Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  Hector was back up double-quick, making for Patroclus, stretched out naked in the dust. Now that he’d seen to the armour, he wanted the corpse. Menelaus yelled for help and Big Ajax came up to support him. Hector fell back again. There was no way he was going to take on the two of them. Menelaus he could have done in his sleep, but with Ajax on the scene – that would be for another time. Glaucus went mental when he saw the retreat. He raced after Hector.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, man? Are you seriously going to just fuck off and let them have that cunt’s corpse, as easy as that?’

  Hector glared.

  ‘What’s it to you? I’ve got the armour – the rest is dogmeat!’

  He turned on his heel, but Glaucus wrenched him round by the shield.

  ‘Dogmeat nothing! That corpse is fucking gold! You’re forgetting Sarpedon. An exchange of bodies. What it is to me, since you ask, is that not one of the Lycians will fight for you again if you don’t even try to save Sarpedon. We’ll all go home tomorrow. And you can say goodbye to your town. You’ll never survive without us.’

  Hector threw a glance at the retreating soldiers who were taking Achilles’ armour back to Troy.

  ‘Wait there, Glaucus!’

  And he leapt into his chariot and chased after them. He was quickly back with the armour.

  ‘Right you fucking are! I’ll put it on here and now – and we’ll see if we can get hold of that corpse for you!’

  He stripped on the spot, exchanging his armour for Achilles’. He didn’t know it, but he was dressing for death.

  Zeus knows it and makes a speech about it, a threnody of regret.

  ‘Ah, proud hero and unhappy man, how little you know how close you are to death! You have donned the war-gear of the greatest of the Greeks, and in it you will hold sway, but only for a time. The hour of reckoning must come, when even that glorious armour will fail to protect you. Andromache will never unclasp it and take it from you. For there will be no homecoming for you from the battle, doomed star!’

  Hector never heard that speech. Men can be as deaf to the gods as the gods are to men. Shit happens – and both sides close their ears.

  Now Hector led a ferocious charge, which we met with a fence of shields and a rain of spears. He came through the rain with Hippothous at his side, Hector covering while Hippothous got his baldric fastened to one of the dead man’s ankles and started dragging him backwards through the stramash. We were starting to fall back. But then Big Ajax swung his men round again and went charging in himself like a deranged bear. He struck Hippothous on the head as he bent over the corpse. It was a killer blow. The huge spear splintered the helmet and the skull and scattered the brains. Hippothous dropped the corpse and became one himself.

  Remembering deep-soiled Larissa, perchance? Remembering, as he died, his home in fertile Thessaly? Remembering the scented vines, the purple noons and flushed sunsets, and the parents who loved him, and whom he’d never see again?

  Perchance. More likely he didn’t have the time – not with his brains out and spread over a wide area, his thoughts hardly together. But who knows what last thoughts slip from the split skull of a dead soldier? For anybody who cares for such thoughts, there they are in the web. A far cry from the field. And each thought a lyric stitch.

  Hector targeted Ajax, but he bent sideways and Schedius got it instead, just under the collarbone. The point came out the back, below the shoulder, and down he went, with the usual loud clatter of armour and the cloud of dust.

  Ajax hurled back and hit Phorcys. As always, the Ajax bronze inflicted maximum damage. It shattered the corslet and Phorcys fell, clutching at the dust, his bowels passing out under him as he sank on all fours. Goodnight, Phorcys.

  Then Lycomedes hit one of the Paeonian allies, Apisaon, who happened to be their best fighter. The spear hit the liver, his legs buckled under him, and his soldiering days were over, gone with his life into the barren ground. He’d seen the last of fertile Paeonia. We were prevailing.

  Aeneas tried a charge, Apollo-inspired, if you like. Or just inspired. And we took plenty of casualties. But Ajax made us form a shield-wall round Patroclus, a ring of defence without a single chink, not a fucking eyehole.

  ‘Any cunt breaks the circle and I’ll break him in two!’

  It worked.

