The Women of Troy

13

Calchas is dreaming, as he often does now, about his childhood in Troy, long before he became a priest, back in the days when he was, nominally at least, his father’s apprentice in the blacksmith’s shop. A skinny, pasty-faced kid, all thumbs, slow to move in response to his father’s barked orders and not nearly fast enough to dodge his fists. Inclined to slope off into the house where his mother is baking in the kitchen—smells of warm bread and cinnamon, the rush of heat as she takes loaves from the oven, sticking her bottom lip out to blow strands of hair away from her flushed face. She pauses for a moment as he bursts in, presses his swollen face against her hot side, but she daren’t say too much; she’s even more frightened of his father than he is. Calchas stirs and briefly wakes, remembering his mother. A mouse-like little woman, she seems to him now, who had once been his entire world. Always praying, every feast day at the temple, a little in love with the priest, perhaps? A bruise here and there, though nothing her husband didn’t have a perfect right to inflict, she wasn’t complaining, only she did wish he wouldn’t be so hard on the boy. And then, one day, the obvious solution presented itself. Calchas remembers it as a day of talk behind closed doors, his father’s rumble going on and on, and then the priest’s voice, reedy but authoritative, rising above it—and suddenly his few possessions are being bundled together and he’s following the priest, a respectful three paces behind, along the narrow, winding alleys, the congested streets, which till now are all he’s ever known, to the sunlit squares and splendid temples near the citadel. Different smells here: flowers, incense, the ferrous smell of blood from the sacrifices. And meat, always meat, so much meat. He’s leaving behind the awful smells of the tannery, the glue factory and the knacker’s yard, though they linger on his skin till he’s had the ceremonial bath—and then they’re gone, along with the smell of baking bread and cinnamon.

Once a month, he’s allowed to go home, and at first he longs for that day, even marks the days on the ground with a piece of chalky stone, but then increasingly with every visit he ceases to belong in the neighbourhood and even in his own home—as if he were in a fast-moving ship and his mother was just a tiny figure waving from the shore.

After a night of confused dreams, he wakes with a dry mouth, his eyelids stuck together; he doesn’t often drink strong wine but last night he had—his head’s pounding. He’s spent the last days and nights waiting for a summons from Agamemnon that he knows must be coming soon; but when, at long last, there’s a knock on his door it’s not the imposing figure of the king’s herald he sees standing there, but Lord Nestor’s slave girl: his “prize of honour” as the Greeks say. He remembers this girl vaguely from the times he’d dined in Nestor’s hall, though it takes a few seconds to recall her name. Hecamede, that’s it. His first thought is that Nestor’s dead—there’ve been rumours about his health ever since his youngest son was killed—and Calchas feels his brain bulge with the effort of calculating what Nestor’s death will mean for the already fragile balance of power within the camp, but a moment later he realizes it’s all nonsense—news of a king’s death is proclaimed by heralds, not carried by slaves. He’s still struggling to wake up, to shake off the last vestiges of sleep. When, at last, the girl speaks, she says, in a remarkably sweet, modest way, “Hecuba would like to see you.”

“Hecuba?”

Instant outrage. Is he really so reduced in status that he can be summoned by a slave to see a slave? Because that’s what Hecuba is now—no matter that she’d once been queen of Troy. But then he starts to remember her as she used to be. She—Priam too, of course—always attended the temple on days that were especially sacred to Apollo. The first time he saw her he must have been…what, fourteen, fifteen years old? A little more, perhaps. As he’d knelt to offer Priam the first cuts of meat from the sacrifice, he’d stolen a sidelong glance at her, where she sat in a gold-embroidered robe with diamonds flashing in her hair. How old would she have been? Not young; even as long ago as that, she couldn’t have been young. And she wasn’t beautiful, not in the way many of Priam’s concubines were beautiful; but she did have the most extraordinary voice, deeper than women’s voices generally are—and with a rasping quality that might have been unpleasant, but wasn’t. He’d thought about her later, lying on his pallet bed trying to get to sleep with all the sights and sounds of the feast day revolving inside his head, and her voice had made him think of a woman’s nails being dragged down a man’s back, all the way from the nape of his neck to the cleft in his arse—but gently, very gently, leaving only the faintest score marks on the skin. Sixteen, he’d have been. An age when really all you think about is sex.

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know, sir, she didn’t say.”

“Well, tell her—” He bites the words back.

The girl stood, breathing softly.

“Tell her I’ll come when I can.”

There is no business to detain him in Agamemnon’s compound, and yet he can’t bear to leave. He waits in his hut all day and still the summons doesn’t come; so, in the late afternoon, his shadow stretching far ahead of him along the beach, he sets off for Odysseus’s compound. Frustrated, bad-tempered—yes, but curious too. He’s astonished to realize there’s still a slight undertow of attraction—but she’s an old woman now, too old to arouse feelings of that sort.

