The Song of Troy (57 page)

I jumped up excitedly. ‘Odysseus,
I
have the shoulder blade of Pelops! King Pittheus gave it to me after Hippolytos died. The old man was fond of me, and it was his most treasured relic. He said he’d rather I had it than Theseus. I brought it to Troy with me for good – er –
luck.’

Odysseus grinned. ‘Isn’t that
lucky?’
he asked Agamemnon. ‘Of Neoptolemos we have high hopes, so that’s taken care of. Which leaves the Palladion of Pallas Athene, who
luckily
is my protectress. My, my!’

‘I’m getting annoyed, Odysseus,’ said the High King.

‘Ah – where was I? The Palladion. Well, we have to have that ancient image. It’s revered above anything else in the city, and its loss would hit Priam hard. As far as I know, the image is located somewhere in the Citadel crypt. A closely guarded secret. But I’m sure I can penetrate the secret. The most difficult part of the exercise will be moving it – they say it’s very bulky and heavy. Diomedes, will you come with me to Troy?’

‘Gladly!’

As there was nothing else of importance to discuss, the council broke up. Menelaos caught Odysseus at the door and took him by the arm.

‘Will you see her?’ he asked wistfully.

‘Yes, probably,’ said Odysseus gently.

‘Tell her I wish she’d succeeded in reaching me.’

‘I will.’ But, as we walked back to his house, he added to me: ‘I will not! Helen is for the Axe, not for her old spot in Menelaos’s bed.’

I began to laugh. ‘Care to bet on it?’ I asked.

‘Will we go up through the conduit?’ was my first question when we settled to work out a plan.

‘You will, but I can’t. I have to be able to gain access to Helen without suspicion. Therefore I can’t look like Odysseus.’

He went from the room but was back in a moment, carrying a short, cruel whip divided into four thongs, each tipped with a ragged bronze knob. I stared at him and it, bewildered, until he turned his back on me and began to strip off his blouse.

‘Flog me, Diomedes.’

I leaped up, horrified. ‘Are you out of your mind? Flog you, of all men? I couldn’t!’

His mouth thinned. ‘Close your eyes, then, and pretend I’m Deiphobos. I have to be flogged –
properly
.’

I put my arm around his bare shoulders. ‘Ask whatever you like of me, but not that. Flog you – a king! – as if you were a rebellious slave?’

Laughing softly, he laid his cheek on my arm. ‘Oh, what are a few scars more on my scraggy carcase? I must look like a rebellious slave, Diomedes. What better than to see a bloody back on an escaped Greek slave? Use the whip.’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

He grew grim. ‘Use it, Diomedes!’

Unwillingly I picked it up; he bent over. I curled the four thongs about my hand, gathered in my courage and brought them down on his skin. Purple welts rose under them; I watched the things swell in fascinated revulsion.

‘Put a little bite into it!’ he said impatiently. ‘You drew no blood!’

I closed my eyes and did as I was told. Ten strokes in all I gave him with that vile implement; each time it fell I drew blood and scarred him for life like any rebellious slave.

Afterwards he kissed me. ‘Don’t grieve so, Diomedes. What use is a fair skin to me?’ He winced. ‘It feels good. Does it look good too?’

I nodded wordlessly.

He dropped his kilt and moved about the room, wrapping a piece of filthy linen around his loins, tousling his hair and darkening it with soot from the fire tripod. I swear his eyes flashed in sheer enjoyment. Then he held out a set of manacles. ‘Chain me, you Argive tyrant!’

I did as I was told a second time, aware that I hurt from the flogging in ways he never would. To Odysseus, it was no more than a means to an end. As I knelt to snap the bronze cuffs about his ankles, he talked.

‘Once I’m within the city I have to get into the Citadel. We’ll travel together in Ajax’s car – it’s strong, stable and quiet – until we reach the grove of trees near the small watchtower at our end of the Western Curtain. From there we’ll go separately. I’ll bluff my way through the little door in the Skaian Gate, and do the same at the Citadel gates – my story will be that I have to see Polydamas urgently. I find his name works best.’

‘But,’ I said, straightening, ‘you’re not really going to see Polydamas.’

‘No, I intend to see Helen. I imagine after this forced marriage she’ll be glad to help me. She’ll certainly know all about the crypt. She may even know whereabouts the Palladion’s shrine is.’ He clanked around a little, practising.