  And so the two sides fight on and on over their oblivious hero, the fallen Patroclus, and the iron clamour of iron men rises up to the coppery sky, through the barren empty air, through the great uncaring waste spaces, up to Olympus, accompanied by the shrieks of dying men, while down below their ghosts gibber and weep as they flit into the deep House of the Dead, saying their long goodbyes to life, sweet life, and all its pain. Some say the dead know nothing, and some say they feel the separation from life and that this in itself is hell enough, so that in the end all men go to hell.

  The horses of Achilles, meanwhile, are filled with pain. They have seen their great charioteer slain by Hector and now they refuse to move, no matter how much Automedon coaxes and chides, and even lashes. But these are no ordinary horses. So they stand apart from the battle and weep, stand like the statues of steeds, as if they have been sculpted above a hero’s tomb, their bent heads drooping earthwards, their long manes trailing in the dust, and the huge hot tears rolling down off their muzzles and wetting the dust like rain, till even Zeus himself can endure it no longer and takes pity on them.

  ‘Poor noble beasts, sharing the miseries of men in their futile, wasteful wars, why? Why did we give you immortals to a mere king on earth? A man like any other man, doomed to die? Why should I let you suffer like this sorry specimen, man, of all earth’s inhabitants the unhappiest and the most wretched?’

  And Zeus gives them heart, so they shake the tear-stained dust from their manes and gallop into the throng while the great god clouds over Ida, hurls his bolts, and thunders deep and loud and long, bringing victory now to the Trojans and terror to the Greeks.

  That at least is how it could have looked, to a lady at the loom, to anybody with one iota of imagination. One thing was for sure. Even Automedon didn’t have the skill to handle these horses and bring a spear into play at the same time. He yelled out to Alcimedon to change places with him, and he dismounted to fight. Hector and Aeneas saw this and advanced.

  ‘No fucking contest!’ jeered Hector. ‘As feeble a pair of charioteers as I ever clapped eyes on!’

  Chromius and Aretus tagged behind, thinking they’d easily demolish the Greeks and get their thieving hands on the horses. They were deluding themselves. Automedon had Alcimedon right behind him. He could feel the horses’ breath on his neck. And he shouted to Menelaus for support.

  ‘We’re in deep shit here! We could use some help!’

  Menelaus came up fast, and he brought both Ajaxes with him.

  ‘Fuck! Look at the fucking opposition now!’

  Aretus hardly got the words out. Next thing he knew he had a spear sticking through him, a present from Automedon. He sprang forward, a bit like an ox on the farm when the farmer sneaks up behind it with the biggest and sharpest axe tucked well behind his back. The ox knows him, and idly wonders what the two-legged idiot is up to because he looks so gormless. Then two-legs whips out the axe and swings it high, hacking four-legs behind the horns, shearing through the sinews and laying open the neck, an unmendable red cleft. The beast’s legs buckle and it falls backwards now. That’s exactly how Aretus went down – first the spring forward, then the backwards collapse, just like the ox under the axe.

  Hector hurled at Automedon and missed. Then the Ajaxes loomed up and the Trojan pair retreated, leaving Aretus to be stripped. Like the ox, he wasn’t dead yet. But the Ajaxes soon saw to that, cutting his throat only after he was naked, so as not to spoil the armour more than was necessary.

  Now the struggle hotted up. Dead as he was, Patroclus was still taking lives. Menelaus hit Eëtion’s son, Podes, one of Hector’s best chums. They’d grown pally over the wine cups, and Hector was fille
d with grief to see him fall, especially as the spear struck him in the back as he ran from the Ajaxes. But it was a Menelaus hit. The bronze brought him crashing down as he ran, and his forehead hit a rock and split right open.

  ‘Nothing going your way today,’ gloated Menelaus. ‘Some you win, some you fucking lose!’

  The spear was still swaying in the dead man’s back. Like a tall poplar, bending to the gale.

  Not the way Hector saw it. He screamed as if he’d been hit himself. We thought he fucking had at first. But it was just the rallying cry for yet another assault. The cunt could fight all right, you couldn’t deny that. And on top of that, it was like he had the fucking gods behind him. Thunder had been rolling away during the whole battle and now a sudden crash deafened us. Hephaestus was providing reinforcements, and even the sound effects were intimidating. Our boys turned and ran.

