A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

  The young man laughed and said, ‘I bring you a message from the gods. Does that not tell you the answer to your question?’

  ‘You’re Hermes.’

  This moment rings truer than almost anything else the bards have sung, Odysseus. Who but you would assume that the gods had nothing better to do than assist you with whatever impossible scheme you had embroiled yourself in? And who but you would be right?

  ‘At your service,’ he laughed, and gave a little mocking bow. ‘Now listen to me, Odysseus. Your life depends upon it.’

  He gave you a small black-rooted white flower, and told you to eat. The plant, which he called moly, would protect you from Circe’s concoctions and allow you to keep your human form. But that was only the beginning of his advice. After feeding you her poisoned food, Circe would try to strike you with her staff, and drive you into her pigsty, as she had done with your men. At that moment – and not before – Hermes told you to rush at her with sword drawn. Then, he said, she would try to seduce you, but you should force her to swear a binding oath by every god that she would leave you unharmed and release your men from their swinish prisons. Only then, Hermes said, should you agree to share her bed. You nodded, and repeated the instructions, expecting him to congratulate you on your excellent memory. But he had already disappeared, as gods are wont to do.

  You swallowed the flower and followed his advice: entered the palace, ate the food, rushed at the witch with your sword drawn, forced her to swear not to harm you, and to release your men.

  And it is at this point, Odysseus, that I am not quite clear what happened next. Obviously you would not have spent, as the bards have it, a year in her halls, living as her husband, for the excellent reason that you are my husband, and such behaviour would be beneath you. A long, long way beneath you.

  And yet here we are, another year passed, no sign of you and your men.

  Your wife,

  Penelope

  24

  The Trojan Women

  The women watched the Greeks approaching, led by a stocky, thick-chested man, scarred and tired beneath his soft grey eyes.

  ‘Madam,’ he said to Hecabe, bowing with an ironic smile, so it was impossible to judge whether he was being courteous or not. ‘You must be the queen of the late city of Troy.’

  ‘Is that what you’re calling it now?’ Hecabe asked. She did not return the bow, but stayed standing in front of the body of her son, determined to hide her fatigue.

  ‘Your city is dead, madam. You see its smoking remains.’ He waved his right hand in the direction of Troy, as though he were revealing an honoured guest from behind a curtain.

  ‘I see them.’ She stared at him, but he did not stare back. Rather his eyes scanned the faces of all the women in front of him. There was nothing avaricious in his expression; it was not the face of a man picking out his slaves.

  ‘Let us dispense with pleasantries,’ he said. ‘I am Odysseus, you are Hecabe.’

  The women said nothing. This, then, was the man who had destroyed their city. Odysseus of the many wiles, plots, plans and schemes. This was the man who had thought to build the wooden horse. This was the man who had persuaded Sinon, his great friend, to wait behind as bait for the kind-hearted people of Troy, and trick them into thinking Odysseus wanted to make a human sacrifice of him. This was the man who had brought the war to such a sudden and disastrous end. What could they now say to him?

  Not that Odysseus seemed to expect a response. He spoke quickly, the harsh Greek sounds softening on his lips.

  ‘And this was one of your sons, yes?’ He gestured at the body which lay next to his men’s booted feet.

  ‘My youngest,’ Hecabe said. ‘Polydorus.’

  ‘You sent him away?’ he asked. ‘When you feared Troy would fall?’

  ‘You would have done the same,’ she snapped.

  ‘I would.’ He nodded. ‘I would have sent my boy as far away as I could get him, if my home were besieged. Had I been in Priam’s place, I would have sent all my children away. Let other men’s sons fight a war I didn’t start and couldn’t win. His city was always going to be taken, it was only a question of how many of his subjects it took when it fell. And I only have one son, madam, and I haven’t seen him in ten long years.’

  ‘Then you have one son more than I,’ Hecabe said. ‘Polydorus was my youngest, the last surviving boy.’ Cassandra was muttering about something but Hecabe continued without heed. ‘And now even he is dead. How dare you compare your loss to mine? You miss your son? You could have sailed home whenever you chose. No one was keeping you here.’

