The Women of Troy

20

Outside the storage hut, the guard stopped and began unlocking the door. Three locks, an indication of the value of the armour kept inside. When he’d finished, he stood aside and politely indicated to me that I should go in. I recognized him as one of the men who’d touched my belly as I’d served wine in the hall, a sign of loyalty to the bloodline of Achilles. Well, gestures like that weren’t going to help me now. And it was Achilles’s son who’d sent me here.

I stepped over the threshold. The guard closed the door behind me and fastened the locks. They didn’t really need locks to keep me in. Where would I go? The lamp cast a circle of pallid light around the hut and I caught the gleam of polished bronze. At first, I squatted down next to the lamp and gazed at the thin line of light under the door. My hands were trembling; I put them up my sleeves to warm them, but I couldn’t stop them shaking. All around me was the cold, heavy smell of metal and oiled cloth that seemed to settle onto my stomach and lie there like a stone. I think, at that moment, I understood how fragile my position really was. As Alcimus’s wife, I’d started to feel secure in my new status, but standing there in a storage hut with a locked door behind me, I knew I’d never been more than an inch away from slavery.

My whole life, years, weeks, days, hours, had led me to this moment in this place. And one day in particular: the day my own city, Lyrnessus, fell. I’d gone up onto the roof of the citadel to watch the battle raging far below. I’d watched Achilles kill my youngest brother with a spear thrust to his throat. Before pulling the spear out, he’d turned and stared up at the citadel. I knew I had the sun behind me, I knew he couldn’t see me—or only as a dark smudge looking down—and yet I felt he was looking straight at me. Gradually, in twos and threes, the other women had drifted up from the floor below and together we’d waited for the end. As the Greek fighters had pounded up the stairs, Arianna, my cousin on my mother’s side, had grasped my arm, saying without words: Come. And then she’d climbed onto the parapet and, at the exact moment the fighters burst in, she’d leapt to her death, her white robes fluttering round her as she fell—like a singed moth. It had seemed to be a long time before she hit the ground, though it could only have been seconds. Her cry had faded into a stricken silence in which, slowly, stepping in front of the other women, I turned to face the men who’d come in.

Arianna said: Come…

But I chose to stay—and everything else, everything that had happened between then and now, had followed on from that choice. From my first hours in the camp, I’d been wary, alert, single-mindedly focused on survival—right up to the moment when I saw Priam’s hand lying dishonoured on the filthy sand. Did I regret helping to bury him? Yes. Yes!

And, no.

It seemed to me, crouched by the door of the storage hut, that I’d merely blundered into it. I had gone out to try to stop Amina, I had tried to persuade her to come away, to leave the task unfinished, but then I’d seen Priam’s hand and suddenly there I was scrabbling like a dog in the sand. I’d said the prayers, I’d drunk the wine, forced the stale bread down my throat…I’d buried Priam—and less than twenty-four hours after I’d heard Pyrrhus say the penalty for doing so was death. I’d thrown away all the gains I’d made in the past dreadful year. I really thought it possible that Pyrrhus would kill me, or have me killed. Amina would go on lying to save me—or to save her concept of herself as the only person brave enough to defy Pyrrhus and obey the gods. But I didn’t think they’d believe her. Why would they? When I’d shown Pyrrhus the dirt under my fingernails.

I closed my eyes, and gradually—this was a slow process—I felt a presence growing in the darkness behind me. “Presence” is the wrong word, but I don’t know what the right word is. Opening my eyes, I forced myself to lift the lantern high above my head—and cried out with shock. Because there, lined up along the far wall, stood Priam, Hector, Patroclus, Achilles. The cry died on my lips—because of course they weren’t there. Of course not. What I was seeing were suits of armour, not stacked in corners, as I’d thought they would be, but fastened to the walls, each piece in its proper place, so that together they formed the shapes of men. Men, instantly recognizable. Here was Priam’s armour, which Hecuba had begged him not to put on. Blood all over it—you never wipe off an enemy’s blood. Beside it, Hector’s armour, his famous plumed helmet glittering in the light—but no shield with it. Andromache had begged Pyrrhus to let her baby son be buried inside his father’s shield—and he’d agreed, though he’d regretted his generosity later. I could imagine how furious he would be, every time he looked at the empty space. Finally, Achilles’s armour. The shield was missing from this too, but only because Pyrrhus kept it close by him in the hall, polishing it obsessively, as Achilles himself had done.

