The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus) (33 page)

T
he old beggar opened his eyes to the first light of day and the smell of cooked breakfast. It awoke the gnawing hunger in his stomach and for a moment he thought of rising and petitioning the nearby Myrmidons for their leftovers. But the air beyond his dew-damp cloak was chilly with the approach of autumn, and his bed of hay was still snug and soft – a luxury for a man in his unfortunate position. Daring to stretch out an arm from his protective cocoon, he grabbed a pile of the hay and pulled it closer, stuffing it into a gap that was letting in the cold. Then his nostrils twitched at the pungent reek of horse manure and he saw that one of his bedfellows had risen early and left a heap of fresh dung close to his head. The beggar contemplated the steaming cluster for a moment, then snatched a few handfuls and pushed them into the hay beneath his back. They were like hot coals to his chilled body, and the stench and the disdainful look he received from the white mare that had produced them were a small price to pay for a little heat.

For a while after, he struggled between a reluctance to leave his cosy bed and the need to find something for his nagging stomach. His last meal had been a mixture of grain, rye and barley picked from the hay, where they had fallen from the feedbags of the horses as they ate. Then his decision was made for him: two men were approaching the pens where he lay, talking in the harsh accent of the Myrmidons. The beggar’s first instinct was to cover himself in more hay and hope they did not see him, but his common sense told him a man of his heavy build would need more than a few strands of dry grass to hide behind. So he stood, brushed off some of the dung, and stooped between the wooden bars that kept the four horses from escaping.

‘Who in Ares’s name are you?’ one of the Myrmidons snarled. ‘And what’re you doing in with the horses?’

‘Sleeping,’ the beggar replied haughtily, taking his gnarled staff from the fence post where he had left it the night before and leaning his weight upon it. ‘A man’s entitled to sleep, ain’t he – even if he’s gotta lay his head down with beasts!’

The Myrmidons closed on him angrily, only stopping as they caught the stench of manure and wrinkling their noses up at him in disgust. His appearance matched his aroma. His tunic and cloak were so ragged and torn that large patches of grimy brown skin were visible through the rents. His belt was a long piece of rope – wound several times about his waist – and he wore no sandals, leaving his bare feet caked in manure and dust. His face was almost black with dirt, while his hair and beard were matted with filth and stuck all over with pieces of hay and other accumulated vegetation. And though once a thickset man – a farmer or fisherman, possibly, by his physique – his back was now curved and his knees bent outward so that he seemed a hunched, shuffling creature to their eyes.

‘Two of those “beasts”, as you call them, are immortal,’ the first Myrmidon sneered. ‘And if their
master
had caught you in with them, rather than
us
, he’d have lopped off your head by now and thrown your corpse into the sea for the fish to feed on.’

‘Immortal, you say? Then surely they’re the horses of Achilles – Balius and Xanthus.’

‘Not any more,’ the second Myrmidon corrected. ‘Achilles is dead and now they belong to his son, Neoptolemus. And unless you want him to find you here then you’d better get on your way.’

The beggar glanced over towards the huts and tents where the Myrmidon army had been camped for ten years, then looked back at the two men and nodded. But as he turned to go he saw the bags of feed hanging from each of their arms and pointed at the pile of small, red apples on top.

‘Will you spare an old man an apple? I can’t remember the last time I had a whole apple just to meself.’

‘Get on with you!’ one of the men shouted, kicking his behind and sending him sprawling into the dry grass.

The beggar watched the Myrmidons walk away laughing, then slowly picked himself up and began shuffling towards the mass of tents that constituted the rest of the Greek camp. Though the army had routed the Trojans and their Mysian allies several days before, the mood in the camp had become sullen again. Until the arrival of Neoptolemus the Greeks had suffered many casualties, and though they had repaid their enemies in great slaughter, the glory of victory had quickly grown stale and lost its appeal. The survivors mourned their fallen comrades, but even more now they longed for the final conquest of Troy that would release them from their oaths and allow them to return home. As the beggar passed between them, he saw the emptiness in their dark-ringed eyes and knew that they were at the last ebb of their strength. The coming of Neoptolemus – who had taken Achilles’s position at the head of the Myrmidons and now lived in his father’s hut – and his defeat of King Eurypylus had stretched their hope a little further, but it would not endure forever. The beggar could sense the war’s end was close now, just as surely as the last days of summer were passing and the autumn was waiting to take its place.

