Meanwhile, there in all the confusion, I saw Paris, bare-headed, helping my half-brother Chamois calm the white horse of my nightmares, so that he, Chamois, could get it into the shafts. Then I knew Chamois was doomed. A capped Phrygian came to assist. These allies, some thirty of them, had been billeted in an old fish warehouse. They complained of the smell. Neighbours complained of their musicians playing late into the night, keeping children awake. Beside the temple a gang of twenty short men with clubs, wearing only breechclouts, were clustered round a black stone they had brought with them, in which no doubt their collective soul lay.
Buckets of water were being carried all over the place. I looked at each mug dipped by child or soldier with the dread of a miser. Why were children, horses and soldiers always so thirsty? Our cisterns would not sustain a week of this. When the fighting commenced women would have to brave the battlefields and go to the rivers for water. At that point I hated the Greeks, who fought abroad, while their own civilians – women and children, old people – were living safely at home.
Hector, my father, Sarpedon and some others stood in a corner of the square, discussing tactics. Clemone passed me with a huge bundle of torn rags, saying, ‘Help us, Cassandra.’ Polyxena appeared and tucked a shaking hand in mine. Helenus came and took my other hand. He bent and kissed me.
‘It’s not farewell, Helenus,’ I told him. ‘We know that.’ For we would have known, surely, years before, of our own deaths and had no doubt seen our own fates and each other’s.
He smiled. ‘That’s hard to believe at this moment.’
‘You’re in full armour, yet you’re not with them,’ I said.
‘They don’t want me now,’ he told me. ‘I grew tired of Hector shouting his dispositions, his instructions, embracing the warriors, wishing them luck and always ignoring me.’ His tone dropped. ‘They’ll want me soon enough,’ he muttered. Helenus, due to his gift, had been robbed of that surging spirit which makes a young man feel all he wants to do is fight and win, that he is immortal, only the enemy can die. He had no pride of manhood, that sense of honour and heroism which gets men into battle and keeps them there. He was already in the state all our warriors eventually came to – weary, rallying each day a courage they no longer felt they had.
A guard rushed down the street into the square and cried out, ‘They’re on the move!’ I went to the temple. The women were arranging pallets on the ground for the reception of the wounded, and as they did so they chanted. At the altar the priestess held up a struggling white hen and cut its throat with a curved knife. The musicians played on, a long stream of music of worship, knowing that soon they would be beside the open gates, drumming and playing our men forward. There was little I could do here or anywhere now, except, by my existence, demoralise the combatants by reminding them I had predicted defeat. Helenus and I went up to the palace again. Halfway up, I gazed down. Adosha, at the gates, was tugging at an armoured boy, trying to get him out of a crowd of soldiers.
From the ramparts, we watched the gleaming lines of Greeks a thousand-strong moving forward under the sun, light glinting from their armour.
In front, blind Calchas strode in a long robe, his white hair streaming, both arms held high to the heavens. There was a boy beside him to guide him as he walked ahead of the army, uttering incantations. Behind him marched three long lines of men on foot, each line one hundred men strong. To the rear was a fourth long line of chariots. There were bowmen behind the chariots but plainly they could not be useful. They would find it hard to shoot effectively over the lines of their own men in front More spearmen marched behind.
Polyxena’s small chilly hand was in mine.
‘Where’s Achilles?’ I asked Helenus. ‘Do you know what he looks like?’
‘Paris knows him and says he’s not there. He’s tall, very strong, like a giant and easy to pick out,’ Helenus said. ‘Hector’s dread is that he and his Thessalians are holding back ready to come up at the last. His camp is over there.’ Helenus pointed to the left. ‘Where you see the plume of smoke from a fire. One of our men who has very keen eyes, says the women are washing clothes in tubs there, and cooking all manner of things, while the Myrmidians, Achilles’ Thessalian troops lounge about, unarmoured, so far as he can tell. It’s mysterious.’
The Greeks were within six hundred yards of the city wall. As Calchas was led away by his boy to the side of the battlefield, Agamemnon raised his long sword and yelled up at us over the sound of our battle music, ‘We shall see you inside the city at nightfall.’ There was a chorus of laughter and shouts from the Greeks.
