For the Most Beautiful (40 page)

He did not turn, but continued to fill his pouch.

‘I said, you sing well,' I said more loudly.

Still he did not turn, and the silence stretched. He was fastening the straps now and lifting the lyre on to his back.

‘Can you not hear me?' I asked again. ‘I said—'

‘I heard you, Krisayis,' he said, and his voice was clear and sweet.

I blushed. ‘Oh.' I paused. ‘Wait – how do you know my name?'

He did not answer. I stared at his back as he fastened the lyre, thinking. A memory had stirred unexpectedly in the back of my mind: the Greek camp, a tent, a voice; a sweet, clear voice, saying my name.

A sudden realization came over me.

‘It was
you
!' I exclaimed. ‘It was you, in the Greek camp! You recognized me there, too!'

He nodded slightly, still not turning, gazing out through one of the arches of the colonnade that faced the olive grove.

‘But – but how did you know it was me?' I asked. ‘We never even saw each other, and I'm sure I've never seen you before.'

‘I have a talent with voices,' he said simply, bending to pick his leather pouch from the floor. ‘And every young man in the Troad knows the name of the most beautiful girl in Troy.'

I blushed more deeply, then searched for something matter-of-fact to say. ‘I liked your song,' I said.

He bowed. ‘Thank you.'

He moved to leave.

‘Wait,' I said, not quite sure what I was going to say. ‘Where did the song come from? I – I should very much like to learn it.'

‘I invented it,' he said. ‘I enjoy telling stories.' He moved towards the doors.

I was thinking back to what he had said.
Every young man in the Troad knows the name of the most beautiful girl in Troy.
I blushed and smiled.
Beautiful. He called me beautiful.

‘Wait!' I called after him. ‘You think I'm beautiful! Isn't that what you said?'

Slowly, he stopped.

‘You think I'm beautiful!' I repeated, my heart racing.
Could it be that Apulunas' curse had not worked after all?
‘You can see me, can you not?'

He hesitated, then, very slowly, shook his head.

‘No, Krisayis,' he said. ‘I may not be deaf, but I am …' he turned and pointed to his eyes, which were white and slightly glassy ‘… blind.'

My heart fell. ‘Oh. I – I'm sorry.'

He smiled, then walked towards me and reached for my hand. The same warmth flooded my body that I had felt that day in the Greek camp. ‘But I do not have to see you to know how beautiful you are. After all, there is more to it than simply seeing.'

Suddenly, there was the sound of something hard and heavy rolling across the floor towards us. The bard let go of my hand and bent down deftly to pick it up. He held it out to me.

‘Is this yours?'

It was a golden apple. I took it from him, turning it over to look at the soft gold sheen of its skin. There was an inscription on it in elegant slanting writing, and I held it up to the fading light.

For the Most Beautiful
.

I looked at it, thinking.

Then I walked over to the arch of the colonnade, reached back and threw it up, up into the sky. It went spinning through the air, glittering in the evening sun.

And then it was gone.

‘So there you have it,' Hermes says to the cupids. They are gazing up at him, their little mouths open, entranced. Even the older ones have forgotten their duties and are lying, chins propped on fists, staring at Hermes. ‘The story of the Trojan War, the real story, told the way it happened by the people it happened to, and me, Hermes, the god who watched it all.

‘It wasn't too long after our story ends that King Agamemnon decided to make use of Odysseus' plan, and the Wooden Horse, filled with Greek soldiers, was welcomed inside the walls, like a gift from us gods. When the city was silent and the sky above Troy was dark, the Greeks came out from the horse's belly and opened the gates to the army. The city was burned to a crisp, its well-built walls shattered, its towers toppled.

‘Cassandra's prophecy was, at last, fulfilled, and the loveliest city in the Aegean was left smoking on the horizon as the Greek ships sailed away, Helen standing at the stern of Menelaus' vessel, watching the ruins of Troy slip over the edge of the earth.

‘Yes,' Hermes continues, as the cupids gaze at him, ‘the Greeks won the Trojan War, and so, as it always goes, they and their poets were the ones who sang the tales of their victory. But what the Greeks and the Muses did not tell you,' he permits himself a smile, ‘was that, when the Greeks entered the city, they found only the warriors and nobles, their king and queen. There were no women to rape, no children to murder and enslave, no ordinary folk to put to the sword or slaves to steal and sell for gold. All the other citizens and slaves of Troy were gone – escaped to Mount Ida far to the south and beyond, where they lived and thrived and then, when many years had passed and their children were grown, returned across the rocky ridges of the mountains and north towards the Trojan plain to settle Troy once more. And so, in the end, the people of Troy were saved.'

He points down from the clouds, and the cupids peer over the edge, as if they can almost see the crowds of Trojans walking together – children on mothers' hips, husbands leading aged fathers by the hand – over the mountains' sloping flanks and north to Troy.

