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By Root 376 0

had obviously kicked me, not wanting bleeding corpses cluttering up the deck. To add to my pleasure, I was covered in fish-scales and crabs’ legs, and other marine bric-a-brac of a more or less noisome nature; and I suppose I should mention in passing that I was in the most excruciating pain I had ever known – or had believed was generally available outside the nethermost circle of Hades! No point in going on about it: but I tell you, I wanted to die, and was very sorry to find I hadn’t. That’s what it was like – so I’ll trouble you to bear the fact in mind, if you think I’m being altogether too flippant.

In any case, as I say, it was all a very long time ago.

But to resume: it was dark by now, Zeus be praised; except where a lantern illuminated the Doctor’s designing board, and a selection of brooding evil-looking faces. Because Odysseus had obviously sent out the formal invitations as arranged; and Agamemnon and Menelaus were now among those present. A couple of death’s head moths were fooling about in the lamp-light, I remember. All very well for them, I thought – but somehow ominous, all the same. Not that I go much on signs and portents as a rule – but you know what I mean.

The genial host was excited as a schoolboy, and busy explaining the whole horrendous scheme to his dubious guests.

‘I tell you, it’s revolutionary,’ he was saying, ‘war will never be the same again!’

‘Show them the working-drawings, Doctor. There! What do you make of that?’

Understandably, no one seemed very impressed at the outset – and you couldn’t blame them. Surprisingly, Menelaus was the first to venture a diagnosis.

‘It’s a horse,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’

‘Well done, Menelaus,’ said Odysseus, patronisingly. ‘Now, come on – what sort of a horse?’

Menelaus tried again: ‘A big horse?’

‘Precisely. A very big horse. A horse at least forty feet high!’

‘But,’ objected Menelaus, ‘they don’t grow that big – do they? I mean, not even that Great Horse of Asia the Trojans worship.’

‘Ah, now you’re beginning to get the point! They don’t grow that big. The Great Horse of Asia doesn’t exist. That’s why we’re going to build one for them – as a sort of present!’

‘Go on,’ said Agamemnon, his slow brain stirring in its sleep.

The Doctor took over the sparkling exposition: ‘We build it of wood, and we build it hollow. And what’s more we build it as quickly as possible, so as to rescue my friends. And then we fill it with a picked team of your best warriors.’

‘I’m with you so far. What next?’

‘Why, the rest of you take the fleet, and you sail away!’

Menelaus lit up a bit at that. ‘Marvellous!’ he said. ‘A first rate idea! Oh, yes – I like it very much!’

‘And then, after dark, you sail back again.’

Menelaus subsided. ‘Why is there always a catch?’ he grumbled. ‘No, I’m afraid I’ve gone off it now!’ But nobody cared what Menelaus thought.

‘Now,’ said Odysseus, ‘we come to the difficult bit. Because someone has to winkle Achilles out of his tent for long enough for him to take his Myrmidons, and hide out there in the plain.

As a covering force,’ he explained patiently, before anyone could ask him why.

‘But I thought you said that the best warriors were going to be inside the horse?’ objected Agamemnon, rooting about in his beard, where something had come to his attention.

‘So they will be,’ agreed Odysseus; ‘I shall be there with my Ithacans. Oh, yes, and the Doctor, of course.’

The Doctor leaped like a gaffed salmon. ‘That wasn’t part of the plan!’ he objected.

‘It is now. I’ve just thought of it. Don’t you want to be on hand, to rescue your friends?’

‘Yes, of course. But can’t I join you later? I’m afraid I should only be in the way...’

‘You’d better not be, that’s all. No, Doctor, I prefer to keep my eye on you. And then the rest is up to the Trojans. They see we’ve all gone home, or so they think; and naturally assume it’s the Great Horse which has driven us away. So they dance around it like maniacs; cover it with garlands, I should think; and then they drag it into the city!’

‘Are you sure they do?’ enquired Agamemnon, not unreasonably.