I had never seen Kalchas at work before, and had to admit that he was very good. With hands trembling so much they could hardly lift the jewelled knife, his face waxen, he cut the victim’s throat jerkily, almost upsetting the great golden chalice as he held it to catch the blood; when he poured the scarlet stream out upon the cold marble it seemed to smoke. Then he slit open the belly and began to interpret the multiple folds of entrails according to the practice of priests trained in Asia Minor. His movements were rapid and dysrhythmic, his breathing so stertorous that I could hear it whenever the wind died for a moment.
Without warning he spun about to face us. ‘Listen to the word of the God, O Kings of Greece! I have seen the will of Zeus, the Lord of All! He has turned away from you, he refuses to give this venture his blessing! His motives are clouded by his wrath, but it is Artemis who sits upon his knee and begs him to remain obdurate! I can see no more, his fury overwhelms me!’
About what I had expected, I thought, though the mention of Artemis was a deft touch. However, to give him his due, Kalchas really did look like a man pursued by the Daughters of Kore, a man stripped of all save his life in a single flake of time. There was genuine agony in his eyes. I wondered about him anew, for he obviously believed what he said, even if he had worked it all out beforehand. Any man who possesses the power to influence others interests me, but no priest ever interested me as Kalchas did.
And no, you have not yet concluded your performance, I thought; there is more to come.
At the foot of the altar Kalchas wheeled and flung his arms wide, his huge sleeves flapping soaked in the sleety wind, his head far back, the line of its tilt revealing that he looked at the plane tree. I followed his gaze to where the branches were still bare, wormy buds not yet unfurled. A nest was tucked into one fork, and on it sat a bird, hatching. An ordinary brown bird of some indiscriminate kind.
The altar snake was writhing along the branch with greed in his cold black eyes. Kalchas drew in his arms, still upraised, until both hands pointed at the nest; we watched with bated breath. A large reptile, he opened his jaws to take the bird, swallowing her whole until she was a series of tattoos thrusting at his rich brown scales. Then one by one he devoured her eggs: six, seven, eight, nine, I counted. The mother and all nine of her eggs.
The meal over, like all his kind he stopped in his tracks, curling about the thin branch as if graven from stone. His eyes were riveted on the priest without the shadow of an expression; no human blinks fractured the frigid penetration of his stare.
Kalchas twisted as if some God had driven an invisible stake clean through his belly, moaning softly. Then he spoke again.
‘Listen to me, O Kings of Greece! You have witnessed the message of Apollo! He speaks when the Lord of All refuses! The sacred snake swallowed the bird and her nine unhatched young. The bird herself is this coming season. Her nine unborn children are the nine seasons as yet unborn of the Mother. The snake is Greece! The bird and her young are the years it will take to conquer Troy! Ten years to conquer Troy! Ten years!’
The silence was so profound it seemed to vanquish the storm. No one moved or spoke for a long time. Nor did I know what to think of that stunning performance. Was this foreign priest a true seer? Or was this an elaborate charade? I looked at Agamemnon, wondering which would win: his certainty that the war would end in a few days, or his faith in the priest. The struggle was a violent one, for he was by nature a religiously superstitious man, but in the end his pride triumphed. Shrugging, he turned on his heel. I left the last of all, never taking my eyes from Kalchas. He was standing stock still, gazing at the High King’s back, and there was malice in him, outrage because his first real exhibition of power had been ignored.
The days dripped onward into high spring, tortmented by strong winds and deluges of rain. The sea was lashed into waves as high as the decks of the ships; there could be no hope of sailing. Each of us settled down to wait in characteristic fashion. Achilles drilled the Myrmidons pitilessly, Diomedes paced up and down my poor tent floor with increasing impatience, Idomeneus dallied in the arms of the courtesans he had brought with him from Crete, Phoinix clucked like a demented hen over his fleet, Agamemnon chewed his beard and refused to listen to any kind of advice, while the troops idled and diced, quarrelled and drank. No easy business, either, to bring sufficient food across the rain-soaked leagues to keep the army eating.
I felt little. It was all one to me which way I spent the beginning of twenty years in exile. Only a few of us gathered each day at noon to witness the reading of the omens. None of us expected a positive reason from Kalchas as to why the Great God had turned against us. The new moon waxed to full and waned to nothing without a pause in the tempest; it began to seem a serious possibility that we would not sail at all. If another moon went by the winds would be more unpredictable, and by the end of summer Troy would be closed to us until next year.
More because of my fascination with Kalchas himself than in any real hope that the God would draw back his veil and let us see his purpose, I never missed the noon ritual. Nor did this particular day prompt any prickles that it would turn out to be different. I simply went in my role of Kalchas watcher. Only Agamemnon, Nestor, Menelaos, Diomedes and Idomeneus arrived to keep me company. I had noticed in passing that the altar snake had long since emerged from his gluttonous hibernation and had taken up residence in his niche again.
But today was different. In the midst of his probing into the victim’s entrails Kalchas whipped around and pointed one long, bony, bloodied finger straight at Agamemnon.
‘There stands the one who prevents the sailing!’ he shrilled. ‘Agamemnon King of Kings, you have denied the Archeress her due! Her long-dormant anger has roused, and Zeus, her divine father, has heard her pleas for justice. Until you give Artemis what you promised her sixteen years ago, King Agamemnon, your fleet will never sail!’
Not a wild guess. Agamemnon stood swaying on his feet, his face ghastly. Kalchas knew what he was talking about.
The priest stalked down the steps, stiff with outrage. ‘Give Artemis what you denied her sixteen years ago, and you may sail! Not otherwise. Almighty Zeus has spoken.’
Covering his face with his hands, Agamemnon shrank away from the purple-clad figure of doom. ‘I cannot!’ he cried.
‘Then disband your army,’ said Kalchas.
‘I cannot give the Goddess what she wants! She has no right to demand it! If I had dreamed what the outcome would be – oh, I would never have promised! She is Artemis, chaste and holy. How can she demand such a thing of me?’
‘She demands her due, no more. Give it to her and you may sail,’ Kalchas repeated, voice cold. ‘If you continue to refuse your sixteen-year-old vow, the House of Atreus will sink into obscurity and you yourself will die a broken man.’
I stepped forward and forced Agamemnon’s hands down. ‘What did you promise the Archeress, Agamemnon?’
Eyes full of tears, he clung to my wrists like a drowning man to a spar. ‘A stupid, unthinking vow, Odysseus! Stupid! Sixteen years ago Klytemnestra was at full term with our last daughter, but her labour dragged on for three days without fruit. She couldn’t bring forth the child. I prayed to them all – the Mother, Here the Merciful and Here the Throttler, the Gods and Goddesses of the hearth, of labour, of children, of women. None of them answered me – none of them!’
The tears were falling, but he struggled on. ‘In desperation I prayed to Artemis, even though she is a virgin with her face turned away from fecund women. I begged her to help my wife give birth to a fine and unblemished child. In return, I promised her the most beautiful creature born that year in my kindom. Not many moments after I made the promise, Klytemnestra was brought to bed of our daughter, Iphigenia. And at the end of the year I sent couriers through Mykenai to bring me all the offspring they considered most beautiful. Kids, calves, lambs, even birds. I saw them all and offered them all, though in my heart I knew they would not satisfy the Goddess. She rejected every sacrifice.’
