Achilles had killed her father, cutting Eetion down in combat when the swift-footed Achaean man-killer had led his men against the outlying Trojan cities shortly after the Greeks had landed. Andromache had seven brothers—none of them fighters, but sheepherders and tenders of oxen—and Achilles had killed them on that same day, finding them in the fields and chasing them down to their death in the rocky hills below the forest. Achilles’ plan was obviously to leave no male vestige of the Cilician royal family alive. That night, Achilles had his men dress Eetion’s body in war-bronze and he burned the corpse with respect, heaping a grave-mound above the old king’s ashes. But Andromache’s brothers’ bodies lay untended in the fields and woods, food for wolves.
Rich with the plunder of a dozen cities, Achilles still demanded a literal king’s ransom for Eetion’s queen—Andromache’s mother—and he had received it. Ilium was still rich then, and free to bargain with its invaders.
Andromache’s mother had returned home to the halls of their empty palace in Cilicia and there—according to Andromache’s frequent telling of her woeful tale—“Artemis, in a shower of arrows, shot her down.”
Well, in a way.
Artemis, daughter of Zeus and Leto and sister of Apollo, is the goddess of the hunt—I saw her on Olympos only yesterday—but she is also the goddess presiding over childbirth. At one point in the Iliad, an infuriated Apollo flung shouts at his sister, in front of their father Zeus—“He lets you kill off mothers in their labor”—meaning that Artemis is responsible for dispensing death in childbirth as well as for serving as the divine midwife to mortal women.
Andromache’s mother died nine months after being taken hostage by Achilles on the day Eetion, Andromache’s father, was killed. Andromache’s mother died in childbirth, attempting to bring her husband’s killer’s child into the world.
Tell me that the bitch-goddess Irony doesn’t rule the world.
Andromache and their baby were not at home. Hector rushed from room to room in the house, the four of us spearmen holding back, watching the entrance but not interfering. The hero was obviously worried and showed more visible anxiety that I had ever seen him show on the battlefield. Back at the doorway, he stopped two servant women coming in.
“Where’s Andromache? Has she gone to the Temple of Athena with the other noble wives? To my sister’s house? To see my brother’s wives?”
“Our mistress has gone to the wall, master,” said the oldest of the servants. “All of the Trojan women have heard of the day’s terrible fighting, of Diomedes’ wrath and the turn of fortune against the sons of Ilium. You wife has gone to the huge gate-tower of Troy to see what she can see, to learn if her master and husband still lives. She ran like a madwoman, Master, with the nurse running along behind, carrying your child.”
We could hardly keep up with Hector as he ran to the Scaean Gates, and I realized a block from the wall that I shouldn’t stay with him. This event—the meeting of Hector and Andromache on the ramparts—was too important. Too many gods would be viewing it. The Muse might well be there, hunting for me.
Several hundred yards from the Gates, I dropped away from the loping spearmen and fell into a crowd on a side street. The shadows were deep now, the air cooling, but the topless towers of Ilium were still lighted by the red sun setting in the west.
I chose one of these towers and climbed its winding interior staircase while still morphed as the spearman Dolon.
The tower was built something like a minaret—although Islam was still millennia in the future—and I was the only one on the narrow, circular balcony when I stepped out onto it. The sun was in my eyes, but by polarizing my visual filters and magnifying the focus on my god-given contact lenses, I had a clear view of the reunion on the wall.
Andromache rushed down the rampart and flung herself at her husband, her feet twirling in the air as he lifted her and returned the hug. His polished helmet caught the rich evening light. Other soldiers and worried wives on the wall stepped away, giving their leader and his bride some privacy. Only Andromache’s nurse, holding the one-year-old boy, stayed close to the couple.
I could have eavesdropped on their conversation with my shotgun-microphone baton, but I chose just to watch them, seeing their mouths move, studying their expressions. After her rush of relief at seeing her warrior-husband alive and unharmed, Andromache frowned and began speaking quickly, urgently. I remembered from Homer’s tale the rough outline of what she was saying—a retelling of her own woes, her loneliness after Achilles’ murder of her father and brothers. I could actually read her lips on some of the words as she said, “You are my father now, Hector, and my noble mother as well. You are a brother to me now, my love. And you are also my husband, young and warm and virile and alive! Take pity on me, my husband! Do not abandon me. Do not go back out onto the plains of Ilium and die there and have your body dragged behind an Achaean chariot until your flesh is flayed from your bones. Stay here! Fight here. Protect our city by fighting on the ramparts, here.”
“I can’t,” said Hector, his helmet flashing as he slowly shook his head.
“You can,” I saw Andromache say, her face contorted with love and fear. “You must. Draw your armies up close to where that fig tree stands . . . do you see it? This is where our beloved Ilium lies most open to their attack. Three times the Argives have tried that point, hoping to overrun our city, three times their best fighters led the way—both Ajaxes, the big and little, and Idomeneus, and terrible Diomedes. Perhaps a prophet showed them our weakness there. Fight here, my husband! Protect us here!”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” cried Andromache, pulling away from his embrace. “But you won’t!”
“Yes,” I watched Hector say, “I won’t.”
“Do you know what will happen to me, Noble Hector, when you die your noble death and become food for the Achaean dogs?”
I saw Hector wince but stay quiet.
“I will be dragged off as some sweaty Greek commander’s whore!” shouted Andromache, her voice so loud that I heard it half a block away. “Carried off to Argos as booty, as some slave for Big Ajax or Little Ajax or terrible Diomedes or some lesser captain to fuck at his whim!”
“Yes,” said Hector, his gaze pained but steady. “But I’ll be dead, with the earth over me to muffle your cries.”
“Yes, oh, yes,” cried Andromache, weeping and laughing at the same time now. “Noble Hector will be dead. And his son, whom all the citizens of Ilium call Astyanax—‘Lord of the City’—will be a slave to the Achaean pigs, sold away from his slave-whore mother. That will be your noble legacy, oh Noble Hector!”
And Andromache called the nurse closer and grabbed the child, holding him up like a shield between herself and Hector.
Now I saw the pain on Hector’s face, but he reached for the tiny boy, holding his arms out. “Come here, Scamandrius,” said Hector, calling their son by his given name rather than by the nickname given him by the city’s folk.
The boy flinched back and started to howl. I could hear his cries from my perch on the tower half a dozen rooftops away.
It was the helmet. Hector’s helmet. Polished, shining bronze, streaked with blood and grime, reflecting the sunlight and the distorted parapet and the boy himself. The helmet with its flaming red horsehair crest and its monstrously shining metal guards curving around Hector’s eyes and covering his nose.