A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

  So because of Circe, or perhaps in spite of her, you took the route past Scylla and Charybdis, the smooth, high rock on your right, the fig-tree on your left. You skirted Scylla’s rock and lost six men. You looked back to hear them screaming your name, dangling from her multiple jaws like so many fish on hooks. You will have found this especially painful, I think, more so than the cannibals and the crews they drowned, more than the Cyclops and its vicious unseeing eye. You never have liked to see a man deprived of the chance to defend himself. It offends your sense of justice.

  And at the same time, you heard the deafening roar of seawater foaming into the whirlpool of Charybdis, but even then you did not lose heart. Your ship was just far enough over to come through safely, although you had been close enough to see the black sand and bedrock, when she had swallowed all the water from above her.

  Terrifying though this journey was, you made it through the straits to the safety of Thrinacia, a lovely, verdant island sacred to Helios. It scarcely needs saying – does it? – that Circe had given you one more instruction. If you chose to land at Thrinacia, you had to be sure not to harm any of the cattle there, because they belong to Hyperion, the father of Helios, and he takes a dim view of losing even one of them to a ragtag bunch of sailors. The safer course would have been to sail right past, but how could you tell your men – exhausted and frightened by the voyage through the straits and the loss of six of their remaining comrades – that they should sail past an island which contained nothing more lethal than cows and sheep?

  Even the bard does not pretend that you didn’t warn your men, Odysseus. He has line after line about how you repeated the warnings given to you twice over, once by Circe and once by Tiresias in the Underworld. But your men were no longer willing to obey your instructions on this matter. You had led them through so much danger, and they had lost so many friends. No wonder they overruled you and made for the shores of Thrinacia, just for one night. Just to allow themselves time to recover from their trauma and rest a while on dry land. Even then you did not let them go blindly to their deaths. You made them swear an oath that they would leave Hyperion’s creatures alone. And they obeyed you gladly. What was one night without meat? They would soon be sailing home to Ithaca.

  Sometimes it’s hard not to think that you have offended more gods than you have impressed. Because what else could explain the cruel south wind, which blew for a whole month – a month without cease! – and kept you on Thrinacia for all that time. Greek sailors are so rarely lucky with the wind, almost as if the gods themselves want to keep you out of the water. Don’t you think? And while the rations which Circe had given you were plentiful, they were not infinite. And after so many days without fresh supplies, your men grew hungry and restless. They waited – having learned this sort of trick from you, I imagine – until you were asleep. And then they killed the pick of Hyperion’s cattle and sacrificed them to the gods, before eating the remaining meat. How could the gods take offence at that, they said. A sacrifice could not be an act of impiety, could it? Besides, they would build a temple to Hyperion when they returned to Ithaca, and he would forgive them a cow or two. The gods would rather have stone monuments than mere cattle. But the father of the sun needs no new temple. He can see every temple to every god, every single day. What he needed was for his herds to remain unharmed, as they had always been. He complained bitterly to Zeus, and to all the gods, and they agreed that an outrage had been committed. Once the winds changed and you set sail, the gods took their vengeance upon you. The one ship of your fleet which had remained intact through all your tribulations was the price for your men’s hunger and their theft. You were driven all the way back to the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. Your men – every last one but you, as the man sings it – were drowned. I hope the meat was worth it.

  You survived death because you leapt from your splintering ship and clung on to the fig tree above Charybdis. You hung there until she spewed her water back up, and then you let go. You landed in the water, and were washed ashore days later on Ogygia. This seems so extravagantly unlikely that I almost believe it.

  The first time I heard the bard reach this part of the story, I thought he would sing that you built a new ship and began to sail home. This should be where the story ends, shouldn’t it? But that is not what he sang next. I demanded to know why. Do you not know where Ogygia is, he asked, his blind eyes moistening. I did not know. Why would any Ithacan have heard of such a place? It took you nine days to drift there, if the poet tells it rightly.

