At least Mela’s death had been quick. Was it true what the old women said, that a corpse buried without a gift for the ferryman under the tongue could never rest? Gods, I hoped not.
Maybe she wasn’t really dead. That snap could have been something else. Perhaps she hadn’t moved because she was unconscious. But then I thought of her head at that unnatural angle, and the horrible crack as she landed. If only I’d listened to her. Or if I’d just kept quiet.
I tried to force my thoughts to something else. For ten years, the wall had kept the Greeks out. The mortar was said to be mixed with ichor from the veins of immortal Poseidon himself. But yesterday, all that had come to an end. How could the Greeks have breached the wall? I frowned, thinking back to the day before.
That morning we had awakened to unfamiliar noises from the street. Rubbing my eyes, I’d sat up from our shared blanket. Melantha was stirring beside me, while the pang in my stomach reminded me that we’d found no supper again the night before. Tying my loincloth tighter, I kicked out the pot shard that wedged our door shut and lifted the edge to swing it open.
Mela and I were late sleepers, and I winced at the bright morning sunlight flooding through the doorway. The noise was coming from the King’s Way, the broad boulevard that wound up the hill to the palace, so I stumbled down the steps and headed over.
Mela caught up with me and tossed me the ragged chiton that had been my father’s. “You want people to think you’re a slave?”
Most people wouldn’t wear the clothes of the dead, fearing ill fortune, but Mela and I weren’t most people. I shrugged and wrapped it on.
At the corner, we stopped short. Hundreds of people were dancing on the broad brick avenue, patrician women in colourful formal himations mingling unabashed with beggars in rags. Dancing and singing. It looked like the gods had sent a plague of madness.
Nearby we saw old Alcoa, the half-blind tailor from two streets up, his nightshirt flapping around his bare, spindly legs as he danced past with the well-padded widow from the fishmonger’s stall. That was unusual: men and women didn’t normally dance together. But that day I saw a lot of rules being broken. I grabbed at his nightshirt as he careened past. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t you know, boy?” he replied, grinning so widely his wooden teeth were nearly falling out of his mouth. “The barbarians are gone! Packed up and left, by all the gods. Their ships are gone, their camp burned, the war is over! We’ve beaten them, the filthy k—” he spotted my sister and changed course “—uh, crab eaters!” He grabbed at the fish lady and they swirled off, his spindly legs kicking wildly in all directions.
Mela glanced at me, her eyes widening. “Lex! You don’t think . . .”
I just looked at her. “Oh, please. Remember when they said the gods had struck all the Greeks blind in the night? This is just another stupid rumour.”
She tugged at my hand. “In that case it should be easy to disprove. Or did you have plans?”
Scrounging some breakfast, I was about to say, but she was already weaving through the dancing crowd. I scowled and headed off after her.
Every boy in the city knew the details of the Greek camp. We used to run to the wall whenever we saw a priest sacrificing a goat in front of the temple of Athene, waiting for her wrath to strike the barbarian encampment. The priests kept telling us it would, if we sacrificed enough. Although we watched eagerly for days, it never did. But the priests, who only burned the heart and liver in the sacrifice, always looked well-fed.
So as I climbed the rickety ladder to the archers’ ledge behind the wall, I knew exactly what I’d see: an armada of slender black ships drawn up on the distant beach, surrounded by a forest of stubby grey tents, greasy cooking fires, and a swarm of Greek soldiers. I reached the ledge and looked out over the wide grey top—and stared in disbelief.
“It’s true,” Mela breathed, clambering up beside me. The grey sailcloth tents and long black ships of the Greeks were gone. Vanished, as if Poseidon’s hand had swept the beach clean. I stared, wondering if we’d somehow come to the wrong spot. But there was no mistake: I could still see the deep ruts on the beach where their ships had sat for so long that they’d sunk deep into the sand.
For a moment I felt disoriented. The beach had been covered with ships ever since I could remember, stretching away down the coast. Now, in a single day, every one of them had left, the campfires abandoned, a few tents and stockade walls still smouldering. Even the sharp wooden pikes at the edge of the camp had been knocked down, the wind-dried heads of the Trojan warriors topping them pitched face down in the sand.
