The Gates Of Troy (25 page)

‘Nothing, my lord,’ Eperitus commented. ‘Nothing at all. But once we’re up in that citadel, surrounded by ten thousand Trojans and penned in by their god-built walls, what difference will a sword and some armour make anyway?’

Palamedes, who seemed irritated by the delay, stepped forward. ‘They’re right, Menelaus. The Trojans won’t dare mistreat us and dishonour the gods, but we shouldn’t risk provoking them either.’

Menelaus huffed in response, then lifted the shield off his back and threw it on the narrow decking of the prow, following it with his dagger, sword, and one by one the different elements of his rich armour.

‘Bring in the sail!’ Eurybates called from the helm.

There was an instant flurry of activity and within moments the sail had been furled and the spar detached. Odysseus looked on with pleasure as his crew demonstrated their excellent seamanship to the watching Trojans. Then there was a large splash from the anchor stone being cast overboard, followed by a jerk as the slow motion of the galley was brought to a sudden halt.

‘Looks like they’re sending a welcoming party,’ Palamedes said, raising his chin towards the beach as he unbuckled his breastplate.

They turned to see an old man and two fully armed soldiers walking along the road that wound down from the city gate to the bay.

Odysseus peered over the bow rail.

‘It’s shallow. We can jump down and wade ashore from here. Eurybates,’ he called, ‘you’re in charge while we’re gone. I want half the men to camp on the beach and half to remain on the ship, just in case we need to leave hastily. No one is to steal any goats or sheep; there’s enough food onboard, and I don’t want you lot causing an incident while I’m trying to talk peace. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Eurybates replied.

‘Antiphus,’ Odysseus said, beckoning the archer forward from the benches. ‘I want you and Arceisius to come with us. And bring Polites with you; if we
do
get into trouble, someone of his size will be useful.’

Antiphus nodded and went to find the others. Odysseus seized the bow rail and, with surprising agility for his size, leapt overboard to land with a splash in the water below. The others followed and soon they were wading ashore to where the Trojan greybeard and his armed escort were awaiting them.

‘My name is Antenor,’ the old man announced in perfect but heavily accented Greek. His head hung down between his shoulders as if it had sprouted from his breastbone, and as he looked up at them – pronouncing each word with a slight nod and a flourish of his right hand – they could see his left eye was blind and looked away at a slight angle. ‘King Priam has asked me to welcome you to Troy.’

‘I am King Menelaus of Sparta, son of Atreus. These men are my companions: King Odysseus of Ithaca, son of Laertes; Palamedes, son of Nauplius; and Eperitus, who keeps his lineage to himself but has the honour of captaining Odysseus’s guard. We’re here to speak with King Priam about a matter of the gravest concern.’

‘Good, good. And my brother-in-law is equally keen to see you, King Menelaus,’ Antenor assured him, with another series of nods and flourishes. ‘He’s intrigued to learn what business could bring a Greek warship to our shores, and has asked if you will eat with him in the morning.’

‘What’s wrong with now?’ Menelaus said, his forehead gathering into a dark frown.

‘I’m afraid the king is predisposed,’ Antenor answered. ‘He is with one of his wives.’

‘
Wives
!’ Menelaus repeated, looking aghast. ‘You mean he has more than
one
?’

Antenor gave the angry Spartan another smile. ‘Of course – he’s the king, after all – but my sons and I will be greatly honoured to entertain you and your escort in our home tonight. It’s just outside the walls of Pergamos, by the gates.’

‘Pergamos?’ Odysseus asked.

‘The citadel,’ Palamedes explained, pointing up at the lofty buildings on the raised plateau.

‘Then we will be happy to accept your hospitality, Antenor,’ Odysseus continued, ignoring the Nauplian. ‘And as your Greek is so good, perhaps you can teach us a little about your country as we walk? We’re unfamiliar with Ilium and her customs.’

