framing the fine features of the face he had fallen in love with: the full lips that had declared her love for him in words and kisses; the small nose and smooth cheekbones he had once touched with such affection; and the dark eyes that had looked into his with real longing, but had kept from him the secrets of her traitor’s heart. As they looked at him now he felt his veins flush with bitterness at the memory of her betrayal. Yet his anger could not completely conquer his desire to reach out and touch her, to hold her again and pretend nothing had ever come between them. For though she had been sent as a snare to draw him into his father’s clutches, she had instead caught him up in her own plans – plans for a home and a family, away from the wars and politics of more powerful men. For a while he had glimpsed an alternative to the violent and glorious, but ultimately lonely,
life of a warrior, only to find that the woman who had sold it to him was a liar.

  ‘I have been at your side ever since Apheidas brought you wounded and unconscious from the battlefield,’ Astynome said, leaving the shadows and walking to his side. As she knelt beside him, Clymene stood and moved back. ‘I haven’t left you for a moment, unless it was to fetch water or clean bandages. I even slept beside you last night, Eperitus, with my head against your shoulder and my arm across your chest.’

  She smiled as she spoke, almost forgetting he was now awake as she reached out to touch his muscular arm. He grabbed her wrist, making her gasp as she felt the anger in his grip.

  ‘Save me the mock affection. Whatever care you have administered was given on the orders of your master, not out of concern for me. If you had loved me, Astynome, you would have let me die; better that than to live as a prisoner of my father.’

  ‘Let you die? Not while it was in my power to save you. Besides, Apheidas may have commanded me to keep you alive on pain of death, but the prayers I’ve given for your life and the offerings that I sent to the temple of Athena were my own. I love you, Eperitus, even if you have learned to hate me.’

  ‘You were sent by my father to lead me into a trap!’

  ‘I didn’t know you then. When we first met, I was a loyal Trojan doing my lord’s bidding, under the illusion it would bring about the end of the war.’ She slipped her wrist from his grip and took his hand. ‘And then I fell in love with you.’

  Eperitus sensed the walls of his fury bend beneath the touch of her warm fingers. He felt a powerful urge to take her in his arms and kiss her, healing the wounds she had inflicted on him. But his warrior’s caution maintained its defences against her, knowing she had deceived him once before. He took his hand from hers.

  ‘If you loved me, why did you continue your deceit? You could have told me the truth, but you chose to carry out my father’s commands to the very end.’

  ‘Weren’t you listening, that night at the temple of Thymbrean Apollo?’ she asked, her tone sharp with reciprocal anger. ‘Did you not hear, or did you not want to hear? I didn’t know he was planning to betray Troy to the Greeks in return for Priam’s throne, or that you were to be a pawn in his ambitions. When he told me he could make you join the Trojans and put an end to the war I trusted him, and that’s why I carried on with his plan. And what choice did I have? He is my master: if I had refused to do what he told me, he would never have allowed me to see you again.’

  Eperitus looked into Astynome’s eyes and knew she was right. He had not considered the difficulties she had faced before, and now that he did he saw that she had never been given any option but to see out Apheidas’s orders. But as the hardness in his heart began to soften, so the memory of how much he had suffered because of her stopped him from taking her hand and confessing that he still loved her. Besides, he reminded himself, he was still a prisoner in his father’s house.

  ‘And where is Apheidas now? Has he sent you to soften me up – to persuade me to join him again?’

  Astynome closed her eyes and turned her head away with a sigh, and Eperitus knew he had allowed his bitterness too much rein.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. You must know why I’m here, though, why he’s permitted me to live instead of killing me on the battlefield? Does he think he can appeal to the Trojan blood in my veins again? If so, you can tell him I’m loyal to my Greek ancestry, not to some foreign culture I’m more intent than ever on seeing destroyed.’

  ‘Do you think he would tell his plans to me, a mere servant? All I know is that he was in a jubilant mood after the battle. Along with Cassandra, he’s the only person in Troy who seems pleased at the death of King Eurypylus – as if Trojan victory in battle doesn’t suit his ambitions. The only other thing I know is that he’s keen for you to regain consciousness.’

  ‘So he either wants to kill me while I’m wide awake, or he has other designs for me.’

  ‘Then we will stop him. Together. You remember how you used to tell me about him in your hut, about the kind of man he is? To my shame I did not believe you, because the Apheidas I knew had shown me nothing but kindness after my husband’s death. Now I know you were right, and –’ she looked at the guard and Clymene, and lowered her voice, ‘and I will help you to kill him if you still desire revenge.’

  ‘Revenge?’ Eperitus replied, feeling suddenly tired once more. ‘Yes, I’ve wanted it more than ever since you and I were last together – vengeance for King Pandion, and now for Arceisius too. But how will you help me?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but a chance will arrive. I will pray to the gods for one.’

  Eperitus’s tiredness was deepening rapidly, weakening his desire to continue his show of resistance to Astynome. He knew in his heart he loved her as much as he had ever done, and before he slipped back into unconsciousness he wanted to tell her that. Weakly, he pulled his other arm free of the blanket and placed his hand on her thigh, moving it around to her hip. For a moment he felt as if his eyes would fill with tears, so happy was he to feel her warm skin beneath his fingertips and have her back at his side.

