kept waiting. As her maid thrust a wet sponge in her face, Andromache grabbed it from her.
‘I’ll do that. Find my saffron gown, and the calf sandals Laodike gave me yesterday.’
As she washed she wondered about the significance of being made to wait seven days to see Priam. Perhaps she should be honoured. Perhaps other young brides had to wait months before they met the king. She had asked Laodike but the king’s eldest daughter had just shrugged. There were so many things Andromache did not know about Troy. What she did know, however, was that the palace of Priam was not a happy place. Stunningly beautiful, and filled with treasures, many of them of solid gold, it was a monument to ostentation, which contrasted mightily with the furtive manner in which people moved through it. Laodike had been assigned to guide Andromache through the customs of the palace: the areas in which the women could wander, and the rooms and corridors closed to them. But Andromache had learned far more than this. Laodike’s conversation was always of warnings. What not to do. What not to say. Whom to smile at, and be civil to.
Whom to avoid.
Laodike had listed names, but most of them had flown by Andromache with the speed of hunting hawks. Some had registered, but only after meeting the men they applied to: watery-eyed Polites, the king’s chancellor, fat Antiphones, his Master of Horse. It would have amazed Andromache if the wheezing man could actually mount a horse. Then there was Deiphobos, the Prince of the Harbour.
More commonly called Dios, he looked a little like Helikaon, though without the inherent power. In fact, he had frightened eyes, she thought.
She realized Axa was regarding her with a worried frown. ‘The pretty sandals, my lady…’ she faltered.
‘Do you have them, Axa?’
‘Yes, my lady, but… they are not appropriate.’
‘Do not argue with me,’ she said. ‘You fear the king’s anger. I understand that.
But you should fear my anger too.’ She kept her voice pleasant, but she looked hard into Axa’s face and the young woman dropped her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, my lady, but you do not understand. You cannot wear sandals. You are to meet the king on the Great Tower. The steps are treacherous, and his orders were for you to wear suitable shoes.’
Later, striding through the stone streets in the growing dawn light, Axa hurrying behind her, two royal Eagles, in armour of bronze and silver, by her side, Andromache wondered what game Priam was playing. She wished she had had a chance to speak to Laodike about the king’s strange choice of meeting place.
She had heard a great deal of gossip about Priam in her seven days in Troy –
most of it admiring, all of it meaningless. He was said to have fifty sons, Axa had confided to her, although the queen had borne him just four. He was known to be a great bull in his youth, and many of those sons, recognized by him or not, had made their home in Troy, close to the glory of their father. The king, now on his throne for over forty years, still had an eye for a pretty young girl, said another maid, giggling. Andromache had felt repulsed. Just another old man who couldn’t accept that his rutting days were decently over, she had thought.
But then rich men were also powerful men, and power was an aphrodisiac. And Priam was said to be the richest man in all the world.
She had been astonished by the treasures she had seen in the king’s megaron, in the queen’s apartments, and the gold and jewels that Laodike thought quite normal daily wear. Laodike was always festooned with gold, her wrists and throat sporting an assortment of bracelets, bangles and necklets, her corn-coloured hair intertwined with gold wire, her gowns weighed down with brooches. None of which made her more pretty, thought Andromache. The jewels only served to draw attention to her small, hazel eyes, her long nose and a slightly receding chin.
What she had, though, to compensate, was a smile of dazzling beauty, and a sweet nature that made her lovable.
‘Poor Andromache,’ Laodike had said, putting her arm through her new sister’s.
‘You have no jewellery, no gold at all, only a few cheap beads and a little silver. I shall make my father give you gold, amber and carnelian necklets and earrings to match your eyes, and gold chains to adorn your dainty ankles…
and,’ she laughed gleefully, ‘y°ur big feet.’
‘Big feet are said to be very beautiful,’ Andromache had replied gravely. ‘The bigger the better.’
She smiled to herself now, looking down at those feet encased in the clumsy rope-soled sandals Axa had borrowed for her. Then she looked up. The Great Tower of Ilion, standing proud of the south wall of Troy, was almost twice as high as the main city walls, and by far the tallest building she had ever seen. As she walked towards it she could see the ever-present guards on each corner of its roof. They looked like tiny insects, the rising sun glinting off their helmets and spear tips.
When she had asked Axa about her summons to the Great Tower, the maid had been strangely reticent. ‘It must be a great honour,’ she had said doubtfully. ‘King Priam sometimes goes there to look over his city and to scan the sea and land for invaders. He is watchful for his people.’
‘Does he usually greet visitors on the Great Tower of Ilion?’
Axa blushed and refused to meet her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what the king does. It is the highest point in the city. It must be a great honour,’ she repeated.
Andromache had caught a look of dismay on her maid’s face and she put her arms round her and hugged her close.
‘I have a head for heights,’ she reassured the woman. ‘Don’t worry.’
They entered the huge square tower at its base, just inside the Scaean Gate. The stone wall was very thick and inside the tower was cold and damp. Andromache saw a narrow flight of stone stairs spiralling up into the darkness. She looked up and saw the tower was merely a dank square shaft of empty air illuminated at intervals by holes punched through the thickness of the walls. The stairs hugged the inside walls in a series of sharp inclines, followed by horizontal walkways to the next rise, until they reached a tiny square of light high above. There was no hand rail. Torches flickered in wall brackets and one of the soldiers lit a brand to carry up the steps.
‘Do you wish me to come with you, my lady?’ Andromache saw Axa’s eyes were huge and frightened in the torchlight, her hands straying unconsciously to her swollen belly.
‘No. Stay here. Wait for me,’ Andromache replied.
‘Do you want the water?’
Axa started to unsling the water skin she held on her hip. Andromache thought for moment, then told her, ‘No, keep it. I might want it later.’
She realized the two soldiers were preparing to escort her up. She held out her hand. ‘Give me the torch,’ she demanded.
The torch carrier, unsure, casting an eye at his fellow, passed the brand to her.
‘Stay here,’ she told them curtly, and before they could move she set off swiftly up the stairs, stepping lightly on the shiny stone.
On and up she climbed, her legs, strengthened by her many hours of walking or running on Thera, pushing her up the steep flights. The steps were each nearly knee-high, and she felt her body enjoying the exercise, her thighs and calves thrilling to be worked so hard. She had never suffered from the sickness sparked by heights, but she was not tempted to look down to see how far she had climbed.
She looked up instead, towards the small square of light.
She felt she had the measure of the old king now. He had asked her to the tower to daunt her, perhaps to humiliate her, hoping she would collapse in tears at the foot of the tower and have to be carried up like a child. She was amazed that a king with such power, such riches, should feel the need to prove his superiority over a young woman. Petty bullies I can deal with, she thought.
The steps became narrower as she neared the top, and they seemed much more worn here and slick with damp. She became conscious of the dark abyss to her right and she placed her feet more carefully as she climbed. She wondered why the stairs would be most worn at the top of the tower. Then she realized and laughed. She stopped and held her torch high. Thirty or so steps below her, on the other side of the tower, was a dark recess. In it there was a narrow door.
She had not seen it as she passed. It must be a door leading to the battlements of the south wall. The old man would have come that way, leaving her to climb the full height of the tower. Priam, she thought, already I do not like you.
