Death can find nothing to expose in him
that is not beautiful.
Homer, Iliad 22.73
1
NARRATED BY
There never was a city like Troy. The young priest Kalchas, sent to Egyptian Thebes during his novitiate, came back unimpressed by the pyramids built along the west bank of the River of Life. Troy, he said, was more imposing, for it reared higher and its buildings housed the living, not the dead. But then, he added, there was an extenuating circumstance: the Egyptians owned inferior Gods. The Egyptians had moved their stones with mortal hands, whereas Troy’s mighty walls had been thrown up by our Gods themselves. Nor, Kalchas said, could flat Babylon compete, its height stunted by river mud, its walls like the work of children.
No man remembers when our walls had been built, it was so long ago, yet every man knows the story. Dardanos (a son of the King of our Gods, Zeus) took possession of the square peninsula of land at the very top of Asia Minor, where on the north side the Euxine Sea pours its waters down into the Aegaean Sea through the narrow strait of the Hellespont. This new kingdom Dardanos divided into two parts. He gave the southern section to his second son, who called his domain Dardania and set up his capital in the town of Lyrnessos. Though smaller, the northern section is much, much richer; with it goes the guardianship of the Hellespont and the right to levy taxes upon all the merchants who voyage in and out of the Euxine Sea. This section is called the Troad. Its capital, Troy, stands upon the hill called Troy.
Zeus loved his mortal son, so when Dardanos prayed to his divine father to gift Troy with indestructible walls, Zeus was delighted to grant his petition. Two of the Gods were out of favour at the time: Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, and Apollo, Lord of Light. They were ordered to proceed to Troy and build ramparts taller, thicker and stronger than any others. Not really a task for the delicate and fastidious Apollo, who elected to play his lyre rather than get dirty and sweaty – a way, he explained carefully to the gullible Poseidon, of helping to pass the time while the walls went up. So Poseidon piled stone upon stone while Apollo serenaded him.
Poseidon laboured for a price, the sum of one hundred talents of gold to be deposited each and every year thereafter in his temple at Lyrnessos. King Dardandos agreed; time out of mind the hundred talents of gold had been paid each and every year to the temple of Poseidon in Lyrnessos. But then, just as my father, Laomedon, ascended the Trojan throne, came an earthquake so devastating that it had felled the House of Minos in Crete and blown the island empire of Thera away. Our western wall crumbled and my father hired the Greek engineer, Aiakos, to rebuild it.
Aiakos did a good job, though the new wall he erected had neither the smoothness nor the beauty of the rest of that great, God-begotten encirclement.
The contract with Poseidon (I daresay Apollo hadn’t deigned to ask for a musician’s wages), said my father, was dishonoured. The walls had not proven indestructible after all. Therefore the hundred talents of gold paid each year to Poseidon’s temple in Lyrnessos would not be paid again. Ever. Superficially this argument looked a valid one, save that the Gods surely knew what even I, then a boy, knew: that King Laomedon was an incurable miser, and resented paying so much precious Trojan gold to a temple located in a rival city under the rule of a rival dynasty of blood relations.
Be that as it may, the gold ceased to be paid, and nothing happened for more years than it took me to grow from child to man.
Nor, when the lion came, did anyone think to connect his advent with insulted Gods or city walls.
To the south of Troy on the verdant plains lay my father’s horse farm, his one indulgence – though even indulgence had to bring profit to King Laomedon. Not long after Aiakos the Greek finished rebuilding the western wall, a man arrived in Troy from a place so far away we knew nothing of it beyond the fact that its mountains bolstered the sky and its grasses were sweeter than any other grasses. With him the refugee brought ten horses – three stallions and seven mares. They were horses the like of which we had never seen – large, fleet, graceful, long maned and long tailed, pretty faced, demure and tame. Splendid for drawing chariots! The moment the King set eyes on them, the man’s fate was inevitable. He died and his horses became the private property of the King of Troy. Who bred from them a line so famous that traders from all over the world came to buy mares and geldings; my father was too shrewd to sell a stallion.
Through the middle of the horse farm ran a worn and sinister track, once used by lions as they travelled north from Asia Minor to Skythia for the summer, and south again to winter in Karia and Lykia, where the sun retained the power to warm their tawny hides. Hunting had killed them off; the lion track became a path to water.
