The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus) (25 page)

‘The Trojans revere horses,’ he said, quietly. Then he turned to Eperitus and smiled. ‘I have it, Eperitus,’ he whispered. ‘I know what the riddle is, and I know the answer. I have the key to the gates of Troy.’

E
URYPYLUS
A
RRIVES

H
elen stood behind Cassandra as she sat on the high-backed chair, staring gloomily at her reflection in the mirror. The polished bronze surface was uneven in places and a little tarnished around the circumference, but there was no hiding the girl’s natural beauty.

‘White suits you,’ Helen said conclusively, gathering Cassandra’s thick, dark hair in her fingers and holding it behind her head to expose the long neck and slim shoulders.

Cassandra laid a modest hand across her exposed cleavage.

‘Black would be more appropriate.’

‘For your husband? Come now.’

‘Did you want to wear white when Deiphobus forced you to marry him against your wishes?’ Cassandra replied, harshly. ‘Besides, Eurypylus will not be my husband until he and his army have defeated the Greeks. My father was clear on that, at least.’

Helen looked across the bright, sunny chamber to where the wind from the plains was blowing the thin curtains in from the window. The air in Cassandra’s room was warm and humid, and carried with it the sound of pipes, drums and the cheering of crowds. Eurypylus’s army had already entered the Scaean Gate and was marching in premature triumph through the lower city on their way up to the citadel of Pergamos. Soon thousands of soldiers would be filling the palace courtyard below, where Priam would formally greet the grandson he had never met and give him Cassandra – Eurypylus’s aunt – to be his wife. And through the wine-induced fog that had obscured her thoughts and emotions almost every day since the death of Paris, Helen recalled how she had stood in her own room in Sparta, twenty years before, and listened with disdain as Agamemnon persuaded her stepfather, Tyndareus, to offer her in marriage to the best man in Greece. She shuddered at the memory and turned back to look at Cassandra.

‘Nevertheless, Hecabe has asked me to make you look your best for him, and your mother’s request is as good as an order.’

‘They say Eurypylus is an ugly man.’

‘Who says, and who would know?’ Helen laughed as she gathered Cassandra’s hair up at the top of her head and pinned it in place. ‘After all, who in Troy has seen him? Mysians and Trojans have hardly been good friends since Astyoche’s feud with Priam.’

‘I have seen him in my dreams,’ Cassandra insisted, ‘and he has a brutal face to match his brutal character. His heart is black, too, made so by an indulgent mother who has never denied him anything.’

‘Really?’ Helen responded, a hint of scepticism in her voice.

She finished tying up Cassandra’s thick locks and lifted her chin a little with her fingertip. The sombre face that had for so long been hidden behind drapes of black hair was now revealed in all its loveliness. She had a small but perfectly proportioned mouth, a slightly pointed chin with the merest hint of a dimple, pale, petite ears pressed forward by the volume of hair behind them, and large eyes heavily rimmed with long eyelashes. Cassandra looked at herself in the mirror and seemed surprised at what she saw, perhaps realising for the first time that she was a woman worthy of any man’s attention. Behind her, Helen stared at her own reflection and saw the beauty that had never withered with the loss of her youth, or been blemished by her grief for Paris. If anything, the years and her suffering had made her more beautiful, as if the divine blood that coursed in her veins had made itself more obvious with maturity. And something inside her suddenly wanted to tell Cassandra to cover up her beauty again, to hide it from a world that would kill and maim, burn and destroy for the sake of a woman’s looks.

Outside, the sound of pipes and drums was growing closer while the cheering had faded. The Mysians had left the crowds of the lower city behind and entered Pergamos itself.

‘Everyone knows there’s nothing Astyoche won’t do for her son,’ Cassandra continued. ‘And in return he hangs upon her every word, doting over her like a pet puppy.’

There was a hint of disgust in her tone, and Helen laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

‘If she has spoiled him, it’s exactly because she wants him as her pet – a creature that will do her bidding without question. But I don’t believe she has given him everything. Not her heart. Else, why would she send him out to risk his life in battle, for the sake of a father she despises? In her pride she wanted Priam to come begging for her help – as she knew he would, one day – and that victory, symbolised by the Golden Vine, is worth more to her than Eurypylus.’

