Circe

He spent his days working on the ship. In the evenings, we would sit before the hearth while the men ate their suppers, and at night he came to my bed. His shoulders were thick, carved from his warrior hours. I ran my hands across his ragged scars. There were pleasures there, but in truth the greater pleasure was after, when we lay together in the darkness and he told me stories of Troy, conjuring the war for me spear by spear. Proud Agamemnon, leader of the host, brittle as badly tempered iron. Menelaus, his brother, whose wife Helen’s abduction had begun the war. Brave, dull-brained Ajax, built like a mountainside. Diomedes, Odysseus’ ruthless right hand. And then the Trojans: handsome Paris, laughing thief of Helen’s heart. His father, white-bearded Priam, king of Troy, beloved by the gods for his gentleness. Hecuba, his queen with a warrior’s spirit, whose womb had borne so many noble fruits. Hector, her eldest, noble heir and bulwark to his great walled city.

And Odysseus, I thought. The spiral shell. Always another curve out of sight.

I began to see what he’d meant when he had talked of his army’s weakness. It was not their sinews that had wavered, but their discipline. There had never been a parade of prouder men, more fractious and unyielding, each certain the war would fail without them.

“Do you know who truly wins wars?” he asked me one night.

We lay on the rugs at the foot of my bed. Moment by moment, his vitality had returned. His eyes were bright now, storm-lit. When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell I knew that could equal it. The gift was his alone.

“The generals take the credit, of course, and indeed they provide the gold. But they are always calling you into their tent and asking for reports of what you’re doing instead of letting you go do it. The songs say it is heroes. They are another piece. When Achilles puts on his helmet and cleaves his red path through the field, the hearts of common men swell in their chests. They think of the stories that will be told, and they long to be in them. I fought beside Achilles. I stood shield to shield with Ajax. I felt the wind and fan of their great spears. Those soldiers, of course, are yet another piece, for though they are weak and unsteady, when they are harnessed together they will carry you to victory. But there is a hand that must gather all those pieces and make them whole. A mind to guide the purpose, and not flinch from war’s necessities.”

“And that is your part,” I said. “Which means you are like Daedalus after all. Only instead of wood, you work in men.”

The look he gave me. Like purest, unmixed wine. “After Achilles died, Agamemnon named me Best of the Greeks. Other men fought bravely, but they flinched from war’s true nature. Only I had the stomach to see what must be done.”

His chest was bare and hatched with scars. I tapped it lightly, as if sounding what lay within. “Such as?”

“You promise mercy to spies so they will spill their story, then you kill them after. You beat men who mutiny. You coax heroes from their sulks. You keep spirits high at any cost. When the great hero Philoctetes was crippled with a festering wound, the men lost their courage over it. So I left him behind on an island and claimed he had asked to be left. Ajax and Agamemnon would have battered at Troy’s locked gates until they died, but it was I who thought of the trick of the giant horse, and I spun the story that convinced the Trojans to pull it inside. I crouched in the wooden belly with my picked men, and if any shook with terror and strain, I put my knife to his throat. When the Trojans finally slept, we tore through them like foxes among soft-feathered chicks.”

These were no songs to sing before a court, no tales from the great golden age. Yet somehow in his mouth they did not seem dishonorable, but just and inspired and wisely pragmatic.

“Why did you go to war in the first place, if you knew what the other kings were like?”

He rubbed at his cheek. “Oh, because of a foolish oath I swore. I tried to get out of it. My son was a year old, and I still felt new-married. There would be other glories, I thought, and when Agamemnon’s man came to collect me I pretended to be mad. I went out naked and began plowing a winter field. He put my infant son in the blade’s path. I stopped, of course, and so I was collected with the rest.”

A bitter paradox, I thought: to keep his son he had to lose him.

“You must have been angry.”