Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  The river had been close to flood level already, and in no time it burst its banks. The wind increased to hurricane force and Scamander raged and roared like the high seas. Trojans who’d been cut off took advantage of the chaos to try to escape – those who reckoned that the odds against drowning were better than those against surviving an attack by Achilles.

  When he saw this, he plunged in after them. But now the swirling waters rose high around him, dark with divine anger, almost drowning him. In his sudden terror, he reached out as he was swept along and clutched at a nearby tree, a full-grown elm bending over the bank. It held him for several seconds, but then the bank collapsed and the entire tree, roots and all, came away. Still holding on to it, he managed to reach the other bank where the course narrowed. Here he scrambled ashore and started running.

  The river came after him.

  Achilles was a swift runner, famous for it, but an angry river-god in full spate runs faster than the fastest horse in the course. The plains of Troy were quickly flooded and afloat with the bodies and body parts of butchered soldiers.

  And soon Achilles was swimming again, or rather being dragged like a rat through the river at terrifying speed. The mountain streams of Simois joined in the general inundation, bringing rocks and tall trees tumbling down in tons. Achilles, with logs and corpses whirling dizzyingly round him, was convinced he was about to die. And even in these hectic moments, with no time to think, he pictured himself lying afterwards deep in the mucky sludge, under the flood.

  I’ll be rolled beneath the sands, he thought, deep in silt and slime. And the shingle will be piled high above me. That will be my barrow, and the Greeks will never find my bones beneath it, and my Myrmidons will go home without me. And there will be no tomb in Phthia.

  Even as he gave way to fleeting self-pity, the lightning struck again, and everything that grew along Scamander banks caught fire: elms, willows, tamarisks, rushes, lotuses, irises, galingale – all went up in flames. The river itself appeared to be on fire. And now the reason for it materialised.

  There it is. There he is – red-hot Hephaestus and his scorching breath, attacking Scamander, taking the part of Achilles, siding with the Greeks. Scamander roared in anger and agony. The elements of fire and water, mortal enemies, mingled excruciatingly. The gods themselves were at war.

  And there was another god at war with Achilles that day. It was the one he’d fought with so long, the god of his own anger. It pursued him wherever he went. It made him blind and deaf to all reason, ignorant of himself. Instead of accepting that enough was enough, and that he’d been lucky to escape with his life, after the river’s retreat from the fire, he went straight back to where he’d left off, back to the butchery, determined to destroy, still pursuing his course of slaughter, still pursuing the fleeing Trojans back to the city, still harried by his own anger.

  Old Priam climbed up to a bastion and saw him coming, like a killer whale driving the dolphins to the shallows, where the massacre would happen. Agenor was the last of the shoal – and Achilles was closing on him fast.

  Priam screeched out his order.

  ‘Open the gates! Our army is in retreat. Our men are being picked off like flies from behind. Open the gates and let them in quick! Before that madman reaches the town!’

  All the same, Achilles might have made it through the open gates and caused havoc in the city if Agenor hadn’t decided to be a hero.

  Not an easy decision, even though he had to think it through fast. It must have gone something like this:

  If I keep on running, the cunt is going to catch me and I’ll die a coward’s death. Or I could slip away in the confusion, reach the foothills of Ida, bathe in the river, refresh myself, regroup, sneak back home in the evening, under cover of night. Sounds good. But what if the bastard sees me skulking off and comes after me, gets me on my own. Safer to stick with the crowd, nearer the town.

  What’s it to be? Stand and fight? Run and be caught? Go like a sheep? Sneak the other way and still get caught? Fuck! What do I do?

  Stand my ground? Yes, stand my ground. No shame in that at least, though I’m a fucking dead man.

  And as Achilles came charging up, still picking off stragglers, Agenor suddenly stepped out and faced him, blocking his path.

  He stopped, surprised, and Agenor took quick advantage of the moment of shock to launch an attack without a verbal preamble. But he was tired with running, the spear had fuck-all force behind it, and it came down low. Achilles grabbed it and raised his own spear arm.

