Anchises, ever-cautious, pointed out that we had been at peace a long time, while the Greeks had been continually at war, with each other or abroad, and were battle-tried. In spite of our increasing readiness for war he still advocated making terms with the Greeks by a complex mixture of bribes and threats. One of the more important pieces in this game, he said nervously, was Helen, Paris’ wife, who would, he said, have to be returned to her former husband as a pledge of good faith.
A surprising number of people advocated peace, even at this late stage. The merchants, with the harbour idle and the Greeks blockading the countryside and commandeering the goods of anyone foolish or ill-informed enough to try to enter the city from the landward side, saw their livelihoods at an end for the duration of the war. The fishermen and those dependent on their catches felt the same. So did many of the farmers.
On the other side were the young men, warriors, my father and many older men. ‘They plan to destroy us,’ Hector said bluntly. ‘They always have. They have taken Miletus. They have taken Tenedos. They plan to take this whole coast. They must have Troy because without it they will never control the coast. We have bribed them away once and they have come back with an army. We must fight them now we have the men to do so.’
Anchises said, leaning on his stick to make himself look older and wiser, ‘Let us again persuade them to leave. At worst they will come back next year, when we have had better time to prepare. At best they will go away and tear each other to pieces like the dogs they are. In the course of a long life I have learned that many problems are solved by doing nothing; time, not action, provides the answer. I know too that war seldom solves anything.’
My father said, ‘Anchises. You and I are of an age and I know there is much in what you say. But there are some difficulties, some enemies which do not go away.’
Hector jumped in, pressing Anchises. ‘If you are in the mountains to the east and a wolf runs at you, what do you do – ignore it or kill it to save your life? These Greeks are wolves. They will not leave. If we bribe them, contrive with them, make treaties with them, we only give them encouragement. They will come after us again, even stronger and more confident next time. We must tackle them now. Defeat them once and for all.’
‘Spoken like a brave young man,’ Anchises observed tolerantly.
Hector grew angry. ‘Don’t count my youth against me. Reflect, Anchises. I and my brothers – and, indeed, your own son – have grown up under the shadow of Greek piracy and their attacks on our neighbours. We have known nothing else since we were children. Our experience has always been of the Greeks coming closer, ever more threatening. And of our retreating from them. Now they have mounted an expedition against us, the biggest we have ever seen. They are outside our city, slavering for our blood and our gold. And still you suggest compromise. This fight, as I see it, will not come too soon, but almost too late. We should have seized Tenedos back from Achilles last year, before he took root there. If we do not fight now, I tell you, we will be here next year, the Greeks around the city again, stronger again, and with the confidence that comes from knowing we fear them. Your understanding of the Greeks is drawn from the time when they were not so determined to destroy us. You think that somehow those days can be brought back. I tell you, they cannot.’
His words swayed the council. Huge Sarpedon observed calmly from the stool where he sat, overwhelming it, ‘We have come here with troops and supplies because you appealed to us in this terrible crisis. But if you make some accommodation with these villains you may not be able to count on such ready support the next time. The desire for peace in older men and women is valuable, preventing pointless and hot-headed acts which do no good. But any desire, yielded to over-often, can destroy a man. Here, it is not a man, but nations, which will be destroyed.’
Archos was a merchant from the town, a corn-vendor, owner of two ships now sailing about cargo-less and without direction under captains he was inevitably beginning to mistrust. He was the man who had suggested murdering Agamemnon and Menelaus when they came on their visit two years before. He stood up now, rapped his staff on the floor and cried, ‘Whatever we do, let us get it over with. While we talk and do nothing we’re being ruined. The harvest will go to the Greeks unless we clear them out by one means or another. Trade’s at a standstill. The city’s crammed with soldiers and paupers. In the blink of an eye we’ll be digging into our reserves just to pay the cost of survival.’
Pandarus of Lycia, a merchant as well as a warrior, nodded beside him.