‘Have you come for your wife, Menelaus?’ shouted one of our guards. ‘Do you think she’s grateful?’
Then came the grating of the gates and yelling as our own soldiers and chariots came out pell mell. The musicians stood by the gates, playing wild music. Our Scythian contingent drew up in front of the city and began firing arrows into the Greek ranks from the backs of their small horses. Then suddenly they raced to the rear of the Greek army to fire into their ranks from the back. They did enormous damage in a very short time; it was like magic. The rest was disaster. Our chariots crashed into our own foot-soldiers, a mess of men hit the left flank of the Greek troops, leaving the middle and the right unaffected so that the Greek troops were able to turn and rush in large numbers to the aid of their comrades. This left the Trojans encircled and outnumbered three to one. Meanwhile the Scythians, who had done great damage, could no longer shoot arrows into the mêlée for fear of hitting the wrong men. They had retreated to the trees by the riverside, where they sat, nudging each other like children, grinning and pointing things out, interested spectators, rather than participants. Nevertheless, the troops were fighting over the bodies of many casualties they had caused with their deadly arrows.
Hector was standing in his chariot, tackling with his sword a Greek who had leaped into it. The Greek fell. Menelaus and Troilus were standing in a mass of men, barely able to lift their swords against each other. Trojans were being forced back, slipping in blood, stumbling over dead and wounded, towards the open gates of the city.
On the ramparts we watched in horror. I saw a Greek cut the reins in Chamois’ chariot, then, as the white horse broke free and bolted, the warrior was in the chariot, hacking at my half-brother like a butcher. All around me were cries and lamentations. Polyxena sobbed, ‘Make them stop. Make them stop.’
‘Where’s Paris – where are the others?’ I asked Helenus.
‘Listen,’ he said. The other gate was being opened and soon there came Paris, bare-headed in his chariot, Aeneas and all the rest running or galloping across the front of the walls to surround the Greeks. The Greek bowmen, in the rear, away from the fighting began to loose arrows at the Trojans encircling the mêlée, at which the Scythians as one man – and one woman, I suppose – stood up casually, jumped on their little ponies, galloped wildly behind the line of Greek archers and began intrepidly loosing off shots fast and with terrifying accuracy at them. I suppose in a few minutes these fifteen men had put paid to double that number of Greek bowmen. The remainder just took to their heels and ran back down to the Greek camp. The Scythians, once more unable to fire into the main fight, rode off, dismounted and sat down by the river again.
Paris, in the meantime, spotted the man he wanted to find. He thrust his chariot, horses rearing and slipping, into the battle and pushed through to the centre where Menelaus, red hair streaming, stood in his chariot. Around both chariots men were fighting on foot Above the grunts and groans, the screaming of a horse wounded and thrashing on the ground, Paris, grinning horribly, yelled (we could hear it from where we stood): ‘Have you come for your wife, Menelaus?’
They told us, Menelaus replied, ‘I’ll fight you for her. Then when you’re dead, the rest of you.’
Paris reared his spear arm back.
‘Put on a helmet,’ yelled Menelaus, raising his shield.
‘I prefer the sun,’ shouted Paris, looking up deceptively
and, as Menelaus’ eye automatically followed his, he hurled his spear. It caught Menelaus in the right shoulder, stuck, then fell. Menelaus raised his left arm and hurled his spear, which missed Paris, then both men jumped from their chariots and were lost in the mêlée. Apparently they fought on foot with swords until Menelaus, attempting to bring his weapon down on Paris’ bare head, had it wrenched from his hand by Troilus, even then fighting off the onslaught of the mighty Ajax, a terrifyingly huge man, hairy as a bear – but, they said, slow, so often a nimble man could evade his massive sword-blows. After that Paris threw away his sword, also, and the two men, both husbands of Helen, grappled in the dust and blood on the ground among the fighting men, like brothers who have fallen out over a puppy. The Trojan ring closed in, became engulfed in the fighting. That was when Helenus left me, running off shouting, ‘I am needed now.’
