2. Odette

2

Odette

I didn’t want to sleep, not when any one of those Greek soldiers could walk into this tent at any moment. But after the day’s events, the heightened adrenaline, and the long arduous walk on no food or sleep, exhaustion soon sucked me under.

Hypnos was waiting for me. He was not, it appeared, fond of mothers who had killed their sons. And so he sent his son Morpheus to haunt me. I stared at the flapping of the tent and whenever Hypnos dragged my eyelids shut, the flickering sound of the tent became the crackle of the log fire Alcander and I had lit last night.

“They’ll come tonight.” Alcander’s voice was quiet.

I had only just put our son Lykas to bed. “You sound certain.”

He sent me a pained look, and I knew what it meant. He was begging me to take this seriously, but when faced with the certainty of eternal damnation, what better way to beat back the desperation than with glib statements?

“We could still take Lykas and run,” I pleaded, for the millionth time.

“Run where, exactly? To the next village on their warpath? Did you hear what they did to the people in Old Theronika, only one village away from our own?”

I shook my head, not wanting to hear, already having heard the rumours, but Alcander was intent on continuing.

“They hung the men’s bodies from their own homes and left the ground slick with their entrails for their wives and children to walk through, as the Greek soldiers dragged them out of their houses kicking and screaming. Then, they hauled the boys by their hair and crushed their skulls against the rocks, until their small bodies were limp and left for the crows to peck at. Those close enough to report back say you can still hear the flies buzzing over their remains from miles away. And the smell of blood, and piss, and shit – and fear – becomes so overwhelming you can’t help but retch. That is what will catch up with us eventually, no matter how far we run. And when it does, we will wish we had stayed to face the sword here, because what waits out there is a death so slow, even the gods look away.”

I had closed my eyes to avoid watching Alcander’s mouth paint such a vivid, crushing picture while also humming a soundless tune in my head to block out his words, but it had not worked. The scene had sunk in regardless, until it took me several moments to catch my breath, to force the bile that had risen in my throat back down again, so I could speak. “We could go to the citadel to seek refuge.”

“The citadel won’t open until the people are banging down the door, and even when they do, the overcrowding is likely to cause disease and death to sweep the streets.”

“At least it would give us a fighting chance,” I countered, but I already knew it was useless. Alcander would say what he had said every time we had this argument. Still, some parts of me hoped he would change his mind at the eleventh hour. But he was already shaking his head.

“Odette, stop it. We would be hunted down like animals. These are soldiers, barbarians. They want to see the fall of Troy – not just the citadel, but the fall of the Trojan people. All of us. I will die and they will butcher our boy like he’s nothing.” His voice hardened. “You know what they do to women. You’d be forced to watch them brutalise us before they dragged you away in chains.”

“They might still spare him, raise him as their own, he’s so young …” I tried, but even I heard the patheticness in my voice.

Alcander shook his head, his stare boring into me. “I am trying to offer you the only final kindness I can, as your husband. Do not fight me on this. My plan is the only thing keeping us from a fate worse than death.” He stepped closer to me. “I won’t let them take you or our son. I won’t let you put us through that on a thread of foolish hope.”

For the first time, I heard it in his voice. Defeat. Said quietly, resignedly, yet there was a crescendo roaring through my ears and a crushing weight on my chest that felt like someone was robbing my lungs of air. This had not been a discussion. There was no room for defiance, no space for hope. The poison I had purchased was not a back-up plan, but our only chance to be spared a brutal life, a brutal death, and die peacefully together as a family.

“Go. Make the tea,” he ordered.

Nodding mechanically, I slowly rose from the fireside and walked as quietly as I could into our tiled kitchen. Above the sink, a rack where I usually kept jars of herbs for cooking and preserving. Behind them, the hemlock I had quietly purchased from one of the women in the village over, now gone. She had been quite clear in her instruction: crush the plant in my mortar and pestle, then add hot water, brew it for no more than five minutes, and serve it as a tea.

I boiled the water and steeped the tea.

The gods would never forgive me for this. They did not like poison. We were their little playthings. Anything that gave us some measure of control was abhorrent to them. Hera, in particular, would curse me for what I was about to do. But she didn’t understand; how could she? Her children were gods. They would never know pain or suffering, so they did not understand the concept of mercy. That’s what separated us and them, the mortals and the gods. True, compassionate mercy.

That’s what I told myself as I poured the tea.

Alcander came in behind me and pressed his body warmth against mine. His attempt at comfort. His thumb stroked the curve of my neck, ran along the length of my bare shoulder, which he pressed a kiss to before he left. I heard him head up the stairs and imagined him going in to check on our son, stroking those curls off his forehead and pressing a kiss to his temple, before quietly moving into our bedroom.

I had already been told how this was to go. I did not agree with his approach, but in the end, I was his wife. I was supposed to follow my husband’s instruction. And he would not – could not – watch his little boy die. As if I wanted this task. As if I had asked for it. As if I hadn’t screamed and pleaded and begged the gods to keep the Greeks from our doorstep.

