The Song of Troy (4 page)

Eager to know the result of the encounter with the lion – and fretting because the hour was so late – they came quickly. Now was not the moment to sit upon the throne; I stood to one side of it and stared down at the small sea of curious faces: faces belonging to my half-brothers, my cousins of all degree, the high nobility not related to us save through marriage. There was my brother-in-law Antenor, eyes alert. I beckoned to him to draw near, then rapped my staff upon the red-flagged floor.

‘My lords of Troy, Poseidon’s lion is dead, killed by Herakles the Greek,’ I announced.

Antenor kept glancing at me sidelong, wondering. As a Dardanian he was no friend to Troy, but he was Hekabe’s full brother, so for her sake I tolerated him.

‘I left the hunt then, but my servant remained. Just now he came home to tell me that the three Greeks murdered our King and my four brothers. They sailed too long ago to pursue them. With them they took the Princess Hesione as a rape.’

It was impossible to continue in the face of the ensuing uproar; I sucked in my breath, debating how much I could safely tell them. No, nothing about King Laomedon’s denial of a solemn promise; he was dead and his memory should be appropriately kingly, unmarred by such a paltry end. Better to say that the Greeks had intended this outrage all along as a reprisal for his policy barring Greek traders from the Euxine Sea.

I was the King. Troy and the Troad were mine. I was the guardian of the Hellespont and the keeper of the Euxine.

When I struck the floor again with my staff, the noise fell away at once. What a difference, to be King!

‘Until the day I die,’ I said, ‘I pledge you that I will never forget what the Greeks have done to Troy. Every year on this day we will go into mourning and the priests will chant the sins of Greek mercenaries throughout the city. Nor will I tire in my search for appropriate ways to make the Greeks rue this deed!

‘Antenor, I appoint you my Chancellor. Prepare a public proclamation: henceforth not one Greek ship will be allowed to pass through the Hellespont into the Euxine. Copper can be obtained in other places, but tin comes from Skythia. And copper and tin combined make bronze! No nation can survive without bronze. In future the Greeks will have to buy it at exorbitant cost from the nations of Asia Minor, as they will have the tin monopoly. The nations of Greece will decay.’

They cheered me deafeningly. Only Antenor frowned; yes, I would have to take him aside and tell him the truth. In the meantime I handed him my staff and hurried back to my palace, where, I suddenly remembered, Hekabe lay at death’s door.

A midwife waited for me at the top of the stairs, her face dripping tears.

‘Is she dead, woman?’

The old hag grinned toothless through her grief. ‘No, no! I mourn for your dear father, sire – the news of it is everywhere. The Queen is out of danger and you have a fine, healthy son.’

They had returned Hekabe from the childing stool to her big bed, where she lay, white and weary, with a swaddled bundle in the crook of her left arm. No one had told her the news, and I would not until she was stronger. I bent to kiss her, then looked at the babe as her fingers spread the linen about his face apart. This fourth son she had given me lay quiet and still, not writhing or screwing up his features as newborn babes usually did. He was quite strikingly beautiful, skin smooth and ivory instead of red and wrinkled. Black, curly hair covered his scalp in masses, his lashes were long and black, his black brows finely arched above eyes so dark I could not tell their colour, blue or brown.

Hekabe tickled him beneath his perfect chin. ‘What will you call him, my lord?’

‘Paris,’ I said instantly.

She flinched.
‘Paris?
“Married to death”? It is an ominous name, my lord. Why not Alexandros, as we had planned?’

‘His name will be Paris,’ I said, turning away. She would learn soon enough that this child was married to death on the day of his birth.

I left her higher on her pillows, the bundle cradled feebly against her swollen breasts. ‘Paris, my wee man! You are so beautiful! Oh, the hearts you will break! All women will love you. Paris, Paris, Paris…’

2

NARRATED BY

Peleus

When my new kingdom of Thessalia was in order and I could trust those I left behind me in Iolkos to deal properly with my affairs, I went to the isle of Skyros. Weary, I craved the company of a friend, and as yet I had no friend in Iolkos who could rival King Lykomedes of Skyros. He had been lucky: he had never been banished from his father’s realm, as I had; nor fought tooth and nail to carve another kingdom for himself, as I had; nor gone to war to defend it, as I had. His forefathers had ruled his rocky island since the beginning of time and Gods and men, and he had succeeded to his throne after his father died lying in his own bed, surrounded by his sons and daughters, his wives and concubines; for the father of Lykomedes had adhered to the Old Religion, as did Lykomedes – no monogamy for the rulers of Skyros!

