A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

  ‘No, king.’ He sucked in his tear-stained, mud-smeared cheeks for a moment. ‘You know the story of the Greek voyage to Troy? How we massed our fleet in Aulis, but then could not sail, because the winds disappeared?’

  Around him, the Trojans nodded. It was a tale they had all heard, and told: how the Greeks had offended the goddess Artemis, and she had taken the wind from them until they appeased her. Horrifyingly, they had done so by conducting a human sacrifice. What Trojan did not know of this terrible, typical cruelty?

  ‘When it came to the time to return to Greece, Calchas and Odysseus hatched their plot together,’ Sinon continued. ‘The king of Ithaca could not resist an opportunity to rid himself of me.’

  Creusa looked again at the red ribbons around the prisoner’s head and felt a prickling behind her eyelids. Surely he was not saying such a dreadful thing.

  ‘I see you understand my meaning, king,’ Sinon said. ‘Calchas announced at the assembly of Greeks that the gods had chosen their sacrifice, and that it was my blood they wished to drink from a makeshift altar. There was a little criticism from the soldiers but better me than them.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Priam. ‘They intended to sacrifice you like an animal.’

  ‘They did more than intend it; they prepared me for it. They bound me at the wrists.’ Sinon raised them to show the grimy ropes which still held his hands together. ‘And at the feet. They oiled my hair and tied fillets around it. Everything about this sacrifice had to be perfect, of course. But the bonds around my ankles were not quite as tight as these,’ he shook his hands, ‘and when I was left out of sight of the guards, I wrenched myself free.’ This explained the angry weals around his feet.

  ‘I knew the guards would soon drag me to the altar. So first I crawled and then I ran as fast as I could away from the camp. By the time I heard the shout go up I had made it almost to the reed banks and I lay down and hid.’

  The tears began to flow from the man’s eyes once again, and a corresponding dampness appeared on the face of the Trojan king. Creusa knew that she too was weeping. It was a horrific story, even to those well-versed in the barbarity of the Greeks. Priam’s wife, Hecabe, looked on without comment: her mouth in a short, thin line, her grey brows drawn.

  ‘I heard the men searching for me,’ Sinon said. ‘I heard them cutting at the grass with their whips and spears. I was desperate to run further, but I knew I couldn’t risk being seen. So I waited for the longest night of my life, praying to Hera who has always been my protector. And the next morning, my prayers had been answered. The Greeks had decided to fashion this wooden offering to the gods, instead of sacrificing an unwilling victim. They built it, dedicated it, and then set sail without me. So in spite of my bad fortune, I have lived a few more days than I was allotted. Now you will kill me, king, and rightly: I am one of the men who came here to raze your city, and I deserve to be treated as your enemy, even if I was only a boy when I was brought here. I have no family who can ransom me. So I do not beg you to send my body home to grieving relatives. I have none. I have but one request to make of you.’

  ‘What is that?’ Priam asked.

  ‘Take the horse.’

  *

  Creusa had fallen heavily and she could feel the blood inching down her shinbones as she pulled herself upright. She could see almost nothing ahead of her now, though the heat on her back made her certain she was taking the only possible route. Was everywhere behind her in flames? She could not bring herself to look, knowing that if she did, the brightness of the fire would blind her when she turned back towards the darkness. It was this – thinking of the practical things she could and could not do – which was keeping her on her feet, when nothing in her life had prepared her for what was happening. Although she wanted to hitch up her dress and run, she took small, quick steps to minimize the likelihood of crashing into anything else.

  She was glad of it when she found herself at what she thought was another dead end. About to give in to despair, she stared into the smoke and thought she might see a smaller path to the left, running between two houses. She was trying to remember whose homes they were, and work out where she might be, when a gang of soldiers erupted from the one furthest away. Creusa shrank back against the front wall of the building opposite the men, but they did not see her. They laughed as they ran down the alleyway which Creusa planned to use. She did not need to hear their words to know that the men had killed whoever they had found inside. Creusa waited for the men to disappear before she dared follow. Having tried so hard to remember whose house she was passing, she was grateful that she had failed. She did not want to know whose throat the men had just slit.

  She dragged her fingers along the wall beside her, making her way more slowly now, to be sure that the men would not see her behind them. When the passageway finally opened out into the street again, she saw that she had done it. She had found her way to the city walls.

  *

  ‘Take the horse,’ Sinon said. ‘In so doing, you will take its power from them. They built it here and dedicated it to Athene, protector of the Greeks. They believed it to be so large that you Trojans would have no chance of dragging it away into your city. They saw the distance across the plains, the height of your acropolis, and they laughed at the notion that you could take it for yourselves.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Hecabe. Her Greek was rudimentary, but clear.

  ‘Forgive me, queen, I do not understand,’ replied the prisoner.

  ‘How do you know what they thought about the horse?’ she repeated. ‘If you were hiding in the reeds, fearing for your life. You say they built the horse after you had run away. So how do you know what was said?’

  Creusa thought she saw a flicker of annoyance cross the man’s face. But when he spoke again, his voice was still quavering with sorrow.

