A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

  In that moment, I felt truly sorry for you, Odysseus. But when the bard sang this next part, it was all I could do not to have him thrown over Ithaca’s rocky outcrops and left to drown in the darkening sea. First you asked your mother how she had died. Then you asked after the health of your father. Then your son. Then your honour. Then your throne. And then, when you had asked about everything else except the dog, you remembered to ask after your wife.

  Once you had finished speaking to your mother, you stayed among the dead for a little while longer. When else would you get the opportunity to see so many great figures from the past? You saw Alcmena, Epicaste, Leda, Phaedra, Ariadne. Even dead women can’t seem to leave you alone. But I could listen to no more by then, I am afraid, and retired to my bed. To our bed. Perhaps you remember it.

  The dog is fine, by the way. Getting older, but aren’t we all?

  Penelope

  30

  The Trojan Women

  The shadows of the Greeks were stretched long and thin. A man with greying sandy hair led three of his men towards the women. His mouth was set in a sullen line. He had not wanted this task, whatever it was.

  ‘Which is the girl? The daughter of Priam?’ he asked bluntly. Cassandra was mewling like the gulls swooping overhead to catch the last of the day’s fish as they glittered in the late afternoon sun. She was still watching her mother’s fate play out behind her eyelids, though she could tell no one what she saw. The man looked from one face to another: every one of them soot-stained, tear-stained, dishevelled. He had never seen such an unappealing selection in his life, and no quantity of renown – the queen of the horse-taming Trojans, for example – could make up for the lack of quality. What did it matter what status someone had held in a city which had fallen?

  Hecabe spoke first. ‘You don’t look very happy, my lord, for a man who has his wife back.’ The man’s sparse brows drew together. ‘You are Menelaus, are you not?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘My wife faces a death sentence when we return to Sparta. Adultery is a crime in Greece.’

  ‘It’s a crime here, too,’ Polyxena said. ‘You’ll remember, Paris fought you in single combat because he was the guilty party.’

  Menelaus reddened as he remembered the unfortunate duel. He still could not understand how he hadn’t won. The effeminate Trojan prince must have had the help of a god on that day. Or a goddess, more likely.

  ‘You harboured the two of them for ten years,’ he snarled. ‘Ten years. And look what it has cost you, your immorality.’ He gestured at the broken walls of Troy. ‘This is no more than you deserve.’

  ‘Thank you for your kind words,’ Hecabe said. ‘If it is any consolation, I would happily have sliced your wife’s throat for you at any time. I have rarely wanted to do something more. But my husband the king was a kindly man, and your wife has – as you know – an appealing manner.’

  Menelaus scratched his puffy, flattened nose. ‘She has that.’

  ‘You won’t put her to death,’ Hecabe said. ‘She will have charmed you back into her bed before you return to Sparta. She will have done it by tomorrow.’

  ‘You pride yourself on your wisdom, I see.’

  ‘Some things don’t require wisdom. Just eyes.’

  ‘Perhaps I will let her live,’ he said. ‘Do you think the Greeks would thank me for it?’

  Hecabe shrugged. ‘Would you rather have the approval of your men outside your bright sunlit palace, or the approval of your wife, in the dark inner chambers?’

  He ignored the question. ‘I came for your daughter.’

  ‘The Greeks have voted you a princess, from the royal house of Troy, in addition to the restoration of your wife? What loyalty.’

  ‘The Greeks did no such thing,’ he said. ‘Your daughter – do you have more than one?’

  ‘I had more,’ Hecabe said. ‘Now I have two.’ She pointed at Cassandra, and reached a protective arm towards Polyxena.

  Menelaus appraised them both. Polyxena turned her eyes modestly towards the ground. Cassandra looked straight at him, unseeing. ‘Does she always make that noise?’ he asked.

  ‘She always makes some noise,’ Hecabe said. ‘People say she was cursed as a girl. Certainly, she was a delightful child. Sweet-natured, obliging, quiet. But she began this tiresome display a year or two ago, and now she only stops to sleep.’

