The Songs of the Kings

Poimenos, emboldened by the kindness in the priest's regard, now gave way to curiosity in his turn. 'Master, which do you think will win?'

But Calchas shook his head, still smiling. A diviner of status did not indulge in unofficial forecasts, even to those he held dear. The question was the one Chasimenos had asked; and he gave now the same reply: 'I have no ideas on the matter.'

2.

The fire was out and he was already thinking of getting dressed when the army started to assemble. There was no need for him to make any immediate move. This was a military assembly, a marshalling of combatants. There was no place for him in these ranks, any more than for the priest of Zeus, or scribes like Chasimenos, or the bronze-smith and his slave assistants. He watched for a while, from this higher ground, as they formed up in rank upon rank on the shore under the direction of their officers and in accordance with the plans drawn up by Chasimenos, a naked host – in this hot weather they wore only loincloths and the improvised leggings essential for anyone moving about in the thorny scrub above the shore. The nakedness gave an impression of unity entirely misleading, Calchas thought, seeing how carefully the men were kept within their tribes, Molossians from the mountains of Epirus, Aetolians from the northern shores of the Corinthian Gulf, the seventy from Arcadia under their chief Inachus, speaking a language that did not sound like Greek at all. Then the combined force from the cities of the Argolis, headed by Mycenae, 400 men, the core of the army, then Achaians and Messenians, then the Hellenes from Crete, under their king Idomeneus.

On they came, mostly in bands of not more than a few dozen, men of every physical type. They were silent and their footsteps were noiseless in the soft sand of the upper shore above the line of the dunes. There was only the loud sound made by the wind as it moved over the water, something between a hiss and a whistle, as if escaping from some vast puncture or breach in the sky. It was lower down, on the shingled ground, that the two men would fight, and a space was left there between the ranks.

They were still coming when he went back inside the tent to prepare himself for the meeting that was immediately to follow the fight. Agamemnon had not appeared yet, nor would he until all other movement was over, and only he was moving. Calchas felt a return of that earlier foreboding. Something would be expected from him. It was important that he should take care of his appearance. It was hotter now inside the tent, with the sun striking through the canvas. Poimenos mixed oil with a little lemon juice in the shallow cup he always used and soothed it into his master's skin where the skin was dry, as he had been taught to do, at the nape and over the shoulders and back and over the outer parts of the thighs. Under the pressure of the boy's fingers Calchas felt his body loosen and relax, the fear and worry recede. Poimenos combed out the long dark hair, still tangled from sleep, applied scented oil to the temples and scalp, dressed the fringe of hair back from the forehead with thin-toothed bronze combs. The loincloth was abandoned and Calchas struggled into the long, close-fitting skirt, with its pattern of sacred circles. He kept his eyes patiently closed so that Poimenos could blacken the lids and outer corners with kohl, and his face held still for the white make-up, the application of which required much concentration, as the circles had to be perfect in shape and the chalk paste made lustrous by the careful addition of sheep grease, which Poimenos kept in a small terracotta pot.

When all this was done and he had do

There was some talking now among the waiting men. They stood there in their ranks between the sea and the hills in the hot, gritty wind – there was no chill in the wind, though it came from the north-east, another mystery that had exercised Calchas. He saw that the Boeotians and Locrians, whose representatives were to fight, had been placed as far apart as possible. A wise move. But it was more complicated than that. Even within the ranks of the Boeotians care had been taken to separate the people of Orchomenus from those of Thebes, ancient foes with a long history of mutual pillage and murder. The Ainians and Atticans, who were in feud because of a rape not yet reciprocated and shouted insults and threats at the sight of each other, had also been sited at the greatest possible distance apart. If the gods were to glance down at this formation, it would serve them as a chart or plan of all the bloody discords that riddled the host assembled here, the Expeditionary Force, as Agamemnon liked to call it. The delay caused by the wind was envenoming these divisions day by day, loosening what loyalties there were, setting the King's authority more and more in doubt. It was why he had given his consent to this general assembly, this fight to the death. A spectacle would hold the men together, make them forget – at least for a while – their various discontents.

It would take more than this, Calchas privately thought, to keep such a rabble quiet for long. What did these people care about the pretext given out for the war, the honour of the house of Atreus, Helen's flight with the Trojan Paris – a boaster who put it about that he had seen Aphrodite naked, looked at her from every side, and that the sight had enhanced his libido to such a phenomenal degree that he now secreted semen as fast as he spent it? Who could take a man like that seriously? Even if it were true – a man might be favoured, though undeserving – who but Menelaus would care about Helen's multiple pleasures and repeated cries of joy? Troy meant one thing only to the men gathered here, as it did to their commanders. Troy was a dream of wealth; and if the wind continued the dream would crumble, Agamemnon's authority would slip away and with it his command, that too like a dream gone wrong. Then it would be dangerous for those too close to him, people like Chasimenos. People like himself...

Now, as he watched, two guards brought out from the King's tent his great throne-chair, straining with the weight of it, while a third followed behind with his footstool. These were set down in the space that had been allotted to them, at the exact midpoint between the two masses of waiting men, separated as these were by the combat area itself, a rough square of pebbled ground; twelve paces by twelve, sloping slightly down towards the sea. Thus chair and stool occupied the dead centre of this universe of the duel, a calculated effect and a triumph of pla

A certain silence descended as all gazed at these emblems of the wealth and power of Mycenae, the high-backed chair of African ebony, incised all over in an elaborate pattern of gold wires, with panels of alabaster at the sides; the footstool inlaid with figures of men and lions in ivory and silver and amethyst. Agamemnon had had them brought by ox-train over the rough roads from Mycenae to the sea at Lerna and embarked them at the very place where for his second labour Heracles slew the fearsome Hydra in the time of long ago. The King understood the importance of symbols. It had been the one mission the hero had not been able to accomplish alone. He had been obliged to call on the help of his charioteer Iolaus, who had come with burning-brands and as Heracles chopped off the monster's ravening heads had cauterized the wounds so the heads could not grow again. The vanquished Hydra was Troy; Iolaus represented the forces allied with Mycenae. All very well, so far as it went. But Calchas had not been happy with the choice of embarkation point. For one thing, there was the excessive pride, inviting rebuke or worse, of putting oneself on the same level as a demi-god; and then there was the fact that the hero had taken the Hydra's venom to poison his arrows, and it was this same venom, after many enemies slain, that had later devoured his own flesh. This placed a dark question over the future, adding to the fears and anxieties Calchas was always prone to and which he nowadays felt were increasing. When it came to symbols it was all or nothing, you could not pick and choose. But he had been afraid to say this to Agamemnon, whose displeasure could take violent forms. Troy meant wealth to Agamemnon too, and it was easy to see why he was always so in need of it. Chair and stool together, made to order by Cretan craftsmen, with ivory and alabaster and gold from Egypt, amethyst from Syria, silver from Thrace, would be roughly equal in value to a year's ration of grain and dried figs for a hundred of the slaves in the royal textile factories.