The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Shut up and sit down,’ his father ordered.

Penelope saw the doubt in Eupeithes’s eyes and held out her hands imploringly towards him.

‘Think about what I’m saying. If any new king is to hold power, he must have unassailable legitimacy. If I remarry in two years’ time, the people might accept my husband for a while, but won’t their eyes always be gazing towards the distant horizon, wondering when the true king will return? But if we consult the Pythoness and she says Odysseus will never return, or if he doesn’t come back by the prophesied date, then everyone will know the new king has the approval of the gods. They’ll accept Odysseus is never coming home and will welcome my new husband openly.’

Eupeithes’s eyes narrowed as he pondered Penelope’s words, but he did not have to think for long.

‘You speak wisely, my queen, and I accept your condition. Antinous and Mentor will go to Mount Parnassus, escorted by an armed guard. That way, there will be plenty of witnesses to the oracle and no-one can change the Pythoness’s prophetic words to suit their own ends. Agreed?’

Penelope nodded and sat down again, hoping her gamble would pay off.

Chapter Twenty-five

PRISONER OF APHEIDAS

Eperitus woke slowly, drawn out of his dream by the mingled aromas of woodsmoke and the scent of flowers. He heard the crackle and spit of a fire and beneath it the whisper of soft voices. His eyelids were heavy – too heavy yet to open – and he could detect little or no light through the thin layers of skin. There was a throbbing ache inside his head that seemed to be faintly echoed by every muscle in his body, and as he felt the warm furs across his naked chest and the pliant mattress beneath him he wondered whether he was back in his hut in the Greek camp. But as his confused mind began to read and order the signals his senses were feeding it, a deeper instinct informed him that he was not in his hut or anywhere else he recognised. Then the lazy fumbling of his senses was trumped by the recollection of his father’s face, charging at him with his sword drawn. His eyes flashed open and he tried to sit up.

It was as if a strong man was holding each of his limbs, pinning them to the table and defeating every effort he made to rise. As he fought his weakness for a second time, the figure of a woman appeared above him. She laid a gentle hand upon his chest, easing him back down to the mattress, and with her other hand placed a damp cloth on his temple.

‘Be still,’ she said firmly in accented Greek. ‘Your wounds have weakened you. There is no point in fighting them.’

Her face was old and soft, though lined with concern, and her grey hair was tied up in a bun at the back of her head. She was kneeling beside him and high above her he could see a shadowy ceiling, where faded murals of the moon and stars were barely visible through a fine haze of smoke. He could also see the tops of the four wooden pillars that supported the roof, as well as the upper reaches of plastered walls where paintings of tall, indistinct figures twitched in the firelight. It was a hall of some kind, confirming to him that he was not back in the Greek camp. The woman’s accent, he noted, was Trojan, but that meant little when almost all the slaves owned by the Greeks were from Ilium.

‘Where am I?’

‘You are in Troy, in the house of my master.’

Troy. The word had a crushing effect on his spirit. Somehow, he had been captured and taken back to the city of his enemies. For all he knew, the battle could have ended in a Trojan victory and his countrymen might all be slain, prisoners like himself, or sailing back across the Aegean to Greece in defeat. If that was the case, he hoped that Odysseus and the rest of the Ithacans had been able to slip away in time.

‘Then the battle was lost and the Trojans were victorious?’

The old woman shook her head.

‘It ended in the same way as all its predecessors – the plain full of dead men and both armies licking their wounds behind the safety of their respective walls. And don’t ask me to tell you what happened,’ she said, intercepting his next question. ‘I don’t know and I don’t much care.’

‘Then tell me your name.’

‘I am Clymene,’ the woman said.

The name was common enough, but Eperitus followed his instincts.

‘Palamedes’s mother?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, a little surprised that he knew of her. Then her attitude stiffened. ‘You Greeks stoned him to death.’

Eperitus felt a pang of guilt as he recalled how Odysseus had brought about Palamedes’s execution, after discovering the Nauplian prince was secretly passing Agamemnon’s strategies to the Trojans. Only as Eperitus had escorted him to his death did he reveal that his mother was a servant woman in Troy – a Trojan herself – and that Apheidas had threatened to kill her if Palamedes did not betray his fellow Greeks. As the offspring of Greek and Trojan parents himself, Eperitus had sympathised with Palamedes, despite his treachery.