The Mammoth Book of Classical Whodunnits

Book 165: Mammoth Books

by Mike Ashley

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

In the golden days of Ancient Greece and Rome, amidst the splendid art and architecture, the philosophy and politics - there was always a full measure of intrigue, mystery and murder. In this new collection twenty-two writers take up their pens to give an enthralling picture of classical crime. Favourite historical detectives such as Gordianus the Finder, Decius Metellus, and Sister Fidelma rub shoulders with eminent temporary sleuths such as Socrates and that honourable man Brutus, whilst other great names - Augustus, Archimedes, and even the spoilt and beautiful goddess of love, Aphrodite herself - also become enmeshed in terrible and ingenious crimes. Contributors include: Keith Heller Edward D. Hoch Phyllis Ann Karr Theodore Mathieson Amy Myers Wallace Nichols Anthony Price Steven Saylor Darrell Schweitzer Brian Stableford Keith Taylor and many more

Release date: February 11, 2014

Publisher: C & R Crime

Print pages: 379

Sample

This anthology brings together twenty whodunnits set in the great days of ancient Greece and Rome. The stories span over fifteen hundred years from the time of the Trojan War to the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. On our journey through time we will encounter the detective skills of Socrates, Alexander the Great, Archimedes, Brutus, Epictetus, Apollonius of Tyana and, believe it or not, the goddess Aphrodite.

I am delighted that the anthology contains stories by Steven Saylor, John Maddox and Ron Burns, each of whom is closely associated with mysteries set in the Roman world, as well as the man who started it all, Wallace Nichols. Other popular writers of detective and mystery fiction have here turned their minds to the ancient world – Amy Myers, Edward Hoch, Anthony Price, Keith Heller and Peter Tremayne, whilst others, not normally associated with mystery fiction, have taken up the challenge – Keith Taylor, Brian Stableford, Phyllis Ann Karr and Darrell Schweitzer. Fifteen of the stories are brand new, written especially for this anthology. Only two have appeared in book form before.

Some of the authors look behind the curtain of history and present what, for all we know, may be the true story. Perhaps the stories contained here tell us what really happened concerning the founding of Rome, the deaths of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and the exile of Ovid. And what happened to Roman law on the day the Roman Empire collapsed?

Here you will find stories set all over the classical world, from Athens to Alexandria, and from Troy to ancient Britain. In all of them you will find ingenious crimes with ingenious solutions. Poisoning was perhaps the most popular means of disposing of an enemy in ancient Rome, so it is not surprising that several of these stories use poison as the weapon, but it is fascinating to see in how many different ways the lethal dose might have been administered and how the crime is solved. One story contains perhaps the most bizarre death of a victim I have ever encountered – in (yes, in) a tree.

When I first considered compiling a volume of detective stories set entirely in the ancient world I was a little unsure if there were enough good stories around. I knew there were plenty of good writers, but would they be interested? Maybe they would be too busy? I was staggered at the response. I ended up with more stories than I had ever expected, and this book is far bigger as a result. I must thank all the contributors for their inventiveness, and for meeting such tight deadlines. May I give special thanks to Steven Saylor, who not only wrote a new Gordianus the Finder story but also provided an insightful preface. I’m also delighted to be able to publish the very first story by Claire Griffen. May I also thank my editor, Jan Chamier, for her remarkable patience and help during moments of crisis.

So, with no more ado, let me hand over to Steven Saylor to open the doors on the Golden Age of Crime.

Mike Ashley

April 1996



Steven Saylor

Why do you work in passions, lies, devices full of treachery, love-magics, murder in the home?

Euripides, Helen, 1103–4

Not long ago I wrote a story called ‘Murder Myth-Begotten’, in which two modern-day, would-be matricides (any resemblance to Orestes and Electra being entirely intentional) try to persuade their vulgar, anti-intellectual mother (more like Medea than Clytaemnestra) to read the Classics. ‘They’re not dry at all,’ insists the snooty daughter. ‘You’re always reading those tawdry murder mysteries and awful true-crime books. Well, the Greek tragedies are full of murders. That’s what they’re all about. Lurid, shocking stuff!’

