The Women of Troy

3

I’d lost count of the number of times I’d heard that song—if you could call it a song—in the last few days. Groups of men staggering around the camp—drunk, slack-mouthed, fish-eyed—bellowing out the simple, repetitive words until their voices grew hoarse. Discipline had almost completely broken down. All over the camp, the kings were struggling to regain control of their men.

Crossing the arena one morning, I heard Odysseus shout: “If you don’t bloody well get that ship loaded, you won’t be going anywhere!” He’d come out of his hall and was standing on the steps of the veranda, confronting a group of twenty or thirty men. It was a sign of the general mood that, even there, in his own compound, he carried a spear. Most of the singers began to edge away, but then a voice shot out of the crowd. “Aye, an’ what about you, yer conniving bastard? Don’t see you lifting much.”

Thersites, of course. Who else? He hadn’t exactly stepped forward; it was more a case of the others stepping back. Odysseus was on to him immediately, spear raised high above his head. Using the butt end as a cosh, he struck Thersites repeatedly on the arms and shoulders and then, as he lay curled up and groaning on the ground, delivered several more blows to his ribs before finishing him off with a kick in the groin.

Clutching his balls, Thersites thrashed from side to side while the other men crowded round, roaring with laughter. He was well known as a shit-stirrer, a gobshite; if there was any work to be handed out, you’d always find Thersites at the back of the queue. Oh, they might get a vicarious thrill from his challenges to authority, but they’d no love for the man, no respect. So they left him lying there and wandered off, possibly to load the ship but more likely to look for fresh supplies of booze, since the goatskins slung across their shoulders appeared to be empty. A few yards further on they began singing again, though with every repetition the song sounded more and more like a dirge.

The truth? Nobody was going home. Nobody was going anywhere. Only four days ago, they’d been within an hour of departure—some of the kings, including Odysseus, had already gone on board—but then the wind suddenly veered round and started blowing at near-gale force off the sea. You’d have had to be mad to leave the shelter of the bay in that. “Oh, don’t worry,” everybody said. “It’ll soon pass.” But it hadn’t passed. Day after day, hour after hour, the freak wind blew, and so, here they all were, the victorious Greek fighters, penned in—and the captive Trojan women with them, of course.

Meanwhile, Thersites. I bent over him, trying not to recoil from the reek that blasted out of his open mouth. It pained me to think ill of a man who’d just called Odysseus a conniving bastard to his face, but really there wasn’t much to like about Thersites. Still, there he was, injured, and I was on my way to the hospital, so I put my hand under his arm and helped him to his feet. He stood doubled over for a moment, hands on knees, before slowly raising his head. “I know you,” he said. “Briseis, isn’t it?” He wiped his bloody nose on the back of his hand. “Achilles’s whore.”

“Lord Alcimus’s wife.”

“Yeah, but what about that brat you’re carrying? What does Lord Alcimus think about that, then? Tekking on another man’s bastard?”

I turned my back on him, aware all the time as I walked away of Amina trailing along behind me. Did she know the history of my marriage? Well, if she didn’t before, she certainly did now.

A couple of days before he was killed, Achilles had given me to Alcimus, explaining that Alcimus had sworn to take care of the child I was expecting. I knew nothing about this until the morning it happened. Dragged out of Achilles’s bed—a semen-stained sheet wrapped round my shoulders, breadcrumbs in my hair, feeling sick, smelling of sex—I was married to Alcimus. A strange wedding, though perfectly legal, with a priest to say the prayers and bind our hands together with the scarlet thread. And, give credit where it’s due, Alcimus had been as good as his word. Only this morning, he’d insisted I must have a woman to accompany me whenever I left the compound. “It isn’t safe,” he’d said. “You’ve got to take somebody with you.”

This girl, Amina, was the result.

We made a ridiculous little procession, me a respectable married woman, heavily veiled, Amina trotting along a few paces behind. All nonsense, of course. What protected me from the drunken gangs roaming around the camp was not the presence of a teenage girl, but the sword arm of Alcimus, as once, only five months ago, it had been the sword arm of Achilles. The only thing, the only thing, that mattered in this camp was power—and that meant, ultimately, the power to kill.