  ‘Ah, but they were. When a man makes a vow that he will fight to bring back another’s wife if she strays.’ He tilted his head towards Helen, his eyebrows raised. She gazed at him in mute annoyance, before turning away to watch the tide as it retreated once again. Odysseus smiled and turned back to Hecabe. ‘He must keep that vow, or the gods will punish him. I can’t deny that there were times when I wondered if one woman could be worth so much trouble, so many lives.’

  ‘I thought the same myself,’ Hecabe said. ‘Many times.’

  Odysseus shook his head slowly. ‘But now I look at her, perhaps I understand why men go to war over her, and fall silent when her name is spoken.’

  ‘You have not fallen silent,’ Hecabe remarked.

  ‘Ah, but I was here for the treasure, madam, that your king kept in his citadel. That, and avoiding the ill will of the gods. Beautiful women I can take or leave.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes both.’

  ‘Your wife must be a patient woman.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ he replied. ‘Do you need my men to help you bury your son?’

  There was silence. It was Polyxena who answered. ‘We can manage it ourselves. But thank you.’

  ‘You should bury him over there.’ Odysseus pointed at a cave behind a pile of large rocks. ‘The water doesn’t reach that far. He’ll be safe there.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Hecabe nodded at her captor as though he were her steward. ‘We shall do that today.’

  ‘I came to ask you a question,’ Odysseus said. ‘As well as to offer you my men’s assistance.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Do you have any other sons, madam?’

  ‘I had many other sons,’ she replied. ‘But you Greeks have killed them all, one after another, like a pack of wolves.’

  ‘We thought so, too,’ Odysseus said. ‘But then this one washed up on the shore, and we realized we had not.’

  ‘You think I might have sent more sons away for safe-keeping.’

  ‘Not so safe, perhaps.’

  ‘I have only daughters now,’ Hecabe said. ‘All my boys are gone. Do you hear me? All of them.’

  ‘You lost a war, madam.’

  ‘You could have ransomed my sons. You chose to kill them.’

  ‘With what could you have paid the ransom?’ He laughed, his head tilting back towards the sky. ‘All your treasure belongs to us now.’

  ‘Is this an example of the great heroism of the Greeks?’ Hecabe asked. ‘Gloating over an old woman whose sons have all been slaughtered?’

  ‘Is this the honesty of the Trojans?’ he replied. ‘The queen of a hostile city presenting herself as nothing more than a poor old woman?’

  Hecabe stared at the space between his eyes, so she did not have to meet his gaze.

  ‘Madam, you know why I must ask you this,’ he added.

  Andromache had been trying to place the emotion which touched his eyes as he spoke – her Greek was not good enough to follow all that was being said, so she concentrated on his mannerisms. It was not anger, not sorrow, not triumphalism, for all that Hecabe perceived it. Finally she placed it. Delight. This Greek warrior was enjoying his argument with her queen.

  ‘Of course I know,’ Hecabe said.

  ‘If you have a living son, he may try to take his vengeance upon the Greeks, in years to come.’

  ‘I said I know. You need not fear the blade of a ghost
, Odysseus. As I told you, my sons are all dead.’

  ‘What happened to this one? You called him Polydorus?’

  ‘Priam and I were deceived. We sent him to an old friend, and that friend has revealed himself to be the most treacherous of men.’

  ‘A traitor to his friends,’ Odysseus said. ‘Is there a worse thing for a man to be?’

  ‘Our fear,’ she continued, ‘was that he would sell Polydorus to you Greeks. But he did not.’

  Odysseus shook his head. ‘Madam, I can promise you that. We probably would have bribed him to betray you, if we’d known. But I did not know you had another son until he washed up with the tide.’

  ‘You had guessed there might be one.’

  ‘I had.’

  ‘Even before Polydorus was returned to us by the ocean?’ He nodded. ‘Because you would have done the same as Priam, though you would have chosen your friends more carefully.’

  ‘He is the light of my heart, madam. Even though I have not seen that light for ten years, and he was scarcely more than a baby when I left Ithaca. Still, I did not know where you would have sent your son. So many of your allies . . .’ His words tailed off.

  ‘Have betrayed us already, yes. Or died, fighting your armies.’

  ‘I didn’t know who was left for you to trust.’