That may be simplifying things a bit, but it’s no coincidence that the Oxford don who spends his day lecturing about Euripides may curl up at night with Colin Dexter, or that the insatiable reader of Agatha Christie may just as avidly devour I, Claudius. The inspirational link between the ancient world and the modern mystery story – the happy circumstance which has produced the stories in this volume – is hardly surprising. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King can be read as a stunning whodunnit (in more ways than one!); Cicero’s defense orations tell stories as seamy and gripping as today’s courtroom thrillers; Polyaenus gives us the nuts and bolts of Classical espionage, revealing how ancient spymasters concealed their secret messages; and for surefire page-turners, full of sex, murder, politics and poison, Plutarch and Suetonius set the standards. It seems to me only reasonable (indeed, irresistible) to draw upon these sources not only for themes and inspiration, but more directly, recasting their stories for modern readers in the form of the modern murder mystery.

Reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose first convinced me that the combination of historical and mystery fiction could be sublime; reading Cicero’s defense of Sextus Roscius, a man accused of murdering his father, inspired me to try my own hand at the game with my first novel, Roman Blood. I originally intended to make Cicero himself the narrator, but the more I got to know him, the less I savored the idea of spending twenty-four hours a day with such a prig – and so my detective-hero, Gordianus the Finder, came into being. Reading between the lines of Cicero’s oration, researching the era, placing the trial in its political context, and walking with Gordianus down the mean streets of Rome, circa 80 BC, I stumbled upon an insidious conspiracy that spanned all levels of society and ultimately reached to the highest circles of power. Snooping through the musty stacks of the San Francisco Public Library and rushing home to pound the keys of my Macintosh, I often felt as exhilarated and edgy as a hero in a John Grisham thriller, carrying dangerous (albeit 2,000-year-old) secrets in my head.

And there you have the great pleasure of writing the historical mystery: the detective work. You begin with a crime. You research (investigate) the long-ago scene, interrogate the long-dead witnesses, evaluate the suspects and their motives. One clue leads to another. You backtrack; in a book opened by chance, you come across a name that’s vaguely familiar and suddenly realize how it fits in, and with a thrill you discover a whole new set of suspicious circumstances. You start to get so close to the truth that you can almost taste it . . .

All historical researchers know this excitement of discovering the past, but for the researcher with the goal of constructing a murder mystery, the game is especially complex and rewarding. This is because of the built-in Aristotelian closure of the genre: the murder mystery, by definition, must have a beginning, middle, and end. The research – the detective work – is never an end in itself, but a search for the unique resolution that will restore order and meaning to a universe thrown out of kilter by crime.

Such a pursuit would have been understood intuitively, I think, by our old friends, the ancient Greeks and Romans. They knew what hubris was and where it inevitably led. They understood the agency of Nemesis. Yet they realized, too, that guilt and innocence are seldom simple matters, and they doggedly explored, in their laws as in their stories, all the possible, mysterious permutations of justice, retribution and revenge.



Amy Myers

Amy Myers should need no introduction to devotees of historical mysteries. Her novels about the Victorian cordon bleu chef and solver of mysteries, Auguste Didier, which began with Murder in Pug’s Parlour (1986), are immensely popular. But her presence in a volume of classical mysteries may seem a little surprising. Amy, however, was keen to bring her special skills to the ancient world, particularly the time when history became legend. She takes us back to the dawn of the ancient Greek world, to the time when men were heroes and heroes were gods (or was it the other way round?) – to the time of the Trojan War. And though our sleuth is none other than the goddess Aphrodite, don’t imagine Amy pulls any supernatural punches. She abides by the rules. Though her tongue remains firmly in her cheek throughout.



