THE WAR AT TROY
Lindsay Clarke

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain as part of The War at Troy by HarperCollinsPublishers 2004

Copyright © Lindsay Clarke 2004

Map © Hardlines Ltd.

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Lindsay Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008371067

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008371050

Version: 2019-09-25

Dedication

For

Sean, Steve, Allen and Charlie

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Phemius Resumes His Task

The Gathering

The Years of the Snake

The Altar at Aulis

The Wrath of Achilles

A Duel in the Rain

An Offer of Peace

The Price of Honour

The Gods at War

Murder at the Shrine

A Horse for Athena

The Phantasm

Glossary of characters

Acknowledgements

Also by Lindsay Clarke

About the Publisher

Map

Phemius Resumes His Task

The tale has already been told of how, in service of Aphrodite and of the impetuous passion of his heart, Prince Paris of Troy voyaged to Sparta more than half a century ago. No voyage before or since that time has ever proved more disastrous in its consequences, for it was there, in breach of all claims of friendship and the laws of hospitality, that Paris won the love of the lady Helen and persuaded her to abandon for his sake both her devoted husband, Menelaus, and her daughter, Hermione. It is my task now to relate what befell all the lands and peoples of both Argos and Troy in the turbulent wake of that fateful voyage.

The scroll on which I write was one of a number which my friend Telemachus brought back for me as a gift when he too made a voyage to Sparta, seeking news of his father Odysseus many years after the fall of Troy. Even as those scrolls lay untouched across the decades since then, I Phemius, bard of Ithaca, knew that one day they were destined to contain my chronicles of Odysseus. For that reason they have always been among my most treasured possessions. The scroll on which I now write will tell as truthfully as I can the tales of triumph and defeat, of glory, suffering and grief, which together make up the tragic history of the war that Lord Odysseus and his comrades fought at Troy.

The Gathering

News of Helen’s flight from Sparta with her Trojan lover Paris travelled across Argos faster than a pestilence.

Sitting by the fire in their various strongholds, men remembered the dreadful oath they had sworn on the bloody joints of Poseidon’s horse, and pondered what they would do when Agamemnon’s heralds came – as come they must – to demand that their pledge be honoured. Menelaus’ own immediate vassals were in no doubt. For them, the loss of Helen festered like a wound. She was their sacred queen, the priestess of their rites, the living heart of Sparta. She was their totem of beauty in an often ugly world, and it was hard for them to believe that such grace had willingly abandoned them. Witchcraft must have been at work, or some malice of the gods. Helen had been abducted by force or spirited away. Menelaus had proved to be a generous and kindly king, and now, in this adversity, he commanded their loyalty. If it would take a war to force the return of their Queen, then let there be war. Was there ever more noble cause for a man to lay down his life than the rescue of the Lady Helen?

Others beyond the Lacadaemonian hills awaited the call with less enthusiasm. Troy was far away across an unpredictable sea, somewhere east of common sense. They had troubles enough without bothering their heads over a younger brother’s faithless wife. And, yes, they might indeed have sworn an oath before Poseidon’s altar, but that had been to protect Menelaus from their envy, not to go chasing after a wanton who no longer wished to share the pleasures of his bed!

If a man failed to look to his wife, what was that to them? It had been folly to invite the Trojans into his house, madness to leave a beauty like Helen alone with them. Against such stupidity the gods themselves were helpless.

Such sentiments were not murmured in the High King’s presence, but his spies caught wind of them, and it wasn’t long before Agamemnon began to suspect that, with only his brother’s interests directly threatened, mounting a force large enough to take on the power of Troy might prove harder than he had guessed.

Some of the difficulties had declared themselves even before the sons of Atreus left Crete. Once apprised of the situation, Deucalion had been fulsome in his sympathies for Menelaus – so much so that his manner drifted perilously close to gloating – but when Agamemnon sounded him out for support in their war against Troy, the Lord of the Labyrinth proved less immediately forthcoming. Yes, he felt in his own heart the gross insult that Troy had given to all Argos, but times were hard. He would have to think carefully before committing the already stretched resources of the House of the Axe to a distant campaign in which there might be much to lose. Since Theseus had reduced his country to a mere vassal-state of Athens, there had been little appetite for war among the barons of Crete. They already knew too much about its costs. At the very least, a council would be required, and though Deucalion would do what he could to sway its deliberations, the Atreides brothers must understand that the power of the Minoan throne was not what it had once been. For the moment, alas, he could promise nothing.

Agamemnon came fuming from the meeting. ‘That old bastard is the rat-king of a rotten country,’ he growled. ‘Small wonder Crete fell so easily into Theseus’ lap! But I’ve had my eyes open while we’ve been here! He may be the true heir of a degenerate father and a depraved mother but he’s a lot less needy than he makes out. With Theseus gone, and only Menestheus to answer to in Athens, Crete is on the rise again. Deucalion has ships, and he knows we need them. But he’s also thinking that if Argos and Troy wear each other out in a long war, then Crete might find scope to command the seas once more.’Agamemnon glared across at his brother. ‘We’ll have to teach him that he may have more to lose by staying out than by coming in.’

Menelaus nodded. ‘But were you watching Idomeneus while we spoke? I’m sure he despises his father. We should talk to him separately.’

‘You think we might set them against one another?’

‘It could do no harm to try. Idomeneus and I are friends. He was among the first who swore to aid me. His father has lived too long, and he’s been restless and ambitious for some time now. I think he might like a war.’

‘I see you’re learning, brother,’ Agamemnon smiled. ‘Hate is a mighty teacher,’

Shortly after his return to Argos, Agamemnon called his principal allies to a council of war in the great hall of the Lion House in Mycenae. Menelaus was there, bitter and gloomy still, having found his empty bedchamber in Sparta too desolate a place to bear. Nestor, king of Pylos, was among the first to arrive, already in his sixties but valiant and eloquent as ever. He was at pains to assure the Atreides brothers that, at this painful hour, they could rely on all he had to give in the way of wise counsel and military support. He was joined in those sympathies by Palamedes, Prince of Euboea, who was authorized to put the resources of his father Nauplius at the High King’s disposal, and by the Argive hero Diomedes, who had always been so infatuated with love for Helen that he took her abduction as a personal slight. Like Menelaus, Diomedes was a devotee of Athena, and after the two men had wept together for a while, he told the bereft King of Sparta that the goddess had assured him in a dream of her special protection for the eighty ships he would commit to the war against Troy.

Others of the High King’s vassals began to arrive through the Lion Gate. Some were openly eager for the venture, others discreetly kept their counsel, preferring to watch which way the wind was blowing. But on the whole, things seemed to be going well when news came of two unexpected setbacks.

Agamemnon had been counting on the warlike temper of Telamon to put fire into any of the princes who might query the wisdom of an assault on Troy. The old warhorse knew the city well. He had sacked it once and grown rich on the pickings. It was a sore blow, therefore, when news came from Salamis that Telamon had collapsed after a rowdy banquet on the night before he was due to cross to the mainland. Though his breathing was heavy and he had lost the power of speech, the old man was still alive. His son Ajax and his stepson Teucer were at his bedside, praying to Apollo the Healer for his full recovery.

The herald they sent in their place promised that the island would fit out six vessels for the venture. But Agamemnon cursed the ill luck that had deprived him of a man whose experience and forceful character was worth far more to him at that moment than a handful of ships.

The news out of Ithaca was still more dispiriting – so much so that the brothers went into private conference with Nestor before breaking it to the assembled warlords. The message came not with a herald but in a small bronze canister tied about a pigeon’s leg. It came with the excuse that storms were blowing round the coast of Ithaca, and went on to tell how Odysseus and Penelope grieved to hear of their Cousin Helen’s defection. They understood why, in his righteous anger, Menelaus might wish to take violent revenge on Troy, but wasn’t it the case that the treachery had been the fault of a single man, not a whole city? Should any act of retaliation not be proportionate therefore? While their own loyalty to the High King was never in question, it was their considered opinion that the Atreides brothers would be wise to wait upon King Priam’s response to their envoys before harnessing their power to a war that might prove long and arduous. Helen had acted rashly, yes, but that was no reason for her husband, who was always assured of their love and deepest sympathy, to do the same.

Agamemnon smacked the paper with his hand. ‘The villain is looking to his own interests as usual. He got what he wanted when he came to Sparta. Now he thinks he can lie back, counting his blessings, and let the rest of us go hang.’

Still raw from the humiliation of his wound, Menelaus had listened touchily to the unwelcome homily out of Ithaca. ‘Do we need him?’ he frowned now. ‘Ithaca’s far to the west and hardly fit for goats to graze on. If our cousin doesn’t want to come, let him rot at home.’

‘It’s not just Ithaca.’ Agamemnon got up and began to pace the chamber. ‘All the Ionian islands look to him. If the Lords of Same, Dulichium, and Zacynthus get to hear he won’t come, why should they stir their stumps? This could cost us a thousand men. And Odysseus isn’t just some bare-arsed sheep-farmer with more balls than brains. He’s a thinker. A strategist. The best strategist we’ve got – with the exception of old Nestor here. Of course we need him!’

Nestor had been dandling Agamemnon’s small daughter Iphigeneia on his knee as he waited for the rant to end. Now he took her fingers from his mouth and lifted his silver head. ‘Odysseus doesn’t actually say that he won’t come,’ he offered quietly. ‘He merely suggests we wait to hear what your envoys report.’

‘We know well enough what they’ll say! If Priam’s feeling strong, it’ll be a defiant jibe about not getting much help from us in the matter of his sister. If he’s not, then expect some appeasing diplomatic pribble-prabble. Either way, it’s what I want to hear. There’s never going to be a better time to take on Troy than this.’

‘And Odysseus knows you think this way?’ Nestor asked, stroking the small girl’s curls where she nestled against him, sucking her thumb, with large eyes following her father’s strides as he paced the floor.

‘Of course he does. He’s no fool. We’ve always shared intelligence on our raids. He knew what I was thinking a long time ago. But that was before he married and settled down and got lazy. I preferred him as a rogue and pirate! So did most of the princes of Argos, if truth were told. None of them much liked the oath he got them all to swear at the wedding but they admired his cunning!’ Agamemnon sat down again, drumming the fingers of both hands on the table. ‘The man has genius! He’s wasted watching sheep on that barren rock. Somehow we’ve got to prise him out of that great bed he boasts of.’

‘Then let me go and talk to him,’ Menelaus said. ‘After all, it was he who set things up so that I could marry Helen in the first place.’

‘But it’s hardly his fault if it went wrong!’Agamemnon scowled. Though Helen’s defection had provided him with just the excuse for war that he had needed, he still felt the sting of humiliation that it brought on the House of Atreus. ‘Odysseus didn’t know you were going to let some Trojan stallion have the run of your house – any more than I did.’

At that point old Nestor looked up from the child whose smiling face had crumpled at the rising voices. He raised a magisterial finger, which silenced both brothers without offending either, then said, ‘Would the sons of Atreus care to hear my thoughts on this matter, or shall Iphigeneia and I leave you to brawl at your leisure?’

‘Speak up,’ Agamemnon said. ‘It’s why I need you here.’

‘Very well. Consider this. We all know that Odysseus is no coward! Something else must be keeping him at home. The last I heard from the island it was rumoured that Penelope was with child again. The letter says nothing of this, but if his wife is coming close to term, Odysseus would surely keep it to himself lest some evil fate cause yet another miscarriage.’

Agamemnon scratched his beard and looked across at the spoiled favourite among his own children, who had slipped down from Nestor’s knee as he was speaking and was now trying to pull the old man away to play with her outside. ‘Not now,’ her father frowned. ‘Be patient or I’ll send you away.’ He looked back up at Nestor. ‘If you’re right, and Penelope does bring the child to term, we could have a hard time winkling him off the island. What do you suggest?’

