The Women of Troy

4

Entering the compound via the stable yard, I noticed the Trojan women had been allowed out of their hut. They were sitting in two rows on the veranda steps, looking, in their long black robes, rather like swallows about to migrate—the way they line up on ledges and parapets in the days before they fly away. Except swallows keep up a constant twittering whereas the women were silent. I say “women” but they were girls really, not one of them over seventeen—some a lot younger than that. They clung together, too frightened even to whisper, staring towards Troy where columns of black smoke hung over the citadel, pierced now and then by jets of red and orange flame.

Amina ran to join them. They shuffled along the step to make room for her, but they didn’t greet her.

I walked onto Alcimus’s hut. As I lifted the latch, a fresh gust of wind sent the door crashing against the wall. I wrestled it shut behind me and stood in silence for a moment, gazing around at what was now my home. A table, four chairs, a bed pushed hard against the wall, several rugs and, in the corner, a carved chest containing Alcimus’s clothes. A comfortable room: cushions on the chairs, a tapestry on the wall, lamps, candles—but nothing in it felt as if it belonged to me. I’d come to this hut the day after Achilles died, Alcimus prostrate with grief, the whole camp in turmoil. That was five months ago, and yet the room still felt strange. I forced myself to move, do something, anything, and decided I’d go outside and check on the preparations for dinner.

The cooking fire was at the back of the hut where there was a small enclosed space that gave some shelter from the wind. I had women to help me now, slaves. There’s a saying that the worst mistress a slave can have is an ex-slave. I tried at least to make sure that wasn’t true of me. Alcimus’s slaves had a safe place to sleep and I made sure they were well fed.

Once I was sure the meal was well underway, I went back inside and picked up a basket of raw wool, grey-black, with lumps of dung bulking out the fibres. I don’t suppose teasing wool is anybody’s favourite job; it certainly isn’t mine. Within minutes, my hands were slick with grease, but I persevered, though the monotonous repetition of the task was sucking me into a tunnel of shapeless fears. Once again, I heard Amina say: Be easy to dig, and I shifted a little to stretch my aching back. Of course, she hadn’t meant it; she wouldn’t be mad enough to do anything that dangerous—and anyway, the women’s hut was guarded at night. No, it was all right. There was nothing to worry about.

But then, floating between me and the wool, I saw Priam’s hand, with the gold thumb ring he always wore glinting in the sun. Back, back, I went, hauled back helplessly into the distant past. When I was twelve years old, not long after my mother’s death, my father had sent me to live with my married sister in Troy. Helen, who was—unaccountably—my dumpy sister’s best friend, took a fancy to me. Everybody remarked on it: I was always “Helen’s little friend.” She used to take me with her when she went to the citadel, which was almost every day. She’d lean over the parapet and avidly—there was something unpleasant about the fixity of her gaze—watch the battle raging far below. The first time we went, Priam was there, and in the midst of all his troubles—war going badly, sons quarrelling, coffers emptying, a generation of young men dying—he found time to be kind to me. Taking out a silver coin, he put it on the palm of his hand and, muttering some magic words, passed the other hand rapidly across it—and the coin vanished. I stared at his empty hand, inclined to stand on my twelve-year-old dignity—I was too old for magic tricks—but mesmerized too, because I couldn’t see how it had been done. Priam patted himself all over, pretending to search inside his robes. “Where’s it gone? Oh, I do hope I haven’t lost it. Have you got it?” I shook my head vehemently. Then—of course—he reached across and “discovered” the coin behind my ear. In spite of myself, I laughed. Bowing courteously, he presented the coin to me—and then, I remember, turned aside to watch the battle, his face settling into its lines of habitual sadness.

Now, years later, I remembered that hand—and saw the same hand lying dishonoured on the filthy ground. Pushing my fingers hard into my eyes, I banished the image, letting my head fall back against the chair. No more wool-teasing, I decided, it was too depressing. Squeezing my eyes tight shut, I simply sat and listened to the wind.

When, eventually, Alcimus came home, he had Automedon with him. That was no surprise—they often dined together—but then a third man followed them in. Pyrrhus. I bowed deeply and went to fetch cups and wine. Because I knew it would be expected, I selected the best wine and served it undiluted, with only bread and olives as an accompaniment. They sat round the table and talked. Alcimus was keeping pace with Pyrrhus’s drinking, but he had a good head and his speech was no more than slightly slurred. Automedon, though he seemed to drink as much as the others, appeared to be entirely sober. Pyrrhus was unequivocally drunk. I fetched a second jug, set it on the table beside Alcimus and retreated to the shadows round the bed. Nobody so much as glanced at me.

They were talking about Alcimus’s plan to organize games against teams from other compounds. The men had to be found something to do, Alcimus said. Idleness would only breed discontent and already there were rumours flying round the camp that the weather was unnatural, that Agamemnon or one of the other kings must have offended the gods. Fights between rival tribes and factions had begun to break out, and that was dangerous. The Greek kingdoms had a long history of festering border disputes, blood feuds passed down the generations, ceaseless conflict—and now that the Trojans had been defeated, there was nothing left to unite the warring bands. The coalition that had won the war was crumbling, each individual kingdom jockeying for position. The brother kings, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who’d led the expedition, had quarrelled because Menelaus, in defiance of honour, decency and common sense, had taken that bitch Helen back into his bed. Thousands of young men had died so Menelaus could get back to humping his whore. And so, Alcimus went on, they had somehow to seize control of the situation, bring the divided factions together. Pyrrhus said “Yes” and “No” and drank and offered the opinion that what the men really needed was a bit of fun. The games will be fun, Alcimus insisted. “Until they start killing each other over the results,” Automedon said.

