by Glyn Iliffe
‘But you’ll starve.’
‘The goddess will provide.’
Odysseus hesitated, then returned to the plinth and slipped the waterskin from his shoulder, laying it at Theano’s knees. Fishing in the leather bag at his hip, he pulled out some oat cakes and pushed them into her hands. Eperitus followed, leaving his own waterskin with the priestess.
‘You see,’ she said with a smile.
‘Come on,’ Eperitus said, laying a hand on Odysseus’s arm. ‘Let’s get back to the ships. We’ve fulfilled our obligations and I don’t want to remain in this city of ghosts any longer than I have to.’
They picked their way over the mounds of broken masonry and shattered roof tiles, heading for the empty doorway. All around them they could hear the sounds of destruction from the city walls, but somewhere a bird was singing. Then, as they reached the splintered remains of the temple doors, Theano called out to them.
‘Wait! I have something else to say. To you, Eperitus.’
Eperitus turned and saw the priestess standing in the sunlight, surrounded by the devastation of her temple. He wondered for a moment whether he wanted to hear the words she had for him, or whether he should leave before she could prophesy a crippling doom that would only bring despair. Too many Greeks and Trojans had been destroyed by such glimpses of the future, seen darkly through the eyes of priests and prophets. And yet he knew he must listen.
‘For ten years you have suffered under the oath that Agamemnon’s wife extracted from you,’ she began. ‘When Clytaemnestra knew her husband would offer their daughter as a sacrifice to the gods, she made you swear to protect his life until he returned from the war, so that she could exact her own revenge upon him.’
Eperitus felt his heart race and a nervous sickness enter his stomach.
‘How did you know about the oath?’
Theano smiled, though sadly. ‘The goddess revealed it to me. I also know that you slept with Clytaemnestra ten years before in the foothills of the Taygetus Mountains, but when she realised she was pregnant she told Agamemnon the child was his.’
‘I didn’t know she had conceived,’ Eperitus said, holding his hands out imploringly to the priestess. ‘I didn’t know I had a daughter. How could I? It was one night and I didn’t see Clytaemnestra again for another ten years. And it was only after she made me swear that she told me Iphigenia was mine. By then it was too late to save her.’
‘Agamemnon plunged his dagger into Iphigenia’s heart,’ Theano said. ‘And you have had to suffer his presence ever since, even saving his life when you could have let him die at the hands of his enemies.’
‘I have kept my oath,’ Eperitus answered, coldly. ‘And it is some comfort knowing Clytaemnestra will avenge our daughter’s death; she brought Iphigenia into the world and has a greater claim for vengeance than I, who only knew her a short while.’
‘But it is difficult for you, Eperitus – a warrior used to imposing your will by force not being able to make Agamemnon pay for his crime, or even to have a hand in his destruction.’
Eperitus felt his anger rise at what seemed to be her provocation. He nodded slowly.
‘Then listen to me,’ Theano continued. ‘You can yet play a part. Indeed, unless you do, Iphigenia’s murder will never be avenged. Leave now and go to Agamemnon’s tent, alone. There you will find your chance for retribution.’
Chapter Six
THE CALL OF JUSTICE
A strong wind blew through the ruins of Troy, chasing clouds of dust along the narrow thoroughfares and sweeping away the columns of smoke that rose from the funeral pyres. From the gates of the citadel Eperitus could see over the battlements to the Scamander valley and the great harbour into which the river fed, now filled with the beetle-like galleys of the Greek fleet. The sky above was clean and blue, made bright by the warm mid-morning sun. It was a day full of hope and the promise of freedom, a day for raising anchors and dropping sails for the homeward voyage. But now it had come to it, Eperitus was reluctant to leave. Not for any love of Ilium, his prison for the last ten years. With the war over, there was still one thing to be done before he could take ship with Odysseus. Astynome knew it and feared it. Theano had commanded it, if only for his own sake. And Odysseus was against it.
The king leaned against the sloped wall of the tower that had once guarded the gateway. His arms were crossed and his eyes fixed obstinately upon Eperitus.
