‘There’s no time, as you say. In Hector’s name, then,’ and he put his arm round Deiphobus’ neck and they left at a soldierly pace, bidding me farewell over their shoulders. As they went into the compound outside, I heard them start to sing.
The drums went on beating. I found Helen sobbing by the fountain. She babbled, ‘I shall never see him again. I know it. Cassandra, what do you see – will he live? What will I do without him? Offer a sacrifice to Hecate, Cassandra. She will listen to you. She is your mother. What shall I do? What shall I do? Friend and lover. Friend and lover. Oh Paris. Oh Paris, my husband. What do you see, Cassandra? What do you see?’
‘Nothing,’ I told her. ‘Nothing.’ And this was true.
The drums beat faster. Pipes grew shrill. Down by our gates the oracle would be dancing, weaving patterns of victory into the ground. Women would be embracing husbands and sons. In the temple my mother would be offering sacrifice, the women behind her praying. The moon was full, the goddess was the old woman now.
Naomi told me later the Greek musicians were playing pipes and beating drums down by the beach before dawn. At dawn they had sacrificed a Trojan girl. The magician Calchas offered prayers to the god of war, and to Artemis, the mother of them all.
But my nerve had gone. I could not go to the gates to see the army out, or to the ramparts, to witness the battle. I stayed with Helen in that dusty room.
The battle began. As ever, the Phrygians stood on the small eminence in front of the city with their bows. This time they were interspersed with most of the Amazon women on their small horses. These two units would go to work with their bows as the Greeks advanced, then ride into the fighting. Memnon’s tough, fresh Ethiopians took the centre of the army with the Hittites, while the Trojans were on the right flank, Lycians and the rest of the Amazons on the left. In the middle of the Ethiopians, the chariots were clustered in ranks.
It was a near-perfect battle-plan. First would be the arrows, fired downhill into the Greek ranks. Their own bowmen, never good, could only cluster on the rampart, which gave them limited range. After that the chariots would race into the thick of the throng, with the Ethiopians, to take the main burden of the fighting. The soldiers on both flanks would then attack from each side. Sarpedon and his men would hold back until it was plain where our army was weakest. Then they would throw themselves into the battle.
The Amazons stood on the mound in front of the city half up in the stirrups of their horses, bows poised. The long line of chariots and warriors on foot advanced slowly. Almost at once the Greek troops made their first mistake. Over-confident perhaps, because of their superior numbers, they raced towards us at speed. Our own charioteers restrained their horses, over-excited by the noise of the drums and the tension of the men around them, making them walk slowly with the lines of advancing men. Now the drums on both sides were silent. The shouting, fighting, cries of encouragement from man to man were absent Nothing was to be heard but the jingling of chariot harnesses, the thud of advancing feet, the whinny of a horse, the cries of gulls overhead.
The Greeks advanced with their chariots at a run. Faces were grim or fearful beneath their helmets. It was Ulysses who half pulled up, grabbed Agamemnon’s arm, spoke urgently up into his face warning him. But still they came on rapidly until, suddenly, they were within range of our bowyers, but too far from their own archers for cover.
Then came the silent and deadly arrows from our side. The Greek line began to shatter. Many fell. A scream went up from our ramparts as Diomedes, the Greek hero, fell. Then the Trojan chariots took off, the Ethiopian and Hittite forces raced forward with the mounted Amazons. Paris was first into the Greek lines, his horse rearing in their faces. He swept past Agamemnon who gazed up at him in horror.
In the deadly struggle that ensued Paris and Deiphobus, avenging their brother, moved like men in the throes of lunacy, spearing, withdrawing bloodied spear to spear again. They did not tire. They made no mistakes. They cut down Menelaus who was dragged away by his men. The tall black men fought ferociously, many fell, but took more Greeks with them. The Hittite women, who as soon as battle was joined, had shouldered their bows, lifted their curved swords and sped into the battle, tackled, outnumbering them, King Nestor and his throng, cutting half of them down. Seeing this, Achilles signalled his Myrmidons, who raced to Nestor’s assistance. Then Paris, fighting side by side with Memnon, spotted his brother’s killer. Abandoning a joint attack on Ulysses and his small, tough Ithacans, Paris and Deiphobus ran to confront Achilles. Paris was hacking at those who surrounded Achilles. Furious, he was grinning like a dog, his perfect teeth exposed in a face covered in dust. Several of Memnon’s men came up and the Myrmidons and Achilles turned. ‘Run!’ Achilles yelled.
