Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  Agamemnon caught my eye with a desperate look and I knew what he meant. Moments ago, the men’s blood had been up and they’d been ready to dig out blind. As usual, Thersites had swung them against their leader and against the war. He had to be stopped. There was only one thing for it. I grabbed the bastard and threw him to the ground in front of the whole army. Then I ripped off his clothes, exposing every inch of his deformities. Softer hearts would have been shocked, but the rank and file had no hearts to soften. They were hard bastards and they laughed, this time at Thersites’ expense.

  ‘What a fucking freak!’

  ‘A cunt of a chimera!’

  ‘A fucking abortion!’

  ‘The ugliest fucker on earth!’

  ‘And he’ll look even uglier,’ I said, ‘after this.’

  I laid about his back and shoulders with my staff, the ceremonious one with the big golden studs all the way down. They brought out a huge bloody great chain of weals on the bastard’s back, like a line of hills, as big as the studs themselves, all the way along the spine. He screamed and doubled up, hiding his scraggy tackle with one hand and fisting away tears with the other, blinking like an imbecile. I raised the rod again and he yelled for mercy.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but one more fucking cheep out of you and I’ll give you a proper thrashing that’ll make you more than fucking blubber. You won’t recover. And you’ll be on shit patrol for the rest of the war, rank or no rank. That’s if I don’t take you out personally into the desert and throw you to the camel-shaggers! Leadership? Who are you to be lecturing us on leadership? Good god almighty, you’re not even a man yourself by definition! What’s that old horse-cock hanging between your legs? You couldn’t even get it up a cunt-cap, could you? Look at you!’

  Thersites clutched at his clothes and scuttled off, whimpering. I wasn’t proud of hurting the poor bastard, but even by his standards he’d gone too far, and Agamemnon now owed me one. All the same some of the men grumbled and looked sullen. I wasn’t sure I’d got off with spoiling their fun, but Nestor seized the moment to bring them back on side.

  ‘What a waste of time this has been! Words are not weapons, lads; you know that well enough. And windbags are not far off being traitors – like that scatological idiot Odysseus has just rightly dealt with. Go home indeed! Why be in such a hurry to go home? Eager to see your women? Who wouldn’t be? But haven’t you forgotten something? There are Trojan women here that need seeing to first – and I mean seeing to! Hundreds of them up there within those walls, maybe even a couple of thousand young virgins who’ve never tasted a man. And wives who’ve had it often enough, but never from a Greek. And they’ll be needing it all right when their husbands are delighting the dogs instead. Yes?’

  An enormous yes.

  ‘And you wouldn’t deny their women that pleasure, would you? No?’

  An enormous no.

  ‘Look then, here’s the plan. We can topple Troy’s towers in an hour, raze the whole city in a day, just as Agamemnon says. I say no soldier goes home to his woman till he’s taken a Trojan woman. Or two. And made them pay for everything this war has cost us. Cost you. Take ten women if you feel like it, there’ll be plenty of pussy to go round. Spear your enemies first, lads, and then start spearing their wives and daughters, night after night, till you’ve spilt enough white stuff to float us back to Argos! What do you think, then? To war?’

  To war.

  Picture the base of a beetling cliff, thrashed by the crashing waves, flung at it by every gale that blows.

  Picture the early bees falling thickly on the quick spring flowers when the sun with Taurus rides.

  Picture a forest fire, a furious blinding glare, gathering speed, and raging faster than a massed chariot charge, when the war-horse nostrils flare and the muzzle’s flecked with foam . . .

  Picture the long-necked swans, flock upon flock, like the floods that foregather in Asian meadows by the streams of Cayster, flying upwards and settling and rising again until you can hear the entire plain ringing, clangorous with their cries.

  Picture the swarms of flies that buzz about the April cowsheds when the buckets brim and spill with milk and the milkmaids’ breasts are splashed and Taurus rides again.