Six years ago the peasants had come running, pallid faced. I will never forget the sight of my father’s countenance when they told him that three of his best mares were lying dead and a stallion badly mutilated, the victims of a lion.
Laomedon was not the man to give way to unthinking rage. In a measured voice he ordered a whole detachment of the House Guard to station itself on the track the following spring, and kill the beast.
No ordinary lion, that one! Each spring and autumn he came through so stealthily no one saw him; and he killed far more than his belly needed. He killed for the love of it. Two years after his advent the House Guard caught him attacking a stallion. They advanced on him clashing their swords against their shields, intending to force him into a corner so they could use their spears. Instead, he reared to roar his war cry, charged straight at them, and went through their ranks like a boulder rushing downhill. As they scattered the kingly beast killed seven of them before going on his way unscathed.
One good thing came out of the disaster. A man torn by his claws lived to go to the priests, and told Kalchas that the lion bore the mark of Poseidon; on his pale flank was a black, three-pronged fish spear. Kalchas consulted the Oracle at once, then announced that the lion belonged to Poseidon. Woe the Trojan hand that struck at him! Kalchas cried, for he was a punishment visited upon Troy for cheating the Lord of the Seas of his annual hundred talents’ payment. Nor would he go away until it was resumed.
At first my father ignored Kalchas and the Oracle. In the autumn he ordered the House Guard out again to kill the beast. But he had underestimated the common man’s fear of the Gods: even when the King threatened his guardsmen with execution, they would not go. Furious but balked, he informed Kalchas that he refused to donate Trojan gold to Dardanian Lyrnessos – the priests had better think of an alternative. Kalchas went back to the Oracle, which announced in plain language that there was an alternative. If each spring and autumn six virgin maidens chosen by lot were chained in the horse pasture and left there for the lion, Poseidon would be satisfied – for the time being.
Naturally the King preferred giving the God maidens to gold; the new scheme went ahead. The trouble was that he never really trusted the priests in the matter, not because he was a sacrilegious man – he gave the Gods what he considered their due – but because he detested being bled. So each spring and autumn every virgin maid aged fifteen years was covered head to foot in a white shroud to prevent identification and lined up in the courtyard of Poseidon Maker of Walls, where the priests chose six of these anonymous white bundles for the sacrifice.
The ploy worked. Twice a year the lion passed through, killed the girls as they stood huddled in their chains, and left the horses unmolested. To King Laomedon, a paltry price to pay for the salving of his pride and the preservation of his business.
Four days ago autumn’s six offerings were chosen. Five of them were girls from the city; the sixth was from the Citadel, the high palace. My father’s most beloved child, his daughter Hesione. When Kalchas came to tell him the news, he was incredulous.
‘Do you mean to say that you were idiot enough to leave her shroud unmarked?’ he asked. ‘My daughter treated the same as all the rest?’
‘It is the God’s will,’ said Kalchas, calmly.
‘It is not the God’s will that my daughter should be chosen! His will is that he receives six virgin maids, nothing else! So choose another victim, Kalchas.’
‘I cannot, Great King.’
From that stand Kalchas would not be budged. A divine hand directed the choice, which meant that Hesione and no other girl would satisfy the terms of the sacrifice.
Though none of the Court was present during this tense and angry interview, the word of it swept through the Citadel from end to end and top to bottom. Favour curriers like Antenor were loud in condemning the priest, whereas the King’s many children – including me, his Heir – thought that at last our father would have to break down and pay Poseidon those annual hundred talents of gold.
Next day the King summoned his council. Of course I attended; the Heir must hear the King deliver all his judgements.
He looked composed and undistressed. King Laomedon was a tiny fellow far past the flush of youth, long hair silver, long robe gold. The voice which issues out of him never ceased to surprise us, for it was deep, noble, melodic, strong.
‘My daughter Hesione,’ he said to the assembled ranks of sons, near cousins and remote cousins, ‘has consented to go to the sacrifice. It has been required of her by the God.’
Perhaps Antenor had guessed what the King would say; I did not, nor did my younger brothers.
‘My lord!’ I cried before I could stop myself. ‘You cannot! When times are hard the King may go to the sacrifice for the sake of the people, but his virgin daughters belong to Virgin Artemis, not to Poseidon!’
He did not care to hear his eldest son chide him before the Court; his lips thinned, his chest swelled. ‘My daughter was chosen, Podarkes Priam! Chosen by Poseidon!’