‘My first thought,’ Nestor answered, ‘is that you say nothing to the other princes about this. Tell them only that the weather over Ithaca is foul and Odysseus saw no need to make the long journey to Mycenae at this time, but is content to wait for further instructions.’ Nestor smiled and gave a suave little shrug. ‘After all, it’s not so far off the truth.’ Holding the little girl gently by the slender stems of her wrists, he clapped her hands as she laughed. ‘Then once the council is over, and they’ve gone back to rally their troops, let Menelaus go to Ithaca, but not alone. He should take someone guileful with him. Someone who can match wits with the wily Ithacan. I’m thinking of Palamedes. He’s a young man still, but he’s clever, and he’s committed to the cause. He may be just the fellow we need.’

As the story now turns to Ithaca, I Phemius, may be forgiven for introducing a personal note, for though I cannot yet have been five years old when Menelaus came to our small island, I still recall the feast that Odysseus held to celebrate the birth of his son. That day my father, the bard Terpis, sang before the gathered people. I remember swelling like a bullfinch in my pride, and thinking that if one could not be a prince, then the next best fate was to be a poet and sing for men and gods. I remember the sunlight through the plane trees, and the thick caress of honey on my tongue. And I tell myself also that there is a picture of Odysseus in my mind, happiest of men that day, wearing vine leaves in his hair and dancing lightly to the throb of the lyre like a breathing statue of a god.

I cannot truthfully say that I remember anything about the arrival of Menelaus and Palamedes. What I know of that fateful encounter I learned much later from the lips of Penelope when she told the story to Telemachus one day. He and I were almost young men by then and had long been friends of the heart. It was a grief to Telemachus that he had no memories of his father, and a greater grief that his mother was already under siege from several suitors. Angered by their manner, he had again demanded to know why his father had abandoned them alone on Ithaca to pursue the madness of the war at Troy. I was sitting beside him as his mother answered, and I think I learned the true tale of what happened when Menelaus and Palamedes came to Ithaca. It is a little different from the tale the people tell, for they attribute to a ruse of madness what was, in fact, a craziness of grief occasioned by an oracle.

That story tells how Odysseus was so unwilling to go to war that he tried to convince Menelaus he had lost his wits. Dressing himself like a peasant, he yoked an ox and an ass to his plough and began to sow his field with salt. Only when Palamedes snatched Telemachus from his mother and threw him in front of the ploughshare did Odysseus act in a way that betrayed his ruse.

The truth is subtler and more painful.

The whole island was so drunk with joy and merriment that day that the ship beating in off the mainland docked unnoticed for a time. As they climbed from the cove through the heat of the afternoon to look for Odysseus in the palace, Menelaus and Palamades heard the sounds of song and laughter drifting down the hill. They caught the hot smell of an ox roasting on the spit and knew that old Nestor had been right in his speculation: the Prince of Ithaca had an heir at last.

The feast itself, however, was more rustic than they would have guessed. Laertes, father of Odysseus and Lord of Ithaca, sat in state on a carved throne that had been carried out of the palace and placed under a vine-thatched awning, from where he stroked his beard and beamed on the happy throng. His plump wife Anticlea sat beside him, nursing a swaddled, week-old infant in her lap as she chatted with the women who gathered about her, cooing at the sleeping babe. But Odysseus and Penelope were indistinguishable from the dancing shepherds and their wives. Only when the music stopped and the line broke up in laughter and applause did Menelaus recognize the short, bandy-legged man in a homespun tunic who stepped forward with his hands spread in welcome.

‘The King of Sparta honours us,’ he cried and the crowd’s gasp became a din of excited chatter, while under the crown of vine-leaves, the eyes of Odysseus glittered with pleasure and defiance.

Penelope came to stand beside him, as graceful in her simple rural dress as she had been in her royal robes at Sparta. Though her thoughts had darkened at the sight of Menelaus, there was no sign of it about her face, which was tanned and glowing. Nor was there anything of Helen’s sultry enchantment about her smile. She might have been a dairymaid had it not been for her unflustered poise in the presence of a king, and the regal lines of her high-boned cheeks.

‘Be welcome in our house, my lords,’ she said. ‘You come at a happy time.’

‘So I see, so I see.’ Menelaus bowed towards Laertes and Anticlea, who dipped their heads in shy acknowledgement. Then he stepped forward to take Penelope warmly in his arms. ‘My dear, I am so very happy for you at last. It was more than time that the gods favoured you.’

‘But they have already blessed me with a loving husband and a good life here on Ithaca,’ she answered. ‘Now we have a son to make our happiness complete.’

Menelaus observed the hint of wariness in her smile but turned away from it to greet her husband. He clapped his arms about the smaller man’s shoulders and squeezed him like a bear. ‘You’re a lucky man, Odysseus.’ And at the unspoken contrast between the evident happiness around him and the bitter condition of his own marriage, a surge of grief and self-pity rose from his chest to his throat. For an instant, with his face pressed against that of his friend, the King of Sparta was blinking back tears.

Odysseus was the first to pull away. ‘Surely you’ll admit that I deserve no less?’ he laughed. ‘Come, you and your companion must wet the baby’s head.’

‘This must be his naming day. How shall we call him?’

‘Telemachus,’ Odysseus answered proudly.

‘Decisive Battle,’ Menelaus smiled. ‘A good name and a good omen!’

With a reassuring glance at Penelope, Odysseus looked over Menelaus’s shoulder at the vaguely familiar figure of a fashionably dressed young man, whose sharp, deep-set eyes were taking in the up-country, sheep-fair feel of the festivities. Menelaus gestured to his companion. ‘You remember Palamedes, son of Nauplius of Euboea? He was with us in Sparta for the wedding.’

Smiling, Palamedes took the proffered hand. ‘We seem to meet on lively occasions, Lord Odysseus. I was one of those you forced to stand barefoot on bloody horse-meat and swear undying loyalty to this fellow here.’

‘I remember it well,’ Odysseus smiled back. ‘I also remember losing money at your game of dice and stones! And now I hear tell you’ve invented a new system of measures and weights on Euboea. Come, take some wine, and tell me about it. Where’s young Sinon gone with the carving-knife? My friends here need meat. Make room at the benches there.’ But neither man had missed the brisk chill of incipient hostility that passed invisibly between them, as though, for a moment, they had stood in each other’s shadow and shut out the sun.

Late that night, Odysseus sat up with Menelaus and Palamedes on a balcony overlooking the cliff where they could hear the sea toiling on both sides of the narrow isthmus. A few merrymakers still sang at the benches under the trees. The baby had been washed and suckled and put down some hours earlier but Odysseus knew that Penelope would still be awake on the bed of olive-wood that he had built for them with his own hands when he first brought her to Ithaca. Weary as he was, he did not expect to see much sleep that night, but right now he was prepared to wait.

These men had sought him out. Let them begin.

Menelaus, who had been sitting with his eyes closed as he rubbed his knuckles across his brow, heaved a large sigh and stretched his legs. ‘Need I say that we were disappointed by your response to Agamemnon’s summons?’

Odysseus pursed his lips in an arch tilt of the head.

‘We were counting on you for at least sixty ships,’ said Palamedes.

‘You have seen how small my island is,’ Odysseus answered, smiling still. ‘If you can find sixty ships here you may keep four fifths of them, with my blessing.’

‘No doubt other ships await your word on Same, Dulichium and Zacynthus.’

Odysseus arched his brows. ‘Agamemnon has all the hosts of Argos at his command. The Cretan fleet will almost certainly join with him since he’s set Idomeneus against his father, and here you are with the might of Euboea and Sparta. So why would you need to trouble the peace of our dull sheepfolds?’

‘You seem to be well informed,’ Palamedes smiled.

‘I try to keep my ears open.’

Menelaus cleared his throat. ‘Be straight with us, Odysseus. It’s you we need.’

Palamedes picked up the jug from the table. On the excuse that his stomach had been weakened by the sea-passage, he had drunk very little, but he poured more wine into his host’s goblet now. ‘Your reputation for courage and cunning reaches far across the Aegean. Where Odysseus goes, others will follow.’

‘Then let them follow my example and stay at home.’

‘I can’t do that,’ said Menelaus. ‘I can’t just let her go.’

Odysseus studied the anguish in his friend’s eyes for a long moment. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and my heart bleeds for you. But surely there are better ways to catch a stray mare than setting fire to the forest? Surely this whole wretched affair could be managed through negotiation? Telamon can have no use for Hesione now that he’s bed-ridden. It’s time he saw reason. Let there be an exchange of hostages. That’s the way to get Helen back.’ He paused, remembering how proud Menelaus had been that day in Sparta: then added, ‘—if you still want her, that is.’

Menelaus took a swig at his wine and glanced away. ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘Why?’ Odysseus demanded. ‘Because your heart is so badly wounded that only blood will heal it? Or because your brother’s mind is set on war?’

When Menelaus did not answer, Palamedes said, ‘The Trojans gave Menelaus their word that they came as friends to Argos seeking peace. This war is of their making. It surprises me that the Prince of Ithaca shows so little stomach for the enterprise. Agamemnon led me to believe that you and he have often talked together of taking Troy. Is that not so?’

‘Yes, it’s so. Just as I once talked with Theseus about sailing westwards round the coast of Africa just to see what was there! I was a younger man then, and full of idle dreams.’

Palamedes said, ‘There is nothing idle in the thought of taking Troy. It has been done.’

‘Yes, and Telamon never stops bragging about it! What he always fails to mention is that the Earthshaker had already flattened the city and salted the land with a great wave before he and Heracles came. And that was thirty years ago at a time when the Trojans were so desperate they were ready to propitiate the gods with human sacrifice. Things have changed since then. Priam has built a mighty city on the ruins of his father’s town. And the Dardanians, Mysians, Lydians, and Lycians have all grown wealthy with him. He might even be able to call on the Amazons and the Hatti empire beyond the Red River further east.’ Odysseus forestalled interruption. ‘You’re quite correct, my friend. I did think about taking Troy once – until I saw it for the madness that it was. Heed my counsel and stick to your dice – the odds are more in your favour there.’

Palamedes was eager to retort but Menelaus reached out a hand to restrain him. ‘This isn’t like you, Odysseus,’ he said. ‘I’ve never known danger or difficulties knock the heart out of you before.’

‘My heart is strong enough. So is my brain. Also I have a wife now, and a son.’

‘Menelaus also has a wife,’ Palamedes said, ‘and so do many men. If all of them thought as you do, then our Trojan friends would feel free to ravish their wives at leisure. Who knows but that your own might not be next?’

Odysseus narrowed his eyes. ‘This has been a happy day, my lords, and we have drunk much wine.’ He got to his feet. ‘You are the guests of my house. I think it better that we sleep than that we quarrel.’

‘We’re not looking for a quarrel,’ Menelaus said. ‘It’s your help I need. All Argos needs it. I thought you were my friend, Odysseus.’

‘I am. And as your friend I counsel you against this madness.’ Odysseus looked down to where the surf was breaking white in the moonlight at the foot of the cliff. Then he sighed, shook his head, and seemed to reach a decision. ‘I knew you would be coming, and I knew what you would ask. Even before Agamemnon summoned me to Mycenae, I had taken the omens on this matter.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘That a war against Troy would drag on for ten years before it ended.’

Menelaus winced. ‘Who gave you this judgement?’

After a moment’s hesitation Odysseus said, ‘It came to me in a dream.’

‘Ah,’ said Palamedes, ‘a dream!’

‘A dream which I took to the oracle on our island. The old priestess there serves Earth-Mother Dia. She has snake wisdom and second sight. It was she who read the meaning of the dream for me.’

Palamedes smiled into his wine-cup. ‘Stranger and stranger!’

Menelaus said, ‘My own soothsayers at the Bronze House in Sparta have assured me that Helen will return. They said nothing of it taking so long.’ He took in the shrug with which Odysseus looked away. Both men knew well enough that it was not unknown for priests to prophesy what their masters wished to hear.

