Chapter Twenty-two

 

 

 

Briseis roused me from a fitful morning doze. “Helenus sends word for you to come down to the megaron.” I refused, started to push her away, but she kept tugging me, adding, “He says at once.” My handmaidens rustled around her as they started to open the jewel casket and cosmetic box. Briseis shooed them aside. “Bring ribbons for her hair and a comb, and a simple dress. There’s no time for anything else.”

I stirred reluctantly. Cramps and heavy bleeding made venturing downstairs an unpleasant prospect. “Did Helenus tell you why?”

“An important message has come.” Briseis helped me change into a fresh linen gown and comb my hair. Had word come from Neoptolemus, wherever he was? Let it not be from Delphi. Something about the summons felt amiss, a foreboding implicit in its haste and Helenus’s unwillingness to specify.

Passing through an empty great court into the megaron reinforced my uneasiness. Neoptolemus’s regents should have been hearing petitions, but the stone benches lining the frescoed walls were deserted. Helenus stood below the dais, a grim sentinel with his arms folded in his voluminous Anatolian sleeves. The Molossian chieftain Corythus and my husband’s Thesprotian regents, Echelaos and Amyntor, sat nearby.

“Shut the doors,” Helenus said.

When the guards pulled the oaken doors closed, it seemed like they were shutting us inside a tomb. As Helenus conducted me to the queen’s chair beside the empty throne, my gaze went to the man slumped on a stool beside the hearth. A young Myrmidon, bruised and bloodied, his arm tucked into a sling. “What is this?” I asked.

“Aglaos will tell you.”

In faltering fits and starts, the youth spilled forth a horrifying account. Neoptolemus had landed on Phocian shores and led his Myrmidons on a quick march thirty miles inland to Delphi. Not kingless Ithaca at all, as I had suspected, but sacred Delphi.

“M’lady, I thought we were going to pay homage to Apollo, like all the other pilgrims, but when we got there the king went straight for the nearest altar and smashed the god’s image.” Aglaos trembled as Helenus administered strong wine to keep him going. “Guards and pilgrims fell on us from all directions, shouting for us to stop, but he ordered us to cut them down, to avenge Achilles.”

A chill shuddered through me. Sacrilege. Briseis brought me a cup of the same potent wine. I gulped it down. Sacrilege. Neoptolemus had violated a holy sanctuary. No wonder I had started bleeding. Eleuthia had terminated whatever seed I might have been carrying.

Helenus urged the young man on. “Tell the queen the rest.”

A wilting Aglaos fought unconsciousness long enough to finish. “There were too many of them, with stones and walking sticks, hoes, and shovels, bludgeoning us all, and we couldn’t break free to fight our way to him. We...” Aglaos’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled from the stool to the floor.

Helenus knelt down beside him. “They were not able to recover the king’s body,” he finished. His gaze moved to Phylakes, who maintained his position beside my chair. “Take Aglaos to the physician.”

But the bull-headed man refused to budge. “I stay with the queen.”

“You will do as you are told.”

Phylakes spat, “I don’t take orders from Trojan slaves.”

Imminent confrontation roiled in the smothering air. I surged to my feet, shoving back the chair so violently it almost tipped over. Neoptolemus’s sacrilege affected me, too, unless I made reparations to the gods. “Do as you’re told!” I thrust a finger at the unconscious young man. “Take him to the physician, and don’t you ever disobey or insult Lord Helenus again!”

Phylakes folded his arms across his chest with an exasperated look that said he did not have to listen to a petulant, overwrought woman.

Corythus came to my defense. “Queen Hermione gave you an order, you thick-headed Myrmidon dog!” The Molossian’s fierce bellow shook the rafters. “Now get out!” He remained standing, smacking his meaty fist into his palm as Phylakes and another guard grudgingly obeyed, lifting Aglaos between them and dragging him from the megaron. “Savages.”

“Blasphemers,” Amyntor muttered, shaking his head.

Briseis helped me sit down again, where I had little else to do but listen to the lords speak.

Echelaos addressed Helenus. “I know Neoptolemus consulted you for an oracle before he set out. Did you foresee his death?”

“Are you asking whether I knew what he intended to do?” Helenus resumed his old stance, arms tucked into his sleeves, and an inscrutable tightness in his features. “I doubt even he knew exactly what he intended to do until he got there”

“Speak clearly,” Corythus rumbled. “No prophetic double-talk.”

