Читать книгу The Return from Troy - Lindsay Clarke - Страница 11

In my later travels across Argos I encountered a chronicler who insisted that more than eight hundred thousand people had died in the war for Troy. Though his estimate strikes me as more bloodthirsty than accurate, many thousands of men and women must have lost their lives in what proved, in the end, to be a wholly destructive enterprise. Countless more came back with injuries that disfigured them for the rest of their days. But what of its effects on those other, unsung casualties of the war – those who were too young to fight?

Having grown up without a father’s guidance, they were forced either to endure the wretched silence of those who could not bring themselves to talk about the war at all, or to listen again and again to stories which left them feeling that real life had passed them by. This is what Odysseus came to recognize as the dreadful patrimony of war. Even as he identified its corrosive power, he was aware of the shadow that his own glorious reputation cast across the life of his son; but I know that he was also thinking about Neoptolemus and Agamemnon’s tragic son, Orestes.

The fierce young son of Achilles – his true name was Pyrrhus – was of a different order than other boys who had been left behind at home. Though he was only twelve years old in the final year of the war, he had been summoned to the fight by an oracle. It was prophesied that Troy would not fall until he came to the city, and so, against the will of his mother Deidameia and his grandmother Thetis, who were both devastated by the news of Achilles’ death, he was fetched out of Skyros. No one expected him to take an active part in the fighting. He was seen merely as a kind of mascot, a talismanic presence required by the gods; one who might rouse the flagging morale of the host by reviving the memory of his father. Yet he was given the name Neoptolemus – the new warrior – and quickly astounded them all. It seemed that he put on his father’s intrepid spirit with his gilded suit of armour, and the Myrmidons guarded his young life with a loyalty that encouraged him to such fearless acts that some said his soul was possessed by his father’s ghost.

Odysseus believed the boy to be possessed rather by the idea of what his father’s ghost demanded of him, for Neoptolemus was a child whose sense of manhood was shaped by the desire both to avenge the death of Achilles and to equal him in glory. It was a consuming appetite, unqualified by such tenderness as Achilles had known in his love for Patroclus and Briseis, and perhaps also for Polyxena. And so, long before he left Troy without a wound on his young body, Neoptolemus was a casualty of the war.

What could Andromache have made of him as she was forced to submit to his embraces on board his father’s black ship? Here was a woman who had lain in Hector’s arms. She had known the devotion of a man for whom warfare was not the chief goal and glory of a man’s existence but a violent fate forced on him by other men. She in turn was forced to watch as Hector fell under Achilles’ spear. She had seen her husband’s body dragged around the walls of Troy. The son of Achilles had hurled her child from a balcony onto the stones below; and now she must endure the thrust of his callow hips as Neoptolemus strove to plant his seed in her loins.

Yet if her body was captive, her spirit was not, and the boy can have found little pleasure in her bed. After a time, he began to leave her alone; and though his Myrmidons may have guessed that she emerged the victor from those loveless encounters, those grim men were too loyal to reveal their amusement and contempt. But Neoptolemus knew what had happened, and the knowledge made him all that more furious a fighter. Returning from Troy to recover his father’s lost lands, he was unable to land in Iolcus, which remained in Dorian hands; so he navigated the straits between Euboea and southern Thessaly and then marched inland in search of glory. The march brought him to the Orthris Mountains, where his grandfather Peleus – an old man aged further by the death of his son – had withdrawn his forces to make his stand against the alien invasion.

Before the day when his grandson marched the advance-guard of Myrmidons up into the mountains, Peleus and Neoptolemus had never met. The boy had been raised on the island of Skyros, in thrall to his formidable grandmother Thetis, from whom Peleus had been estranged for many years. Through her influence, Neoptolemus had developed a profound attachment to his heritage among the Dolopian people, some of whom had long since migrated from Epirus in the far west, through Thessaly, and on to Skyros. In these circumstances, Neoptolemus might have felt little attachment to Peleus, who was, for him, a remote and dubious figure, one who had long outlived the noble achievements of his youth. But the Myrmidons belonged to Peleus, and he had given them to Achilles; and since Neoptolemus had acquired an appetite for blood at Troy he had begun to think of himself as a Myrmidon first above all things. So now he was eager to make a stand beside his grandfather, and swear on his father’s shade that the soldierants of Thessaly would not rest until they saw King Peleus seated again on his rightful throne in Iolcus.

The old man gazed at the armoured youth with tears in his eyes. He recognized more of his wife’s features in the humourless yet unexpectedly soft young face than he did his own. The hair blowing about the boy’s head had the same reddish tinge to it as hers; the eyes were the same grey-green: and Peleus wondered whether something of her rage still ran through his veins. But there was a colder edge about him too – the coldness of a blade in winter – as if the things he had done at Troy had cancelled all feeling from his heart and left only ambition there.

