The Fall of Troy

by Peter Ackroyd

  “Come, Reverend. Let me show you what we have uncovered.” Obermann took Harding’s arm, to Harding’s annoyance, and guided him over the site of Troy. “The plan is simple, as you may see. The steep street here, covered with flagstones, leads from a single gate on the western side. Do you observe the foundations there?”

  “This city has been in my mind’s eye for many years, Herr Obermann. Taken from the pages of the divine Homer.”

  “You must not say ‘divine.’ Not in your profession.”

  “A flight of fancy, dear sir.”

  “I may call him the holy of holies, but for you that would be blasphemy.”

  “But we may call him sacred, may we not? That will not disturb the most tender conscience.”

  Sophia surmised that Harding’s conscience was not in the least tender. “Heinrich tells me that Homer contains more beauties than the Bible. Do you agree, Father Harding?”

  “It is the oldest written poem in the world, of course. It has many felicities. I am not ‘Father,’ dear lady, in my church. I am ‘the Reverend Mr. Harding.’ It is a subtle distinction.”

  “Now you are in the land of gods and heroes,” Obermann said. “Do you see how the main street leads up to the palace here?” He beat the ground with his cane. “We have excavated many thousands of cubic metres of rubbish. I built a path to transport it. There were huge masses of debris, dear sir, sixteen metres in height!”

  “I have no mind for details, Herr Obermann.”

  “That is why you are a priest. Do you observe this layer that descends upon these stones like black vapour? Do you perceive above it a yellow stratum of matter burned by a white heat?” Obermann was pointing his cane at some small, ruined chambers. “During the conflagration the wind must have driven the flames from the south-west, from the direction of the gate, to the north-east. All the treasures were found on the south-east side.”

  “Treasures, dear sir? Ahmed Nedin will be overjoyed to hear of them.”

  “Objects treasured by me, sir.” Obermann spoke quickly. “Clay statuettes. Bowls.”

  “Nothing precious?”

  “All of Troy is precious.”

  “But Mr. Nedin was sure that a bounty of golden ornaments would soon be handed to the museum.” Decimus Harding had visited the Museum of Antiquities in Constantinople, and had met Ahmed Nedin; Nedin was an admirer of all things English, and had even spent an evening with the Reverend Mr. Harding over a hookah. “Have I told you the story of the sword?”

  “Sword? What sword?” Obermann was very sharp. “I know of no sword.”

  “Calm yourself, dear sir. I am referring to the sword of Constantine the Twelfth.”

  “He was the last emperor of Byzantium. What of it?”

  Sophia noticed that her husband had become unexpectedly flustered. It occurred to her that there was some skein of connections between Heinrich Obermann and Ahmed Nedin, between a promised “bounty” and the sudden appearance of the sword in the excavations. But she did not want to follow these connections. “He was defeated by Mehmet the Second, was he not?” she asked her husband.

  “He was known as the Marble Emperor.” Harding answered for him. “But the marble proved to be unsound.”

  “It proved to be the fall of Byzantium,” Obermann said.

  “The golden empire came to dust.” Harding pronounced the phrase with relish. “The Turks conquered the glorious land. But I must tell you about the sword, Herr Obermann.”

  “If you wish.”

  “A Turkish dealer in antiquities, one known as Issed Saka—”

  “I am acquainted with him,” Obermann said. “A notorious lecher. A sodomite.”

  “He brought a sword to Ahmed Nedin, claiming it to be that of Constantine the Twelfth.”

  “Do not trust him.”

  “The museum experts confirmed that it was of Byzantine design and provenance.”

  “Fake. Easily achieved.”

  “That was precisely my reaction, dear sir. You would be surprised how many counterfeit objects arrive at the museum.”

  “A trained eye will discover them.”

  “Is that so?” Harding looked keenly at Obermann. “I must take your word for that.”

  Obermann seemed offended. “You may take my word for everything.”

  Sophia observed that her husband was growing more uneasy. “Here is Mr. Thornton,” she said. “You must meet him, Reverend Mr. Harding.”

