A Thousand Ships(30)

Her parents consoled her: Protesilaus would return, the distance was not so great, the sea was calm. Too calm, it transpired. A few days after he had sailed from Thessaly, Protesilaus sent word that he – like the rest of the Greeks – was becalmed at Aulis. The fleet could not sail and Laodamia allowed herself to hope that the enterprise would be abandoned, and her husband would sail home again. That the image she kept seeing – of his beautiful feet, the long toes pointing outwards, left foot in front of right, perched on the prow of a ship – was Protesilaus disembarking on the Thessalian coast and not leaping to his doom at Troy. She could see it in such detail: his knees slightly bent, like a dancer, his weight moving forward with such deliberate precision.

But of course she knew it was hopeless. Agamemnon, the leader of the expedition, committed some atrocity to appease the gods and win back the wind for his ships. The fleet sailed, as she had always known it would. It reached Troy safely and her husband, her beloved, so desperate to get the war underway so he could hurry back to his little queen, leapt from his ship into the shallow waters which lapped at the shore. The Trojans were waiting for them, but Protesilaus was no coward. She did not know – until the messenger arrived with the awful news – that her husband was such a fine warrior. If asked, she would have said that he was, of course. But if asked, she would have said, with equal pride, that he might fly. It was no consolation to her to find out that her husband was brave and skilled with both spear and sword. She would have preferred it if he had sat quivering behind a couch, refusing the call to fight. Who could love a coward, she had once heard a woman say. Laodamia knew the answer. Someone for whom the alternative is loving a corpse.

But though she took no comfort in his bravery, she knew others did. His fellow citizens were filled with pride for their late king. They sat beneath sun-bleached flax awnings, telling each other of Protesilaus’ exploits. How he had leapt from his ship ahead of all his men, and killed three Trojans – no, four – before the Myrmidon ships had even landed. Swift-footed Achilles, people called the Myrmidon king. But their king had been swifter still. How they boasted of him: she heard it from the slaves who hoped to ease her suffering. And it had not been an ordinary Trojan who cut her husband down. It had been no less than Hector, the favourite son of Priam, the barbarian king. He was built like an ox, they said. Tall and strong, and fighting in defence of his city. All agreed that those who fought to protect what they valued fought more desperately than those on the attack. Such a man it had taken to fell their young king and make him the first of the Greeks to die.

After the news of his death had reached her, Laodamia had not known what to do. She tore her garments and ripped at her hair and cheeks, because she knew it was expected of her. She rent her skin with her sharp nails – nails which she had dragged down her husband’s spine in moments of pleasure – and in the moment of causing the damage she felt a release. The physical pain was a shallow reflection of what she felt, but even a poor reflection was better than nothing. The dull soreness which followed was insufficient. The wounds healed, but nothing else did. Unable to bear the conversation of her parents or friends or servants, she found herself repeating the looped walk, across to the eastern side of the city where she sat under a thin tree and waited for no one to come, because there would be no news she ever needed to hear again.

The citizens of Phylace left her alone with her grief every day, until the blacksmith – whose forge lay opposite her tree – could bear it no longer. A tall, bulky man with huge, soot-blackened forearms and a gut which he restrained with a tanned leather belt, he had watched his queen sit opposite his smithy since the day the king had left. He had never considered himself to be a sentimental man: he had hammered out the king’s spearheads for him, he knew what happened on a battlefield. But the sorrow which exuded from her like a stench – forcing others to turn away and hurry past, even when it was too hot to hurry anywhere – did not repel him. Rather, it reminded him of his wife, when she lost their second child a few months after birth. The baby had slept fitfully and cried often, and one morning when they awoke, he lay cold in his crib. There was no sign of sickness or injury; he was perfect. He looked more beautiful dead than he had looked alive, always gasping for breath. The blacksmith had taken the child and buried him in a pit he dug himself. His wife could not speak for days. The smith tried to remind her that they still had a son – toddling around their chair legs, tugging at her skirts – and that they would surely go on to have more. But grief stood before his wife like an immovable object around which she could not find her way. She grew paler and thinner from staying indoors, and after a day or two, he began to take his surviving son around the corner into the smithy each morning because he could see that if she was not feeding herself, she was not feeding the boy. He begged his sisters and his brothers’ wives to talk to her. But no one could reach her. A month after the child died, he buried his wife.

The blacksmith was a good man and he could provide for his family, so he married again within a year. His second wife was ten years younger – broad-hipped and quick to laugh – and they had five more children in rapid succession. She never treated his eldest son as anything but her own, and it was this which made his voice still catch in his throat sometimes when he spoke about her. His friends would roar and laugh and raise their cups at the sight of the big man brought low by his own affection. But the laughter was never cruel.