The Odyssey Read online

  High in the window of Pelicata Palace, Penelope, Queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus, looked out across the wave-striped ocean. A dark shape caught her eye, far, far out across the sea. At once she was leaning out of the window and her hands were plunged into the unpruned vine which cloaked the palace walls. ‘Odysseus! Odysseus!’

  GERALDINE MCCAUGHREAN

  INTRODUCED AND RETOLD BY

  GERALDINE MCCAUGHREAN

  Illustrations by VICTOR G. AMBRUS

  Contents

  Introduction by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Map of Odysseus’ Wanderings

  1. Yearning for Home

  2. The Sea God’s One-eyed Son

  3. The Brass Island and the Bag of Winds

  4. The Pig-Woman

  5. Alive Among the Dead

  6. Beauties and Beasts

  7. Mutiny and Murder

  8. Three Women Watching

  9. Poseidon’s Revenge

  10. A Husband for Penelope

  For Alexander Leslie Krasodomski Jones

  Introduction by

  Geraldine McCaughrean

  The Greek myths are like a great patchwork bedspread of stories, stitched together over centuries, growing and growing as the Greek Empire flung itself across more and more of the ancient world. Each new territory seized joyfully on the myths and wanted to be a part of them. ‘Do you think Heracles visited here? Bet he did!’ So they stitched themselves into the bedspread. For me, though, The Odyssey is the greatest of stories and one near the very centre of the bedspread.

  It seems to me like an advertisement for all things Greek: that willingness to explore the world and carry Greek cunning, courage and strength into every cove and port around the Mediterranean. Odysseus doesn’t mean to spend ten years meeting the world’s oddities, but he is equal to every terror, adored by every woman who sees him. How good it must have felt to be a Greek listening to the courageous adventures of Odysseus!

  The Greeks were a seagoing race – fishermen and traders, forever setting sail in small boats – and yet the voyage of Odysseus was, for them, like science fiction is for us: a journey into the unknown. You only have to think for a moment of Star Trek where the starship Enterprise flies from planet to planet, encountering new monsters and dangers every time it comes in to land. Captain Kirk is a direct descendant of Odysseus. The one story has shaped countless stories that came after.

  I return to The Odyssey time and time again; I’ve told it for all ages of reader. It has everything – monsters, giants, nymphs, fools and gods, bravery, suffering, magic and shipwreck.

  I could tease many a new story out of its characters too. Did Circe put her magic to good use after Odysseus left? Didn’t Telemachus want to see for himself all the wonders his father talked about when he got home? Great stories drop fruit from their branches, inviting you to pick up – taste! – make them your own. Do it. Savour the taste of Story – as strong today as it was in ancient Greece. And maybe the delectable fruit of The Odyssey will tempt you out on to the world-encircled sea of the Imagination. But be careful: like the lotus fruit, Story is addictive.

  1

  Yearning for Home

  The war lasted so very, very long. Then suddenly it was over in a flash of fire, a splash of blood and a trampling of horses. Men whose ships had rolled idly over a thousand tides in the bay of Troy mustered by the water’s edge in groups.

  There were many faces missing, many oars lacked a rower after ten years of war. But those who unfurled their sails, latched their oars over the oar-pins and set the tillers, were cheerful. Their masts were hung with tokens of victory and their holds were full of Trojan gold and wine. Best of all, they were going home.

  Home! To wives they had not seen for ten years, to sons who had grown from boys into young men, to daughters who had grown from babies into beauties, to farms that had lain tangled and untended under ten hot summers. A few strokes of the oar and they would be home – all those men who had answered the call to war and mustered from every island and shore of the O-round ocean.

  The long fast-ships were heaved off the sand and gravel and into deep water. Friends stood waist-deep in the sea, waving and waving and waving.

  ‘Till we meet again, Nestor!’

  ‘Until we meet again, Menelaus!’

  ‘Until we meet again, all you brave Myrmidons!’

  ‘Safe journey, Odysseus!’

  Odysseus felt the sand and gravel grate against the bottom of his ship. Then, with a rush of white water past the bow and the crack of his sail as it filled, he leaned on the tiller and turned his eyes away from the shoreline and the still-smoking ruins of Troy. He was going home to his three-island kingdom of Ithaca. His cockerel mascot crowed triumphantly on the stern rail.

