Homer’s Daughter (18 page)

Listening to this story again, I was surprised to find how my childish imagination had transformed it, confusing the incidents and attaching them to familiar scenes. The Far Gates, for example, were the harbour and fortress of Cephaloedium, up the coast from Aegesta, where my father had taken me during one of his royal progresses, long ago; and Circe's palace was our own, but somehow set in the middle of
Eumaeus's hog farm; and the sacred cattle of the Sun were a speckled herd, much prized by my father, which a pirate crew had once tried to lift near Rheithrum. The Aeolian island was Osteodes, lying all alone to the north-west, and visible in fine weather from the top of Eryx; being waterless, it is good only for seal hunting and lobster catching. And Calypso's island was Pantellaria, which one can see on exceptionally clear days, far to the southward, halfway to Libya.

“What is moly?” I asked.

“A sort of garlic with a yellow flower.”

“And I always imagined it snow-white and perfumed like the April cyclamen! Why has it become so famous in magic?”

“Doubtless because of its golden colour and because, unlike other plants, it grows faster when the moon wanes, resisting the magic of the various death-in-life Goddesses whom Ulysses encountered. The pilchard, also unenticed by the moon, has a similar virtue, and its liver is therefore sovereign against the evil eye and witches.”

“Are you sure that you used to tell me this story in exactly the same way?”

“Quite sure. And if I were to repeat it ten years hence, there would still hardly be a word changed. This is a myth, rather than an old wives' tale like the one about Conturanus.”

“I do not understand.”

“Well, the mythographers explain that a certain Corinthian king refused to die when his reign ended. In times past, a new one had been appointed every year and at its close was castrated with a boar's tusk and sacrificed to the Moon Goddess Hera. But this Corinthian Ulysses defied tradition and
went on reigning for eight years. And he instituted an annual Demise of the Crown, as when your father lies in state for a day and a goat is sacrificed to Zeus, also hogs to the Infernal Gods. Those visits to the seven islands are an allegory of his seven annual escapes from death. At the close of the eighth year, Ulysses should have gone down to the Underworld, as did his father Sisyphus; but by a divine dispensation he was allowed to live out the term of his natural life. The Gods were thus said to have granted him immortality. However, every ninth year, to commemorate ancient custom, he offered a speckled bull to Zeus instead of a goat; as your father also does.”

Ungratefully I wished that he had not spoilt the story by his explanations. “I detest allegories and symbols. By the way, Uncle, what if the King fails to appear in time for the Demise of the Crown?”

“The Regent takes his place, though that is considered unlucky. We can therefore expect your father back within thirty days, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Oh, Nausicaa, sometimes I think none of us will survive this trial!”

We toiled gloomily upwards, making frequent halts because the ascent was hardly short of three thousand feet. I seldom climb, and my uncle Mentor had a game leg, the result of a chariot accident. But we met nobody and the view was glorious, with the islands stretched out before us like the ones that Ulysses visited: Hiera at last wholly detached from Aegusa, after riding on its back for a while, and marked clearly against the western horizon. We drank at a roadside
spring and ate a little food, and presently sighted Hypereia at the eastern end of the summit, which, though walled and ranking as a city, now houses only a few families. A couple of hundred feet below it lay Raven Rock, and the Fountain of Arethusa, and Eumaeus's hog farm, reached by an exceedingly rough path. Oh, what a fearful barking greeted us from his four savage hounds! My uncle halloed to Eumaeus to call them off; then, as they bounded ferociously towards us, dropped his staff and forced me to sit down on a rock beside him.

“Keep as still as an image,” he said, “or you will be torn to pieces!”

Fortunately Eumaeus recognized my uncle's voice. He had been cutting two oblong pieces of dressed pigskin and boring holes at each corner to make himself a pair of sandals; but dropped the leather and dashed through the gateway after the hounds, yelling imprecations and hurling stones after them. Though they slunk back to heel obediently, how scared I was! Eumaeus, you see, had been visited almost every day lately by the suitors' messengers, whom he would not dissuade his hounds from treating as if they were Sican bandits; each of the four creatures was as big as a calf and fanged like a wolf. Eumaeus apologized gruffly, and when he had made the dogs smell us, to learn that we were friends, they accepted food from our bag and wagged their tails.

The farmyard was spacious. One of its rough stone walls ran along a sheer precipice; the others were topped by a stockade of wild-pear branches, and protected by an outer fence of oak rails lashed closely together. Eumaeus had built a dozen large sties inside the yard, where the sows and piglings
slept at night, while the boars were driven into the space between the stone wall and the oaken fence. When he invited us into his cottage, my heart suddenly began to beat violently in the hope of seeing Aethon again, and the fear that he was no longer about.

