The Women of Troy: A Novel

by Pat Barker

  “I got better, but by the time I went home everything, everything, revolved around Helen. Paris was besotted—Hector not much better—even my father! She could play him like a flute. There was some talk of marrying me off; I think they actually had some poor sucker lined up, but then it happened again. And again. And by this time, it was obvious nobody was going to marry me. Even being King Priam’s son-in-law couldn’t make up for the taint of madness. Who wants that in the family? So Hecuba decided I was going to be a priestess—a virgin priestess. Priam went along with it—he went along with almost everything she said—and I was packed off to the temple.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You must have missed your family?”

  “Not really. I certainly didn’t miss my mother! I did miss my father, and Helenus. But, of course, from Hecuba’s point of view—problem solved. Now, when I had fits of madness, she could say it was a frenzy sent by the god. Much more respectable. If I’d been religious, it might have made things easier, but I wasn’t—not then, anyway. You must know the story? How Apollo kissed me and gave me the gift of prophecy, and then when I refused to sleep with him, spat in my mouth to make sure I’d never be believed?”

  “I’ve heard the story. Is it true?”

  “Of course it’s true.”

  I was starting to rebel against being the audience for an endless, self-justifying monologue. “I’m not even sure I know what prophecy is.”

  “Well, take a very minor example…I haven’t moved from this chair since I got up, I certainly haven’t looked out of the door, but I saw you walking along the beach and I knew you were coming here.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You don’t sound convinced?”

  “We-ell, I came to ask you a question—and I knew the answer before I arrived. Is that prophecy?”

  “No, that’s just intelligence.” She was looking intently at me, really seeing me, I thought, for the first time. “You watch people, don’t you?”

  “Look, she’s your mother. You’ve just got married—would it be so difficult to walk a few hundred yards?”

  “You have no idea how difficult.”

  I was beginning to glimpse the truth about Cassandra. Like Athena, who’d sprung fully armed from Zeus’s head, she didn’t owe her life to anything that had gone on between a woman’s legs. So, Hecuba could be brushed aside as an irrelevance. She was—at least in that way—the opposite of me.

  Anyway, I had my answer. I put my cup down—I’d barely touched the wine—and was about to stand up when there was a knock on the door.

  Cassandra put a restraining hand on my arm. “Don’t go yet. That’ll be Calchas—and he’ll want to talk to you as much as me.”

  I could hear the maid at the door letting him in. “I can’t think what he’d want to talk to me about.”

  “Can’t you? Clever girl like you—I’d have thought it was obvious by now.”

  As Calchas came into the room, I smelled salt air on his skin, together with the rather less pleasant smell of the white paste he’d plastered onto his face. He was wearing a priest’s robes and carried a staff festooned with scarlet bands. A compliment to Cassandra’s new role as Agamemnon’s wife? Or a visible reminder of their shared priesthood? They’d trained in the same temple, even slept in the same small room, though many years apart—Calchas must have been easily fifteen years older. Still, they had that experience in common. After he’d sat down and been given wine, they started reminiscing about the priest who’d trained them both, and then—with considerably more affection, I thought—about the ravens who’d been kept in the temple grounds, unable to fly away because their wing feathers had been clipped. These birds had been their childhood companions, their friends—and they’d been the same birds. Ravens live a long time in captivity. They all had a name, a personality, little tricks that they did. As I listened, a picture took shape in my mind of two very lonely children, each of them sent away from home before they were ready to leave. There was something incredibly moving about this—and it changed my attitude to both of them, but particularly to Calchas, whom I’d always thought a bit of a fraud. I wasn’t so sure about that now.

  After a short pause—Calchas was devoting his attention to the sweetmeats, getting through them at a surprising rate—he began talking about Priam’s visit to Achilles, the night he went into the Greek camp to beg for the return of Hector’s body. “I believe you”—addressing Cassandra—“spoke to him as soon as he returned?”

  “Yes,” Cassandra said. “I’d been on the battlements all night. I couldn’t see a thing—even when it started to get light, I still couldn’t see because there was a thick mist—but then suddenly there he was, driving that rickety old farm cart. I ran to meet him, I made them open the gates, and then I climbed onto the driver’s seat beside him—and we drove into the city together.”

  “In triumph,” Calchas said.

  “Hardly triumph,” Cassandra snapped. “We had my brother’s dead body in the back.”

  Calchas bowed slightly, an apology for his crassness, perhaps. “Did Priam mention Achilles? I mean, did he say how Achilles had received him?”

  “Oh, he was full of praise. He said Achilles walked beside the cart and saw him safely out of the camp. Apparently, the last thing Achilles said was, ‘When Troy falls, try to get a message to me—and I’ll come if I can.’ And Priam said, ‘By the time Troy falls, you’ll be in Hades with the dead.’ Achilles just laughed, then said: ‘Well, then, I won’t come, will I? No matter how many messengers you send.’ ”

  I hadn’t known about this final conversation until now, but I could hear Achilles saying that—and his laughter.

  Calchas turned to me. “Hecuba says you were there that night?”

