The Fall of Troy Page 16

They came next to a small clearing, with a pool of green water, while above it stretched upward the side of the mountain covered with a canopy of pine and oak and chestnut. “We will rest the horses here,” Obermann said, “before we venture any further.”

  “And how do you propose to climb this?” Harding asked him.

  “There is a track. You cannot see it from this vantage. But it has been used for thousands of years. It is the human path, dear sir. Besides, we are not ascending very far. The glade of the goddesses is below the first peak.”

  “I am glad to hear it.”

  Sophia approached Thornton as he was leading his horse towards the pool. “You have been very quiet,” she said.

  “Have I? I must have been distracted.”

  “You have been thinking of your work. It never leaves you.”

  “And of other things, I’m afraid.” He did not look at Sophia. “The scenery here is very fine. Majestic.”

  “Of what other things are you afraid?”

  “It is just a figure of speech. Which of these peaks is our destination, do you suppose? I must admit that I have no great experience of mountains.”

  “Heinrich will not test us beyond endurance. He knows the way. He has come here before. You are very secret, Alexander.”

  “If I cannot speak of something without embarrassment I keep silent. That is all.”

  Sophia sensed that her husband was coming towards them. “Alexander wishes to know our destination, Heinrich.”

  “We are travelling to Gargarus, Mr. Thornton, among the Ida range. That is where the goddesses descended. By great good fortune it is also the source of the Scamander. So you will see the origin. The mountain marks the beginning of the divine river. And the opening of the Trojan war. It is doubly blessed. Human beings love the start of adventures, do they not?”

  They spurred on their horses, and ascended the incline of the foothill by means of a track of loose earth and stone that made its way between the thickly growing trees; then it swung around and for a mile they followed the bank of a stream that took them to a valley carving its way between two of the peaks of Ida. The floor of this valley was covered with rocks and boulders that had rolled down from the steep slopes that rose on either side. They could hear the sound of rushing water coming from somewhere above them. “You see here Mount Gargarus and Mount Cotylus,” Obermann called to them, as he rode a little ahead of the main party. “The summit of Gargarus is six thousand feet above the level of the sea. Do not be concerned. We will not be climbing to the top!” He laughed. “The glade is four thousand feet below the summit of the mountain. And there we will also find the source of the Scamander. Follow me.”

  “I believe we have no choice,” Harding muttered to no one in particular. He was not enjoying the labours of the journey.

  They ascended by a narrow track, riding in single file with the pack-horse in the rear. Within an hour of hard climbing they had reached a small plateau, from which they could see the valley beneath them as well as the plain of Troy stretching out towards the sea. The only sound was that of the rushing water. “We are close to the glade of the goddesses,” Obermann informed them. “But before we enter, I will show you something.” They followed him on a circuitous path that seemed to go around the mountain. Then he stopped and pointed upwards. There was a natural cavern in a nearly vertical rock wall, some two hundred feet in height, and from it there issued a broad stream. It fell many feet over projecting blocks of stone until it was joined by a smaller stream and made its way as a rivulet down the side of the mountain. “The origin of the divine Scamander!” Obermann said. “It will be swollen by winter snows. It is pure! It makes the mountain fertile!” The lower slopes were indeed covered with woods, spreading over the foothills and on to the plains. “The trees here provided the timber for the ships of Paris, when he set sail to abduct Helen. Yet from this very same mountain the Greeks found the wood to build their great horse! Do you see how the land fashioned Troy’s destiny? It was from here that the gods watched the battles. It was here that Aeneas was conceived by Anchises and Aphrodite. That is why I have brought you. It is part of the city.”

  “We will soon need wood ourselves,” Harding said to Thornton, “to make a fire.” He had been looking more and more anxiously at the sky. The sun was now setting, and the clear atmosphere presaged a cold night. He had not expected their journey to last so long, and did not greatly welcome a night in the Turkish countryside. Sophia, however, had been taken up by Obermann’s spirit of adventure and relished every moment on the mountain. Thornton pointed out to her the waning sunlight shining upon the rock face, so that it seemed like some furnace glowing in the heart of the mountain.

  “Now,” Obermann said, “we may visit the three goddesses.” They retraced their path a little way, then took a narrow track leading down through the rocks and gorse bushes into the trees. It was darker and more sombre here, away from the vista of the mountain range and the sound of the rushing water. The travellers were quiet. Then they came out into a small clearing, where three tall alder trees rose close together. “Holy ground,” Obermann said.

  They dismounted and tethered their horses to oak trees on the periphery of the clearing. “The trees grow where the goddesses once stood. The alder tree loves water. They love the Scamander, as the goddesses did.”

  To Harding’s amazement, Obermann then went down upon his knees and bent his head in prayer. The clergyman did not feel that he could countenance this act of worship, so he walked to the edge of the clearing and looked among the trees. Then he took a sudden step backwards. He thought that he had seen something moving in the foliage. He rejoined the others very quickly, just as Obermann was rising to his feet. “We may set up our camp here,” Obermann said. “While there is still light we must collect fallen branches for a fire.” He laughed at Harding’s expression of dismay. “We have all packed food in our saddle-bags, and I took the precaution of bringing four blankets. The ground here is very smooth.”

