A Thousand Ships(60)

‘To which of the Greeks are you taking me?’ she asked. Her Greek was stilted, formal. Menelaus said nothing and for a moment she thought he had not heard her or that she had failed to make herself understood.

‘I asked you where you were taking me,’ she repeated.

‘I do not owe answers to a slave,’ he replied. She felt the colour in her cheeks but she kept her temper.

‘I did not think you were too much of a coward to tell a powerless slave what her future holds,’ she said. ‘My brother Hector spoke well of you, he said you were a brave man.’

She did not smile when she saw him straighten his back and carry his head a little higher. As if Hector would have said anything of the kind. Everyone – Greek and Trojan – knew that Menelaus was a boor; a man who could not put down a wine jar until it was emptied of every last drop. Who drank his wine till too late every night with too little water, and who wondered aloud why his wife had left him while his companions hid the answer behind their hands. His brother Agamemnon was less pitiable but more petulant, so the Trojans had said. Neither of them was a good king by Trojan standards but the Greeks were less demanding, she supposed.

‘I am no coward,’ he replied. ‘I drew the shortest straw and I have done my duty, as it was decreed by the council of Greeks when we gathered last night. I have collected you from your family and I will deliver you to Neoptolemus.’

Polyxena suppressed a shudder. The Trojans had feared Achilles as the great warrior he was: quicker and more lethal than a mountain lion. But his vicious nature was also like that of the lion. There was no grudge against the Trojans, or any of the other victims he cut down like so many stalks of wheat, at least not until Hector had killed Patroclus. They were simply his prey and he slaughtered them because that was what he was born to do. The same could not be said for his son.

Neoptolemus was feared by Trojan and Greek alike: unpredictable and sulky, burdened by the knowledge that he could never be as great a man as his father. It was Neoptolemus who had cut down Polyxena’s father, Priam, as he clung to the altar in the temple of Zeus. What kind of man had so little fear of the king of the gods that he would violate his sanctuary? Her only certainty was that Neoptolemus would be cut down in turn for his blasphemous crimes. Thetis herself would not be able to save her grandson from the wrath of Zeus when it came.

‘You are right to fear him,’ Menelaus said, though she had not spoken. ‘But Neoptolemus will not keep you for long. You are to be a gift for his father.’

‘His father is dead,’ she said. And then she understood what was to become of her.

She gave silent thanks to Artemis. She had said to herself many times that she would rather die than live as a slave. And her prayer would be granted. She added to it, hoping her mother would not find out that her youngest daughter – the last one in her right mind – would shortly share the same fate as her youngest son. One sacrificed for a Greek’s lust for money; the other for a Greek’s desire for blood.

Although perhaps she misjudged her mother. Hecabe was a proud woman who resented the yoke of slavery on her own account, quite aside from her children. Perhaps she would be happier knowing Polyxena was dead rather than enslaved, relieved if the shame could be contained to herself and would not cascade down through the generations of the children of Priam. And surely her mother would grieve less if she knew her daughter had gone willingly to her death. Polyxena kept walking ahead of the soldiers, beside Menelaus. They would not be able to call her a coward.

*

There were fewer soldiers present than she had anticipated. In her imagination she had built up a huge dais, a gaggle of priests in full ceremonial garb, a vast array of Greeks looking on, all willing the sacrifice to be completed quickly so they could eat and drink and prepare to set sail tomorrow. But when she arrived at the Myrmidon camp, it was a more threadbare gathering than she had expected. She saw a few small tents, patched up, salt-encrusted. Was this where Briseis had slept, she wondered. The woman who had held the whole Greek force back when Achilles had refused to fight until she was returned. Was she still here, now Achilles was dead? Had she been inherited by his son or gifted to one of his lieutenants? Polyxena was surprised by her own curiosity. It was odd to care about another’s fate when her own was coming to such an abrupt finish. Yet she found she cared about this woman she had never met. She found herself staring from face to face, hoping to pick out the features of a woman who could alter the direction of a war. But none of the women she saw – camp-followers and slaves – had such a face. She felt unreasonably disappointed. And then she realized that had their places been reversed, she could not have stood by to see a girl sacrificed like a heifer. She, too, would have hidden herself away.

Menelaus shouted something she could not understand and a young man stepped out of his tent into the harsh afternoon light. He frowned at the glare and this added to his already peevish demeanour. Polyxena had heard that Achilles was beautiful: golden hair and long, golden limbs. But this man had a mess of auburn locks that sat girlishly around his soft face. His chin was weak and his blue eyes were too pale and too small. He might have been beautiful even so – his skin was like ivory – but for his cruel expression. His mouth was a petulant stub, and his brow already bore the traces of frequent disapproval. Polyxena saw immediately why he was so ruthless: even as he stood in front of his own tent surrounded by his own men, he gave the impression of a boy wearing his father’s clothes. But this boy was the man who had slaughtered her father as he knelt in the shrine of Zeus.