The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

by Iliffe, Glyn

  Eperitus looked at the king’s face – eyes closed, head back – and recalled the debate aboard the beached ship, when the full extent of his plans had been laid before the key members of the Council of Kings. All understood immediately that it would bring about the end of the conflict at a stroke: either Troy would fall in a single night, or the cream of the Greek army would be caught and wiped out. But when many baulked at so high a risk – most significantly Agamemnon – Odysseus had played on their weariness with the seemingly endless war and spiced his appeal with the promise of undying fame. His smooth, persuasive voice reminded them how they had set out from their homes expecting a quick victory bathed in the blood of Trojans and rewarded with a rich bounty of gold and slaves. Instead, they had endured ten years of siege warfare, deprived of the comforts of home and the love of their families. And though at first they had tried to ignore the omen from Zeus that the war would last a decade, he warned them not to forget it again now that the prophecy had come to the end of its course. Now, Odysseus said, was not the time to shy away from risks, but to seize them and gamble everything.

  The debate was easily won, with Agamemnon and Nestor’s doubts overruled by the sheer enthusiasm of Menelaus, Neoptolemus, Diomedes and many others. In the days that followed, Epeius – the most gifted craftsman in the army – oversaw the building of the wooden horse while the rest of the Greeks threw themselves into making the fleet seaworthy again. All passage into or out of the camp was halted, to prevent spies informing the Trojans of what was happening. Finally, two days after the horse was finished, the winds sprang up again and the rest of Odysseus’s scheme was put into motion. The camp was packed up in a hurry, and whatever could not be stowed aboard the hundreds of galleys was burnt. Meanwhile, the gates and part of the surrounding walls had been knocked down and the colossal horse wheeled out onto the plain. Under the command of Agamemnon and Nestor, the fleet then sailed the short distance to Tenedos and hid itself on the western flank of the island where it would not be seen from the shore. After nightfall, Omeros was left alone in the remains of the camp – waiting to be found by the Trojans the next morning – while teams of oxen had dragged the wooden horse to the ridge overlooking the Scamander. Here the beasts had been set free and the picked band of warriors had climbed up into the horse, their armour shrouded in cloth to stop it gleaming in the darkness or clanking inadvertently. Epeius came last, drawing the rope ladder up behind him. Though a renowned coward, he was included in the party because he was the only man who knew how to open or close the trap door, which he had designed to be invisible from the outside. The door shut with a click, and the longest day of Eperitus’s life began.

  It had been a day filled with discomfort, stiffness and boredom, sliced through by moments of intense fear and anxiety. Dawn had seen the arrival of Apheidas and Aeneas, and Eperitus’s urge to leap out and face his father had only been checked by his self-discipline and the inner knowledge the night would bring other opportunities for revenge. Menelaus had been less restrained when Deiphobus had arrived with Helen in his chariot. He had not seen his wife so close in ten years and her beauty had lost none of its allure, but the sight of her with her new husband had him clawing at the hatch to get out. It had taken all the strength of Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Diomedes to hold him down and keep him quiet.

  But perhaps their greatest fear had come with the appearance of Cassandra, shrieking madly and calling for the horse to be burned. Eperitus had gripped the handle of his sword – there was no room for their spears within the belly of the horse – expecting to have to jump out and fight the throng of Trojans below. Then Astynome, his beloved Astynome, had stepped from the crowd and spoken out against the black-clad daughter of Priam, casting doubt upon her words of doom until the arrival of Omeros finally convinced the Trojans to accept the horse. After that, the towering effigy had been dragged across the fords and into the city through a breach the Trojans had made in their own wall. While Cassandra had walked alongside the horse, shouting in a strained voice that it was full of Greeks, the Trojan women laid a carpet of flowers in its path and the Trojan men sang songs of victory. And as evening approached and Troy was consumed with darkness, the people feasted and drank, letting the wine erase the memory of the hardships they had suffered as they danced arm in arm, circling the horse and trailing through the streets in long human chains until, eventually, drunkenness and exhausted sleep had taken them.