In the silence Palamedes said, ‘So will you share this portentous dream with us?’ Odysseus looked away from him to Menelaus, who glanced up from his wine-cup with entreaty in his eyes. The Euboean added, ‘Or must the princes of Argos be left to think that Odysseus stays at home because he has bad dreams?’

Without looking at him, Odysseus sat down again. When he spoke it was to neither of these difficult guests but to the night glittering above him and the dark sea below.

‘In the dream I had yoked an ox and an ass to my plough and was scattering salt over my shoulder in the furrows as I worked the land. At the end of the tenth furrow I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of an infant boy that somebody had thrown before my ploughshare.’

There was a lull in the singing from the benches and the silence felt louder now. The two other men waited, but Odysseus said no more.

‘That was it?’ said Menelaus.

Odysseus nodded grimly.

‘A droll dream,’ said Palamedes. ‘What did your wise-woman make of it? Not that Menelaus was the ox and myself the ass, I trust?’

Odysseus refused to rise to the jibe. ‘Diotima knew without my telling her that war with Troy was much on my mind. She reminded me that the ox is Zeus’s beast of summer and the ass the winter beast of Cronos. Each furrow in my dream stands for a year. To sow them with salt means ten wasted years.’ He fixed his eyes on the two men. ‘Diotima prophesied two other things: that I would shortly have a son, and that the decisive battle for Troy would not come until ten years had been thrown away. Her first prophecy has already come to pass.’

‘So the dream also gave your son his name,’ Palamedes smiled. ‘A powerful dream, it seems, as well as droll – if your old lady of the snakes has it right.’

Odysseus said, ‘I for one would not care to argue with the Earth Mother.’

‘No more would I. But oracles and dreams are both notorious riddlers. What if the furrows represented not years but months? Might not ten summer months and ten winter months be encompassed within two years?’

Menelaus, about whom gloom had gathered like a pall, instantly brightened at the suggestion. ‘Two years! That seems a more reasonable estimate for a campaign against Troy – especially with Odysseus there to help us win it.’

‘And little Telemachus would hardly have gained the power of speech by then.’ Palamedes glanced at Menelaus. ‘I see his mother suckles him at her own breast, so all our friend would miss would be such pleasure in his wife as two years of sleepless nights allowed him.’

‘When you are the shrine-priest at an oracle,’ Odysseus said grimly, ‘I may look to you for guidance. Meanwhile, I shall trust the earth-wisdom of my homeland gods.’ But there was less confidence in his thoughts than in his voice.

Once again he got up and was about to bid his guests good night when Palamedes said, ‘I have been thinking about your son.’

‘What of him?’

‘That one day he will be king here – and a brave warrior, one hopes.’

‘I don’t for a moment doubt it,’ Odysseus said.

‘But will it not be great shame for him when he sails to Argos then and hears the songs of the noble deeds that were done in the war at Troy by the fathers of other men, yet cannot call upon the harper to sing of what was done by Ithaca?’

Odysseus stood in silence, his head swimming with the wine. He stared down at the ground beneath his feet as though it was already turning to salt and he could see his infant son abruptly thrown beneath a ploughshare there.

Palamedes began to speak again, that dry, suavely insidious voice, through which an ironic intellect glittered like a blade. ‘And will not those other kings have good cause to wonder why Odysseus dared to give his son such a proud name when he lacked the heart to honour the pledge that he himself had devised, and fight on his friend’s behalf in the decisive battle?’

For a moment, such was the sudden blaze of rage inside him, Odysseus could have picked up this angular young man by the throat and thrown him over the cliff. But he heard the sea-surge sounding in his ears, and the ground might have been trembling under his feet. So he was held where he stood by the knowledge that, though he had never been counted among the contenders for Helen’s hand, he too had been required to stand upon a bloody portion of the King Horse in Sparta. He too had asked Earthshaker Poseidon to bring ruin on his land should he fail to keep his oath to Menelaus. And he had done so at this man’s urging.

A brief, self-mocking laugh broke harshly from his lips, and such was his sense of the irony of the gods that it was edged already with a bitter premonition of the anguish that was to come.

By the time he arrived in Mycenae, Odysseus was back in his right mind once more, but the interim had been a vertiginous descent to the bottom of his soul such as he was not to experience again till he began, ten years later, the long return from Troy.

In the end, I suspect, it was Penelope herself who freed him from the dilemma that was tearing him apart, though she never said as much. Always poised and self-possessed, she would say only that before Menelaus and Palamedes took ship for the mainland, her husband had pledged to bring a thousand of his Ionian islanders to Troy, and that honour required him to keep that pledge.

What she may not have known, however, was that Odysseus would also bring, concealed inside the darkest chamber of his heart, a patient hatred for the clever young man who had brought him to this pass.

When the envoys that Agamemnon had sent to Troy reported back to Mycenae, they brought two surprises with them.

As expected, King Priam demanded to know what satisfaction he himself had been given in the matter of his sister Hesione. Why should the sons of Atreus expect him to act in the matter of which they complained when he had been demanding his sister’s return in vain for many years? In any case, he had no certain knowledge that his son Paris was involved in the Queen of Sparta’s disappearance as his ship had not yet returned to Troy.

‘Then where in the name of Hades has he got to?’Agamemnon demanded.

The envoys could only report rumours that Paris and Helen had been heard of in Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt, but no actual sightings had been confirmed.

‘Then they’re lying low, hoping the storm will blow over,’ Nestor said.

Agamemnon nodded. ‘But they can’t stay on the run for ever, any more than Priam can hide for ever behind his ignorance.’

‘What about Aeneas?’ Menelaus asked the envoys. ‘Wasn’t he in Troy?’

The envoys had seen no sign of the Dardanian prince. However, they had taken advantage of a private conversation with the High King’s counsellor, Antenor, to question him on the whereabouts of Aeneas. They were told that, for some time now, both Anchises and his son had kept to their palace at Lyrnessus. Though Antenor had been careful to watch his words, hints were dropped of a cooling of relations between the courts of Ilium and Dardania, and the envoys were left with the impression that, if Prince Paris was never seen again inside the walls of Troy, Antenor himself would not greatly grieve.

If this news was welcome, the envoys’ assessment of the powerful fleet Priam had built in readiness for war was less so. But the second surprise they brought back with them proved more encouraging. On the night before they were due to sail, they had been approached by a Trojan soothsayer named Calchas. As priest in the Thymbraean temple of Apollo at Troy, he had consulted the omens and could see no good future for the city. He now wished to take passage to Argos with the envoys and offer his services to the High King in Mycenae. Having decided that the man might prove useful, the envoys had brought him back and he was here in the Lion House now, eagerly awaiting an audience with the king.

‘Then bring him before us.’ Agamemnon said, ‘Let’s see if this soothsayer can bring us any better omens than did Odysseus’s dream.’

While Calchas was being summoned, Palamedes said, ‘They would have done better to leave the priest in Troy. A single friend behind the walls might have proved of more value than a whole company of archers on this side of them.’

‘The priest serves Apollo,’ Odysseus murmured from where he sat beyond Nestor to the left of Agamemnon. ‘He knows the run of his own life-thread better than you or I. In any case, it seems we may have such a friend already. And he is powerfully placed – though he may take a little time to declare himself.’

‘We do?’ said Agamemnon.

‘Odysseus refers to Antenor,’ said Menelaus. ‘He was the father of the child killed by Paris and has no love for him.’

‘Do you suspect some connection with this priest?’

‘Who knows?’ Odysseus shrugged. ‘We must see what emerges.’

At that moment Calchas was escorted down the hall. When he arrived before the Lion throne, he threw himself on the floor and lay there abased in the Asiatic manner with his arms outstretched and his forehead pressed against the tiles.

Agamemnon said, ‘I don’t much care for grovelling.’ Calchas got to his feet, arranging his dark robes, and stood before the High King with his head lowered. ‘Also I should warn you that I mislike traitors,’ the High King added, ‘– unless, of course, they can deliver my enemies into my hands.’

Calchas raised his face. Above the swarthy hollows of his cheeks, dark intelligent eyes looked back at the High King with no sign of fear or deference. Nor was there any arrogance in the voice that asserted quietly, ‘We who serve Far-sighted Apollo in his temple at Thymbra answer neither to the High King at Troy nor the High King in Mycenae. We answer only to the god.’

‘So I can rely on you no more than Priam can?’

‘If you will hear what Divine Apollo, Slayer of Darkness, has to say, you can rely on my truth. If not,’ Calchas opened his hands as if to let something fall, ‘so.’

Agamemnon sat back on the Lion throne, studying the impassive face of the priest with his chin supported on one hand. ‘Well, you’re a bold enough fellow, stealing between the lines where more cautious men might fear to tread. My envoys tell me you’ve been taking omens. I’m curious to know what the God of the Silver Bow had to say to you.’

‘That Troy will fall.’

At this confident announcement, Agamemnon turned to smile at his counsellors. Then he looked sternly back at the priest. ‘This we know already, just as we know that Mycenae will one day fall, and Sparta will fall, and perhaps even one day all Argos and the high crags of Mount Olympus itself. The pressing question is when? And how?’

‘There is a single answer,’ Calchas answered.

‘Then share it with us, friend.’

One by one, Calchas surveyed the princes around him, as if searching for some particular face among their number. Then he looked at the king again and said, ‘I do not see the sons of Aeacus here.’

‘Didn’t the god tell you that old Telamon has fought his last battle, priest? He lies bedridden in Salamis, but his sons Ajax and Teucer will shortly join us, and the ships of Salamis will follow.’

Calchas nodded. ‘And what of Telamon’s brother?’

Nestor answered him. ‘Peleus has not left his hall in Thessaly for many years. He is an old man who broods on the deaths that have shadowed his life. I think that the King of the Myrmidons longs only for his own death now.’

‘We did not expect Peleus at this council,’ Agamemnon said. ‘Why do you ask about him?’

‘Because there is a line of fate drawn between Aeacus and Troy, and it reaches across the generations. It was Aeacus who built the walls of Laomedon’s city under the aegis of Apollo and with the guidance of Poseidon. It was to his son Telamon that Troy fell at the place where the walls were weakest.’

Agamemnon sighed impatiently. ‘Telamon himself has told us this story many times. Why should we concern ourselves with it now?’

‘Because the fate of Troy is bound up with that of two sons. The first of them is Priam’s own son, Paris, who should have been killed at birth. Priam was warned by the priests of Thymbra that if the child was permitted to live he would bring destruction on the city.’

‘And this is the omen that gives Troy into our hands?’ Menelaus asked.

Calchas turned to frown at him. ‘As you know from your own experience in Sparta, a wise king does not fail to heed Apollo’s oracle – no matter what the cost.’

‘You mentioned two sons,’ said Palamedes.

Calchas nodded. ‘The omens I have taken say that Troy will fall only after the seventh son of Peleus returns from the place to which he has withdrawn and joins the fray.’

Agamemnon turned an enquiring brow to Nestor. ‘Do you know the son of whom he speaks?’

With a puzzled frown, Nestor said, ‘To the best of my knowledge Peleus has only one son.’

‘But there were six who died before him,’ Odysseus put in. ‘Achilles is the seventh son of Peleus.’

‘Good,’ said Agamemnon. ‘Then Peleus must send us this son.’

But Odysseus was frowning now. ‘I know the boy. The last time I visited Peleus a few years ago, Achilles had just returned from Cheiron’s school. He was going on to be trained by Phoenix, the King of those Dolopians who chose to remain in Thessaly.’

‘Then we will send to Thessaly for him.’

Odysseus shook his head. ‘I doubt that you’ll find him there. Peleus and Thetis have been fighting over him for years but he’s of an age to make up his own mind now. I think you’ll find that Achilles is with his mother and her people.’

‘And where are they?’ Agamemnon demanded.

‘At the court of King Lycomedes on Skyros.’

‘What difference?’ Agamemnon brought his hands together in satisfaction. ‘If that’s the place to which he’s withdrawn, then let’s winkle the lad out and get on with winning this war.’

