The room filled with men, then the women arrived. Nestor and I searched their ranks fruitlessly. None could be Achilles.

‘Sire,’ I said, stepping forward, ‘King Agamemnon wishes to thank you and yours for your help and hospitality.’ I indicated the heaps of women’s things. ‘Here are gifts for your women.’ I turned to the weapons and armour. ‘And here, gifts for your men.’

Both sexes murmured in delight, but no one moved until the King granted his permission. Then they clustered about the tables to pick the things over happily.

‘This, sire,’ I said, taking an object wrapped in linen from a sailor, ‘is for you.’

Face alight, he stripped the shroud from it until it was revealed as a Cretan axe, its double head bronze, its shaft oak. I held it out for him to take it; beaming with pleasure, he extended his hands.

At that precise moment there came from outside a shrill, high squeal of alarm. Someone sounded a horn, and in the far distance we all heard Ajax bellow a war cry from Salamis. Came the unmistakable clang of armour being strapped on; Ajax yelled again, closer now, as if he retreated. The women shrieked and began to flee, the men broke into confused questions, and King Lykomedes, deathly pale, forgot his axe.

‘Pirates!’ he said, not seeming to know what to do.

Ajax howled once more, louder and much closer, a war cry from the slopes of Pelion that only Chiron taught. In the rooted stillness suddenly gripping us all I changed my hold on the axe, grasped its shaft in both hands and lifted its head.

One other moved also, erupting into the Throne Room with such force that the terrified women, clustered in the doorway, were flung about like spools of yarn. A sort of a woman. Easy to see why Lykomedes had not dared display her! Impatiently stripping off the linen robe swathed about her to reveal a chest so well muscled that I stared in admiration, she strode to the table where the arms were piled. Achilles at last.

He swept the contents of one table to the floor with a crash, took a shield and spear and towered there at his full height, every fibre of him ready to fight. Axe extended, I walked up to him.

‘Here, lady, use this! It looks more your size.’ I flourished it, my arms creaking under the strain. ‘Do I address Prince Achilles?’

Oh, but he was odd! What should have been beautiful was not, despite the paeans of Patrokles. Though it was not the mouth negated beauty. That actually lent him some much-needed pathos. His lack of beauty, I have always thought, came from within himself. The yellow eyes were full of pride and high intelligence; this was no lubber Ajax.

‘My thanks,’ he cried, laughing back at me.

Ajax came into the room still holding the arms he had used to create the panic outside, saw Achilles standing with me, and roared. The next moment he had Achilles in his grasp, was hugging him with a force that would have crushed my rib cage. Achilles shook him off without seeming to be impaired, and flung an arm across his shoulders.

‘Ajax, Ajax! Your war cry tore through me like a shaft from a longbow! I had to answer, I couldn’t stand idle a moment longer. When you yelled old Chiron’s war cry you were summoning me – how could I resist?’ He spied Patrokles and held out one hand. ‘Here, with me! We go to war against Troy! My dearest wish has been granted, Father Zeus has answered my prayers.’

Lykomedes was beside himself, weeping, wringing his hands. ‘My son, my son, what will happen to us now? You’ve broken the oath you swore to your mother! She’ll rend us limb from limb!’

Silence fell. Achilles sobered in an instant, his face grim. I raised my brows at Nestor; we both sighed. Everything was explained.

‘I can’t see how I broke it, Father,’ Achilles said at last. ‘I answered a reflex, I responded without thinking to a call instilled in me when I was a boy. I heard Ajax and I answered. I broke no oath. Another man’s guile destroyed it.’

‘Achilles speaks the truth,’ I said loudly. ‘I tricked you. No God could deem you guilty of breaking your vow.’

They doubted me, of course, but the damage was done.

Achilles spread his arms above his head in exultation then reached for Patrokles and Ajax, hugged them. ‘Cousins, we go to war!’ he said, smiling fiercely, then looked at me with grateful eyes. ‘It is our destiny. Even in the midst of her vilest spells my mother could never convince me otherwise. I was born to be a warrior, to fight alongside the greatest men of our age, to win everlasting fame and undying glory!’

What he said was probably true. I gazed wryly at them, that splendid trio of young men, remembering my wife and son, all the endless years which must elapse between the beginning of my exile and my homecoming. Achilles would win his everlasting fame and undying glory before Troy, but I would cheerfully have traded my share of those two vastly overrated commodities for the right to return home tomorrow.

In the end I did manage to return to Ithaka, on the pretext that I had to form up my contingent for Troy in person. Agamemnon was far from pleased to see me leave Mykenai; he could perform his own part more easily if I were there to lean on.

I spent three precious moons with my web-faced Penelope, time we hadn’t counted on having, but eventually I could delay no longer. While my small fleet weathered the stormy rim of the Isle of Pelops, I made the journey to Aulis by land. I went swiftly through Aitolia, not breaking my progress by night or by day until I reached mountainous Delphi, where Apollo, Lord of the Prophetic Mouth, had his sanctuary, and where his priestess, the Pythoness, gave out her infallible Oracles. I asked her if my house oracle had been right in saying that I would spend twenty years away from my hearth. Her answer was simple and straightforward: ‘Yes.’ Then she added that it was the will of my protectress, Pallas Athene, that I should be away from home for twenty years. I asked why, but got no answer beyond a giggle.

Hopes dashed, I pressed on to Thebes, where I had arranged to meet Diomedes coming up from Argos. But the ruined city was deserted; he had not dared to tarry. Nor was I sorry for the solitude as I put my team on the last short stage of my journey, jolting over the rutted track which led down to the Euboian Strait and the beach at Aulis.

The whereabouts of the expedition’s start had been long and carefully debated; a thousand or more ships took up some leagues of room, and the waters had to be sheltered. Therefore Aulis was a good choice. The beach was over two leagues long, shielded from the wildest winds and seas by the island of Euboia, not far offshore.

Last to foregather, I breasted the top of the rise above the beach and looked down. Even my horses seemed to sense something ominous in the air, for they stopped, balked and began to rear, as horses do when commanded to approach carrion. My driver had to fight to control them, but finally managed to coax them on.

Endless they ranged before my eyes! There on the beach in two rows stood those high-prowed, red-and-black ships, each of them built to carry at least a hundred men, with room for fifty on the oars and fifty to lie at rest amid the gear, each with a tall mast to swing the sail upon. I wondered how many trees had crashed to earth to create those thousand and more ships, how many splashes of sweat had soaked into their pitched sides before the last bolt had been driven home and they could ride lightly upon the water. Ships and ships and ships, small from where I stood atop the rise. Enough ships to convey eighty thousand troops and thousands more of noncombatants to Troy. Mentally I applauded Agamemnon. He had dared, and he had succeeded. If he never got those two ranks of vessels any further than the beach at Aulis, it was nonetheless a splendid achievement. The beauty of the land was lost on me; mountains were dwarfed, the sea reduced to a passive instrument for the use of Agamemnon, King of Kings. I laughed aloud and shouted, ‘Agamemnon, you have won!’