Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  And her voice was soft and thrilling.

  ‘The woman in question is my representative on earth. In taking her you are taking me. Take me and turn your back on cruel wars and the harsh cares of state. Who wants them? Forget the heavy staff, the flaring torch, the cold bronze. Who needs them?’

  He could have said . . .

  But he wasn’t given the chance to say anything.

  ‘Take me – and take these.’ She let fall her robe to the waist, baring her famous breasts.

  He stared open-mouthed.

  ‘Take me – and take this.’ The robe dropped all the way to the flowery ground. She stood naked among the rumpled embroidery.

  Outrage from the other two.

  ‘Swindler!’

  ‘Slut!’

  She’d cheated by showing all, clouding his judgement.

  ‘This is your prize. It’s what you will enjoy. I once destroyed a man simply by letting him see me like this. It wasn’t even his fault. He didn’t mean to. Oh, you are not just one of the chosen few, you are the man, the only man. Perfect beauty. This is what she is like. And she’s all yours. Go on – taste and see.’

  Paris drops to his knees in front of her, reaches out and holds her by the flanks, cups his trembling hands around her buttocks, buries his face in her bush.

  The contest is over. The others turn away, disgusted, and two hot hates go storming back to Olympia. From now on it will be war, total war, and Troy is already a doomed city. Never mind that Paris never stood a chance. He was a pin-head, a peasant, an ignorant boor. She’d rigged it and he’d fallen for it. She places her hands on his handsome nuzzling head and suddenly she’s in love with him herself. Her eyes close, her mouth opens.

  ‘I will endow you,’ she sighs, ‘with irresistible sexual allure. She will see you and she will want you, only you. Nothing else in the world will satisfy her. She is yours and you hers. It’s decided. You will take her home with you to Troy.’

  History is written. Aphrodite has her apple, Paris his prize. He will launch his ship for Sparta. Nobody knows it yet, but the Trojan War is under way.

  FOUR

  ‘It’s a date that will live in infamy!’

  Agamemnon bawled out the words across our heads.

  ‘The day I went to my grandfather’s fucking funeral!’ yelled Menelaus, not quite matching the rhetoric.

  ‘An act of treachery!’

  ‘A stab in the back!’

  ‘And one which will never be forgotten, brother. Or forgiven. Be assured of that. It cries out for retaliation.’

  Agamemnon was addressing the assembled army at Aulis. Crouched beneath Mount Messapion, overlooking the Euboean Gulf, Aulis was a good port, the best in Boeotia, halfway between Mycenae and Phthia, between Agamemnon and Achilles. The perfect meeting place. It had taken weeks for the task force to muster, and now that mobilisation was complete, Agamemnon was busy telling us all why we’d come, why the offensive was justified.

  He didn’t mince his words.

  ‘What the fuck? Did they think we’d let them get away with it? Did they simply fail to understand the scale of the consequences? The incredible suffering it would bring on their own people? The huge dust cloud that would mushroom up from so many pyres, so many burned bodies? All that ash. Was it a failure of the imagination? Or a catastrophic misunderstanding of the kind of people we are? Did they even think at all? And afterwards, the opportunities for peace were there, but they never took them. They opened up the skies instead to the inevitable annihilation that will now rain down on them – the destruction of an entire city. Destruction that will be followed by years of misery, generations of mourning. Why? They had their chances. They could have sent her right back. They could have given her up to any of the embassies.’

  Agamemnon had a habit of grinning stupidly when he was in full rhetorical swing. He also had a habit of lying. He couldn’t help himself. At this point, in fact, there had only ever been one embassy to Troy. Although it had been a high-profile affair. Agamemnon had gone in person on his brother’s behalf and he had taken me with him. The other leaders had insisted on an embassy to give the Trojans a chance to avoid war. Only Agamemnon wanted war. Big ugly fat warmongering, Chief Motherfucker in Charge. Even Menelaus would have settled for just getting his wife back.

  Nobody mentioned that Agamemnon had abducted the three daughters of King Anius of Delos who were famous vine-growers and kept the Greek army supplied for years. They supplied a lot more than wine, in fact. The story went that they escaped and, when overtaken, prayed to Dionysus, who turned them into doves, sacred thereafter on Delos. A nice story. Truth is, Agamemnon fucked them two at a time while the third one served the wine. Then they changed shifts. That’s how high the moral ground that Agamemnon occupied on the matter of abducted women happened to be.

