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Before I came to Troy, I knew how to fly. The plains streaming along under pounding hooves; the rich forests rising, a blanket of green carpeting the steep hillsides; my brothers behind me, laughing, and the feel of firm horseflesh between my thighs, knees gripped tight into heaving flanks; this was all, and everything I had ever wanted.
An end came to that - to flight, brothers, laughter, freedom and all - the day my father told me I had been sold. That Hektor, prince of Troy - Troy the great, Troy the glorious, Troy the magnificent - had asked for me specifically, our house was honored to accept, and all my thoughts and feelings on the matter were inconsequential as the advice of a woman in wartime.
He came for me with the wealth of kings, and paid my bride price in gold and silver, in copper trinkets and bright bronze weapons; in a shimmering golden veil and circlet he set upon my head with his own hands, in jewels he draped around my throat, wrists, fingers. In return, my father gave him a great gift of horses, and chariots, and his allegiance forevermore. And me - in body, if not in soul.
And thus weighed down - with gold, with jewels, with grief - I come at last to Troy, to sit, high in the citadel on the hill, at our wedding feast.
There are so many of them, is my mind’s first thought, looking out over the crowd of Trojan nobility. Of my new people; my new family. Brothers and sisters my husband has in plenty, all as finely made and richly attired as he. (For he is finely made, this Hektor - thick black curls atop his head, a close-cropped beard like a shadow over his jaw, broad shoulders and powerful arms, movements of disconcerting grace for one so large - not, of course, that I have noticed these things!)
Already I miss my brethren, and their tunics smelling of horse and stiff with hair; their good-natured teasing, their tweaking of my braids. They are so impeccably polite, my husband’s brethren - Be welcomed, good sister, and We are blessed to have you, sister, and Our brother has chosen well, dear sister, flowing around me like wine, dark and syrup-sweet.
“Do you feel blessed, Andromache?” my husband asks, passing our shared wine cup into my hand, his fingers brushing mine.
“I give my worship to Artemis,” I respond, keeping my hand still with an effort, keeping my gaze steady over the crowd. “A virgin goddess gives no blessing to a wedding.”
“Even a goddess may be pursued,” Hektor murmurs, voice low in his throat, and private; a voice I know in my bones he means only for me.
“Pursued, yes,” I say, and will my arms not to tremble as his fingers slide over the pulse of my wrist. “But never caught. Did Artemis not tear Actaeon to shreds for his insolence?”
“Perhaps he counted it worth the cost,” Hektor says, and withdraws his hand; still, I hear the smile in his voice, and curse it all the more.
Priam, the great king, calls to me from his high seat, and I go to kneel before him, a good and dutiful daughter. “What would you have of me as a wedding gift, daughter?” he asks, smiling, magnanimous. “Ask any boon, and you shall have it.”
I want to run in the forests of the hills, my mind cries. I want to hunt, and ride, and be far from this place.
But I have been trained well, for all I would like to pretend, and must play my part. “I want only to bring glory to Troy,” I say, “and bear the sons of your son, to rule long after you and he have gone into legend.”
Priam does not hear the bitter scald the words leave on my tongue, nor Hecuba his queen, content in her place at his side.
Only Hektor hears, and frowns.
*
In the chambers of my husband, every lamp is lit, their glow a weak and fitful thing, shivering in the breeze off the sea, smells of sand and seaweed mingling with the city’s smoke; weak, and yet too strong for me, leaving me exposed, even the shadows too bright for respite.
His sisters have done their work well. Stripped of the finery of Thebes and Troy both, I am left bare, hair unbound, clad only in a tunic I had woven myself in my father’s house, gossamer thin. They kiss me farewell, one by one, these new sisters of mine - how strange, to have sisters! - and take their leave. When the slender one with haunted dark eyes and delicacy in her bones - I cannot keep them all straight in my mind, not yet - whispers against my ear, You are the most beloved, I dismiss it as a trick of the wind, of the distant waves, for surely I am anything but, here and now.
We are alone then, he and I. My rebellious mind steals to the curl of his hair, blown a bit on the breeze, to the scent of him, all leather and salt; to the curve of his lips as he drinks, and watches me over the cup’s rim.
