by Peter Tonkin
As we came past the mouth of the outer bay I looked across at the camp-site we had spent much of the morning so far examining but it was too distant for me to make out any details so the place added nothing more to our store of knowledge. It did prompt me, however, to turn back for a closer look at the boy on the deck. I walked over to him, dripping, until I could see him quite clearly. He lay on his back, eyes and mouth wide, the black-blood still set on the front of his tunic, despite the soaking; though quite a lot seemed to have been washed off his arms and half-open hands. The last of the sand with which he had been covered was beginning to stir as the heat of the morning sun dried it sufficiently to set the sand-hoppers that had survived their swim to jumping and calling the last remaining ants out into the light. They mostly came out of his thick, matted hair, crawling up onto his face. Some came from folds in his tunic, scurrying back onto that Myrmidon-black section on top of his chest. I watched them in a kind of dream, revolted yet fascinated at the same time. The wide eyes looked more human now that the sand had been washed out of them. The expression on the dead face frozen into shock and horror. It was only after several moments that I realised his loincloth had somehow fallen round his ankles—which at least explained how he had managed to kick me with both feet at once.
I was still staring, sickened but entranced, when the captain arrived at my side with a pair of sail handlers in tow. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s see what more this poor boy can tell us.’
***
He ordered that the corpse be stripped, then he examined it minutely, frowning with concentration as the sailhandlers working with him laid out the tunic, loincloth and sandals a little distance away, close to the bulwark to the right of the high, back-curving prow. He probed gently down its back from head to heels. ‘No swelling or softness,’ he said thoughtfully, as he pushed his finger beneath the thick dark hair. ‘He wasn’t knocked out, then. He wasn’t attacked like you were in Troy.’
I nodded, dumbly. ‘No. I see that,’ I said as the sail-handlers turned the body onto its back once more. But the front of the body apparently revealed nothing new either.
Odysseus sat back on his heels and began to discuss what he had deduced. The first thing he remarked on was something as far away from that severed throat as it was possible to get. ‘His loin cloth was round his ankles when he came aboard,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember that being the case when we slung him over Elpenor’ shoulder. It must have come down when he was in the water. Did you notice?’
‘Not really, Captain. I was looking at his throat. But he did manage to kick me with both feet at once.’
‘It’s instructive, though, even if we could have worked it out logically from the facts we already know.’
‘What facts, Captain?’
‘That he was killed while using the latrine behind the wall of bushes. The blood was on the sand and the bushes there, so he was facing that way when he was attacked. He had eased his loincloth down just enough to allow him to urinate, therefore, and he never had the chance to pull it up again. Had he been defecating, of course, the loincloth would already have been around his ankles and he would have been facing the other way entirely. Somebody approached him. Somebody who presented no immediate threat. They went close enough to reach out and bang!’ He clapped his hands. ‘The deed is done. His throat is cut, blood sprays across the latrine and onto the screen of bushes. He clutches his wound with both hands as he goes to his knees, blood cascading down his breast. He is pushed back—or topples back—to lie on the sand rather than falling into the latrine itself. He dies, swiftly and silently, most of the blood pouring down his chest soaks into his tunic as he does so.’
‘But the killer is not alone,’ I took up the story. ‘Two people move him up to the undergrowth then or soon after, one walking backwards and the other forward. They bury him in a shallow grave.’ I paused, frowning. ‘You suggest that they might be smaller and weaker than the average sailor because of the size of the footprints and the shallowness of the grave. But, more importantly, surely, there is another question. There were a hundred people there, maybe more. Why did no-one see any of this happening?’
‘There must have been at least two elements,’ he said. ‘Darkness and distraction.’
‘But what could distract so many so completely?’
‘I can only think of one thing—a rhapsode.’ He paused, calculating. ‘So either there were two rhapsodes or the boy died before Dion did.’
‘Very well,’ I said, ‘but even if Dion was singing the most engrossing song, surely it is not so easy to cut a throat so that it can be done in an instant. Surely a hand over his mouth and a blade at his throat would give him the chance to struggle and call out...’
