An elderly slave emerged from a doorway to their right. He stretched out his arm, indicating that they should enter. From the open door a wisp of steam curled out and the smell of hot water and perfumed oil greeted their nostrils.
‘After you,’ said Talthybius, bowing to Odysseus.
‘Mycenaean manners are justifiably famous,’ the king replied with a smile, before leading the way to the waiting baths. He was already stripping the heavy armour from his shoulders as he disappeared through the door.
After being bathed and rubbed down with oil by slaves, the men put on the fresh clothes that had been laid out for them and stepped out into the courtyard. The four guards stood aside at Talthybius’s command, allowing the warriors to pass between the twin pillars of the threshold and into the antechamber beyond. Here they found a single soldier, who took a torch from the wall behind him and – after satisfying himself that they were unarmed – opened the twin doors and allowed the men through.
They entered a square, dimly lit room with high ceilings and a wide, circular hearth at its centre. The air was stiflingly warm and tasted of roast meat, while the red light of the fire pulsated against the four wooden pillars and the heavily muralled walls. Eperitus looked about himself and felt disappointed. This room was the beating heart of the most powerful state in Greece, and yet it was a pale shadow of the great halls of Troy and Sparta, and lacked even the fresh vitality of Odysseus’s throne room on Ithaca. The once-colourful murals on the walls of the modest chamber were fading, and in places had begun to peel away. A scene depicting Perseus lopping off the snake-covered head of Medusa was so faint and stained by smoke that it was difficult to see in the red light from the fire. Perhaps there was little the greatest king in Greece could do to increase the dimensions of the hall, but to restore the murals would have been an easy thing for a wealthy ruler.
Unless that ruler was waiting to replace the murals altogether, Eperitus thought – maybe with depictions of his own glorious conquest of Troy? Eperitus smiled to himself and turned his eyes to the tables of food laid out around the hearth. The smell of the freshly roasted meat filled his nostrils, making his stomach rumble and his mouth salivate. To his left he could see a slave in the shadows, washing the blood of a recently sacrificed animal from a wooden altar. The altar stood before an alcove containing a glazed terracotta image of a goddess – Hera, the wife of Zeus, judging by the pomegranate in the palm of her hand. But the pomegranate was also associated with Persephone, the dark goddess of the underworld.
‘Be seated, my lords,’ said a voice.
The newcomers turned as one towards a large granite throne positioned against the right-hand wall of the great hall. A woman stood beside it, scrutinizing them carefully as she leaned with her elbow on the back of the chair. She had dark red hair that was tied back behind her neck, with a fringe of ringlets and a tumbling curl before each of her protruding ears. She had her fair share of the beauty that her sister, Helen, possessed in such abundance, but Helen’s face was fair and pleasant, whereas hers was dark and hardened with bitter experience. As if to emphasize this, she wore a black chiton over her tall, bony figure, against which the pale skin of her face and arms stood out starkly.
‘Please,’ Clytaemnestra said, stepping into the glow of the fire and indicating the seven chairs that circled the hearth, ‘sit and eat. I may only be ruling in my husband’s stead, but I won’t have it said that I don’t treat my guests according to the customs of xenia.’
Odysseus and Talthybius sat, followed by the others. Eperitus was last, eyeing Clytaemnestra as he walked around the hearth to the only remaining chair. She did not return his gaze, but sat on a high-backed wooden chair opposite Odysseus.
‘Xenia exists to protect travellers and allow alliances between men of power,’ Odysseus said, taking a knife from the table beside him and carving a slice of mutton. He folded it into a piece of bread but did not eat. ‘What use is it to a woman?’
‘I’m not a woman, Odysseus. I am a queen. And while Agamemnon fights his wars abroad and his son Orestes is still only a boy, Mycenae is under my rule. Now, you and your comrades will have travelled far and must be hungry; I have provided food and wine; please, satisfy yourselves and then we can talk.’
She leaned across the arm of her chair and poured herself a cup of wine. The others, who were famished, immediately began to help themselves to the modest meal. Eperitus’s appetite, however, had diminished and he satisfied himself with a barley cake and a swallow of the cool wine. Had Clytaemnestra forgotten him, he wondered? They had been lovers, and though some treated physical intimacy lightly, he could not believe she had allowed the evening they had spent together to die in her mind. And yet she ate and drank and smiled at the other men as if he were not there.
‘It’s been a long time, Clytaemnestra,’ Odysseus said, after washing down a mouthful of food.
‘Ten years,’ Clytaemnestra replied. ‘In which time I hear you’ve become the king of Ithaca, and fathered a son.’
‘Telemachus,’ Odysseus nodded proudly. ‘A fine lad, but born at the wrong time. I only hope the war will be short so I can go home and watch him grow up.’
‘It’s a cruel fate that separates a parent and a child. They uphold our memory and make sure we are not forgotten – our only real hope of immortality.’
‘A warrior’s memory is upheld by his spear,’ Eperitus contested, tired of being ignored. ‘A child may pass his name on from generation to generation, until he becomes nothing more than another name in a list of names learned by rote. But if his achievements in battle are great enough, his name will be remembered forever, just like Heracles, or Perseus on that wall up there.’
Clytaemnestra looked into her krater of wine. ‘Who am I to deny that a warrior can make his name on the battlefield or in the pile of bodies he leaves behind him? But corpses are cold and lifeless, and the stories they tell are full of blood and horror. A child, Eperitus, is warm and loving, and will carry on a man’s legacy through the blood that is in their veins, not the blood that is spilled in the dirt of a distant country.’
Their eyes met at last, and instead of the confidence she had demonstrated before Odysseus, or the strength and power that befitted a queen of Mycenae, he saw only her weakness and longing. He was suddenly aware of her frail beauty and wanted to hold her slender body again, as he had done by the fire in the Taygetus Mountains so long ago. Then her staring eyes faltered and blinked, and she turned back to face Odysseus.
‘I’m unfamiliar with practising the custom of xenia, King Odysseus, but once a guest’s needs are met is it not time for the host to ask the purpose of his visit? I already know the fleet is wind-bound at Aulis, but perhaps you will tell me why you have left your duties to visit a lonely queen, four days’ ride away by pony. Have you come all this way, only to feast your eyes on golden Mycenae?’
‘No, though I’m glad to have seen this famous city,’ the king responded. ‘But I have not left my duties to come here, as you suggest; rather, I am carrying out the command your husband and his brother gave me, to come to speak with you in person about a matter of great importance and honour.’