People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze) (4 page)

T'érsite passed them without comment, kicking tent flaps open as he passed them, to glance inside.  "Dáuniya," he called at each entrance.  "Are you in there?"  More than once he surprised a man and woman in a close embrace on their sheepskins.  Driven quickly away by an empty clay pot or a dusty sandal hurled at his head, T'érsite pressed on, unperturbed.

Near the center of the camp, the largest of all the tents stood.  Muffled sounds came from inside, a man's grunts and a woman's wails, in a rising rhythm.  "No, Agamémnon, no!" shrieked the higher voice, to no avail.

T'érsite ducked behind the big tent, and hurried past with furtive glances to each side, hoping that he would not be seen by its owner.  Once past the great shelter, he slowed his pace again, ambling easily to a wide area empty of tents, but filled with prone men.  Here, stretched out on the bare earth, lay the seriously wounded, growing pale and cold, one by one, as the sun rose, unable to warm them with its feeble rays.

T'érsite passed a man with crushed legs who seemed to be breathing no longer, his face pale and damp.  Beside this man lay another who breathed still, but in quick and shallow gasps.  His half-open eyes were glazed and unseeing, his hands weakly clutching at a massive wound in his side.  Blood still oozed from his cracked ribs into a pool beneath him.  Beyond him lay two others with deep gashes in their arms and legs, moaning, writhing in the clutches of burning fever.

In the midst of this dying, one man stood unwounded, the front of his kilt washed in deepest crimson.  Before him knelt a man whose face was obscured with blood, his nose recently broken.  "Get me a goose quill," ordered the man on his feet.  He spoke to a young woman in a long skirt, whose black hair fell to her waist in a thick braid.

"Yes, Mak'áwon," answered the woman obediently, hurrying to a mass of clay jars and woven baskets stacked beyond the line of wounded men.  From a basket she brought a large feather and presented it to the man in the bloody kilt.

He took the quill and examined it cursorily.  "Very well, Dáuniya.  I will set his nose, then you wash his face."  She nodded silently, clasping her work-worn hands behind her back.

Mak'áwon grasped the hair of the injured man, who knelt nervously at his feet, and pulled his head back.  The wounded man raised his hands instinctively.  "Get your hands down!" Mak'áwon bellowed.  At the same time, he deftly ran the goose quill up the other man's nostril.  While the man with the bloody face roared and cursed with pain, his eyes pinched shut and streaming reflexive tears, Mak'áwon moved the broken nasal bones and cartilage back into place, pushing from the inside with the stem of the feather, pressing with a beefy hand on the outside.  Withdrawing the quill, Mak'áwon stood back to eye his handiwork.  After a brief consideration of the remaining damage, he said, "Now let me do the other side."

"Get away from me!" the wounded man protested, choking and gasping.  Before his physician could object, he scrambled away on his hands and knees, blood pouring from his face.

Mak'áwon would have followed his patient, but T'érsite quickly stood in his way and asked, "Are there any more poppy flasks?"

Mak'áwon looked him up and down with some surprise.

"Ai gar, it is not for me," T'érsite laughed.  "It is for Diwoméde, for his foot, remember?"

The medical man shook his head.  "No more poppy essence is to be distributed, by command of the high wánaks."

Behind him, Dáuniya padded back to the stack of jugs and baskets.  Silently she held up a small clay jar, shaped like the head of a dried poppy.  Where Mak'áwon could not see, she caught T'érsite's eye.  With a jerk of her head, she indicated a walk in the direction of the big tent.

T'érsite pretended not to notice the woman.  He shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly.  "If that is Agamémnon's command, Diwoméde cannot argue," he told Mak'áwon unconcernedly.  And he turned away, back toward the center of the camp.  Before the large tent he waited, trying to look inconspicuous, poking at the fire with a bit of kindling.  He did not have to wait long for the surgeon's assistant to appear, the small flask hidden in the folds of her ragged skirt.

Dáuniya surreptitiously delivered her juglet, standing close to T'érsite and moving the little vessel from her side to his without looking at it.  "Say my name to Diwoméde, now," she whispered to the broad-shouldered man, as he drew a fold of his kilt over the juglet.  "Do not forget," the woman urged him.  "I do not want to spend the rest of my days as the slave of a physician."  Her young face contorted with distaste, she hurried back to Mak'áwon and his miserable charges.