The cottage was a dark, smelly, windowless place, unfurnished except for a trestle table, a stool, and two large wooden boxes on the floor, strewn with straw, which served as beds. Eumaeus's wife had died in giving birth to his only son—the boy who used to drive the hogs down to us—and no touch of a woman's hand was to be seen anywhere. It occurred to me that the Greek camp before Troy must have been in a pretty filthy condition by the tenth year, unless the women captives taken in raids set themselves to improve it—by clearing away refuse that would attract flies, planting flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs around the huts, polishing the metal, sweeping the floors, making window frames and stretching them over with oiled vellum to keep out the wind and let in the light. These swineherds wore only leather, using sheepskin coats and sheepskin bed coverlets in cold weather, ate like hogs, slept like hogs and grunted rather than talked; but nevertheless had a simple, penetrating wisdom and displayed a more humane spirit by far than reigned among the noblemen of Drepanum.

Eumaeus was making his reverence to me as my father's daughter, when someone passed behind me in the gloom and let fall a load of faggots with a crash. I leaped nearly a foot into the air, but turned and recognized Eumaeus's son, who now gathered an armful of straw from one of the beds, spread it across the fallen faggots, covered it with an old bald goatskin
and begged me to be seated. I was only too glad to do so, though the fleas were already eating me alive and, being a princess, I could not scratch.

“Well, well, my lord,” said Eumaeus, rubbing his horny hands together. “What about taking bacon, bread, and wine with us?”

“Dinner is not a bad thing at dinnertime,” my uncle laughed.

“But, by Cerdo, you had a narrow escape from my hounds! They would have made short work of you and our little Princess, if you had not kept your heads; and then I should have been held responsible. As though I hadn't a sufficiency of troubles: the King gone off in search of Prince Laodamas, and Prince Clytoneus gone off in search of the King, and those cursed noblemen scheming to ambush and kill them both on their return…”

“How do you know that?” asked my uncle sharply.

“The old white sow told me several days ago,” Eumaeus answered. “And then these wretches demanding my best hogs in your name, and threatening to cut my throat if I refuse! It is enough to turn my hair white. They have plotted your death too, my lord.”

“How do you know that?” asked my uncle again.

“I had it from the old white sow. Now let me tell you something really remarkable. A beggarman came here the other day whom the hounds did not bark at—knowing him, I suppose, to be a friend, though hounds are stupid creatures; and the old white sow, when she saw him, rose from her wallow and offered her neck to be scratched. ‘Old lady,' I said, talking Sican to her, as she expects, ‘who is this beggar
that you love so dearly?' And she answered in her own way: ‘A homicide, a wild man, my chosen champion!'”

“Is the beggar still here?”

“Under the oaks with the boars,” said Eumaeus, “and what is more, he has contrived a lyre from a tortoise shell and the guts of a dead stoat and is playing beautiful music to them and singing in an outlandish language. He declines to tell me his name or country, and because I have a suspicion that he is a god of some sort—Hermes, or Apollo perhaps—I dare not press him to reveal it.”

“What does the old white sow say about him now?” asked my uncle, as Eumaeus hurried to fetch the goatskin of wine, the ivywood mixing bowl and the beechwood drinking cups.

“The same as she said at first, my lord.”

“Will you invite him to join us in this splendid repast?”

“I have already sent my son on that errand, my lord, by your leave.”

Seldom before have I felt so elated. Oracles from birds, oracles from the entrails of bulls, taken by priests of noble family and long experience—these are all very well; but I have Sican blood and the Sicans say: “The old white sow can tell which way the wind will blow, and is never mistaken.”

We heard the distant throbbing of a lyre and a loud, sweet melancholy song with many unexpected grace notes. Though knowing as little Cretan as any Greek woman of Sicily, I recognized it as a love song and bit my lip to choke back my emotion. “Nausicaa,” I said to myself, “be careful! Do not give yourself away. The room is dark and by leaning back you can keep your face in shadow; but at least control your voice.”

Aethon entered and had the sense to do no more than courteously incline his head in my direction before greeting my uncle. He now wore a filthy, tattered, smoke-begrimed tunic lent him by Eumaeus, and a cloak of undressed deerskin.

