The Trojan War (11 page)

The trouble here was that Poseidon for all his tempestuous bluster had a strong feminine side to his nature. He was incapable of loving or hating people in groups. Generalization irked him. He could form a powerful attachment to an individual—as he had to Theseus, for instance, said to have been his son—and keep an eye on him through all circumstance and crown his deeds with glory. Or, far more often, he could hold an implacable grudge against someone, and pursue him with storm, tidal wave, sea-monster, every type of marine catastrophe. But, as he thought about things, he found himself incapable of preferring either Greek or Trojan en masse.

“Let’s see,” he said. “Let me consider this carefully. Certainly I can find cause to favor one side or the other …

“Greek or Trojan, Trojan or Greek? Shall I have to draw straws? Seems a paltry device to decide such potent favor. Perhaps I should consult my preferences among the gods—who have all involved themselves in this fray. Here again it is very difficult. I have reason to dislike all my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. My sister, Demeter, has always pleased me the most, I suppose. On the other hand, she takes least interest in this war among all the Pantheon. She dislikes war too much. It means the destruction of crops, whoever wins. And she is the Lady of Growing Things.

“I have this old feud with Athena, and her espousal of the Greeks might lead me to choose the Trojans. Against this, though, those mealy mouthed, high-stepping twins, Apollo and Artemis, help Troy, and I should not wish to be on the same side of any question as they are. Apollo’s flaming nuisance of a chariot parches my waters whenever it can catch them in shallow pools. While that grasping, bare-thighed, male-hating icicle sister of his has the gall to meddle with my tides. Her keen whistle pierces to the underwater kennels where the seadogs sleep. She summons them, leashes them with a chain of silver light, and swings them high, low, despite my dominion of the sea. Her I will destroy one day. I don’t quite know how, but I will find a way.

“Difficult … most difficult question. Quite gives me a headache.”

And he spit a tidal wave that covered an ancient island with a wall of water a hundred feet high. When the wave subsided the island had disappeared, and has never been seen since.

All this time he had been hovering over the face of the waters. Now he whistled up his chariot—not the beach-raiding one drawn by his white-maned gray mares, but the sleek green sea-going chariot drawn by dolphins. He sped to his palace of coral and pearl. Seated on his great throne, which was of whalebone lined with mother-of-pearl, he felt more at ease, and resumed his thought.

“I am unable to decide this way,” he said to himself. “That is clear. Perhaps it is better so. Weighing this, calculating thus, that has never been my style. My rage is storm. My kindness a fall of light, sudden bliss of blue weather. I am sudden, capricious, king of tempest. The sea itself takes its famous changableness from my moods. I shall watch the battle then as it shapes up this morning and, as I watch, take inspiration from what I see. Yes … that will relieve me of this head-splitting meditation, and provide some diversion also. For I find uncertainty pleasing—and have always diced with dead men’s bones. Very well, then, I shall watch the battle, and decide. And woe be to the forces, Greek or Trojan, whom I decide against.”

He took a great bowl made from a single chrysoprase, the largest in all the world. It is a light-green jewel pure as a child’s eye holding much light. This bowl of chrysoprase he filled with clear water. And, watching the water, and thinking about the Dardanian plain, he saw cloudy pictures form and dissolve, and they were the images of battle.

Poseidon, like all gods, was intensely amused by the sight of men fighting. The fiercer the fighting, the more he enjoyed it. A good killing sent him into peals of laughter. This laughter of the gods at the sight of death and suffering is sometimes dimly heard by men—as a natural sound, usually, the wind howling on a peculiar note, the cry of an owl striking, a scream out of nowhere waking the sleeper who tries to identify it, and fails.

Thus, Poseidon, on his whalebone and nacre throne, rocked with laughter as he saw the battle rage on the Dardanian plain. He saw the cloudy images form and dissolve in his bowl of pure water. So much blood was spilled in these scenes that the bowl was tinged with red, and this pleased Poseidon.

He saw Agamemnon, clad in gorgeous armor, goaded to fury by the whisper of Athena. Agamemnon clove the Trojan ranks, thrusting with his long spear, shearing through shield, breastplate, helmet—crushing bone, drinking blood.

