Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  A day’s walk from Thebe-under-Plakos is the city of Chryse. On the day Thebe was attacked, a visitor from Chryse got caught up in the raid. She’d been seeing a friend in the city and ended up as part of the spoils. Wrong place, wrong time. She was Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, the priest of Apollo in that city and an important man.

  Important? Counts for fuck all in war. She was taken back to the camp and ended up in Agamemnon’s bed. Achilles had fancied her and reckoned he had earned her, but he let Agamemnon have his way.

  ‘He cuts that cunt too much slack,’ complained Patroclus.

  Like all wives, Patroclus was a nag. Achilles seemed to like it.

  The pair of them then proceeded to sack Lyrnessus. This time, Patroclus insisted Achilles take what was due to him from the spoils, though it was mostly the usual story, the males butchered or sold, the women raped or penned, then sorted out as weavers, water-carriers, bed-warmers, whores and slaves to the soldiers who’d killed their husbands, brothers, sons and now fucked them whenever they felt inclined. They did much the same thing as before, but with a different man in a different place, speaking a few words in a different language. Words for water, food and fucking you can learn in half an hour.

  That’s what happened to Briseis. Achilles killed her three brothers, and their sister had to sleep with their killer. She was lucky. Achilles treated her well. Not everybody who met him in the field came off well – not unless you commanded a fat ransom, or if you were a girl with a nice belly and breasts like Aphrodite. Achilles’ decency did not include any sentimentality. His Myrmidons were merciless.

  But Agamemnon was simply rapacious. He always took the lion’s share, even if he’d done bugger all to earn it. The men called him ‘the jackal’. Seldom in at the kill, he was always quick and keen to clean up. He was no fucking lion, they said.

  So bad blood was brewing. After the raids came the distribution of the loot and the pussy-booty, with the inevitable grumbling in the ranks. Except that on this occasion even the leaders were pissed off with Agamemnon. Nestor, sensing trouble ahead, called a meeting. Discontent can spill over into the combat zone and fuck things up. The meeting on Lyrnessus, Nestor said, was to clarify the rules.

  They were rough and ready but clear enough and didn’t need any sorting out. You’d have to be a complete moron not to understand and respect them. Or an arsehole. Agamemnon scored high on both counts, but Nestor patiently went over everything, determined to send a message to the top.

  You kept what you’d taken from somebody you’d killed or raped. It didn’t matter who that somebody was or what you’d taken – weapons or armour stripped from the corpse, a necklace torn from the neck of a wife become widow, a ring ripped from her finger – that was yours for keeps, whether you were Agamemnon or the lowly sod who filled in his private crap-hole. But the captive in question was not yours until or unless the allocations were approved. If you wanted a spear-wife or a bed-slave you had to wait in the queue. If they were aristocrats, the leaders wanted them for concubines or for ransom. You’d never even smell them. The same went for the pretty boys. Ugly slags or social shit became camp slappers. All being fair in love and fucking war. Clear?

  CFB

  ‘And let me remind you of the principle that still applies,’ said Nestor, looking at Agamemnon. ‘The best prize goes to the best fighter, the army’s top soldier. And we all know who that is.’

  An enormous roar for Achilles. Agamemnon had placed him second by awarding himself Chryseis.

  ‘This is what has mainly caused the trouble,’ Nestor went on. ‘It was a flagrant breach of manners.’

  Another huge roar, this time an angry one.

  ‘Actually a breach of discipline,’ Nestor added.

  Agamemnon gave his fuck-you snort.

  ‘Of moral discipline.’ Nestor emphasised the adjective with his usual quiet clarity. ‘Specifically,’ he said, ‘Chryseis should have gone to Achilles.’

  We all looked at Achilles, wondering what he’d say. He said nothing. He was waiting for Agamemnon to drop himself in the shit. Which he duly did.

  ‘Well, he got Briseis, didn’t he? I didn’t even ask for her.’ He was red in the face.

  Big round of laughter.

  Idomeneus came in mockingly. ‘He didn’t even ask for her! That was odd, wasn’t it? After all, Achilles killed her father and her brothers, all three of them, and the Chief Motherfucker didn’t even put in a fucking claim for her even though he’d obviously earned her, by doing fuck all, as usual. Didn’t even ask for her! What the fuck were you thinking, man?’