  “Yes, I was there. But before I answer any questions, I’d like to know where this is going.”

  Did he look slightly taken aback? It was so difficult to read his expressions behind the mask of paint.

  “I’ve spoken to Hecuba,” he said. “And she told me how Priam died. She was there, you know? She saw it all. She said you wouldn’t kill a pig the way Pyrrhus killed Priam.”

  “I know. But can I just say in Pyrrhus’s defence—Priam was armed, he was ready to fight, and he’d rather have died like that than be forced to his knees in front of Agamemnon.”

  “Yes, that’s true—but it doesn’t stop me being angry. He was old, he could hardly stand up in his armour, he was butchered—and the man who did it was hailed as a hero. He’s not a hero, he’s a vicious little lout. And you can say a lot of bad things about Achilles—but he was never that.”

  I saw his anger. I could scarcely avoid seeing it; it was literally cracking the paint on his face—and at that moment I forgot, or at least set aside, my instinctive dislike of Cassandra, my suspicion that Calchas tailored his prophecies to his own advantage. We were simply three Trojans talking together in a room at the heart of the enemy camp.

  “Look,” Calchas said, “the point we’ve got to establish is: what was the nature of the relationship between Achilles and Priam? Because, you know, it’s perfectly possible they just did a deal. ‘Here’s the ransom, check it out.’ ‘All right, good enough, here’s the body.’ And that would have been the end of it. But if it was more than that, if Achilles accepted Priam as his guest, then a bond was forged between them. Guest-friendship. And that’s a very different matter. Because there’s no lawful way of killing a guest-friend. Even if you’re on opposite sides in a war, even if you meet on the battlefield, you still can’t kill a guest-friend. And the bond, once formed, descends from father to son—it’s inherited. So, if Achilles and Priam were guest-friends, Pyrrhus and Priam were guest-friends too—and that makes Priam’s death—”

  “Murder,” Cassandra said.

  I looked up—and found her staring at me with those
brilliant yellow eyes.

  “So, do you see now why it’s important to answer Calchas’s questions?”

  I nodded, took a moment to organize my thoughts, and started telling them the story of that evening. But even as I spoke, another far more complex story was rising to the surface of my mind. That night was the most important of my life, the time everything changed. First there’d been the shock of seeing Priam, alone and defenceless in the midst of his enemies. And that was followed by a dizzying sense of possibility. I begged Priam to take me with him when he left, pleaded with him, but he steadfastly refused. He said the war had started when his son Paris, in defiance of the laws of hospitality, had seduced (some said raped) Menelaus’s wife, Helen. So, he would not abuse Achilles’s hospitality by stealing his woman away. There was my answer, but I couldn’t—and didn’t—accept it. I hid beside Hector’s body in the cart as it trundled to the gates, aware all the time of Achilles walking beside it, only a couple of feet away. And then…

  And then I thought better of it. Did it really make sense to go to Troy when everybody, including Priam, knew the war was lost? Did it make sense to endure the sacking of another city, a second enslavement? These were the reasons I gave myself for not escaping, for going back to Achilles’s hall and Achilles’s bed. I believe—though this is something no woman can ever be sure of—that my child was conceived that night.

  Calchas didn’t need to know any of that. He had no interest in me, except as a witness. So, as a witness I gave him exactly what he wanted, neither more nor less.

  “We were just finishing dinner when the door opened and somebody came in. I looked up and saw that it was Priam. He was dressed like a peasant farmer, but I recognized him at once. Achilles didn’t, he hadn’t met Priam, and then, when he realized who it was, he was furious. He said, ‘How the bloody hell did you get in?’ Priam said something like, ‘I was guided by a god’—and that made Achilles even more furious. He accused Priam of bribing the guards. And by this time other people had worked out who it was. They crowded round, and Achilles told them to back off. Priam was kneeling at Achilles’s feet, clasping his knees. He said, ‘I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.’ ”

  I looked from Calchas to Cassandra, wondering whether either of them could grasp the shock and power of that moment.

  “Achilles could’ve killed Priam at any moment—he chose not to. Instead, he invited him through into his living quarters. Oh, and I remember he changed into a plain tunic, because obviously Priam was dressed like a peasant farmer. Then they sat down and ate together. Priam hadn’t even brought a knife with him and so Achilles wiped his own knife and handed it across the table. I wasn’t really waiting on them at all. Achilles poured the wine—I just put it on the table—and it was the best wine he possessed. He carved the meat for Priam; he even held the bowl for him to wash his hands. Then—well, Priam was obviously exhausted, so Achilles told me to make up a bed for him. I remember him saying: ‘Take the furs from my bed if you like, I don’t want him to be cold.’ And then the following morning—I’d taken water for Priam to wash—Achilles was up early, in full armour. He told Priam the sooner he was out of the camp the better. He said he didn’t want Agamemnon to find him there and Priam said something like: ‘But you’d fight for me?’ And Achilles said: ‘Oh, yes, I’d fight. I don’t need a Trojan to teach me my duty to a guest.’ ”

  Calchas leant forward: “You’re sure he said ‘duty to a guest’?”

