by Glyn Iliffe
‘Are you already trying to overturn the agreement made by this Kerosia only a few months ago?’ said one of the others sitting in the circle of seven high-backed chairs.
He was a handsome middle-aged man with a blue cloak that flowed down from his broad shoulders to lap about his ankles. The stump of his right hand, encased in a leather cup, rested on his thigh.
‘I am mindful of what is best for our island, Mentor,’ Antinous replied. ‘You’ve all heard about these tribes of wanderers filtering down from the north. They’re settling wherever they feel like because there are no fighting men – and no kings – left to stop them. Soon they’ll want more than parcels of abandoned land: they’re going to establish their own towns, set up temples to their own gods, and protect themselves with armies. There’s going to be war, Mentor, in every part of Greece. Ithaca may be an island, but we won’t be immune to it. Our time’s coming and we need a king to govern the defence. We can’t simply wait ten more years for Odysseus to return!’
‘Very impassioned, my son,’ said Eupeithes, shifting slightly in the uncomfortable chair and smiling at Antinous. ‘And yet we made an agreement and we must honour it, especially as it was made by this Kerosia.’
If Eupeithes smiled it was not because he felt at ease. No, his sense of discomfort came from more than just the chair. As for the terrifying news of the northern tribes that had unsettled not just the Kerosia but every farmer and fisherman across the islands of Ithaca, Kefalonia, Samos and Dulichium, that did not concern him. After all, he had encouraged the rumours for his own purposes, to quell ominous rumblings from among the people after Penelope was persuaded to sell her son’s birthright. And it had worked handsomely. Rather he was unsettled by certain reports he had received from his own contacts on the mainland. Fellow merchants had heard from other merchants who supplied the Greek camp, saying that the gods had sent a great horse to kick down the walls of Troy and give Agamemnon the victory he had sought for so long. Not that Eupeithes gave much credence to the gods, and even less to their inconvenient oracles that so easily swayed the minds of the simple. But experience had taught him not to dismiss tales out of hand, even fantastic ones. If men were suddenly saying Troy had fallen when no such gossip had passed their lips before, then he was worried.
Antinous’s complexion darkened. He brought his fist down on the arm of the chair.
‘Great men know when to honour an agreement and when to overlook it! Odysseus would have served his country better if he’d turned his back on that oath. Instead he let himself and all the fighting men of these islands be dragged off to another man’s war.’
‘And if he had ignored his duty he would have been a king without honour, weaker by his presence here than his absence when all others had answered the call,’ Penelope said.
‘Yet I hear he tried to feign madness so that he wouldn’t have to go,’ Antinous said, rising to his feet and standing before her. ‘He at least understood that a king’s place is defending his own country, not fighting on the shores of a foreign land. If he was prepared to deny the oath he had taken – though by trickery rather than manly defiance – shouldn’t you, my queen? Show your loyalty to Ithaca and give her a new king.’
‘Penelope’s loyalty is also to her husband,’ said the large man next to Mentor. ‘Sit down, Antinous, and keep your foolish notions to yourself.’
‘For once I agree with Halitherses. Sit down and let your youthful impetuosity be ruled by the wisdom of our greater years.’
Antinous turned and glared at his father. Then, laying the speaker’s staff on the floor, which he had clung on to since almost the start of the debate, he returned to his seat. It irked Eupeithes to humiliate his son so, especially as he understood his fears. Antinous saw his chance of power slipping away from him and wanted to pull it back as loudly and forcefully as he could. But to compel Penelope to choose a new husband now would destroy everything his father had worked for. All they had to do was wait. The Pythoness herself had foretold Odysseus would not return for another ten years, and Penelope had agreed to remarry if her husband did not return within that time. So they must be patient, even though Eupeithes knew the assassins he had planted among Odysseus’s men would ensure the king was dead long before then.
‘The Kerosia can deal with any threat from these northerners,’ he continued. ‘We can raise a militia –’
‘You’re wrong, Eupeithes.’
Had the opposition come from Mentor, Halitherses or Penelope, he would not have been surprised. But it had come from Oenops, the grey-haired old fool he had placed on the Kerosia to be an echo of his own voice.
