The Return from Troy. Lindsay Clarke

answered. ‘Life may be very pleasant here among the Lotus Eaters, but I’ve seen enough to know it’s often wretched elsewhere. I too have had dealings with the gods in my time. As far as I can tell, we’re nothing but their playthings.’

      Hanno nodded undismayed, and glanced across at where two of the dice-players were now caught up in a torpid quarrel. ‘You must allow the lotus more time,’ he smiled. ‘Come, my friend, take some wine.’

      More weeks drifted by. Some desultory repair work was done on the ships; then the men relapsed into idleness again.

      Late one afternoon, with a pang of self-disgust Odysseus disentangled himself from the sinuous black limbs of a woman whose name he could not pronounce. For the past half hour she had been employing the skills which had already won her many anklets to coax fresh life into his sluggish member; but suddenly he could abide her no more. He sat up, shook his head, and saw the oars of a warship flashing in the sunlight as the galley entered the quiet waters of the bay.

      The captain of the ship turned out to be a Thessalian named Guneus whom Odysseus had vaguely known at Troy as a friend of Achilles and Patroclus. He splashed ashore from his beached vessel, exclaiming with surprise when he recognized Odysseus, burly and good-natured, the smile on his face cracked by the white ridge of a scar.

      ‘I’d heard rumours of a party of Argives camped in these parts,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t think to find you here. I’d given you up for dead, like everybody else. I should have guessed it would take more than a bad blow to finish off Odysseus. But there were so many ships lost in that storm, I assumed yours must have been among them.’

      Enlivened by this reminder of a world that had almost receded over his horizon, Odysseus invited the man to come and eat with him. They sat down on the mats outside the lodge while a woman served them calabashes filled with lotus-meal. Explaining how he had been driven south by the storm as he tried to double Cape Malea, Odysseus caught the leathery face of Guneus frowning at the scene around him. As though looking through the newcomer’s eyes, Odysseus saw his men lying about their ramshackle lodges, lax, bleary and unkempt. Many of them were too far gone in their lotus dreams to take much interest in the new arrivals. Embarrassed by the sight, he was suddenly at a loss to explain how it was that they had remained here for so long.

      ‘We’ve been taking it easy here,’ he muttered. ‘After the long strain of the war, I mean … and one of the worst voyages I can recall.’ He took in his visitor’s polite but uncertain nod. ‘Anyway, what brings a Thessalian as far south as this?’ he added with forced good humour. ‘The last I heard you northerners had your hands full fighting some new invader. Is it all over? Have you driven them back to whatever nameless wastes they came from?’

      Guneus frowned and drew in his breath. ‘The Dorians won’t be driven back. They’re too strong for that. There’s too many of them and some of them carry weapons superior to ours. Neoptolemus and the Myrmidons are holding the line by sheer bloody-minded grit and obstinacy. With luck they might retake Iolcus next year; but the lands to the north are gone for ever – my own estates among them. I got back from Troy to learn that my father and young sons had been killed in the Dorian advance, and my wife and daughters taken into slavery.’

      Offering his awkward condolences, Odysseus gazed into the man’s grim face with sympathy; yet it was like listening to news from another, harsher world than the one he now inhabited. He struggled a little to connect with it.

      ‘But surely Agamemnon won’t let things stay that way?’ he said. ‘He needs Thessaly too much to let it go without a fight. He won’t risk letting the Dorians advance any further south.’

      Guneus looked up from the handful of food he had just scooped from the calabash he had been given. ‘You haven’t heard? I thought the whole world must know of it!’ He took in the perplexity in Odysseus’s eyes. ‘Agamemnon’s dead and buried, man. There’s been revolution in Mycenae. Clytaemnestra murdered him as soon as he got back. Stabbed him to death in his own bath-house, they say.’ The Thessalian’s face wrinkled into a sour smile at the other man’s shocked gape. ‘It’s true,’ he declared. ‘True as I’m sitting here in Libya. The King of Men got even less profit from his war than I did. At least I’ve come away with my skin intact – even if I’ve lost everything else apart from my ship.’ Guneus wiped the back of his hand across his beard. ‘I’m looking to rebuild here in Libya. I hear there’s good country over to the west by the River Cinyps, and no one to claim it but a few beggarly nomads. It’s there for the taking.’ He scowled down at the mess of pottage in his bowl. ‘What is this sticky pap you’ve given me? It’s too sweet. Sets my teeth on edge.’

      ‘It’s an acquired taste,’ Odysseus said without thinking. ‘But what you said … it makes no sense to me. Agamemnon was coming home in triumph. He’d achieved everything he and Clytaemnestra planned together.’

      And then, with a sickening lurch in his stomach, like that of a man waking from thick sleep to face the prospect of a dreaded day, he remembered the death of Iphigenaia.

      ‘Clytaemnestra hated his guts,’ Guneus said dryly, pushing his calabash aside. ‘Always had done, if you ask me, long before he cut the windpipe of that pretty child of theirs in Aulis. So she got the King of Men to do what she wanted him to do – bring home the treasure of Troy. And once it was in her grasp, she got rid of him.’ Grimacing, he licked his sticky fingers clean and wiped his hands on his kilt. ‘Is there no meat in this camp of yours? Don’t you Ithacans go hunting ever?’

      ‘There’s goat,’ Odysseus answered with a hot darkness swirling in his mind. ‘We’ll get some skinned and roasted in a minute … but I’m still trying to make sense of what you’re telling me.’

      ‘If you can make sense of this world,’ Guneus shrugged, ‘you’re a better man than I am.’

      ‘But I can’t believe the Mycenaeans would let a woman sit on the Lion Throne again – not even one as clever as Clytaemnestra.’

      ‘They don’t have to. She’s taken a lover. Aegisthus son of Thyestes, would you believe? Yes, he’s back in Mycenae again, and nominally king there now – though Clytaemnestra wields all the power of course. The two of them had the whole thing planned. They murdered the High King and Cassandra together, and the palace guard finished off any commanders who stayed loyal to Agamemnon.’

      ‘Surely it can’t have been that easy?’

      ‘Well, a couple of the leading citizens did try to organize resistance, but when they were put to death Clytaemnestra had absolute control of the city. There’s unrest in the army, of course, and in the hill country around Mycenae; and none of the other kings look likely to accept Aegisthus as suzerain. After all, who wants to pay tribute to a man who can’t keep the peace in his own backyard?’

      ‘But no one’s raising a force against him?’

      ‘There’s talk of it. Agamemnon’s son Orestes is still alive and he won’t have anything to do with his mother now. I hear he’s taken refuge with King Strophius in Phocis. Some of Agamemnon’s men are rallying around him.’

      Astounded to learn that the bloody history of Mycenae had taken a further malevolent and vengeful twist, Odysseus asked, ‘What about Menelaus? Does he know what’s happened?’

      ‘There’s been no sign of him. He’s out east somewhere – Cyprus or Egypt, I don’t know. Cuddled up with Helen, I suppose, and staying out of trouble.’

      Odysseus sat in incredulous silence. How could the world have undergone such changes while he lounged on this uneventful beach in a stupor of ignorance? How long must he have been stuck here that such drama could have unfolded while he dozed? And what were its consequences for the lesser kingdoms of Argos? How might Ithaca be affected?

      He looked up to see Guneus frowning at him, shaking his head.

      ‘I’m sorry to have shocked you this way,’ the Thessalian said. ‘I thought you must know what kind of turmoil all Argos is in these days. I thought that’s why you were holed up here.’

      ‘What