A Thousand Ships(83)

She did not resent his wife, when Neoptolemus married Hermione, the young daughter of Menelaus and Helen. Anyone could see there was no affection between them. And although he visited her bed for the first month or two, her youthful attractions quickly paled and he returned to Andromache for comfort. She lay in the darkness beside him, no longer sickened by the faint sourness of his breath. She heard his breathing slow but she knew he was not yet asleep. And still she was surprised when he spoke.

‘I killed her as painlessly as I could.’

She felt her limbs stiffen. ‘Who do you mean?’

‘Your sister,’ he said. Polyxena. Neoptolemus had killed her sister-in-law (she did not correct him) on the shore, to appease his father’s ravening ghost.

‘Did you?’ she asked. She kept her tone as neutral as she could. Tears of gratitude would antagonize him as much as tears of anger.

‘The Greeks had decided,’ he said. ‘They would not sail without the sacrifice. They sacrificed the general’s daughter at Aulis, they needed to sacrifice your king’s daughter to sail home again.’ It was a peculiar quirk of his, to refer to men by their role rather than by name. Always the general, never Agamemnon. Your king, rather than Priam. And then in a rush, ‘She was no coward. She died nobly.’

In the dark, Andromache nodded. She knew he felt the movement of her head. ‘She was always brave,’ she replied. ‘Always.’

‘She is the one who torments my sleep,’ he said. Andromache drove her nails into her hands. Not Astyanax, a baby. Not Priam, a helpless old man. Only Polyxena had wakened the conscience of the man she had once thought a monster. Would still think a monster, if circumstances had not forced her to find something else in his character that she could tolerate.

‘Why?’ she asked.

She heard a muffled sound and he moved his hand swiftly across his face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She was so—’ This time he felt her go rigid. ‘You should not hear this,’ he said. But she found that although she could not think of these events on her own, for fear that the grief would split her asunder, even now, she was comforted to hear the words from him. The shock came first, but she could feel the consolation travelling just behind it.

‘Tell me.’

‘She was so willing to die,’ he said. ‘She did nothing to resist. She offered me her throat to cut. Why wasn’t she afraid?’

‘She was afraid,’ Andromache replied. ‘But she was more afraid of slavery. More afraid to be torn from her homeland. More afraid to belong to a man she did not know or choose. Death was not frightening to her because she preferred it to a worse fate.’

There was silence as he considered what she had said. ‘Would you have been afraid to die then?’ he asked.

Andromache winced as though he had slapped her. ‘No.’

‘Coming to Epirus was worse for you than dying?’

‘I thought so.’

There was a further silence. ‘Do you still think so?’ he asked. She heard the unmistakeable note of hope in his voice and almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Her captor, the murderer of her son, craving her approval. And yet, she found she could not withhold it. ‘No. I have Molossus now.’

‘When I die,’ he began, and then broke off. She did not interrupt, knowing that he sometimes needed to think his way into his words and would become annoyed if she distracted him. ‘When I die, you will marry that Trojan prince.’

‘Helenus?’ she asked. Cassandra’s brother was one of the few Trojan men whom the Greeks had allowed to live. He had performed some service for them, betrayed the Trojans in some way – that much was clear to Andromache, but she knew no more than that.

‘The brother of the mad girl,’ he agreed. Cassandra’s reputation had extended to every part of the Greek army, even before she was slaughtered by Agamemnon’s wife.

‘Very well. But why would you think about this now?’ Neoptolemus was silent. ‘Has someone threatened us?’ Andromache asked. She felt his arm reach over and his hand came to rest on her cheek.

‘They will,’ he said. ‘They will.’

*

When they came for Neoptolemus, he was not in Epirus, but in Delphi, several days’ ride away. He was killed in front of the temple of Apollo by men from Mycenae. He was heavily outnumbered. Orestes, the prince of Mycenae – Agamemnon’s son – demanded Neoptolemus’ wife Hermione as his bride. He claimed to be avenging some impiety Neoptolemus had committed, but Andromache knew this was a flimsy pretext. If someone was going around Greece righting every impiety shown towards Apollo during the Trojan War, there would be no Greek left alive. Had Apollo not visited a plague upon them all for their crimes? So why would Neoptolemus deserve a greater punishment than the rest? The worst excesses against Apollo had been committed by the former king of Mycenae, Agamemnon himself. What right did his son have to take vengeance on any other man? He should have been making offerings and prayers himself, in penance for his own wrongdoing, his and his sister’s. Hadn’t they killed their mother to avenge their impious father? How did the Furies let him go unpunished?

When Andromache heard that Neoptolemus was dead, she did not grieve. She could not weep for him. She wept instead for herself, cast once again into the world with no one to protect her, and she wept for her son, though her love for Molossus was tainted. Love had come so easily to her when she was young: she had adored her parents and her brothers. And then Thebe had fallen to Achilles, and her father Eetion and her seven brothers were slaughtered in a single day. This tragedy – the shock of which killed her mother shortly afterwards – had not broken her of the habit of loving. She had opened her heart to Hector and his family, delighting in their numbers, all those new brothers and sisters. She had been as dutiful to Priam and Hecabe as she had been to her own parents. She had found it a pleasure, had never understood the sly remarks other women made about their husbands’ mothers. Losing her own family had made her all the readier to love another. Then when Hector died she had grieved as a widow should and she had found consolation in his family: her loss was also theirs.