It had worked, for a time. Until it hadn’t.

I held the cup firmly in my palms, as if spilling any of this poison on the floor would erode the stone beneath my buskins. Up each step, one by one. A light push on the door until it creaked open and there was my son, in his bed, bathed by the moonlight from the window above .

“Mummy?” he murmured drowsily.

Gathering myself, I took the four small steps into his room and sat on the floor beside his bed.

“It’s alright, darling. I just came to say goodnight. Are you thirsty?”

He nodded as he sat up.

“H—Here.” I swallowed hard, willing my voice not to break. This was a kindness, I reminded myself. “Drink this.”

His small pudgy hands clasped either side of the cup. So small, so perfect. How could I think of ending something so precious? I went to snatch the cup out of his hand, but it was too late; he had already taken a giant gulp.

“Mummy, it tastes funny,” he complained, and then took another gulp as if that would change his mind. Like I had frequently told him to do when trying new vegetables at the dinner table. Oh gods, what had I done?

He handed the empty cup back to me. “I don’t think I’d like to drink that again, Mummy.”

A tear fell down my cheek and I couldn’t help but let out a small sob. “No, I don’t think you should.”

Climbing into bed beside him, I stroked his soft arms, forehead, hair, and sang to him. When he complained that he couldn’t feel his legs and that his tummy felt funny, I shushed him and told him it would be alright. When his body trembled as his breaths got shallower and more rapid, I cradled him in my arms and assured him it would be alright. Not much longer, I promised.

And when he was still and the last of my wretched sobs had been torn from my throat, I went back down to prepare the two remaining cups.

I woke to the knowledge that there was someone in the tent. Someone trying to muffle their footsteps in a failed attempt to keep quiet. Unlike the soldiers who’d made no such attempt when they stormed their way into our homes.

The boar was wrong. I had been sleeping when they’d come to raid us. I had gone to make the remaining two cups of hemlock. Alcander and I had sat by the fire together and drunk them. It had an acrid, bitter taste and it wasn’t long before I had felt the muscles in my limbs weaken and my breathing become laboured. I remembered my head lolling to the side, as if I was having an out-of-body experience, before my eyes had flickered shut.

I don’t know what happened, why I had awoken to the banging on the door. Or why Alcander was staring wild-eyed at me as the banging seemed to get impossibly louder. Perhaps the gods had spared us for a reason. I ran immediately to Lykas’ room, in case he too was awake, only to crumble in the doorway at the sight of his still, lifeless body.

The gods hadn’t spared us.

They’d ensured there wasn’t enough poison to take us all. I was certain I had measured it out as the witch had said. Had she lied? Had one of the gods interfered? It didn’t matter though, as rough calloused hands yanked my arms behind my back and dragged me from our home.

Now my little Lykas lay dead, my husband killed before my eyes, and my worst fear had come to pass: life without either of them, with me left behind to carry on. I was no longer a desperate mother pleading with the gods to no avail. I was a murderer. And for trying to take control of my fate, the gods were content to make me suffer. Hera certainly knew how to punish those who went against her.

That’s why I had ended up a slave – to him .

I opened the slits of my eyes to try and make out who was walking around, but it was just the boar. He stopped and I tried to breathe evenly to maintain my feigned sleep. Grunting, he found whatever he was looking for and left again.

I did not wish to fall back into Hypnos’ arms, so I got up, finding the jug by the entrance of the tent to wash my face and under my arms. Outside, the camp didn’t sound so busy, so I dared to look.

Turning my head from left to right, I saw two rows of simple but sturdy tents staged like houses along a sandy road. These ones were all emblazoned with the same circular emblem stitched onto the beige canvas. The line that ran across the middle of the symbol was jagged, clearly a clifftop, with a swirling line below it representing a bay. In the centre of the emblem, balanced on the jagged clifftop, was a palace surrounded by olive branches. Above the palace emblem was a rising sun, as if the place was a beacon of enduring hope.

I knew from my studies with Alcander that the island of Ithaca was famed for its rugged mountains and olive groves. I wondered if the boar was from there.

There weren’t many soldiers out, but I could hear roaring laughter in the distance and smell a fire; the aroma of roasted meat mingled with the salty tang of sea air. Perhaps that’s where Odysseus had gone, to have a real dinner, the paltry plate he offered me earlier merely honouring some weird Greek guesthood rule I didn’t know about.

But, why would he feed me at all if I was now nothing more than property to him? I shook my head, my thoughts foggy from weariness, and quite possibly the aftereffects of the hemlock still working its way out of my bloodstream.

My memories, even from earlier in the day, were muddled at best. I was sure on my walk here that there were rows upon rows of these tents, a sprawling tent city, nestled beneath the shadow of mighty warships drawn up to shore. I could imagine that during the day the place pulsed with an energy equal to the citadel of Troy, which I’d visited on the few occasions I ventured beyond the walls.

