Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  Ajax ran up to retrieve the spear. He wanted the armour too, but a hail of javelins came down on him like a skein of long-necked geese flying south in the fall of leaves, filling the skies with their cries. As the hissing geese shrieked down on Ajax, he tried to fend them off with his shield, but they kept on coming, so thickly that eventually he retreated.

  COERANUS, ALASTOR, CHROMIUS, ALCANDER, HALIUS, NOEMAN, PRYTANIS. All killed by me, Odysseus, no details necessary, for modesty’s sake, and their names on the roll of honour. For what that’s worth.

  And the hero of the hour in the web?

  Only one hero – Death. Beautiful death, glorious death, kalos thanatos, descending like sunset on doomed men, the darkness wrapping them up fast, as though they were sleepy children. Penelope didn’t show Death as he really was, strolling among the wounded at his leisure, allowing ample hours of suffering. Death was in no hurry on the plains of Troy, when the blood turned slowly black from the bronze bite of the poisoned arrows and soldiers puked and shat their way to Hades, and the dogs’ long tongues sucked out their marrow when their sharp teeth had finished crunching on their bones. You won’t find that on the web.

  And glory? Staying alive is glorious. War is stripping the enemy and not getting stripped yourself. War is acquisition. You grab what you can under the hail of spears and then you get out. You don’t leave a man with a cap on his skull or a rag to cover his balls or his arse. Take life, take property, take all. That’s how it goes.

  For us, Diomedes was the hero of the hour, brighter than the brightest star of summer. His crest and shield flamed like Sirius and his spears rained down on the Trojans like meteors, like the Pleiads shooting through the midnight skies in August when the air is clear, like one of those winter torrents, swollen by the rains, that tears down trees and flattens dykes, destroying the landscape. Nothing that stood in his way survived.

  It was while he was watching this onslaught that Aeneas urged Pandarus – soon to be a dead man – to bring down Diomedes if he could.

  ‘I’ve shot the cunt already!’ yelled Pandarus. ‘And Menelaus! Both the bastards should be dead meat by now. Why the fuck didn’t I listen to my father? He told me before I left for the front to fight from my chariot. And I paid no attention to him, did I? I thought I’d get the glory with this fucking thing!’

  He threw down his bow in disgust and kicked it away from him.

  ‘It’s let me down. I wish I’d left it on its peg by the door. When I get home again the first thing I’ll do is chuck it into the fucking fire!’

  So said Pandarus, little knowing that he wouldn’t be going home again, not today. Not ever. Aeneas took him on a different course, in his own chariot, pulled by the horses of Tros. Their mission: to take out Diomedes.

  ‘Now’s your chance,’ shouted Aeneas, ‘to follow your father’s advice!’

  Sthenelus saw them coming and shouted to Diomedes to retreat.

  ‘From that pair of testicles? Never!’

  ‘They may be testicles but they’re no fucking dunces! And you’re wasted!’

  ‘Am I? We’ll see about that!’ Diomedes stroked his javelin and pointed with it. ‘See these horses? They’re the best ever.’

  And they were. The son of Cronos, the great god Zeus, gave their sires to Tros in exchange for Ganymede. Anchises put the mares to them, bred without permission. The mares foaled. He got six horses, kept four, and gave Aeneas the other two.

  ‘They’re only fucking horses!’ said Sthenelus.

  ‘No matter. They’d be a cracker of a prize. A match for Achilles, I’d say – any fucking day!’

  Seconds later Pandarus and Aeneas had charged up to within range, and Pandarus let fly his javelin. It pierced Diomedes’ shield and Pandarus whooped.

  ‘A hit! A fucking hit! You’re a dead man!’

  ‘Think so, do you?’

  The spear hadn’t penetrated the armour.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘If I were you I’d try sword practice. You’re not much of an archer, and your spear’s no good. But you won’t have time to rectify that. You’re the dead man, you loser!’

  Diomedes hurled.

  And that was the encounter in which Aeneas lost his horses and Pandarus his life. Along with many a fellow Trojan. The Greeks cheered.

  ‘We’re drubbing the cunts – keep at them, lads! They’re on the fucking run!’

