`Has he taught you any songs?' asked the steersman. `We've sung all of ours.'
Much to my surprise, I found myself chanting the story of Elene, the most beautiful woman in the world, and the league of suitors at Mycenae.
I wondered what had happened to Odysseus.
The wind took us across the Aegean, unfailing, and we did not stop for darkness that day or the next. As the sun came up the shipmaster yelled, `Out the oars! Take up the sail!'
Lemnos was approaching at a rapid rate. The oars hit the water together; the men grunted as they took the strain until the sail was furled up to the masthead. Then we rowed gently into the arms of the island where the women had slaughtered all their men. The only men on Lemnos were Thracian settlers, who had a rather haunted look, and the children engendered by the Argonauts when Jason had landed here.
We slept the night in a fishing village, as our shipmaster did not want to waste the heaven-sent south wind. I remember that I ate good roasted fish there, though the sailors grumbled, wanting meat. Then they vanished for the night, taken in by the Lemnos women who, it appeared, were still short of children.
Dawn brought red-eyed rowers, exhaling wine, to crew the benches of the
Ram
as we hoisted sail, skirted the island, and sailed along dreadful cliffs. The current, the shipmaster said, was ordinarily adverse, the headwaters of the Euxine sea spilling with great force through the Pillars of Heracles and down the coast of Phrygia and Caria. However, it appeared that the non-existent Poseidon had forgiven me for whatever it was I had done to offend him, and we skimmed along like a landing bird.
The bay of Troy was wide and shallow. At its head was the city, walled with grey stone, with three gate towers. It seemed tall and ominous.
Dusk was falling as we rowed to the beaches, where hundreds of small fires twinkled in the night. Troy was lit by torches in each tower.
`The eyes of Troy never sleep,' commented the shipmaster.
The Ram was hauled onto the shore and I splashed down with my load of herbs into the Atreidae's war.
I slept on the beach that night, as it was too late to find the sons of Glaucus in the interlocking lines of clans and dialects. I was tired but uncomfortable among so many strangers. Towards dawn I was woken by a hand fumbling over my throat and I grabbed for the wrist and my knife. A startled soldier dragged me upright as he backed and I clung to him.
`Sorry, asclepid,' he said hurriedly. `I thought-'
`That I was a sailor who wouldn't mind having his throat cut in order that you should have his valuables?' I asked, and three men laughed.
`Your luck always was terrible, Thersites,' one commented. `Trying to rob an asclepid, you'll be in trouble now if you are wounded.'
The man snarled an extremely indelicate reply. I released him and sheathed my knife. `You can carry the herbs, Thersites,' I ordered. `Take me to Macaon and Polidarius, the sons of Asclepius.'
He led the way, staggering under the weight of the medicines, through a hundred small encampments towards a row of tents.
Macaon was asleep, but Polidarius embraced me and took me and the bale of herbs joyfully inside.
`Greetings, little brother, you are welcome, doubly welcome if you have some comfrey and more vervain.'
`I have all of those and more; I carry your respected father's greetings and his love; how is it with you?'
`If I had known what war was like, little brother, I would not have come; but I am here and there is no going back,' said Polidarius. `Come out and we will light a fire and warm some wine.'
We looked at each other in the cool light. He was taller than me, my master's son, with dark hair and brown eyes. He had been careless and jovial, but now there were streaks of grey in the chestnut hair and new lines around his mouth. I realised that he was examining me just as narrowly.
`What happened to you, Chryse?' he asked in a physician's voice. `Have you been very ill?'
`Yes, in that ship, and before that. I ran mad when Chryseis died.' I had managed the sentence without a quaver in my voice; I was proud of myself. He nodded.
`Arion Dolphin-Rider said it would be so,' he said, stooping to blow on the embers of his cooking fire. `Hand me some kindling.'
`How did he know, that old man?' I cried.
`Because you were too happy,' grumbled a voice like a bear's, awoken from a winter's sleep at half-past January. `The gods do not allow men to taste pure happiness for long, Chryse. I told you - songs of loss are easy to write. That is because losing is more common than finding, finding more common than keeping. Is there any wine for an old man, Polidarius Asclepid Priest?'
`You do not need wine, but an infusion, which I shall presently prepare, against over-indulgence,' said Polidarius primly. The old man sat down on a driftwood plank and blinked, like the bear to which I had compared him. His beard and hair were liberally greased with animal fat and he had certainly slept in his clothes.
