The Song of Troy

When the sixth child was stillborn – how could he be when he had gone to full term and looked, lying on his tiny funeral car, so strong despite his dark blue skin? – I vowed that I would dower Olympos with no more sons. I sent to the Pythoness at Delphi and the answer came back that it was Poseidon who was angry, that he resented my stealing his priestess. What hypocrisy! What lunacy! First he doesn’t want her, then he does. Truly no man can understand the minds or the doings of the Gods, New or Old.

For two years I did not cohabit with Thetis, who kept begging to conceive more sons for Olympos. Then at the end of the second year I took Poseidon Horse Maker a white man foal and offered it to him before all the Myrmidons, my people.

‘Lift your curse, bless me with a living son!’ I cried.

The earth rumbled deep in its bowels, the sacred snake shot from beneath the altar like a flash of brown lightning, the ground heaved, spasmed. A pillar toppled to earth beside me as I stood unmoving, a crack appeared between my feet and I choked on the reek of sulphur, but I held my position until the tremor died away and the fissure closed. The white man foal lay on the altar drained and pathetically still. Three moons later Thetis told me that she was pregnant with our seventh child.

All through those weary times I had her watched more closely than a hawk watches the ground bird’s chicks; I made Aresune sleep in the same bed every night, I threatened the house women with unspeakable tortures if they left her alone for an instant unless Aresune was there. Thetis bore these ‘whims’, as she called them, with patience and good humour; she never argued or tried to defy my edicts. Once she made my hair stand on end and my flesh prickle when she began to sing a strange, tuneless chant out of the Old Religion. But when I ordered her to cease she obeyed, and never sang so again. Her time grew imminent. I began to hope. Surely I had always lived in proper fear of the Gods! Surely they owed me one living son!

I had a suit of armour belonged to Minos once; it was my most treasured possession. A wondrous thing, it was sheeted in gold atop four separate layers of bronze and three of tin, inlaid with lapis and amber, coral and crystal depicting a marvellous design. The shield, of similar construction, was as tall as the average man and looked like two round shields joined together one above the other, so that it had a waist. Cuirass and greaves, helmet and kilt and arm guards were made to fit a bigger man than me, so I respected the dead Minos who had worn it as he strode about his Cretan kingdom confident that he would never need it to protect himself, only to show his people how rich he was. And when he did fall it was no use to him, for Poseidon took him and his world and crushed them because they would not subscribe to the New Religion. Mother Kubaba, the Great Godesss of the Old Religion, Queen of Earth and All High, always ruled in Crete and Thera.

With the armour of Minos I had placed a spear of ash from the slopes of Mount Pelion; it had a small head fashioned from a metal called iron, so rare and precious that most men thought it a legend, for few had seen it. Trial had proven that the spear flew unerringly to its target yet felt a feather in my hand, so after I ceased to need to employ it in war I put it with the armour. The spear had a name: Old Pelion.

Before the birth of my first son I had unearthed these curios for cleaning and polishing, sure my son would grow to be a man big enough to wear them. But as my sons continued to be born dead I sent them back to the treasure vaults to live in a darkness no blacker than my despair.

About five days before Thetis expected to be confined with our seventh child I took a lamp and trod the ragged stone steps leading into the palace’s bowels, threading my way through the passages until I came to the great wooden door which barred off the treasury. Why was I there? I asked myself, but could find no satisfactory answer. I opened the door to peer into the gloom and found instead a pool of golden light on the far side of the huge chamber. My own flame pinched out, I crept forward with my hand on my dagger. The way across was cluttered with urns and chests, coffers and stored sacred gear; I had to pick my path carefully.

As I drew nearer I heard the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping. Aresune my nurse was sitting on the floor cradling the golden helm which had belonged to Minos within her arms, its fine golden plumes streaming over her crinkled hand. She wept softly but bitterly, moaning to herself and breaking into the mourning song of Aigina, the island from which she and I originally came, kingdom of Aiakos. O Kore! Aresune was already weeping for my seventh son.

I could not leave her unconsoled, could not creep away and pretend I had never seen, never heard. When my mother had ordered her to give me her breast she had been a mature woman; she had reared me under my mother’s disinterested gaze; she had trailed through a dozen nations in my wake as faithful as my hound; and when I had conquered Thessalia I raised her high in my household. So I went closer, touched her very gently on the shoulder and begged her not to weep. Taking the helmet from her, I gathered her stiff old body close and held her, saying many silly things, trying to comfort her through my own suffering. At last she fell quiet, bony fingers plucking at my blouse.

‘Dear lord, why?’ she croaked. ‘Why do you let her do it?’

‘Why what? Her? Do it?’

‘The Queen,’ she said, hiccoughing.

Afterwards I realised that her grief had sent her a little mad; otherwise I could not have prised it out of her. Though she was dearer to me by far than my mother had been, she was always conscious of the difference in our stations. I gripped her so hard between my fingers that she writhed and whimpered.

‘What about the Queen? What does she do?’

‘Murders your sons.’

I rocked. ‘Thetis? My sons? What is this? Speak!’

Her frenzy dwindling, she stared at me in dawning horror as she grasped the fact that I knew nothing.

I shook her. ‘You had better go on, Aresune. How does my wife murder her sons? And why? Why?’

But she folded her lips one over the other and said nothing, eyes in the flame terrified. My dagger came out; I pressed its tip against her loose, slippery old skin.

‘Speak, woman, or by Almighty Zeus I swear that I will have your sight put out, your nails ripped from their beds – anything I need to do to unstopper your tongue! Speak, Aresune, speak!’

‘Peleus, she would curse me, and that is far worse than any torture,’ she quavered.

‘The curse would be evil. Evil curses rebound on the head of the one who casts them. Tell me, please.’

‘I was sure you knew and consented, lord. Maybe she is right – maybe immortality is preferable to life on earth, if there is no growing old.’

‘Thetis is mad,’ I said.

‘No, lord. She is a Goddess.’

‘She is not, Aresune, I would stake my life on it! Thetis is an ordinary mortal woman.’

Aresune looked unconvinced; I did not sway her much.

‘She has murdered all your sons, Peleus, that is all. With the best of intentions.’

‘How does she do it? Does she take some potion?’

‘No, dear lord. Simpler by far. When we put her on the childing stool she drives all the women from the room except me. Then she makes me put a pail of sea water under her. As soon as the head is born she guides it into the water and holds it there until there is no possibility that the child can draw breath.’

My fists closed, opened. ‘So that’s why they’re blue!’ I stood up. ‘Go back to her, Aresune, or she will miss you. I give you my oath as your King that I will never divulge who told me this. I will see she has no opportunity to do you harm. Watch her. When the labour begins, tell me immediately. Is that clear?’