He looked up at me. ‘That’s how you’d do it? Come up behind him, arm round his chest, hand over his mouth, blade across his throat?’
‘That’s how they do it on the docks,’ I said. My tone told him I knew what I was talking about.
‘On the battlefield it’s different,’ he said. ‘The man you’re going to kill is usually lying on his back, wounded, incapacitated; dying in agony as often as not. No chance of getting behind him at all. Also, he’s covered in armour. Helmet down past his chin, cuirass up to his neck. Maybe a hand’s width of throat in between. So you slide your blade in one side—usually his left.’ He was close enough to touch the side of my throat with his forefinger. ‘The point is often sharper than the edge in any case, so you push it right through and then pull it up towards you. Cuts through the blood vessels and all the tubes there; its effectiveness depending on how sharp the edge actually is. But in my experience it’s not too hard to do. Swift and silent.’
‘Is that what’s been done here?’ I asked, imagining how it would have felt had his finger been the point of a sharp bronze dagger.
‘It looks like it,’ he answered. ‘The wound seems wider and deeper on the left side of the throat; it cuts deep into the muscle, see? Little more than the point came out at the right. On the battlefield, the blade would sometimes pull things loose in a way that I suppose wouldn’t happen cutting in from the front in the manner you describe, and that’s clearly what’s happened here.’
He and I looked down at the dead throat. Sharp though it might have been, the fatal dagger had certainly pulled things there loose as it was torn out through the front of the throat. ‘Does that get us any farther?’ I wondered.
‘It allows us to put the actual murder together more accurately and in more detail,’ he said. ‘The lad has his loincloth down, holding the front of his tunic up as he uses the latrine. One hand on the tunic and one hand on his member if experience is any guide. The murderer walks up beside him. It’s dark so he’s not sure who it is and neither are we. But something is said that puts his mind at rest for an instant. During which his shadowy companion stabs a dagger into the left side of his throat pushes it right through and jerks it forward. He falls to his knees as the blood spurts. He clutches the wound and topples backwards, his face frozen with shock and horror. He dies within almost no time at all. The body is moved and buried before anyone else notices. By two people who are not much older or bigger than he is. Look at his sandals.’ He held one up for me to inspect. ‘The same size as the footprints we examined so closely. I assume no-one else has been alerted to these gruesome events, but we will find out when we catch up with the ship that carried the rhapsode Dion, because that was bound for Skyros. As are we. And I think I’d better check on our progress.’
Odysseus rose and turned to stride back to the rear deck. I glanced down at the dead boy then followed him.
When I caught up with him, he was standing beside Nestor, Hypatios and the helmsman. ‘Are we still heading west under oars?’ he said. ‘We’ve come much further than I’d have thought.’
‘We’re still seeking the wind,’ said Nestor.
‘Skiathos,’ said the helmsman tersely, gesturing to the island that stood to the north west of us. ‘It seems to be blocking the nort
herly we need, Captain. And in any case the wind seems to have swung to westwards.’ He wet his finger and held it up. ‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s swinging westward. Which will help us go east of south. If we can find it.’
‘Well,’ said Odysseus, ‘if we haven’t found it by noon we’ll have to run south with the oars.’ But even as he spoke, a strange change overcame the motion of the ship. The rhythm of the oars didn’t vary, but our speed westward suddenly seemed to get faster—as though Poseidon himself had grasped the hull and was pulling us towards Euboea, or rather towards that channel just north of it. No sooner had the ship began to thrill with this strange new motion than the first puff of the north wind blew onto our cheeks.
‘Turn south at once,’ ordered Odysseus, his voice tense. ‘Row us out of this current before it pulls us too far off course, then set the sail. Trim it to sail east of south.’
