Troy
About this book
Troy begins before the Greek fleet sails. Stephen Fry traces the city's founders, the divine competitions and family histories surrounding it, the judgment of Paris, Helen's departure, and the oaths that draw a generation of kings and warriors into one expedition.
The siege brings together Achilles and Hector, Agamemnon and Priam, Odysseus, Ajax, Cassandra, Andromache, and the gods who protect or persecute them. Fry connects episodes scattered across ancient sources, keeping genealogies clear without smoothing away contradiction or comedy.
This third volume in Fry's Greek Myths sequence follows Mythos and Heroes and precedes Odyssey. Maps, family trees, illustrations, a character list, appendices, notes, and an index support a continuous retelling of the war and the stories that gather around it.
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From the opening
It Fell from Heaven
Troy. The most marvellous kingdom in all the world. The Jewel of the Aegean. Glittering Ilium, the city that rose and fell not once but twice. Gatekeeper of traffic in and out of the barbarous east. Kingdom of gold and horses. Fierce nurse of prophets, princes, heroes, warriors and poets. Under the protection of ARES, ARTEMIS, APOLLO and APHRODITE she stood for years as the paragon of all that can be achieved in the arts of war and peace, trade and treaty, love and art, statecraft, piety and civil harmony. When she fell, a hole opened in the human world that may never be filled, save in memory. Poets must sing the story over and over again, passing it from generation to generation, lest in losing Troy we lose a part of ourselves.
To understand Troy’s end we must understand her beginning. The background to our story has many twists and turns. A host of place names, personalities and families enter and exit. It is not necessary to remember every name, every relationship of blood and marriage, every kingdom and province. The story emerges and the important names will, I promise, stick.
All things, Troy included, begin and end with ZEUS, the King of the Gods, Ruler of Olympus, Lord of Thunder, Cloud-Gatherer and Bringer of Storms.
Long, long ago, almost before the dawn of mortal history, Zeus consorted with Electra, a beautiful daughter of the Titan Atlas and the sea nymph Pleione. Electra bore Zeus a son, DARDANUS, who travelled throughout Greece and the islands of the Aegean searching for a place in which he could build and raise his own dynasty. He alighted at last on the Ionian coast. If you have never visited Ionia, you should know that it is the land east of the Aegean Sea which used to be called Asia Minor, but which we know as Turkish Anatolia. The great kingdoms of Phrygia and Lydia were there, but they were already occupied and ruled over, so it was in the north that Dardanus settled, occupying the peninsula that lies below the Hellespont, the straits into which Helle fell from the back of the golden ram. Years later JASON would sail through the Hellespont on his way to find the fleece of that ram. The lovestruck Leander would swim nightly across the Hellespont to be with Hero, his beloved.fn1
The city Dardanus established was called – with little imagination and less modesty – Dardanus, while the whole kingdom took on the name Dardania.fn2 Following the founder king’s death, Ilus, the eldest of his three sons, ruled – but he died childless, leaving the throne to his brother, the middle son, ERICHTHONIUS.fn3
The reign of Erichthonius was peaceful and prosperous. In the lee of Mount Ida his lands were fed by the waters of the benign river gods Simoeis and Scamander, who blessed the land of Dardania with great fertility. Erichthonius grew to become the richest man in the known world, famous for his three thousand mares and their countless foals. Boreas, the North Wind, took the form of a wild stallion and fathered a remarkable race of horses by the filly foals of Erichthonius’s herd. These colts were so agile and light of foot they could gallop through fields of corn without bending a stalk. So they say.
Horses and riches: always, when we talk of Troy, we find ourselves talking of wondrous horses and uncountable riches.
FOUNDATION
After the death of Erichthonius, his son TROS succeeded to the throne. Tros had a daughter, Cleopatra, and three sons, ILUS (named in honour of his great-uncle), Assaracus and GANYMEDE. The story of Prince Ganymede is well known. His beauty was so great that Zeus himself was seized by an overmastering passion for him. Taking the form of an eagle, the god swooped down and bore the boy up to Olympus, where he served as Zeus’s beloved minion, companion and cupbearer. To compensate Tros for the loss of his son, Zeus sent HERMES to him, bearing the gift of two divine horses, so swift and light they could gallop over water. Tros was consoled by these magical animals and by Hermes’ assurance that Ganymede was now and – by definition always would be – immortal.fn4
It was Ganymede’s brother Prince Ilus who founded the new city that would be named Troy in Tros’s honour. He won a wrestling match at the Phrygian Games, the prize consisting of fifty youths and fifty maidens, but – more importantly – a cow. A very special cow that an oracle directed Ilus to use for the founding of a city.