  ‘Polymestor,’ she said.

  ‘The king of Thrace?’ Odysseus could not quell the note of astonishment. ‘You trusted your son to a Greek?’

  ‘As you have already noted,’ she said, ‘our options were somewhat curtailed.’

  ‘And he proved unworthy of your trust.’

  ‘As you see.’ She gestured at Polydorus, her hand letting slip a little of the dust they had used to sanctify him, which had caught under her fingernails.

  ‘Did you send him with a lot of gold?’ The smile played around Odysseus’ eyes again, but Hecabe was still gazing at her son.

  ‘With too much,’ she said.

  ‘It was an easy mistake,’ he replied. ‘If you had sent less, Polymestor might have refused to take him in at all. You cannot blame yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But there is no one else to blame.’

  ‘How about the man who killed him?’ Odysseus asked.

  ‘Of course. But how can I be revenged upon him?’ she asked. ‘My city has fallen, as you have been quick to remind me. I am queen no more.’

  ‘Let me think about it,’ he said.

  ‘I hear you’re good at that,’ she said.

  ‘I am.’

  25

  Eris

  Eris – goddess of strife – hated to be alone, but that was how she spent most of her time: in the dark recesses of her cave dwelling, halfway up Mount Olympus, home of the gods. Even her brother, Ares, the god of war, preferred to avoid her nowadays. She remembered how they had once been inseparable: just children, squabbling over a toy, pulling at each other’s hair to settle the dispute. How she missed him, now he was absent from Olympus. Where had he disappeared to this time? She was always forgetful, but she tried to think, although the black snakes she wore twisted around each wrist were distracting. Thrace? Was he sulking on Thrace? But why? She pushed the scaling creature back down to her left wrist. Because of Aphrodite. That was it.

  Ares (she thought of him spitefully even as she missed him) was always involved with someone or other, but the affair with Aphrodite had been more consuming than most. Eris couldn’t remember who had told Aphrodite’s husband about it. Had it been Helios? Had he seen them sneaking around together while Hephaestus was away? The sun-god saw everything, after all, if it happened during the hours when his light illuminated the world. But he couldn’t be looking everywhere at once, could he? Or his horses would drive the chariot off course. So had someone mentioned it to Helios, encouraging him to point his gaze in the right direction? But who would that have been? Eris had the faintest recollection of the last time she had spoken to the sun-god, but although she sensed it was quite recent, she couldn’t remember when it had been, or what they had discussed.

  Still, someone had told Helios, and he had told Hephaestus that Ares and Aphrodite were carrying on together. But of course they were. How could Hephaestus, bent and lame as he was, ever have expected Aphrodite to be faithful to him? No one was shallower than Aphrodite, Eris remarked to herself: she had the depth of a puddle formed in a brief rain shower. She would never have been able to resist Ares, so tall, so handsome, so beautifully turned out in his smart, plumed helmet. What was Hephaestus to her? He would forgive her eventually, however she behaved. Everyone always did. As she thought about Aphrodite, Eris felt a familiar stabbing pain in her torso. She looked down, expecting to see one of the snakes removing its ill-tempered fangs from her flesh, but they were both twisting around her forearms where they belonged. She must have imagined the injury.

  But on this occasion, Hephaestus had not been ready to forgive his wife straightaway. Not when he discovered she had been seducing Ares in their marital home, their marital bed. Told by Helios of the infidelity, he determined to catch her in the act. He went to his smithy and forged golden bonds so fine that they were like a spider’s silk. He hid them in the bedroom, tying them around the posts of the bed, beneath it, and even above it, though none of the gods could say how the little blacksmith had reached the ceiling to attach them there. Someone must have given him assistance, but who? Not Helios, who was busy with his chariot all day. Eris had a hazy memory of seeing the bedroom herself, but she couldn’t imagine why she would have been there, or if Hephaestus had been present. Still, someone must have helped him, someone who could reach up high. She admired her own long arms as a snake curled behind her wrist.