“Well?” I say, finally, when the silence grows suffocating. Patience was never a great virtue of mine. “Are we to stand here all night?”
He watches for a long moment, his gaze dark, and waits; long enough that gooseflesh rises along my limbs, long enough that my breathing turns shallow. “You may, if you please. I had a mind to be abed, myself.”
With his back turned to seek the bed, my heart grows bolder, and my limbs cease their treacherous trembling, for this moment at least. “Ah yes, let us to bed,” I say, twisting the words to throw at his retreating feet. “Would you have it said that the noble Hektor tamed the proud princess with his prowess in the bedchamber, as he breaks a horse to harness?”
One by one, the lamps extinguish under his hand, the shape of the room around me (of my husband, moving around me) blotted out.
“No,” he says, and the rustle of linen and the creak of wood tell me, more than the starlight spilling dim in the windows, that he has achieved his aim, and sought out our bed alone, leaving me standing, straight and still. “You will get cold,” his voice tells me, a moment later. “The wind off the sea can be chill.”
But I am stubborn, and proud, and a daughter of kings.
A sigh in the darkness, and the sounds of shifting. “I promise,” he says, in a voice grown softer, and thick with sleep. “I will not touch you, not until you ask it.”
I do not believe him. Why should I, when I know what my brothers say of women, when I know how their minds are never far from the sweet honey between a woman’s legs, when I know he is a prince, and used to owning all he lays eyes on? “You mean to hear me beg, then?” I take no trouble to hide the sneer in my voice; let him hear it, and know what he has chosen in demanding me for his bride. “You will not.”
Out of the darkness, his laugh; a quick huff, and no more. “As you wish. Goodnight, wife,” he says, and in the starlight I can make out the shape of his body as he turns from me, and settles one last time.
Still, I wait, and shiver, my feet ice on the stone floor, until I hear his breathing grow steady, and regular; only then do I creep into the great bed at his side, and though I brace myself, he does not stir.
In the morning, when I wake to the sunlight streaming across my eyes and the cries of gulls in my ears, I am alone, and untouched still.
*
On the fifth night, I ask.
“Why do you wait?” The light lies low around us, a flickering haze of gold; by it I study my limbs in turn, the fine bones of my wrist, the hard muscle arcing down in a gentle curve from my shoulder, the long, taut planes of my thighs, the high swell of my breasts beneath their sheer covering. His eyes follow mine on their journey; I feel his gaze rove, and catch, but still, his hand does not rise. “Do you not find me pleasing?” Lifting one foot higher into the light, my eyes consider the jut and hollows of my ankle, prominent in the shifting light. “Do you find me too full of bones and angles, and would rather a woman with lush curves to cradle you?” Along my thigh, the air creeps chill; my bride’s robe, split to the thigh, fallen open, disturbed by the motion of my leg.
And by Hektor’s fingertips, I see, with a breath caught in my throat; not touching, never touching, merely weighing down the fabric’s edge, peeling it from the soft skin beneath, where his eyes are fixed. “You are pleasing to me, Andromache,” he says, and no more, lifting his eyes to mine, with his fingers a whisper from me.
But I say nothing, too overwhelmed (not too frightened, never let it be said I was frightened!) by what I see there for words. So he turns from me once more, hiding his thoughts. “You know why I wait,” he says, and then we are alone together in the dark.
*
One small part of Troy claims a portion of my heart, little love though it has to give this city. The sea is too near, the sounds and smells all wrong, the people too content to go about their days on foot, always trapped, always contained within the high, slanting walls.
But here, ah! Here in the royal stables I am not suffocated, not buried under the weight of water and trade winds and my failure as a wife.
“Together we could fly,” I whisper to a mare, cradling her sweet head against me, letting her breathe warm gusts down my dress. In the stalls at my back, the chariot-horses of my husband stamp, necks stretched out towards me; they form part of my bride-price, and know me well. But like he, they must wait their turn. “You’re a failure as well, aren’t you?” If she were not, this mare, she would be heavy with foal in rolling green fields far outside the city, not trapped here with me. She makes no reply, only nibbling at the embroidery edging my chiton in search of treats until I laugh, and rest my forehead to hers, heart warm and full for the first time since I journeyed here.
