The Oath

34

HELEN.

Had she come to tempt us? Had she come to trick us into revealing ourselves? Or had she, perhaps, come to tell us that she was aware of our deception but would not reveal us?

That was a night of blood and deceit.

When it was very late and everything was peaceful and silent around us, I gave Epeius the order to open the hatch and one by one we lowered ourselves down to the ground on the rope ladder. I looked at the constellations in the sky: ‘By this time the fleet will be coming ashore. Go to the towers and launch the signal.’ Each one of us knew what we had to do. Diomedes, Pyrrhus and Ajax Oileus were to eliminate the guards and take their places on the towers on either side of the Skaian Gate. Eumelus would signal using a torch that we had been successful. The others, including me, would provide cover for our comrades and, if necessary, defend our positions until reinforcements arrived.

Everything had gone perfectly up to that moment. I saw Eumelus’ torch moving to the right and then to the left three times; he stopped and then repeated the signal. What followed was the longest time of our lives. We could still fail: a delay, a misunderstanding, an accident. . finally another light blinked on and off from the beach. The fleet had landed. At that point I was certain that Troy’s destiny was in our hands. But I refused to exult in the idea of victory until I’d seen our army charging through the Skaian Gate, finally agape.

The pounding of thousands of heavy footsteps, the clatter of weapons. .

‘It’s them!’ exclaimed Diomedes.

‘Open the gate!’ I shouted with all the breath I had in my lungs. The moment that I’d awaited for years.

The hinges creaked mightily and then the heavy bronze-plated doors swung open. The army poured into the city like a river in flood.

Troy, from that moment on, was completely at the mercy of the invading forces. The alarm wasn’t sounded until it was too late. Many of the defenders, awakened by the fracas and by the cries of terror of the population, threw on their armour and rushed into the streets, prepared to fight to the last drop of blood. Others took position in front of the doors to their own homes, to defend their wives and children, but were cut down where they stood by a vastly superior force. We were drunk on the slaughter now, furious at the years spent in endless combat, dying to stamp out the persevering, insuperable resistance of proud Troy.

The entire city was plunged into a vortex of horror. There was no way, nor was there the will, to check the endless violence of our warriors who raged on and on, killing, destroying, raping and sacking. Fights broke out between our own men, turning into bloody brawls as they quarrelled over their prey: precious objects, fabrics, weapons, women. After a short time, fires started to burn in various parts of the city: in the lower quarters first and then, as the hours went by, the flames began to lick at the citadel. The blaze spread swiftly, roaring from one point to another of the high city.

It was there that the final defence was concentrated. There were the king and the queen, their sons and wives. There were the last valiant defenders of the city and the kingdom: Aeneas and Deiphobus, Hector’s brother. There was Andromache, his widow, with their infant son, Astyanax.

There was Helen.

I tried to imagine what she was doing, how she was feeling at the sight of the holocaust of the city that had welcomed her as a daughter. How she felt about the inevitable arrival of Menelaus, her betrayed husband.

There the frenzy of the fight — the roaring flames and the din of clashing weapons — had reached its apex.

That was where I was headed, running, because I still had one last task to fulfil. I’d already entered the walls of Troy twice before, once by the light of day and once under the cover of night, and the image of the roads and squares, the monuments and palaces, was still vivid in my mind.

I was looking for the house of Antenor, the man who had foreseen this ruin and who had come to me in an attempt to avoid it. I had been his guest and was beholden to him. I owed him the only possible gift I could offer him now: his life and that of his family.

I found the road, and the house, besieged by hundreds of infuriated warriors. They recognized me and I was able to push my way through to the main door. I shouted to the men milling around me, exhorting them to rush immediately to the ramp leading up to the sanctuaries and the citadel, where Aeneas was leading a counter-attack and reinforcements were needed. It was difficult to get them to obey me, but when they had finally gone, I entered, struggling to find my way down the corridors and through the rooms, crossing walls of flames, until I finally found him. He was grasping a spear and he aimed it at me.