‘Murder? Me? You accuse me falsely, O Cow-Faced Lady of the Golden Throne.’ (Goodness knows why Hera always considers this appellation such a compliment.)

I burst into tears with one of my splendid hyacinth-blue orbs carefully on Father – sorry, Great Zeus the Thunderer, ruler of the heavens. You can never be sure which way Father is going to rumble; he is terrified of Cow-Faced Lady, otherwise known as his wife.

I had been rudely summoned to a full council of the gods in the Hall of the Golden Floor just when I was anointing my golden body with a most delightful oil of violets. There they all were, the happy family: Pallas Athene, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, Dionysus, even Uncle Poseidon had turned up for the occasion, not to mention every nymph and naiad who could scramble into her gauze knick-knacks in time. And I, Aphrodite, goddess of laughter and love, was promptly not only accused but apparently convicted. Father cleared his throat, his sable brows twitching, and decided to thunder a little. Coward. ‘Hera has justification, daughter. A dead body had been found and one of my thunderbolts is missing.’

‘Hera’s always been jealous of me, just because I’m Dione’s daughter, not hers.’ My mother, the goddess of moisture, was a bête noire of Hera’s, just like Thetis, Europa, Leda and all the other thousands of ladies whom Zeus had favoured with his own private thunderbolt.

‘Is that why you’re always weeping, O laughter-loving Aphrodite?’ enquired the Poisoned Dart of the Flashing Helmet, otherwise known as Pallas Athene. Like Hera, she thought those dull long-haired Greeks were the sacrificial sheep’s whiskers, just because when she, Hera and I paraded our charms for Paris of Troy on Mount Ida, he awarded the Golden Apple Prize for beauty to me. Well, naturally. How was I to know when I told him he could have of Helen, the fairest woman in all the world, in exchange, that it would start the Trojan War, which after nearly ten years was still raging? We may be immortal, up here on Olympus, but we’re not omniscient, nor omnipotent, not even the Thunderer himself, though he likes to pretend he is. He may be sovereign administrator for Destiny, but he can’t decide it, and he does tend to nod off from time to time.

I ignored her. Just wait till she pleaded for my kestos next time, my magic girdle in which my immortal aphrodisiac powers reside. She needed it. These Amazonian types couldn’t seduce a centaur without it. It all comes of her having leapt out of Zeus’ head fully armed instead of being conceived in the usual far more interesting manner which is my domain.

‘But why me?’ I wailed.

The Mighty Son of Cronos lost patience with me; his nectar must have been off this morning. ‘Because the blasted body belongs to Prince Anchises,’ Zeus thundered. ‘What else can we think?’

I put my hands over my shell-like ears. I was truly shocked. ‘But I wouldn’t kill Anchises.’ (Give me half a chance!) ‘He is the father of my beloved son.’

‘Which one?’ enquired my husband Hephaestus, with a rare flash of what passed for wit with him. We have no children, the god of the forge being too hot to handle. I ignored him too. I usually do.

‘Aphrodite,’ Father said more kindly. ‘You’ve been threatening to punish Anchises ever since you heard he’d been boasting about his relationship with you. Now his body has been found on Mount Ida. Near my shrine,’ he added crossly.

Mount Ida! The very place where Anchises and I had consecrated our love – he had looked so sweet lying there asleep with that natty little leather apron awry exposing a truly princelike appendage. He was serving the usual shepherd’s apprenticeship obligatory for Trojan princes (even the junior line to which he belonged), a year out to see how other folks lived. I just had to swoop on him there and then. Darling pious Aeneas was the result, and Anchises never let anyone forget it.

‘But, Mighty Zeus, I didn’t touch your thunderbolt.’

‘The thunderbolt store in the Chamber of the Golden Bed was rifled.’

‘But there is no proof I did it.’

‘There is.’ The sable brows looked even blacker, and my peerless knees began to tremble. ‘All the gods with keys, save you, have sworn that they were all occupied in” – Zeus paused – “amorous nocturnal occupations. I’ve already decided only you could have stolen the thunderbolt.’

