These women would report on me, I thought, not just on my state of being and apparent character, but on my looks, which they had had plenty of opportunity to examine. It would be very difficult to escape being a wife of Suppiluliumas if that was what he decided. Behind all these thoughts was another – anxiety about the plague.
The women took me to a large, grand room where we ate a meat, dressed with many spices, that I had never tasted before. There was also a peculiar soft grain, and strange vegetables and fruit, then a sweetmeat made of nuts and honey. There was great wealth here evidently – the women wore fine fabrics and jewellery of gold and glittering stones. There must have been fifteen or twenty women at this meal, some evidently of the utmost, foreign refinement, others near barbarians. For example, one was a doe-eyed Babylonian, I thought, while another was a Gasga chieftainess with terrifying eyes, bold and blue as a winter sky. Another, I felt sure, was of the Greek tribe, a young woman of fifteen, red-haired, who avoided my eyes or any speech with me. In the end, the others drifted off and I was left with two women. One was about thirty-five and of great importance, judging by her dress of silver and gold and her noble bearing. The other was some ten years younger, with piled-up hair, a heavily-beaded dress and a big, embroidered cloak. Her eyes were ringed with kohl, her headdress elaborate. These women both addressed me as ‘sister’ and treated me with respect I was not, however, easy in my mind. In these kingdoms the channels through which power flows are complicated and many run underground, making it dangerous not to understand who people are and what they want. These women could have been anyone, from the king’s mother and chief wife to powerful sorceresses. It was impolite of them not to explain who they were. I thought it was deliberate. They wished to investigate me.
‘You will be leaving us soon, sister, before the snows,’ said the older woman.
‘The snow is here,’ I said astonished.
She was amused. ‘You have not seen it as we do in winter, day after day, piled as high as two men, until spring comes and melts it.’ She laughed again at my expression. ‘You will never have seen the world turn white.’
‘We hear you are gifted with second sight. Do you tell fortunes?’ the younger woman enquired eagerly.
‘I regret it does not come on command,’ I had to answer. ‘I have not the gift of those oracles to whom you ask a question and they will straight away give you a true answer.’ I added, though, not wishing to offend, ‘I will try, if you wish it.’ I hoped that the effort, to see perhaps if the younger woman was to bear a son who would be a king, or if the older woman was to die or win a great victory, or whatever they wanted me to foretell would not submerge me in that other world where I could only tell the real truth that came to me. For so often the truth was hard and alarmed or displeased the listeners. Sometimes I have the good fortune to be in control of my gift, able to predict truly, but suppress the bad and emphasise the good, in someone’s future, just as a fortune-teller will. But more often, I can only say what I am told to say. And bad news would not endear me to these women of Suppiluilumas’ court. Bad news never makes friends. Some might ask, could I not just lie, as a fortune-teller does in the market-place? But to know true prophecy and lie is dangerous. The god or goddess who gave the gift may, if it is abused, take revenge.
An offer to tell a fortune is in my experience never refused. The older woman stuck a small, smooth palm out at me. ‘Shall I take off my rings?’ she asked. My eye was stuck now into the heart of the carved ruby – it had a bird’s, perhaps an eagle’s, eye inscribed on it. It was most beautiful. It was also somewhat evil.
Touching her small, warm hand, I felt, or knew now the woman was the mother of the king. She must have borne him when she was no more than twelve years old. There would have been other sons, by other women, yet her son was king. Her efforts on his behalf had probably been formidable, as she was. I then saw her own mother, magnolia-skinned and almond-eyed, taking the ring from the jeweller who had engraved it, blinding him, so that he would make no more. Her mother had been a princess from very far off – the land of great emperors, where plants grew in great ponds. This I told the king’s mother. I was glad it was a small vision, a mere trickle. Then it ceased. I had spoken little, but I had spoken truly. When I released the queen’s hand both she and the younger woman smiled. I had under-estimated their subtlety. They were not interested in their futures, only in my authenticity. But was it a trap? It was known I had said Troy would fall. Would they tell the king? Would he decide that if I was a true prophetess, then it was pointless to commit troops for our salvation?