Raising the lantern higher, I looked up at the helmet. Whenever I moved my hand, light and dark chased each other across the metal, creating—or revealing—movement behind the eyeholes in the mask. I heard two people breathing where only one had breathed before. No words spoken; none needed. I don’t know whether this meeting—and it did feel like a meeting—lasted minutes or hours, but it changed me. On the day Polyxena died, I’d stood by Achilles’s burial mound and told myself that Achilles’s story had ended at his grave, and that my own story was about to begin. The truth? Achilles’s story never ends: wherever men fight and die, you’ll find Achilles. And as for me—my story and his were inextricably linked.

A sound of somebody outside the door. It opened and a widening arc of daylight cut a slice out of the dark. The light hit me like cold water, bringing me out of my trance. Alcimus said, “Briseis!” and as I walked towards him, he stood aside to let me out. All the way across the yard, I felt him rigid with fury at my back. Evidently the moment of reckoning was upon me, and that was confirmed when I entered the living quarters and found Automedon waiting there.

Alcimus sat down at the table. “All right. Let’s start at the beginning.” He pointed to a chair and I sat down. The light was dim, so he lit a candle and set it down beside me, close enough for me to feel the warmth on my skin. Automedon slipped into the chair at the head of the table—and I remember thinking that was odd because Alcimus always sat there. So far, Automedon hadn’t even glanced at me. I resented his presence, while at the same time knowing I had no right to resent anything. But I felt I couldn’t have a proper conversation with Alcimus with him sitting there. I wondered—for the first time, which is stupid, I know—if Achilles had hesitated over which he should give me to—and how long it had taken him to decide. I knew what he thought of them; he’d never made any secret of it. Alcimus was a decent man, kind-hearted, a good fighter, but young for his age and a bit of a fool. Automedon—you could trust him with your life, totally honest, no sense of humour, a self-righteous, intolerant prig. But both brave, both loyal—both completely devoted to him.

Alcimus cleared his throat. “There’s something I should say before we start. I told Pyrrhus you’re expecting Achilles’s child.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much.”

“It won’t necessarily help you,” Automedon said—and I felt he enjoyed saying it. “I think he’s quite attached to the idea of being great Achilles’s only son. Difficult to know how he’ll react.”

“No doubt it’ll become clear.”

I saw them exchange glances. Perhaps I wasn’t reacting in the way they’d been expecting either.

“Right,” said Alcimus. “Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you when the men found you?”

“By the grave.”

“Standing up?”

“No, kneeling. I—”

“And you had soil on your hands?”

I nodded. He seized my wrists and pulled them closer to the candle. There was soil under my fingernails and a dusting of grit on the palms of my hands. Alcimus glanced at Automedon and the atmosphere in the room subtly changed. I felt a ripple of cold air across my skin, though the room was airless and thick with the smell of candle-wax.

Automedon leant forward. “What about the first time? Were you there then?”

“No.”

“She’d not said anything?”

I hesitated and caught a glint in his eyes. This was an interrogation. I looked to Alcimus for some warmth, some acknowledgement of the relationship between us, but I got nothing back. If we’d been alone, I’d have tried to be honest with him about the confusion in my mind, the unintended switch from trying to stop Amina to helping her. I’d have told him about meeting Priam on the battlements and how kind he’d been. But there they were, the two of them, and I didn’t think Automedon had ever been confused in his life.

He was still waiting for me to speak.

“Only that she was horrified Priam hadn’t been buried.”

“Did she tell you what she was going to do?”

“No.”

Alcimus said, “So, when you found out he’d been buried, what did you think had happened?”

“I didn’t know.”

He was leaning in closer. The table was between us, only it didn’t feel like that; he seemed to be breathing into my face. And he looked different: older, leaner, more focused. The infatuated boy—and I did think he’d been infatuated with me once—was gone, and in his place was somebody altogether more formidable. This was the man who’d taken part in the final assault on Troy and done nameless things inside its walls. No longer “young for his age”; no longer “a bit of a fool.” I felt I was seeing him for the first time.

After a pause, I said, “Well, you were saying it must be Helenus or Calchas, so I suppose I thought it was one of them.”

Automedon thumped the table. “No, you didn’t! You knew who it was.”

“Look, she just said Priam deserved a proper burial. It’s only what any Trojan would have said.”

“Any Trojan fighter.”

“Do you think women have no views? No loyalties?”

“A woman’s loyalty is to her husband.”

Alcimus got up and fetched a jug of wine from the sideboard. He poured two cups and then, after a fractional hesitation, a third for me.

