The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

by Iliffe, Glyn

‘What do you want?’ Eperitus sneered. ‘My gratitude?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse. I want … I expect your help.’

  ‘After what happened at the temple of Thymbrean Apollo? After you murdered Arceisius? After you used Astynome to fool me into thinking you’d changed?’

  He spat at his father’s feet, who replied by striking him hard across the cheek, almost toppling him from the chair. A silence followed, filled only by the sinister hissing that seemed to be coming not from the garden, but from beneath it. Eperitus sniffed at the blood trickling down the inside of his nostril.

  ‘Nevertheless, you are going to help me,’ Apheidas assured him. ‘If not, then I will kill you in the worst way you could imagine.’

  He knelt down beside a wooden box, on top of which was a pair of heavy gauntlets. He forced his hands into the stiff leather, then lifted the lid. A low sibilating put Eperitus on edge, and as Apheidas pulled out a thin brown snake from the box he felt every muscle in his body stiffen. He strained against the ropes that held him, but was unable to move.

  ‘Still have the old fear then?’ his father mocked, stepping closer and holding the snake level with his son’s face.

  Eperitus felt his hands shaking as he stared at the scaled, lipless creature with its thin tongue slipping in and out of its mouth. He pressed his head as far back as it would go into the hard, unyielding wood of the chair.

  ‘Take the damned thing away! Take it away!’

  ‘As you wish.’ Apheidas stood up straight and held the snake to his own cheek, so that its forked tongue flickered against his jaw. ‘You never did master your fear of my pets, did you? I’ve been keeping them again, you know, since I left Greece.’

  ‘That hissing sound I can hear –’

  ‘You don’t even want to think about that,’ Apheidas told him with a knowing grin. ‘But I wonder if your tortured mind has regained any memory of why you fear snakes so much.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t fear them for nothing, Son. It happened when you were very young, perhaps three years old. I’d bred snakes since before you were born, to provide sacrifices for worshippers at Apollo’s temple in Alybas. I kept them in a pit in our courtyard, a courtyard much like this.’

  ‘I remember it.’

  ‘Do you remember falling in?’ Apheidas asked, fixing his son’s gaze. ‘Your mother and I thought we’d lost you then. I hurried down the ladder and saw you lying on the wooden platform at the bottom, which I used to stand on to keep me safe from the snakes. If you’d landed anywhere else you would have perished in an instant, but Apollo must have been protecting you that day. Then I saw your leg was dangling over the side, waving about above all those angry snakes. Before I could reach you, a viper sprang up and bit you behind your knee. The mark’ll still be there, if you care to look.’

  ‘If it bit me, then how did I survive?’

  ‘It was a dry bite. No venom was released. You were lucky.’

  The story did not bring back any latent memories, but neither did Eperitus have any reason to think his father was lying. It certainly explained why he despised the creatures so much.

  ‘But you won’t be so lucky next time,’ Apheidas added with a sudden snarl.

  He threw the snake onto Eperitus’s lap, causing him to jerk backwards in fear. The chair toppled over with a crash, but instead of hitting his head against the ground as he had expected Eperitus sensed a void opening up beneath him. The surprise lasted only a moment as he remembered the snake and lifted his head to stare down at its thin, curling body on his chest. A wave of nausea and dread surged through him. Then a gloved hand plucked it up and tossed it away.

  His father’s sneering face appeared above him.

  ‘That’s nothing to what you’ll get if you don’t listen to me.’

  Standing now, Apheidas tipped Eperitus on his side. A black void opened up by his left ear, from which the terrible hissing he had heard earlier rose up like a living entity to consume his senses. Not daring to look, but unable to stop himself, he turned his head to see that he was balanced over the edge of a pit, and in the darkness at the bottom he could see daylight glistening on the bodies of hundreds of snakes. His stomach tightened, pushing its contents back up through his body and out into the hole below.

  Then his chair was being pulled up again by four of Apheidas’s men, away from the pit and back to safety in the broad sunlight.

  ‘Now are you ready to listen to my proposal?’ his father demanded.

  ‘I’ll listen,’ Eperitus gasped, ‘but you already know my answer. In the end you’ll still have to kill me!’

