Science Fiction Originals Vol 3 Part 10

Aeneas guides her away.

After they are gone, Leo and I don't say much. I think he knows that I had it bad for Ca.s.sandra. I don't know how I feel now. Sick. Confused. Even if he didn't know, there isn't much to say when the king's daughter shows signs of cracking.

We are as bristled as teased cats for the rest of the night. I keep imagining creaking and groaning noisesin the wind.

Like the sound a s.h.i.+p would make on land.

Impossible.

He stood atop the ruins reaming out his right ear with his little finger like an artilleryman swabbing down a gun barrel. The autumn wind had got there first, piercing him down to the nerve.

The pain eased, replaced with the dull ringing that came and went, daily, hourly, sometimes by the minute.

All around and below him in the trenches Turks, Circa.s.sians, and Greeks sang, but not together, as each nation competed with the most drunken-sounding drinking song in their own tongues. Heinrich Schliemann's ears bothered him too much to try to listen to any of the words; it was all a m.u.f.fled din to him. The diggers handed over a long line of baskets, each to each, from where others dug with pick and shovel to the edge of the hill mound of Hissarlik, where the soil was dumped over into the plain below.

Since there were four or five clans of Turks and Greeks present, he'd learned to put a Circa.s.sian between, so that the baskets went from the diggers to Turk to Circa.s.sian to Greek to Circa.s.sian to Turk and so on.

Sometimes there were four or five Greeks or Turks to each neutral middleman, sometimes ten or fifteen. The last in the line were all Circa.s.sian, who had the task of filling the flat alluvial plain that stretched away to the small river flowing to the sea two miles away.

The ringing in his ear returned slowly to the drone (he wasn't that musical, but he'd imitated it as best he could once for a violinist, who p.r.o.nounced it "B below middle C") that was always there.

Today, progress was fast. They'd uncovered one of the Roman phase walls and were rapidly digging along where it sank lower into the debris. What he searched for lay below, probably far below. Only when the diggers found something other than building stone, perhaps pottery or weapons, did things slow down, the workers graduating from shovels to trowels while those s.h.i.+fting baskets caught up with others carrying away piles of earth. But today, the diggers kept at it full swing. He suspected that this meant his colleague, Dorpfeld, would be along to complain that the diggers weren't being systematic enough. Dorpfeld was methodical, even for a German. One thing I've learned, Schliemann thought, is that some follow and some lead. And I'm the leader here.

Schliemann wanted bones: Trojan bones buried with honor. If it was gold that honored them, so much the better. Schliemann liked the way his Sophia's eyes lit up when she saw the gold they uncovered. Just seeing her delight was almost reward enough for him these days. She deserved everything in heaven and earth simply for not being that Russian chunk of ice he had married first and foolishly.

I've made very few mistakes in my life but the Russian marriage was one, he thought. However, marrying dear, beautiful, Greek Sophia makes up for that. I am rich, I am successful, I am famous, I have a loving family.

Now all I want are some Trojan bones, and for that head louse Botticher to sink into the earth instead of writing all that vitriolic rubbish about me.

Suddenly, he groaned. His earache had worsened.

One of the Turks scrambled up to him. "Boss!" he said impatiently.

Schliemann realized the digger had called to him several times. He pretended that he had been preoccupied rather than mostly deaf and turned slightly. The Turk handed him a shard.

Impossible. On it was the feathery curved design that Schliemann recognized as an octopus tentacle.

Mycenaean.

"Where did you get this?" Schliemann demanded in Turkish, glaring at the young man. A thought flared up that someone was sabotaging the dig (Botticher?) by bribing his workers to put Greek pottery in Turkish soil.

The Turk pointed, jabbering, but Schliemann could only hear the word "boss," which the Turk repeated with respect over and over. He was excited. Then Schliemann thought he lip-read the phrase "much more."

