The War at Troy

These men had sought him out. Let them begin.

Menelaus, who had been sitting with his eyes closed as he rubbed his knuckles across his brow, heaved a large sigh and stretched his legs. ‘Need I say that we were disappointed by your response to Agamemnon’s summons?’

Odysseus pursed his lips in an arch tilt of the head.

‘We were counting on you for at least sixty ships,’ said Palamedes.

‘You have seen how small my island is,’ Odysseus answered, smiling still. ‘If you can find sixty ships here you may keep four fifths of them, with my blessing.’

‘No doubt other ships await your word on Same, Dulichium and Zacynthus.’

Odysseus arched his brows. ‘Agamemnon has all the hosts of Argos at his command. The Cretan fleet will almost certainly join with him since he’s set Idomeneus against his father, and here you are with the might of Euboea and Sparta. So why would you need to trouble the peace of our dull sheepfolds?’

‘You seem to be well informed,’ Palamedes smiled.

‘I try to keep my ears open.’

Menelaus cleared his throat. ‘Be straight with us, Odysseus. It’s you we need.’

Palamedes picked up the jug from the table. On the excuse that his stomach had been weakened by the sea-passage, he had drunk very little, but he poured more wine into his host’s goblet now. ‘Your reputation for courage and cunning reaches far across the Aegean. Where Odysseus goes, others will follow.’

‘Then let them follow my example and stay at home.’

‘I can’t do that,’ said Menelaus. ‘I can’t just let her go.’

Odysseus studied the anguish in his friend’s eyes for a long moment. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and my heart bleeds for you. But surely there are better ways to catch a stray mare than setting fire to the forest? Surely this whole wretched affair could be managed through negotiation? Telamon can have no use for Hesione now that he’s bed-ridden. It’s time he saw reason. Let there be an exchange of hostages. That’s the way to get Helen back.’ He paused, remembering how proud Menelaus had been that day in Sparta: then added, ‘—if you still want her, that is.’

Menelaus took a swig at his wine and glanced away. ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘Why?’ Odysseus demanded. ‘Because your heart is so badly wounded that only blood will heal it? Or because your brother’s mind is set on war?’

When Menelaus did not answer, Palamedes said, ‘The Trojans gave Menelaus their word that they came as friends to Argos seeking peace. This war is of their making. It surprises me that the Prince of Ithaca shows so little stomach for the enterprise. Agamemnon led me to believe that you and he have often talked together of taking Troy. Is that not so?’

‘Yes, it’s so. Just as I once talked with Theseus about sailing westwards round the coast of Africa just to see what was there! I was a younger man then, and full of idle dreams.’

Palamedes said, ‘There is nothing idle in the thought of taking Troy. It has been done.’

‘Yes, and Telamon never stops bragging about it! What he always fails to mention is that the Earthshaker had already flattened the city and salted the land with a great wave before he and Heracles came. And that was thirty years ago at a time when the Trojans were so desperate they were ready to propitiate the gods with human sacrifice. Things have changed since then. Priam has built a mighty city on the ruins of his father’s town. And the Dardanians, Mysians, Lydians, and Lycians have all grown wealthy with him. He might even be able to call on the Amazons and the Hatti empire beyond the Red River further east.’ Odysseus forestalled interruption. ‘You’re quite correct, my friend. I did think about taking Troy once – until I saw it for the madness that it was. Heed my counsel and stick to your dice – the odds are more in your favour there.’

Palamedes was eager to retort but Menelaus reached out a hand to restrain him. ‘This isn’t like you, Odysseus,’ he said. ‘I’ve never known danger or difficulties knock the heart out of you before.’

‘My heart is strong enough. So is my brain. Also I have a wife now, and a son.’

‘Menelaus also has a wife,’ Palamedes said, ‘and so do many men. If all of them thought as you do, then our Trojan friends would feel free to ravish their wives at leisure. Who knows but that your own might not be next?’

Odysseus narrowed his eyes. ‘This has been a happy day, my lords, and we have drunk much wine.’ He got to his feet. ‘You are the guests of my house. I think it better that we sleep than that we quarrel.’

‘We’re not looking for a quarrel,’ Menelaus said. ‘It’s your help I need. All Argos needs it. I thought you were my friend, Odysseus.’