‘While I?’

‘You’ll wait in the trees until half the night is gone. Then ascend through our conduit and kill the guards in the vicinity of the small watchtower. I’ll get the image to the walls somehow. When you hear the nightlark’s song with this variation’ – he whistled it three times – ‘you’ll come down and help me get her through the conduit.’

I dropped Odysseus in the trees without being detected, and settled down then to wait. Limping and staggering, he ran like someone demented towards the Skaian Gate, shouting, screeching, grovelling in the dust, the sorriest specimen of man I had ever seen. He always loved to be someone he wasn’t, but I think he enjoyed the escaped slave identity most.

When the night was half over I found our conduit and crawled slowly up its twisting, stifling length, making no noise. At its top I rested and got used to the moonlight, ears tuned to pick up the few sounds which drifted along the pathway atop the walls. I was close to the minor watchtower Odysseus had made our rendezvous because it was well removed from other guarded points.

Five guards were on duty, awake and alert, but they were all inside – who organised these people, to permit them to sit in comfort while the bastions were neglected? They’d not last long in a Greek camp!

I wore a soft, dark leather kilt and blouse, had a dagger between my teeth and a short sword in my right hand. Edging up to the window of the guardroom, I coughed loudly.

‘See who’s outside, Maios,’ someone said.

Out came Maios, strolling; a good, unconcealed cough isn’t at all alarming, even when heard on top of the most bitterly contested walls in the world. Seeing no one, he tensed – though, being a fool, he didn’t call for reinforcements. Obviously telling himself that he was imagining things, he came on with pike at the ready. I let him pass me before I rose up silently, one hand gagging him, the other using the sword. I lowered him gently onto the path and dragged him into a dark corner.

A few moments later another one emerged, sent to look for Maios. I cut his throat without a sound: two down and three to go. Then before those left inside could grow uneasy, I edged up to the window again and hiccoughed drunkenly. Someone inside heaved an exasperated sigh; another lunged out impatiently. I wrapped my arms about him as if very drunk, and when the bronze slid under his left ribs and up to his heart he didn’t so much as grunt. Holding him upright, I reeled about in a tipsy dance, mimicking a Trojan voice. Which brought a fourth man out. I tossed the dead one at him with a low laugh, and while he fended the fellow off I stuck a cubit of sword blade through him from one side to the other. I got both of them to the ground with fading chinks, as if they had moved off into the darkness. Then I peered over the windowsill.

Only the tower captain remained, muttering angrily to himself as he sat at a table. Clearly in a quandary, he was staring at a trapdoor in the floor. Expecting someone he thought he should be there to greet? I slipped into the room and leaped on him from behind, stopping his cry with my hand. He died as quickly as the rest and joined them in that dark corner between the path and the tower wall. Then I sat down outside to wait, deeming it better that, if the expected visitor did appear, he should see no one in the guardroom.

Not long afterwards Odysseus whistled his variation on the nightlark’s song – how clever he was! Had he not thought to vary the usual trill, a real nightlark was bound to have decided to sing right near the watchtower. As it was, no real nightlark was in the offing; all I had to hope was that no visitor was either, for I couldn’t warn Odysseus.

I opened the trapdoor in the guardroom and shinnied down the side of the ladder to find Odysseus waiting at the bottom.

‘Wait!’ I whispered, and went outside to scout around. But the streets were quiet, lampless and torchless.

‘I have her, Diomedes, but she weighs as much as Ajax!’ said Odysseus when I returned. ‘It’s going to be hard work dragging her up a twenty-five-cubit ladder.’

She – the Palladion – was perched precariously across the back of an ass, so we lugged her into the downstairs chamber after sending the beast scampering off. Awestruck, I stared at her in the lamplight. Oh, she was so
old
!
A crudely recognisable female form carved out of some dark wood too grimed by the passage of aeons to be beautiful, and beautiful she was not. She had tiny, joined, pointed feet, huge thighs, an obscene vulva, a distended belly, two bulbous breasts, arms clamped against her sides, a round head and a pouting mouth. She was also enormously fat. Taller than me, she was heavy. The pointed feet might have enabled her to spin like a child’s top, but she couldn’t stand on them; we had to support her.

‘Odysseus, will she fit inside the conduit?’ I asked.