‘You’re wrong because the Kerosia is ineffectual,’ Oenops continued, barely able to look Eupeithes in the eye as he spoke. ‘The people know we’re divided and so they neither trust us nor respect our authority. If these barbarians decide to make Ithaca their home, do you think the Kerosia could organise any kind of defence?’
‘It would be every man for himself,’ added Polyctor, the final member of the council and another of Eupeithes’s cronies. ‘Before we could draw them together into a unified force our enemies would have overrun the island and taken it for themselves. What we need is a king, a single leader to help us prepare.’
Eupeithes now saw that Antinous had persuaded Polyctor and Oenops to support his own bid for power, in the hope his father would join them. Halitherses and Mentor added their own voices to the argument, refusing to accept that the previous agreement should be overturned. Penelope, who was only there to represent her husband and had no vote, stood and held out her hands in a plea for silence.
‘Antinous, you cannot force me to marry against my will, not when my husband still lives.’
‘You will obey the will of the Kerosia,’ he answered.
Mentor stood and looked angrily at Eupeithes’s son. But before he could speak, silence descended suddenly on the hall and every eye was turned to the open doorway. A man stood silhouetted against the sunlight, the horsehair plume on his helmet almost touching the upper beam. A shield was on his back, but he carried no spear and his scabbard was empty, his weapons doubtless having been confiscated by the guard at the outer wall. The man peered into the gloom of the hall and dropped to one knee as he saw the circle of chairs.
‘My lords,’ he called out in an accent that Eupeithes did not recognise, ‘I have a message for Queen Penelope.’
‘Come forward and speak.’
The man crossed the dirt floor and passed between the chairs of Oenops and Halitherses, where he removed his helmet and bowed before Penelope. His leather cuirass was well made but battle-worn. As Eupeithes surveyed his suntanned face with its hardened expression, he thought he knew what the man was going to say. He glanced at Antinous, who by the despairing look in his eyes seemed to have come to the same conclusion.
‘My lady, I bring a message from King Nestor of Pylos, the first of the kings to return from the war. Troy has fallen! Your husband lives and is even now sailing back to Ithaca.’
Odysseus and Eperitus stayed awake all night, watching one torch after another flicker into life on the pitch-black sea. The last three ships did not come into sight until dawn, and with the fleet now huddled together in a pack, Odysseus let the wind take them westward. As the sun approached its zenith, Eperitus suddenly called out that he could see land. The announcement was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the crew.
Astynome wondered if it was Greece and felt a sudden apprehension at the thought of reaching their long hoped-for destination. Her eagerness to set up home with Eperitus and start a family was dulled by the thought that Eurylochus would never be far away. After she realised he had avoided capture by the Cyclopes and returned to the ship, she had considered telling Eperitus that he had tried to attack her. That would have been an end to all her fears, for Eperitus would have killed him without hesitation. But she had not forgotten Eurylochus’s words: that if Eperitus killed him there would be a mutiny, and that he was the only one preventing the crews from murdering Od
ysseus. And she did not dare to risk that he might be right. Even on Ithaca she doubted whether Eperitus could kill Eurylochus without consequences. So she decided that she would never speak of it to anyone. And hoped Eurylochus had the sense not to try the same thing again.
The island they had spotted was uninhabited and not known to any of the experienced sailors in the crew. Against their advice Odysseus insisted on sailing on through the night, perhaps fearing that the west wind would abandon them before time and return home to its master. It did not. Instead it continued to blow day after day and night after night, and all the time Odysseus stood on the same spot, refusing to give control of the sail to anyone else. He was there when Astynome closed her eyes and he was there still when she opened them again in the morning, his bloodshot gaze fixed fervently on the horizon. Eperitus was usually beside him, determined to support the king in his vigil. But after the fourth night at sea he joined Astynome for breakfast and was asleep within moments. Odysseus spared his friend a glance and then gave Astynome a nodding smile as she cradled Eperitus’s head in her lap, before setting his eyes back on the distant horizon. Eperitus did not stir until the last light of day was fading. He admonished Astynome gently for letting him sleep so long, then rejoined his friend on the deck. He slept twice more over the next few days, both times from exhaustion rather than choice, but Odysseus – if he slept at all – must have napped standing. His face had become ashen and his eyes were dark-ringed, but his stoic determination to see Ithaca again held him fast to the spot, controlling the sail to take full advantage of the wind and drive them ever westward.