‘I am. And as your friend I counsel you against this madness.’ Odysseus looked down to where the surf was breaking white in the moonlight at the foot of the cliff. Then he sighed, shook his head, and seemed to reach a decision. ‘I knew you would be coming, and I knew what you would ask. Even before Agamemnon summoned me to Mycenae, I had taken the omens on this matter.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘That a war against Troy would drag on for ten years before it ended.’

Menelaus winced. ‘Who gave you this judgement?’

After a moment’s hesitation Odysseus said, ‘It came to me in a dream.’

‘Ah,’ said Palamedes, ‘a dream!’

‘A dream which I took to the oracle on our island. The old priestess there serves Earth-Mother Dia. She has snake wisdom and second sight. It was she who read the meaning of the dream for me.’

Palamedes smiled into his wine-cup. ‘Stranger and stranger!’

Menelaus said, ‘My own soothsayers at the Bronze House in Sparta have assured me that Helen will return. They said nothing of it taking so long.’ He took in the shrug with which Odysseus looked away. Both men knew well enough that it was not unknown for priests to prophesy what their masters wished to hear.

In the silence Palamedes said, ‘So will you share this portentous dream with us?’ Odysseus looked away from him to Menelaus, who glanced up from his wine-cup with entreaty in his eyes. The Euboean added, ‘Or must the princes of Argos be left to think that Odysseus stays at home because he has bad dreams?’

Without looking at him, Odysseus sat down again. When he spoke it was to neither of these difficult guests but to the night glittering above him and the dark sea below.

‘In the dream I had yoked an ox and an ass to my plough and was scattering salt over my shoulder in the furrows as I worked the land. At the end of the tenth furrow I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of an infant boy that somebody had thrown before my ploughshare.’

There was a lull in the singing from the benches and the silence felt louder now. The two other men waited, but Odysseus said no more.

‘That was it?’ said Menelaus.

Odysseus nodded grimly.

‘A droll dream,’ said Palamedes. ‘What did your wise-woman make of it? Not that Menelaus was the ox and myself the ass, I trust?’

Odysseus refused to rise to the jibe. ‘Diotima knew without my telling her that war with Troy was much on my mind. She reminded me that the ox is Zeus’s beast of summer and the ass the winter beast of Cronos. Each furrow in my dream stands for a year. To sow them with salt means ten wasted years.’ He fixed his eyes on the two men. ‘Diotima prophesied two other things: that I would shortly have a son, and that the decisive battle for Troy would not come until ten years had been thrown away. Her first prophecy has already come to pass.’

‘So the dream also gave your son his name,’ Palamedes smiled. ‘A powerful dream, it seems, as well as droll – if your old lady of the snakes has it right.’

Odysseus said, ‘I for one would not care to argue with the Earth Mother.’

‘No more would I. But oracles and dreams are both notorious riddlers. What if the furrows represented not years but months? Might not ten summer months and ten winter months be encompassed within two years?’

Menelaus, about whom gloom had gathered like a pall, instantly brightened at the suggestion. ‘Two years! That seems a more reasonable estimate for a campaign against Troy – especially with Odysseus there to help us win it.’

‘And little Telemachus would hardly have gained the power of speech by then.’ Palamedes glanced at Menelaus. ‘I see his mother suckles him at her own breast, so all our friend would miss would be such pleasure in his wife as two years of sleepless nights allowed him.’

‘When you are the shrine-priest at an oracle,’ Odysseus said grimly, ‘I may look to you for guidance. Meanwhile, I shall trust the earth-wisdom of my homeland gods.’ But there was less confidence in his thoughts than in his voice.

Once again he got up and was about to bid his guests good night when Palamedes said, ‘I have been thinking about your son.’

‘What of him?’

‘That one day he will be king here – and a brave warrior, one hopes.’

‘I don’t for a moment doubt it,’ Odysseus said.

‘But will it not be great shame for him when he sails to Argos then and hears the songs of the noble deeds that were done in the war at Troy by the fathers of other men, yet cannot call upon the harper to sing of what was done by Ithaca?’

Odysseus stood in silence, his head swimming with the wine. He stared down at the ground beneath his feet as though it was already turning to salt and he could see his infant son abruptly thrown beneath a ploughshare there.

