The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307472816
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

SHE HAD DRESSED like a native woman for the journey, and her complexion was now so darkened by the sun and the wind that she did not expect to provoke much notice. For the same reason she had decided to ride upon a mule rather than a horse. She placed the golden treasures in a leather pouch, and slung it over the animal’s back. Then she made her way towards the farm of the Skopeli.

THIRTEEN

It was not a hard journey. The road to Kannakale was well travelled. But she could not resist the sight of a spring a few hundred yards from the track. Partly shielded by olive trees, it was a vision of coolness and repose upon the plain. But the quietness did not last. She had come close to the water, having tethered the mule, when four black dogs hurled themselves at her furiously barking. They had come from a neighbouring vineyard. Aware of the danger, she recalled what Odysseus had done in the same situation. “As soon as the barking dogs saw Odysseus, they rushed towards him howling. Odysseus, however, wisely sat down on the ground, and let his staff slip from his hand.” So she lowered herself to the earth, looking once over her shoulder to make sure that the mule was safe, and remained still. The dogs circled around her and continued to bark, but they did not touch her.

A man came running out of the vineyard, alerted by their barking, and called off the dogs. He began talking rapidly to Sophia in Turkish, but she rose to her feet and said nothing. She waved him away, making a gesture of modesty and embarrassment. He ran back to the vineyard and brought out a bunch of grapes which she accepted without a word. Then she walked back to the mule, which had remained impassive throughout Sophia’s ordeal, and returned to the track. “I am pleased that I have read Homer,” she said, half to herself and half to the mule.

She rode through Kannakale slowly, not wishing to draw attention to herself. And she passed unnoticed in the general noise and bustle of the town. She was relieved, however, when she had taken the road to the village of Karamic; she passed by the huts and stalls on the outskirts of Kannakale until she found herself among fields of long grass and patches of marshy ground with dunes and clumps of weed. The sky here appeared to be vast, over-arching, an infinity of pale blue that touched the earth and grassland. The sky above Troy always seemed to Sophia to be fleeting and troubled, inconstant, but here it was light and unmoved.

She recognised the hut of the watcher of the sea because, as Heinrich had predicted, there were loaves of bread and figs on the earth beside the door. She hesitated as she passed, wishing to stop and greet him. But she dared not disturb him.

She went a few yards further, then dismounted. She had promised

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