The War At Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  Not even his half-brother Teucer could comfort Ajax for this further loss. Shouting that there was justice neither among men nor among the gods, he withdrew from the assembly in a black frenzy of rage.

  Calchas declared that Athena had inflicted him with madness for having insulted the gods once too often and advised Teucer to see that he was confined to his hut until his senses returned. But Odysseus watched Ajax walk away convinced that, like many others, he was simply unable to sustain the long strain of this war.

  Whatever the case, Ajax was discovered that night, flailing about with his sword among the penned cattle and sheep that had been lifted from the Dardanian pastures. The animals were screaming and moaning around him as he cut them down, shouting curses on the names of Agamemnon and Odysseus. No one dared approach until he collapsed at last from exhaustion.

  Ajax came to his senses, not on the battlefield where he had believed himself to be but under a dark sky in a grisly butcher s yard of dead sheep and oxen. Refusing all offers of help, he got to his feet and staggered away. When Teucer called after him, he shouted back that Athena had told him to wash himself clean of blood in the sea. But when he was down by the shore Ajax must have found only a blackness there that corresponded to the darkness in his mind, for he took the sword that had been Hectors gift to him, fixed it in the earth and threw himself on to the blade.

  A quarrel broke out over what should be done with the body. Teucer insisted that Ajax should be shown the honour due to a great warrior. But he had died by his own hand, not on the field of battle, and Menelaus said that his body should be left where it lay for the kites and vultures. As the son of Telamon, who had always been Agamemnon’s friend, Teucer brought his case before the High King. Finding himself caught between loyalty to Telamon and fear of offending the gods, Agamemnon could not make up his mind what to do for the best. Odysseus urged him to permit the funeral rites and offered to help with them himself, but Teucer proudly declined this offer. The matter was finally settled by Calchas who said that Ajax had forfeited the right to a hero’s funeral pyre, but his body might be buried in a suicide’s coffin rather than left to the birds of prey.

  By the end of that dismal funeral Agamemnon had fallen into another fit of gloom. Once Hector had been killed, he had believed that the war was finally going his way, but after the murder of Achilles and the madness and suicide of Ajax, everything seemed to be falling apart again. To add to his anxieties, the Trojan army had been reinforced by the arrival of the Ethiopians, and the walls of the city remained as unbreachable as ever. Uncertain which way to turn, he took Odysseus’s advice and asked Calchas to take the omens.

  Calchas returned from his prophetic rites with the encouraging news that Paris had incurred the wrath of Apollo by his sacrilegious act. Troy could no longer rely on the support of the god but two things were necessary before the city would fall. ‘Firstly, a new warrior must be brought to lead the Myrmidons. We must send to Skyros for Pyrrhus, who is the son that Deidameia gave to Achilles.’

  ‘The boy can scarcely be twelve years old,’ Diomedes objected.

  ‘He is the son of Achilles and the grandson of Peleus,’ Phoenix answered. ‘The Myrmidons will follow him.’

  ‘Then let him be brought,’ said Agamemnon. Then he looked warily back at Calchas. ‘What is the other thing?’

  ‘Troy once fell to the might of Heracles,’ said the priest. ‘The city will fall again when his great bow is brought to the war.’

  ‘And where in the name of Zeus is that to be found?’

  ‘Not far away,’ Odysseus answered. ‘It’s on Lemnos where Philoctetes still nurses his wound.’

  Remembering the sickening stink of decay that had been given off by that wound, Agamemnon frowned. ‘Will he let the bow go?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Odysseus, ‘but surely we can bear with his stench if it means the city will fall?’

  As the island of Lemnos was only fifty miles west of the Trojan coast, the vessel carrying Philoctetes was the first to return. The wound in his leg still festered but Agamemnon immediately set his surgeon to cutting away the putrid flesh and his physician to treating it with poultices of healing herbs. Their reports were good. The patient would soon have the use of his leg again.