For now, though, the place was muted and seemingly deserted. Most of the soldiers must have been up by the bonfire. I hesitated, not wanting to get lost in what was undoubtedly a labyrinth, but also desperate to explore. To not be an easy target for the boar to return to.

So, I stepped out onto the path. Each tent along the way was a miniature fortress, its entrance flanked by spears thrust into the ground and shields propped up against the fabric walls. Whetstones to sharpen weapons lay abandoned beside them. Somewhere, horses whinnied and stamped their hooves impatiently. I imagined they were tethered to wooden stakes.

At least I had been spared that.

Rows of tents gave way to more rows of tents, and I could see more than one bonfire scattered up the coast of the shoreline. Of course, if a hundred thousand Greek soldiers were here, then there had to be other areas for the different islands all gathered under one Greek banner.

Just as I’d had the thought, I saw a pennant with a different emblem of another Greek city-state wrapped around a wooden pole and stuck into the ground, clearly marking the boundary between one encampment and the next.

“What are you doing here?”

The harsh voice to my right threw me and I froze, like a deer that’s just scented a predator in the glen. I went to swallow, to talk, but my mouth was dry and no words would come to mind.

“I asked you a question,” the soldier rounded on me, grabbing my hair and harshly tugging it until my face was cast in moonlight.

“I—I was just … taking a walk,” I managed.

“Without your master? I don’t think so,” he sneered. His flat sloping nose looked like it had been dented in with a shovel. His dull eyes, slightly too far apart, lingered on my face then dragged their way down the rest of my body, his sneer turning salacious as his tongue swiped out against fat lips. His grip on my hair tightened.

Then, before I could so much as curse myself for my foolishness (of course there would be guards on watch duty), a commanding voice with the weight of a church bell and yet somehow like warm wood and honey cleared through the heavy breaths of the man holding me.

“There you are.” Odysseus appeared from the shadows of a tent, along the track between the two encampments that obviously led elsewhere. To one of the bonfires, probably. “Release her, Thersites.”

“Odysseus … Lord Odysseus,” he corrected himself. Was that fear I heard in his voice? His hand unclenched from my scalp as he shoved me. “I was just showing this slave back to her proper place.”

“And where would that be, Thersites?”

I actually sensed the man behind me begin to tremble as Odysseus strode towards him.

“You would be particularly stupid to take what does not belong to you just to increase your own status. Are you dumb as well as ugly, Thersites? To take another man’s property when his tent is not five hundred metres from your own? What were you going to do, cut her tongue out so she couldn’t talk? Or just hope she wouldn’t open her mouth for anything but your stump of a cock?”

“I wasn’t?—”

“Thinking? No, I don’t imagine you do much of that,” Odysseus said quietly, ignoring the soldier’s blabbering entirely as he stopped beside me, crooked a finger under my chin and turned my head one way and then the other, examining my skin for marks. Satisfied he saw none, though my scalp was still on fire, he took the remaining steps until he was inches from Thersites’ face.

The smell of fresh sweat emanated from unwashed pores and coloured the air around us.

“Even without talking, all bodies – slave or soldier – can do an awful lot of explaining. Just as yours is doing right now. Do not let me find you touching my property again. Do you understand me, Thersites?”

Thersites gave an audible swallow, the soldier’s fear palpable. I realised in that moment that Odysseus must have been more than just a general, or done something on the battlefield, something renowned, in order to inspire that kind of fear in another man, particularly one on his side of the war. Thersites nodded in deference before shuffling off into the shadows of his encampment.

“Come,” Odysseus motioned for me to take his hand. My legs were now jelly-like from exhaustion and fear, so to avoid tripping over the fabric of my chiton, I gathered the dusty and sand-spattered hem around me and reached for his hand. His was large and calloused, dwarfing mine as he interlocked our fingers and tugged me back to Ithaca territory.

We had just returned to the tent, Odysseus holding the flap open for me as I nodded my thanks, when a cry pierced the air. My head snapped back towards the outside, but no one came declaring war. Instead, an uproar of laughter followed as Odysseus stepped into the tent. I realised it must have been one of the women from my village. I stepped back, to avoid being crushed into the boar’s broad chest and cringed simultaneously, trying to keep my show of displeasure to myself.

He noted it.

“It is the only way kings can convince men to go to war,” he said as he moved past me and I remained standing near the doorway, loath to be here but even more loath to leave. “That and glory. Next time, you would be wise to stay where I tell you.”

I went to thank him for what he’d done with Thersites. It was a force of habit, of manners that had long been drilled into me as I’d been raised a good woman, a good wife. Then I realised the absurdity of such a thing – to thank my captor for sparing me from degradation. He hadn’t done it for me. He had done it because to take and debase another’s property was to question a man’s social status.

The boar had no more rescued me than he had asserted his position. That was all.

He wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t a kind man. He was a feared general in the great Grecian Army. And I would do well to remember that.