  The two of us crossed to Troy in three days, long before Paris and Helen even got there, we were told. They’d gone off course, made detours, and right now were fuck knows where. According to reports, they could be in Egypt. That’s what Hector said, standing in for his father, who was unwell at the time. Apparently.

  Agamemnon sniffed the air suspiciously.

  Hector sniggered. ‘Look, cunt-sniffer, I’ve told you, she’s not here. Look for yourselves. You’re welcome to search. And even if she does turn up, are you going to make such a fuss about one missing wife who’s spread her legs a little wider than the rest? What’s wrong with your brother? Doesn’t he have other wives? Concubines? Aren’t there enough whores in Sparta?’

  ‘She was abducted!’ Agamemnon interrupted loud and clear. ‘Against her will!’

  ‘I know what abducted means, thank you very much. And you’re talking bollocks. She wasn’t forced: she eloped.’

  ‘How do you know that if she’s not even here to ask?’

  ‘I know. We have our messengers. And what about all the Anatolian women you Greeks have abducted? What about Medea? What about my own aunt, Hesione?’

  ‘Now you’re the one that’s bollocking. Hesione was promised to one of ours. And Medea wasn’t abducted – she was hot for Jason.’

  ‘And Helen was hot for Paris.’

  ‘Helen was taken against all the laws of hospitality, politics and civilised behaviour – things for which you easterners show scant regard.’

  ‘Get this fucker out of here!’

  The embassy was over. The guards shouldered us to the door, Agamemnon still shouting over his shoulder.

  ‘And if she did spread her legs as you say, she spread them right across the fucking Aegean!’

  ‘Go and fuck yourself!’

  ‘Other way round, boy! They’re your legs she’s spread. And now all of Greece is going to come and fuck you!’

  ‘I’m shitting in my sandals,’ laughed Hector.

  The first embassy to Troy had not been a success.

  And now we were stuck in Aulis without a wind. We’d been stuck for weeks. That’s why Agamemnon was haranguing us. Morale was low, the men lay about bitching and beefing and there was a lot of buggery about, some of it unsolicited. Juicies were in short supply as Agamemnon had said we wouldn’t take whores aboard, not on a three-day crossing. He wanted the men to arrive in Anatolia with an edge on them.

  ‘Happy shaggers don’t make an effective landing force,’ he said. ‘Hag-shags banned on every ship. No exceptions. Got it?’

  Got it, Chief Motherfucker.

  ‘They can have their pick of prostitutes on the other side, not to mention all the other ladies we’ll introduce them to. Let them earn their pussy. Fight first, fuck later.’

  And now they’d turned to buggery. Brawls broke out over the bum-chums, the latrine queens, the dice, the rations, any excuse. There were desertions before each dawn, deaths before every sunset. The army at Aulis was an angry one. And Agamemnon was reduced to repeated speechifying, bullshit and lies.

  The lies came first.

  ‘This is a war of liberation. It’s not about occupation or acquisition
. We find what we’re looking for and we leave. It could be over in days.’

  That soon shaded into an all-important admission.

  ‘Liberation is the object of our attack. But the object of our attack is no more important than the principle behind it: the act of revenge. Revenge not only makes us feel good, it makes us look good. Foreign powers don’t fuck with us. If they do – they feel what it’s like when we fuck them back!’

  Roars of approval, huge round of applause.

  It didn’t last long. Agamemnon sounded convincing, except that there was still no wind. Not a breath from heaven. The venture stood still. Days passed. Windless weeks.

  Then Boreas blew. The god of the north frigging wind. He blew all fucking summer, his cheeks puffed out. He never paused for breath, the bastard, just blew and blew, made the riptide roar, keeping us holed up. Then he stopped. But he didn’t hand over to the other winds. He just finished his shift and buggered off. That’s gods for you. The air was heavy again with silence and flies and unrest. The latrines reeked. Our skins itched and prickled. Our skulls were bursting. Low-level mutiny rumbled among the tents. Agamemnon had to work even harder to keep our boys up for it.