‘So you run from us, do you?’ called Deiphobus, exulting.
Sarpedon and his troops could control themselves no longer. They flung themselves into the fight.
It was midday, the sun high and hot, no sound but the occasional shout, a scream, the perpetual sound of metal on metal, men grunting and straining against each other under blue sky, all beyond any thought but finding their man and killing him. And slowly the Greeks were forced back to their own rampart. By now they were fighting in small bands, each one cut off from the other. The carnage among their novice troops had been so great they were retreating across heaps of their own dead and wounded. A chariot, driver dead, lurched about the field, the horses in a panic, rearing in their traces.
Forced back to their rampart and then across the causeway, they fought bravely but the Trojan troops, men inspired, pressed on. They were tireless. There was no resisting them. Sometimes it almost seemed they did not feel the sword blows. In the stake-filled moat men lay impaled and screaming. Our army pushed on, flooding across the causeway pursuing the Greeks behind their own rampart. There they continued the deadly work.
On the shore the Greeks, shouting, began to try to launch their ships for a retreat, under a hail of arrows from the Amazons, who had scaled the rampart and were firing down on them while the Trojan force, cutting and hacking, began pushing them right into the sea.
This took place as Helen and I sat by her well, now low and muddy and filled with leaves from the unwatered lemon tree. We held hands and said little. Sometimes her clutch on me tightened fiercely, like that of a woman in childbirth. The city was silent
The Greeks, in full retreat now, managed to launch six of their ships, though many fell in the attempt Those who had scrambled in began to row, while others, wounded and unwounded, splashed through the shallows to try to get into the boats. Some staggered and fell into the water in the attempt As our troops, fighting in the sea, dragged men from the ships, Greeks were elsewhere pushing slaves and booty aboard.
Slowly the ships laboured out, rowing with half the oars unmanned until they reached water too deep for any man, Trojan or Greek, to reach them. There, in clear sight of the shore the oarsmen slumped over their oars, while others crowded to the side, gazing towards the shore where some three hundred men of their number, stranded, were fighting double the number of Trojans for their lives. There was no attempt on our side to take captives. We slaughtered them like beasts and stripped them of their armour where they lay, some in, some out of the water. Bodies with gaping wounds bathed by the sea, washed about like dead fish.
The great figure of Agamemnon stood in the bow of his ship staring at this scene. In another ship Achilles was sobbing, one arm over his eyes – he had left three of his men behind in the panic, had tried to jump overboard to rescue them, and had been wrestled to the deck by his men.
*
So the great battle ended. A contingent of our men was left on shore to hold off the Greeks if they decided to return, though we thought they would not. We released the Greeks’ slaves. Women came out from the city with waggons to collect the dead and wounded. Our soldiers began to go back to the city. A column of tired men and tired horses crossed the trampled plain. Some sat down in the dust, grey-faced and st
aring. Others moved to the rivers, to drink, to sit on the denuded banks, to sleep. Some raided the supplies of wine held by the Greeks on the shore.
Paris and Deiphobus, Troilus and Aeneas, lay together outside the gate. They said Paris, his arm over his eyes, wept, while Troilus stared up at the sky and laughed. They were surrounded by dancing figures.
The war had been going on for almost two years and suddenly it was over. No one could believe it, at first But the guards on the ramparts reported that what remained of the Greek fleet was rowing raggedly out to sea. They were retreating. Their casualties had been too great, this last battle too decisive. The war was over.
Hours passed slowly in Helen’s quiet garden while that last battle was waged. There seemed to be no servant, not even a slave in the house, only two big slavering guard dogs who came in and lay between us as if pleased to be in company.