On the eighth day there was a great clamour on deck as a familiar coastline was spotted. Now every man seemed to know where he was and the realisation that they were nearing home gripped them and the air was filled with excited chatter. By now Odysseus was swaying on his stocky legs, and Eperitus and Polites took it in turns to support him. But he refused to close his eyes or sit down, possessed by a superstitious fear that Ithaca might slip away from him if he rested for a moment.
Neither would he take the fleet into one of the many harbours or bays they saw along the rugged coastline. This caused some grumbling among the crew, especially in the portion of the benches where Eurylochus and Selagos held court. Despite the knowledge they would soon be home again, there were some who wanted fresh provisions and the chance to sleep on firm land by a warm fire. Astynome watched the scowling faces with concern and voiced her fears to Eperitus, who simply nodded and told her that everything would be alright as soon as they reached Ithaca. But the crew’s discontent was not only down to Odysseus’s determination to reach Ithaca without stopping. There were rumours about the contents of the leather bag that was in the ship’s hold. Aeolus’s gift had fired the men’s imagination so much that it was soon held to contain untold treasures, which Odysseus had no intention of sharing with his men. This above all seemed to anger them, but when Astynome asked Eperitus what was in the bag, he said he had sworn to keep the contents a secret until they reached Ithaca.
When the tenth morning since they had set sail from Aeolia arrived, the skies were grey and the air had turned cold and damp. Odysseus stood like a corpse, his knuckles white as they gripped the ropes controlling the sail, and his eyelids so heavy that he struggled to keep them open. Eperitus, standing beside him, was also showing signs of fatigue, for he had not slept for the last three nights, worried as he was by the rumours that had been spread about the leather bag. The crew, with little else to do, were pointing out hills and rocks and fishing villages on the familiar coastline to the east, talking excitedly among themselves about home. Only Eurylochus and Selagos looked unhappy to be returning and sat talking together in whispers. Omeros and Elpenor also seemed distracted as they watched Odysseus, perhaps worried the king was pushing himself too far. Not long now, though, Astynome thought to herself. Not long now.
Eperitus was the first to succumb. For some time Astynome had watched him battling to stay awake, so she moved quickly to support him when his eyes closed and refused to open again. He slumped into her arms and it was only with Elpenor’s help that she shifted his bulk to one of the benches, where Polites was already sleeping off two nights at Odysseus’s side. There Eperitus remained fast asleep, his head in Astynome’s lap, so that even the cry of ‘Zacynthos! It’s Zacynthos!’ and the resulting uproar did not rouse him.
Odysseus’s head had begun to drop and his body was swaying with neither Eperitus nor Polites to support him, but at the name of the southernmost island of his kingdom his whole body stiffened and he lifted his eyes to the large island forming on the northern horizon. Signalling to Elpenor to take the ropes from his hands, he staggered to the prow and forced his way through the men who were crowded there. Even those who had previously voiced hostility to him stepped aside and returned to the benches, leaving the king to regard his realm in peace. And so, as the galley slipped past Zacynthos and the islands of Kefalonia and Ithaca came into sight, Odysseus stood alone at the prow looking at that which he had longed to see for ten years.
‘So that’s Ithaca?’ Astynome asked Elpenor.
‘Mostly it’s Kefalonia. It looks like one island from here because you can’t see the channel between them, but Ithaca is the small spur to the right.’
After a while the strait that divided the islands became clear. Ithaca seemed tiny to Astynome’s eyes, but she nevertheless felt a sense of relief that after everything they had been through they had finally reached the end of their voyage – even if the threat of Eurylochus remained. Smoke trails were rising from the hilltops and the glow of small fires could be seen where farmers and shepherds were cooking their dinners. Farmsteads and orchards were visible on the hillsides and there were boats in the water around the rocky skirts of the island, the crews of which must have been looking at the fleet of galleys with trepidation. Soon their fear would turn to jubilation, she thought, and a smile crossed her face at the knowledge that her dream of a life with Eperitus was about to begin. She looked at him fast asleep on the bench and wondered whether to wake him. Then she glanced at Odysseus and saw that he was slumped over the prow.
