The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

by Iliffe, Glyn

  He saw a banner fluttering in the wind ahead of him. It was green with a golden fox leaping across its centre, and though the material was faded and its edges tattered it remained a symbol of pride to the men who followed it into battle. The beggar watched it for a moment, then began shuffling towards it. Men looked up at the sound of his staff and quickly moved out of his way as they caught his stench and saw his filthy clothing. Eventually he found the hut beneath which the banner flickered and snapped. Three men were seated before it in tall chairs draped with rich furs – the sort of pelts, he noted with greedy eyes, that could make a beggar’s life so much warmer and happier. They were clearly warriors of high rank and renown, sitting with their legs thrust out before them and kraters of wine in their laps as they regarded him with a mixture of distaste and cautious interest.

  ‘Go warm yourself by the flames, father,’ one of them said, nodding towards the circular fire before their feet.

  A black pot hung over it, bathing the beggar’s senses with the delicious smell of porridge while provoking his stomach into a series of groans.

  ‘My thanks to you, King Diomedes,’ he said, settling cross-legged before the campfire and holding out his blackened hands towards its warmth.

  Diomedes gave him a half smile and nodded to a male slave, who walked over to the pot and doled out a ladleful of porridge into a wooden bowl. He passed it with disdain to the beggar, who cackled with joy as he raised the steaming broth to his lips.

  ‘He stinks like the lowest pit of Hades,’ Sthenelaus said, leaning slightly towards Diomedes.

  Euryalus, seated on the other side of Sthenelaus, could barely conceal the sneer on his lips as the beggar slurped noisily at the contents of the bowl.

  ‘You shouldn’t encourage these vagabonds, Diomedes. Show kindness to one and before you know it you’ll have an army of them at the door of your hut.’

  Diomedes smiled. ‘Let the man eat. Isn’t there enough suffering in this world without denying a poor wretch a morsel of food?’

  ‘There speaks a true king,’ said the beggar, casting the empty bowl aside and rising to his feet. ‘I knew you was Diomedes, as soon as I set eyes on you. Tydeus’s son, yet greater than he.’

  ‘It isn’t your place to make that judgement,’ Euryalus admonished him.

  The beggar flicked his hands up in a dismissive gesture.

  ‘Who said it were my judgement? A beggar may lack wisdom, but he ain’t deaf. I’m only repeating what I’ve heard others say: that Tydeus was a great man who killed Melanippus at the first siege of Thebes, though he died later of his wounds. But they also say he dishonoured himself by devouring Melanippus’s brains – something his son wouldn’t ever stoop to.’

  ‘You can’t deny he’s a well-informed vagabond,’ Sthenelaus commented with a grin.

  ‘As for your father, Sthenelaus,’ the beggar added, ‘they say he were killed by a thunderbolt, for boasting that even Zeus couldn’t stop him scaling the walls of Thebes.’

  ‘Who do you think you are!’ Sthenelaus snapped, rising from his chair.

  Diomedes laid a hand on his wrist and pulled him back down to his seat.

  ‘Whoever he is, he’s neither as ignorant nor as foolish as he looks. For all we know he could be a god in disguise. Do you have a bag, father?’

  The beggar pulled aside his cloak to reveal a battered leather purse, hung across his shoulder by an old cord. Diomedes stood and walked to his hut, signalling for the beggar to follow. As the bent figure entered behind him, he passed him a basket of bread and another of meat.

  ‘Here, fill your bag for your onward journey. And if a king can advise a pauper in his trade, I suggest in future you don’t insult the fathers of the men you’re begging from.’

  The old man smiled and took both baskets, somehow managing to cram the entire contents into his purse.

  ‘If I insult you,’ he asked, ‘why repay me with such generosity?’

  ‘Because there’s something about you. A presence that marks you out from the rest of your kind. You may be a god, or you may just be a good man fallen on hard times, but I know better than to turn you away with nothing more than scorn.’