‘It’s Odysseus!’ I shouted. ‘Follow me, take your family! Show me a way to leave the city from the north.’

He understood. I returned outside and he immediately joined me, followed by a number of weeping children and women. We ran as fast as we could down dark, twisting roads, through quarters already destroyed by fire, until we got to a side gate.

He stopped for an instant and gave me a long look of infinite pain. His eyes were full of tears.

‘This was our destiny,’ he said. ‘It was written that it would end this way, but may the gods reward you for showing us mercy.’

‘Run,’ I answered him. ‘Don’t stop until you get to a place where you can find help, on the sea or in the mountains. No one will follow you.’

I kept my eyes on them for as long as I could make them out in the reflection of the fires, until they were swallowed up into the night.

Then I turned back towards the citadel. The end was near: Pyrrhus, flanked by two enormous warriors, was brandishing an axe and pounding it into the palace door, which finally exploded into a thousand splinters. He rushed in, followed by his Myrmidons. He came out again onto the high gallery, not long after he’d entered, letting out a bloodcurdling cry and holding aloft his horrifying trophy: Priam’s head. The most powerful city of Asia, and her king, were decapitated. Weeping and moaning pierced the autumn night, flocks of birds wheeled over Troy in wide circles, like the spirits of the dead, their purple wings reflected in the flames.

Little by little, as the last pockets of resistance were eliminated, a long line of prisoners began to form: mostly women and children, but even some men, to be sold off as slaves. The Achaian kings and princes gathered to divide up the spoils. Pyrrhus saw Andromache with her crying child in her arms; perhaps someone had pointed her out to him. He immediately claimed Hector’s widow for himself. He pulled her out of the line, exclaiming: ‘This one is mine!’ But then, irritated by the baby’s frightened bawling, he tore the child from his mother’s arms, strode over to the walls and flung him over the side onto the cliffs below.

I did nothing to stop him because it was me who had created that monster. He was obeying the law of war: the war isn’t over until the last descendant of the enemy is dead. The crushing of those tiny limbs thus extinguished the bloodline of glorious Hector, tamer of horses, the man who had come to set fire to our ships, who had incessantly defended Troy for ten long years and who, in the end, had succumbed only to Achilles’ spear. Andromache let out a scream that didn’t sound human, the agonized shriek of a wounded eagle. She collapsed to the ground as if dead.

But Pyrrhus wasn’t finished. He went back to the line of prisoners and yanked out the youngest of Priam’s daughters, lovely Polyxena. He seized her by the hair and proceeded to drag her all the way to the tomb of Achilles, and there he sacrificed her to his father’s angry shade, opening her throat with his sword.

I hadn’t finished either. I had to reach the sanctuary of the citadel, where the image of Athena was preserved, the one I had seen that night long ago. As I was making my way, I met Diomedes and together we continued to the apex of the high city. We weren’t the first to arrive. As we approached, we saw Ajax Oileus leaving the sanctuary and running off swiftly. We entered and saw Athena’s priestess and protectress, Priam’s daughter Cassandra, the princess I had seen weeping the night I had furtively entered the temple. Cassandra, sad prophet of Troy’s end, was splayed on the ground half naked, and her bruised and bloodied body showed the signs of the rape she’d suffered.

She looked at me and in a faint voice said: ‘He is cursed. . he will die.’ I glanced up at the image of the goddess and it seemed to me that her eyes were closed, loath to witness such horror. As I was staring at that stone face, Calchas’ voice rang out in my mind: this was the most powerful idol of the entire world, the sacred image that made the city that possessed her invincible against any human or divine force, except one: the hand of Fate!