Standing on the windy mountainside Peleus knew that when this boy fought on his behalf, it would not be for love of him, but merely out of a voracious appetite for battle. He shook his head, remembering the disastrous quarrel among the goddesses at his wedding feast at Mount Pelion all those years ago. There were those who claimed that the seeds of the war at Troy had been sown that day. Well, here was its harvest now – an unsmiling boy who had lopped off King Priam’s head and led a murderous assault on his beautiful city. And the dreadful truth was that Peleus had need of such warriors now.

‘Did you come here directly from Troy?’ he asked. ‘You must be weary.’

‘I am rested well enough,’ Neoptolemus answered stiffly.

Peleus nodded. ‘Did you not put in at Skyros?’

The youth glanced away. ‘For one night only. Iolcus had already fallen, so one night could make no difference.’ He hesitated a moment before adding, ‘Also I wished to speak with my mother.’

Peleus nodded. ‘And with your grandmother no doubt?’

‘Yes, with my grandmother also.’

So he had guessed right. Thetis had dropped some of her old poison in the boy’s ears. Yet she had not been able to prevent him from coming at his call. Loyalty to his father’s Myrmidon heritage had brought Neoptolemus to the fight for Thessaly. Peleus could build on that. Somehow he must find a way to win his love and respect as well as his cold service.

Smiling into those calculating eyes, he said, ‘May I see the spear you carry?’

Neoptolemus considered a moment before relinquishing his weapon. ‘This was my father’s spear,’ he said.

‘I know it was,’ Peleus answered, feeling the familiar weight in his hand, and balancing it there as if for the throw. ‘And it was his father’s before him. This spear was given to me by the gods as a wedding gift. The head was forged in the smithy of Hephaistus. This ash-wood shaft was carved by Divine Athena.’

Unable quite to conceal his boyish awe, Neoptolemus said, ‘You truly stood in the presence of the gods?’

‘As we all do, all the time,’ answered Peleus, ‘though not all of us are privileged to see them. Your father once took down this spear from the hooks where it hung beside my hearth. He was no more than a restless boy at the time, younger than you are now. I found him hurling it at a tree for target-practice and was angry with him because he had taken my spear without seeking my consent. But it was on that day that Achilles declared his desire to become a Myrmidon.’ Peleus smiled at the memory. ‘I told him that he should have his wish but that I would keep my spear until I could be sure that I had a son who was fit to wield it.’

As stiffly as if some insult had been intended, Neoptolemus declared, ‘No man was ever worthier than my father.’

‘I know that,’ Peleus answered him, unsmiling, ‘and no father was ever prouder than myself. And now this spear is yours.’

The youth narrowed his eyes against the wind. The beardless jut of his chin was held high as he said, ‘My hand shall never dishonour it.’

‘I trust not, Son of Achilles.’ Gravely, Peleus handed back the ash-wood spear. ‘I am proud to have you at my side,’ he said. ‘I hope to be made prouder still. Now come, let us make our offerings to the gods and to your father’s shade.’

Many weeks later, some fifty miles to the south, at the city of Crisa in Phocis, another son of the war – a sandy-haired youth with truculent eyes, some two or three years older than Neoptolemus – was practising sword-play with his friend. They wielded only wooden swords and carried light duelling shields, but both of them sweated from the length of the bout even though a cold wind was gusting off the rugged slopes of Mount Parnassus.

Growing suddenly impatient of his failure to break through his opponent’s guard, the sandy-haired youth came at him with a swift series of swingeing blows that drove him back on the defensive; but the vigour of his assault left his shield-arm swinging almost as widely as his sword. Just as he was about to deliver what must be the winning stroke, he felt the blunt point of his opponent’s weapon nudging at his ribs.

‘Ha, you’re dead, Orestes!’ cried the darker youth. He gave a gay, slightly mocking laugh that was picked up by the four girls wrapped in brightly coloured shawls who had been watching them from the balcony above. Their clapping set the doves whirring their wings across the court.

Orestes glowered briefly up at them and flushed.

‘Take no notice of them,’ said Pylades, who was the king’s son in Phocis and the most intimate friend to the youth he had just stabbed with his wooden sword. ‘Their applause is as empty as their heads. In any case, it’s you they fancy!’

‘It was a lucky stroke,’ Orestes scowled.

Smiling still, Pylades arched his brow. ‘Even if that were so, you would still be dead. But I was waiting for you to lose control and that’s just what you did.’ Putting down his sword and shield, he wiped the back of his arm across his brow. ‘You’re still far too hot-headed. It’s part of your passionate nature, and I love you for it. But if you want to live long enough to take your vengeance, you’re going to have to rein in that temper of yours.’

‘That’s easy enough for you to say.’ Doing his best to ignore the tittering of the girls, Orestes threw down his sword. ‘The gods have always been kind to you. What complaint can you possibly have against this life?’