The bustle on the rear deck and midships, as the ship swung southward and began to fight clear of the current, while the sail was set and angled at the captain’s order, became so great that I soon felt in the way. I went forward, therefore, and stood on the deck at the bow which was empty of everyone else except the dead boy. In my hurry to get to a good vantage point and look away along our new course, I kicked one of his sandals without realising it. It slid across the deck and fell over the side just as the ship began to turn, still under the power of its oars. I watched the sandal almost mindlessly as it bobbed there on the undulating surface, floating away, its departure from the ship’s side speeded by our movement round onto that new course. Almost immediately, it was far beyond the ends of the oars themselves, beyond even the spreading disturbance as they churned the water into white foam. The wind strengthened, the sail thundered and filled. The oars came back aboard. Thalassa groaned as the yards, mast and rigging took the strain. It shuddered, then began to move deliberately out of the grip of that strange current and gathered speed as it settled onto the southward reach. All the time I leaned on the forward bulwark watching that lone sandal sailing away from us. It seemed to be moving with a purpose of its own, as though it had decided that, wherever we were bound for, it was going back to Phthia.
I stood there, alone and lost in thought until, with a suddenness that shocked the breath out of me, Lord Hypatios grabbed my shoulder from behind. ‘It’s lucky you are of so little account, apprentice rhapsode,’ he said, ‘or I could have slipped a dagger between your ribs and had you over the side with no-one any the wiser…’
4 – Skyros
i
The harbour at Skyros turned out to be the most welcoming of all. It was a relief to get there at the end of a disturbingly long afternoon trapped aboard Odysseus’ ship with Lord Hypatios, his grim-looking servants, and his threats. It was fortunate that we had caught the steady breeze as early as we did, for even under full sail it took from mid-morning to early evening to get there. I spent as much time as possible close to the captain and well away from the Phthian lord and his sinister cohorts. So, almost by accident, I got a fine chance to admire the Odysseus’ ship-handling skills. These were superior to those of any captain aboard any of my father’s fleet and second only to his ability to apply logic to apparently insoluble mysteries. But of course Odysseus was a fighting captain, not a trader and his vessel Thalassa was a lean, dangerous warship not a fat-sided merchantman.
As we approached the tiny islet of Skiropula in mid-afternoon, Odysseus ordered that the sailhandlers trim the great rectangular linen sail so that the steady north-westerly could push us a point or two further eastwards. Nestor and the helmsman looked askance at him because trimming the sail much further risked losing the wind altogether, but the captain knew his ship and Thalassa settled onto her new course sailing across the wind without complaint. I noticed Nestor breathing a sigh of relief: the linen that the sail was made of came from his slave-run flax beds and linen-weaving workshops in Pylos; he would have taken its failure to hold the wind personally. As it was, the cliff-walled mound of rock passed close on our right beam just as the northern headland of Skyros loomed more distantly south-east on our left. Late afternoon found us to the east of the even smaller islet of Skirou with the northern promontory of Skyros still on our left, but closer now. As evening approached, we sailed closer and closer to Skyros’ rocky and forbidding coast. At last Odysseus ordered that we furl the sail. Under oars, he guided us carefully through a narrow, rock-fanged channel between two desolate headlands that started Nestor talking of the clashing rocks again. Close on our right lay the northern point of Valaxa, the hilly finger of island that protects the haven at Skyros. On our left, seemingly just beyond the blades of our oars, the tip of a promontory jutting out from the larger island itself. Beneath our hull a ridge of rock that joined the two and raised the stony sea-bed dangerously close. Once through, we turned left once more to head back north-eastward. Powering forward at full-speed it still took us nearly an hour to reach the island’s main harbour. The sun had slipped behind the heights of Valaxa, and the western jut of Skyros which was so nearly joined to it. The anchorage was in shadow, therefore, but all the way along our final approach we had seen bludgeoning brightness beating down on the city dead ahead and the citadel sitting squarely on top of it.