  ‘She’s beautiful, in spite of . . .’ Menelaus gestured at Cassandra’s drool-stained chin. ‘Someone will be happy to find ways of keeping her quiet.’

  Hecabe said nothing.

  ‘I’ll take the other one, then,’ he said. ‘Come.’ He jerked his hand and the men stepped forward, ready to take Polyxena.

  ‘If she is not for you, then why have you come to collect her?’ Hecabe asked. She would not demean herself by begging to be allowed a few more moments with her beloved girl. But she could not bear to see her go.

  Menelaus shook his head. ‘Drew the short straw,’ he said. ‘Come on, girl.’

  Polyxena kissed her mother, and Andromache, and tried to embrace Cassandra. But her sister clutched at her arms and began to scream. The soldiers wrenched her free so they could march her away as their captive.

  31

  Polyxena

  When she had murmured her prayers growing up, Polyxena had never wished for bravery. There would have been no point. Her city was under siege; she had only hazy childhood memories of it being any other way. So courage was not something special, to be wished for; it was something commonplace, required of everyone. She had always known fear for those she loved: her brothers as they strode out of the city gates in the mornings, her sisters, when the city’s food supplies ran short. Her mother, as her shoulders began to hunch, like a crone. Her father, as he stood on the high walls, watching his sons fight off the men determined to take his city by force. Each dead man was a source of personal grief and civic fear: a husband, a son, a father lost and one fewer defender left to fight the next day.

  But feeling fear was not the same as lacking courage. Anyone could be brave if he felt no fear. The Trojans murmured that this was true of Achilles, this was why he was so lethal. He rode into battle on his chariot, with no care whether he lived or died. None at all. He cared only for the safety of his friend, for Patroclus. If the Trojans kept clear of him, Achilles would scythe through their ranks seemingly at random. It was many months, perhaps years, before the Trojans realized the better way to fight was to send a small group of men after Patroclus, which would draw Achilles to his side. The men died, of course, every time. They drew lots to decide who would take on this unwinnable fight to protect their comrades.

  Polyxena had seen these men, as they bade their wives farewell, and cherished their last few moments with their sons. They had an air of calm about them, as everyone around them rushed to fasten their armour and make their weapons ready. They knew they would die and so the time for fear was past. All that was left was the chance to die courageously, to remove Achilles from the battlefield for long enough to allow their fellow warriors the opportunity to push forward elsewhere, to drive the Greeks back towards their ships. At the time, Polyxena had thought these men to be out of their minds with grief or sorrow. How else were they so unconcerned about dying? Now, she wished she had their certainty. She would have given a great deal to know the fate she was being taken to meet.

  The Greeks spoke quickly in their own tongue and she did not understand the thick accent or the dialect. They were not as lascivious as she had been led to believe. One of them grabbed at her, under the guise of helping to steady her on the uneven ground. But Menelaus shouted something and the man removed his hands, his face reminiscent of a dog caught stealing milk from a jug.

  Above all, she hoped that Menelaus had not lied to her mother and that he wasn’t taking her for himself. No fate could be worse than being enslaved by him, leaving her homeland to become the handmaiden of Helen, the cause of all their grief. Well, perhaps not the whole cause. Polyxena knew her mother had al
ways let Paris off too lightly. Her brother Hector had made no such mistake. He had been quick to censure Paris, and Polyxena had known he was right. But still, she did not wish it to be Helen who ordered her to fetch water or grind meal. Even if they made her a maidservant, she was sickened by the thought of plaiting the hair of her former sister-in-law, or helping her to dress each morning, or looking the other way when her secret lovers arrived (Polyxena had no doubt that Helen’s character would be unchanged when she returned to Sparta).

  She felt a sudden rush of anger flow through her, at Paris, at Priam, at Hector, at all of them. At all the men who should have protected her and who had instead left her. And her anger was tinged with the jealousy that they had died and she would be enslaved. Men would have vied with one another to win her in marriage, and now she would be impregnated by her owner, or another slave, and there would be nothing she could do to prevent it. Her offspring should have been royalty but would now be the lowest of the low: born into servitude. The shame of all this was hers alone to bear.

