The Women of Troy: A Novel

by Pat Barker

  At last she was silent. She actually ate one of the cakes, dabbing her mouth daintily with the edges of her veil. “Delicious,” she said, waving away another. “Do you know”—turning to me—“I don’t think I ever tasted cakes like that in Troy—and Priam had the best cooks in the world. Though I must say I still like the ginger cake best. Such a strong taste.”

  Hecamede looked concerned. “Was it too strong?”

  “No, no, perfectly balanced. Not too spicy, not too sweet.” She turned to me again. “And what about you, my dear?”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Do I bake? Well, yes, a bit—nothing like Hecamede.”

  “But I’m sure you have other talents. They tell me you know quite a lot about herbs?”

  “I wouldn’t say a lot.”

  “You see—” She paused, looking around the little circle. “I’ve been thinking, about what we could do.”

  I felt a prickle of uneasiness as I listened. She seemed to be asking Hecamede to bake a cake for Helen. A cake? For Helen?

  And then she said, looking at me: “I know where to find the plants.”

  Of course she knew. Like every other great herbarium, the garden at Troy had a gated area set aside for poisonous plants, because—paradoxically—poisonous plants produce some of the most powerful medicines. Administered in minute doses, under careful supervision, these plants can actually save lives. Henbane, wolfbane, foxglove, sweet clover—it sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? Sweet clover—snakeroot, castor-oil plant, strychnine tree…

  Hecuba touched my arm. “You’d know which ones to pick?”

  I glanced across at Hecamede and saw her realize what we were being asked to do. She reached for Hecuba’s hand. “Why don’t you leave her to the gods?”

  “Because leaving things to the gods doesn’t bloody well work! You need to grow up, my girl.”

  “Only the gods can judge.”

  “Huh! You think the gods care about justice? Where’s the justice in what’s happened to me?”

  She turned away from us then, hunching her shoulders like a hawk in the rain. For a moment, there was silence. Then she said: “Amina understands, don’t you?”

  Amina nodded. “Yes.”

  “Fortunately,” I said, “Amina isn’t allowed out of the women’s hut without me.”

  The atmosphere had gone sour. I flared my eyes at Hecamede, asking: How soon can we leave? But then Hecuba turned to face us again and her whole demeanour had changed, almost as if the corrosive fantasy of poisoning Helen—which, I suspected, had been her sole companion during her long, sleepless nights—had fallen away and left her suddenly lighter. “Do you know, I think I might manage another cake.”

  There was only one left. When she’d finished, she moistened her finger and picked up the last crumbs from the plate. “And now, I’d like to go for a walk.”

  The three of us exchanged glances. We all thought it was nonsense: the wind would blow her away. I actually had visions of her being whirled up into the sky like one of those skeletal brown leaves you see in autumn, but I nodded and helped Hecuba to her feet. She draped her thin arms across Hecamede’s shoulders and mine and then, awkwardly, like a six-legged freak calf, we shuffled towards the door.

  Once outside on the veranda, Hecuba stopped dead and I felt a tremor run through her. She was blinking in the harsh light, as if daunted by her own temerity. I half expected her to change her mind, to turn back and say she’d try again another day, but no, she was determined. One or two women who were squatting on the ground grinding corn looked up as she embarked on her perilous journey down the steps. I was terrified she’d fall. In the end, we simply lifted her down—she was no weight at all.

  “Where would you like to go?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment. “The sea. I haven’t been to the sea for years.”

  So, keeping as far as we could to the shelter of the huts, we set off. Several times, we had to stop so she could wind her veil round her mouth; the wind was snatching her breath—as it was ours, but she had less breath to spare. Though she might as well not have bothered, because as soon as we left the shelter of the huts, the veil streamed out behind her and she had to let go of me to stop it flying away. Crows circled, their ragged wings black against the white sky. “Look at the buggers!” she said. “Better fed than we are.” And she made a sound that in other circumstances might have been a laugh.