Helen was silent much of the time. I don’t know what thoughts were going on in her head.
‘If he should die, if he should die,’ she repeated. Then, ‘Why are you here, Cassandra? Why are you not watching the battle or preparing food, nursing the wounded?’
‘My people suspect me as they suspect you,’ I said bluntly. ‘And I know this can only end badly. I know my own fate and I’m tired. That’s why I’m here.’
She sighed. ‘If the Greeks win –’
For a long while we sat, heavy-hearted, by the well in her garden.
When the cry came, ‘Victory!’ from all over the city, she and I started, stared at each other unable to believe it. But the noise went on and on, a trumpet blew, Aeneas came staggering in, dusty, one arm useless, carrying a broken sword in his other hand. ‘Paris sent me to tell you he is alive, lady, and the Greeks have been driven off to sea. We are victorious.’
He sat down heavily beside us at the well and stared, through red eyes, at nothing at all.
Helen was instantly on her feet and running from the house into the street, down to the town to find her husband. I followed – Aeneas’ loyal wife, whom he had for so long neglected, would find him and tend his wounds. People were embracing each other, laughing, crying out with joy.
I joined the waggon, taking food and drink to the soldiers on the beach, hoping as well to find Naomi. The captives abandoned by the Greeks had been released, and were going back to the city, hand in hand. But there was no sign of Naomi.
They had piled the stripped Greeks into a big heap. Heads dangled, arms and legs stuck out of this mound of carcasses. Here was the new face of the enemy, not snarling from under helmets, appearing horribly through dust with a raised sword – just a pile of bearded fathers and beardless sons, one no more than twelve. He stared with sightless eyes into the afternoon sky. The boy should have been at home, leading goats. My half-brother Dymas, only a few years older than the dead boy, looked down at him and said, ‘So that is the enemy.’ Then he assumed a cruel grin and kicked a body lying at the bottom of the heap. He said, ‘These are the dregs of their army. The big fish were quick enough to get away.’ He took a swig of the water I handed him, wiped his hand across his mouth like a thirsty farmer, and threw his head back and shouted over the sea in the direction the Greek vessels had taken, ‘Come back and finish the fight.’
I passed on with the water I was carrying, needed by some, not by others who had made free with the supplies of wine and food abandoned by the Greeks. Our guards were sitting, some even sleeping. There would still be warning if the Greeks decided to bring back their ships for a further attack but no one expected them to do so. Their defeat had been too decisive.
Helenus was there sitting among the soldiers. He was covered in blood, not his own, too exhausted to wash it off. He said to me quietly, ‘It can’t be over.’ I shrugged. Few of us had slept, or eaten. We were all dirty, gaunt with semi-starvation, and beyond thought A Lydian cousin, child of my aunt’s husband, who had been a captive, chained to a stake on the shore, told me the tougher Greeks had bundled some of their women aboard the fleeing ships. There had been fury about this in the midst of the panic. Agamemnon had shouted, ‘Save your comrades,’ but he’d been seen jostling his unhappy girl Briseis aboard earlier. Those who had seen him do it justified their own acts by remembering his, and those who had not, did it anyway. Two or three captives had managed to leap overboard and swim back to shore – one told me he had seen Naomi among the captive women pushed aboard. So far she was still alive, but would I ever see her again, I wondered? This thought barely upset me at the time, accustomed as I was to death and separation. To know an individual might still be alive seemed in those days good enough.
A wild wave of joy and mourning swept the city. It is impossible to describe our feelings, so many years on. People laughed, though tears ran down their faces. Drunken soldiers embraced each other or girls, and then stopped, stared into space, remembering the dead. Only the little half-naked starvelings we called our children lacked these complicated feelings. They skipped about, being given food by the soldiers. They put on discarded helmets. They mock-fought with discarded swords, they ran in and out of the open gates, hardly able to believe that they could do so, freely with no angry guard or panicky parent’s hand to snatch them back from the danger outside.