  ‘Then perhaps I’m worth a cup of wine, too,’ the beggar grinned.

  Diomedes raised his eyebrows a little at the man’s audacity, then pointed to a table by the back wall, beneath the racks of armour and weapons he had stripped from his enemies, and told him to help himself. The beggar shuffled over and found a bowl of mixed wine surrounded by half a dozen silver goblets. After clattering about among them for a few moments, he turned with a cup in each hand, one of which he passed to Diomedes. The king took it at arm’s length, holding back from the stink that clung to his guest. Then the beggar poured a meagre libation onto the fleece at his feet and raised the goblet to his lips, drinking greedily so that the dark liquid spilled down over his beard and neck.

  ‘Zeus’s blessing on you, m’lord,’ he said, and with a fleeting bow pulled aside the curtain door and left the hut.

  Outside, the sun was beginning to climb and the cold air and dew that had marked the dawn were swiftly forgotten. The beggar nodded to Sthenelaus and Euryalus as they stared at him with disdain, then shuffled off in the direction of the camp walls. But as soon as he was out of sight of Diomedes’s hut, he placed less weight on his staff and quickened his pace, until a short while later he had climbed the slope and was approaching one of the gates. It was then he heard the sound he had been listening out for: a series of shouts and the clamour of men running some way behind him. He was barely feigning a shuffle now as he passed between the open gates and across the causeway, the guards keeping as far back from the shabby, foul-smelling old man as they could. But he had taken no more than a few paces on to the plain when a voice commanded him to stop. He turned to see Diomedes striding towards him, with Sthenelaus and Euryalus at each shoulder. A horse whip was in the king’s hand and his handsome face was creased with wrath.

  ‘Where is it?’ he demanded.

  The beggar backed away, instinctively covering his head with his forearms.

  ‘Where’s what? I ain’t got nothing but what you gave me, m’lord.’

  Diomedes reached across with a snarl and pulled open the beggar’s robes. The man fell unceremoniously onto his backside, causing a ripple of laughter from the gate guards. As he hit the ground, a silver goblet tumbled from his mess of rags and rolled in a semicircle towards Diomedes’s sandalled foot.

  ‘Call this nothing?’ he said, stooping to retrieve the cup.

  ‘You said to help meself,’ the beggar protested.

  Diomedes raised his whip and brought it down smartly over the beggar’s shoulder, causing him to howl with pain. As the whip was raised for a second strike, the beggar threw his arms about Diomedes’s knees and pleaded for mercy.

  ‘A man shouldn’t beat his guests, not for nothing!’ he sobbed. ‘It’s an offence to the gods.’

  ‘And you’re an offence to me, thief,’ Diomedes replied, kicking him away and lashing his back as he scrambled through the long grass on his hands and knees.

  His whimpering yelp was met by more laughter from the guards, who had now been joined by other men from the camp. As they watched, Diomedes whipped the beggar again, slashing open his filthy robes and leaving a red line on the brown skin beneath. Euryalus swung at the man’s stomach with his foot, knocking him onto his back, but as Sthenelaus stepped up to follow with a kick at the man’s head, Diomedes seized his arm and pulled him back.

  ‘Enough now. He’s learned his lesson.’

  ‘It’s you what needs to learn a lesson,’ the beggar groaned, clutching at his stomach. ‘Odysseus didn’t attack me when I was in his hut last night; he’s a proper host and knows the rules of xenia.’

  Diomedes shook his head in disgust. ‘So you’re a liar as well as a thief. Odysseus retired to his hut last night with orders not to let anyone in. Agamemnon himself would have been turned away, so the chances of a beggar –’ />
  ‘But I was there,’ the beggar countered. ‘Fact is, he invited me in to help him with a little problem he was having. Something about finding a way into Troy to pinch a statue.’

  ‘The Palladium!’ Sthenelaus exclaimed.

  Diomedes rebuked him with a warning glance, then turned to the beggar.

