Paris turned on her: ‘Now understand me, Cassandra – I will not have one word said against that horse! It’s mine – I found it!’
‘And I won’t hear one word against Cressida,’ said Troilus. ‘She’s mine – now that I’ve found her!’
Two brothers, shoulder to shoulder against the world! Jolly impressive – if it hadn’t been so tragic.
‘Will you not, you pair of degenerate simpletons?’ Cassandra said, as if washing her hands of the whole affair. She’d done all she could – and somehow she knew , d’you see?
‘Then woe to the House of Priam! Woe to the Trojans! And woe to the world, as we’ve known it!’
Paris looked at her wearily. I think he may have known, even then, that she was right – but he’d had enough, and the game was over.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘at any rate, I’m glad you’re too late to say “Whoa” to the horse! I’ve given orders to have it brought into the city!’
Chapter 24
Doctor in the Horse
‘Now once and for all, Steven,’ I said, as soon as I couldn’t avoid being alone with him again for a moment, ‘nothing will induce me to go back to that foul Greek camp! Look what happened to me last time, will you?’
‘Please, dear little Cyclops,’ put in Vicki, sidling up to us like the girl of silk and sherbet she’d just discovered she was. ‘If you won’t do it for me, think of Helen.’
‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind awfully. I’ve been trying to keep my attention on other matters ever since I first saw her.’
‘But I know you like her. Surely you don’t want her to be killed, do you?’
I could have spat in her face, if I hadn’t been fond of her. ‘No red-blooded man is going to kill Helen, you can be sure of that. But, in any case, I’m not going in reach of Odysseus again, for you and Helen together in a gift-wrapped package! I’ve got my own life to be getting on with, thank you!’
‘Well, that won’t take up much of your time in the future, will it; unless you can manage to stop the Doctor somehow? You’ll be slaughtered with the rest of us,’ said Steven heartlessly. ‘So you’d better hurry up, or it will be too late!’
I saw the point, of course. But why, in Zeus’s name, did it have to be me all the time? I was sick and tired of doing all the work and getting precious little thanks for it. There comes a time when a man has got to put his foot down. So eventually, I put my best one forward, and thinking – damn it! – of Helen all the way, I went back to meet my destiny!
I must say, when I got up close to it, that horse was really something! Those Greeks must have worked – well, like Trojans on a job creation scheme, to get it ready in time!
In fact, I suppose, they must have cobbled it together out of old ships’ timbers and drift-wood, and I could see a thigh-bone or two from the old skittle-alley, which had been pressed into service as ribs. But somehow there was more to it than that – as if it had taken on a life of its own; and Odysseus and the Doctor had just fleshed out an idea the gods had thought of anyway. Weird, the whole thing!
But there it stood, nostrils flaring and eyes – Zeus knows what they were made of, and I don’t want to – flashing in the sunset; and you could swear it was almost pawing the ground and panting to be off on its ordained trail to mayhem and murder! And the last of Odysseus’ men were just climbing into its sagging belly: so one thing was quite clear – I was too late!
Though what I could have done – what Steven and Vicki could have expected me to do – even if I’d got there earlier, I haven’t the remotest idea. Once Fate is really on its way with the captions rolling, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it, in my experience. Even if I could have contrived to have a quick word with the Doctor, I don’t see how that could possibly have helped.
He probably wouldn’t have listened to me anyway; and, to be fair there was no earthly reason why he should. ‘A man of no importance,’ as Vicki so kindly pointed out. But even if he had listened, why should Odysseus have paid any attention to him ? All Odysseus wanted was the sack of Troy, and sharp about it, with drinks on the house afterwards! And the Doctor had shown him how to go about it, and that was the end of his function, thank you – only do try not to get in the way. That’s all.
They stood there now, the pair of them, looking up at their creation, as if it were a thing of beauty, and not a horrifying, doom-laden juggernaut.
