Ritsa shrugged. “I don’t know. They thrashed it out between them, but they couldn’t have done it without you. Apparently, Alcimus and Automedon weren’t at all keen to talk—till they realized Calchas knew anyway.”
Movement inside the hut. A moment later, Odysseus came out, nodded to me, ignored Ritsa, and set off in the direction of his hall. Shortly afterwards, Cassandra also emerged. “Go to my mother,” she told Ritsa. “She’ll need help getting down the steps.”
Pointedly, I got up and followed Ritsa into the hut. Hecuba was looking even more excited than before; dangerously so, I thought.
“He’s sending a cart,” she said. “He said I could have his chariot, only then I’d have to stand, so I said, ‘No, no, a cart’s good enough for me. I’m not proud.’ ” There she stood, in her poky little dog kenneclass="underline" the epitome of pride.
I found a comb and began sweeping back her long white hair, thinking it might help to soothe her, but nothing could have calmed her down that day. She was euphoric. I’d always struggled to understand her moods and this was no exception. I was too young to understand that elation is one of the many faces of grief. At the funeral, in front of the entire Greek army, she would represent Priam. More than that: she would be Priam. Because isn’t that, ultimately, the way we cope with grief? There’s nothing sophisticated or civilized about it. Like savages, we ingest our dead.
As I finished dressing her hair, I heard the cart pull up outside. Suddenly anxious, she said: “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
I’d been intending to walk, but of course I said I would. Odysseus had sent a team of horses—rather than mules, which would have been more usual—and, to drive them, a fresh-faced young man with a scattering of ginger freckles. He clearly felt driving the cart was beneath him—I thought I recognized him as Odysseus’s charioteer—but he was all gentleness as he lifted Hecuba onto the seat. Hecuba was flustered and pleased and even a little flirtatious as he put her down. Once settled, she looked around her with great interest, at the arena, and the statues of the gods, and the crowds of men returning from the beach. We might have been setting off on a pleasure jaunt. Beside her, stony-faced, Cassandra stared straight ahead.
The journey to the cremation site was long and hard, the cart wheels jolting over ruts in the cinder path. More than once Hecuba had to brace herself against the side of the cart, but she stayed bolt upright from beginning to end. We were surrounded by men who’d only just emerged from their ritual purification in the sea. There was an overwhelming smell of wet hair, of dampness trapped in folds of skin. They looked surprised to see women—as I say, women don’t normally attend funerals—but they stepped to the side of the path to let us through. Many of them openly stared at Hecuba, as if aware that they were seeing history pass.
Cassandra asked the driver where he was taking us and, when he pointed to the place, said, “No, we need to be closer than that.” By now, Hecuba had seen the funeral pyre and was holding her lips together in the way she sometimes did when grief and anger threatened to overwhelm her. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but held back. There was an isolation about her now that no amount of love could breach.
Finally, at long last, the jolting stopped; the driver dismounted and went off to join his mates. We were on a slight incline, so we had a good view of everything. No grave, of course—that would be dug later to receive the bones. Instead, the Myrmidons had built a huge funeral pyre, towering ten or twelve feet above the crowd. The ground was filling up fast. Men were still streaming up the path, but the upper slopes of the headland were already densely packed. The cart had become an island in a sea of heads and shoulders. The kings had not yet arrived; they’d be waiting till all the men were assembled before they made their entrances.
Gradually, one by one, they began to appear: Odysseus, first; he shielded his eyes and scanned the slopes, looking for Hecuba, perhaps. At any rate, his gaze seemed to alight on us, before he turned to greet Ajax. Nestor received his usual roar of applause. I caught a glimpse of Hecamede walking beside his chariot. Agamemnon arrived last, as was his right, glancing at Menelaus and delivering a slight, dismissive bow. As he took his seat, silence fell, except for the frantic yapping of seagulls wheeling overhead.
Then, we waited.
At last, in the distance, came a sound of drums and marching feet. Nothing else, at first, just that single pounding note, and then, slowly, the funeral procession wound into view. Ritsa and I helped Hecuba climb onto the bench so that she could see, both of us holding on to her skirt, the way you do with a little girl who wants to walk along a wall. Only when I felt she was secure could I look towards the cinder path and the procession moving towards us. Priam’s body, tightly wrapped in gold-and-purple cloth, was carried on the shoulders of six Myrmidon fighters. I thought I recognized the cover I’d used to make up his bed the night he came to see Achilles. As they came closer, the fighters started to bang their swords on their shields, as they used to do every morning before setting off for the battlefield. A solemn sound, but menacing too. And then, rising high above the clash of swords on shields, the pipes began to play Achilles’s lament, the music that had haunted me—driven me to the verge of insanity, almost—in the weeks after his death.
Immediately behind Priam’s body came Ebony, led by the slow-witted boy who was so good at calming horses, though even he must have been finding this a challenge. Excited by the crowds, Ebony kept tossing his head, pirouetting, dancing about…Perhaps, to him, this looked like the start of a chariot race; he had no way of knowing that he’d been garlanded for sacrifice. Pyrrhus, in full armour, his head bowed, walked a few paces behind the horse. In fact, all the Myrmidons were wearing full armour, though I suppose that was only fitting for the funeral procession of a king. As they left the path and began moving through the crowds of men in tunics and cloaks, they formed an alien, glittering stream. Myrmidons: ant-men. I’d always thought what a stupid name that was for men who were so sturdily independent, so ready to question authority, whose respect always had to be earned; but seeing them like this, hearing—and, in the vibration of the cart, feeling—the power and precision of those marching feet, I understood—for the first time, I think—the terror they inspired on the battlefield.
At last, they came to a halt at the foot of the pyre. The pall-bearers carried Priam up the steep slope and laid him on the bier while other men went round larding the logs with beef fat and oil. All this the crowd watched in total silence, though I could hear Hecuba whimpering a little beside me. Or rather, I thought I could—but when I turned to look, I saw that it was Cassandra making the sound. Hecuba neither moved nor spoke.
A solitary voice began singing a hymn of praise to Zeus. Gradually, one by one, other voices joined in until the whole assembly was singing:
I’ve heard that hymn sung in temples all over the Greek world, but never as movingly as it was that day. Even as the singing continued, Calchas emerged from the knot of men behind Agamemnon and went to stand at the foot of the pyre. As the music faded into silence, he called to Priam. “May it go well with you in the house of Hades. These, your enemies, salute you.” Immediately, at a signal from Agamemnon, the army gave three full-throated shouts for Priam—“Priam! Priam! Priam!”—and the seagulls that had begun to settle took off again and screamed overhead.