  Slowly, very slowly, we got her down onto the beach. By now, we were almost carrying her, our arms crossed over her bent back as she tottered towards the sea. Once her veil came off altogether. Amina chased it across the sand and brought it back, knotting it securely round Hecuba’s neck. On the shoreline, we stopped and watched the waves in their relentless assault on the land, each one failing, falling back, dislodging pebbles that peppered down the slope after it—then, the long, grating sigh of its defeat. But already, beyond the breakers, the sea was flexing its powerful shoulders for the next attack. Hecuba stared at the black, beaked ships that were lined up on the beach like a flock of predatory birds, seeing probably for the first time the forces that had destroyed her life. I was afraid she’d look along the beach to where crows and seagulls still squabbled over Priam’s body, but instead she drew a shuddering breath and turned to face inland.

  A group of women had gathered a short distance away, slaves who’d come running out of Odysseus’s huts to see their former queen, but she looked over their heads at the ruined city. I followed her gaze and saw, through her eyes, Troy’s black and broken towers, like the fingers of a half-buried hand pointing accusingly at the sky. I waited for Hecuba to speak, but she said nothing. Perhaps, confronted by this sight, words felt like such debased currency she couldn’t be bothered to use them anymore. Somewhere deep in her throat a wordless sound was forming. I didn’t hear it; I felt it—running from her neck and shoulders down into my arm. And before I realized what was happening, she’d slipped from my grasp and fallen to her knees. She crouched on the hard sand and suddenly the grief burst out of her. She raised her face to the sky and shouted for Priam, and then for Hector and for all her other dead sons. And then again for Priam. Priam. Priam. She was pulling out chunks of hair, clawing her cheeks, beating the ground, as if she could make her cries heard in the gloomy halls of Hades. As if she could wake the dead.

  I knelt beside her and tried to get an arm round her shoulders, made meaningless, soothing noises, desperate to calm her—as much for my own sake, I’m afraid, as hers. I couldn’t bear it. And then she threw back her head and howled, and the howling went on and on—it seemed to have no end. The watching women moved closer, gathering round her where she knelt on the filthy sand, joining their cries with hers—until they turned from women into wolves, the same terrible howl coming from a hundred throats. And I howled with them, horrified at the sounds I was making, but unable to stop. Hecamede howled, and Amina, all of us, for the loss of our homeland—for the loss of our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, for everybody we’d ever loved. For all the men carried away on that blood-dark tide.

  Surely, if ever living voices could penetrate the world of the dead, it was then; but nobody answered us. After a while, Odysseus came out of his hall to see what the commotion was about and, a few minutes later, a couple of guards appeared and ordered the women roughly back to work.

  10

  Somewhere along the beach, a pack of dogs has begun to howl. Calchas stops and listens as the howling fades first into whimpers and then into silence.

  Looking around him, he’s aware that something’s changed. What is it? The sky still burns the same awful red, the air still tastes of iron, the waves still crash with that deadly monotony on the shore…He feels his lungs struggle to keep pace with the endless rise and fall; his chest seems to be full of swirling water. Resting his hand on the warty side of a ship, he tries to breathe deeply. For a moment he feels dizzy, his vision
blurs, but then slowly, slowly, the beach swims back into focus. A smoke of fine grains is blowing across the hard sand and, as he watches, several balls of dry grass trundle past.

  All this he’s seen many times before, so why does it suddenly feel strange? He sucks his index finger and holds it up. Yes, that’s it, the wind’s changed. Not very much—it’s still blowing off the sea—but at a slightly different angle. Perhaps it’ll make walking easier; perhaps he’ll be bowled along, like one of those balls of grass. Leaving the shelter of the ship, he sets off confidently, no longer the gawky boy who’d once knelt at Priam’s feet, but Apollo’s high priest, the chief seer in the Greek army, a man who enjoys the confidence of kings. Though when he turns to look back, his footprints scrawling across the wet sand are as erratic as a crab’s. Nevertheless, he presses on, intent on reaching his hut before darkness falls. He decides that tonight he’ll allow himself a cup of strong wine, perhaps with a small cake to dip into it. A man can’t always be denying himself the good things of life; he’s been worn thin by sacrifice. He thinks with some resentment of Machaon, who’s never denied himself anything, and yet sees Agamemnon as often as he wants—every day, it’s said—while he, who’s given the king years of loyal service, years, spends his days waiting for a summons that never comes.