‘None,’ Pylades answered, ‘except that it has treated my friend very ill.’ He took a towel from the heap on the bench beside him and tossed it across to Orestes. ‘Come, let’s take a bath together. Then I’ll give you a game of knucklebones before we eat.’

The two youths were cousins and had been friends since they were children, though it was not a friendship of which Clytaemnestra had recently approved. Even before the death of his sister Iphigenaia at Aulis, Orestes had become a major source of concern to his mother. His temperament was pugnacious and impatient, his manner verging on the insolent. In a court where everyone else went in fear of her power, Orestes had begun to take liberties, trying her patience in ways that he would not have dared to risk with his father. Yet Clytaemnestra found it hard to be firm with her son, even though she often devastated others with her cruel reproofs.

From the first, she had always entertained such hopes of him. One day he would marry his cousin Hermione and unite the thrones of Mycenae and Sparta, thus confirming the hegemony of their royal house across all Argos. And he would become the kind of king that her first husband might have been had Agamemnon not murdered him. A king who ruled supreme over a world of artistic beauty and intellectual excellence, a world such as she would have chosen for herself if a strong fate had not willed otherwise.

Yet with her mind preoccupied with the cares of state, Clytaemnestra had found it impossible to give her son the quality of attention that such ambitions required. She had recruited the best mentors she could find to teach him eloquence and music, to cultivate his aesthetic sensibility and encourage him in philosophical enquiry as well as instructing him in the elements of politics and statecraft. But the plain fact was that Orestes wanted to be at the war. More than that, he wanted to be fighting alongside Achilles – to serve as his cup-bearer or humble armour-polisher if no more glorious role was available. Anything to be close to the man whom he idolized above all others. While Troy still stood and there were deeds of glory waiting to be done, what interest could he have in poring over old clay tablets and the finer points of sophistry?

And then when Clytaemnestra returned to Mycenae with the bitter news that his father had put Iphigenaia to death on the altar of Artemis at Aulis, the mind of Orestes had taken a darker turn. What was he to make of this – that his sister, whose beautiful face and exquisite singing voice had always been sources of wonder and delight to him, should have been murdered by his father? How could such a thing make sense unless the gods themselves were mad? In his confusion, he raged against his mother. How could she have permitted this to happen? Why had he not been informed of what his father intended so that he could have offered himself up in Iphigenaia’s place? But Clytaemnestra seemed remote and frozen inside her grief, and where Orestes looked to find maternal understanding, he met only silence or the impatient snarl of an injured lioness.

Eventually he found consolation in the company of his friend Pylades, who had been brought from Phocis to Mycenae in the hope that his companionship might make Orestes’ hours of study less solitary. The two boys had always been fond of one another, but now their imaginations were ignited by the same hopes and dreams. At last Orestes had found someone willing to play Patroclus to his own Achilles; and the cheerful modesty of his friend elicited a greater generosity of spirit from the spoiled prince. The two boys became inseparable. They swore the same oaths of undying love for one another as their heroes had sworn. Secretly they began to sleep in each other’s arms.

Then the news reached Mycenae that both Achilles and Patroclus were dead.

For a time Orestes was inconsolable. Not only did victory seem inconceivable now, but life itself seemed a vain and empty thing. How was it that everything he loved was taken from him? How was it that Achilles could have been slain by treachery while his father – a man he barely knew, who had callously put his own daughter to death – lived on and did nothing with all the power at his command?

Cooler-headed, more pragmatic in temperament, Pylades consoled his friend as best he could. Surely, he said, the best way to honour the shades of their heroes was to become greater heroes still. Together they would make good the loss. Let the war drag on, for soon the two of them must be called to the front. They were the young lions who would carry on the fight. Agamemnon would look on with pride as his son Orestes did what even Achilles had failed to do and led his forces through the Scaean Gate into the very heart of Troy.

Yet before any of that could happen, changes began to take place in Mycenae itself. Pelagon, the court bard who had sung for years of the deeds at Troy, mysteriously died. Familiar figures about the palace were relieved of their posts. Less approachable young men replaced them. Then Aegisthus appeared.

When his father first left for the war, Orestes had been too young to hear a full account of his family’s history, so the name of Aegisthus meant nothing to him. Nor did he take against the man at first. Handsome and charming, the newcomer appeared to be no more than a further addition to his mother’s ever-growing staff of ministers and officials, though one with whom she spent an unusual amount of time closeted in private. Only on the day when he remarked on the man’s lively wit to Pylades, and he saw his friend glance uneasily away, did Orestes become conscious that something might be amiss.

‘What is it?’ Orestes demanded. ‘Don’t you like him?’

Pylades merely shrugged and carried on oiling his bow.