Mycenae. Of course. Yes, how could I forget? Schliemann's mind raced as he followed his digger. The royal families of Troy and Mycenae were guest-friends. It was on a royal tour of Sparta that Paris fell in love with and stole Helen. Of course there would be Mycenaean pottery! It was probably sent to Troy as... say, wedding gifts for Hector and Andromache.

The diggers were gathered at one corner of the trench, one of them carving the soil with his small knife.

Edges and rounded curves of pottery stuck out all along.

"My good men!" Schliemann said first in Greek, then Turkish, clapping his hands. "Good work. Early lunch." Half the workforce put down their tools, wiping their foreheads and grinning. Then he repeated it in Circa.s.sian and the remainder cheered and climbed out of the trench after the others.

Schliemann smiled and nodded, watching them go, saluting them with dignified congratulations. Then he slid down into the trench and stroked the smooth edge of a partially-excavated Mycenaean stirrup cup, elegantly decorated with stripes.

"Oh, Athena!" he whispered, his throat tight, ears banging painfully, eyes stinging. "Dare I imagine thatHector himself drank from this cup?"

He felt a change in the light and looked up with a start. At first he saw no one. He put the pottery shard into his s.h.i.+rt, then found a foothold in the trench, climbing halfway up. The hill was a broken plane, gouged mostly by his own trenches, but also by age. The city walls had grown weary with time, crumbled, grown pale gra.s.ses and stray barley. Dark elms, losing their summer dresses, blew in the relentless seawind.

There. One of the diggers, lagging behind? Schliemann wondered. But he didn't recognize him. A young man whose s.h.i.+rt had torn and was hanging on one shoulder. Not even a young man but a big boy, only his upper half visible. Confused, Schliemann tried to calculate just which trench the lad was in.

"Hey, you!" Schliemann called in Turkish, scrambling towards him.

The boy turned slightly but didn't look at Schliemann. He was looking towards the tallest of the remaining towers of Ilium and then he seemed to trip backwards and was gone.

"Local rascal," Schliemann said, irritated that his spell had been broken. Never mind. He returned to the trench and took out his pocket knife to sc.r.a.pe, ever so gently, around the striped cup.

Already he was composing tonight's letters: two in English, to friends; two in French, to other archaeologists; one in Russian, to his mercantile partners; another in Swedish, to a correspondent there; a Turkish note to the Museum at Constantinople; a letter in Greek to his mother-in-law. Oh, yes, and he needed to write to his cousin in Germany.

This was an incredible find.

He stuck his finger back in his ear as the roaring in it crashed into his head like the ocean. "Owww," he moaned.

This watch is almost over. Look, there's old rosy-fingers in the east.

You know how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, about how you never wrote that thank-you letter to grandad before he died? Or about the pain in your tummy being fatal? Or about the money you owe? Well, I've had a night like that without being in bed. Leo and I kept ourselves awake some of the time by gambling in a sticks and stones game, the sort you can scramble underfoot if one of the sleepless mucky-mucks happens to show. Most of the time we just stared out at nothing, worried that those footsteps might come back.

It wasn't helped by Andromache's spell of sobbing and shouting a few hours ago. Hector wouldn't have liked that, even though it's strangely heartwarming to hear a wife miss her husband. But Hector knew that women's wailing unsettled the soldiers.

Like me. Unsettled is about one-tenth of it.

Thinking about how we've lost most of our best generals, most of all Hector. Thinking about how it's no longer special being a prince when every other soldier is as well. Thinking about my family. Thinking about spooky Ca.s.sandra. Thinking about how rotten this war is.

When the sun comes up we'll see what they were up to on the beach last night.

Leo and I still don't want to believe that after ten years, they had simply swum away. But then, Achilles was their man, like Hector was our man. With both those guys gone, maybe they've decided it's time to pack it in.

Now, in the earliest light, I lean over the wall and see a huge dark shape sitting outside the main city gate.

Bigger than the gate itself.

