Fall of Kings (40 page)

Now the world had come to Troy to bring it to its knees and plunder that
wealth.

The streets around him were filled with shacks and shanties built by refugees
from the lower town who hoped for safety behind the great walls. Their rough
wood and hide shelters, hundreds of them, leaned low against the tall palaces of
the rich and powerful. Traders and craftsmen lived in those hovels, some
working—if they had the materials—but most living on the hope that one day the
war would end and they could return to their trades and prosper again.

There was an atmosphere of fear and anger in the streets, and few ventured
out after dark. Food was becoming scarce, and the stores of grain were guarded
closely, the bakeries, too. Water was also a problem. There were two wells
within the walls, but most of the city’s water had come from the Scamander, now
behind enemy lines, and the Simoeis, from which cartloads of water barrels still
were brought from time to time. The city wells also were guarded to ensure that
fighting did not break out among the waiting crowds of thirsty people and
protect the meager water supply from poisoning by agents of the enemy.

Khalkeus wove his way through the confusing pattern of alleys created by the
shanties. It seemed to change from day to day. At one point the alley he was
following came to a dead end, and he cursed in frustration. He thought he was
alone in the smelly, shadowy alley, but then a voice said, “Give you a ride to
remember, lord. Only one copper ring.” A skinny whore was sitting in the doorway
of a shack, her eyes heavy-lidded with fatigue and disappointment, bright
splashes of red paint on her cheeks. She cocked her head and smiled at him, and
he saw that her teeth were gray and rotten.

He shook his head nervously and hurried back down the alley, finding his way
at last to the square before Priam’s palace. The great doors were open, and the
red-pillared portico in front of the palace was flanked, as always, by a line of
Royal Eagles in bronze breastplates and high helms with cheek guards inlaid with
silver and white plumes.

Khalkeus looked up at the gleaming gold roof, a symbol of Priam’s wealth and
power. The bronze had been torn off the roofs of the other palaces at Hektor’s
command to fashion into weapons. Only this remained, a shining beacon drawing
Priam’s enemies, taunting them to come and take it.

He walked on. At the Dardanian Gate beneath the northeast bastion he was
forced to stop and wait for a train of donkey carts to come in. Two of the carts
carried water barrels. The others were loaded with families and their
possessions, tearful children and their anxious mothers, their menfolk plodding
alongside. One was piled high with wooden crates filled with chickens.

A burly gate guard strolled over to him. “You again, smith. You like to take
your chances, don’t you? One of these days Agamemnon will attack this gate; then
we have orders to close and seal it. It wouldn’t do if you were stuck outside.”

“It is not in Agamemnon’s best interests to seal the city, not yet,” Khalkeus
replied, reluctant to get into a conversation with the man.

“He’s letting families out,” the soldier continued. “My wife and children
left two days ago for the safety of Zeleia.”

“How many have gone out today, and how many have come in?”

The man frowned. “I’ve been here since dawn, and I’ve seen more than fifty
people come in. Two families have left.”

“So more are coming into the city than going out,” Khalkeus snapped,
irritated by the man’s lack of understanding. “Can’t you see, you idiot, that’s
what Agamemnon wants—Troy packed with refugees, eating the stores of grain,
drinking the precious water. They are of no use to the city. They do not bring
weapons; most of them cannot fight. They are farmers and their families. They
bring only fear”—he gestured to the women and children and sputtered—“and
babies!”

The guard looked angry. “Then why are the enemy letting people out?” he
demanded.

Khalkeus held his tongue with difficulty and moved toward the gate. In his
own mind he knew the soldier’s family members were already dead, had died as
soon as they had traveled out of sight of the walls. Agamemnon would not allow
children to leave the city, knowing that Hektor’s son and the Dardanian heir
were inside.

Outside the walls he glanced to the south, where the enemy was camped a mere
two hundred paces away. Then he followed the stone road around the north of the
plateau, hunching his shoulders against the wind. Eventually he reached the line
of empty forges.

Troy’s forges had lit up this area since the birth of the city. The wind
scythed in from the north, hitting the high hillside and making the furnaces
roar in a way no man-made bellows could. But when the war had started, Priam had
ordered all his forgemasters behind the walls, and those furnaces were
abandoned. Except by Khalkeus.