  Harding ignored her, and continued to address Obermann. “Several other swords, all claimed as belonging to Constantine the Twelfth, were presented to Ahmed Nedin. He has proposed a small exhibition.”

  “If he wishes, I will go to Constantinople and pick out the genuine.”

  “But you have seen him recently, have you not? When I dined with him, he extolled your virtues to me.”

  Obermann hesitated. “I have made a brief visit. I had no time to discuss anything of significance with him. Ah, here is a fellow Englishman for you. May I present Alexander Thornton of the British Museum?”

  “Delighted. Shall we greet each other in the Turkish fashion?”

  Thornton did not know what he meant. He seemed about to kiss Harding on the cheek, in response, but Harding stepped back in alarm.

  “That will never do,” Obermann said. “The Englishmen do not kiss each other. Not in public, at least.” He put his arm around Sophia, and laughed very loudly.

  THAT EVENING, at dinner, Decimus Harding turned once more to the fall of Byzantium. “All golden things must come to dust,” he said. “There is no beauty or grandeur on the earth that is not perishable.”

  “On the contrary,” Lineau replied. “Gold survives time.”

  “Oh, sir, you mean mere cups and vases.”

  “You mistake me. I mean ideals. Aspirations. The idea of Troy has survived for thousands of years. The glory of the Byzantine Empire is still a light to the world.”

  “It is nonsense,” Obermann said, “to compare Troy and Byzantium. They are not related.”

  “They may be closer than you think, Herr Obermann.” Decimus Harding turned to him with a smile. “After the fall of Constantinople Sultan Mehmet the Second, the conqueror of the city, despatched a letter to the Pope. He was grieved, he said, that His Holiness was steadfast in his enmity towards him when, after all, they had common ancestors. Mehmet explained that the Teucri, the Trojans from whom the Italians were descended, belonged to the same race as the Teurci or Turks.” Decimus Harding was still smiling as he spoke. “Only an accident of consonantal evolution had obscured the truth of their affinity.”

  “It is laughable,” Obermann said. “Absurd.”

  Kadri Bey had been listening intently to this exchange. “Not nonsense, Herr Obermann. There are many Turks who believe that the capture of Constantinople was a just vengeance for the fall of Troy. The Greeks were at last made to pay for their perfidy. You asked me once why the Turkish villagers venerate the tombs of the Homeric heroes. Now I answer you. They are worshipping their ancestors.”

  “This is folly.” Obermann put down his glass. “Lunacy. I cannot believe what I am hearing from you.” Sophia now realised why Kadri Bey watched over the site of the excavations with such care. He believed that he was protecting his country’s patrimony. “Have I not made it clear to the world? The Turks are Asiatics from the East. The Trojans were Europeans from the north.”

  “And where is your proof, sir?” Alexander Thornton entered the argument.

  “Proof? The proof is here.” He touched his head. “And here.” He pointed to his heart. “I need no other guide.”

  “That is not evidence,” Decimus Harding said, “that would stand up in a court of law.”

  “No jury would convict me of being an idealist. Not even in England.” He had recovered his good humour. “Besides, I have a witness. Homer stands beside me. Do you really believe that Hector and the Trojan warriors are the ancestors of the Turks? I mean no disrespect to your race, Kadri Bey, but they are not the stuff of h
eroes.”

  “That is not so, Herr Obermann.” Harding had intervened once again. “There is Mehmet himself, the conqueror of the Marble Emperor. There is Sultan Murad. There is Suleiman the Magnificent. All of them worthy to be celebrated by Homer himself.”

  “Well, I will not argue with a priest.”

  “The priest speaks the truth, as always.” Kadri Bey did not wish to let the matter rest. “The Turks are no less valiant and determined. And they claim Troy as their own.”

  “We shall see,” Obermann said. “The dead do not lie. They will tell us their stories. Our friend here, Mr. Thornton, will help them.”

  “You may not like what they tell us,” Thornton said.

  “In that case, I will ask them to be quiet.”

