A PRINCE OF TROY
Lindsay Clarke
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain as part of The War at Troy by HarperCollinsPublishers 2004
Copyright © Lindsay Clarke 2004
Map © Hardlines Ltd.
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Lindsay Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008371043
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008371036
Version: 2019-09-30
For
Sean, Steve, Allen and Charlie
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Map
The Bard of Ithaca
The Apple of Discord
An Oracle of Fire
The Judgement of Paris
Priam’s Son
A Horse for Poseidon
The Supplicant
The Trojan Embassy
The Madness of Aphrodite
The Flight from Sparta
A Perfect Case for War
Glossary of characters
Acknowledgements
Also by Lindsay Clarke
About the Publisher
In those days the realm of the gods lay closer to the world of men, and the gods were often seen to appear among us, sometimes manifesting as themselves, sometimes in human form, and sometimes in the form of animals. Also the people who lived at that time were closer to gods than we are and great deeds and marvels were much commoner then, which is why their stories are nobler and richer than our own. So that those stories should not pass from the earth, I have decided to set down all I have been told of the war at Troy – of the way it began, of the way it was fought, and of the way in which it was ended.
Today is a good day to begin. The sun stands at its zenith in the summer sky. When I lift my head I can hear the sound of lyres above the sea-swell, and voices singing in the town, and the beat of feet stamping in the dance. It is the feast day of Apollo. Forty years ago today, Odysseus returned to Ithaca, and I have good reason to recall that day for it was almost my last.
I was twenty years old, and all around me was blood and slaughter and the frenzy of a vengeful man. I can still see myself cowering beside the silver-studded throne. I remember the rank taste of fear in my mouth, the smell of blood in my nose, and when I close my eyes I see Odysseus standing over me, lifting his bloody sword.
Because Ares is not a god I serve, that feast of Apollo was the closest I have come – that I ever wish to come – to war. Yet the stories I have to tell are the tales of a war, and it was from Odysseus that I had them. How can that be? Because his son Telemachus saved me from the blind fury of Odysseus’s sword by crying out that I was not among those who had sought to seize his wife and kingdom. So I was there, later, beside the hearth in the great hall of Ithaca, long after the frenzy had passed, when Odysseus told these stories to his son.
One day perhaps some other bard will do for Odysseus what I, Phemius of Ithaca, have failed to do and make a great song out of these stories, a song that men will sing for ever. Until that day, may a kind fate let what I set down stand as an honest man’s memorial to the passions of both gods and men.
The world is full of gods and no one can serve all of them. It is true, therefore, that a man’s fate will hang upon the choices that he makes among the gods, and most accounts now say that the war at Troy began with such a choice when the Trojan hero Paris was summoned before the goddesses one hot afternoon on the high slopes of Mount Ida.
The Idaean Mountains stand some ten miles from the sea, across the River Scamander in that part of the kingdom of Troy which is known as Dardania. Odysseus assured me that an ancient cult of Phrygian Aphrodite existed among the Dardanian clan of Trojans at that time, and that as one of their chief herdsmen, Paris would have grown up in an atmosphere charged with the power of that seductive goddess. So it seems probable that he was gifted with a vision that brought him into her divine presence during the course of an initiatory ordeal on the summit of Mount Ida. But it is not permissible to speak directly of such secret rites, so we bards must employ imagination.
It began with a prickling sensation that he was being watched. Paris looked up from a pensive daydream and saw only his herd of grazing animals. They seemed, if anything, less alert than he was. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a brief shimmering of light. When he turned his head, the trembling in the air shifted to the other side. Perplexed, Paris moved his