King of Ithaca (45 page)

‘You all would have,’ Eperitus said, dismissing the compliment. ‘Now, is someone going to tell me who these others are?’

‘They’re Spartans,’ said Damastor, stepping forward and offering his hand. ‘Tyndareus lent them to Odysseus as a wedding gift, to help him retake Ithaca.’

This was the moment Eperitus had thought about and dreaded more than any other since waking that morning. Should he refuse Damastor’s gesture of friendship and denounce him as a traitor in front of everybody, without the slightest proof to support his accusation? Or should he keep silent and bide his time, waiting for some evidence that Clytaemnestra was right? After a moment of doubt, he decided the latter would be the wisest course of action and took Damastor’s hand.

Soon after, the march to the sea resumed. Odysseus did not return to the chariot, but walked beside Eperitus. The matter of his sudden appearance still needed explanation, he said.

‘Does it?’ Eperitus asked. ‘You of all men should know I’m a man of my word. I offered you my loyalty and now it’s my duty to help you restore Ithaca to Laertes’s rule. Did you really expect me to let you and these clumsy oafs you call warriors fight Eupeithes alone?’

‘Of course I didn’t,’ he laughed. ‘But I should really like to know where you hid yourself these past few days, and what you lived on. And just how did you ghost into the palace armoury and retrieve your own weapons?’

‘That’s a story I’ll keep to myself,’ Eperitus replied, thinking of Clytaemnestra and knowing that the mere mention of her would reveal everything to Odysseus’s clever mind. ‘But you must answer a question for me: how do you intend to retake Ithaca with the force you have? These Spartans look like good men, fully armed and battle-hardened, but the Taphians aren’t children either. We were lucky to beat the ones that ambushed us, and from Mentor’s account their army on Ithaca is at least twice our number.’

‘The people of Ithaca will come to our aid,’ Odysseus began. ‘They may only be fishermen and farmers, but they love their country and they’re loyal to their king – that’s more powerful than the gold Eupeithes pays to his Taphians. But Athena’s the one I’m counting on.’ He dug into his pouch and brought out the clay owl the goddess had given him. ‘Her spear and aegis are worth a thousand men each, and when I use this to call on her no power on earth will be able to save Eupeithes.’

Darkness began to fall before they reached the coast, putting an end to the day’s journey. As the others made camp for the night Eperitus and Antiphus gathered wood and built a fire. The archer sniffed the air and announced that the sea was only a quick march away. Although Eperitus did not possess his seafarer’s senses, the gulls flocking about their camp in the twilight seemed to confirm his verdict.

‘I know the coast around here,’ Antiphus added. ‘The river empties out beside a large fishing village. I stopped there once when I was a lad on a merchant ship, and I remember we came inland to buy livestock for the voyage home. We might even have come this far, though it was a long time ago and it’s difficult to recognize a place in this sort of light.’ He looked about at the rocky hills on either side. ‘But it feels familiar, you know, and if I’m right there’s a temple to Athena nearby.’

‘What’s that you say, Antiphus?’ Odysseus asked, who was standing nearby and watching the last of the sunset over the peaks of the Taygetus Mountains.

‘A temple of Athena, my lord, on a hilltop not far downstream from here. It wasn’t very big, as I remember, but you’d easily catch its silhouette if there’s any light left.’

‘Then I’m going to look for it,’ Odysseus said. ‘I’ll be back by the time it gets dark.’

‘My lord!’ Eperitus said, noticing Damastor amongst a group of Ithacans preparing food nearby. ‘Surely you’re not going alone? At least let me accompany you.’

‘Eperitus, if I’d needed a nursemaid I’d have brought old Eurycleia with me. Now, sit down by the fire and stop worrying about me.’

Eperitus felt uneasy as he watched his friend go. Soon he and Antiphus were joined by the other Ithacans, Damastor amongst them. The blaze was already puffing burning embers into the evening air and a few early moths were attracted into its circle of light. One of the Spartans, a tall, bearded man by the name of Diocles, came over and politely requested a brand from their fire. There were too many of them to share a single fire, so Eperitus helped him carry some burning logs over to the stack of wood his comrades had constructed and soon had it ablaze. The Spartans thanked him and he returned to his own group.

The last embers of the day were burning over the western hills, leaving an insipid pink stain on the sky that gave warning of an even warmer day to come tomorrow. But the faint glow was rapidly succumbing to the deep blue of evening and the stars were already beginning to gleam and twinkle at every point on the horizon. As Eperitus watched them his thoughts turned to Penelope, who was in a makeshift tent with her slave Actoris, over by the tethered horses. He was wondering whether she would join them that evening when he was struck by a sudden sensation that something was wrong. It was a feeling of growing fear, though he could not think what had caused it. He looked about and instinctively put a hand on the hilt of his sword, but there was nothing. Then he knew. He looked once around the circle of faces, illuminated orange by the fire, and his heart sank into his stomach. Damastor was gone.