Mela and I stood on the archers’ ledge for several minutes, staring out at the empty beach. A few other street kids—the war had made a lot of orphans—joined us. Ten years of war couldn’t really be over just like that. Could it? I shivered. I hated the war for what it had done to my family, hated the Greek barbarians who had started it, even though I was part Greek myself. But like the bracing beams the stonemasons used, the war had always been there, giving some structure to my life. That, and Mela. I glanced over.
The sea wind above the wall was whipping her long dark hair against her cheek. Most mornings she bound it up with a clasp, but today we’d both dashed out without a thought. Her dark eyes narrowed against the wind as she pulled a fold of her threadbare himation back onto her shoulder. It had been our grandmother’s, once richly woven and embroidered in red thread with a scene of Artemis hunting, now so faded that the scene was almost invisible. But like my father’s chiton, it was all she had left to wear.
Eventually, the sounds of revelry drew our attention back to ground level. As I turned to climb down, I spotted the city gates hanging open. That was odd. The large gates were never left open, except for sorties. But nobody was going out; in fact, the soldiers were struggling to drag something in with ropes. Something heavy, by the way they were straining. I craned my head to see, but one of the huge gates blocked my view.
Just then Mela’s voice reached me from the foot of the wall. “Alexi! Let’s go—there’s food!”
I sniffed the air and scrambled back down the ladder, the gates forgotten.
When we returned to our neighbourhood, it looked like the whole city was dancing and drinking on the broad cobbles. I was amazed. Three years of poverty had accustomed us to scraps and an occasional scrawny seagull that I brought down with a well-aimed stone. Now, delicious scents were all around us. Plates of curly dried squid and dark olives in brine, nearly fresh. Dried figs, plates of grapes, even some of the spicy goat meat strips we used to get as a treat. And wine! Not cut ten to one with water the way civilized people took it, but pure, like the drunkards and barbarians did.
Dodging a spray of honey dates thrown to the crowd from a second floor window, I nearly ran into old Sifla, the arthritic crone who worked the bakery we lived above. She scowled as I passed. “Miserable hoarders,” she was muttering, her bad eye wandering uncontrollably as she sucked on a date. “Where was all this when we needed it? And me living off lizards and goats’ eyes these last three years too.”
All the same, oiled by hoarded wine, the giddy mood was catching. Even my sister warmed up, and for the first time in a long while, she had a real smile on her face. She was dancing with the carter’s son, a muscular, oiled young man who wore his tunic wrapped much too tight around his broad shoulders. Rumour was that whenever the press gangs grabbed him for service, his mother, an attractive, slightly plump woman with a knowing eye, went to see Prince Hector and persuaded him to let her son go again.
I was just finishing off a few dried figs when my friend Spiros tugged at my arm. “Look, Alexi. Crazy Cassie’s out again!”
I looked up. Cassie escaped from the castle regularly, but she’d never come down into our neighbourhood before. The gods alone knew why she thought she had the gift of prophecy. Most wandering crazies got garbage pitched at them, but since she was King Priam’s daughter, people were just pretending they hadn’t seen her. Two palace gu
ards trailed uncertainly in her wake.
“Hey, Alexi,” Spiros said. “Remember when she said the Greeks were going to attack at the east wall with giant ladders? Zeus, what a squirrel.” He snatched a bunch of dark grapes off a passing tray and sucked one into his mouth.
I mounted a crumbling stone step fronting a burnt-out finecloth shop to watch. The shopkeeper had stepped off the wall one night a few years ago, after his son caught an arrow in battle. Come to think of it, the Greeks had attacked along the east wall not long afterwards. But that was stupid. Cassie was always wrong, it was probably the only thing everyone in Troy agreed on. That, and how filthy the Greeks were.
Her beautifully embroidered himation of glowing green was never meant for our part of town. It dragged on the oily cobblestones behind her as she drifted up the alley toward us, running her fingertips over anything in reach. I watched her stoop to brush her fingers over a broken doll in the gutter before reaching out to touch a young woman’s face, shaking her head sadly.
