The Women of Troy

5

As Alcimus’s wife, I led a much more isolated and restricted life than I had as Achilles’s prize of honour. I no longer served wine to the men at dinner in the hall, and the lawlessness of the camp meant it was harder to see my friends. There weren’t many hours I didn’t spend alone. Alcimus came and went, busily organizing the work of the compound; we barely spoke. In the evenings, when I was always alone, I sat spinning wool, letting the thread lead me down a labyrinth of memory. I found myself thinking a great deal about my sister, Ianthe—the daughter of my father’s first wife. I had no memories of her from my childhood: she’d already been a woman on the brink of marriage when I was born. It was only later, after my mother died and I was sent to live with her in Troy, that I got to know her. I thought of her now, because I felt as lonely as I’d ever felt since arriving in the camp, and she was my only living relative. If she was still alive.

After Troy fell, as the captive women were being herded into the arena, I’d gone in search of her. Since she’d been married to one of Priam’s sons, I’d looked for her first among the women of the royal household, who were being housed in an overcrowded hut on the edge of the arena, waiting to be allocated as prizes of honour to the various kings. Some of the women had spilled out of the hut and were sitting or lying on the dirty sand. Hair stringy with sweat, faces bruised, eyes bloodshot, tunics torn: their own families would have struggled to recognize some of them. As I walked through the crowd, I’d stared hard into every face, but Ianthe wasn’t there.

Later, I looked for her among the common women I’d seen being forced down the muddy track into the camp, stumbling, sometimes falling over like cattle driven to the slaughter. Those who fell were “encouraged” to get on their feet again by blows from the butt ends of spears. No pregnant women among them, I noticed—and though some of the women were leading little girls by the hand, there were no boys. Once again, I looked from one terrified face to another, but fear made them all look alike and it took me a long time to establish that my sister wasn’t there. I learnt later that several hundred women had thrown themselves from the citadel, and as soon as I heard that I felt sure Ianthe would have been one of them. It was in her to do that—as it was not in me.

Gradually, over the intervening days, I’d learnt to accept that she was dead. But I couldn’t be sure and, now more than ever, I needed certainty. The only person I could ask was Helen, who’d been Ianthe’s friend—though it wasn’t a friendship that many people had understood. So, one morning, I rose early, dressed myself in my darkest clothes, and set off, creeping between the huts as unobtrusively as I could, nervous and alone. I couldn’t take Amina with me on this trip because she’d have told the other girls and I didn’t want this visit to be generally known. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to Helen—she was known to be heavily guarded—but the sentries at the gate of the compound waved me through. Women were not considered a threat.

I’d never been in Menelaus’s compound before, so I had no idea which door to knock on. After looking around for some time, I noticed a young girl sitting on the steps of one of the huts, grinding corn. She was skinny, with dark shadows under her eyes and an open sore at the corner of her mouth—only too clearly one of the women who scratched a miserable living round the cooking fires. When I asked for directions, she pointed at one of the huts. “You want to see Helen?” she said. And then she spat to clean her mouth after saying the name.

I climbed the steps, waited a few moments—wishing I hadn’t come—and then knocked. My hand was still raised, my mouth open to ask the maid if I could see her mistress, when I saw there was no need. Because there she was. I detected no change in her, none at all. She looked my age—even a little younger, perhaps—though she had a daughter old enough for marriage. Her hair was unbound and so tousled I thought she must just have tumbled out of bed.

“I’m sorry to get you up.”

“You didn’t. I was working.”

I noticed there was a loom in the far corner, with lamps lit all around it. Helen and her weaving. I remembered a cruel story I’d heard when I was a girl. People believed—or at least affected to believe—that whenever she cut a thread in her wool, a man died on the battlefield. I wondered, now, if she’d known that’s what people were saying—and, if so, whether it had frightened her as much as it ought to have done. Every death in the war laid at Helen’s door.

She was staring at me, not stepping aside to allow me into the room. I realized she didn’t recognize me, so I pushed my veil away from my face. “Briseis.”

Instant delight. “Well, look at you!” She caught my hands. “You’re as tall as I am.” She sketched the air between our heads. “And so beautiful. I knew you would be.”

