Another shout from the hall. More singing, louder now, accompanied by stamping feet. Hold him down, you Argive warriors! Hold him down, you Argive chiefs! Chiefs! Chiefs! Chiefs! Chiefs!
Hold him down? From what I’d seen of Pyrrhus, propping him up would have been more like it.
I knew Andromache would be in the room that opened off this one—the cupboard, I used to call it. I tapped on the door. “Andromache? It’s me—Briseis.”
Pushing the door open, I saw her face, pale, disembodied, floating on the darkness like the moon’s reflection on water.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Amina told me.” I realized, even as I spoke, that I’d answered the wrong question. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m very familiar with this room.”
On my first night in the camp, Patroclus had given me a cup of wine. I couldn’t understand it—such a powerful man, Achilles’s chief aide—waiting on a slave. That simple act of kindness has haunted me ever since. Turning to the table on the left of the door, I filled two of the largest cups I could find and gave one to her.
She looked anxious. “Do you think we should?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s Priam’s wine and I don’t suppose he’d begrudge us a cup.”
Uncertainly, she raised hers to her lips.
“Have you had anything to eat?”
She shook her head, so I went back into the other room, picked up a basket of cheese and bread and set it down beside her. I didn’t expect her to eat, but at least now she could if she wanted to. I squeezed onto the bed beside her and we sat in silence for a while, listening to the singing in the hall.
“You’ll be all right.” That sounded feeble, but anything said in this situation would have sounded feeble. “It’ll soon be over and then you’ll be back in your own bed.”
“You know he killed my baby?”
Sometimes there are no words. I put my arm round her shoulders—she was so thin, birdlike, I almost expected to feel her heart fluttering against her ribs. At first, she was unresponsive, every muscle tense, but then, suddenly, she curled into my side and rested her head in the crook of my neck. I put my lips against her hair and we sat like that for a long time. My free hand rested on the coverlet. The pattern of leaves and flowers was so familiar I could trace it from memory without needing to see it. I was thinking about my friend Iphis, who’d so often waited in this room with me. After my first night in Achilles’s bed, she’d had a hot bath waiting for me when I got back to the women’s hut; she’d understood how you needed to feel clean, to immerse yourself in that all-enveloping warmth. I decided then and there that there’d be a hot bath waiting for Andromache whenever he let her go.
The shouting in the hall had died away to a low rumble with ripples of laughter running through it. Oh, they were pleased with themselves, these Greeks, celebrating the destruction of Troy. With their bellies full of looted beef, drunk on looted wine, their voices drowning out the roar of the wind, it was easy to forget they were trapped on the beach with no hope of launching their black ships. Only now the evening was drawing to a close—and the wind would whistle round their huts all night. Suddenly, they were singing the final song. I knew every word of it; I’d heard it sung so many times as I’d sat waiting in this room. It’s a song about friendship; friends parting at the end of a good evening, a celebration of warmth and life, but tinged with melancholy too. As the last notes fade into silence, they tip the dregs of their wine onto the rushes as a final libation to the gods.
I squeezed Andromache’s shoulder. “I have to go.”
She nodded, bracing herself, knowing that the next time the door opened it would be Pyrrhus. And at that moment, all the protective numbness I’d built up over the last months vanished and I was back in this room, sitting where she was sitting, waiting for Achilles—experiencing all over again the terror I’d felt when the door opened and his huge shadow blotted out the light.
7
The hut was empty when I got back. I had no idea where Alcimus was or whether he’d be coming home. Probably not. I didn’t know where he slept when he stayed out all night and I had no right to ask. Of course, he had other women—all men do—but I didn’t know of anyone in particular.
It was too late to start carding wool, and yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead, I paced up and down, while the memories I’d become so good at suppressing bubbled away just beneath the surface and the baby boiled inside me. Spending time with Andromache and the girls was forcing me to relive my own early days in the camp. When I look back on that time, I think I must have been almost insane. Oh, outwardly normal, calm, smiling—always smiling—but moving my arms and legs about with no more feeling than a puppet. Whole days went by and towards evening I wouldn’t be able to recall a single thing that had happened. Except, no, that’s not quite true. I remembered—and still remember—the numerous small acts of practical kindness I received. I couldn’t repay Iphis, but I could pass her kindness on—Andromache would have her bath.
But that was for the morning. I still had to get through the night. Perhaps I could have a small cup of the sleeping draught Alcimus kept by his bed, though I was wary of some of its effects—he had nightmares, the kind that don’t stop when you open your eyes. I’d hear him sometimes moaning in his sleep. Still, I told myself, a few mouthfuls couldn’t hurt. I tossed it back in a single gulp, twisting my mouth against the bitter taste, then went to the little room at the end of the passage, realizing as I did so that it was the exact equivalent of the “cupboard” in Achilles’s private quarters—the room where women sat while they waited to be summoned. I wondered who’d waited there for Alcimus in the years before his involuntary marriage.
My bed was hard and even on the short walk back from Pyrrhus’s hall the cold had got into my bones. The sultry nights of summer were long gone; the year was turning towards the dark. I closed my eyes and kept them closed, though I was aware all the time of the empty cradle at the foot of my bed.
You know he killed my baby?
I did, though I’d only recently found out. At first, I’d assumed it was Odysseus who’d killed Andromache’s son, simply because I’d heard him argue with such passionate intensity that every Trojan male must die, including babies in the womb. All of them, he’d insisted, but particularly the bloodline of Priam. There must be nobody left alive with any claim to the Trojan throne, nobody who could act as a focus for resistance and revenge. I’d discovered the truth accidentally through overhearing a conversation between Alcimus and one of the other fighters. Pyrrhus had been chosen to kill the baby as a reward for the part he’d played in the downfall of Troy. His exploits ran from mouth to mouth and no doubt grew in the telling. I’d even heard a rumour that he’d killed Priam by bludgeoning him to death with the body of his baby grandson. That wasn’t true, or at least I hoped it wasn’t true, though he had lied about the death of Priam—I was sure of that. So many hideous things had been done inside the fallen city that it was difficult to rule anything out.