She ran to his side. Taking his bulk in her arms, she struggled to lift him from the bow rail. She stared at the nearest crew members as they sat watching her from the benches.
‘Help me.’
‘Let him rest,’ an old greybeard replied. ‘He’ll be home soon enough.’
‘Back in his palace with all his plunder,’ said another.
‘And very little for us,’ added the greybeard.
He was answered by a few disgruntled murmurs, though some shook their heads and one man at least told him to be quiet.
‘He has always promised to share everything fairly, you know that,’ Astynome protested.
She was acutely aware of her Trojan accent as hostile eyes stared at her from the benches.
‘What about the bag Aeolus gave him?’ This voice was also foreign, though the words had a thick Taphian burr. Selagos stood up and looked at the men around him. ‘He never told us what was in the bag, did he?’
‘Gold is what I heard.’
‘Keep your gold, man. That bag’s filled with diamonds and rubies or I’m a satyr.’
‘Its contents are the king’s business and nobody else’s,’ Astynome said.
‘What’s it to do with you, you Trojan whore,’ Eurylochus spat. ‘Elpenor, tell us what’s in the bag or it’ll go hard with you when we get back.’
‘He’s sworn to silence,’ Eurybates called from the stern where he was leaning on the twin rudders.
‘Tell us, Elpenor,’ Eurylochus insisted, his small eyes fixed on the youth. ‘Tell us and we’ll make it worth your while.’
Elpenor – hanging on to the sail ropes as if tied in place – looked Eurylochus square in the eye.
‘If you want to find out you’ll have to look for yourself. I won’t tell you.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ Selagos said.
&nb
sp; Eurylochus looked at him in surprise.
‘B–but we can’t! What if Odysseus wakes up?’
Selagos looked at the unconscious king with a sneer.
‘I hope he does. There’s enough treasure in that bag to make every man here rich. Do we want to return to Ithaca as poor men ruled by a rich schemer, or do we open it up and take our share now?’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Astynome shouted, pulling as hard as she could at Odysseus’s inert body until he slumped to the deck.
‘Let’s not do anything rash!’ Eurylochus warned. ‘Selagos speaks in jest, of course. But Odysseus did say he would share all plunder fairly, and that includes gifts. I say we look inside the bag and list everything in it so that he can’t exclude us from our split.’
There were loud words of agreement from the crew, whose outrage at being denied a share of the treasure was growing. Astynome looked in desperation at Eperitus and Polites – who were still in a deep sleep on the benches – then down at Odysseus. Taking hold of his tunic she began shaking him as hard as she could.
‘Wake up, Odysseus! Wake up!’
‘You’re all fools,’ Omeros warned the others.
He had been sitting on a sack of grain beside Eurybates, watching the course of the debate with concern. Now he got to his feet and stood over the hatch that accessed the hold. Selagos approached him with a mocking grin on his face.
‘Out of my way.’
Omeros drew his sword. Selagos leapt at him, grabbing hold of his wrist and twisting the weapon from his grip. Omeros cried out in pain and was thrown into the scuppers by the powerful Taphian. Leaving the twin rudders, Eurybates leapt forward and swung at Selagos. His fist caught him in the jaw, almost knocking him back into the men on the benches. But Selagos rocked back with a counterpunch that caught Eurybates square in the face. He fell back against the sacks of grain and was silent.
With no-one at the rudder the galley lurched suddenly to starboard, rolling both Eperitus and Polites from their benches. They did not wake, and to Astynome’s continued dismay she could not shake Odysseus from his exhausted slumber. As Omeros ran to take control of the rudder, Selagos tore open the hatch and dropped into the hold. A moment later he clambered back out, dragging the leather sack behind him. There was a look of confusion on his face as he lifted it lightly in his arms and threw it onto the deck.
