The Songs of the Kings: A Novel Page 10

  “How do you know what sign I had from the goddess? We do not speak together about such things.”

  The boy looked at him in silence for some moments with a deliberateness of regard unusual with him. “No,” he said, “it is true you do not tell me things. But you said things as you drew back from the fire, before the vomiting came. And then again, during the night.”

  “It was not the moment to speak of it.” A lie, as he knew in the cold depths of his heart, a lie to join the many he had told to this boy and others to disguise his faintness of purpose. The moment had been then, he had drawn back from it and it had gone. And he had lost favor even so. Self-contempt brought a wave of anger with it, anger against the boy before him, who showed his disappointment too obviously, too childishly. And with the anger there came again the desire to instruct, which is also the desire to destroy.

  “A story,” he said. “Do you think we have been telling stories back there?” He paused on this, however, his anger disappearing as abruptly as it had come. A kind of story it had been, not a contest of priests, nor even of gods, but a struggle for possession of the King’s mind. Who had the King’s mind would have the conduct of the war.

  Poimenos had cast his eyes down in awareness of being rebuked, but he made no answer. Calchas felt nothing now but weariness and the premonition of loss. “Will you leave me to myself for a while?” he said. “Go about the camp a little, try to learn the feelings of the people.”

  The boy obeyed, still in silence. Alone in the tent, Calchas strove to close his mind against the bitterness of defeat and the fear he felt for the future. He prayed in whispers to Pollein, god of blended natures, to act as peacemaker in this quarrel, reconcile the goddess and the god and restore the King’s favor to his diviner. For answer there was only the beat of his heart and the grieving of the wind as it searched among the scrub of the hillsides. And he was visited with an anguish worse than all his fear. In that voice of the wind there was no urgent will, no intention, no message of god or goddess, only a desolation as old as the hills themselves.

  7.

  This would be the moment,” Odysseus said. “Croton has done his stuff and come out with a whole skin—only just. Agamemnon has had time to absorb the shock and start thinking about the consequences of refusing. The consequences to him personally I mean.” He paused here, smiling a little. “That’s always the first thought, isn’t it?”

  “A great man like Agamemnon cannot think only in personal terms,” Chasimenos said. “He has to consider the people who depend on him.”

  “The people who depend on him, brilliant. Be sure to bring that in when we go over there.”

  The daylight was waning now, it would soon be dark. They were in Odysseus’s tent and kept their voices low in case of eavesdroppers. “People like you and me,” Odysseus said, still smiling. He was looking forward to the visit, it should offer a good field to his talents. “Strike while the bronze is hot. He won’t have had time to hit on an alternative, not with any firmness anyway. I know Agamemnon. He wants to decide for others but he needs advice on how to decide for himself.”

  “Timing is important, certainly,” Chasimenos said stiffly. He had sometimes noticed before a lack of due respect for Agamemnon in the other man’s words; and now that they were associates in this enterprise, Odysseus took less trouble to conceal it. This distressed him, but he tried not to show it, knowing that Odysseus, whose cruelty he had early recognized, enjoyed his distress and found it laughable in someone busily engaged in exploiting Agamemnon’s weaknesses. But to Chasimenos this was a cynical view, it was not what he was doing at all: he was working to bring out all that was best in Agamemnon, that quality of lordship which he lacked himself and knew to be there in his master, and which, with him aiding, could conquer the world. He had been in the palace service since the age of twelve, when he had been taken on as a page boy; he had worked his way up to a position of power and trust and he was devoted to the King’s person and his interests. With this great campaign, there was an opportunity for Mycenae, already the strongest kingdom in Greece, to control the approaches to the Euxine Sea, to found not just a string of trading posts but a vast maritime empire. He was stirred by this thought even now; and when he was stirred his speech became elevated. He said: “In view of the importance of the matters under consideration, it is hardly surprising that the King should take time to review all his options on the information currently available.”