When a shadow darkens the doorway, moving on silent feet, I turn my head without thought, smile still in place; such is the magic of the scents of horses and hay and the feel of a smooth coat against my hand that my mind is transported, and expects one of my brethren; Podes perhaps, or my darling Eteocles.
In their place instead, one of my husband’s sisters - my sisters - the delicate one, Cassandra. By now I know, for she alone fixes herself quickly into memory, strange among the flock of beautiful, polished Trojan princesses. “My mother wishes you to join my sisters and her ladies in weaving,” she says, before I can speak, and wrinkles her nose in a childish smile. “I came to warn you.”
“It is good of the Queen to wish to include me,” I say; though I wish it otherwise, my voice betrays me, sounding out wooden and hollow.
“It is dull of her. You are very strange, but you’re not dull.” Her eyes, so large in her pale face, dart about the stables, from me to the mare and away, sparkling, mischievous. Already, I like her the best, though this of course must be my secret. “My brother Hektor is a good man,” she says, sudden, abrupt, her glance stilled, focused in all its intensity on me. (How piercing her eyes are, I notice! How chilling their gaze, like the icy waves of the sea at dawn. Perhaps not my favorite, after all.) “He’s not dull either.”
Wary, I feel my way, a doe evading the hounds. Bad enough if Hektor should wish to prise me out; worse if he has asked it of his sisters. “Did he send you to take up his part?”
“Hektor never needs another to take up his part for him. Only to share it. That’s why he chose you.”
“Chose me? He speaks hardly a word to me.” In sympathy with my bitterness, perhaps, the mare pricks her ears, tail swishing, and my hands rise without thought, rubbing and petting and soothing away her distress. Would that mine could be soothed so easily! That Hektor chose the Theban princess, my heart can believe; that he chose Andromache? No, and no, and no.
A pause, and Cassandra’s head tilts, eyes dreamy with thought, the lines of her face still as marble before she twitches, and relaxes, and speaks again. “I have dozens of brothers. Deiphobus shouts and blusters, Paris is vain and flighty, Helenus lost in dreams, Troilus fanciful and easily led. Only Hektor is quiet. He listens, he observes, he is patient.” An unexpected thing - she smiles, and with it, her face loses all its chill, blossoming with warmth, with charm. In that moment, she resembles her brother my husband, and my mouth (the unaccountable thing!) smiles back at their image. “It’s why he is the best of us.”
I say nothing. The silence sits, thick as the dust dancing between us, thick with all the things my heart hardly dares admit to myself, much less to this sun-touched girl; how he unsettles me; how my heart longs to be other than it is, and yet fears the change; the want, the need to be more, more than princess, more than wife alone.
“You will see,” she says, smiling still, and turns, and leaves me there, alone.
*
I remain wary, all that day into the night; at the edge of our bed, I sit with spine locked, combing through the tangled waves of my hair. When he speaks, the comb falls from my fingers, I start so.
“Andromache,” he says, pausing to press the comb back into my hand, fingers careful to avoid mine, chilled and clammy as they are, “it’s not because you are...” Once more, a pause; could it be the great Hektor is uncertain of himself? Surely not, I think, and bite my lips to contain the laughter that threatens. “Unfamiliar with the act that occurs in a marriage bed?”
The laughter escapes, for I cannot hold it back. Over my shoulder, I note the twitch of his lips, the smile trying to hide itself within his beard. “I have watched stallions mount mares since I was small; your performance is hardly likely to inspire any surprise.” He watches me struggle with a knot in my hair, with the heavy weight of it, freed from its pins and coils, and holds out his hand for the comb.
“If you will trust me,” he says. “I have many sisters; I long ago learned to plait hair.” Loosely, wordlessly, I relinquish the comb, and wait for pain; but his touch is light and deft, gliding through tangles with ease. “Why then?” he says, once my guard has dropped, when my spine has curved and I have lost myself to secret shivers, to the prickles along my scalp that follow in the wake of his combing fingers. “Why do you avoid my touch still? I need not ask you to be honest with me, for I know well you cannot be otherwise.” The wryness in his voice burns me with a feeling I do not like to name, and for this I blame my response; sharp, in kind.
“I did not want this; all the less so with a man who chose me for my father’s horses, rather than myself.” There. Let it be said, and baldly, and let him do with it what he may.
