A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

  She moved quickly through the halls, making sure everything was being done in the right order. She checked his bath was being drawn the way he preferred it: hot, scented like a temple offering. She took the priestess to the altar room inside the palace and bade her wait there. She threw incense on the fire, and the girl – mute again – knelt on the ground before the hearth and mouthed her prayers and prophecies in silence. The sweet smoke almost choked Clytemnestra, but it seemed to make the girl calmer. A priestess was used to burning incense, Clytemnestra supposed.

  ‘I will return for you,’ Clytemnestra murmured. ‘You still have time to flee.’

  But the girl was deaf as well as mute, and so the queen pulled the curtain across the doorway and left her in prayer.

  She walked through to the bath: a huge circular indentation in the floor of the palace. The water was steaming and she paused so her eyes could adjust to the flickering torchlight and the suffocating haze. She could see Agamemnon – pudgy and shrunken – sitting in the middle of the room. She scooped up the purple robe she had woven so carefully for this moment. ‘Here, husband,’ she called out, and walked towards the water’s edge. ‘Let us envelop you in purple and take you next door. We will cover you in scented oils and scrape the last remnants of Troy from your skin.’

  ‘You startled me, woman,’ said the king, as if she hadn’t noticed. ‘Can the slaves not bring the oil in here?’

  ‘We have a couch laid out for you,’ Clytemnestra said. ‘With wine and honey waiting in your cup.’

  The king rolled his eyes gracelessly and stood. He walked up the three small steps from the pool to his wife and reached out his arms. She helped him place his right arm into the right sleeve and quickly pushed his left arm into the left one before he realized that the robe was no robe, but a net, a trap, an ambush. The sleeves had no ends, they were sewn shut and attached to the body of the garment, so once his arms were inside them he was pinned. He clutched at the fabric with his fingers but she had sewn layer after layer into the sleeve ends, so there was nothing he could grip. She spun him off balance, and tied the strings at the back of the robe into a quick knot.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. Angry now, not afraid. Not afraid until he saw the sword glinting in her left hand. He had not noticed a sword, propped up against a pillar in its shadow. He did not recognize it: it was a short womanish weapon. Where could his wife have found such a thing?

  She drove the sword into his gut, above his paralysed arms, and he screamed. She wrenched it back and drove it in higher, splitting the gap between two of his ribs on the right-hand side. He screamed again and fell forward onto his knees as she drew the sword out a second time. His screams were deafening, but no one came running to help him. No one came.

  She stood above him now and drove her sword down, through his ribs once more. He felt the air disappear from his lung as she sliced into that, too. He opened his mouth to make a sound but his voice had left him. He looked down to see his innards spilling out onto the ground, the purple of his viscera lost in the purple of the treacherous robe.

  His widow stood over his body and smiled. Everything was going according to plan. She watched his blood taint the water red. How typical of Agamemnon to despoil something even after death, she thought. She felt warm and flushed with a savage joy, as if she, too, might dance on the roof, licked by black fire. This reminded her that her revenge was not complete and she walked calmly to the altar room.

  The priestess was still there, kneeling on the floor, calmly awaiting her fate. Clytemnestra hesitated for two beats of her racing heart, but she knew that she must kill again. Nothing of Agamemnon’s could remain, except his blood running through her surviving children. Cassandra had foreseen it and her god demanded it. Clytemnestra stood behind the girl, and raised her sword to draw it across her neck. She must die, but unlike Agamemnon, there was no need for her to suffer. As she was about to bring the blade across Cassandra’s vein, the girl opened her eyes and stared up at her murderer. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for what will come.’

  And in later years, when Clytemnestra thought about this moment, she was always sure it must have been her who spoke these words. Because what could the priestess have to be sorry for?

