A whisper from a pedlar at the palace gates--presumably paid by the Spy--informed me that the galley lay in Prasiai’s harbour. The Trojan slave, whom I never saw, delivered the bogus message; Paris, one fine morning, abruptly left for the port. He made contact with the penteconter’s master, obviously confirming his way of escape was assured. (The Spy had induced Periphetes to appoint as master a Lesbian mariner whose speech resembled the guttural Trojan brogue. For this masterly expedient I gave the corpulent tanner a monopoly in providing hides for my palace.)
My agents in Paris’ and Helen’s entourages kept me informed. Paris sent to the city for hiring wagons, but provisioning the concourse gathered in Sparta kept wagons and drovers fully employed. I dropped a hint to my steward: Paris, from my baggage train, unknowingly found the transport he required. Helen covertly collected in her chamber a hoard of gold and silver from the palace treasury: the queen had no intention of going to her lover destitute.
While the couple made ready for flight Menelaus remained in Sparta; there seemed no hope of them slipping away unnoticed. The conference of kings was coming to an end; I saw the whole conspiracy dissolving into air and invented slim excuses for prolonging the daily meetings.
The Lady answered my prayers.
On the final day when all agreed no more remained to be settled a galley flying from Crete brought word King Catreus had died.
Idomeneus immediately took ship, and left Menelaus and me in acrimonious argument. The dead king being our mother’s sire we should both in decency attend his obsequies in Crete. I pleaded business in Mycenae. (Actually I wanted to stay in Sparta and speed the erring lovers on their way.) Menelaus berated my manners, swore I brought discredit on our House, embarked and sailed for Amnisos.
Paris, bless his heart, wasted no time. He brought by night the transport he’d collected to the court outside his quarters. Helen joined him with some serving women and Pleisthenes, her infant son; in darkness, silence and haste they loaded the wagons. Long before dawnlight washed the sky, the elopers were speeding east to Prasiai.
Luckily the kings were also leaving Sparta: commotion broiled in the palace; Heroes, spearmen and slaves crammed chambers and courts; waggoners hefted baggage, turmoil seethed in the streets. Amid the confusion no one noticed the Queen of Sparta’s absence, nobody missed Paris. (To a chamberlain who complained that Helen could not be found I opined she had probably gone driving in the countryside, and told him not to fuss.) By nightfall palace officials were becoming seriously worried, and organized a search. I informed these zealous gentlemen the queen in my hearing the previous day had suggested a picnic near Thoron--a direction opposite to Prasiai--and possibly her chariot had broken a wheel. They drove speedily south in gathering dusk.
I went happily to bed.
Uproar reigned in Sparta by the morning. Chariots quartered the land and quested the queen. At midday a travel stained stable-hand, meticulously obeying his instructions, arrived from Prasiai and told consternated Heroes he had seen his master Paris lift Helen aboard a penteconter which promptly left the port under oars and sail. (Unfortunately for this bearer of bad tidings a furious Spartan noble ran him through; thus, to my contentment, disposing of an inconvenient witness.) I feigned dismay and anger, and organized pursuit. A cavalcade drove to Prasiai, a daylong chariot journey, and naturally found the harbour bare of all save innocent ships. Heroes tumbled aboard and ordered galleys to sea. I watched them go with a quiet mind; Paris had a full day’s start, and hunting a solitary ship at sea is like seeking a spearhead’s rivet lost on a sandy beach.
A galley sailed to fetch Menelaus from Crete. The kings who were still in Sparta vented searing condemnations; their genuine horror was all I desired. ‘A foul and detestable crime!’ Diomedes roared. Typical Trojan perfidy! As for Helen--! I couldn’t have believed ...’ He flung his arms in the air. ‘We’ll tumble Troy’s walls in the dust, kill Paris and all his kindred! No Hero in Achaea can hold his honour unblemished till Helen is restored to Menelaus’ arms!’
A sardonic quirk crossed Nestor’s face. ‘Provided he still wants her. If I were he I’d let the baggage stew in the broil she’s cooked. None the less an outrage so disgraceful must be speedily avenged, or the world will despise Achaea.’ He crooked a finger. ‘Come, Agamemnon--we’ll word a proclamation for sending to the kings.’ He hobbled to the hearth, propped arm on a fluted pillar and thoughtfully studied my face. ‘This elopement, though shattering for Menelaus, is mightily convenient for the war we’re trying to start. Most opportune! Bears the marks of an inside job, wouldn’t you say?’
