The Armour of Achilles (22 page)

T
he rain hissed in the courtyard outside the great hall on Ithaca. It drummed against the doors and the roof of the portico, and came in through the vent in the centre of the ceiling. Penelope stroked her fingertips lightly over Argus’s head as he lay beside her chair, thumping his tail against the floor. Phronius sat opposite the queen on a high-backed chair, his white hair and beard still matted with the rain. His cloak was hanging from the back of another chair, turned about so that it faced the flames of the hearth. A faint steam was rising out of the thick wool.

‘He offered you
gold
to resign from the Kerosia?’ Mentor asked, the disbelief clear in his tone.

‘You heard me right,’ Phronius croaked toothlessly. ‘Enough gold and other wealth to see me through to my dying day. Very generous, I’d have called him, too, if he wasn’t such a devious old serpent. Not that he ever fooled Laertes or me with his supposed
change of heart
.’

‘I wonder if he ever really fooled Odysseus,’ said Penelope.

‘I didn’t mean any criticism of the king . . .’ Phronius protested.

‘Of course you didn’t, and your loyalty to him has put Odysseus in your debt. The fact that Eupeithes was prepared to offer you a bribe proves my suspicions were true – he wants to take control of the Kerosia, and perhaps he’s not that bothered who knows it.’

‘He should be,’ Halitherses snarled. ‘I’ll collect a dozen guardsmen in the morning and arrest him.’

Mentor shook his head.

‘He wasn’t so careless as to make the offer in person. It was only suggested through an acquaintance and, despite Phronius’s convictions, Eupeithes wasn’t mentioned by name. We have no proof.’

‘Give me tomorrow morning with him in a quiet storeroom and I’ll get you all the proof you need,’ Halitherses replied, gripping the edge of his chair.

‘We aren’t tyrants, old friend,’ Penelope said, her calm voice belying the look of concern in her eyes. ‘We have no choice but to wait for him to make a mistake and reveal his crooked intentions more openly. Until then, we will have to simply watch our backs.’

‘You must look out for the boy, too,’ Phronius added, leaning forward on to his staff as he slowly levered himself from his chair. He signalled for one of the servants to fetch his cloak. ‘If Eupeithes is gambling Odysseus won’t return and thinks he can take power through the Kerosia, at some point he will have to deal with Telemachus. Even if Odysseus doesn’t come back from Troy – forgive me, my lady – Telemachus will inherit the throne at twenty-one. Eupeithes knows that.’

He emphasized his point by staring at each of the others in turn, Penelope last and longest. Not that he needed to make her understand: she had long known the dangers that surrounded her son, and more so with the reawakening of Eupeithes’s treacherous nature. Her fears had not been helped by an instinctive knowledge that the fighting in Ilium had started again, and that her husband was in greater danger than he had ever been before.

The servant draped the cloak over Phronius’s frame and the old man, too bent already to make a meaningful bow, satisfied himself with a nod to the queen.

‘And now I will beg your leave. It may be a short walk to my hut for some, but at my age it’s still quite a trek.’

‘Let me walk with you, Phronius,’ Halitherses offered, rising from his chair. ‘It’s growing dark and—’

Phronius gave a dismissive wave of his stick and stumped off to the doors of the great hall, which were opened for him by two armed soldiers. Outside, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle, but the uneven courtyard was a patchwork of puddles, the largest forming a small lake at the bottom step of the portico. Phronius made a resigned huffing sound and stepped into it. The water was above his ankles in an instant, and by the time he had reached the gates and the terrace beyond, both feet and the hem of his cloak were soaked and filthy with the mud of the courtyard.

Phronius’s hut lay a little beyond the eastern edge of the town, on a grassy shelf of rock that overlooked the sea. It was distant enough for him to keep his own company – which he preferred to the pestering interference of town life – and the views at sunrise were enough to make a man happy just to be alive. The seagulls cawed and screeched from dawn until dusk and the crashing of the waves on the rocks below the grassy shelf never ceased, but he had grown used to the din of it many years ago and now he doubted he would get to sleep without it.