  Mustered behind his own fast, black ship, like cygnets behind their swan, were eleven others all manned by men of Ithaca, Cephalonia and wooded Zanthe. At first their rowing was ragged. Their oars beat out of time for lack of practice and their shoulders burned under the Trojan sun. But gradually they settled into a rhythm – a splash, a grunt and a sigh.

  ‘Your son will be a big lad now, captain,’ said Polites.

  ‘Eleven! Almost eleven! He was only a baby when I left Ithaca. A fine help I’ve been to his mother, leaving her all alone.’

  ‘Ah, but such a lady, captain! Such a lady as never knew the meaning of impatience!’

  Odysseus looked into the distance with unfocused eyes. ‘Indeed, yes, Polites. Such a woman.’

  High in the window of Pelicata Palace, Penelope, Queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus, looked out across the wave-striped ocean. A dark shape caught her eye, far, far out across the sea. At once she was leaning out of the window and her hands were plunged into the unpruned vine which cloaked the palace walls. ‘Odysseus! Odysseus!’

  Her voice rang through the empty courtyards and tumbled over the cliff edge. Her son, Telemachus, stopped his game of archery and ran towards the house.

  But it was only the shadow of a scudding cloud, and not a ship at all. Penelope pressed her cheek against the cold stone of the window frame and steadied her breathing. Behind her, Telemachus tumbled into the room. ‘Is it him, Mama? Has Father come home from the war?’

  Penelope turned away from the window, smiling. ‘Not yet, Telemachus. I was mistaken. Not just yet.’

  A breeze sprang up. The breezes braided themselves into a wind. The wind twisted itself into a gusting gale and the gale screwed itself into a frenzy. Odysseus’ twelve ships were juggled by the waves: those on the crests and those in the troughs clashed sides as they rose and fell. The crews looked in terror at their comrades and saw them one moment against a sky crazed with lightning, the next in a valley of glazed black water, then enveloped in clouds of spray. They raised their oars but they were too slow to lower the sails, which ripped in three. Their cloaks were so wrenched at by the wind that the cords half-throttled them. Two hundred voices called on the gods, and prayers skimmed like seagulls over the teeming sea. For nine days and nights they ate sopping bread and drank rainwater, cupping it out of the bilges with their hands.

  ‘Land!’

  ‘Where? I don’t believe you!’

  ‘There! There!’

  ‘It’s a cloud.’

  ‘It’s a reef!’

  ‘It’s an island!’

  ‘We shall be driven past.’

  ‘We shall be driven on!’

  ‘We shall be broken up!’

  ‘We shall be saved,’ said Odysseus loudly and calmly, ‘and the gods are to be thanked for it.’

  The gods were indeed to be thanked. The storm died in an instant, and they found themselves on a sunlit beach of white sand. Strewn like flotsam, the twelve ships lay on their sides and the sea tickl
ed their round bellies. The crews crawled up the sand, and most fell asleep on their hands and knees.

  ‘Can we go and look for food?’ asked Eurylochus.

  ‘You don’t want to rest?’ said Odysseus in amazement.

  ‘I’ve got a wife and six daughters to get home to, and I don’t mean to keep them waiting any longer than need be, captain. I’ve been away ten years already.’

  ‘Very well. But go carefully. Take just twenty men with you: I don’t want the islanders to think we are an invasion force … and don’t get into any fights.’

  Odysseus himself was anxious to inspect the boats for any damage. So Eurylochus took men and went inland in search of food and fresh water. The sinking sun wounded the sky. The night bruised it black. And still Eurylochus did not come back.

  Odysseus waited until first light to begin the search. Leaving the ships well guarded, he took fifty men inland through the dense, luxurious trees. Velvety, succulent leaves stroked their faces. Sweet-smelling flowers drooped, heavy laden with nectar, and sprinkled their hair with pollen. There was a noise of water bubbling underground, and dark-eyed fawns peeped at them from between golden grasses.

  ‘What danger could there be in a place like this?’ whispered Polites at Odysseus’ shoulder.