Normally, I found a walk along the shore pleasant, but not today. The wind had become a hot, moist hand pushing you away from the sea, saying: No, you can’t go there. I say “moist,” but so far there’d been no rain, though an anvil-shaped cloud towered high into the sky above the bay and, at night, you could see flickers of lightning deep inside it. Everything suggested a storm was about to break, and yet it never came. The light, a curious reddish brown, stained every bit of exposed skin bronze, until men’s hands and faces seemed to be made of the same hard, unyielding metal as their swords.

Under the celebrations—the drinking, the feasting, the dancing—I detected a current of uneasiness. This wind was beginning to saw at everybody’s nerves, like a fractious baby that just won’t go to sleep. Even at night, with all the doors shut and barred, there was no escaping it. Gusts insinuated themselves into every crack, lifting rugs, blowing out candles, pursuing you along the passage into your bedroom, even into your sleep. In the middle of the night, you’d find yourself lying awake staring at the ceiling, and all the questions you’d managed to ignore by day gathered round your bed.

What does Lord Alcimus think about that, then? Tekking on another man’s bastard?

My pregnancy was public knowledge now. The change seemed to have happened imperceptibly, rather like the drawing-in of the nights. Evening after evening, you see no real difference until suddenly there’s a chill in the air and you know it’s autumn. People’s attitudes to me had shifted with the swelling of my belly and that in turn made my own feelings about the unborn child more difficult to deal with. Achilles’s child. Achilles’s son, according to the Myrmidons, who apparently could see inside my womb. At times, I had the feeling that what I carried inside me was not a baby at all, but Achilles himself, miniaturized, reduced to the size of a homunculus, but still identifiably Achilles; and fully armed.

As we neared the gate of Agamemnon’s compound, I looked down, determinedly following the movements of my feet—in, out; in, out—as they appeared and disappeared under the hem of my tunic. I’d been so unhappy in this place, I always dreaded going back, but I reminded myself that the shame of being a slave in Agamemnon’s huts, in Agamemnon’s bed, belonged to the past. I was a free woman; and so, once inside the gate, I lifted my head and looked around.

We were in the main square of the compound. When I’d lived there, this had been the parade ground where the men mustered before marching off to war; now, it was occupied by a hospital tent, moved there from its original, exposed position on the beach. In its new setting, the tent looked even shabbier than before, its canvas covered in green stains, foul-smelling from long storage in the hold of a ship. This was one of the tents the Greeks had lived in for the first months of the war when they’d been arrogant enough to think Troy would be easily defeated. After their first miserable winter under canvas, they’d cut down an entire forest to build their huts.

I ducked under the open flap, pausing for a moment while my eyes adjusted to the green gloom. I thought I’d heard every sound the wind could make, but the snapping and bellowing of canvas was new. The smells were the same though: stale blood from a basket full of used bandages; a tang of fresh herbs: thyme, rosemary, lavender, bay. When I’d worked there, the tent was so overcrowded you’d had to step over one patient to reach the next. Now, it was half empty: just two rows of five or six ox-hide beds, their occupants for the most part sleeping, except for two at the far end who were playing dice. These would be men who’d been wounded in the final assault on Troy. None of them seemed to be seriously injured, except for one at the end of the front row who looked to be in a bad way. I wondered why I was even bothering to assess them; it had nothing to do with me now.

Ritsa was standing by the bench at the far end, wiping her hands on the coarse sacking apron round her waist. She smiled as I approached, but I noticed she didn’t run to meet me as she used to do.

“Well,” she said, as I reached her. “Look at you.”

I wondered what was different about me. My pregnancy, which was beginning to show, or the rich embroidery on my robe? But neither of these was exactly new. Then I realized she must be referring to Amina, who’d followed me in and was hovering a few feet behind me.

“Who’s this, then? Your maid?”

“No.” It was important to make this clear. “It’s just, Alcimus doesn’t want me going around the camp on my own.”

“He’s right there. I’ve never seen so many drunks. Come in, sit down…”

She picked up a jug of wine and poured three cups. After a moment’s hesitation, and with a glance in my direction, Amina accepted one. Annoyingly, she was behaving exactly like a maid.

I sat down at the long table and turned to Ritsa. “How are you?”

“Tired.”

She looked it. In fact, she looked haggard, and I couldn’t understand why because these men, apart from the head injury in the front row, all had slight wounds.