Before long, even at his creeping pace, he had passed the outskirts of the town and could see the grey wisp of smoke rising up from the roof of his own hut. It was barely visible in the growing darkness, through the haze of fine rain, but he greeted the phantom-like column with a satisfied grunt, knowing he would soon be tucked up in his bed until the first glimmer of dawn woke him. Indeed, his body was so heavy with tiredness, he felt as if he would sleep for ever.

Then he saw a figure rise up from the rocks at the side of the path. The man stepped out in front of him and planted his legs shoulder-width apart.

‘Who’s there?’ Phronius asked, slipping his hand down to grasp the neck of his staff. In younger hands it would make an effective club; in his feeble, arthritic fingers it did not even amount to a threat.

‘Friends,’ came another voice, this time behind him.

Phronius twisted around to see a second man blocking the route back to the town – as if he would have been able to escape anyway. His voice was young and faintly familiar, despite being muffled by the cloth that hid the lower half of his face.

‘Friends to whom?’ Phronius challenged.

‘That depends. Have you thought about the offer that was made to you?’

‘Hmph!’ Phronius replied.

He carried on along the path towards the first man, who had also masked his lower face. To Phronius’s surprise he stepped aside and let him pass, but both men followed him at a short distance.

‘That’s not an answer,’ the second man called, raising his voice over the crash and boom of the waves as they neared Phronius’s hut.

‘It’s all the answer you’ll get.’

Phronius reached the grassy shelf of rock and drew confidence from the sight of his hut, built under the shelter of an inward-leaning cliff face. He could smell the woodsmoke much more strongly now, as well as the pot of stew he had left warming over the embers of the hearth. If he could get inside, the old spear he kept behind the door would even matters. But he never reached the hut. In a few easy strides, the first man placed himself between Phronius and his home, and this time his cloak was thrown back to reveal the gleam of a dagger in his belt.

Then a hand fell heavily on Phronius’s shoulder and he was dragged forcefully to the lip of the rock shelf. He caught a glimpse of the black waves far below and the foaming lines of jagged boulders that awaited his frail body.

‘Think carefully, old man,’ hissed the second assailant, clutching at his robe and dangling him backwards over the cliff edge. His eyes were fearful and uncertain, but with a dangerous edginess about them. ‘You’ve proved your loyalty to Odysseus time and time again, nobody can deny that. But the king won’t be coming back from Troy, so it’s time for you to stand down from the Kerosia and let a younger voice take your place.’

With a speed that surprised even himself, Phronius hooked his fingers into the cloth that covered the man’s mouth and tore it away from his face.

‘Antinous!’ he exclaimed, recognizing the haughty features of Eupeithes’s only son. ‘I should have realized it was you. And will the voice that replaces mine on the Kerosia be yours?’

‘Yes, and why not? The Kerosia needs some younger heads to replace the old fools Odysseus left behind.’

‘Go to Hades, Antinous. You’ll be nothing more than a mouthpiece for your treacherous father, and I’d rather die than allow that to happen.’

‘So be it,’ Antinous sneered.

He splayed his fingers, releasing the folds of Phronius’s cloak. The old man’s heels scuffed pathetically against the cliff edge for an instant, kicking off one of his sandals, and then he was falling into nothingness. He felt a momentary lightness and freedom from the cramped and twisted prison of his body, then his ankle caught an outcrop of rock, spinning him around so that his head was mangled by the cliff face. Phronius was dead before his body could be impaled on the black teeth below, or the powerful waves could snatch him away and fill his lungs with salt water.

On the slopes above the Scamander, the passing of the sun was marked only by a deeper greyness; with the onset of night came distant rumbles of thunder and an increase in the wind. Lightning lit the clouds above the eastern mountains, and by its intermittent flashes the last of the bodies were hauled from the battlefield and carried away.