Despite the crowds, people were carefully opening a path as she walked. Stepping up beside me as she approached, Spiros spat a seed into the gutter. “Zeus, she’s slipped right off the anvil today!”
In spite of her hollow-eyed stare, she was stunning. Dark, wavy hair flowed over perfect cheekbones to drape across her bare shoulders. Captivated, I didn’t look down fast enough. She looked my way and her eyes widened. Before I could step down, she had come up beside me to grab my shoulders, peering intensely into my face. Quicker than me, Spiros had vanished into the crowd.
“All . . . dead.” She was speaking only to me, her scented breath hot in my face. Gods. She was just my height, her full lips only a finger’s length from mine. I found myself wondering what would happen if I leaned forward and kissed them.
Wait—what was she saying? “The city of Priam, aflame and dying.” Her voice was oddly flat, speaking of things she’d already seen. “The wasps burst from the swollen hive.” Her voice grew louder. “Stinging, burning. Dark silver in the streets. Temples defiled.” Her eyes had drifted, but swivelled back to lock onto mine. “Nobody believes. But you—” she stared hard for a moment. “Live. Accept your father’s gift.”
Easy to see why King Priam was having trouble getting her married off. But she wasn’t done yet. Her eyes widened suddenly and her voice rose to a shriek, her fingers tightening on my shoulders. “I see it! I see them now! Soldiers inside it! Beneath the moon, they spill out . . . sweet Hera believe me! Oh, gods—” she broke off and began to convulse, eyes rolling up into her head. I shook myself at the sight. Kiss that? If I wanted a quick and painful death, maybe. I twisted away but her sharp fingers clung to my shoulders with a mad strength, and she was tugged off balance as I pulled away.
Her foot slipped on the greasy step and she pitched forward. There was a wet crunch from behind me as I slid sideways into the crowd. I should have kept going, but I turned back to watch, peering out from behind a fattish man with a basket of bread.
She was lying on the ground, blood welling from a gash in the side of her temple where it had struck the step. One of the guards was on his feet, sword waving anxiously as the other knelt beside her, trying to stem the flow with his filthy fingertips. Stupid koprophages. Didn’t they know anything about healing?
I couldn’t resist. “Nice guarding, crabs!” I called from behind the basket. There were a few chuckles around me. Their carefully polished armour and the rumour that they scuttled sideways from danger had earned the palace guards that nickname.
But not to their faces. The fattish man glared down at me and moved pointedly away as the guard’s gaze snapped in our direction. Shoving the fat man aside, he stepped forward and grabbed me under the arm, yanking me out of the crowd hard enough to dislocate something. His fist was already up when a soft voice drifted up from the cobbles.
“Stop. Bring him.” Her voice was weak. “He will heal me.” My head jerked around, startled. Me?
The guard turned to stare at her for a moment, then shrugged. “You heard her highness,” he grunted, throwing me to the ground at her feet. “Start healing.” His sword dug pointedly into the back of my neck as the other guard scuttled out of the way.
Heal her? What was she talking about? I’d helped my father in his surgery a few times, but this was serious. The way the blood was gushing from her head, in a few minutes all she’d need would be a shroud. I dithered, trying to think of what to do.
A growl from behind and a painful prod in my back urged me on. Right. What would my father have done? Um—stop the bleeding, I guessed. I pressed down with the heel of one hand across the wound, slowing the gush to a trickle between my fingers. So far, so good. I vaguely remembered my father saying how the gods respected cleanliness in healers, and glanced around the garbage-strewn alleyway. Let’s hope they’d overlook it this time. Now, what would my father have done next? Bandage the wound. Yes. I shouted over my shoulder. “Cloth strips! I need cloth strips! Now!”
