‘My house is just down here,’ Antenor announced, indicating a two-storeyed, square building halfway down a side street to their left. Two young men stood at the open doorway, the light from within pooled at their feet. ‘My wife, Theano, and our sons have been preparing a feast in your honour. Come inside, now, and put your weariness behind you. Whatever tomorrow brings, tonight I want you to taste real Trojan hospitality.’
Chapter Thirteen
PERGAMOS
‘Is this any way to treat guests, Antenor?’
Menelaus was red with anger. He sat on a stone bench outside the soaring, highly decorated portals of Priam’s throne room and looked at the old man sitting opposite. Antenor shrugged his sloping shoulders in resignation and gave the Spartan king a reassuring smile.
‘My brother-in-law is a busy man, my lord. I’m sure he’ll be as quick as he can, but these affairs of state demand much of his time.’
‘You mean he’s with another of his blasted wives!’ Menelaus retorted, gripping his knees until his knuckles turned white. ‘Well, we’ve been waiting here all morning and I’m getting tired of it. If those doors don’t open soon I’m going to go in there myself and teach him a few manners!’
‘We’re not in Sparta now, Menelaus,’ Odysseus chided him. He sat between Antiphus and Polites on one side and Eperitus and Antenor on the other, slouching back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. ‘Trojan ways aren’t our ways, but as long as we’re in their country we’ll just have to put up with them.’
‘I don’t believe Trojans do treat their guests like this,’ said Palamedes, who was sitting between Menelaus and Arceisius. ‘Antenor and his sons were perfect hosts last night. You and Menelaus were given the places of honour, and Eperitus, myself and the others were seated on either side of you; when the animals were sacrificed, the gods were given their due and then you both received the long chines, just as we give the choicest parts to the guests of honour at home. Whenever any of us spoke, Antenor and his sons listened respectfully and without interruption. So if Trojans know as well as any Greek how to care for their guests, then Priam is deliberately snubbing us. He wants to provoke our anger and force us to fail in our mission. In my opinion, he has no intention of giving up Helen at all.’
‘Palamedes!’ Eperitus hissed.
Antenor raised his head inquisitively. ‘Who’s Helen?’
‘Nobody to concern yourself about, friend,’ Odysseus replied, patting the old man amicably on the shoulder. ‘A matter between us, that’s all.’
Antenor seemed to accept this and returned his bored gaze to the doors of the throne room, but Eperitus could sense Odysseus’s anger as he stared across at Palamedes. Only the night before, as they had bathed in preparation for the feast in Antenor’s house, the Ithacan king had insisted that none of them should reveal the purpose of their mission until they were standing before Priam. Palamedes, Eperitus felt, had deliberately defied him, and the brief look of triumph on his pinched, rat-like features suggested Odysseus’s suspicions about the Nauplian prince were true.
Eperitus turned to look through the open doorway of the antechamber, where the wide courtyard of the palace was bright in the sunlight, and trawled his mind through the events of the night before. Odysseus had left none of them in any doubt as to why he believed they should not speak to anyone about their mission. Despite the readiness of the Trojans for war, his instincts told him things were not as they seemed. People were bemused or angered by their arrival, but not afraid. If they had thought the Greeks were there to reclaim Helen, they would have known the threat of war was not far behind them. But their faces did not show anxiety or fear, and because of this Odysseus was convinced the ordinary Trojans did not know Helen had been brought to their city – if she was even within the walls of Troy at all. For this reason, he said, they should not speak of their mission until they had tested Priam on the matter.
Although Menelaus scoffed at the idea that Helen might not be a prisoner in the city – and Eperitus had been quietly doubtful – both men were quickly forced to agree that her presence was at least a closely guarded secret. Antenor and his eleven sons certainly seemed ignorant of the fact: they had even enquired about their guests’ families – a bold question to ask, had they known the true reason for their visit.
Though normally suspicious of non-Greeks, Eperitus had quickly grown to like his hosts. Their household shrine was well maintained and treated with reverence by the entire family, even if the depictions of the gods were strange to Eperitus’s eyes. He was also pleased with the honourable way they treated their guests, which was especially surprising for foreigners. However, it soon became clear that Antenor was an admirer of the Greeks and had passed this love down to his sons. As a buyer and seller of pottery and silver and gold artefacts, he had had dealings over many years with merchants from Mycenae, Sparta, Athens, Crete and other Greek kingdoms. This had led to an understanding of their language and an appreciation of their culture, for which reason Priam had sent him to Salamis to request the return of Hesione. Despite the poor reception he had received there, Antenor stayed long enough to intensify his fondness for all things Greek and become fluent in the language. This, as far as Eperitus was concerned, explained Antenor’s excellence as a host.
‘Does Priam speak any Greek?’ Odysseus had asked, as they said goodbye to Theano and Antenor’s sons at the threshold of the house that morning, before leaving for their audience with the Trojan king.
‘He speaks several languages, but Greek only passably,’ Antenor replied. ‘I’ve been teaching him myself, at his insistence. But he will probably only speak in our native tongue when you come before him. He likes foreigners to think he can’t understand them, then listens in on their private conversations. I shouldn’t have told you that, of course.’
‘Of course. What about his sons?’
‘Hector speaks your language with a fluency equal to my own. He’s thirsty for knowledge of all things Greek and has his own tutor – a man from Pylos – who instructs him daily in Greek language, culture, politics, warfare . . .’
‘Warfare?’ Eperitus interrupted.
‘Yes. Hector has always loved anything to do with war, and you’ll not find a more formidable fighter anywhere.’
By then they had reached the tower they had seen the evening before. Its soaring walls sloped to the height of two tall men, then continued vertically, up and up until they reached the crenellated battlements, from which the helmeted head of a guard was peering down at them. In the broad light of morning they could see the walls were constructed from massive limestone blocks, so finely fitted together that they did not need mortar. At the foot of the tower, facing south, were the six statuettes they had noticed the night before, deliberately placed so that all newcomers to the citadel would see them. Whether they were intended as a sign of welcome, or simply to warn visitors that the place they were entering was holy, was unclear, but their crude features and roughly formed bodies were unrecognizable as any gods the Greeks knew, and their lifeless eyes seemed only to offer the visitors hostility.
The great bastion jutted out from the walls and it was not until the party had passed the strange gods that they saw the gateway to the citadel, hidden in the shadow of the tower. Its carved wooden doors were already open and the two guardsmen stepped aside at a word from Antenor.
‘And Paris?’ asked Menelaus sternly, eyeing the black, rectangular mouth of the gateway. ‘Is he a fighter like his brother, or a womanizer like his father?’