  Even allowing for Penelope’s prejudice and her fondness for Greek bronze in Trojan teeth, the web is right: the Trojans were taking a bad thrashing, and Sarpedon, King of Lycia, lashed out at Hector bitterly.

  ‘You Trojans are doing next to nothing – your allies are standing between you and annihilation. I’ve come a long way from Lycia, leaving behind a lovely wife and a beloved son, far from here by the rushing Xanthus. And I’ve left lands and property that my neighbours are eager to get their greedy hands on. Have I brought my men all this way only to watch you cower like beaten dogs before a few thugs got up in bronze? What sort of men are you? Make a stand at least!’

  Hector rallied his men. ‘Make a stand there! No giving ground! Stand and advance!’

  ‘We can’t! It’s a three-sixty fucking attack!’

  ‘Make a fucking circle then, you motherfuckers!’

  ‘It’s a fucking rout – they’re cutting men’s heads off here!’

  ‘Then fucking stick them back on again! Show some fucking balls!’

  Aeneas killed the two sons of Diocles, Crethon and Orsilochus from Phere. Their father himself had trained them up in arms and he saw them off proudly to Troy. It was a great adventure for them. But the adventure ended for Crethon with a spear in the forehead which split his skull in two, and for his brother, who tried to save him, with a sword-thrust to the throat as he bent over him, grief-stricken. The two brothers’ blood mingled as they died in each other’s arms.

  Menelaus and Antilochus came running up with their spears, and Aeneas, who’d hoped for double spoils, retreated when he saw the double opposition. The dead brothers were dragged back behind their own lines.

  When Hector saw Mydon go under his horses’ hooves he made for Antilochus. The first spear struck Menesthes in the eye and sank deep into the brain. Antilochus tried to wheel his horses round but Mydon’s terrified mounts got in the way. The second spear went through one side of his neck and out the other. He made a frantic effort to pull it out but fell forwards and soon gave up the attempt – and his life.

  Then Tlepolemus and Sarpedon contested – the long javelins left each man’s hand in the same split second. But Sarpedon’s spear was swifter. It hit his opponent in the neck and the blade went right through the middle and came out. The darkness came down on Tlepolemus. He never saw his own spear strike Sarpedon in the thigh, shaving the bone. His friends rushed in to carry him off – well out of the war, the long heavy javelin still dangling from the leg. It would be a surgery job to get it out. Sarpedon limped like Hephaestus for the rest of his life – which meant he didn’t have to limp too long. But Tlepolemus was past all pain.

  That was one of our bloodiest encounters.

  But it wasn’t over. Ajax hit Acamas, the Thracians’ best fighter. Then Diomedes’ terrible bronze sliced through Axylus’s cheekbone and entered the lower part of the brain. His charioteer stood petrified as the Greek charged up, freed the spear with a wrench and plunged the point, thick with his master’s brains, into his eye.

  Euryalus killed Dresus and Opheltius with two easy spear-casts and then went like an arrow after Aesepus and Pedasus. Born of the water-nymph Abarbarea among beds of violets on the same riverbank where they were conceived, these two lads were stripped of their lives and their armour. Their father, Bucolion, mourned their loss with scalding tears and went softly all his days thereafter in the bitterness of his heart. He couldn’t forget them, or the day of their conception, coming across the lovely goddess by the river when he was out shepherding his flocks. And Abarbarea wept too, her tears dropping over them and turning to pearls, shro
uding her sons from the slavering dogs of Troy.

  The tears glitter in the web as the killings continue.

  Polypoetes killed Astyalus; Teucer killed Anetaon; Antilochus killed Ablerus; Agamemnon killed Elatus; Leitus killed Phylaeus; Eurypylus killed Melanthus; and I, Odysseus, killed Pidytes. I chopped off the wrong arm – he fought on briefly with the remaining arm, the one holding the sword. Then I stabbed him hard in the thigh and the sword jammed in the bone, the blade splintering as I tried to wrench it free. I finished him off with two spear-thrusts, one to the groin and the other through the throat. I’d aimed at the eye but botched it. That put Pidytes in some pain before he died.

