'The summer is waning,' Calchas said, as if speaking to himself. Did truth lie in the short-lived, perfect sphere? Or in this slow spreading of rays, this formless brightness? Was there one single, perfect thing to say to Agamemnon, if he could seize upon it?

Before they were back in the camp the sun had cleared away those lingerings of night in the west and laid a long stripe of silver across the water that shimmered as the wind moved it. The hulls of the chariots drawn up on the shingle flamed in the sun and the neurotic horses tossed their heads in the wind. And already Calchas was faltering. He would not go at once, it was never wise to speak or act precipitately, he would wait for the right moment, the right formula. Customary fears and doubts, customary quickening of self-contempt.

'Look, there goes the versatile Odysseus,' Poimenos chose this moment to say. Odysseus, head lowered and seeming lost in thought, was walking slowly in the direction of Agamemnon's tent.

'The versatile Odysseus?' He looked at the boy's bright face, felt again the old conflict, the fear of losing this last resource, so precious to him, the bleak need for truth, even though destructive. Something else too, more recent: the jealousy of contested possession. 'That is a term that belongs to singers. You listen to him often, our Singer, as you go about the camp?'

'Sometimes, passing by, I stop and listen for a while.'

'Poimenos, you will never get the truth of things from singers. They have interests to serve, their voice is a collective voice. Do you understand what I mean?'

'I think so, yes. The stories they tell belong to everybody.'

'No, I mean their Songs are about what people already believe or what it is wished they should believe. Here at Aulis we have an army that must be kept together or the expedition will fail. Odysseus the versatile, the resourceful. Yes, these words describe him. But then come the words that don't, though they seem to follow naturally enough. Loyal Odysseus, faithful Odysseus, Odysseus who is using his great talents in the service of Greece.'

The boy was silent; his expression had not changed but he had glanced aside. Calchas hesitated a moment, aware of the beating of his own heart. This was not the way, he knew it. The spectre of loss and desolation loomed between him and the boy's averted face. But he was driven to go on. 'The loyalty and fidelity exist only in the Song. This Greece doesn't exist except in the Song. Odysseus is lord of Ithaca. Do you know where Ithaca is? It is over there, far to the west. It is a small island, very small. You haven't seen Ithaca, but I have seen it. When I first came to Greece, on the voyage to Megara, we ran into a great storm and the ship was blown far off course. We had to enter the Gulf of Corinth from the west.'

He paused again, looking at the boy closely. Poimenos' eyes were on him now but there was no comprehension in his face. These names of seas and cities, these points of east and west, would mean little to him. The only sense of place he had was the place in a story, someone else's story. Calchas turned a little, into the wind, looked beyond the boy at the hills across the narrow water and the very faint striations of cloud in the sky above. Rifts in the cloud were smooth, not ragged, they made no shapes for him, only a strange confusion of liquid and solid. Again he sensed the waning of summer, cooler weather coming. Someone was grinding wheat not far away, he could hear the grating of the heavy stones, one above the other.

'I saw Ithaca from close by,' he said. 'It's just a rock standing up in the sea. There is nothing there, no great buildings, no industry of any kind. No stories belong to Ithaca, except only that it is the birthplace of Odysseus, son of Laertes. It has no past. On Ithaca Odysseus is nobody, lord of kelp-gatherers and swineherds and a few barren crags. Suppose, for the sake of comparison, we think of another island, let's say Lemnos. Lemnos lies in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. That is the sea we are looking at now, this one here before us.'

He pointed, and with habitual obedience Poimenos followed the direction of his finger. 'Has this island of Lemnos got stories belonging to it?' the boy said.

'It is rich in them. It is larger than Ithaca and more populous, it has fertile plains and wooded valleys and wide pastures. It has deposits of minerals and metals. But even more important than all this, it is in just the right place. It dominates the approaches to Troy from the west. One who could take possession of Lemnos and establish his rule there could control the trade that passes through the narrow water below the walls of Troy. That is where the gold is embarked, the gold that comes down from Thrace.' He pointed again, northwards this time. Now don't you think that versatile Odysseus would rather be king of Lemnos than king of Ithaca?'

'Yes, I do.' The boy's face wore again the look of innocent enthusiasm that Calchas loved and felt driven to discourage. 'I would like to hear them,' he said, 'these stories belonging to Lemnos.'

The diviner made a gesture of impatience. 'I want to tell you meanings, not stories.' This came out in a tone harsher than he had intended. With a strange feeling of helplessness he knew again that this was not the way, it would not hold the boy to him; Poimenos was outside the cage of meanings altogether, it was he himself who was imprisoned in it.

'Do you think this war is about Helen?' he said. 'That's just a story. People intent on war always need a story and the singers always provide one. What it is really about is gold and copper and cinnabar and jade and slaves and timber. Great wealth will fall into the hands of those who conquer Troy and occupy her territories. Imagine what dreams of wealth would fill the mind of Odysseus, sitting on a rock far away on the wrong side of the sea. Agamemnon will want to come back, he is lord of a powerful kingdom. But why should Odysseus think of returning? He has a son, Telemachus, who can rule Ithaca for him. His heart is set on conquest in the East. On his own, with the small force he has been able to muster, what can he do? But in alliance with Crete, Thebes, Pylos, Mycenae... you see? Then this wind comes, things begin to slip away, he must hold them together, he will do or say anything, it is his only chance. You see, don't you, Poimenos?'

It sounded like an entreaty. He fell silent, looking straight before him, away from the sea now, towards the flatlands of the south. There was some different quality in the light, some thickening in the air above the lion-coloured plain. After a moment or two he understood what it was. Here and there, across the whole expanse of the land, as far as the distant foothills, they were threshing the wheat, and the chaff was rising in pale gold puffs of cloud, lifted and scattered by the wind. He tried to discern shapes in these, but the blown chaff was too thin, too quickly dispersed. 'That is the versatility of Odysseus,' he said, 'and it is something you will not hear from the Singer.' He felt tired, defeated. This was just another story, after all, drabber, less entertaining, than those the boy liked. For some moments longer he studied the faint golden graining in the air above the plain. Then he said, 'We must go and visit the smith now, to see how work on the knife is proceeding.'

'If you will give me leave,' Poimenos said, not quite meeting his master's eye, 'I will not go with you. I have set snares for quail up on the hillside and I want to see if we have caught anything. The young are grown enough now, they are easier to catch than the older birds. But they flutter in the trap and crows can get them if they are left. I have seen this happen. Crows always start with the eyes, as if they must blind the birds before they can eat them. And then, there are plenty here in the camp who would rob the traps if they came upon them.'