‘Well, Doctor,’ Odysseus was saying, as he picked the splinters out of his gnarled hands; ‘there’s a war-horse and a half for you! That’s something like a secret weapon! Better than half-a-dozen of your crack-brained flying-machines!’
The Doctor, to do him justice, was rather more doubtful. ‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ he said.
‘Why, what’s the matter? Don’t you trust your own invention?’
‘It’s not that. Oh, the idea’s good enough, as ideas go. It’s just that the whole contraption looks so mechanically unsound. I mean, just consider those fetlocks: there’s no safety margin at all!’
Odysseus gave the offending pastern-joints a cursory glance.
‘Well, it hasn’t got to last forever, you know. We’re not trying to build one of the wonders of the world. As long as it holds together till we’re inside Troy, it can collapse into a mare’s nest if it wants to.’
‘I just wish you understood a few more of the basic principles of mechanics. Supposing we’re still inside when it collapses? What then?’
‘Then we shall all look extremely silly,’ answered Odysseus, philosophically.
‘Well, personally I have no wish to be made into a laughing stock! In fact, I’ve had second thoughts about the whole thing. I think we should cancel the operation while there’s still time. I’ll find some other way of rescuing my friends.’
‘Now, not another word. You’ve made your horse, and now you must ride in it. Get up that rope-ladder, confound you!’ He prodded the Doctor with his cutlass, and together they began the precarious ascent. I tell you, I wouldn’t have fancied it. Suddenly the Doctor froze. ‘Look out,’ he said.
‘Oh, what’s the matter now? By Zeus, you’re making me as nervous as a Bacchante at her first orgy! Get inside, and try to get some sleep!’
‘I never felt less like sleep in my life.’ I wasn’t surprised – they were spinning like spiders in a sand-storm. ‘And as to what’s the matter, I thought I saw a movement out there on the plain.’
‘Well, I should hope you did. That’s the whole point of the thing, isn’t it? A pretty lot of fools we’d look, if no one took a blind bit of notice of us. So hurry up – and if you find you really can’t sleep, I suggest you try counting Trojans. You were quite right, Doctor – here they come now.’
They scambled up the last few rungs of the ladder, and the trap-door closed after them. And that was the last I saw of the Doctor for quite some time.
But I shall always remember how he looked miserably back over his shoulder, that blood-stained evening, so long ago. I think he knew even then, you see, that for once in eternity, all his well-meaning ingenuity had landed him up on the wrong side.
Although, I don’t know, perhaps not, after all. Because if the Trojans had won the war, what would have happened to Greek civilization, and all that came later? Would they have been able to produce anything to equal it, I wonder? Impossible to say. It’s done – and that’s all there is to it.
And the Doctor couldn’t have changed things, even if he’d wanted to. And no more could I.
For a fleeting moment, as that company of decent Trojan soldiers marched into the clearing, and took their first awe-struck look at Paris’s hellish trophy, the thought crossed my mind that now was the time to say, ‘Stop it, you fools! Beware the Greeks bearing gifts!’ or words to that effect.
But what would have happened then? First, they’d have destroyed the horse, with the Doctor inside it. And then they’d have gone back home to tell Cassandra she’d been right all the time, before putting Vicki and Steven to death for b
eing involved in the treachery. And I couldn’t be a party to all that, could I?
So I let the moment go. There’d been quite enough meddling already. Now I must just let History take its course. And the best I could hope for was to get a good view of it. And considering what was still to happen, that was ironic, if you like.
Chapter 25
A Little Touch of Hubris
But as the Trojans began to drag their great, unwieldy prize out of the mud, I realized it was certainly going to take them quite a long time to reach base, to put it mildly – even if it didn’t collapse on the way, as seemed likely.
And so after all there was just one more thing I could do – I could warn Steven and Vicki to get the TARDIS warmed up while there was still time. So that if and when the Doctor was able to join them, they could zip to infinity without hanging about cranking the starting-handle; or whatever it was they had to do, to get the thing mobile.