He saw a banner fluttering in the wind ahead of him. It was green with a golden fox leaping across its centre, and though the material was faded and its edges tattered it remained a symbol of pride to the men who followed it into battle. The beggar watched it for a moment, then began shuffling towards it. Men looked up at the sound of his staff and quickly moved out of his way as they caught his stench and saw his filthy clothing. Eventually he found the hut beneath which the banner flickered and snapped. Three men were seated before it in tall chairs draped with rich furs – the sort of pelts, he noted with greedy eyes, that could make a beggar’s life so much warmer and happier. They were clearly warriors of high rank and renown, sitting with their legs thrust out before them and kraters of wine in their laps as they regarded him with a mixture of distaste and cautious interest.

‘Go warm yourself by the flames, father,’ one of them said, nodding towards the circular fire before their feet.

A black pot hung over it, bathing the beggar’s senses with the delicious smell of porridge while provoking his stomach into a series of groans.

‘My thanks to you, King Diomedes,’ he said, settling cross-legged before the campfire and holding out his blackened hands towards its warmth.

Diomedes gave him a half smile and nodded to a male slave, who walked over to the pot and doled out a ladleful of porridge into a wooden bowl. He passed it with disdain to the beggar, who cackled with joy as he raised the steaming broth to his lips.

‘He stinks like the lowest pit of Hades,’ Sthenelaus said, leaning slightly towards Diomedes.

Euryalus, seated on the other side of Sthenelaus, could barely conceal the sneer on his lips as the beggar slurped noisily at the contents of the bowl.

‘You shouldn’t encourage these vagabonds, Diomedes. Show kindness to one and before you know it you’ll have an army of them at the door of your hut.’

Diomedes smiled. ‘Let the man eat. Isn’t there enough suffering in this world without denying a poor wretch a morsel of food?’

‘There speaks a true king,’ said the beggar, casting the empty bowl aside and rising to his feet. ‘I knew you was Diomedes, as soon as I set eyes on you. Tydeus’s son, yet greater than he.’

‘It isn’t your place to make that judgement,’ Euryalus admonished him.

The beggar flicked his hands up in a dismissive gesture.

‘Who said it were my judgement? A beggar may lack wisdom, but he ain’t deaf. I’m only repeating what I’ve heard others say: that Tydeus was a great man who killed Melanippus at the first siege of Thebes, though he died later of his wounds. But they also say he dishonoured himself by devouring Melanippus’s brains – something his son wouldn’t ever stoop to.’

‘You can’t deny he’s a well-informed vagabond,’ Sthenelaus commented with a grin.

‘As for
your
father, Sthenelaus,’ the beggar added, ‘they say he were killed by a thunderbolt, for boasting that even Zeus couldn’t stop him scaling the walls of Thebes.’

‘Who do you think you are!’ Sthenelaus snapped, rising from his chair.

Diomedes laid a hand on his wrist and pulled him back down to his seat.

‘Whoever he is, he’s neither as ignorant nor as foolish as he looks. For all we know he could be a god in disguise. Do you have a bag, father?’

The beggar pulled aside his cloak to reveal a battered leather purse, hung across his shoulder by an old cord. Diomedes stood and walked to his hut, signalling for the beggar to follow. As the bent figure entered behind him, he passed him a basket of bread and another of meat.

‘Here, fill your bag for your onward journey. And if a king can advise a pauper in his trade, I suggest in future you don’t insult the fathers of the men you’re begging from.’

The old man smiled and took both baskets, somehow managing to cram the entire contents into his purse.

‘If I insult you,’ he asked, ‘why repay me with such generosity?’

‘Because there’s something about you. A presence that marks you out from the rest of your kind. You may be a god, or you may just be a good man fallen on hard times, but I know better than to turn you away with nothing more than scorn.’

‘Then perhaps I’m worth a cup of wine, too,’ the beggar grinned.