  And Agenor would have died on the spot. But something made Achilles hesitate. After the flood and storm the sun had come out again, scorching the recently inundated plain, and the steam was rising from the ground. Achilles felt the sudden heat on his face and blinked, rubbing his eyes. Agenor looked around him. The whole town was shrouded, and the retreating Trojans, including himself, were enveloped in thick white swirls of mist.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Achilles ran about every which fucking way, searching for his missing man, his drawn sword thrust out in front of him. Sometimes he thought he saw him, a dark shadow in the wet sweltering veils. But he was following a phantom.

  Who is the sun-god, after all? Phoebus Apollo. Some say so. Some say that’s who spirited away Agenor in the film of heat. That’s who ran ahead of Achilles, making himself look like the ghost of Agenor, fooling Achilles by letting him chase him all the way across the wheatfields, heading him off again in the direction of deep-pooled Scamander. Who else, they say, could have done it but a god? And all the time Agenor was elsewhere. He’d joined the last of the stragglers, the wearied remnants of that last battle. They’d long since entered the town and had shut the gates.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Penelope could never give the Trojans credit for anything – and who could blame her? It was Troy that took Odysseus from home. What wife takes an impartial view of the enemy? So when a Greek spear missed a Trojan target, it had been deflected by the war-god, who sided with the Trojans. Or when an arrow fell short or failed to fly true, it had been breathed on by Artemis, or blown by Aphrodite, who enjoyed such pranks. That’s why the steam that followed the storm had to be the work of Phoebus Apollo. That’s why it was Apollo who saved Agenor, took on his likeness, and lured Achilles away until the Trojans were safe inside their walls. It would never have done for Agenor alone to have saved the day for Troy, but he may have done just that – saved the city by facing up to Achilles for that brief encounter. The Myrmidons had dutifully halted to watch the outcome and cheer on their leader, and Agenor and the last of the straggling Trojans got through the gates in the nick of time. Clang! A close-run thing.

  But now it was Hector’s turn to stand alone outside the Scaean Gate, ready for his destiny. He couldn’t bring himself to cower inside the city listening to the taunts that Achilles lobbed over the walls, worse than rocks or blazing pitch-balls. So he ordered the gate to be unbarred and stepped out. The gates slammed shut after him. Through the clearing mist Achilles saw the lone figure standing at the great gate, dwarfed by it. He grinned, his teeth and weapons glittering as he advanced. But the eyes were green ice. He was still naked.

  Old King Priam saw him approach, his spear-point blazing bright as Orion’s dog in autumn when Sirius rises, glaring through the gloom and bringing plagues and fevers on mankind. The old king groaned and cried down from his bastion to Hector, urging him not to face up to Achilles alone.

  ‘He’s too strong for you, even for you, my son, and he’s a cruel and pitiless killer, a complete savage, already the butcher of so many of my fine sons. All dead and rotten.’

  And he entreated Hector to spare him the crushing sorrow of seeing him killed too, with all the woes that would follow.

  ‘My daughters mauled and dragged off in tears, their rooms plundered, our women raped, our children hurled from the highest towers, our infants dashed against the walls, their brains spilled out on the ground. And I myself slaughtered at my gates, ripped to bi
ts by my own dogs, the dogs I’ve fed with my own hand, maddened by the taste of their master’s blood.’

  Hector howled and covered his ears. ‘Achilles is at least more merciful than you, father – he doesn’t use torture!’

  Priam was relentless in his grief.

  ‘No, listen to me, my son. When a young soldier lies dead, killed in action, disfigured by wounds, even death can open up nothing in him that isn’t lovely and honourable. His gashes are noble and beautiful to behold. But when an old man’s genitals are torn off by the dogs, he sinks into the pits of degradation. There is no sadder sight among all the sufferings of men than that of the dogs devouring the grey hairs of age. And this will surely happen if you stay outside the gates and face that madman, who hates you worse than hell.’

  But Hector wouldn’t listen, not even when his mother arrived and stood with Priam on the battlements, baring her breasts. Not even when she flew madly down to the gates, ordered the sentries to open them and let her out to stand by her son – so that even Achilles was shocked, and halted his advance out of respect.