And so Antenor led them across the windswept plain to the city. Herds of goats and sheep could be seen wandering freely across it in the dusky twilight, while here and there were large, circular corrals where groups of well-fed, strong-looking horses chewed at the grass or peered over the bars of the wooden fences that penned them in. Many stone-built farms and settlements sat nestled between olive groves and clumps of poplars, which seemed permanently bent over by the unceasing northeasterly wind that swept the open flats. Odysseus and Eperitus strolled either side of the old man who, despite his age and crumpled posture, was quick on his feet; Menelaus and Palamedes followed close on their heels, both staring at the city walls with undisguised interest, and the three Ithacan guards tramped behind them. The two Trojan soldiers, their spears sloped lazily over their shoulders, brought up the rear. The evening sky above them was now a deep violet sprinkled with a few early stars, and as the copper glow on the western horizon faded it was impossible for the Greeks not to envy the Trojans the beauty of their land.

The large river to the south of the city was the Scamander, Antenor informed them, which had been named for its crooked course. Its smaller cousin to the north was the Simo¨eis. The area around both deltas was notoriously marshy and had grown more so since the cutting down of large numbers of oak trees in recent months, something the old man regretted. But when Odysseus asked if they had been felled to build the fleet of ships in the bay he quickly forgot his sadness and pointed out the peak of Mount Ida in the south-east. It was sacred to the goddess Demeter, but several of the immortals were rumoured to frequent its wooded slopes. He went on to confirm that the city walls had been made by Poseidon and Apollo a few years before he was born, though some of the younger men in the city questioned the truth of the claim.

‘It’s because they’ve never had the privilege of seeing a god in human form,’ he added.

Odysseus and Eperitus looked at each other, but said nothing.

‘It didn’t stop Heracles from sacking the place, though,’ Antenor continued. ‘I remember watching from the citadel walls, just a frightened youth quaking inside my inherited armour as he and Telamon breached the defences of the lower city. I can picture him as easily as if it was happening right now – he was as tall as a young tree, with muscles sticking out all over the place. But he was no brute to look at. He had flowing hair and a thick beard, yet his face was the handsomest you could ever hope to see. A true son of Zeus, he was.’

‘Where did he breach the wall?’ Eperitus asked, trying to sound only mildly interested.

‘Just over there, by that fig tree – you can still see the repairs now. Shoddy work in comparison to the rest, but we Trojans aren’t gods, after all.’

‘Yes, I see it,’ said Odysseus, sharing another quiet glance with Eperitus. They looked at the repaired breach with its ill-fitting stones that gave ample foot and handholds, and for the first time noticed the broad ditch that surrounded the walls of the lower city. Further along, at the foot of the plateau below the walls of the citadel, a group of women were filling jars with water from a two small pools, one of which was wreathed in steam.

‘And this is the Scaean Gate,’ Antenor said, pointing to the entrance they had seen from the galley. ‘One of the four ways into Troy. The others all face inland.’

It had been a long walk from the beach to the city walls, and a hazy half-moon was already rising over the citadel as they reached the defile that fed into the Scaean Gate. A dozen spearmen stood watching them from the ramparts, dressed in the same curious style of armour worn by Antenor’s guards. Each had a leather tunic covered in overlapping bronze scales that ran from the neck to the groin or upper thighs. The fish-like armour was supplemented by a tall, rectangular shield of ox-hide – sometimes with a layer of bronze over the top – that curved in at the sides, and a bronze cap with a horsetail plume that hung down at the back or side. Two more soldiers leaned against the trunk of a solitary oak tree to one side of the dirt track. They nodded to Antenor, but eyed the Greeks with undisguised hostility as they passed by.

The old man led his guests between the high walls of the salient to the open doors of the Scaean Gate. These were tall, made of thick wood and fitted closely with the surrounding stonework. Any attempted assault through them, Eperitus now felt sure, would be suicidal.

As they passed beneath the majestic, menacing battlements they heard a clamour of voices and suddenly found themselves surrounded by a great crush of onlookers. It was as if the whole town had rushed down to see the foreign warriors, and the armed escort now moved in front of Antenor and began using their shields in a brutal manner, herding the crowd back against the walls of the closely packed stone houses to clear a route. But the more people they thrust back, the more seemed to emerge from the doorways and side streets, swelling the multitude and pressing closer on all sides in their eagerness to see the Greeks.