I pleaded with him, but this time all my beauty and winning ways failed to move him. It was just my bad luck that this was the one day in a thousand when he didn’t need the help of my girdle to carry out his busy agenda.

Then he delivered his verdict: ‘I sentence you to be expelled from Olympus, and thrown down to my brother Hades in the Underworld.’

‘You can’t do that.’ I was horrorstricken. ‘They only eat pomegranate seeds down there, and they wear the most dull clothes. Who’s going to do my hair?’ I’d only just got the Graces trained to curl my tresses properly over the shoulders – Thalia, I think (otherwise known as Good Cheer. She’s always giggling anyway).

It was then I had my first bright idea. There’s always been a rumour flying around that just because I’m beautiful, and loving, and kind, I haven’t a brain in my head. What happened now was to disprove all that for ever.

‘I claim the right to see the body. I wish to gaze once more upon the body of my love before it is swallowed by the funeral pyre,’ I intoned as dolorously as I could. Even now I can’t imagine why this brainwave struck me, but it was to save me from a fate of immortal death.

Zeus coughed, and ostentatiously looked round his ‘council’, though he takes all the decisions. ‘I see no reason why not,’ he ventured. There’s courage for you!

‘She must be guarded,’ snapped Hera.

‘I’ll send Paean with her. A medical man might be useful.’

‘He’s a fatuous old fool. She’ll twist him round her slippery body,’ quoth the Queen of the Sour Grapes, Pallas Athene, of the gods’ physician. Who’d have sisters – well, half-sisters?

‘Ares, you go too,’ Zeus barked.

I tried not to look too overjoyed. I’d always fancied the god of war. At least he is a real man, not a Hephaestus, roaring around like an ox in a nectar-cup shop, or mooning over nymphs like sneaky Sun God Apollo.

Ares stepped to my side with alacrity, I was pleased to see.

‘Do you wish to chain me?’ I asked in a low seductive voice.

He turned red. ‘I don’t usually, not the first time,’ he stuttered.

One-track minds these gods! Really, what could he have thought I meant? I arched my body towards him, aware that my wondrous breasts were shimmering sensuously through my diaphanous gown.

‘Can we take the golden chariot, Mighty Zeus?’ I asked winningly. No one seems to credit that we goddesses can get tired winging through the air, on our own two feet as it were, and Olympus is some way from Ida.

Zeus hesitated, obviously noticing Queen Hera’s glare. Surely it wasn’t her day for visiting Grandma Rhea? ‘In the interests of speed, yes.’

Splendid. I’d pick up darling Aeneas on the way, and hope Zeus was safely tucked up in bed with Cow-Faced Lady so that he didn’t spot this diversion from his orders.

I do dislike dead bodies, particularly of my former lovers. Today, however, my future was at stake. Odd that the body was on Mount Ida, almost exactly in the place where Anchises and I had made love. And ever afterwards he’d had the nerve to boast about bedding a goddess! I summoned up my courage and approached the body where it lay on the ground under an olive tree, blackened to the point of unrecognizability, but indisputably wearing the remains of clothes of the royal house of Sacred Troy. The emblem of the crane was quite unmistakable; what’s more, there was only one crane, and King Priam’s brood had two. That meant it was Aeneas or Anchises. And as my beloved son was at my side . . .

Aeneas promptly burst into tears. ‘Father,’ he wailed.

To tell you the truth, I find Aeneas rather dull. I get quite worried about him; he’s plumpish, shortish, not much of a fighter, a little pompous, and he seems to have no interest in women whatsoever, and that includes his wife, Creusa. Why can’t he be more like his half-brother, Eros? I have lectured him on it many times, but he talks nothing but politics and the need to found nations. I blame his father. He’d always borne a grudge because he was from the junior branch of the family. I even offered Aeneas the most beautiful – sorry, second most beautiful after Helen – woman in the world, but no.