While the rest of the army struggled to make fires in the wind and rain, Odysseus offered to take Peisandros back to the ships in his chariot. After a difficult journey in the darkness, they passed between the great mounds of the dead – fifty of them at least – and so came to the edge of the camp. By this time the storm had rolled westward towards the sea, and as a bolt of lightning parted the clouds the newly built walls sprang up from the other side of the ditch. They had already been raised to the height of a man and the rain-washed bricks gleamed wetly as the stark light bounced off them, before disappearing again and leaving only an impression of a deeper darkness where the walls had been. They reached a causeway marked by torches and guarded by bronze-clad soldiers, where Peisandros leapt down. He accepted Odysseus’s hand in farewell, as the blustering wind made words useless, and then the king turned his chariot around and sent the frightened horses back as fast as they would go to the ridge above the Scamander valley.

As the next day arrived, overcast but without rain, Agamemnon changed his mind about the wall and decided that every effort should now be thrown into making it higher and thicker, while the ditch before it should be dug deeper and filled with sharpened poles. Perhaps unnerved by the sight of the dead piled up on the plain beyond the camp, he ordered the army back from their positions overlooking the Scamander and set them to work on the defences. This caused resentment from the men who had fought to defend the ridge and strongly worded protests from their leaders, who knew the strategic value of such a position in the face of a Trojan army that was suddenly intent on facing them in the open. But Agamemnon refused to listen, insisting the men were needed to help build the wall and cut down hundreds of trees, to supply wood for the gates and the stakes, as well as provide fuel for the funeral pyres.

These were lit at midday and quickly filled the air with the stench of burning flesh. Great columns of black smoke twisted upwards to mingle with the low clouds, and shortly afterwards were followed by similar columns from Troy. The different Greek armies stood around the pyres where their comrades’ bodies were stacked and as the flames fed greedily the men raised their spears and shouted three times to the heavens. It was a shout of grief and despair, pride and defiance, and glorification of the dead. Once they had saluted the fallen they returned to their tasks, their already stiff limbs labouring hard in the sunless warmth. Eventually, as the sun went down on the second and final day of the truce, the wall was complete, its gates fitted and its ditch made almost uncrossable by man or horse. The Greeks set a line of pickets on the plain and more guards on the wall, then returned to their tents. Here they feasted and drank, easing their grief and tiredness with a newly arrived shipment of wine from Lemnos. As they lay down to sleep the sky rumbled with distant thunder, but no storm came and the rain held.

At dawn, the gates in the new wall were thrown open and the chariots of the Greek leaders dashed out, followed by endless columns of infantry and cavalry. They trudged over the causeways that bridged the ditch and formed up in dense blocks on the plain beyond with their standards trailing above them. Overhead, the skies were like an ocean of pale grey marble, streaked with skeins of darker cloud that twisted and curled across the face of the monotonous mass. The distant thunder of the previous evening still rumbled over the tortured surface of the Aegean, and as the army began its slow, all-consuming march towards Troy, the rain began to fall.

Eperitus heard the approach of the Trojan army long before any of the others and knew that they must have spent the night camped on the ridge where the previous battle had taken place. Now they were advancing across the pastureland towards them, and this time the Greeks would not have the advantage of the higher ground. Then, through the curtains of grey that swept west to east across the plain, he saw them: row upon row of shields, helmets and spears, shining dully in the pallid light that filtered from above. He called to Odysseus who, trusting to his captain’s eyesight, drove his chariot across the line towards Agamemnon. Soon, orders were being shouted and the whole army tensed like a muscle, the lines of warriors drawing closer together and their lumbering movement becoming suddenly tighter as their step found a unified rhythm. In contrast, the units of skirmishers moved forward at a run, losing any sense of formation as they spread out and pulled the bows from their backs.

Now every man in the army could see their foe in the near distance. The terrible fighting of three days before seemed to have had no effect on their numbers, as the wall of their shields spread in a long line across the plain, the threatening packs of cavalry only just visible on each flank. The skirmishers of both sides rushed into range and released deadly swarms of arrows at each other. Men fell thickly, their death cries strangely dampened by the hissing rain. But the main armies did not wait for the archery duel to be decided: kings and princes sent their chariots to the rear and led their men into battle on foot, quickening their pace as they passed through the archers and came within spear-shot of their hated enemies.