‘What do your priests and priestesses say of Troy? Do they, speak of the war?’ I asked boldly.
‘We go to the old witches, village people,’ the young woman told me. ‘They say strange things, nothing clear. The old woman from Carchemish says it is a war which will bring eternal fame to all who strive in it. This prophecy puzzled us.’ It was plain they saw Troy as a very minor part of their empire.
‘Does the Great King know this?’ I asked.
‘He went to the old woman a month ago. She lives in a hut by the river Euphrates, from which she will not move. So the Great King visited her. She is said to be one hundred years old. Certainly she can remember much, or seems to. She repeated the other foretellings. She said, over and over, “Troy will never be forgotten.”’
I reflected that the rulers of such great empires have few desires that cannot be satisfied. Death and being wiped from the memories of men are the two enemies they cannot vanquish. This is why they make big statues, huge cities that will live after them. This prophecy, of eternal fame through Troy, would help our cause. I said nothing about this, though.
In vision I saw the other woman with a child. ‘You will bear a son,’ I declared. She gave me an enigmatic glance. ‘Perhaps,’ I temporised. ‘Or perhaps I am mistaken.’
‘Perhaps.’ She smiled. I think she knew she had conceived a child. The atmosphere was less suspicious, more friendly. I imagined myself dealing with two amiable lionesses. I could pat and stroke the huge beasts, amuse them perhaps, but never without the fear that they might, on a whim, kill me. Emboldened, I asked the question I had planned to ask the Great King before he spoke of plague in the city.
‘I need iron, my lady,’ I said. ‘May I have iron?’ I was pleading for speartips and swords. I had the idea that compared with those of iron, bronze swords would seem soft as clay.
‘Iron would be of no use to you. You could not smelt it,’ the queen’s mother said. ‘You could not repair it unless you had a smith who knew the proper way to handle the metal. Have you such a man?’
I shook my head. ‘Could you send us one?’
‘I will think about it,’ was all she said.
I spent the night with several other women in a stifling room, where braziers gave off strange, lovely scents. I was dizzy with it in that heat, covered as I was by the hide of some huge, coarse-furred beast.
Next morning Naomi and I left in a chariot, with fifteen horsemen in armour mounted on fast ponies. Naomi had spent her night among the Hittite slaves. Galloping terrifyingly downhill, I asked her, ‘Any word of Nisintas?’
‘They gossip about him,’ she reported. ‘He’s a hero. All are excited about his journey from Troy with you, lady. It seems he came back to find the farmer’s daughter widowed – but her oldest child was his. She welcomed him. And the farmer is in need of a strong back for his forge. Nisintas is a happy man, now.’
‘I was hoping he’d come back as a smith,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Is there plague in Troy?’ she asked. Slaves hear everything.
‘How do I know?’ I asked. ‘They say so – it may be a rumour.’
And so we went on, day after day, across the plain, sleeping a few hours wrapped in furs, in the snow, then off again, by torchlight. The journey, at Hittite military speed, was very fast. In a week we were at Brusa, into which we clattered late one night, and were given a royal welcome, with no fear t
his time of poison or assassination.
Laodice denied rumours of plague in Troy had reached her. I spent an easier night.
We left Brusa at dawn next day. From a bend in the road the queen’s consort, Syr, broke from some bushes, naked and smeared with body paint and mud, and stood in the road, tears running down his face. He pleaded to come with us to Troy. His life, he was babbling, wasn’t worth a potsherd at Brusa; the king and queen were mad. His conception of himself as a sacred part of the nation and people was much damaged by their perverted behaviour. The night before they had painted him with indigo and gold, allowed him to be used in ways he found wrong by two Greek captains and he had realised then he was within an inch of his life. They were collaborating with the Greeks. If the alliance went any further he sensed, he said, they would sacrifice him, not for the traditional religious reasons, for fertility and prosperity, but to try to ensure a Greek victory.
