The Silence of the Girls

by Pat Barker

  I thought that was it, it was over, I could go, but then Odysseus stood up and reminded Agamemnon he’d promised to swear a solemn oath that he’d never touched me. It was only right, he said, that Achilles should know he hadn’t been wronged. Odysseus sounded pious, even a little priggish; you had to look closely to catch the glint of mischief in his eyes.

  This was followed by a long silence during which I felt every eye in the arena turn on me. Agamemnon heaved himself to his feet. Yes, of course he’d swear the oath, of course, why not? A boar was dragged, squealing, into the ring. I smelled the stink of its fear-shit and closed my eyes. Intoning a prayer to Zeus and all the gods, Agamemnon cut its throat and swore that he’d never once lain with me “in the manner of men with women.” I felt an absurd desire to giggle; that was so very nearly true. Agamemnon went on to say that I had lived, unmolested, among the other women in his huts and he called upon the gods to punish him if he lied.

  Achilles’s dirt-streaked face remained expressionless. Did he believe Agamemnon? I have absolutely no idea. Perhaps—it’s a terrible thing to lie under oath, he might have doubted that even Agamemnon would do that, but the truth is I don’t think he cared. Patroclus was dead; nothing else mattered.

  And with that oath, the deal was done. Agamemnon invited all the other kings to a great feast where he and Achilles would once more sit down and eat as brothers. Meanwhile, the Myrmidons would gather up the stuff and take it to Achilles’s compound. They set to work at once. The tripods, the cauldrons, the bales of rich, embroidered cloth, the gold dishes and plates were carried from Agamemnon’s storage huts and loaded onto mule-drawn carts. Prayers and libations were offered to the statues of the gods, then the drivers cracked their whips and the procession moved slowly off. Four great prancing stallions headed the column, followed by a long line of overladen carts, jolting and swaying over the rough tracks.

  And I brought up the rear, along with the seven girls from Lesbos, and all the other things.

  33

  The first thing I saw when I returned to Achilles’s compound was Patroclus’s body laid out on a bier. He’d been a living man when I left. I fell on my knees and clasped his cold feet in my hands. I think at that moment I felt more alone, more abandoned, than I’d ever felt. I wept without restraint and the other women, hearing my cries, came running out of the huts to mourn with me.

  I think we were all, to some extent, using Patroclus’s death as a cover to mourn our own losses. I thought about my brothers as I wept. I even thought about poor, silly Mynes, who’d have been perfectly happy, I think, with another wife. But I wouldn’t like it to be thought our grief for Patroclus was in any way staged, or insincere. I held his cold feet in my hands and remembered how he’d once told me not to cry, that he’d promised to make Achilles marry me.

  Oh, I’ve no doubt that on the battlefield, in the thick of the fighting, he was every bit as ferocious as the rest of them, but here in the camp, among the captive women and their children, he had always been kind.

  * * *

  ——————

  Ah, yes, I hear you say. But that’s not the whole truth, is it? You didn’t just “remember” he’d promised to make Achilles marry you, you made bloody certain everybody else remembered it as well. Especially Achilles. A dead man’s wishes carry enormous weight with the living, particularly when the dead man has been as deeply loved as Patroclus. Go on, admit it! You were trying to arrange your marriage.

  Hardly! Achilles had just told everybody he wished I was dead!

  No, but you gave it a go, didn’t you? How could you do that? This man killed your brothers, he killed your husband, he burned your city, he destroyed every single thing you’d ever loved—and you were prepared to marry him? I don’t understand how you could do that.

  Perhaps that’s because you’ve never been a slave. No, if you want to pick at something, why don’t you ask me why I’m telling this as if it were a communal event? “Our” grief, “our” losses. There was no “our.” I knelt at Patroclus’s feet and I knew I’d lost one of the dearest friends I ever had.

  * * *

  ——————

  Sometimes at night I lie awake and quarrel with the voices in my head.

