Lindsay Clarke - The Return from Troy

With her farrow beginning to snatch at her teats, the sow snorted and waddled away across the grass towards the shade of a holm-oak, where she dropped her hind legs and collapsed, grunting, onto her side. Squealing, the piglets clambered over one another in their haste to plug their small snouts to her belly.

Telemachus was staring at them, wishing he was older, wishing he was bigger, when a voice behind him said, ‘Niobe’s a good old sow. Farrowed a dozen she did, and she’s still suckling the lot.’ He turned and saw Eumaeus standing there with his grandfather, old King Laertes, leaning on his staff at his side.

In his rough smock and tattered straw hat, Laertes looked more like a peasant farmer than the lord of all the islands. ‘It’s good to see you taking an interest, Telemachus,’ he smiled at his grandson. ‘Your father’s head was always full of ships and the sea when he was a boy. He loved the island well enough, but he was restless – thinking more about what lay over the next horizon than what was here in his own back yard.’ Shaking his head, Laertes squinted into the glare of light off the sea. ‘Odysseus wasn’t like you – he never had the patience to make a good farmer.’

Telemachus had heard this complaint a number of times before. Each time it was uttered he noticed the only half-suppressed note of admiration – of envy almost – in the old man’s voice – as if the old king loved, and missed, his errant son a great deal more than he cared to admit.

Eumaeus said, ‘There’ll be time enough for him to learn patience when this war is over and done with.’

‘It’s finished,’ Telemachus said, almost dully. ‘Troy’s fallen. We’ve won.’

The two men looked at him in some bewilderment. The news, if it was true, was tremendous, but it had been announced with so little excitement that they thought the boy must be imagining things. Seeing their uncertainty, Telemachus allowed himself to smile. ‘It’s true,’ he said with more elation. ‘Dolon the fisherman got back from Zacynthus an hour ago. He heard the news there. He’s telling everybody. Troy’s beaten. They’re singing and dancing down in the town.’

‘You’re sure of this, boy?’ Laertes demanded.

But the swineherd was frowning dubiously as he said, ‘Dolon’s got fewer wits than he has teeth.’

‘I know,’ Telemachus replied, ‘but he seems certain of it. He heard it from a Phoenician trader who’d put in on Zacynthos for repairs. I think the fighting’s been over for weeks but nobody told us.’

Laertes and Eumaeus looked at each other, scarcely daring to believe. ‘What about your father, boy?’ the old king asked. ‘Was there news of him?’

‘Dolon said he was the great hero of the hour. He said something about a clever horse that my father brought to the fight … It seems to have made all the difference, but I’m not sure how.’

‘A clever horse?’

‘That’s what he said. But I may have got it wrong. I couldn’t really make head or tail of what he was saying. Anyway, it seems my father’s definitely alive. And Dolon says he’s going to come back very rich.’

‘Rich?’ Laertes hand was trembling at his staff. To his amazement, Telemachus saw that tears had started at the rims of his eyes. ‘If he still has all his limbs about him he’ll be rich enough for me.’ The old man lifted his staff and shook it in the air. A laugh cracked out of his throat, and another that turned into a shout of triumph at the sky; then he and Eumaeus were jumping up and down together, hugging each other by the shoulders and laughing and shouting as they wept.

Laertes turned his head to see his grandson staring up at him in wonder. ‘I must share this news with the Queen,’ he exclaimed, ‘and there are grateful offerings to be made to the gods. And what does your mother have to say about it, boy? Has she ordered up a feast already? It must be attended to immediately. Back to your sties, Eumaeus. Pick out some good porkers. And tell Philoetius to choose a bull for the sacrifice.’ Only then did he arrest the flowing torrent of his pleasure long enough to observe the almost sickly flush of distress on his grandson’s face. ‘What is it?’ he asked, his concern only slightly tinged with impatience. ‘And what are you doing up here on your own here anyway? Why aren’t you celebrating with the others? Why aren’t you at your mother’s side, sharing her joy?’

Telemachus stood frowning at the recumbent sow and her tussling litter, not wanting to cloud his grandfather’s happiness yet unable to disguise the turmoil of his feelings.

‘What’s the matter with you, boy?’ Eumaeus asked.

Telemachus had been biting his lip but now the words burst out of him. ‘What if he doesn’t like me?’ Heated and angry, he looked up at the two perplexed old men. ‘Sometimes I think everybody knows him but me. And I’m his son. His only son. But I don’t even know what he looks like. If he stepped off a ship tomorrow I wouldn’t know who he was. And he doesn’t know me either, and he’s a great hero, isn’t he? The whole world knows about him. He’s famous everywhere from here to Troy and probably further than that by now. And what am I? I’ve done nothing. No one knows who I am outside this island. And even here …’

Uncertain whether he was more amused or perturbed by this untypically verbal spate of emotion, his grandfather said, ‘What about here, boy? You’re the royal prince of this island and don’t you forget it. You’re the scion of a noble line that goes back through me to my father Acrisius, and his father Abas, who was grandson to Lynceus and great-grandson to King Danaus himself. There’s no better blood in all Argos than runs in your veins.’ He frowned down at Telemachus, shaking his head. ‘Your father will be as proud of you as you should be of him. It’s my belief that for these last ten years he’s been pining for nothing more than the moment when he gets back home and holds his wife and son in his arms again. So let’s hear no more of this sorry nonsense. Now I’m going back to my farm to tell your grandmother this news, and you should hasten to share it with your mother. This is a great day for Ithaca, boy, a great day!’

Laertes tousled his grandson’s hair, then turned away and hurried off through the glade, making for his lodge where Anticleia would be busying herself about the garden or the farm. Telemachus watched him go, feeling the weight of his ancestry about his young shoulders more closely than the reassurance that Laertes had sought to give him. When he looked round, he saw Eumaeus scratching his beard as he studied him with shrewd eyes.

‘So what’s brought this on?’ the old swineherd asked. ‘T’was only two days ago you were jumping up and down to have your father back.’ When he saw that Telemachus was reluctant to speak, he said, ‘What is it, lad? Has somebody been goading you?’

Again Telemachus flushed. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Because I don’t only keep my eyes out for my pigs, you know. I’ve been watching Antinous and his cronies throw their weight about. Phemius tells me they’ve been giving you a hard time.’

‘Phemius should mind his own business.’

‘Phemius cares about you. We all do. And as for you – you don’t want to take any notice of those layabouts – especially Antinous. He was too young to go to the war when Odysseus first set out and he didn’t answer when the call went out from Aulis for more men last year. Strutting about on Ithaca making a nuisance of himself is all he’s good for.’ The swineherd gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat onto a fern. ‘I blame his father for it. Eupeithes never amounted to much himself, and ’tis like enough his son will go the same way.’