‘He refuses to listen,’ her husband said. ‘He cannot see past her.’
His wife spat on the ground. There was only ever one ‘her’ in Troy, and that had been true for ten long years. Ten years that had taken her four most precious jewels.
‘You have served him well,’ she said. ‘Years have passed since you first advised him to return the whore to her husband.’
‘Years,’ Antenor echoed. They had conducted this conversation so many times in the past that it had come to seem to him like a song, in which he no longer had to remember his words, any more than a man had to remember his way home. It was simply a part of him.
‘Priam has been too prideful,’ his wife continued. ‘The goddess has told me, more than once.’
Her husband nodded. Theano had been a priestess of Athene when he first saw her, with her parents in the temple precincts. How many years ago was that? He couldn’t recall. She had been a lithe girl, he remembered, bright-eyed with a sharp intelligence which had, over the years, attenuated to impatience.
‘I made the offering of the robe,’ she reminded him. The women of Troy had embroidered an ornate ceremonial robe for the statue of the goddess, and his wife had dedicated it to her the previous summer. It had done nothing to win Athene’s support away from the Greeks and in favour of the Trojans. They might as well, Theano had whispered as the body of their youngest son was carried back from the battlefield, have offered her a pile of rags, for all the good it had done. Her husband had begged her not to blaspheme, but with only one child – their daughter Crino – left, his wife was in no mood to be told. The goddess was quite clear, Theano said: return Helen to Menelaus. Purge the pollutant from our city. Send ten gold kraters – Priam’s largest and most highly decorated – and ten finely worked red and gold tapestries along with her. Send Paris to abase himself before the man whose wife he had stolen, and beg his forgiveness. If it was unforthcoming, his wife had added, Priam’s over-indulged son would have to pay for his folly with his life. It was not an unreasonable price for taking a man’s wife from her home, overturning generations of tradition, which rightly said that a guest must respect his host.
‘Priam will not force his son to lose face,’ Antenor said.
‘Lose face!’ she snapped. ‘Reputations can only be lost if they have not already been trampled in the mud. Only a deluded man could think Paris has any reputation beyond that of a philanderer and the woman who shares his bed will always be known as a whore.’
‘The king cannot see it.’
‘He will have no choice.’ Theano paused. ‘But you do have a choice.’ The conversation had never turned this way before. She watched her husband’s eyes flicker to hers, barely able to see her expression. ‘You have heard the message, Antenor. You know they will act tonight.’
‘They may not,’ he said, his voice quavering. ‘The message only said that they are lying in wait somewhere nearby.’
‘You know where,’ she snorted. ‘They are inside the horse. They must be.’
‘But how many men would fit inside a few planks of wood, Theano, even if your suspicions are correct? Five? Ten? It is not enough to overthrow a city like Troy. It is nothing like enough. We are proud citizens who have withstood a ten-year war. We cannot be overthrown like children from a wooden fort.’
‘Quietly,’ she chided him. ‘Crino is asleep.’
He shrugged his shoulders, but spoke more softly. ‘You know I’m right.’
‘We only know half of the story,’ she replied. ‘The Greeks have made a big show of sailing away. What if they have not? What if they are waiting for a few warriors to be smuggled into the city inside their votive horse? What if those men open the city gates to a whole army?’
His face contorted in pain. ‘Troy would be destroyed,’ he said. ‘They would loot it and burn it.’
‘And kill the men and enslave the women.’ She continued his thought. ‘All the women. Your wife, Antenor. Your daughter.’
‘We must warn them,’ he said, looking around himself, agitated. ‘I must hurry to Priam now, and warn him before it is too late.’
‘It is already too late,’ she said. ‘The horse is inside the city now. There is only one thing you can do to save us.’
‘What is that? What have you planned?’ he asked.
‘Go down to the city gates now,’ she said. ‘Open them yourself.’
‘You’re mad,’ he said.
‘The guards will have left their posts long ago. They believe the Greeks have sailed away. They think there is but one Greek left on Trojan soil, and that is the snake, Sinon.’
Her husband rubbed his right hand against his left arm, as though it pained him. ‘He will unlock the gates if you do not,’ she said. ‘And they will reward him for his bravery, instead of you.’
‘You want me to betray our city? Our home?’ he asked.
‘I want our daughter to live,’ she said. ‘Go now, before it is too late. And quickly, husband. It is our only chance.’
The old man returned carrying an animal skin and a stark message. He must nail the panther’s hide to the door of their home, and the Greeks would pass it by.
5
Calliope
Sing, Muse, the poet says, and this time he sounds quite put out. It’s all I can do not to laugh as he shakes his head in disappointment. How does his poem keep going wrong? First he had Creusa, and she filled him with confidence. All the epic themes covered: war, love, sea-snakes. He was so happy taking her through the city, searching for Aeneas. Did you see how much he enjoyed the descriptions of the fire? I thought he might choke on his epithets. But then she lost her way when he was barely past the proem.
I took him straight to the shore so he could see what happened to the women who did escape the fires and he didn’t even notice that the survivors were hardly any better off than poor Creusa. I’m not sure I could have made it more obvious, but he hasn’t understood at all. I’m not offering him the story of one woman during the Trojan War, I’m offering him the story of all the women in the war. Well, most of them (I haven’t decided about Helen yet. She gets on my nerves).
I’m giving him the chance to see the war from both ends: how it was caused, and how its consequences played out. Epic in scale and subject matter. And here he is, whining about Theano because her part in the story is completed and he’s only just worked out how to describe her. Idiot poet. It’s not her story, or Creusa’s story. It’s their story. At least it will be, if he stops complaining and starts composing.
6
The Trojan Women
The black cormorants wheeled above them, diving one by one to the surface of the dark sea, their feathered throats throbbing with fish when they rose again. Hecabe shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Her whole body ached from sitting on the rocks, pain spreading out from the base of her spine to her every bone. She was hungry, but she said nothing to her women. They must all be hungry too. Foolish, to think that hunger and thirst would disappear, just because their lives lay in ruins. Even slaves needed to eat.