Palamedes began to speak again, that dry, suavely insidious voice, through which an ironic intellect glittered like a blade. ‘And will not those other kings have good cause to wonder why Odysseus dared to give his son such a proud name when he lacked the heart to honour the pledge that he himself had devised, and fight on his friend’s behalf in the decisive battle?’

For a moment, such was the sudden blaze of rage inside him, Odysseus could have picked up this angular young man by the throat and thrown him over the cliff. But he heard the sea-surge sounding in his ears, and the ground might have been trembling under his feet. So he was held where he stood by the knowledge that, though he had never been counted among the contenders for Helen’s hand, he too had been required to stand upon a bloody portion of the King Horse in Sparta. He too had asked Earthshaker Poseidon to bring ruin on his land should he fail to keep his oath to Menelaus. And he had done so at this man’s urging.

A brief, self-mocking laugh broke harshly from his lips, and such was his sense of the irony of the gods that it was edged already with a bitter premonition of the anguish that was to come.

By the time he arrived in Mycenae, Odysseus was back in his right mind once more, but the interim had been a vertiginous descent to the bottom of his soul such as he was not to experience again till he began, ten years later, the long return from Troy.

In the end, I suspect, it was Penelope herself who freed him from the dilemma that was tearing him apart, though she never said as much. Always poised and self-possessed, she would say only that before Menelaus and Palamedes took ship for the mainland, her husband had pledged to bring a thousand of his Ionian islanders to Troy, and that honour required him to keep that pledge.

What she may not have known, however, was that Odysseus would also bring, concealed inside the darkest chamber of his heart, a patient hatred for the clever young man who had brought him to this pass.

When the envoys that Agamemnon had sent to Troy reported back to Mycenae, they brought two surprises with them.

As expected, King Priam demanded to know what satisfaction he himself had been given in the matter of his sister Hesione. Why should the sons of Atreus expect him to act in the matter of which they complained when he had been demanding his sister’s return in vain for many years? In any case, he had no certain knowledge that his son Paris was involved in the Queen of Sparta’s disappearance as his ship had not yet returned to Troy.

‘Then where in the name of Hades has he got to?’Agamemnon demanded.

The envoys could only report rumours that Paris and Helen had been heard of in Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt, but no actual sightings had been confirmed.

‘Then they’re lying low, hoping the storm will blow over,’ Nestor said.

Agamemnon nodded. ‘But they can’t stay on the run for ever, any more than Priam can hide for ever behind his ignorance.’

‘What about Aeneas?’ Menelaus asked the envoys. ‘Wasn’t he in Troy?’

The envoys had seen no sign of the Dardanian prince. However, they had taken advantage of a private conversation with the High King’s counsellor, Antenor, to question him on the whereabouts of Aeneas. They were told that, for some time now, both Anchises and his son had kept to their palace at Lyrnessus. Though Antenor had been careful to watch his words, hints were dropped of a cooling of relations between the courts of Ilium and Dardania, and the envoys were left with the impression that, if Prince Paris was never seen again inside the walls of Troy, Antenor himself would not greatly grieve.

If this news was welcome, the envoys’ assessment of the powerful fleet Priam had built in readiness for war was less so. But the second surprise they brought back with them proved more encouraging. On the night before they were due to sail, they had been approached by a Trojan soothsayer named Calchas. As priest in the Thymbraean temple of Apollo at Troy, he had consulted the omens and could see no good future for the city. He now wished to take passage to Argos with the envoys and offer his services to the High King in Mycenae. Having decided that the man might prove useful, the envoys had brought him back and he was here in the Lion House now, eagerly awaiting an audience with the king.

‘Then bring him before us.’ Agamemnon said, ‘Let’s see if this soothsayer can bring us any better omens than did Odysseus’s dream.’

While Calchas was being summoned, Palamedes said, ‘They would have done better to leave the priest in Troy. A single friend behind the walls might have proved of more value than a whole company of archers on this side of them.’

‘The priest serves Apollo,’ Odysseus murmured from where he sat beyond Nestor to the left of Agamemnon. ‘He knows the run of his own life-thread better than you or I. In any case, it seems we may have such a friend already. And he is powerfully placed – though he may take a little time to declare himself.’