‘But Briseis did not leave,' Hermes continues. ‘She found her end on the Trojan shore, consumed by fire and her love, thereby eluding a fate that would have seen her tortured and killed for treason at the hands of her captor Agamemnon. She was reunited at last in the Underworld with Mynes, the man she had loved most; and they will spend eternity there together, as they could not on this earth.

‘As for Krisayis,' he says, ‘she escaped Troy with her bard that very night, before the Greeks sacked the city. And, now I think of it, I may as well claim credit for that last little incident while I have the chance. Who else, after all, would have thought to steal the golden apple from Aphrodite's dressing-table all that time ago? Who else would have been clever enough to think of a way around Apollo's curse? And who else would have dreamt of playing a trick on my dear brother by sending a blind bard to fall in love with his unfortunate paramour?

‘Sometimes I'm just too clever for my own good.'

The cupids giggle, and some applaud.

Hermes grins. ‘I must admit, Apollo wasn't amused when he found out, but he's got over it now. And he's managed to find other ways, and other women, to console himself.

‘So Krisayis and her bard are travelling the country somewhere to the south of Troy, blissfully unknown to the gods, not famous enough to tell stories about, but happy enough to last them both a lifetime. And more, I shouldn't doubt.

‘It's the memories that really count, you see.

‘After all,' he says, ‘isn't that what stories are?'

The book you have just read is inspired by a 2,500-year-old poem called the
Iliad
, an epic narrative composed in ancient Greek by a blind poet called Homer, who lived in the islands off the coast of modern Turkey around 750
BC
. It is the story of Achilles, the most famous warrior of the ancient world: his anger at King Agamemnon, his grief at the death of Patroclus, and the duel with Hector that ultimately sets the seal upon his fate. It is a story about war and the choices that men have to make in war. It is a tale of blood and guts and death, and the fight to win Helen and the city of Troy.

But there is another – hidden – side to the
Iliad
, the part of the story that Homer left more or less untold, and that is the story of its women. I have always been fascinated by the female characters of the
Iliad
, who hide behind the scenes, behind the walls of Troy or in the huts of the Greek camp. When they make their brief appearances in the poem, they can be loving and sensitive, like Hector's wife, Princess Andromache. They can be guilty temptresses or remorseful victims of Fate, like Helen. They can be warm and caring mothers, like Queen Hecuba, anxious mothers, like Thetis; they can be daughters, sisters, friends and wives.

But the two women I was always most fascinated by were Briseis and Chryseis/Krisayis.
^fn1
Why them? Well, in the
Iliad
, it is these two women who set the whole plot in motion. The poem opens with the events described in this book: the outbreak of plague in the Greek camp, and Achilles calling the assembly. It is at this assembly in the first book of the
Iliad
that Krisayis' father forces King Agamemnon to give her up, and that Agamemnon, in turn, takes Briseis away from Achilles. Achilles leaves the war in outrage – and the stage is set for the story of the
Iliad
. One could even say that if it weren't for these two women the story of the
Iliad
– one of the greatest works of world literature – would never have happened. And yet, despite their vital role in setting up the plot, Briseis and Krisayis are subsequently rarely mentioned. Krisayis is shipped off the scene only a few lines after the assembly has finished, and Briseis remains in the poem to make one-line appearances and a single brief speech to mourn the death of Patroclus.

It is when you start to pay attention to these two fascinating women, however, piecing together the bits and pieces of evidence scattered throughout the
Iliad
and other literary works about their past lives and their experience of the war, that you start to appreciate just how rich and exciting their stories are in their own right – quite capable of rivalling even Achilles' tale.

This, then, was where I got interested. Sifting through the clues the
Iliad
gave me, I discovered Briseis' harrowing tale – married to Prince Mynes of Lyrnessus, losing her husband and three brothers at the hands of Achilles, then forced to be a slave in his bed. Reading the
Iliad
alongside subsequent retellings of the Trojan War story – including Shakespeare's
Troilus and Cressida
– I discovered the ancient tradition of Troilus' love for Krisayis, her capture by the Greeks and her release to Larisa.
^fn2

Those stories were enough to have me hooked. They were just waiting to be told.

But it is not simply that Briseis and Krisayis' lives make good stories. Their experiences make us think about the
Iliad
, and war more generally, in an entirely different way. When we imagine what the female prisoners of war in the Greek camp must have gone through, what it must have been like to lose your husband, your father, your brothers, and be forced into slavery to the man who killed them; all of this makes us reflect on the experience of war for everyone involved, not just the people fighting on the battlefield. It makes us understand the cost to families, households, whole ways of life, not only to the young men who tragically lose their lives in the fighting. It makes us realize, fundamentally, just what is at stake in a war. But it also shows us the things that men and women alike can fight for, even in times of deepest trouble – the qualities of love, beauty and, in the very end, peace.