‘I agree he seems a bit full of himself,’ Orestes said, ‘and I resent the way he tries to speak to me sometimes as if he thought he was my father. But he’s better company than those other drones that hang about my mother. I mean, which of them ever stops to pass the time of day with us?’

‘I don’t trust him,’ Pylades muttered almost below his breath.

Orestes blinked in surprise. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’ And then, two seconds later. ‘I’d rather not say.’

‘What do you mean?’

Pylades flushed. ‘You must have noticed,’ he murmured, ‘how much time he spends alone with your mother.’

‘They work together,’ Orestes countered, but the back of his neck was suddenly hot. He wanted to demand what his friend meant by that mumbled remark but he couldn’t do it without losing his temper. His mind started to lurch as he watched Pylades put more oil onto the kidskin. Could it be that the friend he loved was imputing his mother’s honour? And why would he choose to do that unless he had good reason?

‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘you had better explain yourself.’

Pylades turned his honest face towards him, ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

‘Are we not sworn to one another?’

‘Whatever might happen? Whatever I might say?’

Orestes saw that they were both trembling a little.

‘Now you’re alarming me,’ he gasped.

‘Then perhaps silence is better.’

‘It’s too late for that. Tell me what you know.’

Pylades looked down at his feet. His knuckles were gripped tight about his bow. ‘Do you remember some time ago when you were ill with a fever and you asked me to bring your mother to you? It was quite late one night.’

‘I remember.’

Pylades swallowed before continuing. ‘I went to the Queen’s private apartment and saw her serving-woman Marpessa admitting Aegisthus to her bed-chamber.’

He watched the colours changing in Orestes’ face. He saw the anger rising in his eyes, but he pressed on, forestalling interruption. ‘I withdrew at once, of course, and came back wondering what reason I could give for not bringing your mother with me. Fortunately you’d already fallen asleep so I didn’t have to explain.’

‘Is that all?’ Orestes demanded hotly. ‘What’s so terrible about that? Doesn’t it occur to you that he might have needed to speak to her urgently? Some matter of state business must have come up. Anyway, if Marpessa was there, they weren’t alone. There need have been no wrong in it.’

But his boyish heart was floundering.

‘That’s what I told myself,’ Pylades answered. ‘I would have put it out of my mind but Marpessa must have spotted me leaving the apartment because the next day Aegisthus came up to me and …’ Pylades faltered there. He glanced away from his friend’s fierce regard, uncertain but not abashed.

‘What?’ Orestes demanded.

‘He threatened me.’

‘How? How did he threaten you?’

Still not looking at his friend, Pylades drew in his breath a little shakily before answering. ‘He said that he knew very well what the Queen did not yet know – that you and I have taken to sleeping in each other’s arms. He said that if the Queen got to learn of it I would certainly be sent away from Mycenae.’

‘How?’ Orestes protested. ‘How could he have known that?’

‘He must have spied on us while we slept. He or some minion in his pay. I don’t know, but he said that he would say nothing to the Queen about it so long as I too agreed to say nothing to anyone of what I thought I might have seen. He said that if we failed to reach such an agreement, he and I, then the consequences would be very unpleasant for you.’

‘I’ll kill him,’ Orestes said.

‘I don’t think so,’ his friend answered quietly.

‘I’ll go to the armoury and take a sword and plunge it in his traitor’s heart.’

‘Think about it, Orestes, Even if you got close to him – which I very much doubt – what would your mother do? How would you explain yourself without disgracing her? And who would believe you anyway? Pylades put a hand to his friend’s trembling shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything, but you asked me and … I don’t know, but there’s something going on in this city that I don’t understand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why have so many of the old ministers gone from the palace? And haven’t you noticed how hard it’s become for ordinary people to petition the Queen? The whole feel of the place is different. Nobody seems to speak their mind any more. I may be quite wrong about it, but,’ Pylades glanced around to make sure they were still unobserved, ‘the only person I trust right now is you.’

Orestes listened to his friend with growing trepidation, for everything he said corresponded to vague feelings that had crossed his mind without ever becoming clear. Yet the implications were so worrying that his heart jumped about his chest and his mind refused to keep still long enough to think.

Pylades looked up and saw the agitation in Orestes’ face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. But it seems to me that the only thing for us to do is keep our eyes and ears open and our mouths shut till things come clearer.’

And that’s what they did for a time in an anxious conspiracy against the world. Orestes found it hard to conceal his newfound feelings of revulsion for Aegisthus. Clytaemnestra felt ever more frustrated by her son’s behaviour, and her daughter Electra resented the way that her brother and his friend excluded her from the secrets they shared. Then the boys’ apprehensions were allayed in the excitement that burst across Mycenae with the news that Troy had fallen and Agamemnon must soon return to the city in triumph.