Helenus regarded him impassively. “I have explained to you before how my gift works. I saw darkness hanging over him whenever he talked about avenging his father, and nothing more. I warned him to tread with care in whatever he meant to do, but you know that he did not always heed the advice of others.”

The Molossian shook his head, his breath stirring his thick red moustache as he muttered his displeasure. “Foolishness.”

Amyntor turned to me. “My lady, do you wish to retire?”

So they wanted me gone in order to discuss men’s business. Amyntor was courteous and well-meaning, though, and right to ask. Queen though I was, I had relatively little to contribute to the conversation. “Apollo must be appeased,” I stated. “You must remember that.”

Echelaos and Amyntor responded simultaneously, “Of course, my queen.” Corythus grunted agreement.

Helenus acknowledged me with a curt nod. “It will be done. Go rest now, my lady. I will come later and bring you news.”

Briseis escorted me out via a side door and hustled me upstairs, away from the crowd beginning to gather in the great court. My handmaidens greeted my bloodshot, puffy eyes and sticky cheeks with concern as Briseis gave them the news.

They felt obliged to offer their condolences. “Mistress, we’re so—”

“Leave me alone.” I cut Monime short with a brusque gesture, removed my own sandals and dress, and lay down in the stifling room. Tension crackled through the hot air like the electric charge before a thunderstorm.

On the surface, it might have been any other drowsy late summer morning. A Molossian mastiff barked in the distance, sandaled feet slapped along the pavement below, an irritated taskmaster shouted orders to lazy servants. Baking bread and the mingled fragrances of thyme and sage from the kitchen garden competed with the smell of sweat and the incense smoking on my altar. Everyday sounds and smells to deceive the senses, though not mine. I could not lie there and pretend nothing had happened. People must already know that the king was dead, might even have heard rumors about the sacrilege. My mind visualized servants and courtiers stopping each other in the cool passageways to ask after the latest news, and then their jaws sagging in horrified disbelief.

Numbness had begun to creep over me. Neoptolemus was dead, his body lay battered and broken in the sanctuary he had defiled, and I did not care; what horror I nursed was not for him. I floated above the concerns of the great lords debating the matter downstairs, the surviving Myrmidons now without a leader, and the common people who wanted nothing to do with such madness. I was an outsider, a captive bride, and as the morning became afternoon a curious thought entered my mind, that this was how my mother must have reacted when Alaksandu died.

I must have dozed, for it was growing late when the servant girls filed through the curtain with the bath water. Briseis had remained in my apartment all afternoon, and as my maids washed my hair and sponged my sweaty limbs, she told me that the word had gone around. “People refuse to believe what they are hearing, and are gathering below the gate and in the agora to wait for more news.”

Violence might yet come when the truth was confirmed. I saw the fear reflected in my handmaidens’ eyes.

Evening brought the acrid tang of wood smoke and roasting animal flesh. Priests must be conducting sacrifices to appease Apollo, as I had urged. A second thought occurred to me, a thought which had lain dormant all these hours, and which frightened me enough to send me to the altar to pour out a libation and burn incense before Apollo’s image.

Orestes. Suppose he had not yet undergone his trial when my late husband barged into the sanctuary. Angry gods did not distinguish the righteous from the blasphemers, a fact which the pilgrims who had killed Neoptolemus knew all too well. Apollo must not withdraw his protection from my kinsman as a result, but must be persuaded to continue to watch over him.

Determination to see it done spurred me to rouse my women from their domestic tasks and force them to join me at the altar. “Pythian Apollo, look kindly upon your supplicants and keep us safe from harm.” As I knelt, I raised my right hand, palm facing outward, to my forehead to salute the deity. “Forgive us our transgressions. We revile the crimes of the son of Achilles. We had no knowledge of his intentions.”

Helenus found us congregating on the floor around the altar; he waited for me to stand before addressing me. “King Strophius is outraged over the incident,” he said. “It falls to the council to try to repair relations with the Phocians, while the priests try to placate the god.” He regarded the idol wreathed by our offerings. “I fear it will take a human life to appease his anger.”

Orestes. “Has he not already claimed a life?” Do not think such a thing. Have hope. So I shoved the thought from my head.

“A consecrated slave will go to the altar.” He answered. “You need not attend the sacrifice.” But his gaze was stern, and when he spoke again, he advised me, “When you finish your bleeding, you should receive special purification to remove any taint by association.”