‘For some of us,’ Troilus observed, ‘the price of falling to the Greeks may be less than for others.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ exclaimed Archos’ son.
Troilus said, ‘A merchant who knows his business is usually able to survive and prosper under any rule. His concern can be more with the resumption of trade than the outcome of wars or negotiation.’
Archos was now holding back his son, who was trying to attack Troilus. There were exclamations from the witnesses. Anchises said, ‘Stop! What use is this?’ But Archos, grasping his son’s arm with one hand, spoke over Anchises’ voice and said loudly, ‘Let no one call me a traitor. I stand for Troy. You will recall I suggested killing the Mycenaean brothers when they came here to spy out our land, consume our goods and ask for favours. Then you told me I was a villain. What do you think now? Secretly, you’ll be thinking, “Oh – if only we’d let Archos pay a couple of assassins to do the deed then.” But it’s too late for a knife in the back in the dark. Unless Troy makes up its mind now, ruin will come through indecision. And – yes – if the Greeks took the city I would try to preserve my trade. Who would not? Who would rather starve? Or be a slave? Only a hypocrite would say anything else.’
The talk grew more agitated, more animosities emerged, parties were formed supporting one course of action or the other. It was well into the night now. I fell asleep in a corner. I awoke when Deiphobus came in off watch, a man arriving from the fresh air in a room where others have confused themselves with long talking, and stood in his armour in the doorway saying, ‘I observe we have no conclusion. The Greeks you will like to know are nicely settled in their camp on our shores. I can’t see my brother Paris here, or his wife. Have you discussed sending the woman back? That would at least get rid of their pretext for this attack.’
My father shook his head. My mother said, ‘She would not agree. Nor would Paris. Honour is involved.’
Deiphobus took off his helmet, shook his head to relieve the pressure it had caused and exclaimed, ‘Honour! Honour – I’ve watched this long, weary night, after the long, weary day we have all endured, and what I have heard is the sound of Greek dogs barking on our shores. Greek horses neighing. Snatches of song – Greeks singing songs on the shores of Troy. And I’ve heard something else as I watched and listened – the sound of music and laughter from Paris’ house. What is he celebrating? Who are his guests? Why is he not here?’ And he turned to look significantly at Anchises whose son Aeneas, not being present, might rightly have been suspected of being at the party in my brother’s elegant house.
Anchises said, though he had spoken differently earlier, ‘It is known that Paris would never allow Helen to leave. She will not go. She loves him and fears, I have no doubt, the wrath of Menelaus.’
Deiphobus said furiously, ‘I have heard that music and laughter and so have many others in this city. Our allies, men who have come to fight for us, will have been curious about these people who feast and dance, while they are expected to go out and fight for us – for her. No doubt they will have been told who rejoices while they gird themselves up for battle – the king’s son and his consort over whom the war is being fought. I wonder what they think. I am loyal to my brother, I love him, but this –’ He clenched his fists and turned his face to the ground to hide his expression. There was a silence.
‘Your brother’s wife,’ Hector muttered defensively.
Deiphobus raised his head. ‘My brother’s wife,
’ he said softly. ‘Before that, the wife of Menelaus. Before that, another man’s. And after this – who knows whose wife she may become? She is a woman blessed, and cursed, by beauty which comes from no human source. I have felt it. Which of us here has not? Which of us, let us all be honest, has not in his heart envied Paris his wife?’ There was a kind of shame on all the men’s faces, the shame of a pointless, never-to-be-satisfied desire for another man’s wife, the shame of returning home, seeing their own loyal wives and sweethearts as if they were lowly, undesirable creatures foisted on them by an unkind fate – and being ashamed of that feeling. Helen’s gift to all men was shame. She carried it in every fold of her garments. It drifted from her, like dust, everywhere she went.
Deiphobus then gently said, ‘We are asking other women to be widows to preserve her marriage to the Prince of Troy.’
Pandarus, a trader, so no friend of war, said delicately, ‘There is perhaps a case for appealing to Paris…’
‘To bundle his wife out of the city like a thief?’ Priam said hotly.