‘If you mean,’ I said impassively, ‘they were helped by a palace Spartan I’m inclined to agree.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that precisely.’ Nestor’s watery eyes held a wicked gleam. ‘No matter. Paris and Helen have kindled the fire we wanted, a romantic beacon lighting the seas to Troy. We must now compose a fiery pronouncement, a call to rally reluctant kings, brand cowardice on fainthearts. We’ll rehearse selected messengers till they know the words by heart and send them to all the ruling lords from Thessaly to Crete.’
Two days without news assured me Paris and Helen had not been overtaken. (In truth they didn’t deserve to escape. I heard afterwards that Paris, feverishly lustful, insisted on breaking the voyage at Cythnos, a morning’s sail from Attica, because he could not wait to consummate the union.) Then chariots carrying heralds scattered to the corners of Achaea.
Menelaus arrived from Crete. He was very quiet; you’d almost have thought him unconcerned till you saw the wretchedness and heartbreak in his eyes. Over the days his haggard apathy yielded to icy, revengeful fury which found expression, not in words, but in tempestuous preparations for bringing his Host to Aulis.
My envoys returned and reported. The reaction was all I could have wished, replicas of the revulsion Diomedes had expressed. Idealistic fervour swamped dull economic truths, Menelaus’ wrongs assumed the hue of personal affronts, disgraceful stains on every Hero’s honour. Warriors bawled for revenge on a House whose scion publicly horned a respected Spartan king and--even worse--broke the traditional code that governed a guest-friend’s conduct.
I offered Menelaus no condolences on Helen’s flight. I found myself unable to wallow in duplicity’s uttermost dregs. Only the Spy knows my part in Helen’s elopement--a secret the bards won’t sing. For the stratagem itself I make no excuses. The lovers provided the chance--they might possibly have fled without any encouragement: only The Lady knows--and political necessity compelled me to seize the opening. I inflicted a crushing blow on my honest, trusting brother which often troubles my conscience and keeps me awake at night. Though a ruler and therefore a realist I am not entirely shameless.
I became apologetic. Atreus, for sure, would not have felt the slightest twinge of remorse.
* * *
Sowers were scattering seed when I saw Mycenae again. I mustered the Host at Nauplia, and launched the ships. Heroes practised rowing, were miserably seasick and returned frequently to harbour for replacing broken oars. But, as I have said, any fool can rapidly learn to row; soon they sped the vessels smoothly as seasoned oarsmen. Arcadia’s war-bands gathered at the port; they likewise exercised in sixty Mycenaean galleys I allotted for their use. (Landlocked farmers and herdsmen, they were even more unskilful than my own ham-handed Heroes.) We stowed supplies, loaded dismembered chariots, forced jibbing horses aboard--a daylong task--and finally embarked.
On a glittering sunlit sea lopped by a following wind the ships sailed line ahead from Nauplia’s bay. The foremost galleys weighed at dawn; the last cleared the harbour well after noon. On my leading triaconter I surveyed the serried sails fluttering from the horizon like a multitude of moths, and wondered how to control at sea a fleet ten times the size.
The wind died in the Euboian strait and Heroes took to the oars. At evening the flotillas grounded on Aulis’ beaches; crews disembarked, pitched tents and lighted fires. The lord of the city offered me his palac
e’s hospitality. I scowled at Aulis’ black stone walls and dank encircling forests, and preferred the wind’s clean breath on the open shore. There was something repulsive about that sinister city.
We remained there a moon while the forces assembled. Diomedes brought eighty Argive galleys, Nestor ninety Pylian. Achilles led a heterogeneous swarm from the realms around Phthia: ten-score vessels in all--but many no larger than cockle boats. They flocked from Phocis and Locris, Elis and Aitolia. Boeotia beached ninety; Menelaus, grimly taciturn, brought sixty Spartan galleys. Idomeneus hauled ashore eighty Cretan hulls. (He voiced dismay on discovering Mycenae sailed a hundred; and expected to lose the shared command. I smacked the Cretan’s shoulder and told him it made no difference. Nor did it--throughout the Trojan War Idomeneus had no influence on any military move.)
