But I could see she was enjoying herself: drinking wine, eating cheese, gossiping…
“Everybody was chasing him—men and women. Not that he ever ran very fast.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “There was one night, Priam and I were coming back from dinner, and Priam spotted somebody ahead he didn’t want to see—one of his counsellors—oh, I can’t remember his name—never mind, nice man but my god he could go on! So, we did a detour through the bedrooms, and you know how they open off each other? Well, the door of one of them was thrown open and there was Calchas on all fours between two lords…” She giggled. “Plugged at both ends.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, somebody had the presence of mind to slam the door. Priam laughed about it, but it was a bit much really. I mean, Calchas was supposed to be celibate. God, he was trouble…And yet you look at him now…Did you ever see such a stick?”
She was enjoying herself, regaling me with gossip from the Trojan court. “Holy Ilium” Troy used to be called, because of its profusion of temples—but it did have another side. I’d been dimly aware of that even as a young girl. So, Hecuba and I ate, drank and laughed—but I felt all the time there was something else, something she wasn’t getting to. We lapsed into silence for a moment, and then she said: “I want to see Cassandra.”
Perhaps because I’d lost my own mother at such an early age, I’ve never been able to bear the thought of mothers and daughters being separated. “All right,” I said, cautiously. “Though it won’t be easy. I doubt she’s allowed out of her hut.”
No reply. Hecuba was sitting with her head turned pointedly away, in her sulky, moulting-bird-of-prey mode. I was remembering Cassandra’s prophecy that her marriage to Agamemnon would lead directly to his death, to the fall of the royal House of Atreus and the destruction of the kingdom that had destroyed Troy.
“Do you believe her? I mean, about Agamemnon being killed?”
Hecuba shrugged. “She gets carried away. People always say it’s divine frenzy, but I could never see it. I think she just makes things up to suit herself.”
Difficult to believe your daughter’s a prophet: the little girl you potty-trained and sang to sleep at night.
“It’s all very precise, though, isn’t it? She says his wife’s going to throw a net over him while he’s in the bath and then hack him to pieces with an axe. Why would she do that?”
“Because he sacrificed their daughter to get a wind for Troy. They were all stuck there waiting, starting to fight among themselves—same as they are now—the whole thing was falling apart…So, he sacrificed her.” She’d been staring into space, but then suddenly she turned and looked straight at me. “I’d kill the bastard, wouldn’t you?”
“She says she’s going to die too.”
“I know what she says.” Her expression softened. “She was always frightened of nets when she was a little girl. We used to put nets over the children’s beds at night to stop insects getting at them, but she’d never let me put one over hers; she always used to scream and pull it down. I gave up in the end. Of course, she got bitten to bits. She was riving at herself all the following day. I just said, ‘Serves you right.’ I actually made her sit down and count the bites—forty-seven, forty-seven—but it didn’t make any difference, she still wasn’t having it.”
Such a mixture of emotions flitting across her face: regret, love, guilt, exasperation…Mothers and daughters have their battles, I knew that—though my own mother had died before I reached the awkward age and I had only happy memories of her. But the impression I was getting from Hecuba was of a really troubled relationship in which nothing had ever been put right.
“I need to see her.”
What could I say? “All right, I’ll do my best.”
The archery contest was well underway now; our conversation was being punctuated by roars and groans from the men outside.
When I left, I was confronted by a solid wall of backs. There was a tense silence as one of the contestants took aim, then a thud as the arrow hit the target, followed by a buzz from the spectators. Peering between the rows of backs, I saw the targets standing in a line and the painted faces of Trojan fighters torn to shreds. So much hatred; you felt it must’ve soaked into the ground beneath our feet.
I turned away and walked on.
15
On my way across the camp, I promised myself I wouldn’t burden Ritsa with my problems, but as I ducked under the flap and stood blinking in the green gloom, I couldn’t help but remember that the last time I’d been here I’d brought Amina with me—and that reawakened the niggling uneasiness that was never very far from my mind. And the tent was not a welcoming place. I still had the sense of being inside a diseased lung that was struggling to breathe, but as soon as I hugged Ritsa and sat down at the bench beside her I started to feel better.
“No maid today?”
“She’s busy,” I said. “And she’s not my maid.”
“Just asking.”
I reached for a pestle and mortar and began grinding some of the herbs she’d laid out in front of her. She made no comment and for a few minutes we worked in silence.
“Actually, I was wondering if I might see Cassandra?”
“I don’t see why not. Perhaps leave it a bit though. She was asleep when I left.”
I looked around the tent. “Bit busier?”
“Huh—silly young idiots tearing chunks out of each other. Fighting over the games—we had one lad in here the other night, his ear had been nearly torn off. ‘Oh, you think this is bad, do you?’ he says. You know, all cocky—‘You should’ve seen him.’ Machaon gave him a right bollocking.”
Poor Alcimus, I thought. So far Automedon had been proved right. Every result was disputed; every friendly contest ended in a fight.
“How is Cassandra?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, up and down. Nights are still bad.”
“No better, then?”
“She is a bit. You can have a conversation now, whereas before…”
“Hecuba wants to see her.”
“Well, of course she does, poor woman, but I’m afraid there’s not much chance of it. Cassandra’s not allowed out of the hut. You know what he’s like.”
“That’s what I thought. And Hecuba’s too weak to walk all the way here…”
“And mightn’t be welcome even if she did. I’ve heard Cassandra say some pretty awful things about her mother. There’s no love lost there.”
We’d been working for perhaps half an hour when there was a commotion at the entrance and two men came in half carrying, half dragging a third man between them. They dumped him unceremoniously on the ground and left. We got up and went to see who it was: Thersites. At first, I thought he’d been beaten up, but then I noticed his eyes were unfocused, or rather, focused on a point only a few inches away from his face; he kept making odd little snatching movements in the air as if trying to catch something only he could see. Drunk? His breath stank, but I didn’t detect wine particularly, or no more than usual.
“Best get him into bed,” Ritsa said. “Let him sleep it off.”
There were several cowhide beds already made up and vacant, so it was largely a matter of dragging him across to the nearest and persuading him to crawl onto it. He was covered from head to foot in what looked like goose shit—god knows where he’d been. “He’ll have to be washed,” Ritsa said. “Machaon’ll go mad if he sees that.” She looked exhausted; she even held on to my arm as she spoke.
“You go and sit down; I’ll do it.”
“Briseis, you can’t.”