Yet Orestes found it still harder to sleep in his bed at night. How should he receive his father? Should he greet him, like everybody else, as the great hero of the age, the conqueror of Troy and King of Men? That was what he wanted to do; but he couldn’t free his mind of the sickening thought that this was the man who had put his sister to death in order to further his ambitions. Orestes told himself that the thread of a man’s fate was spun at his birth and there was no avoiding the ordeals that the gods devised for him. Yet that thought brought him no peace for it seemed to turn life into a prison where no one was free to choose for himself. Victory and defeat, courage and cowardice, fidelity and betrayal – all blurred to insignificance in a world ruled by capricious gods.

Lost in such dark contemplation, Orestes lay uneasily awake night after night, or jumped into darkness out of terrifying dreams.

One afternoon he returned from a long, uncomfortable conversation with his mother to find that Pylades had already gone from the city. All his things had been hastily packed and not a trace of his presence remained. Orestes was simply told that King Strophius had required that his son return home at short notice and that the herald who had brought the message would brook no delay.

On the following day Orestes and his sister Electra were despatched into the care of Lord Podargus in Midea. When Orestes complained that, as well as being denied the company of his only friend, he would not even be permitted to witness his father’s triumphant return into Mycenae, he was told, incomprehensibly, that such was Agamemnon’s express wish. No further explanation was forthcoming.

Some days later Orestes and Electra were sitting miserably together in the draughty hall at Midea when Podargus came up to them wringing his mottled hands. Something terrible had happened in Mycenae, he declared. They must brace themselves for a shock, for he could see no gentle way of breaking the news that their father had been assassinated.

Electra’s face whitened as though she was about to faint. She uttered a little strangled cry, tried to stifle it further, and then burst into tears. Orestes sat in shock. He felt as if someone had struck him a blow on the back of his head.

Then he demanded, ‘Who has killed him?’

But Podargus merely shook his gaunt head, grim-lipped. The situation in Mycenae remained confused, he said. He had told them the little that he knew. When more information became available he would share it. Now they must prepare to mourn and make their offerings for their father’s shade.

Some time would pass, therefore, before Agamemnon’s children learned that their father’s assassin was their mother. The source of that information was a serving-woman called Geilissa, who was one of the small band of guards and retainers who had accompanied the children on their journey from Mycenae to Midea. She had known Orestes and Iphigenaia since infancy and had been wet-nurse to Electra, but she and Clytaemnestra had often been at odds over the Queen’s cold way with her children. Geilissa never doubted where her own warm loyalties lay, and she had been included in the party against Clytaemnestra’s better judgement only because Electra declared that she would refuse to go without her. Geilissa herself was glad enough to put Mycenae behind her and take care of her charges once more during their sojourn in Midea.

A cheerful soul, she had quickly made friends with the servants of the house, and it was from them that she learned the truth about the death of Agamemnon. With her own secret suspicions now confirmed, Geilissa saw how grave a threat these circumstances must pose to the welfare of the two children. Yet sooner or later the truth must come out. Better that they heard it from her than from some careless stranger.

So once again Orestes was forced to listen while a person he trusted told him things so terrible that he could hardly bear to hear them. Already distraught from the news that her father was dead – a grief that was as instinctive as it was emotional, for the girl had no retrievable memories of Agamemnon – Electra was devastated by this further revelation. She sat with her hand across her mouth, trying to suppress her wailing. Orestes sat beside her, gripping her shoulders as she rocked in his arms.

‘It is Aegisthus,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘The villain has poisoned her mind. It must be his foul hand behind this thing. I should have killed him long ago.’

Anxiously Geilissa hissed, ‘You must keep your voice down, master. Lord Podargus is not of your father’s party.’

Orestes looked across at the nurse in bewilderment as he pieced together the long, manipulative process by which he had been separated from his friend, cut off from contact with his returning father, and sent to a place where he could be held in check. His mind was working quickly now. He was not a guest in Midea: he was a prisoner. His mother would send for him when she was ready. She would tell him that he had a new father and must learn to love and respect him. And if he failed to obey? Orestes remembered what Aegisthus had said to Pylades. He remembered the hostility he had glimpsed in the man’s eyes when he had made his own mistrust for him plain. Aegisthus had no love for him. As far as Aegisthus was concerned, he was Agamemnon’s brat. The man must be living in fear that a day must come when Orestes would seek to avenge his murdered father.

And he was right to fear it.

But for the moment Aegisthus held all the power. Only Clytaemnestra stood between Orestes and death, and Clytaemnestra had already killed her husband. Was she capable also of killing her son?

In an insane world where fathers killed their daughters, it was entirely possible.

For the first time in his young life, Orestes felt consumed by fear. Somehow he must get away from Midea. He must go to Pylades. His friend would take care of him in Phocis. He would know what to do.