I prayed in my heart that my goddess would not abandon me and would continue to hold her hand on my head. . We took Cassandra back with us, to the ruins of palace where all the prisoners were being held. Agamemnon, our supreme leader, claimed her for himself. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and in the flickering light of the conflagration I saw a figure at the top of the ramp: wanax Menelaus. His hair red as fire, his armour bloodied, he was leading proud Helen by her hand, her breasts bared. He had possessed her, they say, in the bedroom spattered with the blood of Deiphobus, her last husband after Paris. When the palace had fallen, the Trojan prince had rushed to defend his own home and there, at Helen’s feet, he had been slain.

The dawn of the following day illuminated a desolate expanse. A grey desert streaked with whispers of stagnant smoke. Mount Ida hulked against the leaden sky, her peak hidden, encircled by ashen fog. The Scamander and Simoeis flowed sluggishly, thick with slime and mud. There was no strip of land that had not been slashed or wounded, not a single building in glorious Troy that stood where it once had. No forest had survived the years of axes chopping down trunks for the pyres of the dead. Victory had the bitter tang of blind violence and the wailing of women and children was as keen as a sacrificial blade, shrill and incessant. Only the three black-veiled Moirai rejoiced, dancing over the field of death, appearing and vanishing in the dull morning air.

Our great endeavour had drowned in a sea of tears.

The spoils distributed, the women and the weapons divided, wanax Agamemnon, grey-faced, convened the council of kings and princes. He proposed that we offer solemn sacrifice to the gods to appease the shades of the dead and to make the outcome of our return voyages favourable. Nestor, lord of Pylos, dissented, saying that we must all leave immediately, before the harsh winter weather set in. Once we were safely back in our homelands, we could offer sacred hecatombs. Many agreed with him. After much dispute, it was decided that each of us should be free to remain or leave at once.

I joined the latter, so eager was I to begin my return voyage, to forget these ten long years of life lost, of weeping and burning, of solitary vigils steeped in aching nostalgia, of friends lost, of spent ashes that the wind had carried off over the sea.

Of the twelve ships I had set off with, only seven returned with me now. We burned the others, because the men who had left Ithaca with me and had sat at those long oars were gone. They were dead. They now lie beneath the deserted fields of Troy. Weeping, we shouted out the name of each one of them ten times, so the wind would carry him all the way to the home of his distant parents, still waiting for news, choked with dread.

We thus set sail and rapidly reached Tenedos, as the sun, finally free of the black shroud of smoke, came out and lit up the sea. I took a deep breath and it felt like a return to life. For an instant I caught a glimpse of a fabulous glittering of bronze, silver and orichalch: my precious treasure, my share of the spoils, hidden under the planks at the prow. But the moment was fleeting. Black clouds soon gathered at the centre of the sky and a cold wind started to blow.

I felt a sharp pain piercing my heart then, heard a voice and a bolt of thunder echoing from the mountains. Who was calling me? I found out instantly, when I turned to look at the shore we had just left.

I shouted out: ‘Strike the sails! Dismast! Return to your oars, we’re going back!’

My men obeyed my command. The ships turned, lining up one behind the other. The prows furrowed waves that boiled higher and higher, tipped with foam. The shore was slowly getting closer; the mound on the Rhoetean promontory guided me in. My ship gained the shore and the men dropped anchor. I think they understood. I took the armour of Achilles from the bow and bound it all together with a thick rope: his storied shield, the embossed greaves, the shining breastplate, the crested helmet and the invincible sword. I jumped off the ship and my feet touched the gravel on the sea bottom. It took enormous effort for me to move forward and the weight of the bronze dragged me back every time a breaking wave pulled away powerfully from the shore.

I bent my back like an ox under the yoke, breathing hard, forcing one foot in front of the other until I finally made it to the beach. My brow and my face and my hair were dripping with seawater, huge drops that clouded my sight.

There before me rose the immense burial mound of Great Ajax, bulwark of the Achaians. I laid the shining armour of Achilles on the altar that covered his ashes. Ten times I shouted his name, raising my voice higher than the howling wind. Zeus thundered. My tears mixed with those of the sky.