  ‘So you’ve overheard a bit of campfire gossip you think you can twist to your advantage. Perhaps you believe I’m a fool? Well, I’ll show you I’m not.’

  He raised the whip again and the beggar threw his hands up before his face.

  ‘Agamemnon ordered you and Odysseus to steal the Palladium from the temple of Athena,’ he said quickly and urgently, though in a low voice that would not be heard by the gate guards. ‘It’s the last of the oracles given by Helenus, for the defeat of Troy.’

  Diomedes’s arm froze above his head and he stared at the beggar incredulously.

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  The beggar dropped his hands away from his face and sat up, the sluggishness now gone from his movements. There was a smile on his lips and a roguish gleam in his eyes.

  ‘Because I am Odysseus, of course.’

  Euryalus snorted derisively.

  ‘Such arrogance in one so low. Do you think we’ve never set eyes on Odysseus before? Do you really think we’re going to believe you’re the king of Ithaca?’

  ‘This man’s asking for more than a whipping now,’ Sthenelaus hissed, his voice an angry whisper.

  The beggar did not take his eyes from Diomedes.

  ‘Then how would a simple beggar know that Trechos was the first Argive to be killed in Pelops’s tomb, his neck snapped by Pelops’s skeleton as he removed the lid of the sarcophagus?’

  ‘No-one could know that unless they were there,’ Diomedes answered. He scrutinised the beggar closely for a moment, then smiled and offered him his hand. ‘By all the gods, Odysseus, even your own mother wouldn’t recognise you in that state.’

  Odysseus refused his friend’s hand and, retrieving his stick, pulled himself slowly and stiffly to his feet.

  ‘No Greek will ever be allowed through the Scaean Gate, but beggars come and go as they please. These rags are how I’ll get past the guards, and once I’m in I’ll lower a rope over the walls so you can join me, Diomedes.’

  ‘We’ll come, too,’ Euryalus declared.

  Odysseus shook his head.

  ‘Agamemnon gave the task to Diomedes and myself. Besides, the more there are of us the more risk there is we’ll get caught.’ He turned his green eyes on Diomedes. ‘Hide yourself on the banks of the Simöeis until dark. I’ll wave a light from the walls – five times from left to right and back again – to show where I’ve tied the rope.’

  ‘What rope?’

  Odysseus pulled back his robes and the folds of his baggy tunic to reveal the rope he had wound several times around his waist.

  ‘The walls on the far side of the city are lightly guarded,’ he continued, ‘and once you’re over them you’ll be inside Pergamos itself. We can find our way to the temple of Athena, steal the Palladium and be back out before dawn.’

  ‘Zeus’s beard, I think it might even work,’ Diomedes said with a grin, excited by the prospect of danger and the glory that came with it.

  ‘There’s one other thing I need to do while we’re there, though,’ Odysseus said. ‘I need to find out whether Eperitus was taken prisoner.’

  The others looked at each other doubtfully.

  ‘He charged a company of Trojan cavalry alone,’ Sthenelaus said. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I spent the whole day searching for his body among the slain,’ Odysseus replied sternly. ‘He wasn’t there! And though some say they saw him shot by an archer as he rode at Apheidas, until I see his corpse and know his ghost has departed for the Underworld I won’t give up looking for him. He’s my friend, and he would have done the same for me.’

  ‘There’s a chance the Trojans took him,’ Diomedes said, though sceptically. ‘And if they did, they’ll accept a ransom for his release – or we can set him free when we take the city. But that won’t happen until we’ve stolen the Palladium. That has to be our priority, Odysseus, especially if we ever want to see our wives and families again.’

  Odysseus did not need to be told the urgency of their mission.

  ‘Then we should go now. Take the whip and strike me again.’

  Diomedes frowned.

  ‘We’ve given you enough rough treatment already, for which I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I provoked you to it, and it was necessary to make people believe my disguise; but the Trojans have eyes in the Greek camp and unless you want to arouse suspicion then you must continue to treat me as a vagabond and thief. Once you’ve made a display of driving me off you can return to your tent, but make sure you leave unnoticed again after sunset. And don’t forget to bring my sword with you.’

