A Tearful Goodbye
The Trojan War, Part 11: The heartbreak of Hector and Andromache
Find the last two parts of the story of the Trojan War here:
Part 9
Part 10
As the words of Glaucus’ captivating story floated up to Olympus on the breeze, Hector had entered the Scaean Gate of Troy, the main gate to the city. Inside this enormous gate stood a magnificent oak tree, around which the mothers, sisters, wives and daughters of the city were gathered to wait anxiously for any news of their loved ones on the battlefield. At Hector’s appearance, the waiting ladies swarmed to greet him, desperate for any drops of information on their fighting men.
He eased his way through the throng, consoling where he could and gently extracting himself from the eager hands that begged to grab his attention and his tidings from the warfront. Eventually, Hector managed to extricate himself and made his way swiftly to his father’s grand palace. While it housed King Priam and his queen, Hecuba, it also had fifty houses of stone for each of Priam’s sons and their wives that stood opposite the twelve houses of his daughters and their husbands.
Between these homes stood a grand courtyard where Hector waited for his mother, though he didn’t have long to wait. She swept into the courtyard, hastening to embrace her eldest son after such a long time apart from him. In her wake came Laodice, Hector’s most beautiful sister, attending to their mother and desperate to see her brother safe within the palace walls once more.
Hecuba was beyond delighted to see Hector returned home, but asked him why he had come; after all, it was so unlike him to leave his men and return home when they could not. She suggested that perhaps he had come to pray and that he should have some wine, both to drink to the gods and to make him steadfast. Hector refused, however, knowing the wine would only make him sluggish when he would need his wits intact when he returned to his troops shortly. He was too dirty for praise, he added, completely unfit to worship the gods in his current state.
It was some kind of prayer he sought, though, and begged his mother to go to Athena’s temple as Helenus had told him, to offer up praise and sacrifice there with the older women of the city. He had his own business, he told her; he needed to find Paris and drag him back to the battlefield whether he liked it or not. He lamented, briefly, over Paris’ character, one so ready to run from the battles he started; surely he must be a test from the gods, one that he tolerated but nonetheless occasionally and casually wished dead.
Queen Hecuba, cherishing every moment she spent with her son, summoned and dispatched her servants to gather the older women of Troy, to instruct them to meet her so they could walk to the temple of Athena together. When her treasured Hector took his leave to visit Paris, Hecuba set her mind firmly on the task she had been given to aid her soldiers and her many sons.
She visited her underground vaults to sort through her robes, finding the finest and most beautifully adorned one as Helenus had instructed. It was the largest in her collection and shone brightly even in the dim light of the vault, the silver and gold woven through it catching the torches’ firelight. It had been brought back for her by Paris on his infamous journey home with Helen after he had stolen her away from Sparta, so it seemed fitting for the prayers she would be offering on his behalf.
She took the robe and left the palace, gratefully greeting the swell of older ladies who waited for her outside the palace gates. Robe in gentle hands, Hecuba led the women down the wide streets of Troy to the temple of Athena. They waited by the gates as they were drawn open by the priestess Theano, the wife of Priam’s trusted advisor Antenor, who took the robe inside as Hecuba bade her and laid it across the knees of the statue of Athena there.
As she did, the women all sent up their praise to Olympus, all loudly proclaiming the wisdom and greatness of the gods to catch their lofty attention. Theano prayed over the offering and made vows of her own, adding Hecuba’s offer of twelve heifers should Athena only think of the women and children and see fit to keep Diomedes away from the gates of Troy. She asked the goddess to break Diomedes’ mighty spear and to drive him to his death into the ground at the Scaean Gates, the ones he so wished to breach.
Theano, Hecuba and the gathered women remained in prayer for some time but their pleas and promises of sacrifice fell on deaf ears: Athena had no intention of sating the Trojans’ prayers as she had chosen her side, knowing that she would do everything in her power to ensure that the Greek army won their war as she had promised long ago.
By the time Hecuba had reached Athena’s temple, Hector had made his way to Paris’ fine mansion in the palace grounds. It stood between his own and King Priam’s, built by the finest workmen and craftsmen in the land. He entered the house and found Paris idly fiddling with his spear and sword in Helen's rooms as Helen and her women worked at their own projects around him.
Hector saw his brother wasting the time he could have been spending with his soldiers and felt his blood begin to boil. He berated Paris, reminding him that while he sat sulking in his wife’s rooms, men were fighting and dying for him in battle. Many, he added, including himself, had not seen their wives or loved ones for weeks, months or even years, while Paris lounged and basked in Helen’s presence without thought or concern. He ended his tirade with the threat of burning Troy down, with Paris and his house inside, leaving nothing for the Greeks to do but go home if Paris continued not to fight, so useful was he being.
Paris, bitter at such a dressing down but knowing, deep down, that Hector was right, acquiesced and petulantly agreed to come back to the field. Helen had, after all, been trying to urge him back to his men and out of their house so he could finally put his sword to good use and get out from under her feet. He promised to put on his armour at once and meet Hector at the Scaean Gate should he want to go ahead, should the mighty crown prince have other calls on his time.