A large man's head suddenly peeked out the flaps of the great tent, a head with a full mustache and beard, both tinged with gray.  "T'érsite!" he shouted, startling the man at the fireside.  "Tell Diwoméde I have work for him.  He is to gather an escort for the captives.  I have decided to allow the slaves to visit the funeral pyre by the city gate.  Each can sing one song and cut a lock of hair for her kinsmen.  Then Diwoméde must bring them all back to camp.  There will be no lengthy rites this time.  I want the lamentations finished before today's evening meal.  Go, you lazy goat!  What are you waiting for?  Tell him!"

T'érsite had straightened at the first appearance of the bushy head.  As his superior spoke, T'érsite shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other.  "Yes, wánaks," he responded at last.  "I will tell him.  If that is what you want.  But his wound…"

"By 'Aidé," cursed the king.  "I had forgotten about that.  Ai, then, send for my brother."

T'érsite lifted his shoulders in a shrug that was almost a cringe.  "Meneláwo sailed at dawn.  Idé, there is wánaks Idómeneyu now!" he hastened to add, pointing to a distant, bearded figure.  "I will tell him, king Agamémnon."

The wánaks nodded and his head disappeared inside the tent.  In his place came a young woman.  Her long, dark robe was rumpled, her eyes red from weeping.  T'érsite gestured for her to follow him.

aaa

Across the Sqámandro River, by the blazing funeral pyre, soon there trailed a line of captives.  Haggard warriors accompanied them from the seaside camp to the fire, their spears and swords at the ready.  Each woman was allowed a brief song of lamentation and a blade to cut a lock of hair to toss to the flames.  On the opposite side of the pyre, men and women from the smaller camp by the city gathered to watch the procession of misery.  They cried out at the sight of those they knew among the captives, their hands reaching hopelessly toward each other.

"Kashánda!" wailed a woman of middle age, with graying hair and wide hips, in the small group by the citadel’s blackened walls.  "Owái, my poor little sister," she wept, spying the younger woman who had come from Agamémnon's tent.

Kashánda looked across the flames at the woman who called her name, staring woodenly out of bruised and swollen eyes.  She made no response to her sister.  In silence, she knelt by the fire and bent her head for T'érsite to cut a lock of her hair with a bronze razor.  She took the severed lock without glancing at the man, tossing it into the fire to burn.  Raising her hands toward the sky, she began to sing.

"Ai, Wilúsiya, my native land, I am leaving you.

Under your soil, no grain has been planted.

Ai, wealthy Tróya, I will mourn your lost children.

On your steep hills, no sheep have been pastured.

Six bright stars have fallen from Assúwa's sky.

Six white doves have fallen from Tróya's nest:

Parents, brothers, city, land.

Ai, father and mother, I am an orphan now.

Four brothers have followed you.

Qántili and Paqúr, I have seen your pyres.

Lupákki and Dapashánda both have left this earth."

At each name, Kashánda's older sister, across the pyre, cried out and tore her face, wailing especially at the sound of the last.  "Owái no, no, not Dapashánda, not him too!"

With the butt end of his spear, the captives' guard urged Kashánda on.  She rose, still singing, her voice now strong and angry.

Winds, cruel winds, fan the flames and consume our halls.

Lady Dáwan, mother of the gods; hear me, Apúluno,

Ai, the Horse has betrayed your children.

Poseidáon has failed us.

Lady Kórwa is weeping, Lady Préswa is mourning,

For the crop sprouting here is grief, for the hillsides are barren.

Ai, Dáwan, send no rain, flood the earth with bitter tears,

Till Tróya has sweet revenge."

Kashánda began to turn away from the fire.  When her sister called out her name once more, she looked back over her shoulder.  "Good-bye, Laqíqepa," she called, tears welling in her eyes.

Behind Kashánda came a younger woman, a fat baby in her arms crying wearily.  Laqíqepa cried out again from the city side of the pyre, seeing the mother and child.  "Owái, Andrómak'e, my poor brother's wife, what will become of you?"

Without answering, Andrómak'e knelt by the fire in her turn.  She pressed the little boy's face to her bruised shoulder before setting him on the ground.  Choking, tears stinging her scratched cheeks, she sang her lament.

"Owái, husband!

Qántili, you were too brave.

Beloved, you were far too bold.

May lady Préswa treat you well,

Though hers is such a cold embrace.

For my love I cut my hair,

But hair grows back – it is not enough.

For you alone I scratch my face,

But scratches heal – the heart does not.

Ai, my soul laments your loss.

Lamentations are too brief, far too brief.

I will give my love my eyesight,

Tear these eyes from my face.

Eyes torn out will never heal,

As my heart will never mend, Qántili."

