King of Ithaca (44 page)

As the sun threw the shadows of the mountains across the Eurotas valley, turning the landscape from sallow ochre to a dun brown, he felt keenly the lack of human company. He missed the closeness he had felt in belonging to Odysseus’s men, and it was hard not knowing what was going on at the palace. He wondered how Ajax had reacted to the choice of Menelaus to marry Helen, as Athena had said would happen. And what of Diomedes, the proud warrior who was deeply in love with the princess? How had Little Ajax fared with the loss of Penelope to Odysseus? And what of Helen? With all her hopes of freedom dashed, how would she cope with marriage to a man she did not love? He felt for her most of all, and pitied the girl whose youthful hopes never had a chance of being realized.

These thoughts buzzed around his head long into the night, until the moon was overhead and he knew Clytaemnestra would not appear. Even then sleep was slow in coming, but finally the pressure on his eyelids became too much and he slept until the light of the sun on his face woke him.

There were no signs that he had been visited in the night and so he went about his usual tasks of gathering wood and looking for food. The rest of the day passed in much the same way as the one before, followed by an equally restless and, ultimately, disappointing evening. The next morning he was woken not by sunlight forcing its way through his eyelids, but by splashes of rain on his face. He looked up, blinking against the heavy droplets, to see a ceiling of grey cloud covering the valley and mountains. Quickly he carried his supplies of food and wood into a niche in the rock face and spent the rest of the day hidden beneath the protection of its broken roof as the rain came down.

Making a fire in those conditions was difficult, but as the rain trickled away slowly to nothing he eventually succeeded in his task. Soon a great blaze was burning in the darkness and he stood naked before it, holding first his tunic and then his cloak up to the heat to dry. Then he heard a sound behind him and turned to see Clytaemnestra standing there, shamelessly eyeing his nakedness.

He hastily threw the cloak about his waist and apologized. Saying nothing she approached the flames and picked up his tunic. He put a hand out to take it from her but, as he did so, she threw it onto the flames.

‘What are you doing?’ he objected, trying to get hold of a corner of the garment and pull it free of the flames, though without success. ‘That’s my only tunic. Do you want me to look a fool when I finally get down from this mountain?’

‘Of course not,’ she replied, calmly. ‘That’s why I brought you this.’ She held up a new tunic and handed it to him. ‘I made it myself, especially for you. That old rag you’ve been wearing is a disgrace for a nobleman, so travel-worn and threadbare. Don’t worry, it’ll fit you perfectly.’

Eperitus looked at the garment. He could detect Clytaemnestra’s scent on it, and imagined her long-fingered hands working on the soft material, just for him. He met her eyes and saw that the veil of cynicism and anger had lifted to reveal a young woman in the prime of her life.

‘I’ll put it on now,’ he said, and walked behind a corner of rock to change.

As Eperitus slipped the cloak from around his waist and stood naked once more in the cool night air, he suddenly felt himself being watched. He turned and saw that Clytaemnestra had followed him, but instead of covering himself he allowed her to look at him. It was exhilarating, and for a moment he felt godlike, worshipped, desired. Then he pulled the tunic over his head and picked up his cloak. She returned to stand by the fire as he followed.

‘So Helen’s husband has been chosen,’ he said, as if nothing had happened between them. But something had. The usual formality of their relationship had been bridged, and the bridge could not be recrossed.

‘Yes. They were married today.’

She stood between himself and the fire, her back turned to him, and he could see the silhouette of her body through the thin material of her dress: her bony shoulders; the narrow hips and waist; the gap between the meeting of her legs. A tingling feeling crept across his skin and spread through his whole body, exciting the flesh and shaking off the cold of the night. He wanted her. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her and then to take her, to journey where he had never ventured before.

‘It was Menelaus, wasn’t it?’

‘How did you know?’ she asked, turning towards him.

‘A god told me.’

Clytaemnestra gave him an inquisitive look that was halfway between disbelief and curiosity, but she did not question his knowledge.

‘Anyway, it’s over now and the suitors – all but Menelaus, of course – will be leaving over the next couple of days. I hear Odysseus and his new bride are heading for the sea tomorrow afternoon. They’ll follow the course of the Eurotas and hire themselves a ship when they reach the coast.’

‘So your husband’s plans for a war on Troy have failed?’

‘Yes. Utterly,’ she said, with a grim smile of quiet triumph. ‘There’ll be no war unless Priam turns his ambitions towards Greece itself. Agamemnon’s dream to unite the Greeks can never be revived now.’

‘But when Menelaus inherits Tyndareus’s throne, the Atreides will rule the two most powerful states in Greece. With the combined armies of Sparta and Mycenae they could conquer all the other states, effectively giving Agamemnon what he wanted anyway.’

Clytaemnestra shook her head. ‘He’s ambitious, but he isn’t a tyrant. He believes in unifying Greece by mutual agreement, not subjugation. If he were anybody else I could almost admire his vision and his commitment. But he isn’t anybody else; he’s my husband and he’s a bastard. I curse him!’

She spat over her shoulder into the flames.

‘I don’t blame you for hating him, not after what he did to you,’ Eperitus ventured, taking a step closer.

Clytaemnestra hung her head and a shining tear rolled down each of her cheeks. Then Eperitus put a hand under her chin and lifted her face. Her large, bewitching eyes met his and something stirred deep within him. More tears, even though her face was proud and defiant, and then he kissed her. Her lips parted and he followed her lead, each action new to him. His hands found her thin waist and pulled her body against his, the twin bulge of her small breasts pressing upon his ribs. Then as her fingers ran into his hair he felt the tip of her tongue enter his slightly opened mouth, a sensation for which no rumour or description of the act had ever prepared him. He felt his whole body respond.

