He began with a Song completely familiar to all in the camp, the one he had been requested – politely but very firmly – to recite at least once a day so as to keep the just cause of the war well to the forefront of men's minds. This was the story of Paris, prince of Troy, the handsomest man in the world, who had gone on a visit to Sparta, stayed in the palace of Menelaus and while his host was away seduced his queen, the fabulously beautiful Helen, who in addition to this beauty had the unusual distinction of having been hatched from a swan's egg after her mother, Leda, had yielded to the embraces of Zeus, who visited her in the form of a swan. Paris had taken Helen back to Troy with him, an outrage to Greek honour that could not be taken lying down. Hence this great army, united in their patriotic duty to avenge the insult and recover the queen.
He did not linger on the story, being himself thoroughly bored with it by this time, but passed quickly on to the epic battle between Stimon the Locrian and Opilmenos the Boeotian, their bronze helmets and breastplates glittering in the sun, their speeches of defiance one to the other, the marvels of valour and dexterity both had displayed. The wretched end of Opilmenos, butchered at leisure as he scrabbled on the pebbles of the shore, came over the more graphically, he felt, for the contrast with the physical splendour that had gone before. Such a downfall gave a sense of doom, a note of tragedy. He liked this version of the duel and intended to repeat it several times before any of Opilmenos' friends or relatives could get at him with requests to dignify the hero's manner of dying. But of course no story was ever final and requests came sometimes in a form one couldn't refuse...
Next he sang of the wind that held them there. Day by day this wind was heaping up the fabled wealth of Troy, making her towers and walls more wondrous, more lovely to destroy. As the embers of their campfires glowed and flamed in the endless wind, so the heaped gems took fire, so the gold flamed in the fanning wind of their desires.
It was no more really than a sustained simile, but he liked it. He was coming to the end when he was again aware of someone drawing near. It was a shape of face and quality of voice he recognized. Face and voice came very close. 'I am Chasimenos of Mycenae, Chief Scribe to Agamemnon. You know me, don't you?'
'Yes, I know you,' the Singer said.
'We want you to make it known to the people of the army that this wind is sent by Zeus because of an offence.'
'Whose is the offence?'
'No need to go into specifics. You can say it's somebody high up.'
3.
On the edge of the camp they found men who had come with fish to sell, and one agreed to ferry them over. Even here, in this narrow, sheltered strait, the wind chopped at the water, breaking the surface into shallow ridges that reared and flashed. Hoping for a good reward, the man made a show of the labour involved in taking them across in such weather. This he did by gesture and expression of face – he spoke a language they did not understand, it had no words of Helladic in it. As they set off, in pursuance of his new intention to instruct, offspring of kindness and envy, Calchas tried to explain to Poimenos that the people of these shores had kept their own tongue, which was not related to Greek and so must have been theirs already in that far distant time before the Greeks came. But this was too abstract – it soon became clear to him that Poimenos had no concept at all of such a time, or of one system of sounds that could be older than another.
It was that time of day in summer when the sea and sky seem more definite in colour and more substantial than the land. When they looked towards the island it seemed that water below and air above were clasping the land, keeping it in place. This too Calchas pointed out to the boy. 'Like the hands of a Titan,' he said. 'See, he keeps his hands flat, one above and one below, so the island cannot slip away, cannot escape.' He saw the quickened interest in the boy's face, as his imagination caught at these giant hands; it was always stories that held him.
The man rowed from the prow with a single oar, standing upright, grunting with each forward lunge of his body. The wind was all round them now, ruffling the sea, stirring scents from the land they were approaching. Poimenos' eyes were shining and he uttered some laughing exclamation. He was glad to be on the move, in this rocking boat, away from the tedium and oppression of the camp. Some tincture of this gladness came to the priest and he experienced, as sometimes before, a feeling of gratitude for the boy's vivid, quick responses to all things of sense, an eagerness that helped for a while to allay his own doubts and fears.
He had it in mind to speak of this to Poimenos, something he had never done before. But at this moment he saw two crows flying towards the sun. They came from the direction of Thrace, the homelands of Boreas, god of the north wind. Calchas followed them with his eyes as they flew towards the sun, followed them as far as he could, till they were lost in the fire and his eyes were blinded. When he could see again, the sky was empty, there was no smallest speck of a bird in it. On the evidence of sight – the main evidence the gods gave to men whether awake or dreaming – the birds had flown into the sun and been consumed.
As they approached the calmer water on the lee shore of the island, he strove to understand the meaning of this immolation. The crow was the bird of hope, the messenger bird of Polunas, a god of the Hittites. She had once been a white bird, pure white, but one day Polunas, furious at some unwelcome news she brought him, pronounced a malediction on her, and she turned black as night. Afterwards he repented, but the colour of a creature cannot be restored; further changes there can be, but there is no reverting to the original. Not even Zeus could, he thought. Though Croton would doubtless dispute that. Croton preached that the power of Zeus had no limits, an obvious absurdity. No god known to man could undo the effects of his own power, no god could take back his words, no god could restore to mortal life a creature destroyed by his breath.
The reason for that anger of Polunas was that a girl he desired had fled from him, and it was the crow that brought this news. Calchas remembered Agamemnon's face and his smile. The right words. The crow had not brought them. Was it only this then, a warning? But hope could not be extinguished or consumed, even in the furnace of the sun... Zeus had launched them with the eagles, Artemis was detaining them with the wind. As patron of guests and hosts Zeus was offended by the behaviour of Paris, cuckolding Menelaus while staying in his house, then escaping with his prize, getting off scot-free. As protectress of childbirth and the young, Artemis was offended by the slaughter of the innocents that the war would entail. Male justice, female compassion. One looking back, one looking forward. Were they in conflict or blended in a harmony as yet too obscure to see?
These thoughts and the return of dread they brought with them so occupied him that he was hardly aware of nearing the shore. Only when they were out of the boat and wading, with Poimenos holding his arm, did his mind clear. They agreed with the boatman by signs that he should return next day when the sun was overhead, and in order to be sure he came Calchas promised payment only then.
They could see from below the place of the goddess; it was marked by the presence of water, a cluster of close-growing plane trees, the glint through leaves of a thin cascade. They began to climb, following the rocky path, passing through straggling bushes of broom, brown with seedpods. After this, where the water came closer to the surface, there were ferns and two walnut trees, the nuts still green. Bees were busy among the thyme and origano, rifling the tiny flowers, releasing their scent, performing miracles of balance and tenacity as they clambered and clung, endlessly jostled by the wind, which brought scents of the sea and pine resin and summer dust.