Since he had been very young, the bronzesmith realized, he had thought in a
way different from that of other people. His head constantly brimmed with ideas.
He was impatient with those who could not understand the solution to simple
problems that seemed obvious to him. He was curious about the world and spotted
challenges everywhere. When he saw oarsmen rowing a ship, he wondered what could
be done to make it go faster. He understood instinctively why one house would
fall down in a winter gale while another nearby remained standing. Even as he
had shunned the whore’s advances that day, part of his mind had been wondering
what the red paint on her face was made from and why some people’s teeth rotted
faster than others.

But his obsession for ten years or more had been his search for the perfect
sword.

Everyone knew of the lumps of gray metal that fell from the skies. Most
thought them a gift of Ares. They were prized, more valuable than gold. Priam
had several in his treasury, and sometimes small objects, brooches, even
arrowheads, were hammered out of the cold gray metal.

The Hittites had learned to make swords of that star metal, it was said, but
they guarded the secret closely. Khalkeus never had seen such a weapon, but he
believed the stories. He had gathered several slivers of the metal over the
years and had studied them. He had found that they could not be scratched by
bronze, only by some gemstones. He believed there had to be a way to cast the
metal into a sword stronger than the best bronze, a sword that would bend, not
break, remain sharp, and last a warrior a lifetime.

His greatest surprise in studying the shards was that they went red and
rotted when left in water. The red crumbly remains made him think of the red
rocks mined all over the country in the search for gold and the elusive tin,
rocks considered valueless and thrown away by the miners. He employed workmen to
bring cartloads of the red rocks to his forge, and the other smiths mocked him
when he heated them over charcoal in his furnace. Brought to the heat at which
copper could be smelted, the ore refused to become molten and flow, separating
itself from the slag and unburned charcoal. What was left was merely a gray
spongy mass that, when cooled, shattered at the blow of a hammer.

Frustrated, he pondered this for a time. Seeing that the metal could be
weakened by water, he concluded that it must be strengthened by fire. He needed
more heat. He had persuaded King Priam to fund bigger furnaces, taller than any
seen before in Troy, so that the gray sponges could be superheated to release
their pure metal. His neighboring smiths laughed at him at first, then stopped
laughing as the first two furnaces burned down, taking nearby forges with them.
Then the war came to Troy, and the other forgemasters followed the king’s orders
and moved inside the city.

But not Khalkeus. Now, alone on the hillside at last, away from the prying
eyes and jeering comments, he looked up at the great chimney he was building.
Surrounded by a scaffold of wood, it was already twice the height of a man.
Rubbing his palms together, Khalkeus set to work.

Cocooned in a soft pile of sweet-smelling bed linen and downy cushions,
Andromache slept on long past dawn, deeply asleep in the unaccustomed comfort of
a real bed. When the sound of muted sobbing woke her, the sun was high.

Luxuriously she stretched, then rolled over and sat up. “What is it, Axa?
What’s wrong?”

Her maid, placing a large bowl of scented water on a table, turned a
tear-stained face to her. “I’m sorry, lady. And you so tired. I didn’t mean to
wake you.”

“I thought you’d be glad to see me back,” Andromache teased her, running her
hands through her thick red hair, pushing it back.

Axa smiled wanly. “Of course I am, lady. But just as you get back safely,
then my Mestares leaves.” Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she hung her
head. “I’m sorry, Princess, but I am frightened for my babies. The enemy are
letting women and children go. I wanted to travel to Phrygia. It is a long way,
I know, but I have family there. My babies would be safe. But Mestares would not
let me. He forbade me to leave the city. I could not complain, lady, because he
was here with me. But now the Trojan Horse has left in the night. And he said
nothing to me. Not a word.”

“They rode out at dawn?”

“No, my lady. They left in the middle of the night.”

Andromache nodded thoughtfully. “Hektor can trust no one. All the while
refugees are entering the city, Agamemnon will be sending his spies in with
them. Mestares could not tell you he was going. Perhaps he did not even know
himself. Hektor told me they were leaving at dawn. You see, he could not even
tell
me
the truth.”