‘Poseidon would be happier,’ I said through my teeth, ‘if one hundred talents of gold were paid to his temple in Lyrnessos.’
At which moment I caught sight of Antenor smirking. How he loved to hear the King and his Heir at loggerheads!
‘I refuse,’ said King Laomedon, ‘to pay good, hard-earned gold to a God who didn’t build the western wall strong enough to survive one of his own earthquakes!’
‘You can’t send Hesione to her death, Father!’
‘I am not sending her to her death! Poseidon is!’
The priest Kalchas moved, then stilled.
‘A mortal man like you,’ I said, ‘should not blame the Gods for his own failings.’
‘Are you saying that I have failings?’
‘All mortal men do,’ I answered, ‘even the King of the Troad.’
‘Take yourself off, Podarkes Priam! Get out of this room! Who knows? Perhaps next year Poseidon will ask that heirs to thrones form the sacrifice!’
Antenor was still smiling. I turned and left the room to seek comfort from the city and the wind.
Cold, damp air blowing from the far-off peak of Ida cooled my anger as I strode along the flagged terrace outside the Throne Room and sought the steps, two hundred of them, which led ever upward to the summit of the Citadel. There, far above the plain, I closed my hands on man-made stones; for the Gods had not built the Citadel, Dardanos had done that. Something reached into me from out of those carefully squared bones of Mother Earth, and I sensed in that moment the power residing in the King. How many years, I wondered, would have to pass before I donned the golden tiara and sat on the ivory chair which was the throne of Troy? The men of the House of Dardanos were very long-lived, and Laomedon was not yet seventy.
For a long while I watched the changing march of men and women below me in the city, then looked farther afield to the green plains where King Laomedon’s precious horses stretched out their long necks to nudge and tear at the grass. But that was a vista only increased the pain. I looked instead to the western isle of Tenedos and the smear of smoke from fires lit against the chill in the little port village of Sigios. Beyond to the north the blue waters of the Hellespont mocked at the sky; I saw the long greyish curve of the beach which lay between the mouths of Skamander and Simois, the two rivers which watered the Troad and nurtured the crops, emmer wheat and barley, rippling in a soughing, perpetual wind.
Eventually that wind drove me from the parapet to the great courtyard which lay before the entrance to the palaces, and there I waited until a groom brought my chariot.
‘Down into the city,’ I said to the driver. ‘Let the horses lead you.’
The main road descended from the Citadel to join the curve of the avenue which ran around the inside of the city walls. The walls built by Poseidon. At the junction of the two streets stood one of the three gates let into Troy’s walls, the Skaian. I could not remember its ever being closed; men said that happened only in times of war, and there was no nation in the world strong enough to make war on Troy.
The Skaian Gate stood twenty cubits tall, and was made of huge logs bolted together with spikes and plates of bronze, too heavy to be swung on the biggest hinges a man could forge. Instead it opened on a principle said to have been devised by Archer Apollo as he lay in the sun watching Poseidon toil. The bottom of the gate’s single leaf rested upon a great round boulder set in a deep, curving ditch, and massive bronze chains were cast about the shoulders of the stone. If the gate had to be closed, a team of thirty oxen was harnessed to the chains and pulled the leaf shut fraction by fraction as the boulder ground along in the bottom of the ditch.
As a little boy, burning to see the spectacle, I had begged my father to hitch up the oxen. He had laughed and refused, yet here I was, a man of forty years, husband of ten wives and owner of fifty concubines, still hankering to see the Skaian Gate shut.
Across the top of the gate a corbelled arch connected the walls on either side of it, thus permitting the pathway which ran along the top to be continuous right around the perimeter of the city. The Skaian Square inside the gate lay in permanent shadow from those fantastic, God-built ramparts; they towered thirty cubits above me, smooth and sleek, sheeny in the sun when it bathed them.
I nodded to my driver to move on, but before he could shake the reins I changed my mind, stopped him. A party of men had come through the gate into the square. Greeks. That was manifest in their garb and manner. They wore leather kilts or tight-fitting, knee-length leather breeches; some were bare from the waist up, and others sported tooled leather blouses open to display their chests. The clothes were ornate, decked in gold designs or sporting tassels or rolls of dyed leather; their waists were clipped in narrow by wide belts of gold and lapis-studded bronze; polished crystal beads depended from the lobes of their ears; each throat was girdled with a great gem-encrusted collar; and their very long hair flowed loose in careful curls.