It was Geilissa who arranged for his escape. On her way through the market-place, she observed a Sicilian merchant dealing in slaves who appeared to take reasonable care of his valuable human stock. When she learned that he would soon be moving on, it occurred to her that Orestes might be smuggled out of the city among his train. Geilissa discussed the idea with a friend she trusted from the old days in Mycenae – a grizzled warrior who had lost an eye serving at Troy with Agamemnon. When neither of them could come up with a less risky plan, she approached the merchant and quickly discovered that his venal soul had no loyalties in Argos other than to his desire for profit. Once sure of her ground, she set about persuading him that his desire would be well served if he delivered safely to the court of King Strophius in Phocis a certain person whose identity must not be disclosed in Midea or any other city through which they might pass.

‘Including Mycenae?’ the merchant shrewdly asked.

‘Mycenae, above all, is to be avoided,’ Geilissa said.

The Sicilian opened his hands. ‘I look to do good business in Mycenae.’

‘And doubtless you will,’ Geilissa answered, ‘on your return from Phocis. King Strophius is a wealthy man. He will compensate you well for the delay.’

‘And what assurances do I have of this?’

Geilissa unwrapped from a cloth the casket in which were gathered all the jewels and golden ornaments that Electra had insisted on bringing to Midea. ‘These are already worth more than all your slaves. You shall have the casket when you leave the city with my friend safely concealed in your train.’

‘Let me think about this a little.’ Smiling, the Sicilian made a self-deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘I am a timid man.’

Geilissa watched him stroke his beard. ‘Think too long,’ she said, ‘and you may begin to wonder what there is to prevent you from taking the casket and then betraying my friend to those who mean him harm. You should be aware, therefore, that were you to do such a thing, there are those who will not rest till they have hunted you down and cut your tongue out of your throat and divided your manhood from your loins.’

The merchant studied her for a long moment with a ringed hand at his mouth. Then he lowered the hand to reveal a sour smile. ‘You reason like a Sicilian,’ he said. ‘But I will do this thing for you. Pray tell your friend that this humble merchant is at his service.’

That evening they untied the long hair that Orestes wore clubbed at his neck, dressed him in one of Electra’s gowns and wrapped around his head and shoulders a shawl that she had embroidered with figures of prowling lions and winged griffins. Geilissa started with shock when she looked at the finished effect, for in the unsteady light of the oil-lamps, it might have been his dead sister, Iphigenaia, standing demurely there.

So Orestes escaped from Midea early the next morning as one among a coffle of slaves. Unaware that the son of Agamemnon was slipping through their guard with a kitchen knife clutched under the folds of his pretty shawl, the sentinels at the gate paid scant attention to the train. Almost a month later he was welcomed to safety by Pylades with tears and open arms. Denied their chance of glory in Troy, and with the world at home turned hostile round them, the young lions began preparing themselves for the day when they too would play a significant part in the continuing drama of the long catastrophe that was the Trojan War.

As the reader will recall from my account of the day when Dolon the fisherman brought us the news that the war had ended, Ithaca also had a number of young lions frisking about the streets, and even before Troy fell, they had already begun to make a nuisance of themselves. That’s how we thought of it at first – as no more than a nuisance, for we Ithacans might have our feuds and quarrels and grudges, and blood might even be shed at times, but murder was rare on the island and we lacked any talent for evil on the grand scale with which it flourished in Mycenae and the other great cities of the world. So King Laertes and his ministers did little more than sigh over the noise of drunken revelry in the streets of the town at night. But out of small neglected troubles larger problems grow, and soon there were signs that Antinous and the gang of young men who followed his lead were getting out of hand.

The first of the truly bruising encounters between Telemachus and Antinous took place at the Feast of Pan in the spring of the year after the war had ended. At that time the mood of the island was gloomy and apprehensive. Diotima, who had been priestess of Mother Dia’s shrine on the island for longer than anyone could remember, had died during the course of a hard winter. Because she was already very old, her death came as no surprise, but she had outlived all the women who knew the ways of the snake well enough to succeed her, so the power of the shrine itself began to wane.

No one took her death harder than King Laertes and his wife Anticleia. They too were old, and each day that failed to bring news of their son increased their grief and anxiety. Laertes had been eager to lay down the burdens of kingship for many years, and the business of exacting tribute from men younger and more ambitious than himself, and of giving justice among quarrelsome islanders, was increasingly a trial to his soul. So to Queen Anticleia’s concern for her son was added the further strain of watching her husband’s strength fail. Her nights were sleepless and her appetite poor. Never a large woman, she began to shrink visibly, both in weight and stature. Soon people began to mutter that if her son did not return she might simply die from grief.

In these circumstances, Penelope had to be strong for everyone and her faith did not fail. Whatever private anxieties troubled her nights, she remained ever hopeful, refusing to allow any other possibility but that her husband was alive and on his way home. Yet she had not seen Odysseus for more than ten years, and there must have been times when she had difficulty remembering what he had looked like then, let alone imagining how he might have been changed by war.

