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After a little, their escort, who could not long keep silent, resumed his chatter, every now and then enquiring after Priam’s royal comfort and at last, after another silence in which he might finally have run out of talk, asked very pleasantly of the carter: ‘And that pretty daughter-in-law of yours? How is she? Still troubled, poor girl, by her limp?’

The carter hid his astonishment with a narrow-eyed glare. What cheek!

And how could the fellow know of her? He felt a pang of unease, but also a faint glimmering of something else that was gone before he could grasp it. He hunched into himself and pretended not to have heard.

Priam too was surprised. The driver had not mentioned a limp. It formed no part of the picture he had fashioned of the young woman as she squatted beside hot stones, flipping pancakes with the tips of her fingers, and if they were too hot, popping her fingers into her mouth. He would have to begin all over again, though he was glad to hear that she was pretty.

‘Ah,’ the youth said, ‘I can see you’re not pleased, old fellow, that I know so much about you. But I know more than that. A lot more!’ and he gave a teasing laugh. ‘I know you’ve got a temper for instance and are on the sly side, that you’re a rogue in fact. I don’t say an outright scoundrel, but a fellow who’s not too particular about the law. Fond of the tavern too. Isn’t that what they say of you? A bit of a tippler, and a storyteller and spinner of tales. I know you pretty well, eh?’ And he cocked his head in a disingenuous, frankly disarming way and laughed again.

The carter was casting little sideways glances at Priam. He was sorry the king should have to hear this low gossip about him. He could have knocked the fellow to the ground, with his scurrilous talk and his air of being so pleased with his own cleverness. But something restrained him. Some inkling that all here was not quite as it seemed. That he had best keep an eye out and hold back.

‘Well,’ the youth said lightly, ‘the gods bless you. To tell the truth, I’m not too particular myself when it comes to the law, so I won’t hold that against you. And it’s a good thing to be merry and like a joke. You do, don’t you, like a joke?’ But the carter was glaring. ‘Well, maybe I’ve gone too far. I’ll stop chattering, old fellow, if all it does is get your temper up. But I’m young, you know. My head is full of this, that and I don’t know what, and the world is such a lively and interesting place that I can’t help getting carried away. And it’s a tempting thing when you’re young as I am to talk and hear news of all that’s happening in the world. Time enough later to be long-faced and glum, and sit still, and go hem and hum. We’re a long time in the earth, father. Plenty of silence there.’

‘Sir,’ the driver whispered aside to Priam, who was sitting straight on the crossbench, his figure as wooden as the bench itself, ‘sir — this fellow who is with us — I know he’s wearing a Greek bonnet and is dressed like one, but I wonder if he really is a Greek. Or even, my lord —’ and he lowered his voice still further — ‘a man like the rest of us.’

‘What’s that, old fellow?’ the youth demanded from the off-side of the cart, and the little mule turned her head at the change in his voice, which was no longer light and youthful like that of her friendly stranger. ‘What are you mumbling there? I’ve got good ears, you know, it’s no use whispering. So you think I’m not a man like the rest of you, is that it? What am I then? Who am I?’

Priam’s eyes opened wide. He wondered how he had not seen it before. ‘My lord,’ he breathed. ‘My lord Hermes!’

The carter too was wide-eyed. With his usual feigned indisposition to be astonished by anything the world might throw at him, he disguised the alarm he felt, but could not avoid asking himself one or two discomforting questions.

If he really was the celestial joker — messenger, thief, trickster, escort of souls to the underworld — where were they heading? Had they drowned back there, when he had led them so cheerfully to his chosen crossing place? Were they already disembodied souls on their way to the afterlife?

He pinched himself. Didn’t feel like it! Pushed his nose into the yoke of his robe and sniffed. Didn’t smell like it either.

‘I see you are amazed,’ the god said, ‘both of you. Well, that is understandable, and proper too. What I told you is true, I was sent. Though not by Achilles, who knows nothing of your coming.’

He saw the look of alarm that passed between the two. That too was understandable and he hastened to reassure them.

‘Sent, yes, but not for the usual reasons, nothing of that sort is intended. Not on this occasion. The next time you see me will be a different story. But you’ll know me then, won’t you, old fellow? I am, by the way,’ and he paused to take his gloves from his belt and draw them very delicately over his slender fingertips, ‘invisible, though you can see me well enough. Oh, and that little girl you have been so concerned about —’ this to the carter, as if he had just called it to mind — ‘she’s sitting up now eating a bowl of barley porridge and asking where you’ve got to and when you’ll be back.’ He turned, addressing the king. ‘Now, father,’ he said gravely, ‘the time has come to gather your strength. The Greek trench is just beyond that second barrow. We’re almost there.’

Priam found himself suddenly overcome. He was at the limit of his strength. The moment had arrived when he must do in fact what to this point he had done only in plan, in the realm of thought. Would he be equal to it? Faint with weakness at the thought of coming face to face at last with Achilles, he felt his eyelids droop, as if he might be about to seek refuge in sleep.

What strengthened him was the presence at his side of his good Idaeus, who seemed in no way intimidated by their escort’s transformation. As if the arrival of a god on the scene was in his life a quite ordinary occurrence, one more eventuality to be recognised and taken account of in a world of endless surprise and accident.

Perhaps it was bravado. A determination not to be impressed, or at least not to show it. If so, it worked, it had its effect, and he too felt the benefit.

He took comfort as well from the title the god had just given him. The youth had addressed him as father on earlier occasions, but Priam had taken it then as no more than another aspect of his playful teasing, the sort of half-affectionate, half-patronising tone that young men adopt, especially young men who are in love with their own importance, when they are dealing with the old. Respectful yes, ingratiating even, but with a hint as well of amused condescension. Now, with the play about to begin in which he was to represent ‘the father’ — and in a way he had never till now attempted — he was moved by this invocation of the sacred tie, and took it, from a god’s lips, as an endorsement and blessing.

The youth — Hermes — clasped his wrist, and Priam felt a jolt as his blood responded to the firm, rather icy touch. Then a slow energy flooded his limbs.

They had arrived at the trench before the stockade wall. Two body-lengths wide, three sword-lengths deep, it was overgrown with thistles and protected by a hedge of sharpened stakes set at a forward angle.

Beyond it, twelve feet high and made of pine logs caulked with oakum, was the high portal gate to the camp. Three men were needed to raise the pine trunk with which it was barred. Only Achilles among mortal men could manage it alone.

A company of Argives was on duty in the inner yard. Scattered across the open space, they were squatting round the embers of cookfires where their evening meal was broiling, or sprawled on their cloaks playing at dice. It was the early watch, an easy hour. When a sudden knocking came at the gate the captain of the guard looked up surprised. No signal had come in from the pickets he had posted of strangers approaching the camp.