‘You aren’t going –’ he began.
Warning shouts from further along the walls were followed by the crash of falling stone. A billow of dust rolled up the street, forcing a group of warriors to raise the corners of their cloaks to their faces. After a moment’s silence, the sound of metal upon stone resumed.
‘I won’t allow you to go, Eperitus,’ he continued. ‘As your king I forbid it.’
‘And as my friend?’ Eperitus asked. ‘How would you feel if Agamemnon had murdered your son? Will you order me to carry this burden for the rest of my days?’
‘The question is what will killing Agamemnon achieve? It won’t bring Iphigenia back to life. Even if you weren’t oath-bound not to take your vengeance, murdering him will only result in your own execution. It’s time to turn from the past and look to the future. And you have a future now, Eperitus. With Astynome. Don’t sacrifice that for some hollow victory.’
Eperitus scowled and looked to where the smoke-blackened wooden horse still towered over the remains of the city it had conquered.
‘I hope that after all these years you aren’t intending to forget your oath, Eperitus?’
Eperitus shook his head. The years of war had taken much from him, but it had not taken his honour. And he would not surrender it now.
‘Then what can you hope to accomplish by going to Agamemnon’s tent?’ Odysseus insisted.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll confront him, let him know that Iphigenia was my daughter, not his. I’ve hated living this lie for ten years. If I can’t kill him I’ll at least have the satisfaction of letting him know Clytaemnestra betrayed their marriage bed. Perhaps he’ll begin to wonder whether Orestes is really his son, too.’
‘So you’ll risk his anger for petty vengeance. Is that the sort of man you’ve become, Eperitus? For Astynome’s sake – and mine – let it go. Come back to the ships and let’s sail for home.’
‘No. I can’t leave without seeing justice for my daughter. That’s the sort of man I am, Odysseus. Athena knows it, even if you don’t, and she commanded me to take retribution. Would you have me disobey her like you did?’
Odysseus’s eyes darkened momentarily then were calm and thoughtful again. He sighed and stared at his captain.
‘Theano is not Athena –’
‘Odysseus!’
Three men came running up the road that led from the Scaean Gate, the gleam of their leather armour dulled by a thin layer of dust. The first was Antiphus who, despite the war being over, still carried his customary bow over his shoulder; the others were Omeros and Elpenor.
‘My lord, we’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ Antiphus said.
‘What is it?’
‘Hecabe’s raving again. She’s calling down curses on the Greek kings, including you, and it’s making the men nervous.’
‘Then let Eurybates deal with it,’ Odysseus snapped. ‘I left him in charge to deal with this sort of thing, not so that I’d be called away from more urgent matters just to play nursemaid to a madwoman.’
‘A mad queen!’ Antiphus protested. ‘I’d rather take on a company of fully armed Trojans than face that old harpy. She keeps calling for Priam and her dead children, and it’s making the other women cry out for their own dead. Eurybates is afraid she’ll kill herself.’
Odysseus turned to Eperitus.
‘That settles it. We need to leave at once and get them away from this place before they go insane with grief. As soon as we’re on the open sea they’ll have other things to worry about. And so will you, Eperitus. Forget Agamemnon and look t
o the journey home – that’s an order. Come on.’
He set off at a jog down the sloping road towards the remnants of the Scaean Gate, followed by Antiphus, Omeros and Elpenor. Eperitus hesitated, debating hurriedly between the command of his king and his instinct for revenge. A shouted warning followed by the crash of another great block from the walls of Pergamos snapped him out of his thoughts and he set off in pursuit of the others. They ran beneath the shadow of the great horse and down to the gates, passing scores of Greeks busy razing the buildings where the citizens of Troy had once lived and worked, and in which many of them had died. They hurried through the gateway that had defied Agamemnon’s armies for so long and which, in the end, the Trojans had torn down themselves. Reaching the plain beyond, they were confronted by the vast camp of the victors, stretching from the skirts of the city to the shores of the bay. Somewhere on the far side were the twelve ships of the Ithacan fleet.