  So after all the danger you endured, after all the risks you took, I have it on good authority from the poet that you have never been further away from me than you are at this moment. That’s right, Odysseus: you are further from home now than you were when you were at Troy, or on Aeaea. You are further than you were when you were trapped inside the cave of Polyphemus and you are further than when the Laestrygonians pelted you with rocks and smashed your ships. You are further from home than when you were clinging to a fig tree for the thinnest chance of life. You are further from me now than when you were in the land of the dead.

  Your wife/widow,

  Penelope

  34

  The Trojan Women

  None of the women had been able to settle since Polyxena had been led away. They knew they would all be taken, picked off one by one. But once Polyxena had gone, it was hard to think about anything but who would be removed next. None of them guessed correctly except Cassandra, who knew. Because when the herald finally came, he did not come for a woman.

  The women would have recognized him even if he hadn’t been carrying his staff with its twin ovals at the top, the lower one quartered by a cross. His robe was gathered at the neck with a large gold brooch, and his black boots were decorated with fine rows of metal studs. He winced as he put his weight on the left foot, as though a sharp stone had worked its way through the bands of leather and wedged itself beneath his heel.

  Every truce, every shift in the ten-year war, had been heralded by Talthybius. The Trojans had seen him many times walking across the plains outside their city to consult with their own heralds, or with Hector. He carried himself across the sand with the pomposity of a man who has been sacrosanct for years: no one was permitted to harm a herald. And yet he moved slowly. It was not just Cassandra who could see he was reluctant to perform the task he had been allotted.

  When he finally reached the women, Hecabe stared at him. Sweat poured down his face beneath his ornate cap, its brim pushed back so his black hair sprouted out from beneath it.

  ‘You should remove your thick cloak,’ she said. ‘It is not as cold as all that.’

  Talthybius nodded, acknowledging in his mind the warnings he had received from Menelaus and Odysseus about the sharp tongue of the Trojan queen.

  ‘I have no time for your words, old woman,’ he said. ‘I am here for the son of Hector.’

  The scream which rose up did not come from Cassandra. She had watched this happen so many times before that she felt almost dizzy with the repetition. But for Andromache, the widow of Hector, it was new. And so it was her voice which keened so piteously. It was all the more distressing for her family, because she was always so quiet. Softly spoken before the birth of her son, Astyanax, she had acquired a low, soothing tone when he was born. Her son – unused to hearing his mother in such distress – began to howl.

  ‘No,’ said Hecabe. ‘You cannot mean this. He is a baby.’ Her voice cracked in two, like a dropped pot.

  ‘I have my orders,’ Talthybius said. ‘Give me the boy.’

  Andromache wrapped her arms tighter around the bundled child she had kept safe through a war and a city on fire. His face was growing purple with the effort of screaming.

  ‘Please,’ she wept. ‘Please.’ She fell to her knees before the herald, but she did not let go of her son.

  Talthybius’ supercilious eyebrows dropped a little at the sight of this hopeless woman lying at his feet. He bent down on his haunches, re
sting his elbows on his bare brown knees. ‘You know why the Greeks have decided this must be so,’ he said. He reached out and touched her hair with his fingertips. His voice was quieter now, speaking to Andromache alone. ‘Hector was an outstanding warrior, the great defender of Troy. His son would grow up to be a warrior too.’

  ‘No.’ Andromache shook her head. ‘He will not. He will never carry a sword or spear, I swear it on my life. He will become a priest or a farmhand. He will not learn to fight. The future you fear will not come to pass.’

  The herald continued as though she had not spoken. ‘He will grow up to hear his father’s name spoken with admiration, how brave he was, how audacious.’

  ‘I will never mention his father.’ Andromache’s voice was rising into a scream. The child paused for breath before he too renewed his wailing. ‘Never. The name of Hector has passed my lips for the final time if you will only spare my baby. Please. He will never know whose son he is. He will never remember Troy. We will never speak of it. I swear it on the shade of my dead mother.’