  They collected firewood easily enough from the forest just beyond the glade, and placed it in a large pile away from the three alder trees. As the sky darkened, a full moon was visible above the mountains. It seemed close to the earth here, the silver orb striated with the marks of its own valleys and mountains. “I know what we must do,” Obermann said.

  “I do hope,” Harding muttered to Thornton, “that it is not some kind of ceremony. He is very pagan, don’t you think?”

  “I think that is his way of maintaining good relations.”

  “Relations? With whom?”

  “The Trojans. The land.”

  Obermann had gone over to the pack-horse and taken from one of its satchels the marble head he had purchased in Ine. “This is the prize,” he said. “Sophia, you must choose between us and award it to the most deserving.”

  “You are copying the legend, Herr Obermann,” Harding said. “Is that wise? What if we were to start another conflict?”

  “What conflict could there possibly be? We are not divine beings. Mr. Thornton will not abduct anyone. At least I hope he will not.”

  “I do not know what I am supposed to do, Heinrich.”

  “Here. We will line up before you. Mr. Harding is the most devout. I am the most adventurous. Mr. Thornton—well, he is the most handsome. You must simply choose between us.” They stood just in front of the three alder trees, and the clear moon made them seem for a moment like figures of marble, silent and motionless in the silver light. The sculptured head lay on the ground between them and Sophia.

  “I cannot do it, Heinrich.”

  “How can she judge between us, sir?” Thornton asked him.

  “A woman always knows.”

  “I am not so sure of that,” Harding said. “You may remember Eve.”

  And then they heard the howling of a wolf, somewhere close to them. The horses whinnied and became restless, while Obermann walked to the edge of the clearing and peered into the darkness of the surrounding trees. “It is a
warning,” he said, when he returned to the others. “Nothing more.”

  “You are being told,” Sophia said, “not to imitate the gods.”

  “It is possible.”

  “I thought I saw something move between the trees.” Harding was clearly nervous.

  “At the time of the full moon,” Obermann said, “a wolf may possess a human soul. As a child in Germany, I was taught that. Yet whose soul would wish to be with us tonight?” He looked at Sophia. She had, for an instant, thought of William Brand.

  While they were talking, Alexander Thornton had been gathering up more branches from the glade and the forest beyond it. He brought them into the centre of the clearing, and placed them on the pile. “A fire will keep any animals at bay,” he said. He took a box of Lucifer matches from one of his pockets, and soon enough there was a blaze that spread warmth and glimmering light around the glade.

  “We will sing,” Obermann said. “We will sing loudly. That will keep off the beasts of the night. I will sing to you ‘Einerlei’ and then ‘Meinem Kinde’!” He sang boisterously, and then recited another ballad that began “Für fünfzehn pfennige.” The others had not understood a word, but when Thornton took the lead with a version of “The Sobbing Deer” and “Where the Bee Sucks,” Decimus Harding joined the chorus. They continued singing until they were too tired to think of any more songs, and then all of them slipped quietly into sleep as the fire sank down. In the forest, there was no noise.

  THE NEXT MORNING they were in good spirits, relieved and pleased that there had been no incursion in the night. Any danger had safely passed. But as they packed away the blankets and levelled the charred remnants of the fire, Obermann called, “It has gone!” He put his hands on his hips and stood perplexed. “It has been taken!”

  “What are you talking about, Heinrich?”

  “I left it here on the ground.” The sculpture—the marble head—was missing.

  “It must be there,” Harding said. “How could it have disappeared?”

  They looked throughout the glade, in case the marble had rolled away by some strange motion. They looked in the forest immediately beside the glade. “What is the explanation for this?” Obermann asked them, as if he were challenging them.

  “A wild bear may have taken it in the night,” Thornton said, smiling. “They may collect such things.”

  “And made no noise to wake us,” Obermann replied. “I hardly think so.”

  “Could one of us have walked in our sleep?” Harding was also smiling. “But we would scarcely have walked into the forest.”

  “What is your explanation?” Sophia asked Obermann.

  “I do not know.” He looked at the others carefully. “You will laugh at me if I propose some divine agency—”

  “The three goddesses came down and removed a rival. Is that it?”

  “Not so fast, reverend sir. Do not forget that this is a sacred place. That may be why the wolves did not touch us.”

  “So,” Sophia said, “the marble was their reward for protecting us.”

  “Oh, really,” Harding said.

  “It could be so.” Obermann put his arm around his wife. “Sophia has a female understanding of these deities. They may have wished for a gift.”

  TWENTY

  Over the next few weeks, after Decimus Harding’s return to Constantinople, Sophia became more interested in Thornton’s meticulous study of the clay tablets; she came into his hut and, sitting side by side, they would pore over the signs and symbols that he placed on the wooden table. She was also able to draw them with great precision, and they would compare each other’s interpretations of the shapes they saw. What for Thornton seemed to be a bundle of arrows was, for Sophia, a sheaf of wheat.