`Where is your apprentice, Arion, he should be looking after you - at least enough to keep your beard out of the dish,' I exclaimed, sitting down next to him. He grinned, that slow and irresistible grin which seemed to take you into a gleeful conspiracy with him. `Aren't men fools?' the grin said. `And aren't they
funny
?' I found my mouth moving in sympathy.
`The boy has found that he has no head for wine. The whelp took too much and is sleeping yet. I am amusing the kings, Chryse, and that is no laughing matter. Especially,' he whispered, nearly knocking me down with the wine on his breath, `since Troy, despite all efforts, has not fallen and we are not, it seems, feasting in the ruins of the towers. They are not happy and neither is this army - but your fellow asclepids can tell you about that. I am glad to see you, Chryse Diomenes, Death's Little Brother.'
`I am glad to see you too,' I said, realising that it was true. `I saw dolphins on the voyage - Arion, did you really ride one?'
`It is all true,' he spread his hands on his knees. `Strange as it seems, I did not improve that story at all.'
I smelt the mint in the infusion Polidarius had prepared, and I drank some too. He produced bread and oil and we ate, the bard complaining bitterly that a mixture of mint and oil would collide catastrophically with the wine in his insides and it would be all our fault if he could not sing that night. Polidarius bore this prospect philosophically. It was evidently a ritual argument.
Men were waking and cooking breakfast on the beaches. Macaon came out of the tent and said `Chryse! So it was true then. I mean, a fellow surgeon, how delightful.' He looked even older than his brother, worn and stooped. His hands were red with scrubbing.
I did not ask how the war was going. Troy loomed up, a stony block on its hill. The gate I could see was fast shut, and there was a flicker of movement on the walls; people pacing to and fro. Without the power of Poseidon Blue-Haired, Earth Shaker, I could not see how an army could get in, if there were men on the walls. Macaon followed my gaze and said quietly, `Indeed. You see the problem. They won't come out - why should they? - and we can't get in.'
`And how many are dead trying,' asked Arion rhetorically. `Uncounted. There must be hundreds pierced through with Trojan arrows, bitter darts. They have some Scythians there, or my name's not Arion, famous bard, great singer of the Achaeans.'
`Which, of course, it is, therefore they have Scythians,' agreed Macaon. `Those arrows can go through ox-hide like butter and they never miss.'
`What of the wounded?' I asked.
`They die,' said Macaon wearily. `I am officiating over the slaughter of all the young men in the world. By the time I get to them they have bled out their lives. The smallest wound is inflamed in hours and they die of blood-poisoning in days. Not to mention the number who die on the plain before another truce is arranged to bring back the dead. Some survive. It has been better since I have been boiling the sea water to wash the wounds, but there is no hiding this, Chryse; only one out of about fifty can be saved.'
`Then we shall save that one,' I said, putting down my empty cup. `As my Master says: if that is all we can do then we will do that.'
The brothers laughed. `I can hear him saying it,' declared Polidarius. `Yes. We can do that. Come, Chryse, there is a council this morning; come with us and we will introduce you to Agamemnon and the captains.'
`We've met,' I said, finding that my fear of Elene's secret being disclosed had quite left me. `But we shall meet again. I wonder if he remembers me?' For I had grown since I had last encountered the Atreidae, and learned a great deal since I had lain in Elene's arms.
The meeting was held in a cleared circle where chariots turned around. There was Menelaus of the cold smile, Palamedes and his lover Myrses, Agamemnon as huge as a mountain, the elegant red-headed Odysseus, holding a staff of office next to an old man with silver hair who was - Polidarius informed me - Nestor, son of the Nyleus of Pylos, who had sailed with Jason on the Argo a generation ago. Someone was missing, however, and I asked Arion about him.
`Achilles the Swift Runner, ah yes. He's a strange one, that man. The great hero is sulking in his tent about a girl captured in some village that this gallant army sacked. Agamemnon claimed her, Achilles wanted her. Although what he wanted with her is another matter, for it is well known that he loves only one person, and that person is Patroclus. That is him, over there.'
A tall handsome man was hovering on the edge of the gathering. He turned his head and looked into me. Dark eyes full of compassion, dark hair which curled over a marble brow. Patroclus was as beautiful as a statue, princely and gentle. I could understand Achilles' feelings.