“How gaudy he is, this commander,” said Poseidon to himself. “This wild boar from Mycenae who cannot utter a word without creating dissension; how splendidly he is clad, and how splendidly he fights, to be sure. Marvellous his armor. Of lapis lazuli, of bronze, and of pure beaten tin. He glitters like a beetle on the dusty plain. And, like a beetle, he can be crushed.”

Just as Poseidon said these words the picture in the green bowl dissolved from that of Agamemnon spearing the elder son of Antenor, to a picture of the younger son of Antenor spearing Agamemnon. The younger son, Choön, drove his spear through the king’s shoulder. Agamemnon’s counterthrust pierced the lad’s eye-socket, and split his skull. But Agamemnon, bleeding sorely, was forced from the field.

Grinning, Poseidon signalled to a naiad, who took up the bowl and poured out the blood-tinged water, and refilled it with clean water and returned it to the laughing god. Now Poseidon, conning the waters in the bowl, saw Hector rally the Trojans for a counterattack that carried them back over the field half-way to the fosse.

Here at the lip of the fosse the best of the Greeks took a stand against the Trojan’s hurricane charge. Diomedes flung a rock at Hector that crushed the crest of his helmet and hurled him to earth, stunned. But Aeneas straddled the fallen Hector and covered him with his shield, and Diomedes could not follow up his advantage. Such was the fever of combat burning in Hector that his dizziness fled, and he sprang to his feet, ready to fight again. As Diomedes hesitated, seeking a way to get at Hector, Paris slithered near. Sheltering behind a tree, he notched an arrow to his bowstring, and let fly. It was a splendid shot. Had he ventured closer before shooting he would have killed Diomedes, but the tree was a long bowshot away, and the arrow struck downward, piercing Diomedes’ foot, pinning it to the ground. Seeing that Diomedes could not get at him, Paris laughed, and came closer, fitting another arrow to his string.

“It was you, was it, prince of sneaks!” roared Diomedes. “Hiding behind a tree like a mountain bandit, and shooting arrows at your betters. Miserable ambusher! Puling abductor! Dare to come within my reach. Dare to meet me with spear or sword!”

Diomedes stooped and pulled the arrow out of his foot despite the awful pain of the barb tearing backward through his flesh. Paris was so disconcerted at this stoic feat that he melted into the crowd again without shooting his second arrow. But Diomedes had lost much blood; he had to quit the battle.

Now Hector, flanked by Troilus and Aeneas, swept like a brushfire along the bank of the Scamander where the Thessalians were making a stand.

Paris had hastened to join this group because he preferred to shelter himself behind an impenetrable hedge of such shields. But he was welcome. His archery was inspired. It was as if Apollo himself had tutored him in bowmanship between one day’s fighting and the next. Every arrow he shot found its target in Greek flesh. He sent a shaft through the shoulder of Machaon, who fell where he stood. A shout of despair arose from the Thessalians. Machaon was their king; not only their king, but the most able healer in the Greek camp. Son of Aesclepius himself, he had been taught by the great surgeon, and had mastered his father’s art. This made him a grandson of Apollo, of course, but he had lost Apollo’s favor by fighting on the wrong side.

It was old Nestor who leaped out of his chariot and lifted the fallen Machaon, and drove him safely back to the Greek lines. But the Thessalians were disheartened by the loss of their leader and would have crumbled before the Trojan charge had not Great Ajax come rushing up, and rallied their wavering ranks with a loud war-cry.

All this time Poseidon was watching the battle in the visionary waters of his bowl. Octopi wrestled beyond the huge windows set in his palace of coral and pearl. Sharks glided, smiling their hunger. Shoals of long-legged naiads swam by, hair floating. Balloon-fish, giant rays, the artful twisted glyph, the only sea-creature that can outmaneuver an eel. All the rich traffic of the sea swam past his window—which he so loved in his ordinary hours, but which he failed to notice now, absorbed as he was in the shifting images of battle.

He saw Ajax standing among the broken Thessalians, steady as a rock, with streams of Trojans dividing upon him as waves break upon a rock. The Thessalians gave ground; the Trojans swarmed. Ajax, for all his huge strength, was about to be overwhelmed. Then Poseidon’s heart bounded with pleasure as he saw Ulysses storm up in a chariot drawn by a pair of magnificent mares. Milk-white they were with black manes and brass hooves.

“How did Ulysses come by that team?” said Poseidon to himself. “They belong to Rhesus. They are the get of my own surf-mares, sired upon them by Pegasus. But he could not be driving them, and Rhesus alive. What could have happened?”

