The Women of Troy: A Novel Page 6

  I squeezed Andromache’s shoulder. “I have to go.”

  She nodded, bracing herself, knowing that the next time the door opened it would be Pyrrhus. And at that moment, all the protective numbness I’d built up over the last months vanished and I was back in this room, sitting where she was sitting, waiting for Achilles—experiencing all over again the terror I’d felt when the door opened and his huge shadow blotted out the light.

  7

  The hut was empty when I got back. I had no idea where Alcimus was or whether he’d be coming home. Probably not. I didn’t know where he slept when he stayed out all night and I had no right to ask. Of course, he had other women—all men do—but I didn’t know of anyone in particular.

  It was too late to start carding wool, and yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead, I paced up and down, while the memories I’d become so good at suppressing bubbled away just beneath the surface and the baby boiled inside me. Spending time with Andromache and the girls was forcing me to relive my own early days in the camp. When I look back on that time, I think I must have been almost insane. Oh, outwardly normal, calm, smiling—always smiling—but moving my arms and legs about with no more feeling than a puppet. Whole days went by and towards evening I wouldn’t be able to recall a single thing that had happened. Except, no, that’s not quite true. I remembered—and still remember—the numerous small acts of practical kindness I received. I couldn’t repay Iphis, but I could pass her kindness on—Andromache would have her bath.

  But that was for the morning. I still had to get through the night. Perhaps I could have a small cup of the sleeping draught Alcimus kept by his bed, though I was wary of some of its effects—he had nightmares, the kind that don’t stop when you open your eyes. I’d hear him sometimes moaning in his sleep. Still, I told myself, a few mouthfuls couldn’t hurt. I tossed it back in a single gulp, twisting my mouth against the bitter taste, then went to the little room at the end of the passage, realizing as I did so that it was the exact equivalent of the “cupboard” in Achilles’s private quarters—the room where women sat while they waited to be summoned. I wondered who’d waited there for Alcimus in the years before his involuntary marriage.

  My bed was hard and even on the short walk back from Pyrrhus’s hall the cold had got into my bones. The sultry nights of summer were long gone; the year was turning towards the dark. I closed my eyes and kept them closed, though I was aware all the time of the empty cradle at the foot of my bed.

  You know he killed my baby?

  I did, though I’d only recently found out. At first, I’d assumed it was Odysseus who’d killed Andromache’s son, simply because I’d heard him argue with such passionate intensity that every Trojan male must die, including babies in the womb. All of them, he’d insisted, but particularly the bloodline of Priam. There must be nobody left alive with any claim to the Trojan throne, nobody who could act as a focus for resistance and revenge. I’d discovered the truth accidentally through overhearing a conversation between Alcimus and one of the other fighters. Pyrrhus had been chosen to kill the baby as a reward for the part he’d played in the downfall of Troy. His exploits ran from mouth to mouth and no doubt grew in the telling. I’d even heard a rumour that he’d killed Priam by bludgeoning him to death with the body of his baby grandson. That wasn’t true, or at least I hoped it wasn’t true, though he had lied about the death of Priam—I was sure of that. So many hideous things had been done inside the fallen city that it was difficult to rule anything out.

  The child inside me kicked again and I rested my spread fingers on my belly. I didn’t know what pregnant women were supposed to feel; I had nobody to ask except Ritsa—and she always responded with the automatic cheeriness of an experienced midwife. So, what did I feel for this baby whose father had killed my husband and my brothers and burned my city down? I felt it wasn’t mine. At times, it seemed more like a parasitic infestation than a pregnancy, taking me over, using me for its own purposes—which were their purposes. Kill all the men and boys, impregnate the women—and the Trojans cease to exist. They weren’t just intent on killing individual men; they meant to erase an entire people.