  The light’s fading fast now, but it’s not the blue shadows of a normal evening that are lengthening across the ground, the creeping twilight that makes the flames of fires and lamps glow suddenly brighter, more inviting; no, these shadows are a sickly yellow, the bone-ivory of old skin. He remembers Hecuba’s wrinkled neck, as he’d seen it when she was first led into the camp, and touches his own neck nervously. Men experience their own ageing in the bodies of women, even men like himself who’ve chosen a celibate life; not that he’d ever actually chosen celibacy—or stuck to it either, come to that. He walks on; but now he’s back in Troy, a child again—white houses, black shadows, a little boy sitting on a doorstep, squinting up at the sun. Dimly, he’s aware of the sky darkening, of his own narrow feet flashing in and out of the shallows, but he’s lost in memories of the past…

  And when he looks up again, Agamemnon’s there.

  At first, he doubts the evidence of his eyes. Agamemnon never leaves his hall; he hasn’t been seen outside since the wind changed and pinned the Greek ships to the beach—he who was always giving feasts or attending feasts given by the other kings—but there he is, wrapped in a dark blue cloak, a gold circlet round his head to stop the lank, iron-grey hair blowing across his face. He hasn’t noticed Calchas; he’s gazing out to sea. Calchas looks around, but there’s nobody else in sight. This is the hour when men wrap themselves in warm cloaks and gather round the cooking fires. When the serious drinking starts.

  So, they’re alone—with the wind making snakes of loose sand and sending them writhing across the beach. What to do? He daren’t approach Agamemnon, who’s obviously come out unattended because he wanted to be alone, but neither can he just walk past and ignore him. The slanting light discovers worm casts, little heaps of coiled sand, each with its own distinct shadow; he pretends to take a great interest in them, even kneeling down as if to examine them more closely. Next, he spends a few moments looking out to sea, where each crash and roar of waves pounding the cliffs emphasizes—as if emphasis were needed—the impossibility of a ship leaving the shelter of the bay. Is that why Agamemnon’s here, to confirm the hopelessness of the situation, like somebody jabbing a broken tooth to check that it still hurts?

  Calchas feels sharp granules of sand sting his bare ankles. The wind’s colder now—and still he can’t move. But then he hears a new sound, somewhere between a groan and a roar, and it seems to be coming from the ground beneath his feet. Singing sand. A recognized phenomenon, familiar to everybody who lives along this coast. The words “recognized” and “familiar” are comforting, because they seek to tame the experience, to bring it out of the realms of the uncanny and establish that it’s merely part of normal life. Though it’s not really “singing” at all—it’s a far more menacing sound—and it seems to be coming from deep inside the earth. As if the dead had found a voice at last—or perhaps recovered the voices they once had.

  Agamemnon’s staring all around him. At last, he kneels and puts both hands to the ground as if he needs touch to confirm what his ears are telling him. Everything about this situation—the failing light, the howling sand, the all-powerful, helpless king—combines to produce a rush of terror in him. Calchas would run away if there was anywhere to run to, but the roaring’s everywhere. All over the camp there are raised voices, so the men around the fires must be hearing it too, but it’ll be fainter there, and less frightening with other men for company. There, they’ll be able to crucify the mystery with jokes and laughter, but out here, exposed on the darkening beach, two men turn to stare at each other, neither of them able to disguise his fear.

  And then, as suddenly as it began, the roaring stops. Agamemnon straightens up, looks in Calchas’s direction for a moment, and seems about to speak, but then, abruptly, turns and strides off towards his compound.

  Calchas follows at a slower pace, mouth dry, heart thumping his ribs, but underneath it all he’s jubilant, because Agamemnon can’t ignore this. He’s a man who craves signs and portents, who sees the action of the gods in even the most mundane events, and assumes, of course, that any message from the gods will be aimed exclusively at him. Yes! He’s got to send for me now. Though, after a moment’s further reflection, Calchas returns to his previous anxious state. Yes, Agamemnon will send for him, he’ll be asked to explain why the gods are forbidding the Greeks to leave the site of their greatest victory—and he has absolutely no idea, no idea at all, what he’s going to say.