Greeks were taller and fairer than Trojans, but these Greeks were taller, fairer and more deadly looking than any men I had ever seen. Only the richness of their clothes and arms said they were not common marauders, for they carried javelins and longswords.
At their head strode a man who was surely unique, a giant who towered over the other members of the group. He must have stood six cubits high, and had shoulders like dark mountains. Pitch-black and trimmed into a spade, a beard coated his massively jutting lower jaw, and his black hair, though cut short, was wild and unruly above a brow which overhung his orbits like an awning. His only clothing was a huge lion pelt flung over his left shoulder and under his right arm, the head a hood on his back with frightful jaws open on mighty fangs.
He turned and caught me staring. Overwhelmed, I found and looked into his wide still eyes – eyes which had seen everything, endured everything, experienced every degradation the Gods could mete out to a man. Eyes which blazed with intelligence. I felt myself mentally backed up against the house behind me, my spirit a naked scrawn, my mind his for the taking.
But I marshalled my sinking courage and drew myself upright proudly; mine was a great title, mine a gold-embossed chariot, mine a pair of white horses finer than any he had ever seen. Mine, this mightiest city in the world.
He moved through the racket and bustle of the marketplace as if it did not exist, came straight up to me with two of his companions close behind, then put out a hand the size of a ham to stroke the black muzzles of my white horses gently.
‘You are from the palace, perhaps of the King’s house?’ he asked in a very deep voice, though it lacked imperiousness.
‘I am Podarkes called Priam, son and Heir of Laomedon, King of Troy,’ I answered.
‘I am Herakles,’ he said.
I stared at him with mouth agape. Herakles! Herakles was in Troy! I licked my lips. ‘Lord, you honour us. Will you consent to being a guest in my father’s house?’
His smile was surprisingly sweet. ‘I thank you, Prince Priam. Does your invitation include all my men? They are of noble Greek houses, they will not shame your court or me.’
‘Of course, Lord Herakles.’
He nodded to the two men behind him, a signal that they should step out of his shadow. ‘May I present my friends? This is Theseus, High King of Attika, and this is Telamon son of Aiakos, King of Salamis.’
I swallowed. All the world knew of Herakles and Theseus; the bards sang their deeds incessantly. Aiakos, father of the stripling Telamon, had rebuilt our western wall. How many other famous names were there in that little band of Greeks?
Such was the power in that single word Herakles that even my miserly father was moved to put himself out, give the famous Greek a royal welcome. So that afternoon a feast was laid out in the Great Hall, with unlimited food and wine off gold plate, and harpers, dancers and tumblers to provide entertainment. If I had been awed, so too was my father; every Greek in the party of Herakles was a king in his own right. Why, therefore, I wondered, were they content to follow a man who laid no claim to any throne? Who had mucked out stables? Who had been gnawed, bitten and chewed by every kind of creature from gnat to lion?
I sat at the high table with Herakles on my left and the lad Telamon on my right; my father sat between Herakles and Theseus. Though the imminence of Hesione’s sacrificial death overshadowed our hospitality, it was so well concealed that I told myself our Greek guests had noticed nothing. Talk flowed smoothly, for they were cultivated men, properly educated in everything from mental arithmetic to the words of the poets they, like us, committed to memory. Only what kind of man was a Greek underneath that?
There was little contact between the nations of Greece and the nations of Asia Minor, which included Troy. Nor, as a rule, did we of Asia Minor care for Greeks. They were notoriously devious people famed for their insatiable curiosity, so much we knew; but these men must have been outstanding even among their own Greek kind, for the Greeks chose their Kings for reasons other than blood.
My father in particular did not care for Greeks. Of late years he had formulated treaties with the various kingdoms of Asia Minor giving them most of the trade between the Euxine and the Aegaean Seas, which meant that he had severely restricted the number of Greek trading vessels allowed to pass through the Hellespont. Not Mysia and Lydia, not Dardania and Karia, not Lykia and Kilikia wanted to share trade with the Greeks, for the simplest of reasons: somehow the Greeks always outwitted them, emerged with better bargains. And my father did his part by keeping Greek merchants out of the black waters of the Euxine. All the emeralds, sapphires, rubies, gold and silver from Kolchis and Skythia travelled to the nations of Asia Minor; the few Greek traders my father licensed had to concentrate their efforts upon fetching tin and copper from Skythia.
