But either Nauplius did not hear him or affected not to have done so. He took a trial sip from his wine-cup, wrinkled his nostrils in a barely concealed grimace of disappointment, and smiled at Penelope. ‘Our Euboean vintage is mellower, my dear. I must make a point of sending you some.’
Her voice uncharacteristically tense, Penelope said, ‘My husband is no man’s fool, sir. Do you suggest he is a knave?’
Nauplius opened his hands in a mild gesture of protest. ‘You were daughter to my old friend Icarius long before you became wife to Odysseus. Believe me, I have no desire to say anything that would cause you pain or displeasure.’
Aware that the answer was neither a withdrawal nor an apology, Penelope made an effort to still her breathing. If she had suspected earlier that this dour old man had come with mischief at work in his embittered mind, she was convinced of it now. Looking for space to gather her thoughts, she turned to Amphinomus. ‘Did you not ask Phemius to sing for you tonight? Perhaps his voice will please our royal guest?’
And so I was required to stand before this uneasy table and raise my voice in the silence. I had been looking forward to this moment all day but any bard will tell you that few can sing at their best before those whose minds are elsewhere. My ambition had been to sing from The Lay of Lord Odysseus on which I had been working, and in the circumstances it would have been the courageous thing to do. But I was reluctant to expose a still raw and tender talent before a judge as stern as King Nauplius, so I chose instead to sing some of the traditional goat-songs sung by shepherds on the island. Amphinomus and Lady Penelope received them warmly enough, but those bucolic airs appealed no more to the visiting king’s ears than our island’s wine had done to his palate.
‘My son told me that you liked to keep a simple life here on Ithaca,’ he said dryly, ‘but I’m surprised to find that the court of Laertes lacks a bard even!’
‘The boy’s father is our bard,’ Penelope answered quietly. ‘There is some fear that his life was lost at sea after the Mysian campaign.’
‘A campaign against which my own son strongly advised,’ Nauplius said with narrowed eyes, ‘but other counsel was preferred, and with what disastrous results we may all now plainly see.’ Then he cast a searching look my way. ‘The boy sings sweetly enough,’ he conceded. ‘I hear the grief in his voice. It is hard for a son to lose a father, but it is in the natural course of things.’ Nauplius shook his gaunt head. ‘For a father to lose a son however …’
Amphinomus said, ‘Surely a father can take comfort from the knowledge that his son died honourably in battle?’
But Nauplius turned a cold stare on him. ‘My son was denied such honour. And denied it by those whom he had loyally sought to serve.’
The silence was broken by Lord Mentor. ‘As the king has observed,’ he said, ‘we are simple souls on Ithaca. Perhaps he will make his meaning plainer.’
Nauplius met the controlled anger with a bleak smile. ‘In good time,’ he said, ‘in good time. My business here is with the Lady Penelope. If she will grant me private audience when this meal is done, we will talk more of these things.’
‘You are the guest of our house,’ Penelope answered. ‘It shall be as you wish.’
And so, with the only subjects about which people wished to speak thus firmly confined to silence, this awkward meal progressed. Amphinomus did what he could to ease the atmosphere by extolling the contribution that Euboea had made to the art of navigation. In particular he praised that island’s introduction of cliff-top beacons beside dangerous shoals, an invention which had caught on across Argive waters and proved a boon to mariners everywhere.
Nauplius nodded in acknowledgement. He and Amphinomus chatted together for a while. ‘It pleases me,’ he said, ‘to learn that the Lady Penelope has found a diverting companion in her husband’s absence.’ And at the fireside pillar where we sat with the dog Argus stretched between us, kicking his hind-legs in a dream of chase, I saw Telemachus scowl.
Eventually, having eaten well for all his disdain for rustic fare, Nauplius declared himself replete, washed his hands in the bronze bowl and indicated his desire to speak alone with the lady of the house. We watched them leave the hall together, he gaunt and frail, she taller by almost a head, yet they felt worryingly like an executioner and his victim.
‘Come, Phemius,’ Amphinomus called across the hall, ‘sing for us again.’
Not for many years, not indeed till after her husband’s return, did Penelope utter a word about what was said between her and King Nauplius that night. The following morning, shortly after dawn, that disagreeable visitor put out to sea without offering thanks or saying farewell to anyone. No one on the island regretted his departure though we were all troubled by the shadow that he had evidently cast across Penelope’s mind and face, and not even Amphinomus could persuade her to share the burden of her cares.
Not many weeks would pass, of course, before we learned that this was only one of many visits that Nauplius was to make to the chief kingdoms of Argos, and everywhere he went, including, most dramatically, Mycenae itself, he left the contamination of his vengeful grief. And from reports of what happened elsewhere it was not difficult to guess what must have passed between Nauplius and Penelope that night.
Nauplius would have begun by singing the praises of his dead son Palamedes. Was his not the swiftest and most orderly mind in the Argive leadership? Had he not come to the aid of the duller-witted Agamemnon by recommending an order of battle which would take full advantage of the diverse forces assembled under his command rather than allowing their rivalries and customs to weaken their strength and cause disarray? Had he not devised a common signalling system that could be understood and exploited equally well by tribesmen from Arcadia, Crete, Boeotia and Magnesia? Had he not unified the systems of measurement used throughout the host so that there could be no confusion over distances and arguments over the distribution of rations and booty might be kept to a minimum? Wasn’t it Palamedes who had kept the troops in good heart by teaching them his game of dice and stones? Hadn’t he always done what he could to make sure that the voice of the common soldiery was heard among the council of the kings? In short, Nauplius insisted that if it had not been for the presiding intelligence of Palamedes, anticipating difficulties and finding means to overcome them, Agamemnon’s vast army would quickly have degenerated into a quarrelsome rabble with each tribal contingent looking only to its own interests even though the entire campaign might founder on such narrow pride.
Penelope would have listened patiently to all of this. After all, the man was her house-guest and it was understandable that a father’s grief should exaggerate his dead son’s contribution to the arduous effort of a war in which he’d lost his life. She had no doubt, of course, that the intelligence and experience of Odysseus must have played at least an equal part in that effort, and probably a greater one, but she had already sensed that to speak up for her husband at this juncture could only arouse a hostile response from this lugubrious old man. So she preferred to hold her peace and wait to see what menace still lay concealed behind his show of grief.
It was not long in coming. Frowning into space as he spoke, Nauplius told how, late in the previous year, when their supplies began to dwindle and raids along the Phrygian and Thracian coasts produced little by way of grain and stores, the Argive host had been faced with a choice between starving outside the walls of Troy or turning tail with little to show for all those long years of war. Odysseus had been in command of one of the raiding parties that returned with its holds empty. When he was met by the rage of Agamemnon, he publicly defied any man to do better. The harvests had failed everywhere that year, he claimed. The granaries were bare.
‘Palamedes took up the challenge,’ Nauplius said, ‘and when he returned to the camp only a few days later, his ships rode low in the water, heavy with grain. You would have thought he deserved the heartfelt thanks of the entire host, would you not? And the common soldiers were warm enough in their praise. My son had always championed their cause. Now he had saved them from hunger. But with the generals it was a different story.’ Fiercely the old man drew in his breath. ‘Whenever