11
After a stormy night, I put bread and cheese and a jug of weak wine on the table in case Alcimus came home for breakfast and then went down to the beach. The wreckage left by yesterday evening’s high tide lay all around me. I’d grown used to finding large numbers of dead creatures on the beach, but I’d never seen anything like the carnage I saw that day. The sand was littered with pale greenish-grey crabs, jellyfish, probably a hundred starfish blanched in death—the latter a particular grief to me because I loved them so much. I hunted about for anything still living, but found nothing. Picking my way across the devastation, I felt I was on a battlefield in the aftermath of one of Achilles’s red rages, but it was the sea that had done this, the sea that had cast these small, delicate creatures so far up onto the land, where they had no chance of survival.
I’d been walking up and down the water’s edge for ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps, when I glanced up and saw a tall, thin man standing twenty or so yards ahead of me, gazing out to sea. Calchas. Observing him like this, the two of us alone on the desolate shore, I felt I was seeing him more clearly than I’d ever done before. He was immensely tall—six feet five, perhaps, something like that—though the word you’d choose to describe him was not so much “tall” as “long.” Long feet, long hands, long fingers—even his neck was long, the larynx so prominent that in certain lights it cast its own distinct shadow. Like all Trojan priests, he painted his face white and outlined his eyes in black, in effect putting on a mask, behind which his thoughts were impenetrable. If you add to this a slight speech impediment that turned any word beginning with “s” into a hiss, you can see why the Greeks found him both intimidating and ridiculous. He struck them as effeminate and that made them uneasy, so they laughed at him, but feared him too.
I was only a few feet away from him now, and still he hadn’t moved. Curiosity made me stop and look out over the bay, trying to work out what it was that he found so fascinating. It didn’t take me long. A huge black bird—though possibly it merely appeared black against the bronze glare of the sky—was soaring high above the waves. All along the beach, gulls were gathering and bursting apart like showers of spray, but this bird flew with precision and purpose, like an owl quartering a meadow. Suddenly it dived, at the last moment stretching out its gnarled yellow feet. A splash, a glint of silver, and then it was struggling to rise, powerful wings flailing to escape the water’s drag. For a second, I thought it might be sucked under, but no—slowly, slowly—it fought its way into the air. It was so nearly there—when a gust of wind caught it. Blown off course, it crashed onto the wet sand only a few yards away from me. With a stab of pity, I saw it trying to get its breath back. Nothing else inspired pity. The shoulders were pure hunched muscle, the beak designed to tear still-living flesh from bone, and the eyes—pale gold, gleaming, intent—were the eyes of Agamemnon.
Even as I watched, it was gathering itself together; the mighty wings began to beat, and at last, still grasping the flapping fish between its talons, it lifted off. Less than a minute later, it had become merely a black dot in the red furnace of the sky.
Excited, I turned to Calchas. “Wasn’t that amazing?”
I didn’t just mean the sea eagle itself—though it was amazing—I meant the mistake that had seen it blown off course. There’d been something shocking about that—like watching Achilles throw a spear and miss.
Calchas stared at me. I expected him to share my excitement, but I saw only calculation in the black-ringed eyes. He was a bird seer—so naturally a large part of his time would be spent observing them, though I suspected an even larger part would be spent observing men. Who was currently most powerful? Who was climbing the rickety ladder? Who had to be placated? Who could safely be ignored? Above all, what did this woman, asking this particular question, at this particular time, want to hear? I could see him trying to work out who I was, whether I was worth bothering with. Remember, until recently I’d been a slave, as far beneath his notice as a slug. Eventually, after a lengthy pause, he nodded. “Yes, most unusual.” Stiff, stilted, pompous—altogether typical of the man. I was misjudging him—badly. But that’s what I thought at the time.
“What do you think it means?” A slightly mischievous question.
“Ah. The interpretation of omens requires many hours of thought and prayer.”
Once again, stiff—how could he possibly be unmoved by the experience we’d just shared? But I bowed to acknowledge his superior wisdom—and watched him walk away towards Agamemnon’s compound, noticing how his steps slowed as he approached the gate. The gossip was he’d fallen out of favour, that Agamemnon no longer bothered to consult him, and, seeing him dawdle like that, almost literally dragging his feet, I had no difficulty believing it.
Ever since the fall of Troy, I’d been living from hour to hour, without energy and without hope. Now, suddenly, I felt alive again—more than excited—elated. Somehow the encounter with the eagle changed everything. I’d come face to face with one of the lords of life, and the experience lifted my mood beyond recognition—even though the impression I took away with me was one of pure savagery. As a woman living in this camp, I was navigating a complex and dangerous world, but the eagle—everything he saw was his by right. Because he was perfection: every feather, every curve of that hooked beak, every glint of his sunlit eyes—they were all exactly as they ought to be. He was older than the gods. And for a moment, just for one moment, I’d been up there with him, gazing on the wrinkled sea and the earth-bound creatures toiling far below. When he looked down, he saw…dinner. Nothing else—nothing complex, nothing difficult, nothing that could possibly be a threat—just dinner. There was a grandeur in the simplicity of it—and I hated the idea of Calchas rubbing his smeary fingers all over it, trying to extract a “meaning.” The eagle was its own meaning.
That night, I lay awake, thinking about Helen and Hecuba, about my sister, who I had to hope was dead, and my lost brothers. The same thoughts that preoccupied me every night. But when eventually I slept, I dreamt about the eagle—as I did on many of the nights that followed. When, just before dawn, I woke, I lay in darkness, listening to the wind, and I thought of Calchas, who was also, I felt sure, lying awake staring into this same darkness, remembering the eagle and trying desperately to work out what this “sign,” this portent, this “message from the gods,” might mean.
12
The blaze of energy I felt after seeing the eagle stayed with me. I started looking for ways to make things better for the captive girls. So far, they hadn’t been able to use the yard behind their hut because a section of the fence had been blown flat. Now, with a great deal of help from Alcimus, I managed to get the fence repaired and the ground cleared. It wasn’t easy because the Greeks resented spending time and effort on huts they were always about to leave, but once they started on the job, it took them less than an hour. It gave the girls privacy and some shelter from the wind. That afternoon I baked cakes and two huge trays of sweetmeats and set them aside to cool. I was tired of the loneliness of my hut and looking forward to an evening with the other women.