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

She looked at him and smiled, the power of her beauty returning like the light of the sun that has been briefly concealed behind a cloud.

‘I’ll help,’ she said with a sniff. ‘I can take you to the place where the walls are easiest to climb. There are still guards, but I can distract them while you signal to Diomedes. Even then you’ll be hard pressed to enter the temple and escape with the Palladium alive.’

‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’

Helen moved to the edge of the bath and Odysseus helped her out. She quickly covered her nakedness with one of the towels, then turned to him with a strange expression on her face.

‘There are other ways I can help you,’ she said. ‘My sister, Clytaemnestra, taught me how to make sleeping draughts when we were children. It’s a skill I’ve found use for here in Troy – to sooth Paris when he struggled to sleep, and also for Deiphobus on the nights when I can’t bear his touch. I can have my maids take a skin of wine for the guards at the temple, if you wish.’ She met Odysseus’s grin with a smile of her own. ‘And there’s something else – someone who can help you if you’re forced to fight your way out.’

‘Who?’

‘A captured Greek – a nobleman, from the rumours my maids have heard. It’s curious, and I don’t know whether it’s true, but they say he’s being held in Apheidas’s own house rather than the usual rooms in the barracks, so it’ll be much easier to get him out – ’

‘Eperitus!’ Odysseus exclaimed, suddenly filled with excitement. ‘It’s Eperitus! By all the gods, I knew he wasn’t dead. Fetch me some clothes, Helen – I have to get to Apheidas’s house now.’

Helen reached across and took his hand.

‘Diomedes first,’ she said, then turned and called for her maids.

Chapter Thirty

U NEXPECTED H ELP

The streets of Pergamos were cloaked in thick darkness as Helen led Odysseus towards the battlements. The flames of their torch left an orange glow on the walls of the buildings they passed, but at that time of night there was no-one to see them as they slipped out of a servants’ side entrance and between the narrow thoroughfares of the citadel. The greatest danger was from the guards patrolling the parapet, but Helen had sent two of her maids to keep them distracted while she and Odysseus signalled to Diomedes.

‘Any Greek soldier who deserted his duties for the sake of a woman would be flogged,’ Odysseus commented as they waited in the shadows of a house, looking up at the ramparts. ‘I don’t expect it’s any different for Trojans.’

Helen raised a dismissive eyebrow at him before returning her gaze to the stone steps that led up to the walls.

‘I hand-picked my servants for their beauty and sexual charm, and there isn’t a soldier alive who could resist their advances. You’ve seen them, Odysseus, you know I’m right.’

Odysseus recalled the girls who had undressed him and washed him clean, and even though their faces had been screwed up into expressions of severe disapproval there could be no denying their beauty.

‘So what are we waiting for?’

‘No harm in being certain,’ Helen replied.

After she had waited a short while longer – long enough to be sure the guards’ regular tours of the battlements had been disrupted – she moved to the steps as swiftly as her long chiton would allow and ascended. Odysseus followed. His Trojan tunic hugged his knees and restricted his movement on the steps, but it was soft, warm and clean and a thousand times better than the beggar’s rags he had thrown onto the hearth in Helen’s house. Soon he was beside her on the wide walkway, looking beyond the parapet to the pale line of the Simöeis, lit by the sliver of moon above. The meandering ribbon of grey was interrupted in places where the banks were higher, or where clumps of trees or shrubs rose up from the river’s edge.

‘The walls are easier to climb here,’ Helen said. ‘The rock that Pergamos was built on rises up from the plain and makes the drop shorter. More importantly, when you make your escape you can’t risk leaving a rope tied around the battlements. If the guards find it they’ll be alerted to your presence and will raise the alarm, and as soon as they realise the Palladium has gone they’ll send out cavalry patrols to block your escape across the fords of the Scamander.’

Odysseus had not thought that far ahead, but did not admit as much to Helen.

‘So are you suggesting we jump?’

Helen pointed to an alcove in the walls. A deeper darkness indicated a gap in the floor and from the smell that drifted up from it Odysseus guessed it was a latrine.

‘There’s a rock shelf a short way below that hole. It isn’t pleasant, but you can drop down to it without too much danger and nobody will even realise you were here. Until morning, that is.’

Odysseus grimaced slightly and nodded. Then he gave the torch to Helen and, with a glance either side of him along the empty walkways, began to unwind the rope tied around his waist.

‘I told Diomedes to look out for a light waved five times, left to right, from the battlements.’

As he looped one end of the rope about his back and shoulders and tossed the other to the rocks below, Helen leaned over the ramparts and, stretching as low as she could reach, swung the torch in a wide arc five times. After several long, nervous moments they heard a hissed warning from below, followed by a tug on the rope. Odysseus quickly braced himself against Diomedes’s weight and before long the Argive king was clambering through a gap in the crenellated walls.

‘You smell a lot better,’ he greeted Odysseus. ‘Where’d you get the clothes from?’

Then he noticed Helen and nearly fell back through the gap by which he had just arrived.

‘My lady,’ he said, recovering with a low bow. ‘But how –?’

‘Odysseus can tell you later,’ Helen said. ‘Have you brought weapons?’

Diomedes, who had loved Helen ever since he had been among her suitors at Sparta in their youth, could barely take his eyes from her as he pulled aside his cloak and revealed the two blades tucked into his belt. He drew one and handed it to Odysseus.

‘You’re here to help us?’

‘Of course she is,’ Odysseus answered.

Diomedes turned to him. ‘Then if we can persuade her to leave with us now, we could put an end to the war!’

‘Odysseus and I have already discussed that,’ Helen explained, with a slightly embarrassed glance at the king of Ithaca, ‘but I refused to leave without Pleisthenes.’

‘There are other complications, too,’ Odysseus added, ‘but Helen is ready to shorten the war by at least helping us steal the Palladium.’

‘Then let’s find this temple of Athena,’ Diomedes said, turning back to Helen, ‘so you won’t have to wait any longer than necessary, my lady.’

Diomedes moved to the top of the steps, but Odysseus placed an arresting hand on his upper arm.

‘There’s something we have to do first. Eperitus is being held prisoner here in the citadel. We release him first and then we take the effigy.’

Diomedes looked at him with surprise, then seeing the determination in his friend’s eyes gave a silent nod.

‘Good,’ Odysseus said.

He wound the rope around his waist again, took the torch and led the way back down the steps, entering the dark streets once more. They had not gone far when they saw two figures silhouetted against the end of a short thoroughfare. Odysseus and Diomedes raised their swords, ready to defend themselves.

‘Don’t be concerned,’ Helen said, stepping out ahead of them and lowering their blades. ‘I sent one of my maids to fetch a servant girl from Apheidas’s house. I’ve heard it said she’s befriended the Greek prisoner, so if the rumours are true and the prisoner is Eperitus then she’ll help you find him.’