Close behind Andrómak'e knelt a young man with bony limbs.  One of very few male captives, he had been stripped naked, and his back bore the marks of a recent whipping.  He had been clean-shaven until recently, but a short stubble now covered his cheeks and chin, and all his hair was cut short.

"Érinu!" wailed Laqíqepa, "owái, my poor little brother!"

But Érinu did not answer her any more than the others had.  Alarmed at the words of Andrómak'e's song, he threw his arms around her and clasped her hands in his.  "No, sister-in-law, do not touch your eyes," he whispered in her ear, as she struggled weakly, crying with the abandon of a small child.  "The souls of the dead take the form of birds, to fly to queen Préswa, to Dáwan's daughter.  There in 'Aidé, my brother Qántili will find good things again.  First, there will be a wondrous banquet where he will see all his kinsmen again.  He will find my father and mother there to greet him, as well as his brothers.  They will seat him at Préswa's golden table, and serve him the wine of the gods, mixed with cool water.  They will feed him the seeds of the holy pomegranate."  They had no more time to mourn, as the spears of the soldiers drove them on.

Dáuniya came at the end of the line of prisoners.  When it was her turn, she would not kneel.  Unlike the others, she pushed T'érsite's hand from her black hair.  Though tears moistened her cheeks, her face was unscratched and she had cut none of her locks in the recent months of war.  By the pyre she spat.  "It is just," she announced, staring into T'érsite's astonished eyes, "that those who took me captive in the ítalo land should now taste the bitterness of slavery themselves."

Back across the low river that bisected the plain, back among the tents by the shore, the Tróyan captives huddled together in misery, while the victorious warriors drank watered wine and ate their fill, in celebration.  But, even as they rejoiced, the soldiers turned their eyes to the sky from time to time, pondering the weather.  In the flight of Tróya's domestic geese, in the vitals of slaughtered water birds, they sought signs of their uncertain future.

CHAPTER TWO

MENELAWO

Twenty-eight longboats sailed from the blighted kingdom in Assúwa toward the west.  On a platform at the stern of the lead ship, stood Meneláwo, the rowers' overlord, wánaks of Lakedaimón.  In his patched kilt, one arm pressed to his side above the draining wound, he inspired little confidence in his men.  With hollow, despairing eyes, the oarsmen watched their king as he stood behind his helmsman, scanning the horizon for signs of land.

"We should reach the island of Ténedo before the sun is much past its summit," Meneláwo told the man at the steering oar.  "If the gods are with us and the sky clears, we can make the island of Lámno before dark.  By the goddess, I wish I had Odushéyu's knowledge of the weather!"

The steersman grunted his agreement, straining against his extra-long oar.  "I wish we had a few more men.  Some of the soldiers are not fit to row."

Meneláwo sighed deeply.  "Owái, that is true enough." He turned and wearily surveyed the assembled ships behind him.  To himself, he whispered, "Less than half my army remains.  What a price I have paid for Ariyádna!"

At his feet crouched the woman for whom he had paid that price of souls.  Her black hair was longer than the men's but just as ill-kept.  Her lower lip was swollen, her face dark with bruises.  Wrapped in a filthy cloak, she stared absently at nothing, twisting a lock of hair around and around her finger.  "Feathered warriors do battle for the queen of the fertile land," she murmured, her head hanging to one side.

Images flitted through her mind, of burning houses, unclothed men slaughtered in their beds at night, sobbing women collapsing on the still bodies of their husbands, children screaming at the sight of bloody spears and shields.  Victorious warriors from Tróya once more killed her kinsmen, behind her vacant eyes, and forced the women of Lakedaimón from their homes.  Mixed with those memories were similar ones of the previous day, as the city of her captors had fallen about her.

Again and again, she turned to see the rising smoke above Tróya, now far behind them.  "Owái, 'Ermiyóna," she whispered.  "It is the end of the world, my child.  Will I ever see you again?"

"Ariyádna," Meneláwo said gently.  He knelt beside the woman and drew her close to him.  "Do not look back.  It is over now.  We are going home.  Think how happy 'Ermiyóna will be to see her mamma and pappa again."

Ariyádna laid her head on her husband's shoulder and closed her eyes.  Tears fell from her eyelids and she moaned.  "Owái, t'ugátriyon, my poor little daughter."

Across the dark, gray waters of the Inner Sea passed the ships of Lakedaimón.  They hopped from island to island, sailing whenever the wind blew toward the west, rowing when they had to, traveling from dawn to dusk each day.  The first night away from the eastern mainland was spent west of Tróya on the large island of Lámno, barely reached before darkness fell.  Here, their numbers were increased by the smaller contingent of ships led by Odushéyu, wánaks of the western islands of Zákunt'o, Dolik'áon, Ek'íno, and holy It'áka.  The Lakedaimóniyans' spirits rose a little to have this leader with them, this master mariner who knew the sea better than any other Ak'áyan.