My skin crawled. Two more days seemed far too long to wait. “Is there anything else I must do?”

“The priestesses will tell you.” Helenus’s wandering gaze seemed to reproach my poor manners. I realized then I was not being a good hostess. Abashed, I dispatched Monime to fetch cool water and wine, and offered my guest a seat by the window.

When he was comfortable, I sat down across from him. “I blessed the sheaves four days ago. Now the grain will be infested with mice and weevils.” Despite myself, I started wringing my hands in my lap. “Young animals and babies will die from my impurity.”

“I would have foreseen that,” he said.”

“And yet you did not foresee the king’s death.”

Helenus acknowledged the mixing bowl and wine my maid set before him. “You were not listening earlier,” he answered reprovingly. “Only he who inscribes the tablets of Fate can read the future whole. I saw a blackness gathering about Neoptolemus when he told me he meant to demand restitution from the gods for his father’s death. I urged him not to give offense, but the choice was his.” Pausing, he poured the wine and water into the bowl to mix it. “Remember, Aglaos said the Myrmidons did not know what he was going to do. I do not think even he knew until the moment came.”

That was true. “Is Aglaos going to be all right?”

“He has taken a fever from his wounds.” Helenus made the libation, then poured wine into a cup and drained a long draught. “I do not know yet whether he will mend.”

All I knew for certain was that my husband was dead and I was not carrying his child. “What will happen now?”

“If you are referring to the kingdom, then it is to be partitioned,” he replied. “I have nothing to do with that. Amyntor has asked me to stay on as an advisor, but I have served long enough.” Helenus crooked a wry smile. “Neoptolemus granted me an estate near Buthrotum. I will take Ashakumila and the children, and retire there. She will not want to remain here. As for the Myrmidons, I do not care where they go.”

I shared his smile. “Neither do I.”

He grunted. “Perhaps you should return to Sparta.”

“Does the council wish me to leave?”

Thebe came forward with a tray of cold sweetmeats. Helenus waited for her to withdraw again before answering, “No, but I assumed you would want to go home.” He pored over the selection, chose a nut pastry. “No one expects you to decide while you are in mourning.”

“No one” meant him, and him alone, it seemed. Amyntor sent a scribe the next morning to help me arrange my passage home. So the council had decided to banish me, to expunge the tainted woman from the kingdom. Actually, Amyntor and the other councilors sent their deepest condolences, and placed porters, ships, and an armed escort at my disposal. And I would have chosen to go home, anyway, so I should not have taken offense. Rather, it was their condescending manners, their preemptory dismissal that set my teeth grating.

I did not fare any better with the priests or priestesses who came to examine and purify me. Far from respecting my status as a queen and high priestess, they treated me as a weak and sinful woman, and took sanctimonious pleasure in making me purge and fast. I came away feeling filthier than ever, and eager to be gone from this backward land.

Although I had not expected to mourn, a peculiar heaviness hampered my efforts to arrange my departure. I moved through my days as though through viscous honey, unable to function beyond the most simple things. As with my wedding and the post-nuptial adjustment period, making decisions overwhelmed me. Briseis did what she could to alleviate the strain by consulting with the scribes and ordering my women. She walked with me in the cool mornings, and told me about her childhood in Anatolia, but even she could not pierce the gray veil swathing my spirits.

I wanted to go home, to surround myself with comfortable and familiar things, and forget this misadventure, and yet I dreaded the homecoming. Chrysothemis would resent my return, and view my presence as a threat. And I did certainly not want to see my father, who had thrown up his hands and surrendered me to my abductor without a struggle. Second-rate warrior, Neoptolemus had called him. A man who no longer had Agamemnon to fight his battles for him. I was ashamed to look at him.

Helenus visited me whenever he could. “Briseis tells me you are unwell.”

“Briseis should stop acting as a spy,” I said hotly.

“She worries about you.” Helenus took in the clutter of boxes and chests with an approving eye. “If it consoles you, Ashakumila is wading through the same mess. She is very happy to be leaving.”

While my horizons seemed to have dimmed and shrunk in, theirs were bursting forth like the exuberance of spring now that their jailor was dead. I could not hold it against them. “And the boys?” I asked. How I wished I had gotten to know them!

“It is an adventure for them,” he replied. “They know their father is gone, but nothing else.” Then his expression grew thoughtful. “I am going to take them to the necropolis to perform the rites. Perhaps you should join us.”