‘We do?’ said Agamemnon.

‘Odysseus refers to Antenor,’ said Menelaus. ‘He was the father of the child killed by Paris and has no love for him.’

‘Do you suspect some connection with this priest?’

‘Who knows?’ Odysseus shrugged. ‘We must see what emerges.’

At that moment Calchas was escorted down the hall. When he arrived before the Lion throne, he threw himself on the floor and lay there abased in the Asiatic manner with his arms outstretched and his forehead pressed against the tiles.

Agamemnon said, ‘I don’t much care for grovelling.’ Calchas got to his feet, arranging his dark robes, and stood before the High King with his head lowered. ‘Also I should warn you that I mislike traitors,’ the High King added, ‘– unless, of course, they can deliver my enemies into my hands.’

Calchas raised his face. Above the swarthy hollows of his cheeks, dark intelligent eyes looked back at the High King with no sign of fear or deference. Nor was there any arrogance in the voice that asserted quietly, ‘We who serve Far-sighted Apollo in his temple at Thymbra answer neither to the High King at Troy nor the High King in Mycenae. We answer only to the god.’

‘So I can rely on you no more than Priam can?’

‘If you will hear what Divine Apollo, Slayer of Darkness, has to say, you can rely on my truth. If not,’ Calchas opened his hands as if to let something fall, ‘so.’

Agamemnon sat back on the Lion throne, studying the impassive face of the priest with his chin supported on one hand. ‘Well, you’re a bold enough fellow, stealing between the lines where more cautious men might fear to tread. My envoys tell me you’ve been taking omens. I’m curious to know what the God of the Silver Bow had to say to you.’

‘That Troy will fall.’

At this confident announcement, Agamemnon turned to smile at his counsellors. Then he looked sternly back at the priest. ‘This we know already, just as we know that Mycenae will one day fall, and Sparta will fall, and perhaps even one day all Argos and the high crags of Mount Olympus itself. The pressing question is when? And how?’

‘There is a single answer,’ Calchas answered.

‘Then share it with us, friend.’

One by one, Calchas surveyed the princes around him, as if searching for some particular face among their number. Then he looked at the king again and said, ‘I do not see the sons of Aeacus here.’

‘Didn’t the god tell you that old Telamon has fought his last battle, priest? He lies bedridden in Salamis, but his sons Ajax and Teucer will shortly join us, and the ships of Salamis will follow.’

Calchas nodded. ‘And what of Telamon’s brother?’

Nestor answered him. ‘Peleus has not left his hall in Thessaly for many years. He is an old man who broods on the deaths that have shadowed his life. I think that the King of the Myrmidons longs only for his own death now.’

‘We did not expect Peleus at this council,’ Agamemnon said. ‘Why do you ask about him?’

‘Because there is a line of fate drawn between Aeacus and Troy, and it reaches across the generations. It was Aeacus who built the walls of Laomedon’s city under the aegis of Apollo and with the guidance of Poseidon. It was to his son Telamon that Troy fell at the place where the walls were weakest.’

Agamemnon sighed impatiently. ‘Telamon himself has told us this story many times. Why should we concern ourselves with it now?’

‘Because the fate of Troy is bound up with that of two sons. The first of them is Priam’s own son, Paris, who should have been killed at birth. Priam was warned by the priests of Thymbra that if the child was permitted to live he would bring destruction on the city.’

‘And this is the omen that gives Troy into our hands?’ Menelaus asked.

Calchas turned to frown at him. ‘As you know from your own experience in Sparta, a wise king does not fail to heed Apollo’s oracle – no matter what the cost.’

‘You mentioned two sons,’ said Palamedes.

Calchas nodded. ‘The omens I have taken say that Troy will fall only after the seventh son of Peleus returns from the place to which he has withdrawn and joins the fray.’

Agamemnon turned an enquiring brow to Nestor. ‘Do you know the son of whom he speaks?’

With a puzzled frown, Nestor said, ‘To the best of my knowledge Peleus has only one son.’

‘But there were six who died before him,’ Odysseus put in. ‘Achilles is the seventh son of Peleus.’

‘Good,’ said Agamemnon. ‘Then Peleus must send us this son.’

