hands of his sister-in-law, Queen Clytemnestra. The queen has killed King Agamemnon, with the aid of her lover.’
Anchialus lowered his head. The Great Atreid had fallen! After having endured such suffering in the war, he had fallen in his own home, between the very walls he had so dearly desired.
‘How long ago did he depart?’ he asked.
‘Two days ago. He is marching south, along the coast.’
‘Can you tell me where he is headed?’
‘I do not know. But I could not tell you if I did. The king’s destination is a secret. No one must know where he is coming from. He will descend like a hawk into a flock of crows.’
Anchialus fell silent for a moment, trying to work out what he should do. If only he had been able to meet the young king, he would have given him Diomedes’s message and his mission would have been over. He would have looked for some ship in a port and sailed westward. He wanted to return to Diomedes. As he was contemplating his course of action, his gaze alighted upon the figure of a woman who was just exiting a side door and heading towards a path that led to the mountainside. For a moment, their eyes met and he was thunderstruck: Priam’s daughter-in-law, Hector’s bride: Andromache!
He followed her without making himself seen and saw her stop in front of an earthen mound topped by a stone. Weeds had completely covered the mound and at its base a few wild thistles had opened their purple flowers. She knelt next to it and bowed her head until it touched the ground; she was weeping, her back shaken by sobs.
Anchialus turned away because he understood that those solitary tears should bear no witness. He knew who that mound had been raised to. Andromache had wanted a place where she could grieve for her lost husband, buried far away in the fields of Asia after Achilles had slit his throat, pierced his heels and dragged him behind his chariot. She was the sad bride that the man who had directed him to Buthrotum was speaking of. Queen of a miserable kingdom of shepherds and fishermen, prey to a violent and irascible boy who had demanded her as his trophy; she, the rightful spoil of his father had the gods not sent the arrows of Paris to fell him at the Scaean Gates.
After some time, Andromache rose to her feet, drying her eyes with the edge of her veil, then walked back down the path that led to the city. Anchialus approached her, bowing like a suppliant.
‘Queen,’ he said, ‘stop and heed my request. I am a man who has nothing left to me, neither home, nor homeland, nor friends, but I think I can offer you something if you will help me.’
Andromache appeared startled, as if she could never have expected to meet anyone in so solitary a place. She looked him over calmly; her skin was pale as marble and her eyes were black as the gates to Hades, but the glitter of tears gave her gaze a mournful intensity.
She did not answer and hurried her step, head bowed.
‘I beseech you, queen,’ said Anchialus, nearly barring her way. ‘Do not deny a moment of your time to a poor suppliant.’
‘I am not who you think I am,’ she said in a soft voice. Anchialus could hear her light eastern accent, the same as the women prisoners whom he would take to Diomedes’s tent when they were dividing the spoils after a victory in Asia. Tears swelled within him as well, as the violence and futility of her pain pierced into his very bones.
‘I beg of you, I must reach your husband Pyrrhus, valiant son of Achilles. I have been told that he has departed.’
‘He is not my husband,’ replied Andromache. ‘He is my master. They have given me to a boy who could be my son. .’
‘They say he marches to join forces with Menelaus. Tell me the road he is following, if you can, because I absolutely must find him. If you tell me, I will help you to escape. I will take you with me; I promise you, you will not lack sustenance nor a resting place for the night. I will respect you as befits your rank and your sorrow, and I will never raise my eyes to you unless you wish to speak with me. I will find a peaceful, secret place for you. My own nurse will care for you, if she is still alive; she is a good, old woman who lives alone on a little island. If she is dead, I will find another house for you, and another woman to serve you for as long as you desire. More than this I cannot do, but I swear before the gods that I am sincere and will keep faith to what I have promised.’
‘Sincere. .’ said Andromache. ‘Like the vow Ulysses made to Poseidon on the beach of Ilium: an enormous horse, of wood. .’
Anchialus dropped his head, unable to bear the look in Andromache’s eyes.
He drew a knife from his belt and he held it out to her, kneeling before her. ‘I was inside that horse,’ he said. ‘With lord Diomedes, my king. Kill me if you want, because if I cannot fulfil my mission, I prefer to die by your hand, so that at least a little justice may be done in this world, and so that you may be convinced that I am sincere.’
Andromache hesitated a moment, looking at the glittering blade, eyeing the edge slowly all the way up to the hilt. She stretched out her hand until she was nearly touching it with her long white fingers. Anchialus raised his head and saw in her gaze the ferocious tranquillity that he had so often seen in the eyes of warriors in the heat of battle. All their strength gathered in a still gaze and even stiller hand. The quiet that comes the instant before dealing the blow that will take a life.
Anchialus realized that he was ready to accept death without regret, on that dusty trail at the edge of the land of the Achaeans, from that gentle hand that had once caressed the head of a boy and the body of a hero. But all at once, the hand drew back.
‘Pyrrhus has taken the road for Phocis; his aim is to reach King Strophius and Queen Anaxibia, Menelaus’s sister. From there, he will continue with the Phocians towards the Isthmus to close off Mycenae from the north.’
Anchialus sheathed the blade and rose to his feet: ‘Accept my offer, queen. You will live in peace, sheltered from all violence.’
‘In peace?’ said Andromache. ‘Do you know why I haven’t killed myself yet? After having endured the hands that hurled my son from the wall of Troy on my skin, do you know why I haven’t killed myself?’
She turned her head towards the stone stuck into the pitiful, weed-covered mound, and the tears suddenly began to pour from her eyes again, trembling first on the rim of her eyelids, then trickling to meet the corners of her wan lips. Anchialus felt his heart unsteady in his chest.
‘Because the sweetness of my memories is still greater than the horror of that massacre. And my memories are so dear to me that they give me the strength to live. Death would take even them from me. My Hector, my one and only love, and my beloved child: they would die entirely, and for ever. My life, as miserable and shameful as it is, prolongs theirs. Without me, their memory would be lost for ever.’
They began to walk again towards the little city and Anchialus realized that she would not separate herself from that place for any reason. Might that mound actually cover the bones of Hector, the greatest warrior of all Asia? If that were true, what terms did she have to accept in exchange for keeping those relics there? Was her shame the price she’d paid to live with her memories?
An icy shudder gripped him, although the sun shone high; it seemed to him that the sky had lost its light and the sea its splendour.
When he set off for the mountain, he was burdened by an obscure weariness that he had never felt before.
He reached Pyrrhus’s column five days later, in a valley at the heart of the steep mountains of Acarnania. The only people of Achaean stock who had not taken part in the war of Troy lived in that land. They were so isolated and primitive that they cared nothing about anything. Ten years earlier, Agamemnon had sent Ulysses in vain to convince them to fight at his side; not even the persuasive words of the king of Ithaca had moved them. But what could be expected of a people who had no king nor cities, only wretched villages? Ulysses had spoken to a few old heads of family, who had no authority. They listened impassively as if he were speaking nonsense, and did not even deign to answer him. They neither agreed, nor disagreed; they said nothing. As Ulysses was still speaking, one of them stood and left, then another followed, and yet another, until they were all gone.
Anchialus had heard this directly from Ulysses when King Diomedes had once invited him to share the evening meal in his tent. And so he had avoided any contact with those people as he journeyed, for fear of not knowing how to deal with them.
