Authors: Colleen McCullough
‘Yourself and Diomedes. You were his friends. If he remembers us with kindness, it will be because of you. Take ship for Lesbos at once, go and ask him for the bow and arrows he inherited from Herakles. Tell him we’ve kept his share of the spoils, and tell him he’s never been forgotten,’ I said.
Diomedes stretched. ‘A day or two at sea! What a good idea.’
‘But there’s still the matter of Neoptolemos,’ I said. ‘It will be well over a moon before he can arrive here –
if
old Peleus will let him come.’
Odysseus looked back from the doorway. ‘Rest easy, sire, it has already been attended to. I sent for Neoptolemos more than half a moon ago. As for Peleus – offer to Father Zeus.’
Within eight days the saffron-coloured sail Odysseus had chosen showed again on the horizon. My heart in my mouth, I stood on the beach beside the vacant slips. Even supposing he still lived, Philoktetes had been in Lesbos for ten years without ever once sending us a message. Nor had our messengers ever found him. Who knew what illness could do to a man’s mind? Look at Ajax.
Odysseus stood high in the prow, waving gaily. I let my breath go in a huge sigh of relief. He was a devious man, but he didn’t grin like that if he had failed. Menelaos and Idomeneus joined me as I waited, none of us knowing what exactly to expect. His life had been despaired of; and, in the event he had survived, his leg had been despaired of. So I stood imagining a cripple, a withered wreck, not the man who swung himself over the rails and dropped the many cubits to the ground as lightly as a boy. He hadn’t changed. He had hardly aged. He sported a neat golden beard and wore nothing save a kilt. Over his shoulder hung a mighty bow and a grimy quiver stuffed with arrows. I knew he was at least forty-five, but his hard, tanned body looked ten years younger, and his powerful legs were perfect. I could only gape.
‘Why, Philoktetes, why?’ was all I could find to say when we had settled into chairs at my house and had the wine servant at our elbows.
‘Simple, Agamemnon, when you know the story.’
‘Then tell it!’ I commanded, happier than since Achilles and Ajax died. That was the effect Philoktetes had on us; he sent the winds of life and cheer through my musty halls.
‘It took a year to recover my wits and the use of my leg,’ Philoktetes began. ‘Fearing that the local people wouldn’t be kind to a Greek, my servants took me high onto a mountain and settled me in a cave. This was far west of Thermi and Antissa, leagues from any village, even farm. My servants were faithful and loyal, so no one knew who I was or where I was. Imagine my surprise when Odysseus told me that Achilles had sacked Lesbos four times during the last ten years! I knew nothing of it!’
‘Well, sacks are visited on cities,’ Meriones said.
‘True enough.’
‘But surely you ventured further afield once you recovered!’ Menelaos objected.
‘No,’ Philoktetes answered, ‘I didn’t. Apollo spoke to me in a dream and told me to stay where I was. Candidly, I found it no hardship. I took to hunting and running, shooting deer and wild pigs, and had my servants barter the meat for wine or figs or olives in the nearest village – I led an idyllic life! No cares, no kingdom, no responsibilities. The years went by, I was happy, and I never suspected the war was still going on. I thought you’d all be back home.’
‘Until we climbed your mountain and found you,’ Odysseus said.
‘Did Apollo say you could go?’ Nestor asked.
‘Yes. And I’m very glad to be in at the kill.’
A messenger had come to whisper in Odysseus’s ear; he got up and accompanied the man outside. When he returned his face was comical with surprise.
‘Sire,’ he said to me, ‘one of my agents reports that Priam is planning another fight. The Trojan army will be on our doorstep well before dawn tomorrow, with orders to attack while we’re asleep. Isn’t that interesting? A flagrant breach of the laws governing warfare. I’ll bet Aineas plotted it.’
‘Oh, come, Odysseus!’ said Menestheus unexpectedly, blowing a derisive noise with his lips. ‘What’s all this about breaching the laws governing warfare? You’ve been doing that for years!’
His mouth twitched. ‘Yes, but they haven’t,’ Odysseus said.
‘Whether they have or have not, Menestheus,’ I said, ‘they are now. Odysseus, you have my permission to use any means you can devise to get us inside the walls of Troy.’
‘Starvation,’ he said promptly.
‘Short of starvation,’ I said.