Odysseus knew the whereabouts of Achilles because he had been party to the decision to allow him to go to Skyros. It had happened this way.

When Achilles was almost eleven years old and still a pupil in the wilderness school on Mount Pelion, King Cheiron of the Centaurs passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was found on his litter of grass by Euhippe who had returned to live with the old man after Thetis had departed for Skyros. The little Centaur woman let out a deep-drawn, moaning wail that echoed throughout the dawn light of the gorge and was quickly taken up by her tribe.

Achilles was left utterly distraught by the death, but though he did not know it yet, he was about to lose far more than a much-loved teacher. The wider world was changing in ways that left little room for Cheiron’s simple way of life, and when Peleus learned that the morale of the Centaur people had collapsed with the death of their king, he decided to bring Achilles back to his palace in Iolcus. At the same time, Patroclus was recalled by his father, Menoetius. These two boys, who had given each other a bloody nose at their first meeting, had become inseparable friends during their years on the mountain. Now they were being parted for the first time and neither dealt well with the separation.

In Iolcus things went badly from the start. The fair young face of Achilles reminded Peleus too fiercely of the wife who had burned his other children, while Achilles was shy with his father at first, and then increasingly dismayed to discover that the great king of whom he had often boasted to his friends was a morose and taciturn old man with a gammy leg. The boy wandered the halls of the palace uncomfortable in the princely robes that had been woven for him, missing the sounds and smells of the mountain woodlands and, above all, missing his friend. He grew fractious and bored. When he sensed that his father was reluctant to talk about the mother he had never known, Achilles pressed the issue. Eventually he learned what had been withheld from him earlier in order to avoid any suspicion of favouritism at the school – that Cheiron had not only been his teacher, he was also his maternal grandfather.

Already Achilles knew that he had loved the old Centaur as he could never begin to love this remote stranger who was his father. Now he began to believe that, in being separated from his mother at birth, he had been robbed of more than he had ever dreamed. Feeling wounded and betrayed by his father, he became increasingly importunate in his demands to meet Thetis – which was a thing that Peleus still could not countenance. When the subject was brusquely closed, father and son found themselves caught in a grim bind of mutual incomprehension and hostility. Yet Peleus cared deeply for the boy and was increasingly afraid of losing him to disaffection or mischance.

One day he came into his chamber after an exhausting afternoon of giving judgement to find that a table had been moved close to the wall and the great ash spear which had been Cheiron’s wedding gift to him had vanished from the hooks on the wall where it had hung unused for many years. Furious that Achilles had taken his most prized possession without seeking his consent, Peleus went in search of the boy. He found him stripped to his breech-clout in the garden and using the trunk of an old plane tree for target practice. The spear was too long and heavy for his height, yet Achilles threw it with surprising accuracy from the distance he had set himself. Torn between his anger and his desire to congratulate his son on his marksmanship, Peleus said coldly, ‘That spear you have stolen is a warrior’s spear. Only a proven warrior has the right to wield it.’

Achilles stood flustered before his father. ‘How shall I ever be a warrior,’ he muttered sulkily, ‘when you keep me cooped up here like a bullcalf in a stall?’

Sensing all the frustrated energy locked inside that stalwart young body, Peleus felt suddenly sorry for his son and ashamed of his own morose rage.

‘Do you want to be a warrior?’ he asked.

Achilles glanced away. ‘I have watched the Myrmidons training on their field. I have watched them fighting together as if they hated one another and then oiling each other’s bodies and dressing their hair afterwards, and I wondered whether they were men or gods. What else would I want to be?’

‘Then you shall have your wish,’ Peleus said. ‘But I will keep my spear until I am sure I have a son who is fit to wield it.’

Already a skilled horseman, athlete and hunter, Achilles had never shown any concern for his own safety, and with hurt pride and anger prominent among his emotions now, he took to the volatile world of the common soldiery in much the same way that he had once felt at home among the Centaurs. Soon he began to acquire all the murderous skills of a professional fighting man.

One day his father came to watch him working with sword and spear on the practice field and was so impressed by his progress that he immediately agreed to make enquiries when Achilles asked whether Patroclus might not be allowed to come and train with him among the Myrmidons. Menoetius, who had run into similar difficulties with his own disgruntled son, readily consented, and the boys rushed to greet each other as though they had been deprived of air and light in the time when they were apart.

Over the next few years they grew ever closer – two young men united by a love so intense that they would gladly die, and kill, for each other.

Among their mentors was a commander named Phoenix, who had no children of his own, and to whom Achilles gave much of the affection that he denied to his father. Phoenix was one of the few Dolopians who had remained loyal to Peleus at the time when most of his people were migrating to Skyros, and though he was a Myrmidon warrior first and foremost, he had not renounced all the customs of his clan. So there was more than a touch of the old religion about him still. Fascinated by the blue tattoo etched into the skin of his thigh, Achilles was intrigued to learn that it was a mark of an initiation that Phoenix had undergone during the spring rites on his passage from boyhood into manhood. For a time he seemed reluctant to say any more, but Achilles reminded his tutor that he too had Dolopian blood through his mother’s side and began to ply him with more questions about his tribal heritage. The answers came slowly at first and then, when Phoenix saw how much it mattered to the boy, more freely. The vague restlessness that still sometimes troubled Achilles took on clearer form. He began to dream of his mother.

Odysseus visited Iolcus about this time and witnessed a violent argument between Peleus and Achilles. Peleus came away from it red-faced and distraught, calling for wine and complaining that Thetis was drawing their son away from him by some magical power with which he could not compete.

‘But the boy has a right to know who his mother is,’ Odysseus said, ‘and he will soon be of an age to go whether you forbid him or not. Perhaps it might be better in the long run if he went with your consent.’

Peleus grimly shook his head. ‘You’ve never met the witch who was my wife. You don’t know the kind of power she has. And Achilles is my only son and heir. I’m afraid that if I let him go to Skyros he might not come back.’

‘Such things are for the gods to decide,’ Odysseus answered, ‘but one way or another he’s going to have to get this thing out of his system. Why not allow the boy to go to Skyros but insist that he goes alone? After all, the strongest tie in his life is to his friend Patroclus. He won’t want to be separated from him for long.’

Peleus eventually saw the sense of this and acted on it. Achilles proved so reluctant to be separated from Patroclus again that for a time it looked as though he might not go at all. But the draw proved stronger than the tie. He sailed for Skyros when he was fourteen years old. As Peleus had feared, he remained there for rather longer than Odysseus had anticipated.

Skyros is a windy island out beyond Euboea in the eastern sea, about half way between Mycenae and Troy. The people there have a picturesque tale to tell about the expedition that Odysseus made to the island to retrieve Achilles.

According to them, Thetis was an immortal goddess with prophetic powers who knew that her son’s life must either be long, peaceful and obscure, or filled with undying glory and very brief. It was for this reason that she had decided to place Achilles far out of harm’s way on remote Skyros.

When Odysseus came to the island he could see no sign of the boy anywhere among the young men who lived at the court of King Lycomedes. Realizing that only cunning would prise Achilles out of hiding, Odysseus returned to his ship and came back the next day disguised as a Sidonian merchant. Having regained entry to the court, he laid out his rich store of wares on the floor before an excited gathering of young women and girls. Most of the treasures he displayed were chosen to catch their eyes – embroidered dresses, bales of cloth, perfumes and cosmetics, necklaces, bangles and other fancy baubles. Among these pretty things, however, Odysseus also placed a sword and a shield which attracted no attention whatsoever until the chattering gaggle of girls picking through his delightful assortment of goods were startled by the sudden blast of a trumpet in the yard outside. When the cry went up that the island was under attack from pirates, the girls ran from the room in alarm – all that is save one, who reached eagerly for the sword and shield.

Smiling at the success of his ruse, Odysseus brought Achilles away to the war.

It’s a good story, and no less good for the fact that much the same tale is told of the way their great heroes emerged into manhood by the people of the Indus far to the east and on Apollo’s island of the Hyperboreans far to the north. But the truth as I learned it from Odysseus is somewhat different.

From the moment that his ship put in on the strand below the high rock where the castle of Lycomedes perched, facing the sea one way and the little town the other, it was clear that Odysseus would not receive a warm welcome on Skyros. The Dolopians had kept open their channels of communication with the mainland and they knew why he was coming. Odysseus was courteously prevented from seeing Achilles while Lycomedes reminded his guest that his people had chosen a different destiny from that of the other Thessalians and had no wish to become embroiled in a war which was none of their concern. Odysseus answered that he respected the choice they had made, but Achilles son of Peleus was no Dolopian. He was the sole heir to a great king in Iolcus who now required him to take up his royal duties and lead the Myrmidons to the war at Troy.

At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a woman’s voice from the back of the draughty hall.

‘A man’s destiny is not determined only by the claims of his father.’

Odysseus turned to look at a tall, stately woman wearing a dark green robe shot through with colours like a peacock’s tail. The derision in her voice was matched by the cold hauteur of her gaze. She must, Odysseus thought, have been very beautiful once, but those fiercely hooded eyes were more likely to exact obedience these days than adoration. He sensed at once that King Lycomedes was deeply in awe of her.

Beginning to understand for the first time why Peleus had found it so hard to deal with his wife, Odysseus declared himself honoured to have met Thetis at last, having already heard so much about her.

‘But only from those who slander me,’ she said.

‘From those who respect your power, madam.’

‘If that is true then you must know that I will not willingly give up my son again.’

‘And if you are truly his mother,’ Odysseus answered quietly, ‘you will leave him free to choose for himself – as his father did.’

Thetis made a dismissive gesture with a heavily ringed hand. ‘Achilles has already chosen. On this island he has learned the beauty of what he has hitherto been denied – the wisdom and consolation that is to be found only in the loving service of womankind. He is the chosen one of Deidameia, the daughter of King Lycomedes, and has already fathered a son on her. He has made his life here and is content with it. So go and fight your man’s war if you must. My son wishes only to be left in peace.’

‘I might believe it,’ Odysseus said, ‘if I were to hear it from his own lips.’

The lamplight cast a shadow on the hollows of Thetis’s gaunt cheeks. An emerald necklace glistened at her throat. ‘Achilles is preparing to take part in the spring rite tomorrow,’ she answered coldly. ‘He has no desire to see you.’

‘But he knows that I’m here?’

‘He has no need to know.’

‘Surely that too is for him to decide?’

Thetis merely shrugged and glanced away.

‘If you are not afraid of me,’ Odysseus said, ‘you will tell him that the friend who made it possible for him to come to Skyros wishes to speak with him.’

‘I have no fear of you, Ithacan.’

Odysseus smiled. ‘Then tell your son that I also bring word from his friend Patroclus. Perhaps he will speak to me when the rites are done.’

Odysseus was excluded from the inner mystery of the rite that took place on Skyros the next day but they could not keep him from joining the crowd that witnessed the procession afterwards. After hours of waiting in the sunlight he heard the clangour of approaching bells, and then the crowd were shouting and singing. His heart jumped as the procession rounded a corner of the narrow street and he was looking up at the huge, bear-like figure of a man hooded and caped in sheepskins, and with no face – for beneath the hood dangled only a featureless shaggy mask made from the flayed skin of a goat-kid. The man carried a shepherd’s crook, and around his waist and hips were tied row upon row of goat bells which clattered and jangled as he danced along the street with a curious swinging amble designed to make all his bells ring. At his side danced what Odysseus took to be the veiled figure of a maiden wearing long, flounced skirts, but as more and more such figures appeared, he realized that these were in fact young men dressed in maiden’s clothing.

Among them ran other, more comical figures holding long-necked gourds with which they made obscene gestures to the delight of the old women in the crowd. The air began to stink of wine and sweat. The din made by hundreds of bells was painful on his ears. But he was caught up in the noisy tumult of the cavalcade, wanting only to drink and dance and give himself over to the frenzy of the god. And then he became aware of one of the female figures faltering in the dance to stare at him with a shocked look of recognition, and he knew that hidden behind those veils and flounces stood the suddenly discomfited figure of the young man he had come to fetch from the island.