“Then you were the only one. Everybody keeps telling me what an ugly duckling I was.”

She shook her head. “Eyes, cheekbones—you don’t need anything else.”

Said the woman who had everything else. She pulled me towards a chair and sat opposite me. There were two pink spots on her cheeks; she was warm, friendly, excited. There was no doubting the sincerity of her welcome.

“You haven’t changed.”

I meant it as a compliment, I suppose, or a simple observation. Nobody ever really complimented Helen on her looks—what would have been the point? But the words lingered on the air, sounding slightly accusatory. And yes, I did feel that some sign of grief or regret, some external mark, would have been welcome—a few faint lines around the eyes and mouth, perhaps? Would that have been too much to ask? But no, there was nothing.

If there was an edge to my voice, Helen didn’t appear to notice. She was busy mixing wine and pouring it into cups. As she handed one to me, she said, “Pregnancy suits you. Achilles’s child?”

I nodded.

“A great, great man. Menelaus always speaks well of him.”

I didn’t know how to answer that. Obviously, the past had been wiped clean. Helen was Greek again, no longer Helen of Troy—that was over, finished. She’d gone back to being Helen of Argos. Queen of Argos. So many thousands…

I cut the thought off. “I was wondering whether you know what happened to my sister?”

Immediately, Helen’s expression changed. “I saw her that day—she came to the house, we had a cup of wine sitting out in the courtyard, in the shade. She was happy, I think—or as happy as she ever was. And then there was this great outcry, shouting in the streets, I couldn’t think what was going on—the slaves were all running around gabbling something about a horse, so we went outside to see. I knew it was a trap. I know it’s easy to be wise after the event, but I really did know. I felt there was something living inside it, and that could only be men. And Cassandra was there, of course, screaming her head off: Don’t let them in! Until Priam told her to shut up and go home. After it was dark, I went back. I walked all the way round it, singing Greek songs.”

Love songs. I’d been told about this, though there was something strange about the story. Some of the men hadn’t heard her singing at all—Automedon hadn’t; Pyrrhus hadn’t—and even those who did remember her singing could never agree on the song. It was as if every man had heard the song that meant most to him.

“Why?”

“Why did I sing? Oh, I don’t know, I suppose it was a way of…reaching out?”

“You weren’t trying to get them to reveal themselves?”

“No.” She was shaking her head so vigorously she might have been trying to dislodge a wasp that had got caught in her hair. “I wanted to go home.” Her voice broke on the word. Raising her hand, she dabbed the corner of one perfect eye.

“Helen—you could have left at any time.”

“Could I? You’ve no idea how difficult it was.”

Somehow my sister had disappeared from the conversation, but that was Helen all over. I saw something at that moment that I’d never been aware of before. You couldn’t imagine a more feminine woman than Helen nor a more virile man than Achilles, and yet in every way that mattered, they were alike. It was always about them.

“Ianthe,” I said, firmly.

“Oh, yes. I was told—I don’t know if it’s true—she threw herself down a well. Apparently, a lot of women did. There was a whole group of them who used to meet in the temple of Artemis—widows, you know…She did become very religious after her husband was killed. No children, I suppose, nothing to hang on to…A bit of a temple mouse, I’m afraid…” Helen looked at me. “As I say, I don’t know for sure.”

“Well. Better than the slave market, I suppose.”

Because that was the only other possibility. My sister was much older than me, and women nearing the end of their child-bearing years are routinely sent to the slave market—and in many ways it’s a worse fate. Older women can be picked up cheap and worked to death. Why not? You can always buy another. I made my mind up at that moment to believe that Ianthe was dead.

The business of my visit was over, and yet I lingered. We stayed silent for a while, though not awkwardly. Rather to my surprise, something of the old intimacy had returned.

“You were such an odd little thing,” she said.

“I wasn’t very happy.”

“No, I could see that.”

There had been genuine affection between us. Poor woman, she’d had to find her friendships where she could. Her real friends were Priam and Hector, who’d always treated her kindly, but in the nature of things she’d seen very little of them. Like all women, she lived her life largely separate from men—and every woman in Troy (except my sister) hated her. And she them. Oh, in public she was always respectful, but in private it was a different story. Andromache was “the child bride,” Cassandra “the mad woman,” and Hecuba…What had she said about Hecuba? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps Hecuba had been spared. I could imagine that inside the walls of the women’s quarters Hecuba would be a formidable opponent, too intimidating even for Helen to take on. We lapsed into silence again and let the tides of memory wash over us.

