Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

Chapter Six

  A Shiver of Desire

  The palace in Pylos was surprising.

  Antenor had expected to find the hall of a warrior king. That was what the Argives were, after all: warriors and raiders, defining themselves by who they killed and what they stole. Their palaces were built like fortresses, with thick walls of heavy stone and cramped corridors, easy to defend. Shafts of light crept in through small, high windows, and only served to make the greyness around them all the gloomier.

  Here it was different. The palace stood above most of the city, on a rising coastline above a west-facing bay. Afternoon sun blazed off the water and into the streets, and also through the wide, arched porticoes that formed the seaward side of the palace. They led to a series of small, cleverly placed courtyards, each with a cluster of buildings to house visiting guests, and all bathed in that brilliant sunlight. Beyond those was the palace proper, wide passageways and bright rooms, all of it painted.

  If you knew what to look for, you could see where plaster covered the join between an old wall and a new, or where battlements had been reshaped into decorative balustrades. The designers had used as much of the old, martial fortress as they could, when they laid out these new halls. This palace showed that Messenia had money now, and a lot of it. The use of old walls showed they still had far less than Troy.

  Antenor had expected Greek martial scenes and he saw enough of those. Men in crested helmets stabbing with spears, charioteers careering through a chaos of struggle: the usual sort of thing. Argives were not imaginative when it came to showing battle. It was the same few images repeated again and again, in hall after hall. The lords didn’t want anything new, or daring, they just wanted the same, tired old repetition.

  But that was on the old walls, where plaster hadn’t been replaced at all. Not on the new ones.

  The main entrance hall boasted a mural all down one side, done in the Egyptian style, all the colours bright but the black darker than evil’s heart. Three people were being guided into the afterlife by a god with a jackal’s head: Antenor thought that was Anubis, but he always mixed up the strange Egyptian gods, and he wasn’t sure. One of the trio was a warrior in armour, another was a woman and the third looked like a labourer, which made the meaning plain. Everyone is equal in death. It was an unexpected message for an Argive warrior king to send.

  Then there was plenty of Greek art. Athletes competing in their Games, and a Gorgon’s head carved into the stone wall with the snakes of her hair writhing out as though to snatch at passers-by. A vase on a plinth was decorated with two men making pottery – an ironic touch, perhaps – while on a wall a painted maiden gave herself up into a lover’s arms. Antenor began to feel he was on more familiar ground again.

  And then one of the chambers was decorated with a Hittite pattern, circles made up of dozens of concentric rings in red, yellow and green. A line of lions walked around the edge, while near the middle crimson triangles pointed inward. The circles all overlapped, twisting the eye as it tried to follow them. It made Antenor a little queasy. Most Hittite art took the form of bas-relief or sculpture, and he wasn’t sure they’d got the hang of painting.

  The megaron itself had a mosaic floor, a style Antenor had heard of but never seen before. It was popular among some of the western peoples, the Etruscans and Samnites he thought. When he entered he was too low down to make out the design clearly, but he could see it was another pattern, swirling lines of bright colour set against brilliant white.

  This was not an Argive warrior hall. It was more like palaces Antenor had visited in Asia, Halicarnassus or even Troy itself. He was more unsettled than he cared to admit, his expectations confounded even before he spoke a word. Antenor was an experienced diplomat and councillor though, and he was sure his manner gave nothing away when Nestor greeted him.

  The king of Messenia was old now, somewhere past his mid-fifties according to Trojan agents, and he looked it. Half his hair was gone and the rest was grey, and liver spots decorated the backs of his hands. But his brown eyes were sharp, and his step was firm when he rose from his throne and came down the dais to greet Antenor. A courtesy, that: he was within his right to stay where he was and wait for his guest to bow.

  `“Antenor of Troy,” Nestor said. “Come to discuss transit duties on the eastern roads, I’m told?”

  “The matter requires constant attention,” Antenor replied.

  The king nodded. “Of course. Important matters so often do. Though I’m sure they will leave you ample time to mention the lady Hesione before you leave,” an eyebrow rose ironically, “as you so often do.”

  It was unfair, really. In his younger days Nestor had been among the most admired warriors in Greece, an excellent spearman and the match of any charioteer in the land. Much like the young man behind him, in fact, who looked enough like Nestor that he just had to be his son. But that had only ever been a part of who Nestor was. He was clever, a rare thing among the viciously competing warrior kings of Greece. He thought things through, devised stratagems and twisty schemes no one saw through until it was too late. This light-drenched new palace was proof of how far that cleverness had taken him, and the country he ruled. Messenia could never have afforded it twenty years ago.

  The man was both warrior and scholar, and he’d disarmed Antenor in a sentence, laced with a touch of wit.

  “I’m sure of it too,” Antenor said, trying not to let his discomfiture show. “But perhaps we might observe the formalities first?”

  Nestor grinned, obviously amused by Antenor’s effort to match his cleverness. He gestured for his visitor to seat himself beside the throne, and the court advisors and flunkies shuffled aside to make room for him.

