Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy) (37 page)

They stopped for an instant, panting heavily, then attacked each other with renewed violence.

Myrsilus was astonished: he could not understand what mysterious energy upheld Aeneas’s arm against Diomedes’s fury. He watched the sun as it continued to rise in the sky. Perhaps Aeneas was truly born of a goddess, as he had heard, and he prayed to Athena to hastily infuse new vigour in the arm of Diomedes.

The ferocious battle went on. It went on and on, until their swords were blunted and deformed by the blows. They were useless now. The charioteers approached them and offered the double-edged axes. The two combatants were disfigured by the tremendous struggle. Blood dripped from innumerable wounds; sweat blinded them and they burned with thirst and fever. As he handed him the axe, Myrsilus looked the king full in the face: ‘There’s still enough fire in your eyes to burn a city. Strike him down,
wanax
, no one can stand up to you. You’ve already beaten him once, and forced him to flee.’

And the charioteer of Aeneas also spoke to his lord as he handed him the sharpened axe: ‘His energies are waning. He’s desperate. You have a son, a people with women and children. Strike him down, son of Anchises. You will be the one to see the dawn tomorrow.’

And the battle resumed with the axes: long, exhausting, cruel. Their shields were shattered, mangled by their blows, the straps holding their helmets and breastplates were ripped to shreds. At the end, the heroes faced each other, offering their undefended bodies to the axes. Skin and bone against bronze.

But a god, perhaps, took pity on them. As they attacked each other for the final time, even the handles of the axes split, and the two warriors remained on their feet, gasping, soaked in bloody sweat.

Diomedes spoke first: ‘Son of Anchises, the gods have granted victory to neither one of us. See? Our weapons are broken and useless; we have nothing but our teeth with which to wound each other. It would not be worthy of us to attack each other like dogs. I . . . I believe that the gods have sent us a sign; is it not a miracle that we are both still alive? Look, the sun is already descending towards the sea. We have fought this entire day. Perhaps this is what the gods want: that there be peace between us.’ Aeneas regarded him in silence. Only the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest accompanied his panting breath.

Diomedes spoke again: ‘Listen. Achilles is dead. Hector is dead. You and I are the strongest warriors in the world. But neither of us is stronger than the other. Let us forget our ancient animosity. Let us unite our peoples in this land and form a new, invincible nation. Listen, son of Anchises. I am willing to share with you the greatest of my treasures, the most precious talisman of your lost homeland.’ Aeneas listened with a look of deep apprehension. ‘On the night in which we conquered the city, I managed to slip into the sanctuary and abduct the Palladium, the sacred image of Athena which had made Ilium the greatest and most prosperous city in the world. I knew where it was kept; Ulysses and I had stolen into the citadel some time earlier and we were the only ones to know where it was. I’ve been carrying it with me all these years. I was waiting for the day in which I would found a new city. I would have placed it in a beautiful temple and there I would have built a new kingdom. And now I offer it to you, so we can build this kingdom and this nation together. Enough blood and enough tears. Enough.’ He bowed his head and awaited Aeneas’s response in silence.

The Dardan hero stared at him without saying a word. There was no longer hate in his eyes, but rather melancholy and pity. He said: ‘Son of Tydeus, I fought for years to defend my homeland and I fought you now in the hopes of destroying the last shadows of my past before beginning a new life here, in the land of Hesperia. The gods wanted our last encounter to end this way, and now let us separate, so that each of us may take his own road. Too much hate and too much blood have divided us. Our wounds are still bleeding.

‘What you believe to be the talisman of the Trojans is nothing. It is nothing but a false image, one of the seven replicas that King Laomedon had made to mask the true idol. All of you searched for it that night, blinded by the dream of endless power: you, Ajax Oileus, Agamemnon. Ulysses himself. Cassandra fooled you all. She alone knew which one was the true idol, and that night she revealed the secret to me. I returned unseen amid the flames which were still devouring the city and recovered it, and I took it with me, to Mount Ida. It was the smallest and poorest image of them all; just two cubits tall, I could easily carry it in my arms.

‘Only Ulysses realized the trick. He had always suspected something. That night at Tenedos, while you were all sleeping, overwhelmed by weariness, he searched your ship and Ajax’s ship and found the false images. That is why he turned back; he wanted to warn Agamemnon, but when he landed on that deserted beach, the Atreid king had already departed.