I felt I had better make a show of sorrow, so I flung myself over Anchises’ body and wept in a most convincing manner, while Aeneas sobbed on at my side.

‘Darling Paean,’ I said tremulously, as soon as I dared recover from my grief, ‘are you sure that’s a thunderbolt strike? Couldn’t he have burned himself some other way?’

Paean rather reluctantly took a closer look at the body. He’s past it, but what can you do? He’s got a job for immortality.

I averted my eyes from the blackened face and arms – I’m always a leg lady anyway – so I concentrated on the way they peeped out from under the ducky little short apron, and tried to recall the desire I had once felt for him. Instead I recalled my own, very present, plight.

‘He’s under a tree,’ I observed hopefully to Paean. ‘Perhaps he was accidentally struck by lightning.’

‘Zeus rules all thunder and lightning.’

I glared at him. Silly old fool. Perhaps I’d have to sleep with him. Fortunately I was to be spared this ordeal. A new lease of immortality now seemed to overcome Paean as he developed a morbid interest in the blackened corpse. He took various nasty instruments out of his golden leather case, and carried out investigations which I preferred not to watch. At last, he staggered to his feet: ‘There’s no evidence of thunderbolt blackening to his air passages, and there are no signs of hyperaemia.’

I didn’t want a long lecture – Zeus made me sit through one by Aesculapius once in an attempt to educate me – so I asked hastily: ‘And what does that mean?’

‘It means Anchises could well have been dead before the thunderbolt struck. Did you notice?’ he asked me brightly.

I think I would have done, I was tempted to reply, but refrained. It does not do to be too laughter-loving at the older gods.

At that moment, due no doubt to Paean’s investigations, the leather apron, partly burned away, slipped a little further, and the belly I had once admired so intimately was in view. Then I let out a shriek.

‘This isn’t Anchises!’

‘Not now. His soul has left us, Mother.’ Aeneas heaved again.

‘It isn’t his body,’ I insisted. ‘You can rejoice, my son.’ (Even if I had mixed feelings. I could cheerfully have wished Anchises in Hades, but I wasn’t going to share this with Aeneas.) ‘I remember Anchises’ body quite distinctly. It was flawless. Look at that.’

Gods and man stared down at a huge strawberry-shaped birthmark on the side of the belly which the thunderbolt had not affected.

‘Aeneas, you must know he has no birthmark. You bathe with him, don’t you?’

‘Then my father lives,’ Aeneas exclaimed joyfully.

‘Apparently without his clothes,’ I pointed out brightly. ‘How typical.’

‘My father lives.’ So dull, Aeneas. It takes time for things to sink in. ‘Thanks be to Zeus.’

‘And thanks be to your mother,’ I added pointedly.

Then Paean suddenly got the professional bit between his teeth. ‘Who is it, if not Anchises?’ He seemed to be addressing me.

‘Paean, I have seen many mortals in the nude, not to mention gods, in the course of my profession, but even I am unable to identify a man by a birthmark.’

Ares decided to weigh in. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ he pointed out reprovingly. ‘I’ve been running it. Of course there are dead bodies lying around. Someone wanted us to think they’d killed Anchises.’

‘But why should the Greeks bring the body here if they wished to pretend it was my father?’ Aeneas asked, having got over his awe at having three gods to chat with.

‘To frame me,’ I cried indignantly. I don’t mind being framed by the likes of Botticelli, but I draw the line at Pallas Athene playing tricks like this.

‘With Anchises’ assistance?’ Paean asked doubtfully. ‘How did they get his clothes?’

‘You are clever, Paean,’ Ares said approvingly. (You could have fooled me.) ‘Unless they’ve killed him too.’

‘Ay, me, alack,’ was all my son could offer.

No one took any notice, so he said it again somewhat louder. ‘When you told me, Gracious Mother, the body of my father had been found, I feared the Greeks had captured and slaughtered him.’

‘Thank you, my son.’ I was surprised and grateful that at least he had not blamed me.