  “Quite so, well said, this is a difficult moment for him, that’s what makes it a good time for us to go to work. For the common good, of course, always for the common good.” His smile came again, an engaging smile, slightly lopsided as it grew broader, wreathing his face in lines of good humor, though the eyes remained the same, at once watchful and calm. I’ll know the eyes of a twister from now on, Chasimenos thought. He knew he was on higher moral ground than the other, he was acting out of loyalty. Anyone who looked into his eyes would see the eyes of a faithful public servant.

  “Well, I am glad we see eye to eye in this business,” Odysseus said. He still could not quite believe his luck in having found such an ally, a man besotted with military power who had never worn a sword in his life, whose highest aim was to live in the light of another’s glory, who saw in this rabble of hostile factions and predatory chiefs the makings of a nation, the founders of an empire. Chasimenos would play his part, probably without fully knowing it, in the two-pronged assault Odysseus had in mind; he would soften the King’s defenses by defending him. Really neat. “We must take Nestor with us,” he said.

  Chasimenos frowned. “Is that really necessary? Nestor lost his marbles long ago. He’ll only keep interrupting us with this interminable saga of his exploits as a rustler.”

  “It’s not for the sake of anything he says, only to have him there. He’s an accustomed figure at all councils. Haven’t you noticed how he is brought out whenever there is an assembly of any kind? He puts a sort of stamp on the proceedings, an official endorsement. The Atreid brothers never change their view of things once it is formed, they are quite impervious to physical realities. Surely you must have seen that? Look at Menelaus, who goes on asserting that Helen was taken from him by force, as if only by force she could have been made to leave his side, when he is fat and short-legged and short-winded and Paris is like a god in looks and moreover Helen was what you might call easily led even before Paris came along. But Menelaus sticks to his story. It’s useful of course, it provides a pretext for the war. But he didn’t persuade himself to believe it, he believed it from the beginning. Questions of how Paris, alone and unaided, got an able-bodied woman— and Helen has an able body, we all know that—out of the palace and onto a ship against her will simply don’t come into it. And Agamemnon is just the same. Nestor is wise in council, he has to be present, the fact that he is in his second childhood is neither here nor there.”

  Odysseus paused and his smile faded. He had felt the touch of caution, like cold fingers laid on his mouth. He was talking too much and too fast and taking too much pleasure in it. His own fluency betrayed him sometimes, when he felt the sort of excitement that possessed him now, the prospect, through words alone, of prevailing over another mind, using the fears and desires of that mind to disarm and control it. “It’s peculiar, all the same,” he said, “that we should depend for legality on a doddering old cattle raider.”

  “And Nestor’s sons? They accompany him everywhere.”

  “No reason why they shouldn’t be present. Pylos is a close ally of Mycenae, they have the same need for cheap metals, the same need to expand their markets. They are strongly in favor of the war. Besides, we will need witnesses when the King, you know, undertakes to do what we urge on him, agrees to embark on the required course of action, what’s the word I’m looking for?”

  “Commits himself.”

  “Commits himself, brilliant. Menelaus should be there too, I think. He is stupid but he has some influence with his brother. Can you see that these pe
ople are sent for?”

  So it was decided. In the gathering darkness of the summer night, by the light of torches guarded from the wind, these several people began to make their way towards Agamemnon’s tent; while Calchas prayed for reconciliation and heard only sorrow; while Croton and his acolytes went about the camp with the standard of the Armed God, proclaiming Iphigeneia a witch; while Poimenos sat by a different fire, close to the Singer, listening to the second episode of Perseus and the Gorgon repeated by popular request.

  He had missed it in the morning, much to his disappointment, getting back too late from the island. As soon as his master had gone into the meeting, he had hurried across to the outcrop of rock where the Singer was almost always to be found, but by then the morning stories were over, there was only a news item to the effect that Zeus was now believed to be the sender of the wind and that according to informed sources Agamemnon was in some way involved. This evening, however, left to his own devices at an ideal moment, just the time people were gathering to listen, he had been able to get in at the beginning. He had listened spellbound to the story of the bronze giant Talus, guardian of Crete, who was kept alive by a single vein closed at the ankle by a bronze nail. And now he was absorbed in the continuing adventures of Perseus, who was on his way to do battle with the hideous Medusa. In his usual place, just behind the Singer, facing the audience, he was close to the heart of the Songs.