  Picture those scenes, charged with so much natural energy, innocent life, idyllic beauty, and you have some idea of how Penelope pictured the Greek army on the move. The thunderous applause that followed Nestor’s speech was like the crashing of the sea at the base of that steep cliff. The swarms of bees poured out from the black ships, stitched in thickly, and with such loving patience and skill. As ever, there was a curious paradoxical aptness to Penelope’s imagery. No soldier going into action has his mind on milk-pails or bees or the buds of spring, and yet these are the innocent things he’s missing at that moment, the very scenes that might inspire him to survive, to animate the instinct to fight and win and so return to the innocent idyll, the old life, far away from war and the frenzied cries of the commanders.

  ‘Move out, you motherfuckers, move out!’

  ‘Red on red, lads – and watch your arses!’

  ‘Up to the front, dogfucks, up to the fucking front!’

  ‘Shift and scuttle, you turtlefuckers, let’s hear your balls clang!’

  The illustrious Agamemnon had assembled an amazing army, the wonder of the web. The Boeotians alone were a sight to behold, culled from the uplands of Eteonus to the spreading meadows of Mycalessus. They came from dove-cotted Thisbe, thick with wings and murmuring moans, and from Coronea, from grassy Haliartus and the impregnable city of Lower Thebes. There were soldiers from holy Onshestus, from the deeps of Poseidon’s sacred wood, from Arne where the black grapes hang thick, and from furthest Anthedon, bordering the back of beyond. They sailed in fifty ships and there were a hundred and twenty young Boeotian men in every ship.

  That was just one of a myriad of companies. Others came from Aspledon and Phocis, from Salamis and Ormenion and Pherae and Argissa and scores of other places. Penelope showed all the homelands, the whole majestic fleet of ships thrusting from their scattered harbours and converging on Troy, and the soldiers pouring forth.

  There’s Elphenor, leading the fiery Abantes, so fleet of foot, with their cropped forelocks and their long flowing manes walloping the air behind them. They’re lunging as they march, practising on the move with their ashen spears, and it’s obvious they’re lethal spearmen, they’re so eager for the real thing.

  Nestor may have been old, but he commanded ninety ships. He’d brought them from sandy Pylos, from the lovely land of Arene, from Helos and from Dorion. Achilles commanded the troops from Pelasgian Argos, Alus and Alope, from Trachis, his own Phthia, and from Hellas, land of lovely ladies and spellbound men. These were the Hellenes, the Achaeans and his beloved Myrmidons. But now they lay in disarray and the ships were waste and idle, not even drawn up in battle order. Their glorious commander hung about the hulls like a ghost, still eating his heart out for Briseis, for whom he’d sacked Lyrnessus and stormed the walls of Thebe. Or so he had made himself believe. It was grief for the lovely girl and anger against Agamemnon that kept fifty shiploads of sailors and a crack regiment stranded on the beach while the rest went into the field.

  Gouneus brought twenty-two ships from Cyphus, leading out the Enienes and the intrepid winter-bitten Peraebians, battle-hardened men who made their homes round wintry Dodona and farmed the fields by the delightful streams of Titeresius, pouring into the Peneus.

  There was a powerful-looking pair leading the men from Minyaean Orchomenus: Ascalaphus and Ialmenus. As a girl, their lovely mother had ascended secretly to an upper room in the palace of Actor and had lain naked there for the war-god himself. Ares laid by his lance and made love to her instead, tamed by her charms. There she lies in the web – naked, young and lovely, years before Helen and Troy. But her sons inherited their father’s bellicosity, and their thirty ships were foremost in fight.

  Medon led the men who’d come with Philoctetes fr
om Methone, Thaumacie, Meliboea and rocky Olizon. But the great archer himself still lay in agony on lovely Lemnos, the snake that had bitten him lying at his side, woven coiled and glittering into the web.

  And Podarces took over from his brother Protesilaus, whose blood had been first to stain the beach and whose men had followed him from Phylace and flowery Pyrasus, from sheep-strewn Iton and sea-swept Autron and Pteleus, deep green and lush with grass. Back in Phylace, his young wife Laodamia lies with lacerated face in a half-built house, ash on her hair and emptiness between her thighs where her husband should have lain, King of Thessaly, his coral bones now strewn deep in the whelming sea.