  Apheidas sighed and raised himself to his full height. He turned and picked up a leather water-skin.

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding it to his son’s lips.

  For the first time, Eperitus realised how dry his throat was and how much his body craved liquid. He opened his mouth and Apheidas squeezed a splash of cool water into it.

  ‘You shouldn’t be so hasty to welcome death, Son. You’ve plenty to live for, after all. Astynome, for instance.’

  Eperitus was almost taken by surprise, but the hint of uncertainty in Apheidas’s voice gave him away. His father was no fool: he knew Astynome hated him and loved Eperitus, despite all that had happened. He must also have suspected his son had forgiven her for betraying him. For a brief instant Eperitus was tempted to admit as much, if only to show Apheidas that his feelings for Astynome transcended the schemes of his father that had divided them. Then he heard a voice in his head – not unlike Odysseus’s – warning him not to give Apheidas anything to bargain with. His love of the girl could be used against him; by threatening Astynome, Apheidas could force him to agree to whatever he wanted, just as he had used Clymene to bribe Palamedes to treachery.

  ‘Don’t mock me,’ Eperitus said, narrowing his eyes and trying to sound angered. ‘If all you can offer is that treacherous bitch then save your breath.’

  ‘So you’ll be glad to know you won’t be seeing her again?’

  Eperitus felt sudden anxiety clawing at his chest, but kept his silence.

  ‘Now she’s nursed you back to health, I’ve assigned her to other duties,’ Apheidas continued. ‘I don’t trust her around you, and the last thing I want is for her to smuggle you a weapon of some sort. Clymene will change your bandage later and after that you’ll not need any more tending to, because you’ll either have agreed to help me or I’ll have thrown you to my pets.’

  Eperitus opened his mouth to speak, but Apheidas raised a hand to silence him.

  ‘Before you tell me to go ahead and kill you, listen to what I have to say. Snakes are a good way to get your attention, but they won’t force you into doing what I want. Neither will threatening you with death, or even, it seems, threatening Astynome. You may still love her and you may not, but I’m not going to send you back to the Greek camp with that uncertainty.’

  ‘The Greek camp?’

  ‘As a messenger, of course. My ambitions haven’t changed from when I laid them out before you in the temple of Thymbrean Apollo – I need you to tell Agamemnon I will give him Troy in exchange for Priam’s throne. The King of Men will have his victory, Menelaus his wife, and I will become ruler of all Ilium!’

  Eperitus threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Still hankering to be a king? Even one subservient to the Greeks you hate so much? Well, things have changed since we last met. There’s a new oracle and Troy won’t fall until it’s fulfilled, not even if you throw the gates wide open and let the whole Greek army inside.’

  Now it was Apheidas’s turn to be amused, and he looked at his son with a broad smile.

  ‘Obviously you’re referring to Helenus’s visions,’ he said.

  Eperitus’s laughter ceased and he stared at his father.

  ‘How could you know about that? Helenus said he hadn’t revealed the oracles to anyone in Troy.’

  ‘He hadn’t – except to me. Now, let me think: I already know you
’ve found Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus, and I guess you must have retrieved Pelops’s shoulder bone by now. Which just leaves the Palladium, doesn’t it. The last key to Troy.’

  Eperitus watched as his father raised the water-skin to his lips and took a mouthful of liquid. There was something triumphal about the movement, and this time he did not offer a drink to his son.

  ‘So, are you ready to listen yet? Threats only work on cowards, and you’re no coward, but maybe I can offer you something we will all profit by: the choice between certain victory for the Greeks or war without end. Would you prefer to return home with your friends before the end of the year, or to remain in that squalid camp until you die of old age, while the kingdoms of Greece succumb to bandits and invaders?’

  ‘I won’t help you fulfil your vile ambitions, Father,’ Eperitus replied, obstinately. ‘The only thing you can offer me in exchange for the dishonour and pain you’ve brought me is your life. Give me that and I’ll gladly take your message to Agamemnon.’