  The Singer, unusually, had permitted this closeness from the start. He was glad now that the boy was back. For one thing, he was obviously a good forager, though this time he had brought nothing with him; and such listening as his gave power to the Song, though this one, of course, was a winner anyway. The Singer felt in full command of his material, both form and content, as he related the visit of Athena to Perseus and how she told him of certain weapons he would need for the encounter with the Gorgon. There were those who held that the goddess actually described these weapons and told the hero where they were. There were others who believed that Athena did not possess this information. Both views were equally mistaken. She knew but she did not tell him. Why not? The answer was simple: a hero cannot take shortcuts. All Athena told him was where he could go to find out.

  Following her instructions, Perseus made his way to the Libyan mountains. Here, in the depths of a cave, he found the Graeae. These were two hags who had been born with gray hair and had only a single eye and a single tooth between them. Naturally, they quarreled all the time over these. Perseus acted casual, waited for the right moment, then, quick as a flash, he snatched the eye as one of the crones was passing it to the other. They went groping round the cave to get at him with their nails, but he avoided them easily. “Now,” he said, “enough of this fooling around. If you want your eye back, you’d better tell me what I want to know, otherwise I’ll throw it into Lake Tritonis. Don’t think I’m joking. I mean what I say.” So they were obliged to tell him where the nymphs were who kept the weapons Athena had spoken of. These were river nymphs, they lived in the waters of the Styx, so Perseus had to make a trip into the Underworld in order to visit them, but they readily gave him the things he asked for.

  And what were these? Most people in the audience could have answered this question, but there would have been general outrage at any attempt to take this knowledge for granted and cut the story short. It was familiarity that cast the spell, everything was savored in advance. The Singer knew this well, knew he couldn’t take shortcuts any more than Perseus. A pouch to sling over the shoulder; a pair of sandals fitted with wings which enabled him to fly; the cap of darkness which rendered him totally invisible as soon as he put it on his head. Then Hermes appeared and gave him the assault weapon, a sickle made of adamant, razor-edged, unbreakable. He kept his own shield, which was of bronze and highly polished. Fitted out from head to foot, he flew off to find the Gorgons.

  There in his privileged position, at the source of the words, Poimenos felt his soul expand with wonder. Often it was the lesser details that absorbed him, filling his mind long after the song was over, things that the Singer did not mention or passed over quickly. Those two gray-haired babies, lying side by side, who had been the guardian of the eye and tooth? What was adamant? Why did Hermes give Perseus a sickle rather than a sword? What was the pouch for?

  Now, as the Singer observed the customary dramatic pause, striking slow notes on his lyre, Poimenos observed the angle of the head, the set of the shoulders. Slowly, almost stealthily, he adjusted his own body to an exact imitation. And it was in this posture, carefully maintained, that he listened to the rest of the wonderful story. The lair of the Gorgons was set in a strange forest of petrified forms, men and animals turned to stone by the glances of the terrible sisters. Perseus avoided this fate by keeping his eyes on the polished surface of his shield, which reflected the scene like a mirror. No one had told him to do this, it was his own idea. Wearing the cap of darkness, he soon tracked down the hideous sisterhood, with their hands of brass and wings of gold, their huge lolling tongues between swine’s tusks, their heads permanently writhing with snakes. He waited till they were asleep, then crept up on Medusa. The other two were immortal, so he didn’t bother with them. He had to move fast. Keeping her in view by means of the shield, he severed her head with a single stroke of the sickle, stuffed it into his pouch and took off. The other two rose up, but how could they pursue an enemy they couldn’t see? All they could do was return to the corpse and fly screaming round it.

