A Thousand Ships(56)

‘Papa, are these the heroes of Troy?’ the older one asked. His expectations had not been met by this ragtag crew.

‘They are,’ Polymestor replied, lifting the boy up to his waist and then scooping up the other one in his right arm. ‘What do you think Odysseus? Fine heroes of the future, yes?’

‘You echo Hecabe’s words about her own son. I shall keep old friends apart no longer.’ He nodded to one of his sailors, who opened the flap of the tent and brought the women outside.

‘My dear friend.’ Polymestor turned to Hecabe, dropping his boys gently to the ground and opening his arms. ‘I would not have recognized you.’ He strode forward to greet her, his boys alongside him. All these unknown men on their shore had made them nervous, and they wished to be close to their father.

‘I have grown old in the years since you were last in Troy,’ Hecabe agreed.

‘No, madam, I did not mean—’

‘You did, and I have no vanity left. It died in the war, like my husband and my sons,’ she said. ‘If you could have seen me even a year ago, you would have known me straightaway. It is grief which has left its mark on me, not time.’

‘Your losses have been great,’ Polymestor said.

‘They have been intolerable,’ she replied.

‘It must have seemed so.’

‘It was so. It is so. I have long since been unable to bear the burdens which the gods have placed upon me,’ she said. ‘One loss after another. Just in the past year: Hector, then Priam, then Paris, then . . .’

‘The gods have treated you most harshly,’ he said. ‘I will make offerings and beg them for mercy on your behalf.’

‘Will you?’

‘Of course. Madam, no one could see you and not wish to alleviate your suffering. Why, even Odysseus, a long-held enemy of your city and the house of Priam, has brought you here to receive comfort from your old friend.’

Hecabe shook her head slowly. Her maidservants gathered about her, clustering around Polymestor. ‘How can you speak to me after what you have done?’ she asked.

‘Madam?’

‘Don’t lie to me, Polymestor. It is beneath me to listen to the words of a murderous, avaricious traitor like you. Did you not have gold enough? Was this territory too small for you? Was your palace too cheaply made? Your shrines too shabby?’

‘I don’t—’

‘Priam sent you a vast sum to look after our boy. Don’t try to deny it and don’t try to trick me, you old fraud. I placed the gold in his pack myself. And if that was not enough for you,’ she spat the words out, saliva landing on his embroidery, ‘I would have given you the same sum again to keep my boy safe. You had only to send word that he was worth so little to you. His worth was beyond gold to me. The Greeks have all the treasure of Troy now anyway. What difference would it have made to me if the gold had come to a Thracian instead of a Spartan, an Argive, an Ithacan?’

‘He is safe! What lies have you been told?’ Polymestor cried.

But Hecabe had no desire to talk further. There was a glint of metal, reflecting the rays of the sun, though he must have closed his eyes to spare himself the sight of it. In a flash, Hecabe had dragged her small, sharp blade across the neck of Polymestor’s older boy. The blood spurted out indecently as two of her womenfolk did the same thing to the younger child.

‘I buried him with my own hands, Polymestor,’ she screamed. ‘How dare you lie to me?’

‘What have you . . .’ The Thracian king roared in horror, but there was more carnage to come. As his boys spilled their dark life blood out onto the sand, Hecabe and her women turned their short knives on him. They did not aim for his throat or his heart. As he tried to gather his sons in his arms, desperately willing life back into them, the women instead plunged their blades into his eyes. His cries of horror mingled with howls of pain, and the blood pouring from his blackened sockets pooled with the blood of his children. His slaves did not attempt to help him, seeing themselves outnumbered by Odysseus’ battle-hardened crew.

‘You wiped out my line,’ Hecabe whispered. ‘Now I have wiped out yours. And I leave you alive to remember that had you not been a traitor, a murderer, a breaker of vows and deceiver of friends, your sons would still be delighting you into your old age. You would have seen them grow up as you grew old. Now you know that the last thing you will ever see was their death. I hope the gold was worth it.’

She stood back from the butchery and nodded to Odysseus. ‘Thank you.’

Odysseus and his men began to load themselves back onto their ships, ignoring Polymestor – hunched over the bodies of his sons – nearby. The king’s roars subsided into sobs and then into helpless mewling. Odysseus stared at him in contempt. Every one of his men had been elbow-deep in the blood of his comrades more than once in the past ten years of fighting. They had little sympathy for a traitor who took payment from the Trojans and would have brought up a boy from the royal household, who might have grown up determined to avenge his father, his brothers, his city. The Greeks could not afford to leave the Thracian king unpunished for his two-faced dealings. Polymestor had followed his instincts, which were to maximize profit wherever he saw the opportunity, irrespective of the cost to others. That could not be allowed to stand. His punishment would remind any other Greeks who thought to betray their word that such behaviour was not tolerated, at least not by Odysseus.