A Thousand Ships Read online

  Troy would not open her gates to the Greeks. Creusa had watched her father’s brow darken when he spoke to her mother about what Priam had decided to do. The city would fight, and they would not give back the woman, or her gold or her dresses. The Greeks were opportunists, he said. They would be gone before the first winter storms battered their ships. Troy was a city of fabled good fortune: King Priam with his fifty sons and fifty daughters, his limitless wealth, his high walls and his loyal allies. The Greeks could not hear of such a city without wishing to destroy it. It was in their nature. And so the Trojans knew this was why they had come, with the retrieval of Helen as their pretence. The Spartan king – Trojan wives muttered as they gathered by the water to launder their clothes – had probably sent Helen away with Paris deliberately, to give him and his fellow-Greeks the excuse they needed to set sail.

  Whatever their reasons, when the Greeks had first made camp outside Creusa’s home, she had been a child. And the next time she walked outside, she held the hand of her own son, who’d had a whole city for his nursery, but had never run across the plains outside. Even Aeneas, battle-wearied after years of fighting, had a lightness to him when the gates creaked open. He was still wearing his sword, of course, but he had left his spear at home. Scouts had reported that no soldiers had been left behind. The coast was empty of men and boats. Only a sacrificial offering remained, a huge wooden thing, they said. Impossible to know who the Greeks had dedicated it to, or why. Poseidon, for a safe voyage home, Creusa suggested to her husband, as their little boy tore off across the muddied ground. The grass would grow again, she told Euryleon when they first walked outside. Thinking of her own childhood, she had promised too much. She had not thought of all those studded feet trampling, all those chariot wheels churning, all that blood draining.

  Aeneas nodded, and she caught sight of their son’s face in his, just for a moment, beneath the thick dark brows. Yes, Poseidon was surely the divine recipient of their offering. Or perhaps it was Athene, who had protected the Greeks for so long, or Hera, who loathed the Trojans no matter how many cattle they slaughtered in her honour. They walked around the edge of what had recently been a battlefield towards the bay. Euryleon would finally feel sand beneath his feet rather than dirt and stone. Creusa felt the change already, as the mud became grainier and clumps of thick sea-grass sprouted around her. She felt tears warm on her cheeks as the soft west wind blew into her eyes. Her husband reached out a scarred hand and pressed her tears away with his thumb.

  ‘Is it too much?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to go back?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  *

  Creusa felt tears on her face once again but they did not come from fear, although she was afraid, and although Aeneas was not there to comfort her. Billowing smoke filled the streets, and it was this which made her eyes track sooty tears down her cheeks. She turned down a path which she was sure would lead her to the lower part of the city where she could follow the wall around until she came to the gates. She had spent ten years locked inside Troy and had walked its paths countless times. She knew every house, every corner, every twist and turn. But though she had been sure she was heading downhill, she suddenly found her way blocked: a dead end. She felt panic rise in her chest and she gasped for air, spluttering at the greasy blackness which filled her throat. Men ran past her – Greek, Trojan? She could no longer tell – with cloths tied around their faces to hold off the smoke. Desperately she cast around for something she could use to do the same. But her stole was at home, and she could not return for it now. Even if she knew the way back, which she was no longer sure she did.

  Creusa wanted to pause and try to find something familiar, something which would allow her to work out exactly where she was and calculate the best route out of the city. But there was no time. She noticed that the smoke looked thinner at her feet, and crouched down for a moment to catch her breath. The fires were spreading in every direction, and although the smoke made it difficult for her to judge, some looked to be very close. She retraced her steps until she came to the first crossroads, and peered left, which seemed a little brighter, and then right into the deepest darkness. She must move away from the light, she realized. The brightest parts of the city must be where the fires raged most strongly. So Creusa would go into the dark.

  *

  The sun had dazzled her as she and Aeneas approached the promontory which had held the Greek encampment on the low plains. Only from the highest point of Troy – the citadel and the watchtowers – had the camp been visible. Creusa had climbed up to see it every time her husband fought outside the walls. If she could see him fighting on the plains, she had told herself, even if she couldn’t identify him in the midst of mud and gore and glinting blades, she could keep him safe. And now here he was, walking beside her with his hand on her arm. She had expected to feel the strongest relief, when she saw the bay vacated and the camp abandoned. But as she and Aeneas turned the sandy corner, she barely noticed the missing boats or the detritus on the shore. Like the other Trojans ahead of them, their eyes were drawn upwards, to the horse.

  It was the largest sacrificial offering any of them had ever seen, even those Trojan men who had sailed abroad to Greece before the war. It was another way in which the Greeks sought to distinguish themselves. Their offerings to the gods were extravagant beyond measure. Why offer one cow when you could offer a hecatomb? The smell of burning meat from outside the walls had filled Troy in the early days of the war, when Creusa had eaten nothing but a small cup of barley with a little milk. The Greeks were doing it on purpose, she knew: flaunting their carcasses in front of a besieged city. But it would take more than hunger to break Trojan spirits. And as the war dragged from one year to the next, she thought the Greeks must regret their earlier largesse to the gods. If they had only saved some of those cattle, they might have had quite the herd by now, grazing on the sea-grass perhaps, and sustaining the soldiers who grew leaner every year.