Though Hector didn’t respond to this impertinent suggestion, Helen did. She turned to Hector and told him that she was mortified by her new husband’s actions or lack thereof, as well as the trouble her disappearance from Sparta had caused. She had been the root of so much grief, she said, and to make matters worse she had done so for the disappointing coward that was Paris. It would have been better if it had all been for someone worthy of so much honour and glory on the battlefield, but Paris was a fool in and out of war and she lamented having ever had her eye turned toward him. She continued that he and his instability would be the cause of the fall of Troy, surely the harbinger of the undoing of them all and, to make matters worse, not once had he shown remorse for the things he had done to his people, his family and to her.
Once she had caught her breath after such an outpouring, Helen offered Hector a seat, urging him to take the weight from his body since she could see that he carried so much in his heart and on his shoulders thanks to her fleeting infatuation that had done all of this damage. Hector thanked her but refused, so desperate was he to get back to his men after some small time away from them. There was, he added, something else he had to do first, so he would be on his way. He bade goodbye to Helen, entrusting her with the responsibility to throw her husband into the streets the moment he had donned his armour, which she accepted gladly.
Hector’s final stop in the city was his own house, entering the cool shadow from the heat of the palace courtyard. He searched the rooms but found them empty of his wife or son, so he stopped a passing servant and asked after his family. The maid told him that the lady had gone to the wall with nurse and baby son in tow as she had heard that her people were fairing poorly and the city was in danger. The little family had gone to see it for themselves, with his wife hurrying through her tears as she went.
Hector thanked the maid and departed, a sinking misery growing with every step he took back toward the Scaean Gate to meet Paris and rejoin the fight without seeing his beloved family for what could be the last time. Reaching the gate, however, his spirits were lifted as he glimpsed a familiar figure running toward him, her nurse in tow holding a babbling bundle. Andromache, his dear wife, ran into his open arms and hugged him fiercely, tears flowing freely at her joy and relief.
The nurse caught up to them too, holding baby Astyanax so he could see his father. Andromache drew back, the tears still rolling down her face, and told him that she knew why he had found them and why he was so relieved to see them. His nobility would kill him, she said, knowing that he was too brave and heroic to end this war any other way than dead on a battlefield, fighting as he would to the end.
She told him that she would rather be dead herself than lose him, reminding him that thanks to the war, he and Astyanax were the only family she had left. Achilles had rent her family apart during the Greeks’ raid on her home city of Thebe. King Eetion, her father, had been killed and burned in death along with their lands by Achilles, who had also slain all seven of her brothers along with the palace livestock. He had captured her mother too, selling her back to her own father at a heavy price, but she had perished at the arrow point of Artemis’ bow that had brought the gift of instant death.
Andromache begged Hector, who was cradling her face now and unable to look away, to remain at home, safe behind Troy’s enormous walls, and to post soldiers to guard the only way over and into the city. At various points over the past nine years, the Greek army had tried three times to climb a large fig tree close to the city, managing to get on the wall and not much further; these men had been both the Greater and Lesser Ajaxes, then Indomeneus and his men, then lastly Diomedes, Menelaus and Agamemnon.
Hector smiled sadly, wishing he could do so and leave the war at that. He kissed Andromache’s forehead, then gazed tenderly into her eyes before he would have to break both of their hearts afresh. He couldn’t leave his soldiers, he murmured. He couldn’t ignore their sacrifice or their loyalty; he had to return. Nor, he said a little louder to steel himself, could he bear the judgement of the city’s people should he stay safe behind the wall while the others fought on his behalf and he lounged in security like Paris had been.
He was a mighty warrior, he consoled her, and every life he took was for her. He couldn’t, he said, take any chance that Andromache would be captured and forced to live as someone else’s slave, living in misery and fear through all manner of horrors should Troy fall. He would rather die than subject her to such a fate, so he wouldn’t stop fighting for her until the Greeks left their shores or until he had breached the gates of Hades.
He pulled back to admire his son and reached out to take him from the attentive nurse, but the horsehair on his helmet flopped and shivered as moved, scaring the baby. Mother and father both chuckled as Hector unbuckled his helmet and set it aside, taking the boy now that the source of his fear was neutralised. He kissed Astyanax, praying to the heavens that he would surpass his father in might and skill, that he would one day grow to be a noble, strong and capable king, much more so than Hector could ever be.
Andromache reached up to kiss Astyanax where he sat in Hector’s arms, crying and laughing all at once. Hector saw her tears and her smile and wrapped a reassuring arm around her, telling her that if he did die then it would be at the will of the gods and in one of the greatest causes. He kissed her temple, acknowledging that they should likely both return to the things they were best at: she, running the household and he, running the war. After all, if anyone in Troy should defend the city, it was him.
She nodded and smiled a sad smile through her tears, taking Astyanax and kissing her husband one last time, gathering every mote of strength she possessed to walk away from her beloved. Hector rebuckled his helmet and never took his eyes off her as she left, the nurse trailing faithfully behind her. As she went, Andromache would turn back every now and then, stealing final glimpses of her Hector before he left the city once more. All the while, with every glance back, he remained gazing at her until, at last, she was out of sight.
After what felt like the longest walk of her life, Andromache reached home. When she entered and felt the cool shade envelop her, she could no longer restrain the pain and fear she held inside. She wept, not in a way that would be expected of a princess but in a way so raw and feral that her wail seemed to rip from her throat unbidden. She sank to the floor as her ladies gathered about her, all sobbing with their own grief for Hector, trying only to make Andromache comfortable while she howled with the agony of losing her husband for what was surely the last time.
Find the twelfth part of the story of the Trojan War here:
