For what? I thought privately. So that they could starve, or die of the sickness too? He told me later that the day before Achilles had been seen taking his men away in a ship. ‘His rage continues. Now he’s completely abandoned Agamemnon. We shall mount the attack soon,’ he promised.
‘How is my husband?’ asked Hecuba.
‘No worse,’ he said. ‘Creusa also lives. Perhaps it is best the child died,’ he added. ‘There is no food for any of the children. Helen brought Creusa a peach, a little withered, but still a peach.’
‘Generous as ever,’ commented my mother. I had never heard such bitterness in her voice. My sick father, I discovered, was living on gruel made of barley. People were boiling twice-boiled bones for soup, children chewing leaves which had blown into the city. People ate wheat husks, grape pressings, half rotten, half-fermented skins and pips, bad for all, lethal for the weak. One thing was certain – no one else in that city had a peach, wrinkled or not.
As we wound up to the palace I saw that trees in the gardens of the wealthy had been cut down, for fuel, I supposed. Paris and Helen’s house was shut. Behind the gates fierce dogs leapt up, ready to kill intruders. As we passed I saw my mother looking deliberately ahead, unwilling to acknowledge the closed palace, the dogs, the couple hiding behind their own walls. I thought at first the palace was closed merely because they were hoarding food in there and feared attack from starving people. Later, I realised there was another reason why they hid. They feared if they opened their gates someone would kill Helen – a soldier, a bereaved mother or wife.
I missed many faces, the faces of those now dead or too ill, like my father, to be present. Meanwhile Deiphobus brought the Hittite captain to a meeting of all the warriors where the result of my visit to Suppiluliumas was told to everyone. All agreed the city must hold out, if possible until spring, when the promised reinforcements would arrive. It was important that news of the reinforcements should not reach the Greeks. They must be led to think the fifteen soldiers were the only Hittite warriors coming.
That night Helen tried to leave the city, disguised as an old woman. She was brought to the great hall of the palace before dawn. She stood in rags, the old shawl she had thrown over her head to hide her face falling away from her blonde hair. That surpassingly beautiful face was tear-stained and desperate. She sobbed. My mother said, in a voice like ice, ‘Do not cry. You cannot leave now. You cannot go back to Menelaus and trade our secrets for your safety. Too late to go now, Helen.’
She was led off by Paris, gasping, ‘I am a prisoner in this city, a prisoner.’ I would not wish to see Paris’ expression then on the face of my worst enemy, nor have that enemy feel as he must have done. I have already said how, wherever she went, Helen brought shame to others.
Unhappily, because of my return and the news I brought, though it was too late, the hall was full. Hector was there of course, as was Sarpedon, who had fallen asleep, and many of the Lycians, and Troilus and Anchises – this degrading scene, in short, took place before the weary and incredulous faces of many of Troy’s greatest warriors – men who risked their lives almost daily in a war begun by Helen’s flight.
The shame on the face of Paris, as he led off his sobbing, foolishly disguised wife, was pitiable. Both Hector and Troilus dropped their heads as they passed. Anchises, sometimes a foolish man, had been turned into a realist by tragedy, by hunger and by the earlier fear of my father, the king’s, death. Unusually, he said nothing, but his face was filled with disgust. Into the silence, a grey-bearded farmer, Colaxes, captain of a band of Lycians, spoke. His son had died a month before, in great pain, of wounds delivered by Menelaus.
He said, ‘We have witnessed something here of which we must never speak. This foolish woman Helen, cause of this war, might have offered herself back to her former husband by representations made to the King of Sparta in a decent manner. Then, if Menelaus had agreed to take her, and withdrawn his men, the war would have ended. Instead, she acted like a thief in the night, without any thought of the consequences. No doubt she thought that if Menelaus rejected her, she could sneak back again in her disguise without anyone knowing. She deliberately risked her own capture by Menelaus, who could then have continued the war, with the benefit of all the information she could give him. This,’ he said, looking round, ‘is the nature of the woman for whom we fight and die – foolish, near-treacherous and degraded. I do not want it known that it was for a woman of this character my beloved son died, and for whom my remaining son will go on fighting. And if we allow tonight’s events to become public, the Greeks will mock – how they will mock – and our own citizens will despair, when they discover Helen was attempting to flee the city. We must swear never to reveal this disgrace. Tomorrow we go into battle again,’ he added. ‘We have the Hittite warriors now, plague has struck the Greeks, but we don’t know how badly. We have a promise of reinforcements. We must not flag because our own warriors are bitter and weary.’