Behind me, I could hear ripping cloth and a shriek of dismay as some citizen was volunteered to give up part of her tunic. A moment later a few strips of fine linen dropped on the back of my head. Maybe there was something to be said for the crabs after all. I reached up with my free hand and grabbed one, then—kopros. This was going to take both hands. As I took my other hand away to fold the strip into a pad, her head started gushing blood again. I slapped the pad into place frantically and began my father’s slow chant to Apollo, god of healing.
It took three full chants before the blood stopped seeping. As with so many of the gifts from the gods, nobody knew why they had filled us with blood, but people never did well without it. Cassie had drifted in and out of consciousness as I was treating her, and now as I bound up the gash with a tight fresh cloth, her green eyes flickered open and those full lips of hers smiled. “I knew you’d do that, ” she murmured, satisfied. “Remember your father’s gift.”
Spiros punched my shoulder as we trotted off. “Hey Lex— I think she likes you!”
Could he tell what I’d been thinking about her? “Go grope a fig tree, would you? At least the girls talk to me.”
It had come out harsher than I meant. Cursed by the gods with a cruelly twisted lip, Spiros wasn’t likely to ever land himself a girl without paying her. I tried to change the topic. “What Cassie was saying—did it make any sense to you? Wasps? Defiled temples?”
He shrugged. “How should I know? War’s made a lot of people crazy.” Throwing the rest of his handful of grapes into the gutter, he loped off. It was the last time I saw him alive.
At the time, I had just shrugged. Someone was piping a tune on a pan flute nearby, and several girls were dancing in a circle by the polished stone steps of the temple of Hestia. One of them, a dark-eyed girl from down by the fish market, glanced at me out of the corner of her eye as I watched her. I wish I’d had the nerve to ask her to dance.
As the evening drifted into a warm night, people started staggering home, drunk and exhausted. Finally, I picked my own way back, stepping over revellers who had passed out in the streets. The pure wine had destroyed my balance, and I nearly tumbled over the wall of the ornate carved well at the foot of our steps. The well had been dug years ago when the lower town was still fashionable. The gentry had moved uphill after it went dry, leaving behind a decaying corner of the city.
Stepping carefully around the well, I lurched up the outside stairway to the room that Mela and I shared. It was just a storage room over the bakery, but after her husband died old Sifla couldn’t make it up the stairs so she let us stay there. Mela wasn’t home yet, and I collapsed onto our shared blanket on the floor to drop off quickly.
It had been later the same night that I was awakened by the sounds of Greek invaders putting Troy to the torch.
Chapter 4
I HUDDLED IN the culvert beneath the roadway all night, despair washing over me in slow waves. For the first time in my life, I felt completely alone.
When I was yo
unger, my father had always been around. Later in the war, when he became too busy to come home much, he’d brought me with him to his xeneon to watch and, later, to help treat his patients. With his deep, rumbling voice and his power of life, I used to imagine that he was the god Zeus himself, come to earth.
Unlike Zeus, my father was always patient. And unlike those healers who, proud of their reputations, shunned cases they couldn’t help, my father never turned anyone away, even those about to die. “Just remember, Alexi,” he had murmured to me once, “if you can’t cure them, you can still relieve their pain.”
After he’d left us, Mela had stepped in—preparing meals, helping with my lessons and, later, scrounging with me for food.
Above me, the sounds of battle had died down, and the few soldiers who came clanking down the road were Greek. I could hear them laughing and talking to one another, not bothering to lower their voices. I could only guess what that meant. Eventually fatigue overcame fear, and I drifted off, to unpleasant dreams.
I slept fitfully in the culvert until early morning when a noise woke me. A ragged column of women and children were coming down the lane. A few wore fine embroidered himatia, mostly torn and stained; others had on nightshirts or were completely naked. But they all walked with their heads down and shoulders slumped, hands in front of them, their feet barely clearing the ground. There were no men among them.
In their midst was the dark-eyed girl I’d seen dancing at the temple. Had it been just yesterday? I opened my mouth to call, but something stopped me. Her head was downcast, her torn tunic half off her shoulder and stained with blood. Her dulled eyes looked my way, but her gaze slid right past me. It was then that I spotted the leather thongs binding her wrists.
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