  *

  Up on the palace roof, the Furies ceased their dance. They looked at one another, nodding excitedly. Their work was done; their will had been carried out at last. It was the longest they had ever waited anywhere, dancing through the halls and across the warm stone floors, warming their bare feet and their cool snakes as they went. But after a year or two they had grown bored. They had clambered onto the roof to try and spot the guilty man returning, so they could scream into his ears as he woke or tried to sleep, and drive him from his senses. They had waited and waited and waited for his return. They did not speak of all the other guilty men who had gone unpunished in the years that they had spent on the roof of the palace of Mycenae. The Furies would catch up with them soon enough. In this moment, they felt nothing but exuberance at the final settling of matters here.

  And yet – one of them turned her head, as if she had just caught the edge of a sound but wasn’t quite sure. The snakes paused their writhing and the flames shrank away. A second sound, and then a third. The Furies said nothing, but they began to climb down from the roof, all vipers and fire and elbows and knees. Where was it coming from? They scurried along the outer walls of the palace and the sound grew louder. A hammering noise was emanating from the storeroom. The door was made of thick wood, banded with blackened metal, but as they stood outside they heard someone pounding on the door, begging to be let out. Electra had been locked in there for hours and she was no fool. She knew by now that her father was dead, killed by her mother. Had the slaves told her? Had Aegisthus? The Furies neither knew nor cared. All they heard was her fists pounding on the locked door, and her tears as she begged to be allowed to see her father’s corpse.

  The Furies did not concern themselves with doors or walls. They appeared beside her and wreathed her in their black fire. Their snakes nestled in her hair, and although she could not see the women who encircled her, or the snakes which writhed around her, Electra felt their fiery warmth and knew what she had to do. She must find her brother, find Orestes. And then they must avenge their father.

  40

  Penelope

  Beloved goddess Athene,

  I raise to you my prayer of thanks. I compose it in the last hour of darkness, before the rosy dawn streaks across the sky. Odysseus is upstairs, asleep in our bed, something I never thought would be true again. My husband, in Ithaca, after twenty years’ absence. Telemachus is asleep, too, safely back from his travels. They have only just begun to tell me what happened and how they both returned to me on the same day, from who knows where. But the stories will come. I already know that it is you I have to thank.

  It is you who has protected them. I know you always did like Odysseus: so clever, just like you. I don’t think it can be hubris to point that out, can it? Forgive me, Athene, if it is. The long years without my husband have made me sharp-tongued. I imagine you know how that feels. And I know I have you to thank for persuading the nymph, Calypso, to give him back. They say you entreated Zeus himself to intervene. That you summoned a council of the gods to demand that Odysseus be freed to return home. They say you compelled Poseidon to let him sail unharmed and coaxed the Phaeacians to give him safe harbour. Without you, my husband would assuredly be at the bottom of the sea.

  He came back in disguise, of course. Typical Odysseus. Never approach a problem directly if you can come upon it sideways. And I’m sure we have you to thank for the efficacy of his disguise: his own mother would have struggled to recognize him. His own wife could not be certain it was him. Even when I looked him in the eyes, I could not be sure.

  But before he came to me, he hid himself away for a day or two with the swineherd, Eumaeus. The bards sing of the great homecomings of all the Greek heroes (some of which, let’s
be honest, went rather better than others). But I feel sure that only in my husband’s story will pigs play a crucial role. If his men aren’t being transformed into them, he’s sleeping next to them, all rather than coming home to his wife. I presume word had got back to him about Agamemnon, and how Clytemnestra welcomed the old coward home. They say she cut him down like an old tree as he stood beside his bath. They say she felled him with an axe or pierced him with a knife – the details vary depending on who does the telling. But one thing is certain: those daughters of Leda are a plague on their menfolk. Did Odysseus worry that he would receive a similar welcome here on Ithaca? That I, the devout Penelope, would treat him as Clytemnestra had treated her husband? The idea is preposterous. My name is a byword for patience and loyalty, no matter which bard sings it. But that is my Odysseus. And your Odysseus. Always finding things out the hard way.

