The Women of Troy

8

It hurt even to turn his head on the pillow. His mouth was dry; he must have been snoring like a fish all night—though what a bloody stupid saying that was. Whoever heard a fish snore? Eyes tight shut, he spread out his arms and found the other side empty. She’d gone, then. When had she gone? Dimly he remembered kicking her out of bed. No, not kicking—he wouldn’t have done that. She was Hector’s widow, after all—an important prize, like his helmet and his shield. Except that he didn’t have the shield. Automedon should have stopped…Eyes open now, but the light burned like acid and he was glad to close them again. Something was niggling away…The ring, oh, shit, yes, the ring. He’d offered her necklaces, bracelets, brooches—and she’d chosen a man’s ring. Why? Because it was Hector’s ring. Because she’d recognized it? He should’ve stopped her taking it, and he would have done—if he hadn’t felt sorry for her. If he hadn’t been trying not to be sick.

How they’d managed to have sex he didn’t know. But they had, the damp sheet underneath him was proof. He couldn’t remember much, but he’d done it. Had he? Yes, of course he had. He can remember it now, though it’s hardly worth remembering. Like sticking your dick in a bag of greasy chicken bones. He shouldn’t have let her take the ring. Trouble is, he’s too generous—people take him for a fool. She certainly will. Still, it hadn’t helped her much, had it? The important thing is, it’s over. The next time it’ll be easier, and the next. And the next…Shit. It’s a life sentence—time off if he gets her pregnant, but otherwise…He’s got to stop thinking like this. The important thing is: he did what he had to do. The walls of Troy had been well and truly breached.

The momentary spurt of confidence enables him to sit up and look around. As always, the room seems to shrink away from him. It’s extraordinary how alive these things are. The lyre, lying there as if Achilles had only just put it down; the mirror that had once held his reflection, but is now black; his shield propped up against the wall. All these things are his now, but they don’t feel like his. He can’t play the lyre, and he certainly isn’t going to let anybody else play it. He can, and does, polish the shield. The mirror plays tricks. Sometimes he puts on Achilles’s armour and stands in front of it, but his reflection doesn’t always move when he moves. He’s becoming detached from himself.

Enough. The only solution is to get out. He pulls on a clean tunic, thrusts his feet into sandals and bangs out of the hut. The wind snatches his breath, slams the door behind him, almost as if it’s locking him out. Where to go? Nobody’s up. The late-night-drinking session in the hall will have everybody groaning and nursing their sore heads much as he’s been doing; apart from a few women stoking fires and grinding corn, the camp’s deserted. The sea, then. He follows the path through the dunes, aware every time he puts a foot down that he’s treading where great Achilles trod. Literally, there’s nowhere on the beach or in the camp that he can stand without knowing that Achilles stood there before. Nothing he can touch: the table, the cup, the plates at dinner…Nothing. And, of course, it’s a comfort to have his father so close. Except he isn’t. He’s not here at all. Coming out onto the beach, Pyrrhus experiences the vast expanse of sea and sky as one unbearable, aching absence.

Swim. As once Achilles swam—every morning, every night. But the sea’s a wall of brown, churned-up sand. Even the thought of plunging into that makes him feel sick, but he’s got to do it—there’s no choice. There’s never been a choice. So, he wades in; feels ice-cold water slap against his knees, sand slip away between his toes. The next wave slops into his groin, his chest, his mouth and then he’s swimming, his head and tense neck raised above the waves. He tries to put a foot down, but there’s no ground beneath his feet, and so he has to go on through the bubbling foam into the quieter space beyond, though even here the swells are tipped with white and seethe along their crests. A few more yards of shameful doggy paddle, becoming ever more frantic as the waves threaten to carry him away, and then he’s ready to come out. Half walking, half crawling through the shallows, he feels no sense of achievement. The sea swallowed him; the sea’s spewed him back, that’s all.

Achilles, as Pyrrhus has been told over and over again, swam like a seal, as if the sea were his real home. Once, he’d stayed underwater so long that Patroclus ran into the sea to rescue him, only to see him surface a couple of hundred yards further out. That scene’s one of the clearest images he has of his father: a man swimming far out to sea, another waiting anxiously on the shore. Now, for the first time, it occurs to him that the scene makes no sense. What had Patroclus been anxious about? The strongest swimmer in the Greek army, swimming in a calm sea?

There are so many things he doesn’t understand.

Slowly, he puts on his damp tunic, pushes his feet into gritty sandals and turns to look at the camp. One or two lights in the huts now, but he has no desire to go back. He’s better off out here, with the wind scouring his mind clean of the night’s tawdry memories. Not her fault, poor cow. Not her fault at all. If only it wasn’t so cold. If only the wind would stop. And at that very moment, just as the thought forms, there’s a lull.

Silence. Nothing moves, not even a blade of grass. All over the camp, men who’ve slept soundly through the raging of the storm, will be awake, staring at each other. Is this it? Has it stopped? Can we go home? But before they even have the chance to speak, the wind starts picking up again; at first no more than a cat’s-tail twitching of dead leaves and grass, but then with greater and greater force, till it’s sweeping off the sea with every bit as much power and venom as it had before.

These unpredictable lulls, when, for a brief moment, leaving, going home, begins to seem possible, sap morale more than the worst blasts of the storm. And every time it happens, the common-sense view that the wind means nothing, that it’s just, to use Machaon’s contemptuous word, weather, loses ground a little. Because, in the aftermath of one of these lulls, it really does feel as if the gods are playing with them, holding out hope on an open palm only to snatch it away.

Pyrrhus feels his wet hair lift from the nape of his neck, feels his damp tunic being moulded yet more closely to the contours of his body, and trudges on. A hot bath? A bowl of stew? Last night’s leftovers, but stews sometimes taste even better the second day. Or a visit to the stables? See Ebony, help the grooms turn the horses out to pasture. No, none of those things. Not now.

All the time he’s been pretending to think about hot baths and food, his feet have been leading him to where he needs to be. He’s reached the place now. Fingers pinching his nose, breathing loudly through his mouth, he follows the path until he sees what lies stretched out on the dirty sand. He needs this. He needs to confirm what he already knows, that the tongue that said those words—which he will not let himself repeat, no, not even in the buzzing vacancy of his own mind—is rotting now, inside a rotting skull. He stands, stares, takes in every minute detail, notices every change.

Enough. He won’t need to come here again, possibly not for several days, but he will be back. Because this is his proof that he is who he claims to be: the man who killed King Priam. Great Achilles’s son. The hero of Troy.