Meanwhile, from where the rest of us stood it was hard to comprehend anything in the mass of struggling bodies. Here, suddenly, a corpse was being stripped of its armour by a Greek – then the Greek was felled by the blow of a club. Here was the shocked look on a young man’s face as a blow from tall Agamemnon struck him. He did not know, as we did, that it had gone right through his helmet and split his skull. The blood was pouring from his helmet He put his hand to his wet cheek, looked blankly at his fingers, red with blood, then fell dead. I saw the Greek, Diomedes, his expression a fierce grimace, stripping a Trojan body of its armour in the throng, rising, a helmet in one hand, to fell an attacker with one sword-blow. The squat mountain men in their breechclouts only, who had embarrassed the Trojans and been mocked by the oncoming Greeks, were leaping away from swordsmen with uncanny speed, dodging in and out of the fighting men, bringing down their clubs on the enemy. In close fighting a club can be just as effective a weapon as a well-wrought sword, and a helmet is no protection against a heavy blow. I watched one rescue huge Sarpedon, toe to toe with an equally big Greek, by reaching up and bringing the Greek down with a mighty thwack on the head. Sarpedon then finished him with his sword, as he lay on the ground. I saw a horse trample a felled man; heard the screams and groans of men and horses; saw Hector and Nestor fighting hand to hand.
Then Agamemnon, all streaked with blood, climbed on to his chariot, shouted for a retreat, and charged through the men, his horse bleeding from a neck wound, followed by the others, who broke from the battle and, fighting all the way, retreated to their ships. Even as the troops fought back towards the sea, Trojan women ran out to fetch in the dead and wounded from outside the city gate. Others ran for water, with backward looks at those bent over the prone bodies.
Then, there was Adosha, standing beside me with her baby, Hector’s child, in her arms.
‘I saw you below urging Vanno not to fight. Why have you come here?’ I asked her urgently. ‘I told you to hide. Go back to the country.’
‘My husband’s here,’ she said. ‘And two of my brothers. I saw Vanno fall under Menelaus’ chariot.’
‘It’s too cruel, standing here,’ I said. ‘Watching, unable to do anything. But you must return – your parents need you. Save yourself and the boy.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like out there now the Greeks have come,’ she told me, bitter that I did not understand. ‘We dug grain pits in the woods, but they burned my father’s feet over the fire until he told them where they were. They took all we had until harvest, and two pieces of silver we had hidden. They took the horse. It’s only a matter of time before they come back for the rest They always suspect you have more. They punish. They rape. They kill. Troy’s our only hope now. We had to come. To protect the city and ourselves.’
I said desperately, ‘Adosha – you reared Helenus and me. You heard all our nightmares. Now they’ve come true. Leave – go anywhere.’
But she said with a shrug, ‘Even Greeks can be beaten.’
I looked into the eyes of my brother’s child and thought, poor baby.
The tally was fifty of our men dead, five mortally wounded, eleven more standing a chance, good or bad, of recovery. We left the Greek dead where they were. The groans of the wounded and dying we ignored as our own sick men required our attention. Later, under cover of darkness, the Greeks would come to our walls and take away their men. At that time we allowed them to collect their dead and wounded. Later we became ruthless and killed their injured as they lay among the dead. We slew their helpless men and they killed ours. However we always allowed the dead to be taken away for a pious burial. War makes villains and hypocrites of us all.
The little men with clubs had lost seven of their number. They carried their dead off up the hill behind Troy and, on the evidence of a boy scouting about at the time, they ate them. Encamped there in their hidden spot, they came out to battle with the Greeks over and over again. Later, when there were only three of them left, they disappeared, loaded down with captured armour and Greek necklets, and were never seen again.
Paris came back into the city covered with blood, a hank of red hair in his hand. Apparently he went to his house and flung himself on to Helen’s bed. She had taken poppy-juice as soon as he went off to battle. Waking from her drugged dreams she saw the hair and shrieked, ‘Is he dead?’ Paris’ comrade who had followed him, blind with fatigue, into the bedroom, not understanding where he was going, recounted later that he hardly knew from her voice whether she was pleased at the prospect of Menelaus’ death or frightened by it.