Odysseus led the way into the mass of pitched canvas. Seeing the towering peaks of Agamemnon’s tent to his right, Eperitus hesitated. A group of Trojan captives was seated nearby, among whom was a girl of nine or ten years old. Her hands were cupped in a begging gesture towards some soldiers. Irked by her pleading, one of the men kicked her into the dirt and spat on her prostrate body. After a moment, the child wiped away the tears and blood, pushed herself to her knees and held her hands out to the other soldiers.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ the first man grunted. ‘Are you stupid? We don’t feed dogs; we let them scavenge for themselves.’
His comrades laughed, but the girl did not understand Greek and turned her hands back towards the man who had struck her. Angrily, he raised his fist to strike her, but before the blow could connect, Eperitus caught his wrist and held it fast. The soldier turned to him with a look of surprise that quickly turned to fury. He grabbed his sword, but before it could leave the scabbard Eperitus butted him hard in the face. The man’s nose split and blood gushed down over his lips and beard. As he fell unconscious in the dust, Eperitus pulled out his own sword and pointed it at the man’s comrades, whose hands were already reaching for their weapons.
‘Don’t be fools,’ he warned them.
‘You’re the fool, my friend,’ scoffed the tallest, Thessalian by his accent. ‘There’s four of us and one of you. And soon there’ll just be the four of us.’
‘I’ve faced worse odds,’ Eperitus replied, glancing coolly about himself. There was no sign of Odysseus or the others. ‘Now, put your weapons away and we can all go about our business.’
‘Our business is with you,’ said the Thessalian, casually tossing his sword from one hand to the other and back again.
The four men spread out and prepared to attack Eperitus from all sides. By the scars on their armour he knew they were seasoned veterans and that bloodshed was inevitable. Then the man whose nose he had broken groaned and sat up. Before his comrades could take another step, Eperitus grabbed his mop of black hair and pulled him to his feet, holding the blade beneath his chin.
‘Stop where you are or he dies.’
The Thessalian’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled up in a sneer.
‘Now you really are being a fool,’ he said, stepping forward.
‘By all the gods, man, he means it, he means it!’ squealed the first as Eperitus pressed the sharpened bronze against his throat, breaking the skin so that a trickle of red ran down the blade.
His comrades stopped. Two began edging backwards.
‘Sheathe your weapons and return to your camp,’ Eperitus insisted. ‘When I think you’re far enough away I’ll release your friend.’
‘And why should we trust you?’ asked the Thessalian.
‘What choice do you have?’
‘For mercy’s sake, Tekton, do as he says before he murders me,’ the first man implored.
With a scowl, Tekton slid his weapon back into its scabbard, then turned slowly on his heel and walked towards the tents. The others followed. When they were no longer visible Eperitus withdrew his sword and brought the pommel down hard on his hostage’s head. He collapsed for a second time and lay still.
‘Sir,’ said a voice at Eperitus’s side.
There was blood on the Trojan girl’s lip where she had been kicked, and though she now stood at a respectful distance, her hands were cupped in the same gesture she had used earlier.
‘You’re persistent,’ he replied in her own tongue.
She’s starving, he thought.
Over the unconscious soldier’s shoulder was a bulging leather satchel. Eperitus cut the strap and pulled it free. Inside were several cakes of flatbread.
‘Here,’ he said, handing it to the girl. ‘Eat your fill.’
She pulled out a cake and crammed it into her mouth, before tucking the rest inside a rip in her dress and running back to the fragile safety of the other slaves. Eperitus watched her share the meagre food between them, then signalled to an armed man standing at the edge of the encampment.
‘Whose slaves are these?’ he asked as the man approached.
‘They belong to my master, King Agapenor of the Arcadians.’
‘Then keep a better watch over them, unless Agapenor wants to lose what little he’s got to show for ten years of war.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
The Arcadian called to two more men loitering by the edge of the camp, who picked up their spears and shields and joined him. Eperitus looked over to the gap in the tents where the Thessalians – and Odysseus before them – had disappeared. They would return at any moment; or worse still, Odysseus would appear first and prevent him from doing what he now knew must be done.
