The Songs of the Kings

8.

Agamemnon's pious habit of including the senile Nestor in all councils and consultative assemblies meant that nothing, however small the gathering otherwise, could remain a secret for very long. Sooner or later it would find its way into one of the old man's interminable monologues about the highlights of his life, and especially the one about his youthful exploits as a rustler in Elis, when he had disembowelled the king's son and got away with fifty cows. So it came about that one evening Agamemnon was visited in his tent by an Achilles incandescent with rage, accompanied by his inseparable companion and lover, Patroclus.

Rage in Achilles was not much expressed in outward motions. Rather, his movements became slighter, more contained, as if he was saving energy for the moment of the kill. There was a glowing paleness about him, his eyes were wider than usual and the line of his jaw more prominent, somewhat marring the perfection of his profile.

Agamemnon was with Chasimenos and Odysseus when the two visitors entered brusquely without depositing their arms at the door, as custom demanded. Meeting that murderous gaze, he thought for a moment that these two were the leaders of a coup, an event he dreaded day and night, arriving to put an end to him. He started up and his hand went to the sword at his side. He might at least put paid to that vain dimwit Patroclus before Achilles' sword found his heart. He was stayed by calm words from Odysseus, who also feared a coup, but not on the part of Achilles, whom he considered too cold-hearted and narcissistic to have much popular appeal. Besides, he had instantly reasoned, they would have moved faster, there would have been more of them.

'Good evening, gentlemen,' he said. 'Is there something the matter?'

Tension about the jaws did not allow Achilles much range of sound. His words came out flat and uninflected. 'Whose idea was it to use my name?'

'I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't–'

Achilles looked at Patroclus, who said, 'Lord Achilles has formed the intention of challenging to mortal combat the person responsible for putting forward his name, without his knowledge or consent, as a suitor for Iphigeneia's hand in marriage.'

'My name,' Achilles said, grinding his teeth. 'My name.'

'An illustrious name was needed, or she might not have agreed to come,' Chasimenos said. 'What name more illustrious than yours, o mighty Achilles, goddess-born.'

He received in reply the full homicidal blaze of Achilles' eyes, which caused him quickly to lower his own.

'It was you then?'

'Er, no.'

Agamemnon felt unutterably weary, weary to the marrow of his bones. Wasn't it enough that a man should be bearing the heavy burden of command without having a maniac like this to deal with? 'It was a collective decision,' he said. 'I forget how many people were involved. A dozen at least. You can't kill us all, you would leave the army leaderless.'

'That's a lie. I know you, Agamemnon. You would have kept it close and secret, just among a few, schemers like yourself. Do you think I'm a fool? By Zeus, I'll show you different.'

'We'll really have to stop including Nestor in these meetings,' Chasimenos said.

'Is it only this?' Odysseus' smile concealed a vast surprise at the depths of human stupidity. Here was one who could not see beyond vanity and bloodlust, even in a matter that concerned his reputation and public image. He felt a preliminary pang of pleasure at the thought of bemusing this brute and taming him with words. 'I will tell you the truth, Achilles,' he said. 'As you know, it is not my habit to go beating about the bush. It is true that we put you forward as a suitor for Iphigeneia without telling you. We were afraid that otherwise you might refuse. And if you had refused and we had gone ahead after your refusal, that would have been worse still, wouldn't it? And we would still have had to risk it.'

'I don't follow you.'

'Well, look at it this way. If you had been asked and refused, that refusal would have been a very public one. You would have made sure it was public, wouldn't you? You would have wanted there to be no doubt, no smallest doubt, about your attitude. And what would the result have been?'

'The army would have known I set a value on my name, the army would have understood what it means to be Achilles.'

'Forgive me, it would have had an opposite effect, your name would have been irredeemably tarnished. The army would simply have thought, mistakenly of course, that self-esteem was more important to you than the Greek cause, that you were lacking in the spirit that unites us all in this great enterprise, making us forget petty differences, making us gird up our loins, set our shoulders to the wheel, share and share alike, what's the word I am looking for?'

'Civic sense.'

'Civic sense, brilliant, you can always count on Chasimenos for le mot juste. Of course, you might not have refused, but how were we to know? Now, as things are, you have been saved from a total disaster in public relations, for the simple reason that the matter is not public at all. Agamemnon, understandably enough, exaggerated a little. The only people in the know are the people in this tent now, at this present moment in time. Nestor's sons waited outside on that occasion and nobody takes the old man seriously, it's a well-known fact that he doesn't know his arse from his elbow.'

'I have always found him a great support in times of trouble,' Agamemnon said.

'Well, you are alone in that. Even Diomedes, whom we chose as our ambassador, doesn't know. We were obliged to tell him that you had agreed. He is a simple man, with a very rudimentary moral sense, and would not be convincing if he didn't believe what he was saying.'

Achilles' jaws had slackened appreciably in his puzzlement at these words that issued so easily, in such impeccable order, from the slightly smiling mouth before him. 'You mean to say he believes the offer of marriage is genuine?'

'No, no, not that, but he believes that you know the offer is being made.'

'But if he knows the offer is fake he is lying through his teeth.'

'My dear Achilles, that is a secondary matter, another unit as it were. Life is made up of units. Units of action, decision, choice. We try to associate them together, to discover the essential relations between them, to see them as links in a chain, what's the word–'

'Making co

'Absolutely brilliant, bravo Chasimenos. Now some of us are not so clever at making co

'Certainly. Since nobody in the army except us knows that you didn't know, and since nobody in the army except us and the members of the delegation, who in any case think you knew, knows that the proposal is being made at all, and human assumptions being what they are, the view that you had full knowledge from the begi

'That's supposed to be lucid?'

'My dear fellow,' Odysseus said, 'it will prevail because it is the way we look at things. When it comes to the conduct of affairs, people are far readier to see purpose and design than ignorance and accident. We are all basically on the side of the operator because we see how he succeeds.'

'We're talking human nature now,' Chasimenos said.

Agamemnon entered the discussion at this point, with a cloudy sense of playing his part, and very nearly ruined everything. 'It is true, Achilles,' he said. 'People are more likely to think one a twister than a dupe.'