  The blackheads picked them off in quick succession. Hector took a hit from Idomeneus but the spear snapped and the bastard lived. Idomeneus would have died for sure then, but Coeranus came charging up with Meriones in his chariot, and Idomeneus jumped up with them for protection. Hector threw at him and missed, but he hit the driver who’d saved Idomeneus’s life. Hector’s spear struck him under the jaw and ear, shattering all his teeth and tearing them out by the roots. Brutal dentistry. But the bronze blade didn’t stop there – it split his tongue in two. He dropped the reins, and Meriones picked them up. Coeranus toppled out of the chariot, toothless and fork-tongued, like a snake. He’d come with Meriones all the way from the city of Lyctus, only to lose his life to Hector. Meriones handed the reins to Idomeneus.

  ‘Get going! And don’t fucking stop till you’ve got us to the ships!’

  Idomeneus hesitated.

  ‘And Coeranus? What about him?’

  ‘Leave him. He’s had it. And so have we if we don’t get away!’

  Idomeneus lashed the horses, leaving the man who’d saved him lying dying in the dust. Meanwhile, Menelaus checked that Antilochus the runner had survived the latest attack and ordered him to race to Achilles with the news.

  ‘Tell him that Patroclus is dead and that we’ve lost the war! Go like fuck! Go, go, go!’

  Antilochus sprinted off, but Menelaus shouted him back.

  ‘No, wait! Just tell him Patroclus is dead and leave it at that. The rest will sound like begging.’

  Antilochus turned again and went like an arrow. Menelaus hurried back to the Ajaxes and to the struggle for Patroclus. The shield ring was still holding there, though the front line was in tatters. They hoisted the remains shoulder high and managed to move them to safer ground, only just holding off the swarms of blackheads biting at our heels all the way, still trying to win back the corpse.

  TWENTY-NINE

  When Achilles heard that Patroclus was dead, he threw the dust over his head and shoulders, tore his clothes and howled out long and loud, a bitter cry.

  ‘I told him not to do it, not to try to be a hero, and now he’s lost his life for me, the only man I ever truly loved!’

  He reached for his sword, and Antilochus seized his wrist with both hands and held him hard, afraid that he intended to end his life with a sudden cut to the throat. Meanwhile the maidservants fell around him, beating their breasts as he grieved.

  ‘I loved him more than life itself, and I let him down. I let the army down, let down the people!’

  His crying was terrible. Nobody had ever heard it before, not like this. Thetis heard it and returned it, wailing from the salty depths of the sea, and the Nereids gathered round her, and they too beat their breasts. Then the whole immortal company rose out of the waves and came to Troy’s coast, to the ships of the Myrmidons, and Thetis inquired of him – though she already knew the answer – what could be troubling him so deeply now that his prayer had been granted. The Greek army had been driven back to the ships just as he’d asked, and disaster was staring Agamemnon in the face.

  He gave his stark answer.

  ‘The price was too great. It was the life of Patroclus. And I cannot pay it. I cannot bear to live a moment longer without him. I am ready to die and eager for death.’

  Thetis smiled sadly and stroked his long hair.

  ‘A bitter death, my son. Have you forgotten the tempering taste of retribution, the sweet relish of revenge?’

  Achilles blinked up at her through his tears. He was like a baby.

  ‘It’s what you have to do,’ the goddess said, still stroking him. ‘It is the true course of action and it is the only one that will recall you to life.’

  ‘Hector has my armour,’ Achilles said simply.

  ‘Ah! As for the armour, forget it. I will bring you glorious new armour, and I will bring it from the gods.’

  Another sound, a very different sound was now heard, carried across the trench, across the Trojan lines, across the plain and into the city. It rang through all of Troy. It was Achilles’ terrible war-cry. It was heard by the deep-breasted women of Troy, who knew all too well what it meant for them, and for their husbands, sons and daughters.

  That was when the struggle for Patroclus ended. The Trojans gave up the contest, and the Myrmidons brought the corpse back to the camp. Polydamas then advised Hector that the army should withdraw to the safety of the city, where even Achilles would be unable to hurt them. They would never take the town, and the Greeks would continue to wear themselves out in a war of attrition they could never win.