  ‘Go and fuck yourself!’

  Everybody turned back to Achilles. He smiled his cold smile of contempt but still said nothing. His look said it all. Agamemnon was a pathetic cheat and a greedy swindler and everybody knew it. Such was the high command. Nestor’s attempt to clear the air had made it stink instead. An insult is a silver-plated turd, silence is pure gold. Achilles’ silence was eloquent and spoke volumes. The disillusionment with the leadership had already set in. Nestor made one final effort.

  ‘Achilles, are you happy?’

  Patroclus shook his partner’s elbow and made exasperated faces at him but Achilles ignored him.

  ‘I’m happy with Briseis,’ he said.

  ‘And you, Agamemnon?’

  An opportunity for an apology.

  Agamemnon said he didn’t give a fuck for Anatolian farm girls with their sunburned breasts and their big unsunned arses – they were cheaper than sheep. He cared about something called class.

  Uproarious horselaughter. As if, the soldiers sniggered, refinement oozed out of Agamemnon’s every pore.

  ‘That’s why we can hear you farting on the job every night!’ Thersites lobbed his shitty witbit into the debate and made everybody laugh even louder.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, you!’

  But the men encouraged him, egging him on with shouts and applause. The rank and file especially liked him, because although he was well-born, you wouldn’t think it to look at him. He was a smashed arsehole of a man, a deformed lump with a foul mouth that ran like an open sewer.

  ‘Go on, Thersites, let him have it!’

  Thersites grinned and spat. ‘Come on, lads, you’ve got to admit it, you can’t hide breeding. Look at me, for example. And our Big Chief Motherfucker there is fucking full of it. That’s why we’re so short of pussy, don’t you know? He suffocates the fleas and gasses the whores! That’s not farting, that’s fucking class you hear – and smell! Sleep with that bag of class and you’re fishbait by the morning! It’s a fucking death sentence! Class? Class my arse!’

  Universal hilarity and prolonged applause. The whole army stood up and cheered. Thersites was as coarse as they come, but generally he knew when to strike. Nobody could improve on him. Agamemnon went purple.

  ‘You scabrous rat, I’ll fucking kill you!’

  He knew he couldn’t, but he didn’t have the wit to realise that Thersites inadvertently had done him a huge favour. The meeting broke up in laughter and more jokes, much to Nestor’s relief. Agamemnon’s inequity was forgotten.

  For the moment.

  TEN

  It’s a great scene on the web. Helios is riding high in the sky, clothed in gold, his horses galloping unstoppably, drawing the flaming sun through the upper blue. He glances down at the blue sweep of the sea, remembering how Heracles had once looked up at him from his ship, crazed by the glare, and had tried to bring him down from the sky. Heracles was on his tenth labour at the time, charged with bringing back the cattle of Geryon from the island of Erythia, and when he passed the straits separating Europe from Asia, he set up two stone pillars at Gibraltar and Centa, the Pillars of Heracles. Helios had been so tickled by the audacious attempt to topple him that, instead of annihilating the man who had tried to oust him from the air, he gave him a golden goblet with a lion skin for a sail. Heracles sailed it to Erythia, Geryon got an arrow through each of his three throats, and the cattle were driven o
verland all the way back to Greece.

  ‘Ah, the age of heroes,’ sighed Helios. ‘There are precious few of them left on earth these days.’

  Then he looked back again, more closely this time, scanning the huge blue ploughlands of the ocean.

  What did he see?

  South of Samothrace, between Lemnos and Imbros and Tenedos, the sea is blackening with ships. The Greek fleet is approaching the straits. The sailors don’t yet see what Helios can see – the plains of Troy, where fates will be decided, glory won, lives ended. The Trojans know we’re coming, though, and already they’re defending the beachhead, where the first casualties will occur. Men who never gave a thought to the gods will suddenly start praying to them, might even begin to believe in them. Nerves are strung out. Our mouths are dry. Our chests hurt.

  ‘Keep a tight arse, lads!’

