A Thousand Ships(57)

As the last of his men boarded, he called Hecabe and her women to accompany him. Polymestor, hearing the name of his enemy, let go of his dead sons and turned towards the sound of the waves.

‘You will die before you ever reach Ithaca,’ he shouted. ‘You will drown in the seas and no one will mourn you and no one will mark your grave.’

Hecabe stopped beside the ruined king. ‘I have been dead since I buried Polydorus,’ she said. ‘It makes no difference where I fall.’

*

Cassandra took in jagged breaths, desperate to remain calm. She closed her eyes and then opened them again in the present, to see her mother, her sister, her sister-in-law, all sitting beside her on the rocks, just as they had been before she followed her mother to Thrace. But then the scene began to play out from the beginning once more. It was no less horrifying to see it again. More so, in fact, now she had seen so much of what was to come. But still, one detail was missing, right at the beginning when Hecabe first stepped onto Odysseus’ ship. She, Cassandra, was standing there on the sands of Troy, watching her mother leave. She could sense that Andromache had already gone. She could see other women – cousins and neighbours – heading off with different warriors to disparate kingdoms. She had accounted for all of them. All except one. Where was Polyxena?

The answer came to her in a rush. And this time she could do nothing to prevent the sickness overwhelming her.





29


Penelope


My husband Odysseus,

I now know you are in the land of the dead. When the bard first sang of your voyage to the Underworld, I confess I wept. After so many years, I believed I had no more tears left to shed, but I was mistaken. I had made a simple error when I heard his song, of course: I had assumed that only the dead can enter the kingdom of Hades. It doesn’t seem so outlandish to think that, does it? I mean, who else has ever courted the favour of the dread Persephone, without having died first? Orpheus, I suppose. But he had the strongest possible reason for his katabasis: he took on Cerberus, the three-headed hound, to try and earn the restoration of his beloved Eurydice, cut down by the sharp tooth of a serpent on their wedding night. An exceptional and heart-breaking circumstance, as I’m sure you would agree. And, try as I might, I cannot see why you would essay the same perilous journey to consult a dead seer. Would a live one not have sufficed?

They say that Circe, your witch friend, told you the consultation was necessary. I suppose I should be grateful that she only persuaded you to sail to the end of the world to do her bidding. Some women really will do anything to avoid returning a husband to his wife. But honestly, Odysseus, did you believe this journey was necessary? You were already so far from home (I am not entirely sure where Aeaea, Circe’s island, is situated, but probably not as close to the edge of the earth as I would hope)? And then to sail to the river that circles the world in perpetual darkness? I think it is fair to consider this one of your more unusual choices.

But I am thinking like a stranger, like one of the bards who sings your story. You have not sailed to the place of perpetual night in spite of the danger, have you? You have done so because of it. I know you, Odysseus. There is little you would enjoy more than the chance to boast that you had taken your ship to the end of the world and back again. What a fantastic story, people would say. And you would demur, no, anyone would have done the same thing in your position. Except, somehow, no one else is ever in your position, are they?

The other Greeks have all returned, to warm (some less warm) homecomings. But you followed the advice of Circe, an enchantress you knew you could not trust, and found yourself in the darkest region, pouring sacrificial blood into a trench to lure the spirits up from Erebus. The shades of the dead dwell there, always hungering for blood. And you came along to feed them in the hopes of speaking to the dead seer, to Tiresias. But it was one of your men whose ghost appeared first. Elpenor, who died on Aeaea. He had drunk too much wine, climbed onto the roof of Circe’s palace, and thence fallen to his death. It is not the pitiful stupidity of his death which moves the listener, when the bard sings this section (in case you were wondering). It is the triviality of it, of him, a fallen comrade whom none of you even noticed was gone. Imagine that: fighting beside the same band of Ithacans for ten years; sailing home alongside them. And not one of them misses you when you fall. I’m sure you were simply distracted, organizing the provisions for your difficult voyage ahead. But not to have even noticed a man’s broken body on the ground? Let us hope you never have to muster another force, Odysseus. Your reputation may leave you short of volunteers.

Elpenor made you promise to go back to Aeaea and bury his body with due ceremony and – though I’m sure you were desperate to avoid returning to Circe’s island – you, of course, agreed. Always so considerate. And what are a few more weeks at sea after all this time, you probably thought. You might as well take the scenic route.

You poured a little more blood into the ditch and waited for your prophet. But it was not him who appeared next. Ah, even as I am angry with you, my heart aches to think of you there alone, catching sight of the shade of Anticleia. What a way for a man to find out that his mother has died while he has been away. Still, you held your nerve and forbade her spirit to drink until the seer had given you the benefit of his wisdom. She bared her teeth at you, but she obeyed, and you waited.

And when Tiresias finally arrived, drawn by the stench of animal blood, what did he tell you? What I have already told you, with none of the inconvenience of a trip to hell and back. You have offended Poseidon by blinding his son. Your journey home is more difficult and more treacherous than that of any other Greek, because you have earned the enmity of a god. And what else did he tell you? Oh yes. That your homecoming would be painful. That you would be welcomed by a palace full of suitors who had been living in your home, determined to woo your wife.