  So it was at Eumaeus’ hut that he received his homecoming. Not at first (this last part of the story is all I have heard so far). At first, he was almost torn apart by dogs. He had forgotten – of course he had – that the swineherd’s dogs were not the same ones that had barked at strangers when he was last on Ithaca. Dogs cannot wait as long as wives: these hounds were the pups of the pups of the original dogs, I should think. When they saw a strange man approach them, they snarled and barked and threatened to rip him apart. Only when Eumaeus placated them did they agree to allow the stranger to pass. Odysseus assumed the hounds were vicious, until the following morning when he heard the quick footsteps of a young man coming towards the hut. The dogs did not bark or growl, but emitted a single joyful yelp to welcome home their friend, Telemachus. Odysseus is not always a man to reveal his thoughts, as you know. But I believe this moment – when his son was acknowledged by the Ithacan dogs which did not know their old master – was upsetting for him. It was still more distressing to see how his son greeted Eumaeus, as a son might greet his father. His own child, fully grown, a young man, embracing another man and sharing with his old servant the stories a boy would tell his papa. Odysseus is the master of discretion when he chooses. But on this occasion, the tears spilled from his face and collected in his beard. His son thought of another man as his father. Odysseus could conceal his true identity no longer. He wanted to be embraced and welcomed home. So he revealed to Telemachus what he had yet to reveal to me. This – I might add – is absolutely typical.

  He asked Telemachus questions all night long: how were things in the palace, had the queen ever remarried, who were the suitors of whom Eumaeus spoke who courted her night and day? The swineherd said they were drinking all the queen’s wine and eating all her pigs, one by one, day by day. Was it true? How many were they? How strong, how well armed? He was already planning his revenge on the men who had dared to think of marrying his wife. There are some who will say this was cruel and unjust. Odysseus had been gone for twenty years: who didn’t think he was dead? I doubted he lived, his father doubted, his mother had died doubting he would ever return. And I know his son, Telemachus, doubted too (although it would be ungracious of me to mention this). It is no wonder the young men of Ithaca wanted a chance to become its king: how much reverence could they really have for a ruler they had never seen?

  If anything could have happened differently (and I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this, Athene), I wish that Odysseus had felt able to take me into his confidence earlier. It is one thing to know that your husband is fighting a war across the wide, dark sea. It is another to know he is delayed by monsters, gods and sluts at every stage of his journey home. But it is one last twist of the knife to discover that he would reunite himself with his child before his wife. I know what he will say when I raise this with him one day. He will say he had to be sure of the outcome before he embarked on the battle. He was always such a cautious man, always testing his options. But here he was, so near to me, and yet I was completely alone. The one person I might have looked to for comfort was our son, and Odysseus kept him from me, too. Only for a day or two, I know. But Telemachus was and is my only child. My chance to have any more sons or daughters was taken from me when Odysseus set sail for Troy. And he must have known – they both must have known – that after years of waiting for a husband who didn’t return, the loss of my son as he adventured around Greece trying to find his missing father was an injury too far. I would forgive my son anything, of course: what mother could not? But of all the things Odysseus did in his absence, I will find this last little cruelty one of the hardest to forgive. I know – again – what his defence will be: it was only a few days, it was for the greater good. Easy for him to say, when he had not spent twenty years waiting. I cannot shake the sense that Odysseus was more concerned with a successful revenge than with a successful reunion with his wife.

  And that is the second reason for my prayers, Athene. I do give thanks to you for bringing him home. But who is it that has returned? My husband: the clever, conniving, desirable, paternal, filial man? Or a broken warrior, so bludgeoned by bloodshed that he sees every problem as one to be solved with a sword? Because the man I loved twenty years ago loathed the prospect of battle. He pretended to be mad to avoid sailing to Troy. Does he even remember that? I do. And he was never a coward: you know that as well as I. But still, he shunned the war for as long as he could. And I heard all those reports of his wily ambushes, his tricks and guile, and I thought – every time – that’s my man. That’s my Odysseus, always coming up with the cleverest scheme, always saving the day with his wits. At some point, did I stop noticing how many people died with each of his plots? Did I think that was an incidental consequence, when actually it was the whole point? When he lost all his men on his journey home, was that even an accident? What if – Athene, I wish I didn’t have to voice these thoughts, but they will plague me until I put them into words – he jettisoned his men, rather than losing them? What then?

