By now, all the women had come up to the roof and were huddled together, young girls in particular clinging to their mothers. We could hear laughter as the Greeks crowded up the stairs. Arianna, my cousin on my mother’s side, grasped my arm, saying without words: Come. And then she climbed onto the parapet and, at the exact moment they burst onto the roof, threw herself down, her white robe fluttering round her as she fell—like a singed moth. It seemed to be a long time before she hit the ground, though it could only have been seconds. Her cry faded to a stricken silence, in which, slowly, stepping out in front of the other women, I turned to face the men. They stared at me, awkward now, uneasy, like puppies who aren’t sure what to do with the rabbit they’ve caught in their jaws.
Then a white-haired man walked forward and introduced himself as Nestor, King of Pylos. He bowed courteously and I thought that, probably for the last time in my life, somebody was looking at me and seeing Briseis, the queen.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
I just wanted to laugh. The boys who’d been pretending to defend the staircase had already been dragged away. Another boy, a year or two older, but backward for his age, clung to his mother’s skirt until one of the fighters bent down and prized his pudgy fingers loose. We heard him screaming “Mummy, Mummy!” all the way down the stairs. Then silence.
Keeping my face carefully expressionless, I looked at Nestor and thought: I will hate you till my last breath.
* * *
——————
After that, it’s a blur. A few things stand out, still cut like daggers. We were led away, through the narrow side streets of our city, herded along by men with torches. Our jumbled shadows leapt up the white walls ahead of us and fell away behind. Once, we passed a walled garden and the scent of mimosa drifted towards us on the warm night air. Later, when so many other memories have vanished, I still get flashes of that smell, tugging at my heartstrings, reminding me of everything I lost. Then it was gone—and we were holding on to each other again, slipping and slithering along alleys cobbled with our brothers.
And so on to the beach, the sea dark and heaving, breaking curd-white against the black bows of their ships. We were pushed on board, urged up ladders by men wielding the butt ends of their spears and then made to stand crowded together on the decks—the holds being full of more perishable cargo. We took a last look at the city. Most of the houses and temples were ablaze. Flames had engulfed one wing of the palace. I only hoped my mother-in-law had somehow summoned up the strength to kill herself before the fire reached her.
With a great rattling of anchor chains the ships put out to sea. Once we’d left the shelter of the harbour, a treacherous wind filled the sails and carried us rapidly away from home. We crowded the sides, hungry for a last glimpse of Lyrnessus. Even in the short time we’d been on board, the fires had spread. I thought of the corpses piled high in the marketplace and hoped the flames would get to them before the dogs, but even as the thought formed I saw my brothers’ dismembered limbs being dragged from street to street. For a time, the dogs would snap and snarl at the black birds circling overhead and the big, ungainly vultures waiting. At intervals, the birds would all rise up into the air and then settle slowly, drifting down like scraps of burnt cloth, charred remnants of the great tapestries that had lined the palace walls. Soon the dogs would have gorged till they were sick and then they’d slink out of the city, away from the advancing fires, and the birds would get their turn.
* * *
——————
A short voyage. We clung to each other for comfort on the tilting deck. Most of the women and nearly all the children were violently sick, as much from fear, I think, as from the motion of the waves. In no time at all, it seemed, the ship yawed and shuddered as she turned, against the tide, into the shelter of a huge bay.
Suddenly, men were shouting and throwing ropes—one rope snaked across the deck and hit my feet—or jumping down into the sea and wading, waist-deep, through foam-tipped waves onto the shore. Still we held on to each other, wet and shaking with cold now because a wave had broken over the bow as the ship veered round, all of us terrified of what was going to happen next. They drove the ship hard onto the shingle, and other men, scores of them, splashed into the sea to help haul her above the tideline. Then, one by one, we were lowered to the ground. I looked along the curve of the bay and saw hundreds of black, beaked, predatory ships, more than I’d ever seen in my life. More than I could ever have imagined. Once everybody was on dry land, we were driven up the beach and across a wide-open space towards a row of huts. I was walking beside a young girl, dark-haired and very pretty—or she would’ve been if her face hadn’t been blubbery with tears. I grabbed her bare arm and pinched it. Startled, she turned to look at me, and I said: “Don’t cry.” She gaped at me so I pinched her again, harder. “Don’t cry.”
We were lined up outside the huts and inspected. Two men, who never spoke except to each other, walked along the line of women, pulling down a lip here, a lower eyelid there, prodding bellies, squeezing breasts, thrusting their hands between our legs. I realized we were being assessed for distribution. A few of us were singled out and pushed into a particular hut while the others were led away. Ritsa was gone. I tried to hold on to her but we were pulled apart. Once inside the hut, we were given bread and water and a bucket and then they went out, bolting the door behind them.
There was no window, but after a while, as our eyes became accustomed to the dark, there was just enough moonlight slanting in through cracks in the walls to let us see each other’s faces. This was now a much smaller group of very young women and girls, all pretty, all healthy-looking, a few with babies at their breasts. I looked around for Ismene, but she wasn’t there. Hot, close, airless space, wailing babies and, as the night wore on, a stink of shit from the bucket we were obliged to use. I don’t think I slept at all.
In the morning, the same two men thrust piles of tunics through the door and told us roughly to get dressed. Our own clothes were dirty, wet and creased from the sea crossing. We did as we were told, numb fingers fumbling with fastenings that ought to have been easy. One girl, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, began to cry. What could we say to her? I rubbed her back and she pressed her hot, damp face into my side.
“It’ll be all right,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t.
I was the first out. Remember, I hadn’t been outside the house, unveiled and unchaperoned, since I was fourteen years old, so I kept my eyes cast down, looking at the ornate buckles on my sandals that glittered in the sunlight. Whoops of appreciation: Hey, will you look at the knockers on that? Mainly good-natured, though one or two shouted terrible things, what they would have liked to do to me and all the other Trojan whores.
Nestor was there. Nestor, the old one, seventy if he was a day. He came up and spoke to me—pompous, though not unkind. “Don’t think about your previous life,” he said. “That’s all over now—you’ll only make yourself miserable if you start brooding about it. Forget! This is your life now.”