I hadn’t the remotest idea how it worked, of course – and, what’s more, I don’t believe they were entirely clear about it, either! Or they wouldn’t have kept bouncing about from side to side of N-dimensional space like a snipe on the toot. But that was their business, not mine, Zeus be praised!
In fact, when you thought about it, nobody at this turning point in History appeared to have the vaguest notion about what was going on, or what they should do about it. Perhaps the participants in what later prove to have been great events never do: or is it just that you only need one man with his eye on the ball to urge events onwards? If so, then Odysseus was the fellow in this instance – has to have been!
He had the great advantage, you see, of enjoying violence for its own sake; and that with a pure, clear-sighted unswerving devotion, undistracted by any weak-kneed moral considerations! That’s the way to succeed in life, you know: never see anyone’s point of view but your own, and you’ll romp home past the winning post. Bound to! But it’s a difficult trick, and one that I never quite got the hang of.
These Trojans, for instance, obviously had no conception of optimum stress, or moments of inertia; and the horse was straining at every screaming sinew, as they rocked it back and forth, trying to shift it out of the pit its own weight was digging for itself. I imagined that an outbreak of travel-sickness would shortly strike the occupants; so I moved smartly out from under, and retired to a slight distance.
But at last, with a final shuddering groan, the grotesque structure began to move – and once under way, of course, there was no stopping it. Ropes, arms and legs snapped like old bowstrings as it trundled remorselessly forwards.
Funny, what you notice: amidst the general haphazard destruction, one of its vast hooves came down on top of a nest-full of fledgeling larks, which I had been watching with affection. And I remember thinking: ‘Yes – and that’s only for starters!’ Think what Cassandra could have made of an incident like that!
But it was no use hanging about philosophising, so I set off ahead of them towards what I hoped would be my final involvement in this whole misguided farrago.
There was no difficulty about getting in to Troy now: the enormous gates stood wide open, and the whole city seemed to have come out into the streets to enjoy the splendid, triumphal climax of the war. Poor fools! Little did they know that Zeus was about to slip them the staccato tomato!
Before going in, I paused and looked back the way I had come.
Already you could see the approaching monster quite clearly, silhouetted against the full moon; its great, grinning head nodding and tossing, as if to say: ‘You wait just a little longer, my dears; and what a nice surprise you’re going to have!’
Indescribably ominous and horrible, the whole thing! I shuddered, turned on my heel, and popped back into the palace – while it was still there.
Paris was the hero of the hour – there was no doubt about that. To this day, I cannot imagine why nobody but Cassandra seemed to suspect that anything might be a tiny bit wrong; and that success doesn’t come that easily in the affairs of men. Perhaps if Hector had still been alive to lead them, things might have been different.
But again, I don’t know: people generally believe what they want to believe – and the Trojans wanted to believe that the war was over at last. And you’ll admit they had every excuse for doing so. After all, the Greeks had gone back where they came from, hadn’t they? And it seemed they had their new little friend, Cressida, to thank for that.
The general opinion seemed to be that she had somehow conjured this loathsome ancestral god of theirs out of thin air; and it was this macabre manifestation which had finally persuaded the superstitious, Olympus--orientated Greeks that the game was up. So the least the Trojans could do under the circumstances was to invite the faithful old horse in for a bundle of hay and a bit of a sing-song. Churlish not to, in fact. Quite.
So there Vicki was; guest of honour at the victory banquet – and how she was ever going to find an excuse for slipping away to the TARDIS for a moment, I couldn’t imagine. Not that she showed any sign of wanting to. The silly, infatuated child was so enraptured with young Troilus, that I honestly believe that during my absence, she’d contrived to forget the ghastly danger they were in. Women!
Even Steven appeared to be having the time of his life: because the real Diomede had been quite a fellow, it seemed. Not perhaps in the very first rank of heroes, like Ajax and Achilles; but still a likely contender for second place in the hierarchy. And now that the war was over, and he’d been captured, they couldn’t wait to say what a splendid chap they’d always thought him – our very gallant enemy, and so forth. I’ll swear, they were even arranging to hold anniversary reunions, when the veterans could all swap reminiscences, and get drunk together!
