Menelaos recovered his powers of speech first. ‘Are you going to let him get away with this, brother?’ he asked Agamemnon.

‘What do you want, Menelaos?’

‘His life! He’s killed the sacred animals, his life is forfeit! The Gods demand it!’

Odysseus sighed. ‘Whom the Gods love best, they first drive mad,’ he said. ‘Let it alone, Menelaos.’

‘He has to die!’ Menelaos insisted. ‘Execute him, and let no man dig his grave!’

‘That is the punishment,’ Agamemnon muttered.

Odysseus struck his hands together. ‘No, no, no! Leave him be! Isn’t it enough for you, Menelaos, that Ajax has doomed himself? His shade is condemned to Tartaros for this night’s work! Let him alone! Don’t heap more coals on his poor, crazed head!’

Agamemnon turned away from the carnage. ‘Odysseus is right. He’s mad, brother. Let him atone as best he can.’

Odysseus, Diomedes and I walked down through the streets and the murmuring, shivering men to where Ajax lived with his chief concubine, Tekmessa, and their son, Eurysakes. When Odysseus knocked on the bolted door Tekmessa peered fearfully through the shuttered window, then opened to him, her son at her side.

‘Where’s Ajax?’ asked Diomedes.

She wiped away her tears. ‘Gone, sire. I don’t know where, except that he said he was going to seek forgiveness of Palladian Athene by bathing in the sea.’ She broke down, but managed to go on. ‘He gave Eurysakes his shield. He said it was the only one of his arms not tainted by sacrilege, and told us that all the other pieces were to be buried with him. Then he gave us into the care of Teukros. Sire, sire, what is it? What did he do?’

‘Nothing he understood, Tekmessa. Stay here, we’ll find him.’

He was down by the shore where the tiny waves lapped gently at the fringe of the lagoon and a few rocks dotted the gravelly sand. Teukros was with him, kneeling with his head bent over, stolid Teukros who never spoke much but was always there when Ajax needed him. Even now, at the last.

What he had done spoke mutely for itself: the flat rock a few fingers above the gravel, its surface cracked from some blow of Poseidon’s trident, the sword handle wedged to its hilt in the crack, blade upwards. He had shed his armour and bathed in the sea, he had traced an owl in the sand for Athene and an eye for Mother Kubaba. Then he had positioned himself above the sword and fallen on it with all his weight; it had taken him in the centre of his chest and clove the backbone. Two cubits of it protruded beyond his body. He lay with his face in his own blood, his eyes closed, traces of madness still in his features. His huge hands were slack, the fingers gently curved.

Teukros raised his head to look at us bitterly, his eyes as they rested on Odysseus plainly saying that he knew who was to blame. What Odysseus thought I couldn’t begin to guess, but he didn’t falter.

‘What can we do?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Teukros. ‘I’ll bury him myself.’

‘Here?’ asked Diomedes, aghast. ‘No, he deserves better!’

‘You know that’s not true. He knew it. So do I. He’ll have exactly what the laws of the Gods say he deserves – a suicide’s grave. It’s all I’m able to do for him. All that’s left between us. He must pay in death, as Achilles paid in life. He said that before he died.’

We went away then and left them alone, the brothers who would never again fight with the little one under the shelter of the big one’s shield. In eight days they were both gone: Achilles and Ajax, the spirit and the heart of our army.

‘Ai! Ai! Woe! Woe!’ cried Odysseus, the tears running down his face. ‘How strange are the ways of the Gods! Achilles dragged Hektor by the baldric Ajax gave him. Now Ajax falls on the sword Hektor gave him.’ He writhed painfully. ‘By the Mother, I am sick unto death of Troy! I hate the very smell of Trojan air.’

29

NARRATED BY

Agamemnon

The days of open fighting had gone; Priam locked the Skaian Gate and looked down on us from his towers. A handful of them remained, only Aineas still alive among their great ones. With his most beloved sons dead, Priam was left with the worthless to console him. It was a time of waiting, while our wounds healed and our spirits slowly revived. A curious thing had happened, a gift from the Gods no one had dreamed of: Achilles and Ajax seemed to have entered into the very substance of every Greek soldier. To the last one they were determined to conquer the walls of Troy. I mentioned the phenomenon to Odysseus, wondering what he thought.

‘There’s nothing mysterious about it, sire. Achilles and Ajax have been transformed into Heroes, and Heroes never die. So what the men are doing is taking up the burden. Besides which, they want to go home. But not defeated. The only vindication for the events of these last ten years in exile is the fall of Troy. We’ve paid dearly for this campaign – in our blood, in our greying hair, in our aching hearts, in the faces so long unseen we can hardly remember the beloved lineaments, in the tears and the bitter emptiness. Troy has chewed its way into our bones. We could no more go home without smashing Troy into dust than we could profane the Mysteries of the Mother.’

‘Then,’ I said, ‘I’ll seek counsel of Apollo.’

‘He’s a Trojan far more than a Greek, sire.’

‘Even so, his is the oracular mouth. So we’ll ask him what we need to enter Troy. He can’t deny the representation of a people – any people! – a truthful answer.’

The high priest, Talthybios, looked into the glowing bowels of the sacred fire, and sighed. He was no Kalchas; a Greek, he used fire and water to divine, saving animals for simple sacrificial victims. Nor did he announce his findings at the augury itself. He waited until we were assembled in council.

‘What did you see?’ I asked then.

‘Many things, sire. Some of them I couldn’t even begin to understand, but two things were fully revealed.’

‘Tell us.’

‘We can’t take the city with what we have. There are two items dear to the Gods we must possess first. If we acquire them, we’ll know the Gods have consented to our entering Troy. If we can’t get them, we’ll know that Olympos is united against us.’

‘What are these two items, Talthybios?’

‘First, the bow and arrows of Herakles. The second is a man – Neoptolemos, the son of Achilles.’

‘We thank you. You may go.’

I watched their faces. Idomeneus and Meriones sat sternly sad; my poor inadequate brother Menelaos seemed changeless; Nestor was so old we feared for him; Menestheus soldiered on without complaint; Teukros hadn’t forgiven any of us; Automedon was still unreconciled to commanding the Myrmidons; and Odysseus – ah, Odysseus! Who really knew what went on behind those luminous, beautiful eyes?

‘Well, Odysseus? You know where the bow and arrows of Herakles are. How do you rate our chances?’

He got to his feet slowly. ‘In almost ten years, not one single word from Lesbos.’

‘I heard he was dead,’ said Idomeneus gloomily.

Odysseus laughed. ‘Philoktetes, dead? Not if a dozen vipers had poured their poison into him! I believe he’s on Lesbos even yet. We certainly have to try, sire. Who should go?’

‘Yourself and Diomedes. You were his friends. If he remembers us with kindness, it will be because of you. Take ship for Lesbos at once, go and ask him for the bow and arrows he inherited from Herakles. Tell him we’ve kept his share of the spoils, and tell him he’s never been forgotten,’ I said.

Diomedes stretched. ‘A day or two at sea! What a good idea.’

‘But there’s still the matter of Neoptolemos,’ I said. ‘It will be well over a moon before he can arrive here – if old Peleus will let him come.’

Odysseus looked back from the doorway. ‘Rest easy, sire, it has already been attended to. I sent for Neoptolemos more than half a moon ago. As for Peleus – offer to Father Zeus.’