The Women of Troy: A Novel Read online

  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.

  21

  I spent the rest of the day alone. Once, I went out and sat on the veranda, but I thought one or two of the fighters who walked past were staring at me, so I went back inside. I cooked, I changed the beds, I swept the floor. I didn’t allow myself to sit down until late afternoon and then I think I must have dropped off because when I next became aware of my surroundings somebody was knocking on the door. Alcimus had told me not to let anybody in, but the door was pushed open before I’d even got out of my chair. I couldn’t see anything clearly, only a bulky shape and a gleam of pale eyes. Pyrrhus. I stood up, remembering, though only just in time, to bow.

  He came a little further into the room.

  “I’m afraid Alcimus isn’t here,” I said.

  “No, I know, he’s gone to see Menelaus. I suppose I should have gone too, but I just didn’t feel like it.”

  I pulled a chair away from the table and waved him towards it. “Please…”

  Without needing to be asked, I went to the wine store in the sideboard and poured him a cup of the best wine, realizing as I took it across to him that, for the first time ever, I was seeing Pyrrhus sober. He more than filled his chair, meaty thighs spread wide apart—massive; and yet there was an adolescent gawkiness about him that suggested he hadn’t yet grown into his full strength—god help us. I remembered my brothers at that age, how clumsy they’d been, scarcely able to get across a room without bumping into furniture. He looked up as he took the cup, and smiled. I didn’t find the smile reassuring. It occurred to me that when Alcimus warned me not to let anybody in, he might have been thinking of Pyrrhus, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to say it outright.

  This visit was unconventional, to say the least—men don’t normally visit women when their husbands are known to be absent—but Pyrrhus didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about it. To say he was retarded would give entirely the wrong impression, and yet there was something lacking. He didn’t seem to know how people normally behaved, how relationships worked, and so he was always breaking the rules, not because he was driven to rebel against them, but simply because he wasn’t aware that they existed. Or perhaps he thought they didn’t apply to him.

  “Won’t you have a drink with me?” he said.

  So, I poured myself a cup—still in silence—and sat down opposite him. I was too wary to speak.

  “Alcimus says you’re expecting Achilles’s child?”

  “Yes, I thought you knew?”

  He shook his head.

  “The Greek army gave me to Achilles as his prize of honour after he sacked Lyrnessus—and then, when he knew he was going to die, he gave me to Alcimus. He thought Alcimus would be a good protector for the child.”

  “Well, he was right there. Good choice.”

  I sensed he hadn’t come to talk about Priam’s burial and I think the relief of that made me a little mad. At any rate, I drank half a cup of strong wine much too quickly, and when I looked up again, I saw he was holding out his hand.

  “Look.”

  I leant forward. Realizing I still couldn’t see, he got up and came towards me, his huge bulk blotting out the light. I felt him put something into my hand, and then he stepped aside to let the lamplight fall on it. I was holding Priam’s ring.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “Yes, it’s Priam’s ring.” I tried to hand it back.

  “Definitely Priam’s? Not Hector’s?”

  “No, Priam’s—he always wore it. I think it was Hecuba’s gift on their wedding day.”

  “But you’ve seen it since then?”

  “Yes, Andromache showed it to me, she said you’d given it to her. She said how kind it was.”

  “Huh.”

  He returned to his chair. For a moment, I thought that was it, but then he said, “Sometimes I think people mistake kindness for weakness.”

  “I’m sure some people do—but not Andromache. She’s not like that.”

  “I offered her a whole tray of jewellery—bracelets, necklaces…All of it fit for a queen. And she chooses a man’s ring?”

  “Well, she wore it round her neck.” I couldn’t think of a single good reason why he’d be pursuing this. I was being asked to implicate Andromache in Priam’s burial.

  “Do you honestly believe that girl stole it?”

  That girl. Poor Amina, she didn’t even have a name. To put off answering, I took a sip of my wine and tried to think. Any lie I told to help Andromache would make things worse for Amina—but then, they couldn’t be much worse. Perhaps I should try to save the one person who could still be saved? “Look, all I know is Andromache was frantic when she lost it. She was; she was really, really upset.”

