The Song of Troy

by Colleen McCullough

  At nightfall we returned to the Citadel, more hopeful now that Antenor’s man would confirm the story. He came before we had time to grow restless, and in a few rapid sentences repeated what Polydamas’s man had told us. There had been a terrible quarrel, Agamemnon and Achilles could not be reconciled.

  Helen stood by the far wall well away from Paris, openly beckoning to Aineas, her smiling mask secure in the knowledge that for the time being all rumours about herself and the Dardanian were eclipsed by news of the quarrel. When Aineas came up to her she put her hand on his arm, her long eyes slanting up at him in naked invitation. But I was right about him. He ignored her. Poor Helen. If it came to a choice between her charms and those of Troy, I knew what Aineas would decide. An admirable man, yes, but one who held himself just a little too high.

  She did not, however, seem disconcerted by his abrupt departure. I fell again to wondering what she thought of her countrymen. She knew Agamemnon very well indeed. For a moment I debated as to whether I should question her, but Andromache was with me, and Andromache loathed Helen. What little I might get from her, I decided, would not be worth the verbal drubbing I’d get from Andromache if she learned about it.

  ‘Hektor!’

  I went to the throne and knelt before my father.

  ‘Receive the battle command of our armies, my son. Send out the heralds to order mobilisation for battle at dawn two days hence. Tell the Skaian gatekeeper to oil the boulder in its tracks and hitch up the oxen. For ten years we’ve been incarcerated, but now we go forth to drive the Greeks from Troy!’

  As I kissed his hand the room erupted into deafening cheers, though I did not smile. Achilles wouldn’t be on the field, and what kind of victory was that?

  The two days passed with the swiftness of a cloud shadow on a mountainside, my time filled by interviews with men and orders to armourers, engineers, charioteers and infantry officers, among many others. Until everything was in train I couldn’t think of rest, which meant I didn’t see Andromache until the night before we were to do battle.

  ‘What I fear is upon us,’ she said harshly when I came into our room.

  ‘Andromache, you know better than to say that.’

  She brushed at her tears impatiently. ‘It’s still tomorrow?’

  ‘At dawn.’

  ‘Couldn’t you find a little time for me?’

  ‘I’m finding time now.’

  ‘One sleep, then you’ll be gone.’ Her fingers plucked at my blouse restlessly. ‘I can’t like it, Hektor. Something’s very wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’ I forced up her chin. ‘What’s wrong with fighting the Greeks at last?’

  ‘Everything. It’s just too convenient.’ She held up her right hand, clenched into a fist save for the little and forefingers, stuck up in the sign to ward off evil. Then she said, shivering, ‘Kassandra’s been at it day and night since Polydamas’s man came with the news of the quarrel.’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, Kassandra! In the name of Apollo, wife, what ails you? My sister Kassandra is mad. No one listens to her croaks of doom.’

  ‘She may be mad,’ Andromache said, determined to be heard, ‘but haven’t you ever noticed how uncannily accurate her predictions are? I tell you, Hektor, she’s been raving without let that the Greeks have laid a trap for us – she insists Odysseus has put them up to it, that they’re simply luring us out!’

  ‘You’re beginning to annoy me,’ I said, and actually shook her – a first. ‘I’m not here to discuss war or Kassandra. I’m here to be with you, my wife.’

  Wounded, her dark eyes went to the bed; she shrugged. Then she turned the covers down and slipped off her robe, went about snuffing lamps, her tall body as firm and lovely as it had been on our wedding night. Motherhood had left her unmarked; her warm skin glowed in the last lonely light. I lay down and held out my arms, and for a while forgot the morrow. After which I dozed, sliding into sleep, my body content, my mind relaxed. But in the final giddy moments before the veil of unconsciousness is drawn tight, I heard Andromache weep.

  ‘What is it now?’ I demanded, up on one elbow. ‘Are you still thinking about Kassandra?’

  ‘No, I’m thinking of our son. I’m praying that after tomorrow he still knows the joy of a living father.’

  How do women manage to do that? How do they always seem to be able to find the one thing a man doesn’t want or need to hear?

  ‘Stop snivelling and go to sleep!’ I barked.