  I hadn’t chosen this pregnancy; I didn’t want it. And yet I knew it was my salvation. Without it, I’d have been given away—offered as a first prize in Achilles’s funeral games. Instead, I had marriage, security, even a certain deference. I’d noticed a marked change as soon as the pregnancy started to show. Only the other day, a man I scarcely knew had placed his hand on my stomach, and not in a sexual, predatory way, but as a mark of his loyalty to the bloodline of Achilles. I was the casket that contained the crown jewels—at least, that’s how the Myrmidons seemed to see me. As a person, I didn’t count at all. If they ever thought about my feelings—and I was fairly certain they didn’t—they’d probably assume I was glowing with pride at the thought of bearing Achilles’s son. To be pregnant by the greatest warrior of his time—perhaps of all time—what more could a woman want?

  I listened to the whimpering of the wind. At night, the roar that bullied and threatened all day sometimes died away to an inconsolable sobbing—like an abandoned child begging to be let in. By now, I knew every flaw in the hut. The gap beneath the door that allowed sand to blow in, so the floors were always gritty no matter how often they were swept. You had to be careful to place the lamps well out of the draughts, because if they happened to be blown over, they’d continue to burn. Candles were safer, since they’d probably be extinguished by the fall. You had the constant sensation that the wind was blowing darkness in through every crack. I’d have said that by now I knew every trick the storm could play, but then, lying there with my eyes closed, beginning to drift off to sleep, I heard a new sound: a knocking I’d not noticed before. Dragging myself awake, I opened my eyes and saw that the cradle had begun to rock. No human hand had touched it and yet there it was, creaking away, moving—inching its way across the floor. My mind scrabbled for an explanation, and as soon as I’d managed to shake off the pall of sleep, it was obvious enough. There was a gap in the wall at floor level—you could feel the draught round your ankles as soon as you entered the room—and since the floor sloped from the outer wall to the door, it was actually easy for the cradle to move. There was nothing remotely supernatural about this, and yet still the skin at the nape of my neck crawled. I watched the cradle rock and felt a stifling sense of dread. It was a long time before I managed to get back to sleep.

  * * *

  ——————

  First thing next morning, still a bit dopey from the sleeping draught, I walked along to the women’s hut, intending to wait for Andromache, only to be told—by Helle, who opened the door—that she’d already returned. “She was only there a couple of hours.”

  That was a bit odd. Normally, if you were summoned you expected to be there all night—but that was Achilles. I had no experience of Pyrrhus. I went straight along the passage to Andromache’s room, which in size and shape exactly mirrored my own. She was curled up under a blanket, tear-sodden and silent, though when I sat at the end of the bed, she rolled over and began wiping her eyes on the side of her hand.

  “Well, that’s done,” she said. “And I’m glad it’s over.”

  I offered her a square of linen to blow her nose. She emerged from its folds sniffing, moist, pink-eyed, but a lot calmer than I’d been expecting. She jerked her head at the door. “They keep asking me what it was like…”

  Natural enough; they must all have thought it would be their turn soon. I remembered how important it had been to me that Iphis never asked questions. “Look, why don’t you come back with me?” I said. “You can have a bath, there’s plenty of hot water…”

  She looked helplessly around the room, as if just getting off the bed was too daunting a task to be contemplated, but then she swung her legs over the side and stood up. Her hair was bedraggled, her tunic stained. I went back to the hut ahead o
f her, ordered a hot bath and set food on the table: cold cuts of meat from last night’s dinner; warm bread; ripe apricots; white, crumbly cheese. I didn’t for a moment suppose she’d be able to eat, but she surprised me. I can’t say she ate heartily, but then I’m not sure she ever did. She did manage a cup of wine, though, and that brought some colour to her cheeks.

  By the time she’d finished, the bath was ready and I took her outside to the back of the hut where she could bathe in privacy. Steam rising from the water, sweet-scented herbs floating on the surface, white towels warming on a clotheshorse by the cooking fire…She did brighten a little at the sight. When she took off her tunic, I saw she was wearing a ring on a silver chain round her neck and wondered how on earth she’d managed to hang on to it. Usually, when a woman is captured, her jewellery’s taken from her; many of the girls had arrived in the compound with torn earlobes where their earrings had been ripped out. I could see it was a man’s thumb ring; but I didn’t want to look too closely. More than anything else, she needed privacy. I knew how raw she’d be feeling—every inch of her body raw—as if she’d been skinned.

