The Women of Troy

35

Later that afternoon, it began to rain. That’s an understatement. The ground was too parched to absorb the sudden deluge: puddles grew out of nowhere; every hill became a river. Huge grey columns of rain swept across the camp, driven by a wind that blew with undiminished ferocity straight off the sea. I wondered if Calchas was beginning to feel nervous, but then I thought: No, he doesn’t need to be. He could always blame Pyrrhus for not having obeyed the will of the gods. Despite the downpour, I still went for a walk, though before I’d gone a few yards, my hair was plastered flat against my skull. Blinking water from my eyes, I almost bumped into Machaon, who waved cheerily as he splodged past. “What did I tell you?” he shouted over his shoulder, pointing both hands at the sky. “WEATHER!”

A deep uneasiness spread through the camp that evening as men grappled with the fact that the gale was still blowing, and that their situation had been made worse by the added misery of lashing rain. Alcimus came home briefly, but then left again immediately. He had to take a work party up to the headland, where they were struggling to keep the pyre alight. Holding my mantle over my head, I splashed across to the hall because food and wine would need to be sent up to them, and I didn’t trust anybody else to organize it. On the way back, I called in on the girls and found them listless, bored and fractious. I decided that wasn’t my problem, and went for another walk instead.

Everywhere you went you were greeted by smells of wet hair and wet wool. Men with their cloaks pulled over their heads huddled round the fires—fires that smoked and spat and threatened to go out altogether. The meat was half cooked, at best; wine was the only reliable comfort, and they were certainly downing plenty of that. No singing, no laughter, no conversation—and the little there was, mainly grumbling. Oh, they’d still have fought for Pyrrhus, even now, if they’d had to—but his claim to know the will of the gods better than Calchas, who was, after all, the army’s chief seer, didn’t sit well with them. Most of them would rather Ebony had been sacrificed.

The rain fell persistently all night. The groups round the fires broke up early, the men staggering off to find whatever comfort they could inside the huts. But in the past few weeks, a considerable amount of storm damage had been done and very little of it repaired. Consequently, leaking roofs added to the general discomfort. When I got back from my walk, I discovered three leaks had started in my own hut, so I fetched buckets from the yard and found a bowl big enough to catch the drips that were falling onto the sideboard. In the midst of all this chaos, I actually sat down and tried to spin, but the wool felt damp and it was full of those annoying little bobbles that are so difficult to get out. From where I sat, I could hear water plopping into the buckets and the bowl, but the plops came at unpredictable intervals, and each made a slightly different noise. That must sound like a very minor irritation but, believe me, after an hour of it I thought I was going mad, so I put the wool to one side and went to bed. The cradle creaked; the baby kicked. I thought I’d never get to sleep, and then, somehow, still listening to the rain, I drifted off.

Just before dawn, I jolted awake and lay, dry-mouthed and panicky, staring into the darkness. For a moment, I couldn’t even remember where I was. I listened, straining to identify whatever it was that had woken me. Alcimus coming in? One of the girls knocking on the door? Then, very slowly, I began to realize that what I was hearing was silence. Of course, it was only the pre-dawn lull that for weeks now had tormented us with a daily renewal of hope—invariably dashed. With any luck, I might manage another hour of sleep before I needed to get up, so I turned onto my side and pulled the covers up to my chin, but I couldn’t settle. The silence went on. And on. There was no sound at all except for the tick-tick of drops falling into the buckets. Even the cradle had stopped creaking.

In the end, I got up, reached for my mantle and went out. All over the compound, doors were opening, dazed-looking men staggering out, blinking at the light. Their movements seemed jerky, stiff, as if they were suits of armour learning to walk. I glanced to my right and saw the girls had tumbled out of the hut and were standing on the steps, looking around them as if they were seeing the place for the first time. The strange thing was, nobody spoke—as if we were all frightened of breaking this infinitely fragile silence.

Then, ripping the soft silk of the air, a man shouted—and instantly others joined in; they danced, they sang, they splashed in puddles until mud caked them to the thigh—and then they ran. Ran headlong to the ships, a stampede there was no stopping, though I heard Automedon yelling at them to stop, to go back. The ships weren’t loaded, two of them needed repairing, they couldn’t just leap on board and start rowing for home. After a while they started to show sense, if dancing and turning cartwheels on the sand is sense. Pyrrhus appeared, looking, with his short, jagged hair, rather like a half-fledged chick. Behind him stood Helenus, both of them red-eyed from the smoke. They must have done the night watch together. They might even have raked through the ashes to collect Priam’s bones.

After talking to Automedon, Pyrrhus went inside to get dressed. Within minutes, all the action had shifted to the beach. The women were left alone in the compound, as we used to be every morning when the men set off for war. It was a strange experience, listening to those shouts of jubilation, trying to imagine what this meant for us. It was obvious what it meant for the Greeks: they were going home. Where were we going? I looked at Andromache. There was nothing for her here now, everybody she’d ever loved was dead, and yet I knew she wouldn’t want to leave. She’d given birth here; her dead lay buried in this ground. That’s home.

All the girls seemed subdued, facing up to the desolation of exile. I kept telling myself nothing was certain yet. And a part of me still expected the wind to start up again at any moment, though I didn’t say that to the others.

In the end, we simply huddled together, listening to the men shouting on the beach. Watching the rain fall.