  Odysseus and Menelaus came to visit Philoctetes as he lay recuperating, and after they had chatted for a time, Odysseus picked up the great bow of Heracles that stood beside the litter on which Philoctetes lay. ‘We were wondering if you’re still as sharp with this as you used to be.’

  Philoctetes smiled. ‘Give this leg another day or two to heal and I’ll show you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Menelaus. ‘That’s very good. You know that Paris fancies himself with the bow. We thought you might challenge him to a duel.’

  ‘Do you think the coward dare stand against me?’

  ‘He’s the oldest son that Priam has left,’ said Odysseus. ‘He’s the hero of Troy these days. He won’t dare to refuse a public challenge.’

  Paris was drinking wine alone when a herald brought the news that there was a challenger outside the walls summoning him to a duel. When he demanded to know who it was, the herald could say only that the challenger was carrying a great curved bow and a quiver of arrows, and had never been seen outside the city before.

  Then Deiphobus was at the door. ‘It’s Philoctetes, the greatest of their archers. He has the bow of Heracles. You’ll have to stand against him.’

  Though they had fought side by side out on the plain of Troy, and had conspired together, after the death of Hector, to assassinate Achilles, Paris knew that this brother had never forgiven him for breaking his nose in the boxing match all those years ago. That blow had knocked Deiphobus’s face awry in a way that lent a further twist to the smile with which he studied Paris now.

  Paris got to his feet and was crossing the room to fetch his bow when, with a lurch of his heart, he saw that Helen had been standing just behind Deiphobus.

  He had always known that his brother lusted after Helen but until recently she had kept herself distant from him, and whenever she spoke of him it was with an edge of scorn. But that had begun to change. Paris sensed a different kind of tension between them, an almost sensual animosity in which her despair mingled with his brother’s desire in ways that sickened and humiliated him.

  Helen stared at the floor unspeaking, waiting to see what he would do.

  Paris had no wish ever to fight or kill again, but this war that he had started refused to let him go. He looked across and saw the taunt in his brother’s eyes. Without saying a word to either of them, Paris turned away to look for his bow.

  Less than twenty minutes later, his servants carried him back into the chamber. His left eye had been put out by an arrow that had deflected upwards off his armour. Another arrow protruded from his thigh and a third had entered below his rib-cage on the right side. The surgeons were afraid to remove it, so he lay watching his father and mother weep over him as he tried to comfort them with a weary smile.

  Uncertainly Helen approached the bed. She forced herself to look down where Paris lay, half-blinded, bandaged to staunch the flow of blood, and still transfixed by a shaft so slender one could scarcely believe that it could do him harm. And she thought that she might faint.

  ‘It seems you were right,’ he whispered, smiling up at her. ‘For us there was no hope.’

  And there was such loss in his disfigured face that she could not bear it. Yet for a long time she sat beside the bed, holding his hand in hers, and unable to speak because she too was transfixed by anguish so complete and unendurable that all the available resources of her body were consumed by it.

  And he could take no comfort in her presence, for each time he looked at her he saw only the magnitude of his loss. So after a time, as though out of consideration for her, he said, ‘Leave me now. We have suffered together long enough.’

  Dusk came. They lit the room with oil-lamps. Only his mother and her women were grieving now besi
de the bed. And it was taking so long to die that he began to feel afraid. Like a hunter lost in a dark wood, he was casting about among his memories, looking for a way through, back into the light. Then a thought came to him, and with it came a flickering of hope. Paris reached out for his mother’s hand and pulled her closer. ‘Aeneas,’ he gasped. ‘Ask Aeneas to come to me.’

  More time passed. The night grew darker. At last Aeneas came and stood uneasily beside the bed. Paris gathered his strength, but his voice was scarcely more than a whisper now. ‘We were friends once, you and I,’ he said, ‘and if that friendship failed, the fault was mine. I beg you to forgive it.’

  Aeneas felt his heart flood with compassion as he said, ‘A man must follow his fate. You were in the power of the goddess, as my father once was.’