He shook the waters in the bowl until they darkened into images of the night before. He saw Ulysses and Diomedes, acting upon the information they had tortured out of Dolon, steal into the Thracian lines, cut the throats of Rhesus and twelve companions, leap into his chariot and whip up the beautiful steeds to a windlike rush back beyond the fosse.

“So that’s how they did it,” said Poseidon to himself. “What devils they are, those two—crafty, bold, imaginative, ruthless. How can the Trojans possibly stand against such men; how could they have withstood them for nine years? Zeus secretly helps the Trojans; that’s the only explanation. Despite his oath of neutrality he is sending signs and portents to hearten the Dardanians beyond the limits of their own mortal strength. And yet he threatens with awful punishment any of the other gods who intercede.”

Poseidon shook the waters in the bowl again, and returned to the day’s fighting. Ajax and Ulysses, shields locked, were making a stand on the banks of the Scamander. But they had each suffered wounds, and, step by step, were being forced back. Finally, Ulysses grasped Ajax, who was more seriously wounded, about his waist, thick as the trunk of a tree, and with an enormous effort hauled the giant into his chariot. Then he whipped up the white mares, who galloped so fast it seemed they were flying. With one bound they leaped the Scamander, pulling the chariot through the air after them, and sped behind the Greek lines.

But now the Trojans were free to ford the river, storm the fosse, break the ramparts, and burn the ships. With the flight of Ulysses and Ajax, with Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Machaon wounded—and Achilles still refusing to fight—the battle had definitely turned in favor of the Trojans.

But now Poseidon had decided. He could not retrace the process by which he had made the decision—but he recognized an enormous urgent partiality toward the Greeks. He lost no time. He sent a message by a naiad who swam underwater to a marg of the Inner Sea where a river cuts its way to the shore. There the naiad rose to the surface and sang a summoning song, which was answered by a nereid, a river nymph. She arose, tall, naked, brown-haired, and dripping, to meet her green-haired cousin. The naiad whispered the message to the nereid who swam upstream to the source of the river—a spring on the slope of the mountain. She arose from the water, sleek as an otter, and sang a summoning song. A song answered—far and coming near. Running over the fields came a troop of dryads or wood-nymphs. The nereid spoke to their leader, a tall, black-haired nymph with suave satiny muscles tightening her brown skin.

“I will bear the message, cousin,” cried the dryad, laughing.

She ran up the slope again, followed by her troop, screaming and laughing. The nereid watched them until they disappeared into a grove of trees, then dived back into the river and floated downstream. The tall dryad ran to a certain grove on the slope of Olympus where she knew Hera was wont to hunt. There she found the goddess holding a hooded falcon on her wrist, instructing it—which she did quite fluently. She was queen of the air and spoke the language of falcons and of all birds. The dryad knelt before her.

“A message from Poseidon, oh queen.”

“What have you to do with Poseidon, hussy?” cried Hera, who, like her falcon, would not be in good humor until their first kill. “Has he been hunting on these slopes again? Does he not have naiads aplenty that he must seek my dryads of the Sacred Grove? Why, he’s as insatiable as his elder brother, if that is possible.”

“Pardon me, queen,” said the Dryad. “But I was not given this message by him, personally. It was brought by a nereid who swam upstream from the Inner Sea—and she had it from a naiad sent by the Lord of the Deep with this message to be given to you, and you alone.”

“What is it?”

“He wishes to meet with you on a matter of much urgency. He will meet you halfway on the isle of Patmos.”

“Urgent for him or for me?”

“A most important affair,” he said, “which he could confide to your ear alone, but that you would rejoice to hear.”

“Thank you then for the message,” said Hera.

She uncinched the falcon from her wrist, and gave it to the dryad.

“Take him back to the palace for me. Catch a rabbit and feed it to him, fur and all. But take care of your fingers.”

Hera whistled. A chariot appeared, drawn by eagles. She mounted the chariot, uttered a piercing eagle scream, and sped away off the mountain toward the blue puddle of the sea.

Poseidon’s residence on Patmos was a great cave. He received Hera very courteously.

“Sister, forgive me for bringing you this distance. Had I come to visit you on Olympus, the wrong ear might have heard us speak, and a tattling tongue borne our business to Zeus.”