Old Religion or New, Lykomedes could look forward to the same kind of death, whereas my chances were not so assured. I envied him his tranquil existence, but as I walked with him in his gardens I realised that he had entirely missed a great many of life’s pleasures. His kingdom and his kingship meant less to him than mine did to me; he carried out his work thoroughly and conscientiously, being both a softhearted man and an able ruler, but he lacked utter determination to hang onto what was his because no one had ever threatened to take anything off him.

I knew in full the meanings of loss, of hunger, of desperation. And loved my hard-won new kingdom of Thessalia as he could never love Skyros. Thessalia, my Thessalia! I, Peleus, was High King in Thessalia! Kings owed me allegiance, I, Peleus, who had not set foot north of Attika until a few years ago. I ruled the Myrmidons, the Ant People of Iolkos.

Lykomedes intruded. ‘You think of Thessalia,’ he said.

‘How can I keep my thoughts away?’

He waved a white, languid hand. ‘My dear Peleus, I am not endowed with your powerful enthusiasms. Whereas I smoulder sluggishly, you burn bright and clear. Though I am content to have it so. Were you in my shoes, you would not have stopped until you owned every isle between Crete and Samothrake.’

I leaned against a nut tree and sighed. ‘Yet I’m very tired, old friend. I’m not as young as I once was.’

‘A truth so obvious it doesn’t bear mentioning.’ His pale eyes surveyed me pensively. ‘Do you know, Peleus, that you have the reputation of being the best man in Greece? Even Mykenai has to notice you.’

I straightened and walked on. ‘I am no more and no less than any other man.’

‘Deny it if you must, but it is true all the same. You have everything, Peleus! A fine big body, a shrewd and subtle mind, a genius for leadership, a talent for inspiring love in your people – why, you even have a handsome face!’

‘Continue praising me like this, Lykomedes, and I will have to pack up and go home.’

‘Be still, I’m done. Actually I have something I want to discuss with you. The paean of praise was leading up to it.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘Oh?’

He licked his lips, frowned, decided to plunge into troubled waters without further ado. ‘Peleus, you are thirty-five years old. You are one of the four High Kings in Greece, and therefore a great power in the land. Yet you have no wife. No queen. And, ah – given that you subscribe absolutely to the New Religion, that you have elected monogamy, how are you going to ensure the succession in Thessalia unless you take a wife?’

I could not control my grin. ‘Lykomedes, you fraud! You have a wife picked out for me.’

He looked cagy. ‘I might. Unless you have other ideas.’

‘I think of marriage often. Unfortunately I don’t fancy any of the candidates.’

‘I know a woman who might appeal to you strongly. She would certainly make a splendid consort.’

‘Go on, man! I’m listening avidly.’

‘And with your tongue in your cheek. However, I do mean to go on. The woman is high priestess to Poseidon on Skyros. She was instructed by the God to marry, but she has not. I cannot force so exalted a prelate to obey, yet for the sake of my people and my isle I must persuade her to marry.’

By this time I was staring at him in astonishment. ‘Lykomedes! I am an expedient!’

‘No, no!’ he exclaimed, face wretched. ‘Hear me out, Peleus!’

‘Poseidon has ordered her to marry?’

‘Yes. The oracles say that if she does not marry, the Lord of the Seas will break the earth of Skyros open and take my isle down into the depths as his own.’

‘Oracles in the plural. So you’ve consulted many?’

‘Even the Pythoness at Delphi and the oak grove at Dodona. The answer is always the same – marry her off, or perish.’

‘Why is she so important?’ I asked, fascinated.

His face became awed. ‘Because she is the daughter of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea. As such she is half divine by blood –
and
divided in her loyalties. Her blood heritage belongs to the Old Religion, yet she serves the New Religion. You know what a state of flux our Greek world has endured since Crete and Thera toppled, Peleus. Take Skyros! We were never as dominated by the Mother as Crete or Thera or the kingdoms of the Isle of Pelops – men have always ruled by right here – but the Old Religion is strong. Yet Poseidon is of the New Religion, and we lie under his thumb – he is not only Lord of the Seas which surround us, he is also the Earth Shaker.’