‘Yes. The bulk of her belly is no bigger than your shoulders and she’s rounder. So’s the conduit.’

Then I had a bright idea. I searched the room for a piece of rope and found it in a box, then looped it under her breasts, tied it, and had enough left over to hold on to. I went up the ladder first dragging her on the rope, while Odysseus put one hand on her huge, globous buttocks and the other inside her vulva, and shoved from underneath.

‘Do you think,’ I gasped when we reached the guardroom, ‘that she’ll ever forgive us the liberties we’ve had to take?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, lying flat on the floor alongside her. ‘She’s the first Athene, who is Pallas, and I belong to her.’

Getting her down the conduit was actually easier; Odysseus had been right. Her roundness bumped along more easily than I could with my wide shoulders and masculine angles. We kept her roped, which proved a second boon once we were on the plain; we dragged her to the grove of trees and Ajax’s four-wheeled car. There, groaning from our final effort, we hoisted her aboard and collapsed. The half moon was westering, which meant we still had sufficient time to get her home.

‘You did it, Odysseus!’ I crowed.

‘I couldn’t have without you, old friend. How many guards did you have to kill?’

‘Five.’ I yawned. ‘I’m tired.’

‘How do you think
I
feel? At least your back is whole.’

‘Don’t talk about it! Tell me what happened inside the Citadel instead. Did you see Helen?’

‘I duped the gate guards beautifully, so they let me into the city. The sole guard on the Citadel gates was asleep – I just picked up my chains and stepped over him, dainty as you please. I found Helen alone – Deiphobos was off somewhere. She was a little taken aback to find a bloodied, filthy slave prostrating himself at her feet, but then she saw my eyes and recognised me. When I asked to go to the crypt, she was out of her chair in an instant. I think she was expecting Deiphobos. But we escaped, and as soon as we could find a quiet spot she helped me rid myself of my fetters. Then we went to the crypt.’ He chuckled. ‘I have an idea it proved very handy when she was intriguing with Aineas, because she knew it like the back of her hand. Once we were down there she plagued me with questions – how was Menelaos? – how were you? – how was Agamemnon? She couldn’t hear enough.’

‘But the Palladion – how did you manage to move her if your only helper was Helen?’ I asked.

His shoulders shook with laughter. ‘While I said the prayers and asked the Goddess for her consent to the move, Helen vanished. The next thing, she was back with the ass! Then she led me out of the crypt straight into the street below the Citadel wall, where she kissed me – very chastely! – and wished me well.’

‘Poor Helen,’ I said. ‘Deiphobos must have tipped the balance against Troy’s interests.’

‘You’re absolutely right, Diomedes.’

Agamemnon erected a magnificent altar in the assembly square and enthroned the Palladion inside a golden niche. After which he summoned as much of the army as he could fit into the area, and told the story of how Odysseus and I had kidnapped her. She was given her own priest, who offered her the finest victims; the smoke was white as snow and lifted so quickly into the sky that we knew she loved her new home. How she must have hated the cold, dank blackness of her Trojan home! Her sacred snake slithered into his house below her altar without a moment’s hesitation, then stuck his head out to lap at his saucer of milk and swallow his egg. An imposing and happy ceremony.

Odysseus, the rest of the Kings and I followed Agamemnon to his house when the ritual was over, there to feast. None of us ever refused an invitation to dine with the King of Kings; he had by far the best cooks. Cheeses, olives, breads, fruits, roast meats, fish, honeyed sweetmeats, wine.

The mood was lively, the conversation larded with mirth and jests, the wine excellent; then Menelaos called for the harper to sing. Maudlin by this time, we settled down comfortably to listen. The Greek was never born who loved not the songs, the hymns, the lays of his country; we would rather have heard the bard than bedded down with women.

The harper gave us one of the Lays of Herakles, then waited patiently for the slightly hysterical applause to die down. He was a fine poet and a fine musician; Agamemnon had brought him from Aulis ten years before, but he came originally from the North, and was said to be descended from Orpheus himself, the singer of singers.

Someone asked for the Battle Hymn of Tydeus, someone else for the Lament of Danai, and Nestor wanted the Tale of Medea; but to every request he smilingly shook his head. Then he bent the knee to Agamemnon.

‘Sire, if it pleases you, I’ve composed a song about events much closer to us than the deeds of dead Heroes. May I sing my own composition to you?’