The Silence of the Girls

  ALSO BY PAT BARKER

  Union Street

  Blow Your House Down

  Liza’s England (formerly The Century’s Daughter)

  The Man Who Wasn’t There

  The Regeneration Trilogy

  Regeneration

  The Eye in the Door

  The Ghost Road

  Another World

  Border Crossing

  Double Vision

  The Life Class Trilogy

  Life Class

  Toby’s Room

  Noonday

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Pat Barker

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2018.

  doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Excerpt from The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Copyright © 2000, Philip Roth. Published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited, The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Emily Mahon

  Cover illustration: Engraving by Louis Charles Ruotte, drawn by François Gédéon Reverdin, nineteenth century, after an antique sculpture at the Vatican Museums. Bibliothèque Nationale. akg-images

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Barker, Pat, 1943– author.

  Title: The silence of the girls : a novel / Pat Barker.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018014387 (print) | LCCN 2018015358 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385544214 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385544221 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Trojan War—Fiction. | Troy (Extinct city)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / War & Military. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | War stories.

  Classification: LCC PR6052.A6488 (ebook) | LCC PR6052.A6488 S55 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018014387

  Ebook ISBN 9780385544221

  v5.3.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Pat Barker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part Three

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  For my children, John and Anna; and, as always,

  in loving memory of David

  “You know how European literature begins?” he’d ask, after taking the roll at the first class meeting. “With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.” And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. “ ‘Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles…Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon, the King of men, and great Achilles.’ And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It’s as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war.”

  —The Human Stain, Philip Roth

  PART ONE

  1

  Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles…How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him “the butcher.”

  Swift-footed Achilles. Now there’s an interesting one. More than anything else, more than brilliance, more than greatness, his speed defined him. There’s a story that he once chased the god Apollo all over the plains of Troy. Cornered at last, Apollo is supposed to have said: “You can’t kill me, I’m immortal.” “Ah, yes,” Achilles replied. “But we both know if you weren’t immortal, you’d be dead.”

  Nobody was ever allowed the last word; not even a god.

  * * *

  ——————

  I heard him before I saw him: his battle cry ringing round the walls of Lyrnessus.

  We women—children too, of course—had been told to go to the citadel, taking a change of clothes and as much food and drink as we could carry. Like all respectable married women, I rarely left my house—though admittedly in my case the house was a palace—so to be walking down the street in broad daylight felt like a holiday. Almost. Under the laughter and cheering and shouted jokes, I think we were all afraid. I know I was. We all knew the men were being pushed back—the fighting that had once been on the beach and around the harbour was now directly under the gates. We could hear shouts, cries, the clash of swords on shields—and we knew what awaited us if the city fell. And yet the danger didn’t feel real—not to me at any rate, and I doubt if the others were any closer to grasping it. How was it possible for these high walls that had protected us all our lives to fall?

  Down all the narrow lanes of the city, small groups of women carrying babies or holding children by the hand were converging on the main square. Fierce sunlight, a scouring wind and the citadel’s black shadow reaching out to take us in. Blinded for a moment, I stumbled, moving from bright light into the dark. The common women and slaves were herded together into the basement while members of royal and aristocratic families occupied the top floor. All the way up the twisting staircase we went, barely able to get a foothold on the narrow steps, round and round and round until at last we came out, abruptly, into a big, bare room. Arrows of light from the slit windows lay at intervals across the floor, leaving the corners of the room in shadow. Slowly, we looked around
, selecting places to sit and spread our belongings and start trying to create some semblance of a home.