  Now it was Adrestus’s turn. His horses, careering across the plain, had stumbled on a tamarisk root, snapping the shaft of his chariot and pitching him on his face in the dust, completely exposed, the wheel still spinning wildly next to him. He looked up half blinded to find Menelaus standing over him, javelin in hand. Adrestus wrapped both arms round his enemy’s knees.

  ‘Take me alive and my father will pay you a fat ransom.’

  Menelaus hesitated.

  ‘He’s fantastically rich. He’ll pay anything – you name it. He’ll stump up a fortune if he hears that you spared me and that I’m alive and well on your ship, a prisoner of war.’

  Menelaus lowered his lance and looked ready to soften and accept. But Agamemnon came running up.

  ‘No captives, brother! No mercy, no ransoms – not today, nobody to be taken alive, no matter how much is offered. All die, even the baby in the belly. And they die unpitied – especially the baby in the belly. We’re going to cleanse the earth of this race, wipe them from the planet, every last rat. We don’t need their ransoms – we’re going to take them anyway. Understood?’

  So Menelaus thrust the knee-clutching suppliant from him. He landed on all fours and Agamemnon hacked him flat and down to darkness, unransomed and unpitied.

  ‘Get to the front, you motherfuckers!’

  It was a band of horse soldiers from Nestor’s contingent. His youth had long gone but he still rode with the chariots and issued orders and advice. He was a crafty one too: he put his charioteers in front and his best infantry in the rear, so that the second-raters and the poorest fighters stationed between them couldn’t escape the heat. They had to stand and fight with the rest of us. Or die. But Nestor always kept a small cavalry detachment to keep an eye on the other contingents and catch out the slackers and the funks.

  ‘No fucking looting, do you check?’

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, soldier?’

  ‘None of you funks skulking back to the ships with your fucking plunder, do you hear? There’s a fucking war on here, you cunts!’

  ‘Touch that fucking armour and I’ll cut off your head and shit down your fucking neck!’

  ‘Move up, move up, at the fucking double, you motherfucking slack-arses! Intensify the attack!’

  So we did. And the unstoppable Diomedes now faced Glaucus the Lycian, son of Hippolochus, mid field. Diomedes went on the verbal offensive.

  ‘Ready to die, Trojan-lover?’

  Glaucus stood his ground. ‘Ready if you are, Greek-beak!’

  Diomedes grinned. He hated cowardice. ‘Who the fuck are you, first? I like to know who I’m taking out.’

  Glaucus came closer, his shield carelessly slung to one side. Diomedes gripped his spear tighter, eyeing his opponent’s unprotected throat . . .

  ‘I’m not about to die.’

  The mighty Glaucus speaks loftily.

  ‘And why do you ask me who I am? Do you want to know my race? You’ve already guessed I’m not a Trojan. What does that matter? Aren’t the races of men just like the forest leaves? They drop and are scattered by the wind. And spring brings in another generation. Nevertheless, I’ll tell you who I am, if it means anything to you.’

  And he identifies himself as the grandson of Bellerophon of Argos, who slew the Chimera and the notorious Solymi, who defeated the man-slaughtering Amazons and the elite soldiers sent to ambush him by the King of Lycia – the king who later offered him his daughter and half his kingdom.

  Bellerophon lost the favour of the gods in the end, though, and went out alone over the Aleian Plain, far from the paths of men, eating his heart out in solitude. All the same, both Argos and Lycia are the lineage of Glaucus and the blood he boasts of.

  Diomedes is more than merely impressed. He reminisces about how his own grandfather, Oineus, entertained Bellerophon in the old days of their youth. They became firm friends and exchanged gifts. This is a hint. And when Glaucus doesn’t take it up, Diomedes decides to be more direct.

  ‘Let’s do the same,’ he says, ‘for old time’s sake. Let’s exchange our armour, for instance, like heroes on the field.’

  So, for old time’s sake, Glaucus exchanges his golden armour for the bronze that Diomedes is wearing. The gods must have addled the Lycian’s brains, or his eyes are blinded by the magic of the moment and his heart by the yarns of yesteryear. Certainly he doesn’t use his head, because that trade costs him the value of a hundred good oxen for the worth of nine.