“You want me to come with you?” Here was my chance to escape my prison, to breathe some fresh air and see the Epirote countryside, and all I could do was balk!

Helenus saw it, too. “You have spent far too long pent up here. It would do you much good to get out.”

I would have preferred to visit the riverbank, or walk through the dusty vineyards and sample the ripening fruits. A mournful air clung to the hill of the necropolis where Hades and Persephone dwelt in their cult house, a squat building set amid cypresses and juniper, where not even the birds dared sing. Even the flies, that perpetual nuisance around altars, avoided the area.

Anyone venturing into the presence of the Lord of the Dead and his dread queen wore black, and brought black sheep for the offering. Andromache’s dark clothes and sober demeanor, however, could not quite conceal the ebullience sparkling in her eyes. She accepted Helenus’s arm when he offered to escort her to the sanctuary door, and relaxed her vigilance just enough to let me interact with her sons.

Six-year old Molossus was a polite, dignified young gentleman who appeared to understand far more than the adults realized. On his own, he poured out the libations of milk, wine, and honey, but hesitated when it was time for the blood offering. The high priest was a kindly man, though, and knelt down on rickety joints to show him how to slap his hands against the bare earth to summon the god.

Pielus was a sweet, inquisitive child too young to comprehend the rituals. He wanted to pet the ewe and explore the antechambers: the high priest let him stroke the sacrificial animal’s curling fleece before Andromache and his nurse took him and baby Pergamos outside.

I did not want to linger in that funereal sanctuary, and so followed the boys out into the bright afternoon. Pielus was a chasing a bee through the greenish gray lavender, around the weed-tangled grave markers of the long-neglected dead. Sunlight flashed against his mother’s jewelry, and in her somber robe with her myriad amulets she might have been a priestess of the place.

A boy’s muffled sobbing filtered down to us. Andromache turned her head back toward the sanctuary, where Molossus had remained with the priest and Helenus. “Death is a hard lesson to learn,” she said quietly.”

She had left me alone during the mourning period, as she had avoided me before, so it came as a complete surprise when she visited my apartment the very next day. “Is there anything of his that you want?” she asked. “I am setting a few things aside for the boys.”

I shook my head. “Let them keep everything.”

She reached out to grasp my hand. “Oh, I am not letting them keep everything.” Andromache had elegant white fingers, too slight for the chunky silver rings she wore, but hard as marble under the soft skin. “Come, I will show you.”

Boxes and chests littered the floor in the king’s vacant apartment. Neoptolemus’s favorite dog, an enormous Molossian mastiff who liked to nap across the threshold, was gone. “Where is Konon?” I asked.

“Molossus has him.” She crossed the room to step onto a linen drop cloth. “I see the plaster is almost dry.”

Andromache said it so casually it took me a moment to realize what she had done. I started in astonishment. That dreadful fresco depicting Achilles dragging dead Hector’s corpse behind his chariot had been erased, obliterated under several coats of whitewash. “You—?”

She walked over to a chest, removed an object, and undid the fleece wrapping to reveal the wedding kylix. I knew what she was going to do, but not how. She carried it to the window, and from there let it drop three stories to the court below. I heard the ceramic shatter against the paving stones, and clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the shock.

Andromache turned to me, wearing a slyly innocent look. “What an unfortunate accident!”

I sputtered with amazed, delighted laughter. “Have you left anything for me?”

She indicated the mess the plasterers had left. “I have a task for you.”

Among the discarded scrapers and trowels was a pot of leftover lime plaster, not yet dried out. Andromache dragged out the weathered ox-hide shield that had belonged to the dead hero. “It is so worn and ugly,” she said. “You will find water in that jug.”

I sloshed the water and lime in the pot, then flicked my wrist to let the mixture fly. Great gobs of whitewash spattered the shield and dripped down.

Andromache and I shared a conspiratorial smile as she approved my handiwork. “Such clumsy slaves,” she drawled. “One cannot trust them with anything.” I set down the plaster pot while she tossed the ruined shield aside. “I feared I might be an arthritic old woman before that fool died, but he blessed us all with his stupidity. Hah! Just like his father, rushing to get himself killed.” Then she held out her hand to me. “Come, I have saved you some other treasures.”

