A Thousand Ships(66)

‘Please,’ she wept. ‘Please.’ She fell to her knees before the herald, but she did not let go of her son.

Talthybius’ supercilious eyebrows dropped a little at the sight of this hopeless woman lying at his feet. He bent down on his haunches, resting his elbows on his bare brown knees. ‘You know why the Greeks have decided this must be so,’ he said. He reached out and touched her hair with his fingertips. His voice was quieter now, speaking to Andromache alone. ‘Hector was an outstanding warrior, the great defender of Troy. His son would grow up to be a warrior too.’

‘No.’ Andromache shook her head. ‘He will not. He will never carry a sword or spear, I swear it on my life. He will become a priest or a farmhand. He will not learn to fight. The future you fear will not come to pass.’

The herald continued as though she had not spoken. ‘He will grow up to hear his father’s name spoken with admiration, how brave he was, how audacious.’

‘I will never mention his father.’ Andromache’s voice was rising into a scream. The child paused for breath before he too renewed his wailing. ‘Never. The name of Hector has passed my lips for the final time if you will only spare my baby. Please. He will never know whose son he is. He will never remember Troy. We will never speak of it. I swear it on the shade of my dead mother.’

‘But other people will mention him,’ Talthybius replied. ‘Hector cannot be excised from the story of the Trojan War. The bards sing his name already. Your name is mentioned in the same songs. You son will grow up wishing to avenge his father. He will have the murder of Greeks in his heart.’

‘I will change my name,’ she cried. ‘I will leave Andromache here in Troy and become someone else in Greece. Who cares what a slave is called?’

‘Your master will care,’ the herald said. ‘Your name makes you a trophy. Another name would carry less weight.’

Andromache’s eyes were darting around as she looked for some sort of escape.

‘Then I will tell him that Hector deserved to die.’ she said. ‘I will tell him that the bards sing it wrong. I will bring him up to believe his father was a coward and he deserved the death he received at Achilles’ hands.’

Hecabe opened her mouth to rebut this lie, but her voice had not yet returned. She looked around for Polyxena, to remonstrate with Andromache, or plead with the herald, or control Cassandra, who was beginning to rock to and fro on the sand. But Polyxena was gone, and there was nothing anyone could do.

‘No,’ Talthybius said. ‘You will not have to lie about your husband, madam.’ He stood up again, rubbing his fists against his aching thighs. He looked behind him to the Greek soldiers who accompanied him. ‘Take the child.’

‘No,’ Andromache screamed. ‘Let me come with him. Don’t take him from me.’

The herald turned back to her, his expression unreadable. ‘You know he will die?’ he asked.

‘If I cannot save him, I ask only to die alongside him.’

Talthybius sighed. ‘You do not own your life to give it up,’ he said. His soldiers wrenched the baby from Andromache’s arms. Astyanax was silenced by the shock of it. The herald continued: ‘You belong to Neoptolemus now. I cannot stand by while his property is destroyed. He would blame me, and his temper is remarkable.’

There was a moment of silence before the baby began to wail again.

‘Please,’ said Andromache, sensing the men’s discomfort. None of them knew what to do with a crying child. ‘Let me come with you.’

‘You would not wish to see it,’ Talthybius said. She fell prostrate at his feet, her hands gripping his metal-studded boots. If the herald could not leave, her son could live a few moments more.

‘Where are you taking him?’ Hecabe had found her voice at last. The herald turned to look at her. The sharp-tongued old witch had lost some of her vinegar now, he thought.

‘He will be thrown from the city walls,’ he said. ‘He will die where he was born.’

‘No, no.’ Andromache made one last plea, flinging her arms around the herald’s legs, almost taking him off his feet. ‘If I cannot die with him—’ she said. Cassandra gave a low moan. This part always made her sick. ‘If I cannot die with him,’ she continued, ‘at least let me be the one to kill him. Don’t throw him from the walls. Please. Don’t let his body fall onto the rocks below. He is a baby. Please. I will smother him. He will not grow up to avenge his father. He will die in his mother’s arms. What could be wrong with that? Your Greeks will allow it. Won’t they?’

‘We will return his body to you,’ the herald said to Hecabe. ‘You can bury him beside your son.’





35


Calliope


So he does have children, my poet. Or he once had them. Tears flow from his blind eyes. He can’t look at me, can’t bear what he’s just composed. I want to reach down and stroke his hair, and tell him everything will be alright. But it wouldn’t be true. Who could say that, about a war?

He was expecting something else from me, I suppose. I depend on war for my very existence. But depending on it means I need to understand it. And if he wishes to write about it, so must the poet. He is learning that in any war, the victors may be destroyed as completely as the vanquished. They still have their lives, but they have given up everything else in order to keep them. They sacrifice what they do not realize they have until they have lost it. And so the man who can win the war can only rarely survive the peace.