  ‘It had been their original plan, my lady. Before Calchas and Odysseus cooked up their plot against me. The Greeks wanted to build a giant horse and invest it with all the sacred power they could. Then they wanted to leave it outside your city to taunt you: a sign of the goddess guiding them home safely. It is the kind of arrogant gesture that Agamemnon cannot resist.’ Hecabe frowned but said no more.

  ‘So please, king,’ he added. ‘Rob them of their safe voyage home. Take their horse to your citadel before nightfall. It could be dragged by your men. I will set my own shoulder to the ropes if you will only permit me. Anything to punish those impious Greeks who would have taken my life without hesitation. If you let me help you drag the horse into your city and up to its highest point, I will fall on the sword of any of your men the moment the task is completed. I swear it.’

  ‘No.’ Laocoon the priest could keep himself in check no longer. ‘I beg you, king. The horse is cursed and so shall we be, if we allow it in our city. The man speaks with a false tongue. Either he deceives or he is deceived. But the horse must not come inside our city walls. Let us burn it, as I proposed.’ He lifted his meaty arm and flung the spear he held into the horse’s flank. It vibrated for a moment, humming in the shocked silence which followed his words.

  Creusa could not be sure what happened next. She didn’t see the snakes for herself, though many others claimed to have done so. She wasn’t looking at the reeds. She was looking at the man, Sinon, and his filthy, unreadable face. The only sign that he could understand Laocoon’s words was the shiver of his biceps against the ropes which still held him. She thought Laocoon’s children had simply run out into the water. Why wouldn’t they? They had long since tired of hearing the men argue and – like all the other children of Troy – they had never been down to the shore before, never played in the sand. So of course they had wandered off, following the river a little way until they reached the waves on the beach. The two of them had waded out into the shallows before anyone noticed they were gone.

  The seaweed grew in huge fronds, Creusa knew. As a child, her nurse had warned her never to enter the water in search of the dark green tentacles. Whil
e the seaweed’s fingertips were thin enough for a child to tear, the body of the plant was thick and fibrous. It would have been all too easy to stumble and lose her footing. And that was surely what had happened to Laocoon’s children. One of them must have caught his foot in a loop of seaweed and fallen. Unused to the current, he panicked and, writhing, entangled himself further. The other, ploughing over to help his brother who had slid right under the water, found himself in the same predicament. His thin cries for help were carried away by the shore breeze.

  But by the time Laocoon had run – too late – to save them, the seaweed had taken on a malevolent form. Giant sea-snakes sent by the gods, someone said, to punish the priest for defiling their offering with his spear. As soon as the words had been spoken, they had believers.

  As the priest wept on the sand, cradling the bodies of his drowned children, Priam’s choice could hardly have been different. The gods had punished the priest, so the Trojans must heed the warning and follow the words of the prisoner, Sinon. They laid logs beneath the horse and dragged it across the plains, the men taking turns to heave on the ropes. They rolled it through the city, though it barely fitted into the indentations of cart-tracks which cut through the streets. They drew it up onto the citadel and cheered when it reached the highest point and the men rubbed their aching arms and rolled up their ropes. Priam declared a sacrifice must be made to the gods, and a feast would follow. The Trojans cheered again as the fires were lit and the meat cooked. They poured wine first for the gods and then for themselves. Troy had won the war at last.

  *

  And Creusa turned and looked back at her burning city. She had made it to the walls but now she could see that the fire had reached them before her. She could not follow the walls around to the city gates as she had planned: the paths were ablaze. If she could have climbed the wall where she now stood, she could perhaps still have escaped. But it was too high, too sheer, and she had nothing to cling on to. The men she had followed were no longer a threat to her: choked on the thick smoke, they had lost their lives in the pursuit of carnage. She could see their bodies on the ground ahead of her, already being claimed by the fire.

  She understood her predicament far more quickly than the birds which were singing overhead – on roofs which had not yet burned – though the sky was black, the moon obliterated by thick grey smoke. The fires across the city were so bright, they thought it was morning, and Creusa knew she would remember this oddity – the fire and the birds and the night made day – for as long as she lived.

  And she did, though it mattered little, because she was dead long before dawn.

  3

  The Trojan Women

  The women were waiting on the shore, gazing blank-eyed at the sea. The tang of dried green seaweed and bent brown reed stalks fought against the stench of smoke which filled their clothes and matted hair. After two days, the Greeks were finally completing their systematic looting of the blackened city, and as the women waited to find out who they now belonged to, they huddled around their queen as though her last embers might keep them warm.

  Hecabe, a small, leathery figure with half-hidden eyes, sat on a low rock worn smooth by water and salt. She tried not to think of her husband, Priam, cut down by the vicious Greek as he clung to an altar, his dark blood trickling down his chest as his head drooped back from his murderer’s blade. Something else she had learned as the city fell: the old did not die like the young. Even their blood was slower.

  Her mouth hardened. The thug who slaughtered him – an old man pleading for the protection of a god – would pay for his cruelty, his disrespect, his impiety. It was the only thing she could cling to, now everything else was lost: a man could not expect to disregard the sanctity of a god’s temple and continue to live and thrive. There were rules. Even in war, there were rules. Men might ignore them, but the gods would not. And to slaughter a man as he bent his stiffening knees to seek sanctuary? Such behaviour was unforgiveable and the gods – as the queen of the smoking remains of Troy knew all too well – were rarely prone to forgive.

