“A fire-kiss.” I must have looked concerned because she laughed again. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Her gaze slid to the door of the hut, but Pyrrhus had withdrawn into the shadows. So, she’d known he was there. She’d known all along.
A whiff of smoke from her braided hair, as she sat down to cheers and a cup of wine. Only Amina looked unimpressed; positively disapproving, in fact. Helle stared straight at her and lifted her cup in a mocking toast. I sensed that they hated each other, those two, and that was a pity, because both of them were strong characters, natural leaders. Together, they could have done so much, but neither of them seemed inclined to take on the role that should rightfully have been Andromache’s. Amina, because she was following the straight and narrow path of religious purity; Helle, because she was focused exclusively on her own survival. And the other girls were just lost. All of them—lost. So, it fell to me, I suppose. I knew they looked up to me, they trusted me—simply because I’d survived in this nightmarish place to which the loss of their homes and families had brought them.
Not long after that, Pyrrhus sent for Helle; almost immediately, in fact, while we were still sitting in the yard. He’d scarcely have had time to get back to the hall. “YES!” Helle shouted, raising both arms above her head.
I thought that was the last we’d see of her till morning, but when, finally, we tore ourselves away from the fire, we found her curled up on her pallet bed with the blanket pulled up to her chin.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing happened. He just wanted me to watch him wank.”
The girls looked at each other and I realized not one of them knew what the word meant.
It was odd, and this wasn’t the first time I’d been aware of the oddity. Pyrrhus was a young man, not fully grown, and yet he showed very little interest in these girls. Until he’d sent for Helle, no interest at all. And he seemed to regard sleeping with Andromache as more of a punishment than a pleasure. Alcimus hadn’t said anything about it. Perhaps he just wasn’t aware of it, though I did wonder whether it formed part of that wordless conversation he and Automedon carried on for so much of the time.
Half an hour later, safe and warm in my own bed, I looked back over the evening and thought it had been a great success. Obviously, it would have been better if Andromache had joined us, but even without her the girls had come together as a group in a way they’d never done before. I was pleased. I kept telling myself how pleased I was, because I was aware of a growing uneasiness and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Because Helle had been summoned by Pyrrhus? No, it wasn’t that. Better her than one of the other girls. Anyway, she couldn’t wait to get into the hall; she was nakedly ambitious. No, it was no use, I couldn’t pin down why I felt that something was wrong, but I wasn’t going to lie awake worrying about it.
Blowing out the candle, I pulled the covers up and stared into the darkness, my eyes smarting from the smoke of the fire. I could smell it on my skin and in my hair. Bath, tomorrow, first thing. All the time, involuntarily, my brain went on sifting through the events of the evening. What was it? Something didn’t fit. And then, on the edge of sleep, I realized: that moment, right at the end, when the girls had gathered round Helle’s bed, their faces full of curiosity and fear, I’d looked around the circle, noticing how bewildered and ignorant they all were. Now, I closed my eyes, trying to re-create that scene because I needed to be sure, and slowly, one by one, the faces swam into focus, even the two mute girls whose names I still didn’t know. All of them—except Amina. Amina hadn’t been there.
I told myself it didn’t matter, that she’d probably just stayed behind in the yard, gathering up the cups and dampening down the fire. That would have been like her; she was always tidying up the mess in the overcrowded hut, and becoming tetchy and frustrated when the other girls didn’t keep it that way. Still, I was a bit concerned. I even wondered if I should get up and check to see if she was all right, but they’d all be asleep by now. No, it could wait till morning. I tossed from side to side, while the baby turned somersaults as it always did if I was upset. At last I found a position that suited both of us, but even so it was a long time before I got to sleep.
13
Calchas is dreaming, as he often does now, about his childhood in Troy, long before he became a priest, back in the days when he was, nominally at least, his father’s apprentice in the blacksmith’s shop. A skinny, pasty-faced kid, all thumbs, slow to move in response to his father’s barked orders and not nearly fast enough to dodge his fists. Inclined to slope off into the house where his mother is baking in the kitchen—smells of warm bread and cinnamon, the rush of heat as she takes loaves from the oven, sticking her bottom lip out to blow strands of hair away from her flushed face. She pauses for a moment as he bursts in, presses his swollen face against her hot side, but she daren’t say too much; she’s even more frightened of his father than he is. Calchas stirs and briefly wakes, remembering his mother. A mouse-like little woman, she seems to him now, who had once been his entire world. Always praying, every feast day at the temple, a little in love with the priest, perhaps? A bruise here and there, though nothing her husband didn’t have a perfect right to inflict, she wasn’t complaining, only she did wish he wouldn’t be so hard on the boy. And then, one day, the obvious solution presented itself. Calchas remembers it as a day of talk behind closed doors, his father’s rumble going on and on, and then the priest’s voice, reedy but authoritative, rising above it—and suddenly his few possessions are being bundled together and he’s following the priest, a respectful three paces behind, along the narrow, winding alleys, the congested streets, which till now are all he’s ever known, to the sunlit squares and splendid temples near the citadel. Different smells here: flowers, incense, the ferrous smell of blood from the sacrifices. And meat, always meat, so much meat. He’s leaving behind the awful smells of the tannery, the glue factory and the knacker’s yard, though they linger on his skin till he’s had the ceremonial bath—and then they’re gone, along with the smell of baking bread and cinnamon.
Once a month, he’s allowed to go home, and at first he longs for that day, even marks the days on the ground with a piece of chalky stone, but then increasingly with every visit he ceases to belong in the neighbourhood and even in his own home—as if he were in a fast-moving ship and his mother was just a tiny figure waving from the shore.
After a night of confused dreams, he wakes with a dry mouth, his eyelids stuck together; he doesn’t often drink strong wine but last night he had—his head’s pounding. He’s spent the last days and nights waiting for a summons from Agamemnon that he knows must be coming soon; but when, at long last, there’s a knock on his door it’s not the imposing figure of the king’s herald he sees standing there, but Lord Nestor’s slave girclass="underline" his “prize of honour” as the Greeks say. He remembers this girl vaguely from the times he’d dined in Nestor’s hall, though it takes a few seconds to recall her name. Hecamede, that’s it. His first thought is that Nestor’s dead—there’ve been rumours about his health ever since his youngest son was killed—and Calchas feels his brain bulge with the effort of calculating what Nestor’s death will mean for the already fragile balance of power within the camp, but a moment later he realizes it’s all nonsense—news of a king’s death is proclaimed by heralds, not carried by slaves. He’s still struggling to wake up, to shake off the last vestiges of sleep. When, at last, the girl speaks, she says, in a remarkably sweet, modest way, “Hecuba would like to see you.”