by Ben Blake
*
She found him where she’d expected to, standing at the rampart of Ilos’ Tower, at the western end of the Pergamos. The Meltemi had died away, leaving Troy calm and still, even this high up. He had sent the guard away. Usually there was only one, able to look out from here over the Plain and Bay of Troy, across the Hellespont and even into Thrace beyond.
Which was what Priam was doing, of course. He was fifty now, his hair more white than the sandy colour it had once been, his shoulders more rounded. Lines in the folds of his fingers and around his blue eyes. There were times when the light fell just so, and Hecuba would catch sight of Hector from the tail of her eye and think he was Priam, just for a moment. Priam as he had been, when they married. The years had been kind enough, until now. Until recently Hecuba had believed they would continue to be.
“I heard the news,” she said.
He nodded, unsurprised by her voice, and went on staring west. The southern beach of the Bay was there, thick as ever with trading ships from across the Greensea. Hecuba could make out brown Phoenicians and black men from Egypt, sailors in kilts and others in trousers, in caps or hats or bare-headed, some in robes and some wearing shirts, or stripped to the waist. Visitors from the whole Greensea, come laden with trade goods but also come to wonder at Troy, its wealth and splendour.
From an eastern tower she would be able to see the caravans on the Trojan Road. Fewer of them than the ships, of course, but easier to see – or at least the dust trails they raised were. The men on the wagons might be Colchians or Zhykians, hard-eyed fighters from Sarmatia or even the pale, red-haired men who came from Rus, the land of great rivers north of the Euxine Sea. They might be Hittites or Assyrians just as easily, perhaps sent by their Great Kings to offer riches beyond measure for horses reared on the Trojan plains, tarpans trained by Trojan wranglers. This was not the centre of the world, not yet. But it was sometimes difficult to remember that.
“Well?” she asked.
He turned his head to look down at her. White hair and lines aside, his eyes were still the same, blue and bright and clear. He was still the same, older and more worn, but still the man she remembered.
“What is there to say?” he asked. “The Argives are mad. Only madmen would react as they have.”
“You don’t blame Paris?”
He shook his head. “Paris is what he’s always been. It might be that Hector’s right, and we indulged Paris too much as he grew. The youngest child is often loved too much, and spoiled.”
“It was me who told you that,” she said.
“I know,” Priam said. No smile ghosted about his lips, as it usually did when she teased him. “But there’s no point in blaming Paris. The plan was Antenor’s, and since he first suggested it two years ago nobody has found anything to criticise in it. Not me, not Ucalegon or Hector or Aeneas. Not even you, my dear. If there’s guilt here, we all share it.”
She caught the note in his voice and responded to it. “But you don’t believe there is.”
“No. The plan was a good one, even after Paris… altered it. Faced with the loss of Helen, as well as punitive taxes on the Road, the Argives should have bargained. Any reasonable men would have done, but not them. I don’t believe they know reason, not anymore. They truly are mad.”
“They always were,” she said. “Or else driven to their actions by capricious gods, which amounts to the same thing. We knew that. If the fault is ours to share, let us admit as much.”
He sighed and nodded, hands on the parapet.
“It will be war, then,” she prompted.
“So our agents tell us,” Priam said. He sighed for a second time. “I will send to our allies and vassals tomorrow morning. Tell them to strengthen their walls and build new ones where none exist. And tell them Troy will need the aid they have promised, these past years.”
He pointed past her, across the Plain with its clumps of grazing horses. “Do you see there?”
“What am I looking for?”
“Cradle Bay,” he told her. “That’s where they’ll land. The Bay of Troy is too much of a risk, because when the Meltemi blows it will pin their ships to the strand. That will break up their supplies, and put them at risk if our warriors can reach their prows while the wind keeps them from putting to sea.” He shrugged under her penetrating gaze. “When I was a boy I tried to imagine how best to attack Troy by water. This is what I worked out. Hector has reached the same conclusion now, though I’ve never spoken to him of the plan I made, all those years ago.”
She studied him a moment longer, then reached up to place a soft kiss on his cheek. Priam touched his fingers to the place and frowned at her, obviously not understanding.
“For you,” she said. “Because you have been a good shepherd to your people, all of your life. Whatever happens now.”
He did smile then, just a flicker of movement at the corners of his mouth, but it would do. It would more than do, on this grim day. They were going to need laughter in the days ahead, if the Argives really were coming. And if they didn’t baulk at their first sight of the mighty walls of Troy, rising out of the plain and seeming to hold up the sky. Hecuba didn’t think they would, though she wished it. But then, if the Argives could be wished away the world would have been rid of them long ago, thanks to the sheer number of victims around the Greensea who prayed fervently that they would be swept away and lost.
“I would give it all away,” he said, “whatever reputation I have, and such affection as I’m held in. I’d abandon it all, if it meant I could hand this city to Hector intact, and safe, when my time comes.”
“You may yet,” she said.
He smiled, but this time it was sad, and she said no more. They stood on Ilos’ Tower and watched the ships in the Bay below, some sliding north and others south, their sails limp in the still air.