“Right,” he said. “Last night. Did you know what she was going to do?”

“I had absolutely no idea.”

Not an outright lie, but not exactly the truth either. They sat in silence, staring at me. United. At that moment, I felt I’d lost my husband, while at the same time suspecting I’d never really had one. I wanted to ask what they thought Pyrrhus was going to do, but I didn’t dare; I was too afraid of the answer.

Automedon: “So when did you find out?”

“One of the girls knocked on the door. Don’t ask me which one, I don’t know all their names. Some of them still can’t speak.” Careful. Don’t let the anger show.

“Well, evidently this one could. What did she say?”

“That Amina wasn’t in the hut. That she’d gone.”

“So, what did you think had happened?”

“I thought she’d run away. I certainly didn’t think she was burying Priam.”

Automedon was shaking his head.

“We’d just been to the gardens. There’s shelter there, plenty of food. I thought she might have gone there—”

“But you didn’t go looking for her there, did you? You went to where you knew the body was.”

There was no denying that. And looking back, the idea that Amina might have run away had never been more than a passing thought. Amina would never have run away from anything.

Alcimus: “What did you find when you got there?”

“She’d almost finished. I just wanted it to be over, I wanted her back inside the hut. Safe.”

“So, you helped her bury Priam?” Alcimus barked a laugh. “My god, woman.”

It was too late now for anything but the truth. “Look, I was trying to save Amina. But you know what? You’re absolutely right, I buried Priam. Because I respected him. Because it was shameful to leave him lying there. You both met him—when he came to see Achilles, you met him. You know what happened that night. Achilles made him welcome, he gave him food, he gave him a bed, he treated him with respect—he even gave him his own knife to eat with. Do you think he’d want this?”

They glanced at each other. I could see them reading the truth in each other’s faces, but neither of them was going to admit it.

“You know,” I said. “Both of you—you know Achilles would have wanted Priam buried.”

Alcimus said, heavily, “Your first duty is to me.” He took a deep breath. “Just as mine is to you.”

I laughed; I couldn’t help myself. “No, Alcimus, we both know your first duty is to this.” I pulled the loose fabric of my tunic tight across my belly.

“Shouldn’t that be your first duty as well?”

I felt ashamed in front of him then: his single-minded commitment to a child that wasn’t his contrasted so sharply with my own doubts, my own ambivalence.

Automedon had been silent throughout all this, doodling with a spillage of wine on the table, turning it into a spider, giving it legs. “I think we can find a way round this,” he said, at last. “The girl says she acted on her own. Well, good, let her say it. All Briseis needs to do is keep saying she was trying to stop her. I think she might get away with it. Possibly.”

She. This was Automedon at his smoothest, his chilliest. “Aren’t you forgetting the guards?” I said. “They know I was covering the body—they saw me.”

“You can leave the guards to us,” Automedon said. “If we tell them they saw you trying to drag the girl away, that’s what they’ll say. As long as the girl doesn’t change her story…”

“She won’t,” I said. No, Amina would be where she’d always wanted to be: in a circle of blazing torches, every eye focused on her, and her alone. Perhaps I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t. “What’s going to happen to her?”

Alcimus shrugged. “It’s nobody’s business what he does with her. She’s his slave.”

“But what do you think he’ll do?”

“I don’t know. I suppose if she’s lucky he might sell her on. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with you. The less you have to do with her now, the better.” And with that he stood up, bringing the interrogation to a close.

“One more question,” Automedon said. “Did you talk to Calchas? Or Helenus?”

Mutely, I shook my head.

“Well, that’s a relief. Did she?”

“No—how could she? They’re not allowed out of the hut.”

At the door, Alcimus turned. “Look, while I’m out, don’t open the door to anybody, right? Say you’re ill or something. Don’t let anybody in.”

Alcimus went out first—I couldn’t help thinking he was glad to get away—but Automedon lingered. When he was sure Alcimus was out of earshot, he said, “Be careful, Briseis. You might get away with it this time, pleading your belly, but you won’t always be as lucky.”

He might as well have punched me. I thought of the women in Troy who’d been stabbed in the stomach or speared between their legs on the fifty–fifty chance their baby might be a boy. No amount of “pleading their bellies” would have helped them. Of course, I didn’t dare mention that. What happened in Troy had already become a sinkhole of silence.

But I wasn’t going to let that go entirely. “I didn’t plead my belly,” I said. “Alcimus did. And you know what, Automedon? If you’d been there, you’d have done exactly the same.”

Then I turned away, without waiting for his reply.