I’d been worried we might find the garden locked, but no, the gates stood wide open—it gave me a curious sense of being expected. No doubt the gardeners had gone to help drag the horse through the streets, and then perhaps been caught up in the celebrations, and never returned. Once we were through the gates, the high walls protected us and the wind was abruptly cut off. The tops of the orchard trees were tossing but at ground level once we were away from the open gate there was no more than a slight breeze. I felt we were being watched, not by human eyes but by the flowers that seemed startled by our presence. Masses of birds, the small, multicoloured, flickering kind who prefer seeds and ripe fruit to rotting carrion. They were enjoying a feast of their own with no gardeners to chase them away. Two whole rows of goldfinches lined up cheekily on the arms of a scarecrow—and seemed to know there was nobody left to fear.
We walked along the path between two huge plots of vegetables to the herb garden at the far end. Immediately, I started picking handfuls of coriander. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amina, who’d been staring at the burnt-out towers, kneel down and begin gathering herbs too—though I noticed she started at the other end of a row, too far away for conversation to be possible. Never mind, I could wait. I knew she was expecting to be interrogated, but I didn’t intend to oblige—not yet.
The humming of bees, the mingled scents of apple mint, thyme, rosemary, oregano, bay, the heat, like a hand pressing hard on the top of my head, sweat stinging my eyes…I lifted a hand to wipe it away and felt myself go dizzy—the garden was revolving around me. Carefully, I stood up and managed to get myself to a bench where I could sit in the shade. This wasn’t like me, but perhaps pregnancy made you more likely to faint? I closed my eyes and wished for water.
When I opened them again, Amina was standing over me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.”
I was feeling slightly better, but I can’t have looked it because she sat beside me. “Take deep breaths.”
I did as I was told, focusing my eyes on a clump of foxgloves until, gradually, the spinning stopped. I felt exhausted, empty. Looking around, I realized that everything here—every herb, flower and vegetable—had been planted by men who expected to see the next season, the next spring. Everywhere, there were signs of a normal day disrupted. A spade, its blade crusted with dry soil, lay at the end of a freshly dug row. On the bench, there was a square of red-and-white cloth wrapped round somebody’s half-eaten lunch: a hunk of bread and a slab of mouldy pale-yellow cheese with a bite taken out of it. Whoever it was, he must have been just starting his meal when the gates opened and the wooden horse was dragged inside—and he’d left, just like that, carelessly, without a second thought, expecting to return. He’d vanished into the shouting, celebrating crowds…
Nothing that I’d experienced that day, not on the battlefield, not seeing the dead fighter, not even hearing the buzzing of flies from inside the walls, had broken me; but this did: an unknown man’s teeth marks in a slab of smelly old cheese. I put my face in my hands and cried for the destruction of Troy, for the death of Priam and the ruin of his people.
I was only dimly aware of Amina as a blur of face and staring eyes, but then I felt her arms round me. She held me, rocking me, stroking my back, as tears and snot dripped out of me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I kept saying, until at last I was hiccupping and sniffing and wiping my nose on the back of my hand. After a while, I picked up the red-and-white cloth and used that instead. “Oh, god,” I said. “I don’t know what came over me—I don’t cry, I never cry.”
“There, there.”
She took off her veil and used it to dry my face—and then we just went on sitting in the shade. The ground around the bench was littered with mushy brown apples with a myriad dozy bees zigzagging drunkenly over the feast. Now that the storm of weeping was over, I felt flat again, desolate; but then, gradually, my mood began to lift. I gazed around at all the colours in the garden—the purples, blues, reds, greens, yellows, many of them so bright they even survived their immersion in the tainted light, for though we were sheltered from the wind the grey clouds had parted to reveal the usual orange glare. One day, I thought, I’m going to have a garden like this. I felt a stirring of hope, almost painful, like blood flowing back into a numbed limb. Amina was quiet beside me, looking up into the tree, at the moving leaves and branches. She’d made no attempt to console me except for that meaningless There, there—and I was grateful to her for that. Perhaps I should have spoken then, when we were momentarily close, but I was feeling too vulnerable. So, after a while, with no more than a glance at each other, we simply went back to gathering herbs.
At the centre of the garden was a built-up bed in the shape of a wheel, the spokes designed to contain the more prolific plants, those that would otherwise run wild and choke the rest. We worked our way round the circle, coming from opposite directions. The intimacy we’d achieved on the bench was ebbing fast, the tension between us growing as we got closer, until at last we met.
“Well,” I said. “Was it you?”
The lie she’d been about to tell died on her lips. “Why do you want to know? Wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t?”
I brushed that aside. “The thing is, he’s not going to suspect the women. At the moment, he’s thinking about Calchas—you know, the priest?—or Helenus, because they’re the only two Trojans in the camp—”
“I’m a Trojan.”
That stung. “So am I.”
“Yes, but it’s different for you, isn’t it?” Her gaze slid to my belly. “You’ve made your choice.”
“A choice? What choice do you think I had?” Deep breath. “Look, I’m trying to help. If you keep a low profile and don’t do anything silly, there’s every chance it’ll blow over. We can get through this.”
“We?”
“Yes! We.”
She gave an irritating smirk and I wanted to slap her. “You know he’s had the body dug up again?” I was watching her closely—and I could see that hurt.
“He tells lies.”
“Who does?”
“Pyrrhus. He told Andromache Priam died painlessly—he said it was quick—and it’s just not true. You wouldn’t kill a pig the way he killed Priam. And the awful thing is, Hecuba saw it. She begged Priam not to put his armour on, but he would do it—there was no way he wasn’t going to fight.”
“He did what he had to do.”
“Yes—so did I.”
What was becoming steadily more apparent as I listened to her was how stubborn she was, how impervious to reason. She reminded me of two women I’d known when I first came to the camp. Sisters. Every day at dusk, they’d set off for a short walk, arm in arm, heavily veiled, looking neither to right nor left, but always, modestly, down at their feet. And then, after about two hundred yards, without even needing to glance at each other, they’d turn round and walk back. On the surface, nobody could have been less like Amina than those two timid little women. And yet I saw the same inflexibility in her: the same refusal to accept that life has changed. It made her unreachable, and yet I felt I had to go on trying. “He’ll kill anybody who tries to bury Priam again now.”
“I know.”
I had to leave it at that. “Come on,” I said. “We may as well get some fruit while we’re here. It’s a shame to let it go to waste.”
The orchard was at the other end of the garden, a shady, rather mysterious place full of listening trees. The cherry trees had been covered in nets to keep out marauding birds but, standing on tiptoe, we were just able to reach one of the nets and pull it off. Amina climbed the tree and threw cherries down to me. I remember how they cascaded onto my face and arms, leaving red stains like splashes of blood. I was begging her to come down, I was frightened she’d fall, but she just went on pelting me with cherries—laughing, full of fun. They were ripe, overripe, we couldn’t resist eating them and they were delicious. I turned to her, and noticed she had two red ticks at the corners of her mouth, pointing her lips in the direction of a smile.