Without those reinforcements the Greeks could have been defeated that day. But Paris had waved his arm signalling retreat. The chariots wheeled. Sarpedon, furious at the order to return to the city, hurled his spear futilely at Paris’ retreating chariot He and the Lycians gathered for a time to argue furiously – but they had no choice. They were forced to leave, for the entire Trojan army, including Memnon and the Ethiopians, was retreating. There were too few Lycians to stay alone on the open plain. They would have been massacred.
Back in Troy, the men sat in silence with their heads in their hands. They had so nearly won the battle, even the war. Later a quarrel broke out ‘We could have fought on,’ said Memnon bitterly.
‘Not worth the risk,’ Paris said.
‘The risk of your life?’ Memnon enquired. Paris leaped at him and had to be pulled off.
The Phrygian bowmen played dice. Sarpedon and his men had retreated to their camp behind the city. The Ethiopians sat, discouraged, in the square, ignoring the admiring girls who eyed them.
Later, Memnon sent a cadre of Ethiopians covertly to the lines by night to burn the fleet, but they were all captured – and by that stage, the Greeks having seen them wounded and falling like ordinary men, no longer believed these troops were immortal.
Poor Andromache still mourned. The city prepared for fresh battles against a reinforced enemy. The priestesses offered sacrifice. And the oracle came from the hills. She predicted victory. And then she wept.
Thirty
Troy
Then came the Amazons and the last battle in Troy.
We saw the Amazons at dawn, from the city walls on the other side from the sea, fighting a furious battle with forty Greeks, who had gone out to forage for wood. They were small women on small, rough, upland horses, wearing trousers and Hittite helmets with flaps over their ears, and they had curved Hittite bows on their pommels. They killed two Greeks with their curved swords, drove the rest back, almost to the walls of our city, at which point the Greeks turned their horses and disappeared, leaving their waggons, and two more men, both injured, behind. The women then rode into the city laughing. One was holding a wounded arm, another had a Greek helmet and shield across the pommel of her horse. We had crowded up on the walls to watch. Now we rushed down to greet them. Others sped out to claim the waggon and its contents. Two sheep found there furnished what was to us a feast.
While they were cooked, a council of war took place in the great hall. My mother produced bread, and the last of the wine, apologising for such scanty hospitality. A new mood of hope prevailed. Both the Ethiopians and the Amazons had arrived to reinforce us – their supply waggons were expected shortly. We had enough troops to defend the passage of these waggons into the city. And we detected confusion in the Greek camp, indicating that their reinforcements, though more numerous than ours, were perhaps raw warriors. Our own reinforcements were men and women of calibre. We had already seen the courage and ferocity of the Ethiopians in battle and the determination and speed of the Amazons putting war-tried Greeks to flight. Perhaps – we hardly dared think it – now we could push out the Greeks, reclaim our lives, our city, our countryside.
How can I describe what had happened to Troy? The once fertile plain between the city and the sea was flattened, denuded of all grass. All the trees by the river had been cut down. The river banks were crumbling, so many went up and down them. They were littered with rags, pieces of harness, broken sandals, split planks. Further off, for miles around, there were no trees. The countryside was ravaged, the farms empty, many burnt The livestock had gone, the fields were overgrown. Grass grew in the docks.
At the council of war on that important evening, my father spoke of Hector. Priam was an old man now, not fully recovered from his sickness, bereaved of his oldest and best-loved son. He stood erect, but his voice was weak.
‘We welcome our allies and the chance they bring to defeat our enemies. But we must remember the heroic Hector, who fought and encouraged when there was no help, when defeat seemed almost certain, disaster almost inevitable. He is dead now, but it was he who prevented defeat, day after weary day and had he not done so, there would be no battles now to fight. Troy would have fallen.’
It fell to Memnon to translate this to his countrymen and to acknowledge the virtues of this man – his cousin – whom he had never met. I translated for the Amazons, mostly mountain women from the area between Hattusas and the Taurus mountains, who spoke a version of the Hittite tongue. A group of them did not even speak that, but some dialect of their own, so their comrades had in turn to translate for them. In looks these women were different from each other, some being fine-boned, with emphatic noses and very dark eyes and hair like the Hittites, others from deep in the mountains being more squat, round-faced, with brownish hair and ruddy complexions.
To our intense interest, two of these mountain women carried short, straight swords made of iron, the iron being very little dented or buckled, as swords of bronze usually are. These weapons were very strong. Of course, everyone wanted to test them, but the women were very proud of their swords and only reluctantly let others handle them. They were also extremely costly, worth at least the price of a chariot and two fine horses or a heavy gold necklace.
The captain of the Amazons, Penthesilea, was short in stature, with large, direct brown eyes and an open stare. She had a big scar on one cheek, which looked like an old sword-slash and thick black hair, in pigtails. She must have been about thirty and, apart from the sword-slash, very beautiful.
That council took a long time; multiple translations were necessary.
Memnon’s general, a black Ethiopian with gold bracelets right up his left arm, seemed convinced we should attack next day and finish the war. Anchises, characteristically, counselled patience and after much debate my father sided with him.