We were drawn up in the shadows long before darkness was due to dissipate, so Aineas found himself too slow. I led the assault myself and we cut them to pieces, showing them that we could do without Achilles and Ajax. Already uneasy because they couldn’t be comfortable with Aineas’s trickery, the Trojans panicked when we fell on them. All we had to do was follow to pick them off in hundreds.
Philoktetes used Herakles’s arrows with devastating effect. He had developed a system whereby men ran to all his victims, plucked out the precious arrows, cleaned them and returned them to the worn old quiver.
Those who escaped fled into the city; the Skaian Gate closed in our faces. The fight had been very short. We stood victorious with dead Trojans littered everywhere not long after the sun had risen; the final flower of Troy had fallen in the dust.
Idomeneus and Meriones drove up, Menelaos close behind, and then the others; they swung their cars into a circle to scan the field and talk over the battle.
‘Herakles’s arrows certainly own magic when you fire them, Philoktetes,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘I admit they like such work more than they like plugging deer, Agamemnon. But when my men count up the tally of arrows, they’re going to find three missing.’ His eyes went to Automedon, who had done well leading the Myrmidons. ‘I have some good news for you to pass on to the Myrmidons, Automedon.’
That riveted all of us.
‘Good news?’ Automedon asked.
‘Indeed! I tricked Paris into a duel. One of the soldiers pointed him out to me, so I stalked him until I caught him with no bolt hole in his vicinity. Then I boasted of my prowess as an archer and made nasty fun of his pansified little bow. Since he didn’t know me from an Assyrian mercenary, he fell for it and accepted my challenge. I let my first shaft fly wide to whet his appetite. Though I admit he has a good eye. If I hadn’t been quick with my shield his first shot would have punctured me neatly in the midriff. Then I took him. The first arrow in his bow hand, the second in his right heel – I thought that suitable payment for Achilles – and the third straight through his right eye. None of them were mortal enough to kill him outright, but more than enough to ensure that he dies sooner or later. I asked the God to guide my hand, make him perish slowly.’ Clapping Menelaos on the shoulder, he laughed. ‘Menelaos followed him from the field, but wounded and all he was too slippery, much to our old redhead’s disgust.’
By this time we were all laughing; I sent heralds to spread the word through the army that the murderer of Achilles was a dead man. We had seen the last of Paris the seducer.
NARRATED BY
Helen
Most of the time I kept strictly to myself. How Penelope my cousin would have chuckled! Time hung so heavily on my hands that I had actually taken to
weaving.
The pursuit, I now understood, of neglected wives. Paris literally never came near me. Nor did Aineas.
Since the death of Hektor the palace atmosphere had altered for the worse. Hekabe had gone so peculiar in the head that she never ceased to reproach Priam for the fact that she hadn’t been his first wife. Bewildered and upset, he would protest that he had made her his principal wife, his
Queen
!
Whereupon she would squat down on her hunkers and start howling like an old dog. Absolutely crazy! But at least now I understood where Kassandra got it from.
A desperately unhappy place. Hektor’s widow and therefore tumbled far from her old status, Andromache acted like a shade herself. Rumour had it at the time that she and Hektor had quarrelled bitterly just before he left Troy to fight his last fight, and that the falling out had been her fault. He had begged her to look at him, to say farewell, but she had chosen to lie in their bed with her face to the wall. I believed the tale; she had that ghastly look of terrible pain and unending remorse which only a guilty woman who loves greatly can wear. Nor could she summon up any interest in her son, Astyanax, whom she had given over to the men to educate the moment Hektor was in his tomb.
What was left of Priam’s world disintegrated when Troilos fell to Achilles. Even the death of Achilles failed to pull him from his slough of despond. I knew the gossip in the Citadel – that Aineas had deliberately refrained from sending Troilos help because Priam had insulted him so during the assembly at which he had appointed Troilos the new Heir. As with Andromache, I believed the tale. Aineas was not a man to insult.
Then Aineas demanded to lead a surprise raid on the Greek camp, and Priam, abject, agreed.
Nothing could stop the wagging tongues, but nothing could be done either. Aineas was all we had left. Though Priam hadn’t given in all the way; he appointed that savage boar, Deiphobos, the Heir. An act of defiance which made no impression upon dear Aineas, very sure of himself these days.
