A Thousand Ships(65)

Sometimes it’s hard not to think that you have offended more gods than you have impressed. Because what else could explain the cruel south wind, which blew for a whole month – a month without cease! – and kept you on Thrinacia for all that time. Greek sailors are so rarely lucky with the wind, almost as if the gods themselves want to keep you out of the water. Don’t you think? And while the rations which Circe had given you were plentiful, they were not infinite. And after so many days without fresh supplies, your men grew hungry and restless. They waited – having learned this sort of trick from you, I imagine – until you were asleep. And then they killed the pick of Hyperion’s cattle and sacrificed them to the gods, before eating the remaining meat. How could the gods take offence at that, they said. A sacrifice could not be an act of impiety, could it? Besides, they would build a temple to Hyperion when they returned to Ithaca, and he would forgive them a cow or two. The gods would rather have stone monuments than mere cattle. But the father of the sun needs no new temple. He can see every temple to every god, every single day. What he needed was for his herds to remain unharmed, as they had always been. He complained bitterly to Zeus, and to all the gods, and they agreed that an outrage had been committed. Once the winds changed and you set sail, the gods took their vengeance upon you. The one ship of your fleet which had remained intact through all your tribulations was the price for your men’s hunger and their theft. You were driven all the way back to the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. Your men – every last one but you, as the man sings it – were drowned. I hope the meat was worth it.

You survived death because you leapt from your splintering ship and clung on to the fig tree above Charybdis. You hung there until she spewed her water back up, and then you let go. You landed in the water, and were washed ashore days later on Ogygia. This seems so extravagantly unlikely that I almost believe it.

The first time I heard the bard reach this part of the story, I thought he would sing that you built a new ship and began to sail home. This should be where the story ends, shouldn’t it? But that is not what he sang next. I demanded to know why. Do you not know where Ogygia is, he asked, his blind eyes moistening. I did not know. Why would any Ithacan have heard of such a place? It took you nine days to drift there, if the poet tells it rightly.

So after all the danger you endured, after all the risks you took, I have it on good authority from the poet that you have never been further away from me than you are at this moment. That’s right, Odysseus: you are further from home now than you were when you were at Troy, or on Aeaea. You are further than you were when you were trapped inside the cave of Polyphemus and you are further than when the Laestrygonians pelted you with rocks and smashed your ships. You are further from home than when you were clinging to a fig tree for the thinnest chance of life. You are further from me now than when you were in the land of the dead.

Your wife/widow,

Penelope





34


The Trojan Women


None of the women had been able to settle since Polyxena had been led away. They knew they would all be taken, picked off one by one. But once Polyxena had gone, it was hard to think about anything but who would be removed next. None of them guessed correctly except Cassandra, who knew. Because when the herald finally came, he did not come for a woman.

The women would have recognized him even if he hadn’t been carrying his staff with its twin ovals at the top, the lower one quartered by a cross. His robe was gathered at the neck with a large gold brooch, and his black boots were decorated with fine rows of metal studs. He winced as he put his weight on the left foot, as though a sharp stone had worked its way through the bands of leather and wedged itself beneath his heel.

Every truce, every shift in the ten-year war, had been heralded by Talthybius. The Trojans had seen him many times walking across the plains outside their city to consult with their own heralds, or with Hector. He carried himself across the sand with the pomposity of a man who has been sacrosanct for years: no one was permitted to harm a herald. And yet he moved slowly. It was not just Cassandra who could see he was reluctant to perform the task he had been allotted.

When he finally reached the women, Hecabe stared at him. Sweat poured down his face beneath his ornate cap, its brim pushed back so his black hair sprouted out from beneath it.

‘You should remove your thick cloak,’ she said. ‘It is not as cold as all that.’

Talthybius nodded, acknowledging in his mind the warnings he had received from Menelaus and Odysseus about the sharp tongue of the Trojan queen.

‘I have no time for your words, old woman,’ he said. ‘I am here for the son of Hector.’

The scream which rose up did not come from Cassandra. She had watched this happen so many times before that she felt almost dizzy with the repetition. But for Andromache, the widow of Hector, it was new. And so it was her voice which keened so piteously. It was all the more distressing for her family, because she was always so quiet. Softly spoken before the birth of her son, Astyanax, she had acquired a low, soothing tone when he was born. Her son – unused to hearing his mother in such distress – began to howl.

‘No,’ said Hecabe. ‘You cannot mean this. He is a baby.’ Her voice cracked in two, like a dropped pot.

‘I have my orders,’ Talthybius said. ‘Give me the boy.’

Andromache wrapped her arms tighter around the bundled child she had kept safe through a war and a city on fire. His face was growing purple with the effort of screaming.