‘Now I suspect it is a dastardly plan by the House of Priam.’

I was startled. Old King Priam of Troy is waging the war so incompetently, he appears to have no plans at all, dastardly or not.

‘Mother, Great King Priam dreads a rising against him in Troy, because there is still no end to this war in sight; he believes any such rising would unite under my father Anchises. My father and I, loyal as we are, have feared for our lives. Now I know my father lives, I am happy again.’ He cried to prove it.

‘Oh, my beloved son.’ All my few maternal instincts came to the fore. ‘Do you not see? The House of Priam would not dare kill Anchises; they would incur Zeus’ wrath.’ I was in no doubt of this. Father thinks this war is his own private chessboard and gets very upset if a pawn is removed without his say-so. Ares, god of war, is merely around to roar a little, in Father’s view.

‘And my wrath also,’ Ares put in indignantly. ‘It might affect my war.’

‘True.’ I fluttered my eyelashes at him, but for once my mind was elsewhere. ‘But do you not see, if they buried this stranger as Anchises, they would achieve the same object without offending the mighty gods?’ Apart from me, I thought crossly.

‘Let’s bury the body here,’ Ares rumbled eagerly. ‘Then they’ll be thwarted.’

‘Hold on, I’ve been thinking,’ I said quickly, as Paean appeared about to agree. ‘Zeus will throw me to Hades if I don’t come back with some evidence of who this man was.’ Blood drained from my rosy-hued cheeks. ‘I need that body.’

‘I can’t take it to Olympus,’ Paean decreed, pompous idiot. ‘It’s dead. It would be against all the rules. I’d have to get a special dispensation from Hades.’

I made an immediate decision. ‘Then I shall take the body to Troy myself and demand to know who did this terrible deed.’

‘If you’re right,’ Aeneas said slowly, ‘then it must be King Priam himself or more likely one of his sons. Great Hector of the Flashing Armour is the most likely. Or sly Helenus, Seer of the Second Sight. Or, of course, Paris.’

I bristled. ‘Paris?’ I asked dangerously.

Belatedly my son remembered I was a goddess, fell to his knees, and paid a few overdue obeisances. ‘He is a good and honest prince,’ he conceded hastily, ‘but much under the influence of Hector, Helenus and Helen.’

I forgave him. I’ve always been ambivalent about Helen. ‘Very well. I will come to Troy, demand to know which of them is responsible, and then make full report to Olympus.’

‘You will terrify them into silence with your goddess aura.’

‘That’s true.’ I thought for a moment. Just as I did so, I thought I saw a girl watching us from the shelter of some trees; it was a face that rang a bell with me, but I couldn’t place it. Then she was gone. But it put an idea in my mind. ‘I’ll come in disguise.’ One power we immortals do have is the ability to take on any disguise we like, provided it’s mortal. ‘I’ll come as a sixteen-year-old vestal virgin.’

Ares shouted with laughter, and I began to change my mind about his desirability. ‘In Troy?’

‘Why not come as Hecuba?’ my son suggested.

‘That old hag?’ Priam’s consort was as ancient as he was.

‘She is the queen as well as wife and mother.’

Reluctantly I saw some sense in this. If anyone could strike fear into my Trojan heroes, it was her.

I left Aeneas to struggle back across the plain with the body slung across his horse’s saddle. Ares had obligingly magicked one up from a local farm, since I thought Father might notice if his chariot came back minus one horse. It was a night’s journey to Troy from Mount Ida, and apart from ensuring that Aeneas wasn’t slaughtered by the Greek army en route, it gave me time to make my report to Zeus. I found him in the Ambrosia Room, it being about time for supper. The sounds of Apollo strumming on that awful lyre drifted in from the Room of the Marble Columns. Only Hebe, the Bearer of the Mighty Cup, was flitting around in the dining chamber pouring nectar and she doesn’t count, so I told Zeus my news immediately.

‘Not Anchises? Then where the devil is he? I’ve seen nothing of him.’