  A curse in the darkness woke Eperitus from his thoughts.

  ‘Damn this waiting! Where’s Omeros? He should have been here by now.’

  Odysseus opened an eye and turned it towards the source of the outburst.

  ‘Keep your voice down, Epeius.’

  ‘No I won’t! I’ve had enough of being crammed inside this horse with no room to stand or stretch my legs –’

  ‘Then perhaps you should have made it bigger,’ Little Ajax growled.

  ‘It’s alright for a dwarf like you,’ Epeius snapped. ‘I’m twice your height and I’ve spent a day and a night with my knees tucked up under my chin. I want to get out before I go mad!’

  Little Ajax gave a snarl and rose from the bench, but Eperitus placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back down. Odysseus leaned across and faced Epeius.

  ‘We’ll be out soon enough. Have patience.’

  ‘What if Omeros has been found out?’ Epeius asked. ‘What if he’s locked in some Trojan dungeon, or if he’s already had his throat cut?’

  Odysseus smiled at him. ‘If he’d been found out, d’you think we’d still be waiting here in the darkness? They’d have made a burning pyre of us long before now. Besides, you should have some faith in the lad. You saw how he dealt with Priam earlier, convincing the old king that we wanted the Trojans to set the horse ablaze. Do you think that was an easy trick to pull off?’

  Epeius shook his head. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t! He’s a born storyteller and he’s got a level head – that’s why I chose him for the task. And when he judges the time is right, he’ll go up to the walls and set a torch on the parapet for the fleet to see. Once that’s done, he’ll come straight here and give us the signal to climb out.’

  ‘He’d better not get himself caught,’ Menestheus, the Athenian king, said.

  ‘He won’t,’ Eperitus answered. He turned to the others, who were fully awake by now and leaning forward on their knees. ‘It’s Agamemnon I’m concerned about. It won’t be easy sailing into the harbour at night and disembarking the army in complete darkness.’

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘My brother’ll be here on time,’ Menelaus assured them, curtly. ‘He may not have liked your plan, Odysseus, but he won’t let us down.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Eperitus hissed in a whisper. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  Silence fell as the warriors listened intently for what Eperitus’s hearing had already picked up. Their eyes were pale orbs in the darkness as they exchanged tense glances. Then they heard it: the sound of voices – one male, one female – approaching the horse.

  Eperitus twisted on the bench. Behind him was one of the holes that Epeius had drilled in the wood to keep the horse’s occupants from suffocating. He pressed an eye to the small aperture and looked out on the scene below. The horse had been hauled halfway up the main thoroughfare from the Scaean Gate to Pergamos, and left at a broadening in the road where busy markets must once have been held in times of peace. Since Eperitus had last looked out in the late afternoon, the wide square had been cleared of the tents where hundreds of allied warriors had been bivouacked and a large, circular fire had been built by the wheeled hooves of the great horse, the embers of which still glowed hot and sent trails of smoke up into the night air. Around it were scores of feasting tables and long, low benches, many of which were lying overturned. The remaining tables were piled up with wooden platters – some empty and others still half-filled with staling food – and countless kraters and goblets. The ground in-between w
as littered with food, broken cups, items of clothing and even a few shoes – not to mention countless sleeping bodies – so that it looked more like the aftermath of a battle than a feast. Picking their way through all this as they walked down from the gates of the citadel were a man and a woman, followed by four female slaves. The man was tall and richly dressed in a pale, knee-length tunic and black double cloak, fastened at his left shoulder by a gleaming brooch. The woman was almost as tall and leaned unsteadily against the man’s arm as they approached the horse. She wore a white chiton and her black hair lay in long, curling fronds across her shoulders.

  ‘Who is it?’ Sthenelaus hissed.

  ‘Deiphobus,’ Eperitus answered, glancing cautiously at Menelaus, ‘and Helen.’

