The child inside me kicked again and I rested my spread fingers on my belly. I didn’t know what pregnant women were supposed to feel; I had nobody to ask except Ritsa—and she always responded with the automatic cheeriness of an experienced midwife. So, what did I feel for this baby whose father had killed my husband and my brothers and burned my city down? I felt it wasn’t mine. At times, it seemed more like a parasitic infestation than a pregnancy, taking me over, using me for its own purposes—which were their purposes. Kill all the men and boys, impregnate the women—and the Trojans cease to exist. They weren’t just intent on killing individual men; they meant to erase an entire people.
I hadn’t chosen this pregnancy; I didn’t want it. And yet I knew it was my salvation. Without it, I’d have been given away—offered as a first prize in Achilles’s funeral games. Instead, I had marriage, security, even a certain deference. I’d noticed a marked change as soon as the pregnancy started to show. Only the other day, a man I scarcely knew had placed his hand on my stomach, and not in a sexual, predatory way, but as a mark of his loyalty to the bloodline of Achilles. I was the casket that contained the crown jewels—at least, that’s how the Myrmidons seemed to see me. As a person, I didn’t count at all. If they ever thought about my feelings—and I was fairly certain they didn’t—they’d probably assume I was glowing with pride at the thought of bearing Achilles’s son. To be pregnant by the greatest warrior of his time—perhaps of all time—what more could a woman want?
I listened to the whimpering of the wind. At night, the roar that bullied and threatened all day sometimes died away to an inconsolable sobbing—like an abandoned child begging to be let in. By now, I knew every flaw in the hut. The gap beneath the door that allowed sand to blow in, so the floors were always gritty no matter how often they were swept. You had to be careful to place the lamps well out of the draughts, because if they happened to be blown over, they’d continue to burn. Candles were safer, since they’d probably be extinguished by the fall. You had the constant sensation that the wind was blowing darkness in through every crack. I’d have said that by now I knew every trick the storm could play, but then, lying there with my eyes closed, beginning to drift off to sleep, I heard a new sound: a knocking I’d not noticed before. Dragging myself awake, I opened my eyes and saw that the cradle had begun to rock. No human hand had touched it and yet there it was, creaking away, moving—inching its way across the floor. My mind scrabbled for an explanation, and as soon as I’d managed to shake off the pall of sleep, it was obvious enough. There was a gap in the wall at floor level—you could feel the draught round your ankles as soon as you entered the room—and since the floor sloped from the outer wall to the door, it was actually easy for the cradle to move. There was nothing remotely supernatural about this, and yet still the skin at the nape of my neck crawled. I watched the cradle rock and felt a stifling sense of dread. It was a long time before I managed to get back to sleep.
First thing next morning, still a bit dopey from the sleeping draught, I walked along to the women’s hut, intending to wait for Andromache, only to be told—by Helle, who opened the door—that she’d already returned. “She was only there a couple of hours.”
That was a bit odd. Normally, if you were summoned you expected to be there all night—but that was Achilles. I had no experience of Pyrrhus. I went straight along the passage to Andromache’s room, which in size and shape exactly mirrored my own. She was curled up under a blanket, tear-sodden and silent, though when I sat at the end of the bed, she rolled over and began wiping her eyes on the side of her hand.
“Well, that’s done,” she said. “And I’m glad it’s over.”
I offered her a square of linen to blow her nose. She emerged from its folds sniffing, moist, pink-eyed, but a lot calmer than I’d been expecting. She jerked her head at the door. “They keep asking me what it was like…”
Natural enough; they must all have thought it would be their turn soon. I remembered how important it had been to me that Iphis never asked questions. “Look, why don’t you come back with me?” I said. “You can have a bath, there’s plenty of hot water…”
She looked helplessly around the room, as if just getting off the bed was too daunting a task to be contemplated, but then she swung her legs over the side and stood up. Her hair was bedraggled, her tunic stained. I went back to the hut ahead of her, ordered a hot bath and set food on the table: cold cuts of meat from last night’s dinner; warm bread; ripe apricots; white, crumbly cheese. I didn’t for a moment suppose she’d be able to eat, but she surprised me. I can’t say she ate heartily, but then I’m not sure she ever did. She did manage a cup of wine, though, and that brought some colour to her cheeks.
By the time she’d finished, the bath was ready and I took her outside to the back of the hut where she could bathe in privacy. Steam rising from the water, sweet-scented herbs floating on the surface, white towels warming on a clotheshorse by the cooking fire…She did brighten a little at the sight. When she took off her tunic, I saw she was wearing a ring on a silver chain round her neck and wondered how on earth she’d managed to hang on to it. Usually, when a woman is captured, her jewellery’s taken from her; many of the girls had arrived in the compound with torn earlobes where their earrings had been ripped out. I could see it was a man’s thumb ring; but I didn’t want to look too closely. More than anything else, she needed privacy. I knew how raw she’d be feeling—every inch of her body raw—as if she’d been skinned.
I turned away and began fussing with the towels. When I looked round again, she was lying stretched out in the bath with her eyes closed, shadows of passing clouds moving softly over her face. I let her take as long as she wanted, going back inside the hut and selecting one of my tunics for her to wear. It was fully twenty minutes before I heard her call my name. She stepped out of the bath into the embrace of warm towels. Then I helped her into the clean tunic and we sat on the step while I combed and braided her hair. There’s something soothing about combing hair—for both the people involved. I kept trying to remember her as she’d been when I was in Troy. I was only twelve, so I’d have thought of her as a grown woman, though, looking back, I realized she must have been very young—not quite fifteen when she married Hector. That was unusually young, particularly since by all accounts she’d been a much-loved only daughter, but her father had wanted to get her safely married because he suspected (rightly) that his city was next on Achilles’s list of targets.
I could imagine how difficult the early days of her marriage must have been. Preoccupied with fighting the war, Hector had postponed marriage till he was well into his thirties. By that age, he’d have had several concubines; some, at least, of the children playing round the dinner table would be his. But that’s only to be expected; a young wife who makes herself miserable over her husband’s concubines is a fool. No, the real problem was Helen. Hector was dazzled by her, though he was far too honourable a man to express in word or deed his infatuation with his brother’s wife. For her part, Helen flirted outrageously with him, scarcely bothering to disguise her feeling that she’d married the wrong brother—and she was totally dismissive of Andromache, “the child bride.” All women faded in Helen’s presence, but Andromache—skinny, flat-chested and painfully shy—faded more than most. Hector always treated his wife with great respect on the rare occasions when they were obliged to appear together in public; and if, on such occasions, his eyes frequently strayed towards Helen…Well, that was true of every other man in the room.