Homer’s Daughter (3 page)

“…of copper ingots and bales of linen, I repeat, you invested nearly half in a Libyan trading venture. They were to be bartered for herb Benjamin, gold dust and ostrich eggs; but I doubt whether you will see them again.”

“Women can never believe that once a ship has raised anchor and spread her sails she will ever make port.”

“I am not questioning the seaworthiness of the ship, but only the integrity of her captain, whom you were a fool to trust on the advice of your friend Eurymachus. It would not be the first time that a Libyan defaulted, and if anyone tells me that Eurymachus demanded a commission for his part in the fraud, I shall believe him.”

“Look, this argument can be doing your headache very little good,” said Laodamas. “Let me fetch you a bowl of water and a soft cloth to bathe your temples. The sirocco is killing us all.”

What he intended for kindness she took as irony. After lying silent and inert until he brought the silver bowl to her bedside, she sat up suddenly, seized it from him, and deluged him with water.

“To cool down your hot thighs, Priapus!” she screamed.

Laodamas did not lose his temper and take her by the throat, as many a more impetuous man would have done. I never knew him to lay violent hands on a woman, not even to chastise a saucy slave girl. He merely cast Ctimene a baleful look and said: “Very well, then: you shall have your necklace, never fear, and may it bring less sorrow on our house than did the necklace of Theban Eriphyle in the Homeric song!”

He walked over to a nail-studded wooden chest, unlocked it, and took out a number of personal possessions—a gold cup, a helmet with an ostrich-feather plume, a buckle of silver and lapis lazuli, a new pair of scarlet shoes, three undershirts, a jewel-hilted dagger in an ivory sheath carved with lions pursuing a royal stag, and a fine whetstone from Seriphos. He pulled the helmet on his head, spread a thick cloak of striped wool on the floor and laid the treasures in it. Then he locked the chest, replaced the key on the nail above the bed head, caught up the bundle, and fumbled at the latch.

“Where are you taking those things? I demand to know. Put them back at once! I have something to tell you.”

Laodamas paid no attention, but walked out, bundle on shoulder.

“To the crows with you, then, madman!” screamed Ctimene.

This conversation took place about midnight. My bedroom was next door, and my hearing being unusually acute when I have a touch of fever, as I had then, every word reached me. Slipping hurriedly into my shift, I ran after Laodamas and caught him by the sleeve. “Where are you going, Brother?” I asked.

He looked at me dully. He had been drinking sweet dark wine that evening, and though his gait was steady, I could see that he was by no means himself.

“I am going to the crows, little Sister,” he answered sadly. “Ctimene has consigned me to their care.”

“Please, pay no attention to what your wife may have said tonight,” I begged him. “A sirocco is blowing; and at this time of the month she is never at her best.”

“She demands a necklace of amber with nubbly gold beads,
and a clasp of interlocking golden snakes. It has to be pale Hyperborean amber; our own darker variety does not content her, though it has a lovely play of purple which occurs in no other. I mean to fetch her what she wants: in proof that I am neither idle nor a coward.”

“From where? From the crows?”

“Or the jackdaws… I cannot let her abuse me again as she has done. All the maids must have been listening, and soon the story will travel around the city. When it reaches Eurymachus and his friends, they will call me a fool for not taking a strap to her.”

“No strap ever cured either a shrew or a sick woman.”

“I agree; though if I loved Ctimene in a different way I might think otherwise. It is to keep my hands from violence that I am leaving her.”

“For how long?”

“Until I can bring her the necklace. Two or three months' separation may do us both a deal of good.”

“I heard you mention the necklace of Eryphyle, which was a word of ill omen. Unless you offer a sacrifice to the Goddess of our Hearth, and another to Aphrodite, the safety of our whole household will be endangered. Do not go off with your wrong foot thrust forward. Stop, and replace those things in the chest.”

“And ask Ctimene's pardon, I suppose? No, I cannot turn back now. Some god is urging me on. Good night, Sister! We shall meet when we shall meet.”

The story of Eriphyle is part of the famous Theban cycle which the Sons of Homer recite. This hateful woman was married to King Amphiaraus the Argive but, for the sake of
Aphrodite's necklace, which made its wearer irresistibly beautiful, she sent him to his death at Thebes.