At last, hearing voices outside the hut—the compound was starting to come to life—I stirred. “May I see your weaving?”

She brightened. “Yes, of course.”

Jumping to her feet, she caught my arm and almost dragged me across the room. Helen’s weaving was unlike anybody else’s. Most women use motifs that are common in the culture—often stylized flowers and leaves, or incidents in the lives of the gods—but Helen’s designs were nothing if not original. She was weaving a history of the war, telling the story in wool and silk just as the bards sing it in words and music. I assumed she’d still be doing that and, sure enough, taking shape on her loom was a gigantic wooden horse. Inside its belly were two long rows of curled-up foetuses; man-babies lying in a womb.

I stood there taking it in, my silence probably a better compliment than any words would have been.

“This is for Menelaus’s palace, I suppose?”

“Who knows?”

Something in her voice made me turn to look at her. The light from the lamps she’d been working by fell full onto her face, but it wasn’t that familiar perfection which caught my eye; it was the necklace of circular bruises round her throat. Many different shades, I noticed—being, I’m afraid, something of a connoisseur in such matters—from angry red fingermarks all the way through blue and black to the mottled yellow and purple of old injuries. All of them on her neck and throat—he hadn’t touched her face. He’d throttled her as he was fucking her. As you would.

Instinctively, she started to wrap the blue shawl more tightly round her neck, but then let her hand fall, meeting my gaze with that too steady, skinned look I’d seen so many times before—and since. She was ashamed, while knowing she had no reason to be ashamed. She wanted to hide the bruises—and yet, at the same time, she wanted me to see.

“Oh, Helen.”

“Well, you know, he gets drunk and…It’s just one long list of names.”

“Names?”

“People who’ve died. Patroclus, Achilles, Ajax—”

“But that was suicide.”

“Doesn’t matter, he still blames me. Nestor’s son—what’s his name? Antilochus. Agamemnon—”

“Agamemnon? Last time I looked he was very much alive.”

“Yes, but it’s got very bad between them. He says he’s lost his brother—and what did they fall out over? Me.”

Poor Helen. All that beauty, all that grace—and she was really just a mouldy old bone for feral dogs to fight over.

“Oh, I know, it’s just grief and it’s natural, but it’s all the time—relentless. And, of course, it’s all my fault. All of it, every single death—my fault. When I was first returned to him after Troy fell he said he was going to kill me. Sometimes I wish he had.” She choked on a laugh. “Except I don’t, of course.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I need to get my hands on some plants.”

“Not poison?”

“No—I’d never get away with it. But there are drugs that make people forget—even if somebody they love dies, they don’t feel it, they don’t cry, they don’t mourn…They don’t get angry. It’s all just—” She swept her hand from side to side. “Smoothed away.”

“I don’t know where you’d get your hands on something like that.”

“Machaon?”

“Well, you could always ask. He’d certainly give you a sleeping draught.”

“No, that’s no good, he’d see through that straightaway. I need him awake—but calm.” She hesitated. “There’s masses of stuff in Troy. In the herb garden there.”

I knew what she was asking. “That’s a long way away. I think Machaon’s your best bet.”

I didn’t blame Helen for wanting to drug Menelaus. When I looked at her, I didn’t see the destructive harpy of the stories and the gossip; I saw a woman fighting for her life.

“He will kill me,” she said.

I shook my head. “If he was going to do that, he’d have done it by now.”

“So, you won’t help me?”

“Ask Machaon.”

That was that. In the end, everything done, everything said, we simply stared at each other. Then she touched me lightly on the arm and led me to the door. As she opened it, the light revealed the full extent of the bruising, which went right down to her breasts. I sensed she wanted to leave me with that sight and I felt myself recoil from her.

“You can’t blame me for trying to survive,” she said, closing the door till it was open no more than a crack. “From what I hear, you’re pretty good at that yourself.”