Andromache led me into the bathroom, which the porters and plasterers had not yet touched. Vessels still stood on the shelves near the terracotta tub. Scented oils spattered and dribbled down the walls as we took turns smashing the jars. Soon, the room was awash in perfume, a great mess of unguent congealing together, and we howled our laughter. “There will be no oil of lilies or saffron for you now, Pyrrhus!” Andromache threw back her head and cackled. “Pyrrhus, Pyrrhus, Pyrrhus!” She fashioned it into a song, finding half a hundred ways to chant that hated name, to utter what had been forbidden. She became drunk on her glee, crazed from having held it in so long.

But she was not yet done. With her, it was one insult after another, and she left the greatest for last. In her hand she held his favorite bracelet, twirled round and round with it like a maenad, and then dropped it down the privy. She lifted her skirts like the rustling of crow’s wings, sat down on the stone seat, and voided her bladder. “They will smell my woman’s blood upon him in the nether world and laugh!” she cried.

Caught up in her exultation, I crowed my delight.

We left the king’s apartment once we regained our poise. Andromache halted me at my door. “Come to my apartment tonight, and bring Briseis. I am hosting a funeral supper.”

Her invitation was unexpected, given what had just come before. “For him?”

A grim smile hovered on her lips. “You will see.”

That night, she received me as an Anatolian princess, having thrown off the black of her captivity like a chrysalis and become resplendent in embroidered scarlet and dark blue, with golden fringes and spangled felt shoes. Amber and silver pendants hung from her headdress. Such was the vision who clucked her tongue at my black-edged widow’s veil before whisking it from my head, snagging my hair as she did so. “You do not need that here.”

Pins hung askew from my mussed curls. “You said it was a funeral supper.”

“So it is.” Escorting Briseis and me into the sitting room, Andromache gestured to the table where Helenus was already seated. Savory aromas made my mouth water. My stomach growled at the platters of grilled lamb spiced with cumin, coriander, and diced onions, sourdough flat bread, cucumbers and fried chickpeas, boiled millet, and Egyptian beer.

Briseis gave a start when she saw the Anatolian dishes. “Oh, but he hated our food. He will starve in the afterlife.”

“Let him.” Andromache bestowed a deceptively sweet smile upon us. “I never said this supper was for him. These were Hector’s favorite dishes. We feast in his honor tonight.”

I wished she had told me beforehand, to let me dress appropriately. “Are you sure you want me to join you?” I asked. “I did not know Hector, and my father and uncle were...”

Helenus moved a silver mixing bowl between his hands. “Hector befriended your mother during her time in Wilusa. She attended his pyre as one of the chief mourners. Come and sit down, so we may have the libation.”

Once everyone was seated, he lifted the bowl in both hands. “Iyarri, Lord of the Bow, receive this drink offering and safeguard us from your anger.” Droplets splashed into the alabaster libation bowl before him. “Apaliunas, Mouse God and Plague Bringer, receive this drink offering and watch over your servants.” Raising the bowl heavenward, he repeated the prayer in his tongue before passing the vessel to me. “Speak to your god Apollo for us.”

I lifted the bowl between my hands as he had done. “Apollo, receive this drink offering and look kindly upon your supplicants. Watch over us and our loved ones.”

Helenus also offered a libation for the shade of his deceased brother. “Lelwani, goddess of the dead, receive this drink offering and continue to watch over Harunta, firstborn son of Piyamaradu. Let him rest content in the nether world.”

As Helenus poured the wine into cups, Andromache passed an amulet across the table. “You must wear Kamrusepa on your way home,” she told me. “She will safeguard you from plague and seasickness.”

Kamrusepa felt heavy and strange in my hand, and I did not know how Dia would take to having her high priestess wear so foreign a goddess around her neck. “Hector has great fame among our people,” I said. Having heard it but once, I did not feel confident enough about the pronunciation to attempt his Anatolian name. “I know he was a warrior and breaker of horses, but nothing else.

Andromache made a commiserating little noise in her throat. “So it always is,” she commented. “Singers remember nothing but how the great men strode across the battlefield in their gleaming bronze, who they slew, and how they in turn were slain. I knew a man who was more than his victories or defeats, more than the chariot or bow.” She spoke like a bard who had nursed her song in her heart for a very long time. “Your singers will tell you that Hector broke horses, but they will not sing about his gentleness. Hector was not a man for brute force, with horses or with women.” Sweet reminiscence brought a glow to her face. “He could whisper in a horse’s ear, as though the gods had granted him the speech of animals, and no matter how wild, a horse would do as he said. He loved leading them out, and seeing how their ears would prick up and their tails would dance. When the war came, it tore up the plain below the city, and the horses were slaughtered, for food or for spite. Sometimes it seemed to me that Hector wept more for the horses than the men.”