They talked together that night. Odysseus allowed Achilles space to tell about the life he had made on Skyros, of his love for Deidameia and their little son, whom they had called Pyrrhus because of his reddish-blond hair. He talked of the warm sense of return and homecoming he had found among his mother’s people, and how Thetis herself had supervised his initiation into mysteries that had previously lain beyond the reach of his gauche, juvenile emotions. He claimed that never in his life – not even in the years at Cheiron’s school – had he felt so at peace.

Odysseus listened with the kind of patience and sympathy that Achilles had never found in his father. He said that he was deeply glad that Achilles had found peace and joy at last. He said that he understood very well the things that the youth had been trying to tell him because he had known such a tranquil life himself on Ithaca. He too had a beloved wife. He too had a small son who was the delight of his life, and he knew how such things changed a man for the better.

‘Then why have you left them?’ Achilles asked.

‘Because I am a man and I gave my word at the swearing of the oath at Sparta.’

Odysseus watched as the intense young man across from him frowned and shook his head. Then he added almost casually. ‘Your friend Patroclus will go to the war at Troy for the same reason.’

‘Patroclus is going to the war?’

‘Of course. He was among those who contended for Helen’s hand. He took the oath and will honour it – though that’s not the only reason he will fight, of course. He and the rest of the Myrmidons are eager for the battle. They know that it will be the greatest war that has ever been fought in the history of the world. They know that there is such honour to be won there as will be sung of by the bards for generations to come. Even as I speak, a huge army is gathering not far from here at Aulis, on the other side of Euboea. Thousands upon thousands of men are arriving by land and sea. The harbour will be crowded with ships. All the great heroes of the age will be there – Agamemnon, Menelaus, Diomedes of Tiryns, Ajax and Teucer, Nestor of Pylos, Idomeneus of Crete and countless others. Everyone who cares about the glory of his name.’

Odysseus smiled and shook his head as though amazed by the wonder of the thing. He allowed time for Achilles to respond but when the youth said nothing, he added, ‘Your friend Patroclus wouldn’t want to be left out of a gathering like that even if he wasn’t bound by his given word.’

After a moment Achilles said, ‘Did he not ask if I would come?’

Odysseus shrugged. ‘He presumed that you would lead the Myrmidons – particularly as your father is in no shape to fight these days. Phoenix thought so too.’ He looked up into the uneasy gaze across from him. ‘But then they don’t know how content you are here among these shepherds on Skyros.’ Odysseus sighed. ‘I could almost envy you, Achilles, knowing that you have a long and peaceful life ahead of you untroubled by the din of battle and the tumult of the world with its lust for deathless fame.’ As though a new thought had occurred to him, the smile became a frown. ‘Your father is bound to be disappointed. He was sure you would take his ashwood spear to Troy with you. He knows what a fine warrior you have become. He saw you winning all the glory that his wound has denied him. But it seems that you belong to your mother now.’ Odysseus glanced out to sea. ‘So shall I tell him that you’ve wisely decided that it’s better to dance in maiden’s clothing than to lie gloriously dead inside a bloody suit of armour?’

The Years of the Snake

They had agreed to assemble the fleet at Aulis, a rock-sheltered harbour on the narrow strait between Boetia and the island of Euboea. The Boeotian levies were already there, and neither their northern neighbours, the Locrians, nor the warriors of Euboea had far to come. By the time Agamemnon’s own fleet of a hundred ships arrived in the port, Ajax and Teucer, the sons of Telamon, had also arrived from Salamis bringing the twelve vessels they had promised. Meanwhile, Menelaus had mustered sixty ships out of Laconia, and though there was no word from Crete as yet, the principal Argive allies rallied quickly to his cause. Diomedes brought eighty ships out of Tiryns while Nestor’s flagship led ninety more out of Pylos round the many capes of the Peloponnese, and Menestheus sailed fifty Athenian warships around Sounion Head. More impressively, Odysseus and his allies out of the Ionian islands managed to launch only eight vessels short of the sixty that Palamades had mockingly suggested.

Even the distant island of Rhodes contributed nine ships, but King Cinyras of Cyprus was less forthcoming. When Menelaus sailed on a recruiting mission there, half-hoping that he might waylay Helen and Paris somewhere at sea, Cinyras promised to send fifty ships to Aulis. In the event only one Cyprian vessel turned up – though its captain did launch forty-nine model ships made out of earthenware in fulfilment of his monarch’s pledge before he sailed away.

Menelaus was furious to have been duped in this manner, but perhaps he should have expected no more from a king who was also high priest to Aphrodite on the island of her birth. Worse still, the insult confirmed a suspicion that had haunted his jealous mind while he was on the island – that Cinyras had made a pact with Paris to conceal the runaways on Cyprus while he himself was there.

Agamemnon had set up his headquarters in the ancient fort on the rocky bluff overlooking the harbour where a vast fleet of around a thousand ships jostled each other as they made ready to cast off for Troy. The town below the fort had been overcrowded for some time now, and at night the watch-fires lit by the bivouacked troops stretched far along the strand. Standing beside Agamemnon one evening, the head of the college of Boeotian bards – a famous master of the art of memory – assured the High King that no one before him, not even Heracles or Theseus, had ever mounted an expedition on this scale. The Lion of Mycenae could scarcely manage his pride.

But various minor conflicts had already demonstrated the difficulty of holding together a diverse force that spoke many different dialects and harboured a number of old feuds and grudges. Agamemnon was under no illusion that so many men had been drawn to Aulis merely out of loyalty to himself and his brother. Yet whether it was greed for the rich spoils of Troy, or lust for land and trading advantage, or the mere love of violence and adventure that had brought them, this mighty host of warriors was now his to command, and the name of Agamemnon, King of Men, would live for ever in the songs of bards.

He was, however, engaged in the less glorious business of arguing with a hard-bargaining minister from Delos over terms for the provision of wine, oil and corn when word came that Achilles and his Myrmidons had arrived. ‘Send him up at once,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what this son of Peleus is made of.’ Then he dismissed the Delian with orders to think of better prices and summoned his chiefs of staff into council.

Many ferocious warriors were oiling their spear-shafts and sharpening their swords among the host outside the fort, and Agamemnon was glad enough to have their weapons under his command. But the touchy youth that Odysseus had brought back from Skyros was an altogether different proposition. Resolute to demonstrate that he was a man among men, Achilles walked into the council with an arrogance that fell not far short of disdain and then he sat throughout most of its deliberations taut as a bowstring, observing the others in the room with a taciturn frown that could be construed as vigilant in some lights and as surly in others.

From the first there was no doubting that this young warrior had something of a god about him. Whether or not Thetis, his mother, had seined him with fire or dipped him in the Styx, a radiance of immortality already flashed like a nimbus off his hair and glittered from the keen grey metal of his eyes. And it did so with such ardour that even old Nestor, more than forty years his senior, found it hard to stop a wondering gaze straying towards his lithe, graceful presence. For there was – Nestor saw with both admiration and trepidation – a killer’s glitter in that sheen.

Nor had he come alone. Though the invitation to join the council had been extended only to Achilles, a companion entered the room at his side, darker and slightly taller, but with much the same assured composure, as though the war had been arranged for their mutual satisfaction. When Agamemnon queried his presence, Achilles jutted his chin and said, ‘This is Patroclus, son of Menoetius, grandson of Actor, King of Phthia. Where I go, he goes also.’ And it was immediately clear that either both men stayed or both men left.

Seeing the blood flush in his brother’s face, Menelaus hastened to remind him that Patroclus had been among the men who took the oath at Sparta, and Odysseus further defused the tension by remarking that the last time he’d seen Achilles and Patroclus together they had been six years old and scrapping like dogs beside the stream at Cheiron’s school. ‘If the two of you fight as hard now as you did then,’ he said, ‘the Trojans are in for a bad time.’

Having already reminded himself that Apollo had promised victory only if Achilles came to the fight, Agamemnon joined in the laughter and ordered that room be made for another chair.

When Nestor asked for news about his old friend Peleus, Achilles answered with the stiffness of a young man reluctant to speak freely about his personal life. ‘My father regrets that he can no longer be of service to the cause himself, but the men I lead are his. Also he gave me the long spear which was Cheiron’s gift to him and bade me use it well. Divine Athena polished its shaft with her own hand. My father prays that the goddess will bestow her favour on us.’

Diomedes and Odysseus exchanged glances at the youth’s solemnity, but Ajax, who was cousin to Achilles, gave a good-natured laugh. ‘And no doubt your father warned you about keeping on the right side of the gods as mine did me. But as I said to the old man when I left his bedside, any fool can win glory if the gods are with him. I mean to do so whether they’re with us or not.’

‘Well I for one,’ said Odysseus wryly, ‘will be glad of any help we can get.’

At that moment Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius entered the room to announce the arrival of a Cretan legate, who was seeking audience with the High King.

‘Only a legate?’Agamemnon frowned. ‘Deucalion was supposed to send me ships. Where are they?’

Talthybius shrugged. ‘There’s no sign of them as yet.’

‘Damn these Cretans and their lies. Let’s have him in.’

Menelaus immediately recognized the legate from his visit to the island. One of Deucalion’s shrewder ministers of state in Knossos, Dromeus had caught the drift of the changing wind and aligned himself with the dissident faction of young men that had gathered around Idomeneus. That it was he, and not one of Deucalion’s minions that had come to Aulis, augured well. But where, Agamemnon demanded to know at once, were the ships they had hoped to see by now?

Dromeus chose to answer a different question. ‘There have been changes in Knossos since the sons of Atreus graced us with their presence,’ he said. ‘Deucalion has crossed the river to the Land of Shades. His son Idomeneus now sits on the Gryphon throne.’

There came a few formal acknowledgements of regret for Deucalion’s death before Agamemnon said, ‘But were we not given reason to think that your new king looks on our cause more favourably than his father did?’

‘That is indeed the case, Great King’

‘Then I ask again. Where are the ships?’

Dromeus opened his hands, brought them together at his lips and smiled. ‘The House of the Axe now stands ready to commit a hundred ships to this war.’

‘A hundred! Excellent!’Agamemnon made no effort to conceal his pleasure.

He turned smiling to Menelaus, who exclaimed that this was more than they had dared to hope. The mood around the table lifted.

Then Palamedes said, ‘So when can we expect to see them?’

Again Dromeus smiled. ‘This is, as you acknowledge, a generous commitment. You will not be surprised, therefore, that it comes attended by a condition.’

Lifted by a breeze gusting from a courtyard down the hill, the distant shout of an officer haranguing his men entered the room. With an irritable flick of his hand Agamemnon shooed a fly that was buzzing about his ear. ‘What condition?’

‘That as leader of so large a force King Idomeneus should share supreme command of all the allied forces.’

Telamon’s son, Ajax, an open-faced, broad-chested fellow with a frank manner, was the first to break the silence. He gave a derisive snort, slapped a hand across a sturdy thigh and said, ‘The crown has gone to your new king’s head! Go home and tell him that we already have the only leader we need.’

Still smiling, Dromeus fingered the curls of his beard and turned his gaze back to Agamemnon. ‘I might point out,’ he said, ‘that Crete’s hundred vessels are equalled in number only by the large squadron that the High King himself has brought out of Mycenae. Our ships are ready to sail. They await only your word.’

The stern young face of Achilles was also waiting for that word.

Agamemnon did not miss the quick sideways glance directed by Patroclus at his friend, but the cool, intimidating scrutiny of Achilles’ gaze remained fixed directly on the king’s frown, waiting to see how he would react.

Feeling the immediate need for decision, yet flustered by this unforeseen development, Agamemnon was, in those tense moments, listening for the advice of a god. When no voice entered the silence of his mind, he decided that though a hundred ships meant a great deal to him, his honour and authority meant a great deal more.