‘I saw Ulysses rummaging through the ruins of the citadel that night as I slipped away. I spoke to him; I appeared to him as a ghost amid the pillars of Priam’s palace, reduced to ash. I did not kill him; I knew that the worst torture for him would be having been deceived. This is why he still wanders the seas without purpose and without hope.

‘The sacred image now protects my camp and for this reason I know that this small refuge will become a city and that this city will generate one hundred cities, all beautiful and prosperous, and will unite all the peoples of Hesperia, from the Mountains of Ice to the Mountains of Fire, along the crests of the Blue Mountains, for ever. Farewell, son of Tydeus. May the gods have mercy on you.’

D
IOMEDES FELT LIKE DYING
. He fell on to his knees and wept, as Aeneas mounted his chariot and disappeared over the plains of the
Lat
.

Myrsilus brought him back to the camp by force and there he lay for three days and three nights, devoured by fever, touching neither food nor drink. Myrsilus had all his weapons taken away, for he feared the king would take his own life.

On the fourth day he spoke to him: ‘Oh king, I and my companions know the truth now and yet, although we are sick at heart, we have not given ourselves up to despair. All these years we have followed you and we have fought with you so that your dream and ours might become reality. The gods have willed differently, and we mortals can do nothing against Fate. But we love you, and we want to live with you or to die with you.

‘I saw you fight with spear, sword and axe against the son of Anchises, and I heard your words. There is no man on the face of the earth who can match you. We have come to a decision, and we want you to know this: if you live, we will live; if you die, we will die.’ He stretched out his arm: ‘This is the sword I have borne with honour. Take it. If you use it against yourself, I will take my life with the same blade, and our comrades will do the same and we will sleep here together, under this sky, lulled by the voice of this great river. If you eat and drink with us, we will be happy and we will follow you until we find a place to live in peace in this land and together we will await the end that the gods have reserved for us.’

Upon hearing those words, the king wearily got up from his pallet and showed his pale face, his blood-matted hair, his unkempt beard, his eyes red behind dark rings, and he burst into bitter tears. His back was shaken by sobs and big drops coursed down his hollow cheeks. Myrsilus stood before him unmoving until he saw him begin to calm, to wipe his eyes with the edge of his tunic. He nodded then to the bride, to long-haired Ros, who crouched in silence in a dark corner of the tent, and she took a jug of spring water and gave it to him so he could drink. She touched his face, then got up and had some water heated. When it was ready, she removed his clothes and bathed him, she poured scented oil over his head and then she lay down beside him, under a warm sheep’s fleece. She embraced him, caressing his tortured body with light fingers, passing on the warmth of her body until sleep descended on his eyes.

*

They departed at the beginning of spring and headed eastward until the Blue Mountains stood between them and the people of Aeneas, and after wandering at length they found the sea that they had long ago crossed in search of the mouth of the Eridanus.

A people called the Messapians lived on that land, ruled over by a king called Daunus. The
Chnan
negotiated a treaty with him, and obtained a small territory on the shores of a lake to found a small city. They called it Helpie, which in the Achaean language means ‘hope’.

*

It was a long time before the threat announced by Anchialus came to pass in the land of the Achaeans. King Menelaus had had a wall raised on the Isthmus and he built new bulwarks in Mycenae and other cities; cisterns were dug and stores assembled. But what truly gave the king hope for the survival of his people was his certainty that he possessed the talisman of the Trojans. He had placed it in a temple on the citadel of Argos, for that was the highest site on the whole plain; from there, one could see Tyrinth and Temenium and, at night, the fires of Mycenae. In Argos, to keep the memory of Diomedes alive.

One day, Orestes returned to Sparta and Menelaus granted him the hand of his daughter Hermione, who had long awaited him, so that they might reign over Mycenae together and generate many descendants to carry on the line of the Atreides.