My mother spoke, saying, ‘This war must end soon. We have no food left. Many of our people are already dead. Others have had to leave the city or starve and we do not know what has happened to them. We daily risk our lives for food, water, herbs for medicine. The baggage trains promised by our allies from Ethiopia and Hattusas will help us but not for long. We cannot continue like this. We must fight and win now, or Troy will fall from starvation. And the sickness could come back.’
The discussion went on. At one point a sentry came in, grinning. He stood in the doorway and shouted, ‘Listen! They’re drilling their new troops now, in darkness. You can hear Agamemnon’s curses from the ramparts. Those men are the dregs – the scrapings of the barrel.’ There was a laugh. This information helped the council to make up its mind to stage an early attack, before the Greek reinforcements had found their feet
Paris and Aeneas were not pleased at having to submit their judgements to these extraordinary new troops who, from their speech, appeared to have fought all over the known world, from beyond the Black Sea to the Euphrates. Hitherto only Sarpedon, among the allies, had had any real influence on the Trojan strategy and now Sarpedon was making a friend of Memnon’s general, by name, if I have it correctly, Tewodros. He cordially invited Tewodros and the Ethiopians to share his campsite outside the city walls, which was becoming more dangerous as the Greeks grew bolder. Tewodros agreed to this plan. Being there in greater numbers, they thought, it would be easier to prevent Greek foraging parties from getting into the back country. Their horses could then be tethered there under guard in the fields behind the city. We were short of fodder for what horses remained. Many had been killed in battle. Others had been killed because we could not feed them. All too often we needed them to feed us.
Since my imprisonment I had been as subdued as possible, knowing that in the view of my own people, I was half-way between prophetess and curser of my own city. I assisted with the preparation of the feast. When it was ready I helped to serve it, then took a stool and sat at the back of the room, which was filled with warriors. Helenus, who understood, came over and sat by me, wordlessly. Now we were both thinking of Hector. H
e said, ‘If the reinforcements had come only a few days sooner, Hector might have lived.’
I answered, ‘I think he was destined to die.’ We wept together, while the clash of spits, the feasting, the talk went on.
Then a watchman ran in, saying there was a noise, and some lights on the road. Memnon thought it was probably his Ethiopian baggage train and he sent a troop out to protect it from marauding Greeks. Not too long after, we saw the convoy coming up the road in darkness, eight mule-drawn waggons, loaded with arms, provisions and bedding, women and children walking beside it, with smaller children seated on top. Strapped on top too, were huge drums, the ends of brightly painted carved wood. We also spotted a small contingent of Greeks on horseback by the riverside, but, on being charged by Memnon’s men, they fled. The city gates swung open and the convoy entered Troy. The food they brought had to be disposed of – and it was a blessing. The more able-bodied wounded had to be moved for the temple was needed for some of the new arrivals – about thirty women and fifty children, from babies to ten- or twelve-year-olds. Their gods and the drums were set up on the temple floor. There were families in all the big houses. The great hall of the palace was full of little groupings, on rugs or skins, surrounded by bundles of clothing and domestic items they had brought with them. A few hours before dawn one woman gave birth, swiftly and soundlessly, to a baby daughter.
King Memnon and his army had of course disappeared to their camp with the Lycians, leaving the women and children in the city. The Amazons contemplated all this confusion ruefully – they had left their own children behind in the mountains to the north. They took themselves off to camp with the small Hittite force on the hill where the tunnel ended.
The Amazon leader, Penthesilea, and her lieutenant, one of the ruddy mountain women, stayed behind with the small group of generals for the continuing council of war. These generals were Memnon’s general Tewodros, Paris, Deiphobus, Troilus and Helenus. The question was whether an attack at daybreak was a possibility after all this confusion, and if it was, what strategy should be employed. It was important to attack the Greeks before their reinforcements could become effective, but our own had not fought together, did not know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how to deploy themselves most effectively. In spite of this it was decided to attack at morning; the Amazon women would stand with the Phrygians to the rear, on the small eminence outside the city, as they were the better archers. They would join the battle only when it became too dangerous to shoot arrows into the mêlée. The Ethiopians would take the centre with the Hittite soldiers. The others would dispose themselves to right and left, while Sarpedon and the Lycians held back, ready to strike at the last moment when the battle was fiercest I was sitting beside Helenus, silent ‘This is the final battle,’ he said. ‘I wonder which of us will survive.’
Later, unable to sleep, I stood on the ramparts as the watch paced up and down. Down in the Greek camp, the fires still burned. They must know, too, this might be the last battle of the war. The Amazon, Penthesilea, joined me. ‘The Greek leaders cannot sleep, either,’ she said. ‘Soldiers can, generals can’t.’ She pointed downwards, asking, ‘The battlefield?’ I nodded.
There was a mournful silence. I said, ‘Once our foals pranced there. We were famous for our horses. Now it is only bare earth ridged with the tracks of chariot wheels, soaked with our blood – and theirs. It’s in the wind we breathe.’
She nodded.
‘You’re far from home,’ I said.
