Calchas leant forward: “You’re sure he said ‘duty to a guest’?”
“Exact words.”
“Did anybody else hear that?”
“I don’t know. Alcimus and Automedon were on the veranda immediately behind him, but I can’t say whether they heard or not. But they’ll be able to confirm he walked to the gate with Priam and saw him safely out of the camp.”
When I’d finished, Calchas let out a noisy breath and sat back in his chair, looking across at Cassandra and then back at me.
“So,” I said. “You’re saying Priam’s death was murder? Do you really think the Greeks are going to accept that?”
“I think it’s possible. You see, people always say they want an explanation, but they don’t—not really. They want somebody to blame.”
“I think they’d rather blame Menelaus.”
“Oh, of course they would—they want to see Helen stoned to death. But that would mean war.”
“So, you’re going for Pyrrhus instead? The hero of Troy? Achilles’s son?”
“I said I thought it was possible. I didn’t say it would be easy.”
Calchas lapsed into silence, obviously thinking hard. He was a strange, difficult, complex, driven man—and yet I felt his loyalty to Priam was genuine. And with all his oddities, he was impressive. Though I didn’t for a moment think he was going to succeed in this plan. Pyrrhus had so much power, so much prestige—the hero of Troy. There was no getting past that. And there was one major flaw in the case Calchas was building. He had Cassandra’s account of Priam’s return to Troy and my memories of what Achilles had said and done that night, but both of us were women—and a woman’s testimony is not considered equal to a man’s. In a court of law, if a man and woman disagree it’s almost invariably his version of events that’s accepted. And that’s in a courtroom—how much more so in this camp where all the women were Trojan slaves and the only real law was force. Calchas would need to get Automedon or Alcimus to confirm everything I’d said, but for much of the time I’d been alone with Priam and Achilles, because Achilles thought Priam would be more at ease with a Trojan girl than with heavily armed Greek fighters. I hoped, at least, Alcimus and Automedon would tell the truth about what they knew, but I suspected their loyalty to Pyrrhus, as Achilles’s son, might override everything else.
Cassandra broke into my thoughts. “I want to see my father buried,” she said. “I want to see Pyrrhus crawl on his hands and knees through the dirt.”
Suddenly, I wanted to get away from the fug in this room. Abruptly, I stood up, and this time Cassandra didn’t try to detain me, though she did see me to the door. “I will come to see my mother,” she said. “Only not yet.”
I felt the promise was intended as a reward, a pat on the head for being a good little girl. Patronizing bitch. She saw herself as being at the centre of the web that was being spun around Pyrrhus, but I thought she was deceiving herself there. Cassandra was so completely her father’s daughter, so far removed in attitudes and experience from almost all other women, that she was incapable of appreciating the full extent of Hecuba’s power. Calchas saw it. There was something in his voice whenever he mentioned Hecuba, a softness that certainly wasn’t there the rest of the time. Perhaps as a young man he might have loved her, and perhaps somewhere underneath the face paint, the cynicism and the plotting, he still did.
27
That night, as was now usual, Andromache and I served wine at dinner. We arrived in good time and began pouring the first drinks. The torches were lit, fresh rushes laid, gold plate gleamed on Pyrrhus’s table. I noticed he was drinking from the Thracian cup. I’d seen it before, of course, when Achilles was alive, in the last ten days before his death, but now I saw it with fresh eyes because I knew Priam had been holding it when Hecuba tried to persuade him not to go to the Greek camp, not to throw himself on the non-existent mercy of Achilles.
As the men ate and drank, as the torches blazed and the temperature soared, I kept glancing across the tables at Andromache. She looked so thin and pale—worse, I thought, since Amina died—but she seemed to be managing, though I noticed she still avoided looking at the men she served. They were talking about the games: which referee was blind (all of them), whose team was rubbish, who was favourite to win the chariot race. The games seemed to be going well. There’d been one pitched battle after a wrestling match that had left a contestant permanently disabled, but no other real disturbances. I was pleased for Alcimus, who seemed to be growing in confidence from one day to the next.
When the time came for us to leave, Andromache was told to stay behind. She gave a despairing glance over her shoulder as she disappeared into the living quarters. I decided to go and visit the women’s hut. By the time I got there, the girls had a meal ready: chicken with lemons and garlic, very simple, but delicious—the girls were becoming rather good at this. We sat outside to eat. One of the girls who still worried me was Maire; she was such a silent, depressed lump. Inevitably, we women tended to see each other through our captors’ eyes, and I’m afraid I was as guilty of that as anybody. Why on earth had Pyrrhus chosen her? She was immensely fat, so fat she waddled when she walked—and she was obviously ashamed of her body because she’d been shuffling about in the same shapeless black robe every day since she arrived. Sitting beside her, Helle was slim, strong, firm, graceful, glowing with health—and yet, despite the stark contrast, they did seem to have struck up a friendship. At least, Maire spoke to Helle now and then—which was more than she did to anybody else.
At last, the dishes were cleared away, the fire built up and the drums and pipes came out. Alcimus’s lyre had been returned to him—in pristine condition, I’d made sure of that—but he’d very kindly found another less impressive instrument for the girls to use. One of the quieter girls held up her hand and said she could play a little—“but not as well as Amina.” A shadow—I could almost see it—passed over the group at the mention of her name.
Instantly, Helle was on her feet, clapping her hands for attention, announcing that they were all going to learn a new song. A drinking song. They looked at each other: women don’t sing drinking songs. So, Helle went on, they all had to raise their cups and have a good long drink first.
It was, indeed, a drinking song: the kind sailors used to sing in Lyrnessus in taverns and brothels along the harbour front.
The girls giggled; some looked shocked—but they all seemed perfectly willing to learn the song. You heard versions of this song being sung all over the camp, no two exactly the same, though they all concerned a woman of gargantuan sexual appetites. A woman who could not be satisfied and only managed to reach a climax when somebody thrust a spear into her vagina. Needless to say, this woman’s name was always Helen.