Within eight days the saffron-coloured sail Odysseus had chosen showed again on the horizon. My heart in my mouth, I stood on the beach beside the vacant slips. Even supposing he still lived, Philoktetes had been in Lesbos for ten years without ever once sending us a message. Nor had our messengers ever found him. Who knew what illness could do to a man’s mind? Look at Ajax.

Odysseus stood high in the prow, waving gaily. I let my breath go in a huge sigh of relief. He was a devious man, but he didn’t grin like that if he had failed. Menelaos and Idomeneus joined me as I waited, none of us knowing what exactly to expect. His life had been despaired of; and, in the event he had survived, his leg had been despaired of. So I stood imagining a cripple, a withered wreck, not the man who swung himself over the rails and dropped the many cubits to the ground as lightly as a boy. He hadn’t changed. He had hardly aged. He sported a neat golden beard and wore nothing save a kilt. Over his shoulder hung a mighty bow and a grimy quiver stuffed with arrows. I knew he was at least forty-five, but his hard, tanned body looked ten years younger, and his powerful legs were perfect. I could only gape.

‘Why, Philoktetes, why?’ was all I could find to say when we had settled into chairs at my house and had the wine servant at our elbows.

‘Simple, Agamemnon, when you know the story.’

‘Then tell it!’ I commanded, happier than since Achilles and Ajax died. That was the effect Philoktetes had on us; he sent the winds of life and cheer through my musty halls.

‘It took a year to recover my wits and the use of my leg,’ Philoktetes began. ‘Fearing that the local people wouldn’t be kind to a Greek, my servants took me high onto a mountain and settled me in a cave. This was far west of Thermi and Antissa, leagues from any village, even farm. My servants were faithful and loyal, so no one knew who I was or where I was. Imagine my surprise when Odysseus told me that Achilles had sacked Lesbos four times during the last ten years! I knew nothing of it!’

‘Well, sacks are visited on cities,’ Meriones said.

‘True enough.’

‘But surely you ventured further afield once you recovered!’ Menelaos objected.

‘No,’ Philoktetes answered, ‘I didn’t. Apollo spoke to me in a dream and told me to stay where I was. Candidly, I found it no hardship. I took to hunting and running, shooting deer and wild pigs, and had my servants barter the meat for wine or figs or olives in the nearest village – I led an idyllic life! No cares, no kingdom, no responsibilities. The years went by, I was happy, and I never suspected the war was still going on. I thought you’d all be back home.’

‘Until we climbed your mountain and found you,’ Odysseus said.

‘Did Apollo say you could go?’ Nestor asked.

‘Yes. And I’m very glad to be in at the kill.’

A messenger had come to whisper in Odysseus’s ear; he got up and accompanied the man outside. When he returned his face was comical with surprise.

‘Sire,’ he said to me, ‘one of my agents reports that Priam is planning another fight. The Trojan army will be on our doorstep well before dawn tomorrow, with orders to attack while we’re asleep. Isn’t that interesting? A flagrant breach of the laws governing warfare. I’ll bet Aineas plotted it.’

‘Oh, come, Odysseus!’ said Menestheus unexpectedly, blowing a derisive noise with his lips. ‘What’s all this about breaching the laws governing warfare? You’ve been doing that for years!’

His mouth twitched. ‘Yes, but they haven’t,’ Odysseus said.

‘Whether they have or have not, Menestheus,’ I said, ‘they are now. Odysseus, you have my permission to use any means you can devise to get us inside the walls of Troy.’

‘Starvation,’ he said promptly.

‘Short of starvation,’ I said.

We were drawn up in the shadows long before darkness was due to dissipate, so Aineas found himself too slow. I led the assault myself and we cut them to pieces, showing them that we could do without Achilles and Ajax. Already uneasy because they couldn’t be comfortable with Aineas’s trickery, the Trojans panicked when we fell on them. All we had to do was follow to pick them off in hundreds.

Philoktetes used Herakles’s arrows with devastating effect. He had developed a system whereby men ran to all his victims, plucked out the precious arrows, cleaned them and returned them to the worn old quiver.

Those who escaped fled into the city; the Skaian Gate closed in our faces. The fight had been very short. We stood victorious with dead Trojans littered everywhere not long after the sun had risen; the final flower of Troy had fallen in the dust.

Idomeneus and Meriones drove up, Menelaos close behind, and then the others; they swung their cars into a circle to scan the field and talk over the battle.

‘Herakles’s arrows certainly own magic when you fire them, Philoktetes,’ I said.

He grinned. ‘I admit they like such work more than they like plugging deer, Agamemnon. But when my men count up the tally of arrows, they’re going to find three missing.’ His eyes went to Automedon, who had done well leading the Myrmidons. ‘I have some good news for you to pass on to the Myrmidons, Automedon.’

That riveted all of us.

‘Good news?’ Automedon asked.

‘Indeed! I tricked Paris into a duel. One of the soldiers pointed him out to me, so I stalked him until I caught him with no bolt hole in his vicinity. Then I boasted of my prowess as an archer and made nasty fun of his pansified little bow. Since he didn’t know me from an Assyrian mercenary, he fell for it and accepted my challenge. I let my first shaft fly wide to whet his appetite. Though I admit he has a good eye. If I hadn’t been quick with my shield his first shot would have punctured me neatly in the midriff. Then I took him. The first arrow in his bow hand, the second in his right heel – I thought that suitable payment for Achilles – and the third straight through his right eye. None of them were mortal enough to kill him outright, but more than enough to ensure that he dies sooner or later. I asked the God to guide my hand, make him perish slowly.’ Clapping Menelaos on the shoulder, he laughed. ‘Menelaos followed him from the field, but wounded and all he was too slippery, much to our old redhead’s disgust.’

By this time we were all laughing; I sent heralds to spread the word through the army that the murderer of Achilles was a dead man. We had seen the last of Paris the seducer.

30

NARRATED BY

Helen

Most of the time I kept strictly to myself. How Penelope my cousin would have chuckled! Time hung so heavily on my hands that I had actually taken to weaving. The pursuit, I now understood, of neglected wives. Paris literally never came near me. Nor did Aineas.

Since the death of Hektor the palace atmosphere had altered for the worse. Hekabe had gone so peculiar in the head that she never ceased to reproach Priam for the fact that she hadn’t been his first wife. Bewildered and upset, he would protest that he had made her his principal wife, his Queen! Whereupon she would squat down on her hunkers and start howling like an old dog. Absolutely crazy! But at least now I understood where Kassandra got it from.

A desperately unhappy place. Hektor’s widow and therefore tumbled far from her old status, Andromache acted like a shade herself. Rumour had it at the time that she and Hektor had quarrelled bitterly just before he left Troy to fight his last fight, and that the falling out had been her fault. He had begged her to look at him, to say farewell, but she had chosen to lie in their bed with her face to the wall. I believed the tale; she had that ghastly look of terrible pain and unending remorse which only a guilty woman who loves greatly can wear. Nor could she summon up any interest in her son, Astyanax, whom she had given over to the men to educate the moment Hektor was in his tomb.