He was about to declare as much when Nestor straightened from where he had leaned to hear Odysseus whisper in his ear. ‘Perhaps’ – the old man cleared his throat – ‘perhaps it might be wise for the council to deliberate upon this matter?’

Taken aback, Agamemnon observed Nestor’s insistent nod.

‘My own thought precisely,’ he said. ‘If the Cretan legate will excuse us …’

Bowing courteously to each of the counsellors, Dromeus backed out of the room, leaving a musky trace of perfume on the air.

As soon as the door had closed behind him, Ajax said, ‘What is this whispering about? The High King is our commander. He has all the fighting force he needs.’

‘Bear with me, friend,’ Odysseus smiled, and would have said more but Palamedes intervened. ‘This matter requires careful thought. Crete promises more than eight times the number of ships that Salamis could muster.’

‘But at what price?’ demanded Ajax. ‘Any fool knows that a divided leadership can only spell trouble in the end.’

‘I stand with Ajax,’ declared Diomedes. ‘It seems to me there’s nothing to discuss. Like most of us here, Idomeneus was sworn to our cause at Sparta. A man doesn’t make conditions when he swears before a god.’

Fortified to find his own instincts strengthened by such unqualified support, Agamemnon said, ‘There’s already too much scope for division in our forces. A hundred ships more or less will make no great difference to our strength. I’d rather do without them than lose control of the rest. If Idomeneus won’t bow to our authority then let him stay at home.’

‘Good,’ said Odysseus. ‘The only hard part being that’s not what he will do.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ajax frowned.

‘You heard what Dromeus said. His ships are ready to sail. If Idomeneus has scoured his island to mount such a considerable fleet, he’s not about to let it rot in port at Knossos.’ Odysseus turned his ironical smile on Agamemnon. ‘A hundred more warships may not count for much in your reckoning, King of Men, but I’ve no doubt that Priam will welcome them with open arms.’

Ajax uttered an outraged gasp of dismay. Menelaus began to shake his head. ‘Idomeneus was among the first to swear. I don’t believe he would betray us.’

Odysseus shrugged. ‘Is it unknown for Cretans to break their word?’

‘But the man’s my friend,’ Menelaus protested. Then he saw that every man in the room was thinking the same bleak thought: that the open-hearted, younger son of Atreus had not proved to be the wisest judge of friends.

‘Nevertheless,’ Nestor dispelled the fraught silence, ‘it seems that Deucalion’s son has ambitions for his kingdom. Evidently he hasn’t forgotten that there was a time when Crete ruled the seas and took tribute from many of our cities. With Troy’s help it’s possible that she might do so again.’

Diomedes said, ‘Then what would he have to gain from joining us?’

‘A large share of the spoils of Troy,’ Odysseus answered. ‘Unrestricted access to her trade routes through the Hellespont and around the Asian coast – gold, silver, grain, cinnabar, timber, amber, jade. All of this, along with recognition of his independent authority by every kingdom in Argos.’

‘My friend Menestheus won’t care for that,’ said Palamedes.

Odysseus made a dismissive gesture. ‘Then the Lord of Athens should have kept as tight a rein on his vassal as his predecessor did.’

Agamemnon grunted and sat back in his chair. ‘Crete was on the rise again even before Theseus leapt from the cliff on Skyros. Idomeneus merely has more ambition than his father.’

‘And more courage,’ Menelaus put in.

Diomedes frowned. ‘The more shame that his courage is not matched by his honour. I took him for a true man at Sparta, and a worthy contender for Helen.’

‘But the question remains,’ Odysseus insisted. ‘Do we want his ten thousand Cretan spearmen inside our tents pissing out or outside them pissing in?’

A hint of a smile briefly crossed the face of Achilles.

Agamemnon caught it from the corner of his eye, and decided that the time had come to confront this arrogant young blood directly. ‘The son of Peleus seems amused. What are his thoughts on this question, I wonder?’

‘That it is a matter of indifference to me,’ Achilles said.

Agamemnon frowned. ‘How so?’

‘With all due reverence to the gods, my trust is in my own strength and that of my friend.’ Achilles smiled at Patroclus. ‘Whether the Cretans are for us or against us, we will fight.’

‘So will we all,’ said Ajax. ‘But who will lead? My obedience is to Agamemnon.’

‘And mine,’ Diomedes concurred.

Nestor rubbed a hand through the silvery-white curls of hair at the back of his head. ‘Yet Idomeneus awaits an answer. I for one am wondering whether it may not be prudent to have his forces at our side.’ He turned his grave eyes to Odysseus, who nodded and said, ‘This war will have to be won at sea before it can be won on land. A hundred ships either way could make all the difference.’

Agamemnon stared at Palamedes, who said quietly, ‘I agree with that judgement,’ and glanced away across the table, where Menelaus fidgeted with the heavy gold signet ring that Helen had given him on their wedding day. He was frowning gloomily down at the rampant pair of leopards on its bezel when Palamedes asked, ‘What does the King of Sparta say?’

The younger son of Atreus glanced uncertainly at the elder before answering. ‘As I said before,’ he murmured hoarsely, ‘I consider Idomeneus to be my friend. I believe he will prove a valuable ally.’ He fingered the ring which slipped loosely around his knuckle. Then he said, ‘This thing is for my brother to decide.’

Again Agamemnon shifted in his chair, trying to gauge the feeling in the room. His face had reddened and his eyes were on the move, avoiding the silent faces round him, yet finding nowhere sure to settle. This was the first occasion since he had committed himself to this war when he knew he was faced with a decision on which the whole dangerous enterprise might turn. Yet which way to lean? Every muscle of his body insisted that he retain absolute control. Control over the forces he had gathered, control over this council, control over himself. And the two men in the room with whom he felt most at ease fully expected him to do so. But Ajax and Diomedes were men of action, not of thought. And the same was true of Achilles and Patroclus, young men both, driven by an invincible confidence in their own strength and prowess. Neither of them, he suspected, would hesitate for a moment. They would go down fighting sooner than yield an inch in pride. That was the warrior’s way, the way of men, and he was Agamemnon, King of Men. But there was more to waging war than blood and fear and mindless valour amid the clash of chariots, and if shrewd old Nestor and that cunning thinker out of Euboea agreed with Odysseus on this, then more might be at stake than pride.

Agamemnon sat with his hand across his mouth, regretting that he had exposed his own position too soon. Were he to change his mind now, he might appear weak before those who most respected him. Yet if they were wrong … A hundred more ships … ten thousand more men … on one side or the other. He saw his whole proud fleet in flames around him and a Cretan pentakonter bearing down on his flagship with a gryphon at its prow and the double axe painted on its sail. An error made now might prove costly indeed when his ships were at sea.

But he could not vacillate for long under the impatient gaze of Achilles.

He was summoning the will to speak when Odysseus leaned back with a mildly incredulous air and said, ‘Do I speak only for myself when I say that if there was disagreement between Idomeneus and Agamemnon, I would know where my own loyalty belonged?’

And before either of them had fully taken in the implications of the question, both Ajax and Diomedes, at whom his challenge was directed, had declared that he was certainly not speaking for himself alone.

Odysseus arched his brows at Agamemnon and opened his hands. ‘It seems that we’re in agreement then.’

Agamemnon narrowed his eyes and saw that a door had opened on his dilemma. ‘Very well. On that clear understanding, let the Cretans come.’

But the Lion of Mycenae was feeling the full weight of the burden of command, even in the very moment when he was about to relinquish half of it.

Nor was he to know that Odysseus had no particular reason to mistrust the intentions of Idomeneus. But as the Ithacan said to his cousin Sinon afterwards when telling him how the meeting had gone, ‘We need those Cretan ships and how else was I to persuade Agamemnon to give up half his command?’

As to whether or not divine assistance might be required, Agamemnon was more inclined to agree with Odysseus than Ajax, so he had set aside the day before the fleet was due to sail for prayer and acts of sacrifice to the gods.

All the principal commanders and their men assembled outside the town in a hollow where a thick-girthed plane tree, sacred to Hera, had stood for centuries. An altar had been raised in the shade of the tree beside a nearby spring. The priests invoked the almighty power of Sky-Father Zeus, and Calchas prayed for the wisdom and guidance of Apollo. Then Agamemnon offered the sacrifice.

He had just raised the knife from the kill when all the men standing in the hollow were amazed to see a huge snake slither out from under the altar. Agamemnon stepped back in shock, gazing down at the scarlet markings streaked along the mottled black scales of the creature’s back. With astonishing speed, the snake writhed its long body towards the trunk of the plane tree and began to climb.

Calchas moved quickly from where he had been standing a little behind Agamemnon to observe the behaviour of the snake. He watched it make its way along a high bough to where a sparrow had made its nest. Though the mother-bird rose, fluttering her wings in alarm, she was quite powerless against the muscular strike of the great snake. Eight times it dipped its jaws into the nest, snatching out a fledgling sparrow at each strike. Then it raised its head upright, swayed for a time, watching the flight of the panic-stricken mother-bird. A last swift strike caught the sparrow by the wing and swallowed it whole. A moment later the snake stretched itself out along the bough and lay there so stiff and rigid that men later swore that it had been turned to stone.

A murmur of wonder and alarm ran through the assembled men.

Agamemnon stood with the sacrificial knife still dripping in his hand, looking to Calchas who threw the flat of his right hand to his forehead, cried out, ‘We accept the oracle,’ and stood with his eyes closed.

Silence settled across the glade. Not a man moved. Only the plane tree stirred a little in the breeze off the sea. Then Calchas lowered his hand, opened his eyes and smiled at the hundreds of men gazing at him with rapt attention. ‘Argives,’ he cried, ‘the mighty intelligence of Zeus himself sends you this portent. We have waited long for it, and will have to wait long for its fulfilment, but the glory promised here will never die.’

Still dismayed by the shock, Agamemnon took encouragement from his words. ‘Tell us, Calchas,’ he said, ‘how do you read the omen?’

‘Does a serpent not renew its skin each year?’ said Calchas. ‘And are the leaves of the plane tree not reborn with every year that passes? Eight was the number of the fledglings in the nest. Their mother sparrow made the ninth, and the death of each bird speaks of the passing of a year. The sparrow is one of Aphrodite’s creatures and Aphrodite fights for Troy. So for nine years you must fight to take Troy, but in the tenth year her broad streets will be yours.’

The priest’s voice was exultant. He threw open his arms, gazed skywards, and then stood with his eyes closed as though in silent prayer. Around him the assembled men waited in silence, each locked in his own thoughts.

Agamemnon saw at once that more was needed. ‘It is the will of Zeus,’ he shouted. ‘The god has spoken. Victory will be ours.’ Then Menelaus and Ajax were quickly at his side taking up the shout, urging others on. Soon the hollow was loud with the cry of ‘Victory will be ours’. It rose from the throng again and again, but as he joined the shouting, Palamedes, the prince of Euboea, became uncomfortably aware that only a few yards away across the glade, Odysseus of Ithaca was studying him with a cold, ironical regard.

The next day, to the accompaniment of a peal of thunder which was generally interpreted as a sign of encouragement from Zeus, the fleet set sail for Troy.

Two generations have passed since that day and many men have told the stories of the war many times. But memories grow confused with the passing of the years, so not all of the stories are reliable, and some chroniclers, for reasons that serve their own doubtful ends, have been known to tell downright lies. My own authority is the word of Odysseus, which I have found to be trustworthy in almost all respects, and he was quick to dismiss as nonsense the story put about by some that the fleet got lost almost immediately and made landfall in Mysia, where they launched a major assault, thinking that they had reached the coast of Troy.

Those who believe this fable offer divine intervention in explanation of the error. They claim that Aphrodite confused the navigators in order to stave off the attack on the city. But as Odysseus pointed out, Agamemnon was well-furnished with charts, Menelaus himself had already made a voyage to Troy without difficulty, and some of the most experienced rovers of the Ionian, Cretan and Aegean seas were among the captains of the Argive fleet. Odysseus was not the only prince who supplemented his wealth by piracy, and among his many other pursuits, Palamedes took a particular interest in the problems of navigation. So the story is most charitably understood as a muddled memory of a war that lasted for many years and involved many different campaigns not all of which took place beneath the walls of Troy.