“I’m sleeping in Cassandra’s hut.”

That explained it. I remembered how frenzied Cassandra had been when the Trojan women were waiting to be shared out among the kings—how she’d grabbed torches and whirled them round above her head, stamping her feet, shouting for everybody to come and dance at her wedding…She’d even tried to haul her mother to her feet, forcing her to dance and stamp her feet too.

“Is she any better?”

Ritsa pulled a face. “She varies—mornings are pretty good; the nights are bloody awful…She’s obsessed with fire, it’s amazing how she gets her hands on it, but she does—and every single time, I’m in trouble, my fault. I’m surprised she hasn’t burned the whole bloody place down. I daren’t go to sleep—and then I’ve got to work in here all day. It’s no life.”

“You need somebody to help.”

“Well, there is one girl—she’s pretty useless though. I couldn’t leave Cassandra with her.”

“I could sit with her—let you get some sleep.”

“I don’t know what Machaon would say about that.”

“We could ask. I could ask.”

She shook her head. Machaon was the Greek army’s chief physician. He was also—and rather more relevantly—Ritsa’s owner. I could see she was reluctant to let me approach him, so I had to let it go.

“Nice wine,” I said, to fill a silence.

“It is, isn’t it? Not bad.”

She was just pouring us another cup when a great blast of wind bellied the canvas above our heads. Alarmed, I looked up. “Aren’t you worried? I’d be scared it was coming down.”

“I wish it would.”

I looked at her, but she just shrugged again and went back to grinding herbs. You might think it strange, but I envied her the cool feel of the pestle against the palm of her hand. It was a long time since I’d worked beside her at this bench, but it had been my happiest time in the camp. I could still identify every one of the ingredients she had lined up in front of her—all of them sedative in their effects. Mixed with strong wine, you’d have a draught capable of knocking out a bull. “Is that for Cassandra?”

She glanced at Amina, then mouthed, “Agamemnon. Can’t sleep, apparently.”

“Ah, the poor soul.”

We exchanged a smile, then she jerked her head at Amina. “She’s quiet.”

“Still waters.”

“Really?”

“No, I don’t know. But you’re right: she doesn’t say much.”

“Is she your maid?”

“No, she’s one of Lord Pyrrhus’s girls. Suits both of us, I suppose. I need somebody to walk with, she needs to get out.”

This was all rather awkward. I’d known Ritsa since I was a child. In those days, she was a person of some standing, a respected healer and midwife. She’d been my mother’s best friend—and after my mother’s death Ritsa had done her best to take care of me. Then, years later, when Achilles sacked and burned our city, we’d been brought to this of Lyrnessus camp together as slaves. She’d been an immense help to me then, and to many of the other women. But now I was a free woman, the wife of Lord Alcimus, whereas Ritsa was still a slave. Oh, it’s easy to say changes in status, in fortune, shouldn’t put a strain on friendship, but we all know they do. Not this friendship though. I’d lost so many of the people I loved; I was determined not to lose Ritsa.

So, instinctively, I began reminiscing about our life in Lyrnessus, reaching out to her through shared memories of a happier past, before Achilles destroyed everything, before we first heard his terrible battle cry ringing round the walls. Even so, the conversation was hard going, guttering like a candle at the end of its life—and I was aware all the time of Amina, avidly listening. After another pause, I said: “Well, I suppose I should be getting back.”

Ritsa nodded at once and pushed her mortar to one side. We hesitated over kissing, making ineffectual pecks and bobs in each other’s direction before finally achieving an awkward bumping of noses. Amina watched. As we set off, she once more lagged deliberately behind. I dropped back, wanting to walk beside her, but the minute I slowed down, she did too, so the distance between us was maintained. I sighed and struggled on against the wind. This girl was on my conscience and I rather resented the fact, because I felt I was doing everything I could. Remembering my own first days in the camp, how much other women had helped me then, I’d tried to reach out to her before, on my visits to the women’s hut, but so far, she’d rejected every overture of friendship. Of course, I was trying to support the other girls too, but Amina particularly, probably because she reminded me so much of myself—the way I’d watched and listened and waited. Friendship’s often based on similarities, the discovery of shared attitudes, shared passions, but the resemblances between Amina and me weren’t having that effect. If anything, they simply increased the doubts I felt about myself. But still, I wanted to make contact. I kept glancing back at her, but she was walking with her head bowed and neatly avoided my gaze.