‘I take it,’ I said slowly, ‘that Poseidon is angered that a woman of the Old Religion is his high priestess. Yet he must have sanctioned her appointment.’

‘He did sanction it. But now he is angry – you know the Gods, Peleus! When are they ever consistent? Despite his earlier consent, he is now angry, and says that he will not have his altar served by a daughter of Nereus.’

‘Lykomedes, Lykomedes! Do you honestly believe these God-begotten tales?’ I asked incredulously. ‘I had thought better of you! A man or woman claiming a God for parent is usually born a bastard – and mostly by courtesy of the herdboy or undergroom into the bargain.’

He flapped his arms like an agitated fowl. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I know all this, Peleus, yet I
believe
!
You have not seen her, you do not know her. I have, and I do. She is the strangest creature – ! One look at her, and you will know beyond all doubt that she comes from the Sea.’

By this time I was offended. ‘I can hardly credit my ears! Thank you for the compliment! You want to palm some strange, mad woman off on the High King of Thessalia? Well, I won’t have her!’

Both his hands went out to clasp my right forearm. ‘Peleus, would I serve you a trick like that? I put it badly – I meant you no insult, I swear it! It’s just that as soon as I set eyes on you after so many years, I seemed to know in my heart that she is the woman for you. She doesn’t lack noble suitors, every well-born bachelor on Skyros has offered for her. But she will have none of them. She says she waits for one whom the God has promised to send with a sign.’

I sighed. ‘All right, Lykomedes, I’ll see her. However, I commit myself to nothing, is that understood?’

Poseidon’s sacred precinct and altar – he had no temple as such – lay on the far side of the island, the less fertile and more sparsely inhabited side; a rather peculiar location for the principal shrine of the Lord of the Seas. His favour was vital to any isle, surrounded on all sides by his watery dominions. His moods and his grace determined whether prosperity or famine prevailed; nor was he the Earth Shaker for nothing. I myself had seen the fruits of his rage, whole cities laid flatter than gold under a smith’s hammer. Poseidon was quick to anger and very jealous of his prestige; twice within knowledge Crete had come crashing down beneath his vengeance, when its Kings had grown so puffed up with their own importance that they forgot what they owed him. So it had been with Thera too.

If this woman whom Lykomedes wished me to see was rumoured to be the offspring of Nereus – who had ruled the seas when Kronos ruled the world from Olympos – I could understand the oracles’ demanding her removal from office. Zeus and his brothers had no time for the old Gods whom they had overthrown – well, who could easily forgive a father who
ate
one?

I came to the precinct alone and on foot, clad in ordinary hunting garb and leading my offering on a length of rope. I wanted her to deem me humdrum, not to know that I was the High King of Thessalia. The altar was perched on a high headland overlooking a little cove; I made my way softly through the sacred grove of trees in front of it, my mind dizzy with the silence and the heavy, suffocating holiness. Even the sea in my ears was muted, though the waves rolled in slowly and crashed down in white bubbles on the rocks at the scarred base of the precipice. The eternal fire burned before the square, plain altar in a golden tripod; I came closer to it, stopped and drew my offering to my side.

Almost reluctantly she emerged into the sunlight, as if she preferred dwelling in a cool and liquid filtration of day. Fascinated, I stared at her. Small, slender and womanly, she yet owned some quality that was not feminine. Instead of the customary dress with all its frills and embroidery she wore a simple robe of the fine, transparent linen the Egyptians weave, and the colour of her skin showed clearly through it, pale and bluish, streaky because the material was inexpertly dyed. Her lips were full but only faintly pink, her eyes changed colour through all the shades and moods of the sea – greys, blues, greens, even wine-dark purple, and she wore no paint on her face save for a thin black line drawn around her eyes and extended outward to give her a slightly sinister look. Her hair was no colour at all, ashen white, with a gleam to it that almost made it seem blue in the dimness of a room.

I advanced, leading my offering. ‘Lady, I am a visitor to your island, and I come to offer to Father Poseidon.’

Nodding, she extended her hand and took the rope from me, then inspected the white bull calf with an expert eye. ‘Father Poseidon will be pleased. It is a long time since I have seen such a fine beast.’