They were well into the second jug—and I still didn’t know if Pyrrhus would be staying for dinner. Now very drunk, he began talking—boasting, rather—about the part he’d played in the fall of Troy. I saw Alcimus and Automedon glance at each other. Myrmidons were—are—a stocky, dark-haired, dark-skinned race, as agile as their own mountain goats, deeply sceptical, slow to trust, taciturn to a fault. Neither Alcimus nor Automedon looked comfortable during Pyrrhus’s slurred ramblings; Automedon, in particular, stared into his cup, his sallow, aquiline face expressionless. I wasn’t enjoying it much either. I didn’t want to dwell on what had happened inside Troy; I certainly didn’t want be told what Alcimus had done. I had to spend the rest of my life with this man; it would be easier if I didn’t know. But I needn’t have worried: Pyrrhus’s account featured nobody but himself.

He was describing—reliving—the moment he’d hacked his way through the doors of Priam’s palace. I’d never thought of Pyrrhus as an eloquent man, but on this subject the words flowed. I was forced to see everything through his eyes: the long corridor, doors opening off on either side, glimpses of rugs, tapestries, gold lamps—all the fabled wealth of Troy—though he’d only looked just long enough to make sure there were no fighters hiding there. Then on he ran—feeling, he said, Achilles’s blood coursing through his veins—towards the door at the far end. Finding it heavily guarded, he’d veered off in search of the secret passage that linked Hector’s house with Priam’s apartment. The existence of this passage was one of the crucial pieces of information Priam’s son Helenus had revealed under torture. The briefest of searches had led Pyrrhus to it. By now, he’d left the other Greek fighters far behind, so when, finally, he burst into the throne room and saw Priam, in full armour, standing on the altar steps, the two of them had been alone together.

All this was painful to me, though no different from my own involuntary imaginings. I tried not to hear what came next, but it was no use, I had to go on listening. He spoke of how proudly he’d announced his identity: Pyrrhus, son of Achilles. How, at the mere mention of that name, Priam had gone white with terror. How he’d leapt up the altar steps, dragged the old man’s head back and quickly, cleanly, deftly, easily, cut his throat. One blow, he said. Like sticking a pig.

I looked at him and I thought: You’re lying. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. The death of Priam had been nothing like that. And nobody would ever be able to contradict Pyrrhus’s account, because nobody else had been present. Eventually, he lapsed into silence, staring at his cup as if he couldn’t remember what it was for. I watched him, searching, I suppose, for some resemblance to Achilles, whose unappeasable anger had caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths. People kept telling Pyrrhus he was the spitting image of his father, but I couldn’t see it. To me, he looked like a portrait of Achilles done in coarse red clay by a competent but mediocre sculptor. So? Yes, there was a resemblance; and no, he was nothing like Achilles.

As if made uneasy by my gaze, Pyrrhus straightened up and looked around. “You know what I really regret?” he said. “Giving Hector’s shield to that fucking woman to bury her brat in. You”—jabbing his finger at Automedon—“should’ve stopped me.”

“It was very generous,” Automedon said, stiffly.

“It was very bloody stupid.”

“You’ve got the helmet,” Alcimus said. “You’ve got everything else.”

“S’not the point though, is it? My father stripped that armour from Hector’s dead body, the minute after he killed him. I should have the full set—not bits missing.”

Abruptly, he lurched to his feet. Alcimus put out a steadying hand, but Pyrrhus ignored him, grabbed the edge of the table and then launched himself at the door. Alcimus followed him out onto the veranda. I could hear them talking, though their words were broken up by gusts of wind. After a few minutes, Alcimus came back to the table, bringing the cool night air on his skin. He pulled out his chair and sat down.

“Well,” he said.

Automedon shrugged. They were used to waiting in ambush, these two, where one whisper might betray them—and so over the years they’d developed a method of communication that hardly seemed to rely on words. I sensed that this particular conversation had been going on, unspoken, for much of the past hour.

“He’s very young,” Alcimus said.

“Not young enough.”

Not young enough for drunken boasting to be excusable?

“He just wants to prove he’s as good as Achilles. And he can’t.” Alcimus glanced in my direction. “Nobody can.”

A fraught silence. I’d never told anybody my marriage was unconsummated, not even Ritsa, and until that moment I’d always taken it for granted that Alcimus wouldn’t have spoken about it either. Now, suddenly, I felt Automedon knew—or, more likely, guessed.

“More wine?” I asked.

“Better not,” Alcimus said. “Fact, I think we should be going.”

I nodded, regretting yet another uneaten dinner. At the door, he hesitated. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

And I felt he resented even that small concession to the obligations of domestic life. This was at the root of all my uneasiness. I knew—I thought I knew—that Alcimus had loved me once—or been infatuated with me, at least. I’d noticed the way he’d looked at me, whenever we were together in a room, though of course he’d never said anything. As Achilles’s prize of honour, I’d been as far beyond his reach as a goddess—but, then, perhaps he’d preferred it like that? Perhaps the real love had been for Achilles.