  Poimenos sat on, still in the same posture, while the Singer fell silent and the wind raised its voice again, echoing the lamentation of the Gorgons. His mind was flooded by the story. So that was what the pouch was for. And the sickle, perfect for close quarters, it would almost encircle the neck, one sweep, bam. Everything had been thought of. It hadn’t been a contest at all really. She would never have known what hit her. Careful planning, backed up by the most advanced equipment available, a tale of triumph. However, it was not the homeward-speeding hero that engaged the boy’s mind, but the two grieving monsters, flapping round the headless corpse and screaming, screaming. The more deadly and ugly they were, the more he felt their sorrow.

  And so, that evening, without fully realizing it, Poimenos joined the addicts, passed for the first time into the true, un-governed realm of story, where the imagination is paramount, taking us to places not intended, often not foreseen, by the framers of the words and the makers of the music.

  8.

  Menelaus was already there when the self-appointed delegation arrived. Nestor, accompanied by his two sons, came in soon afterwards. Agamemnon had left his chair of state and was half reclining on a couch of cushions, an oil lamp with a fretwork guard close beside him on a low stand, as if he wanted to keep near to the source of light. There were no soldiers inside the tent, only two attendants, neither of them armed; a good sign, Odysseus immediately thought: if Agamemnon did not feel in danger of human harm, it must be because he believed himself to be in the hands of Zeus.

  The attendant brought cushions and the King motioned his visitors to be seated. There followed a brief period of waiting, the silence of respect, while they listened to the rippling detonations made by the canvas, sounds that would swell and fall as the night wind breathed and paused and breathed again. The flame swayed inside the delicate grid of the guard and bolts of light flickered like lizards over the walls.

  Chasimenos began. This had been agreed beforehand; he was the one most trusted. He spoke of the danger of mutiny among the troops, the growing popularity of Palamedes, the Carian, son of Nauplius. “A fellow countryman of Calchas,” he said, infusing his tone with significance—it never came amiss to hint at conspiracy. “I have sent people out through the camp. Whatever the fireside, the talk is always the same. Croton’s messages are repeated. You are blamed for the wind because of the malpractices of Iphigeneia. They say that if Palamedes were leader, we would be free of the wind.”

  They had chosen Palamedes from among several possible contenders be
cause he was generally liked, and known to be ambitious. Also he was clever. In the Songs he was credited with having while still a youth invented the game of dice, which had become very popular of late years. Odysseus detested him because of a malicious story he had put about, one which still found its way into the Songs, that the Ithacan had tried to dodge the war by feigning madness, yoking a horse to an ox and attempting to plow with them. For this slander, he had sworn to kill Palamedes one day. For the moment, however, he kept these feelings to himself.

  “Palamedes,” Agamemnon said. “A slack-wristed fellow if ever I saw one.” His insomniac eyes moved slowly from one face to another. “I could split him down the middle,” he said. “If the people blame me for this misfortune of the wind, that is only natural, I am the leader, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame of a thousand men.” He had become enraged as he spoke. He ground his teeth and his eyes flashed. “Who says I have not shoulders broad enough to bear the blame of a thousand men?”

  “No one would dare to say that, my brother, not about either of us,” Menelaus said. “We were born to command, we are the eagle kings.” He was shorter than his brother and inclining to fat and sometimes his words came accompanied by a wheezing sound, as if there were some clogging in his lungs. “Eagle kings,” he said, “swooping down on Troy on strong pinions to revenge the rape of my Helen and teach these snotty-nosed Asians a lesson they’ll never forget.”

  “My lord,” Chasimenos said, “greatest of men, excuse me, shoulders are not the issue here. Atlas had broad shoulders and look where it got him. It’s not so much a question of enduring the blame as atoning for the guilt. You have incurred pollution through Iphigeneia, whereas Palamedes has respected the altars of Zeus. Moreover, his father was one of that band of heroes who sailed with Jason on the Argo in the quest for the Golden Fleece. That’s the sort of thing that is bound to look impressive on a person’s CV.” He stopped short at this; but everyone there knew that Atreus, the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, had a record far from heroic, having murdered the children of his own brother, even though they had taken refuge in the temple of Zeus, and afterwards served them up in a stew to their unsuspecting father.