A Prince of Troy. Lindsay Clarke
walked to the cave, Peleus explained why Patroclus had been sent to him. But Cheiron merely nodded in reply, and then shook his head over the way Peleus was limping across the rocks. ‘You should have come to me sooner,’ he said, ‘then as now.’
As they ate together, Odysseus expressed his admiration for Cheiron’s way of life. ‘We still like to keep things simple on Ithaca,’ he said. ‘Some people find us rude and barbarous, yet we’re honest and we have all we need there. It’s only a restless lust for adventure that draws me away, but I’m always glad to get home again.’
Peleus sighed. ‘I should never have left this place.’
‘A man must follow his fate,’ Cheiron said, ‘and yours has been a hard one. I should have seen it sooner, but there are things the heart sees and will not believe.’ Peleus insisted that none of the blame for his fate had been Cheiron’s, but the old king gravely shook his head. ‘Though she followed her mother’s ways, Thetis is of my blood, and I have failed as a father.’
When Odysseus protested that Cheiron had been a good father to many of the greatest heroes of the age, the old Centaur sighed that a man could care well for the children of others yet be a fumbler with his own. ‘It is only boys who come to me here,’ he said, ‘and though the power in the world may have passed to Sky-Father Zeus, the Goddess still has her claims to make on us – though sometimes it is hard for men to understand her mysteries.’ He gazed up into the troubled eyes of Peleus and drew in his breath. ‘But you have a fine son. He’s already a skilful huntsman and he runs like the wind. Also he has a singing voice that will break your heart. You will be proud of Achilles – as he is already proud of you.’ Cheiron took in the dubious tilt of Peleus’s head. ‘Oh yes, he knows that his father is a great king in Thessaly and has already taken a knock or two for bragging of it.’
At that moment all three men heard the eager, rowdy sound of boy’s voices shouting in the gorge. They tried to resume their conversation, but the noise went on until Cheiron got up and said, ‘It’s time I put a stop to it.’
His guests followed him to the mouth of the cave where they looked down at the sward of rough grass among the rocks and saw two boys scrapping like fighting dogs inside a shifting circle of young, tousle-headed spectators who were urging them on. When they struggled back to their feet from where they had been flinging punches at each other on the ground, blood was bubbling from both their noses.
Peleus recognized Patroclus by the dark red tunic he was wearing. ‘His father warned me that he had a bad temper, but this is a poor start. I trust the other fellow is strong enough to stand up to him.’
‘I should think so,’ Cheiron turned to him and smiled. ‘He is your son.’
After the wedding-day of Peleus and Thetis a whole generation passed in the world of mortals, but the quarrel among the goddesses raged on and Zeus was no nearer to finding a solution. At last, out of all patience with the bitter atmosphere around him, he called a council among the gods, and Hermes, the shrewdest and most eloquent of the immortals, conceived of a possible way through.
It was obvious, he said, that none of the three goddesses would be satisfied until a judgement was made. It was equally clear that none of the immortals were in a position to choose among them without giving everlasting offence. Therefore it was his opinion that the decision should be placed in the hands of an impartial mortal.
Not at all displeased by the idea of returning the dispute to the mortal realm, Zeus asked if he had anyone particular in mind.
‘I think,’ smiled Hermes, ‘that this is a matter for Paris to decide.’
Ares looked up at the mention of the name. That handsome bully of a god, who had come swaggering back from Thrace where they make war their sport and take as much delight in the lopping off of heads as others do in the finer points of art, had no doubt about which of the goddesses should be given the apple. He had long since grown bored therefore by a conflict that lacked real violence. Now he declared impatiently that Paris was an excellent choice. He knew him to be a fair-minded fellow with a good eye for the best fighting bulls in the Idaean Mountains.
Though she was restless to get back into the wilds, Artemis pointed out that being a bull fancier might not be the ideal qualification for the matter in hand. But before Hermes could respond, Ares went on to tell how Paris had once offered a crown as prize for any bull that could beat the champion he had raised. Just for the sport of it, Ares had transformed himself into a bull and thoroughly trounced Paris’s beast. Yet even though the odds had been stacked against him, Paris had cheerfully awarded him the crown. So yes, Ares was quite sure of it – Paris could be relied on to give a fair judgement.
‘I should perhaps add,’ said Hermes, smiling amiably at the goddesses, who had, at that moment, no passionate interest in fighting bulls, ‘that Paris is also the most handsome of mortal men.’
Zeus grunted at that. Sternly he looked back at the goddesses. ‘Will all three of you be content to submit to this handsome mortal’s judgement?’ And when they nodded their assent, the lord of Olympus sighed with relief.
‘Very well, Paris it shall be.’ And asking Hermes to conduct the goddesses to Mount Ida, Zeus gratefully turned his thoughts to other matters.
As he sat in the sunlight watching his herd graze the pastures of Mount Ida, Paris was, of course, quite unaware that the gods had elected him to solve a problem that they could not solve themselves. But at that time he was ignorant of many other matters too, not least of the mystery of his own birth, for the youth entrusted with this awesome responsibility was rather more than the humble herdsman he believed himself to be.
Many years earlier, in the hours before he was born, his pregnant mother had woken in terror from a prophetic dream, and that dream was now beginning to cast a lurid light across the world. Yet as parents beget children, so one story begets another, and one cannot understand who Paris was without also knowing something about his parents, and something of his father’s father too.
There were many Troys before the last Troy fell. One of them was ruled by a king called Laomedon, and the lore of the city tells how, as a humiliating punishment for displeasing Zeus, the gods Apollo and Poseidon were once forced to work for a year as day-labourers in that king’s service. In return for a stipulated fee, Apollo played the lyre and tended Laomedon’s flocks on Mount Ida while Poseidon toiled to build the walls around the city. Knowing that the walls would never fall unless some mortal was also involved in their construction, Poseidon delegated part of the work to Aeacus, who was the father of Peleus and Telamon. But Laomedon had a perfidious streak in his nature, and when the work was done he refused to make the agreed payment of all the cattle born in the kingdom during the course of that year.
It was not he but Zeus, he argued, who had put the gods to their tasks, and in any case what needs did the immortals have that they could not supply for themselves? So he turned them away from the city empty-handed.
The gods were not slow to take their revenge. In his aspect of a mouse-god, Apollo visited a plague upon Troy, while Earthshaker Poseidon unleashed a huge sea-monster to terrorize its coastline. When a people already sickening from pestilence found their land made infertile by the huge breakers of salt-water that the monster set crashing across their fields, they demanded that Laomedon seek counsel from the oracle of Zeus as to how the gods might be appeased. The answer came that nothing less than the sacrifice of his beloved daughter Hesione would suffice.
Laomedon did all he could to resist the judgement, trying to force others in the city to offer their own daughters to the monster in Hesione’s place. But the members of the Trojan assembly were fully aware that the king’s perfidy was the cause of their grief, and would consent to no more than a casting of lots. In accordance with the will of the gods, the lot fell on Hesione. So Laomedon had to look on helplessly as his daughter was stripped of everything but her jewels, chained to a rock by the shore, and left alone to die.
The sea was