The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth Page A

outside the tent. The brain-soft Nestor, again growing restive—and perhaps jogged by these details of the gutted hare—raised his lamenting voice again, sought to return to that ancient disemboweling of Itymoneus or Iphitomenos, only to be silenced again by the pigeon notes of his dutiful sons on either side.
    Taking advantage of this diversion and the breathing space it brought with it, Calchas moved forward and turned to the King and bowed low. On behalf of all, he asked for time to interpret the meaning of what they had heard, a day and a night for reflection. He heard the request granted and uttered thanks, struggling to control his voice, to betray nothing of the trembling he felt within him at his first dim perception of who it might be that had spoken to them through the belly and throat of this staring man.

5.
    Poimenos was waiting for him outside and supported him back to his own tent. Once there, however, he could not rest. He sent the boy away and covered his face and head with a dark cloth and sat in the close heat of his body, seeking through this warmth and enclosure to find again a time before he knew a difference between his body and the space surrounding it. He felt the run of the sweat on his brow and chest. In the darkness under the head cloth the tranced face of the man took form again, uttering the words that had been forced from his mouth, the lie that had changed from lie to truth as it was uttered, truth for everyone present in that tent, but most of all for him, servant of the Divine Companion, who united male and female in one being and blended them like water and the light on water. It could only be she, the Lady, whom the Greeks knew as Artemis, one of her many names, protectress of the young, mistress of wild things, goddess of childbirth. Always alert for opportunity, she had found the slack mind and the slack mouth, and used them to warn of a price to be paid. The eagles were from Zeus, yes, but the pregnant hare was hers.
    In a day and a night he would have to announce this to the King. The reader of omens takes the omen for himself, takes it over, makes it his own, together with the danger of it. Calchas felt fear in the darkness, felt it in all the pulses of his body, customary fever, companion of all his travels. With it came the need for a time apart, in which to consider. He would have to get away from the camp for a while and for that he would require the King’s permission—there was no leaving without it. Agamemnon needed, demanded, to know where he was at all times of the day and night; in the hours of his insomnia he would send a summons, or at the moment of waking, the sweat of his dreams still on him. And he was sudden now and terrible in his rages. Poimenos had brought back from the gossip of the camp the story of the slave boy who for spilling water had been struck so heavily by the King that he had lain lost to the world for most of a day and now did not put words together in a connected way. Even when Agamemnon was not enraged, Calchas sensed a malignancy that was new, felt it in the glances he received, even when his understanding was being asked for. It was as if the King, hating his own misery, had begun also to hate those who were witness to it.
    There was a cave shrine to Potnia, the Lady, on the island, just across the narrow water. Calchas had heard the priests of Zeus inveigh against it in their regular processions through the camp, denouncing the presence of an ancient pollution, this nearness of unclean earth cults, pointing to it as one of the causes of their troubles. It was there he would ask leave to go.
    The wind had strengthened, he heard it loud in the scrub of the hillsides and felt it push against his face as he walked the short distance to Agamemnon’s tent. He spoke to the armed guards at the entrance, was checked for hidden weapons, as everyone now must be who sought audience with the King. One of the guards went inside, returning