  Every hero in Greece was there that day, the greater of the two Ajaxes more prominent in Achilles’ absence, and the finest horses therefore the matching mares of Admetus, with Achilles’ peerless steeds withdrawn. Their great master lay with his bosom friend Patroclus, heartsore by his ships, seething and grieving, and the splendid steeds stood idle beside their empty chariots, champing the clover and the marsh parsley, their long ears twitching as they heard the familiar sounds of thousands of men and horses on the move, going gladly into battle, every one of them ready to die.

  Sighting this majestic spectacle from high up on snowy Olympus, Zeus turns to wind-footed Iris and orders her to alert the Trojans and prepare them for action. And so the Greek army, its armour ablaze, its heart on fire, will march straight into Zeus’s trap. They will engage bravely, fight well and inflict heavy casualties, but ultimately they will suffer colossal losses.

  Iris speeds like an arrow down to Troy, disguising herself as Polites, one of Priam’s sons and a lookout atop old Aesyetes’ tomb. Polites was still there, spotting the danger, when Iris ran before him to the palace, where Priam was conferring with Hector and the other generals.

  ‘The time for talk is over,’ gasps the goddess. ‘Arm yourselves and get out there! The Greeks are on the move. The entire army has left the ships! It’s a full-scale attack!’

  The response was immediate. Hector led, followed by Aeneas, Pandarus and the two sons of Merops, Adrestus and Amphius, whose seer father had divined their deaths in battle and had pleaded with them to stay at home. But they went to war, laughing at their father and ruffling his white hair, and so died the deaths he had predicted for them.

  They were followed in turn by Asius, Hippothous and Pylaeus, and by Acamas and Peiros, leading the Thracians, hot from the Hellespont. Pyraechmes led the Paeonians, bearing huge curving bows, Pylaemenes led the Paphlagonians, and Odius and Epistrophus brought the Alizones from faraway Alybe. Commanding the Mysians were Chromis and Ennomus, an augur who failed to foresee that soon the birds would be picking his white bones clean, after the river fishes had tasted him first.

  After that came the Phrygians, eager for action, then the Maeonians. The barbarous-tongued Carians followed their captains Nastes and Amphimachus, the charmer, all decked in gold and dressed to kill. He was another of the unfortunates who would encounter Achilles in the riverbed on the day the Scamander ran blood, and Achilles would help himself to the dead man’s gold, dead men having no need of decoration. And lastly came Glaucus and Sarpedon, who would not see the end of the war, leading the men from Lycia and the swirling streams of Xanthus.

  And so the two armies approached each other with destinies already woven and the outcome known only to the gods. If you could have stood and looked at this amazing array of men, all glittering and greedy for action, you might even have believed, in some forbidden part of your heart, that war was nobler than peace, and the field sweeter than home.

  SEVENTEEN

  With Hector leading them, the Trojans go out with loud shouts, like the cries of cranes flying south over the seas before the cold days come. And there the cranes go, taking off, winging away from the wintry glooms, their wing tips almost touching the Trojan helmets, brushing the purple plumes as they leave them to their war and take their clamour higher into the skies, over the crash of waves.

  The Greeks, by contrast, march in silence, shoulder to shoulder, quietly breathing out their courage. Nestor’s finger touches his old lips. No need to sing and shout – better the dignitas of the slow silent march. There’s a sinister chill about it that can paralyse an enemy with terror. Everybody shouts and swears when they’re afraid.

  Stamping across the plains of Troy, the Greek feet soon kick up a dust cloud as thick as the mist the south wind sends swirling across the summits of the hills, making the shepherd grumble and the robber rub his thieving hands, both watchful for their trade, far from the trade of war.

  And so it continues – the heart-stopping spectacle of two great armies about to clash. And the world around them goes about its business, the clouds unconcerned, the birds with worries of their own, intent on life.

  But before we could engage, something happened. A soldier stepped out from the Trojan ranks and signalled to both sides to halt. He put out an open challenge: he’d take on anybody in the Greek army who was willing to meet him in single combat, bumboy or slag, even a man if we had any. He’d face up to him right here and now and spill his brains for him, and the rest of us could just fuck off home, if we had any sense, and learn not to mess with Troy in future.

  ‘Who the fuck’s that?’ asked Agamemnon. ‘Who’s the fucking time-waster?’