Inactivity while waiting irritated like mange: I had half a mind to launch the assembled galleys and let the laggards follow. Nestor protested we would need every man we had to cover the Troad landing; and proposed a hunt to pass away the time. I shipped a pack of indifferent hounds across the narrow channel from Euboia, and with Menelaus headed for the hills embracing Aulis. Our chariots entered sombre pinewoods which scarved the city, and followed a winding track between closely clustered tree-trunks. On rounding a twist in the path I saw in a clearing ahead an enormous antlered stag grazing on the scanty grass that patched a carpet of fallen needles. Talthybius reined the horses; I opened my mouth to order the hounds unleashed. The beast lifted his head, looked at us calmly and made no move to escape. (I should then, I suppose, have suspected a snare: deer normally run at the slightest alarm.) ‘Quick, Talthybius!’ I whispered. ‘My bow!’
He handed me the stave. Smartly I strung and notched while the stag chewed a mouthful of grass. (And still the truth never dawned!) I drew string to nipple and loosed. The shaft thumped home to the feathers behind the shoulder. The stag toppled to his knees. I drew my dagger, jumped from the chariot, dodged flailing antlers and cut his throat.
Menelaus scrutinized the carcase. ‘A most peculiar animal--why did he stand to be shot?’
‘An accommodating brute. Well, we’ve found a quarry and killed. Venison for dinner!’
Hunters slung the body from a pole. On debouching from the pinewoods we passed a shepherd guarding his flock. The man came close to examine the prize. His features crumpled in horror; dropping his crook he abandoned his sheep and ran wailing towards the city.
‘What in The Lady’s Name afflicts the fool?’ I inquired testily. ‘Haven’t the people of Aulis seen a dead stag before?’
I soon forgot the incident in welcoming late arrivals. Galleys in rows thronged the bay of Aulis and lined the foreshores far to north and south. Tents and rough-hewn timber shelters cluttered the beaches between the ships, provisions and baggage were piled in heaps, grooms exercised horses, warriors wrestled and practised spear-play, smoke from a thousand cook-fires wreathed in long blue tendrils. I collected an advisory staff of battle-tested warriors: Nestor, Menelaus, Odysseus, Ajax and Diomedes. Then and afterwards at Troy they pitched their tents near mine: a Council of War I consulted day by day.
I had brought Gelon and some of his Scribes: he supervised provisioning and quartering and those pettifogging details our brave Heroic leaders are apt to overlook. Backed by my authority he tactfully but firmly eliminated useless mouths--concubines and bards, pretty boys and slaves--which lords from remoter realms deemed essential for waging war.
Achilles sulkily resisted Gelon’s blandishments and insisted on bringing Phthia’s palace bard: a member of a minstrel guild from Chios called Homeridai. (The sole professional bard at Troy among many camp-fire singers--Heroes fancy themselves as poets and lyrists.) I often endured his mournful pre-Orphean tunes and listened to slanted verses lauding Achilles’ deeds. Since the history of Zeus’ descendants is enshrined in bardic lays his version of the Trojan War may become accepted truth, and the treacherous son of Peleus will blaze as Achaea’s paladin for a thousand years to come.
The last of our allies mustered--and a gale snored in from the north and drove great combers foaming on the beaches. Crews hastily hauled the galleys beyond the rollers’ reach. I was not unduly perturbed because Periphetes asserted that northerly gales in early summer blew themselves out in a couple of days. The storm indeed waned, but a strong wind blasted the straits and pinned us on the shore. My anxiety mounted. The campaigning season advanced, the Hosts still far from Troy.
Periphetes tugged his beard and said perplexedly, ‘A northerly so prolonged is unexampled at this season.’
Restless Heroes muttered about ill fortune, and darkly swore The Lady frowned on the venture--pessimistic croakings not to be taken lightly. I sent an emissary to Aulis requesting the Daughters’ offices at a sacrificial ceremony to gain The Lady’s favour. To my surprise and annoyance they returned a blank refusal. Undeterred, I sacrificed three milk-white bulls on the beach, personally slashed their throats, burned slices cut from the thighs on a makeshift altar and invoked The Lady’s benediction.
The contrary wind blew unabated.
Two days later Achilles stamped to my tent where a despondent Council of War discussed the crisis. ‘We can’t idle here for ever!’ he grated. ‘Make up your mind, Agamemnon. Either we sail or disperse to our homes!’
I frowned at the pallid, loose-lipped countenance. ‘Have patience, Achilles. No vessel ever launched can sail against a headwind fierce as this. Soon it will fail, and then we embark.’