The city of Skyros faced south-west and was shaped like a gigantic arrow-head pointing at the sky, its bearing and form dictated by its unique situation. Its houses, squares, temples and public buildings mounted a steep hillside. Wide and welcoming at the foot of the hill, lining the curve of the beach and the anchorage seaward of it, they were piled one on top of the other as they rose seemingly vertically. The width of the city grew narrower and narrower as the hill itself came to a point like the fang of an enormous wolf. And there, right at the very top, seated on the pinnacle of the mountainous metropolis, sat Lycomedes’ citadel. Although we were in cool evening shadows as we approached our anchorage below, the citadel still burned brightly in the last of the sun, as though the home of the gods had somehow come down into the real world.
Straight ahead, beneath this stunningly impressive hillside, a low, flat valley stretched away into the distance. It was a fertile area, well watered and full of farms that supplied the city and the citadel above it. It remained more sparsely populated than the city itself, however, because it was effectively defenceless against sea-raiders. This was a situation compounded, I knew, because the island of Skyros was constructed like a giant hornet: precipitous hills made the northern and southern sections wide as well as high, and this central wasp-waist section narrow as well as low. There was, as far as I knew, another anchorage at the far side of this but it was hardly ever used—except by marauders from the east creeping in off the sea to pillage and steal whatever they could.
At the main anchorage, however, there was a jetty reaching out into the bay with one ship tied to it already while the beach was littered with fishing boats and fishermen mending their nets. Odysseus took us along the opposite side of the jetty to the other large vessel and we shipped oars and tied up there. A brief discussion between Hypatios and Nestor never really became confrontational but in the end one representative from each man’s band of followers went running up the hill to tell King Lycomedes—who had no doubt been warned of the ship’s approach long ago—precisely who had come to visit him so that he could prepare a suitable welcome. Then we disembarked more slowly.
***
The wise Odysseus had sent no-one to proclaim his arrival, though he sent his chief oarsman Elpenor to the harbourmaster to announce his vessel’s presence, discuss port fees and enquire as to what other shipping had passed through recently. As we waited for the massive oarsman’s return, and the sailhandlers carried the apprentice rhapsode’s corpse below-deck, the captain leaned against the bulwark beside the back-curving prow and expressed his surprise. ‘I had rather taken it for granted,’ he said, ‘that the two ships which ran ashore on Skopelos would have arrived here before we did. They must have been days ahead of us.’
; ‘Perhaps that’s one of them,’ I said, gesturing at the ship on the far side of the jetty.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘I know it. It’s named Nerites and it’s neither of the ones we were expecting to find here. Looks as though we may have to wait a little while yet before we can begin to look further into the murders of Dion the rhapsode and his apprentice.’
Elpenor returned with much of the information the captain required, but as to the question of the ships from Skopelos, he shrugged and shook his head. Odysseus frowned, then, still deep in thought, he went to work. He knew all too well that he would need every man he had at hand to transport everything he and Nestor had brought with them up to Lycomedes’ hilltop citadel. That, I assumed, was why he had waited for the strongest of them to return and left the weakest aboard as harbour watch and guards of the dead body.
I found the steep streets so testing that I soon fell behind the captain and his men, Nestor, Hypatios and theirs. For once, my companions were too busy and preoccupied to offer me any help. On more than one occasion I seriously considered giving up and returning to the ship to camp-out with the harbour watch and the apprentice rhapsode’s corpse. This was especially the case because every now and then I got the impression that I was being watched. As a stranger, half blind and partially crippled, I was hardly surprised to be drawing the attention of the locals. But this was something different. I soon got the decided impression that, although the scrutiny lingered on me as I puffed along behind my captain and his crew, it was they who were actually being watched. Secretly. Guardedly. But several things goaded me onwards. I naturally wanted to be close to Odysseus, for I was still unnerved by Lord Hypatios’ threats. Moreover, it was clear that the captain planned to do more here than give Lycomedes his gifts and pass Agamemnon’s messages on, even if that mysterious pair of ships had not yet docked here. And there was the matter of the two signet rings still lying in his purse.