  The Spartan’s brow furrowed sharply. He leaned across and hauled Epeius away from his eyehole, pressing his face to the opening.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s over,’ Eperitus heard Helen say. He placed his eye back against the hole to see her standing below the horse and craning her neck to look up at it. ‘It still doesn’t seem possible that in the morning I can leave the city and go riding across the plains if I want to.’

  ‘Believe it,’ Deiphobus responded, snaking an arm about her waist. ‘And the only escort you’ll need is me at your side.’

  ‘See how she doesn’t brush his arm away!’ Menelaus hissed.

  No-one replied.

  ‘But –’ Helen raised a hand lazily towards the horse as she slumped drunkenly against Deiphobus. ‘But why just leave? They’ve been here ten years, spreading slaughter and destruction, dying in their thousands, and then they simply decide to go? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It does to me.’

  Helen turned to Deiphobus, who was clearly sober.

  ‘They weren’t as strong as we assumed,’ he explained. ‘It’s just as Apheidas says: the Greeks are a vicious people, but they lack stamina and courage. The years have worn away at their morale and now they’ve had enough. They’ve run off back to their wives and children.’

  He draped his arm across her shoulders, but in a move that earned a grunt of approval from Menelaus, she stepped forward from his half-embrace and placed her hands on her hips, looking up at the horse.

  ‘What about the things Cassandra said?’

  Deiphobus shrugged his shoulders indifferently. ‘My sister says a lot of things, and nothing at all of any worth.’

  Helen features dropped into a mournful grimace, mimicking Cassandra’s look of permanent woe. ‘But there are men inside the horse,’ she wailed in perfect imitation of her sister-in-law. ‘I’ve seen it!’

  Deiphobus gave a derisive snort. Helen flitted around him like a spectre, then stepped forward and laid a hand on the upper arch of one of the horse’s wheels, so that Eperitus was barely able to see her through the narrow aperture.

  ‘I quite like the idea. Can you imagine it, Deiphobus? The wooden horse, full of Greek chieftains listening to us at this very moment?’

  Deiphobus laughed and gave a dismissive flick of his hand, but looked up at the horse anyway and narrowed his eyes slightly.

  ‘Who do you think would be inside?’ Helen continued. She began circling the horse now, slipping from Eperitus’s sight and her voice fading a little as she moved around the other side. ‘Which warriors would they hide in its belly?’

  ‘Open the hatch, Epeius,’ Menelaus demanded. ‘Let’s see the look on her face when she sees me jump out.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Neoptolemus said, raising his fingertips almost to Menelaus’s mouth.

  ‘This is a silly game,’ Deiphobus said. ‘Cassandra’s full of the most ridiculous fantasies, dressing them up as oracles of doom. The other morning she was running around the palace screaming that a woman in black was going to kill her with an axe. I told her she must have been looking at herself in the mirror!’

  ‘Do you think Agamemnon would be in there?’ Helen persisted.

  ‘Never,’ Deiphobus laughed, conceding that he would have to play along. ‘They wouldn’t risk the leader of their army.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Besides, Agamemnon would never put himself in danger if he could order somebody else to do it for him.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Little Ajax whispered.

  ‘What about my husband, Menelaus?’

  ‘He isn’t your husband any more. I am. And if he was up there, do you think he’d be hanging around listening to us play your absurd game?’ Deiphobus looked up at the horse. ‘Are you in there, Menelaus? Don’t you want to come out and save the woman who used to be your wife? Aren’t you going to rescue her from my kisses?’

  He grabbed Helen as she completed her circuit of the horse and tipped her back in one arm, kissing her on the mouth. His free hand moved over her breasts, squeezing each in turn.

  ‘By all the –!’ Menelaus began, springing back from the eyehole with a thunderous look on his red face.

  Before he could say any more, Diomedes’s hand closed over his mouth and Teucer and Philoctetes, the two archers, took a firm hold of his arms.

  Helen stood and pushed Deiphobus away.