  The old woman took one of her breasts in her hand and thrust the withered thing at her son, pulling down his helmeted head and begging him to take pity on the pap that had suckled him.

  ‘If that savage kills you, as he surely will, we’ll never see you again to give you an honourable burial. He’ll throw you to the dogs, whatever’s left of you that he hasn’t eaten raw himself. Even your bones will be shredded to powder out there, and your white dust blown over the Hellespont. There will be no resting place on which I can drop my tears and water your tomb!’

  Hector tried to tear himself away, but the frantic old woman clung to his armour with amazing strength, still insisting with that single finished nipple.

  ‘Look at it! Take your fill of it, as you did when you were an infant. Feast your eyes on it again, the breast I unbound for you night after night to stop your sobs. And now I’m the one who’s sobbing, and you won’t take pity on this breast, to quieten me!’

  Achilles watched and waited. Yet even the sight of his mother’s hot tears raining down on her ruined bitter breast was not enough to deflect Hector’s heart. So the distraught old queen ordered the sentries to shut the gates against her, and she screamed to the skies that she’d stay there and be slaughtered with her son if the contest went Achilles’ way. Hector was compelled to command the guards to drag her back inside the city, where she was restrained by her women. And now Hector turned again, the gates shut behind him, and stood with his back to the tower, ready for Achilles.

  And suddenly the unthinkable happened: his nerve failed him. At the sight of Achilles advancing on him, fast and furious, he turned and fled, flew as the dove flies from the mountain hawk, swiftest on wings; ran fast along the cart-tracks, past the watch-tower and the wild fig tree where he’d played as a boy, much taller now, both tree and man; and on to where the two springs of Scamander rise, the hot spring and the ice-cold one, where the Trojan women used to wash their clothes and laugh and chatter and sing songs in the time of peace, long before the Greeks came on the scene . . .

  Steam hung in veils over the hot spring, while the other gushed up water clear as crystal, cold as snow. See them now, see them always, repeated eternally. Nearby stood the lovely wide stone troughs, where wives and daughters laundered the shining linen, laying it out on the smooth-laid stones as they do even now, giggling and singing and waving to Hector as he ran past, blowing sweet kisses to him as he fled from Achilles.

  So Penelope wove the washing day and the day of Hector’s death into one, the two that never were, except in Hector’s mind. Peace was a dream, and Hector remembered only in a flash as he flew past the now desolate springs how beautiful life used to be, before Helen came.

  Faster now the two men ran like the wind, the one pursuing, the other fleeing, swift as racehorses when the course is marked and the prize is set. But the prize for which they raced today was Hector’s life. And horse-taming Hector was doomed to die.

  Three times round the city walls they went, with Hector each time attempting to make a dash for the gates, all the while trusting to the archers on the walls to choose their target, take careful aim and take out the pursuer, ending the chase, and perhaps the war.

  But Achilles was a fast-moving target and much too dangerously close now for a comfortable shot without endangering their own man, their fleeing hero. And Achilles kept cutting Hector off and edging him out to the plain, also signalling to his own men not to shoot at his quarry, he was so eager to bring him down himself – not for glory, not for kudos, but for sweet revenge, to slake his hot thirst in Hector’s blood.

  It couldn’t go on. Hector was an innocent man, a soldier. He was not Paris. All he had ever done was defend his people, their homes and families. He had slain Patroclus as part of the chance of war. Patroclus could easily have been the killer, Hector the fallen. But it had to end. Even with the odds high in favour of the naked Achilles, unencumbered by armour, the distressing spectacle of a rabbit running from a wild dog could not be allowed to continue. And so on came the gods to bring it to a conclusion, this time deserting Hector. Such are the ways of the inscrutable Immortals.

  Zeus raised the balance high, hung out the beam, held it steady, and Hector’s scale dropped dead. Phoebus Apollo left him then, a man on his own, and Pallas Athene came to Achilles’ side.

  ‘Hector’s time is up,’ was all she said.