Another gust of wind blew the curtains inward again, brushing them against a small clay jar filled with perfume that Helen had brought with her for Cassandra. It fell from the table and smashed, making the two women start. As their maids had already been dismissed, Helen slipped her hand from Cassandra’s shoulder and walked over to the broken pieces, picking them up one by one and placing them in her palm. Kneeling there, she heard the pulsing of the drums and the heavy tramp of marching feet coming up the last ramp to the courtyard below, followed by a loud command and then silence. She looked at Cassandra, then stood and moved to the window. Dropping the shards of clay on the table, she brushed the fluttering curtain aside with her arm and looked out.

The large courtyard below was filled with armed men. On three sides, dressed in double-ranks, were Priam’s elite guard – Troy’s fiercest warriors, who wore the richest armour and carried the best weapons. On the far side were the men of Mysia: a sea of soldiers with dusty armaments, all of them young and strong with faces that were keen for war, not beleaguered and desperate for peace like the Trojans and their other allies. Behind them, on the ramp that led up from the lower tier of the citadel and stretching back into the streets beyond, were the ranks of their comrades – spearmen, archers, chariots and cavalry. They numbered in the thousands, an army that could indeed turn the tide of the war against the exhausted Greeks.

In the space at the centre of the courtyard were a handful of men. The figure of Priam stood tallest, his purple robe resplendent in the sunshine and his black wig and face powder belying the age that had so rapidly caught up with him since the death of Hector. On one side of the king were his herald, Idaeus, and Antenor, the elder; while on the other were Deiphobus and Apheidas, the highest-ranking commanders in his army. Before them all was a tall, powerfully built warrior with a broad black beard and long hair that flowed from beneath his plumed helmet. A sword was slung from a scabbard under his arm and a shield hung from his back.

Helen sensed Cassandra’s presence over her shoulder.

‘That’s Eurypylus,’ she said with certainty. ‘And is he not as ugly as I told you?’

Helen stared down at his broken nose and crooked teeth, and at the cruel, selfish eyes that squinted against the bright sunshine. As she watched, Eurypylus took the hand his grandfather offered him, though with deliberate hesitation and without warmth.

‘Looks are not everything,’ she said. ‘No-one thought Paris handsome, not with that scar; but he was the noblest man in Troy – except perhaps Hector – and for a while he offered me freedom from everything that had tied me down. That’s why I fell in love with him, and love him still.’

‘Look at his eyes, Helen. How could Priam give his own daughter to a man with such evil eyes?’

‘Priam gives the women of his household to whomever he pleases,’ Helen answered, her gaze wandering to Deiphobus, whose once cheerful face was now stern and detached. ‘It’s the lot of a princess to be married to men not of her own choosing. Paris helped me escape from Menelaus, but now I’m married to Deiphobus against my will. And if the Greeks ever conquer these walls, I will be Menelaus’s again.’

‘Eurypylus will never have me.’

Helen was not listening. Her eyes were on Deiphobus and she wanted a cup of wine.

‘Marriage is inescapable,’ she muttered, half to herself.

‘In time, another man will take me against my will. But I will not marry Astyoche’s son.’

Helen caught Cassandra’s last words and turned to her.

‘There are worse husbands than Eurypylus. Deiphobus forced me to marry him while I was still in mourning for his brother. But if you’re planning to run away –’

Cassandra shook her head. ‘There’s no need, Sister. Eurypylus will be killed by Achilles before he can marry me. I have seen it.’

‘Achilles is dead.’

‘He will return.’

Helen looked pityingly at Cassandra’s sad, pretty face.

‘Well, whatever may or may not happen to Eurypylus, your mother still wants you to be ready to meet him at this evening’s feast. I’ll find your maid and send her to clear up the rest of this mess.’

She left Cassandra looking out at her husband-to-be and found her slave waiting outside the door. As the girl rushed off to attend to her mistress, Helen felt the darkness of her grief for Paris stealing up on her again. She lowered her head into her hands and succumbed to the sinking sense of loss once more. Then, with tears in her eyes, she went to find her own room, where she would bury her face in the single tunic of his that she had kept and cry until the mood passed. And then she would drink the wine she had hidden there and ease some of her pain.