  She stroked my brow, sensing that she’d gone too far. ‘Well, perhaps that was too pessimistic. Achilles won’t be on the field, so you ought to be safe.’

  I wrenched myself away, pounded my fist on the pillow. ‘Hold your tongue, woman! I don’t need to be reminded that the man I itch to fight won’t be there to face me!’

  She gasped. ‘Hektor, are you out of your mind? Does meeting Achilles mean more to you than Troy? – than me? – than our son?’

  ‘Some things are for men’s hearts only. Astyanax would understand better.’

  ‘Astyanax is a little boy. Since the day of his birth his eyes and ears have been filled with war. He sees the soldiers drilling, he rides beside his father in a magnificent war car at the head of an army parade – he’s completely deluded! But he’s never seen the field after a real battle is over, has he?’

  ‘Our son doesn’t shirk any part of war!’

  ‘Our son is nine years old! Nor will I allow him to turn into one of these hardheaded, coldblooded warriors Troy has bred out of your generation!’

  ‘You go too far, madam,’ I said in tones of ice. ‘As well that you won’t have any say in Astyanax’s future education. The moment I return from the field victorious I’m going to take him off you and give him into the care of men.’

  ‘Do that and I’ll kill you myself!’ she snarled.

  ‘Try, and you’ll find yourself dead!’

  Her answer was to burst into loud tears.

  I was too angry to touch her or seek any kind of reconciliation, so I spent the rest of the night listening to her frenzied weeping, unable to soften my heart. The mother of my son had indicated that she would rather raise him to be a cissy than a warrior.

  In the grey twilight before dawn I rose from the bed to stand beside it and look down on her; she lay with her face to the wall, refused to face me. My armour lay ready. Andromache forgotten as my excitement rose, I clapped my hands. The slaves came, put me into my padded shift, laced on my boots, fitted the greaves over them and buckled them on. I swallowed down the desperate eagerness I always felt before combat as the slaves went on to dress me in the reinforced leather kilt, the cuirass, the arm guards, the forearm braces and the sweat leathers for wrists and brow. My helmet was put into my hand, my baldric looped over my left shoulder to hold my sword on my right hip; finally they slung my huge, wasp-waisted shield over my right shoulder by its sliding cord and settled it along my left side. One servant gave me my club, another assisted me to tuck my helmet beneath my right forearm. I was ready.

  ‘Andromache, I’m going,’ I said, my tone unforgiving.

  But she lay without moving, her face turned to the wall.

  The corridors shuddered, the marble floors echoed hollow to the sounds of bronze and hobnails; I felt the noise of my coming spread before me like a wave. Those not going to the battle came out to cheer me as I walked, men falling into place behind me at each door. Our boots assaulted the flags, sparks flew under the impact of bronze-tipped heels, and in the distance we could hear the drums and horns. Ahead now was the great courtyard, beyond it the Citadel gates.

  Helen was waiting in the portico. I stopped, nodding to the others to go on without me.

  ‘Good luck, brother-in-law,’ she said.

  ‘How can you wish me luck when I fight your own countrymen?’

  ‘I have no country, Hektor.’

  ‘Home is always home.’

  ‘Hektor, never underestimate a Greek!’ She stepped back a little, seeming surprised at her words. ‘There, I
’ve given you better advice than you deserve.’

  ‘Greeks are like any other race of men.’

  ‘Are they?’ Her green eyes were like jewels. ‘I can’t agree. I’d rather a Trojan for my enemy than a Greek.’

  ‘It’s a straight, open fight. We’re going to win it.’

  ‘Maybe. But have you stopped to ask yourself why Agamemnon should create so much fuss over one woman when he has hundreds?’

  ‘The most important thing is that Agamemnon did make a fuss. The why is immaterial.’

  ‘I think the why is everything. Never underestimate Greek cunning. Above all, never underestimate Odysseus.’

  ‘Pah! He’s a figment of the imagination!’

  ‘So he’d have you think. Whereas I know him better.’

  She turned on her heel and went inside. There was no sign of Paris. Well, he’d be watching, not participating.