  Agamemnon encouraging his troops.

  ‘Don’t let the blackheads sniff your shit! These raids were just a fucking warm-up! Get ready to win your laurels!’

  Helios hears him, smiles and shrugs, looks ahead again, gripping the reins to bring the Greeks to Troy on schedule, dragging time blindly behind him, drinking the blue air.

  As we neared the beachhead, the men kept looking at us, their leaders, sifting our faces, hoping to read in them somehow an assurance of survival, however fragile, however false. It’s what leaders are for: they look after their men, they keep them safe. So if you were a leader, you looked at your men to reassure them, and you saw all those eyes, fixed on you, riveted, staring, the whites wide, depending on you. And you wanted to look away.

  The men looked away from Menelaus. He was a shit leader. They could see it; anybody could see it, the certainty that he’d lead you straight to your fucking demise because he didn’t give a shit about you or your family as long as he got his revenge and got back his good name. The good name he never even had.

  And his wife. Got back his wife. Most of his followers thought he was a dumbo to go to war just because she’d spread her legs for a Trojan. So what? She was a receptacle for sperm anyway, wasn’t she? A bed-warmer. Why did he have to make such a fuss about it? Why did he care so much? But he knew he’d be left without a face either if he didn’t hit back. And then there was the treasure. She’d taken the dowry – and a lot more that had accumulated during their ten years together.

  The fact is, he did care about her, and it wasn’t just about status. Yes, he’d landed on his feet when she’d opted for him, and to find himself suddenly the Spartan king when Tyndareus died was a huge coup. He was cock-a-hoop at the time, up to his balls in clover. Even after she’d left him, they couldn’t take that away from him. He’d always be King of Sparta.

  And yet he was distraught. Some of his people thought he’d go mad. Some thought he’d lost it already. He looked at the sea, promiscuous among the pebbles of the beach, and saw her nude body laid out like water, sunning itself, spreading the practised thighs. She swarmed with ships. Night fell, the full moon slid out of the sea like one of her white breasts. Or the crescent hung high over his head like her ivory comb. She took it off and shook her hair, scattering stars. The bawdy sea-breezes stroked her belly, the shadow of the poplar stole slowly up the bed, between her legs. He saw it all, the whole cosmos having her. By all accounts he could neither eat nor sleep, pacing the moonlit columns, the darkened corridors, sitting with shadows, staring out to sea, saying her name at first light to the hungry palace dogs, to the stray stars of dawn, turning over and over in his mind the whole sordid affair, reliving it as if he were a fly on the wall of his own bedchamber, watching it happen, letting it fester.

  As it festered now, right behind those eyes, and we neared the beaches, and the far-off lines of surf glinted like snow along the shore. So far still. And yet so near.

  Had she ever really wanted him? Or did her father decide? Had she wanted his children? Why did she have only the one? And was Hermione even his? She had her mother’s looks all right, the golden-haired Aphrodite looks, but there was nothing of her father in her – if he even was the father. Why? He was fertile. All the slave-girls had got big-bellied eventually. He’d even impregnated one of them before Helen. But his wife never conceived again. Fucked up by Theseus? Or was she just clever with her cunt – fuck the slut! – applying acacia and cedar juice and oil and vinegar, all held nicely in place with honey, whatever these bitches did to guard the gates of the womb, any old honeycap, anything to avoid a litter of little pigs.

  Naturally he must have wondered, he must have fretted over the years, though he wasn’t the type to insist on an intimate examination, a little squeamish for that, and still proud of his catch, poor bastard, and inclined to indulge her, till one day he indulged her a fuck too far – and suddenly we were all contributing to history.

  Except Menelaus. Even though history was today, history was this moment, history was the sound of seagulls, the swoosh of oars, the sudden taste and tang of tangle. Everybody knew it except Menelaus. We all knew it, knew there was a rain of arrows waiting to fall on us, to hit us hard, ready to rub us right out of time in one split second and into the terrifying dark.