  The King of Ithaca said nothing, but the hairs on the nape of his neck were lifting. No more than a mile along the green and shady path, they were dazzled by a clearing, bright with sunlit water. Round the lake stood a village. In the shade of the palm-leaf roofs, their sword-belts all unbuckled, lay Eurylochus and his twenty men as well as a pride of naked locals. The young native men and women all had long, thick hair which spilled over their shoulders and over the guests lying in the grass. They were plying their visitors with fruit from wooden bowls and, at the sight of Odysseus, leapt up smiling, and ran and took hold of the newcomers and dragged them towards the shade. Their hands were as brown as chestnuts and their skin as sticky as chestnut buds with the juice of the fruit. Their words were soft murmurs, hums like half-remembered tunes, and their mouths never once stopped smiling.

  Eurylochus smiled, too. He smiled at Odysseus as at someone whose face was dimly familiar, and his words slurred a little when he said, ‘Don’t I know you? Come and have some of this fruit. There’s plenty! Plenty! Taste it! You never tasted the like! Know you, don’t I? Do I?’

  He tossed a piece of fruit – a golden globe wrapped in a velvety skin – and Polites reached up to catch it. But Odysseus snatched the fruit out of the air and cast it into the pool. He whispered over his shoulder, ‘Tell the men: no one is to touch the fruit.’ He waved away the sticky brown hands that offered him the luscious food. Then he called out to Eurylochus, ‘What of your wife and six daughters, my friend? Will you keep them waiting while you idle here?’

  ‘Who? What? Sorry, friend, but I think you’ve got the wrong man … Wife? Daughters? Have some fruit. That’s what you need – some fruit to set your brains straight.’ And as Eurylochus spoke, the juice ran down his beard and stained his chest a sugary, crystalline gold.

  Polites was alarmed. ‘What’s the matter with him, captain? What’s the matter with all of them?’

  A native girl pressed a fruit against Odysseus’ lips until he took a grip on her wrist and pushed it away. ‘Have you never heard of the lotus-eaters, Polites?’

  ‘The lotus-eaters?’

  ‘Lotus-eaters?’

  ‘… -eaters?’

  The name echoed through the ranks of Odysseus’ fifty men and their faces turned deathly white. Odysseus leapt up on to a poolside log. ‘Courage, men! Your comrades have been eating the lotus fruit. Their memories have melted and their wits have drowned in the treacherous juice. They care nothing now for us or for the families waiting for them. Are we to abandon them here? Or shall we save them from themselves? Close up your ears and seal up your lips, and help me carry them back to the ships!’

  Round the pool they ran, pushing aside the fawning caresses of the villagers and overturning the bowls and baskets of lotus fruit. They seized on their friends – two men to one – and dragged them to their feet.

  ‘Leave us be! What are you doing? Get away! Who are you?’ shrieked the lotus-eating Greeks. ‘You barbarians! Look, if it’s the fruit you want, there’s plenty for everyone! What are you doing? Where are you taking us? Leave us be! For pity’s sake, don’t take us away from the fruit!’

  The further they were dragged away from the pool and down the shadowy path, the more desperately the advance-party struggled and pleaded and shrieked: ‘The fruit! We must take the fruit! What are you doing? We can’t leave without the fruit – we’d die! We’ll all die without it! It’s life! It’s everything! Pity us! Don’t make us leave the fruit!’

  Shutting their ears and sealing their lips, Odysseus and his party of fifty men dragged their foolish friends down towards the sea, though their sandals kicked at the ground and their hands clutched at tree branches in terror. The lotus-eating villagers pattered along behind making a murmured music with their whimpering. But as they got further from the grove where their beloved lotus trees grew, they dropped away and ran back towards the village.

  ‘Take some fruit! Please! A morsel of fruit, if you have a shred of pity in you,’ begged Eurylochus.

  ‘Should we, captain?’ asked Polites anxiously. ‘We must have food if we’re to row.’

  But Odysseus forbade one lotus fruit to be taken aboard, and the twelve ships were heaved into the surf as empty as they had come. ‘What use would it be to row if we had forgotten where we were going?’ he said. ‘Tie the lotus-eaters to their benches and don’t untie them till this place is out of sight or they’ll try to swim back.’