Herakles and company, however, were far too well bred to discuss incendiary topics like trade embargoes. They confined their conversation to admiring remarks about our high-walled city, the size of the Citadel and the beauty of our women – though this last they could gauge only from the female slaves who walked among the tables ladling stews, doling out bread and meats, pouring wine.
From women the talk veered naturally to horses; I waited for Herakles to broach the matter, for I had seen those shrewd black eyes appreciating the quality of my white horses.
‘The horses which drew your son’s chariot today were truly magnificent, sire,’ said Herakles at last. ‘Not even Thessalia can boast such stock. Do you ever offer them for sale?’
My father’s face took on its avaricious look. ‘Yes, they are lovely, and I do sell them – but I fear you would find the price prohibitive. I ask and get a thousand gold talents for a good mare.’
Herakles shrugged his mighty shoulders, face rueful. ‘I could perhaps afford the price, sire, but there are more important things I have to buy. What you ask is a king’s ransom.’
He did not mention the horses again.
As the evening drew on and the light began to fail my father started to sag, remembering that on the morrow his daughter would be led to her death. Herakles put his hand on my father’s arm.
‘King Laomedon, what ails you?’
‘Nothing, my lord, nothing at all.’
Herakles smiled that peculiarly sweet smile. ‘Great King, I know the look that worry wears. Tell me!’
And out tumbled the story, though of course Father put himself in a better light than the actual facts dictated: he was plagued by a lion belonging to Poseidon, the priests had ordered the sacrifice of six maidens each spring and autumn, and the choice of this autumn’s victims included his most beloved child, Hesione.
Herakles looked thoughtful. ‘What was it the priests said? No Trojan hand can be raised to oppose the beast?’
The King’s eyes gleamed. ‘Specifically Trojan, my lord.’
‘Then your priests cannot object if a Greek hand is raised against the beast, can they?’
‘A logical conclusion, Herakles.’
Herakles glanced at Theseus. ‘I have killed many lions,’ he said, ‘including the one of Nemea whose pelt I wear.’
My father burst into tears. ‘Oh, Herakles, rid us of this curse! If you did, we would be very much in your debt. I speak not only for myself, but for my people. They have suffered the loss of thirty-six daughters.’
Pleasurable anticipation crawling through me, I waited; Herakles was no fool, he would not offer to dispose of a God-sent lion without some compensation for himself.
‘King Laomedon,’ the Greek said loudly enough for heads to turn, ‘I will strike a bargain with you. I will kill your lion in return for a pair of your horses, one stallion and one mare.’
What could my father do? Neatly forced into a corner by the public nature of this overture, he had no choice other than to agree to the price, or have word of his heartless selfishness spread throughout his Court – his relatives close and remote. So he nodded in a fair imitation of joy. ‘If you succeed in killing the lion, Herakles, I will give you what you ask.’
‘So be it.’ Herakles sat very still, eyes wide and unseeing; nor did they blink, or notice what went on. Then he sighed, recollected himself, looked not at the King but at Theseus. ‘We will go tomorrow, Theseus. My father says the lion will come at noon.’
Even the other Greeks at table with him appeared awed.
Delicate wrists loaded down with golden chains, ankles ringed with golden fetters, dressed in the finest robes and with their hair freshly curled and their eyes painted, the six girls waited for the priests to come in the courtyard fronting the temple of Poseidon Maker of Walls. Hesione my half-sister was among them, calm and resigned, though the little twitch at one corner of her tender mouth betrayed her inner fear. The air was filled with the wailing and keening of parents and relatives, the clink of heavy manacles, the quick breathing of six young and terrified girls. I stayed only to kiss Hesione, then left; she knew nothing of the attempt Herakles was going to make to save her.
Perhaps the reason I did not tell her was because even then I suspected we would not rid ourselves of the curse so easily – that if Herakles did kill the lion, Poseidon Lord of the Seas might replace him with something much worse. Then my misgivings evaporated in the rush of getting from the shrine to the small door at the back of the Citadel where Herakles had assembled his party. He had chosen two helpers only for the hunt: the hoary warrior Theseus and the shaveling Telamon. At the last moment he lingered to have speech with another of his band, the Lapith King Pirithoos; I overheard him telling Pirithoos to take everyone to the Skaian Gate at noon and wait there. He was in a hurry to leave, then, which I understood; the Greeks were going to the lands of the Amazons to steal the girdle of their queen, Hippolyta, before winter.