  At first, it felt cool but then, as the sun rose higher, it became hot and stuffy. Airless. Within a few hours, the smells of sweaty bodies, of milk, baby-shit and menstrual blood, had become almost unbearable. Babies and toddlers grew fretful in the heat. Mothers laid the youngest children on sheets and fanned them while their older brothers and sisters ran around, overexcited, not really understanding what was going on. A couple of boys—ten or eleven years old, too young to fight—occupied the top of the stairs and pretended to drive back the invaders. The women kept looking at each other, dry-mouthed, not talking much, as outside the shouts and cries grew louder and a great hammering on the gates began. Again, and again, that battle cry rang out, as inhuman as the howling of a wolf. For once, women with sons envied those with daughters, because girls would be allowed to live. Boys, if anywhere near fighting age, were routinely slaughtered. Even pregnant women were sometimes killed, speared through the belly on the off chance their child would be a boy. I noticed Ismene, who was four months pregnant with my husband’s child, pressing her hands hard into her stomach, trying to convince herself the pregnancy didn’t show.

  In the past few days, I’d often seen her looking at me—Ismene, who’d once been so careful never to meet my eyes—and her expression had said, more clearly than any words: It’s your turn now. Let’s see how you like it. It hurt, that brash, unblinking stare. I came from a family where slaves were treated kindly and when my father gave me in marriage to Mynes, the king, I carried on the tradition in my own home. I’d been kind to Ismene—or I thought I had, but perhaps no kindness was possible between owner and slave, only varying degrees of brutality? I looked across the room at Ismene and thought: Yes, you’re right. My turn now.

  Nobody was talking of defeat, though we all expected it. Oh, except for one old woman, my husband’s great-aunt, who insisted this falling back to the gate was a mere tactical ploy. Mynes was just playing them along, she said, leading them blindfolded into a trap. We were going to win, chase the marauding Greeks into the sea—and I think perhaps some of the younger women believed her. But then that war cry came again, and again, each time closer, and we all knew who it was, though nobody said his name.

  The air was heavy with the foreknowledge of what we would have to face. Mothers put their arms round girls who were growing up fast but not yet ripe for marriage. Girls as young as nine and ten would not be spared. Ritsa leant across to me. “Well, at least we’re not virgins.” She was grinning as she said it, revealing gaps in her teeth caused by long years of childbearing—and no living child to show for it. I nodded and forced a smile, but said nothing.

  I was worried about my mother-in-law, who’d chosen to stay behind in the palace rather than be carried to the citadel on a litter—worried, and exasperated with myself for being worried, for if our situations had been reversed she would certainly not have cared about me. She’d been ill for a year with a disease that swelled her belly and stripped the flesh from her bones. Finally, I decided I had to go to her, at least check she had enough water and food. Ritsa would have gone with me—she was already on her feet—but I shook my head. “I won’t be gone a minute,” I said.

  Outside, I took a deep breath. Even at that moment, with the world about to explode and cascade down around my ears, I felt the relief of breathing untainted air. Dusty and hot—it scorched the back of my throat—but still smelling fresh after the foetid atmosphere of the upstairs room. The quickest route to the palace was straight across the main square, but I could see arrows scattered in the dust and even as I watched one soared over the walls and stuck, quivering, in a pile of dirt. No, better not risk it. I ran down a side street so narrow the houses towering over me let in scarcely any light. Reaching the palace walls, I entered through a side gate that must have been left unlocked when the servants fled. Horses whickered from the stables on my right. I crossed the courtyard and ran quickly along a passage that led into the main hall.

  It seemed strange to me, the huge, lofty room with Mynes’s throne at the far end. I’d first entered this room on my marriage day, carried from my father’s house on a litter, after dark, surrounded by men holding blazing torches. Mynes, with his mother, Queen Maire, by his side, had been waiting to greet me. His father had died the year before, he had no brothers and it was vital for him to get an heir. So he was being married, far younger than men expect to marry, though no doubt he’d already worked his way round the palace women and thrown in a few stable lads for relish along the way. What a disappointment I must have been when, finally, I climbed down from the litter and stood, trembling, as the maids removed my mantle and veils: a skinny little thing, all hair and eyes and scarcely a curve in sight. Poor Mynes. His idea of female beauty was a woman so fat if you slapped her backside in the morning she’d still be jiggling when you got back home for dinner. But he did his best, every night for months, toiling between my less-than-voluptuous thighs as willingly as a carthorse in the shafts, but when no pregnancy resulted he quickly became bored and reverted to his first love: a woman who worked in the kitchens and who, with a slave’s subtle mixture of fondness and aggression, had taken him into her bed when he was only twelve years old.