  But this offering was so large that it tricked the eyes. Creusa looked away for a moment and was shocked anew when she turned them back to its huge wooden planks. It towered above them, three or four times the height of a man. And though the design was rudimentary – what else could you expect from Greeks? – the figure was perfectly identifiable as a horse: four legs and a long grassy tail; a muzzle, though it lacked a mane. The wood had been cut with a clumsy axe, but the panels had been nailed together neatly enough. Ribbons had been tied around its brow to convey its sacrificial status.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ she breathed to her husband. He shook his head. Of course not.

  The Trojans approached the horse warily, as though it might come to life and snap its teeth. Foolish to be fearful of a simulacrum, but how could this be all that was left behind by an invading army? The men began to discuss what should be done, and their women stood back, murmuring to one another about the strange beast. Perhaps they should draw long grasses and twigs into a pile beneath the creature’s feet, and burn it? If it was an offering to a god for a fair wind back to Greece – as seemed likely, though Creusa had heard of them making uglier sacrifices in the past – then could the Trojans inflict one last blow on their enemies by destroying it? Would that divert the good will of the god away from the Greeks? Or should they take the horse and dedicate it to the gods for themselves?

  What began as a whispered conversation soon developed into shouts. Men who had fought alongside one another, brothers in arms and blood, were snarling at their kinsmen. The horse must be burned or saved; driven into the sea or dragged up to the city.

  Creusa wished she could simply call for silence so she could sit on the dunes and lie back, stretching out her arms and legs, feeling the sand on her skin. It had been so long since she had been free. What did the Greeks’ offerings matter to the Trojans now? She grabbed Euryleon’s hand, and scooped him close to her legs as Aeneas stepped forward, squeezing Creusa’s arm as he walked away. He did not want to be drawn into an argument, bu
t he could not shirk his duty as one of Troy’s defenders. The men had experienced a very different war from the women who waited for them, nursed them and fed them at the end of each day. To Aeneas, Creusa realized, the place where she now stood – from which she wished the Trojans would disappear so she could enjoy it in peace with her husband and her son – was still a battlefield.

  Suddenly, the clamour fell silent and a shuffling figure made his painful way past Creusa, his dark red robes tangling around his gnarled feet. Priam walked like the old man he was, but he still held his head upright like a king. His proud queen, Hecabe, moved beside him into the centre of the crowd. She would not hold herself back, as the other women did.

  ‘Enough!’ Priam said, his voice quavering a little. Euryleon began to tug at Creusa’s dress, wanting her attention for something he had seen – a beetle digging its laborious way through the sand-dune at their feet – but she shushed him. Nothing about this first day outside the city was matching her imagination, which had brought light into her darker moments. She had yearned for the day to come when her son saw for the first time the animals which lived along the shore. And now she was quieting him, so the king could speak to his furious subjects.

  ‘We do not fight among ourselves,’ Priam said. ‘Not today. I will hear your thoughts, one after another.’

  Creusa heard the arguments in favour of every possible fate for the horse, and found she did not care particularly what Priam chose to do. Burn the horse, keep the horse: what difference would it make? The last man to speak was the priest, Laocoon, a fleshy man with oiled black curls who was always too fond of the sound of his own voice. He was determined that the horse should be torched where it stood. It was the only way to placate the gods, he said, who had punished Troy for so many years. Anything else would be a catastrophic mistake.

  *

  Smoke from countless fires billowed around her and Creusa stumbled as she tried to make her way along the path to the city walls. She thought she was going in the right direction, but she could not be sure. Her lungs were screaming as though she were running uphill. She could see nothing ahead of her, and she stretched out her hands, one in front to break her fall if she tripped, one to her right, so she could try to trace the buildings she passed. It was the only way she could be sure she was moving forward.

  Creusa tried not to let the thought become words, held it only in its haziest form before hurling it away from her, but it could not be denied: the city was beyond salvation. So many fires raging in every direction. More and more wooden roofs had caught and the smoke was only growing thicker. How much fire could one stone city make? She thought of everything in her own home which would burn: her clothes, her bedding, the tapestries she had woven while she was expecting Euryleon. The sudden sense of loss seared her, as though she had been caught in the flames. She had lost her home. Ten years of fearing that the city would fall, and now it was falling around her as she ran.

  But how could this be happening? Troy had won the war. The Greeks had sailed away, and when the Trojans found the wooden horse, they had done exactly what the man told them they must do. And in a terrible rush, Creusa knew what had set her city ablaze. Ten years of a conflict whose heroes had already made their way into the songs of poets, and victory belonged to none of the men who had fought outside the walls, not Achilles nor Hector, both long since dead. Instead, it belonged to the man they had found hiding in the reeds, near the horse, who said his name was – she could not remember. A hissing sound, like a snake.