  34

  The feasting in Agamemnon’s hall went on far into the night, but Achilles was back before midnight. That night, he spent with Patroclus again, curled up on the bare boards beside his bier.

  Already, I’d noticed a certain uneasiness among the men. Patroclus should have been cremated by now, his bones raked out of the ashes of his funeral pyre and buried with prayers and chanting and libations to the gods. Among the Greeks—and it was the same among the Trojans—the custom was to hold the cremation before sunset on the day following the death, but for some reason Achilles had decided the funeral rites for Patroclus must wait. Perhaps he was hoping that after he killed Hector—and I don’t think he ever doubted he would—his own death would follow so fast he could be burned with Patroclus on a single fire. He’d have liked that.

  Before dawn the next day, he was up and armed. The new armour was so miraculously wrought, so perfectly fitted to his body, that he moved as if he were wearing nothing more constricting than a tunic. I met him in the narrow passage between his living quarters and the hall and his eyes were bloodshot, but he was perfectly calm, coiled as tightly as a hawk in the last few seconds before it stoops onto its prey.

  There was only one moment when I saw him falter. As he was about to climb into the chariot, he looked up and saw Automedon standing there, where for so many years Patroclus had stood, and he took an involuntary step back. But he recovered at once. Automedon held out his hand, but Achilles ignored it, leaping into the chariot unaided, and turned to take his shield from Alcimus, who was staggering under its weight.

  And then, yelling his great battle cry, Achilles raised his spear and signalled the advance.

  * * *

  ——————

  And so began the greatest killing spree of the war.

  As it happens, I know the names of all the men he killed that day. I could recite them to you, if I thought there was any point.

  We-ell…I don’t know. Perhaps there is a point.

  Iphition. Eighteen when he died. Achilles killed him with a sword cut straight down the middle of his head, the two sides falling neatly apart, like a split walnut, to expose the convoluted brain. Dropping to the ground, he fell under the hooves of Achilles’s trampling horses and the chariot wheels ground him deep into the mud.

  And then—

  Demoleon. A spear thrust to the temple, straight through the cheek iron—his armour was nowhere near as good as Achilles’s—piercing the bone and turning his brain to pulp.

  And then—

  Hippodamas. A spear between the shoulder blades as he tried to run away. He rolled over and the light faded from his eyes.

  And then—

  Polydorus. Priam’s youngest son, fifteen years old, too young to fight, but in the closing months and weeks of war underage boys were routinely sent into the field. Another spear thrust, and again into the back, though Polydorus wasn’t running away. Quite the reverse, in fact. He was showing off, charging the Greek lines without looking to see who was coming up behind. Achilles’s spear came out below the navel. Polydorus screamed and fell forward onto his knees, clutching his steaming guts in his cupped hands.

  And then—

  Dryops. A sword swipe to the neck that very nearly took off his head.

  And then—

  Demuchus. A spear in his right knee. As he stood there helpless, waiting, Achilles finished him off with a sword thrust to his neck.

  And then—

  Laogonus and Dardanus, brothers. They clung to the sides of their chariot, but Achilles hooked them out of it, as easily as picking out winkles with a pin. And then he killed them, quickly, efficiently
, one with a spear thrust, the other with his sword.

  And then—

  Tros. He died clutching Achilles’s knees, pleading for his life. Achilles sank his sword into the upper belly, inflicting a wound so deep the liver slid out of the gap, and blood gushed and puddled at his feet.

  And then—

  Mulius. A spear thrust to the ear delivered with such force the tip jutted out of his other ear.

  And then—

  Echeclus. A sword thrust to the head.

  And then—

  Deucalion. A spear thrust, slicing through the sinews at his elbow. Sword arm dangling useless by his side, he waited for death. Achilles swung his sword, Deucalion’s head and helmet flew off together and fluid oozed out of the severed backbone as his body lay spread-eagled in the dirt.