  ‘But other people will mention him,’ Talthybius replied. ‘Hector cannot be excised from the story of the Trojan War. The bards sing his name already. Your name is mentioned in the same songs. You son will grow up wishing to avenge his father. He will have the murder of Greeks in his heart.’

  ‘I will change my name,’ she cried. ‘I will leave Andromache here in Troy and become someone else in Greece. Who cares what a slave is called?’

  ‘Your master will care,’ the herald said. ‘Your name makes you a trophy. Another name would carry less weight.’

  Andromache’s eyes were darting around as she looked for some sort of escape.

  ‘Then I will tell him that Hector deserved to die.’ she said. ‘I will tell him that the bards sing it wrong. I will bring him up to believe his father was a coward and he deserved the death he received at Achilles’ hands.’

  Hecabe opened her mouth to rebut this lie, but her voice had not yet returned. She looked around for Polyxena, to remonstrate with Andromache, or plead with the herald, or control Cassandra, who was beginning to rock to and fro on the sand. But Polyxena was gone, and there was nothing anyone could do.

  ‘No,’ Talthybius said. ‘You will not have to lie about your husband, madam.’ He stood up again, rubbing his fists against his aching thighs. He looked behind him to the Greek soldiers who accompanied him. ‘Take the child.’

  ‘No,’ Andromache screamed. ‘Let me come with him. Don’t take him from me.’

  The herald turned back to her, his expression unreadable. ‘You know he will die?’ he asked.

  ‘If I cannot save him, I ask only to die alongside him.’

  Talthybius sighed. ‘You do not own your life to give it up,’ he said. His soldiers wrenched the baby from Andromache’s arms. Astyanax was silenced by the shock of it. The herald continued: ‘You belong to Neoptolemus now. I cannot stand by while his property is destroyed. He would blame me, and his temper is remarkable.’

  There was a moment of silence before the baby began to wail again.

  ‘Please,’ said Andromache, sensing the men’s discomfort. None of them knew what to do with a crying child. ‘Let me come with you.’

  ‘You would not wish to see it,’ Talthybius said. She fell prostrate at his feet, her hands gripping his metal-studded boots. If the herald could not leave, her son could live a few moments more.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Hecabe had found her voice at last. The herald turned to look at her. The sharp-tongued old witch had lost some of her vinegar now, he thought.

  ‘He will be thrown from the city walls,’ he said. ‘He will die where he was born.’

  ‘No, no.’ Andromache made one last plea, flinging her arms around the herald’s legs, almost taking him off his feet. ‘If I cannot die with him—’ she said. Cassandra gave a low moan. This part always made her sick. ‘If I cannot die with him,’ she continued, ‘at least let me be the one to kill him. Don’t throw him from the walls. Please. Don’t let his body fall onto the rocks below. He is a baby. Please. I will smother him. He will not grow up to avenge his father. He will die in his mother’s arms. What could be wrong with that? Your Greeks will allow it. Won’t they?’

  ‘We will return his body to you,’ the herald said to Hecabe. ‘You can bury him beside your son.’

  35

  Calliope

  So he does have children, my poet. Or he once had them. Tears flow from his blind eyes. He can’t look at me, can’t bear what he’s just composed. I want to reach down and stroke his hair, and tell him everything will be alright. But it wouldn’t be true. Who could say that, about a war?

  He was expecting something else from me, I suppose. I depend on war for my very existence. But depending on it means I need to understand it. And if he wishes to write about it, so must the poet. He is learning that in any war, the victors may be destroyed as completely as the vanquished. They still have their lives, but they have given up everything else in order to keep them. They sacrifice what they do not realize they have until they have lost it. And so the man who can win the war can only rarely survive the peace.

  The poet may not want to learn this, but he must.

  36

  Cassandra

  Cassandra had to admit it: Apollo’s punishment of her was an example of almost perfect cruelty. She had longed to have the gift of prophecy. Longed for it. She spent so many hours in the temple with her brother, Helenus. Each of them a sea of dark locks and a pair of dark eyes, but only one of them beautiful enough to catch the interest of the god himself. She loved Helenus but, like many twins, she felt she needed something which he didn’t have, so she could be sure of where he ended and she began. He had always told her that her beauty was distinction enough. But she wanted something more, something that would not fade over time.