  She knew that her mother, her sister, Andromache and the other Trojan women would share her fate, but none of them would be present to console her and nor would she be able to offer them words of comfort. The cruelty of it was typical of the Greeks. If the war had been reversed, and the Trojans had sailed across the ocean to besiege a Hellene city, her relatives would have behaved to the Greeks much as the Greeks had behaved in Troy. They, too, would have killed the men and enslaved the women and children. That was what it meant to win a war, after all. But, although those women and children would have suffered the loss of their freedom, they would have remained together. A consolation for one another. Whereas the Greeks stemmed from so many different cities and islands that they were separating every Trojan woman from the tatters of her surviving family. She called down a quiet curse and turned to Menelaus who trudged along in silence, dragging one leg a little in the shifting sand.

  ‘To which of the Greeks are you taking me?’ she asked. Her Greek was stilted, formal. Menelaus said nothing and for a moment she thought he had not heard her or that she had failed to make herself understood.

  ‘I asked you where you were taking me,’ she repeated.

  ‘I do not owe answers to a slave,’ he replied. She felt the colour in her cheeks but she kept her temper.

  ‘I did not think you were too much of a coward to tell a powerless slave what her future holds,’ she said. ‘My brother Hector spoke well of you, he said you were a brave man.’

  She did not smile when she saw him straighten his back and carry his head a little higher. As if Hector would have said anything of the kind. Everyone – Greek and Trojan – knew that Menelaus was a boor; a man who could not put down a wine jar until it was emptied of every last drop. Who drank his wine till too late every night with too little water, and who wondered aloud why his wife had left him while his companions hid the answer behind their hands. His brother Agamemnon was less pitiable but more petulant, so the Trojans had said. Neither of them was a good king by Trojan standards but the Greeks were less demanding, she supposed.

  ‘I am no coward,’ he replied. ‘I drew the shortest straw and I have done my duty, as it was decreed by the council of Greeks when we gathered last night. I have collected you from your family and I will deliver you to Neoptolemus.’

  Polyxena suppressed a shudder. The Trojans had feared Achilles as the great warrior he was: quicker and more lethal than a mountain lion. But his vicious nature was also like that of the lion. There was no grudge against the Trojans, or any of the other victims he cut down like so many stalks of wheat, at least not until Hector had killed Patroclus. They were simply his prey and he slaughtered them because that was what he was born to do. The same could not be said for his son.

  Neoptolemus was feared by Trojan and Greek alike: unpredictable and sulky, burdened by the knowledge that he could never be as great a man as his father. It was Neoptolemus who had cut down Polyxena’s father, Priam, as he clung to the altar in the temple of Zeus. What kind of man had so little fear of the king of the gods that he would violate his sanctuary? Her only certainty was that Neoptolemus would be cut down in turn for his blasphemous crimes. Thetis herself would not be able to save her grandson from the wrath of Zeus when it came.

  ‘You are right to fear him,’ Menelaus said, though she had not spoken. ‘But Neoptolemus will not keep you for long. You are to be a gift for his father.’

  ‘His father is dead,’ she said. And then she understood what was to become of her.

  She gave silent thanks to Artemis. She had said to herself many times that she would rather die than live as a slave. And her prayer would be granted. She added to it, hoping her mother would not find out that her youngest daughter – the last one in her right mind – would shortly share the same fate as her youngest son. One sacrificed for a Greek’s lust for money; the other for a Greek’s desire for blood.

  Although perhaps she misjudged her mother. Hecabe was a proud woman who resented the yoke of slavery on her own account, quite aside from her children. Perhaps she would be happier knowing Polyxena was dead rather than enslaved, relieved if the shame could be contained to herself and would not cascade down through the generations of the children of Priam. And surely her mother would grieve less if she knew her daughter had gone willingly to her death. Polyxena kept walking ahead of the soldiers, beside Menelaus. They would not be able to call her a coward.