A group of men had gathered in the arena and were kicking a pig’s bladder around. At least, I hoped it was a pig’s bladder. The day after Troy fell, I’d come across some fighters playing football with a human head. This lot seemed harmless enough, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I turned round, put my hand on Amina’s arm and nodded towards the beach. I was beginning to think Alcimus had been right all along and it was just too dangerous to leave the compound.

The beach was deserted, except for two priests wearing the scarlet bands of Apollo who were whirling bullroarers above their heads, perhaps thinking if they made enough noise, the wind would be cowed into submission. As I watched, a gust caught one of them off balance and dumped him unceremoniously onto the wet sand. After that, they gave up, trailing disconsolately away in the direction of Agamemnon’s compound. All over the camp, priests like these were trying everything they knew to change the weather: examining the entrails of sacrificed animals, watching the flight patterns of birds, interpreting dreams…And still the wind blew.

After the priests had gone, we had the whole vast beach to ourselves, though we had to hold our veils over our faces to be able to breathe at all; talking was impossible. Neither of us could have stood alone against the blast, so we were forced to cling to each other—and those few minutes of shared struggle did more to break down the barriers between us than my offers of friendship had ever done. We staggered about, laughing and giggling. Amina’s cheeks were flushed; I think she was probably amazed to discover that laughter was still possible.

At first, we kept to the edge of the beach, where the cradled ships provided some protection, but I can never resist the pull of the sea—and anyway, I told myself, the wet sand at the water’s edge would be firmer. Easier to stay on our feet. So down the slopes of mixed sand and shingle we went, to find ourselves confronted by a wall of yellowish-grey water that seemed to be intent on gobbling up the land. On the shoreline, there were stinking heaps of bladderwrack studded with dead creatures, thousands of them, more than I’d ever seen before: tiny, grey-green crabs, starfish, several huge jellyfish with dark red centres, almost as if something inside them had burst, and other things whose names I didn’t know—all of them dead. The sea was murdering its children.

Amina turned to look back at the smouldering towers of Troy, her face suddenly tense and wretched. I felt I was failing her and that somebody else, older, more experienced—Ritsa, perhaps—would have been better able to reach out to her. So we walked in silence until we drew level with Pyrrhus’s compound. Once inside the gates I knew we’d be safe, but we weren’t there yet. Hearing a burst of braying laughter, I approached cautiously, keeping to the shadows, trying to work out what lay ahead of us. It wasn’t dark exactly, but in those days the sky was often so overcast that even at midday it was scarcely light.

Immediately outside the gate was a big open space where the Myrmidons used to muster before marching off to war. Here, another group of fighters had gathered, but at the centre of this scrum was a girl. Blindfolded. They were spinning her round the circle, each man sending her careering off into the arms of the next. She didn’t scream or cry for help; probably she knew by now that nobody would come. Amina mustn’t see this. I grabbed her arm and pointed back the way we’d come, but she just stood, transfixed, and so, in the end, I had to drag her away. Stumbling, she followed me along the wall, but still looked back over her shoulder at the spinning girl and the ring of laughing men.

In my first weeks in the camp, when the sea had been both a solace and a temptation—I say “temptation” because I so often wanted to walk into the waves and not turn back—I’d explored every inch of the beach, and that knowledge served me well now. I knew there was a path through the dunes that led to another entrance into the stables, so I headed straight for that. Reaching the first sheltered place, I flopped onto the sand to gather my scattered thoughts and, after a moment’s hesitation, Amina sat beside me, stretched out on her back and stared up at the sky.

