We walked up the steep track without talking much. She was still reserved with me—with everybody—but I thought she had slightly more colour this morning and had taken some care with her dress. The higher up we went the more fiercely the wind blew, but it didn’t seem to be bullying us along, as it so often did—even though we kept breaking into little involuntary runs whenever a sharper gust caught us. I felt as I used to do, as a very young girl, that the wind was the breath of a god filling me with life. How full of hope and possibility the future had seemed then. It didn’t seem so now—and yet the wind and the brightness of the day somehow still suggested the possibility of a larger, freer life beyond the confines of the camp.
Crowds of Greek fighters passed us on the road and we pulled to one side to give them room. The main influx would come after the boxing ended, but there was already a sizeable crowd, men who’d preferred to turn up early and secure a good vantage point. Alcimus had said there’d been heavy betting—and you felt the tension of that. The added excitement. The Greeks gambled on everything—I’d once heard a group of fighters placing bets on two raindrops running down a shield. Admittedly, they were laughing, but it hadn’t been entirely a joke.
The competitors were already gathering. The whole scene was bathed in lemony-yellow light that became richer in tone, less acidic, as the sun rose higher. The chariots glittered; the horses’ backs gleamed. The grooms would have been up well before dawn making sure everything was as perfect as it could be. At the end of the race, ash-grey men driving dirty horses would emerge from the clouds of dust, but they set off each of them looking like Phoebus Apollo driving the chariot of the sun. Among the crowd at the starting line, I spotted Pyrrhus’s red hair and Diomedes’s glossy black curls. Menelaus was there too, evidently intending to compete—which surprised me a little: in recent months, he’d become red-faced and fat, looking suddenly much older than his years.
Agamemnon was there, richly dressed, sitting on his throne-like chair, talking to Odysseus. Behind him, the red-and-gold standards of Mycenae snapped in the wind. Agamemnon had agreed to donate the prizes: a racing horse for the winner; a huge bronze cauldron for the runner-up. I looked carefully, and was relieved to see there was no slave girl dragged out of Agamemnon’s weaving sheds and forced to stand shivering by the finish line. I was remembering the chariot race at Patroclus’s funeral games when Achilles had given my friend Iphis as first prize. She’d disappeared into Diomedes’s compound and, since his women were rarely, if ever, allowed out of their huts, I hadn’t seen her since. But I did my best to shake off the memory, because this event, the chariot race, with its richly dressed spectators and waving flags, was as close to a splendid occasion as the camp could manage.
Nestor appeared in a chariot driven by his eldest son; he was the last of the kings to arrive and there was a great burst of cheering as he greeted Agamemnon. Meanwhile, I was scanning the group behind them for Calchas, who I felt sure would be there. Eventually, I spotted him, right at the back of the crowd, a tall, white-faced figure, carrying his gold staff of office. To my surprise, I saw that he was being jostled by some of the young men from Skyros, who were openly jeering at his dress. This lack of respect was something I’d never seen before, and it disturbed me. Calchas was a proud man and, quite possibly, underneath all the paint and the posturing, sensitive. He was surrounded—and nobody was helping—but just then a braying of trumpets announced that the race was about to begin, and the lads from Skyros surged forward to support their hero.
At a signal from Alcimus, the drivers climbed into their chariots. When they were settled, he went along the line holding up a helmet, and they cast lots into it. After giving the helmet a good shake, he presented it to Agamemnon, who drew the lots and called them out. His voice was considerably weaker than I remembered; I noticed that one or two of the men around me looked surprised. Diomedes was well placed, which was a shame, since it made the outcome of the race even more of a foregone conclusion. How many of the men here would’ve had the confidence to bet against him? The few who had must be feeling rather depressed now. Though I remember Alcimus saying Diomedes didn’t have the best team—Ebony was probably the single best horse in the field—but, on the other hand, Diomedes was infinitely more experienced.
The charioteers raised their whips and at a signal from Alcimus set off, their horses’ manes streaming in the wind, their wheels churning up clouds of dust. In places, the chariots bumped wildly over ruts in the ground, but somehow the riders clung on, racing away from us across the plain. In the far distance, you could just see the turning point, a dead tree flanked by granite boulders. Here, the track narrowed, forcing the chariots to bunch together, a potentially dangerous situation: if they clipped each other’s wheels, there was a real chance they’d overturn, inflicting serious, possibly even fatal, injuries on men and horses alike. All the skill was there, at the turning point, where it was possible to overtake, but only by taking an enormous—though calculated—risk.
Menelaus was in first place as they went into the bend, but Diomedes, only a few yards behind, looked poised to overtake. In third place, Pyrrhus was driving like a madman, as if he thought he and his horses were immortal. And then, infuriatingly, the clouds of dust rising from the trampling hoofs hid them all from view. A groan from the crowd, followed by a tense silence as everybody strained to see who would be in the lead as they came off the bend. Shadows of chariots and drivers wielding whips appeared in a roiling cloud of red dust. Directly in front of me, a man shouted: “Diomedes!” “Course it’s not,” the man standing next to him said. “It’s Menelaus. Are you blind?” And then, in true Greek fashion, they started quarrelling about it, each insisting he was right, though neither of them could see anything. They might have come to blows if the men around them hadn’t sworn at them to shut up.
The murmurs died down, as everybody waited, dry-mouthed, for the riders to appear. I expected Diomedes; I think everybody expected Diomedes—even those who were cheering for somebody else—and when the first shadowy shape finally emerged from the cloud, Diomedes’s contingent raised a ragged cheer. But the charioteer’s face was caked in dust, unrecognizable. People peered instead at the horses: one black, one bay…Or were they? Both were so covered in red dust nobody could be sure what colour they were. But then, as the chariots hurtled towards us, the lead driver pulled off his helmet to reveal a mane of flaming red hair.
Alcimus, who was supposed to be neutral, just about managed not to cheer, but from the mouths of all the Myrmidons around me came a full-throated roar. Could anybody catch him? That was the next question. Less than a minute behind him was not Diomedes, as everybody had expected, but Menelaus. Pyrrhus was whipping his team, shouting—pulling ahead, if anything—and then he was over the finish line. The Myrmidons erupted and ran to congratulate him, swarming over his chariot like bees in a hive. But instead of letting himself fall into their outstretched arms, Pyrrhus climbed over the rim of his chariot onto Ebony’s back and from there jumped to the ground, where he threw his arms round Ebony’s neck. “My boy,” he kept saying. “My boy.” He pressed his face against the horse’s head—and closed his eyes; in all that tumult, a moment of peace. Everybody felt it, and envied it too, I think: the perfect union of man and horse. Then Pyrrhus reached across and patted Phoenix, perhaps wanting to make sure he didn’t feel left out; but you could tell his real passion was for Ebony.