David Malouf - Ransom

‘Sir!’

Achilles, startled, looks again.

The man is a stranger. Noble, yes, even in his plain robe, but not at all like Peleus. What tricks the heart can play! The man is clearly not his father, but for half a hundred beats of his heart his father had been truly present to him, and he continues now to feel tenderly vulnerable to all those emotions in him that belong to the sacred bond.

Which is why, to the puzzlement of his two attendants, he does not immediately take the interloper by the throat but enquires, almost mildly, ‘But who are you? How did you get into this hut?’ As if, whoever he might be, there was something uncanny in this stranger’s appearing so suddenly, and unnoticed, in a place thick with his followers.

The old man totters and looks as if he might fall. He glances apprehensively at the younger of the two men who face him with drawn swords. Alcimus, lionlike, can barely restrain himself from springing.

Achilles, seeing what it is that has alarmed the man, makes a sign, and Alcimus, after a quick look to Automedon for confirmation, sheathes his sword.

Priam steadies himself. The occasion has moved too quickly, and in a way he is not prepared for. He has come here to kneel to Achilles. Instead the great Achilles is kneeling to him. Still, the moment has arrived. He must go on.

‘I am Priam, King of Troy,’ he says simply. ‘I have come to you, Achilles, just as you see me, just as I am, to ask you, man to man, as a father, for the body of my son. To ransom and bring him home.’

Priam closes his eyes. Now, he thinks. Now, they will strike.

The two attendants continue to stand alert, Automedon still hand on sword. Achilles rises to his feet. But nothing happens.

‘But how did you get here?’ he asks. ‘Into the camp? Into this hut?’

‘I was guided,’ Priam answers. And in recalling the god who has led him here, Hermes the giant-killer, he takes heart.

Achilles, he sees, is impressed by this. He does not repeat the word but it is registered in the line that appears between his brows, the slight parting of his lips. He understands immediately, Priam sees, that more than ordinary forces have brought him here. Despite the vast bulk of the man, the span of the shoulders, the ropelike muscles of the neck, the warrior in him has, for the moment at least, been subdued.

‘I came in a wagon,’ he explains. ‘With my herald, Idaeus. He is out there in the yard with the treasure I have brought you.’

He does not kneel. The occasion for that has passed. So the whole scene, as he had imagined and acted it out in his mind, does not take place.

Instead, he stands quietly in the stillness that surrounds them, despite the noise that Achilles’ Myrmidons are making, and waits.

Achilles narrows his eyes, examines the man before him. He makes a sign, almost invisible, to Automedon, who removes his hand from his weapon and goes out.

All this has happened so quickly and so quietly in this darkened corner of the hut that the men at the big mess table remain unaware of the extraordinary happening in their midst. They continue to shout one another down in boisterous argument and raise their cups in drunken toasts. Under the din they make, the notes of the lyre continue to colour the air. All of which gives the moment, as Achilles experiences it, a dreamlike quality.

The tenderness of his earlier mood is still strong upon him. Beyond this old man who claims — can it be true? — to be Priam, King of Troy, hovers the figure of his father, which is too immediate in Achilles’ mind, too disturbing, to be pushed aside. Impatient to know what it is exactly that he has to deal with, he makes a sign to Alcimus to go after Automedon and bring back news of what he has found.

But Alcimus, reluctant to leave his master alone, hesitates, and before he can make the move, Automedon is back. He is bundling in a second old man, sturdier than the first. Shock-headed and dressed in a garment of coarse homespun, he bears no resemblance at all to the Trojan herald, whom Achilles has seen on at least three previous occasions in the camp.

‘It’s true,’ Automedon reports in a whisper, ‘there is a wagon loaded with treasure. In fact, sir,’ and he lowers his voice even further, ‘it’s just an ordinary hay-wain. This fellow is the driver of it. Rather odd, I’d say, and argumentative. He did not want to leave his mules.’

‘You are Idaeus, the king’s herald?’ Achilles asks the man. He is puzzled. Not simply by the claim that this rough-looking fellow should be Priam’s herald but by a situation that has already passed beyond anything he has a precedent for. What surprises him is how easy he feels, despite Automedon’s warning.

The carter, who is rather alarmed in fact at being brought into this business, and by the smoky darkness of the place, and the noise, which is more like what you would expect of a tavern than of a hero’s camp, rubs his nose, a gesture that serves to settle him, and scratches his head. He is playing for time. Now that the question has been put, so directly and with Priam looking on, he does not see how he can answer.

‘Well, old fellow,’ Achilles asks again, ‘you are the famous Idaeus?’

Idaeus?

He isn’t — of course he isn’t, he’s Somax. A simple workman, who this morning, as on every other morning of his life, just happened to be standing in the marketplace waiting to be hired when two strangers appeared who just happened to be the king’s sons, Trojan princes. One of whom came to a halt, and with a nod in his direction tugged lightly at the other’s sleeve, instantly attracted, as people often were, to the little offside mule, his famous Beauty — all of which, though true enough and relevant, at least to himself, does not even begin to account for the unlikeliness of all this. The words to cover it are there in his head but would get turned about and jumbled if he tried to get them out. And how can he explain, with Priam there to hear it, that this king who is in his care, for all his grave authority, is as innocent of the world as a naked newborn babe, and just as helpless?

What he does say is: ‘If you please, sir, Idaeus is the name they have given me. Because the king’s helper is always called that. Idaeus. And the king’s … helper, today’ (he had almost forgotten himself and said ‘companion’) ‘happens to be me. The cart and the mules, sir, are mine. The treasure I was guarding …’

But he does not know what to say of the treasure, or to whom at this point it rightfully belongs.

Fortunately Priam sees the difficulty he is in and intervenes.

‘Achilles, I called this man my herald because I am by ancient custom used to having a herald to drive my chariot, and also, if needed, to speak for me. On this occasion I mean to speak for myself, but this good man has come along to drive the wagon with the treasure I am bringing. He is a carter — no need to dress things up by calling him more. It would be a great courtesy to me if you did not ask too much of him,’ and Priam, turning away from Achilles, addresses the carter. ‘You have done me good service,’ he tells the man. ‘I could not have asked for better. Whatever happens here, I thank you for it, and if all goes well will see you are rewarded. I should be very sorry if any harm came to you on my account. But in that we are in other hands. Both of us.’

Priam is deeply moved. So is his companion, who rubs his nose, keeps his eyes on the ground, and makes little deprecatory gestures that suggest he has in fact done very little.

Achilles is intrigued by this by-play between the two old men, who belong to such different worlds — the humility of the one, the awkward shyness of the other — and all the more because it has proceeded as if it were a matter strictly between the two of them and he had no place here. He might have taken offence at this, but for some reason he does not. The unfamiliarity of it, the unlikeliness, takes him out of himself. It amuses him.