Axa sniffed and rubbed the tears off her cheeks. “Everyone says we’re safe
behind the great walls. You believe that, don’t you, my lady? You came back.”

Andromache could not lie to her. “I don’t know, Axa. I came back because my
son is here. Where is he this morning?”

“The boys are playing in the gardens. They are firm friends now. It is nice
to see them playing so happily together.”

But Andromache felt a stab of fear at her words. Their talk of spies had made
her feel vulnerable. “In the gardens? Are they being watched?”

Axa nodded vehemently. “They are guarded at all times, my lady. Prince Hektor
picked their bodyguards himself. They are safe.”

Andromache saw the maid’s plump face cloud over again as she thought of her
own three children, and she said hastily, “I think the scarlet dress today.”

Surprised, Axa said, “My, your travels have changed you, lady. You don’t
normally care what you wear. And you seldom wear that scarlet gown. You said it
makes you look like”—she lowered her voice—“one of Aphrodite’s maidens.”

Andromache laughed. “I have spent the entire winter in just three dresses. I
am sick and tired of them. Take them out and burn them. I might even do it
myself. Now, Axa, you must tell me all the palace gossip I have missed. I hear
the princess Kreusa has fled the city.”

A curtain rattled, and one of her handmaids, sloe-eyed Penthesileia, came in.
“The king wishes to see you, lady.”

“Thank you, Penthesileia. Axa, our gossip will have to wait. Quickly, help me
get ready.”

It was close to noon and the warm air held the promise of summer when
Andromache arrived at Priam’s
megaron,
yet the atmosphere inside was
chilly and gloomy. She felt goose bumps rise on her arms as she walked to where
Priam sat on his carved and gilded throne, flanked by Polites and Polydorus,
with his guard of six Eagles behind him.

Coming up close to the king, Andromache saw that he looked shrunken and
frail. She remembered the vital powerful man she had met on the great tower.
Then she looked into his eyes and shuddered inwardly. The king she once knew,
though cruel and capricious, had a sword-sharp mind. Now all she could see in
those eyes was cold emptiness. She remembered Kassandra saying of Agamemnon’s
eyes, “They are empty. There is no soul behind them.” Do all kings come to this
at last? she thought.

“Andromache,” he said, his voice familiar, though cracked and thin. “You have
been away from us too long. Tell me of your travels.”

Standing in front of him like a dutiful child, Andromache started to tell him
of their journey: Helikaon’s duel with Persion, her talks with Iphigenia, the
winter journey to the Seven Hills, and their return, right up to her arrival
with the donkey carts full of tin. She left out only the attack on Ithaka. She
gave a detailed account, and it took a long time. She was chilled to the bone by
the time she finished her tale. All the while she watched him, wondering how
much he was taking in. His gaze drifted from time to time, then slowly turned to
her again.

Finally she fell silent. There was a long pause, and then he said, “And
Ithaka. You skipped that. Surely one of the most interesting events of your
journey.”

“Ithaka, my king?”

He leaned forward, and she saw that the whites of his eyes were as yellow as
egg yolks. “It is the talk of the Great Green that Odysseus stormed his own
megaron
to rescue his wife. Achilles was with him. And the
Xanthos
was seen there at the time. Aeneas helping his old friend—and
our
adversary. I know everything that happens on the Great Green, girl. Do not seek
to fool me.”

Andromache remained silent. The king coughed painfully and went on, his voice
harsh. “I declare Aeneas to be an enemy of Troy. He will be executed when he
returns to the city. Do you hear me, Polites?”

“Yes, Father.” Polites caught Andromache’s eye and shook his head slightly.
“You are tired now, Father. You must rest.”

Priam ignored him. “You are not wearing the gown I gave you,” he said to
Andromache.

“My lord?” She looked down at the scarlet dress.

“The gold-embroidered gown with the dolphin shawl. You said you would wear it
today.” The old man leaned forward again and stared at her, frowning. Then he
reached out a clawlike hand and dragged her to him. He was still a powerful man,
and Andromache felt his sour breath on her cheek, hot and feverish. His grip on
her arm was like a vise.