  And then—

  * * *

  ——————

  But you see the problem, don’t you? How on earth can you feel any pity or concern confronted by this list of intolerably nameless names?

  In later life, wherever I went, I always looked for the women of Troy who’d been scattered all over the Greek world. That skinny old woman with brown-spotted hands shuffling to answer her master’s door, can that really be Queen Hecuba, who, as a young and beautiful girl, newly married, had led the dancing in King Priam’s hall? Or that girl in the torn and shabby dress, hurrying to fetch water from the well, can that be one of Priam’s daughters? Or the ageing concubine, face paint flaking over the wrinkles in her skin, can that really be Andromache, who once, as Hector’s wife, stood proudly on the battlements of Troy with her baby son in her arms?

  I met a lot of the women, many of them common women whose names you won’t have heard. And so I can tell you that the brothers Laogonus and Dardanus weren’t just brothers, they were twins. When they were little, Dardanus’s speech was so bad his own mother couldn’t understand him. “What’s he saying?” she’d ask his brother. “He says he wants a slice of bread,” Laogonus would reply. “You’ve got to make him talk,” the boys’ grandmother said. “Make him ask for it himself.” “But I was busy,” the mother told me. “I’d have been stood there hours if I’d listened to her.”

  And Dryops, whose mother’s labour lasted two full days. “Me mam sent the midwife downstairs in the end. ‘You go and get yourself a cup of wine,’ she says. ‘I’ll stop with her.’ And the minute the midwife was out the room, she whipped the covers off and I don’t know what she did, but oh my god, the relief. Ten minutes later he was born. ‘Oh,’ the midwife says, ‘I didn’t think she was as close as that.’ Me mam just smiled.”

  And then there was Mulius, the one with Achilles’s spear point sticking out of his ear. “Six months old he was when he walked—never crawled, never shuffled around on his bum or anything like that, he just straight stood up. I used to walk him around, holding on to his hands, bent double—hours, hours—and the minute he sat down he wanted to be up again. Me back was broke.”

  Or Iphition’s mother, remembering the first time his dad took him fishing, the frown of concentration on his face as he tried to get the worm onto the hook…“Oh, and the minute he stood up, it fell off again. I didn’t dare laugh. Poor little soul. But give him his due, he went on trying. He was like that—he wouldn’t give in.”

  Some of the younger women had since had children by their Greek owners, and I’m sure they loved those children too—as women do—but when I spoke to them, it was the Trojan children they remembered, the boys who’d died fighting to save Troy.

  * * *

  ——————

  And then—

  Rhigmus. Achilles’s spear point struck him in the chest and bubbles of blood gargled from his pierced lung.

  And then—

  Areithous. Achilles killed him with a spear thrust to his back as he was struggling to turn his chariot round. He fell to the ground, and the frantic horses galloped off, the empty chariot bouncing over the rutted ground.

  And then—

  But it really doesn’t matter who came next—he forgets the men he kills. Even as he pulls the spear out, he’s turning to look for the next man, and the next. So why, out of all this red blur of killing, should one man’s death stand out? “Man,” he says, but “boy” would be more appropriate: bum fluff on his chin instead of hair—his presence on the battlefield proof of Trojan desperation, or else of his own desire to fight and prove himself a man. Either way, there he is, crawling out of the river…

  Lycaon, son of Priam. The one he won’t be able to forget.

  No funeral rites for any of these men, no cleansing fire. He’s not going to stop fighting to let the Trojans bury their dead while Patroclus lies, unburied, in his camp. He doesn’t take prisoners either, not now, not anymore. Everyone who crosses his path he kills. Their bodies go down under his chariot wheels; blood, shit and brains fly up until his armour’s caked in filth. He doesn’t stop to look down or back, but stares straight ahead, urging the horses forward, always forward, every death bringing him closer to the gates of Troy, closer to the moment when he will fight and kill Hector.

  Blood, shit and brains—and there he is, the son of Peleus, half beast, half god, driving on to glory.

