Lindsay Clarke - The War at Troy

‘Of course he does. He’s no fool. We’ve always shared intelligence on our raids. He knew what I was thinking a long time ago. But that was before he married and settled down and got lazy. I preferred him as a rogue and pirate! So did most of the princes of Argos, if truth were told. None of them much liked the oath he got them all to swear at the wedding but they admired his cunning!’ Agamemnon sat down again, drumming the fingers of both hands on the table. ‘The man has genius! He’s wasted watching sheep on that barren rock. Somehow we’ve got to prise him out of that great bed he boasts of.’

‘Then let me go and talk to him,’ Menelaus said. ‘After all, it was he who set things up so that I could marry Helen in the first place.’

‘But it’s hardly his fault if it went wrong!’Agamemnon scowled. Though Helen’s defection had provided him with just the excuse for war that he had needed, he still felt the sting of humiliation that it brought on the House of Atreus. ‘Odysseus didn’t know you were going to let some Trojan stallion have the run of your house – any more than I did.’

At that point old Nestor looked up from the child whose smiling face had crumpled at the rising voices. He raised a magisterial finger, which silenced both brothers without offending either, then said, ‘Would the sons of Atreus care to hear my thoughts on this matter, or shall Iphigeneia and I leave you to brawl at your leisure?’

‘Speak up,’ Agamemnon said. ‘It’s why I need you here.’

‘Very well. Consider this. We all know that Odysseus is no coward! Something else must be keeping him at home. The last I heard from the island it was rumoured that Penelope was with child again. The letter says nothing of this, but if his wife is coming close to term, Odysseus would surely keep it to himself lest some evil fate cause yet another miscarriage.’

Agamemnon scratched his beard and looked across at the spoiled favourite among his own children, who had slipped down from Nestor’s knee as he was speaking and was now trying to pull the old man away to play with her outside. ‘Not now,’ her father frowned. ‘Be patient or I’ll send you away.’ He looked back up at Nestor. ‘If you’re right, and Penelope does bring the child to term, we could have a hard time winkling him off the island. What do you suggest?’

‘My first thought,’ Nestor answered, ‘is that you say nothing to the other princes about this. Tell them only that the weather over Ithaca is foul and Odysseus saw no need to make the long journey to Mycenae at this time, but is content to wait for further instructions.’ Nestor smiled and gave a suave little shrug. ‘After all, it’s not so far off the truth.’ Holding the little girl gently by the slender stems of her wrists, he clapped her hands as she laughed. ‘Then once the council is over, and they’ve gone back to rally their troops, let Menelaus go to Ithaca, but not alone. He should take someone guileful with him. Someone who can match wits with the wily Ithacan. I’m thinking of Palamedes. He’s a young man still, but he’s clever, and he’s committed to the cause. He may be just the fellow we need.’

As the story now turns to Ithaca, I Phemius, may be forgiven for introducing a personal note, for though I cannot yet have been five years old when Menelaus came to our small island, I still recall the feast that Odysseus held to celebrate the birth of his son. That day my father, the bard Terpis, sang before the gathered people. I remember swelling like a bullfinch in my pride, and thinking that if one could not be a prince, then the next best fate was to be a poet and sing for men and gods. I remember the sunlight through the plane trees, and the thick caress of honey on my tongue. And I tell myself also that there is a picture of Odysseus in my mind, happiest of men that day, wearing vine leaves in his hair and dancing lightly to the throb of the lyre like a breathing statue of a god.

I cannot truthfully say that I remember anything about the arrival of Menelaus and Palamedes. What I know of that fateful encounter I learned much later from the lips of Penelope when she told the story to Telemachus one day. He and I were almost young men by then and had long been friends of the heart. It was a grief to Telemachus that he had no memories of his father, and a greater grief that his mother was already under siege from several suitors. Angered by their manner, he had again demanded to know why his father had abandoned them alone on Ithaca to pursue the madness of the war at Troy. I was sitting beside him as his mother answered, and I think I learned the true tale of what happened when Menelaus and Palamedes came to Ithaca. It is a little different from the tale the people tell, for they attribute to a ruse of madness what was, in fact, a craziness of grief occasioned by an oracle.

That story tells how Odysseus was so unwilling to go to war that he tried to convince Menelaus he had lost his wits. Dressing himself like a peasant, he yoked an ox and an ass to his plough and began to sow his field with salt. Only when Palamedes snatched Telemachus from his mother and threw him in front of the ploughshare did Odysseus act in a way that betrayed his ruse.

The truth is subtler and more painful.

The whole island was so drunk with joy and merriment that day that the ship beating in off the mainland docked unnoticed for a time. As they climbed from the cove through the heat of the afternoon to look for Odysseus in the palace, Menelaus and Palamades heard the sounds of song and laughter drifting down the hill. They caught the hot smell of an ox roasting on the spit and knew that old Nestor had been right in his speculation: the Prince of Ithaca had an heir at last.

The feast itself, however, was more rustic than they would have guessed. Laertes, father of Odysseus and Lord of Ithaca, sat in state on a carved throne that had been carried out of the palace and placed under a vine-thatched awning, from where he stroked his beard and beamed on the happy throng. His plump wife Anticlea sat beside him, nursing a swaddled, week-old infant in her lap as she chatted with the women who gathered about her, cooing at the sleeping babe. But Odysseus and Penelope were indistinguishable from the dancing shepherds and their wives. Only when the music stopped and the line broke up in laughter and applause did Menelaus recognize the short, bandy-legged man in a homespun tunic who stepped forward with his hands spread in welcome.

‘The King of Sparta honours us,’ he cried and the crowd’s gasp became a din of excited chatter, while under the crown of vine-leaves, the eyes of Odysseus glittered with pleasure and defiance.

Penelope came to stand beside him, as graceful in her simple rural dress as she had been in her royal robes at Sparta. Though her thoughts had darkened at the sight of Menelaus, there was no sign of it about her face, which was tanned and glowing. Nor was there anything of Helen’s sultry enchantment about her smile. She might have been a dairymaid had it not been for her unflustered poise in the presence of a king, and the regal lines of her high-boned cheeks.

‘Be welcome in our house, my lords,’ she said. ‘You come at a happy time.’

‘So I see, so I see.’ Menelaus bowed towards Laertes and Anticlea, who dipped their heads in shy acknowledgement. Then he stepped forward to take Penelope warmly in his arms. ‘My dear, I am so very happy for you at last. It was more than time that the gods favoured you.’

‘But they have already blessed me with a loving husband and a good life here on Ithaca,’ she answered. ‘Now we have a son to make our happiness complete.’

Menelaus observed the hint of wariness in her smile but turned away from it to greet her husband. He clapped his arms about the smaller man’s shoulders and squeezed him like a bear. ‘You’re a lucky man, Odysseus.’ And at the unspoken contrast between the evident happiness around him and the bitter condition of his own marriage, a surge of grief and self-pity rose from his chest to his throat. For an instant, with his face pressed against that of his friend, the King of Sparta was blinking back tears.