Well, I hated to drag them both away to disillusion, but the job had to be done somehow – only the trouble was, they were so busy being lionised, I couldn’t see how I was going to get near them.
And then, amidst the general brouha-ha and rejoicing, I noticed a rather striking looking girl called Katarina, who was crying conspicuously to herself in a corner, and looking rather left out of things. I’d had occasion to notice her before: one of Cassandra’s accolytes, she seemed to be, and although that certainly wasn’t a job calculated to cheer anyone up a great deal, nevertheless I thought she was rather overdoing the soul-sick lamentation business. So I buck and winged my way over to her through the merry throng, and, sensing a possible ally, asked her what was the matter.
She took one look at me, and screamed. I kept forgetting that, since my injury, mine wasn’t the sort of face you’d be happy to use as a model for the bedroom frescos – but I managed to calm her down eventually.
Whereupon she gave me some rigmarole about one of the sacred doves, for which she was responsible, having died, regretted by all; and that the subsequent post-mortem had revealed its liver was all to blazes. Which meant, apparently, that doom and disaster must surely follow – particularly when Cassandra got to hear about it: and not only a general cataclysm would there be, but a more personalized version, closely involving herself and Nemesis.
Well, I couldn’t give her an argument about the first; because round about now the cheers of the populace out in the square reached a crescendo, and a quick glance through the window revealed that super-horse was negotiating the home straight. But as to the second, it seemed to me that her extremity might be my opportunity – for getting both her and Vicki out of harm’s way, that is. For I knew my young friend fairly well by now: and whereas she wasn’t likely to leave Troilus for the purpose of saving her own skin – lovers frown on that sort of thing, for some reason – she might very well do so to save someone else’s. Or so I reasoned.
So, ‘Listen, pretty child,’ I said to Katarina, ‘your uncle Cyclops has the cure for what ails you! Or rather, Cressida has; being altogether more of a force to be reckoned with than your superior as events have shown. So go and tell her from me, that if she’ll take you at once to that portable temple of hers, she’ll find the
necessary on the bottom shelf of the altar; filed under antidotes, panaceas, and elixirs, doom-struck for the use of. Say that the Doctor will be there in no time, and then everything will be roses and ambrosia for both of you. If she gives you an argument, tell her it’s a special favour to me, in return for past services.’
Well, she looked rather surprised – as well she might – but sensible girls don’t argue with men who look like I did at the time; and off she went – to find a happy deliverance, or so I sincerely hoped.
At any rate, I could hardly do more in that direction; and so I made a circuitous way towards Steven, the well-known and popular Diomede, who was attempting a trick with two chairs, to general acclamation; and I gambled on the possibility that he would shortly appeal for an assistant. Because I knew the trick, but did be? I doubted it.
And it also occured to me that I really ought to have a shot at removing Troilus, at least, from the disaster area; and I’d thought of a plan. Oh, ingenuity was positively bursting out of my ears, that Apocalyptic evening!
Chapter 26
Abandon Ship!
I’d told Katarina to pile on the agony a bit; because it was going to take more than a sick headache to prize Vicki away from the proceedings – I could tell that. So I watched with some concern as she listened to the tale of woe; and such an interesting blend of expressions flitted anxiously about her face that it fairly broke my heart to see it.
Her first reaction, of course, was to consult Troilus in the matter: but fortunately he’d chosen that moment to step out onto the balcony with Paris and their father, to acknowledge the vox of the populi.
Then the poor tortured child, so happy a moment ago, but now torn by divided loyalties, seemed to come to a decision – and not before time! She looked across the crowded room, that disenchanted evening, and caught my remaining eye; then she nodded gloomily, gave me a pathetic wave, brushed away a tear or two – and, having dealt with these formalities, slipped silently out into the night with Katarina. Well done, that girl!
Doctor Who: The Myth Makers Page 11