He finds her lying on a pallet bed, her head raised on two pillows—so evidently some effort has gone into making her comfortable, though the blanket she lies under is far from clean. When she pushes it to one side, it exhales a breath of sickness, of old flesh. He wishes he’d remembered to bring the half-lemon stuck with cloves that he always carries whenever he’s obliged to visit the more malodorous parts of the camp.

“Hecuba.” No title; what’s the use of pretending?

She peers up at him. “For god’s sake, man, sit down. You always were a streak of piss.”

That same warm, dark, rasping voice. It jolts him out of his predetermined reactions. He looks around the squalid little kennel of a hut, licks his lips like a confused dog—and then, unexpectedly, involuntarily, sits. He’s surprised himself, though not her—she’d taken his obedience for granted. He looks at her, sees the wrinkled neck and the age spots on her skin, sees it all, but none of it matters. She turns her head and he’s a boy again, kneeling at Priam’s feet, gazing sidelong at her.

She reaches for a jug. “Pour yourself a cup. It’s rubbish, but if I can drink it, I’m bloody sure you can.”

“No thanks, not just now.”

He hears himself: stilted, prissy, constipated. His eyes stray to the cake that’s sitting on a platter beside her bed.

“Go on, help yourself, I won’t get through it.” She pushes the platter towards him. “Hecamede’s. You won’t get better than that anywhere.”

“I saw her this morning.”

“Well, yes, of course you did, I sent her.”

She’s as imperious as ever. He remembers her as she was when he first saw her: a small, thin, brown-skinned woman with high cheekbones and a curious habit of sucking in her cheeks as if she’d just tasted something unexpectedly sour. Perhaps, in old age, it actually helps a woman not to have been too beautiful? Hecuba had kept Priam interested, amused, exasperated, frustrated and utterly beguiled through fifty years of marriage. God knows how she’d done it—no tits to speak of either. And she was outrageous; some of the things she came out with. Streak of piss? Really? What kind of language is that for a queen? And she’d been equally outspoken in Troy. He has a distinct memory of Priam with his head in his hands, saying, “Hecuba!” Can’t remember the occasion—some reception for a foreign ambassador.

“Are they treating you well?” he asks, using his index finger to scoop up a blob of cream and pop it onto his tongue.

“Oh, yes. I want for nothing.”

It’s not clear how she means that to be taken. Compared with the palace in Troy, this…hovel—you couldn’t call it anything else—obviously lacks a great deal.

“I get food, I get wine—bloody awful wine, but…” She shrugs. “Odysseus wants me kept alive. He wants me as a coming-home present for that wife of his.”

“Penelope does have an excellent reputation.” God, he sounds so pompous. How has he turned into this person? “I do think she’ll be kind to you.”

“Oh, yes, I know, I know. Faithful Penelope, loyal Penelope, wise Penelope…I was all those things—fat lot of good it did me.”

Faithful, yes; loyal, yes. Wise? Suddenly, he’s impatient to be gone, to get back to his hut, to wait for the real summons—the one that actually matters—but she holds him there, by sheer force of will, it seems, and he’s tired of it, he’s tired of the arrogance of these people who believe they’re born to rule and then, when fate turns against them, can’t—or won’t—adjust. Lying there in her filthy rags on a slave’s bed, she’s still, in her own mind, a queen. Once, he might have found that admirable, but not now. Wise people trim their sails when the wind changes; they don’t sail headlong into a gale. He makes a move to rise, but then looks at her again and recognizes in the sharp cheekbones and hollow temples a different kind of authority. He sees that she’s dying and that she knows she’s dying. It’s this, not some delusional idea that she’s still a queen, that gives her strength. He sees that she fears nobody, because she has nothing left to lose—not even her own life.

“Well, you certainly enjoyed that.”

Looking down at the platter, he sees to his horror that the cake has disappeared. All of it.

“Moderation in all things,” Hecuba says, piously. “Mind, you never were very good at moderation, were you?”

He feels himself blushing underneath the paint. He knows exactly what she’s referring to: one particular, rather unfortunate, incident. Why is she referring to it? That’s the question. She still hasn’t said what she wants—and he wonders now whether she might be capable of blackmail. Well, if she is, it’s not going to get her anywhere. It’s all too long ago, nobody cares—and anyway, who’s going to listen to a slave? His mind whirrs on, automatically calculating risk and probability, planning his next move…There’s no emotion involved now—he can’t afford emotion—but then he looks at Hecuba once again; the light falls on her face and he’s back in Troy again. All the years between, the years of plotting, dissembling, keeping quiet when things were said that violated everything he believed in—all those years have been erased, leaving him stranded, as naked as a hermit crab without its shell.