But Odushéyu was gloomy and anxious himself, giving the others little reason for hope.  Nor did their island hosts make them welcome.  On Lámno, once an outpost of Tróya's rule, fear of ambush made the men's sleep uneasy.  Despite the increase in their number, both the Lakedaimóniyan contingent and the men of the western isles alike kept their battered weapons close at hand.

"We should not have come this way," Odushéyu told Meneláwo, over their evening fire.  "In the summer, this would have been the best route.  After a night here, we could have sailed west to T'ráki's triple peninsulas.  We could spend one night on the first one, another on the third.  And the following night would see us among our fellow Ak'áyans in T'eshalíya.  But it is too late in the season to risk the northern crossing.  The sky is too threatening.  Tomorrow we must head south, the way we should have gone to start with.  Ai, at least we should make the island of Lázpa easily enough, even without a favorable wind."

Meneláwo listened quietly, gazing at Odushéyu with haunted eyes.  When the mariner had finished, the Lakedaimóniyan king spoke.  "If you advise it, we will head south.  But we cannot afford a night on Lázpa, whether we row or the wind carries us.  We must push on to K'íyo the same day.  Then, clouds or no, we must cross the sea."

Their second night was little better on K'íyo, reached after a hard day's rowing to the south.  There it was not the number of hostile shepherds that concerned the travelers so much as the cold wind and the clouds that blanketed the island.  Here, the men once again erected the tents that had sheltered them on Tróya's plain.  From long use, the bases of the supporting posts were rotting.  The coverings of sheepskin and linen were in need of patching, too.  The men found that there was little fuel on the isle’s rocky hillsides for their campfires and the wind proved to be especially bitter.  Though exhausted, the rowers slept fitfully, huddled close together for warmth.

Odushéyu did not like the signs in the stars and clouds and he readily spoke his mind among the men of both contingents.  Wandering from fire to fire that night, the mariner urged the helmsmen and the ranked warriors from the various ships to gather with him and speak to Meneláwo.  They came reluctantly to where the Lakedaimóniyan king stood on K'íyo's pebbled beach, when the moon rose.  Though Odushéyu's caution made sense to the men, still Meneláwo was the more powerful king.  It was always unwise to anger a man of power.  Wrapped in moth-eaten cloaks, shivering in the cold, stiff breeze, Lakedaimóniyans and It'ákans alike were nervous as they came upon Meneláwo long after sunset, as the king stood staring at the black sky and sea.  Each man among the crowd hesitated to be the first to speak.

"Wánaks," began Odushéyu, respectfully calling his friend by his title.  "It is risky to cross the sea where land is not in sight, especially this time of year."  Around him, the navigators nodded and murmured their assent.  "We should keep to the coast and put an end to this island-hopping."

Meneláwo did not argue.  "It is risky, Odushéyu, I agree," he answered, in a low voice.  "A sudden storm could easily rise up and devour every longboat, send every soul to the land of 'Aidé.  But if we had gone north and skirted the T'rákiyan coast, we would have faced the same risk and for a longer time.  That is our worst enemy now – time.  The longer we are at sea, the greater the chance that winter's storms will take us all down.  If the weather holds, we can make Mukénai, on the mainland, in only nine days.  With a bit of luck, we could all be home in time for the festival of the winter solstice."

Odushéyu shuffled his bare feet and scratched absently at a scab that raggedly crossed his ribs.  All the men looked at the ground or the sea, not daring to meet the tormented gaze of their overlord.  "Meneláwo," Odushéyu said at last and the word was almost a groan.  "You are pushing the men too hard.  They are rowing all day with empty bellies.  A little soup of lentils and barley does not sustain a man's strength.  For this kind of work, they need meat."

Meneláwo looked about at the men, at their wasting limbs and sunken eyes.  "This too is true," he responded, as quietly as before.  "But the Ak'áyan army was once so large and the siege of Tróya was so long, our forays depleted the flocks of sheep and goats all around the waters of the Inner Sea.  It is not by my choice that all of you go hungry.  Still, time is our greatest enemy.  The longer we take to cross the sea, the longer it will be until we eat well.  If we can maintain this pace, we will reach the island of Éyuqoya the day after tomorrow.  The Éyuqoyans were our allies in this war.  They will feed us well and give us shelter."

