The Songs of the Kings

'I don't understand.'

There was no inquiry in this, only a note of finality, a curtness of tone that Calchas had not heard from the boy before. Compunction came to him for the hurt he had given, the damage to the youthful sense of what daring and devotion might achieve. 'I could not let you go,' he said. 'I want you with me, I ca

This was the truth, more so now than ever, when Agamemnon no longer called for him, when he was held in contempt by all, when only the sacred duty of supervising the making of the knife gave him protection – the terrible protection of the King's hatred.

But the words had come too late. The boy's face was closed against him, the eyes were lowered. And now a certain kind of fear came to Calchas, and in the grip of this he blundered further. 'There are lions on those mountains, you know,' he said, attempting a jocular tone. 'You would make a tender morsel. Those good strong sandals would be all that was left.'

Poimenos smiled a little and nodded, because it was not in his nature to disappoint the maker of a joke; but he still had not looked at his master; and it was now, perhaps to avoid further claims on his understanding or sympathy, that he retailed the piece of news he had picked up earlier that morning. 'The dogs dug up a body during the night,' he said. 'Farther along the shore, beyond the camp.' He had been out early, at first light, to gather kindling for the morning fire, and he had heard this from others similarly engaged. 'On that side,' he said, raising a hand to point. 'Towards the narrower water. He was buried in the shingle.'

'It must have been a shallow grave,' Calchas said. 'I suppose it's the body of the Boeotian, Opilmenos, he who was killed by the dancer.'

'The Boeotian was buried by his own people, not near the shore, higher up. They put stones on the grave, heavy stones that no dog would be able to move.'

'Then who?'

'They say he is a Mycenaean.' Poimenos paused briefly, then added, 'He has been partly eaten.'

The certainty of who this must be came to Calchas suddenly, like a memory, some knowledge possessed long before. 'Let us go and see this offering of the dogs,' he said, and thought he saw a shadow pass over the boy's face, something like reluctance or regret, as if he had been pla

2.

Odysseus was told of their leaving together, just as he was told of the unearthed corpse. Nothing that happened in the camp escaped his knowledge; he ran his entire Ithacan contingent on the lines of an information and security unit. He too had a good idea whose body it might be. Obviously Phylakos had blundered again. But there was nothing to be done about it now, in daylight. In any case he was too busy. He was in constant attendance on Agamemnon during this period. The King was not sleeping well and his moods were constantly changing. The tearful self-righteousness and patriotic fervour were all right, all to the good in fact; but at times he was sunk in a kind of stupor, deaf to any voice; and every now and again – most dangerous of all – he seemed to gasp for air and look upwards, as if seeking guidance from the gods. As far as Odysseus was concerned, the gods had already delivered. He did what he could to keep the King isolated from any who might give him bad advice. It was fortunate that Agamemnon could no longer stand the sight of his diviner, Calchas.

It was a question, really, of substituting terms, and in a way Odysseus enjoyed the intellectual stimulus these encounters with the King provided. On the one hand there was the desire for power and loot, on the other the deliberate killing of an i

He was coming from the King's tent after one such maintenance session, on his way to check up on the Singer, when he had this thought and it stopped him in his tracks. It was just a question of concepts. It came to him like a shaft of light. It's all conceptual! The driving force in human society was not greed or the lust for power, as he had always thought, but the energy generated by juggling with concepts, endlessly striving to make perceptions of reality agree with them, to melt things together, iron out problems, harmonize warring elements, what was the phrase he was looking for? Eliminate the contradictions. They would rule the world who knew this and used it.

As he stood there, full of grateful wonder at the insight, he heard from somewhere ahead of him a hoarse, irate shouting interspersed with shriller tones, a double-act that everyone in the camp was familiar with by now. Those two clowns again, he thought. It didn't seem possible to go anywhere without bumping into them. He resolved to go straight past the pair without pausing, but when he came in sight of them he was arrested by what looked like a superstructure of foliage on the smaller man's head, and he stopped, almost involuntarily, to see what it might be.

'My small friend and I are offering you the chance of a lifetime,' Ajax the Larger shouted, looking furiously at the small knot of spectators. 'We had selected precious cups and tripods and shining cauldrons as prizes for the wi

As usual, his dwarfish companion came to the rescue. 'We thought what the fuck can you do with cups and tripods and shining cauldrons?' A small trail of leaves had escaped from the containing band that circled his head and was obscuring the sight of one small round eye. But his face below was as melancholy as ever and the half-erection that was so permanent a feature of his appearance was clearly defined below the kilt.

'I've told him about that language before. A man can't wear a cup or a tripod or a shining cauldron on his head, can he? People would think it strange.'

'People would think he was off his fucking rocker.'

'The result is, the result is...'

'You leave the cups and the tripods and the shining cauldrons at home and go out for a walk and nobody knows you're the fucking wi

'Good grief, I was going to say that, why do you keep interrupting? Your mother should have washed your mouth out with soap when you said bad words, and your father should have beaten you and put cold compresses on your member when you showed signs of being a potential rapist. That's what my parents did and look at me now.'

'It would take more than a cold compress,' Ajax the Lesser shouted, twitching his pelvis and leering obscenely at the audience. 'It would take more than a team of wild horses.'

'So we have devised a much more valuable prize, a circlet of leaves that is worn on the head in the way that my small friend is wearing it now. Give these good people a demonstration.'

The little man paraded back and forth, the wreath of leaves at a rakish angle. 'You can wear it tilted back for the more casual look,' he shouted in his reedy but penetrating voice, 'or forward over the brow for when you mean business. The women will see you coming, they will see the wreath first, their legs will start loosening, no need for body language, the wreath will reduce them to jelly.'