A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

Even in war, there were rules. Men might ignore them, but the gods would not.

And Cassandra faced the ocean, her mouth moving soundlessly. She had long since learned to keep quiet, even if she could not halt the stream of words flowing from her lips.

When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else.

Mother of four sons who would not bury her, when her time came. Four sons who had not survived the war. Sons obliterated by the folly of another woman’s son.

‘Did you always look so sad?’ he continued. She repressed the urge to scream.

‘Is that the only measure of greatness? Killing so many that you have lost count? Making no distinction between warriors and unarmed men and women?’

How such a weak and petty man had risen to such a position of authority, she had wondered more than once.

Men’s deaths are epic, women’s deaths are tragic: is that it?

But this is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s, and the poet will look upon their pain – the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men – and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn.

Too many men telling the stories of men to each other.

Let us hope you never have to muster another force, Odysseus. Your reputation may leave you short of volunteers.

Why could men not just be less greedy, she wondered. Her sorrow morphed into irritation.

A young man would be delicious. And grateful. But, oh, Odysseus, they are all so stupid.