She obviously thought they were safe now. And perhaps they were, safer anyway than they would have been if they’d stayed in Pyrrhus’s compound.
34
Women don’t normally attend funerals, so I didn’t expect to go to Priam’s. From early morning, the camp was buzzing with expectation. The Myrmidons had built a huge pyre on the headland near the horse pastures. Priam’s armour had been brought out of storage and polished till it shone. For me, sitting alone in my hut, this should have been a day of real—if meagre—consolation, but instead, I felt increasingly frantic. I didn’t know where I wanted to be, and so, in the end, I decided I’d simply get out and walk along the shore. Think about Priam. And Amina too.
Normally, at that time of day, the beach would have been deserted, but today it was black with crowds of men gathering at the water’s edge to purify themselves. Most of them were rubbing oil into their bodies. Usually, after a hot bath, that’s a pleasant thing to do, but out here, the wind blowing sand everywhere, sand that stuck to the oil and had to be painfully scraped off, followed by immersion in a cold sea dotted with scuds of dirty yellow foam…Not so pleasant. Somebody started singing a hymn to Zeus, but the singer’s voice was drowned out by a cacophony of yelps as salt water slapped against abraded skin.
I sheltered near the ships and watched, but after a while my deliberate self-isolation began to seem selfish. There were others in the camp who had more reason for grief than me. Hecuba, for one. Hecuba, above all. So, turning my back on the beach, which by now was more crowded than the camp, I made my way to her hut. She was out of bed, wearing a clean tunic, two hectic spots on her wasted cheeks. Only recently, I’d sometimes thought she wouldn’t live another day, but I’d reckoned without the sheer force of will that carried her on. I knelt to touch her feet; as I stood up, she pulled me into her arms and embraced me. The top of her head scarcely reached my chin.
“I’ve sent for Odysseus,” she said, smoothing her hair to make sure it was tidy.
Sent for? She was his slave. Looking at her feverishly bright eyes, I thought her mind must have gone at last—only a mad woman talks like that. I said, as soothingly as I could, “Well, you know, he mightn’t come…”
She patted my arm, almost patronizingly. “He will.”
She was too excited to keep still; she kept making little forays up and down the hut, like a small girl who’s been given new clothes for her birthday and isn’t allowed to put them on yet. At last, I persuaded her to sit down and conserve her energy. “It’s a long way,” I said. “You don’t want to wear yourself out.” I didn’t believe she’d be going anywhere. I gave her a cup of diluted wine, but she pushed it away after only a few sips. When the doorway darkened, she looked up, obviously expecting to see Odysseus, but it was only Hecamede, bringing bread and cheese, moist, crumbly white cheese made with herbs, bread warm from the oven, but Hecuba couldn’t eat anything, and it seemed disrespectful for us to eat without her.
“Nestor’s going to the funeral,” Hecamede said. “Calchas says all the kings have to be there.”
Hecuba brightened. “Well, if that decrepit old git can get there, I’m bloody sure I can. I’ll walk if I have to. Or ask one of those young men to give me a piggyback.”
“You will not!” I said. It wasn’t often I managed to be firm with Hecuba, but really this was too much.
A few minutes later, another shape darkened the open door. Once again, Hecuba looked up. I actually heard her breathe Odysseus’s name; but it wasn’t him this time either. It was Cassandra—tall, young, strong, richly dressed, very much the future queen of Mycenae. She might only enjoy the status for a few days, or weeks at most, but evidently, she meant to make the most of it. Hecamede and I scrambled to our feet to greet her. Hecuba had gone very still.
It didn’t feel like a meeting between mother and daughter. I’d spent so much of my life missing my own mother that I expected tears, embraces, reconciliation…but there was nothing like that. Cassandra stepped forward—reluctantly, I thought—knelt and touched her mother’s feet before offering her cheek in an awkward, arm’s-length embrace. She was wearing a green robe with a yoke of fine embroidery and looked as exotic as a tropical bird in the squalid little hut. After the embrace was over, Hecuba sat back on her heels and looked at Cassandra with bright, sceptical eyes. A lot of pain there, but she was keeping it well hidden.
“Cassandra,” she said, taking in the dress, the elaborately styled hair, the necklace, the rings…“You look well.”
“I’m as well as I’m going to be.” A tense pause. “You know I’m married?”
“Yes. So, he actually did it…I must say, I never thought he would. What do you think his wife’s going to say about that, then?”
“I imagine she won’t be pleased.”
Without bothering to hide her distaste for her surroundings, Cassandra sat down, tucking her legs underneath her as neatly as a cat. Whatever attempts at a real connection these two might be inclined to make could only be hindered by the presence of other people, so I jerked my head towards the door and Hecamede and I left them alone. Out on the veranda, I was delighted to see Ritsa’s broad back and mop of straw-coloured hair. I sat beside her—we hugged and cried a bit, and then turned to watch the men repairing the statues in the arena.
“So, you’re Cassandra’s maid now?”
“Looks like it.”
“Do you ever go into the hospital?”
“Not often. There’s less work than there used to be. Few young idiots tearing chunks off each other…but that’s all.”
All the same, Ritsa was a healer. Cassandra could have had any woman in Agamemnon’s compound as her maid.
Hecamede touched my arm. “I’ll have to go. Nestor’s going to need a lot of help getting ready.”
We watched her walk away across the arena, threading her way between the fallen gods.
“How is she?” I asked, meaning Cassandra.
“Still a bit up and down. She’s like a child sometimes. But, you know…I saw her when she was at her worst, pissing herself sometimes. And she’s a proud woman. Some days, she can’t stand the sight of me.”
“She should be bloody grateful.”
“Ye-es—but we both know it doesn’t work like that.”
We watched a team of men lower the statue of Athena to the ground, two of them hauling on ropes, others reaching up to steady her in case she suffered even worse damage from a too abrupt descent.
“Anyway,” Ritsa said. “You must be pleased. Priam cremated.”
“Not yet!”
“No, but he will be. And as for that little squirt…I thought Calchas could have made a lot more of that. I’d like to see him following Priam’s body on his hands and knees. Still, at least he’ll lose the horse. Not much, though, is it—a horse, for a child’s life?”
I wondered which child she meant. Andromache’s baby? Polyxena? Amina? The girls must have seemed like children to her. I was about to make some comment, but at that moment a shadow fell across us. I looked up and there, incredibly, was Odysseus. We shuffled along the step to let him pass and, ducking his head, he went into the hut.
Ritsa looked as astonished as I felt. “Do you know she actually sent for him?” I said.
“Well, there you are. You’re taken at your own evaluation in this life. In her mind, she’s still a queen.”
A murmur of conversation from behind us. Odysseus: a low rumble; Hecuba: frail, breathless, resolute; Cassandra: a penetrating, ever so slightly nasal whine. “How much did she have to do with Calchas’s speech?”