"What the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Coro, the s.h.i.+ps are going!" shouts Leocritus. Like me, he has come alert in the morning light. He points out to sea, which is as thick with s.h.i.+ps as wasps on a smear of jam.

"But, Leo, what the h.e.l.l is that?" I say again, putting my hands on the sides of his head and making him look down, to the right.

At the horse.

"Zeus H. Thunderfart!" he breathes.

The soldiers on watch from the other walls are shouting down to the people. "They're gone! The Greeks have gone!"

People come out to see what's happening. Doors open and people hang out their top windows, pointing to the s.h.i.+ps now on the horizon.

Celebration! I hug Leo and he hugs me; we jump up and down, making obscene gestures at the cowardly Greeks s.h.i.+ps sailing south. I've never heard such a din in Troy. The women are waving scarves, bringing out the tiny children on their hips, banging on pots. The men bang on everything, shouting about the shortcomings of Agamemnon's men and the strength and bravery of Trojan warriors. All so early in the morning, even before the wine has been brought out.

Everyone's clambering and excited, falling all over each other crowding at our end of town. Now word is getting around about the giant horse at the gate.

I'm still on the wall, looking at it. It's about four men tall and long, probably fas.h.i.+oned of elm with a big box belly and a straight neck jutting out at an angle, alert pointy ears. Its carved eyes look wild and windblown, as if in battle. Is this a peace offering?

I can hear voices asking whether we should open the gate or not. A couple of our soldiers look up at us on the wall. "What should we do?"

"I don't know," I shout down. "Get a priest. Or someone from the royal family."

After a few minutes, the great King Priam, a frail and tiny man billowing with the finest woven white robes, arrives with Aeneas trotting behind. They open the gate, go out, and a crowd surrounds the horse.

I also see a commotion, a v-shaped wedge of frightened and alarmed people, running down from the high city. The cutting point of the wedge is the ma.s.sive priest of Poseidon, almost as naked as if he had come straight from bed as well, waving his thick arms and shouting out in a ba.s.so growl. "What's happening?"

Probably from years of practice, his half-grown sons duck and weave around his great flying elbows, two curious kids wondering what the mayhem was all about.

"What's this about a goodbye present?" Laoc.o.o.n says. "This is a trick." He turns to borrow a staff from one of his gang of water-wors.h.i.+pping thugs. With a mighty swing (why wasn't he ever on the battlefield, I wonder?), he bashes it on the side of the horse.

The wood made a moaning, low sound, the stick playing it like an equine string. Eerie.

"This is a trick!" Laoc.o.o.n repeats.

"Oh, shove off, Laoc.o.o.n!" a man shouts. "Go soak your head in the sea!" There is enough laughter that the man swaggers.

King Priam raises his hands, his wrists like twigs, his face mournful, but he's got that magic touch of a king. Everyone falls silent. "Let's examine the matter," he pipes in an old man's voice.

Then I see Ca.s.sandra, coming down beside Laoc.o.o.n's crowd. "Don't touch it! Get rid of it!" she yells. "It will destroy the city!"

But when Aeneas laughs, everyone joins him. "It's just a pile of sticks, Ca.s.sie!"

Several people start hitting the horse again, making it s.h.i.+ver like a big drum.

Laoc.o.o.n raises his arms to demand silence. It sounds to me like Laoc.o.o.n says, "Ween ye, blind hoddypecks, it contains some Greekish navy," but the crowd was still making lots of noise.

His clinging sons look out wide-eyed from behind their father's back. Laoc.o.o.n's voice is booming. "How can you trust the Greeks?" Poseidon's priest asks, staring down Aeneas but not looking at King Priam.

The laughter and banging stops.

Leo and I have relaxed. With the Greeks gone there seems to be no need to watch the plain any longer.

Mistake. But I don't know what we could have done about what happened next anyway.

"Oh, look," says someone by the gate, pointing towards where the Greek s.h.i.+ps used to be. Huge winding shapes were swimming across the land. "Big snakes."

