Andromache’s eyeballs swivelled in panic as though at sudden loss. Then memory seared through her. Again, as though the scene were being played out before her for the first time, she saw Neoptolemus dragging Astyanax by the lobe of his ear across the upper room of her house. Again she saw the deft sweep with which the young warrior lifted her child above the parapet of the balcony. Again she released a protracted scream of refusal and denial, and again it was in vain. Neoptolemus opened his hands and Astyanax vanished, leaving only a brief, truncated cry on the night air.
Unable to stop herself, Andromache had run to the balcony and gazed down where the small body of her son lay twisted on the stones twenty feet below. A pool of blood oozed from his head like oil. In that moment she would have thrown herself from the parapet after him if Neoptolemus had not grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. So she had stood with that gilded youth bending an arm at her back, screaming and screaming at the night.
But even the mind has its mercies and, for a time, Andromache had slipped beyond the reach of consciousness. When she was pulled back to her senses, she woke into an alien land of torchlight, noise and violent shadows. If she had been asked her own name she could not have recalled it. Still in that primitive state of near oblivion, she had been conducted through the streets of Troy until she was brought to the moment when Hecuba asked after Astyanax. At the sound of the name a whole universe of pain flashed into being again.
Wiping the back of his hand across his nose, Neoptolemus stepped forward to look more closely at the terrified group of women huddled beneath the portico. Wrapped in blankets now, their heads held low in the gloom, they were hard to distinguish from each other. He used the blade of his sword to edge one woman aside so that he could see the girl cowering behind her. ‘The boy had no father,’ he was muttering, ‘and now the mother has no son. But I have a remedy for that.’
Hecuba reeled where she stood. She felt as though she was striding against a dark tide and making no progress. She had seen her firstborn son Hector slain before the walls of Troy. She had seen her second-born, Paris, lying on his deathbed pierced and half-blinded by the arrows that Philoctetes had loosed at him. Others of her sons had failed to return from the battlefield. She had seen one of the youngest, Capys, die that night, cut down trying to defend his father. Then Priam himself had been murdered under her bewildered gaze. Now her six year old grandson Astyanax, Hector’s boy, who had been the only solace that remained to her in a world made unremittingly cruel by war, was also dead. Somewhere she could hear Neoptolemus saying, ‘One of you must be Polyxena, daughter of King Priam. Come forth. The son of Achilles wishes to speak with you.’ Had she not already been exhausted by atrocity, every atom of her being would have shouted out then in mutiny against the gods. As it was, this latest devastation had left the Trojan Queen reduced to the condition of a dumb animal helplessly awaiting the utter extinction of its kind.
And no one among the women moved.
‘Come, Polyxena, what are you afraid of?’ Neoptolemus cajoled. ‘I understand that my father was fond of you. It’s time that we met.’
Still there was no movement among the huddle of blankets.
From somewhere Hecuba found the strength to say, ‘Haven’t you brought evil enough on Priam’s house?’
The boy merely smiled at her. ‘We Argives didn’t seek this war. Troy is burning in the fire that Paris lit. We’re looking only for justice here. As for me, remember that this war took my father from me. He might still have been living at peace on Skyros with my mother if your son hadn’t taken it into his head to meddle with another man’s wife. Now tell me, where is your daughter, old woman?’
But at that moment the sound of Agamemnon’s voice boomed from across the square, shouting out his name and demanding to know where his generals were. As Neoptolemus turned to answer, Odysseus stepped out of the shadow of a nearby building, holding his boar-tusk helmet in the crook of his arm. Immediately Agamemnon demanded to know where he had last seen Menelaus.
‘I left him with Helen,’ Odysseus answered. ‘Deiphobus and his household are dead. The Spartan Guard have control of his mansion.’
‘Has he killed the bitch?’
‘I don’t know. Not when I left.’
Detecting an unusual shakiness in the Ithacan’s voice, Agamemnon looked at him more closely. ‘What’s the matter with you? Have you taken a wound?’
‘Have you seen what’s happening down there? Have you seen the blood in the streets? I gave them my word – I gave our word to Antenor and Aeneas that we would spare all the lives we could. But this …’
Brusquely Agamemnon interrupted him, ‘Aeneas and his Dardanians have already gone free. Antenor is safe enough if he stays indoors. And I’ve got my mind on other things right now. Memnon’s Ethiopians have broken out of their barracks. Diomedes and his men are having a hard time containing them.’
He would have turned away but Odysseus seized him by the shoulder and stopped him. ‘Antenor only agreed to help us because I gave him the most solemn assurances. I gave them on your behalf with your authority. Now you have to get control of this or they’re going to kill everybody. You have to do it now.’ But then he caught the shiftiness in the High King’s eyes. His heart jolted. ‘Are you behind this bloodbath?’ he demanded. ‘Is this what you want?
Agamemnon shrugged the hand from his shoulder and walked away to where Neoptolemus had abandoned his search for Polyxena and was now assembling his war-band for action.
‘Move your Myrmidons down into the lower city,’ Agamemnon ordered. ‘If you look lively we should be able to trap Memnon’s men between your force and Diomedes. I want it done quickly.’
The young warrior raised his sword in salute and, to a rattle of bronze armour, the Myrmidons jogged out of the square down a narrow street that would bring them out in the rear of the Ethiopians.
Agamemnon looked back with displeasure over the city he had conquered. ‘We need to start fighting this fire before half the treasure of Troy is lost to it.’
He was speaking to himself but Odysseus had come up behind him, determined to get the truth from him. ‘You intended this all along,’ he said. And when no answer came, ‘You never meant to hold on to Troy as we planned, did you? You were just making use of me to deceive Antenor and Aeneas.’
‘I’ve no time for this,’ Agamemnon scowled. He was about to walk away when he was snagged by a need to justify himself further. He looked back at Odysseus again. ‘Your stratagem of the horse worked well, old friend. Troy is finished. Poets will still be singing of this victory a thousand years from now. And you’ll be back home on Ithaca soon enough, a rich man, tumbling your wife on that great bed of yours.’ He grinned through the smoke at the grim face that frowned back at him, white as wax, in the moonlight. ‘Think of it, Odysseus. Just think of it. We are immortal, you and I. Whatever happens, our names are deathless now.’
And with that, Agamemnon, King of Men, summoned his bodyguard around him once more and advanced towards King Priam’s palace.
All night long, not speaking, refusing to be touched, Menelaus prowled the bloody chamber where the bed had begun to stink like a butcher’s stall. Helen crouched in a corner, stifling her whimpers. Sometimes, as the night wind gusted, smoke blew into the room, charring the air. After a time the oil-lamp that had been left burning on a tripod guttered out. Now the darkness was almost complete.
Menelaus went to the balcony once to look for the source of the fire and saw that the mansion was in no immediate danger. Beneath him, a tumult of screaming people ran along the street, looking back over their shoulders to where a company of spearmen advanced towards them rattling their shields. But he took almost as little interest in what he saw as did the many corpses already cluttering the gutters. He was remembering those moments in the bull-court at Knossos when he had first heard the news of Helen’s defection – how the roaring of the crowd had dimmed in his ears so that it sounded like the distant throbbing of the sea; how time had wavered strangely, and he had been possessed by the feeling