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

‘Who is it?’ Sthenelaus hissed.

‘Deiphobus,’ Eperitus answered, glancing cautiously at Menelaus, ‘and Helen.’

The Spartan’s brow furrowed sharply. He leaned across and hauled Epeius away from his eyehole, pressing his face to the opening.

‘I can’t believe it’s over,’ Eperitus heard Helen say. He placed his eye back against the hole to see her standing below the horse and craning her neck to look up at it. ‘It still doesn’t seem possible that in the morning I can leave the city and go riding across the plains if I want to.’

‘Believe it,’ Deiphobus responded, snaking an arm about her waist. ‘And the only escort you’ll need is me at your side.’

‘See how she doesn’t brush his arm away!’ Menelaus hissed.

No-one replied.

‘But –’ Helen raised a hand lazily towards the horse as she slumped drunkenly against Deiphobus. ‘But why just leave? They’ve been here ten years, spreading slaughter and destruction, dying in their thousands, and then they simply decide to go ? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does to me.’

Helen turned to Deiphobus, who was clearly sober.

‘They weren’t as strong as we assumed,’ he explained. ‘It’s just as Apheidas says: the Greeks are a vicious people, but they lack stamina and courage. The years have worn away at their morale and now they’ve had enough. They’ve run off back to their wives and children.’

He draped his arm across her shoulders, but in a move that earned a grunt of approval from Menelaus, she stepped forward from his half-embrace and placed her hands on her hips, looking up at the horse.

‘What about the things Cassandra said?’

Deiphobus shrugged his shoulders indifferently. ‘My sister says a lot of things, and nothing at all of any worth.’

Helen features dropped into a mournful grimace, mimicking Cassandra’s look of permanent woe. ‘But there are men inside the horse,’ she wailed in perfect imitation of her sister-in-law. ‘I’ve seen it!’

Deiphobus gave a derisive snort. Helen flitted around him like a spectre, then stepped forward and laid a hand on the upper arch of one of the horse’s wheels, so that Eperitus was barely able to see her through the narrow aperture.

‘I quite like the idea. Can you imagine it, Deiphobus? The wooden horse, full of Greek chieftains listening to us at this very moment?’

Deiphobus laughed and gave a dismissive flick of his hand, but looked up at the horse anyway and narrowed his eyes slightly.

‘Who do you think would be inside?’ Helen continued. She began circling the horse now, slipping from Eperitus’s sight and her voice fading a little as she moved around the other side. ‘Which warriors would they hide in its belly?’

‘Open the hatch, Epeius,’ Menelaus demanded. ‘Let’s see the look on her face when she sees me jump out.’

‘Quiet!’ Neoptolemus said, raising his fingertips almost to Menelaus’s mouth.

‘This is a silly game,’ Deiphobus said. ‘Cassandra’s full of the most ridiculous fantasies, dressing them up as oracles of doom. The other morning she was running around the palace screaming that a woman in black was going to kill her with an axe. I told her she must have been looking at herself in the mirror!’

‘Do you think Agamemnon would be in there?’ Helen persisted.

‘Never,’ Deiphobus laughed, conceding that he would have to play along. ‘They wouldn’t risk the leader of their army.’

‘Yes, you’re right. Besides, Agamemnon would never put himself in danger if he could order somebody else to do it for him.’

‘That’s true,’ Little Ajax whispered.

‘What about my husband, Menelaus?’

‘He isn’t your husband any more. I am. And if he was up there, do you think he’d be hanging around listening to us play your absurd game?’ Deiphobus looked up at the horse. ‘Are you in there, Menelaus? Don’t you want to come out and save the woman who used to be your wife? Aren’t you going to rescue her from my kisses?’

He grabbed Helen as she completed her circuit of the horse and tipped her back in one arm, kissing her on the mouth. His free hand moved over her breasts, squeezing each in turn.

‘By all the –!’ Menelaus began, springing back from the eyehole with a thunderous look on his red face.

Before he could say any more, Diomedes’s hand closed over his mouth and Teucer and Philoctetes, the two archers, took a firm hold of his arms.

Helen stood and pushed Deiphobus away.

‘I’m being serious. If not Menelaus, then what about Diomedes?

‘Why would Diomedes be so stupid as to enter the city inside a giant horse?’ Deiphobus asked, sounding slightly exasperated. ‘You saw how close we came to burning it this morning. I’ll tell you where Diomedes is – sailing back to Argos to see his wife again for the first time in a decade.’

‘Aegialeia,’ Helen said, smiling as an idea struck her. She laid a finger on the tip of her nose and looked down thoughtfully for a moment, before approaching the horse again. ‘Oh husband! Are you up there?’

Diomedes released Menelaus’s mouth and snapped his head round in the direction of the voice.

‘Aegialeia?’ he whispered.

He crawled to the eyehole that Menelaus had vacated and looked out.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Eperitus rebuked him. ‘It’s Helen.’

‘Diomedes?’ Helen continued, flawlessly recreating the voice of the Argive queen, whom she had met several times when married to Menelaus. ‘Have you missed me?’

Deiphobus laughed at her genius for mimicry. The illusion broken, Diomedes slumped back onto the bench and was quiet.

Helen began to circle the horse once more, grinning as she looked up at the tall structure and occasionally pausing to run her fingertips over its wooden legs.

‘Are you up there, Idomeneus?’ she called, copying the Cretan’s wife’s sing-song voice. ‘My bed was lonely without you, at least for the first year. Then I got bored and found other men to fill it. Now I’d rather you didn’t come back at all.’

Eperitus turned and saw Idomeneus’s face stern and tight-lipped in the shadows.

‘And where have you been, Sthenelaus?’ came another voice, harsh and nasal. ‘Helping yourself to Trojan slave girls, I’ve no doubt! Well, the war won’t last forever, and when it’s over I’ll be here waiting for you.’

Deiphobus’s laughter was followed by Helen’s this time, while Sthenelaus sucked at his teeth and shook his head.

‘I’d rather the war went on for another ten years than go back to her,’ he muttered.

Then another voice was pitched up towards the horse, causing Eperitus to freeze and glance across at Odysseus.

‘I’m waiting, too,’ it said. ‘When are you coming back to me, my love?’

‘Somebody has to stop her!’ Odysseus hissed, balling his fists up on his knees.

‘You know it’s not Penelope,’ Eperitus told him.

‘It doesn’t matter –’

‘Odysseus, my love! Do you miss me like I miss you? Don’t you want to kiss my pale breasts again, and feel my soft thighs wrapped around you?’

Eperitus pushed his hand over Odysseus’s mouth, stifling the cry that was on his lips and forcing him back against the inner wall of the horse.

‘ It’s not Penelope !’

Odysseus knocked his hand away and took a deep breath, turning his face aside so that Eperitus could not see the anguish in his eyes.

‘That’s enough,’ they heard Deiphobus say. ‘Come on, Helen. Let’s go home so I can taste your breasts with my lips.’

There was a peel of feminine laughter, followed by silence and then more laughter, receding this time as Deiphobus and Helen retraced their steps back towards Pergamos.