‘Wait here,’ Odysseus told his men as they reached the tall double doors. ‘I’ll send for you when I need the gifts, but do not enter before then – whatever you may hear from inside. Do you understand?’
The muffled sound of voices and music became suddenly loud and clear as the guards threw open the doors and ushered them in. The hall was filled with the nobility of Scyros, men of all ages who had never been called to the fields of Ilium. They were seated at long tables, piled high with food and drink that was constantly being replenished by lines of slaves. These seemed to move in eddying currents through the crowded chamber, balancing platters of bread and meat on their heads, or pouring wine into the empty kraters that were waved before their faces. The hearth was ablaze with fresh logs and pumped a twisting pillar of sparks and smoke up to the ceiling. As the newcomers were led to a vacant table there was a flicker of interest from the other guests in the hall, but it passed quickly.
Odysseus glanced up see Lycomedes watching them closely from his throne. Deidameia was seated next to her father, dressed now in a sable chiton with her hair covered in black cloth. Beside her was a young girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen. Her youthful beauty shone out like a beacon in the shadow-filled chamber, sensualised by her bright red lips and painted eyes. Deidameia leaned across to speak in her ear and the girl looked over at the battle-hardened men who had just entered the great hall.
‘I’m guessing that’s Phaedra, the girl Neoptolemus will marry tomorrow,’ Odysseus said as they sat at the benches.
Eperitus nodded. ‘And that must be Neoptolemus.’
A youth stood by the hearth, holding his krater at arms length and pouring a libation into the flames. Odysseus had not noticed him before among the movement and noise of the hall, but now that he saw the figure beyond the heat haze of the fire he could not take his eyes off him. Neoptolemus was tall and tautly muscled, and though he had short, light brown hair and was clean-shaven – Achilles had been blond with long hair and a beard – the likeness to his father was striking. It was as if the warrior who had killed Hector, Penthesilea, Memnon and countless others on the Trojan plains had been brought back from the dead. Then Neoptolemus’s eyes met his and the illusion was broken. Whereas Achilles’s perfect and terrifying anger was equalled by his capacity for friendship, hospitality, pride, honour and love, his son’s gaze was filled only with a cold and fearsome hostility, untainted by the oceanic passions that had made his father so humanly fallible.
Odysseus took a krater of wine from the hand of a passing slave and walked to the hearth, pouring a libation to the gods. Neoptolemus continued to stare at him and Odysseus returned his gaze for several moments – long enough to show the young prince he was not afraid of him – before raising the krater to his lips and bowing his eyes to the dark liquid. Diomedes and Eperitus joined him, slopping dashes of wine into the flames as they watched Neoptolemus return to a vacant chair beside Lycomedes. He looked at Phaedra and gave her a nodding smile, then at his mother, to whom he bowed his head with reverent formality.
‘He has the eyes of a born killer,’ Diomedes commented. ‘Very like his father, and yet lacking something. That lust for glory, perhaps?’
‘He has that, I think,’ Eperitus said. ‘But I don’t see Achilles’s love of life in him, that joy you could see in his eyes whether he was feasting with friends or riding out to battle in his chariot.’
‘What he lacks is compassion,’ Odysseus said. ‘I don’t trust him, but the gods have a purpose for Neoptolemus in Troy and so we must persuade him to come with us, whether we like it or not. And more to the point, whether Deidameia likes it or not.’
As he spoke, Lycomedes rose to his feet and walked to the edge of the dais, holding his hands up for silence. The music fell away and the hubbub of voices stuttered to a halt.
‘Friends, our guests have arrived. You already know the ill tidings they brought with them from Troy, calamitous news that grieves my heart and plunges it into despair. But I will not mourn the death of my son-in-law tonight. Tonight we will celebrate the greatness of his life. Eat and drink to his memory, and be thankful that the gods have saved you from a similar end on the shores of Ilium.’
There was a cheer from the crowded benches, though many of the men there would barely have remembered Achilles, let alone have known him well during his short years on Scyros.
‘Be thankful?’ Odysseus challenged, raising his voice above the clamour so that voices were stilled again and all eyes turned to the Ithacan king. ‘If you knew anything about his glorious achievements you would consider yourselves cursed not to have fought at his side. And just because you baulk at the prospect of war, Lycomedes, that doesn’t mean Neoptolemus shares your delicate disposition. Surely Achilles’s own son will want to hear something of his father’s deeds in the war against Troy? And who better to tell him than men who fought in the battle line beside him?’
‘You are the guest, Odysseus, not the host,’ Lycomedes warned, barely able to contain his own rage. ‘If I want a story, I will call for my bard. Until then, keep your silence!’
The hall rang with his words and no man dared to break the tension between the two kings. Deidameia looked anxiously from Lycomedes to Odysseus, and finally to Neoptolemus. As her eyes fell on her son, he rose from his chair and stared at his grandfather.
‘Let Odysseus speak. I want to hear what he has to say.’
Lycomedes looked at Deidameia, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘Very well, Odysseus,’ he said. ‘Tell to us of the deeds of Achilles in the years since he left us. Stand and earn your food and wine, like the beggar you are. Speak so that Neoptolemus can understand something of the man his father was, and learn from his errors.’
Lycomedes’s insult had little effect on Odysseus, who stood and looked around at the faces that were now turned to him. There was the flicker of a sneer on some as they stared at the bulky Ithacan, with the faded purple cloak his wife had given him and his long red hair and unkempt beard. Balanced on his short legs, his muscular torso and arms looked ungainly and almost comical, though few would have dared laugh into his battle-hardened face or his knowing green eyes. And yet even on Scyros they had heard about the legendary voice of Odysseus, and despite his vagabond appearance they waited in silence for him to speak.
‘Ten years ago, King Agamemnon charged me with the task of finding the greatest warrior in all Greece – Achilles – who was said to be here on Scyros. When we eventually found him he was disguised as a girl, hiding away from unwelcome visitors at the insistence of his mother, Thetis.’ Here he looked at Deidameia, who held his gaze firmly. ‘She had foreseen that her son would die if he ever went to Troy, and thought that if she could prevent him going he would live a long and prosperous life. But, goddess though she was, she could not change her son’s nature. Achilles sailed with us to Troy in search of glory, and became the fiercest of all the Greeks, the bane of every Trojan who ever faced him in battle.’
He went on to describe the long years of the war, from the first skirmish on Tenedos to the great battles that had rolled back and forth across the plains of Ilium, all the time focussing on the part played by Neoptolemus’s father. With far greater skill than Eperitus’s stumbling efforts with Deidameia in the walled garden earlier, he recalled in detail Achilles’s grief at the loss of Patroclus, his return to war in the magnificent armour presented to him by Thetis, and how he took his terrible revenge on Hector. Though he briefly mentioned Achilles’s refusal to burn Hector’s corpse, he made clear how his anger was ultimately tempered by compassion for Priam. He followed this with vivid accounts of his slaying of Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, and soon after, Memnon, leader of the Aethiopes. As Odysseus described each victory he pointedly did not look at Neoptolemus, speaking instead to the rest of the crowded hall and winning the audience over to his tale, so that they shouted in anguish or triumph as he described Achilles’s various trials. Indeed, he did not need to look at Neoptolemus to know that his icy expression was slowly thawing, encouraged by the crowd around him, and that a fire had been kindled in his heart that blazed in his eyes, to the exclusion of everything else in the great hall.