eyes. A moment later, to his immense consternation and surprise, he saw tears starting there.
In my later travels across Argos I encountered a chronicler who insisted that more than eight hundred thousand people had died in the war for Troy. Though his estimate strikes me as more bloodthirsty than accurate, many thousands of men and women must have lost their lives in what proved, in the end, to be a wholly destructive enterprise. Countless more came back with injuries that disfigured them for the rest of their days. But what of its effects on those other, unsung casualties of the war – those who were too young to fight?
Having grown up without a father’s guidance, they were forced either to endure the wretched silence of those who could not bring themselves to talk about the war at all, or to listen again and again to stories which left them feeling that real life had passed them by. This is what Odysseus came to recognize as the dreadful patrimony of war. Even as he identified its corrosive power, he was aware of the shadow that his own glorious reputation cast across the life of his son; but I know that he was also thinking about Neoptolemus and Agamemnon’s tragic son, Orestes.
The fierce young son of Achilles – his true name was Pyrrhus – was of a different order than other boys who had been left behind at home. Though he was only twelve years old in the final year of the war, he had been summoned to the fight by an oracle. It was prophesied that Troy would not fall until he came to the city, and so, against the will of his mother Deidameia and his grandmother Thetis, who were both devastated by the news of Achilles’ death, he was fetched out of Skyros. No one expected him to take an active part in the fighting. He was seen merely as a kind of mascot, a talismanic presence required by the gods; one who might rouse the flagging morale of the host by reviving the memory of his father. Yet he was given the name Neoptolemus – the new warrior – and quickly astounded them all. It seemed that he put on his father’s intrepid spirit with his gilded suit of armour, and the Myrmidons guarded his young life with a loyalty that encouraged him to such fearless acts that some said his soul was possessed by his father’s ghost.
Odysseus believed the boy to be possessed rather by the idea of what his father’s ghost demanded of him, for Neoptolemus was a child whose sense of manhood was shaped by the desire both to avenge the death of Achilles and to equal him in glory. It was a consuming appetite, unqualified by such tenderness as Achilles had known in his love for Patroclus and Briseis, and perhaps also for Polyxena. And so, long before he left Troy without a wound on his young body, Neoptolemus was a casualty of the war.
What could Andromache have made of him as she was forced to submit to his embraces on board his father’s black ship? Here was a woman who had lain in Hector’s arms. She had known the devotion of a man for whom warfare was not the chief goal and glory of a man’s existence but a violent fate forced on him by other men. She in turn was forced to watch as Hector fell under Achilles’ spear. She had seen her husband’s body dragged around the walls of Troy. The son of Achilles had hurled her child from a balcony onto the stones below; and now she must endure the thrust of his callow hips as Neoptolemus strove to plant his seed in her loins.
Yet if her body was captive, her spirit was not, and the boy can have found little pleasure in her bed. After a time, he began to leave her alone; and though his Myrmidons may have guessed that she emerged the victor from those loveless encounters, those grim men were too loyal to reveal their amusement and contempt. But Neoptolemus knew what had happened, and the knowledge made him all that more furious a fighter. Returning from Troy to recover his father’s lost lands, he was unable to land in Iolcus, which remained in Dorian hands; so he navigated the straits between Euboea and southern Thessaly and then marched inland in search of glory. The march brought him to the Orthris Mountains, where his grandfather Peleus – an old man aged further by the death of his son – had withdrawn his forces to make his stand against the alien invasion.
Before the day when his grandson marched the advance-guard of Myrmidons up into the mountains, Peleus and Neoptolemus had never met. The boy had been raised on the island of Skyros, in thrall to his formidable grandmother Thetis, from whom Peleus had been estranged for many years. Through her influence, Neoptolemus had developed a profound attachment to his heritage among the Dolopian people, some of whom had long since migrated from Epirus in the far west, through Thessaly, and on to Skyros. In these circumstances, Neoptolemus might have felt little attachment to Peleus, who was, for him, a remote and dubious figure, one who had long outlived the noble achievements of his youth. But the Myrmidons belonged to Peleus, and he had given them to Achilles; and since Neoptolemus had acquired an appetite for blood at Troy he had begun to think of himself as a Myrmidon first above all things. So now he was eager to make a stand beside his grandfather, and swear on his father’s shade that the soldierants of Thessaly would not rest until they saw King Peleus seated again on his rightful throne in Iolcus.
The old man gazed at the armoured youth with tears in his eyes. He recognized more of his wife’s features in the humourless yet unexpectedly soft young face than he did his own. The hair blowing about the boy’s head had the same reddish tinge to it as hers; the eyes were the same grey-green: and Peleus wondered whether something of her rage still ran through his veins. But there was a colder edge about him too – the coldness of a blade in winter – as if the things he had done at Troy had cancelled all feeling from his heart and left only ambition there.
Standing on the windy mountainside Peleus knew that when this boy fought on his behalf, it would not be for love of him, but merely out of a voracious appetite for battle. He shook his head, remembering the disastrous quarrel among the goddesses at his wedding feast at Mount Pelion all those years ago. There were those who claimed that the seeds of the war at Troy had been sown that day. Well, here was its harvest now – an unsmiling boy who had lopped off King Priam’s head and led a murderous assault on his beautiful city. And the dreadful truth was that Peleus had need of such warriors now.
‘Did you come here directly from Troy?’ he asked. ‘You must be weary.’
‘I am rested well enough,’ Neoptolemus answered stiffly.
Peleus nodded. ‘Did you not put in at Skyros?’
The youth glanced away. ‘For one night only. Iolcus had already fallen, so one night could make no difference.’ He hesitated a moment before adding, ‘Also I wished to speak with my mother.’
Peleus nodded. ‘And with your grandmother no doubt?’
‘Yes, with my grandmother also.’
So he had guessed right. Thetis had dropped some of her old poison in the boy’s ears. Yet she had not been able to prevent him from coming at his call. Loyalty to his father’s Myrmidon heritage had brought Neoptolemus to the fight for Thessaly. Peleus could build on that. Somehow he must find a way to win his love and respect as well as his cold service.
Smiling into those calculating eyes, he said, ‘May I see the spear you carry?’
Neoptolemus considered a moment before relinquishing his weapon. ‘This was my father’s spear,’ he said.
‘I know it was,’ Peleus answered, feeling the familiar weight in his hand, and balancing it there as if for the throw. ‘And it was his father’s before him. This spear was given to me by the gods as a wedding gift. The head was forged in the smithy of Hephaistus. This ash-wood shaft was carved by Divine Athena.’
Unable quite to conceal his boyish awe, Neoptolemus said, ‘You truly stood in the presence of the gods?’
‘As we all do, all the time,’ answered Peleus, ‘though not all of us are privileged to see them. Your father once took down this spear from the hooks where it hung beside my hearth. He was no more than a restless boy at the time, younger than you are now. I found him hurling it at a tree for target-practice and was angry with him because he had taken my spear without seeking my consent. But it was on that day that Achilles declared his desire to become a Myrmidon.’ Peleus smiled at the memory. ‘I told him that he should have his wish but that I would keep my spear until I could be sure