  11

  After a stormy night, I put bread and cheese and a jug of weak wine on the table in case Alcimus came home for breakfast and then went down to the beach. The wreckage left by yesterday evening’s high tide lay all around me. I’d grown used to finding large numbers of dead creatures on the beach, but I’d never seen anything like the carnage I saw that day. The sand was littered with pale greenish-grey crabs, jellyfish, probably a hundred starfish blanched in death—the latter a particular grief to me because I loved them so much. I hunted about for anything still living, but found nothing. Picking my way across the devastation, I felt I was on a battlefield in the aftermath of one of Achilles’s red rages, but it was the sea that had done this, the sea that had cast these small, delicate creatures so far up onto the land, where they had no chance of survival.

  I’d been walking up and down the water’s edge for ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps, when I glanced up and saw a tall, thin man standing twenty or so yards ahead of me, gazing out to sea. Calchas. Observing him like this, the two of us alone on the desolate shore, I felt I was seeing him more clearly than I’d ever done before. He was immensely tall—six feet five, perhaps, something like that—though the word you’d choose to describe him was not so much “tall” as “long.” Long feet, long hands, long fingers—even his neck was long, the larynx so prominent that in certain lights it cast its own distinct shadow. Like all Trojan priests, he painted his face white and outlined his eyes in black, in effect putting on a mask, behind which his thoughts were impenetrable. If you add to this a slight speech impediment that turned any word beginning with “s” into a hiss, you can see why the Greeks found him both intimidating and ridiculous. He struck them as effeminate and that made them uneasy, so they laughed at him, but feared him too.

  I was only a few feet away from him now, and still he hadn’t moved. Curiosity made me stop and look out over the bay, trying to work out what it was that he found so fascinating. It didn’t take me long. A huge black bird—though possibly it merely appeared black against the bronze glare of the sky—was soaring high above the waves. All along the beach, gulls were gathering and bursting apart like showers of spray, but this bird flew with precision and purpose,
like an owl quartering a meadow. Suddenly it dived, at the last moment stretching out its gnarled yellow feet. A splash, a glint of silver, and then it was struggling to rise, powerful wings flailing to escape the water’s drag. For a second, I thought it might be sucked under, but no—slowly, slowly—it fought its way into the air. It was so nearly there—when a gust of wind caught it. Blown off course, it crashed onto the wet sand only a few yards away from me. With a stab of pity, I saw it trying to get its breath back. Nothing else inspired pity. The shoulders were pure hunched muscle, the beak designed to tear still-living flesh from bone, and the eyes—pale gold, gleaming, intent—were the eyes of Agamemnon.

  Even as I watched, it was gathering itself together; the mighty wings began to beat, and at last, still grasping the flapping fish between its talons, it lifted off. Less than a minute later, it had become merely a black dot in the red furnace of the sky.

  Excited, I turned to Calchas. “Wasn’t that amazing?”

  I didn’t just mean the sea eagle itself—though it was amazing—I meant the mistake that had seen it blown off course. There’d been something shocking about that—like watching Achilles throw a spear and miss.

  Calchas stared at me. I expected him to share my excitement, but I saw only calculation in the black-ringed eyes. He was a bird seer—so naturally a large part of his time would be spent observing them, though I suspected an even larger part would be spent observing men. Who was currently most powerful? Who was climbing the rickety ladder? Who had to be placated? Who could safely be ignored? Above all, what did this woman, asking this particular question, at this particular time, want to hear? I could see him trying to work out who I was, whether I was worth bothering with. Remember, until recently I’d been a slave, as far beneath his notice as a slug. Eventually, after a lengthy pause, he nodded. “Yes, most unusual.” Stiff, stilted, pompous—altogether typical of the man. I was misjudging him—badly. But that’s what I thought at the time.