  Seventy-five thousand infantrymen and ten thousand chariots waited for me, rank on rank along the side streets and smaller squares leading to the Skaian Gate. Within the Skaian Square itself waited the first detachment of cavalry, my own charioteers. Their shouts rang like thunder when I appeared, lifting my club high to salute them. I mounted my car and took time to insert my feet carefully into the wicker stirrups which took the lurch of travel, especially at a gallop. As I did so my eyes swept over those thousands of purple-plumed helmets; the glitter of bronze was blood and rose in the long gold sun, the gate towered above me.

  Whips cracked. The oxen harnessed to the great boulder supporting the Skaian Gate bellowed in anguish as they bent their heads to the task. The ditch was already oiled and fatted; the beasts drove their noses almost to the ground. Very slowly the gate opened, squealing and roaring as the stone slid, halting, along the bottom of the ditch; the door itself grew smaller and the expanse of sky and plain between the battlements grew wider. Then the noise which was the opening of the Skaian Gate for the first time in ten years was drowned out by the scream of joy ripping from the throats of thousands of Trojan soldiers.

  As the troops began to move down towards the square the wheels of my chariot began to rotate; I was through, I was onto the plain with my charioteers behind me. The wind probed my face, birds flew in the pale vault of the sky, my horses pricked up their ears and stretched out their slender legs in a gallop as my driver, Kebriones, wound the reins about his waist and began to practise the leans and lunges he used to control the team. We were going into battle! This was true freedom!

  Half a league from the Skaian Gate I drew up and turned to direct my troops, making the front a straight line with chariots in the first rank; the Royal Guard of ten thousand Trojan foot and a thousand war cars formed the centre of my van. All was done neatly and quickly, without panic or confusion.

  When everything was in order, I turned to look at the foreign wall grown across the plain from river to river, cutting off the Greek beach. The causeways at each end of the wall flashed with a million points of fire as the invaders poured out onto the plain. I gave my spear to Kebriones and fitted the helmet on my head, shaking back its plume of scarlet horsehair. My eyes met those of Deiphobos next to me in the line, and one by one I told them off as far as I could see down the one-league front. My cousin Aineas was in command of the left flank, King Sarpedon of the right. I led the van.

  The Greeks came closer and closer, the sun on their armour increasing in brightness; I strained to see who would be drawn up opposite me, wondering if it would be Agamemnon himself, or Ajax, or some other among their champions. My heart slowed because it wouldn’t be Achilles. Then I looked down our line again and jumped in shock. Paris was there! He stood with his precious bow and quiver at the head of the portion of the Royal Guard which had been allocated to him somewhere back in the mists of time. I wondered what wiles Helen had used to lure him out of the safety of his apartments.

  24

  NARRATED BY

  Nestor

  I said a little prayer to the Cloud Gatherer; though I had fought in more campaigns than any other living man, I had never faced an army like Troy’s. Nor had Greece ever spawned an army like Agamemnon’s. My eyes lifted to the gauzy, lofty peaks of distant Ida and I wondered if all the Gods had forsaken Olympos to perch atop it and watch the struggle. This was well worthy of their interest: war on a scale never dreamed of before by mere mortals – or by the Gods, who fought only intimate little wars among their limited ranks. Nor (if they had collected on Ida to watch) would they be allied; everyone knew that Apollo, Aphrodite, Artemis and that crew were violently for Troy, while Zeus, Poseidon, Here and Pallas Athene were for Greece. It was anybody’s guess whereabouts Ares Lord of War stood, for though it had been the Greeks who spread his worship far and wide, his secret girlfriend Aphrodite was all for Troy. Hephaistos, her husband, was (rather naturally) on Greece’s side. Handy for us, since he looked after the smelting of metals and so forth; our artificers had some divine guidance.

  If any man was happy on that day, the man was I. Only one thing marred my pleasure: the lad beside me in my chariot, who chafed and figeted because he longed to be in his own car, a warrior rather than a driver. I glanced at him sidelong, my son Antilochos. He was a babe, my youngest and most beloved, the child of my twilit years. When I left Pylos he had been twelve years old. I had answered all his messengers begging that he be allowed to come to Troy with firm negatives. So he had stowed away on a message packet and come anyway, the scamp. On his arrival he had gone not to me but to Achilles, and between them they managed to talk me into letting the boy stay. This was his first battle, but with all my heart I wished that he was still far away in sandy Pylos compiling grocery lists.