  Diomedes hesitated for a moment, then raised the whip over his head and struck Odysseus on the shoulders. He yelped with pain and loudly accused the Argive king of being a whore’s son, earning himself another lash across the lower back. And so it continued until the beggar was out of sight and the guards at the gate had already forgotten his existence.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  AN ULTIMATUM

  Wake up.’

  Eperitus opened his eyes a fraction before the palm of a hand struck him across his cheek, whipping his head to one side. Snatched from a dream about the Greek camp, in which Astynome was once more his lover, his senses struggled to grasp hold of something that would bring him back to reality and tell him where he was. The stench of burning fat pricked at his nostrils and he could hear the hiss of a single torch. By its wavering light he could see he was in a small, unfamiliar room, the corners of which were piled up with large sacks – probably of barley, judging by the smell. He was seated in a hard wooden chair, but when he tried to move he discovered he was bound by several cords of flax that wrapped around his abdomen and pinned his arms uselessly at his sides. He blinked and stared at the face of the man who had hit him – a face he did not know – then suddenly remembered he was a prisoner in Troy, alone and far away from the help of his friends.

  ‘Who in Hades are you?’ he demanded, reviving quickly from his slumber and looking around at what appeared to be a windowless storeroom.

  The man did not answer, but beckoned impatiently to two armed warriors standing by the door.

  ‘Untie him.’

  The men knelt either side of him and picked at the cords holding him to the chair, while the first man drew his sword and waved the point menacingly at his stomach.

  ‘Don’t even think about trying to escape,’ he warned.

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  No answer. The two men pulled away his bonds and lifted him bodily from the chair, pulling his arms roughly about their shoulders. As they made themselves comfortable with his weight, he placed his feet on the ground and tried to stand. A bolt of pain shot up from his wounded leg. If he had not been supported he would have collapsed to the floor. Then the first man opened the door to reveal two more guards waiting outside, who followed behind the others as they carried Eperitus through a confusion of half-lit corridors, up steps, through more corridors and into the great hall of his father’s house, which he recognised from when Astynome had been tending his wound. He looked for her in the shadows cast by the flaming hearth, but saw no-one in the fleeting moments before he was dragged to another door and out into bright, blinding sunlight. His eyes had become accustomed to darkness and he was forced to squeeze them shut while he was taken through what smelled like a garden filled with shrubs and strongly scented flowers. He tried blinking, but caught only confused snatches of his surroundings. More baffling was the faint hissing he could hear in the background. Then he felt himself dumped into another chair, while his arms were pinned painfully behind its hard wooden back and bound tightly with more flax cords.

  ‘Stay
close and keep your weapons to hand,’ a familiar voice ordered the guards.

  Eperitus’s eyes stuttered open again. The dark, blurry form before him quickly gained focus and became his father, who had planted himself legs apart before his son’s chair. Eperitus tested his arms against the ropes, but was unable to move them.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In my garden,’ Apheidas answered with a sweep of his hand, indicating the bushes and fruit trees that provided a cheerful green backdrop in the morning sunshine. He spoke in Greek to prevent the guards from understanding their conversation. ‘You were locked up in one of my storerooms – your wound’s healing fast and I didn’t want to risk leaving you in the great hall – but I thought this would be a much more pleasant place to talk.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you. You should’ve just killed me on the battlefield and have been done with it.’

  ‘That was my first thought,’ Apheidas admitted, his voice hardening. ‘After all, you’ve made your desire to kill me very clear. But I don’t suffer from the same crippling lust for vengeance that you do. Revenge is a meaningless, empty passion that achieves nothing – you of all people should know that. No; when I saw you lying in the dust it struck me the gods had delivered you into my hands for a reason. So, not for the first time, I decided to spare your life.’