  Even on that first day, I looked at Queen Maire and knew I had a fight on my hands. Only it was not just one fight, it was a whole bloody war. By the time I was eighteen I was the veteran of many long and bitter campaigns. Mynes seemed entirely unaware of the tension, but then in my experience men are curiously blind to aggression in women. They’re the warriors, with their helmets and armour, their swords and spears, and they don’t seem to see our battles—or they prefer not to. Perhaps if they realized we’re not the gentle creatures they take us for their own peace of mind would be disturbed?

  If I’d had a baby—a son—everything would have changed, but at the end of a year I was still wearing my girdle defiantly tight until at last Maire, made desperate by her longing for a grandchild, pointed at my slim waist and openly jeered. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t become ill. She’d already selected a concubine from one of the ruling families; a girl who, although not lawfully married, would have become queen in all but name. But then, Maire’s own belly began to grow. She was still just young enough for there to be ripples of scandal. Whose is it? everybody was asking. She never left the palace except to pray at her husband’s tomb! But then she began to turn yellow and lose weight and kept to her own rooms most of the time. Without her to drive them, the negotiations over the sixteen-year-old concubine faltered and died. This was my opportunity, the first I’d had, and I seized it. Soon, all the palace officials who’d been loyal to her were answering to me. And the palace was no worse run than it had been when she was in power. More efficiently, if anything.

  I stood in the centre of the hall, remembering these things and the palace that was normally so full of noise—voices, clattering pans, running feet—stretched out all around me as quiet as a tomb. Oh, I could still hear the clash of battle from outside the city walls but, rather like the intermittent humming of a bee on a summer’s evening, the sound seemed merely to intensify the silence.

  I’d have liked to stay there in the hall or, even better, go out into the inner courtyard and sit under my favourite tree, but I knew Ritsa would be worrying about me and so I went slowly up the stairs and along the main corridor to my mother-in-law’s room. The door creaked as I opened it. The room was in semi-darkness; Maire kept the blinds closed, whether because the light hurt her eyes or because she wished to hide her changed appearance from the world, I didn’t know. She had been a very beautiful woman—and I’d noticed a few weeks before that the precious bronze mirror that had formed part of her dowry was nowhere to be seen.

  A movement on the bed. A pale face turned towards me in the gloom.

  “Who is it?”

  “Briseis.”

>   Immediately, the face turned away. That wasn’t the name she’d been hoping for. She’d become rather fond of Ismene, who was supposed to be carrying Mynes’s baby—and probably was, though given the lives slaves lead it’s not always possible to know who a child’s father is. But in these last few desperate weeks and months that child had become Maire’s hope. Yes, Ismene was a slave, but slaves can be freed, and if the child were to be a boy…

  I went further into the room. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes.” Not thinking about it, just wanting me to go.

  “Enough water?”

  She glanced at her bedside table. I went round the bed and picked up the jug, which was almost full. I poured her a large cup then went to refill the jug from a bowl of water in the corner furthest from the door. Warm, stale water with a film of dust on the top. I plunged the jug deep and took it across to the bed. Four sharp slits of light lay across the red-and-purple rug beneath my feet, bright enough to hurt my eyes, though the bed was in near-darkness.

  She was struggling to sit up. I held the cup to her lips and she drank greedily, her wasted throat jerking with every gulp. After a while, she raised her head and I thought she’d had enough, but she made a little mew of protest when I tried to take the cup away. When at last she’d finished, she wiped her mouth delicately on a corner of her veil. I could feel her resenting me because I’d witnessed her thirst, her helplessness.