Glyn Iliffe - The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Would you desecrate our grandfather’s tomb?’ Agamemnon said, angrily. ‘No, you must remain here.’

‘Let me go.’

Agamemnon looked at Odysseus for a moment, then shook his head.

‘Pelops’s tomb is at Pisa in the north-western Peloponnese, just a day’s voyage from Ithaca. Do you think I don’t know where your heart has been through all the years of this war, Odysseus? If I were to send you, the temptation to return home would be too much. You’d never come back.’

Odysseus moved around the hearth to stand opposite Agamemnon.

‘You don’t know that,’ he implored the Mycenaean king. ‘I’m here under oath until Helen is rescued from her captors, and I won’t dishonour myself, my family or the gods by breaking it. Besides, if you want Neoptolemus to come to Troy then you need to send me. Lycomedes, his mother’s father, won’t give him up easily, and I’ve a feeling Neoptolemus himself won’t be simple to persuade. However, if I succeeded with Achilles, I can succeed with his son.’

‘That may be true,’ Nestor said. ‘But I agree with Agamemnon: the lure of seeing Penelope and Telemachus will be too much for you. We can send Diomedes instead.’

Eperitus saw the look of muted exasperation, giving way to disappointment, on Odysseus’s face. Agamemnon and Nestor were right – a voyage to the north-western Peloponnese would take a galley within easy reach of Ithaca, and the temptation of his home and family could prove too great a test for Odysseus. But Odysseus was also right – to bring Neoptolemus to Troy would involve facing his grandfather, the perfidious King Lycomedes, and there was no-one among the Greek kings better equipped for such a task than Odysseus. And then an answer to both dilemmas suddenly occurred to Eperitus. He stepped forward and coughed.

‘There is an alternative.’

The four kings looked at him in quiet surprise. Odysseus, who was not used to being out-thought by Eperitus, raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘Send Odysseus and Diomedes – and me with them – but they should go in one of Diomedes’s ships, with a crew of Argives. That way, Diomedes will captain the galley and can prevent Odysseus succumbing to the temptation to return home.’

There was a moment of silence as the kings pondered his suggestion. Then Agamemnon and Nestor nodded, followed by Menelaus. Odysseus just smiled.

‘And if I protest,’ he said, ‘you can tie me to the mast until Ithaca is far behind us.’

Helenus left on a merchant ship bound for Epirus the next morning, but it was three days before the mission to fetch Pelops’s shoulder bone could begin. Despite Odysseus’s enthusiasm to set sail, the eighty galleys of the Argive fleet had spent too long hauled up on the shores of Ilium to be considered immediately seaworthy. A few had returned to Argos for replacements two years before, but even the best of these needed extensive work before she could be risked on the arduous voyage back to Greece. Every piece of worm-eaten or rotted wood had to be replaced; the hull wanted waterproofing with a fresh coat of tar; the ropes of leather or loosely woven fibre were old and dry and required changing; the cotton and flax sails would not hold a strong wind without repairs; the pine oars needed polishing back to a smooth finish; and the leather loops in which they were slung had to be freshly lubricated with olive oil. It would have been quicker and easier to have used one of the Ithacan galleys that had made the journey home earlier that year, but as Odysseus had been given the choice of making the voyage in an Argive ship or not making the voyage at all, he bit back his frustration and threw himself into helping Diomedes with the preparations.

After the work had been completed, the props were removed and the galley was pushed down into the waiting sea. Now the job of victualling her began. Under the watchful eye of Sthenelaus – Diomedes’s trusted comrade-in-arms – gangplanks were laid against the side and the hand-picked crew of sixty men started loading the hull with sealed jars of wine, sacks of grain for making bread and a few goats for fresh meat. They were assisted by Polites, Eurybates and Omeros, whom Odysseus had chosen to accompany him on the mission to Pelops’s tomb, having left command of the Ithacan army to Antiphus and Eurylochus. Meanwhile, Diomedes and Odysseus, with the help of Eperitus, made sacrifices at the altar of Poseidon, asking him to give them calm seas and a good wind for the Peloponnese.

When the crew finally settled down to their oars and began pulling for the open sea, thousands of soldiers crowded the beach to cheer them on their way. Odysseus watched them from the stern – with Eperitus and Diomedes standing either side of him – wondering how much the army knew of their mission. Naturally, the Ithacans who had heard the oracles spoken by Helenus in the temple of Thymbrean Apollo would have told others, and those others would have sent a wave of rumours racing through the camp. How much those rumours had become distorted and exaggerated with each retelling Odysseus could not guess, and did not much care; the army would know the truth soon enough if they were successful.

It was not long before Odysseus sensed a change in the current beneath the ship and felt a wind coming down from the north. Sthenelaus, standing with a hand on each of the twin rudders, shouted an order that sent groups of sailors scurrying to the ropes. They raised the cross spar and let go the sail, which tumbled downwards and flapped a little before suddenly filling up and bellying out. As they angled the canvas into the strong breeze, a second order saw the oars drawn back into the ship and stowed. Released from the laborious pulling motion of the rowers, the galley quickly took on a life of its own, skimming southward as it adapted to the movement of wave and wind.

With little now to do, Odysseus leaned back against the bow rail and relaxed, enjoying the natural motion of the ship and looking about at the sights of land and sea revealed in glorious detail by the bright sunshine of late morning. Rarely did he feel as much at ease as when he was on the deck of a galley with a good wind in its sail. The huge weight of his kingly responsibilities was lifted from his shoulders and he could fall back into a meditative silence filled by idle thoughts. Soon the camp was behind them, marked only by the thin towers of smoke from its fires. They had slipped past the bulk of Tenedos before Diomedes spoke.

‘It feels good to be on a ship again, with the freedom of the open sea before us. And to know we’re heading back to Greece for the first time in ten years!’

‘Better if we were heading back home for good and didn’t have to return to this accursed part of the world,’ Sthenelaus growled. He had stern features and hard eyes that glared out from a face overrun by curly black hair. ‘I hope this mission of yours is going to bring an end to the war like you promised, Odysseus, and not turn out to be another false hope.’

Eperitus caught Odysseus’s eye and raised a sympathetic eyebrow.

‘I didn’t make any promises, Sthenelaus,’ Odysseus replied, ‘and this isn’t my mission. We’re following the will of the gods, not to mention the command of Agamemnon.’

Sthenelaus’s snort showed what he thought of that.

‘You can’t blame him,’ Diomedes said with an apologetic shrug. ‘The men are keen to return to Greece and do something other than sitting around in camp or fighting Trojans, but they’re wondering what the point of all this is. And they’re not alone. I mean, why are the gods sending us after an old bone?’

‘I know nothing more than you do,’ Odysseus answered. ‘Although it’s possible the clue to the oracle lies in the legend of Pelops himself.’