Agamemnon was speaking into Odysseus' ear, arguing. It appeared that the king was urging something with which the prince of Ithaca disagreed. Finally Odysseus shrugged, hefted his sceptre, which was of olive wood, as long as a staff and bound with silver, and drifted unobtrusively towards the sea-side of the gathering.
The men on the beaches had come up and were standing in a series of concentric rings around the commanders. There must have been eight hundred soldiers there. I have never seen so many men in one place before.
`Gallant friends and men-at-arms,' announced Agamemnon in a great voice, `we have failed. Zeus, Son of Chronos, has cheated me. He told me that Troy would fall into my hand like a ripe fig. It has not. The walls repel us and we die under the arrows of Ilium. Some powerful god protects them. More of us die every day. The timbers of our ships are rotting in the water and our rigging has perished. Our wives and children sit and wait for us in vain. Therefore I say; board ships and let us go home. Troy with the broad streets will never fall to us.'
This was astonishing. Macaon grinned with relief, but Arion was solemn and did not speak or react.
There was a roar and a rush of feet as the whole army ran for the ships. It was like corn in a tumbled field when the west wind bends the ears, or the stirring of the sea when Boreas howls in winter. The whole host flowed down to the beaches, leaving the king's council and the healers and one bard standing alone in a waste of trampled ground.
With an unexpected speed, the king of Ithaca was before them, swinging his sceptre and talking, talking, to the captains and the men, even as the chocks were taken out from under the beaked ships and launchways were cleared in the sand.
Out of curiosity, I followed him and heard him say to one chieftain, `I am sure you do not mean to fall in with this retreat, Lord. It is a test. Agamemnon will be angry if you show yourselves cowards. A clever man like you would not be taken in.'
Next he brought the staff across the face of a rower, who fell back with a cry. `Idiot! Are you making decisions now for the Lord of men? Get back on the beach and tremble under the wrath of the Atreidae!
`This is a test and I'm afraid that the soldiers may be punished for it,' he said to another man in an embroidered tunic. ` I am sure that you are just examining your boat for damage in last night's blow, but you wouldn't want Agamemnon to misunderstand, would you? Best to get back to the council before he is offended.' He swished the staff again so that five sailors ducked.
No one has ever been as ingenious and persuasive of tongue as Odysseus of Ithaca, great-grandson of Hermes, grandson of Autolycus the thief. I dogged his heels the length of the beach, as ship after ship fell to his words and the men trudged back to the stained and stinking beaches. He had turned the purpose of the mob, who had seemed strong enough to trample all before them. They flocked back from the ships, except for three that had launched and rowed off, to be caught up by the Hellespontine current and whirled towards Lesbos. Even if they wanted to get back to the war, I reflected, they would not be able to return against that current and the north wind. I wished them well.
Meanwhile the troops had settled like a flock of disturbed pigeons. Only one still stood - Thersites, the thief who had tried to rob me of my amber necklace. He was ugly; bow-legged, snaggle-toothed, bald and bad-tempered.
But he had a fine line in invective and yelled to Agamemnon, `My Lord, what more do you want? You have had the pick of the plunder; you can't get into your hut for gold and bronze and you've more women than you can lie with. And you, women of the Achaeans - I can't call you men, drivelling followers of the Atreidae on this doomed beach - why do you trust him?
`He has even quarrelled with Achilles, swift runner, great hero - who might be able to win his war for him. All over a girl when he's got more girls than I've had all my life - luckily Achilles is craven too, or he'd have wiped out the insult in blood.'
`Very interesting, Thersites,' said Odysseus, swinging his staff. `Your arguments would be more persuasive if you weren't such a coward yourself. We'll test it, shall we? Sit down and shut your mouth or I'll break your head.'
Thersites looked around for support, found none, and sat down. The army laughed.
Odysseus began to speak. It was impossible not to listen to him. `Kings and lords of men, your army is worthless. They all promised to stay; when you tested them they all ran away. They whimper like cowards when asked to endure a little hardship; they fret and complain like babies. It would be a shame to us and to our children's children if we come away from Ilium empty handed. Calchas the seer told us it would take ten years to reduce Troy; we have already fought eight and a half years. If it takes another little time, what of it? Are we not stored with the loot of many villages and towns? Soldiers, are you not ashamed? Can you not wait a little time more to feast on the riches of Ilium?'