  She felt a sudden itch in her left shoulder-blade and reached round with a clawed nail to scratch the base of her wing. She pushed the nail between the shafts of her black feathers and sighed with relief. She flexed her shoulders and felt the wings flap out behind her as she tried to remember what had happened next. Ares and Aphrodite had been unable to resist one another, of course. Him so handsome, her so beautiful, no one was surprised. But still, when the shouts rose from Hephaestus’ house – his of anger, hers of panic – all the gods clamoured to see what had happened. Ares looked perhaps a little less handsome, tied up in golden threads, unable to move. Every flail of his limbs bound him tighter to another god’s bed. Meanwhile Aphrodite, quick to recognize her husband’s handiwork, lay still: she knew there was no point struggling. Her perfect mouth was turned down into a furious pout, as the other gods crowded round, laughing at their folly and Hephaestus’ neat little trap. But Hephaestus, his darkening face contorted with fury, did not laugh. Nor did the errant couple, even when Athene – so skilled at weaving that she could immediately pick out the quickest way to unravel the binding threads – released them both. Instead, Ares disappeared to no one knew where. And Aphrodite withdrew to Paphos, where her priests would salve her wounded pride. Laughter-loving Aphrodite, the bards called her. Proof if any were needed, Eris thought, that they had never met her.

  If Eris had been another god, she might have enjoyed the moment of camaraderie which came from watching the downfall of two such stuck-up creatures. The gods might all have nudged one another, and toasted Hephaestus for his ingenuity, and praised Athene for her uncharacteristic mercy, and a delightful tableau might have unfolded in which Eris played a central role. But – for reasons which were never quite clear to her – this did not happen when she was present. Instead, Hephaestus began shouting at Athene for interfering. Artemis began cursing Aphrodite for her vulgarity, and Hera began shrieking at Zeus, because Helios was crossing the sky above, and that was all the reason she ever needed. Apollo snarled at Eris that it was all her fault, though she couldn’t imagine why, and the peaceful moment splintered into collective ill-temper. Eris had withdrawn to her cave as she often did, since no one wanted her presence. But after a while spent sitting balefully in the dark (she was not good at measuring time), she had grown bored.

  Eris
watched a dark feather spiral dolefully from her wing to the ground, and decided she would go to find someone to talk to. Even Athene would be better than nothing. Well, almost better than nothing. Eris could not think who she would most like to see, because the truth was that all the gods irked her in some way or other. But still, she had wearied of her own company, and she would rather be irritated than alone. So she flapped her ungainly way up to the top of the mountain, to the grand palace which Zeus called home.

  There was something wrong, but Eris could not immediately identify what it was. It took her a moment to realize it was the sound of birds singing, and only birds. No one was talking at all. She padded through the halls of the gods, but she could see no one and once she was well inside the building even the birdsong retreated and all she could hear was the sound of her own clawed feet scratching the marble floor. Where was everyone? She unfurled her wings and flew through doorways and across corridors, eventually perching up in the rafters. The halls were empty.

  She felt a momentary stab of fear, wondering if something terrible had happened which she had somehow missed: another war against the giants, perhaps? But even when she was squatting in her cave (she preferred the calming dankness to the honeysuckle stench in the halls of Zeus and Hera), she would have heard the giants if they had come climbing up the mountain to fight. The one thing you could say about giants was that they were rarely subtle and never quiet. So the gods had all left Mount Olympus of their own accord. Together. Without her. She felt the snake on her left wrist coil itself around her hand and slither between her fingers. And then she remembered someone saying something about a wedding. Who had it been? Hera? Yes, that was it. Eris had been sitting out of everyone’s way, in the rafters as she was now, in the bedroom of Hera and Zeus. Hera had called it spying, but that was because she was a vicious-minded shrew, as Zeus had just told her, and everyone knew it. Besides, Eris had hardly been spying, she had simply been resting her wings.

  But when Hera saw the feathers floating down towards her, landing on the edge of her ornately carved couch, first she cursed the crows whose black plumage she thought was defiling her chamber, and then – when she realized her mistake – she cursed Eris. Rounded on her, in fact, and threw her out of the halls altogether. Eris had skulked back to her cave, swearing vengeance. But now she could not even find Hera. Because – the snake’s darting tongue touched her third finger – because they had all gone to a wedding. That was it. Every single god had been invited to a wedding except Eris. Every one of them. Even Athene.