The voyage to the island of Scyros, skirting the coastline of southern Greece, had been quiet and smooth. Water, provisions and shelter had been easy to find in the many harbours and coves along the way, though the few people who dared speak to them were at best suspicious, at worst hostile. But for the men of Ithaca and Argos it was a joy to be back in Greece again, to see her mountains and islands and every evening to sleep on her beaches. The survivors had quickly forgotten the horrors of Pelops’s tomb and put behind them their grief for the comrades who had been slain there; now their minds were on the end of the war and an imminent return to their families and homes. For a while, as they sailed beneath a Greek sun and ate Greek food, their spirits were bubbling with optimism, as if the defeat of Troy was now a mere formality.

It was not, of course, and none knew that more than Odysseus, Diomedes and Eperitus. In those long days, blessed by sun and wind that required them to do little between rowing out to deeper waters in the morning and finding a sheltering cove before dark, they had plenty of time to think about what now lay ahead of them. After retracing their way out of the maze – dragging the bodies of the dead Argives with them to be burned on a pyre beneath the evening stars – Odysseus had explained the significance of the bone to Eperitus and Diomedes.

‘The bone itself is nothing more than a token,’ he told them as they made camp by the banks of the Alpheius. ‘It will be an encouragement to the army, because the oracle Helenus gave us said Troy will not fall without it. However, it isn’t the reason the gods sent us to Pelops’s tomb.’

‘Then what is the point of it?’ Diomedes had asked.

They were sitting away from the others, around a small log fire of their own. The flames cast an orange glow over their faces, distorting their features with strange shadows. Eperitus looked at Odysseus and had absolute faith in the power of his friend’s mind. There was no situation he could not think his way out of, and no riddle he could not decipher. He had found a way through the maze, and he would know the meaning of the shoulder bone. That was why Athena, the goddess of wisdom, had chosen him.

‘The gods were giving us a clue to conquer Troy. The walls were built by Poseidon and Apollo: they can’t be smashed down or scaled, and as long as there are men to defend them the city can never be conquered from the outside. But if we could get men
inside
the walls – enough of them to capture the gates and hold them open until the rest of the army arrive –’

‘As simple as that,’ Diomedes said, sardonically. ‘And how do we get a large force of men into the city in the first place? Turn them into birds so they fly over the walls?’

‘The maze!’ Eperitus exclaimed, thinking he understood. ‘You mean we should dig a tunnel beneath the walls and into Troy. The gods sent you into the maze to give you inspiration!’

Odysseus shook his head.

‘No tunnels, Eperitus. The ground Troy is built on is too hard. Besides, the Trojans would see what we were up to and guess our intent. You’re right in one sense, though: we were sent into that tomb to see something, something that would show me how to get inside Troy. Do you remember I once said I’d been given an idea by Astynome smuggling herself into the Greek camp in the back of that farmer’s cart, and by Omeros’s retelling the story of how I got past those Taphian guards hidden in a pithos of wine? Well, Pelops’s tomb has finally shown me how I can smuggle an army into Troy.’

‘How?’ Eperitus and Diomedes asked.

‘You’ll see in time,’ Odysseus replied with a grin.

Despite having tantalised his comrades, Odysseus stubbornly refused to say any more about the inspiration he had received in Pelops’s tomb, so their thoughts and discussions now focussed on the two remaining oracles: how they would steal the Palladium from the temple of Athena in Troy and, more urgently, how they would persuade Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus, to join Agamemnon’s army. Eperitus remembered the small, light-haired boy he had seen in the palace gardens on Scyros the day Achilles had joined the expedition to Troy. He sympathised with the doubts of the ordinary soldiers who questioned the value of a fifteen-year-old lad who had never seen combat before, and who had been hidden away behind the skirts of his mother’s chiton all his young life. But these uncertainties never bothered Odysseus or Diomedes. The two kings understood that a son of Achilles would be worth all the effort spent in bringing him to the war. The only problem that concerned them was how to prise him away from the clutches of his deceitful grandfather and – a greater problem in Odysseus’s eyes – his jealous mother.