Laodamas clumped slowly downstairs, and I heard him growling at the porter to unbar the front gate. Presently I leaned out of my window and saw him in the moonlight on his way towards the quay, where a big Rhodian ship was tied up. I thought of rousing my father, but knowing that he had fallen into a deep, refreshing sleep, after three days of fever, dared not disturb him with what might prove a matter of little importance. Ctimene herself treated it as such. Laodamas, she told herself, would not retract his insulting remarks about her father, nor listen when she tried to apologize for having lost her temper. So she turned her face to the wall with a good conscience, and was soon fast asleep.

I lay awake in the moonlight until I heard a distant burst of singing, as if a crowd of men had come pouring out of some storehouse or other; and, in the chorus of drunken laughter which followed, I recognized Eurymachus's high-pitched cackle.

“All is well,” I thought wearily. “Eurymachus is still about. How I dislike him; but he will at least prevent my brother from behaving rashly or stupidly.”

When, next morning, we found the Rhodian ship had disappeared, taking advantage of a sudden change of wind, and that Laodamas was also missing, I hurriedly visited the Temple of Poseidon, where Eurymachus would soon be offering the monthly sacrifice of a red bull, to ask him what he knew of the matter.

“Nothing at all, my dear Princess. Why should I?” he answered stolidly, leaning on the sacrificial axe, and looking straight into my eyes, as if to disconcert me.

“Why? Because you were on the quay with Laodamas last night; please do not attempt to deny it. I heard your cackle of laughter when the Rhodians sang that obscene song about their ancestor Hermes and the slippery goatskin.”

“That must have been just before I said good night.”

“Why did you not look after him with decent care? He was drunk and unhappy. Your duty as his comrade demanded it.”

“He showed me little tenderness and, as the saying is, two are needed to make a comradeship, but only one to dissolve it. The failure of that Libyan adventure seems to have turned his wits. Last night he wildly accused me of conspiring with the captain to steal Ctimene's copper and linen and then pretend that the ship had been wrecked off the Syrtes. When I reminded him of our old friendship, and hinted that he must be bewitched to talk such extravagant nonsense, he grew unbearably abusive. So, rather than encourage him to use his fists and have his nose flattened—I am by far the better boxer even when he is sober—I turned on my heel and retired to bed, pleased with my own moderation. It came as a surprise this morning to find the Rhodian purple-sellers gone. Do you think that Laodamas joined them?”

Eurymachus could never be frank with me. I thought at the time: “Because he is one of my suitors, and the one whom my father would most like me to marry (always supposing that he offers an adequate bride price), he does not care to reveal his faults to me prematurely.” Yet I have always hated a man who, trying to hide crooked intentions behind a honeyed smile, is vain enough to believe that I cannot see through him.

“If he has sailed,” I answered severely, “my father will not think the better of you.”

“No, perhaps not—until I have explained what happened, in the same words that I have used to you. Then doubtless I shall find him more ready to believe me.” As he spoke, one of
our house-born slaves brought a message from my father himself, announcing that the fever had passed, and that he would be greatly obliged if Eurymachus could confer with him, as soon as the sacrifice was over, about the two night watchmen.

“Which watchmen?” I asked the slave.

“The dawn watch on the quay,” he answered. “Their relief has just reported them lying in a drugged sleep behind the sail shed. Two sails and three coils of the best Byblian cordage are missing.”

“There now, Eurymachus,” I said. “What do you make of that?”

I studied his face, but he had made it a blank. “Surely a most unusual piece of news?” I pressed him. “Rhodians have a reputation for strict commercial honesty, and I cannot see why one of their big ships should jeopardize it merely for the sake of two sails and a coil or two of cordage.”

He answered glibly: “There is something in what you say, lovely Nausicaa. Perhaps they needed the gear at once and could not wait for an audience with the port authority; so helped themselves, drugged the guards to prevent them from raising the alarm, and went off.”

“In that case they would have left adequate payment behind in the form of metal or wine.”