  And so they would, but for the strong hemp that bound them and the determination of their friends who heaved on the shining oars.

  At last their brains struggled free of the cloying nectar of the deadly fruit. They began to remember and to be ashamed. And, tight-bound to their benches, in the rolling bilges of the fast, black ships, they began to feel very seasick indeed after eating all that fruit.

  2

  The Sea God’s One-eyed Son

  One thing there was in plenty: wine. Wine looted from Trojan cellars slopped in pointed earthenware amphoras rammed deep into heaps of sand in the stern of each ship. But as for food, there was not a bite left. Odysseus allowed his men to drink a sip of the Trojan wine in the hope that it would raise their spirits. But to his horror they immediately rolled into helpless drunkenness before slumping asleep on each other’s shoulders. ‘A little too strong,’ he said to his cockerel mascot, and the cockerel shrugged its wings and fluffed out its feathers. The boats drifted, for want of rowing.

  ‘Land!’ shouted the look-out next day.

  ‘Look, vines!’

  ‘Olive trees!’

  ‘Goats!’

  ‘Let’s go and load the boats right now!’

  ‘Let’s just tread warily and take what we are given,’ said Odysseus. ‘I shall take one ship’s crew and make contact with the people living here. The rest of you moor by that little island offshore, and wait there till I send word that it’s safe to join us.’

  So one sole ship sailed up to the rocky mainland – past cliffs pitted with caves and planted with olive trees and corn. It is hard to judge size, looking inshore from a boat, or they might have wondered at the size of the cavernous cave dwellings or the height of the whiskered corn. Not a boat was moored in the bay, for the art of shipbuilding had not yet reached this remote outreach of the world. There was nobody about.

  ‘Bring that amphora of wine,’ said Odysseus. ‘We may be able to trade it for food or give it as a gift if we are received graciously.’ It took four strong men to carry the huge stone jar, slung between two oars by its looping lug handles.

  They scrambled ashore and up a path to the nearest of the caves. The smell of cheese and sheep was overpowering as they entered. The wine-bearers set down the wine and propped the oars against the shadowy re
ar wall. As they did so, they fell over a huge, soft millstone of a cheese. ‘Look at the size of this, captain! Come on, let’s take it and get out of here. It’s food enough to last us as far as Ithaca.’

  ‘What? Steal? When we could wait and be given it?’ said Odysseus a little pompously. ‘The laws of hospitality demand that our host gives us food for our journey.’

  The sinking sun shone in through the cave mouth, and as the night-insects began to chirrup, the cliff-dwellers came back from pasturing their sheep and cattle inland. The crewmen could hear pebbles, dislodged from the pathways, tumble into the sea. Then the sheep arrived.

  Sheep? They were the size of buffalo, fleecy as the bales of flax shipped in ones and twos on the great ships of Crete.

  The sheep were delicate alongside their shepherd – a monstrous landmass of flesh and bone whose knuckles trailed in the dirt and whose mouth was a cave in itself. In the centre of his forehead, rimmed with rheumy lashes, gaped a single massive eye.

  The Cyclops drove his sheep into the cave, rolled a boulder across the entrance to seal it, then revived the fire smouldering in the centre of the cave. As it flared up, it lit the oval staring faces of the astounded Greeks. The single eye gleamed as it fixed on each man in turn, and the Cyclops grinned. ‘Hello, peoplings. Aren’t you little?’

  ‘Indeed, indeed. Poor miserable specimens come to admire the famous race of one-eyed giants,’ said Odysseus (who was not just a hero and a king, but a diplomat).

  The Cyclops had difficulty in hearing the small, piping voice. He cleaned one ear with his finger. ‘Mmm. Two eyes. Almost repulsive. But I won’t let it put me off. Me, Polyphemus, I’ll try anything once.’ Reaching out, he picked up the fattest member of the crew and crammed him into that cavernous mouth.

  It happened so fast. There was no scream, no shout of protest. When the second man was taken, the Greeks set up a clamour which shook the cliff, racing from side to side of the cave and beating with their fists on the rock.