Lindsay Clarke - A Prince of Troy

Sensing that her husband might be wavering, Hera hissed, ‘Don’t you dare take any notice of that mindless bitch.’

‘And you shouldn’t let your wife push you around,’ Athena put in, ‘not if you expect anyone ever to respect your judgement again.’

At which point Zeus shouted that he was damned if he would choose between them. Looking around in embarrassment, he turned back to the goddesses and said more quietly that, in his opinion, they were all beautiful. All three of them. Each in her own inimitable way. They should forget the apple and let that be an end to it.

‘Things have gone too far for that,’ said Hera. ‘We demand a decision.’

Zeus met his wife’s eyes with gloomy displeasure. For all his might, he could see no way of resolving this argument without causing endless resentment on Olympus. Yet when he shifted his gaze, it was only to see the assembled mortals staring at him, aghast and bewildered. Part of him already begrudged having ceded a nymph as beautiful as Thetis to a mere human. Now he was thinking that this trouble had come from mixing up the affairs of mortals and immortals, and when he caught himself thinking that way, he realized that Eris must be at the back of this quarrel and, if that was the case, there could be no reasonable solution. But the harm was done and he couldn’t yet see how to undo it. Neither could he allow this disgraceful performance to carry on in front of mortal eyes.

‘My decision,’ he said at last, ‘is that we shall return to Olympus immediately, and leave these good people to their feast.’

Moments later the immortals were back among the clouds on high Olympus. But when it quickly became clear that Zeus was still not prepared to make a judgement, the goddesses resumed their argument with uninhibited vehemence and no sign of a solution.

Meanwhile, having begun so joyfully, the wedding feast faltered to a dismal end. Thunderheads had been building over Pelion for some time and the gods had vanished in a livid flap of lightning. Now came the rain, and people ran for shelter, slipping among the rocks and stumbling about as though the storm had wrecked all expectations of peace and order in the world. As soon as the downpour eased, they made their apologies and dispersed back down the mountainside to their comfortable lives in the cities of the plain.

Dismayed that Sky Father Zeus had not been able to contain the fractious energy of the goddesses, Cheiron withdrew gloomily to his cave. The last time his Centaurs had attended a wedding-feast they had been depraved by wine and then hunted down like wolves. That had been the fault of men; but now it seemed even the gods had lost their senses. With the world so out of joint he decided that his people would keep to themselves from now on. If Peleus and his friends wanted to send their sons to be educated in the mountains, he would care for them, instruct them in music and the healing arts, and do what he could to set them on the path of wisdom. But with the gods at loggerheads, and most men’s hearts no longer content with a simple, wilderness life such as he and his people led, he saw only dark omens for the future.

The years passed and things did not go well with the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. However uneasily, the couple had tried to laugh off the dismal fiasco of their wedding day, but it wasn’t long before Peleus woke up to the fact that he knew almost nothing about his wife.

For a time, out there on the mountain, he had come to believe he might be happy once again. Exhilarated by his passionate encounter with Thetis, he began to be sure of it. They would make a good life together, raising children in the clear air of the mountains, far away from the ambitions and duplicity of the courtly world. But Thetis was a creature of the shore. She loved the salt-wind off the sea, the surge of a dolphin’s back beneath her, the moonlit rush of surf, the smell of sea-wrack, the way the shingle tugged between her toes, and the marble world of rock pools. Up there in the mountains, she felt stranded. She pined for the long strands of sand and the sound of the sea, or raged with disgust and frustration at the horsy smell of the Centaur people and their stubborn, earth-bound ways. Having quarrelled with her father, and offended his chief tribesmen, she made it clear to Peleus that though they had been consigned to each other by Zeus himself, if he kept her in that gloomy mountain gorge against her will she would, quite simply, die.

Peleus already had a dead brother and a dead bride on his conscience. The first had been named for a seal and had also loved the sea. The second had hanged herself because instead of staying at her side, he had gone chasing a wild boar in the Calydonian hills and killed her brother. The thought of another such death was more than he could bear. So he had already made up his mind that they would have to leave the mountain by the end of the summer, when a rider came looking for him out of Thessaly.

He brought the news that King Actor, who had never recovered from the loss of his son and his daughter, was now dead. The Myrmidons – those implacable soldier-ants of Thessaly – were now leaderless, and the messenger had been sent to ask Peleus to return and take up his rightful heritage as Actor’s heir. He could be sure of a warm welcome, for some of the Myrmidons had been on the Calydonian boar-hunt and knew that Eurytion’s death was an accident. Moreover the wife of Acastus had gone mad and had been heard boasting crazily that she was responsible for Polymela’s suicide. In these circumstances, Peleus’s right to rule would go unquestioned.

Here was a god-given answer to his problems. Both duty to his people and concern for his wife required him to leave the mountain. He would move the royal court from Athena’s sanctuary in the inland city of Itonus down to one of the coastal strongholds. His wife would soon have the sound of the sea in her ears again. Thetis would be happy there.

Immediately Peleus set about making preparations for his return. Solemnly he said his farewells to the friends he had made among the Centaur people, promising that he would not forget them and that they would be welcomed as guests in his house should they ever want to come. Then he spent a long time alone with Cheiron, up on a windy shelf of rock high above the gorge, from where they could look out across all the summits of Thessaly and Magnesia to the eastern sea beyond. An eagle scaled the blue spaces about their heads. Everything else felt still and ancient round them. They were almost outside time up there, and watching the wind blow among the white locks of the old king’s hair, Peleus knew that Cheiron was looking deeper into the heart of things than words could reach. And his own heart too was lost for speech – not because there was nothing to say but because there was too much. Yet in the silence of the mountain it felt as though it went understood.

After a time, Cheiron turned to look at him. ‘You will do what you can for my people when I am gone?’

‘It goes without saying. But you Centaurs live long. I think you have many years in you yet.’

‘Perhaps.’ Cheiron turned his face back to the wind. ‘But my daughter,’ he sighed. ‘When I first spoke of her, I did not understand that she has immortal longings. A man will find it hard to live with that.’

Peleus frowned at the thought, and then made light of it. ‘I’m not easy to live with myself. And Thetis will be content when we are by the sea.’

Again the Centaur said, ‘Perhaps.’

The eagle glided high above them now, its pinions bent like a bow against the wind. Cheiron stared up at the way that strong span gleamed in flawless sunlight. Quietly he said, ‘Remember that your son will be greater than you. Try not to resent him for it.’