A Thousand Ships(49)

‘Then you have one son more than I,’ Hecabe said. ‘Polydorus was my youngest, the last surviving boy.’ Cassandra was muttering about something but Hecabe continued without heed. ‘And now even he is dead. How dare you compare your loss to mine? You miss your son? You could have sailed home whenever you chose. No one was keeping you here.’

‘Ah, but they were. When a man makes a vow that he will fight to bring back another’s wife if she strays.’ He tilted his head towards Helen, his eyebrows raised. She gazed at him in mute annoyance, before turning away to watch the tide as it retreated once again. Odysseus smiled and turned back to Hecabe. ‘He must keep that vow, or the gods will punish him. I can’t deny that there were times when I wondered if one woman could be worth so much trouble, so many lives.’

‘I thought the same myself,’ Hecabe said. ‘Many times.’

Odysseus shook his head slowly. ‘But now I look at her, perhaps I understand why men go to war over her, and fall silent when her name is spoken.’

‘You have not fallen silent,’ Hecabe remarked.

‘Ah, but I was here for the treasure, madam, that your king kept in his citadel. That, and avoiding the ill will of the gods. Beautiful women I can take or leave.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes both.’

‘Your wife must be a patient woman.’

‘You have no idea,’ he replied. ‘Do you need my men to help you bury your son?’

There was silence. It was Polyxena who answered. ‘We can manage it ourselves. But thank you.’

‘You should bury him over there.’ Odysseus pointed at a cave behind a pile of large rocks. ‘The water doesn’t reach that far. He’ll be safe there.’

‘Thank you.’ Hecabe nodded at her captor as though he were her steward. ‘We shall do that today.’

‘I came to ask you a question,’ Odysseus said. ‘As well as to offer you my men’s assistance.’

‘What is that?’

‘Do you have any other sons, madam?’

‘I had many other sons,’ she replied. ‘But you Greeks have killed them all, one after another, like a pack of wolves.’

‘We thought so, too,’ Odysseus said. ‘But then this one washed up on the shore, and we realized we had not.’

‘You think I might have sent more sons away for safe-keeping.’

‘Not so safe, perhaps.’

‘I have only daughters now,’ Hecabe said. ‘All my boys are gone. Do you hear me? All of them.’

‘You lost a war, madam.’

‘You could have ransomed my sons. You chose to kill them.’

‘With what could you have paid the ransom?’ He laughed, his head tilting back towards the sky. ‘All your treasure belongs to us now.’

‘Is this an example of the great heroism of the Greeks?’ Hecabe asked. ‘Gloating over an old woman whose sons have all been slaughtered?’

‘Is this the honesty of the Trojans?’ he replied. ‘The queen of a hostile city presenting herself as nothing more than a poor old woman?’

Hecabe stared at the space between his eyes, so she did not have to meet his gaze.

‘Madam, you know why I must ask you this,’ he added.

Andromache had been trying to place the emotion which touched his eyes as he spoke – her Greek was not good enough to follow all that was being said, so she concentrated on his mannerisms. It was not anger, not sorrow, not triumphalism, for all that Hecabe perceived it. Finally she placed it. Delight. This Greek warrior was enjoying his argument with her queen.

‘Of course I know,’ Hecabe said.

‘If you have a living son, he may try to take his vengeance upon the Greeks, in years to come.’

‘I said I know. You need not fear the blade of a ghost, Odysseus. As I told you, my sons are all dead.’

‘What happened to this one? You called him Polydorus?’

‘Priam and I were deceived. We sent him to an old friend, and that friend has revealed himself to be the most treacherous of men.’

‘A traitor to his friends,’ Odysseus said. ‘Is there a worse thing for a man to be?’

‘Our fear,’ she continued, ‘was that he would sell Polydorus to you Greeks. But he did not.’

Odysseus shook his head. ‘Madam, I can promise you that. We probably would have bribed him to betray you, if we’d known. But I did not know you had another son until he washed up with the tide.’

‘You had guessed there might be one.’

‘I had.’

‘Even before Polydorus was returned to us by the ocean?’ He nodded. ‘Because you would have done the same as Priam, though you would have chosen your friends more carefully.’

‘He is the light of my heart, madam. Even though I have not seen that light for ten years, and he was scarcely more than a baby when I left Ithaca. Still, I did not know where you would have sent your son. So many of your allies . . .’ His words tailed off.

‘Have betrayed us already, yes. Or died, fighting your armies.’

‘I didn’t know who was left for you to trust.’

‘Polymestor,’ she said.

‘The king of Thrace?’ Odysseus could not quell the note of astonishment. ‘You trusted your son to a Greek?’