“Did he not speak out against the war?” I spooned onions and a morsel of lamb onto a piece of bread.

“Many times,” Helenus said. “But Alaksandu had a silver tongue.”

Andromache’s face grew hard. “Indeed. He knew how to loosen the old men’s ears as well as a pretty woman’s robe, and he told them what they wanted to hear. He made them believe that your leaders despised Agamemnon and would rebel, that your warriors would grow tired of the fighting and suffering and go home, and that Wilusa’s walls would never fall.”

“I heard them say it in Lyrnessos, too,” Briseis added. “Agamemnon would go home within a season, and Menelaus would take a new wife and forget Helen.”

All the while, I wrestled with the question growing in my mind. “Did Alaksandu kill my young brother?” I finally asked. Although I believed my mother, in the end she had not known for certain.

Briseis did not know the story, and looked bewildered. Andromache showed no reaction. It was Helenus who drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “Hector confronted him with the crime, but he always denied it, even swore in the name of the Storm God that he had shed no blood.”

“Pleisthenes was smothered with a pillow,” I retorted.

“I know how he died,” Helenus said sharply. “I saw his body laid out. But Alaksandu never told the truth to anyone about anything. He should have given the boy back to your father.”

“Lelwani will torment him forever for the lies he told and the deaths he caused.” Andromache nodded her solemn certainty.

“Let us speak of other things.” Helenus reached for his wine.

He told me about his travels before the war. In his youth, he had journeyed with Hector as far east as Hattusas, the great Hittite capital on its mountainous plateau, as far south as Ugarit and Carchemish, and as far west as Lesbos. As he talked, the servants brought dessert: candied figs and apricots, nut pastries, and sweet cakes with more wine.

Helenus offered the third libation to Zeus and Hera, as was proper, though he gave them Anatolian names.

Andromache chose for me a cake stuffed with dates and almond paste. “I made this once for Pyrrhus.” Oh, how she delighted in calling his ghost that! “When he took me, he told me he expected me to do his laundry and cook for him, like an obedient wife should. After he tried this, someone else did the cooking. Hah! Was it my fault he had no taste for good food? Hector liked my pastries.”

One bite explained why my late husband had not liked the pastry; it was far too rich.

After we finished dessert, we dedicated the fourth libation, and readied ourselves to depart. Andromache started to escort Briseis and me to the door, only to change her mind at the last minute and invite us into her bedchamber.

She went to her dressing table, rummaged among the trinkets scattered there, and returned bearing an amulet. “Hantili says you will one day conceive,” she told me, “but Shauskha may help the day come sooner.”

Another winged goddess, this one with full breasts, incised into an ivory wafer. “You are also wearing her,” I observed.

Her hand went to the amulet hanging between her breasts. “Yes,” she admitted quietly. “I hope to conceive again soon.”

Briseis gave her a congratulatory kiss on the cheek. “Hantili is a good man.”

“How soon will you marry?” I asked.

“Once we are settled in Buthrotum.”

It would have been nice to attend. “Send word when you have the wedding. I want to send gifts.”

“Send gifts for a baby.” Andromache bade us wait again, and returned to the dressing table as if searching for another amulet, yet the thing she brought back was neither ivory nor silver nor gold, but a scrap of fabric nestled in a black wool cloth. It was threadbare, unraveling at the edges where it had been torn from a larger piece, and yellowed with old stains.

Andromache nursed the rag like the finest linen, petting it with soft fingertips as she held it out to share. “I wove this for my firstborn son. He was wearing the tunic the night Odysseus tore him from my arms to hurl from the walls. When I reached for him, this little piece ripped away in my hands.”

Briseis made a sympathetic noise and brushed the relic with a reverent finger. I wanted to do the same, to acknowledge the honor Andromache did me by showing me her treasure, but remained uncertain. Perhaps I had become too accustomed to the repressed and suspicious Andromache. “I am sorry, Ashakumila.”

“Do not be.” She brought the torn fabric to nuzzle against her cheek, turning her head to seek out her child’s scent within the fibers, although it must have worn away a long time ago. A smile curved her mouth, a brittle crescent set in her white face. “They slew my son to extinguish Hector’s seed, but the gods have tilted the scales, and they will send him back to me.”