Ulysses returned as well, as Prince Telemachus had hoped: one day he showed up at the palace in disguise, dressed as a beggar, and for days he observed all that went on without revealing his identity to anyone, not even his bride. When he suddenly made himself known, he appeared as he truly was to the eyes of all; he grasped his bow and shot down the suitors who were banqueting in the great hall as Prince Telemachus and his servants barred the doors and prevented them from fleeing. He slaughtered them all, one after another, he hanged the maidservants who had betrayed him and then he finally revealed himself to his wife.

And yet his homecoming was bitter: he returned on a foreign vessel, having lost his ships and his comrades, and he had to shed much blood to reassert his authority. The massacre never ceased to weigh upon him. He left his throne to his son and departed once again in a final quest for peace. They say he was seeking a distant, solitary land in which he could immolate a sacrifice that would free him from the persecution of the gods and allow him to live the last days of his life in serenity on his rocky island. No one knows whether he succeeded, and no one knows what end he met. The twilight of the last heroes has faded into confused, uncertain accounts for which there have been no witnesses.

I’ve often asked myself who the serene woman was who welcomed Telemachus to Sparta when he went to ask King Menelaus for news of his father; she showered him with gifts and gave him a beautiful peplum for his bride to wear on the day when he would chose a maiden for himself among the daughters of the Achaeans. I’ve wondered whether this happy, gracious queen who was always seen thereafter in Sparta was the same woman who had screamed with horror over the corpse of her sister Clytemnestra, rent by the blade of her son. On the day of her sister’s funeral Helen was said to have gouged her face and wept inconsolably, cursing the atrocious destiny of the Atreides. I know nothing else.

I know that, for a very long time, threat seemed to disperse without harm over the land of the Achaeans, like when clouds gather and thunder booms in the sky but then the wind scatters the storm without a drop of rain or hail. But the will of the gods is always difficult for men to discover.

One day a ship reached Pylus with terrible news: a horde of invaders was descending from the north, burning and destroying everything in their wake. Nothing seemed capable of stopping them. Pisistratus, who now reigned in the palace after the death of old Nestor, immediately issued the alarm, sending messengers to Sparta and Argos; he summoned the scribes and instructed them to contact all the garrisons on the coast and relay orders to send their warriors into the field and their ships to sea. But as the scribes were still engraving the fresh clay with their styles, the palace was already ringing with cries, the rooms filling with smoke and flames. Pisistratus ran into the armoury and took down his enormous double-bladed axe . . .

*

The echo of that devastation spread everywhere; it crossed the sea and lapped at the coast of Hesperia, where for years Diomedes had been leading an obscure life in the poor village he had built. His bride was long dead, along with the child she had tried to bear him.

One evening, at the end of the summer, a boat laden with refugees came ashore near Helpie. They were Achaeans who had fled their invaded homeland with their wives and children. Nothing was left to them; their houses had been destroyed, their cities burned to the ground. As soon as he heard of them, Diomedes hastened to greet them, bringing them dry clothing and food.

When they had eaten their fill, when they had finished telling their stories, the hero asked them: ‘Do you know who they are? Do they rule over the entire land of the Achaeans?’

‘They are called
Dor
,’ replied the eldest among them, ‘and they are invincible. They form a single, dreadful animal with their horses by mounting them bare-backed. They have weapons stronger than the best bronze; not a shield can withstand them, nor a cuirass or helmet. Our warriors never had a chance against them, and yet they never gave up the fight. Only Mycenae has resisted, and Argos; their walls still protect them, but their destiny is in the hands of the gods, if they still think of us.’

Diomedes turned to Myrsilus, who sat next to him, bouncing on his knee the small son he had generated with a native woman. He had a strange light in his eyes, a light that Myrsilus had thought gone for ever. The king said: ‘Argos is holding out. Did you hear that? Argos resists!’

Myrsilus regarded him with bewilderment: their days of weapons and blood were so far away, now. Every evening he sat with his son on the shores of the sea to watch the waves changing colour. Sometimes Malech, the
Chnan
, who had never taken to the seas after all, came to sit with them as well. Myrsilus told his boy the story of their king, who had once lain siege to a great city in a far-off land; he told him of the gods who had fought at their side and of the endeavours of the heroes: Ulysses master of deceit, Great Ajax, big-voiced Menelaus and Diomedes son of Tydeus, victor of Thebes of the Seven Gates. But the stories he told were like fables of a remote time, as enchanting as they were no longer true.