  NINETEEN

  That same evening Heinrich Obermann organised an expedition for the amusement of his guests. “You will see, Mr. Thornton,” Obermann told him, “the place where the seed of all Troy’s woes was sown. Mount Ida. Surely you can spend a day or two from your scholarship to stand where Athene, Aphrodite and Hera contested for the golden apple?”

  “I do not have your confidence in mythology, sir. But if you put it like that—”

  “I do put it like that. There is always truth in these ancient stories. Athene appeared to Paris in shining armour and promised him supreme wisdom if he awarded the prize to her. Hera appeared in all the majesty of her royal state, and promised him wealth and power. Aphrodite approached him with the enchanted girdle around her waist, and promised him a bride as beautiful as herself. How else could he choose? Do you not crave a beautiful bride, Mr. Thornton? As beautiful as Sophia, perhaps?”

  “I do not know which goddess I would choose, sir. The spur of supreme wisdom would be very strong.”

  “You surprise me. A young man must dream of love. Is that not so, Sophia?”

  “I have no idea, Heinrich.” She regretted her tone, and spoke more gently. “In matters of the heart, there can be no rules.”

  “There speaks a woman!” Obermann replied. “And the story proves that love is strongest. That it cannot be resisted. There is no power on earth to match it.” He and Sophia glanced at one another.

  “But it is the source of jealousy and division. It is the beginning of warfare.” Decimus Harding had noticed the look between them. “The ancients knew that love and strife are indistinguishable.”

  “What do priests know of love, dear sir?”

  “I see its consequences here.” He looked around at ruined Troy. “Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, and so with divine aid he abducted Helen and brought her back to Troy. Of course you know the story, Frau Obermann.” Harding was addressing himself to her. “Her husband, Menelaus of Sparta, enlisted Agamemnon and the other Greek lords to mount an expedition against Troy. The rest is Homer.”

  “You can never underestimate the force of an aggrieved husband,” Obermann said. “Menelaus was implacable. His anger was unimaginable. He was willing to let many die. To allow the city to be sacked and destroyed.”

  “We live in more enlightened times,” Harding said. “We have tamed our private passions.”

  “Oh have we?” Obermann turned to him. “I do not believe so.”

  “Would you forgive me, gentlemen?” Sophia rose from the table. “I am tired after the day’s exertions.”

  They all rose at the same time, and Obermann was about to follow her up the slope towards their hut. “Do not forget,” he said to them. “We begin at first light. We will tread in the footsteps of Paris to Mount Ida!”

  SO JUST AFTER DAWN, on the next day, the four travellers—Obermann and Sophia, Harding and Thornton—rode slowly south-eastwards towards the mountains. They followed the track of the river Scamander as it crossed the plain of Troy. “Do you see there, gentlemen? Swans!” Obermann pointed to them excitedly. “No doubt you considered them to be English birds. The Swan of Avon. The sweet Thames.”

  “They are English in their bearing, don’t you think?” Harding had turned to Sophia who was riding beside him. “Very stately.”

  She did not know if he was humouring her. “Yet they have a fierce temper,” she replied. “They hiss at anyone who comes too close.”

  “That is only natural.”

  “They are beautiful in the water,” Obermann observed, “but they are ugly and ungainly on land.”

  They rode easily across the plain, with a pack-horse carrying their supplies, past tilled fields and huts made out of mud and rushes. The sun was strong but the heat was tempered by the north-east wind that stirred the dust along the track they were following. They came to the village of Bournabashi, where they were greeted by small children who clustered around them with open hands. “Let me show you something,” Obermann said. They rode off the track for a few hundred yards until they came to a hill with a stone outcrop. He pointed to it with his cane. “Johann Conze and Monsieur Chevalier both swore that this little mound was the site of Troy! Can you imagine anything more absurd and insignificant? Look. It is a place fit for beasts.” Some sheep, goats and horned cattle were grazing at the foot of the hill. “My enemies are silent now, of course. They do not dare to challenge me.”

  “He is like the swan who hisses,” Harding murmured to Thornton.