  *

  There were fewer soldiers present than she had anticipated. In her imagination she had built up a huge dais, a gaggle of priests in full ceremonial garb, a vast array of Greeks looking on, all willing the sacrifice to be completed quickly so they could eat and drink and prepare to set sail tomorrow. But when she arrived at the Myrmidon camp, it was a more threadbare gathering than she had expected. She saw a few small tents, patched up, salt-encrusted. Was this where Briseis had slept, she wondered. The woman who had held the whole Greek force back when Achilles had refused to fight until she was returned. Was she still here, now Achilles was dead? Had she been inherited by his son or gifted to one of his lieutenants? Polyxena was surprised by her own curiosity. It was odd to care about another’s fate when her own was coming to such an abrupt finish. Yet she found she cared about this woman she had never met. She found herself staring from face to face, hoping to pick out the features of a woman who could alter the direction of a war. But none of the women she saw – camp-followers and slaves – had such a face. She felt unreasonably disappointed. And then she realized that had their places been reversed, she could not have stood by to see a girl sacrificed like a heifer. She, too, would have hidden herself away.

  Menelaus shouted something she could not understand and a young man stepped out of his tent into the harsh afternoon light. He frowned at the glare and this added to his already peevish demeanour. Polyxena had heard that Achilles was beautiful: golden hair and long, golden limbs. But this man had a mess of auburn locks that sat girlishly around his soft face. His chin was weak and his blue eyes were too pale and too small. He might have been beautiful even so – his skin was like ivory – but for his cruel expression. His mouth was a petulant stub, and his brow already bore the traces of frequent disapproval. Polyxena saw immediately why he was so ruthless: even as he stood in front of his own tent surrounded by his own men, he gave the impression of a boy wearing his father’s clothes. But this boy was the man who had slaughtered her father as he knelt in the shrine of Zeus.

  ‘Is that her?’ Neoptolemus asked.

  ‘Who else?’ Menelaus replied. His dislike of the boy was quite audible to Polyxena, but if Neoptolemus noticed it, he said nothing.

  ‘I thought she would be more impressive. She is meant to be a gift to my father, who gave his life to fight in your war.’

  ‘She is a princess of Troy,’ Menelaus said. ‘They’re all covered in soot and salt: we burned their city and left them on the shore.’

  ‘Wash yourself,’ Neoptolemus said without looking at h
er. ‘Take her and find her something to wear that isn’t in rags.’ Two mousy women stepped away from their soldiers and approached her slowly. She nodded to them – she would not scream or resist – and followed them into a nearby tent.

  Polyxena waited while they heated water in a large open cauldron. She took a cloth from the smaller of the two women and tried to thank her. But wherever she had been captured they did not speak the same dialect as the Trojans. Polyxena could only nod and shake her head to be understood. She soaked the rag in warm water and drew it over her skin. She wiped away the greasy soot with relief. It took her longer than any bath she had ever taken. The women waited patiently, but still they both cast anxious eyes at the opening of the tent, waiting for a sudden explosion of rage from Neoptolemus. As the glances became more frequent, Polyxena hurried herself, rinsing the blackening cloth more quickly.

  Eventually she stood clean and one of the women offered her a small bottle of oil. She took it gratefully and worked a thin layer into her skin. Then the taller woman opened a chest and unfolded a white dress, embroidered in red and gold. It was so incongruous that Polyxena almost laughed, like seeing a perfect flower amid a sea of mud. She reached her arms upwards, and the women helped her into the ceremonial gown. The last time she would ever put on a new garment, and she had women to help her, just like in Troy. She gave thanks once again to Artemis for saving her from the indignity of servitude. Better to die than live as these women, frightened by every gust of wind.

  She gestured to the women to help her unbind her hair. Neither woman offered her a comb, so she pulled her fingers through it. It would flow across her shoulders and down her back. Her dark hair against the white dress would be striking. She had no jewellery to wear, but the embroidery would serve as decoration enough. She took the narrow leather thong which she had tied into her hair that last morning in Troy, and set it aside. She untied her sandals and placed them beside it. She had no further use for these last things which connected her to her old life. It was fitting that she leave them here.