A Thousand Ships(18)
She had been wondering if she might try running from the Greek scouts, neither of whom looked as if he had the speed she knew she could produce. But the thought of her father’s disappointed face when he saw her and the memory of his mortification when she had been caught for other, lesser infractions kept her from making her escape. It distracted her and she did not notice her pace was slowing, until one of the Greek soldiers prodded her waist, grabbing at her flesh and laughing when she screamed.
Fear of upsetting her father had been a much greater influence on her behaviour than anything else, she realized. Since she had discovered the tunnel, she had explored the edges of the plains and the lower reaches of the mountains many times, hiding behind the trees and the rocks so that she wouldn’t be seen by the Trojan watchmen or anyone else who might tell Chryses. It had never occurred to her that she might be caught by Greek soldiers and slaughtered where she stood, her blood staining the grassy nubs in the sand beneath her feet. It had also never occurred to her that being captured by the Greeks might be worse than being killed by them.
When she arrived at the camp, she heard a great deal of shouting and jostling, but she understood very little of what the men said. Was it a different language they spoke, or simply a thick dialect? She could not tell. All were armed and armoured: the clanking of metal on metal was so loud it made her teeth ache. Eventually, she was manhandled towards a tent and pushed inside. She blinked in the guttering torchlight, and pulled her cloak around her body. The tent was full of women, other prisoners, huddled together with arms round one another, as though protecting each other from the cold. Chryseis scanned their faces, in the hope of seeing someone she knew. But all her friends and relatives were safe behind the city walls, where she should have been. These women were strangers, and none of them spoke to her.
Her gaze was drawn to the bright blue eyes of a tall, slender woman who stood with the others but was somehow apart from them. The woman’s hair was extraordinary, like gold in firelight, and her skin was pale. She resembled the chryselephantine statue of Artemis that dwelt in the temple near the shrine of Apollo where her father served. But the statue was the work of craftsmen, gilding the stone, painting the robes, coating the face with thin layers of ivory and the eyes with lapis. Chryseis had always thought she would never see anything so beautiful in her life until now, when she saw that the statue was a pale copy of this woman, or someone who looked very much like her. The priest’s daughter found herself thinking that so long as she stayed near this gold and ivory woman, everything would be alright, so she walked towards her and tried not to reach out and touch the woman’s hair.
‘Where did they find you?’ asked one of the other women. The light flickered behind her, and she was nothing but a silhouette. It took Chryseis a moment to realize that she understood what this woman was saying. Her accent was thick, but they spoke the same tongue.
‘On the edge of the plains,’ she replied. ‘At the bottom of the mountain.’
The tall woman’s expression did not change. The woman in shadow turned her head to Chryseis and stared at her. Chryseis could only see the torchlight glinting off the woman’s pupils but she could feel her annoyance. ‘You’re no shepherd-girl,’ the woman said. ‘Anyone can see that from looking at you. You’ve come from inside the city, haven’t you? How did you get caught outside?’
Chryseis had no answer. ‘Where did they find you?’ she asked instead.
‘Lyrnessus,’ said the woman. ‘We were all taken from Lyrnessus and Thebe.’
Chryseis paused. ‘Are they nearby?’
The woman snorted. ‘You’ve never been outside Troy before tonight, have you?’ Chryseis did not explain her previous excursions around the city. None of these women would be impressed by her adventurous spirit, the way her peers in Troy were.
‘Yes,’ the woman continued. ‘Lyrnessus is a day’s hard ride from here. The Greeks have been out raiding. All this time trying to crack open the nut of your home with no success. They need other places to feed them. They’ve ravaged every town between here and Lyrnessus already.’ Her voice softened. ‘No wonder you haven’t heard of the places they’re taking now. They cast their net wider with each passing year. They’re never happy unless they’re taking what doesn’t belong to them, and burning everything they can’t carry with them.’
‘Is that what they did to your town? Looted and burned it? Couldn’t your men fight for you?’ Chryseis asked. Who were these poor women whose menfolk had abandoned them? The Trojan warriors, her father among them, were far braver than these women’s husbands and sons.
‘What men?’ said the woman. ‘They killed all our men.’
‘All of them?’ Chryseis said. She had been told many times by her father that the Greeks were no better at fighting than any other men. No braver, no stronger, no more beloved by the gods. Had he lied to her?
‘You don’t see much inside your city walls, do you?’ said the woman. ‘That is what the Greeks do. They kill the men, they enslave the women and children. They have done it across the peninsula. And it’s what they will do to Troy, when the Fates compel it.’ Chryseis shook her head. The day would not come. Her father sacrificed to Apollo and made offerings every morning, and he was one of many priests in temples to all the gods across the whole city. The gods would not abandon Troy, so full of willing servants. Of course they would not. ‘Your walls cannot keep them out forever,’ the woman added. ‘You may be the first Trojan woman they’ve captured, but I promise you will not be the last. And when they come for your sisters and your mother’ – Chryseis did not trouble to correct her – ‘your menfolk will be no more help than ours were. A soldier can’t fight if he’s dead on the ground, and the Greeks outnumbered us by so many that we never had a chance. They are not an army, these Greeks. They’re a pestilence.’