Syr said they’d lied when they said there was no plague in Troy. They had heard rumours, but the queen feared the news would cause us to delay or even cancel our return. She desperately wanted to be rid of us before we discovered her collaboration with the Greeks. She’d been forced to conceal the two captains when we arrived.
I was cast down by the news – I had no idea what to do with this man. He was highly unstable, probably drugged, and had almost certainly been ruined by his life in Brusa. For all I knew he might also be a spy. At best he would be another mouth to feed in what I began increasingly to fear was a city not just at war, but also plagued. I did not want to stay arguing with him on the road. Desperate to get home with the troops, and to find out what was happening I urged, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ But he told me he came from Brusa itself – until two years ago he had worked for his father, making barrels for salted fish. So I gave him a tunic I had planned to give one of my brothers and left him on the road. He was young, he had a trade; Troy was at war; we had no food, winter was coming, there was nothing I could do for him. We sped on.
At dawn next morning we came over the rise and looked down on the city nearly a mile away. There would be no point in re-entering the city by the tunnel on the hillside. Each time it was entered or left increased the risk of discovery and, besides, with a contingent of armed men, we had no fear of capture. We paused on the hill above the plain and looked down.
Beyond Troy lay the sea, the Greek camp, their ships. In that area the small figures of almost a thousand Greek warriors moved about. Then there was the city and, beneath us on the plain behind it, the black smoke of several funeral pyres arose. A crowd emerged from the city, surrounding a waggon, drawn by two horses. Whatever there was in the waggon was covered by straw matting, but even from a distance there was an indication of human shapes. A truce had been declared to allow funeral ceremonies for the Trojan dead. There were so many pyres, I thought desperately. So many must have died. The meadow where once sweet grass and flowers had grown, and our flocks had grazed, was now covered in blackened circles.
The captain of the Hittite soldiers was biting his lip. I said, ‘You see the funeral rites and you can see how many must have died. There may be plague in the city. You will not want to come any closer.’
He said, ‘My orders were to stay at a distance if there was plague.’
‘Better to remain here and set up your camp. We can communicate through messengers.’
‘If we’re to fight with you we might as well bury your dead with you,’ he replied, adding grimly, ‘in any case, we may end up on your funeral pyres – we might as well inspect the arrangements. We’ll ride down together.’ And slowly, as if approaching our deaths, we rode downhill under grey skies, the wind whipping round us.
We had of course been seen by that crowd of two hundred mourners. All were sadly thin. Many were weeping and on some faces tears ran through grime. They looked towards us as we approached. Deiphobus ran towards me, smiling, but the bones of his face stood out His arms and legs were thin, his tunic grubby. Behind him came my mother. I had searched in vain for other familiar faces and saw none. The captain of our troupe dismounted and greeted my mother. Deiphobus was embracing me, laughing. ‘We thought you might be dead.’
‘I thought you might be,’ I said, weeping. ‘Who lies in that waggon?’
‘The uncle of Aeneas. And young Crachis, the innkeeper’s boy – and the sister of Adosha, only fourteen,’ he told me. ‘Crachis died of wounds, the others of disease.’ He added, ‘Thirty fighting men have died since you left, including Democoon, and old Clytios, who insisted on putting on armour and going into battle. Fifteen citizens have died of the disease. And Creusa lost her unborn child.’
He paused. That was when my mother came to embrace me. ‘Your father lies ill,’ she murmured.
We stood for the long hours of the fetching of wood, the pouring on of oil, the ceremonies, the weeping, as those tragically light bodies were piled on the communal pyre. Anchises’ brother was in his ceremonial robe. There was the light, undergrown body of Adosha’s sister, there was the boy, Crachis – in the end they just looked like rags and bones, huge dolls with false hair tumbling round waxy faces. Where there are too many bodies the meaning of funeral ceremonies seems to disappear. It is disposal, not mourning, especially when the faces of the mourners are almost as sunken as those of the corpses, as ours seemed to be, and when they have so little energy to express their grief or, perhaps, such grief has become a state of mind.
