He turns to the carter, and in a voice that is meant to be intimate rather than peremptory, but loud enough for the whole company to hear, announces: ‘One other thing. I am accustomed, on all occasions when I leave my palace, to have a herald with me. He is called Idaeus. Since you will be my only companion on this journey, that is how I will think of you, and how you, my man, should think of yourself. From now on your name is Idaeus.’
The carter glances about him, believing there must be something here that he has failed to grasp. He shuffles, rubs his nose rather vigorously with the heel of his hand, looks up under wrinkled brows in the hope that he may catch some clue from the reaction of the crowd.
There is a stirring among the princes of subdued unease. Once again this readiness on their father’s part to change on a whim what has been for so long fixed and accepted dismays them.
As for the carter, who is quite out of his depth now and wonders what further madness these high folk will demand of him — what can he do but drop his head and mutter, very low and without much enthusiasm, ‘Very well, sir. Right, my lord.’
But in fact it is not ‘very well’ with him, not at all. His name is Somax. It fits him, he has always thought, rather well. He has been comfortable with it, warm and very much himself, for a good fifty years, give or take a little. It guarantees the breath that passes in and out of his mouth; is an assurance, after a good night’s sleep, that the spirit that has left his body and gone wandering off to all sorts of places will find its way back to the particular pile of straw where he is lying, and be recognised and taken in. It is the name under which he married his dear one and became the father of five children — none of them, alas, now living — and under which he has always conducted himself, so far as a poor man can, honestly, and kept himself in good odour with the gods. Will they recognise him, he wonders, under this new one?
Idaeus indeed! Mightn’t they take it amiss, those high ones, that after fifty years under one denomination he should suddenly present himself under another? Mightn’t they see as a kind of presumption this juggling with the high dignity of heralds and such, this taking on of ‘Idaeus’ by such a plain low-born fellow?
He shuffles. Feels a crawling under his robe as if all his lice had been stirred up and were on the move. Something about the life he has lived all these years, the hardships, the losses he has suffered, and the way he has forced himself to go on and endure, is being set aside and made light of. That is what he feels.
So when the royal princes, in their affected tones and with a deference so out of proportion to his real status that it can only, he thinks, be a form of subtle mockery, with an ‘Idaeus this’, and a ‘my dear Idaeus that’, begin to make requests and give orders, he feels increasingly uneasy, then silently, sullenly affronted.
Perhaps he is wrong and no offence is intended; they are simply acting in accordance with their father’s odd wishes, and however foolish and effeminate they may appear, this is the way they always speak. But he smoulders just the same, and in spirit at least clenches his fist. He steadies himself by turning to his mules, who stand patient amid so much fluster, waiting for him, in the usual way, to give some indication of when they should move. Beauty the one is called, and the other Shock, though there is no reason why anyone here should know this, and he decides, in a spirit of quiet resistance, to keep these names to himself.
Meanwhile piles of treasure are being brought in: copper cauldrons and tripods, ewers, urns, cups, ceremonial arms and armour; some of it — the cauldrons for instance — so weighty that it takes two servants to heave the pieces up onto the tray. Slowly, the wagon, which has known nothing till now, as the driver could tell them, but winter wood, or hides or stacks of forage, is tight-packed with precious objects.
To the watchers, as the treasure is assembled piece by piece, it is as if what is taking shape there, in all its shining parts, is a body — that of their dear kinsman Hector, for which in their hearts, filled now with the hope that comes from wishing, the hoard has already been exchanged.
At last, when all is done, Hecuba sends her steward for a jar of clear springwater and a cup of wine for a drink offering.
She herself takes the ewer from her steward’s hand, and when Priam has turned back the sleeves of his pure white robe, sprinkled his fingers and dried them with a cloth, she hands him the cup and he prays aloud. Raising his face to where the gods, in their high court, will be looking on, he allows a few drops of the mellow wine to spill on the pavement and prays again.
The carter, peering up from under his brows, is impressed by the solemnity of the occasion, but the moment lasts too long. His nose begins to itch.
At last the tension breaks and someone notices, high up under thin clouds, a bird hanging with wings extended in the blue.
Mmm, the carter thinks, a chickenhawk. Riding the updraught and hanging there, on the lookout for a fieldmouse in the furrows below, or a venturesome hamster or vole.
But prompted by his mother, the priest Helenus proclaims it an eagle. The carter is surprised at this, though no one else appears to be. The whole assembly raises its eyes, and the murmur that fills the court is one of wonder and relief.
Clear for all to see, Jove’s emblem and messenger is hovering there, holding them, these mighty representatives of Troy, and the many thousands of people outside the palace, in the city and in the villages and provinces beyond, in the quivering net of its celestial attention and concern.
Each day at first light the people of Troy crowd the ramparts of the city, the colonnade before the Scaean gate and the broad streets leading to the central square, to watch the Trojan army with shields newly polished, and breastplates and helmets flashing, march out to the field. The passing of this or that hero among them occasions cheers. Some of the little girls in the crowd have gathered flowers and rush forward to pelt their favourites. There is laughter as vivid red petals spatter a warrior’s breast. The air is just heating, and the men sweat inside their leather, but step out briskly in close order. The day is new and still to be won.
Then, in the shadows of late afternoon, in the same numbers but more quietly now, until the stillness is broken by the shrieks of some wife or mother, the crowd assembles for a second time to see their defenders, all streaked with sweat and dust, or in bandages and bleeding, troop home. Some — too many — lie on pallets borne by their squires or comrades, groaning or already stiff in death. Others, propped up on one elbow, call to their family or to friends and neighbours in the crowd — ‘See, I am alive, I’m still living.’ Or with teeth clenched in silent pain, they clasp the hand of a wife or child who walks, half-laughing, half-weeping, at their side. All this till eleven days ago when Hector was slain and all fighting between the two sides was suspended.
Now, at three in the afternoon, news spreads from yard to yard and stall to stall in the swarming market that a procession is gathering at the palace gate.
Labourers in neat-skin aprons with a hammer at their belt call down from the scaffolding of the buildings they are at work on and point, for though the city stands, and has stood for nearly ten years now on the brink of destruction, new houses are still being built and old ones repaired or added to. In spite of alarms, and many deprivations and shortages, the life of the city goes on. Linen is still spread to dry on quince trees or rosemary bushes. Hives have to be visited each day and honey gathered from dripping racks. Cats have still to be set to keep mice out of granaries and the cellars where oil jars are kept, pine logs trimmed and stacked in piles against the winter, trenches dug and cisterns maintained so that the autumn rain when it comes pelting will not run off down the sides of the bluff along which the city is spread. Magistrates, sweating in the late-afternoon heat, have still to hear witnesses and endure the long-winded addresses of rival advocates in a case of assault or murder, since even under threat from a common enemy citizens still harbour grudges and pursue with undiminished bitterness long-standing quarrels or vendettas, and wars still break out among neighbours over the most trivial affronts.