‘If he and she could be persuaded,’ Pandarus suggested. ‘I believe under the laughter and gaiety she is afraid – afraid of the consequences of this war, perhaps, but more afraid of Menelaus, who might, she thinks, kill her if she returned.’
‘I don’t believe,’ Hector said, ‘that the return of Helen would persuade the Greeks to go. They have achieved a rare agreement among themselves to mount a joint and costly expedition. If they return they may never get the alliance together again.’
Archos said, ‘If she were returned with the gold and treasure she brought with her –’
‘Much of it spent,’ Hecuba said grimly, sensing that the coffers of the palace were under threat.
Pandarus bowed and said, ‘Madam. Many of us would be prepared to make up the deficiency, if we could secure peace. Will you go to your son, as a mother, and discuss the matter of his wife’s return to her previous husband?’
There was, as I have said, ever the case where Helen was concerned, shame and dishonour in the room. Some warriors felt their own fear, being offered the chance of escape from battle; some merchants and others recognised they were trying to evade a war for the sake of profit. My mother was being forced to ask her son to give up his wife, my father to consent to the effort by his silence.
And still there was no battle plan.
Next day a band of Greeks attacked a waggon of barley being escorted to the city by our soldiers. A young man, son of the potter, died of a spear-thrust Fought off, the Greeks wheeled round and rode away. The body was loaded in with the barley and brought back to the city by Aeneas, cursing himself for having taken too few men with him to guard the waggon. The potter lost a son bidding to become more skilful than himself. My mother heard the news, then, heavy-hearted, she went reluctantly, without much hope of a result, to the house of Paris and Helen. To persuade Helen to leave.
It was mid-morning, but slaves were still clearing away the remains of the party, sweeping tiles with water, removing dishes. Paris and Helen were asleep, My mother had asked a servant to fetch Paris from his bed but it was Helen who came to greet her. Hecuba then decided, she told me, to tackle her unpleasant mission directly. I realised that, queen and priestess though she was, trained, and inured, therefore, to the loss of her children, knowing from the moment they put her child into her arms after birth that she might have to sacrifice it, boy or girl, to war, dynastic marriage, even to the goddess, if it were so decreed, there was still in her much of an ordinary mother’s feelings. Helen, through her escape with Paris, had put Hecuba’s sons’ lives at risk in battle, her daughters in danger of death or slavery. Not only her own family were endangered, of course. The trouble fell on all the Troiad, of which she was queen. She must have been angry to her very bones. But she told me later, as she stood there on the tiles of the great hall, watching the beautiful, majestic progress of the still sleep-laden Helen towards her, for a moment she was almost disarmed.
Helen put both her hands into my mother’s, murmuring, ‘Welcome, Madam.’ She seated her, with great courtesy, and ordered wine. As ever, she charmed. Hecuba said she forgot the growing shortages, the over-crowding, the grimness of Troy, even the potter’s dead son, for whom they were now building a funeral pyre behind the city. It was like a dream, she said, where one scene changes into another and the dreamer accepts it without question. On the one hand, a young man’s body was being taken out behind the city to be burned. On the other, here was a beauty, smiling gently in her sumptuous palace. It was only imagining, suddenly, the mother, father, sister and brother, all known to her, crying over that still-limp body, which made her, she said, speak to Helen even as firmly as she did.
‘Young Saron, the potter’s son, died today,’ she began.
‘I grieve for him and his parents,’ came the sincere response.
‘A band of Greek warriors killed him to seize the waggon he was guarding,’ my mother continued.
Helen said nothing.
‘There will be many more such deaths,’ Hecuba continued against the silence. ‘Death for petty things, such as a bucket of water or a sheep, deaths in battle, deaths from starvation and sickness, for if we are besieged there will be sickness, as there always is. Your sister-in-law Creusa expects a child. I wonder if it will live?’