‘Wherever the cow lies down, there shall you build.’
If Ilus had heard the story of CADMUS – and who had not? – he would have known that Cadmus and Harmonia, acting in accordance with instructions from an oracle, had followed a cow, and waited for the animal to lie down as an indication of where they were to build what would become Thebes, the first of the great city states of Greece. It may seem to us that the practice of allowing cows to choose where a city should be built is arbitrary and bizarre, but perhaps a little reflection should tell us that it is not so strange after all. Where there is to be a city, there must also be plentiful sources of meat, milk, leather and cheese for its citizens. Not to mention strong draught animals – oxen for ploughing fields and pulling carts. If a cow is taken enough by the amenities of a region to feel able to lie down, then it is worth paying attention. At any rate, Ilus was content to follow his prize heifer all the way north from Phrygia to the Troad,fn5 past the slopes of Mount Ida and onto the great plain of Dardania; and it was here, not far from where Ilus’s great-grandfather’s first city of Dardanus had been built, that the heifer lay down at last.
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Ilus looked about him. It was a fine place for a new city. To the south rose the massif of Mount Ida and at some distance to the north ran the straits of the Hellespont. To the east the blue of the Aegean could be glimpsed, and through the green and fertile plain itself threaded the rivers Simoeis and Scamander.
Ilus knelt down and prayed to the gods for a sign that he had made no mistake. In immediate answer a wooden object fell from the sky and landed at his feet in a great cloud of dust. It was about the height of a ten-year-old childfn6 and carved into a likeness of PALLAS ATHENA, a spear in one upraised hand and a distaff and spindle in the other, representing the arts of war and the arts of peace, over which the grey-eyed goddess held dominion.
The act of looking at so sacred an object struck Ilus instantly blind. He was wise enough in the ways of the Olympians not to panic. Falling to his knees he cast up prayers of thanks to the heavens. After a week of steadfast devotion he was rewarded with the restoration of his sight. Brimming with revived energy and zeal, he began at once to lay out the foundations for his new city. He planned the streets so that they radiated like the spokes of a wheel from a central temple which he would dedicate to Athena. In the innermost sanctum of the temple he placed the wooden carving of Pallas Athena that fell from the sky: the xoanon, the Luck of Troy, the symbol and assurance of the city’s divine status. So long as this sacred totem reposed there unmolested, so long would Troy prosper and endure. So Ilus believed and so the people who flocked to help him build and populate this new city believed too. They called the wooden carving the PALLADIUM, and after Ilus’s father Tros they gave their city and themselves the new names of Troy and Trojans.fn7
There we have the founding line, from Dardanus to his sons Ilus the First and Erichthonius, whose son Tros fathered Ilus the Second, after whom Troy is also called Ilium or Ilion.fn8
CURSES
There was another royal line in Ionia which we should know about: its importance would be difficult to overstate. You may already know the story of King TANTALUS, who ruled in Lydia, a kingdom to the south of Troy. Tantalus served up his son PELOPS to the gods in a stew.fn9 Young Pelops was reassembled and resurrected by the gods and grew up to be a handsome and popular prince and a lover of POSEIDON, who gave him a chariot drawn by winged horses. This chariot led to a curse which led to … which led to almost everything …
Ilus had been as outraged as anyone by Tantalus’s depravity, enough to expel him by force of arms from the region. You would imagine that Pelops would have no objection to his father’s expulsion – after all, Tantalus had slaughtered him, his own son, butchered him and presented him to the Olympians in a fricassee – but far from it. No sooner had Pelops attained manhood than he raised an army and attacked Ilus, but was easily bested in battle. Pelops left Ionia, settling at last in land far to the west, the peninsula off mainland Greece that is called the Peloponnese after him to this day. On this remarkable piece of land grew up such legendary kingdoms and cities as Sparta, Mycenae, Corinth, Epidaurus, Troezen, Argos and Pisa. This Pisa is not the Italian home of the Leaning Tower, of course, but a Greek city state ruled over at the time of Pelops’s arrival by King OENOMAUS,fn10 a son of the war god Ares.