  ‘I’m being serious. If not Menelaus, then what about Diomedes?

  ‘Why would Diomedes be so stupid as to enter the city inside a giant horse?’ Deiphobus asked, sounding slightly exasperated. ‘You saw how close we came to burning it this morning. I’ll tell you where Diomedes is – sailing back to Argos to see his wife again for the first time in a decade.’

  ‘Aegialeia,’ Helen said, smiling as an idea struck her. She laid a finger on the tip of her nose and looked down thoughtfully for a moment, before approaching the horse again. ‘Oh husband! Are you up there?’

  Diomedes released Menelaus’s mouth and snapped his head round in the direction of the voice.

  ‘Aegialeia?’ he whispered.

  He crawled to the eyehole that Menelaus had vacated and looked out.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Eperitus rebuked him. ‘It’s Helen.’

  ‘Diomedes?’ Helen continued, flawlessly recreating the voice of the Argive queen, whom she had met several times when married to Menelaus. ‘Have you missed me?’

  Deiphobus laughed at her genius for mimicry. The illusion broken, Diomedes slumped back onto the bench and was quiet.

  Helen began to circle the horse once more, grinning as she looked up at the tall structure and occasionally pausing to run her fingertips over its wooden legs.

  ‘Are you up there, Idomeneus?’ she called, copying the Cretan’s wife’s sing-song voice. ‘My bed was lonely without you, at least for the first year. Then I got bored and found other men to fill it. Now I’d rather you didn’t come back at all.’

  Eperitus turned and saw Idomeneus’s face stern and tight-lipped in the shadows.

  ‘And where have you been, Sthenelaus?’ came another voice, harsh and nasal. ‘Helping yourself to Trojan slave girls, I’ve no doubt! Well, the war won’t last forever, and when it’s over I’ll be here waiting for you.’

  Deiphobus’s laughter was followed by Helen’s this time, while Sthenelaus sucked at his teeth and shook his head.

  ‘I’d rather the war went on for another ten years than go back to her,’ he muttered.

  Then another voice was pitched up towards the horse, causing Eperitus to freeze and glance across at Odysseus.

  ‘I’m waiting, too,’ it said. ‘When are you coming back to me, my love?’

  ‘Somebody has to stop her!’ Odysseus hissed, balling his fists up on his knees.

  ‘You know it’s not Penelope,’ Eperitus told him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter –’

  ‘Odysseus, my love! Do you miss me like I miss you? Don’t you want to kiss my pale breasts again, and feel my soft thighs wrapped around you?’

  Eperitus pushed his hand over Odysseus’s mouth, stifling the cry that was on his lips and forcing him back against the inner wall of the horse.

  ‘It’s not Penelope!’

  Odysseus knocked his hand away and to
ok a deep breath, turning his face aside so that Eperitus could not see the anguish in his eyes.

  ‘That’s enough,’ they heard Deiphobus say. ‘Come on, Helen. Let’s go home so I can taste your breasts with my lips.’

  There was a peel of feminine laughter, followed by silence and then more laughter, receding this time as Deiphobus and Helen retraced their steps back towards Pergamos.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  THE GATE FALLS

  The men inside the horse were quiet for a while, barely able to look each other in the eye. Eperitus glanced at Odysseus, but his chin was on his chest and his gaze firmly fixed on his sandalled feet. Then the silence was broken by a loud rapping on the legs of the horse, which carried up through the wood and was magnified sharply within the small space where the warriors were huddled.

  ‘My lords! Are you in there?’

  Eperitus sighed with relief. It was Omeros.

  ‘At last,’ said Neoptolemus, slipping his red-plumed, golden helmet onto his head and fastening the cheek guards beneath his chin. ‘I only wish my father were here with me now, to claim the glory that should have been his.’

  ‘And Great Ajax, too,’ said Teucer, clutching at his bow. The nervous twitch that had once defined him had faded after the death of his half-brother, and now he sat calmly with his face set in a determined stare. ‘He would have relished this moment.’