‘Paris will be in the forefront of the fighting, that’s for sure,’ Hector promised.
Sarpedon staggered to his feet, putting a wine-skin to his lips and taking a big draught. ‘He could be killed a hundred times and not redeem that woman’s honour,’ he said. ‘But then, she’s only a woman after all, making up in treachery for what she lacks in strength. The battle’s not about her after all, is it, friends? It’s the cursed Greeks and their cursed ambitions. That’s it, isn’t it? Come on – that’s what we all know.’ He lurched to the door and left.
Helenus said, ‘He’s not drunk.’
I said, ‘I know. He’s a gallant man.’
Next day in the early morning I joined the women of Troy on the ramparts as the gate was opened and our warriors went out. Beside me a woman said, ‘Four more deaths last night in the city.’ Another said, ‘Let’s hope there were five among the Greeks.’
But they had already mustered down by the sea, still a thousand strong, so it seemed to our distressed eyes. Now they came towards Troy heavy-footed over sodden, trampled ground. Our lines advanced to meet them. The Phrygian bowmen let fly.
Returning after so many weeks away, I saw clearly not only what had happened to my own people but to the Greeks as well. As they came closer, I saw huge Diomedes had lost his former carefree look, that of a cheerful young man, itching for a fight. Ulysses’ face was grim. Agamemnon was the grimmest and most terrifying of all. His nose was like a beak, his face long and sallow. He had the air of a man about to avenge himself for the worst crime in the world. It was obvious the advance was not only slow because the earth below their feet was damp and heavy. They were tired now, like wrestlers who have fought for hours – and still their opponents will not yield. Many must have wished now they had never seen the shores of Troy.
On the ramparts of Troy we women stood, gaunt-faced and anxious. Almost all had some relative, husband, father, brother, some dear friend among the warriors. Once our troops, and theirs, had advanced singing; once the armies had shouted at each other; now the battles began in silence. One woman sobbed helplessly, for no real reason, except, perhaps, that she could bear no more. Adosha, with one brother dead, another captured and perhaps dead, stood with the ashes from her dead sister’s pyre still visible in her hair. In her arms she held her son, Hector’s child. That Hector’s wife, Andromache, holding Hector’s other son, stood to my right seemed not to matter at all. Perhaps it was enough that both children, unlike so many, were still alive.
We must have stood a hundred times at the top of the city, watching spears hit home, swords clash against each other, watching men fall. This time, though weary, we had some hope, something new to think about. There were fifteen Hittite soldiers, fresh men on fresh, tough horses on our side. Perhaps they could turn the battle for us. Perhaps even now we could turn resistance into victory.
Hector got the charioteers to attack from right and left, just as the lines of marching men were within arm’s reach. Trojan chariots swung in on the Greek force as hand-to-hand figh
ting began. I saw Ajax, always recognisable by the vast boar’s tusks he wore on his helmet, stumble and fall as a chariot veered into him. A Trojan was on him in a flash, bludgeoning him across the head with his sword. I watched our carpenter, old Harmon’s son, go down by a big spear-thrust from Menelaus. Diomedes was leaping among the Trojan troops. Then down the hill came the Hittite men, on their little horses, at great speed, smacking into the battle at force, scattering Greek and Trojan alike. Their curved swords rose and fell. They were well-trained fighting men, they were fresh. And this put heart into our own troops. The battle, as if by magic, pushed down and down towards the shore, as the Hittite cavalry turned and wheeled, their swords flashing. That a mere fifteen men could be accomplishing all this astonished us.
We could see our own men right down at the beach now, fighting among the ships, a confusing tangle of small figures, struggling together, with the Hittite horsemen among them, rearing reluctant horses into the waves. Below, women with jugs and basins were running to the river Scamander, filling their vessels and racing back to the city. To the left I saw a party of four or five women, with bundles, a baby, trailing children they were urging on over their shoulders. They were leaving, taking the road east, unwilling any longer to starve and hope for victory. They would risk being picked up later by Greek patrols, risk finding themselves roofless somewhere else – anything to escape Troy and the fighting.