Oenomaus had a daughter, HIPPODAMIA, whose beauty and lineage attracted many suitors. The king was fearful of a prophecy foretelling his death at the hands of a son-in-law. There were no nunneries in which daughters could be shut up in those days, so he tried another way of ensuring her perpetual spinsterhood – he announced that Hippodamia could only be won by a man who could defeat him in a chariot race. There was a catch: the reward for victory might be Hippodamia’s hand in marriage, but the price of losing the race would be the suitor’s life. Oenomaus believed that no finer charioteer than he existed in the world; consequently he was confident that his daughter would never wed and provide him with the son-in-law that the prophecy had taught him to dread. Despite the drastic cost of losing the race and the unrivalled reputation of Oenomaus as a charioteer, eighteen brave men accepted the challenge. Hippodamia’s beauty was great and the prospect of winning her and the rich city state of Pisa was tempting. Eighteen had raced against Oenomaus and eighteen had been beaten; their heads, in varying stages of decomposition, adorned the poles that ringed the hippodrome.
When Pelops, ejected from his home kingdom of Lydia, arrived in Pisa he was instantly struck by Hippodamia’s beauty. While he believed in his own skills as a horseman, he thought it wise to call upon his one-time lover Poseidon for extra aid. The god of the sea and of horses was happy to send from the waves a chariot and two winged steeds of great power and speed. To make doubly sure, Pelops bribed Oenomaus’s charioteer MYRTILUS, a son of Hermes, to help him win. Motivated by the promise of half Oenomaus’s kingdom and a night in bed with Hippodamia (with whom he too was in love), Myrtilus crept into the stables the night before the race and replaced the bronze linchpins which fixed the axle of Oenomaus’s chariot with substitutes carved from beeswax.
The next day, when the race began, young Pelops dashed into the lead, but so great was King Oenomaus’s skill that he soon began to catch up. He was almost upon Pelops, his javelin raised to strike a deathblow, when the waxen linchpins gave way, the wheels flew from the chariot and Oenomaus was dragged to a bloody death under the hoofs of his own horses.
Myrtilus went to claim what he thought was his just reward – a night with Hippodamia – but she ran complaining to Pelops, who hurled Myrtilus off a cliff into the sea. As the drowning Myrtilus struggled in the water, he cursed Pelops and all his descendants.
Myrtilus is not the best known of Greek heroes. Yet the part of the Aegean into which he fell is still called the Myrtoan Sea. For countless years the local people conducted annual sacrifices to Myrtilus in the temple of his father Hermes, where his corpse lay embalmed after his death. All this devotion for a weak, lustful man who had accepted a bribe and caused the death of his own king.
But the curse on Pelops. This curse matters. For Pelops and Hippodamia had children. And those children had children. And the curse of Myrtilus was on them all. As we shall see.
If this story, the story of Troy, has a meaning or a moral it is the old, simple lesson that actions have consequences. What Tantalus did, exacerbated by what Pelops did … the actions of these two caused a doom to be laid on what was to be the most important royal house of Greece.
Meanwhile, the royal house of Troy was about to invoke a curse of its own …
King Ilus had died and the throne of Troy was now occupied by his son LAOMEDON. Where Ilus had been devout, diligent, industrious, honourable and provident, Laomedon was greedy, ambitious, feckless, indolent and sly. His greed and ambition included a desire to develop the city of Troy still further, to give it great protective walls and ramparts, golden towers and turrets, to endow it with a splendour such as the world had never known. Rather than plan and execute this himself, Laomedon did something that might seem strange to us but which was still possible in the days when gods and men walked the earth together: he commissioned two of the Olympian gods, Apollo and Poseidon, to do the work for him. The immortals were not above a little contract labour and the pair threw themselves into the construction project with energy and skill, piling up great granite boulders and dressing them into neat blocks to create magnificent gleaming walls. In a very short time the work was done and a newly fortified Troy stood proudly on the plain of Ilium, as grand and formidable a fortress city as had ever been seen. But when Apollo and Poseidon presented themselves to Laomedon for payment he did what many householders have done since. He pursed his lips, sucked in between his teeth and shook his head.
‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘The ramparts are bowed, I asked for straight. And the south gates aren’t what I ordered at all. And those buttresses! All wrong. Oh dear me, no, I can’t possibly pay you for shoddy work like that.’