  She bit the inside of her cheek, welcoming the metallic taste. She began the list again in her mind, the sons who had died in combat, the sons who had died in ambushes, the sons who had died two nights ago, in the sacking of the city. With the death of each one, another part of her dried up, like animal skins left too long in the sun. Eventually, she had thought, when Hector died, when the butcher Achilles took her bravest warrior-son, there was nothing of her left to shrivel up. But one of the gods – she dared not say Hera’s name – must have heard even that hubristic thought, and decided to punish her further. And all because of a woman. All because of that conniving Spartan whore. She spat the blood out, onto the sand. Her desire for revenge was total, and futile.

  She caught sight of a bird, turning on the wind, and flying back towards the shore. Was it a sign? The flight of birds was known to carry messages from the gods, but only skilled priests could read the language of wings. Still, she was sure this message was a simple one, reminding her that there was one boy – one, of all her beautiful sons, so tall, so strong – one still left alive.

  And only because the Greeks did not know where he was, or even that he was. Her last, youngest son, bundled out of the city under the cover of night, and hidden away with an old friend in Thrace. A friend whom they had paid handsomely. Even allies needed encouragement to support a losing side, Priam had said. And Troy had been the losing side for so long: only strong walls and obstinacy had kept her firm against the Greeks for ten long years.

  She and Priam had wrapped the boy’s belongings around four twisted gold circlets, and tied the pack closed before he left. ‘Give two to your host when you arrive,’ they said. ‘Hide the other two and never let on to anyone that you have them.’ ‘Then what good are they to me?’ he asked, a ready, trusting boy. ‘You will know if you need them,’ she had answered, resting her fingers on his shoulder so she could look him in the eyes, tall as he was. ‘Men will do more for a stranger if he has a nub of gold to offer.’ She showed him how the soft metal branches would give beneath his hands, allowing him to snap off a smaller bribe if need be.

  They said nothing to the slave who accompanied their son: the lure of gold would be too strong, and her boy would have a knife between two ribs before he was a day’s ride from home. Secrecy was vital, and she prayed to the gods that her son would realize that his life was at stake if he could not keep quiet. Her husband had warned him, and so had she. He was not her last surviving son when he kissed her the final time and set out through a little-known passage on the north side of the city. But she had known, even as she wept and bid him farewell, that he would be.

  She felt a brief shudder run through her, and tightened her stole around her shoulders. The Greeks were taking their time in the city. Picking over every corner in case they had missed something bright; as grasping as jackdaws. Gold and bronze had been pilfered from every hiding place, piled up on the sand to be divided up among the men. Carefully, since the inequitable distribution of booty had caused them no end of trouble in the past year. There would be some trickery, of course. Men had already been caught stuffing small pieces of precious metal into their clothing. One Greek, she had heard, had been found by his comrades with a gold ring wedged between his cheek and his teeth, and had been slashed across the face for his deception. He would hide nothing in his cheek now. Not even his teeth.

  The women were waiting, powerless and broken. What happened after the end of the world? Polyxena sat at her mother’s feet, absently rubbing her hand up and down her mother’s calf like a small child. Andromache sat slightly apart from her mother-in-law. She was not born a Trojan, but had married Hector and become one of them. Her baby nestled beneath her chin, grizzling a little – the noise and panic had disturbed his sleep. And Cassandra faced the ocean, her mouth moving soundlessly. She had long since learned to keep quiet, even if she could not halt the stream of words flowing from her lips.

  None of
the women wept. The dead husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were fresh wounds to them all. They had mourned through the nights and torn their hair and garments. But the Greek men who guarded them had little time for lamentation. Polyxena nursed a blackened bruise on her eye socket, and now the women were silent. Each promised herself and the others that they would grieve in solitude when they could. But all knew that they would never know solitude again. When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else. And victory had made the Greeks no kinder.

  Polyxena issued a low, guttural cry, which merged with the chatter of the cormorants and went unheard by their captors. No matter how hard she tried to suppress her grief, she could not help herself. ‘Could this have been avoided?’ she asked her mother. ‘Did Troy have to fall? Was there no point when we could have been saved?’

  Cassandra’s shoulders quivered with the effort of not screaming. She shook with the force of her desire to shout that she had told them a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times. And that none of them had listened, not once, not for a heartbeat. They didn’t hear, they couldn’t see, and yet she could see nothing but the future, all the time, forever. Well, not forever. She could see her own future as clearly as she saw everything else. Its brevity was her one consolation.

  Hecabe looked down at her daughter and ran her fingers over Polyxena’s hair. She did not notice the thin film of soot it left behind on her palm. She could not look at her hands touching her daughter, knowing as she did that the hands of a Greek would be defiling her before the night came. The only question was which man would have each of her daughters, her daughters-in-law. Who, not if or when.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The gods know, you must ask them.’ And as she looked out at the sea, over the heads of her battered retinue, she realized that one of the Trojan women was missing. ‘Where is Theano?’ she asked.