‘You find us odd. Your women do not fight Let me tell you the legend. Years ago in the mountains of Anatolia, savages, more like beasts than men, covered in hair, used to lurk in caves, high up in the hills. They would attack the villagers who lived below and one day they came down and killed all the men. As the men fell the women put on their men’s armour, drove them off, these savage men, and killed them. The Rarisha were no more. This, they say, began the tradition of women warriors. Later the Great Kings came and took us over, formed us into an elite corps. We serve officially under the king’s mother. We are paid, we get good booty, with which we can buy land at home and if we die, our dependants are taken care of.’
‘And your menfolk?’
‘They farm the land. The older women take care of our children.’ She added, ‘Fighting is a skill. It can be learned. When it comes to firing a bow, it is steadiness and accuracy, not strength, which count in the end, and in hand-to-hand fighting, speed, agility and discipline are as useful as brute force, wildly applied.’
‘Do you not wish you were at home?’ I asked.
‘Most soldiers wish they were at home,’ she told me. ‘There are boys down in the Greek camp, now awake and staring up at the stars, wishing they were in their own beds, with their brothers, the dog on the floor beside them. Tonight Greeks and Trojans, both, are pining for their women and children, wondering if they will ever embrace their wives again, take their sons to the river to fish, wondering how their children will fare if they die tomorrow. If we win, I shall share in the booty of rich Mycenae. My children could be rulers in Argos, Pylos, Rhodes. You are the prophetess,’ she said. ‘Cassandra? They tell me you brought us here by going to the Great King.’
A dog began to howl down in the Greek camp.
‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘But I’m not well looked on in Troy.’ I did not tell her why; she had enough to think about.
‘I heard that. Well – I must go and rest, if not sleep. I’ll stay here until dawn, then go back to my troop.’
And, saying this, she pulled her cloak about her, retreated to the palace wall, lay down on the stones and, like a soldier, either slept, or went into that light stupor which is the sleep of soldiers before a battle.
I, meanwhile, remained on the ramparts alone, waiting for the sun. As dawn drew near others joined me silently. We watched the moon fade, the early light come across the sea’s horizon. We prayed. As the sun came up the bent old oracle was beside me in her red gown, her face painted. I turned to look into her eyes, like dark pits. Neither of us, I knew, saw anything but the coming light, felt anything but the salt-laden wind from the sea.
As the sun tipped up over the horizon, there was a great sigh, then no more.
Naomi told me that down in the Greek camp they all stood, their faces for once turned from Troy, towards the sea, the sunrise, and their homeland. There were the tall figures of Menelaus, Agamemnon, Achilles, Diomedes, Ajax on the beach among their troops. Naomi said she felt all bloodlust, all desire for women, craving for fame, glory, for loot and dominion – all seemed to have gone, as each mother’s son faced his home, watching the dawn of the day which might bring his death.
Thirty-One
Troy
Strangely, I spent the early morning of that day with Helen. It was strange because by then she was the enemy in Troy, and in Greece too, as we found out later. Odd to seek out such a woman at such a time. Other women were preparing food for the warriors, making medicines, rolling bandages. My mother and Polyxena were with Hector’s widow. Yet I sought out the woman who was at the root of all these terrible events, a curious choice at such a time. Yet was my position much different from hers? Everywhere I went I met the sidelong glances of those who remembered my prophecies and that my own family had incarcerated me for them. I ought to have considered my loyal duty to my mother – helped to nurse the wounded, distribute food, deal with weaponry, with all the details of a city at war and perhaps facing its last and most crucial battle.
I was seventeen years old. My twin brother, all my remaining brothers, faced death today and so did I, so did all of us.
Through this war I had probably lost my chance of happiness in marriage. My own countrymen mistrusted and hated me and because I was young, afraid, hungry and resentful, I went to Paris’ house to spend what might be my last hours, on this day of days, in Helen’s company. It was not only that Troy hated her and mistrusted me. It was that Helen hated this war and so did I. We were fit companions.
A gu
ard let me in. Even in that house the deprivation had made its mark. Certain hangings, certain vessels normally on display were missing. Had they been sold for food, stored against looting? The great hall was dusty and neglected. There was little water, even here. Down in the city, the Ethiopians’ drums began to play.
Helen, trembling, was helping my brother on with his armour. Less than a week before I had watched Andromache nobly do the same for Hector, now dead. Helen had no dignity. She wept as she stood on tiptoe to put Paris’ helmet on his head, then broke down completely and ran away crying, ‘Go, go. Go now. I can stand no more.’ It was shameful conduct, not expected of women in time of war. I kissed Paris and fastened his helmet, but he did not notice me. He was staring blindly at the doorway through which Helen had run. He was about to go after her when Deiphobus came in, fully armed, and said, ‘Come, Paris. It’s time.’ Paris continued towards the doorway. Deiphobus burst out, as he would not have done if his nerves had not been stretched to their utmost, ‘In the name of our brother, Hector, who died in battle only days ago, do not lose your honour, do not go after that woman.’
Paris stared at him in horror. Deiphobus, almost equally horrified, stared back. Then Paris moved towards him softly, like a man in a trance, saying only, ‘I am coming, brother.’
‘I should not have …’
Cassandra Page 31