After that extraordinary trance in the Great Hall the evening before, no one questioned Herakles’s conviction that the lion would come today – though if he did come today, it would be by far his earliest passage south yet. Herakles knew. He was the son of the Lord of All, Zeus.
I had four full brothers, all younger than me: Tithonos, Klytios, Lampos and Hiketaon. We accompanied Herakles in our father’s escort, and arrived at the appointed spot on the horse farm before the priests appeared with the girls. Herakles paced back and forth for a good distance in each direction, spying out the land; then he returned to us and set up his attacking position, with Telamon on the long bow and Theseus carrying a spear. His own weapon was an enormous club.
While we climbed to the top of a hillock out of wind and eye range, our father remained on the track to await the priests, for this was the first day of the sacrifice. Sometimes the poor young creatures had been obliged to wait many days in their golden chains, with only the ground to sleep on and a few very frightened junior priests to bring them food.
The sun was well up when the procession from the shrine of Poseidon Maker of Walls came into view, the priests shoving the weeping girls ahead of them, chanting the ritual and beating tiny drums with muted sticks. They hammered the chains to staples in the ground under the shade of an elm, and left with as much haste as dignity permitted. My father came scampering up the hillock to our hiding place, and we settled in the long grass.
For a while I watched lazily, not expecting anything to happen until noon. Suddenly the youth Telamon broke cover and ran swiftly to where the girls were crouched, straining at their fetters. I heard my father mutter something about Greek gall as the lad put his arms about my half-sister’s shoulders and cradled her head on his bare brown chest. She was a beautiful child, Hesione, enough so to attract the attention of most men, but what folly to venture to her side when the lion might appear at any moment! I wondered if Telamon had acted with Herakles’s permission.
Hesione’s hands plucked despairingly at his arms; he bent his head to whisper something to her, then kissed her long and passionately, as no man had been allowed to kiss her in all her short life. Then he wiped her tears away with the flat of his hand and ran, unconcerned, back to where Herakles had stationed him. A shout of laughter floated up to us from the three Greeks; I shook with rage. The sacrifice was sacred! Yet they dared to laugh. But when I looked Hesione had lost all her fear, stood proud and tall, eyes shining, even at that distance.
Until late morning Greek hilarity continued, then in an instant they quietened. All we could hear was the restless Trojan wind, forever blowing.
A hand touched my shoulder. Thinking it was the lion, I swung round, my heart racing. But it was Tissanes, a palace servant who worked for me. He leaned over to put his lips to my ear.
‘The Princess Hekabe is asking for you sire. Her time is upon her, and the midwives say her life hangs by a thread.’
Why did women always have to choose the wrong time? I signed to Tissanes to sit down and be very quiet, and turned back to watch the path where it dipped down into a hollow from the summit of a small rise in the ground. The birds had ceased to sing and call to each other, the wind fell. I shivered.
The lion breasted the rise and padded down the track. He was the biggest beast I had ever seen, with a light fawn coat and a heavy black mane, his tail tipped with a black brush. On his right flank he bore Poseidon’s mark, a three-pronged fish spear. Halfway down and approaching the spot where Herakles lay he stopped in midstep, one paw off the ground, his huge head lifted high, tail lashing and nostrils flaring. Then he saw his victims frozen in terror; the prospect of his enjoyment decided him. Tucking his tail down and gathering in his muscles, he trotted forward with increasing speed. One of the girls screamed, thin and screechy. My sister snarled something to her and she subsided.
Herakles rose up out of the grass, a giant of a man in a lion pelt, his club hanging loosely from his right hand. The lion halted, lips drawn back from yellowed teeth. Herakles shook the club and roared a challenge as the lion compressed himself and leaped. But Herakles leaped too, in under the frightful sweep of those claws, thudding against the lion’s black-tufted belly with a force that knocked the beast off balance. The lion reared back on his haunches, one paw up to smite the man down; the club descended. There was a sickening crunch as the weapon came into contact with the maned skull; the paw wavered, the man stepped to one side. Up went the club again, down again, the second sound of impact softer than the first, for the head was already fragmented. No fight at all! The lion lay flat on the worn path, his black mane steaming from the warmth of the blood flowing over it.