  *

  ‘Sinon,’ the man wept. Two spears were pointed at his neck, and he had fallen to his knees. The Trojan scouts had found him hiding in the low shrubs, on the far bank of the Scamander just as it opened out to meet the sea. They had driven him – one on either side, armed with knives as well as spears – into the midst of the Trojan men. The prisoner’s hands were bound at the wrists and there were angry red welts around his ankles, as though ropes had bitten him there too.

  ‘We might not have seen him,’ said one of the scouts, prodding the prisoner with the tip of his spear. The man suppressed a cry, though the spear had not broken his skin. ‘It was only the red ribbons which caught our eyes.’

  The prisoner was a strange sight: his mousy hair curled into his neck and out again, and if it had ever been oiled, it was now matted with the mud which covered so much of his bare skin. He wore a loin-cloth but nothing else. Even his feet were bare. And yet, around his temples, bright ribbons had been tied. It did not seem possible that so dirty a man – more like an animal than a man, Creusa thought – could have any part of him so clean and pretty. The prisoner let forth a piteous howl.

  ‘What was meant to kill me then is the cause of my death now!’

  Creusa could not hide her disgust at the filthy, weeping Greek. Why had the scouts not killed him where they found him?

  Priam raised two fingers of his left hand. ‘Silence,’ he said. The crowd stilled, and even the prisoner’s racking sobs diminished.

  ‘You are a Greek?’ Priam said. Sinon nodded. ‘And yet they left you behind?’

  ‘Not intentionally, king.’ Sinon raised his hands to wipe mucus from his face. ‘I ran away from them. The gods will punish me, I know. But I could not stand to be . . .’ His speech dissolved again.

  ‘Take control of yourself,’ Priam said. ‘Or my men will kill you where you kneel and your blood will feed the gulls.’

  Sinon gave one last juddering sob and took a breath. ‘Forgive me.’

  Priam nodded. ‘You ran away from them?’

  ‘I did. Though I was born Greek and I have fought alongside Greeks all my life,’ Sinon replied. ‘I came here with my father when I was still a boy. He died in the fighting many years ago, killed by your great warrior, Hector.’ A ripple passed through the Trojan crowd. ‘Please,’ said Sinon, looking around him for the first time. ‘I mean no disrespect. We were on opposing sides. But Hector did not kill him with malice. He cut him down on the battlefield, and took nothing from his corpse, not even my father’s shield, which was finely wrought. I bear no grudge against Hector’s family.’

  The loss of Hector had been so terrible, and so recent, that shadows settled on Priam’s face, and he seemed to Creusa’s eyes to lose himself for a moment. Standing before her, before them all, was no king, but a broken old man whose ancient neck could scarcely support the gold chains he still wore. The prisoner might have noticed the same thing, for he swallowed and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter, speaking to the king alone. Creusa had to strain to hear him.

  ‘But my father had enemies, powerful enemies among the Greeks,’ Sinon said. ‘And we were unfortunate enough to incur the hostility of two men in particular, though I swear to you neither my father nor I did anything to deserve it. Still Calchas and Odysseus were set against him, and so against me, from the outset.’

  At the hated name of Odysseus, Creusa could not suppress a shudder.

  ‘An enemy of Odysseus holds some common ground with us,’ said Priam slowly.

  ‘Thank you, king. He is the most hated of men. The ordinary Greek soldiers detest him, the way he swaggers around as though he were a mighty warrior or noble king. He is a far from exceptional fighter and Ithaca – his kingdom, as he calls it – is nothing more than a rocky outcrop that no man would envy. Yet our leader Agamemnon and the others, they have always treated him as a hero. And his arrogance has only grown in consequence.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Priam. ‘Yet none of this explains why you are here, or why your countrymen have all disappeared so unexpectedly. And the name of Calchas is not familiar to me.’

  Sinon blinked several times. He could see, Creusa thought, that he must make his point quickly, or lose his chance to speak forever.

  ‘The Greeks have known for some time, king, that they must leave. Calchas is their chief priest, and he has appealed to the gods for happier news. But their answer has been the same, since last winter: Troy will not fall to a Greek army camped outside
the gates. Agamemnon did not want to hear it, of course, and nor did his brother, Menelaus. But eventually they could no longer argue their case. The Greeks are sick of being far from home. The war could not be won, so it was better to take the booty they had acquired and set sail. This argument was put forward by many men—’

  ‘Including you?’ Priam asked.

  Sinon smiled. ‘Not at the formal discussions,’ he said. ‘I am no king, I would never be permitted to speak. But among ourselves, the ordinary soldiers, yes: I agreed that we should leave. I believed we should never have come. And that made me unpopular. Not with the rank and file, who were of the same mind. But with the leaders, the men who had staked their reputations on the war, with Odysseus. Still, they could not argue with a message coming directly from the gods. Reluctantly they agreed to sail home.’

  ‘And they left you behind as punishment?’ Priam asked. His scouts had relaxed their spears a little, so Sinon no longer saw them right at his throat as he spoke.