When great Achilles was alive, he defied even the gods. He wonders what Helenus meant by saying that, whether he’d really been suggesting that Ebony didn’t have to die. If so, he’s a fool. Only madness and ruin await a man who defies the gods. Achilles did. Resting his head against Ebony’s, Pyrrhus blows gently into his flaring nostrils, as once, long ago, he used to do with Rufus. “Sorry, Ebony,” he says. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I am not that man.”
A few minutes later, stumbling blindly up the veranda steps to the main door of the hall, he fails to notice a man huddled in the shadows, so it’s a shock when he moves. Helenus, of course. No time for that now; no patience. “What do you want?”
“Our fathers were guest-friends. That means we are too. The least you could do is offer me some food.”
Pyrrhus, mouth already open to refuse, looks down at Helenus and sees that he’s cold, hungry, frightened and alone. Then he remembers the emptiness of his living quarters: the gibing mirror and the tongueless lyre. Really, what else is he going to do? So, he steps to one side, opens the door a little wider—and lets the future in.
33
Outside, it was dark at last. Before leaving the hut, I filled a bowl with blackberries and added a dollop of the claggy porridge the Greek fighters were inexplicably addicted to. I found Maire sitting on her bed with the baby guzzling at her breast. Helle was hovering behind her.
“Just hold still for a minute.” I crushed a few blackberries against the side of the bowl, mixed them into the grey gloop and began sticking them onto her face and chest. Not too many, but enough to persuade the curious to take a step back.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Helle asked.
“Plague.”
“Plague? Doesn’t look anything like it.”
“Have you got any better ideas?”
Maire handed the baby to me while she spread the shawl to wrap him in. I felt the warm weight of him in my arms and a slight dampness against my chest. Looking down, I saw his eyes beginning to close. Sleep, eat, sleep again. There were thin blue veins on his lids and a small grey milk-blister on his upper lip. When Maire was ready, I handed him back and felt a chill emptiness where his warmth had been. The girls clustered round Maire to say goodbye, peering into the folds of the shawl for a last glimpse of the baby’s face. One or two of them were crying; they’d invested so much hope in that child—far, far, far too much. We all had.
When Maire was shrouded in her black robe, I told her to say a final goodbye and went to wait by the door. Andromache came over and wished me luck. I wondered if she was secretly pleased that Maire and the baby were going. The surprise, as so often, was Helle, who followed Maire and me out onto the veranda. “I’m coming,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “Oh, not to stay, I know I won’t be able to stay. But there’s safety in numbers—and anyway, I’ve got this.”
She pulled back her cloak and I saw she was holding a knife—a wicked-looking thing with a bone handle and a long blade. She must have stolen it from the hall on one of the evenings she’d danced after dinner. I didn’t find the sight of it at all reassuring. Helle was strong, but no match for a Greek fighter; I thought she’d just be handing them a weapon—and she was a striking figure, likely to attract the attention of anybody walking past. I felt Maire and I would be safer on our own. But she wanted to come, and I couldn’t deny her the chance to spend a few more minutes with her friend.
“All right,” I said, reluctantly. I could see they were waiting for me to lead the way. They hadn’t been outside the hut since their arrival, except for Helle’s short trips across the yard to the hall, so they’d have no idea of the layout of the camp. “We’ll go along the beach,” I said. “C’mon, this way.”
“Where are we going?” Helle said.
“I’m taking them to Cassandra.”
“You trust her, do you?”
“No, but I think she’ll agree to help. And she does have a certain amount of power.”
I’d thought about this long and hard. Ritsa and Hecamede would have helped if they could, but realistically what could they hope to do? It had to be Cassandra.
Keeping to the shadows as far as we could, we scaled round the edges of the yard. I was tense with fear that the baby would wake up suddenly and howl. As we passed through a circle of torchlight, I noticed he was awake, but he didn’t move and he made no sound. Perhaps the walking movement soothed him, or perhaps, like so many young animals, he knew to keep quiet when there were predators around. Soon we left the torchlight and the cooking fires behind, setting off along the path that led to the beach. The moon kept disappearing behind black clouds, but the darkness didn’t bother me. This was one of the paths I’d often followed before dawn and sometimes late at night during my early days in the camp. Not usually at this time, because I’d been required to serve wine in the hall.
When we came out onto the beach, I started to relax a little, but then immediately froze because there were two men standing at the water’s edge. One of them had waded a little way in and seemed to be getting ready to swim. I heard their voices between the crashing of the waves, but I couldn’t make out the words. One of them looked a bit like Pyrrhus, but I couldn’t be certain because in the moonlight his hair looked black. I didn’t dare move, for fear of attracting their attention, but we needed to take a break anyway: Maire was gasping for breath. She wouldn’t have been a fit woman at the best of times, and she’d lost a lot of blood after the birth. Turning to my right, looking up at the headland, I saw dark shapes of men with torches moving around, their huge shadows flickering on the grass. They’d be building the funeral pyre for Priam. On my left, peering cautiously out of the shadow of the dune path, I saw the ground was clear. One of the men at the water’s edge had picked up his tunic and was striding off. After a while the other got up too and followed him.
Maire was breathing more easily now. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”
Feeling that the shore was too exposed, I led the way along the line of cradled ships that circled the bay. We moved in quick bursts, darting from one patch of shadow to the next. From the moment I arrived in the camp, the constant thrumming of the rigging against the mastheads had haunted my dreams. It struck me then as the sound of a mind at the end of its tether, but I was stronger now, and focused solely on getting Maire and her baby to safety—or what passed for safety in that camp. There were no guarantees for anybody.
As we drew level with the arena, a whole bunch of fighters, many of them carrying torches, erupted from between the ships and spilled out onto the beach. Most of them set off at a run, probably on their way to the next compound for a drink, but three stragglers happened to notice us standing in the shadow of the hulls. One of them lingered for a moment, but then shrugged and moved off.
“Hello, girls!”
The man facing me was thin, sweaty and very, very drunk. Not nasty, not threatening—or not yet. There was no way round him—no way back either. In effect, we were trapped in the narrow space between two ships. I put my arm round Maire and made a great show of supporting her. Helle did the same, but I felt her stiffen and hoped she wasn’t reaching for the knife. “We’re on our way to the hospital,” I said. “She’s got a fever. I wouldn’t come too close.” He peered at Maire, who was sweating and panting. No acting required—half an hour of floundering through loose sand had tested her to the limit. “I think it might be the plague.” Taking her cue, Helle pulled Maire’s mantle away from her face and neck, while I clutched the shawl to make sure the baby stayed hidden. Seen by torchlight, in the shadow of the ships, the purple crusts that had been so unconvincing in the hut looked absolutely terrifying. Fear of the plague was a constant feature of life in the camp; less than a year ago there’d been a really bad outbreak and most of the men would have known somebody who’d died of it then. The man stopped dead in his tracks. “C’mon!” the man behind him shouted. “Leave it.”