For a time, everyone’s spirits were lifted by the news that a Zacynthian sailor called Axylus had returned to his island, having walked hundreds of miles overland from Euboea where he had been cast ashore after his ship went down. Summoned to Ithaca, he reported that he had been among the survivors of a disastrous raid on Ismarus in which many men, including the brother of Prince Amphinomus, had been killed. He was certain, however, that Odysseus had managed to escape from the skirmish on the Ciconian shore, though how he had fared in the storm that had wrecked his own ship, Axylus was unable to say.

This was the first definite news that Penelope had received and she preferred to let it strengthen her hopes rather than darken her fears. Telemachus chose to share her optimism and draw strength from it; but when Amphinomus returned to Ithaca after his time of mourning was complete, and the boy watched his mother receive her friend, weeping, with open arms, his mood turned sullen again.

Though he tried to elicit my sympathy, I saw nothing wrong in the friendship. Sitting side by side at the high table or walking together on the cliffs above the expansive glitter of the sea, Amphinomus and Penelope might have been taken for a brother and sister who shared a lively affection and were always sensitive to each other’s shifts of mood and feeling. So it seemed to me there was something excessive in the way Telemachus kept watch, like a prick-eared dog, over his absent father’s wife. Only after a time did I come to see that his heart was riven with a kind of jealousy. Perhaps he couldn’t bear it that anyone – least of all this handsome prince out of Dulichion – should be more intimate with his mother than he was himself? Whatever the case, sooner or later his anger was going to turn violent. It happened at the Festival of Pan.

The Spring Feast is always a bawdy and boisterous affair. Shepherds come from all over the island and, once the sacred offerings have been made, there is much eating and drinking and many hours of dancing and singing of songs. Commonly enough, a fair proportion of the children born each year are sired during the course of that night, not all of them in wedlock. Because the winter had been bitter and everyone had been miserable for so long, the revelry was wild that year. The heat of the sun lay heavy on the afternoon, the wine was strongly mixed, and fathers looked to their daughters as Antinous and a gang of randy young men paraded around the awnings with long leather phalluses protruding from the goatskin clouts they wore.

I was in luck myself that day – a plump young woman from a village over by Mount Neriton sat near me as I sang. She had honey-brown skin and thick hair, and an encouraging way of dipping her eyes. Later we found our way to a sunlit glade beneath the trees. She was my first, and it wounded my heart to discover a day or two later that she was already pledged to a prosperous shepherd in her own part of the world; but I have sometimes wondered whether his firstborn son has the gift of singing verses too. In any case, being so pleasantly occupied, I didn’t learn what had happened elsewhere until Peiraeus told me after the event.

Waiting till late in the day when all the royal party apart from the prince had retired, Antinous asked Telemachus if he would judge the merit of a satyr play that he and Eurymachus were improvising for the people’s entertainment. To my friend’s astonishment, Antinous took the part of a woman overwhelmed by the blandishments of her lover, who was played by Eurymachus. Speaking in a high-pitched voice and fluttering his eyelids, Antinous allowed his hand to stray towards the grotesque codpiece protruding from between Eurymachus’s thighs. Only when he released an amorous sigh and squeaked, ‘But what if my husband should return, Amphinomus?’ did the true nature of the game become apparent.

Before anyone realized what was happening, Telemachus had thrown himself at Antinous, knocked him off the wine-stained trestle-table where the young man reclined like a whore on a couch, and fastened his hands about his throat.

By the time Eurymachus and Leodes pulled the boy away, Antinous was choking and retching for air. Telemachus was still much smaller than the man he had attacked, and left to his own malevolent devices, Antinous might have inflicted a terrible beating on him. But some of the less drunken shepherds had been disgusted by the play, and many of them had no love for the family of Eupeithes. Three stood up from their benches making it plain that no harm would come to their prince as long as they were there to prevent it. Two of them were very burly. The other, an older man with a broken nose, thoughtfully weighed the curve of his crook in his hand.

Taking stock of the menace in their faces, Antinous glanced for support to Eurymachus who released Telemachus and stood uncertainly beside his friend with the ridiculous phallus knocked askew at his waist. Sensing that neither Eurymachus nor Leodes had the stomach for a fight, Antinous gasped, ‘What’s the matter with the brat? Can’t he take a joke?’

‘There’s jokes and there’s jokes,’ said the grizzled old shepherd with the crook, ‘and if you think that one was funny then you’ll be even more amused when this ash-plant comes down across your ear – which it would have done by now if I wasn’t making allowances for the belly-load of wine you’re carrying.’ Then he turned to Telemachus. ‘And you’d better run along, young sir. If your father was home, he’d tell you that it’s wise to pick a fight only when the odds are with you.’