  ‘Fuck that!’

  Hector spat and looked towards Troy.

  ‘I’m fucking sick of it,’ he said, ‘sick of being cooped up in there. What is it anyway? It’s not a home, it’s a fucking prison.’

  Too stark? Too banal? Try it another way then. The Penelope way. The way Hector could never have said it.

  ‘Ah, there was a time when our city was the talk of the world! But now all the great houses are emptied of their artworks. All our treasures have been sold – they have gone to Phrygia and Maeonia, all in the cause of this futile war. And for what? Home after all is a barren enough place unless you feel free there, free and unconstrained, serene under the skies. But freedom is what we lack, what we have never felt for so long now, and I fear we will never be free again, not until we can crush the Greeks once and for all and beat them backwards home. That is my one hope. For the luck of war is for every man, they say, and the killer is killed one day in his turn, even Achilles.’

  A fine speech – if not exactly Hector.

  ‘As for that lover boy, he doesn’t frighten me for all his hallooing. He’ll only succeed in losing his voice. And that’ll be a good rehearsal for when I shut the cunt up for good. No, we’ll face the bastards on the plain at dawn. And bring the war to an end.’

  Whatever was said, the fatal decision was taken. And the Trojans stayed out all night on the plain.

  Darkness fell. And all night long Achilles wept for his friend.

  ‘He and I will lie together in Trojan earth,’ he said. ‘For I know now that I will never go home. But I will have Hector’s head before I die. And I will take twelve Trojan youths to kindle Patroclus’s funeral pyre. I’ll take them alive and keep them for the flames. Until I’ve done as much, I will touch neither meat nor wine. Nor will I wash or change my clothes. And, lacking my armour, I’ll put on no armour at all, rather than wear another man’s. Unless Hector brings it back to me, every piece. Which means I’ll fight him naked, since I expect there will be as much chance of Hector’s returning the armour as there is of armour falling from the sky, forged on high Olympus and sent down by the gods.’

  Certainly Achilles made some such speech. And what followed in the web was inevitable.

  Thetis rises from the depths of the sea, soars up to snowy Olympus and enters the house of Hephaestus. He has remained ever grateful to her, and to Eurynome, the daughter of Ocean, for keeping him nine years safe in the deep sea-caves when he lived in fear of his life, hiding from his mother – who hated him because he was a cripple. Now Hephaestus will do anyth
ing the sea-nymph asks of him.

  She goes over all the most recent events: Agamemnon’s greed, Achilles’ anger, the retreat to the ships, the counter-attack, the killing of Patroclus and the loss of the immortal armour.

  ‘And now,’ says Thetis, ‘my son will fight Hector naked if his armour is not returned and will surely therefore die – unless armour is forged for him now, right here and now, on Olympus, and sent down by the gods.’

  ‘And men must never imagine,’ says Hephaestus, ‘that the gods never send them gifts, especially in such an hour of need.’

  So Hephaestus sets to work.

  He makes a magnificent corslet that blazes like a furnace and greaves of glittering tin. Then a huge helmet with a crest of gold, far outshining anything in the lost armour. But the real fire from the forge of Hephaestus is kept for the making of the shield. It is five layers thick with a gleaming golden rim and a silver baldric, and with many pictures and devices wrought on it in gold.

  First he depicts the earth and sky and sea, with the sun, the stars, the full moon, the Pleiades, the rainy Hyades and the Bear that watches Orion the Hunter with a wary eye.

  Second, an image of two fine cities. In one there is a marriage feast taking place. There are lovely youths with flutes and lyres and dancing. The other city is besieged by two armies. On the city walls the women and children are keeping watch with the old men, condemned by the years. Ares and Pallas Athene are shown in gold, and there’s an intricate scene of an ambush by a riverbed where cattle are drinking and Strife and Panic are shown going about their work. The Spirit of Death can be seen dragging off a wounded man and a corpse through the crowd. She wears a crimson cloak, soaked red with the generations of shed blood, spilled by war.