A Thousand Ships(6)

*

‘Sinon,’ the man wept. Two spears were pointed at his neck, and he had fallen to his knees. The Trojan scouts had found him hiding in the low shrubs, on the far bank of the Scamander just as it opened out to meet the sea. They had driven him – one on either side, armed with knives as well as spears – into the midst of the Trojan men. The prisoner’s hands were bound at the wrists and there were angry red welts around his ankles, as though ropes had bitten him there too.

‘We might not have seen him,’ said one of the scouts, prodding the prisoner with the tip of his spear. The man suppressed a cry, though the spear had not broken his skin. ‘It was only the red ribbons which caught our eyes.’

The prisoner was a strange sight: his mousy hair curled into his neck and out again, and if it had ever been oiled, it was now matted with the mud which covered so much of his bare skin. He wore a loin-cloth but nothing else. Even his feet were bare. And yet, around his temples, bright ribbons had been tied. It did not seem possible that so dirty a man – more like an animal than a man, Creusa thought – could have any part of him so clean and pretty. The prisoner let forth a piteous howl.

‘What was meant to kill me then is the cause of my death now!’

Creusa could not hide her disgust at the filthy, weeping Greek. Why had the scouts not killed him where they found him?

Priam raised two fingers of his left hand. ‘Silence,’ he said. The crowd stilled, and even the prisoner’s racking sobs diminished.

‘You are a Greek?’ Priam said. Sinon nodded. ‘And yet they left you behind?’

‘Not intentionally, king.’ Sinon raised his hands to wipe mucus from his face. ‘I ran away from them. The gods will punish me, I know. But I could not stand to be . . .’ His speech dissolved again.

‘Take control of yourself,’ Priam said. ‘Or my men will kill you where you kneel and your blood will feed the gulls.’

Sinon gave one last juddering sob and took a breath. ‘Forgive me.’

Priam nodded. ‘You ran away from them?’

‘I did. Though I was born Greek and I have fought alongside Greeks all my life,’ Sinon replied. ‘I came here with my father when I was still a boy. He died in the fighting many years ago, killed by your great warrior, Hector.’ A ripple passed through the Trojan crowd. ‘Please,’ said Sinon, looking around him for the first time. ‘I mean no disrespect. We were on opposing sides. But Hector did not kill him with malice. He cut him down on the battlefield, and took nothing from his corpse, not even my father’s shield, which was finely wrought. I bear no grudge against Hector’s family.’

The loss of Hector had been so terrible, and so recent, that shadows settled on Priam’s face, and he seemed to Creusa’s eyes to lose himself for a moment. Standing before her, before them all, was no king, but a broken old man whose ancient neck could scarcely support the gold chains he still wore. The prisoner might have noticed the same thing, for he swallowed and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter, speaking to the king alone. Creusa had to strain to hear him.

‘But my father had enemies, powerful enemies among the Greeks,’ Sinon said. ‘And we were unfortunate enough to incur the hostility of two men in particular, though I swear to you neither my father nor I did anything to deserve it. Still Calchas and Odysseus were set against him, and so against me, from the outset.’

At the hated name of Odysseus, Creusa could not suppress a shudder.

‘An enemy of Odysseus holds some common ground with us,’ said Priam slowly.

‘Thank you, king. He is the most hated of men. The ordinary Greek soldiers detest him, the way he swaggers around as though he were a mighty warrior or noble king. He is a far from exceptional fighter and Ithaca – his kingdom, as he calls it – is nothing more than a rocky outcrop that no man would envy. Yet our leader Agamemnon and the others, they have always treated him as a hero. And his arrogance has only grown in consequence.’

‘No doubt,’ said Priam. ‘Yet none of this explains why you are here, or why your countrymen have all disappeared so unexpectedly. And the name of Calchas is not familiar to me.’

Sinon blinked several times. He could see, Creusa thought, that he must make his point quickly, or lose his chance to speak forever.

‘The Greeks have known for some time, king, that they must leave. Calchas is their chief priest, and he has appealed to the gods for happier news. But their answer has been the same, since last winter: Troy will not fall to a Greek army camped outside the gates. Agamemnon did not want to hear it, of course, and nor did his brother, Menelaus. But eventually they could no longer argue their case. The Greeks are sick of being far from home. The war could not be won, so it was better to take the booty they had acquired and set sail. This argument was put forward by many men—’

‘Including you?’ Priam asked.

Sinon smiled. ‘Not at the formal discussions,’ he said. ‘I am no king, I would never be permitted to speak. But among ourselves, the ordinary soldiers, yes: I agreed that we should leave. I believed we should never have come. And that made me unpopular. Not with the rank and file, who were of the same mind. But with the leaders, the men who had staked their reputations on the war, with Odysseus. Still, they could not argue with a message coming directly from the gods. Reluctantly they agreed to sail home.’