  They continued their journey to Mount Ida after a brief respite, while the horses were refreshed by a spring that emerged just to the west of the outcrop of stone. The air seemed to grow clearer as they approached the mountain range, and the sound of the horses’ hooves on the tracks became sharper and crisper. There were flat rocks of black basalt in the landscape around them, and when Sophia pointed them out, Thornton told her that they were the remains of lava that had once flowed down on to the plain.

  “Does that mean,” she asked him, “that Mount Ida was once a volcano?”

  “Very likely. The remains of one.”

  “So its life began before the gods visited it?”

  “You do not need to believe these stories, Sophia.”

  “I do not know what to believe.”

  “Mythological time does not mix with geological time. They are two different worlds.”

  “And yet they are both part of the same world. Am I the only one who is confused?”

  Thornton smiled at her. “Confusion is natural in life. We are never sure what we believe. Or what we feel.”

  “What we feel? Oh, I am certain of that.”

  “Truly?” He looked at her for a moment. “But what you feel today you may not necessarily feel tomorrow.”

  “Now you are confusing me again. I cannot speak to you.”

  “Don’t say that. One of the few delights here is conversation with you.”

  “With me?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “But I am not clever. I am not witty.”

  “But you are good. You are honest. You give me hope.”

  “Hope for what?”

  “Hope that—I don’t know. Hope that everything is worthwhile. Hope for the future.”

  Sophia was left to ponder what that “future” might be, since Obermann now called to Thornton and pointed to the wall of a barn that they were passing. “Do you see the pieces of pottery peeping out of the clay?” he asked him. “Red and brown. They are mostly Hellenic. We must be close to the site of an ancient town, Mr. Thornton. The pottery will lie just below the surface!”

  “Do you know which town it is, sir?”

  “I believe it to be Scamandria. There will be a village somewhere ahead of us. There is always a settlement.”

  Soon enough they came upon a collection of huts, barns and dwellings. Obermann dismounted and strode into a small central store. He came out after several minutes. “This little place is called Ine,” he said. “I do not know if it is a corruption of the name of the river god, Inachus, father of Io. The good woman could not tell me. But she sold me this for a trifle.”

  He showed them a white marble head of a woman, a beautifully polished and moulded oval that seemed to S
ophia like some precious stone. She could not tell whether the face was human or divine. “Her eyes are closed,” she said. “She must be sleeping.”

  “Sleeping or thinking,” Obermann replied. “She is a good omen for our journey. She may be Athene or Aphrodite. Even with her eyes closed she will lead us forward.”

  They journeyed on to the town of Beiramich, which stood upon a plateau on the bank of the Scamander. Here they stopped and ate a small meal of bread and olives, as they listened to the rush of the river below them.

  “Have you noticed,” Sophia asked, “that the birds sing by the river but they never sing by the swamps and marshes?”

  “They are imitating the sound of the water,” Thornton said. “They are responding to it. There is no sound on the marshes, except that of the wind.”

  “Then why do the birds sing in Oxford?” Harding asked him.

  “They hear the voices of the people talking. The birds are talking back to them.”

  “Oh, surely not? They are conversing with each other, even if we cannot understand them.”

  “Nobody understands anything in Oxford,” Obermann said. “We must continue. It would be unwise to arrive at Ida after night has fallen.”

  So they rode on to the village of Evjilar. “Evjilar,” Obermann said, “means village of the hunters. There are many wild beasts that come down from the mountains. Bears. Wild boars.”

  “Will it be safe?” Harding asked.

  “Where we are going? I expect so. But you are a man of God. You will pray for us.” Obermann seemed pleased by Harding’s evident nervousness. “Did not Jesus tame the wild animals in the desert?”

  “I do not recall that particular passage.”

  “You must study the Bible more closely, Reverend Harding. Besides, I have packed a pistol.”

  “Do you feel the air growing colder?” Sophia said.

  “We are now more than eight hundred feet above sea-level,” Obermann replied. “We are close to Ida.”