  I knew him by the panther skin on his back.

  ‘It’s Paris,’ I said. ‘He thinks he’s Heracles today.’

  But Paris got the shock of his little life when none other than Menelaus came charging out of the ranks in his chariot, screeched to a stop in a cloud of dust, jumped down and ran out into no-man’s-land, baying for his blood. He couldn’t believe his luck.

  ‘I’ll kill the cunt! I’ll cut him to fucking pieces! He’s dogmeat!’

  Paris had intended to impress, as usual, but lost his nerve when he saw who was taking up the challenge. He slunk back into the ranks as quickly as he’d left them and Hector gave it to him.

  ‘You fucking wall-boy! Stick you on a mural with the painted soldiers – that’s all the fighting you’ll ever do, you pretty fuck!’

  That was just the start of the tirade. Hector let both armies know what he thought of his little prick of a brother, the curse of Priam’s house and the shame of the city. He’d sneaked off with the wife of a better man when he was away from home and now he was shitting himself at the thought of having to confront him. We all applauded and asked for more. Hector obliged.

  ‘You and your lyre and your good looks! They’ll be fuck-all use to you when you’re stretched out face down in the dust with a Greek spear up your arse! By rights you should be in your tomb already, stoned to fucking death for what you’ve done!’

  Hector had changed his tune a bit since the first embassy and Paris winced under the withering criticism. But he took the shit and dug deep.

  ‘All right, I admit it, I bottled out. But I’m calling you out again, Menelaus, and this time there’ll be no retreat, you’ve got my word on it.’

  Menelaus shouted back. ‘The word of a wife-stealer and a funk! A backstairs fucking skulker!’

  But it was too good an opportunity to miss, and so it was agreed that the two top leaders, Priam and Agamemnon, should meet to discuss the necessary arrangements, the truce and the duel.

  ‘I want that old cunt out here,’ said Agamemnon.

  ‘And he’ll come,’ I said, ‘but for fuck’s sake try to keep the tone diplomatic.’

  ‘I don’t want any of his arrogant bastard sons present. They’re unscrupulous fuckers and they’d wreck a treaty for the hell of it, just as soon as they’d fart in your face.’

  ‘Bravely spoken,’ I said, ‘but let’s put it this way instead, shall we? We’ll say that young men are exceedingly impetuous and unpredictable, and that if an oath has to be taken, it should be taken by older and wiser heads.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Agamemnon. ‘Just get the old cunt out here.’

  So we slit the lambs’ throats and dropped them gaspi
ng to the ground, where the dark red life ran from them. We poured out the wine, mixing it with the blood, and agreed on a set of rules for the duel and a form of words for the oath.

  It was simple enough: Paris and Menelaus to meet in single combat with no backup on either side, the winner to keep Helen and all her wealth, and all the rest to make a treaty of peace between them. If Menelaus lost, the Greeks would leave. If Paris lost, the Trojans would pay us a substantial recompense and hand Helen over to us.

  Antenor spoke the final words that sealed the oath.

  ‘Whoever breaks this treaty, may his brains stain the ground, just like this blood and this wine. And may foreign invaders hurl their infants from the highest cliffs and topmost towers. May they ravish their wives and rape their daughters and take them home to their own beds, wives and girls to the loom and the well, old and sick to the sword and the flame. And all males to have their throats cut.’

  ‘Too fucking right,’ said Agamemnon.

  Priam bowed gravely. After which Antenor led him back to the city. The poor old bugger couldn’t bring himself to stay and watch the fight. He said the stress would be too much for him to bear. He knew that if his son fell down Menelaus would start by cutting his balls off. By the time he’d finished with him Priam might get back a body for burial but it wouldn’t be a joined-up one.

  Under truce the two armies sat down in opposite rows and watched as the combatants, armed to the teeth, stepped out into no-man’s-land. They both looked impressive in silver and bronze and tin, protected by helmet and cuirass and shield and greaves and carrying sword and spears. But everybody knew that underneath all that flash was an arsehole and a prick. Which was which?

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered to each soldier was that it was somebody else’s life and not his own now on the line. Everybody was happy and relaxed. Big Ajax was grinning all over his ugly mug.