‘A special gift for you. You know she’s Hekabe, of course. Take her and give her to Penelope as a serving woman. She’ll add considerable lustre to your rocky isle.’

He blinked, astonished. ‘There’s no need, Neoptolemos.’

‘I want you to have her, Odysseus. If I tried to keep her for myself, Agamemnon would have her off me for himself. But he won’t dare demand her of you. Let some other house than Atreus’s display a high-ranking prize out of Troy.’

‘What of the young one? You know she’s Andromache?’

‘Yes, but she’s mine by right.’ I bent to whisper in his ear. ‘She wanted to go to her son, but I knew that wasn’t possible. What’s happened to Hektor’s son?’

For a moment I saw a coldness. ‘Astyanax is dead. He couldn’t be allowed to live. I found him myself, and threw him from the Citadel tower. Sons, grandsons, great-grandsons – all must die.’

I changed the subject. ‘Did you find Helen?’

His chilliness vanished in a huge guffaw. ‘Indeed we did!’

‘How did she die?’

‘Helen, dead? Helen? Laddie, she was born to live to a ripe old age and die sedately in her bed with her children and servants weeping. Can you see Menelaos killing Helen? Or letting Agamemnon order it? Gods, he loves her better by far than he does himself!’

He calmed down, though he still chortled. ‘We found her in her apartments surrounded by a small guard of men, with Deiphobos prepared to kill the first Greek he saw. Menelaos was like a maddened bull! He took the Trojans on single-handedly and made light of it. Diomedes and I were mere spectators. At length he did for them all except Deiphobos, and they squared up to duel. Helen was standing to one side, head back, chest out, and eyes like green suns. As beautiful as Aphrodite! Neoptolemos, I tell you that there will never be a woman in all the world to hold a lamp to her! Menelaos got ready, but there was no duel. Helen got in first, skewered Deiphobos with a dagger between his shoulder blades. Then she fell on her knees. Chest out.

‘“Kill me, Menelaos! Kill me!” she cried. “I don’t deserve to live! Kill me now!”

‘Of course he didn’t. He took one look at her breasts and that was the end of it. They walked out of the room together without one glance in our direction.’

I had to laugh too. ‘Oh, the irony! To think you fought a group of nations for ten whole years to see Helen die, only to see her go home to Amyklai a free woman – and still Queen.’

‘Well, death is rarely where one expects,’ said Odysseus. His shoulders sagged, and I saw for the first time that he was a man nearing forty, that he felt his age and his exile, that for all his love of intrigue he wanted nothing more than to be at home again. He saluted me and walked away leading the howling Hekabe, then disappeared into an alley. I nodded to Automedon and we went onwards to the Skaian Gate.

The team plodded slowly down the road which led back to the beach, Aineas and Andromache walking behind, Priam’s corpse bouncing along between them. Inside the camp I bypassed the Myrmidon compound, forded Skamander and took the path to the tombs.

When the horses could go no further I untied Priam from the bar, twisted my left hand in the body’s robe and dragged it thus to the door of my father’s burial place. I propped Priam in the pose of a suppliant, kneeling over, and drove the butt of Old Pelion into the ground, piling stones about its base to make a little cairn. Then I turned back to see Troy on the plain, its houses spouting flames into the sombre sky, its gate gaping open like the mouth of a corpse after the shade has fled into the dark wastes below the earth. And then, at last, I wept for Achilles.

I tried to envision him as he was at Troy, but there was too much blood; a haze of death. In the end I could remember him but one way only, his skin shining oil from the bath, his yellow eyes glowing because he looked on me, his little son.

Not caring who saw me weep, I walked back to the chariot and climbed in beside Automedon.

‘Back to the ships, friend of my father. We go home,’ I said.

‘Home!’ he echoed on a sigh, faithful Automedon who had sailed from Aulis with Achilles. ‘Home!’

Troy was behind us burning, but our eyes saw nothing save the dancing sparks of the sun on the wine-dark sea, beckoning us home.

Epilogue

The Fates of Some Survivors

Agamemnon returned safely to Mykenai, completely unaware that his wife, Klytemnestra, had usurped the throne and married Aigisthos. After welcoming Agamemnon graciously, she persuaded him to have a bath. While he splashed happily, she took the sacred Axe and murdered him. Then she murdered his concubine, Kassandra the prophetess. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, was smuggled out of Mykenai by his elder sister, Elektra, who feared Aigisthos would kill the boy. When he grew up Orestes avenged his father by murdering his mother and her lover. But this was a no-win situation; the Gods demanded vengeance for his father, yet condemned Orestes for matricide. He went mad.

In the Latin tradition Aineas is said to have fled the burning Troy with his aged father, Anchises, perched on his shoulder, and the Palladion of Athene tucked under his arm. He took ship and wound up in Carthage, North Africa, where the Queen, Dido, became hopelessly enamoured of him. When he sailed away she committed suicide. Aineas then came ashore for good on the Latin plain of central Italy, fought a war, and settled there. His son Iulus, by the Latin princess Lavinia, became King of Alba Longa and the ancestor of Julius Caesar. However, the Greek tradition denies all of this. It says that Aineas was taken as a prize by the son of Achilles, Neoptolemos, who ransomed him to the Dardanians; he then settled in Thrace.

Andromache, the widow of Hektor, fell as a prize to Neoptolemos. She was either his wife or his concubine until he died, and bore him at least two sons.

Antenor, together with his wife, the priestess Theano, and their children, was allowed to go free after Troy fell. They settled in Thrace – or so some say, in Cyrenaica, North Africa.

Askanios, the son of Aineas by the Trojan princess Kreusa, stayed in Asia Minor after his father left to go with Neoptolemos. He eventually succeeded to the throne of a very much reduced Troy.

Diomedes was blown off course and wrecked on the coast of Lykia in Asia Minor, but survived. Eventually he reached Argos, only to find that his wife had committed adultery and usurped his throne with her lover. Diomedes was defeated and banished to Korinthos, then fought a war in Aitolia. But he couldn’t seem to settle down. His last home was in the town of Luceria, in Apulia, Italy.

Hekabe accompanied Odysseus, whose prize she was, to the Thracian Chersonnese, where her perpetual howling terrified him so much that he abandoned her by the seashore. Pitying her, the Gods changed her into a black bitch dog.

Helen participated in all Menelaos’s adventures.

Idomeneus had the same problem as Agamemnon and Diomedes. His wife usurped the throne of Crete and shared it with her lover, who drove Idomeneus out. He then settled in Calabria, Italy.

Kassandra the prophetess had spurned Apollo’s advances in her youth. In retaliation, he cursed her: always to prophesy the truth, never to be believed. She was first awarded as a prize to Little Ajax, but was taken off him after Odysseus swore that he had raped her on Athene’s altar. Agamemnon claimed her for himself, and took her to Mykenai with him. Though she kept insisting only death awaited them there, Agamemnon took no notice. Apollo’s curse was still working: she was murdered by Klytemnestra.

Little Ajax was wrecked on a reef while returning to Greece, and was drowned.