My wife and brother stood regarding me from the floor of the hall; I sat up straight and looked stern.

‘Helen was kidnapped,’ I said.

Menelaos shook his head miserably. ‘I wish she had been, Agamemnon, but she wasn’t. Helen needed no coercion.’

I suppressed a strong inclination to drub him as I had when we were boys. By the Mother, he was a fool! How had our father, Atreus, sired a fool like Menelaos?

‘I don’t care what really happened!’ I snapped. ‘You will say that she was abducted, Menelaos. The slightest hint that her flight was voluntary would ruin everything, surely you can see that? If you obey my orders and follow me without argument, I will undertake to raise an army on the strength of the Oath.’

One moment extinguished, the next on fire; Menelaos glowed. ‘Yes, Agamemnon, yes!’

I glanced at Klytemnestra, who smiled sourly. Both of us had fools for siblings, and both of us understood that.

A servant hovered too far away to eavesdrop; I clapped my hands to bring him closer. ‘Send Kalchas to me,’ I said.

The priest entered a few moments later to prostrate himself. I stared down at the back of his neck, wondering again what had really brought him to Mykenai. He was a Trojan of the highest nobility, who until a short time ago had been high priest of Apollo at Troy. When he went on a pilgrimage to Delphi, the Pythoness had instructed him to serve Apollo in Mykenai. He had been ordered not to return to Troy, nor to serve Trojan Apollo again. After he presented himself to me I sent to Delphi to check his story; the Pythoness confirmed it unequivocally. Kalchas was to be my man in future because the Lord of Light willed it so. Certainly he had given me no cause to suspect him of treachery. Endowed with the Second Sight, he had told me only a few days ago that my brother would come in great trouble.

His appearance was unpleasant, for he was that rarity of rarities, a true albino. His head was hairless, his skin white as the belly of a sea-dwelling fish. The eyes were dark pink and very crossed in a large round face which bore a permanent expression of blank stupidity. Misleading; Kalchas was far from stupid.

As he straightened I tried to plumb his mind, but there was nothing to see in those clouded, blind-looking eyes.

‘Kalchas, when exactly did you leave King Priam’s service?’

‘Five moons ago, sire.’

‘Had Prince Paris returned from Salamis?’

‘No, sire.’

‘You may go.’

He stiffened, outraged at being dismissed so summarily; it was plain that he was used to more deference in Troy. But Troy worshipped Apollo as All High, whereas in Mykenai the All High was Zeus. How it must gall him, a Trojan, to be obliged by Apollo to serve where he could not give his heart.

I clapped my hands again. ‘Send in the chief herald.’

Menelaos sighed, reminding me that he still stood before me; though I had not forgotten for one instant that Klytemnestra was still standing there.

‘Take heart, brother. We’ll get her back. The Oath of the Quartered Horse is unbreakable. You’ll have your army in the spring of next year.’

The chief herald came.

‘Herald, you will send messages to every king and prince in Greece and Crete who swore the Oath of the Quartered Horse to King Tyndareus seven years ago. The clerk of oaths has their names in his memory. Your messengers will recite what I dictate, which is as follows: “King – Prince, lord, whoever – I, your suzerain, Agamemnon King of Kings, command that you come at once to Mykenai to discuss the oath you swore at the betrothal of Queen Helen to King Menelaos.” Have you got that?’

Proud of his verbatim memory, the chief herald nodded. ‘I have, sire.’

‘Then get on with it.’

Klytemnestra and I got rid of Menelaos by telling him that he needed a bath. Off he went happily; big brother Agamemnon had the situation well in hand, so he could relax.

‘High King of Greece is a mighty title,’ said Klytemnestra, ‘but High King of the Greek Empire sounds even mightier.’

I grinned. ‘So I think, wife.’

‘I like the idea of Orestes’s inheriting it,’ she mused.

And that summed Klytemnestra up. In her savage heart she was a leader, my Queen, a woman who found it galling to have to bow to the will of one even stronger than she was herself. I was quite aware of her ambitions; how much she longed to sit in my place, revive the Old Religion and use the King as nothing more than a living symbol of her fertility. Send him to the Axe when the land groaned under misfortune. The cult of Mother Kubaba was never far from the surface in the Isle of Pelops. Our son, Orestes, was very young, and came after I had despaired of one. His two sisters, Elektra and Chrysothemis, were already in the throes of puberty when he was born. The male child was a blow to Klytemnestra; she had hoped to rule through Elektra, though of late she had transferred her affections to Chrysothemis. Elektra adored her father, not her mother. However, Klytemnestra was extremely resourceful. Now that Orestes, a strong babe, seemed sure to succeed me, his mother hoped that I would die before he came of age. Then she would rule through him. Or through our youngest girl, Iphigenia.

Some of the men who had sworn the Oath of the Quartered Horse arrived in Mykenai before Menelaos returned from Pylos with King Nestor. It was a long way from Mykenai to Pylos, there were kingdoms much closer at hand. Palamedes the son of Nauplios came quickly, and I was glad to see him. Only Odysseus and Nestor exceeded him in wisdom.

I was speaking to Palamedes in the Throne Room when a stir erupted among the small cluster of lesser Kings on the floor of the hall. Palamedes stifled a laugh.

‘By Herakles, what a colossus! It must be Ajax the son of Telamon. What does he come for? He was a child when the Oath was taken, and his father never swore it.’

He plodded over to us, the biggest man in all Greece, head and shoulders above everyone else in the room. Because he belonged to a group of youths who adhered to a strictly athletic regimen, he scorned the customary blouse; at all times of the year and in all weathers he went shoeless and shirtless. I could not take my eyes from the massive barrel of his chest, the bulging muscles owning not one speck of fat. Each time he planted one huge foot on my marble flags I fancied the walls shook.

‘They say his cousin Achilles is almost as big,’ said Palamedes.

I grunted. ‘That need not concern us. The lords of the north never come to pay their respect to Mykenai. Thessalia is, they think, strong enough to be independent.’

‘Welcome, son of Telamon,’ I said. ‘What brings you here?’

His childish grey eyes surveyed me placidly. ‘I come to offer the services of Salamis, sire, in lieu of my father, who is ill. He said it would be good experience for me.’

I was well pleased. A pity the other Aiakid, Peleus, was so arrogant. Telamon knew his duty to his High King, whereas I would look in vain for Peleus, Achilles and the Myrmidons.

‘We thank you, son of Telamon.’

Smiling, Ajax lumbered off in the direction of some of his friends, signalling to him frantically. Suddenly he stopped and swung back to me. ‘I forgot, sire. My brother Teukros is with me. He swore the Oath.’

Palamedes was still laughing behind his hand. ‘Are we about to open a school for babes, sire?’

‘Yes, a pity he’s such a lubber, Ajax. But the troops of Salamis are not to be despised.’

By dinner, late that afternoon, I had Palamedes, Ajax, Teukros, the other Ajax from Lokris usually called Little Ajax, Menestheus the High King of Attika, Diomedes of Argos, Thoas of Aitolia, Eurypylos of Ormenion, and several others; much to my surprise, more than one who came had not sworn the Oath. I told them that I intended to invade the Trojan peninsula, take the city of Troy itself and free up the Hellespont. For the sake of my absent brother I dwelled a trifle too long on Paris’s perfidies, perhaps, but that didn’t delude any of them; they knew the real reasons for this war.