Lord of the Silver Bow by David Gemmell Page A

make Anchises laugh. But his best stories—even the one about the virgin and the scorpion—scarcely creased the king’s stern features, and his eyes remained cold.
    Odysseus was almost relieved when Aeneas, barefoot and dressed in a linen tunic, came running into the
megaron
and skidded to a halt in front of the king.
    “Have I missed everything, Father? Am I too late?”
    “Missed what? What are you talking about, Aeneas?” Anchises asked impatiently, his icy eyes turning to the dark-haired woman who followed the boy into the chamber.
    “The stories, Father—of wild beasts and two-headed boys and adventures on the high sea,” he said, his face creased into a frown of anxiety. “I had to do my lessons,” he explained to Odysseus, who watched him with amusement.
    “I’m tired, lad, and I’ve run out of stories for the day.”
    “Come, Helikaon, don’t trouble your father and his guest,” said his mother, and took him gently by the arm. She was a woman of fragile beauty with delicate pale skin and, Odysseus thought, eyes that seemed to gaze on a different horizon. It was a look he had seen before, and he regarded the young queen with renewed interest.
    “I have told you before,” the king said harshly, “to call him by the name I gave him: Aeneas. It is a proud name.”
    The queen looked frightened and began to stammer an apology. Odysseus saw the boy’s expression change. Then he pulled away from his mother and said: “I’m going to build the biggest ship in the world when I’m older. I am to be a great hero. The gods told Mother.”
    A pretty frown creased the woman’s brow. She knelt before her son and embraced him again as Odysseus had seen her do on the balcony. She looked into the boy’s eyes as if searching for something there. Odysseus was impressed with the lad. He was very young, yet he had sensed his mother’s distress and had spoken to distract his father’s anger.
    “I know the hearts of men and heroes, boy,” he said, “and I think your mother is right.”
    “Go now,” said the king, and flicked his fingers at mother and child as if dismissing servants.
    In the three days the
Penelope
spent in Dardania the child had followed Odysseus around like an exuberant shadow. Odysseus had tolerated his company. The boy was sharp, intelligent, curious about the world around him, friendly to all comers, yet reserving an independence of thought the trader found unusual. He was fascinated by ships and extracted a promise from Odysseus to return to Dardania one day and take him on a voyage on the
Penelope.
The trader had no intention of keeping his word, but it satisfied the boy, who stood on the beach on the last day waving the trading ship goodbye until it disappeared over the horizon.
    That same summer Anchises’ wife died in a mysterious fall from a cliff. Sailors gossiped about the tragedy. One story had Anchises, known to be a coldhearted king, hurling his wife to her death. Others said she killed herself after years of suffering at Anchises’ hands. A few told more elaborate tales, saying that the queen had been possessed by Aphrodite. Odysseus dismissed that one out of hand. The idea of the goddess of love falling for a dry, dull brigand like Anchises was laughable. No, he had seen the queen’s eyes. She had been swallowing opiates. Many highborn women belonged to mysterious sects, taking part in secret revels. When young—around twelve—Odysseus had risked execution to spy on one such gathering in Ithaka. The women there had behaved with glorious abandon, dancing and singing and flinging their clothes to the ground. At one point a small goat had been brought into the clearing. The women had fallen upon it with knives, hacking it to pieces and then smearing themselves with its blood. Twelve-year-old Odysseus had been shocked and terrified and had crept away.
    Anchises’ wife was said to be a priestess of Dionysus and in that role would have experienced no difficulty acquiring