I looked long into that dark Dardanian face, for I knew what fires burned beneath his cool exterior;
I
knew the lengths to which his all-consuming ambition would drive him. Like some slow-moving river of lava Aineas ploughed inexorably onwards, engulfing his enemies one by one.
When Aineas demanded permission to raid the Greek camp, he knew what he was asking the King to do: forsake the laws of the Gods. And only I had any idea of the hugeness of Aineas’s triumph when Priam said yes. He had managed at last to drag Troy down to his level.
On the day of the raid I shut myself in my rooms, my ears stuffed with wadding to deaden the thunder and the screams. I was weaving a length of fine wool in an intricate design and using many colours; by dint of rigid concentration I managed to forget that there was a battle going on. And hah! to Penelope Web Face, wife of a bandy-legged red man with no honour and few scruples. I was willing to bet that
she
had never woven anything half so fine. Knowing her, she had probably taken to weaving shrouds.
‘Sanctimonious, carping cow!’ I was saying to myself savagely when the hairs on my arms began to prickle, as if someone from the grave was watching me. Was Penelope Web Face dead? I couldn’t be so lucky.
But when I lifted my head it was Paris watching me, hanging onto the door frame, his mouth opening and closing in utter silence.
Paris?
Paris drenched in blood? Paris with two cubits of an arrow poking out of one eye?
When I pulled the wadding out of my ears the noise rushed in on me like Maenads racing down a mountainside intent on the kill. Paris’s one good eye blazed at me with the light of madness in it while words I couldn’t understand spilled from his mouth.
As I stared my shock faded. I started to laugh, had to drop onto a couch and shriek helplessly. That brought him to his knees! He crawled with his right hand dragging a crimson trail across the white floor behind him, the arrow protruding from his right eye bobbing up and down so ridiculously that I laughed even harder. Reaching my feet, he wrapped his good arm about my legs and bled all over my robe. Revolted, I lashed out with my foot and knocked him sprawling. Then I ran for the door.
I found Helenos and Deiphobos standing together in the great courtyard, both still in their armour. When neither of them noticed my approach I touched Helenos on the arm; not for all the world would I have touched Deiphobos.
‘We lost,’ said Helenos wearily. ‘They were lying in wait for us.’ Tears stood in his eyes. ‘We broke the law! We are accursed.’
I shrugged. ‘What concern is that of mine? I didn’t come for news of your stupid battle – anyone could have told you you’d lose. I came to ask your help.’
‘Anything, Helen,’ said Deiphobos with a leer.
‘Paris is in my rooms – dying, I think.’
Helenos flinched. ‘Paris, dying?
Paris?’
I began to walk away. ‘I want him removed,’ I said.
When they joined me, they bent to lift Paris onto a couch.
‘I want him removed, not made comfortable!’
Helenos looked appalled. ‘Helen! You can’t turn him out!’
‘Watch me! What do I owe him except my ruin? He’s ignored me for years! For years he’s permitted me to become the butt of every spiteful, bitch-faced old sow in Troy! Yet when he needs me at last, he thinks to find me the same moonstruck idiot he took away from Amyklai! Well, I’m not! Let him die somewhere else. Let him die in the arms of whoever is his current love!’
Paris had quietened; the one eye left to him goggled at me in stupefied horror. ‘Helen, Helen!’ he moaned.
‘Don’t “Helen” me!’
Helenos stroked his greying curls. ‘What happened, Paris?’
‘The strangest thing, Helenos! A man challenged me to a duel over a distance only I or Teukros could shoot accurately. A big, gold-bearded wild man. He looked like a bush king from Ida. But I didn’t know him, I’d never seen him before! So I took him on – I knew I’d win! But he outshot me. Then he stood and laughed at me, just like Helen!’
I was paying more attention to the arrow than to this pitiful story. Surely I’d seen one like it before? Or heard it described in some song given by the harper at Amyklai? A very long shaft of willow stained crimson with the juice of berries, tipped with white goose feathers spotted in the same crimson dye.
‘The man who shot you was Philoktetes,’ I said. ‘You’re honoured above your deserts, Paris. You carry one of Herakles’s arrows in your head. He gave his bow and arrows to Philoktetes before he died. I heard Philoktetes had died too, of a serpent’s sting, but obviously the rumour was wrong. This is an arrow that once belonged to Herakles.’
Helenos was glaring at me. ‘Shut up, you heartless harpy! Must you vent your spleen on a dying man?’