Odushéyu sighed, shaking his short, tangled, and thinning locks.  "I hope that you are right, Meneláwo."

From behind him spoke another man, who had been silent until then.  "But wánaks, Éyuqoyans are northerners and we are all southerners.  Our peoples have never been allies for long.  We will not rest easy until we get as far as Argo, your own brother's kingdom."

Meneláwo's shoulders sagged.  "Ai, St'énelo, I cannot argue with what you say.  But what do you want me to do?  I cannot turn back the seasons.  It took us ten months to begin the siege and another three to crack the walls of Tróya.  Even so, our honor would not allow us to leave before we had accomplished that task.  You may blame me for staying in Assúwa for so long, but remember, it was Lakedaimón's wánasha we went to rescue, not just my wife.  Are you suggesting that we should have left an Ak'áyan queen in Tróyan slavery?"

"No, no, wánaks," the assembled group hastened to say, moving closer to their battered leader in support.

"Lakedaimón would never prosper without its holy 'Elléniyan queen to intercede with the gods," St'énelo agreed.  Emboldened by the king's unexpected humility, he added, "What we question is the wisdom of pushing the men to their limits, now.  We are all exhausted from so much hard fighting and many of us have unhealed wounds.  Two Lakedaimóniyans have died of lockjaw already, just since we left Tróya.  Our wounds are beginning to rot with gangrene.  We have no more clean linen for bandages and no more opium for the pain.  Now we are hungry too.  Just today, one of our lookouts climbed the mast for a sight of land.  He was so weak from hunger and fatigue that he fell and broke his neck on the rowing bench beneath him.  You must allow the men more time to rest or others will die."

Meneláwo slowly shook his head, his cropped hair clinging to his face in the damp air.  "I cannot give what I do not have, St'énelo.  There is no more time.  We must go on and go quickly.  Even in my brother's capital city, time will remain our enemy.  We must leave Mukénai before Agamémnon arrives."

"What is this?" cried Odushéyu and about him the navigators' mouths hung open in surprise.  "It is your brother's wife who rules his kingdom and yours in your absence.  Surely we have nothing to fear from her."

"I do not think Klutaimnéstra will do us harm, no.  After all, we are bringing her own sister back from captivity.  But there is bad blood between my sister-in-law and Agamémnon.  Remember how this campaign began.  The army seer insisted that Agamémnon sacrifice his oldest daughter to gain a fair wind."

"Ai, the wánasha cannot hold that against her husband.  It was his duty to sacrifice Ip'emédeya," protested St'énelo.  Behind him, some men nodded, but others gazed at their wánaks with understanding.

"I do not know Klutaimnéstra's heart," Meneláwo said, his voice growing ever quieter, his heart heavier.  "But I know my brother's all too well.  He blames his wife for the death of his daughter, because she was the one who sent him the seer in the first place."

"What?  Have the maináds caught him?" cried St'énelo.  "Is he mad?  Qálki was not to blame for reading the will of the gods.  Still less is Klutaimnéstra to blame for sending us a prophet with true sight.  If Agamémnon blames anyone, it should be himself.  It was his impiety that angered the goddess Artémito to begin with, so that she held back the wind."

"The goddess cast the plague down on us, too, because of his misdeeds," added Odushéyu, looking around at the others for support.  The men nodded.  "This makes no sense," the It'ákan went on. "People say evil things about me and some of them are actually true.  But I always take care to keep the goddess At'ána on my side.  A man can only achieve so much on his own.  Even the greatest king must be careful not to offend a deity.  Agamémnon surely understands that.  He cannot seriously blame anyone but himself for the death of his child."

Wearily, Meneláwo rubbed his eyes.  "You do not have to tell me these things.  I have said them all to my brother.  But he will not listen.  Madness or not, he does blame Klutaimnéstra for their daughter's death.  He intends to divorce his queen as soon as he returns.  And you know how he is about his plans.  No man can change his mind by arguing."

Unhappily, Odushéyu nodded.  "Ai, yes, I suppose you are right.  That is Agamémnon's way, to ignore the gods' role in every event.  No misfortune has ever been so great he could not blame some man or woman for it."

But the lesser-ranked St'énelo began to laugh, an uncertain, almost hysterical laugh.  "He cannot divorce his wánasha.  He would lose his kingship."

Meneláwo smiled, a small, humorless curvature of his lips beneath mournful eyes.  Kicking at pebbles he asked patiently, "What does a man have to do to gain kingship?  Marry a holy woman.  That is all.  And that is my brother's plan.  Agamémnon intends to take his captive, Kashánda, as his new wife.  She is a priestess."