A Thousand Ships(16)

Still, it is easy to be wise after the event, isn’t it? I said I didn’t blame you for what has happened, and I don’t. You did the best you could with a phalanx of men watching your every move. And it was nearly enough. But you have been gone too long, Odysseus, and it is time for you to come home.

Your loving wife,

Penelope





9


The Trojan Women


Hecabe was squinting at the sun as the tide came in. Her women thronged around her still: she remained their queen until they were separated and taken away. The guards had allowed them to walk across to the river and scoop water into whatever battered receptacles they had. Who knew, when she fled her house in the night and the smoke, that stopping to pick up a dented old cup would mean the difference between thirst and comfort? When she saw Hecabe had nothing to drink from, one of the younger women gave her own cup to the queen, sharing silently with her sister. Hecabe took it without thanks.

Hecabe demanded the guards bring food for the women and they laughed at her. But after a while, a bag of meal was brought over, with a battered cauldron and a few sticks to make a fire. Andromache, having tied the baby to her chest, built the fire. The flames soon caught beneath her quick hands. Polyxena was allowed to fetch more water, as the guards knew she would not try to escape. How could she, with her aged mother sitting on the shore? The women made a thin broth, flavoured with nothing more than the salt tang of the thick damp ropes of seaweed which coiled along the shore. They ate it without complaint. The guards said there would be grain later, so the women could cook bread on the embers of their fire. Hecabe wanted to ask the men how much longer they would keep her women stranded on the shore with no shelter but the rocks next to which they sat, and their torn garments, but she knew there was no answer she would want to hear.

This was the last time she would ever see her women. When the Greeks had finished looting the city, they would return to their camp, a short distance along the shore. They would debate among themselves, or perhaps one of the elders would decide, and the women would be allotted to the leaders of the different Greek tribes, in order of status. And then each woman would be separated from her family, her friends, her neighbours, and given to a stranger whose language she didn’t speak. Hecabe knew a little Greek, though she would prefer it not to be known. Perhaps one or two of the others did. But when a city was sacked, everything within it was destroyed, right down to its words.

Hecabe’s mind played tricks on her: if you could choose to stay with one of these women, who would you pick? As if she would be granted any such wish. She looked at her women and admitted to herself that she knew the answer, even so. Andromache was not her blood, so she would not pick her, even though she was fond of the girl, who had been such a good wife to her favourite son, and borne him a son in turn. And Cassandra was a torment, like a gadfly biting at her mother, every day since the madness came upon her. She had been such a lovely child, Hecabe remembered. Soot-black hair and deep-set eyes like rock pools. She had run about the broad stone halls with her brothers and sisters, always the centre of attention. And then one day it happened. She appeared in the mouth of the temple of Apollo, her clothing torn and hair caught up in knots. Cassandra could not speak for days, only stammered and juddered as though the words were desperate to escape her lips but could not find their way past her teeth. And then when she did talk again, to the nurse who had cared for her since she was a baby, the words were gibberish. She spoke of one terrible thing after another, one disaster to befall them and then one more and one more. No one could bear to hear her speak, predicting death and destruction everywhere she looked. Hecabe had her shut up in her chamber, hoping she would quieten down over time: no one needed to hear her screaming about flames engulfing the city, and so many men dying outside the walls and inside their homes. But soon the slaves would not wait on her, not even under threat of being flogged. Cassandra would tell them of their own impending deaths, and those of their parents or children. And even though it was nonsense – no one believed a word the deranged girl said – it disquieted them. One day, Cassandra was screaming and crying about . . . Hecabe paused. She couldn’t remember. Her daughter had been hysterical, as usual. The details scarcely mattered – and Hecabe had reached across and slapped her hard, across the face. Cassandra had grabbed her hand and held it, shrieking. And Hecabe had slapped her with her left hand until there were bright red fingermarks on both of her daughter’s cheeks, with deeper indentations on the right side, from Hecabe’s thick gold rings.

From that day onwards, Cassandra had at least muttered her curses and madness more quietly. Her family and slaves still made signs against the evil eye when they saw her, but she was easier to ignore. Even now, as the women waited to find out where they would go and to whom they would belong, Cassandra barely spoke above a murmur. She did not dare.

So Hecabe knew that if she could have kept one of her women with her, over the months and years to come, it would be Polyxena. Her most beautiful daughter. The youngest, with golden hair quite unlike any other Trojan woman. People used to say that a goddess must have favoured her with such beauty and yet Polyxena was never conceited. She was a kind and thoughtful girl, everyone’s favourite. Hecabe shuddered, thinking which Greek would take her. The butcher Neoptolemus, who had cut down Priam, Polyxena’s father, as he clung to the altars and pleaded for sanctuary? The devious Odysseus? The idiot Menelaus?