  Paris tried to smile again. ‘And see how Aphrodite blinds us.’ He shook his head. ‘Who would have thought a Dardanian bull-boy could bring such trouble on the world?’ Then Aeneas felt his hand firmly gripped. ‘There is a thing I must ask. Do you remember the girl you saw at the healing shrine at Sminthe -- when Menelaus made his offerings there?’

  He saw Aeneas frown. Wincing, Paris gathered his breath to speak again.

  ‘Her name is Oenone. She loved me once. She said that if ever I was wounded, I should send for her . . . that she had the power to heal me.’

  Doubtfully Aeneas nodded.

  When Paris opened his mouth to say more, he began to cough. Blood dribbled at the corner of his mouth.

  Aeneas said, ‘Lie still now.’

  Again Paris gripped his hand. ‘Will you bring her to me?’ Again Aeneas frowned. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Hers was a truer love than mine,’ Paris said. ‘It will have lasted. She will come. I know she will come.’

  He held on throughout that night and into the next day, but for much of that time he was lost in delirium and if Helen came to his bed again he did not see her.

  Aeneas returned the following evening, alone and apprehensive, and as soon as Paris looked into his friend’s face he knew that his last hope had failed.

  ‘She would not come?’

  Aeneas shook his head.

  ‘Did she send no word even?’

  Knowing that he could never bring himself to pass on Oenone’s bitter message, Aeneas was about to say that Oenone could not be found, but he saw that Paris would know at once that he was lying. So he stood in silence, watching the past drift across those damaged features.

  After a little while, in a brief, choking gasp of blood and spittle, Paris turned his face to the wall and died.

  Hours later, agonized that she had let her pride overwhelm her charity, Oenone came to Troy. The guards would not open the gate for her. When she explained why she had come, they merely shrugged and said that she had come too late.

  A Horse for Athena

  Twelve years old, restless with boyish vigour and big for his age -- almost big enough to fill his father’s armour -- Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, came to Troy He put fresh heart into the Myrmidons who called him Neoptolemus, the new warrior. Agamemnon decided that his luck was in, the Argives took to the field once more, the two armies fought each other to a bloody standstill, and still the war dragged on.

  Then the weather turned foul again, the bitter wind driving rain down across the plain, and stirring the sea to such a steep swell that the supply ships could not make it into port. Wretched and drenched, the Argive host huddled by their fires and grumbled. Only the dreadful weather prevented many of them from packing up and taking to the ships.

  One afternoon, after a skirmish with a small band of Dardanians who surrendered to him surprisingly quickly, Odysseus was approached by their leader, a man who claimed that he was kin to Aeneas. He brought a message from Antenor offering to open secret channels of communication, and naming a time when Antenor might be found at the Thymbraean temple of Apollo.

  Odysseus said, ‘I seem to recall that we Argives have been given good reason not to trust the sanctity of that place.’

  The Dardanian nodded. ‘You may also recall that Antenor has reason to hate the one who violated its sanctity. Also the priest at the shrine is Antenor’s son. Laocoon knew nothing of what Paris and Deiphobus had planned and was outraged by the sacrilege. Antenor also reminds you that you were once his house- guest. That bond still holds. My own life is hostage for it. I look to be free again after you speak with him.’

  Accompanied by his cousin Sinon, Odysseus made the journey to the shrine where Achilles had been murdered. He found Antenor waiting for him there, alone and unarmed. While the wind howled outside, the two men talked together for a long time. Antenor informed Odysseus that King Priam was a broken man who had lost all heart for dealing with affairs of state. Deiphobus had now taken command of the Trojan forces.

  ‘But there is much dissension in the city,’ he said. ‘Many of us are desperate for the war to end and I’m far from alone in thinking that Helen should be returned to Menelaus as part of an immediate peace treaty. Aeneas and his father are with me -- too many Dardanians have already died in a war that none of them wanted. But Deiphobus is heir to the throne and he still has many supporters.’ Antenor glanced away. ‘There’s another thing you should know. Helen is now living with Deiphobus.’ He looked back and saw the shock in Odysseus’s face. ‘And there’s no way he’ll surrender her. He still thinks this war can be won. His trust is in our walls and he doubts that your troops can stand another winter on the plain.’