  It was evening before the two men were able to sit together, away from the business of kingship and diplomacy. They took a table on the westward-facing balcony, in the light of the sinking sun. Nestor waved the servant away and served the wine and figs himself.

  “I’m amazed by your palace,” Antenor said.

  “Because it isn’t a dreary castle?” Nestor chuckled. “When Diomedes of Argolis was here he kept asking me where I’d found the architects. I gave him a few names, actually. If our investments work out he’ll have the money to make this palace look like a hovel.”

  “Investments?”

  “You’re fishing, my dear Trojan,” Nestor said comfortably. “But it doesn’t matter. Anyone in Pylos could tell you. Diomedes and I are putting some money into the western settlements, especially in Sicily. There’s a town called Naxos which has hills just right for olives, but nobody has planted anything yet. We’re going to ship some cuttings out there this summer.”

  “Long project,” Antenor noted.

  “Oh yes, I won’t see it come to fruition. My son Thrasymedes will be the one to benefit from the income. And it might be more than just olives. Once the town starts to grow, it won’t be long before business picks up. Once we start proper trading, they’ll grow as rich as we do.”

  Antenor sipped his wine and didn’t answer. In truth he was quite pleased to hear the Argives were looking west. It might mean fewer raids on the Asian coast, or that of Egypt to the south. There was something restless in the Greek spirit, some unquiet part of the soul that kept pushing them on to the horizon, and then beyond it again. He was happy to see that energy aimed away from Troy.

  “If it was up to me,” Nestor said quietly, looking out to sea, “I would return Hesione to Troy. I’d send her home in honour, with gifts of friendship. But we Greeks still value war above peace, glory above honour. Telamon will never release her while he lives.”

  Again Antenor didn’t speak. Nestor seemed to be talking to himself as much as anything, so he kept quiet and let him speak.

  “We’re changing,” the old man said. “We really are, Antenor. This palace is evidence of it, and there will be more. Diomedes thinks the same way I do, and so does Menestheus, in Athens. The days when Theseus ruled there like a typical bully-king are done.

&nb
sp; “But we don’t have the lineage of you easterners. Trojans, Maeonians are more sophisticated than we Greeks. You’ve have had centuries to learn how to live together, but most of my people still believe you deal with rivals by the sword, and only by the sword.” Nestor sighed. “If this had happened in another generation, say in Thrasymedes’ time, I think Hesione would be returned. If she’d ever have been taken at all.”

  “But she was,” Antenor said. “And all this talk of change, while laudable, does not alleviate her predicament.”

  Nestor looked at him. “I can think of nothing that will. You and I understand each other, I think, and Troy and Messenia are better as friends than enemies. So take no offence when I say I will not set myself against Telamon in this. Not when there is nothing to gain, and certainly not while the High King and most of the lesser rulers support him.”

  “King Priam has instructed me to say that this issue is now linked, for him, with that of trade duties on the Trojan Road.”

  “I regret that,” Nestor said. “I know why he says so, but I rue that it’s come so far.”

  “The fault is not Troy’s.”

  “Nor is it Messenia’s,” Nestor shot back, with a flash of the fire he’d had as a younger man. “We’re both innocent parties in this, but we’re not enemies, so don’t behave as though we are.”

  Antenor sighed. “I apologise, my friend.”

  “Accepted,” Nestor said immediately. “But Troy should be careful, Antenor. Here in Greece we say that if you join the dance circle, you have no choice but to dance. Once events spin out of control we sometimes find we can’t control our steps anymore. I’m afraid that may be becoming the case here.”

  He ruminated for a moment, turning his wine cup in age-spotted hands. “Fate never sets the course of a thread before its time, they say. If we’re to find an answer, we ought to talk to Odysseus.”

  “The king of Ithaca?” Antenor asked, taken by surprise. “I had the impression that was a backwater.”

  “Ithaca is hardly more than a pimple,” Nestor agreed. “But Odysseus is much more than that. If you want winged words, my Trojan friend, then he’s your man. Odysseus can persuade wolves to eat berries and leave the sheep alone. Don’t ever bargain with him. He’ll sell you a pig in a sack and you won’t realise he made a fool of you until two years later.”

  Antenor eyed the old king thoughtfully. He hadn’t heard that of Odysseus before: all the talk of the soft-spoken man was that he was a shepherd-king, little more than a peasant. It might be that Nestor was trying to distract Antenor with this suggestion. Delay him with a pointless journey west to Ithaca, while Nestor spoke to others and settled matters behind his back.

  He didn’t like to think so. Nestor was a friend, as far as any Argive king could be considered so. And if this clever man spoke so highly of the intelligence of Odysseus, his words were worth listening to. Antenor filed the comment away, to be considered later. Perhaps a way could be found to watch this Ithacan, see if reality matched the praise.

  But it didn’t matter for now. Priam and Antenor had planned this journey together, from Pylos to Sparta and Athens, and he wasn’t about to change schedule on the strength of one suggestion.