  Some will say that the grandfathers’ exchange of gifts provided the pattern. Oineus offered a bright purple belt, and Bellerophon handed over a large two-handled gold cup. As sorry a bargain for Glaucus as for his grandfather – so his wife will sneer at him when he returns home and proudly shows her Diomedes’ armour, only to be called a fool. She will little realise the extent of the bargain. Glaucus leaves with far more than his opponent’s armour, and she will have her husband safely home. If they had fought, she would never have seen him again.

  A good story. A woman’s story. One for the web. And not a word of truth in it, except the inexorable truth of myth. It did sometimes happen at Troy that enemies met and parted without loss of life on either side, even after they’d just beaten hell out of one another. But as for parting as friends – never. The fighting was just too bitter for that. And fraternisation was next to impossible on the dusty plains of Troy.

  Hector, on the other hand, appears in the web at that point, exactly as I’d seen him when the blackheads rallied and counter-attacked and we lost ground. I could make out the rim of his shield tapping him above and below, on his ankles and the back of his neck, as he marched calmly away. He was making for the city. Menesthius was standing next to me.

  ‘What the fuck’s he up to? Can’t the cunt take any more?’

  Iphinous was on my other side. ‘He’s calling it a day, it seems.’

  ‘Don’t fucking believe it,’ I said. ‘He’s gone to get that dog-fuck of a brother – to bring the bitch back to the battle. Just you watch.’

  It didn’t take a poet to picture Priam’s palace with its colonnades and its chambers of polished stone, where the king’s fifty sons slept with their wives in fifty private apartments, Paris in one of them right now, his cock rammed hard up Helen’s cunt, ready to come, her arse high in the air, and the sweet Spartan hand giving him the reach-around, cupping his balls for encouragement.

  Hector came storming in and was stopped by his mother. She tried to offer him a bowl of wine, but he brushed it aside, spilling it over the floor.

  ‘Where is the little whoremaster? Fucking murder out there and he’s nowhere to be seen. Men down all over the field – and all on account of a shitbagging little cunt who can’t keep his cock under control! Where is the bastard? I wish he was dead at my feet right now!’

  Hecuba shut her eyes and clapped her hands over her ears. Her women surrounded her and whisked her off out of earshot of Hector’s obscenities, telling him they’d go and arrange an apt gift for Athene’s altar right away.

  ‘You do that,’ said Hector. ‘And then guess what? We’ll all just bend over and the Greeks will beg leave to kiss our arses and all will be forgiven. Just don’t wipe them first – and they’ll suck up all the more! And if you stage all that with a lyre and dancers I might even fucking believe it – if I’m drunk enough
!’

  So the best and brightest robe was chosen from among the broidered garments, worked by the Sidonian women. Theano the priestess laid it on the knees of the goddess’s statue and the women’s wailing prayer went up, a prayer to shatter the spear of Diomedes and bring him down in the dust, to die at the gates of Troy.

  Hector heard it and swore to himself. ‘And that’ll keep Diomedes off our fucking backs for the rest of the day, will it?’

  He reached Paris’s quarters and threw open the door . . .

  Helen regretted everything, naturally, and wished the thundering waves had swept over her long ago.

  ‘Or if I weren’t dead beneath the sea, that I were at least the wife of a better man, as I was once, instead of being what I know now I’ll always be – a song in men’s mouths. A song of scorn and scandal. And eternal reproach.’

  Hector then went to see his own wife, Andromache. She was the daughter of the Cilician king, who once lived below the lovely wooded hill of Plakos in Thebe of the High Gates, before it was sacked by Achilles. She held out their infant son to his father and begged him to stay home, crying that if he returned to the front when it was so dangerous and didn’t come back, she’d rather be in her grave. Already she’d lost her father and her seven brothers, all slaughtered by Achilles, though he’d burned the father’s body and buried him honourably, and the mountain nymphs had planted elm trees by his barrow. But the brothers he’d killed all in one hour as they stood among their white sheep and shambling cattle, and the ransomed mother died later in Priam’s halls, struck by the arrow of Artemis.

  All of which Hector knew and had heard many times before, but never before so pleadingly in the terms in which Andromache now spoke.