  In turn Thornton began to question her about her own awakened interest in the small votive figures that were regularly found in the ground of Troy. Some were of terracotta, and were perfectly formed with the heads of men and women; others were much more crudely fashioned, but there were still clues to their meaning. Sophia had noticed inscribed lines on the backs of some, for example, which seemed to represent the long hair of a female goddess. “What is peculiar,” she said to him, one morning, as she showed him a crude idol of bone, “is that some of the other figures are so carefully sculpted. It is as if a living artist had created them.” They were standing together, in the hut where she and Obermann lived, just above the cavity in the floor where the treasures were concealed.

  “What do you make of this?” He pointed to four horizontal lines below the head.

  “That is her armour. The two breasts are below. And the crossed lines upon the body also give her a warlike appearance.”

  “And this?”

  “Her vulva, I believe.”

  “Our friends were lacking in delicacy.”

  “They were not afraid of life. This is the source of the world, Alexander.”

  “‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.’” He seemed confused for a moment. “I’m sorry. I am only quoting.”

  “There is nothing to be sorry for. It is a wonderful sentiment. When the sons and daughters of Eve came into the world, there must have been great joy. Here is another goddess with the same mark. Do you see?”

  “The Trojans had a much more healthy notion of their gods. They could enjoy—”

  “Intercourse between the sexes? Oh, yes. That was part of their divinity. That is what we have in common with them.”

  “I believed you to be a Christian, Sophia.”

  “Not here. Christianity has nothing to do with Troy.” She put the figurine up to the light. “She was a goddess of life. The equivalent of Rhea. Now do you see this? It is a figurine made into a child’s toy, I believe. Or it may have been a lucky charm carried in clothing. Do you see? Instead of the face there is a carved circle.”

  “I do not think that it was meant for a child. It is too fierce.”

  “I would not say that it was fierce. It is an ancient image. That is all.”

  “And what is this?” He picked up a heavy object of diorite, which had five projections or globes.

  “Do you notice these faint incised lines? That is the necklace. So that globe is the head.” She stood it upright. “The arms and the legs are in place,” she said. “It is too strange. It still possesses a spirit.”

  He stepped back. “This might have been owned by the child.”

  “The one whose body we found? His spirit has fled, I am afraid.”

  “Is that what gave the child life in the first place? A spirit?”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “I used to call it the soul.”

  “Oh the soul is too inert. It dwells within you like some stone. But the spirit leaps and dances. It is the sap in the tree, the blood in the veins.”

  “I never know when you are being serious, Sophia.”

  “Oh, I am never serious.”

  “I have seen you silent. Then you are serious enough. When you look across the plain towards the Hellespont and curl your hair in your hands.”

  “You have been watching me! That is unfair.”

  “I often watch you.”

  “Do not do it. I am now being serious, Alexander. Please do not do it.”

  Her consternation made it clear to him that he had gone too far. He looked around, not wishing to meet her gaze, and noticed that her cloak and hat had been dropped casually upon the bed. Obermann’s packet of American cigarettes was on a side-table. “You are comfortable here, Sophia.”

  “Comfortable? I would hardly call it that.” She laughed. “I manage, as my husband says.”

  “Yet you enjoy your work on these.”

  “They are my life now.” She was silent for a moment. She already relented the annoyance she had shown to him. “I have never admitted that to anyone before.”

  “I admire you, Sophia.” He correctly interpreted her glance. “I cannot speak. I, too, will be silent.”

  WHEN HE WENT BACK to his hut he took out a lett
er that he had begun writing to the head of the department of Proto-historical Scripts at the British Museum. Alfred Grimes was a friend as well as a colleague, and Thornton felt impelled to describe to him the finding and sudden destruction of the small skeleton after the earthquake. It would be a means of placing it on record, albeit in unofficial form, and thus of preserving some vestige of the real conditions of Troy.

  “My dear Grimes,” he had written, “I am here on the summit of the fortress hill of Hissarlik, otherwise known as Troy. It is in many respects a glorious place—nowhere else in the world has the earth revealed so many remains of ancient settlements lying upon one another, with such rich contents within them.” He then went on to describe the layers of the various settlements of Troy, and in particular explained the discovery of the “Burned City” of which Homer was deemed to have written. On another page he expressed his delight at the opportunity of studying the clay tablets. “I do believe that they are some of the first evidences of writing in the world,” he told Grimes. “It is possible that they existed prior to the scripts of Mesopotamia, but on this, as on so many other matters, I can reach no firm conclusion as yet.” He described his faltering progress in deciphering the symbols but affirmed his belief that in the end “I will find my way through all the thickets.”

  He stopped for a moment, and then began another paragraph.

  You know Herr Obermann by reputation as a somewhat aggressive and overbearing fellow. That reputation is fully justified. He is a real Teuton. He regards archaeology as a tool for his theories, and has absolutely no regard for evidence. He orders the destruction of anything Roman or Greek so that he can uncover the prehistoric. Whenever potsherds of classical antiquity are uncovered, he treats them with disgust. If in the course of the work they fall into his hands, he throws them away! He looks with displeasure at each stirrup jar that emerges from the earth. And there has been one troubling and rather unpleasant incident.

  Then in rapid handwriting Thornton sketched the discovery of the child’s powdered skeleton.