While Theseus and Telamon danced out cheering, Herakles drew his knife and cut the beast’s throat. My father and brothers started to run down to the jubilant Greeks, my servant Tissanes sneaking in their wake, while I turned to commence the journey home. Hekabe my wife was in childbed and her life was in danger.
Women were not important. Death in childbirth was common among the nobility, and I had nine other wives and fifty concubines as well as a hundred children. Yet I loved Hekabe as I loved none of the others; she would be my Queen when I ascended the throne. Her child didn’t matter. But what would I do if she died? Yes, Hekabe mattered, for all that she was a Dardanian and had brought her brother Antenor with her to Troy.
When I reached the palace I found that Hekabe was still in labour; since no man could be in the presence of women’s mysteries I spent the rest of the day on my own business, which consisted of those tasks the King was reluctant to deal with.
After it grew dark I began to feel unsettled, for my father had not contacted me, nor were there noises of rejoicing anywhere within that mighty palace complex atop Troy’s hill. No Greek voice, no Trojan voice floated to me. Just silence. Odd.
‘Highness, Highness!’
My servant Tissanes stood there ashen, eyes bulging in terror, trembling uncontrollably.
‘What is it?’ I asked, remembering that he had lingered on the lion track to watch.
He fell to his knees, clasped my ankles. ‘Highness, I dared not move until a short time ago! Then I ran! I have spoken to no one, I have come straight to you!’
‘Get up, man! Get up and tell me!’
‘Highness, the King your father is dead! Your brothers are dead! Everyone is dead!’
A great calm flowed into me. King at last. ‘The Greeks too?’
‘No, sire! The Greeks killed them!’
‘Speak slowly, Tissanes, and tell me what happened.’
‘The man called Herakles was pleased with his kill. He laughed and sang as he flayed the lion, while the ones called Theseus and Telamon went over to the girls and struck off their chains. Once the lion pelt was spread out to dry, Herakles asked the King to escort him to the horse yards. He wanted, he said, to choose his stallion and mare straight away because he was in a hurry to leave.’ Tissanes stopped, licked his lips.
‘Go on.’
‘The King grew very angry, Highness. He denied that he had promised Herakles anything. The lion was sport, he said. Herakles had killed it for sport. Even when Herakles and the two other Greeks grew equally angry, the King would not relent.’
Father, Father! To cheat a God like Poseidon of his due is one thing – the Gods are slow and deliberate in their reprisals. But Herakles and Theseus were not Gods. They were Heroes, and Heroes are far deadlier, far swifter.
‘Theseus was livid, Highness. He spat on the ground at the King’s feet and cursed him for a lying old thief. Prince Tithonos drew his sword, but Herakles stepped between them and turned back to the King. He asked him to capitulate, to make the agreed payment of one stallion and one mare. The King answered that he was not going to be bled by a parcel of common Greek mercenaries out for what they could get, then he noticed that Telamon was standing with his arm about the Princess Hesione. He walked over and struck Telamon across the face. The princess began to weep – the King struck her too. The rest is terrible, Highness.’ My servant used one shaking hand to wipe the sweat from his face.
‘Do your best, Tissanes. Tell me what you saw.’
‘Herakles seemed to grow to the size of an aurochs, Highness. He picked up his club and crushed the King into the ground. Prince Tithonos tried to stab Theseus, and was run through on the spear Theseus still held. Telamon picked up his bow and shot Prince Lampos, then Herakles plucked Prince Klytios and Prince Hiketaon off the ground and squashed their heads together like berries.’
‘And where were you during all this, Tissanes?’
‘Hiding,’ the man said, hanging his head.
‘Well, you are a slave, not a warrior. Continue.’
‘The Greeks seemed to come to their senses… Herakles picked up the lion pelt and said there was no time to find the horses, they would have to leave immediately. Theseus pointed to the Princess Hesione and said in that case she would have to do as their prize. They could give her to Telamon, since he was so smitten with her, and Greek honour would thus be satisfied. They left at once for the Skaian Gate.’
‘Have they gone from our shores?’
‘I asked on my way in, Highness. The Skaian gatekeeper said that the afternoon was still young when Herakles appeared. He did not see Theseus, Telamon or the Princess Hesione. All the Greeks went down the road to Sigios, where their ship lay.’
‘What of the other five girls?’
Tissanes hung his head again. ‘I do not know, Highness. I thought only of reaching you.’
