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One good thing came out of the disaster. A man torn by his claws lived to go to the priests, and told Kalchas that the lion bore the mark of Poseidon; on his pale flank was a black, three-pronged fish spear. Kalchas consulted the Oracle at once, then a
At first my father ignored Kalchas and the Oracle. In the autumn he ordered the House Guard out again to kill the beast. But he had underestimated the common man’s fear of the Gods: even when the King threatened his guardsmen with execution, they would not go. Furious but balked, he informed Kalchas that he refused to donate Trojan gold to Dardanian Lyrnessos – the priests had better think of an alternative. Kalchas went back to the Oracle, which a
Naturally the King preferred giving the God maidens to gold; the new scheme went ahead. The trouble was that he never really trusted the priests in the matter, not because he was a sacrilegious man – he gave the Gods what he considered their due – but because he detested being bled. So each spring and autumn every virgin maid aged fifteen years was covered head to foot in a white shroud to prevent identification and lined up in the courtyard of Poseidon Maker of Walls, where the priests chose six of these anonymous white bundles for the sacrifice.
The ploy worked. Twice a year the lion passed through, killed the girls as they stood huddled in their chains, and left the horses unmolested. To King Laomedon, a paltry price to pay for the salving of his pride and the preservation of his business.
Four days ago autumn’s six offerings were chosen. Five of them were girls from the city; the sixth was from the Citadel, the high palace. My father’s most beloved child, his daughter Hesione. When Kalchas came to tell him the news, he was incredulous.
‘Do you mean to say that you were idiot enough to leave her shroud unmarked?’ he asked. ‘My daughter treated the same as all the rest?’
‘It is the God’s will,’ said Kalchas, calmly.
‘It is not the God’s will that my daughter should be chosen! His will is that he receives six virgin maids, nothing else! So choose another victim, Kalchas.’
‘I ca
From that stand Kalchas would not be budged. A divine hand directed the choice, which meant that Hesione and no other girl would satisfy the terms of the sacrifice.
Though none of the Court was present during this tense and angry interview, the word of it swept through the Citadel from end to end and top to bottom. Favour curriers like Antenor were loud in condemning the priest, whereas the King’s many children – including me, his Heir – thought that at last our father would have to break down and pay Poseidon those a
Next day the King summoned his council. Of course I attended; the Heir must hear the King deliver all his judgements.
He looked composed and undistressed. King Laomedon was a tiny fellow far past the flush of youth, long hair silver, long robe gold. The voice which issues out of him never ceased to surprise us, for it was deep, noble, melodic, strong.
‘My daughter Hesione,’ he said to the assembled ranks of sons, near cousins and remote cousins, ‘has consented to go to the sacrifice. It has been required of her by the God.’
Perhaps Antenor had guessed what the King would say; I did not, nor did my younger brothers.
‘My lord!’ I cried before I could stop myself. ‘You ca
He did not care to hear his eldest son chide him before the Court; his lips thi
‘Poseidon would be happier,’ I said through my teeth, ‘if one hundred talents of gold were paid to his temple in Lyrnessos.’
At which moment I caught sight of Antenor smirking. How he loved to hear the King and his Heir at loggerheads!
‘I refuse,’ said King Laomedon, ‘to pay good, hard-earned gold to a God who didn’t build the western wall strong enough to survive one of his own earthquakes!’
‘You can’t send Hesione to her death, Father!’
‘I am not sending her to her death! Poseidon is!’
The priest Kalchas moved, then stilled.
‘A mortal man like you,’ I said, ‘should not blame the Gods for his own failings.’
‘Are you saying that I have failings?’
‘All mortal men do,’ I answered, ‘even the King of the Troad.’
‘Take yourself off, Podarkes Priam! Get out of this room! Who knows? Perhaps next year Poseidon will ask that heirs to thrones form the sacrifice!’
Antenor was still smiling. I turned and left the room to seek comfort from the city and the wind.
Cold, damp air blowing from the far-off peak of Ida cooled my anger as I strode along the flagged terrace outside the Throne Room and sought the steps, two hundred of them, which led ever upward to the summit of the Citadel. There, far above the plain, I closed my hands on man-made stones; for the Gods had not built the Citadel, Dardanos had done that. Something reached into me from out of those carefully squared bones of Mother Earth, and I sensed in that moment the power residing in the King. How many years, I wondered, would have to pass before I do
For a long while I watched the changing march of men and women below me in the city, then looked farther afield to the green plains where King Laomedon’s precious horses stretched out their long necks to nudge and tear at the grass. But that was a vista only increased the pain. I looked instead to the western isle of Tenedos and the smear of smoke from fires lit against the chill in the little port village of Sigios. Beyond to the north the blue waters of the Hellespont mocked at the sky; I saw the long greyish curve of the beach which lay between the mouths of Skamander and Simois, the two rivers which watered the Troad and nurtured the crops, emmer wheat and barley, rippling in a soughing, perpetual wind.
Eventually that wind drove me from the parapet to the great courtyard which lay before the entrance to the palaces, and there I waited until a groom brought my chariot.
‘Down into the city,’ I said to the driver. ‘Let the horses lead you.’
The main road descended from the Citadel to join the curve of the avenue which ran around the inside of the city walls. The walls built by Poseidon. At the junction of the two streets stood one of the three gates let into Troy’s walls, the Skaian. I could not remember its ever being closed; men said that happened only in times of war, and there was no nation in the world strong enough to make war on Troy.
The Skaian Gate stood twenty cubits tall, and was made of huge logs bolted together with spikes and plates of bronze, too heavy to be swung on the biggest hinges a man could forge. Instead it opened on a principle said to have been devised by Archer Apollo as he lay in the sun watching Poseidon toil. The bottom of the gate’s single leaf rested upon a great round boulder set in a deep, curving ditch, and massive bronze chains were cast about the shoulders of the stone. If the gate had to be closed, a team of thirty oxen was harnessed to the chains and pulled the leaf shut fraction by fraction as the boulder ground along in the bottom of the ditch.