I knelt beside her and tried to get an arm round her shoulders, made meaningless, soothing noises, desperate to calm her—as much for my own sake, I’m afraid, as hers. I couldn’t bear it. And then she threw back her head and howled, and the howling went on and on—it seemed to have no end. The watching women moved closer, gathering round her where she knelt on the filthy sand, joining their cries with hers—until they turned from women into wolves, the same terrible howl coming from a hundred throats. And I howled with them, horrified at the sounds I was making, but unable to stop. Hecamede howled, and Amina, all of us, for the loss of our homeland—for the loss of our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, for everybody we’d ever loved. For all the men carried away on that blood-dark tide.
Surely, if ever living voices could penetrate the world of the dead, it was then; but nobody answered us. After a while, Odysseus came out of his hall to see what the commotion was about and, a few minutes later, a couple of guards appeared and ordered the women roughly back to work.
10
Somewhere along the beach, a pack of dogs has begun to howl. Calchas stops and listens as the howling fades first into whimpers and then into silence.
Looking around him, he’s aware that something’s changed. What is it? The sky still burns the same awful red, the air still tastes of iron, the waves still crash with that deadly monotony on the shore…He feels his lungs struggle to keep pace with the endless rise and fall; his chest seems to be full of swirling water. Resting his hand on the warty side of a ship, he tries to breathe deeply. For a moment he feels dizzy, his vision blurs, but then slowly, slowly, the beach swims back into focus. A smoke of fine grains is blowing across the hard sand and, as he watches, several balls of dry grass trundle past.
All this he’s seen many times before, so why does it suddenly feel strange? He sucks his index finger and holds it up. Yes, that’s it, the wind’s changed. Not very much—it’s still blowing off the sea—but at a slightly different angle. Perhaps it’ll make walking easier; perhaps he’ll be bowled along, like one of those balls of grass. Leaving the shelter of the ship, he sets off confidently, no longer the gawky boy who’d once knelt at Priam’s feet, but Apollo’s high priest, the chief seer in the Greek army, a man who enjoys the confidence of kings. Though when he turns to look back, his footprints scrawling across the wet sand are as erratic as a crab’s. Nevertheless, he presses on, intent on reaching his hut before darkness falls. He decides that tonight he’ll allow himself a cup of strong wine, perhaps with a small cake to dip into it. A man can’t always be denying himself the good things of life; he’s been worn thin by sacrifice. He thinks with some resentment of Machaon, who’s never denied himself anything, and yet sees Agamemnon as often as he wants—every day, it’s said—while he, who’s given the king years of loyal service, years, spends his days waiting for a summons that never comes.
The light’s fading fast now, but it’s not the blue shadows of a normal evening that are lengthening across the ground, the creeping twilight that makes the flames of fires and lamps glow suddenly brighter, more inviting; no, these shadows are a sickly yellow, the bone-ivory of old skin. He remembers Hecuba’s wrinkled neck, as he’d seen it when she was first led into the camp, and touches his own neck nervously. Men experience their own ageing in the bodies of women, even men like himself who’ve chosen a celibate life; not that he’d ever actually chosen celibacy—or stuck to it either, come to that. He walks on; but now he’s back in Troy, a child again—white houses, black shadows, a little boy sitting on a doorstep, squinting up at the sun. Dimly, he’s aware of the sky darkening, of his own narrow feet flashing in and out of the shallows, but he’s lost in memories of the past…
And when he looks up again, Agamemnon’s there.
At first, he doubts the evidence of his eyes. Agamemnon never leaves his hall; he hasn’t been seen outside since the wind changed and pinned the Greek ships to the beach—he who was always giving feasts or attending feasts given by the other kings—but there he is, wrapped in a dark blue cloak, a gold circlet round his head to stop the lank, iron-grey hair blowing across his face. He hasn’t noticed Calchas; he’s gazing out to sea. Calchas looks around, but there’s nobody else in sight. This is the hour when men wrap themselves in warm cloaks and gather round the cooking fires. When the serious drinking starts.
So, they’re alone—with the wind making snakes of loose sand and sending them writhing across the beach. What to do? He daren’t approach Agamemnon, who’s obviously come out unattended because he wanted to be alone, but neither can he just walk past and ignore him. The slanting light discovers worm casts, little heaps of coiled sand, each with its own distinct shadow; he pretends to take a great interest in them, even kneeling down as if to examine them more closely. Next, he spends a few moments looking out to sea, where each crash and roar of waves pounding the cliffs emphasizes—as if emphasis were needed—the impossibility of a ship leaving the shelter of the bay. Is that why Agamemnon’s here, to confirm the hopelessness of the situation, like somebody jabbing a broken tooth to check that it still hurts?
Calchas feels sharp granules of sand sting his bare ankles. The wind’s colder now—and still he can’t move. But then he hears a new sound, somewhere between a groan and a roar, and it seems to be coming from the ground beneath his feet. Singing sand. A recognized phenomenon, familiar to everybody who lives along this coast. The words “recognized” and “familiar” are comforting, because they seek to tame the experience, to bring it out of the realms of the uncanny and establish that it’s merely part of normal life. Though it’s not really “singing” at all—it’s a far more menacing sound—and it seems to be coming from deep inside the earth. As if the dead had found a voice at last—or perhaps recovered the voices they once had.
Agamemnon’s staring all around him. At last, he kneels and puts both hands to the ground as if he needs touch to confirm what his ears are telling him. Everything about this situation—the failing light, the howling sand, the all-powerful, helpless king—combines to produce a rush of terror in him. Calchas would run away if there was anywhere to run to, but the roaring’s everywhere. All over the camp there are raised voices, so the men around the fires must be hearing it too, but it’ll be fainter there, and less frightening with other men for company. There, they’ll be able to crucify the mystery with jokes and laughter, but out here, exposed on the darkening beach, two men turn to stare at each other, neither of them able to disguise his fear.
And then, as suddenly as it began, the roaring stops. Agamemnon straightens up, looks in Calchas’s direction for a moment, and seems about to speak, but then, abruptly, turns and strides off towards his compound.
Calchas follows at a slower pace, mouth dry, heart thumping his ribs, but underneath it all he’s jubilant, because Agamemnon can’t ignore this. He’s a man who craves signs and portents, who sees the action of the gods in even the most mundane events, and assumes, of course, that any message from the gods will be aimed exclusively at him. Yes! He’s got to send for me now. Though, after a moment’s further reflection, Calchas returns to his previous anxious state. Yes, Agamemnon will send for him, he’ll be asked to explain why the gods are forbidding the Greeks to leave the site of their greatest victory—and he has absolutely no idea, no idea at all, what he’s going to say.