Doctor Who: The Myth Makers Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bacchantes’ bath-salts for incompetence! If not the Gorgon’s hair-net,’ he added, anxious to clinch the matter with a telling phrase. ‘Ten foul years we’ve been here, and... well, I’m not getting any younger. I want to go home!’
    ‘You won’t get a lot older if you take that tone with me –
    brother or no brother! What’s the matter with you, man? Don’t you want to see Helen again? Don’t you want to get your wife back?’
     
    ‘Now I’m glad you asked me that – because, quite frankly, no, I don’t. And if you’d raised the point before, you’d have saved us a great deal of trouble. If you want to know, I was heartily glad to see the back of her.’
    Agamemnon looked shocked. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that in front of the servants,’ he said, lowering his voice to a bellow.
    ‘Well, it wasn’t the first time she’d let herself be – shall we say – abducted?’ said Menelaus, raising his to a whisper. ‘There was that awful business with Hercules, remember? And if we ever do get her back, I’ll wager it won’t be the last time either. I can’t keep on rushing off to the ends of the Earth after her.
    Makes me a laughing stock...’ He recorked himself, moodily.
    ‘Now, you knew perfectly well what she was like before you married her. I warned you at the time, no good would come of it. But since you were so besotted as not to listen, it became a question of honour to get her back. Of family honour, you understand?’
    ‘Not to mention King Priam’s trading concessions, of course!
    You’re just making my marriage problems serve your political ambitions. Think I don’t know?’
    Agamemnon sighed deeply. The effect was unpleasant, even at a range of several yards. Candle flames trembled, and sank back into their sockets: as did his brother’s blood-shot eyes.
    ‘There may be some truth in that,’ he admitted, ‘I don’t say there is, but there may be. However, I must remind you that these ambitions would have been served just as well if you had killed Paris in single combat, as was expected of you. That’s what betrayed husbands do, damn it! They kill their wife’s lovers.
    Everybody knows that. And Paris was quite prepared to let the whole issue be decided by such a contest – he told me so. So don’t blame me because you’ve dragged us into a full scale war –
    because I won’t have it.’
     
    Menelaus looked aggrieved. ‘But I did challenge him, if you remember? First thing I did when I noticed she’d gone! Ten rotten years ago! And the fellow wouldn’t accept.’
    ‘True,’ said Agamemnon, giving a grudging nod with a chin or two. ‘So you did, and so he wouldn’t. He’s as cowardly as you are!’
    ‘Once and for all, I am not a coward! I wish you wouldn’t keep on.’
    ‘Well, if you’re such a fire-eater, why don’t you challenge someone else, then – if only for the look of the thing? Why not challenge Hector, for instance?’
    In a vain attempt to increase his stature, Menelaus staggered to his feet, ‘Are you demented? Not even Ajax would go against Hector, it would be suicide!’
    ‘Now you don’t know till you’ve tried, do you?’ asked his brother, reasonably. ‘I think this is a very good idea of yours.
    Tell you what, I shall issue the challenge first thing in the morning on your behalf. That will lend credibility, won’t it?’
    And no doubt he would have done, too. Menelaus obviously thought so, and blanched beneath his pallor to prove it.
    But at this moment Achilles made the entrance for which he’d been rehearsing. He had wisely discarded any elaborate form of words in favour of the simple, dramatic announcement:
    ‘Hector is dead!’ – and he waited stauesquely for his well-earned applause.
    To his surprise, he didn’t get it. Mind you, Menelaus did mop his brow and sink back on his quivering buttocks: but Agamemnon’s reaction was perhaps not all that could have been desired by a popular hero of the hour. Generals are not