“We had fun, though, didn’t we?” Hecuba says.

“Now and then.”

“Oh, come on, you know we did.”

Yes, it was fun. It was tremendous fun. He remembers hot summer evenings in Priam’s orchards, moonless nights when you could barely see the person you’d bumped into. Good, while it lasted, but his position at court had become increasingly precarious. Not long after the unfortunate incident, it had been gently suggested that perhaps a celibate priesthood might not be his true vocation. He’d taken the hint and packed his bags, telling himself he’d welcome a change of scene, though in fact he’d been deeply hurt. Perhaps they were right, he’d thought. And here he is, twenty years on, still a priest, still celibate; though admittedly the celibacy is rather more strictly observed now.

“How’s Agamemnon?” Hecuba asks.

“What makes you think I know? I haven’t seen him since—”

“Since you officiated at my daughter’s death.”

“That wasn’t just me, it was—”

All of us. Every priest in the camp had been there. He’d closed his eyes as Pyrrhus raised the sword, and kept them closed till it was over. Sheer cowardice, and even so the attempt to spare himself had failed. At night, in dreams, he still hears the silence, the gasp from the crowd as the blade fell.

“She died bravely.” He swallows to dislodge the lump in his throat. “Do you know the men put flowers on her grave?”

“The Greeks do?”

“Yes. She was brave, they respect that. And you’ve got to remember it was quick. Seconds. She was dead before she hit the ground.”

“I suppose I have Pyrrhus to thank for that. Well, yes, I suppose I have—he could’ve made a mess of it. God knows he made a big enough mess of Priam. You wouldn’t kill a dog like that.”

“You were there?”

“Yes, I saw it all.”

She throws back her head, exposing her wrinkled neck and throat and a new sound comes from her mouth, a whimpering, like a dog that’s about to howl. He can’t bear it; he has to look away. When he turns back, she’s put her fingers round her mouth; she is actually holding her lips together to stop the dreadful sound getting out. He waits while she brings herself back under control. At last, she straightens up.

“She was a good girl, Polyxena. She’d have taken care of me.” A shuddering breath. “We’d have taken care of each other.”

“They say he’s mad.”

“Agamemnon?”

“Yes—apparently he sends for Machaon every night. Can’t sleep. Downs a whole cup of Machaon’s sleeping draught, still can’t sleep. You know, you’re not supposed to take it with strong wine—try telling that to Agamemnon! Oh, and apparently, he’s started seeing things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Achilles.”

“Oh, I know about that. That’s why Polyxena had to die. Give him a girl, he might stay underground.”

“He’s livid with Menelaus. Apparently, they don’t speak. You know, he’s back sleeping with Helen?”

“Yes—and I’m not surprised. I warned him…I said: Don’t let her anywhere near you—send her home on a different ship. I knew she’d worm her way back—I knew. Oh, well, there you are. Grab a man’s dick, you can lead him anywhere.”

He is inclined to bridle a bit at that, which does seem to imply an unduly low opinion of his sex. She’d been married to Priam, for god’s sake—what did she have to complain about? Not like his own poor mother, fastened to a man who’d been stingy with his money and generous with his fists.

“Has he sent for Cassandra?” she asks.

“Now that I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t—or won’t?”

“We-ell, she did foretell his death…”

“Huh, they think she’ll set fire to the bed, do they? Mind, she did do that once. Set fire to the bed.” Her voice softens. “How is she?”

“Calmer—so I’ve been told; I haven’t seen her.”

“Surely you could ask to see her?”

“No. I don’t know who Agamemnon listens to these days, but it certainly isn’t me.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, you must know, clever man like you?”

“He quarrelled with Achilles once—and my advice to the assembly went against him.”

“Backed the wrong horse, didn’t you?”

He says, stiffly: “I was telling the truth.”

“I want to see my Cassandra. I’ve lost one daughter. I don’t want to lose her.”

Suddenly, she looks completely exhausted. It is extraordinary how rapidly the colour drains from her face. Even her lips have gone white.

“I can’t help you.”

He hates saying it, though it’s no more than the truth. Agamemnon’s women are kept in close confinement, and his own influence in that compound is close to zero.

“Well, then.” She sets the wine jug aside. “Off you go.”

Dismissed, he stands up, bows—and from sheer force of habit begins to back out of the room; but then catches himself up, sharply. She might suffer from delusions about her status, but that’s no reason for him to share them. He turns on his heel and marches straight out of the door, trying not to hear the chuckle that pursues him down the steps.