Diomedes raised his eyebrows a little at the man’s audacity, then pointed to a table by the back wall, beneath the racks of armour and weapons he had stripped from his enemies, and told him to help himself. The beggar shuffled over and found a bowl of mixed wine surrounded by half a dozen silver goblets. After clattering about among them for a few moments, he turned with a cup in each hand, one of which he passed to Diomedes. The king took it at arm’s length, holding back from the stink that clung to his guest. Then the beggar poured a meagre libation onto the fleece at his feet and raised the goblet to his lips, drinking greedily so that the dark liquid spilled down over his beard and neck.

‘Zeus’s blessing on you, m’lord,’ he said, and with a fleeting bow pulled aside the curtain door and left the hut.

Outside, the sun was beginning to climb and the cold air and dew that had marked the dawn were swiftly forgotten. The beggar nodded to Sthenelaus and Euryalus as they stared at him with disdain, then shuffled off in the direction of the camp walls. But as soon as he was out of sight of Diomedes’s hut, he placed less weight on his staff and quickened his pace, until a short while later he had climbed the slope and was approaching one of the gates. It was then he heard the sound he had been listening out for: a series of shouts and the clamour of men running some way behind him. He was barely feigning a shuffle now as he passed between the open gates and across the causeway, the guards keeping as far back from the shabby, foul-smelling old man as they could. But he had taken no more than a few paces on to the plain when a voice commanded him to stop. He turned to see Diomedes striding towards him, with Sthenelaus and Euryalus at each shoulder. A horse whip was in the king’s hand and his handsome face was creased with wrath.

‘Where is it?’ he demanded.

The beggar backed away, instinctively covering his head with his forearms.

‘Where’s what? I ain’t got nothing but what you gave me, m’lord.’

Diomedes reached across with a snarl and pulled open the beggar’s robes. The man fell unceremoniously onto his backside, causing a ripple of laughter from the gate guards. As he hit the ground, a silver goblet tumbled from his mess of rags and rolled in a semicircle towards Diomedes’s sandalled foot.

‘Call this nothing?’ he said, stooping to retrieve the cup.

‘You said to help meself,’ the beggar protested.

Diomedes raised his whip and brought it down smartly over the beggar’s shoulder, causing him to howl with pain. As the whip was raised for a second strike, the beggar threw his arms about Diomedes’s knees and pleaded for mercy.

‘A man shouldn’t beat his guests, not for nothing!’ he sobbed. ‘It’s an offence to the gods.’

‘And you’re an offence to me, thief,’ Diomedes replied, kicking him away and lashing his back as he scrambled through the long grass on his hands and knees.

His whimpering yelp was met by more laughter from the guards, who had now been joined by other men from the camp. As they watched, Diomedes whipped the beggar again, slashing open his filthy robes and leaving a red line on the brown skin beneath. Euryalus swung at the man’s stomach with his foot, knocking him onto his back, but as Sthenelaus stepped up to follow with a kick at the man’s head, Diomedes seized his arm and pulled him back.

‘Enough now. He’s learned his lesson.’

‘It’s
you
what needs to learn a lesson,’ the beggar groaned, clutching at his stomach. ‘Odysseus didn’t attack me when I was in his hut last night; he’s a proper host and knows the rules of xenia.’

Diomedes shook his head in disgust. ‘So you’re a liar as well as a thief. Odysseus retired to his hut last night with orders not to let anyone in. Agamemnon himself would have been turned away, so the chances of a beggar –’

‘But I
was
there,’ the beggar countered. ‘Fact is, he invited me in to help him with a little problem he was having. Something about finding a way into Troy to pinch a statue.’

‘The Palladium!’ Sthenelaus exclaimed.

Diomedes rebuked him with a warning glance, then turned to the beggar.

‘So you’ve overheard a bit of campfire gossip you think you can twist to your advantage. Perhaps you believe I’m a fool? Well, I’ll show you I’m not.’

He raised the whip again and the beggar threw his hands up before his face.

‘Agamemnon ordered you and Odysseus to steal the Palladium from the temple of Athena,’ he said quickly and urgently, though in a low voice that would not be heard by the gate guards. ‘It’s the last of the oracles given by Helenus, for the defeat of Troy.’

Diomedes’s arm froze above his head and he stared at the beggar incredulously.

‘How could you possibly know that?’

The beggar dropped his hands away from his face and sat up, the sluggishness now gone from his movements. There was a smile on his lips and a roguish gleam in his eyes.

‘Because I
am
Odysseus, of course.’