They say a fool and his gold are soon parted, but they ought to say too that those who refuse ever to be parted from gold are the greatest fools of all.
The revenge of the cheated gods was swift and merciless. Apollo shot plague arrows over the walls and into the city; within days the sound of wailing and moaning rose up around Troy as at least one member of every family was struck down by deadly disease. At the same time Poseidon sent a huge sea monster to the Hellespont. All shipping east and west was blocked by its ferocious presence and Troy was soon starved of the trade and tolls on which its prosperity depended.
So much for the Palladium and the Luck of Troy.
The terrified citizens flocked to Laomedon’s palace to demand relief. The king turned to his priests and prophets, who were of one mind.
‘It is too late to pay the gods with the gold you owe them, majesty. There is only one way now to placate them. You must sacrifice your daughter HESIONE to the sea creature.’
Laomedon had a large number of children.fn11 While Hesione may have been his favourite, his own flesh and blood mattered more to him than his own flesh and blood (as it were), and he knew that if he ignored the instruction of the prophets, the frightened and angry Trojan populace would tear him to pieces and sacrifice Hesione anyway.
‘Make it so,’ he said with a heavy sigh and an irritated flick of the hand.
Hesione was taken and chained to a rock in the Hellespont to await her fate at the jaws of the sea beast.fn12
All Troy held its breath.
Salvation and Destruction
SEE, THE CONQUERING HERO COMES
At exactly this time, the very moment that Hesione, shackled to her rock, began to cast up prayers to Olympus for her delivery from Poseidon’s sea dragon, Heracles and his band of followers arrived at the gates of Troy on their way back from his Ninth Labour, the acquisition of the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.fn1
With his friends TELAMON and OICLES by his side, Heracles was ushered into the royal presence. Honoured by the visit of the great hero as the Trojan court was, Laomedon’s mind was more on his plague-ridden and beleaguered city’s depleted storerooms than on the privilege of playing host to Heracles and his followers, however famous and admired they may be. It was a small army that travelled with him, but Laomedon knew that they would all expect to be fed. Heracles alone had the appetite of a hundred men.
‘You’re very welcome, Heracles. Do you plan to honour us with your company for long?’
Heracles looked about the sombre court in some surprise. ‘Why the long faces? I had been told that Troy was the richest and happiest kingdom in the world.’
Laomedon shifted on his throne. ‘You of all men should know that we are but playthings of the gods. What is a man but the hapless victim of their petty whims and vengeful jealousies? Apollo sends us contagion and Poseidon a monster that chokes our sea channel.’
Heracles listened to Laomedon’s self-pitying and largely fabricated version of the events leading up to Hesione’s sacrifice.
‘Doesn’t seem so difficult a problem to me,’ he said. ‘All you need is for someone to clear the seaway of that dragon and save your daughter – what did you say her name was?’
‘Hesione.’fn2
‘Yes, her. The plague will blow through soon enough, I dare say, they always do …’
Laomedon was dubious. ‘That’s all very well, but what about my daughter?’
Heracles bowed. ‘The work of a moment.’
Laomedon, like everyone in the Greek world, had heard stories of the Labours that Heracles had undertaken – the cleaning out of King Augeas’s stables, the taming of the Cretan Bull, the trapping of the great tusked boar of Mount Erymanthus, the killing of the Nemean Lion and the eradication of the Lernaean Hydra … If this lumbering ox of a man with a lion skin for clothing and an oak tree for a club had in truth performed such impossible feats and defeated such terrible creatures, then he might be able to free up the Hellespont and rescue Hesione. But there was always the question of payment.
‘We’re not a rich kingdom …’ Laomedon lied.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Heracles. ‘All I would ask for in return is your horses.’
‘My horses?’
‘The horses my father Zeus sent to your grandfather Tros.’
‘Ah, those horses.’ Laomedon waved a hand as if to say, ‘Is that all?’ ‘My dear man, clear the channel of that dragon and restore my daughter to me and you shall have them – yes, and their silver bridles too.’
Less than an hour later Heracles, blade between his teeth, had dived into the waters of the Hellespont and was breasting Poseidon’s rising surge. Hesione, chained to her rock, the waters now coming up to her waist, watched in astonishment as a huge, muscled man, kicking hard, headed straight towards the narrowest part of the channel, where the dragon lurked.