‘Rubbish! You hid until twilight because you were afraid. Find the steward of my father’s house and tell him to search for the girls. There are also the bodies of my father and brothers to bring in. Tell the steward all that you have told me, and command in my name that everything be attended to. Now go, Tissanes.’
All Herakles had asked for were two horses. Two horses! Was there no cure for greed, no point at which prudence dictated generosity? If only Herakles had waited! He could have appealed to the Court in assembly for justice – we had all heard my father make the promise. Herakles would have got his fee.
Temper and greed had won instead. And I was King of Troy.
Hekabe forgotten, I went down to the Great Hall and struck the gong which summoned the Court to an assembly.
Eager to know the result of the encounter with the lion – and fretting because the hour was so late – they came quickly. Now was not the moment to sit upon the throne; I stood to one side of it and stared down at the small sea of curious faces: faces belonging to my half-brothers, my cousins of all degree, the high nobility not related to us save through marriage. There was my brother-in-law Antenor, eyes alert. I beckoned to him to draw near, then rapped my staff upon the red-flagged floor.
‘My lords of Troy, Poseidon’s lion is dead, killed by Herakles the Greek,’ I announced.
Antenor kept glancing at me sidelong, wondering. As a Dardanian he was no friend to Troy, but he was Hekabe’s full brother, so for her sake I tolerated him.
‘I left the hunt then, but my servant remained. Just now he came home to tell me that the three Greeks murdered our King and my four brothers. They sailed too long ago to pursue them. With them they took the Princess Hesione as a rape.’
It was impossible to continue in the face of the ensuing uproar; I sucked in my breath, debating how much I could safely tell them. No, nothing about King Laomedon’s denial of a solemn promise; he was dead and his memory should be appropriately kingly, unmarred by such a paltry end. Better to say that the Greeks had intended this outrage all along as a reprisal for his policy barring Greek traders from the Euxine Sea.
I was the King. Troy and the Troad were mine. I was the guardian of the Hellespont and the keeper of the Euxine.
When I struck the floor again with my staff, the noise fell away at once. What a difference, to be King!
‘Until the day I die,’ I said, ‘I pledge you that I will never forget what the Greeks have done to Troy. Every year on this day we will go into mourning and the priests will chant the sins of Greek mercenaries throughout the city. Nor will I tire in my search for appropriate ways to make the Greeks rue this deed!
‘Antenor, I appoint you my Chancellor. Prepare a public proclamation: henceforth not one Greek ship will be allowed to pass through the Hellespont into the Euxine. Copper can be obtained in other places, but tin comes from Skythia. And copper and tin combined make bronze! No nation can survive without bronze. In future the Greeks will have to buy it at exorbitant cost from the nations of Asia Minor, as they will have the tin monopoly. The nations of Greece will decay.’
They cheered me deafeningly. Only Antenor frowned; yes, I would have to take him aside and tell him the truth. In the meantime I handed him my staff and hurried back to my palace, where, I suddenly remembered, Hekabe lay at death’s door.
A midwife waited for me at the top of the stairs, her face dripping tears.
‘Is she dead, woman?’
The old hag grinned toothless through her grief. ‘No, no! I mourn for your dear father, sire – the news of it is everywhere. The Queen is out of danger and you have a fine, healthy son.’
They had returned Hekabe from the childing stool to her big bed, where she lay, white and weary, with a swaddled bundle in the crook of her left arm. No one had told her the news, and I would not until she was stronger. I bent to kiss her, then looked at the babe as her fingers spread the linen about his face apart. This fourth son she had given me lay quiet and still, not writhing or screwing up his features as newborn babes usually did. He was quite strikingly beautiful, skin smooth and ivory instead of red and wrinkled. Black, curly hair covered his scalp in masses, his lashes were long and black, his black brows finely arched above eyes so dark I could not tell their colour, blue or brown.
Hekabe tickled him beneath his perfect chin. ‘What will you call him, my lord?’
‘Paris,’ I said instantly.
She flinched. ‘Paris? “Married to death”? It is an ominous name, my lord. Why not Alexandros, as we had planned?’
‘His name will be Paris,’ I said, turning away. She would learn soon enough that this child was married to death on the day of his birth.
I left her higher on her pillows, the bundle cradled feebly against her swollen breasts. ‘Paris, my wee man! You are so beautiful! Oh, the hearts you will break! All women will love you. Paris, Paris, Paris…’