Eperitus looked about himself at the sea of strange faces. All had dark skin, shining black hair and large brown eyes that stared at the newcomers with mistrust and even hatred. Why they should hate them Eperitus did not know, but the tension was palpable and he feared the tiniest spark could turn the mob violent. Some called out in their abrasive foreign tongue, the words unfamiliar but the meaning clear, and only the towering presence and withering gaze of Polites seemed to keep their anger from spilling over. Eperitus instinctively clutched at the hilt of a sword that was not there, and felt suddenly, horribly vulnerable.

‘They’ll not harm us,’ Palamedes assured him, standing at his shoulder and looking calmly around at the many faces.

Eperitus said nothing as more soldiers barged past them to help disperse the crowd with the butts of their spears. Instead, following his protective instinct, he moved closer to Odysseus as Antenor led the way up the broad, paved street towards the citadel. The babbling voices on either side drowned out all other sounds and seemed to close in on him like a swarm of angry bees. His nostrils were full of the smells of roast meat and cooking fires, mixed with the sharp stench of a mass of unwashed bodies. Beyond the staring faces, the buildings on either side of the street were low – none of them more than a single storey high – poorly built and small in dimension. They reminded him of the slums in his home town of Alybas: tightly built shelters where families were crammed together in one or two rooms, taking their warmth at night from each other’s bodies as they slept in a mass on the dirt floors. They were places where privacy – the preserve of the nobility – was unknown, and hardship and deprivation were a certainty. After ten years in the idyllic island kingdom of Ithaca, the experience of lower Troy revolted him.

Then, as they struggled up the cobbled road towards Pergamos, Eperitus noticed a young man elbowing his way through the crowd. A flash of clean white robes from beneath his black cloak marked him as wealthy – possibly even a noble. He would also have been taller than the rest of the throng, but his crooked back and stooping gait robbed him of any advantage, obliging him to fight for a position at the front of the press. All the time he maintained an unfaltering watch on the Greeks, his nearly black eyes gleaming out of the shadow cast by his hood as he scrutinized them one by one. The others hardly seemed to notice him in the noise and bustle, but Eperitus found himself fascinated by the pale, skull-like face. Then their eyes met and Eperitus was drawn helplessly into the man’s gaze, which was deep and at the same time edged with a fierce intensity, like spots of sunlight trembling on the surface of a lake. At first he felt as if the Trojan was looking through him, and then he realized he was looking
into
him, searching his thoughts with a freedom Eperitus could do nothing to resist. It took all his strength to just close his eyes and force his head away, but even this, he felt, was only possible because the hooded man had already taken what he wanted. When he opened them again, the man was gone.

Eventually the crowds thinned and the guards were able to form a holding line across the road, allowing Antenor to proceed unhindered with his guests. They still found themselves watched from numerous doors and windows, but the higher they climbed up the winding road the larger and better built the houses became, and the less threatening the attention of the city dwellers. Before long they were at the walls of the citadel, where the white crescent of the moon looked down at them from above the high-toothed battlements. A tall tower stood away to their right. At its base were six carved figures mounted on stone plinths. They were clearly depictions of the gods, but their strange forms were unrecognizable to the Greeks, who drew no comfort from the sight of them and felt more distant than ever from the homes they had left behind.

‘My house is just down here,’ Antenor announced, indicating a two-storeyed, square building halfway down a side street to their left. Two young men stood at the open doorway, the light from within pooled at their feet. ‘My wife, Theano, and our sons have been preparing a feast in your honour. Come inside, now, and put your weariness behind you. Whatever tomorrow brings, tonight I want you to taste real Trojan hospitality.’

Chapter Thirteen

P
ERGAMOS

‘I
s this any way to treat guests, Antenor?’

Menelaus was red with anger. He sat on a stone bench outside the soaring, highly decorated portals of Priam’s throne room and looked at the old man sitting opposite. Antenor shrugged his sloping shoulders in resignation and gave the Spartan king a reassuring smile.

‘My brother-in-law is a busy man, my lord. I’m sure he’ll be as quick as he can, but these affairs of state demand much of his time.’

‘You mean he’s with another of his blasted wives!’ Menelaus retorted, gripping his knees until his knuckles turned white. ‘Well, we’ve been waiting here all morning and I’m getting tired of it. If those doors don’t open soon I’m going to go in there myself and teach him a few manners!’