  I turned away and began fussing with the towels. When I looked round again, she was lying stretched out in the bath with her eyes closed, shadows of passing clouds moving softly over her face. I let her take as long as she wanted, going back inside the hut and selecting one of my tunics for her to wear. It was fully twenty minutes before I heard her call my name. She stepped out of the bath into the embrace of warm towels. Then I helped her into the clean tunic and we sat on the step while I combed and braided her hair. There’s something soothing about combing hair—for both the people involved. I kept trying to remember her as she’d been when I was in Troy. I was only twelve, so I’d have thought of her as a grown woman, though, looking back, I realized she must have been very young—not quite fifteen when she married Hector. That was unusually young, particularly since by all accounts she’d been a much-loved only daughter, but her father had wanted to get her safely married because he suspected (rightly) that his city was next on Achilles’s list of targets.

  I could imagine how difficult the early days of her marriage must have been. Preoccupied with fighting the war, Hector had postponed marriage till he was well into his thirties. By that age, he’d have had several concubines; some, at least, of the children playing round the dinner table would be his. But that’s only to be expected; a young wife who makes herself miserable over her husband’s concubines is a fool. No, the real problem was Helen. Hector was dazzled by her, though he was far too honourable a man to express in word or deed his infatuation with his brother’s wife. For her part, Helen flirted outrageously with him, scarcely bothering to disguise her feeling that she’d married the wrong brother—and she was totally dismissive of Andromache, “the child bride.” All women faded in Helen’s presence, but Andromache—skinny, flat-chested and painfully shy—faded more than most. Hector always treated his wife with great respect on the rare occasions when they were obliged to appear together in public; and if, on such occasions, his eyes frequently strayed towards Helen…Well, that was true of every other man in the room.

  Helen was well aware of the effect she was having. I remember one evening in particular when—tongue in cheek, as usual—she’d been complimenting the Trojans on how strictly they chaperoned unmarried girls. Helen was from Argos where things were done quite differently. “Do you know,” she said, “when I was a fully grown girl, ripe for marriage, I was still stripping to the waist and racing my brothers along the beach? I mean—” She gazed innocently around the table. “Can you imagine?” Oh, they could, they could, they definitely could. One or two of Priam’s more elderly counsellors looked as if imagining it might be the last thing they ever did. The women muttered and exchanged disapproving glances, while at the head of the table, Priam, his face alight with amusement, caught Helen’s eye and gently shook his head.

  Now, as I finished braiding Andromache’s hair, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory. In spite of everything, I’ve never been able to hate Helen—which, as far as Trojan women go, puts me in a minority of precisely one. I knotted a ribbon round the final braid and Andromache, who’d drifted off into an almost trance-like state, opened her eyes and looked around.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t think I could have stood it a minute longer in there. They go on and on asking questions and I just don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. I fetched a jug of wine and set it on the ground by our feet. We talked about this and that, but nothing held her attention for long and after a while she began telling me about Pyrrhus—as she’d been wanting to do since she arrived.

  “He was so drunk—I’ve never in my life seen anybody that drunk. He kept knocking things over, and he’d say something and then forget he’d said it and say it again. I mean, Hector drank—well, they all do, don’t they?—but nothing like that.” She paused for a moment, staring at the sparse grass around her feet. “I think it helped in a way because I knew he wasn’t going to remember anything—and that meant I needn’t remember it either. Yes, I know, mad—I’m just saying that’s how it felt.” She looked up. “I thought when I was sitting in that room, you know, after you left, he was going to come in and just…pounce. But it wasn’t like that at all. He sat me down and just…stared at me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t speak…After a while he poured me a cup of wine—spilled most of it—then he jumped up and got a box off the table—and he tipped everything out and said: ‘Come on, choose.’ It was jewellery mainly—necklaces, brooches—from Troy, I suppose. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d probably have recognized a lot of it. And he kept saying: ‘C’mon, choose.’ Well, I knew the one thing I didn’t want was to pick something to make myself look pretty—for him. So, I chose this.”