It is true that when Agamemnon first conceived of attacking Troy, he had hoped to emulate the swift, devastating raid by which Telamon and Heracles had once breached the weakest stretch of the city’s walls. But King Priam had strengthened his defences since then. He had also commissioned a new fleet of warships and had been engaged in serious, and successful, diplomatic activity to ready his many allies for the coming conflict around the western coast of Asia. The High King of Troy might have fewer ships at his command than the High King of Argos but he was not faced with the problem of transporting a hundred thousand men across the Aegean, and his fleet was quite large enough to guard the mouth of the Hellespont and offer support to his allies.

And his allies were many. As intelligence reports came into Mycenae from Agamemnon’s spies, they proved ever more daunting. Of all Troy’s friends, only the Dardanians had decided to stay out of the war. Having tried and failed to persuade Priam that Helen should be returned immediately to Sparta, King Anchises had declared that he would not embroil his people in a military conflict that had begun with Paris’ perfidy and might end with the ravaging of all the lands around the Idaean Mountains. But neither would he lend support to the invaders, and all the other coastal kingdoms, from Paeonia and the Thracian Chersonese in the north to the Lycians in the south had swiftly rallied to King Priam’s aid. The Phrygians, the Mysians, the Carians and the Pelasgians out of Larissa were raising armies, and Priam was also given promises of support from countries further east should the need arise. The Amazons, the Paphlagonians and even the distant Halizonians all stood ready to send forces to the defence of Troy.

In the face of such concerted opposition, Odysseus advised that a cautious war of attrition would be the wisest course of action. Troy might be more easily taken if they first wore down her allies through a campaign of naval blockades and raids on the weaker fronts. Until that ominous day at Aulis, no one except Odysseus had reckoned that the campaign might drag on for as long as ten years. But if such was the will of Zeus, he argued, then the princes of Argos must resign themselves to it, fortified by the knowledge that they would win in the end.

Agamemnon listened to this argument but his was not a patient temperament. He still nursed a hope that the sheer size of the force he had mustered would shock the Trojans into surrender and prove the reading of the omen wrong. When he expressed this view the council divided round him along the usual lines, with the thinkers among them – Nestor and Palamedes – supporting Odysseus. The rest argued for an immediate attack on Troy.

When he saw that he was outnumbered, Odysseus came up with an alternative plan. Very well, he suggested, rather than risk everything on a single throw while Troy was at her strongest, it would be wise to establish a secure bridgehead as close as possible to the city. The small island of Tenedos, rising from the sea off the Trojan coast, was perfect for their needs. From there they could either mount a direct assault on Priam’s capital if it seemed likely to succeed, or they could blockade the mouth of the Hellespont and launch raids against Thrace to the north and southwards against the coastal strongholds of his other allies.

Everyone saw the sense of this and the plan was agreed.

By the time the fleet arrived near Tenedos, Agamemnon had decided to position most of his ships where they could hold an advance of the Trojan warships while the island was taken by a smaller force. He called a council aboard his flagship and was about to announce his decision to put Diomedes in command of the invasion, when Achilles demanded the honour of leading this first strike himself.

The day was sultry and close. There had been a delay in starting the council while the others had waited impatiently for Achilles to appear. The mood was now fraught with nervous anticipation.

Agamemnon hesitated. He had no wish to enter into open conflict with this volatile young man, but neither was he willing to trust the success of his first, crucial assault to a warrior who had yet to fight a full-scale battle. Before he could pick his words, Achilles narrowed his eyes. ‘Calchas has warned you that this war can not be won without my help. If the gods are looking to me to seal the victory, they will favour me as I lead the first attack.’ He spoke as though the full force of oracular authority lay behind his declaration, leaving no room for debate or contradiction.

News of the omen about the seventh son of Peleus had spread quickly throughout the ranks, and Achilles already commanded the affection of the troops as well as their respect. His Myrmidons had always been prepared to lay down their lives for him, but so were many others now, and he was known among the common soldiers as the luck of the force. Well aware of it, Agamemnon had already bitten back his tongue on a number of occasions when the youth had spoken with arrogant presumption, but this time he was not prepared to yield.

‘We commend your ardour, son of Peleus, and are grateful for your offer,’ – he glanced down at the chart of Tenedos on the table before him – ‘but our trust is in the experience of Diomedes, the veteran of Thebes. When you have proved yourself in battle as thoroughly as he, we will be glad to give you a command.’

Agamemnon cleared his throat and was about to progress the attention of the council to a discussion of tactics for the assault when Achilles said, ‘The High King must think again.’

Agamemnon visibly swallowed his rage. ‘Did I not make myself clear?’

Achilles rose from his seat. ‘Quite clear enough. The insult you have just given me was quite as clear as the first I had to suffer at your hands.’

Agamemnon looked up in impatient bewilderment.

Anxiously old Nestor sought to intervene. ‘Calm yourself, Achilles,’ he said quietly. ‘I feel sure that no insult was intended.’

‘No,’ Agamemnon growled, holding up a clenched hand so that the gold shone on the lion-seal of his ring, ‘let’s have this thing out once and for all. I shall be most interested to hear how the son of Peleus thinks I have insulted him.’

Achilles brought his fist down on the table. ‘It’s been clear to me from the first that you recruited me to this campaign only as a mere afterthought. Had Calchas not made it plain that Troy would never fall without my aid, you would have been content to leave me on Skyros and keep all the glory for yourself. Is that not so?’

Irritably Agamemnon said, ‘If your fame had been greater we might have thought of you sooner.’

Achilles’ nostrils flared. He was deciding whether to release his pent-up fury or to turn on his heel and walk away for ever, when Odysseus spoke. ‘Achilles my friend, you’re wrong to believe that the High King slighted you. Had I been quicker to come from Ithaca, you would have been called sooner to the cause. Such things are ruled by the gods, but if there is a fault here, it is mine.’

‘And today?’ Achilles demanded, barely mollified by the generous apology. ‘Have I not seen my courage thrown back in my teeth?’

‘No one doubts your courage,’ Odysseus answered, ‘but you ask a great deal.’

Menelaus shifted uneasily in his chair, sweating a little in the heat. ‘My brother seeks only to secure the success of the landing.’ ‘Then am I to understand that the sons of Atreus question my prowess?’

Nestor smiled at him. ‘No more than I do, and that is not at all. But there will be many opportunities for you to demonstrate your skill at arms, young man.’

‘You are old, sir,’Achilles answered, ‘and I respect your wisdom. But were you not once as young as I am and as impatient for fame?’

‘It’s your impatience that worries me,’ Agamemnon scowled. ‘I will not court disaster merely to feed your ambitions.’

Again Achilles bristled. Again Odysseus was about to intervene, but it was Idomeneus who spoke first. It had been one thing for the King of Crete to gain formal acknowledgement as joint-commander of the enterprise, but it had been quite another to make his authority felt in a council that had assembled around Agamemnon and evidently owed him its allegiance. His position was weakened also by the fact that he had brought twenty less ships from Crete than the hundred he had promised. But having observed this dispute with cool detachment, the suave Cretan now saw his first clear opportunity to assert himself. ‘There is a way we might resolve this matter to everyone’s satisfaction while at the same time advancing our business here today’. Gratified to sense that he had secured the full attention of everyone present, he kept them waiting a few moments longer than necessary. ‘I agree with my royal cousin of Mycenae that Diomedes is the right man to lead this force. The conqueror of Thebes will surely make short work of Tenedos.’ Achilles stiffened but Idomeneus smiled and raised a restraining hand. ‘Be patient with me, friend.’ When Achilles settled in his chair again, Idomeneus looked round at the others. ‘Priam has, of course, anticipated our plans to seize the island, and has taken steps to fortify it. He knows that the only harbour large enough for the number of ships we will need is here.’ He pointed to the place on the chart. ‘One of my spies reliably reports that a number of large rocks have been placed on the cliffs above the harbour. In the event of attack, they will be rolled down, causing massive damage both to ships and men as they come ashore.’ Agamemnon was about to demand why he had not been told this before, but Idomeneus spoke over him. ‘This is my suggestion. Let Diomedes command the main assault on the harbour, but give Achilles command of a smaller force that will swim ashore under the cover of darkness, making for this cove here. From there he can storm the cliff positions from the rear. If he times his assault correctly, and conducts it with sufficient ardour, he will prevent the release of the rocks and allow the main force to come ashore unmolested.’ His black eyes smiled across at Achilles. ‘There is great honour to be won from such a perilous task. And this way the two commanders will act together – as Agamemnon and I act together, to mutual advantage and for the good of all.’

Odysseus and Nestor immediately commended the merits of the plan. When Diomedes declared that he had no objection to sharing that part of his command, Agamemnon gave the scheme his general approval so long as the details could be worked out to his satisfaction. But though the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles had been contained, it had not been resolved, and Odysseus came away from the council privately convinced that, whatever the oracles promised, the hostility between the High King and the dangerous young man he had brought out of Skyros might one day prove disastrous for the whole campaign.

Whenever Odysseus spoke about Achilles in later years he would always claim that there was a mystery about the youth that baffled understanding, for though his pride was impossible, his murderous efficiency as a warrior was matched by a degree of tenderness such as Odysseus had observed in no other man. In some respects, he suggested once, Achilles had more in common with Helen than with anyone else he knew. They had both grown up loving wild things in wild places – Achilles at Cheiron’s school in the mountains, Helen in the wilderness groves of Artemis – and both had a certain feral quality about them, by which I think he meant an almost amoral air of innocence that was capable of ruthless action. It’s true also that both of them had been injured by the human world at a crucial moment of their development and their destinies were shaped for ever by those wounds. Above all, however, they seemed kindred in the knowledge that though their bodies were mortal, their spirits were not, and everything about them seemed touched by immortal fire.

‘Mother,’ Achilles had said at last as he and Thetis parted, ‘I was born to die soon, but Olympian Zeus owes me some honour for it.’ And so he had come to the war, convinced that he would never return, and driven by so urgent an appetite for his destiny that he would let nothing stand in the way of his honour. Out of forces that once threatened to tear him apart – the bitter strife between his mother and his father, between the old religion and the new, between the claims of his peaceful life on Skyros and his need for glory – Achilles had forged himself into a weapon of war, and his whole being gleamed with warlike purpose.

This then was the young man entrusted with the leadership of the surprise assault on Tenedos, and his bristling new resolve to prove himself something more than a man among men generated such a degree of impetus that his small band of Myrmidons crashed into the rear of the Trojan defenders with terrifying ferocity. The cliff heights were taken with few losses, a signal was sent to Diomedes telling him to bring his ships ashore, and the raiding party advanced so far ahead of the main force that it was Achilles himself who thrust his spear through the breast of King Tenes, the commander of the island force, and then killed the man’s father with a savage blow to the head.

Thereafter resistance quickly collapsed. Splashed with blood that was none of his own, his bright hair gleaming in the dawn light, Achilles stood among his cheering men, waiting for Diomedes to join him in the citadel. However soon his death might come, he felt certain now that his name at least would never die.

Once the bridgehead on Tenedos was established, Agamemnon decided to send ambassadors to Troy offering terms for the withdrawal of his forces. Menelaus, Odysseus and Palamedes were chosen to present demands which – it was clear to all of them before they set out – Priam must find unacceptable. The true purpose of the mission was to discover just how united the Trojans were behind their outward show of defiance, and with that intention in mind, Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius had arranged for the envoys to be lodged in the house of Antenor while in the city.