  We ranged up opposite the Trojans. The line was a league from end to end; I noted without surprise that Odysseus was correct. There were far more of them than there were of us, even if we’d had all Thessalia. I scanned their ranks looking for the men who led them and saw Hektor at once in the centre of their van. My troops of Pylos formed a part of our own van, together with those of the two Ajaxes and eighteen minor Kings. Agamemnon, leader of our van, faced Hektor. Our left flank was under the command of Idomeneus and Menelaos, our right under the command of Odysseus and Diomedes, that inappropriate pair of lovers. One so hot, the other so cold. Together, perfect?

  Hektor drove a superb team of jet black horses and stood in his car like Ares Enyalios himself. As big and as straight as Achilles. However, I saw no whitebeards among the Trojans; Priam and his kind had kept to the palace. I was the oldest man on the field.

  The drums rolled, the horns and cymbals clashed out the challenge, and the battle began across the hundred paces which still separated us. Spears flew like leaves in the awful breath of winter, arrows swooped like eagles, chariots wheeled and turned to dash up and down, infantry made charges and were repulsed. Agamemnon directed our van with a vigour and alertness I had not suspected lay in him. Many of us, in fact, had not had prior opportunity to see how the rest behaved in combat. Cheering, then, to realise that Agamemnon was competent enough to fare very well indeed this morning against Hektor, who had made no attempt to engage our High King in the duel.

  Hektor railed and stormed, flung his cars at us time and time again, but couldn’t break through our front line. I led a few sallies during the morning, Antilochos shrieking the Pylian war cry while I saved my breath for the fight. More than one Trojan died under the wheels of my chariot, for Antilochos was a good driver, keeping me out of trouble and knowing when to fall back. No one was going to have the chance to say that Nestor’s son endangered his old father just to get into battle himself.

  My throat grew dry and dust settled quickly on my armour; I nodded to my son and we withdrew to the rear lines to gulp a few mouthfuls of water and get our breath back. When I glanced up at the sun I was amazed to see it approaching its zenith. We drove back to the front line at once, and with a surge of daring I led my men into the Trojan ranks. We did some quick work while Hektor wasn’t looking, then I gave the
signal to retreat and we fell back safely into our own line without losing a single man. Hektor had lost upwards of a dozen. Sighing in busy satisfaction, I grinned silently at Antilochos. What we both wanted was the armour of a chieftain, but none had opposed us.

  At noon Agamemnon sent a herald into the open to blow a horn of truce. Both armies groaned and laid down their arms; hunger and thirst, fear and weariness became realities for the first time since the battle had begun shortly after sunrise. When I saw that all the leaders were converging on Agamemnon, I told Antilochos to drive me to him too. Odysseus and Diomedes drew up with me as I swung in near the High King. All the rest were already there, slaves hurrying back and forth with watered wine, bread and cakes.

  ‘What now, sire?’ I asked.

  ‘The men need a rest. This is the first day of intensive fighting in many moons, so I’ve sent a herald to Hektor asking him and his leaders to meet us in the middle and treat.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Odysseus. ‘With any luck we can waste a goodly amount of time while the men get their breath back and eat.’

  Agamemnon grinned. ‘As the ploy works both ways, Hektor won’t refuse my offer.’

  Noncombatants cleared the bodies away from the centre of the strip separating our two armies; tables and stools were set up, and from both sides the leaders drove out to parley. I went with Ajax, Odysseus, Diomedes, Menelaos, Idomeneus and Agamemnon; we stood and watched this first meeting between the High King and Troy’s Heir with great interest and much curiosity. Yes, Hektor was a future king. A very dark man. Black hair showed under his helm and fell down his back in a braid, and the eyes looking at us as shrewdly as we at him were black too.

  He introduced his colleagues as Aineas of Dardania, Sarpedon of Lykia, Akamas the son of Antenor, Polydamas the son of Agenor, Pandaros the captain of the Royal Guard, and his brothers Paris and Deiphobos.