Lying down like that, we escaped the full force of the wind, though the sharp blades of marram grass tossed wildly above our heads. I closed my eyes and put my arms across my face. I was afraid Amina would want to talk about the incident we’d just witnessed, and I didn’t know what to say to her. Tell the truth, I suppose—but it was a difficult truth to tell. On my second night in the camp, I’d slept in Achilles’s bed. Less than two days before, I’d seen him kill my husband and my brothers. Lying underneath him as he slept, I’d thought nothing worse could ever happen to me, or to any woman. I thought this was the pit. But later, as I walked around the camp, I began to notice the common women, those who scrabbled for scraps around the cooking fires, who went without food to feed their children, who crawled under the huts at night to sleep. It hadn’t taken me long to realize there were many fates worse than mine. Amina needed to know that, she needed to understand the realities of life in this camp, but I couldn’t face the brutality of telling her. And anyway, I told myself, she’d learn soon enough.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that she was watching some crows which were circling a hundred yards or so further on. I thought she looked puzzled, and after a while she stood up, shielding her eyes to see better. With her black robe flapping around her, she looked like a crow herself. Reluctantly, I got to my feet, wondering how I was going to get her past the spot, because I knew—or rather suspected—what was there. When Pyrrhus had returned in triumph after his exploits in Troy, he’d been dragging a bag of blood and broken bones behind his chariot wheels: Priam. The action was both horrific and drearily predictable. Achilles had dishonoured Hector’s body by dragging it behind his chariot, so obviously Pyrrhus must inflict the same fate on Priam. I remembered Achilles coming back to the camp that day, how he’d stridden into the hall and plunged his head and shoulders into a vat of clean water, surfacing, a minute or so later, dripping wet and blind. The crows had been circling that day too.

“Come on.” I tried to force a little energy into my voice. “Let’s get going.”

Wrapping my veil tightly round my face, I set off. There was a taint in the air that I hoped she hadn’t noticed, though she seemed alert to everything. Sliding down slopes of loose sand, we came out into a clearing, and there it—he—was. No way of telling whether this place had been deliberately chosen or if Priam’s body had been simply abandoned where Pyrrhus’s mad ride had come to an end. But, whether by accident or design, he’d been left propped up against a slight incline so that he seemed to be half rising to greet us. Somehow that made everything worse. Nothing much left of his face: his eyes and the tip of his nose were gone. Crows always go for the eyes first, because it’s easy and they need to work fast. Many a hungry crow has lingered a second too long and ended up in a fox’s jaws.

There was no way round the body: we had to walk past. Close to, the stench became a physical barrier that you had to push against. I breathed through my mouth, keeping my eyes down so I’d see as little as possible. What I hadn’t expected was the buzzing of flies, thousands of them, covering the body like a fuzz of black bristles. As my shadow fell across them, they rose up, only to settle again the moment I was past. The noise filled my head till I thought it was going to split open. Sometimes, even now, so many years later, I’ll be sitting outside enjoying the warmth of a summer evening, and I’ll become aware of the buzzing of bees fumbling the flowers, of countless other insects seething in the green shade—and it’s unbearable. “Where are you going?” people ask. And I say—convincingly casual, because I’ve had a lot of practice—oh, believe me, a lot—“It’s too hot out here, don’t you think? Why don’t we go inside?”

That day, there was no escape. I tried to focus on trivial things—what we were having for dinner, whether the women would remember to have a hot bath ready for Alcimus’s return, though I’d no idea when he was coming home, or if he’d come home at all. I thought about anything and everything except what was lying there in front of me—the pitiful ruin of a great king.

Amina was some way behind. I turned, meaning to chivvy her along, and found I couldn’t speak. Sickened by the stench, she’d raised her veil to cover her nose and was staring at the body. That mane of silver hair, laced with blood—not much else was recognizable—but still enough for her to say: “Priam?”

I nodded and beckoned her on, but she stood rooted to the spot, staring, staring, her eyes so wide they seemed to have swallowed the rest of her face. And then she turned aside and retched, her whole body convulsed by the effort. A few moments later, she was dabbing her mouth delicately on the edge of her veil.

“Are you all right?”

No reply. Well, fair enough, stupid question. Using the edge of her sandal, she was scraping up enough soil to cover the vomit. Taking her time. Fastidious as a cat. When, finally, she turned to face me, I was startled. I don’t know what I’d expected. Revulsion? Yes. Shock? Yes. Even full-blown hysteria, perhaps; anything but this cool, calm, calculating stare. It made me nervous. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

“Home?”

Too late to choose another word, and anyway, whether she liked it or not, the women’s hut was her home now. I walked on, hoping she’d follow, but she didn’t, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I found her still staring—not at Priam, now, but at the small mound of earth she’d raised to cover her sick. She looked up. “The soil’s very loose. Be easy to dig.”