Laomedon, Telamon and Oicles, with the rest of Heracles’ loyal company of Greeks behind them, watched from the shore. Telamon whispered to Oicles, ‘Look at her! Did you ever see anyone more beautiful?’
While Hesione did present a most alluring sight, Oicles had eyes only for the spectacle of his leader engaging a great sea dragon in the simple, direct and violently confrontational manner for which he was celebrated. Heracles headed directly towards the creature, but far from showing fear the dragon opened its mouth wide and itself made for Heracles.
Oicles thought he had the measure of his friend and commander, but what Heracles did next was entirely unexpected. Without breaking stroke he swam straight into the monster’s open mouth. The cheers from the shoreline were choked into a shocked silence as Heracles disappeared from sight. With a gulp and a snap of its colossal jaws the creature rose up with a roar of triumph before diving down into the deeps. Hesione was saved – for the moment at least – but Heracles … Heracles was lost. Heracles the greatest, strongest, bravest and noblest of heroes swallowed whole, without so much as a struggle.
Oicles and the others should have known better, of course. From inside the animal’s stinking interior Heracles immediately busied himself hacking hard with his blade. After what seemed an eternity, scales and chunks of flesh came bobbing to the surface.fn3 Telamon was the first to see them and pointed with a great shout as the sea began to boil with blood and torn flesh. When Heracles himself at last arose with a heaving gasp, seawater streaming from him, the assembled Greeks and Trojans gave a mighty hurrah. How could they have doubted the greatest of all the heroes?
A short while later the shivering Hesione gratefully accepted Telamon’s cloak and supporting arm as she and the cheering soldiers accompanied Heracles back to Laomedon.fn4
Some people are constitutionally unable to learn from their mistakes. When Heracles demanded the horses which had been agreed would constitute his payment, Laomedon sucked in through his teeth with a hiss, just as he had done with Apollo and Poseidon.
‘Oh no, no, no,’ he said shaking his head from side to side. ‘No, no, no, no, no. The agreement was that you free up the Hellespont, not leave it all clogged with blubber, blood and bones. It’ll take my men weeks to clean up the mess on the shoreline. “Free up the Hellespont” – those were your very words and those the terms. Can you deny it?’
Laomedon jutted out his beard and gave a piercing glance around the room towards the assembled courtiers and members of his elite royal guard.
‘His very words …’
‘“Free it up,” he said …’
‘As ever, your majesty is right …’
‘You see? So I can’t possibly pay you. Grateful to have Hesione back, of course, but I’m sure the dragon would have done her no harm. Could have collected her from the rock ourselves in due course, and certainly without making a mess like that.’
With a roar of indignation Heracles took up his club. The soldiers of Laomedon’s guard immediately drew their swords and formed a defensive circle around their king.
Telamon whispered urgently in Heracles’ ear. ‘Leave it, my friend. We’re outnumbered a thousand to one. Besides, you have to be back in Tiryns in time to start your Tenth and last Labour. If you’re so much as a day late you’ll forfeit everything. Nine years of effort wasted. Come on, he’s not worth it.’
Heracles lowered his club and spat at the semicircle of soldiers behind which Laomedon was cowering. ‘Your majesty hasn’t seen the last of me,’ he growled. Executing a low bow he turned and left.
‘I didn’t meant that bow,’ he explained to Telamon and Oicles as they made their way back to their ship.
‘You didn’t mean it?’
‘It was a sarcastic bow.’
‘Ah,’ said Telamon, ‘I did wonder.’
‘Dear me, how uncouth these Greeks are,’ said Laomedon, watching from the high walls of his city as Heracles’ ship hoisted her sails and glided away. ‘No manners, no style, no address …’
Hesione looked on the departing ship with some regret. She had liked Heracles and was quite certain in her mind that no matter what her father might say he truly had saved her life. His friend Telamon too was most polite and charming. Nor was he unbecoming to look at. She looked down at her lap and sighed.