  “Exact words.”

  “Did anybody else hear that?”

  “I don’t know. Alcimus and Automedon were on the veranda immediately behind him, but I can’t say whether they heard or not. But they’ll be able to confirm he walked to the gate with Priam and saw him safely out of the camp.”

  When I’d finished, Calchas let out a noisy breath and sat back in his chair, looking across at Cassandra and then back at me.

  “So,” I said. “You’re saying Priam’s death was murder? Do you really think the Greeks are going to accept that?”

  “I think it’s possible. You see, people always say they want an explanation, but they don’t—not really. They want somebody to blame.”

  “I think they’d rather blame Menelaus.”

  “Oh, of course they would—they want to see Helen stoned to death. But that would mean war.”

  “So, you’re going for Pyrrhus instead? The hero of Troy? Achilles’s son?”

  “I said I thought it was possible. I didn’t say it would be easy.”

  Calchas lapsed into silence, obviously thinking hard. He was a strange, difficult, complex, driven man—and yet I felt his loyalty to Priam was genuine. And with all his oddities, he was impressive. Though I didn’t for a moment think he was going to succeed in this plan. Pyrrhus had so much power, so much prestige—the hero of Troy. There was no getting past that. And there was one major flaw in the case Calchas was building. He had Cassandra’s account of Priam’s return to Troy and my memories of what Achilles had said and done that night, but both of us were women—and a woman’s testimony is not considered equal to a man’s. In a court of law, if a man and woman disagree it’s almost invariably his version of events that’s accepted. And that’s in a courtroom—how much more so in this camp where all the women were Trojan slaves and the only real law was force. Calchas would need to get Automedon or Alcimus to confirm everything I’d said, but for much of the time I’d been alone with Priam and Achilles, because Achilles thought Priam would be more at ease with a Trojan girl than with heavily armed Greek fighters. I hoped, at least, Alcimus and Automedon would tell the truth about what they knew, but I suspected their loyalty to Pyrrhus, as Achilles’s son, might override everything else.

  Cassandra broke into my thoughts. “I want to see my father buried,” she said. “I want to see Pyrrhus crawl on his hands and knees through the dirt.”

  Suddenly, I wanted to get away from the fug in this room. Abruptly, I stood up, and this time Cassandra didn’t try to detain me, though she did see me to the door. “I will come to see my mother,” she said. “Only not yet.”

  I felt the promise was intended as a reward, a pat on the head for being a good little girl. Patronizing bitch. She saw herself as being at the centre of the web that was being spun around Pyrrhus, but I thought she was deceiving herself there. Cassandra was so completely her father’s daughter, so far removed in attitudes and experience from almost all other women, that she was incapable of appreciating the full extent of Hecuba’s power. Calchas saw it. There was something in his voice whenever he mentioned Hecuba, a softness that certainly wasn’t there the rest of the time. Perhaps as a young man he might have loved her, and perhaps somewhere underneath the face paint, the cynicism and the plotting, he still did.

  27

  That night, as was now usual, Andromache and I served wine at dinner. We arrived in good time and began pouring the first drinks. The torches were lit, fresh rushes laid, gold plate gleamed on Pyrrhus’s table. I noticed he was drinking from the Thracian cup. I’d seen it before, of course, when Achilles was alive, in the last ten days before his death, but now I saw it with fresh eyes because I knew Priam had been holding it when Hecuba tried to persuade him not to go to the Greek camp, not to throw himself on the non-existent mercy of Achilles.

  As the men ate and drank, as the torches blazed and the temperature soared, I kept glancing across the tables at Andromache. She looked so thin and pale—worse, I thought, since Amina died—but she seemed to be managing, though I noticed she still avoided looking at the men she served. They were talking about the games: which referee was blind (all of them), whose team was rubbish, who was favourite to win the chariot race. The games seemed to be going well. There’d been one pitched battle after a wrestling match that had left a contestant permanently disabled, but no other real disturbances. I was pleased for Alcimus, who seemed to be growing in
confidence from one day to the next.

  When the time came for us to leave, Andromache was told to stay behind. She gave a despairing glance over her shoulder as she disappeared into the living quarters. I decided to go and visit the women’s hut. By the time I got there, the girls had a meal ready: chicken with lemons and garlic, very simple, but delicious—the girls were becoming rather good at this. We sat outside to eat. One of the girls who still worried me was Maire; she was such a silent, depressed lump. Inevitably, we women tended to see each other through our captors’ eyes, and I’m afraid I was as guilty of that as anybody. Why on earth had Pyrrhus chosen her? She was immensely fat, so fat she waddled when she walked—and she was obviously ashamed of her body because she’d been shuffling about in the same shapeless black robe every day since she arrived. Sitting beside her, Helle was slim, strong, firm, graceful, glowing with health—and yet, despite the stark contrast, they did seem to have struck up a friendship. At least, Maire spoke to Helle now and then—which was more than she did to anybody else.