Beyond the open Scaean Gate, Sarpedon’s brother and his fierce men sat mourning their brave leader. He lay in the centre of the Lycian throng, unwashed, untended, still in his much-battered armour. His brother Glaucus rose to greet me, tears running down his dusty face. He embraced me. ‘You brought the reinforcements, Cassandra,’ he said. ‘For that we are grateful. But my brother has fallen. We have been here long enough. We will take him home for burial by our parents. In our grief we feel this war is not won. It may be your prophecies are correct. For our own magician tells us now – now we are victorious – that you were right She did not say this earlier. She promised victory. We believed her then. Now she prophesies defeat. We can’t understand. We do not know what to believe. But we know Sarpedon is dead and we can fight no longer. Unlike many we did not fight for wealth or demand brides for matches which would otherwise have been refused. We came early to your aid, we stayed and fought bravely, sacrificing much, including our lives. Now we have agreed to go.’
Their magician, the beautiful, red-haired woman, nodded directly at me, reinforcing her message that her prophecies were indeed true. She had foretold victory for her Lycians in the last battle and it had come. Now she predicted defeat. Yet we had triumphed. Troy was safe. Her message was strange.
A great cry came up from the city – shouts and cheers. The sacrifice in the temple was over. The women were screaming. As the Lycians stood slowly, picking up bundles and armour, and as Glaucus took up the body of his brother, I encountered again the deep brown gaze of the red-headed priestess of the Lycians.
‘Farewell, and thanks,’ I said to Glaucus. ‘Your brother paid for our triumph with his life.’
Glaucus under his burden wept. He put a heavily-muscled, scarred arm up to wipe away the tears running down his face. As others came to bid them farewell, I bowed to the priestess, and went into the city. The musicians were playing. A girl was dancing with a soldier. Another waggon of wine came through the gate. Soldiers crowded towards it.
Adosha came towards me, leading her boy by the hand. In the other was a bundle of bedding and other things. She smiled and embraced me. ‘You’re going back to the farm?’ I asked.
‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘I must go back to my father and mother, if they’re still alive.’
We must plough, reap and pick what we can, prepare for winter. ‘Take care of the boy,’ I said.
‘He’s almost all that’s left of my family,’ she replied.
I kissed them both and went up the hill, past Paris’ house. There was a stir inside. However, a soldier on duty shut the gates again. Helen still mistrusted Troy, and perhaps rightly. I went into the palace, where a feast was in preparation. I found my mother in her office, but she was lying in a chair, her feet on a stool carved
of black wood, a gift brought by Memnon. Her hair was loose, her face drained. ‘Go to your father,’ she said. ‘He is ill.’
I could find him nowhere in all that hurly-burly and rejoicing, as I searched for him in the city. In the end I discovered him by the black circle of Hector’s funeral pyre. I stood a little way off, watching him as he sat on the grass near the remains of the fire where they had burned his eldest son. He did not see me. He took a handful of the days-old ashes from the black circle, dribbled them on his head, doubled over and wept By another pyre stood a young woman, stock-still, perfectly quiet, staring at yet another circle of blackened earth and half-burnt wood.
As the celebration went on that night I thought of those two figures, bereaved father and sad widow, thought that Adosha should by now be home on her quiet farm. I should have recalled something completely different about that scene, not what was present, but what was absent Would it have made any difference, if I had?
Thirty-Two
Thessaly
Hector’s child by Adosha is still alive, but his official child, by Andromache, died on the night when Troy eventually fell to the Greeks, when they slaughtered us as triumphant lions slaughter the cubs from the old litter when they have killed the fathers. Yet Hector’s son lives as does his widow, Andromache, and my brother Helenus. And others, too.
My own decision to remember and record my past and that of my people begins to heal my grief, up to now a carefully protected but still open wound. I have yet to tell the last, terrible part of my tale and then this process will end. At first, in spite of my forebodings, I think I had imagined that when my story was finally told, the history of my people related and my soul more at peace, I could then go reconciled, on the long trip into age and death. But even as I began to write my story, I sensed violence and horror again coming closer to Mycenae. I knew the remainder of my tale would be told, but not before Greece itself had been visited by the very horrors it had brought on Troy so many years ago. And I knew there would not be long to wait
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