  ‘You have the stubbornness of a mule and wits to match, but here’s the choice anyway: help me and I’ll give you the Palladium to take to Agamemnon; refuse and I will not only throw you into that pit behind you, but I will tell Priam the Greeks are planning to steal Troy’s most precious lump of wood. After that, the Palladium will be so well hidden no Greek will ever be able to steal it, and then the walls of Troy will never succumb.’

  Eperitus stared at his father and knew he meant what he said. The choice he had given him was stark: being cast into a pit of snakes with any hope of the Greeks stealing the Palladium gone forever; or receiving his freedom and seeing the final oracle fulfilled with a speed and ease that none could have hoped for, leading the way to victory and an end to the war. But his father would also succeed in his ambition, sealing for eternity Eperitus’s shame and dishonour. He closed his eyes in despair and let his chin sink onto his chest. He could not have known that Priam had already heard the oracle from Cassandra’s lips and had not believed a word of it. Neither could he have guessed that Apheidas was bluffing, else he might have felt less despondent.

  ‘Even if you say no, Son,’ his father said, ‘I won’t reveal your plans to Priam until I have no other option. Perhaps Astynome would be a better messenger; I understand Agamemnon wanted her for himself when she first visited the Greek camp, so if I offered her as a gift it might convince him my offer is genuine. Either way, the choice is yours: death for you and defeat for the Greeks, or life, victory and a swift journey back home. I’ll return for your answer tomorrow morning.’

  The Scaean Gate, which had witnessed the deaths of Hector, Achilles and Paris, was firmly shut and no amount of pounding or calling for the guards would open it. When a soldier stood on top of the battlements and urinated on him, Odysseus realised he was wasting his time and followed the circuit of the walls eastward to the Dardanian Gate, praying to Athena as he walked. He reached Troy’s second great entrance and beat the flat of his hand against its sun-baked beams. Again there was no answer. Eventually, and after all his attempts to gain the attention of the guards had proven futile, he sat down beneath the cooling shade of its walls and looked out over the plain at the blue, distant mountains, trying to think how he might enter. Though he was widely credited as the most intelligent and cunning of the Greeks, especially by those who were closest to him, Odysseus’s schemes were rarely thought out in any detail. Often he would begin with a good idea then rely on his wits – and the help of the gods – to see it through to a successful conclusion. This was destined to be one of those occasions.

  Before long, the answer to his prayers arrived. A trail of dust appeared above the heat haze on the horizon, where the well-worn road to the Dardanian Gate issued out of the foothills. It moved slowly across the plain towards the city, eventually revealing the distant figures of a troop of cavalry, followed by a line of ox-drawn waggons laden with supplies. Shortly, the gates opened and the mounted escort – some fifty horses and riders – began filing through. The waggons followed, the sluggish beasts that drew them taking little notice of the shouts or sticks of their drivers. The final waggon was piled high with sacks of grain that made the heavy axle and solid wooden wheels squeal in protest. With an agility that belied his powerful bulk, Odysseus darted out from the shadows beneath the wall and hopped up onto the rear of the waggon. A moment later he could hear the sound of cloven feet on flagstones echoing back from the interior of the gate, and watched with a quiet smile of satisfaction – mixed with a pang of nervous anticipation – as the wooden portals were swung shut behind him.

  He lay back in the sacks and tried to look as if he belonged there. Then a short guard with an angry, self-important face pointed at him and called out. Odysseus jumped down and immediately assumed a beggar’s pose: back bent, eyes wide with fearful humility, hands cupped and thrust out in a gesture of supplication. The guard shouted something in Trojan that was too fast for Odysseus to understand, then brought the shaft of his spear down on his bowed spine with a whack that gave the other soldiers great amusement. Odysseus hardly felt the blow on his hardened muscles. Moving quickly, he grabbed the hem of the soldier’s cloak.

  ‘Got any food, captain?’ he croaked, thickening his voice to disguise his accent.

  The guard wrinkled his nose up and blinked as the mixed stench of manure, urine and stale sweat washed over him. Yanking his cloak from Odysseus’s clutching fingertips, he stumbled backwards and waved the beggar away.

  ‘Go on, you filthy swine. Get out of my sight.’