Sensing a presence behind him, he turned to see one of the slave women.
‘Why did you help my daughter?’ she asked.
‘She was hungry.’
‘That’s not it. After all these years of war and hatred, why would a Greek risk his life for a Trojan?’
He saw the loss and despair in her eyes. And yet there was a glimmer of hope, too; hope that after the brutality of the past ten years some humanity might remain in the world. If not for her own sake, then for the sake of her daughter, who would grow up a slave subject to the will of her masters.
‘For pity then,’ he replied. ‘And justice. I had a daughter of my own once, and she received neither. Until now.’
He pushed his sword into its scabbard and moved past the Trojan woman towards the outermost line of tents. Agamemnon’s great pavilion was clearly visible on the far side of the encampment, close to the edge of the bay. As Eperitus looked, the banner of Mycenae was opened up by a gust of wind, revealing the golden lion with its jaws buried in the throat of a fallen deer. It was an image he had always hated, reminding him as it did of his own inability to prevent Iphigenia’s murder at Agamemnon’s hands. Feeling a sense of urgency, he plunged into the maze of rope and canvas only to find himself blinded by the smoke of unnumbered campfires and lost in the crush of soldiers moving to and fro. It was as if they were trying to prevent him from reaching Agamemnon’s tent; as if the king himself was directing them like unconscious pawns to hinder his path. As he pressed on he kept hearing Odysseus’s voice. I won’t allow you to go… What will killing Agamemnon achieve? It won’t bring Iphigenia back to life… Murdering him will only result in your own execution.
‘Watch where you’re going, you damned idiot!’
Eperitus saw an angry face glaring at him and looked down to see a basket and several loaves in the grass at his feet. He said nothing and pushed on towards the golden lion on its field of blood, which seemed to be getting no closer. And what would he do when he got there? He grasped the pommel of his sword. Would he have to kill the guards to get to Agamemnon? For what? To taunt the king with the truth about his wife’s infidelity? Or would he go further? The questions mocked his resolve, yet he pressed on, letting his instincts guide him.
Then the words of Clytaemnestra came back to him, spoken ten years ago on the clifftops overlookin
g the bay of Aulis where the Greek fleet was gathered for the coming war. I promise you, the time will come when you can take your revenge on Agamemnon – the gods have revealed it to me. His downfall will begin at Troy, by your hand.
‘But how?’ he asked, speaking aloud. ‘How can I have revenge when your oath has tied my hands?’
For a moment his vision was blinded by a billow of thick smoke from a nearby fire. He raised his hand to swat it aside and caught his foot on a guy rope, falling to his knees. His hands plunged into warm sand, but as the smoke blew away he saw the white sails of Agamemnon’s tent ahead of him, separated only by a stretch of beach.
He sat back on his heels and gazed about himself. Behind him, a slave woman was throwing clutches of dry grass onto the fire that had blinded him. She stared at him boldly, as if she knew what had brought him there. Scanning the crescent of tents that bordered the beach, he counted fewer than a dozen Mycenaean warriors, all of them busy with their mundane duties. Only two men were guarding Agamemnon’s tent, where normally there would be at least ten. Their attention was fixed by the game of dice they were playing on an outstretched cloak. It could only mean one thing: the king was not in his tent. Why then had Theano ordered him to come here on the promise of retribution? He looked back at the slave woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. Thinking quickly, he retreated among the tents and circled back to a point further along the beach, beside the creaking mass of the Mycenaean fleet. There were men on the galleys repairing the neglect of a decade stuck on land. He walked down the sand to the water’s edge, amid the sound of falling hammers and splitting wood, then splashed ankle-deep through the breakers until he reached the shadow of the pavilion. After another cursory glance, he approached the sail walls, knelt, and drew out two of the wooden stakes that were holding the flax into the sand. The taut material relaxed and – with a final look over his shoulder – he rolled beneath the hem and was inside.
Chapter Seven
CALCHAS’S LAST VISION
