The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Be thankful?’ Odysseus challenged, raising his voice above the clamour so that voices were stilled again and all eyes turned to the Ithacan king. ‘If you knew anything about his glorious achievements you would consider yourselves cursed not to have fought at his side. And just because you baulk at the prospect of war, Lycomedes, that doesn’t mean Neoptolemus shares your delicate disposition. Surely Achilles’s own son will want to hear something of his father’s deeds in the war against Troy? And who better to tell him than men who fought in the battle line beside him?’

‘You are the guest, Odysseus, not the host,’ Lycomedes warned, barely able to contain his own rage. ‘If I want a story, I will call for my bard. Until then, keep your silence!’

The hall rang with his words and no man dared to break the tension between the two kings. Deidameia looked anxiously from Lycomedes to Odysseus, and finally to Neoptolemus. As her eyes fell on her son, he rose from his chair and stared at his grandfather.

‘Let Odysseus speak. I want to hear what he has to say.’

Lycomedes looked at Deidameia, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Very well, Odysseus,’ he said. ‘Tell to us of the deeds of Achilles in the years since he left us. Stand and earn your food and wine, like the beggar you are. Speak so that Neoptolemus can understand something of the man his father was, and learn from his errors.’

Lycomedes’s insult had little effect on Odysseus, who stood and looked around at the faces that were now turned to him. There was the flicker of a sneer on some as they stared at the bulky Ithacan, with the faded purple cloak his wife had given him and his long red hair and unkempt beard. Balanced on his short legs, his muscular torso and arms looked ungainly and almost comical, though few would have dared laugh into his battle-hardened face or his knowing green eyes. And yet even on Scyros they had heard about the legendary voice of Odysseus, and despite his vagabond appearance they waited in silence for him to speak.

‘Ten years ago, King Agamemnon charged me with the task of finding the greatest warrior in all Greece – Achilles – who was said to be here on Scyros. When we eventually found him he was disguised as a girl, hiding away from unwelcome visitors at the insistence of his mother, Thetis.’ Here he looked at Deidameia, who held his gaze firmly. ‘She had foreseen that her son would die if he ever went to Troy, and thought that if she could prevent him going he would live a long and prosperous life. But, goddess though she was, she could not change her son’s nature. Achilles sailed with us to Troy in search of glory, and became the fiercest of all the Greeks, the bane of every Trojan who ever faced him in battle.’

He went on to describe the long years of the war, from the first skirmish on Tenedos to the great battles that had rolled back and forth across the plains of Ilium, all the time focussing on the part played by Neoptolemus’s father. With far greater skill than Eperitus’s stumbling efforts with Deidameia in the walled garden earlier, he recalled in detail Achilles’s grief at the loss of Patroclus, his return to war in the magnificent armour presented to him by Thetis, and how he took his terrible revenge on Hector. Though he briefly mentioned Achilles’s refusal to burn Hector’s corpse, he made clear how his anger was ultimately tempered by compassion for Priam. He followed this with vivid accounts of his slaying of Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, and soon after, Memnon, leader of the Aethiopes. As Odysseus described each victory he pointedly did not look at Neoptolemus, speaking instead to the rest of the crowded hall and winning the audience over to his tale, so that they shouted in anguish or triumph as he described Achilles’s various trials. Indeed, he did not need to look at Neoptolemus to know that his icy expression was slowly thawing, encouraged by the crowd around him, and that a fire had been kindled in his heart that blazed in his eyes, to the exclusion of everything else in the great hall.

Finally, Odysseus came to the death of Achilles before the Scaean Gate. The room fell into a hush as he described the shadow of Apollo falling across the closely packed soldiers, and the hiss of the poisoned arrow as it found Achilles’s vulnerable heel and brought him down.

‘And so your father lived and died, Neoptolemus,’ Odysseus said, turning at last to the young man seated beside Lycomedes. ‘But as your mother and grandfather have already guessed, we did not come here solely to bring you news of Achilles’s death. You’d have heard eventually, and the message didn’t need two kings to carry it. No, we’re here at the will of the gods: an oracle has predicted that Troy won’t fall until you’ve taken your father’s place in the army.’