He squeezed her closer still and dropped a hand to her buttocks, only for her to mirror the action on himself. For a moment both of her hands clawed at his flesh, and then began tugging at the hem of his tunic, sliding it up his back until moments later she pulled it over his head and arms and flung it to one side. Instinctively they stood back from each other as she undid the cord that held her dress together. Then she was naked before him and he found his aroused passion momentarily stilled as he stared at her.

Although he had seen naked women before, never had he beheld a body that he knew within moments would be joined with his own. Clytaemnestra, perhaps enjoying the knowledge she was giving herself to him in a way that Agamemnon would never know, allowed his eyes to roam across her body, over the small white breasts with their disproportionately large, starkly pink nipples, down over the flat stomach to the thick arrowhead of red hair between her legs. Then, before his eyes could have their fill of her, she took him by the hand and led him to a patch of dried grass beyond the ring of firelight, out into the shadows where the moon’s silver luminance gave their bodies a ghostly, even corpselike appearance.

When Eperitus awoke the next morning she was gone. He was disappointed – there was so much he wanted to say and ask and talk about with her – but he knew he was not heart-broken. He glanced about for signs of her, just in case she had only wandered off, but there were none.

He lay back on the bed of grass and looked up at the clouds, his mind sliding lazily between the different pleasures of the night before. But for all the foreign delights of experiencing a woman, every thought ran ultimately up against the same barrier, the single revelation that Clytaemnestra had shared with him between their bouts of love-making. Damastor was a traitor. Damastor had wanted Odysseus to choose Penelope over Helen, and it was Damastor who had given the alarm when Odysseus entered the women’s quarters.

It all sounded too incredible, and Eperitus wondered whether Clytaemnestra’s second sight had failed her or deceived her. But as he sifted through everything he could remember about Damastor’s actions over the past half-year, the distant sound of horns carried to him from across the Eurotas valley. In an instant he was on his feet and standing at the edge of the shelf of rock, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed towards Sparta. Away in the distance, the first of the suitors was emerging from the city gates. The courtship of Helen was over. The battle for Ithaca was about to begin.

book

FOUR

Chapter Twenty-five

D
EATH IN THE
T
EMPLE

Even from a distance Eperitus’s shield and spears would mark him out as a warrior, so he was especially cautious in his descent from the foothills not to make himself visible to any watching eyes on the city walls. Once he was back on the level plain of the valley, though, there were enough trees, ravines and stone walls to provide cover and he made much better progress on his way to the sun-dappled waters of the Eurotas.

The day was a warm one, in contrast to the clouds and occasional rain of the past week, and by the time Eperitus reached a point on the river far enough down from the city gates he was sweating and thirsty. He laid down his shield and spears behind a stone wall and glanced about the countryside for signs of life. There were shepherds on the foothills to either side of the valley and a handful of peasant children in an olive grove on the other side of the river, but neither posed a threat so he walked to the near bank and knelt down to drink. The cold waters were refreshing on his dusty hands, the strong undercurrents driving his fingers apart and chilling them to the bone. He took a quick draught and splashed some on his face and neck, then on his dark hair, hot with the sun. He scooped up more handfuls of the liquid until his thirst was slaked, then sat back with the water dripping from his unshaven chin onto the tunic Clytaemnestra had given him.

As he slouched back against the rich, damp grass of the river bank the sun quickly dried his hair and skin and took advantage of his wearied condition to woo him with thoughts of sleep. The air was rich with the smell of spring blossom, overpowering his senses, and he felt his lids grow ponderous and the tension in his muscles ease away. His breathing grew slower and heavier as the gentle breeze from the river fanned his skin. His chin lolled onto his chest and within moments he was in the depths of sleep.

A noise snagged him back to wakefulness. He opened his eyes and raised his head to listen. Silence. For a moment he thought the noise had not been from the waking world, but then he heard it again. The slow beat of hoofs and the trundle of wheels, followed by the sharp whinnying of horses. Eperitus pulled the sword from his belt and lay flat on his stomach against the steeply angled bank.

The road bent out of sight behind a cluster of cypress trees, hiding whoever was approaching, but soon a chariot with a team of four horses came slowly into view, followed by a large number of fully armed warriors. Because of the size of the escort, Eperitus thought at first that it was one of the more powerful suitors, on his way to the coast and a ship home, but as they came closer Eperitus could see Mentor at the reins with Odysseus and Penelope standing beside him. The couple looked magnificent together, and Eperitus felt a surge of happiness at the sight of them. Behind them came the small band of Ithacans, with Halitherses and Antiphus at their head, followed by a much larger troop of a further forty warriors.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Eperitus stood up and ran to greet them. At a command from Odysseus, Mentor halted the chariot and the prince jumped down to meet his friend.

‘I’ve been praying you would find us before we sailed for Ithaca,’ he said, taking Eperitus’s hand and pulling him into an embrace. ‘I’ve a lot to tell you about. Penelope and I were married.’

He nodded towards his wife, who was watching them from the chariot.

‘You old fox,’ Eperitus replied, feigning surprise. He looked up at Penelope and took pleasure from the sight of her calm, intelligent face. She smiled back at him with a happy gleam in her eye.

Odysseus gave him a roguish grin as the other Ithacans gathered around them, their faces full of surprise and joy at the unexpected reunion. Halitherses put his arms about Eperitus and held him in a bearlike grip, a rare sign of affection from the guard captain. As he stepped away, Antiphus gave the young warrior a hug and roughed up his hair affectionately, welcoming him back into the ranks.

‘You did a brave thing,’ he said. The others murmured their agreement. ‘After you escaped Odysseus told us it was him, not you, who had been in Penelope’s room, and that your sacrifice probably saved his life. I wonder how many of us would have done the same.’