His hands do not pause in their task, not for the briefest of moments. “Is that what you think?”
“What do you know of me? That I am Eëtion’s daughter? That I am a princess, reared to breed your sons and keep your household? In short, that I am a woman, and nothing more.”
“I know you are proud and bold,” he says. “Stubborn, brilliant, determined. I know you take no care to hide these things, unlike the women of Troy.”
By feel, I know his hands have shifted to plaiting my hair, his fingers weaving the strands over and through, binding them ever tighter into one another. “I never will,” I say, my chin lifting, for I am as stubborn as he named me, and more.
Tying my plait off, he drapes it over my shoulder, and leans up on his hands, breath warm against my ear. “I did not say I wanted you to.”
My breath catches, so close he must hear (he does hear, for his catches too), and my heart says, maybe, maybe…
But no. He fails to say what he does want, and so I turn away, and the moment sighs, and dies away.
*
Days pass while I watch, while I wait. He waits alongside me, never far, and we orbit each other in a cautious dance, observing, wondering.
Standing on our balcony, I watch the sun descend into the blue-green of the sea, Hektor seated at my side. And still, I am not ready.
“If you wait,” I say, and the moment stretches out around us, down the long shimmering line of the Scamander to the sea. “If you wait...”
Whatever I expect, it is not this: the head ducked, the shy smile pulling at the edge of his mouth, curving out of my sight. It is not the hum of approval; of amusement, even; not the force of his gaze, scything up to meet mine, with a shiver along my limbs following in its wake.
“Promises,” he says, his voice low, and heated, and full to the brim.
I grip the stone beneath my palms, and breathe, and feel that heat begin to pool, low in my belly.
*
When I next wake, it is to the hazy glow of a sun not yet risen, and a tug on my braid, and his dark eyes, thick with lashes, so close to mine. “We are taking a trip,” he announces.
This, and no more; it is a surprise, he tells me when I protest. So I follow, torn between reluctance and curiosity, as we take a cart and head out on the east road, out of Troy and into the countryside beyond.
Out of the cart - the ride is too bone-jarring, and he is too present, too close, too living - lies freedom, and peace; the slow clop of hooves, the grasses brushing against me, grey green and waist high, the flowers shooting up in profusions of blue and yellow, white and deep purple, like jewels in the grass, dusting my trailing fingertips in pollen. Face tipped to the rising sun, I spread my arms wide; the kiss of Helios lights on the bones of my face, and I breathe deep of the air, the wind in the trees, the red deer that tense and flee our approach.
From his seat, Hektor smiles down at me, and the sun stains my cheeks pink as I look away.
Still, I forget, as we continue, as the distance between us and Troy grows; forget who I have become here, what the city has made me. I smell the juniper bushes beside the road instead, sharp and fresh; the bergamot and lemon trees bold in the distance, their sweet scents blown on the breeze; I spot the hydrangeas blooming, a bright riot of pink and lavender, gold and blue-grey, and I remember: Andromache.
I remember my brothers, teasing me as I struggled to catch up, and hike up the entangling cloth of my chiton, tucking its ends into my belt, letting the grasses tickle my legs as I pass, their soft green fingers blessing me. I remember my mother’s warm smile, and break off a spray of blossoms, tucking them into the coils of my hair, humming her favorite song.
I remember Eteocles, my favorite, always sticking loyal to my side, and when Hektor calls to me, I turn to him all unthinking, still sweet, still lost in memory. Still me.
He points in the distance, lifting his chin to the low fences and stone buildings of a farm, and smiles at me. Not a prince, perhaps, not just now - not a commander, a leader, a husband. Just Hektor.
He draws up the cart and jumps down; I cannot help but step back - one step, two. It does not matter, for he grins (like a fox, like a wolf; like a god) and says two words: “Race you?”
My feet move before my mind can react; he is the taller, and possesses the advantage of foreknowledge, but the difference is little enough, and I am lean, and hungry with it.
I fly, feet on wings through the grass, muscles stretching, burning, my lungs full to bursting, Hektor a shadow, a blur at my side-
We draw up before the gate together in a flurry of dust and stones, shrieks (mine) and laughter (his), and I reach out without thought, to spin down my momentum, to pull him in the circle with me-
But no. He is not one of my brothers, and this my fingertips remember, just before they brush his sweat-slick skin. I flinch back, as though the heat rising from him scorches me.