“Eumaeus's son tells me, my lord,” said Aethon, “that I have the honour of addressing the Regent of Drepanum, the famous Mentor of Hiera. These rough clothes which I wear need not mislead you as to my quality: I am a person of rank in my own country; and though at the moment the Gods are chastening me for having lived too fortunate a life, I trust that before long they will lift their curse and return me to the ivory chair from which I was unseated.”

My uncle offered Aethon his right hand and introduced him to me. He bowed deeply, I bowed slightly, and at this point Eumaeus excused himself, and went out to resume his sandal-making. He did not wish to vex my uncle by listening to a conversation between his betters.

Aethon thought fit to tell the truth about himself. “My name is Aethon son of Castor,” he said. “I am a Cretan of Tarrha. My mother was a concubine bought at a high price from pirates: a native of Hiera, and of noble family. She was named Erinna, and my father loved her more than his lawful wife…”

My uncle Mentor rose and solemnly embraced Aethon. “Is it possible?” he cried. “Does she still live? My little cousin Erinna, whom the Sidonian pirates stole as she played with her ball on the beach?”

Yes, she was alive and in good health when Aethon had last heard of her, a few months before this.

Everything at once became delightful, except that I could
no longer regard Aethon as my personal property who owed his life and his hopes of safety to me. He was now an acknowledged kinsman, and my uncle might, I feared, take my place as his protector.

“Tell us more, Cousin Aethon,” I said, greatly reassured.

“My father,” he continued, “treated me as honourably as his legitimate sons, but when he died they divided the estate and cast lots for the shares, allowing me and my mother only a couple of fields and a dilapidated cottage. However, I won a wealthy wife by skill in boxing, wrestling and archery, and soon could look down on these half brothers as poorer and less distinguished than I. When she died in premature childbirth, bewitched by a sister-in-law, I sorrowfully took to sea and began raiding the Phoenician coast to avenge my mother's wrongs. In three voyages I came off safe with a huge hoard of treasure and, though loathing the slave trade, did not hesitate to capture wealthy women (whom I treated courteously) and hold them up for ransom. One day the son of the King of Tarrha invited me to join him in a large-scale descent on Ascalon; unfortunately we were beaten back from the city by superior forces, and brought home a dozen wounded comrades, having left as many more behind as prisoners. When the King of Tarrha tried to make me responsible for the disaster, I spoke out fearlessly and charged his son with having affronted the Ascalonians by the rape of their wives and daughters; and the God Hercules, too, by the sack of his treasury. I also blamed him for having failed to leave soldiers behind to guard his fleet, or to make wine-drinking while on active service a capital offence—precautions which I had taken myself. “The ships under my command,' I said,
‘did not lose a single member of their crews, and we have brought home quantities of copper ingots, sard and malachite.'

“Every captain spoke in my support, and the King's son earned the royal displeasure. That night he waylaid me in a dark alley. I wrested the sword from him and drove it through his belly. Since nobody witnessed the incident, I was accused of having been the aggressor; but the Council, though kindly disposed towards me, did not wish to offend the King. I was therefore banished for eight years.

“One year I passed in the Achaean settlement at the mouth of the River of Egypt, a stream which separates the Jewish Kingdom from Egypt, and pretended to be a Cypriot. I was then captured in a border war with Egypt, and became a mercenary officer in Pharaoh's army. Six years later, I agreed to captain a Phoenician merchant ship on a voyage to Libya. As soon as she sailed, however, the owner, having heard that I was the same Aethon who had once raided Ascalon and stolen his copper ingots, stripped off my fine clothes, replaced them with rags, and thrust an oar into my hands. I learned that he planned to sell me as a slave. We sailed along the southern coast of Crete, put Tarrha well astern—how my heart ached at the beloved outlines of the hills!—but in the narrows between Sicily and Africa met with high seas and rough weather. The mainsail split and carried away, and while we were struggling to turn the ship's head into the wind, a heavy sea jarred her timbers, and we began making water faster than we could bail it out. I had given up all hope of survival when a fast Corinthian unexpectedly appeared and stood by, fifty yards to windward, not daring to close with
us for fear of a collision. ‘We sink, we sink!' screamed the Phoenicians in their own tongue. ‘Is any Greek sailor there?' bawled the Corinthian captain. ‘If so, let him leap into the sea and clutch this line.' He made fast a long stay to the foot of the mast and threw it out into the wind; whereupon I leaped over the gunwale, swam stoutly, grasped the life line, and was hauled aboard. Then the Corinthian veered off, leaving the Phoenician to founder.”