  And she took on the likeness of Deiphobus and prepared for the moment of massive deceit.

  Hector’s head was whirling. It was like one of those nightmares in which the dreamer appears to be flying fast to get away, but isn’t actually moving a muscle. He is rooted to the spot and the pursuer’s breath is hot on his neck and yet he too is somehow frozen in time. Achilles leaned on his spear for a moment, and Hector, glad of the breather, stopped too. Because his head was in such a whirl he imagined he saw his brother Deiphobus standing by the wall. He blinked in disbelief. Then he closed his eyes in gratitude and relief and turned his face up to the sky.

  ‘Thank you, gods! He’s come out to help me in my hour of need! I’m not alone!’

  What to Hector was a mirage, a trick of the tired and desperate brain as death drew near, was destiny in the web, the treachery of the gods stitched into human life, the art of the universe, absolute, unknowable. And believing Deiphobus was behind him, armed and dangerous and backing him up, Hector turned and faced Achilles.

  ‘I lost my courage, I admit it. But I’ve found it again. We’ll settle the issue now. But first let’s make a pact, that the winner will not desecrate the loser’s corpse but will return it for honourable burial. For my part I give you my word on that score.’

  Achilles approached, stood a spear’s throw away, and glared at Hector.

  ‘A pact? You must be mad. Do wolves make pacts with lambs? Lions with men? You and I, we’re enemies to the end. And in the end. And after the end. And it will be a bitter end for you. First I’m going to kill you. Then I’m going to throw your carcass to the dogs and share in the meal. Meanwhile try this for size in your Trojan heart!’

  Achilles hurled and Hector dropped quickly to his knees, sensing the trajectory, and crouching low so that the spear sang its bronze song over his head and stuck quivering in the ground. Hector uttered his war-whoop, a loud ululation. He brandished the bronze with relish.

  ‘Now try mine, Greek nude!’

  The spear was dead on target, speeding straight for Achilles’ unprotected heart. He assessed it accurately, but instead of swerving, he snatched up a lump of rock, which he held against his chest. Bronze struck boulder and both broke, the useless spear bouncing harmlessly backwards. Anyone could see, though, that it was Pallas Athene who not only returned Achilles’ own spear to him but placed herself in front of her favourite, acting as his shield. Anyone who saw that could also see that Achilles was not naked after all but rather impregnable in the immortal armour. He was doubly defended. Perhaps Hec
tor saw it too. He at once turned to his brother for help.

  There was no brother, and there never had been. Deiphobus was a dream, a desire, an imposture of the deceiving gods. And yet death is never inevitable, thought Hector, at least not to a moving target. Realising he was on his own after all, he decided to make one last stand, a brave one, as it had to be, and he charged full tilt at Achilles with his drawn sword thrust before him.

  Achilles eyed up his opponent’s armour as he came at him and fixed on the one unprotected place, at the gullet, where the collarbone joins the neck, a choice spot to kill a man. And before Hector could close, he drove his long lance with perfect precision straight at this spot. The blade passed straight through and far out the other side. Hector had practically run onto the spear, and combined with Achilles’ strong sudden thrust, the force of the strike was tremendous. But it didn’t slice the windpipe, and Hector could still speak. Not that speech could do him any good now.

  Achilles stood over him and crowed.

  ‘So you played safe, you cunt! Killing Patroclus when I was out of action! And you took my fucking armour from his body, you bastard! Didn’t you stop to think I’d never rest till I got it back and made you pay with your miserable life, you sorry piece of shit?’

  Hector’s eyes were already glazing over, but he spoke clearly and quietly. ‘Achilles, I’ll ask you one more time, for honour’s sake, for the fellowship of soldiers, accept the ransom, the gold and bronze –’

  Achilles cut him off. ‘Don’t talk to me about the fellowship of soldiers, you cunt! I’ll cut your fucking flesh from your bones myself and eat it raw! Ransom? Not your own weight in gold, big as you are, not all the gold in Troy will save you from the dogs. They’ll rip out your liver and the vultures will dine on your tripes. End of fucking story. Say goodbye.’