Just to the right of the road I saw a girl holding a flaming brand, trying to urge a boy on to an unsaddled pony. She pointed towards the beach holding the torch aloft, while he hesitated, argued. Suddenly she jumped astride the horse herself and, bare legs kicking into its sides, was charging down to the beach. Her plan, and it was clever, though very dangerous, was to set fire to the Greek ships, where they lay. It was a decision the council had long debated – whether to leave the fleet alone, and hope the Greeks would re-embark and go home, or burn the fleet and cut them off. But the girl had made her own decision.
We watched as she rode through the edge of the mêlée of warriors and men fighting in the water, urged her horse into the sea and hurled the burning torch into a pile of something on the deck of the nearest ship. It caught. It burned. Then a warrior reared up, caught the horse’s head with one hand, thrust a spear into the girl with the other, then wrenched her, using the spear as a lever, into the water. On the ramparts, a groan went up. A knot of women formed round one woman, as she screamed. The girl’s mother, or sister, I supposed. Andromache went to the woman, to comfort her and praise her brave daughter.
A trumpet blared now. Hector had given the order to retreat. ‘Why?’ Adosha cried. ‘Why?’ As our troops plodded slowly away from the beach, unopposed in their retreat, we saw why. There were dead, or wounded, across the pommels of each horse, in chariots carried between men. Men leaned on each other’s shoulders. As they walked they took off helmets, wiped blood from their faces, with slow, fumbling gestures. Spears trailed, swords dangled from their hands. The Greeks, worse hit than our men, did not pursue.
We rushed from the gates to help. I ran past Hector, whose face was a bloody mask under his helmet. He could not see and was supported by a limping Aeneas. Adosha, still holding her child, grasped a collapsing boy who was shaking from head to foot. I put my shoulder under Deiphobus’ arm, my arm round his neck, and helped him back to the city. One hand held his sword, which trailed on the ground. His other arm dangled uselessly. His eyes stared; he did not know where he was.
The Hittite soldiers, with their burden of corpses and wounded, were also staring straight ahead, shocked after battle. Sarpedon carried a bleeding, twisting man in his arms, speaking to him steadily as he came through the gates.
Long hours passed as we tended the wounded. With Naomi, I took water from man to man. Injured men filled all the houses, the temple and the warehouses on the lower level of the city. They lay on floors of houses, in workshops, in gardens, higher up. Inside the city, already with its burden of sickness, were sixteen dead warriors, fifty gravely injured, a hundred warriors with slashes, cuts and broken bones, some of which would, in other circumstances, have been considered serious. Now Aeneas’ damaged knee, which might half cripple him, the mighty gash which had cut through Hector’s helmet into his head and many other woundings were considered minor injuries. We concerned ourselves with the belly of a man ruptured by a spear, a shattered spine caused by being pushed back against a ship, while a Greek warrior hacked at the victim with his sword, a man’s chest pierced by a spear. The uninjured – men, women, old men, even children – unbuckled armour, tried to staunch the blood, washed, wiped, bandaged, tried to comfort.
Hector was sitting against a wall, holding a red cloth to his head, talking in a mumble to my father and Anchises. A slave was supporting my father as they spoke. The Hittite captain stood by, with a stony face. ‘We could not have gone on. They were turning,’ Hector said.
‘Tomorrow, then,’ the Hittite said grimly.
Hector nodded. ‘Tomorrow.’
I did not see the girl with the torch among the wounded.
Next day the Greeks built their funeral pyres, then turned to building a rampart to defend their camp. They moved slowly, but steadily it went up. This rampart, made of earth brought in waggons from beyond the river, was ten feet tall and five feet thick, with two gaps for chariots to go through. Beyond it was a moat some five feet deep. Sharpened palings were embedded in it as in pits to catch fierce beasts.
We should have prevented the Greeks from doing this, but fighting right down by the beach in such an exposed position could have cost us many more casualties. Weakened by sickness and the last battle, we had to allow them to fortify their camp.
They were now dying behind their wall, both from disease and wounds just as we died behind ours. We daily saw the smoke from their funeral pyres on the beach rising from behind their ramparts. It was Anchises who said, at a council meeting, ‘This proves they fear our attack more now. We are besieging them as they are besieging us. Now we are all prisoners.’