Odysseus propped his sword against the outside wall of the temple and walked in. The doorway was so low he had to dip his head to enter, and once inside he saw it was little more than a simple, unadorned country altar. There were no anterooms, no columns supporting the broken, sagging roof, no elaborate murals on the flaking walls and no rich ornaments to lend it the required sense of divine majesty. It was perhaps a quarter the size of the great hall in his father’s palace and boasted nothing more than a pitted stone altar at the far end. This was watched over by a badly formed midget effigy, which he could only assume was meant to represent Athena.

The stub of a torch had been lodged in a groove upon the wall to his right. It was sputtering its last as Odysseus entered, but by its wavering light he could tell that the chamber was empty. A bunch of early spring flowers lay to either side of the altar, which along with the torch were the only signs that the temple had been visited in months. Even they were probably the work of a lone peasant or local holy man, whose daily duty it was to light the single room and attend to its altar.

Odysseus knelt before the clay figurine and eyed it, making a mental comparison between its stunted, grimacing features and the matchless glory of the goddess it represented. But for all its rude art and rough edges he sensed something of Athena had been caught in the representation; compared with the voluptuous, richly curving statuettes of Aphrodite and Hera he had seen in other temples, the figurine’s long body, straight hips and crude breasts reminded him of her boyish masculinity; the jutting brow and the straight nose that shot down from it were every bit as stern as the face of the goddess herself. And as he looked he sensed a new presence filling the temple. Suddenly fearful that the spirit of Athena might be watching him through the thumbed pits of the figurine’s eye sockets, he threw his glance to the base of the altar and closed his eyes.

‘Pallas Athena,’ he said aloud, his voice filling the dusty confines of the temple. ‘The journey you sent me on is over. Now the time has come to prove myself in the final battle, as I know you always intended me to. Tomorrow I embark for Ithaca.’

Damastor stood in the shadows at the back of the temple, the torchlight gleaming dully off the drawn blade of his sword. He had removed his sandals and left them outside so that he could enter the temple without making a noise, and now, as his prince knelt before the effigy of the goddess, he took two steps nearer.

Odysseus continued. ‘Mistress, you’ve always guided my spear in battle, as in the hunt. You’ve kept me safe from harm. It was you who saved me from the boar that tore open my thigh, and you who sent Eperitus to aid me in my trials. You made him swear service to me in your presence, after you gave me the gift.’

Damastor had crept two paces closer and was bringing his sword up to hack down on Odysseus’s neck when he heard the strange words. What gift could he be talking about? Was Odysseus suggesting he had
seen
the goddess? Damastor had heard of such things, though the tales were treated with scepticism and the tellers often mocked. But Odysseus had no one to lie to here.

‘And it is your gift I’m concerned about, mistress.’ Odysseus pulled the clay owl from his pouch and held it up before the figurine. ‘I’ve carried it with me everywhere, and it’s here with me now, but the time is near when I’ll use it to summon your help. Tomorrow I take my men to Ithaca, to win back my father’s kingdom. But you know how weak we are, mistress, how few compared to Eupeithes’s hordes. That’s when I intend to break the seal and pray for your help.’

Damastor looked at the clay owl and his quick mind half-guessed what it was. In an instant he had questioned whether it would work for himself; he considered the possibilities it might offer him after he had plucked it from its dead owner’s fingers; and in his black, ambitious heart he saw himself as the new king of Ithaca, divinely appointed by no less a god than Athena herself.

‘So I ask now that you will be swift to honour your promise to me,’ Odysseus continued. ‘Come quickly into the battle when I call you, mistress, unless every plan and every hope you ever pinned upon me be cut down by a Taphian spear.’

‘Or an Ithacan sword,’ Damastor said, and raised the weapon high over his head.

Eperitus stood up and left the circle about the fire, and as soon as he was out of earshot of the camp he began to run. Following the sound of the river on his left he stumbled like a blind man over the pitted and rock-strewn road, constantly looking up and to his right for sight of a temple on a hill. The light was failing fast and he was beset by fears that he had already passed it, until, after some time of doubt and increasing panic, he was ready to turn back and retrace his steps. Then he saw it.

The very last of the evening light was spread like a purple mould along the low black humps of the mountains. But there in its watery light, barely distinguishable amidst the rocks and twisted figures of leafless trees, was framed the upright silhouette of a building. Despite the darkness he quickly found a path leading up the hillside and began to pick his way along it. But at that moment he was struck by a sudden sense of dread. Looking up he saw, or thought he saw, a figure standing by the temple. It stood between the building’s outline and the stump of a dead tree, the sky burning with purple flames behind it as it looked down the hill. Eperitus froze, not wanting to be seen, but then the figure was gone. He did not see it go and could not say whether it had entered the temple or left it; he was not even certain he had seen it at all. And then panic contracted the muscles of his heart and he knew he must run, run without care for the path or the rocks at his feet, because if he did not Odysseus would be dead.

Even in that blunting darkness, going uphill with his heavy sword in his hand he found a speed he would not have dreamed possible. Instinct took over and it was as if he had been lifted in the hand of a god and carried across the boulders and loose stones. He bounded up the slope to the porch of the temple, where he found Odysseus’s sword and a pair of sandals. The temple had no door and through its open portal, as the last of the sunset disappeared from the evening sky, he could see the glow of torchlight. The sound of a hushed voice drifted out into the night air and brought him back to his senses.