‘Soon, you say. How soon? You sit twiddling your thumbs while an obvious alternative stares you in the face! If you can’t steer north go south with the wind abaft, sail around Geraistos and head for the open sea!’
‘Where again you’ll meet a contrary wind and be swept on the rocks of Andros.’
‘Isn’t it worth a try?’ He clapped his hands together. ‘I’m sick of this gutless havering! My Myrmidons will show you how it’s done!’
The Council of War voiced angry disapproval. Nestor pointed the danger of splitting our forces; Diomedes vowed the vessels would be wrecked; Odysseus coldly accused Achilles of disloyalty. Furious voices clamoured above the incessant sough of the wind. I felt a burning rancour: this malapert cockerel challenged my authority and deserved a salutary lesson.
‘Have your way, Achilles!’ I snapped. ‘You may take Phthia’s flotillas--fifty galleys, is it not?--and show us, if you can, the road to Troy!’
A triumphant gleam lit pale brown eyes. He strode wordlessly from the tent. Later I watched his galleys racing down the channel, tail wind bellying sails, hulls pitching on storm-chopped waters. ‘The fellow’s a maniac,’ Diomedes said. ‘He’ll lose half his ships and return like a beaten cur-dog--if he survives.’
‘That,’ I answered sourly, ‘is what I had in mind ’
On the day after Achilles’ departure a deputation from the Daughters of Aulis demanded audience, their leader a wild-eyed virago, so tall she had to stoop beneath the entrance flap of my tent. She swept lank black hair from her brow and ranted accusations in a high-pitched passionate voice. I listened in astonishment, and gathered from her diatribe I had offended, not The Lady, but the dreadful God Ouranos. (Ouranos, Destroyer, Thunderer, Earthshaker, dwells deep in the centre of the world. A terrifying God Whose name is never mentioned lest the direst bane befall, Who is never openly worshipped, Whose wrath convulses the firmament. I flinched when the harridan mouthed His frightening name.)
The wind Ouranos sent, she raved, would hold my ships for ever beached at Aulis because I had committed a crime beyond redemption.
I said, ‘What crime?’
‘You have slain a stag from the deer herd sacred to the God.’
‘To ... to Ouranos?’
‘To Ouranos.’
I begged elucidation. It transpired that in Aulis--uniquely in Achaea, so far as I’m aware--the people worship Ouranos as a compeer with The Lady. Deer dedicated to The Destroyer roam the woods inviolate, grown tame in generatio
ns safe from harm. In breaking the taboo I and all my followers earned enduring anathema.
I said, ‘I shall make atonement, any sacrifice you wish, whatever you--’I
‘A herd of pedigree bulls won’t purge your sin! Burn your ships, King Agamemnon: they’ll never furrow the wine-dark seas to Troy!’
Though her rhetoric left me unmoved the burden of her plaint gave cause for alarm. I am not excessively superstitious, nor dabble in religion beyond the customary duties that kings perform: attendance at The Lady’s rites in spring, midsummer and winter, and sacrificing on altars for favours received or desired. None the less I have witnessed enough instances of The Lady’s gracious rewards and savage punishments to hold in deep respect Her supreme omnipotence. As for Ouranos--! I cringed from offending the terrible Deity Who resided in the Shades, Whom one day after my death, when flesh had dissolved from bones, my spirit must encounter face to face.
More serious than personal misgivings was the damage the Daughters’ censure wreaked on the Hosts. Horrid enough, men whispered, to incur The Lady’s displeasure; to invite Ouranos’ hostility guaranteed stark calamity. Seeking reassurances the kings besieged my tent; even Nestor looked appalled. I made oblations to The Lady--Aulis’ Daughters again refused to help--and promised the wind would drop. I did not try, by sacrifice, to pacify Ouranos. Only madmen bedevilled by a death-wish--and the people of Aulis--openly acknowledge He exists.
The contrary wind persisted and whipped the waves to foam.
Agasthenes baldly opined our venture lay under a curse, and wanted to take his warriors home to Elis. The contagion spread to others; Heroes clustered in mutinous groups and murmured about desertion.
In desperation I interviewed the Daughters, going afoot in abasement to a fertile estate that bordered the city. (Daughters are privileged people, holding rich demesnes the kings bestow.) The statuesque black-haired beldam received me in the manor. I humbly offered atonement: hoards of gold and bronze, herds of cattle and horses, revenues from wealthy lands in Mycenae.
King in Splendour Page 24