  Odysseus said, ‘He may well be in the right of it. But winter is many weeks away and there’s plenty of time left for senseless killing.’

  ‘Then can we not come to terms,’ Antenor urged, ‘as reasonable men?’

  Odysseus raised his brows. ‘I’ve long since lost all faith in human reason.’

  But they talked on, discussing possible terms for an armistice, and by the time Odysseus left the temple he had promised to do what he could to find a way of ending the war.

  ‘So it seems our spies were right,’ Sinon said as they climbed back into the chariot. ‘It looks as though both Antenor and the Dardanians are thinking more about survival than victory these days.’

  Odysseus smiled wryly at his cousin. ‘Let’s hope that some similar vestige of sanity is to be found behind our lines, otherwise we’ll never get back to Ithaca.’

  Menelaus was so sickened by the news that Helen had now given herself to Deiphobus that he sat in morose silence throughout the long council meeting at which Odysseus reported what he had learned. As for the rest of the warlords, the divisions in the Argive leadership almost exactly mirrored those among the Trojans and their allies. Odysseus and Idomeneus were ready to settle for sensible terms, but Diomedes declared it madness to have fought for all those years, and to have lost so many friends, only to give up before the city fell. Neoptolemus agreed with him. Speaking with a grave, implacable air that reminded them all of Achilles, the young warrior declared that he was not about to leave Troy until all those who had conspired to murder his father were dead.

  Odysseus listened to the boy speak with a heavy heart. He was thinking of his own son, Telemachus, who was almost the same age, and wondering whether the dreadful patrimony of this war must one day be passed on to him too, like a curse casting its shadow across the generations. Meanwhile, old Nestor dithered somewhere between the two camps, aware of the futility of the war, yet knowing that none of the heroes of his youth would ever have settled for less than total victory. Agamemnon listened to the arguments through a surly blur of alcohol. Tempers were rising. It would not be long before insults flew.

  Then Menelaus looked up from his wine. ‘This war began with an injury done to me. At Sparta all of you swore before Poseidon to defend my right. You are still bound by that oath.’ His voice was heavy with menace. ‘I expect you to honour it.’

  Even Agamemnon was astounded by his baleful vehemence. Struggling to keep the incredulity from his voice, he said, ‘Are you saying you still wa
nt her back?’

  ‘I want Deiphobus dead as Paris is dead,’ Menelaus answered. ‘I want to watch this city burn.’

  There was a long silence in which each of the assembled company stared into a future black with death and smoke.

  ‘You heard my brother,’ Agamemnon said at last. ‘This war goes on.’

  Odysseus woke from a dream of blood that night wondering whether he too was going mad. And then he saw the cause -- Menelaus had brought back the vile memory of the oath that he had sworn at Sparta. To the best of his knowledge no one had thought about the oath for years. However this war might have begun, it had long since developed an insane logic of its own that kept them all locked inside it. And yet at the very moment when they might have negotiated a way out of the long nightmare, Menelaus had raised the spectre of that oath again. Small wonder it had returned to haunt the dreams of its deviser!

  Recalling the dream, Odysseus shuddered. He had watched the bloody joints of the horse that had been sacrificed at Sparta rise up and come together again. The horse was reassembled, and one by one the Argive leaders were forced to climb into its belly until they were all shut up inside that grisly cave of blood.

  He shook his head to clear it of the dreadful image. Then he lay for a long time, aching for his wife, remembering how she had been as a girl in Sparta, how they had sailed for Ithaca at last, glad to leave the ambitious bustle of the world behind them, wanting nothing more than the joy of living together on their own small island. Yet Menelaus and Palamedes had come and they had brought with them the memory of that dismembered horse to haunt him there.

  And Palamedes, Patroclus, and Ajax -- each of whom had sworn on the joints of the king-horse with him -- were all now dead; and Achilles, Hector and Paris were wandering the asphodel fields in the Land of Shades with them. And still it seemed the curse of the horse would not let him go.