At first, I didn’t understand. Then: “No. No!”

“We can’t just leave him like this.”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“Yes, there is. We can bury him.” Then, like a child repeating a lesson she’d learnt by rote: “If a dead person isn’t given a proper burial, they’re condemned to wander the earth. They can’t enter the world of the dead where they belong.”

“Do you honestly believe that? Priam’s being punished because Pyrrhus won’t let anybody bury him? Doesn’t say much for the mercy of the gods, does it?” Every word of that was false. Nothing in my life up to that point had inclined me to believe in the mercy of the gods. “The point is, Pyrrhus doesn’t want him buried and what Pyrrhus says goes.”

“There’s a higher power than Pyrrhus.”

“Yes,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding. “Agamemnon. Do you think he cares whether Priam’s buried or not?”

“I care.”

“You’re a girl, Amina. You can’t fight the kings.”

“I don’t want to fight anybody. And anyway, I wouldn’t be—I’d just be doing what women have always done.”

She was right, of course. Preparing the dead for burial is women’s work, every bit as much as childbirth and the care of the newborn. We are the gatekeepers. In normal times, the women of Priam’s household would have prepared his body for burial, but things were different now, and she seemed to have no grasp of how fundamentally her life had changed.

“Look, Amina, if you’re going to survive, you’ve got to start living in the real world. Troy’s gone. In this compound, whatever Pyrrhus wants, Pyrrhus gets.” What I really wanted to say was: You’re a slave. Learn to think like a slave. But I couldn’t do it. She was so young, so brave. And I was a coward, I suppose; I just let it go, hoping the reality of her situation would sink in without me having to hammer it home. “Let’s get you back to the hut. Have something to eat.”

Reluctantly, she nodded. I set off, striding out as fast as I could, though on this sheltered ground behind the dunes, grasses and weeds grew almost waist high; it was a struggle to get through them. Ahead of us was the cinder path that connected the stables with the grazing pastures on the headland. A groom was coming towards us, leading a black stallion. Disturbed by the high wind, the horse was tossing his head and sidestepping so often the man walking on the other side of him was barely visible. Ebony. I recognized him because he was one half of Pyrrhus’s chariot team. I stopped on the edge of the path and raised my veil, aware of Amina standing tall and straight-backed beside me. At first, I was so absorbed in watching Ebony’s constant pirouetting that I didn’t see who the “groom” was; but then I caught a glimpse of wind-blown red hair, jarring against the horse’s sleek black neck. Pyrrhus.

What on earth was he doing, bringing his own horse back from pasture, when he had a dozen or so grooms to do the job for him? But then I remembered that when Pyrrhus first arrived in the camp, ten days after Achilles’s death, Alcimus had more than once remarked on how many hours he spent in the stables. “Brilliant with horses,” he’d said, in a tone that implied Pyrrhus was rather less brilliant with men. “Strange lad.” This was the closest he’d ever come to voicing the doubts I knew he had. Sometimes I wondered if any of those initial doubts remained, despite Pyrrhus having done so well at Troy. A short war, but a good one—that seemed to be the general verdict. (“Doing well at Troy” and “a good war” are phrases that blister my tongue.)

So, there we stood, both of us discreetly veiled, waiting for horse and man to pass by. Perhaps Ebony could smell death or perhaps he just didn’t like the huge black birds still circling overhead, their sharp, angular shadows slicing the ground beneath his feet. Dragging on the lead rope, he reared, then bucked three or four times in quick succession, letting out a string of explosive farts. Pyrrhus did well to hold him. He had a real fight on his hands, but he stayed calm, speaking quietly, gently, reassuringly, until at last the horse was steady, though sweating heavily. Pyrrhus moved to the other side of him, keeping his head averted so he didn’t have to see the dreadful birds. And they were dreadful—they seemed so even to me who had no reason to fear them—cawing raucously in the fading light, their flight feathers like outstretched fingers beckoning the night. Only when he was well past Priam’s body did Pyrrhus ease the rope and let Ebony move his head freely again.

I breathed out, though I hadn’t known till then that I was holding my breath. I waited till Pyrrhus was well ahead of us before I stepped out onto the track and, with a carefully expressionless glance at Amina, set off for the camp, aware all the time of her trailing reluctantly behind.