  Forgive me, goddess: I broke off my prayer for a moment. No disrespect was intended. Where was I? Oh yes. Odysseus’ disguise fooled every person he saw. Even those of us – like me – who knew him best of all. The one creature he could not trick was Argos. Is that because – with all your cleverness assisting him – you forgot the dog might remember who he was? I don’t mean to suggest it was your fault, of course. But Argos had been a puppy when Odysseus set off to Troy. He had trained the little hound and made it obedient to his commands. And then he left and the puppy became a dog and eventually the dog went grey around the muzzle and began to trot more slowly. It is a rare mutt that lives more than twenty years. But live he did, so that when Odysseus walked past him, on his way from Eumaeus’ hut towards our palace, his scent caught in the old dog’s nose. Argos hasn’t barked for a year or two now, and he did not bark then. Instead, he wagged his tail – once, twice – and dropped his ears, as if waiting for Odysseus to reach down and scratch between them. My husband saw the tail and the ears move and he knew – in that moment, he knew – that this elderly mutt was the puppy he had left behind. He wanted to pet the animal, but feared giving away his true identity. And a moment later, it was irrelevant because Argos – who was so old and frail and unused to shock – breathed his last. It is manifestly absurd that in this whole horrific saga of war and tragedy, it is the death of his old dog which has upset me almost more than anything. But it has, and there is no denying it. The dog waits a lifetime for his master’s return and then dies when his wish is fulfilled. Even the bards would think it too sentimental to include in their songs.

  Odysseus arrived at the palace – at his home, at last – still disguised as a beggar. I welcomed him as I welcome any stranger who needs a meal and a roof over his head for a night. You know better than I do, Athene, that it is our duty to the gods to receive every stranger as a guest. The suitors made him as welcome as they have made any vagabond. They jeered at him and threatened him. Antinous threw a stool at him, which hit him in the back. Interestingly, not one of them noticed that this seemingly battered old man did not flinch when a wooden stool bounced off
his shoulder. It had been thrown with some force and yet he shrugged it off. I will not claim that I recognized my husband at this point. How could I, when he was shrouded in your concealments? But I did notice this: for an old man, he carried himself remarkably like a warrior. An unseen missile did not hurt or alarm. And when Eumaeus introduced him as a wandering Cretan with news of Odysseus, I did wonder who this vague description might be hiding.

  The suitors, of course, behaved exactly as I had come to expect over the years. It was not just Antinous, but Leodes, Eurymachus, Agelaus and all the rest of them. They were not bad men individually, I don’t think. Not all of them, anyway. They certainly did not behave so viciously to begin with. They arrived at the palace in twos and threes: shy, at first, quietly competitive with one another for my affections. It took months, perhaps even years, before they became the aggressive gang of men Odysseus finally met. I used to wonder what had happened to them, and why they were so anxious to stay somewhere they were not wanted. Pausing their lives, refusing to marry girls who would have them, failing to start families. Instead they preferred to be together as men, under the guise of wooing me. It took me some time to realize that this was in fact their war. Too young to sail to Troy, they were children when their brothers and cousins and fathers joined the greatest expedition that Hellas had ever seen. They had missed their chance to be warriors in the great war. And so they waged war upon my storerooms, and upon my virtue, because they had nothing else to fight for. In a way, I pitied them.

  But when they gathered together, all better instincts were soon lost. Each one of them became as bad as the worst of them. It was this which made it so easy not to be seduced by them. Not even Amphinomus. And oh, he was handsome. Did you ever notice him, Athene? Or were your owl-grey eyes on my husband the whole time? If you had looked across the room, you would have seen a tall young man, broad-shouldered and strong-limbed, with a kindness in his eyes that the others did not have. You would never have seen him shout at a beggar or hurl insults at a stranger. He had a soft, low voice that was lost in the melee of other, louder men. He had dark eyes and thick brown curls that a woman could twist her fingers into. I imagine.