Helen’s smile, by then, my mother said, was still in place but had become more rigid. She was not, however, going to help my mother in the direction she was going. ‘One of such deaths,’ my mother continued, ‘might be that of your husband, my son.’
At this, my mother reported, Helen’s hand flew to her mouth and she drew in her breath sharply. It seemed she could contemplate any death, any disaster, with equanimity unless it involved her lover, or, presumably, herself. My mother went on, ‘A shocking thought, for both of us, but we must face facts. War is war; men die.’
‘I could not live –’ said Helen. ‘I could not live –’
My mother then leaned forward and told her, ‘A great love – a truly great love such as you bear my son – must sometimes be served in a hard way.’
Helen burst out, ‘You are asking me to return to Menelaus? To save Paris?’
‘To save all of us,’ Hecuba said. She added harshly, ‘What do you want – Paris alive without you or Paris dead, having spent his final moments with you? That is the choice.’
Helen wept. ‘The Greeks would not leave. Menelaus will kill me. He would not give me an easy death. The city can overcome the Greeks. We will vanquish them, make them go home again.’ She spoke rather like a child. Then she controlled herself and stood. Her manner changed. ‘Lady,’ she said, ‘you have come to me, the wife of your son, without his knowledge, to tell me to return to my past husband, who hates me and would kill me. What will your son think of what you have done when I tell him?’
‘He ought to think his mother is trying to save his life and the lives of his brothers and many more,’ said my mother, also rising. Bitterness had come into her voice. ‘But he loves you so much and I don’t suppose he will think that’ Now she begged, ‘Will you not consider what I have said?’
‘Lady – I carry his child,’ said the beautiful woman standing surrounded by all signs of wealth, to my worn and anxious mother. I doubt if my mother had had more than three hours’ sleep a night since the landing of the Greeks.
My mother, the priestess Hecuba, whose aspects reflected the phases of the moon, instinctively disbelieved Helen’s claim to be pregnant.
Her only uncertainty was whether Helen believed it herself, or not She was forced to congratulate her, expressing her own delight and that of the family, and then she withdrew, unhappy, disillusioned and ashamed.
Returning, straight-backed and very pale, Hecuba went instantly to her chamber. After some hours I took her food and wine. She was lying on her bed. She told me then of this interview with Helen, adding, ‘Yet, perhaps she is right. She might return to Menelaus, he might kill her, and still the Greeks would not
leave. If this war is a long one she will be hated by both sides in the end.’
I told her the grave news. ‘Hector believes the Greeks are mustering for the attack. Our men are preparing for battle.’
She stood up. ‘Then the women must prepare for casualties,’ she said firmly, and we went to the temple to assemble what we would need.
As I began to walk down to the lower part of the city I met Advenor wrestling with two prancing, yoked horses and taking them down to where the chariots were kept beside the main square. He instantly sent me back for another. I dragged the reluctant beast after me as I descended, not without a glance at the barred gates of Paris’ house, as I went. Hector’s gates were open. Armed men lounged about under trees in the compound outside it. Hector’s little son was supporting himself by clinging to the big knees of a warrior, looking up and laughing at him.
Down in the city there was the rattle of armed men moving about. The chariots were being dragged out and harnessed up, the charioteers examining the harnesses with great care. From the temple came the sound of flutes, drums and singing. A group of Scythian bowmen had arrived and they sat in a corner, wearing their pointed hats, and trousers, curved bows cradled in their laps, staring at the scene with blank and fathomless expressions. One of them appeared to be a woman. A market man beside me spat in their direction. It appeared they had arrived just before dawn, then one of the men had grabbed a young girl sleeping in her own doorway for coolness and instantly dragged her off and raped her. They seemed to feel this was a harmless act and it had been impossible to tell them as they spoke no language we understood. In the end the girl’s father had given the perpetrator an enormous thrashing with an oar, but this beating had not damaged the man as much as it should. ‘He stood up, laughed, spat, and though he was covered in blood not so much as his little finger was broken,’ said the market man disgustedly.
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