Valerio Mafredi - The Oath

Time passed.

One evening at the beginning of autumn, weary from a long day of combat and disgusted at the senseless ferocity of Pyrrhus and the macabre trophies he insisted on carrying back from the battlefield, sad over Ajax’s death, the thought of which never abandoned me, I found a place on the seashore where I could sit and listen to the timeless voice of the waves coming in. It lulled me, calmed the chaos in my heart and allowed me to think clearly. I was waiting for the moon to appear for my daily appointment with Penelope. I knew in that moment she would think of me and I would think of her.

I heard a voice: ‘Wanax Odysseus. .’

‘Eumelus.’

He sat down next to me. He hadn’t even taken off his armour yet; I could smell his sweat and hear his heart beating in its daily struggle against death. He seemed hard to me, as if he were carved in wood, and the grey evening light made him look very pale.

‘Do you still think of your parents?’ he asked me.

‘Always.’

‘Mentor? Do you think of him sometimes?’

‘As if I’d just seen him yesterday.’

As he was talking I noticed that he’d slipped his hand into the belt at his waist. He pulled something out.

‘This? Do you remember this?’

I smiled incredulously: he was turning in his hand the little horse I’d sculpted in wood so many years before and given to him so he’d know he could trust me.

‘You still have that! I can’t believe it,’ I said.

‘It’s one of the most precious things I have. It’s my good luck charm.’

‘It’s only a wooden trinket.’

‘Yes, but inside this wooden horse is the heart of the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, the thinker of many thoughts. My friend. What were you thinking about, wanax ?’

I took the little horse from his hands and turned it over in my own.

‘I was thinking. .’ I said, ‘I was thinking it’s time to go home.’

Eumelus gave me a perplexed look. ‘Yes, of course. But not before we’ve accomplished what we set out to do,’ he said.

‘Not before then,’ I said.

Eumelus’ horses, unyoked, had come looking for him.

‘They’re used to me feeding them from my hands,’ he said, and went off after them.

I was overcome by a strange anxiety and I felt a chill. It wasn’t the wind. It was the same feeling I’d had the night I’d slept at my grandfather Autolykos’ hunting cottage. I knew what it meant.

‘Where are you?’ I said, looking around to see her.

‘Here,’ said a voice inside of me. ‘Here, in your heart.’

That same night I let Agamemnon know that I needed to talk to him, and that he should convene a restricted council with Nestor and, afterwards, with the camp’s master blacksmith and craftsman, a Locrian named Epeius.

‘What I’m telling you here tonight,’ I began, ‘must remain secret. I am about to reveal to you how we can win the war in a short time.’ Agamemnon and Nestor started. ‘How much time depends on what Epeius will tell us. The real plan will only be known to the three of us; we’ll ask Epeius if he is capable of making what we require, but we won’t let him know the real reason we need it.

‘Listen, then. We will build a gigantic horse of wood, so big that it will have an internal cavity large enough to hold thirty men, whom I will choose personally, one by one. They will only be informed on the night we execute the plan.

‘First, we will spread the rumour that we’re going home because the city of Troy is unassailable and because the gods are against us, and that we are building a votive gift, a horse, an animal sacred to Poseidon, to propitiate the blue god and win his favour for our sea crossing. When Epeius’ horse is ready, we will weigh anchor, but not to return home. The fleet will hide behind the island of Tenedos, where a few of our men will climb to the highest peak and wait for a signal.

‘We will leave the horse on the beach, along with a man whose hands are tied behind his back: one of my men, a trusted, very clever friend. His name is Sinon. When the Trojans come out from behind their walls and find him there, he’ll say that he’s a fugitive; that he ran from us because we wanted to sacrifice him to the marine gods, and he’ll ask them for exile and protection. In exchange, he will tell them about the horse, explaining that it is a powerful votive gift for Poseidon, built to guarantee our safe return. He will tell them that our plan is to cross the sea, to join up with another, even bigger army, which is already waiting for us, and then to return to Troy in the spring.

‘Nothing will be left to fortune. Every moment of the plan will be carefully thought out and executed. Nothing of what we are about to do can fail. From now on, I, and only I, will do all the thinking; you two must cast thoughts of this plan from your heads so that the gods who oppose us cannot see them. At this moment, I am sure that none of them are listening to us. . and so I’ll succeed in tricking them as well. All of them, except one.’

A long silence followed. More of amazement, it seemed to me, than disbelief. Things had to proceed at once, and so I called in Epeius, telling him about our plan for a votive gift and exhorting him to speak with no one about it, although I knew that after the first two or three queries, at most, he would give in. That evening in the council of the three kings he swore repeatedly that for no reason in the world would he let slip the merest suggestion of what he was being asked to do. I explained the characteristics of the gigantic gift to Poseidon that he would have the honour of building. A horse thirty feet tall, thirty-seven feet long, twelve feet wide. The tail and mane would be in real horsehair, artfully intertwined, and the horse would be set upon a platform.

‘I think you are the only man capable of building such an object,’ I flattered him. ‘Am I wrong?’

‘No, wanax, you are not wrong. I will build it exactly as you have described it to me.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘A month, wanax .’

‘I can give you ten days. Not one more. And all the men you need.’

He hesitated an instant, then replied: ‘Ten days, wanax Odysseus.’

Before sunset on the tenth day, Epeius appeared in front of my tent and gestured for me to follow him. I had been careful until then not to show too much interest in the work in progress, so no one could attribute the building of the colossal horse to me and thus suspect a trick. The Trojans had also been watching closely, albeit from afar. We could see them crowding the tops of the walls, swelling in number as the figure took shape. The dimensions of the horse were growing day by day, as scaffolding made of ash poles and boards sawn from poplars was added to support its bulk. It had to look like we were racing against time. And the onset of bad weather.

It was late in the autumn by then and Orion had already started to decline in the night sky. The air was already getting cooler and more humid.

During the entire time that the works were proceeding, we never went out in battle order and the Trojans did not challenge us. They never came out of the city armed, although we noticed them creeping close at times to get a better look at what was going on. They were careful to stay beyond the reach of our archers, although our men had been instructed not to strike out in any way. In the meantime, Epeius had, as I had predicted, let slip that we would be returning to Achaia for the winter and a certain air of joy had spread through the camp, subtle and secret, as though no one dared to believe it.

Halfway through the job I had told Epeius that an offering for Poseidon, a hidden tribute, would be placed inside the horse and that I would be giving him details just before the work was completed. The opening in the horse’s belly would be prepared by him alone; he would have to work at night with no help from his men. One day, I mixed in with the crowd and made my way as far as the scaffolding that still covered the construction. After checking to make sure I was alone, I slipped underneath. There was no clue to any opening, no interruption in the intertwined beams, boards, branches and ropes which held it together. The horse’s secret was invisible and undetectable. A perfect job.