But today, all this busy activity comes to a halt. Crowds race through the streets and push for a place on the city walls. Boys leave off their arm-wrestling, or their games of jackstones or tag, and scramble out between the legs of their elders to be in the front row of spectators; among greybeards, pickpockets, idlers and loungers of every sort, women with a child on their hip and another in hand that they drag along howling, sellers of perfume, sellers of pickles, sellers of fried grasshoppers and of almonds still soft in their velvety green shells, prosperous shopkeepers and their wives who have set a reluctant assistant to watch over their wares while they bustle, fat and breathless, to the nearest vantage point.
Just on three, a cart drawn by two black mules and driven by a man the whole town recognises as a simple carter, Somax, the son of Astrogon, lumbers slowly out of the palace gates and downhill towards the square.
On the crossbench beside the driver, very stiff-looking in a plain white robe, sits the king, Priam, severely upright and with no fillet on his brow, no staff in his hand, no amulet or armband.
On either side of the cart, and in rows behind, sauntering along in a casual way and, when the cart slows or comes to a halt, stumbling a little as they crowd in one against the next, come the king’s remaining sons: Helenus, Paris — the crowd names them as they pass — Agathon, Deiphobus and Antiphonus, Dius, Pammon, Hippothous, and the youngest of all the royal princes, the boy Polydorus.
The mules pull and sweat; the cart is heavy. Some heaped-up load covered by a cloth is in the tray. The driver is anxious. He makes more fuss than seems strictly necessary about negotiating the cartwheels over the big cobbles. Priam, like the statue of himself at the entrance to the temple, sits stiff and square, his gaze fixed rigidly ahead.
It is such an unaccustomed sight, so sober, so stripped of all finery and show, that the crowd, for all its high spirits, does not know how to react. No one thinks it appropriate to cheer. Is the city’s wealth being taken to safety somewhere deep in the country? Is the king deserting them?
They watch the cart stop before the high wooden gate, see the bar raised, hear the great locks snap.
From the walls the crowd, buzzing now with excited speculation, watches the procession wind downhill to the stone trough among riven pines where in the old days, before the war, the Trojan women used to go to steep their washing in the spring. Then on to the lookout with its lone, windswept fig.
Here the little group breaks up.
The cart lurches on and, with Jove’s eagle sitting high above, takes the high road that leads out across the plain. The royal princes, singly or in groups, turn back and make their way, bend after dog-legged bend, uphill.
Whatever it was is over. Or, mysteriously, has just begun.
III
Just on dusk, with the light begining to fade but the air still heated and thick, the wagon creaked down to where Scamander, in its leisurely winding across the plain, scoops two channels out of the bone-white gravel of its bed. One bubbles and is milky-green. The other, which runs deeper, is a smooth-flowing blue. Both were shallow enough at this time of the year to be forded. Glossy-leafed rosebay bushes grew in flowering clumps on the islands between, and in the air above, swifts, with an excited crying, wheeled in high wide circles feeding on midges or skimmed the surface of the stream. ‘Well, my lord,’ the driver announced, ‘we’ve come this far safe enough.’
Rather stiff in the joints, he eased himself down from the cart and, whispering a word or two in the ear of the little off-side mule, secured the reins to the trunk of a tamarisk; then stood waiting with his hand extended for Priam to get down.
But the king, his chin raised so that the loose skin at his throat trembled with the effort, continued to sit.
Dear me, the driver thought, he’ll get an awful pain in his back if he goes on sitting like that. He scratched his head, uncertain how he should address the king or what he might say to tempt him down. He cleared his throat, and the king, reminded of his presence, spoke.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘I shall just stay here in the wagon with the body of my son.’
The driver blinked.
Ah, he thought, so that’s it. The old king’s thoughts, leaping ahead, past all the many difficulties they were yet to pass, had already arrived at the end of their business. It was the body of Prince Hector, freshly washed and shrouded in white linen, that he saw glowing out of the bed of the cart. Well, that was foolish of course, but entirely understandable.
Very tactfully, his heart softened by fellow-feeling, since he too was a father, he allowed himself the deception of pretending he had misheard. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘If it’s the treasure you’re afraid for, my lord, that’ll be safe enough. Beauty here will keep an eye on it, won’t you, my love?’
The little mule pricked her ears at the sound of her name and turned her head.
The driver chuckled. ‘See, my lord, how she knows every word I speak to her? She’s as good as any watchdog, I promise. She won’t let them get away with even a copper coin, will you, my pet?’
The old king saw his error then. A flush came to his cheek. Looking very slight and frail, he moved to get down, and the driver, relieved of a difficulty he had thought he might not be able to resolve, reached up to take Priam’s hand. He had acted on impulse. Only when he saw how startled Priam was at this unaccustomed touch did it occur to him that he might have committed some affront to the king’s sacred person.
But Priam had already recovered. Far from taking offence, he seemed grateful — or so the man thought — for the ready consideration of his need. With great courtesy he thanked the driver, and with one or two twinges, but no lack of royal dignity, allowed himself to be handed down.
‘That’s it, my lord,’ the carter told him, ‘you’ll see. We’ll have a nice rest here, and maybe even a bite to eat.’ He thought he should sow that seed early, since he had had nothing himself since close on dawn. ‘We’ve got shade from the heat and plenty of cover. No one will spy us here.’
He led the king down through soft sand to the water’s edge.
‘It’s an easy enough crossing at this time of the year, though it can be wicked at others.’
Twisting the homespun of his robe in his fist and hoiking it manfully up to his knees, he took a step, sandals and all, into the stream.
The bottom was sandy, the shallows so still and clear you could see the fingerlings that, alert to this sudden large intrusion into their world, formed a silvery arrowhead of light under the surface and came darting in to investigate. All quiver and nerve, they nosed in and nudged and nibbled at him.