“And Eurycleia?” enquired Odysseus, fixing upon the narrator a long, deep, quiet, steady look, not in the least degree an excited or emotional look, and not at all what could be called an inscrutable look. What it really was was a patient ritualistic look, like the look of a priest who has uttered the same words so many times that his emotional reaction to them has the modified, qualified, calmly reverential feeling such as is really the reaction to their destiny of many generations of a closely knit nation, gravely, but not solemnly, honouring their past, guarding their present as something sacred, and facing their future with a massively unruffled assurance.
Zeuks clearly found it difficult to tell the truth as to just how Eurycleia perished; but after a good many noises in his throat that were too like the sounds in an ox-stall to be called laughing and too like the sounds in a cow-shed to be called crying, he explained that when the old nurse saw Leipephile by her betrothed’s side among the foremost intruders she was unable to restrain her indignation and burst out in a rhapsody of vituperation. She abandoned herself indeed to such “shame-crying” and to flinging such “momon” or reproach upon Leipephile that Leipephile, who is, as we all know, a mightily big and powerful wench, lost her temper completely and struck her such a blow over the head with a large marble mixing-bowl or “depas” which she snatched from a side table that the old lady fell down and died instantaneously.
“In the confusion that followed, I fancy I began myself to behave in a wild and excited way and I think I must have drunk quite a lot too, for there was a great deal of wine floating round and I remember that the more adventurous of the intruders soon struck me as being a good deal more intoxicated than I was myself.
“Our Trojan Arsinöe here will bear witness to the truth of what I am narrating to you, O king; for in my tipsy folly I well remember thinking that it was my first duty to you to keep a tight hold on all your captives from the old Trojan War: and it was in the spirit of this sense of duty, O King, that I found myself clinging so closely to the maiden Arsinöe when we took our places on the back of the flying horse. It was your wise and cool-headed herdsman Tis, the brother of the maiden Eione who I understand is with you on board this ship, who insisted on our making use of Pegasos to follow you all this way across the sea.
“I tried to persuade him to accompany us rather than enter the service of the House of Naubolides but he maintained that his duty was first and foremost to the cow Babba, and that Babba’s shed and hay-loft and her field of meadow-grass were, taken together, enough of a kingdom for any man to guard and fight for. He also said that if it was the will of Atropos that Krateros Naubolides should rule in Ithaca while its King was sailing where no mortal had ever sailed before, it might well be her will also that when you returned you would find your cow Babba as ready to give you as good milk and as perfect cream as she did before you sailed away.
“‘The land,’ said Master Tis, ‘is my mother and my father and my grandmother and my grandfather. The grass growing on the land is my cow’s salvation and the milk from the udders of my cow is my redemption. The bread, made of the wheat which grows on my land, is, as I munch it, the only heaven I need, and furthermore,’ said Tis, the grandson of Moros, ‘the sweetness of the bread I munch increases as it nears the crust. My bread needs neither honey nor sugar to make it sweet but it needs land as good as my land to make bread as good as my bread; and it needs a cow as good as my cow to keep me from following my King across drowned Atlantis.’”
It was at this point, just as if the mention of the name “Atlantis” had softened some tension in the minds of all, that as Enorches, the Priest of the Mysteries, left the side of the ship and began to pace up and down within the limited space left between the mast with its reduced sail and the half-circle of listeners to this weird scene while his chiton, or body-shirt, having become ruffled in his violent disposal of his rags, his nakedness, unknown to himself, was startlingly exposed in quite a flagrant fashion.
This shameless sight combined with its exhibitor’s complete unconsciousness evoked a loud and profane chuckle from Euros which communicated itself to Pontos and from him extended to Klytos and Teknon. Whether Odysseus saw what they were laughing at or not this was one of those occasions when the root cause of all his triumphant endurances had a perfect chance to show itself. His senses might be stirred by the mischievous and provocative smile that Okyrhöe was now directing towards him: his anger might be roused by the thought of the murder of his old nurse Eurycleia, the one person in the world who had known him in the intimate sense in which our father or our mother knows us, or our mate knows us, and by the fact that the blow that killed her was struck by the woman who herself had been waiting at his table since she was a child: but as neither of these things seemed able to change by a jot or a tittle the obstinate bulk of his intention, so no burst of bawdy laughter, even though directed at the privy parts of his worst enemy, could distract him just then from the moon that covered the waters and from the waters that covered Atlantis.
“How did you come, my good friend,” he now calmly enquired of Zeuks, indicating the grotesque figure of Enorches, “to bring this confounded fellow with you on the back of Pegasos?”
“I don’t wonder, O great King,” replied Zeuks, “at your asking how it was that he came with us! Well, I can soon tell you how that happened. Your herdsman Tis, the brother of Eione here — I’m right in that, aren’t I, Eione? — was the sole cause of the whole business. None of us would be here now if it weren’t for him; and you saw just now how submissively the horse obeyed the priestess Spartika — all owing to wise treatment he received in Tis’s stable. Herdsman Tis must have learnt from that old cow Babba he so dotes on some secret language that all animals, whether mortal or immortal, make use of when alone with each other.
“It must have been painful to Tis to prepare Pegasos for leaving his stable so soon; but I can tell you, my King, you’ve got nobody in your palace-cave, nobody in your whole rock-bound island, more devoted to you and your best interests than this man Tis.
“Well! just as we were coming out of those stables and sheds of yours, that this Tis looks after so well — and only, as far as I can see, for the advantage of that one solitary old cow — lo! and behold! there came rushing up to us this egregious fellow who calls himself a priest of Orpheus and who sure is the most treacherous and teasing and tantalizing and tricky human being I have ever encountered in the whole of my life. Ye gods! and if he didn’t go so far as to demand permission to sit alongside of us on Pegasos’ back!
“For the moment, my lord, I can assure you I was flabbergasted by this request. I only knew the fellow as your enemy, and the enemy of my young friend Nisos here, and the enemy of your son Telemachos. Why then, you naturally ask, did I allow this arch-liar, this dangerous and tricky traitor, to have a seat with us on the back of Pegasos? I’ll tell you exactly why, O my King, and you must decide for yourself whether I was right or wrong. This Priest-fellow, this Enorches-man, fell on his knees before me and tapped the earth with his forehead seven successive times! As he did so he swore an oath; and he even went so far as to presume to add to this oath certain terrible and dreadful words after the manner of the immortal gods: for the words he added had to do with the River Styx.
“It was this oath of his, this oath by the Styx that he was planning no harm to you, my King, that caused me to hesitate. And then I suddenly decided to put my dilemma — as to whether to refuse his request or to allow him to join us — before your herdsman Tis and allow him to decide. And, when I put the matter to him, shall I tell you how he answered me, O great King?