  “You’re a loyal friend.”

  Was I? I felt that was the last thing I was. “Have you spoken to Andromache?”

  “No, I want to get the truth out of the girl first.”

  I tried to close my mind to what “getting the truth out of the girl” might involve. His huge hands lay on his thighs in the lamplight. If he’d inherited nothing else, he’d inherited Achilles’s hands. I found it hard to look away.

  “Anyway.” He slapped his knees and stood up. “Tell Alcimus it’s all right.”

  All right? “Yes, of course I’ll tell him.”

  I escorted him to the door, relieved that this strange, unsettling meeting was over—but then, just as he was about to step outside, he held out Priam’s ring, as if he were offering it to me. I took a step back.

  “No, go on, I’d like you to have it. For…you know…” He pointed at my stomach.

  “I couldn’t possibly,” I said, firmly. I was remembering how he’d given Hector’s shield to Andromache—and how bitterly he’d regretted it. He was a man who couldn’t answer for himself for two hours together. “No, you took this from Priam’s hand, the day you killed him. It belongs to you now.”

  He tried to push it into my hand, but once again I backed away. Finally, I managed to convince him that I wasn’t going to take it. Immediately, he put it on his thumb, and I thought I saw relief flit across his features. The offer had never been real. He was always acting out some idea of himself, as if he were living his whole life in front of a mirror.

  I remembered to say: “Thank you. Please, don’t think I’m not grateful, it’s extremely generous of you—I just don’t think it would be right to take it.”

  As I spoke, I felt a rush of blood to my face. I just wanted him gone and, after a few further awkward words, he did finally leave. I watched him walk across the yard towards the hall. On the way, he stopped to greet somebody—one of the young men from Skyros—and they talked for a while. A burst of laughter, a bit of back-slapping, then Pyrrhus ran up the steps into the hall, and the darkness swallowed him.

  22

  Automatically, I picked up Pyrrhus’s cup and took it across to the sideboard, though I was almost totally unaware of my surroundings. Again, I saw Pyrrhus put Priam’s ring on his thumb: the destruction of Troy summe
d up in that one casual action. But something strange seemed to be happening: I discovered I could still feel the ring on the palm of my hand—I had held it, briefly—as if, somehow, that fleeting contact had left a permanent trace. I know it sounds trivial, but it wasn’t. Not to me. It was one of those moments that I think everybody experiences—and they don’t have to be dramatic—when things begin to change; and you know there’s no point ruminating about it, because thinking isn’t going to help you understand. You’re not ready to understand it yet; you have to live your way into the meaning.

  I lit several more lamps, then stood in the middle of the room, aware that I was casting multiple shadows. It must have been about mid-evening—certainly no later—and Pyrrhus had told me something I needed to know: that Alcimus had gone to see Menelaus. Menelaus was famous for his love of good food and wine and his dinners tended to go on far into the night. So, I was free to leave the hut and go to see Amina. I took food and wine with me and also, after a moment’s thought, a lantern, because I wasn’t sure she’d have a light in the laundry hut. Probably I shouldn’t have gone—Alcimus had said the less I had to do with Amina now the better—but she was frightened and alone. I had to go.

  Climbing the fence wasn’t difficult. At that stage of my pregnancy I was still reasonably agile and there was a barrel on the other side to help me down. Getting the food across was easy—I simply tucked it into my girdle—but I had to abandon the lantern and the wine. Quickly, I crossed the yard. Men rarely came into the laundry since washing clothes and laying out the dead were both women’s work. Most of the fighters probably didn’t know the yard at the back existed. I tried the door, but even putting my shoulder and hip to the job I couldn’t make it budge. Feeling sick with disappointment, I stood back. I’d been so sure this would work, that I’d be able to get in; but there was a lock and, evidently, they’d used it. Either that, or the door was hopelessly jammed.