  35

  Five days it lasted, and during all that time he scarcely slept. It was difficult to look at him, his eyes so raw with weeping and his face, under the streaks of dirt, white and drawn.

  Each day began before dawn with a visit to Patroclus’s bier. I’d unwind the linen cloth we’d wrapped tightly round his head to keep the flies out and then I’d stand well back, sick to my stomach with the smell of rancid meat. Burn him, for god’s sake, I wanted to say, and I wasn’t the only one wanting to say it. But Achilles didn’t seem to notice any change in Patroclus. Before leaving, he always bent down and kissed him on the mouth, though the lips had darkened and begun to retract. Even with linen strips wound round his head it was difficult to keep the mouth closed. After Achilles left, the laundresses gathered round the bier, muttering to themselves, but I didn’t stop to hear what they had to say.

  After dinner, he went to see Patroclus again, but at night nobody was allowed to go into the room with him. Once, I thought I heard him say “Not yet,” meaning, I suppose, that Hector was still alive. Alcimus lingered outside the half-open door, peering round it, now and then, to see Achilles standing by the slab, his bowed head resting on Patroclus’s chest. Late one night, he groaned aloud and Alcimus put his hand on the door.

  I grabbed his arm. “No.”

  “He shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “He is alone.”

  After a while, he nodded and stepped back.

  * * *

  ——————

  The Trojans were fighting now right under the walls of Troy. As soon as the Myrmidons marched off to the battlefield, I’d climb into the stern of Achilles’s ship and watch. I was there when, on the morning of the fifth day, the Trojan line finally broke. Even then, I expected them to regroup, but the huge gates swung open and the Trojan fighters ran inside. Priam was leaning over the parapet beckoning Hector to take refuge inside the walls. Hecuba even bared her old woman’s wrinkled dugs, pleading with her son to save himself, but Hector wouldn’t. Instead, he turned his back on home and safety and walked out to face Achilles, alone.

  I couldn’t bear to go on watching. I went back to the hut and told the other women what I’d seen. We knew we were witnessing the last days of Troy and with the city’s death would go our last hope of being freed. Yet still the endless routine of weaving went on, the shuttles flew to and fro, inch by inch the cloth grew, perhaps because the women were afraid that if they stopped, if they broke the thread, the world would break too and carry them away.

  But then, above the relentless rattle of the shuttles, we heard a new sound. We had to strain to hear it above the clacking of the looms and no doubt some of us manag
ed to convince ourselves it was the cry of gulls we heard—that hysterical, yapping call they sometimes make—but no, these were women’s voices and the noise went on and on. Gradually, one by one, the looms stopped and, in the silence that washed over us, we heard the cry of lamentation more clearly than before; and we knew that Hector, the last and greatest defender of Troy, was dead.

  PART THREE

  36

  At first, I couldn’t think what it was. When, finally, Achilles drove his chariot into the stable yard I could see something fastened to the back, bumping over the rutted ground, but it must have been five minutes before I realized the torn and bloody lump was Hector. The Myrmidons were buzzing with excitement. Not only had Achilles killed Hector, he’d driven his corpse three times round the walls of Troy, while Priam, Hector’s father, stood on the battlements looking down, watching his strong and handsome son reduced to a bag of leaking guts.

  That was the moment the Greeks won the war. And everybody knew it. I expected singing and dancing, but instead Achilles had Patroclus’s bier carried to the training ground, where he ordered his Myrmidons to drive their chariots in a circle round it. Faster and faster they went, horses snorting, whips cracking, clouds of dust rising from under the churning wheels…Only when horses and men were sweating and exhausted did Achilles get down from his own chariot, walk across to the bier and place his hands, red with Hector’s blood, side by side on Patroclus’s chest. “Hector’s dead,” he told him. “Everything I promised you, I’ve done. You can sleep now.”

  It was a solemn moment after the tumult of battle. The Myrmidons fell silent and many of them wept.