If he is disappointed, he hides it still.
*
“This is why I’ve brought you here,” he says finally, after crossing many fields, passing through many gates, waving to many stoic men who nod with respect but do not dare approach us - and, of course, past many horses. He has brought me to the royal stud, where the mares and foals run free in the fields; where the best are taken, and broken, and trained.
At first, I do not see our quarry; it is early still, and the stud lies in a little hollow of the earth, the sea’s mist clinging yet in filmy white fingers. When he emerges at last, I must make some sound, for at my side, Hektor hums in agreement. “I knew you would see it.”
“He’s beautiful,” I say, watching the horse in the mist; a young colt, no more than two or three years, black as night and tall, with fine, proud lines. His ears prick and swivel towards us, but he is otherwise still; a statue, a paragon.
“He is,” my husband agrees. “But he’s wild. They’ve tried for a year to tame him, but he lets no one near.”
“Not even you?” The glance I cast him is sharp enough to cut, for I am many things, but foolish has never been one.
But he gives me nothing to betray guilt, nothing to indicate this is anything other than its face. “Not even Hektor, tamer of horses,” he says, voice solid and grave, and almost I miss the twitch in his cheek, so subtle is the movement, before I break, and laugh, and he laughs with me. “It is not my way to force things,” he says, sobering, watching me. “If a creature gives its loyalty out of fear, rather than love and respect, that loyalty is brittle, and will break. If a horse will not come to me, I cannot tame it.”
“Perhaps he does not want to be tamed,” I offer. But still…
Climbing onto the fence is easy enough; on the top rail, I sit, and ignore Hektor’s hands hovering at my back, ignore the protests I hear even as he swallows them. I sit, and I wait.
Curious creatures, horses are - nearly as curious as I - and this one is no different. His ears flick forward, and back; he takes a step nearer, two, three, and stops, head tossing. I breathe - in, out, calm - and feel in my bones Hektor’s breathing slow to match mine, see on the edges of my vision his hands, braced on either side of me, sense the solid warmth of him at my back.
The colt paces closer, hooves wet with the morning’s dew and shining gold with the spring’s clinging pollen, a gilded beauty. Still, I do not speak, do not move, still, I think, still, and we are one.
His dark, liquid eye rolls as he approaches closer, showing white along the edge. I let him come in close, let him nose at me, let him snort and blow, let him mouth at my hem, at my hair when his great head lifts.
“Don’t move,” I croon, quiet, low, meant not for the horse but for Hektor, as I slip from the fence to stand before the colt. My husband’s control is better than the colt’s; Hektor remains still, with no more than an indrawn breath, but the horse moves, rubbing his head hard along my body, shoving me back against the fence, rails biting into my back. “Easy, now,” I say, and grab his forelock in my left hand, setting my right shoulder to his and pushing, willing him to ease off, to give me room. He resists, and resists, and then - gives over, so suddenly I nearly fall. I lay a hand to his cheek and send up a prayer - to Poseidon, to Artemis, to whichever god might be listening to take pity on me now - and begin to speak.
“I think you should be called Eteocles,” I tell him, his cheek velvet soft under my stroking fingers, well aware of Hektor tensed at his post, hands white knuckled on the fence. “He is my very favorite of all my brothers, you know. Wild and stubborn, just like you, but so sweet. He is the closest to me in age; we were born in the same year, and looked as alike as twins when we were small. So much so that even our brothers could see no difference, and took me along on their adventures so as not to leave him out, for he would never give me up. For that alone I would have loved him.” Under my hands, my new Eteocles huffs, shifting his weight; but his eyes are full dark, his ears turned forward, toward me, and he makes no motion to pull away as I stroke his shoulder. “Hektor,” I say, without turning, “speak.”
“Of what, wife?” he asks, voice low and gentle as my own, for he is no fool either.
“Anything. He needs to hear your voice, to learn it, to know that with you comes pleasure, and happiness, and calm. Tell me, which of your siblings is your favorite? You have enough of them to choose one, surely.”