  ‘Troy has rich pickings, more than enough for each leader and plenty left over to share out among the men. I saw what that bastard Paris brought to Sparta – and took away again, the cunt! They’re stinking rich, these Trojans, and every thing they’ve got is going to be ours.’

  ‘What about Helen?’

  ‘Fuck Helen!’

  He clapped a big hand over his brother’s mouth.

  ‘Helen goes without saying. We’re going to suck the bastards dry. If they’ve got lice, we’ll skin them for the tallow. We’re leaving them with fuck all. Troy is history.’

  Still no wind. The sea stood like a bronze dish, polished, empty, flat. Agamemnon stood up again to speak to the whole army. He let himself go. You could read the greed in his little piggy eyes, the quick, busy glittering, the truffling brain. His ancestry was thick with it, greed. A breed of grabbers. His language echoed it.

  ‘Listen lads, you could own tripods, teams of Trojan horses, whole bevies of beauties, juicies for the journey back, the apples of Anatolia. You reckon you can fuck? You won’t have to! They’ll do it for you, these women. You’ve no idea what sex is till you’ve had an Anatolian cunt milking your dick. I was there on embassy, remember? Just wait till you see the legs on these women, the thighs. They grip like . . .’

  He’d no idea what they gripped like because he’d been bundled out of the door so fast he’d never even smelled an Anatolian woman.

  ‘Like . . . like nothing on earth!’

  Like nothing. Nice when you run out of words.

  It didn’t bring the wind. Not a wrinkle on the sea. Word went round the ships. That’s it, lads, fuck it, we’ve had enough, even the leaders agree, we’re giving up, we’re going nowhere. We’re going home.

  And home we’d probably have gone, if it hadn’t been for Iphigenia.

  FIVE

  Calchas was the one who first came up with the idea that the impasse at Aulis was down to Agamemnon himself. Our great leader in his great wisdom had killed a deer sacred to Artemis, and in her anger the goddess had asked Poseidon either to lull the sea-winds or to make Boreas blow. And Poseidon had obliged on both counts. That was the official holy story according to the seer. Army god-freaks aren’t expected to meddle in strictly military matters, but this had nothing to do with combat. Calchas hated Agamemnon and never missed a moment to tip him in the shit. Not that a sacred deer ranks high on a soldier’s bad-news list. Agamemnon would have shagged Artemis herself if he could have got away with it, let alone bump off a deer. No fucking finesse – everybody knew that. And it wasn’t exactly a stoning offence. But right now the troops needed somebody to carry the can, and when you’re well and truly pissed off, there’s nobody better to take it out on than your old commander. Calchas landed him in it nicely. He’d fucked with the gods and the Greek fleet was consequently going nowhere.

  Not unless there was a sacrifice.

  And not just any old animal either. That became obvious. Sheep, goats, boars, bulls – we slit their throats daily. We were sick of spilled bowels stinking up the ships in the heat, sick of breathing in the greasy air. Nothing that fed the flames made a god so much as fart. The sky sat on the sea day after day. You could slice the air. Agamemnon felt Troy’s gold sliding through his fingers, slipping away from him like water. Until Calchas came right out with it at last, gave it to him straight, the thing that was expected of him, the ultimate sacrifice.

  Picture a young girl, a virgin, and a priestess too, riding a mule eastward from Mycenae to Aulis, no small journey, and thinking all the way that she was being ushered to her wedding. She’d been spun the story that the great Achilles had refused to sail to Troy with her father unless he had a beautiful bride to come back to. And the bride he wanted was the father’s daughter, Iphigenia.

  But the great Achilles knew fuck all about it. The great Achilles was married already, if truth be told. But truth was not told. Not strong on truth, Agamemnon, not if slitting a fourteen-year-old girl’s throat could swing the wind his way, save his skin, and make him rich. Not even if that girl happened to be his daughter. So truth was twisted. The trap was sprung instead.

  And Clytemnestra walked into it too. The proud mother came down to Aulis in all her glory, accompanying her daughter, the gorgeous bride . . . only to be greeted by an empty altar, no bull to be seen, not a heifer either, not even a sheep, not as much as a chicken in sight, not a cheep, and certainly no sign of a bridegroom. She saw it clear: her chick was the one that was going to cheep. There wasn’t going to be any wedding. There was only going to be this. She ran screaming at her husband, her white fists battering at his big chest as the girl gaped. It hadn’t dawned on her yet. She thought the garlands they had decked her neck with were bridal wreaths.