  Odysseus turned and shuffled off into the narrow streets before the guard could change his mind and have him thrown back out of the gate. It was ten years since he had last entered Troy, when he had been part of an embassy sent to petition for the return of Helen. Then the population had been openly hostile to the foreign warriors who had dared to bring threats of violence to their peaceful city. Now they were less naïve, their lives changed forever by the war that had claimed so many of Troy’s sons and so much of its wealth. Half of the women seemed to be widows, dressed in the black of mourning, while almost as many were prostitutes, with painted faces and brightly coloured dresses. Their wretched, hungry children scurried through the streets like rats, following the slow-moving waggons and trying to steal whatever they could lay their hands on, indifferent to the frequent cuffs of the escorts. And everywhere Odysseus looked there were soldiers, drawn from all the towns and cities of Ilium. Some were beardless boys barely old enough to carry a shield and spear; others were grey-bearded old men, ordered to fill the numerous gaps left by the dead on the plains between the Scaean Gate and the Greek camp; but most were professional warriors or mercenaries, stalking the streets with their battle-hardened faces in search of wine or women with which to pass away their boredom.

  Few paid any attention to Odysseus, unless it was to avoid the odour that emanated from his wretched form. Looking up, he saw the battlements of Pergamos rising a short distance beyond the houses to his right. The temple of Athena – and the Palladium – lay within the citadel walls, and guessing that was where the supplies would be taken for safe storage, he quickened his pace to catch up with the rearmost of the waggons. After a while, the convoy turned right onto a broader thoroughfare that sloped gradually up towards Pergamos. Despite the years since he had last been there, Odysseus recognised the tall tower that guarded the main entrance. Each of its smooth, well-fitted blocks was half the height of a man, and at its base were six statues depicting different gods from the Trojan pantheon. Though these were ostensibly the same gods that were worshipped by the Greeks, the identities of the crudely imagined figures had been a mystery to Odysseus ten years before and remained so now as he followed the trudging convoy to the foot of the tower. The gates opened and the cavalry escort trotted through first, ducking beneath the short, echoing tunnel that led to the highest part of Troy. Odysseus closed the gap between himself and the last waggon, praying silently to Athena that he would not be noticed by the guards.r />
  ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

  The harsh words were followed by the smack of a spear across his arm. Odysseus, bent double once more, glanced up and saw the soldier who had hit him. He also noticed two others leaning their weight upon the heavy timbers of the gates as they pushed them inward behind the last waggon. Ignoring his assailant, he shuffled rapidly towards the men on the doors.

  ‘Spare some food for an old pilgrim? Drop of water, perhaps? How about a swallow of wine?’

  He clutched at their cloaks, forcing them to abandon the gates and withdraw with groans of protest from the terrible smell.

  ‘Never mind,’ Odysseus said, glancing behind as he slipped through the gap they had left. ‘I’ll find something at the temple of Athena. Bless you, sirs.’

  He hurried forward, the rap of his stick on the flagstones repeating rapidly from the walls. Then a heavy hand seized hold of his shoulder.

  ‘No beggars in the citadel!’ the third soldier grunted, throwing him back out into the street. For good measure, he swung his foot hard into Odysseus’s stomach as he lay in a pile of horse manure. ‘Now, piss off and don’t let me see your ugly face here again.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  ODYSSEUS UNMASKED

  Odysseus lay still for a moment, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath as the gates slammed shut behind him. Slowly, using his stick, he pulled himself back onto his feet. Looking around, he could see that the guards had retreated inside the gates and he was left almost alone on the street. Up here, as the lower city lapped about the walls of Pergamos, the houses were wealthier and boasted two storeys, which cast long, dark shadows as the sun began dipping towards the west. Odysseus withdrew to the shade of the nearest wall and sat down, wondering what to do next. By necessity, his plan to enter the city and find his way to the temple of Athena was always going to have to rely on good fortune, but it seemed the gods had turned their backs on him at the final hurdle. And yet he could not give up. If he was to lower the rope for Diomedes and steal the Palladium he had to discover a way into the citadel before nightfall. He also had to discover whether Eperitus had been brought into the city as a prisoner, though how he would glean such information was beyond even his imagination. He leaned his head back against the cold stone and closed his eyes in silent prayer. A few moments later he heard voices.