defeated by Demophon, the son of Theseus, who had now reclaimed his father’s throne. We learned that Agamemnon had indeed been assassinated by his wife and her paramour and that Mycenae was not the only scene of unexpected revolution. Apparently Lord Diomedes had returned to Argos after surviving shipwreck on the Lycian coast only to discover that his wife and her lover had seized the throne of Tiryns; while a similar illicit conspiracy had unseated King Idomeneus in Crete
Being as shrewd as she was wise, Lady Penelope quickly divined the hand of King Nauplius behind this repeated pattern of betrayals. ‘But surely those ill-used lords could combine their powers to help each other,’ she said. ‘Diomedes and Idomeneus are heroes of Troy. Who could stand against them?’
‘They gathered at Corinth with precisely that intention,’ Amphinomus answered. ‘I was there. I heard them planning to join forces and launch a campaign to retake Tiryns first, then to advance against Mycenae, and lastly to mount an expedition into Crete. But the truth is that the war and the storm have left their forces so depleted that they could do none of these things without help; and where were they to turn? Neoptolemus already has his hands full in the north. As yet’ – he cast a rueful glance towards Penelope – ‘they had heard no word of my Lord Odysseus, and Menelaus is rumoured to be far away in Egypt. Of all the warlords, it seems that only old Nestor has returned safely to his throne.’
‘And would he not help them?’ King Laertes asked.
Amphinomus shook his head. ‘He declined their invitation to come to Corinth. He said that, much as he loved his comrades, he was old and weary and still stricken with grief over the death of his son Antilochus in the last days of the war. But he also said what may be true – that it would be unwise to plunge all Argos into a civil conflict which could only leave it weakened against the Dorian threat. Nestor intends to see out his days in peace in sandy Pylos. Should they wish to do so, Diomedes and Idomeneus are welcome to join him at his hearth.’
Yet Amphinomus had not come to the island only to report on events in Argos. It was also his intention to prepare Penelope as best he could for the possibility that her husband might never return. Things he had heard in Corinth left him in no doubt that the Aegean Sea had been hit by a disastrous storm. The coast of Euboea had seen many shipwrecks. Hundreds of men had drowned. As was shown by the case of Diomedes, vessels blown eastwards by the storm had fared little better, and since he had got back, no other survivors had appeared. Amphinomus feared that these unhappy facts offered no good omens for the safe and speedy return of Lord Odysseus.
‘Yet Nestor’s ships all seem to have survived the voyage,’ Penelope countered. ‘And their passage required them to double Cape Malea where the waters can be more treacherous than Euboean kings and faithless wives.’
‘Lord Nestor made an early departure from Troy after the death of his son,’ Amphinomus answered, glancing away. ‘He would have been well across the Aegean before the worst of the storm blew up. He was among the first to return.’
Penelope sat in silence for a time, staring into the hearth where the brands collapsed with a sigh amid a scattering of sparks. For a moment I thought that she too had given up hope; then she shook her head and gave a little smile. ‘But tell me, Amphinomus,’ she said, ‘does the world know of a better seaman than the Lord of Ithaca?’
The young prince of Dulichion shook his finely boned head. ‘There is none, lady,’ he replied, ‘or if there is I never heard tell of him. And yet …’
‘Yet what?’ she defied his frown.
‘I am anxious only that you do not entertain false hopes.’
‘Nor you either,’ Telemachus put in from the shadowy corner where he sat.
The hostile edge to his voice was unmistakable. Mentor and the older men around the table stirred uncomfortably at his petulant breach of hospitality.
‘I try not to do so,’ Amphinomus answered, ‘even though the fate of my kinsman Meges also remains uncertain. I merely seek to be realistic.’
‘As I do myself,’ Penelope intervened, frowning at her son.
‘Yet the fact remains,’ Amphinomus said quietly, ‘that Odysseus was last seen turning back to rescue Sinon and his crew from their sinking ship.’
Penelope smiled. ‘I would expect nothing less of him.’
‘Nor I, my lady, but such care for his friends will have left him far behind the rest of the fleet. He will have been given less time than them to run for shelter. His ship must have taken the brunt of the storm.’
‘Odysseus has run before many storms and lived to tell tales of them. And if I read what you say aright, Amphinomus, then the false beacons that Nauplius lit around Cape Caphareus will have burned themselves out before my husband could be confused by them as others were.’
‘Yes,’ Amphinomus conceded doubtfully, ‘it is certainly possible. Of course I pray, as we all do, that you are right.’
‘Then pray louder and longer,’ Telemachus muttered beside me, ‘and trouble our hearts less.’
But his mother had already raised her indomitable voice. ‘I am quite sure that my husband lives,’ she declared, ‘for I am certain that I would know if he did not.’ Penelope was smiling with the confidence of a woman assured of her own truth. ‘Some difficulty has delayed his return. Shipwreck perhaps … yes, it is possible in so severe a storm; yet even if he has suffered such mischance, he may have survived only to be frustrated by unfavourable winds, or confined by some enemy looking to ransom him. But that Odysseus is alive I have no doubt. My husband has always been among the bravest and most resourceful men in the Argive host. I know that the same courage and ingenuity that took him into Troy when everyone else had begun to believe that city unassailable, will bring him home safely to his wife and son.’
Telemachus led the cheers that greeted her words. I joined in roundly; but so close was the attention I paid to the nuances of my lady’s face these days that I could not miss the pensive shadows that settled briefly about Penelope’s eyes and mouth moments later when she thought herself unobserved.
The Thracian shore vanished in the unnatural brown gloom of the light from the thunderheads just as the skies were torn open by a ferocious strike of lightning. The mast and rigging of a nearby ship combusted into flame. A moan went up from the oarsmen of the struck ship when the mast cracked and the scorching yardarm fell among them. Oars clattered together in the swell as the rowers leapt in panic from the benches. The vessel lost way, yawed and turned broadside on to the waves. Only moments later, it was pushed over onto its side like a tipped bucket, hurling men into the clamour of the seas.
Two hundred yards away, scarcely able to hold their own against the might of the billows breaking over their prow, Odysseus and his crew were forced to watch their comrades drown while the exposed keel of the capsized ship rose and fell. Another pang of lightning flashed across the sky. The flames from the blazing spar guttered for a time with an eerie glare, and were extinguished in a sizzling of smoke and steam.
Odysseus caught a last glimpse of a man shouting through the froth of a crest before the sea dragged both him and his stricken ship down into the advancing hollow. The day thickened prematurely into night, and with the darkness came the rain.
Odysseus led the three great shouts for the drowned men who would never now receive proper burial. Some of his crew were already retching as the rain and spray smacked against their faces. With the prow and cutwater mounting the tall wave at his back, Odysseus staggered down the slope towards the stern where Baius was struggling to control the steering oar. He just had time to clutch the sternpost with both hands before his ship took the steep plunge over the crest.
A torrent of water fracturing into spume as hard as hailstones scattered across the decks and benches. Closing his eyes against the tempest, Odysseus felt the whole world lurching under him. The clamour of thunder merged with