Odysseus came out of his reverie. ‘Sire, if I’m to go on this mission, then I ask one favour. Let there be no suggestion that we’re already here, hiding behind Tenedos. Let us give old Priam the impression that we’re still at home in Greece preparing for war. All we’re obliged to do under the law is formally notify him of a state of war before we attack. We don’t have to do more. Also, Menelaos ought to demand suitable compensation for the mental anguish he’s suffered since the abduction of his wife. He should demand that Priam reopen the Hellespont to our merchants and abolish the trade embargoes.’
I nodded. ‘Good points.’
We made our way back down the slope towards the town, the more energetic striding ahead of me, Odysseus and Philoktetes in the lead, talking and guffawing like a pair of lads. Both were excellent men, but Philoktetes was the better warrior. Herakles himself had given Philoktetes his bow and arrows while he lay dying, though Philoktetes had been a boy at the time.
They leaped over tussocks of grass, the clear air a tonic; Odysseus jumped high above a clump of plants and clicked his heels together to demonstrate his agility. Philoktetes emulated him, landing light and lithe. A moment later he gave a short, sharp cry of alarm, his face contorting as he sank to one knee, his other leg extended. Wondering if he had broken it, we all ran to where he hunched panting, holding the extended leg between his hands. Odysseus was unsheathing his knife.
‘What is it?’ Nestor asked.
‘I stepped on a serpent!’ Philoktetes gasped.
I went numb with fear. Lethal serpents were rare in Greece, a type of creature very different from the house and altar snakes we loved and honoured so much because they hunted rats and mice.
Odysseus cut the two punctures deeply with his knife, then bent his head and fastened his lips over the gashes, spitting out blood and venom after each audible suck. Then he beckoned Diomedes.
‘Here, Argive, lift him and carry him to Machaon. Try not to jar him, that will drive the poison closer to his vital parts. My friend,’ he said to Philoktetes, ‘lie very still, and be of good cheer. Machaon isn’t the son of Asklepios for nothing. He will know what to do.’
Diomedes went on ahead of us, carrying his heavy load as comfortably as if Philoktetes had been a child, in a smooth run I had seen him keep up in full armour for a long time.
Of course we went to Machaon’s surgery immediately. He had been given a good house to share with his much shyer brother, Podalieros; men ail, even before the war begins. Philoktetes lay on a couch, eyes closed, breathing stertorously.
‘Who treated the bite?’ Machaon asked.
‘I did,’ said Odysseus.
‘Well done, Ithakan. Had you not acted so expeditiously, he would have died on the spot. Even now he might die. The poison must be very deadly. He’s had four convulsions and I can feel his heart fibrillate beneath my hand.’
‘How long before we know the outcome?’ I asked.
Like every physician loath to predict a fatal prognosis, he shook his head. ‘I have no idea, sire. Did anyone catch the serpent, or at least see it?’
We shook our heads.
‘Then I do not know,’ said Machaon, sighing.
The delegation set off for Troy the next day in a big ship with its decks disarrayed to indicate that it had just made the long voyage from Greece alone; the rest of us settled down to await its return. We kept very quiet, made sure that the smoke from our fires didn’t drift above the hills to betray our presence to any possible watchers on the mainland. The Tenedians gave us no trouble, still stunned by the size of the fleet which had descended upon them out of the blue.
I saw little of the younger leaders. They had elected Achilles as their chief and looked to him for their example rather than to me. Since the day Iphigenia died he had not come near me. More than once I had seen him, his height and carriage quite unmistakable, but he had pretended not to notice me and gone on his way. Though I could not help but see his methods with his Myrmidons, for he wasted no time and would not let them be idle, as all the other troops were. Every day he drilled and exercised them; those seven thousand soldiers were the fittest, most capable-looking men I had ever beheld. I had been a little surprised to learn that he had brought no more than seven thousand Myrmidons to Aulis, but I could see now that Peleus and his son had preferred quality to quantity. Not one of them was over twenty years of age and all of them were soldiers by profession rather than volunteers more used to pushing a plough or treading grapes. None, gossip had informed me, were married. Very wise. Only youths without wife or babes leap into battle careless of their fate.
Seven days after it had departed, the delegation returned. Its ship sailed in after dark and my three ambassadors came to my house at once. Their faces told me they had had no success, but I waited until Nestor arrived before I let them say a word. No need to summon Idomeneus.
‘They refused to give her back, Agamemnon!’ my brother said, smiting the table with his fist.
‘Calm down, Menelaos! I never thought they would give her back. What actually happened? Did you see Helen?’
‘No, they kept her hidden. We were escorted to the Citadel – they knew me from my previous visit, even in Sigios. Priam was sitting on his throne and asked me what I wanted this time. I said, Helen, and he laughed at me! If that wretched son of his had been there. I would have killed him on the spot!’ He sat down, clutching his head between his hands.
‘And been killed yourself. Go on.’
‘Priam said Helen came of her own free will, that she did not wish to return to Greece, that she regarded Paris as her husband, and that she preferred to have the property she had taken with her in Troy, where she could use it to make sure that she never became a financial burden to her new country. He actually insinuated that I had usurped the throne of Lakedaimon, can you credit that? He said that after her brothers Kastor and Polydeukes died, she should have ruled in her own right! She was the daughter of Tyndareus! I am only Mykenai’s puppet!’
‘Well, well,’ said Nestor, chuckling. ‘It sounds to me as if Helen was plotting rebellion even if she had elected to remain with you in Amyklai, Menelaos.’
When my brother rounded on the old man fiercely, I struck the floor with my staff. ‘Go on, Menelaos!’
‘So I handed Priam the red tablet with the symbol of Ares on it and he stared at it as if he had never seen anything like it. His hand shook so much that he dropped it on the floor. It broke. Everyone jumped. Then Hektor picked it up and took it away.’
‘All of which must have occurred some days ago. Why didn’t you return at once?’ I asked.
He looked hangdog, didn’t answer, and I knew why as well as Nestor did. He had hoped to see Helen.
‘You haven’t told them how that first audience finished,’ Palamedes prompted.
‘I will, if I’m let!’ Menelaos snapped. ‘Priam’s eldest son, Deiphobos, publicly begged his father to murder us. Then Antenor stepped forward and offered to lodge us. He invoked Hospitable Zeus and forbade any Trojan to lift a hand against us.’
‘Interesting, coming from a Dardanian.’ I patted Menelaos soothingly. ‘Be of good cheer, brother! You’ll have your chance to be revenged soon enough. Now go and sleep.’
Only when Nestor and I were alone with Odysseus and Palamedes did I discover what I really wanted to know. Menelaos was the only one who had ever been to Troy, but during the year of our girding for war he had never managed to volunteer any useful information. How high were the walls? Very high. How many men could Priam call to arms? A lot. How firm were his ties to the rest of Asia Minor? Quite firm. It had been almost as bad as trying to prise information out of Kalchas, though my brother couldn’t offer the priest’s smooth excuse – that Apollo had tied his tongue.