Flustered and abashed, Telemachus turned on his heel, shouting, ‘If my father doesn’t kill you when he gets back, Antinous, I promise I’ll do it myself.’

‘Wake up, donzel!’ Antinous shouted after him. ‘Your father’s not coming back, and you’re going to have to answer for those words one day.’

Peiraeus told me that the shepherds would certainly have beaten Antinous in that moment had not Eurymachus had the good sense to hustle him away.

When I learned what had happened, I set out to look for Telemachus. Last seen heading for the palace, he wasn’t to be found in his chamber and no one in the hall knew where he was. By now darkness had fallen, so there was no point wandering the hillsides in search of him, and I was about to give up and join Penelope and the others in the hall when I heard voices in Eurycleia’s chamber.

Putting my ear to the door, I heard the hoarse croak of the old nurse’s voice reassuring Telemachus that he was just like his father – too proud and too brave not to put himself at risk. ‘He was about your age when he went hunting boar with his grandfather Autolycus in the woods around Mount Parnassus,’ she was saying, ‘Couldn’t wait for the huntsmen to lay the nets – not him. Couldn’t wait for the boar to come rushing at him neither. He has to leap straight at it with his spear, leaving his grandsire standing aghast behind him. He got his boar sure enough, but not before the great beast gored his thigh. He took such a gash that men wondered whether he’d ever walk straight again, which he did of course, though he bears the scar of it about him still. He was too proud for patience, you see – just like you – though he learned more sense in later years.’

I was about to walk away and leave them to it when I heard the shaky voice of Telemachus protest, ‘But I’ve been patient. I’ve waited patiently for years and years and it feels like he’s never coming back. I think he must be dead.’

‘He’s no deader than I am,’ Eurycleia said. ‘He’s far too good a sailor to get wrecked by any storm, if that’s what you’re thinking. And he’s too crafty to be kept down for long by any villains who may cross him. Believe you me, my boy, your father’s the rarest of men. The gods have a care for a man like that.’

‘Then why hasn’t he come back?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eurycleia answered, a little flustered now. ‘Perhaps the fancy’s taken him to go adventuring again. I wouldn’t put it past him. Perhaps he’s taken the Black Sea passage like Jason before him and come up against the Clashing Rocks, or got himself enchanted by the Sirens’ song, or hasn’t yet found the narrow way between Scylla and Charybdis. He always loved those old stories. He loved them just as much as you do. Perhaps he’s gone to find out if there’s any truth to them, and when he comes home he’ll bring back something magical and splendid like the Golden Fleece. That’s just the kind of thing Odysseus would do if he took a mind to it.’

I don’t know what effect this fanciful gesture of consolation had on the mind of Telemachus but Eurycleia’s words ignited my own imagination. I began to see how my Lay of Lord Odysseus might be embellished by motifs from those stories. I imagined his ship picking its way through the blue ice floes that came drifting across its bows out of the freezing fog of the Black Sea. I knew that if there was any chance of hearing the Sirens’ song, then Odysseus would want to hear it. Like Jason, he would have himself strapped to the mast with cables while his crew rowed past the enchanted island with their ears stopped up with wax. With my mind already racing, I persuaded myself that if anyone could steer a ship between the many-headed monster Scylla, keeping watch from her cave on the cliff, and the fearful whirlpool of Charybdis, then Odysseus certainly could. So I hurried away down the passage with the song of the Sirens thrilling through my mind, and when I went to bed I lay there yearning for the day when my lay was done and I would be crowned with laurels as the greatest of all bards.

Then, in the small hours, I was jolted back to my senses by the miserable thought that all those songs had already been written. Everybody knew them. Those marvellous adventures belonged to the story of Jason: anywhere outside Ithaca, I would be laughed out of court if I tried to claim them for Odysseus.

Yet my mind would not rest and, before dawn broke, another thought struck me. There was a story belonging to our island that might still be turned into a noble song. It was a crude enough tale of the encounter between our ancient folk hero Oulixos and a one-eyed cannibal giant that devoured some of his men when they landed on his island. Trapped in the giant’s cave, Oulixos and his men blinded the Cyclops and made their escape. But wasn’t it possible that on his voyage home Odysseus had chanced on that same island? With all his resourcefulness, surely he would think up some ingenious way of outwitting that dull monster?

And so it was that, because I heard an old nurse comforting my friend with stories, I conceived the first lines of a song that would not be completed till after Odysseus’ return and is sung across Argos by bards who claim it for their own. As is well-known, the song tells how Odysseus and his men escaped from the island of the Cyclopes by fooling Polyphemus into the belief that a man called ‘Nobody’ had put out his eye. But with Odysseus now long dead, I feel free to tell how there was once a time when his strong sense of identity was so reduced by his ordeals that Odysseus truly believed that he had become Nobody indeed.