  They were her funeral flowers.

  ‘You bastard!’ Clytemnestra spat in his face, wrestling with him.

  ‘You see my position,’ he bleated. ‘It’s ugly for me either way. If the Trojans go unpunished all the other motherfuckers will think they can do the same. Every cunt under the sun will cross the Aegean to steal our wives and screw our daughters!’

  ‘It’s a lie, and you know it, you piece-of-shit coward!’

  ‘If I don’t do it I’m fucking sunk! My name’s mud with the men already. And their blood’s up. They’re primed to kill. They want to murder those barbarians! I can’t hold them back.’

  ‘You mean you want them to help you get rich!’

  ‘That’s got bugger all to do with it. I can’t control things beyond today.’

  ‘Then step aside and let somebody else fill your boots. Let Menelaus lead them. It’s his quarrel, not yours.’

  ‘No, it has to be me.’

  ‘Why? Because you’re still wiping your little brother’s arse?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with him either – it’s in the lap of the gods, I tell you. If I don’t do my duty I’ll end up dead in Argos anyway. I won’t even have to go to Troy for that. And you’ll be slaughtered too – you and all your children.’

  ‘Can’t you do better than that? You’d take an innocent girl’s life as the ransom for a slut? Your own child! A priestess for a whore: that’s your filthy exchange. You’d spend what we love most to buy what we most loathe! How? Why? We both know why. It’s greed that drives you, nothing else. We don’t need this war. You’re going for gold, and for your brother, not for us.’

  ‘Wrong. I’m going for Greece. My country is greater than one private sorrow. I’m leading my people.’

  ‘Well, may you lead them all to hell! And may you all rot there! That’s my curse on you!’

  Agamemnon threw the shrieking woman from him and gave her to the guards. ‘Enough said. No more. Let’s do it.’

  The force of destiny.

  Away back in time they come, appearing over
Pelion, the Pierides, with their long golden tresses and sandals, dancing to the strains of the harp, the piping reeds and the song Hymenaeus calls up on the Libyan flute. They are coming to the wedding, the marriage of the nymph Thetis, daughter of Nereus, and Peleus, son of Aeacus. The centaurs’ haunts ring with mountain melodies and the woodlands of Pelion rejoice. Loveliest of settings, and everyone ravishing in their beauty. Even Ganymede is there to mix the wine in golden bowls and pour libations, and Nereus’s golden girls dance on the gleaming white sands.

  Achilles is the fruit of that liaison, and that far back he is promised to Iphigenia – so the Aulis wedding is a story which, after all, contains a seed of truth. But Achilles’ head is fated for a helmet, and Iphigenia’s tresses for the brindled heifer’s wreath. The force of destiny. They crown her like a queen and ease her out of life to ease the Greek fleet out of Aulis.

  The ships there are a sight for any woman’s eyes. The fleet’s right wing is commanded by the Myrmidons: all the armaments of Phthia in fifty flamboyant vessels, Nereids at the sterns, the insignia of Achilles. These are the sweet honey of the fleet. It is a spectacle like no other, a spectacle to die for.

  Agamemnon slashed her throat, slicing deep, almost taking her head off with his huge brutal cut. He wanted to make it quick, so he saw to it himself, but he was always heavy-handed with a blade and botched it. The girl struggled and gurgled as the blood gushed and spurted over her wedding dress, but it was brief. Clytemnestra’s eyes were a cold flame.

  ‘You murderer!’ She almost whispered the words.

  The father turned his head away from the dying girl. But not out of sensitivity or regret. A wind was already ruffling the Greek sails, lifeless for weeks.

  ‘Who says the gods are not on my side?’

  Iphigenia’s last thoughts are of a snow-clad valley in Phrygia, deep in a haunt of Ida, where another child was once sent to die – the infant Paris, also plucked from his mother, then torn by wild beasts, though there are no beasts like men. He lived instead, survived among the roses and hyacinths and the fountains of the nymphs, and so grew up, and later came to Sparta to claim his illicit bride, Aphrodite’s bribe.