  ‘I won’t allow you to put yourself at risk, my love,’ he said, fighting now just to speak. ‘If I escape and he ever finds out you helped me – ’

  Her face, which had been concerned by his failing strength, now broke into a smile. She squeezed his hand and bent down, placing her lips on his.

  ‘Then take me with you. My loyalty is to you now, Eperitus, not to Troy. I can return to my father on Chryse and wait for you there until the war ends. But now you must sleep. We will make our plans when you awake.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

  The old beggar opened his eyes to the first light of day and the smell of cooked breakfast. It awoke the gnawing hunger in his stomach and for a moment he thought of rising and petitioning the nearby Myrmidons for their leftovers. But the air beyond his dew-damp cloak was chilly with the approach of autumn, and his bed of hay was still snug and soft – a luxury for a man in his unfortunate position. Daring to stretch out an arm from his protective cocoon, he grabbed a pile of the hay and pulled it closer, stuffing it into a gap that was letting in the cold. Then his nostrils twitched at the pungent reek of horse manure and he saw that one of his bedfellows had risen early and left a heap of fresh dung close to his head. The beggar contemplated the steaming cluster for a moment, then snatched a few handfuls and pushed them into the hay beneath his back. They were like hot coals to his chilled body, and the stench and the disdainful look he received from the white mare that had produced them were a small price to pay for a little heat.

  For a while after, he struggled between a reluctance to leave his cosy bed and the need to find something for his nagging stomach. His last meal had been a mixture of grain, rye and barley picked from the hay, where they had fallen from the feedbags of the horses as they ate. Then his decision was made for him: two men were approaching the pens where he lay, talking in the harsh accent of the Myrmidons. The beggar’s first instinct was to cover himself in more hay and hope they did not see him, but his common sense told him a man of his heavy build would need more than a few strands of dry grass to hide behind. So he stood, brushed off some of the dung, and stooped between the wooden bars that kept the four horses from escaping.

  ‘Who in Ares’s name are you?’ one of the Myrmidons snarled. ‘And what’re you doing in with the horses?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ the beggar replied haughtily, taking his gnarled staff from the fence post where he had left it the night before and leaning his weight upon it. ‘A man’s entitled to sleep, ain’t he – even if he’s gotta lay his head down with beasts!’

  The Myrmidons closed on him angrily, only stopping as they caught the stench of manure and wrinkling their noses up at him in disgust. His appearance matched his aroma. His tunic and cloak were so ragged and torn that large patches of grimy brown skin were visible
through the rents. His belt was a long piece of rope – wound several times about his waist – and he wore no sandals, leaving his bare feet caked in manure and dust. His face was almost black with dirt, while his hair and beard were matted with filth and stuck all over with pieces of hay and other accumulated vegetation. And though once a thickset man – a farmer or fisherman, possibly, by his physique – his back was now curved and his knees bent outward so that he seemed a hunched, shuffling creature to their eyes.

  ‘Two of those “beasts”, as you call them, are immortal,’ the first Myrmidon sneered. ‘And if their master had caught you in with them, rather than us, he’d have lopped off your head by now and thrown your corpse into the sea for the fish to feed on.’

  ‘Immortal, you say? Then surely they’re the horses of Achilles – Balius and Xanthus.’

  ‘Not any more,’ the second Myrmidon corrected. ‘Achilles is dead and now they belong to his son, Neoptolemus. And unless you want him to find you here then you’d better get on your way.’

  The beggar glanced over towards the huts and tents where the Myrmidon army had been camped for ten years, then looked back at the two men and nodded. But as he turned to go he saw the bags of feed hanging from each of their arms and pointed at the pile of small, red apples on top.

  ‘Will you spare an old man an apple? I can’t remember the last time I had a whole apple just to meself.’

  ‘Get on with you!’ one of the men shouted, kicking his behind and sending him sprawling into the dry grass.

  The beggar watched the Myrmidons walk away laughing, then slowly picked himself up and began shuffling towards the mass of tents that constituted the rest of the Greek camp. Though the army had routed the Trojans and their Mysian allies several days before, the mood in the camp had become sullen again. Until the arrival of Neoptolemus the Greeks had suffered many casualties, and though they had repaid their enemies in great slaughter, the glory of victory had quickly grown stale and lost its appeal. The survivors mourned their fallen comrades, but even more now they longed for the final conquest of Troy that would release them from their oaths and allow them to return home. As the beggar passed between them, he saw the emptiness in their dark-ringed eyes and knew that they were at the last ebb of their strength. The coming of Neoptolemus – who had taken Achilles’s position at the head of the Myrmidons and now lived in his father’s hut – and his defeat of King Eurypylus had stretched their hope a little further, but it would not endure forever. The beggar could sense the war’s end was close now, just as surely as the last days of summer were passing and the autumn was waiting to take its place.