And if Helios had grown, then so had his sister Helike, who must now be around fourteen or fifteen years old. Rather old to be unmarried, especially as she was such a pretty girl. Helios, poor lad, had been behind the door when good looks were being allocated. We discovered later, mostly through the medium of mime, that she had been briefly married to a soldier, an archer I think, who had been killed around six months before and, as was the custom, she had returned to her father and both children now worked full-time in their father’s tavern.
There were a number of soldiers billeted at the tavern but they never bothered us. In their world, people came – people went. People lived – people died. There was a war on. No one cared. There were other things to worry about.
There was sickness in the city, for a start. With so many people jammed so tightly together, of course, there would be. And food was short. It was there, but never quite enough. Water was not rationed, but soldiers stood at every well. It was all good-natured enough, but no one took more than their fair share.
The old women had disappeared from the streets. They had nothing to sell. People hoarded any surplus food they happened to have. No one was starving, but the children had that pinched look. There was no running around now. They and everyone who could be spared from fighting or manning the walls worked in the fields, wringing every last mouthful of food from the exhausted soil.
But if the Trojans were suffering, the Greeks had it even worse. They were in the tenth year of a siege that was going nowhere. Where was the promised plunder? The spoils of war? The women?
I think the tenth year marked some sort of watershed for them. They didn’t want to play any more. They just wanted to take their toys and go home.
We heard it every night. Their shouted arguments drifted over the city walls in the still night air. And with the rising sun, one, maybe two ships would up-anchor and, accompanied by jeers and insults from those remaining, row silently away.
I don’t actually know how Agamemnon kept them there. Apart from the lack of any military progress of any kind, their campsite was filthy. There are only so many latrines you can dig over ten years. Broken gear and piles of stinking rubbish littered the shoreline. The shallows were thick and oily with sewage. When the wind was in the right direction, we could smell it from Troy. The conditions must have been appalling.
They’d built their own famous wall – the ditch with sharpened stakes to protect themselves from the Trojan chariots – and they squatted sullenly behind it. The days slipped away – as did Agamemnon’s troops.
The Troad, that once fertile plain, was devastated. Gone were the small farms, the huddles of houses, the neatly tilled fields, the olive groves, the woods. Everything had been flattened under the enormous weight of the opposing armies. The trees were long gone. The crops trampled back into the soil. The herds driven back to safety inside Troy itself.
Yes, the Trojans were suffering, but they were on their home ground. The Greeks, trapped on their narrow beach and with their backs to the sea, were becoming desperate.
Something had to give.
Blame Homer with his long descriptions of aristeia – personal combat – in which admiring soldiers from both sides supposedly took a break from the fighting to watch their champions duke it out. In fact, the old boy was a bit of dead loss. Wonderful poet – crap war correspondent. For a start, there was very little formal fighting. The Greeks, far from home, were more concerned with keeping themselves supplied, spending long periods further and further away from Troy as they stripped the Troad and surrounding areas of everything they could find.
So nine years had drifted by in inconclusive sea raids and the odd skirmish outside the walls, with nothing to show for it.
But now, now we were well into the tenth year and, suddenly, everything changed.
It came out of the blue. One day we were on the walls, lethargically watching the ten-year stalemate – and the next day, all hell broke loose.
We were moving into the season of the hot winds. Winds that blew dust into every last nook and cranny. Dust that stuck to sweating skin and drove us insane. Dust that got into our clothes, our beds, our food, and under our eyelids. Winds that blew hot air into our faces no matter in which direction we faced. Winds that irritated and niggled and maddened and we all became snappy and fractious, even with each other. Nothing personal. It was just that time of year. The nearest equivalent is blowing a hot hair-dryer into your face twenty-four hours a day.
Whether the winds were a contributing factor, I don’t know. Probably. But today was the beginning of the end. Today, although we didn’t yet know it, Achilles would finally emerge from his tent, insane for blood and revenge, and all hell would break loose.
As Homer describes it, Agamemnon and Achilles had quarrelled over the division of their booty. Achilles had a massive strop and withdrew to his tent, from whence he refused to budge. Think petulant teenager. The war was going badly for the Greeks, so Patroclus, his friend and countryman, had stolen his armour and led Achilles’ Myrmidons into battle himself. He was immediately engaged and killed by Hector, who, along with everyone else, was under the impression he had killed Achilles.