  When Apollo revealed himself to her, it was in the cool hour of the night. She and Helenus sometimes slept in the temple, if their devotions had kept them there late: he on the left side of the door, she on the right. They wedged soft cushions beneath their heads and she would wriggle under an unfinished robe and use it as a blanket. It was not impious to take the god’s clothing if the embroidery had not been finished yet and it had not been dedicated to him. So when the god appeared, he was kneeling behind her head, his tongue licking her earlobe to wake her. She woke with a start, thinking it was a viper whispering in her ear. She sat up and turned, expecting to see it slithering away across the cool white stone. But instead she was faced with the radiant glow of a god, slightly larger than a mortal man, and possessed of a strange inner light. He demanded her and she refused. He asked a second time, and now she was fully awake she refused again, unless he gave her something in return.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To see the future,’ she said.

  ‘Some people think of that as a curse,’ he replied. His golden hair, which flowed back from his forehead in luscious waves, was oppressively bright. He was beautiful but somehow cold, for all the warm light that he exuded. She found herself squinting to keep her eyes from watering. ‘But if that is what you want, you shall have it.’

  She expected him to do something, to touch his gold hand to her brow. But he lay motionless beside her as the visions filled her mind. Everything that had been was somehow less real to her than everything which was to come.

  ‘Now give me what is due,’ he said, reaching his hand out to touch her skin, which looked almost blue in comparison with his radiance. The vision of what was about to happen was potent. She feared what the god was about to become, so much so that she pulled her hands across her body and her knees up to her chest.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  Apollo’s beauty was transformed in the time it took to blink. The ever-young, ever-glowing Archer was suddenly a vicious, vengeful man, his open hand contracting into a fist.

  ‘You dare to refuse me?’ he asked. ‘You dare to refuse your god after making a bargain
with him?’

  She screwed her eyes shut and tried to block out his rising voice by balling her hands into her ears. Where was Helenus? Why was he not awake? Apollo lunged at her, like a snake moving towards its prey. She felt the sudden curdling of his saliva in her mouth, and then he was gone.

  No one had ever spat on her before, and she scraped her fingers along her tongue in disgust. But the damage was done. Her gift for prophecy was flawless and perpetual. Her gift for persuasion – for the words formed by her defiled tongue to be believed – was gone. And she knew it, long before she spoke another word. She could already see herself being disbelieved by everyone she loved, even Helenus. She could see her warnings falling on ears which refused to hear. She could see the frustration bubbling from her lips as no one listened to her. And she realized that in one gesture, Apollo had cursed her to a lifetime of solitude and what would appear to be madness. Her one consolation – and it was like a tiny pinprick in the blackness – was that she would not be mad. But she would always know what was coming. And all of it terrified her.

  Over time, Cassandra had learned to cope with the horror of what had befallen her. At first, the sheer weight of tragedy – of every sickness, every death, of every person she knew and every person she met – overwhelmed her. She found herself screaming warnings at anyone she saw, trying to ward off disaster. The harder she tried, the deafer they became. Time and again she watched the shock on people’s faces, when precisely what she had predicted – and they had ignored – came true. Sometimes she imagined she saw a flicker of recognition in their eyes, as if part of their minds knew that she had given them a warning. But the flicker soon died, and in its wake it left only an intensified hatred of the babbling priestess, which all attributed to her gibbering lunacy. She became unable to cope with meeting anyone outside her close family and servants, because it required her to see a whole new set of tragedies, in addition to the stillborn children, sickening spouses and crippled parents which already filled her mind. So when they locked her in a thick-walled room in the citadel, with only one slave (whose child would die from an untreated injury, and who would eventually string herself up by the cord which bound her tunic at the waist), it came as a relief.