“Not if Laodamas went with them and undertook, in payment for his fare, to settle the debt on his return. Here comes the red bullock with the fillet on his head. Excuse my haste. Slave, tell the King that I rejoice to hear of the improvement in his health, and that I will discuss the affair of the watchmen as soon as this sacrifice is over and I have inspected the entrails.”

“I wish you well of your interview,” I flung at his insolent back.

Laodamas's departure did not, at first, seem a very serious matter, though the omens taken from the entrails of that bullock were most menacing—the beast looked healthy enough, but had advanced intestinal decay. The port authority agreed, in debate, that the Rhodian captain, who had visited Drepanum three years before as mate of another ship belonging to the same merchant, was an honest and capable seaman; payment for the sails and cordage would doubtless be made one day, nor had the watchers necessarily been drugged by the captain, or by any member of his crew. It might well be that an Elyman comrade had played a joke on them. Laodamas would find himself in safe hands and, this being April, should have returned by July at the latest, bringing Ctimene her promised amber necklace.

My father, though angry that his eldest son had gone off suddenly without a good-bye or waiting for the fever to pass—the banishment of my brother Halius five years before still rankled in his heart—contented himself with telling Ctimene that it should be a lesson to her never again to tease a good man beyond endurance. Ctimene pleaded that the fault lay with Laodamas, who had made fun of her headache, insulted the noble people of Bucinna, and kept her awake by talking drunkenly when she wanted no more than to fall asleep, pillowing her head on his breast.

This version of the quarrel, though dishonestly one-sided, I did not care to contradict. And Phytalus, my mother's old father, who had resigned the lordship of Hiera in favour of a son-in-law and come to potter about our estate as honorary
steward, held that Ctimene was right to condemn Laodamas's idleness. “The only excuse for hunting in a civilized country,” he grumbled, “is to prevent wild beasts from ravaging the cornfields or vineyards; the provision of flesh being incidental. But our cornfields are so well fenced, and game so scarce in this neighbourhood, that Laodamas has been obliged to scour distant forests, seldom bringing home so much as a hare. It is not as though hunter's meat were desperately needed at the Palace; do we ever lack for fat hogs or tasty steers? If the boy needs adventure, on the other hand, let him go slave-raiding in Italian Daunia or Sardinia, as I did at his age.”

My mother never opens her mouth to comment on a situation that is still obscure; and since it was not yet certain that Laodamas had boarded the Rhodian ship, she remained silent. But Clytoneus offered a prayer to Father Zeus for his brother's safe return, and then asked Ctimene's permission to exercise Argus and Laelaps, Laodamas's hounds, which she granted with a sour smile. “He must surely have sailed,” Clytoneus told her, “because if he had gone out hunting somewhere in the hills, he would never have left his hounds behind.”

The mystery deepened a month later, when a ship's captain reported having spoken the Rhodian ship off Scyra, her last port of call. Laodamas, however, was not aboard; or at least the Rhodians said nothing of him. Possibly they had put him ashore at Acragas, where Aphrodite has a famous shrine, or at some other intervening port. Then Eurymachus's mother suddenly recalled that at dawn on the day in question, while the Rhodian ship was still moored in Drepanum Harbour, she had noticed a twenty-oared galley, Phoenician by the build and rig, lying just inside the southern bay. Perhaps Laodamas
had rowed out to her and bargained for a passage? Then another woman, Ctimene's maid Melantho, who had been sleeping on the roof, also claimed to have seen the ship, with a dinghy in tow. But when pressed to explain why she had not mentioned so important a sight before, all that she would say, over and over again, was: “I did not want to cause trouble; silence is golden.” The news provoked a fresh crop of unprofitable speculations, yet nobody grew seriously concerned about Laodamas until the weather broke, at the end of October, and our ships, beached for the winter, were given their annual coat of tar.

I had to bear the brunt of Ctimene's passionate grief and self-pity. We were thrown together by household business, and she pretended that she could not unbosom herself to the maids without either being accused of having treated Laodamas harshly, which would not be fair, or blaming him, which would be indecent. She said that I alone knew the circumstances; and, besides, she was justified in making me the repository of her secret grief because Laodamas's disappearance had been largely my fault. “Indeed!” I cried, opening my eyes wide and jerking up my head. “How do you make that out, Sister-in-law?”