For a moment, I think he will not answer. “Deiphobus,” he says, finally, and I smile - not at his choice, for I agree with Cassandra’s assessment of that particular brother, but at my husband’s thoughtfulness, at his careful contemplation of even this simplest of questions. “He is a good companion, loyal and true, and a good fighter besides.”
“Do the two of you start tavern brawls in the lower city, then?” I ask, putting my smile into my words for the benefit of all three, we shy, tentative, curious creatures.
“He starts them,” Hektor says, mild and smooth as still water. “I finish them.” A moment passes, silent but for the drone of bees, the birds chirping in the trees. Eteocles drops his head to crop the grass at my feet. “It was Deiphobus who gave me a great gift,” Hektor says, and I shift, just slightly, just enough to see him from the corner of my eye, always with my focus on the horse, and the gentle motion of my hands on his coat. “It was he who suggested two years ago that I visit Thebes to gain new mares for the stud.”
I do not freeze, but I flinch, for the colt’s head jerks up from the grass with a shake, and I rub his nose, whispering soothing nonsense in his ear. I did not know he was in Thebes, I whisper, my words a blend, all run together. They did not tell me.
“It was a very brief visit,” he says. “But on it I saw a woman - little more than a girl, really - riding, flying down the plains with the Theban princes, laughing and tumbling with them, giving as good as she got, jibe for jibe and blow for blow.” My face heats, and I bury it against the colt’s shoulder, fingers clutching his mane. “I made friends with the Prince Podes, and I asked him who she was. ‘My sister,’ he said, and laughed, and told me of her desire to be a priestess of Artemis, and her magic with horses, of their father’s despair in ever making a suitable match for her. ‘For who,’ Podes said, ‘would ever want such a wild, bold, knobby-kneed girl as she?’” I do not dare look up, and Eteocles shifts again, my agitation flowing through and into him. “‘I would,’ I said to him, and the next day I asked Eëtion for his daughter in marriage. He could not believe I was serious, and made me wait two years, in hopes I would come to my senses, I suppose. But I did not. I wanted you, Andromache.”
I say nothing; I cannot. It is Eteocles who breaks the moment, nudging me aside and moving to the fence, shoving his beautiful, fine head over and snuffling at Hektor’s tunic. I try to speak, and clear my throat, and try again. “He has come to you, after all.”
“So he has,” Hektor said, and though his hands are on the horse, his eyes, and his voice, are all for me. “You are all that was promised, and more.”
The fence is an obstacle between us, and intolerable suddenly; I clamber over it with little grace and less care, to stand trembling before him. “What do you want?” I demand. My voice has grown unfamiliar to me, rich and thick, throbbing in time to the pulse of my throat. “Tell me what you want from me.”
“All.” The look on his face steals my breath, it is so open. So longing. “Everything. I have wanted you since the first moment I spied you. You are my match, and I will have no other.”
Perhaps I had wanted to be blind, all this time. No more.
“Hektor,” I say, stepping close, reaching a hand up - at last! - to stroke that close-cropped beard, a forest prickling against my palm. My other hand buries itself in his hair, my long fingers lost to black waves. Pressing close, I can feel: himself, hard against my belly; his body, trembling as the earth under the pounding of nearby hooves; his breath, warm against my lips. “Hektor, please.”
He does not make me wait.
A grove of trees nearby gives us cover, and my husband lays me down for our joining in a bed of springy moss and sweet flowers that scent the air as my body presses into the earth; as my chiton is lifted to bare my skin, dappled in shadow and light; as his tunic joins it in a heap on the ground, and he is revealed to me in all his glory. I will not say that I do not beg, as his hands rove my body, touching, teasing, drawing out pleasure and awakening a wild, mad, building heat at my core; nor will I say that he does not beg as I touch him, and find the velvety softness a man’s skin can have. We beg together as we join, mouth to mouth, skin to skin; as he enters me and I gasp; as he shudders and moans against my mouth, the sweetest sound that ever came to my ears.
“Is it enough?” I ask, when my breath returns, when we lay, sticky sweet, in our crushed bower, when my husband cradles me in his warm embrace.
Hektor looks at me, eyes dark and heavy lidded; full of promise. I wait, and wait, and know that I would wait forever. “There is always more. I need you, Andromache.”
“And I you,” I say, and let him take me again; as one, we fly.