Adosha was running round the city looking for her brother Vanno. She had seen him in his over-large armour falling under Menelaus’ chariot wheels. He was not in Troy. Now she thought him dead – alive, captured – then dead again. He was alive of course, a slave. The bright youth was to be snuffed out, to be replaced by the beaten man.
Below, the city tried to patch itself together, help the wounded, prepare the dead, while in the palace the great hall was full of men just out of their armour, some not even washed. Arms and legs were bandaged, sometimes only with rags, faces were cut and bruised and all were exhausted. But there was an air of grim triumph – the first battle, and we had seen the Greeks run! The hall reeked of smoke and sweat and the smell of cooking meat. Clemone and I were turning two sheep on the spit in the fireplace, for fighting men must eat. My mother had taken most of the slaves to attend the wounded or cut wood for the funeral pyres which would be lit on the plain behind the city at dawn.
Helenus was by the fire polishing a breastplate. He turned it over. There was a long streak of blood inside. ‘I stripped it from the man I killed,’ he told me.
‘I had guessed,’ I replied.
‘We beat them,’ he boasted. ‘Did you see them run? Hector says tomorrow will finish it.’
My brother Troilus clapped him on the shoulder and gave him his goblet of wine. Paris – was dancing! There was a laugh from a group of three men, one with a splinted leg, one with a bandaged head. The other had blood, not his own, spattered up his legs, to the knees.
I thought, Helenus is my twin; he is too young for all this; he knows better than to say this will be over tomorrow – he has spent his childhood fearing this war and knowing the outcome. But I cut him a slice of cooked meat from the outside of the sheep which we were turning and said only, ‘Eat – a warrior must eat.’ It broke my heart to see him wolf it down. Aeneas sat staring into space, reliving the battle in his head. Hector was looking grim, Paris stopped his dance. His eyes darting strangely round the room, he said, ‘Well, men. I shall kill the bastard Menelaus, tomorrow.’ There was a cheer.
‘The meat’s nearly ready,’ said Clemone, my sister. ‘And the men are looking at you strangely. The prophecies. Helenus is all right – he’s fighting. But you’d better go. They’ll feel better if you, who have prophesied defeat so often, aren’t here.’ It was a cruel comment but true. I went despondently and alone to the battlements. I looked down at the Greek camp. Their fires were all alight and there were cries, and the distant hammering of their anvil, as the smith repaired battered and broken armour. I wand
ered the darkened ramparts, the scenes of battle replaying themselves in my head.
And so the summer wore on. There were more battles, more deaths. Our men grew wearier, more determined, battle-hardened. The city became near-unworkable, full of soldiers and refugees and filth, short of supplies of every kind. The midden mounted, and stank. Women were killed getting water. The plain below the city became baked earth. No blade of grass was left by trampling feet. The trees around the rivers, the copses everywhere were cut down by both sides for firewood to cook with and keep the anvils going. And the funeral pyres. Almost every evening the darkness was lit by them. They burned from dusk to dawn. Nearly every dusk they were rekindled to burn more corpses. Everyone grew thinner. Thin children played at war, death and injury. Advenor broke his heart when we began to eat horses from the stables. Our barley and oil were now being measured out by the cupful. The levels of the big storage jars in the palace were dropping.
When the reply came to our message asking for reinforcements from Hattusas, the Great King’s answer was disappointing. He could spare no troops he said, and held out no promise that he would help us later on. This was bitter news. We clung on, hoping of course that our enemies would give up and go home before the winter storms began. Anchises was certain of this. ‘They will not stay,’ he assured us. ‘They have the harvest to get in, their ceremonies to conduct at home. The princes must return to keep order on their estates, which are being run by youths and women. They must conduct their spring ceremonies and plant – then they may return.’
Hector said, ‘They may decide to forego all that, let their land go to rack and ruin, their wives turn unfaithful and their slaves run off, in the hopes of capturing this city, with its wealth, its harbour, the command of the trade routes through the Taurus to Assyria and Babylonia. And as for their women,’ he added, ‘perhaps they would rather have ours.’
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