I held the hands of Adosha and my mother, and we all wept. Anchises was not there to mourn his brother. He was ill. Creusa, too, was ill. Aeneas stood on my mother’s other side, still in armour, grim and silent My mother was thin. Her eyes were sunken. She could not ask me how my mission had gone, though, even with my father ill and at this solemn moment, she must have been concerned to know.
‘The news is good,’ I told her briefly and heard her sigh. ‘How is my father?’ It was a heart-stopping moment which lasted for a long time. Would she tell me he was dying? A cold wind blew across the plain, bringing dead leaves with it.
‘He may recover,’ she told me steadily.
The Hittite soldiers stood respectfully at a distance, awed and frightened by the mournful scene. I knew they must be apprehensive about the future. They had looked forward, as soldiers do, to seeing a strange part of the country and to battle, with the prospect of booty for the brave and lucky. They were finding disease, exhausted, dirty warriors, indications of defeat.
Ten men galloped up – Greek cavalry. ‘Go away!’ cried Deiphobus. ‘Let us bury our dead in peace!’ But they made a wide circle round us and rode slowly round the pyre, the waggon and the group of mourners, encircling us to prevent us from breaking from the pyre in search of food and water. The Hittite soldiers were astonished and the two groups of men, Hittite and Greek, regarded each other curiously. The Greeks’ armour was dented; their faces were gaunt. They looked hardly better than we did. Aeneas took the lighted torch and hurled it through the air. It fell on the wasted body of his uncle, in his elaborate robe. Deiphobus lit around the bottom of the pyre. It flared. Adosha screamed. The lost lives of the dead went up into the sky, the bitter smell of their burning bodies blew east on the wind. The Greek soldiers rode round and round.
‘Plague has reached our enemies,’ Deiphobus muttered to me. ‘Before, we thought defeat inevitable as we weakened day by day. Anchises was urging surrender. News of their sickness made us decide to hold on. And we were awaiting your return.’
My mother and I, and Deiphobus, supporting Adosha, stood and gazed at the burning pyre. The centre now flamed and there was just a glimpse, through flames, of black things, no longer bodies. We all wailed for the dead. Under the eyes of the slowly circling enemy, we sang their resurrection in the paradise of the mother.
Then Hecuba took my hand. ‘Come back now,’ she said. ‘You look weary, and you must tell me of your journey.’
‘Should we not wait?’ I asked. It was customary to stay with the mourners until the bodies were c
onsumed.
She smiled a weary smile. ‘The ceremonies grow shorter,’ she said.
Deiphobus went to look after the Hittite soldiers, while we walked back to the city. Smiler, my dog, bounded from the open gate. He, too, was very thin. My mother said nothing, but I knew they had fed the dog with scraps, which however undesirable should have gone to the people.
Hector came out to embrace me, and my brothers and sisters and many others. We went into the city. Once it had smelled of woodsmoke, bread baking on hot stone, of fish, of the heavy scent of apricots in season, of fermenting wine or incense from the temple. Now it smelled of dirt, disease, hard grease and underneath, of faeces, urine and sickness. The courtyard of the temple as we passed was full of prone figures. There were groans. Two women were hauling out the body of a youth, naked but for a breechclout, every rib showing, one leg only a bandaged stump. His face was greenish. He might have been dead, or only nearly so.
There were no stalls, there was no smell of food. There were few people about I did not know then that during famines people lie down, at home, in a kind of daze. Hunger keeps itself secret. Two thin children sat on a pavement, blank-faced. Thin women watched as we passed. A skeletal man in armour leaned against a wall. The big mute young man, the slave, pitifully reduced from what he was, stood at his forge, hammering out a sword, a grim expression on his blackened face.
Anchises came down the steps of the street leading upwards, hand outstretched. But he looked very bent, weakened, seeming much older. ‘You’ve brought soldiers,’ he said.
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