  She fished underneath the neck of the tunic and brought out the ring I’d noticed earlier. Gold, with a big green stone—not an emerald—a pale, milky green, the colour of a calm sea. I looked at it; and a man’s hand with a silver coin glinting on the palm rose up from the darkness of the past.

  “Priam’s ring?”

  “Yes, I didn’t want him to have it.”

  “But didn’t he ask you why you wanted a man’s ring? You’ll never be able to wear it.”

  “I am wearing it. No, he didn’t ask. I think he was trying not to be sick.” She hesitated. “I still don’t know if he…You know. He kept having to…” Jarringly, she made a tossing movement with her closed fist. “And it just went on and on.” She gave a little non-laugh. “And then he threw me out.”

  “You must know if he came inside you.”

  For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then: “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  She’d gone grey again; every bit of life seemed to be draining out of her as I watched. We sat in silence for a while, listening to the wind. And then, among all the other more familiar noises, I heard the grinding of rockers on a wooden floor. I hoped she wouldn’t hear it, but she did. Immediately, she jumped to her feet, stumbling through the door, almost as if it were the middle of the night and she’d heard her baby crying. Once inside the hut, the sound was louder and she started to run. I caught up with her just as she reached my bedroom door and saw, over her shoulder, the cradle rocking. She fell on her knees beside it, peering into the emptiness under the hood.

  “I’ll give it back.” I was stammering, desperate to stop her being any more hurt than she was already. “I can’t do it now because Alcimus gave it to me, but don’t worry, as soon as I can, I’ll give it back…”

  Her hand, clamped to the side of the cradle, had stopped the rocking. We stood in the sudden quiet, breathing. Then she looked up at me. “Why would I want it back?” she said. “I’ll only have to put his child into it.” Her gaze slid from my face to my belly. “How are we supposed to love their children?”

  She was staring at me, almost as if
she thought I might have an answer. Feeling sick, I put my hand over my mouth and turned away.

  8

  It hurt even to turn his head on the pillow. His mouth was dry; he must have been snoring like a fish all night—though what a bloody stupid saying that was. Whoever heard a fish snore? Eyes tight shut, he spread out his arms and found the other side empty. She’d gone, then. When had she gone? Dimly he remembered kicking her out of bed. No, not kicking—he wouldn’t have done that. She was Hector’s widow, after all—an important prize, like his helmet and his shield. Except that he didn’t have the shield. Automedon should have stopped…Eyes open now, but the light burned like acid and he was glad to close them again. Something was niggling away…The ring, oh, shit, yes, the ring. He’d offered her necklaces, bracelets, brooches—and she’d chosen a man’s ring. Why? Because it was Hector’s ring. Because she’d recognized it? He should’ve stopped her taking it, and he would have done—if he hadn’t felt sorry for her. If he hadn’t been trying not to be sick.

  How they’d managed to have sex he didn’t know. But they had, the damp sheet underneath him was proof. He couldn’t remember much, but he’d done it. Had he? Yes, of course he had. He can remember it now, though it’s hardly worth remembering. Like sticking your dick in a bag of greasy chicken bones. He shouldn’t have let her take the ring. Trouble is, he’s too generous—people take him for a fool. She certainly will. Still, it hadn’t helped her much, had it? The important thing is, it’s over. The next time it’ll be easier, and the next. And the next…Shit. It’s a life sentence—time off if he gets her pregnant, but otherwise…He’s got to stop thinking like this. The important thing is: he did what he had to do. The walls of Troy had been well and truly breached.