‘That, Father, is what I propose to find out.’

He gave me a suspicious look. ‘Not going to bump him off, are you? I still haven’t found that thunderbolt.’

‘Of course not. How could I? I loved him once,’ I said virtuously. Several times, actually.

‘Two days, and then I want a full statement of what happened. And proof. I must say, Aphrodite, you’re quite a girl,’ he added approvingly. ‘I never thought you had it in you. Of course, you’re my daughter.’

‘I have both your brains and beauty, Father,’ I oozed.

Ten minutes later I was on my way, having snatched only the merest mouthful of ambrosia from the kitchens en route.

‘Great Queen, Wise Hecuba, welcome!’

‘Mighty King Priam, honoured husband, greetings.’ What a bore, I thought. Suppose he kissed me? I hadn’t thought to investigate their marital relations before I shot in.

I had materialized inside the door of his council chamber just in time. Trumpets were sounding in the audience chamber to announce Aeneas’ arrival. Hecuba herself, I had observed, was over having a woman’s chat with her daughter Cassandra at the temple. She’d be hours; Cassandra is not only a bore when she pontificates about the future, she’s a very slow bore.

I swept out in Priam’s waddling wake (longing to kick his chiton-clad bottom), having already sent slaves to fetch Hector, Helenus and – if he could be prised out of Helen’s bed – Paris. Aeneas was right, those were the three of Mighty Priam’s mighty large brood who were the obvious suspects. Fortunately they didn’t have far to come. Priam had adapted his palace into about fifty rather tasteful apartments for his children, their families, and the lesser royals. The only clever thing he’d ever thought of, keeping everyone under his ageing eye.

We lined ourselves up in the royal pecking order down the raised steps of the chamber; Priam at the front, me slightly behind him, winking at Aeneas, then Mighty Hector of the Solid Muscle Body, Helenus of the Slim Sexy one, and Paris, once my darling boy, now rather going to seed. One of them, I told myself, was a murderer, and I was going to find out who.

‘I demand justice, O King.’ Aeneas draped the body tastefully at his feet.

Priam did a good imitation of a startled monarch. ‘The Prince Anchises!’

‘His clothes only. A stranger lies within them.’

‘Then why bother us with it?’ Helenus piped up.

I always knew he was the intelligent one of the family.

Aeneas turned wounded eyes towards him, as he trotted out the line I’d suggested to him. ‘The corpse was found on Mount Ida near to the shrine of Mighty Zeus, Son of Cronos. He will rise up in anger against Troy if he is not appeased and grant his favour to the Achaeans.’ (The latter are the Greeks to you and me, but I told you Aeneas was a little pompous.)

Hector began to display more interest. ‘Are you sure it’s not your father?’ he asked rather wistfully.

‘I am,’ my son replied with some dignity. ‘I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.’

Hector drew a dagger from his belt. ‘Meet me in combat, Prince Aeneas. Now.’

‘It’s the Greeks you’re supposed to meet in combat,’ Priam pointed out irritably. You can see why he thinks he’s a great king.

Hector’s reply was drowned by the trumpets blaring out again, a thing they did with monotonous regularity. Could it be Anchises himself, I wondered, come to my aid? For once I’d be glad to see him. Then I realized. All those oohs and aahs in the corridor outside, together with the heady cloud of perfume already discernible advancing between the marble columns could mean only one thing: the face that launched a thousand ships was on her way, Helen of Troy. Or, strictly speaking, of Sparta, once wife of King Menelaus and one of my biggest mistakes.

In she swept, while we all gave the routine gasp at her beauty; golden tresses shimmered, silver diadems glinted, wondrous breasts poked demurely out under her wrap-around silk gown. She opened her limpid blue, blue eyes upon me and made straight for me. ‘Great Mother,’ she began.

I tried to listen patiently, but it was hard. In giving Paris the most beautiful woman in the world I had been extremely self-sacrificing, for I fancied him myself, an