He was describing—reliving—the moment he’d hacked his way through the doors of Priam’s palace. I’d never thought of Pyrrhus as an eloquent man, but on this subject the words flowed. I was forced to see everything through his eyes: the long corridor, doors opening off on either side, glimpses of rugs, tapestries, gold lamps—all the fabled wealth of Troy—though he’d only looked just long enough to make sure there were no fighters hiding there. Then on he ran—feeling, he said, Achilles’s blood coursing through his veins—towards the door at the far end. Finding it heavily guarded, he’d veered off in search of the secret passage that linked Hector’s house with Priam’s apartment. The existence of this passage was one of the crucial pieces of information Priam’s son Helenus had revealed under torture. The briefest of searches had led Pyrrhus to it. By now, he’d left the other Greek fighters far behind, so when, finally, he burst into the throne room and saw Priam, in full armour, standing on the altar steps, the two of them had been alone together.
All this was painful to me, though no different from my own involuntary imaginings. I tried not to hear what came next, but it was no use, I had to go on listening. He spoke of how proudly he’d announced his identity: Pyrrhus, son of Achilles. How, at the mere mention of that name, Priam had gone white with terror. How he’d leapt up the altar steps, dragged the old man’s head back and quickly, cleanly, deftly, easily, cut his throat. One blow, he said. Like sticking a pig.
I looked at him and I thought: You’re lying. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. The death of Priam had been nothing like that. And nobody would ever be able to contradict Pyrrhus’s account, because nobody else had been present. Eventually, he lapsed into silence, staring at his cup as if he couldn’t remember what it was for. I watched him, searching, I suppose, for some resemblance to Achilles, whose unappeasable anger had caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths. People kept telling Pyrrhus he was the spitting image of his father, but I couldn’t see it. To me, he looked like a portrait of Achilles done in coarse red clay by a competent but mediocre sculptor. So? Yes, there was a resemblance; and no, he was nothing like Achilles.
As if made uneasy by my gaze, Pyrrhus straightened up and looked around. “You know what I really regret?” he said. “Giving Hector’s shield to that fucking woman to bury her brat in. You”—jabbing his finger at Automedon—“should’ve stopped me.”
“It was very generous,” Automedon said, stiffly.
“It was very bloody stupid.”
“You’ve got the helmet,” Alcimus said. “You’ve got everything else.”
“S’not the point though, is it? My father stripped that armour from Hector’s dead body, the minute after he killed him. I should have the full set—not bits missing.”
Abruptly, he lurched to his feet. Alcimus put out a steadying hand, but Pyrrhus ignored him, grabbed the edge of the table and then launched himself at the door. Alcimus followed him out onto the veranda. I could hear them talking, though their words were broken up by gusts of wind. After a few minutes, Alcimus came back to the table, bringing the cool night air on his skin. He pulled out his chair and sat down.
“Well,” he said.
Automedon shrugged. They were used to waiting in ambush, these two, where one whisper might betray them—and so over the years they’d developed a method of communication that hardly seemed to rely on words. I sensed that this particular conversation had been going on, unspoken, for much of the past hour.
“He’s very young,” Alcimus said.
“Not young enough.”
Not young enough for drunken boasting to be excusable?
“He just wants to prove he’s as good as Achilles. And he can’t.” Alcimus glanced in my direction. “Nobody can.”
A fraught silence. I’d never told anybody my marriage was unconsummated, not even Ritsa, and until that moment I’d always taken it for granted that Alcimus wouldn’t have spoken about it either. Now, suddenly, I felt Automedon knew—or, more likely, guessed.
“More wine?” I asked.
“Better not,” Alcimus said. “Fact, I think we should be going.”
I nodded, regretting yet another uneaten dinner. At the door, he hesitated. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
And I felt he resented even that small concession to the obligations of domestic life. This was at the root of all my uneasiness. I knew—I thought I knew—that Alcimus had loved me once—or been infatuated with me, at least. I’d noticed the way he’d looked at me, whenever we were together in a room, though of course he’d never said anything. As Achilles’s prize of honour, I’d been as far beyond his reach as a goddess—but, then, perhaps he’d preferred it like that? Perhaps the real love had been for Achilles.
5
As Alcimus’s wife, I led a much more isolated and restricted life than I had as Achilles’s prize of honour. I no longer served wine to the men at dinner in the hall, and the lawlessness of the camp meant it was harder to see my friends. There weren’t many hours I didn’t spend alone. Alcimus came and went, busily organizing the work of the compound; we barely spoke. In the evenings, when I was always alone, I sat spinning wool, letting the thread lead me down a labyrinth of memory. I found myself thinking a great deal about my sister, Ianthe—the daughter of my father’s first wife. I had no memories of her from my childhood: she’d already been a woman on the brink of marriage when I was born. It was only later, after my mother died and I was sent to live with her in Troy, that I got to know her. I thought of her now, because I felt as lonely as I’d ever felt since arriving in the camp, and she was my only living relative. If she was still alive.
After Troy fell, as the captive women were being herded into the arena, I’d gone in search of her. Since she’d been married to one of Priam’s sons, I’d looked for her first among the women of the royal household, who were being housed in an overcrowded hut on the edge of the arena, waiting to be allocated as prizes of honour to the various kings. Some of the women had spilled out of the hut and were sitting or lying on the dirty sand. Hair stringy with sweat, faces bruised, eyes bloodshot, tunics torn: their own families would have struggled to recognize some of them. As I walked through the crowd, I’d stared hard into every face, but Ianthe wasn’t there.
Later, I looked for her among the common women I’d seen being forced down the muddy track into the camp, stumbling, sometimes falling over like cattle driven to the slaughter. Those who fell were “encouraged” to get on their feet again by blows from the butt ends of spears. No pregnant women among them, I noticed—and though some of the women were leading little girls by the hand, there were no boys. Once again, I looked from one terrified face to another, but fear made them all look alike and it took me a long time to establish that my sister wasn’t there. I learnt later that several hundred women had thrown themselves from the citadel, and as soon as I heard that I felt sure Ianthe would have been one of them. It was in her to do that—as it was not in me.
Gradually, over the intervening days, I’d learnt to accept that she was dead. But I couldn’t be sure and, now more than ever, I needed certainty. The only person I could ask was Helen, who’d been Ianthe’s friend—though it wasn’t a friendship that many people had understood. So, one morning, I rose early, dressed myself in my darkest clothes, and set off, creeping between the huts as unobtrusively as I could, nervous and alone. I couldn’t take Amina with me on this trip because she’d have told the other girls and I didn’t want this visit to be generally known. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to Helen—she was known to be heavily guarded—but the sentries at the gate of the compound waved me through. Women were not considered a threat.