It was not strictly true, of course, for the Greeks were not in their own land and had only to get into their ships and go home.
Meanwhile, Achilles had evidently returned in a storm from Tenedos, for no ascertainable reason. He had not come to fight, anyway. He had already created for himself a rather handsome wooden dwelling some distance from the main part of the Greek camp, unprotected by the rampart He now made this the centre of a fenced compound – but refused to come out and fight His countrymen, the Myrmidons, who were of course under his direct orders, were not fighting either. He was not on speaking terms with Agamemnon. The Greeks were furious. He and his friends, chief among them being Patroclus, exercised in the compound outside his dwelling. They feasted and played games. It was a grave insult to Agamemnon, for not only could the Greeks see his pranks – we, the enemy, could watch him too.
He was a perverse and quixotic man, admired by both sides for his courage and gallantry. Hector, a man of exactly the same kind, said, ‘The cause of his sulks is the Trojan girl, Briseis no doubt. And his hatred of Agamemnon’s pride. He wishes to prove Agamemnon is not general over the whole expeditionary force. And I think, too, he sees himself as too great a man to want victory over a sick and starving city full of women and children. What heroism is there in that? It’s not beyond him to offer to join us, mark my words. He’s his own man, not Agamemnon’s. He fights when he wants for whom he wants.’
And then – Achilles returned to Tenedos again.
Meanwhile the smoke from our funerals rose, day and night, in the fields beyond the city. Often the Greek cavalrymen rode round and round the site of the funerals. This made our bitter grieving worse – as we burned the dead, their murderers rode about at a distance, watching.
We had, of course, a means of entering and leaving the city secretly – the tunnel my mother had caused to be opened. The Hittite troop, with some reinforcements of our own, were camped on the hills at the tunnel mouth. It would be under
stood by the Greeks they were keeping clear of the city to avoid plague. Because they were vulnerable to attack from Greek forces though, we had a signalling system, a fire which could be lit to warn us if they were about to be attacked. But this never happened. The Greeks were weary and restricted their efforts to the city, knowing better than to attack such skilful and ferocious enemies.
Through the tunnel mouth supplies could be brought into the city, never enough, but something to relieve the famine. Through it, too, we could receive rare messages from the outside world.
The winter wore on. The shortest day came and went. A black and terrible sacrifice took place on that day. We had no beasts left to sacrifice, so the old custom, seldom used, was revived, and a Greek boy slave from the city, a pretty youth of about twelve, though very thin, was killed in honour of the goddess. Anchises held this would please her and bring us victory. Those who wished to attend the ceremony, about a hundred or so, came from the city under heavy guard that night. It was overcast, there was no visible moon, a bad omen, there were few painted faces, the only sound was of a mournful flute and one drum, beating slowly. Throughout the ceremony our soldiers had to circle the crowd every step of the way, up the hill to the sacred place. They waited among the trees while the ceremony was conducted. As my mother, in the grove by the blood-pit, the oracle beside her, brought down the knife, the boy cursed us all in Greek. His voice, in one thin, high scream, cut through the sound of the drum as he delivered his curse in the names of Artemis and Clytemnestra. His speech was so fluent and so terrifying, it was plainly inspired. It made our thin blood turn to water.
A darkness came over me. Free of visions for so long, even as the boy died, crying out his curses, I saw Troy burn again, the Greek king dashing the head of Hector’s child against a wall, blood running over the stones of the city, survivors in chains, setting out in a mournful convoy across the Aegean for Greece. Adosha said my mother also screamed as I lay on the ground, writhing and shouting out my vision. She was crying out, ‘Oh, goddess, take this curse from me –’ and few knew whether she meant the prophecy or the prophetess. Others, too, were raving and yelling. As soon as I fell, Naomi flung herself across my prone body, Adosha said, while Helenus ran forward at speed, in his armour – he was on guard – and helped to pick me up. Then he and Hector turned and, with my body across Helenus’ saddle, and Hector running beside the horse, his sword drawn, they rapidly carried me back to the city. They feared the wrath of my fellow citizens, ground down by siege, horrified by a sacrifice gone badly wrong. The people would have killed me, said Adosha grimly, if Naomi had not sensed the danger so quickly and attracted the attention of my brothers before the crowd had rallied.
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