  History gives you the shits. But Menelaus was stuck in the history of his own four walls, the stained sheets, the crumpled bed, and the blue air of morning pouring in to light up the place where the two had lain. Had they planned it all in his presence, under his nose, before he’d even left for Crete? Did they itch for one another even as they ate? Did they shag with their eyes? Did they pass notes?

  Of course they fucking did. Look at the table where they all sat down to dinner, see the secret messages spilled out from the tipped drinking-cups, scribbled out in the spilled blood-red wine that he was too drunk to read, to decipher. They’re there on the web, those messages, incontrovertible, and in Aphrodite’s handwriting. I want you. I want you too. I’m hard for you. I’m wet for you. All arranged by the amorous goddess, artful at each elbow as the chuckling cuckold across the table sank into a dribbling torpor.

  They longed for him to leave. The gooseberry fool. The pudding. And when he did, and started snoring, who approached whose chamber door? Aphrodite had made Paris irresistible from the moment he turned up in Sparta, bright with barbaric charms, and now she was whispering in Helen’s ear.

  ‘He’s younger, fitter, prettier – and he doesn’t snore, and he doesn’t stink of pigs. What are you waiting for? Go on, fuck the handsome bastard!’

  And although the handsome bastard was only a glorified cattleman – the cunt! – the cattleman took her from the pigman, took her from reedy Eurotas, his Aphrodite bribe, looted the place, and left. Fucked off.

  And now he’s fucking her, fucking my fucking wife, the fucking whore!

  Menelaus broke out into one of his sweats. The crew glanced askance at him again and averted their eyes. Their leader wasn’t even there, the fucker. He wasn’t with them. He’d emigrated inside himself. They’d have to look after themselves.

  Once clear of Sparta, Helen had relaxed. They could have made it to Troy in three days, but they felt confident enough to meander. She was sure Menelaus would follow her, but not in a skiff. He’d bring a fleet and that would take time. Plenty of time. Paris picked his way among pirates, traders, bought her expensive weaves, Sidonian women for her handmaids. The pair were high on henbane and laurel crushed and roasted, breathed in heavily and babbled out in dreams. They lay naked and entwined night and day, the slim Spartan ankles looped around his neck, the adulterous buttocks thrusting with the bucking ocean – in Menelaus’s mind.

  They reached the Hellespont. And Troy came into view, the coastline uninteresting, almost ugly, with its indifferent hills and long, indolent beaches. The city was still a few miles off, but already its coarse sounds and acrid scents were strong on the sea air. It was a city that didn’t know her and didn’t want to know her. She sensed it already. Her heart sank. The sounds increased as they rode inland, the smells intensified, she picked out the details, the shitty shanties of the
lower town, the pungent aroma of horses, the stink of the stable, the rich reek of dung, mingling with iris and coriander, cumin, frankincense. The whole town was thigh-deep, elbow-deep in its sweaty work. People stopped and stared at the beauty in the cart trundling upwards, and the women spat three times across their breasts. Another new bitch for his bed.

  But as she moved up through the town, she could see it was bustling and prosperous. The citadel Pergamos soared a hundred feet above the surrounding plain, protected by walls the height of ten men and equally thick. Impregnable. Menelaus would never storm a fortress like this, even with the help of his brain-deprived brother. She was safe. She breathed more easily. Up here near the citadel, in spite of her tilted head and jolting bones, she noticed how the air had improved, and she was met by people who needed to smell better and could afford to. She knew she was coming to a country where women were better treated than in Greece and had more standing, more respect. They could even make decisions for their husbands, rule in their absence. All this, at least, Paris had assured her of. From the very first night.

  Even so. Even so, as she gazed back out across the sea she had crossed to get here, stared out across the swampy malarial plains, she felt a twinge. For Menelaus? No. For her daughter? No. But for lovely Lacedaemon, Sparta. She and Greece were strangers now, enemies even, enemies forever. What did Troy really have to offer her? What did she have to offer Troy?

  ‘Doom!’ howled Cassandra, the priestess, Priam’s daughter. Her prophecies of doom were doomed to dismissal. From the walls of the citadel she saw her coming, saw it coming, the whole catastrophe. She tore her face and her hair flew out.

  ‘Don’t let her in! Keep her out! Send her home! Away with her!’