HERACLES’ RETURN
King EURYSTHEUS of Mycenae and King Laomedon of Troy were cut from the same shabby cloth. Just as Laomedon had reneged on his deal with Heracles, so now did Eurystheus. On his return from Troy, Heracles undertook his Tenth (and, as he thought, final) Labour – the transportation across the Mediterranean world of the monster Geryon’s enormous herd of red cattle – only to be told by Eurystheus that two of the earlier Labours he had completed would not be counted, and that the ten must now become twelve.fn5 Thus it was that three full years passed before Heracles found himself free from bondage and able to turn his attention to the matter of King Laomedon’s treachery, a grievance that had only grown and festered with time.
He raised a volunteer army and sailed a flotilla of eighteen penteconters, fifty-oared vessels, across the Aegean. At the port of Ilium he left Oicles in charge of the ships and reserve troops and set out with Telamon and the larger part of his army to confront Laomedon. The wily Trojan king had been alerted by scouts to the arrival of the Greeks and managed to outmanoeuvre Heracles, leaving the city of Troy and wheeling round behind to attack Oicles and the ships. By the time Heracles had discovered what was happening, Oicles and the reserves had all been killed and Laomedon’s forces were safely back behind the walls of Troy, preparing themselves for a long siege.
In the end Telamon broke through one of the gates and the Greeks poured in. They hacked their way mercilessly through to the palace. Heracles, a little behind, came through the breach in the wall and heard his men cheering Telamon.
‘Surely he is the greatest warrior of them all!’
‘Hail Telamon, our general!’
This was more than Heracles could bear. One of his red mists descended. Roaring in fury, he stormed through to find and kill his deputy.
Telamon, at the head of his troops, was about to enter Laomedon’s palace when he heard the commotion behind him. Knowing his friend and the terrifying effects of his jealous rages, he immediately set about gathering stones. He was in the act of building them up, one above the other, when a panting Heracles reached him, club raised.
‘Sh!’ said Telamon. ‘Not now. I’m busy building an altar.’
‘An altar? Who to?’
‘Why, to you, of course. To Heracles. To commemorate your rescue of Hesione, your breaking of the siege of Troy, your mastery of men, monsters, and the mechanics of war.’
‘Oh.’ Heracles lowered his club. ‘Well, that’s good of you. Very good. I … yes, very considerate. Very proper.’
‘Least I could do.’
Arm in arm the pair ascended the steps of the royal palace of Troy.
The slaughter that followed was terrible. Laomedon, his wife and all their sons were killed – that is to say, all their sons but the youngest, whose name was PODARCES. His salvation came about in unusual fashion.
Heracles, his club and sword dripping with the blood of half the royal line of Troy, found himself in Hesione’s bedchamber. The princess was kneeling on the floor. She spoke very calmly.
‘Take my life, so that I may join my father and my brothers.’
Heracles was in the act of complying with her wishes when Telamon came into the room. ‘No! Not Hesione!’
Heracles turned in some surprise. ‘Why not?’
‘You saved her life once. Why take it now? Besides, she is beautiful.’
Heracles understood. ‘Take her. She’s yours to do with as you please.’
‘If she will have me,’ said Telamon, ‘I will take her back home, to Salamis, to be my bride.’
‘But you have a wife,’ said Heracles.
Just then a sound from under the bed caught his ear.
‘Come out, come out!’ he called, stabbing there with his sword.
A young boy emerged, covered in dust. He rose up to what full dignified height he could manage.
‘If I must die, then I do so willingly as a proud prince of Troy,’ he said, and then ruined the noble effect with a sneeze.
‘How many sons did the man have?’ said Heracles, raising the sword once more.
Hesione cried out and pulled at Telamon’s arm. ‘Not Podarces! He’s so young. Please, Lord Heracles, I beg you.’
Heracles was not to be persuaded. ‘He may be young, but he is his father’s son. A harmless boy can soon grow into a powerful enemy.’
‘Let me buy his freedom,’ urged Hesione. ‘I have a veil of gold tissue that they say was once the property of Aphrodite herself. I offer it to you in return for my brother’s life and freedom.’
Heracles was not impressed. ‘I can take it anyway. All of Troy is mine by right of conquest.’
‘With respect, lord, you will never find it. It is lodged in a secret hiding place.’
Telamon nudged Heracles. ‘Worth at least taking a look, don’t you think?’
Heracles grunted his assent and Hesione went over to a tall, intricately carved cabinet that stood beside the bed. Her fingers released a hidden catch at the cabinet’s rear and a drawer slid out from the side. She drew from it a length of gold tissue and passed it to Heracles.
‘Its value cannot be estimated.’