Later, after the snakes have slithered away, a smaller crowd reforms around the horse and the three mangled bodies of Laoc.o.o.n and his two sons. They look like something the butcher throws to the dogs at the end of a hard week, but smell worse, like s.h.i.+t and rotten meat. Even though we both would have preferred to be on the battlefield without weapons than do this digusting ch.o.r.e, Leo and I help scoop the bodies onto s.h.i.+elds to take back to the family. I always hate the moment that the wails begin; it's almost worse waiting for the wails than hearing them.

Many of the onlookers are inside the gates again, wet patches where they had been standing. Ca.s.sandra leads a shocked King Priam away with daughterly concern. Aeneas is stunned. He rubs his arm and says, "That was very unexpected," first looking at the bodies, then speculatively towards the sea.

I don't like being down here, off the wall, now. "Where did the snakes go?"

One of our old soldiers, out of breath from running, holds a corner of the s.h.i.+eld while I lift the smallest boy onto it. He says, "They crawled straight up into Athena's temple, circled round the statue, then vanished into a hole in the ground."

"What should we do with the horse, Lord Aeneas?" one of our soldiers asks.

Aeneas doesn't answer, still distracted. "I must go," he says and strides up the hill towards the palace.

With the royals scared off and the priest mangled, we don't know what to do. Leo, myself and two other soldiers take the bodies of Laoc.o.o.n and his sons up to his temple. The women come pouring out, screaming.

You think they'd be used to death by now. But even I felt a wrench when they hovered over the horrible, bloated faces of the little boys.

We miss the arrival of Sinon, the wretched Greek, left behind by his countrymen for his treasonous att.i.tudes. He's spitting angry at his fellow Greeks. He is taken to good King Priam and explains everything, wanting revenge on Greeks for the planning to sacrifice him for good winds.

King Priam finally gets out of him that the big horse is an offering to Athena to appease her for whatOdysseus did to her temple in the city when he crept in one night. These Greeks have to be apologizing all the time for their hubris.

Foolish with victory, Leo and I join the others in tearing down the gate instead of sleeping during the day.

We want the G.o.ddess's horse inside the city with us to help us celebrate the end of the ten long years of war.

Athena must be smiling on us because of what Odysseus did.

I don't feel tired. I feel happy. Up there on the gate, banging away at the lintel stone with a hammer, I can see to the palace windows. Ca.s.sandra's window, particularly. There stands Ca.s.sandra, not sewing with her mother, the queen. Not celebrating with the rest of the court.

She is watching.

I think she is watching me.

The little stone harbor at Sigeum smelled of fish, brine, dank seaweed, rope, and wood. Homer could feel the change from beach to stones underfoot but the light was bright here, too bright, making him screw up his face against the dazzle. This had been the location of the Greek camp during the Trojan war but Homer felt no resonances here. It was too used; occupied by the present.

"Don't let the lad walk so close the edge!" his mother scolded.

His father grasped Homer's arm. "Stand there!" he said. "Don't go wandering. We've got to find the boat's governor. It'll be easier for us to leave you here."

"Sit down," said his mother, nudging his shoulder down. "Less likely to wander on your bottom than on your feet."

Homer sat, his ankles sc.r.a.ping on the uneven stones as he crossed his legs.

"Don't move!" his mother said again. Then she called for her younger children to follow.

Their footsteps faded. Homer listened to the slap of the water and the gentle tap of a boat tied below him against the harbor wall. Sea birds shrieked high above, waiting for the fishermen to return. A big shape just offsh.o.r.e was probably the s.h.i.+p his family wanted to board for their return journey to Smyrna. For a few minutes, he enjoyed the peace. He stretched out to sunbathe and found a large pebble under his back. He held it close to his eyes, almost touching his lashes, and could see fine grey textures, even a little sparkle.

Ah, beauty, he thought in wonder.

Then he heard footsteps again.