They found the king’s chief counsellor cagey and reserved at first, and far from at ease with the knowledge that he was responsible for their safety in a city filled with their enemies. Over a few goblets of wine, however, and at the subtle prompting of Palamedes, it was natural enough for Menelaus and Antenor to share some hard feelings about Paris, the man whom each saw as the destroyer of his happiness. Meanwhile, Odysseus worked his wry charm on Antenor’s wife Theano, who needed little encouragement to express her undying hatred for the man who had killed her child and now threatened ruin on Troy.

For the first time the Argives began to gather a picture of the way events had unfolded in the city since Paris had left Sparta with his prize. They learned that Aeneas had lent his support to Paris during the flight from Sparta only because they were sworn friends committed to each other’s aid, and not because he approved in any way of Paris’s treacherous behaviour. He and his father Anchises had soon made it plain that the High King must not look to Dardania for help when the hosts of Argos came battering at his gates. According to Antenor, Priam had tried to make light of this rift with his cousin, saying that until his son returned, and he had heard the whole story directly from his lips, he would reserve judgement on the matter. Privately, however, the king’s mind was already bent on war. He had known that it must come sooner or later, and was as ready for it as he would ever be. Antenor even remarked on a certain gleefulness in Priam’s usually grave features when he considered the scale of the insult that his son had given to Argive pride.

But Priam had been forced to wait for several months before the Aphrodite returned to Troy, for Paris and Helen had sailed as far east as Cyprus in the hope of eluding all pursuit. Menelaus winced to learn that his wife and her lover had indeed been concealed on the island while he was there, and had sailed southwards into Egypt shortly after his departure. The weather was good at that time and the seas calm, so after making his devotions at the birthplace of Aphrodite, Paris had turned their flight into a prolonged voyage of love. He had calculated that a delay in his return would allow time for his father and brothers to accept what had been done and come to terms with it. Perhaps it might also whet the appetite of the Trojans for the fabled beauty of his abducted lover.

In that last respect, his calculations had certainly hit the mark, for as soon as the Aphrodite was seen approaching the city, a large crowd began to gather along the road from the harbour to the Scaean Gate, while yet others lined the streets. To further heighten the excitement and the air of mystery, Paris arranged for Helen and Aethra to be carried in curtained litters, so that they could pass from the ship to the palace without being exposed to the mob’s coarse stare. They would have heard a few bawdy jeers from the back of the crowd, but they must also have sensed how the rich procession of retainers, slaves, animals and trophies was received for the most part with an exhilarated awe intensified by further expectation. Behind those gauzy curtains lay Helen of Sparta, who had now become, to the city’s undying glory, Helen of Troy. It was as though a goddess had descended among them, one whose mystery must not be profaned. And Paris, the people’s own prince – the bull-boy from the pastures of Mount Ida – could be seen riding proudly beside her litter. Who could argue when a beggar shouted that the age of wonders was come again upon the earth?

Antenor told how Helen’s face had still been veiled when Paris finally brought his lady before the full assembly of Priam’s family and counsellors in the great hall of the palace. ‘It was a little like watching a sculptor presenting his master work,’ he commented drily, aware of the pain on the face of Menelaus, whose sensitive imagination made him feel all the more a cuckold with each new fact he learned. ‘We had waited for so long to see her that the entire hall was agog. And yes, I have to admit that Helen is a woman of astonishing beauty – though whether any woman is worth putting an army at risk is, in my opinion, quite another matter.’

‘Or a city,’ Palamedes said.

‘Indeed.’

‘Yet we are all reasonable men. Our enmity is with Paris not with Troy. It would be a great tragedy if thousands were to die for one man’s selfish folly. Don’t you agree?’

Aware that he was answering other questions than the one that had been put to him, Antenor said, ‘Believe me, if my wife and I could see a way of avoiding war by delivering him over to you, Paris would return with you in chains this very night. But the High King is as smitten with Helen’s beauty as he is indulgent of his son. And the war party on his council is stronger than those of us who would prefer a peaceful solution. So do not expect Priam to look with favour on any demands for Helen’s return.’

When the Argive envoys presented themselves before Priam the following day, they found the atmosphere in the great hall even more openly hostile than they had expected. Paris himself was absent from the council, and Antenor did what he could to ensure a fair hearing for Agamemnon’s ambassadors, but he could not prevent the gasps and jeers of outrage with which Deiphobus and Antiphus greeted their catalogue of demands. These included the immediate return of Helen, the surrender of Paris to answer charges of murder and abduction, the compensation of Menelaus for the injury he had received, the compensation of Agamemnon and Idomeneus and all the princes under their command for the massive expense to which they had been driven by Paris’s actions, the establishing of well-defended Argive settlements in strategic locations on the Asian mainland, and free, unrestricted access to the Hellespont, the Black Sea and all the major trade routes with the east and north.

The monetary demands alone would have been sufficient to ruin Priam many times over, but the King of Troy heard Odysseus out, stony-faced, before silencing his noisier sons with a raised hand, and giving his response.

‘As to the first point, we are hardly to blame if our royal cousin of Sparta failed to satisfy his wife. Unlike my sister Hesione, who has languished in captivity on Salamis for many years, the Lady Helen is here in Troy of her own free will. If it was her wish to leave, I would regard it as beneath my dignity to keep her here. Let the princes of Argos learn a simple lesson of courtesy in that respect.’ Aware of the angry flush across the scarred face of Menelaus, he drew in his breath. ‘As to your other demands, we have long been aware that the High King at Mycenae covets our wealth and power. And why should he not when his own domain is a mere hovel by comparison? Our message to him is also simple. Nothing awaits him in Troy but ruin and humiliation. Let him clear our waters of the infestation of his ships and take his pack of Argives home before all their wives find husbands better suited to their taste.’

Remembering the last time he had stood before Priam in this hall and the amicable manner in which they had parted, Menelaus found it hard to contain his fury. ‘I see that your son lacks the courage to look me in the eye,’ he said. ‘If all your followers are as brave, King Priam, look to have your women raped, your city burned and pillaged, and your line extinguished. I will have my wife again. And you – you will rue the day that Paris shuddered from your loins.’

Odysseus put a restraining hand to his friend’s arm, and then he turned to face Priam with a cool, disdainful stare. ‘We will deliver your message to our king,’ he said. ‘Look to have his answer soon.’

The Argive ambassadors withdrew stiffly from the hall and returned to the house of Antenor. Not till long after they had left the city did they come to learn that, if Deiphobus and Antiphus had been given their way, the three of them might have been murdered in their beds that night. Only Antenor’s outraged protests, fortified by Hector’s sense of honour, had kept them from the crime.

The first assault on Troy turned into a brutal and inconclusive clash which left both sides damaged and thoughtful.

Things began well enough for the Argives when a night raid with blazing torches caused havoc among Priam’s fleet, seriously weakening his ability to guard against invasion. But the same raid had warned the Trojans of the imminence of attack and by the time Agamemnon’s ships approached the shore, a well-positioned army stood waiting to repel them.

To make matters worse, the Argive troops were troubled by rumours of a prophecy that the first man ashore was doomed to die. Even Achilles hesitated at the prow of his ship, reluctant to throw away his life with so little glory gained. Meanwhile the Trojans hurled rocks and stones at the crowded ships, keeping up an unnerving ululation that carried on the harsh wind blowing across the plain.

At last, stung by the insults coming from the enemy before him and from Agamemnon at his back, an old warrior called Iolaus who had once been charioteer to Heracles, gave a mighty shout and jumped into the surf. He was immediately surrounded and cut down on the strand before he could strike a single blow, but the man’s rash courage was to win him undying fame. He was given the title Protesilaus – ‘first to the fight’ – and buried with great honour that night on the Thracian shore of the Hellespont.

But now that the first life had been lost, other warriors began to jump from the ships. Achilles and Patroclus were among the leaders, with Phoenix and the Myrmidons behind them. Odysseus, however, held back a while, watching how the battle developed. He had counselled against launching a land attack until more had been done to stretch Priam’s resources, but Agamemnon had been so infuriated by the king’s insolent reply to his terms that he was determined to force the words back down his throat. Now the price of his impatience swiftly came clear as more and more men fell under the volley of arrows that met them as they stumbled towards the shore.

By sheer force of numbers, the Argives forced a landing, only to find themselves embroiled in a fierce and bloody struggle all along the strand. The strongest resistance came from a sector of the front where a Trojan hero called Cycnus hacked his way through the invaders as if he was invulnerable. When Achilles saw what was happening, he shouted for Patroclus to follow and fought his way across the uneven ground until he confronted the Trojan giant. Cycnus laughed in his face, gesturing for the youth to come at him if he dared. A moment later he was astonished by the speed and ferocity of Achilles’ attack. Even so, the fight was long and desperate, and might have gone either way had not Cycnus stumbled over a stone as he sought to avoid a sword thrust. He fell to the ground on his back, pulling Achilles down with him. Both men lost their weapons in the fall, but Cycnus was winded by the weight of his opponent’s armoured body. In a frenzy of violence, Achilles grabbed at the Trojan’s throat and strangled the man with his own helmet straps.

When he stood up, gasping and exultant from the kill, it was to feel Patroclus pulling at his arm. All around him, as a trumpet sounded from Agamemnon’s flagship, he saw the Argive warriors retreating from the shore.

Many recriminations followed the failure of that first attack, but the heavy losses he had taken persuaded Agamemnon that Odysseus had been right to insist that Troy would fall only after a long campaign of attrition. So the war entered a new, sullen phase of sporadic violence that dragged on for a year, and then another, until it became clear that, if Troy ever fell, it would not be until all the long years of the snake had passed.

Battles were fought at sea, and many ships were sunk, and many men burned and drowned before the Argives established their naval superiority. From their stronghold on Tenedos, they were now free to mount raids all along the Asian coastline. The island of Lesbos was taken, and mainland cities smaller than Troy fell before them. Priam’s southern allies in Lydia suffered heavily from these attacks. Colophon, Clazomenae, Smyrna and Antandrus were all left looted and burning, but other important cities such as Sestos and Abydos on either side of the Hellespont held out under siege. So the years of warfare protracted themselves from season to bloody season, and all across Asia, from the Black Sea to Cyprus, even in places far from where the Argives had ever landed, the name of Achilles struck fear in men’s hearts and kept children from their sleep.

There were also long periods of inactivity while both sides licked their wounds, or when fever, dysentery and pestilence robbed men of the will to walk let alone fight. Sometimes the troops could not be stirred in the torrid summer heat, and the dark winter months were always wretched and bitter. A maddening wind blew across the Trojan plain throughout much of the year but in winter there was ice on its breath. It left the springs frozen, the tents heavy with snow, and battle-hardened warriors groaning over chilblains and frostbite. And even when the weather was clement not a day went by without men questioning why they had ever got into this insane fight and wondering whether they would ever sit by their homeland hearths again. But those who deserted faced a long trek home through hostile territory and most of the Argives grudgingly decided that having endured so much, it made no sense to turn for home with little to show for their pains but wounds and stories. So the war went on.

In the ninth year, with Troy’s western sea lanes cut, and many of her allies demoralized by constant raids, it began to look as though the war was finally moving Agamemnon’s way. Late in the summer he decided to attack Mysia.

The Mysians are a Thracian people who had crossed from Europe a century earlier. Their king, Telephus, was a bastard son of Heracles who had gained the Mysian throne with Priam’s help after marrying one of the High King’s many daughters. His fertile lands were now keeping Troy supplied with wheat, olives, figs and wine that were carried along inland routes beyond the reach of raiders. Agamemnon had been convinced by Odysseus that if Mysia fell, then Troy might be starved into submission. So leaving behind him a force strong enough to hold Tenedos, he brought the bulk of his fleet to the island of Lesbos and used the harbour at Mytilene as a base for his assault on that part of Mysia around the mouth of the river Caicus which is called Teuthrania. But once again he miscalculated the strength of the resistance and the battle took much the same shape as his failed advance on Troy many years earlier. The landing was made more quickly this time but the Mysians had the advantage of the ground and by the time Agamemnon had seen half of his advance guard cut down, he was struggling to avoid a rout among his troops.

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