“Is she the one who danced?”
“No, that’s Helle.”
For the first time, I felt impatient, resentful even, that she took so little interest in the girls, refusing to accept what should have been her role; hers, not mine. And then I felt ashamed, because I didn’t know what it was like to have a child killed; I was afraid even to imagine it. And I certainly had no right to judge her.
“I’m going to take her out, see if I can get her to talk to me.”
“All right.” She sat up and wrapped her thin arms round her knees. “I’m glad he’s buried.”
“Yes, me too—as long as Pyrrhus doesn’t kill somebody for doing it. They’re going to question Helenus, but they won’t stop there…”
Amina was folding her blanket when I went back into the other room. The air was full of the smell of young, unwashed bodies and their slightly sour, early-morning breath. Somehow or other I was going to organize baths for all of them. There was so little I could do. Suddenly, I was furious, almost to screaming point, at this confinement to one tight little space that was being imposed on us by the violence of wind and sea—and by the far more lethal violence of our captors. But then, I reminded myself, there was no “us” now. No “we.” I wasn’t a slave anymore—and perhaps that’s why I suspected them of hiding things from me. I hoped they trusted me, but they must also have looked at my pregnancy, my fine clothes, my Greek husband—and wondered where my loyalties really lay. I could scarcely blame them, when I was so aware myself of all the possible conflicts. Trojan mother, Greek baby—how was that going to work out?
“Amina.” I heard my voice, sharper than I’d intended. “I’m going to get some fresh herbs. I want you to come with me.”
I held out two of the baskets. Amina could have refused, but perhaps she didn’t know that—or perhaps she was tempted by the thought of fresh air, a few hours away from the hut.
“Yes,” she said, simply. She turned to one of the other girls asking her if she could put her blanket and bed away. I’d already reached the door, glad to get away from the frowsty atmosphere. Even the wind snatching the door from my grasp and slamming it shut behind me was welcome. After a few minutes, when I was just about to go inside to fetch her, Amina joined me, muffled from head to toe in her usual black cloak.
“I didn’t know there was a herb garden in the camp.”
Her tone was chatty. I thought she was trying for normality, hoping against hope I hadn’t guessed.
“There is, just a small one, up on the other headland—but we’re not going there. We’re going to Troy.”
Her eyes widened. Perhaps she dreaded going back, and who could blame her? Though she needn’t have worried; I had no intention of entering the city. Priam’s orchards, the kitchen garden, the herb garden—all lay outside the walls. The orchards had been Odysseus’s and Diomedes’s favourite hunting ground for capturing prisoners, because people had to go there; they had to risk their lives to get basic supplies. Helenus had been captured in his father’s orchards—and that fate had befallen more than one of Priam’s sons.
We set off through the narrow gap in the trench. It had been dug to defend the camp in the time-before-time when it still seemed possible the Trojans would win the war—before Achilles, intent on avenging Diomedes’s death, had returned to the fighting. Now the trench lay abandoned, wheelbarrows and spades stacked up against the sides. I wondered if that was where the spade used to bury Priam had come from; I glanced sideways at Amina, but she was staring straight ahead. At Troy, of course. At the ruined towers.
I knew there was a path by the river, but we’d have to cut across the battlefield to get to it. We walked in silence, Amina lagging behind, which was mildly irritating but I managed not to say anything. The ground was so uneven, I had to plan where to put my feet. Deep ruts scarred the surface, old wounds inflicted by chariot wheels and the tramp of marching feet—like memories carved into the land. This plain had once been farming land: the soil heavy, black, too good to pasture cattle, made for growing grain. That’s how it was meant to be and how it had been for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years—until the black ships came.
The day was overcast, though by now we’d given up expecting rain. It was heavy going stumbling across the churned-up ground; I felt sweat prickling in my armpits; my back and thighs ached. At last, I was forced to stop. Amina, still following along behind, her gaze, like mine, fixed on the ground, cannoned into me. We stood getting our breaths back, looking around. I’d seen this battlefield from the ramparts of Troy when it was thick with struggling backs, men grappling each other to the death, while, high above them, the kings rode in their glittering chariots. Now it was empty, desolate.
Perhaps pausing for breath had been a mistake, because having once looked up I found I couldn’t go back to staring at my feet. So, as we walked on, I was alert to everything. There was something eerie about this silence; it was like the silence you hear in empty rooms when somebody you love has died—toxic. The trees had been cut down to build the Greek camp and without them the land looked naked, indecent, with not a shred of cover to hide its disfigurements. In some places, water had seeped up from the earth, from the clayey depths, filling dips and craters to the brim. Now and then, bubbles broke the surface from god knows what decomposition going on below. We had to splodge through several of these miniature lakes before we reached the path that ran beside the river. Here, at least, there was sound—water rippling over the stones—but this only served to heighten the silence of the battlefield.
Rounding a bend in the river, we came across a corpse, several weeks dead, bloated inside its battle shirt, the lower regions pitifully exposed. Neither the water nor the land had claimed him and so he lay there, his face mercifully turned away. I saw Amina put her veil to her mouth as if she were afraid of being sick, but when I reached out to touch her arm, she shook her head violently and moved away.
As we got closer to the city, there were sounds loud enough to fracture the silence: the strident cries of crows circling above the smouldering citadel. Crows are ferociously intelligent birds. I used to watch them gather as the men set off for another day of war. Drums, pipes, trumpets, the rhythmical pounding of swords on shields—to the fighters, this music meant honour, glory, courage, comradeship…To the crows, it only ever meant food. They didn’t care who won or lost; their day always ended well.
We stopped again, looking at the city’s smoking towers. I wondered if Amina was thinking of brothers or cousins lying dead inside the walls. I’d lost four brothers when my city, Lyrnessus, fell—and the thought of their unburied bodies tormented me for months after their deaths. And it still did—on the rare occasions I allowed myself to think about it at all. But they were dead—there was nothing I could do to help them—she was still alive.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s not far.”
“I know where it is.”
A path ran all the way round the city walls. As we began to walk along it, I had a sudden memory from my time in Troy, of how, in the shadow of the high walls, the flowers would close long before nighttime. There were banks of pale, starlike flowers around us now and some of them had already begun closing, their petals puckering like lips. I saw Amina glancing repeatedly over her shoulder, perhaps hoping some Trojan guerrilla band, men who’d miraculously survived the massacres, would appear and rescue her, but there was only the cawing of the crows that went on circling the black towers, as if fragments of charred wood had taken off and lifted into the air. At first, their cries were the only sound, but then I heard another, an insensate buzzing of flies from inside the walls, worse by far than the calling of the crows.