Toward season’s end Penelope told Bias she was going to Pylos with Laertes. Nestor had invited them to one of his sons’ marriage celebrations. Bias had traveled with her on the short voyage east.
The first three days had been massively enjoyable. Bias had been popular with the female slaves at Nestor’s palace. One night two of them had shared his bed, one blond and big-breasted, the other dark with huge eyes. It was a fine night. Toward dawn they heard wailing coming from the palace.
Bias did not know it then, or even sense it through his joy, but the wailing heralded the days of death.
Plague had broken out ten days earlier in a village close by. King Nestor had ordered soldiers to quarantine the place, allowing no one out. Later it transpired that a soldier had smuggled his sister from the village, and she had come to the palace. By the fourth day of her visit several slaves had shown the first symptoms: fever and swellings in the armpits and groin. Within days the plague was rife.
The sick were taken to the stricken village and placed in a large house owned by the merchant who supervised the flax gathering in the area. He had been the first to die. The villa became known then as the Plague House. Bias had been terrified. Apart from the broken arm he had never been sick in his life, and he dreaded the thought of incapacity almost more than death itself.
Then the child Laertes fell ill. Penelope insisted on traveling with him to the Plague House. Bias felt like a coward, for he did not offer to go with her. He might just as well have. Two more nights went by, and he woke with a dry throat, sweat streaming from his body.
At first he tried to hide the symptoms, but the slave girl sharing his bed told her mistress, and soldiers came to escort Bias from the palace with several others who had fallen sick.
By the time the wagon reached the Plague House, Bias was delirious, and he remembered little of the next few days save that his body was racked by terrible pain and his dreams were of fire-breathing monsters whose burning breath blistered his flesh. But he was strong, and he survived the fever and the pus-filled cysts that burst the skin of his armpits and groin. Penelope came to his bedside often during the following days, bringing him broths and clear, cool water to drink. She looked weary, for she was working tirelessly with three priests of Asklepios. More people were being brought in every day, and now many of the houses in the village were filled with fresh victims of the plague. Death was everywhere, and the screams of the dying echoed throughout the settlement. The sickness killed four in every five of those who contracted it.
Then Penelope fell ill. Bias carried her to the wide bed in which her little boy lay and placed her beside him. Laertes had slept for the previous two days, unable to be roused even to drink cool water.
By the tenth day two of the three priests had also fallen ill. Now only the few survivors tended the victims. Bias left the house one morning and called out to the soldiers who were guarding the fence that had been erected around the settlement, telling them that more help was needed inside. That afternoon four elderly priestesses of Artemis arrived with the food wagon. They were stern-eyed, unfriendly women who took charge with brisk efficiency. They directed Bias and three other male survivors to gather all the bodies and move them to open ground, where a pit was dug and filled with oil and brushwood. There the corpses were burned.
Bias recalled the bright morning when Odysseus had appeared at the fence, shouting out for Penelope.
Bias left the house and saw his king standing at the perimeter, a cape of green upon his broad shoulders, the sunlight glinting on his red beard.
“Where are they, Bias?” he called out. “Where is my wife, my son?”
“They are sick, my lord. You must stay clear of this place.”
Bias already knew that Odysseus, fearless in battle or storm, was terrified of sickness. His own father had died of the plague. So he was surprised on that day when Odysseus walked to the makeshift gate and lifted the leather latch. Soldiers surrounded him, grabbing his arms and hauling him back. Odysseus lashed out, sending one man spinning from his feet. “I am Odysseus, king of Ithaka,” he thundered. “The next man who lays hands on me will have that hand cut off!” They fell back then, and Odysseus opened the gate and strode in.
Together they had entered the house. Odysseus had faltered then as he saw the scores of plague victims laid out in the megaron. The air was foul with the stench of vomit, excrement, and urine. Bias had led his king to an upper bedroom where Penelope lay, Laertes alongside her. Odysseus had slumped down beside them, taking Penelope’s hand and lifting it to his lips.
“I am here, my love,” he said. “The Ugly One is by your side.” Then he stroked his son’s face. “Be strong, Laertes. Come back to me.”
But Laertes had died that night. Bias had been there. Odysseus had wept, his body shaking. He had hugged the dead child to his chest, his huge hands cradling the boy’s head. Bias had seen Odysseus hug the boy many times. Laertes would laugh happily and kiss his father’s bearded cheek. At other times he would giggle helplessly as Odysseus tickled him. Now the child was utterly still, his face as pale as marble. After a long while Odysseus fell silent. Then he looked up at Bias. “I brought this doom upon them,” he said.
“No, my king. You did not bring the plague.”
“You heard the slave woman. She cursed me. Said I would know the same anguish she had suffered.”
At that moment Penelope gave a soft groan. Odysseus gently laid his son back on the bed and moved to Penelope’s side. He leaned over her, brushing the sweat-drenched hair from her glistening brow. “Don’t leave me, girl. Hear my voice. Stay with me.”
And there he had remained for three days, bathing her fevered body with warmed water, changing the soiled bed linen, holding her to him, talking to her constantly though she could not hear him. On the morning of the fourth day her cysts burst, her body expelling the poisons. One of the priestesses of Artemis came to see her.
“She will live,” she announced, then left the room.
Fewer and fewer people were brought to the settlement over the next weeks. The survival rate began to rise.
Autumn rains began the day Odysseus, Penelope, and Bias left the settlement. As they walked along a cliff path toward Nestor’s palace, sunshine briefly speared through the thick gray clouds. Bias looked at his king. In the sunlight he saw the touches of gray at his temples, the weariness in his eyes.
Odysseus never spoke of the curse again. But that was the last summer the ships of Ithaka embarked on slave raids. Odysseus, the Sacker of Cities, the reaver, the pirate, became Odysseus the trader, the storyteller.
Bias lay back on the sand and stared up at the stars. In that moment he, too, remembered the laughter of Laertes. The boy would have been twenty now and a man, handsome and strong.
Yet his death had brought fourteen years of peaceful trading from Odysseus. How many villages would have been raided in that time? How many wives torn from their homes to be sold into slavery? How many fathers cut down in front of their families? The thought surprised him, and he cursed softly. Glancing across the campsite, he could see Odysseus sleeping soundly.
Why did you have to talk about threads and tapestries? Now I can’t sleep!
CHAPTER SIX
THE THREE KINGS
Kalliades was sitting staring out over the mist-shrouded sea. There was something sinister about the shimmering white wall and the smokelike tendrils drifting over the dark, half-submerged rocks. He shivered, drawing his cloak more tightly about him. Easy to believe legends about sea monsters and demons of the deep when you gazed upon such a mist. Anything could be hidden there, watching the sleeping men on the beach. Thinking such thoughts made him remember his childhood, when he had sat at the gathering fire listening to the bard tell terrifying stories of night creatures who crept into houses and ate the hearts of the young. He had both loved and hated those stories—loved them while he sat with the other children and hated them when he was alone later, listening for the soft footfalls of the night beasts. Many of the tales had involved magical mists that covered the movements of demons.