But Odysseus was frowning now. ‘I know the boy. The last time I visited Peleus a few years ago, Achilles had just returned from Cheiron’s school. He was going on to be trained by Phoenix, the King of those Dolopians who chose to remain in Thessaly.’

‘Then we will send to Thessaly for him.’

Odysseus shook his head. ‘I doubt that you’ll find him there. Peleus and Thetis have been fighting over him for years but he’s of an age to make up his own mind now. I think you’ll find that Achilles is with his mother and her people.’

‘And where are they?’ Agamemnon demanded.

‘At the court of King Lycomedes on Skyros.’

‘What difference?’ Agamemnon brought his hands together in satisfaction. ‘If that’s the place to which he’s withdrawn, then let’s winkle the lad out and get on with winning this war.’

Odysseus knew the whereabouts of Achilles because he had been party to the decision to allow him to go to Skyros. It had happened this way.

When Achilles was almost eleven years old and still a pupil in the wilderness school on Mount Pelion, King Cheiron of the Centaurs passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was found on his litter of grass by Euhippe who had returned to live with the old man after Thetis had departed for Skyros. The little Centaur woman let out a deep-drawn, moaning wail that echoed throughout the dawn light of the gorge and was quickly taken up by her tribe.

Achilles was left utterly distraught by the death, but though he did not know it yet, he was about to lose far more than a much-loved teacher. The wider world was changing in ways that left little room for Cheiron’s simple way of life, and when Peleus learned that the morale of the Centaur people had collapsed with the death of their king, he decided to bring Achilles back to his palace in Iolcus. At the same time, Patroclus was recalled by his father, Menoetius. These two boys, who had given each other a bloody nose at their first meeting, had become inseparable friends during their years on the mountain. Now they were being parted for the first time and neither dealt well with the separation.

In Iolcus things went badly from the start. The fair young face of Achilles reminded Peleus too fiercely of the wife who had burned his other children, while Achilles was shy with his father at first, and then increasingly dismayed to discover that the great king of whom he had often boasted to his friends was a morose and taciturn old man with a gammy leg. The boy wandered the halls of the palace uncomfortable in the princely robes that had been woven for him, missing the sounds and smells of the mountain woodlands and, above all, missing his friend. He grew fractious and bored. When he sensed that his father was reluctant to talk about the mother he had never known, Achilles pressed the issue. Eventually he learned what had been withheld from him earlier in order to avoid any suspicion of favouritism at the school – that Cheiron had not only been his teacher, he was also his maternal grandfather.

Already Achilles knew that he had loved the old Centaur as he could never begin to love this remote stranger who was his father. Now he began to believe that, in being separated from his mother at birth, he had been robbed of more than he had ever dreamed. Feeling wounded and betrayed by his father, he became increasingly importunate in his demands to meet Thetis – which was a thing that Peleus still could not countenance. When the subject was brusquely closed, father and son found themselves caught in a grim bind of mutual incomprehension and hostility. Yet Peleus cared deeply for the boy and was increasingly afraid of losing him to disaffection or mischance.

One day he came into his chamber after an exhausting afternoon of giving judgement to find that a table had been moved close to the wall and the great ash spear which had been Cheiron’s wedding gift to him had vanished from the hooks on the wall where it had hung unused for many years. Furious that Achilles had taken his most prized possession without seeking his consent, Peleus went in search of the boy. He found him stripped to his breech-clout in the garden and using the trunk of an old plane tree for target practice. The spear was too long and heavy for his height, yet Achilles threw it with surprising accuracy from the distance he had set himself. Torn between his anger and his desire to congratulate his son on his marksmanship, Peleus said coldly, ‘That spear you have stolen is a warrior’s spear. Only a proven warrior has the right to wield it.’

Achilles stood flustered before his father. ‘How shall I ever be a warrior,’ he muttered sulkily, ‘when you keep me cooped up here like a bullcalf in a stall?’

Sensing all the frustrated energy locked inside that stalwart young body, Peleus felt suddenly sorry for his son and ashamed of his own morose rage.

‘Do you want to be a warrior?’ he asked.

Achilles glanced away. ‘I have watched the Myrmidons training on their field. I have watched them fighting together as if they hated one another and then oiling each other’s bodies and dressing their hair afterwards, and I wondered whether they were men or gods. What else would I want to be?’