The Homecoming

 

Pergamus: The Queen,my mother, is dying. Open the windows of her room, so that her spirit might fly to the stars...let soft music hum beside her bed...so that her journey is eased ...shower rose petals on her feet and let silken golden robes caress her....in her final moments... she dies like a Queen, my mother...and leave me to be alone with my grief....

Chorus: Ah King, descendant of great Achilles, your mother was a slave when she bore you. A concubine to Neoptolemus, your father...who seized her as a prize from the ruins of Troy...great Hector’s wife and Princess of Thebe...

Andromache, your dreams were shattered by the river Scamander, on the banks of which stands famed Troy. Paris, the son of Priam abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta and the Greeks descended and spelt the doom of glorious Troy.

Oh Andromache, Queen and Princess, wife of the defender of Troy, Hector ....whose prowess and fame in battle destroyed you and your son. For as you looked over the walls of your palace, cradling the baby Astayanax in your arms, Hector fell to Achilles’ spear...and as the life breath rattled out of him, Achilles bound him to his chariot and dragged him round and round the field of battle so that his body was despoiled ....his head trailed in the dust and you watched from the palace walls...

Andromache : My baby fell from my arms into his nurse’s waiting hands. I tore my veil and shrieked but no sound came...I shrieked again but was still soundless. Hector, Hector...oh! what reason did you have to be Troy’s foremost defender? What reason did you have to leave your wife and son, forever alone and defenceless??? You turned your wife into a slave, someone who would forever be exiled from Troy....I would never have my own home again, I would bear water and weave at another queen’s loom and be passed from bed to bed...a conqueror’s plaything....

Was this the fate you had in mind for me Hector? That far off morning when you came to wed me in Thebe, with bridal gifts and the flowers of amaranth which you wove into a garland and placed so tenderly around my neck? And then my father,Eetion and my brothers, placed my hand in yours and we were wed and the sun himself smiled at us from the skies? Did no one weep that radiant day, Hector, did no one weep?

Neoptolemus: When we took Troy after ten long years of hard fought battle... I slaughtered the King, aged Priam, in the temple of Athena where he had taken refuge...the Greeks violated Troy and her streets ran red with blood...all the royal women were taken captive or sacrificed....and Odysseus wanted you, Andromache....

Andromache: And what happened to my son? What happened to Astyanax, infant son of radiant Hector? He had swung laughing from his father’s hands just a few days ago...he did not know that being swung from hands could lead to such a terrible end....he did not know...so he laughed in my arms even as I knelt at the conquering Greeks feet...even as I knelt and prayed and begged for his life...even as I wept through eyes that had no tears left...rough hands dragged him from me, from my bosom where I had nursed him... coward hands dragged him from me, my baby, and flung him down to his death from the smouldering ramparts of Troy...down to his death...my little baby....

Chorus: Ah Andromache, Andromache....Queen of bitter sorrows....Did you faint then after your son was destroyed, did you know the sweetness of merciful oblivion...come tell us , we would like to know... as ghosts of old memories gather around your bed...

Andromache: I never knew how to faint or cry. This terrible pain, this wound without a name seared through my heart and turned me into stone.

When Thebe, my homeland, where I had grown up a laughing, carefree girl adored by my parents and seven brothers...was destroyed by cruel Achilles, my father and brothers were killed and my mother, taken as a slave...then gracious Priam,my  father-in-law and Hector ransomed my mother from the Greeks...and brought my mother home to me in Troy...

I cared for her with love and affection but the lady’s heart was broken by the death of her husband and sons...she died barely a month later and went to them...

I did not die...I did not break....I was given as a slave, a concubine to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles...

Chorus: Ah Andromache be fair! When Neoptolemus sailed to Epirus with you, he did offer to marry you and make you his Queen but you refused steadfastly....and remained a slave...

Andromache: Did anyone ever give me any time to mourn ? For my husband? To swaddle my child in burial clothes? To see that his grave was properly marked? Did anyone ever give me time for that? No!

Andromache! Marry, marry....marry Neoptolemus...cease being a slave. Marry the man who murdered my son?

No! I could not die but I could say –no!

I had to lie with him and bear him sons...I did that with a fierce gladness and a rage in my heart...for great Achilles’s grandsons, the heirs of his blood are born from a slave...

The man who destroyed my husband, my father, my brothers....who destroyed my home, my dreams....has grandsons who are born from a slave...

Such a pathetic vengeance, such paltriness but my womb was the weapon to execute all this!

Neoptolemus: I loved you, you know....and I do still! It is you who are made of stone. You  are the first woman I saw when I came to fight at Troy as a teenager...and when I carried you away as a prize, I could not believe it...the Greeks overrode the claims of Agamemnon and Odyssus and gave you to me as I was the hero Achilles’s son and I had proved myself in battle...and I did not murder Astyanax...I merely pretended to because the Greeks would not let the son of Hector live...a son who could grow up and avenge his father and bloodline...

Andromache: You let me think that he was dead....killed by the ramparts of Troy! It was only  when our sons were toddlers that you told me that you had given him to the childless ruler of Scepsis...I had mourned him dead for all these years ...now I rejoiced that he was alive but wept as I could never see him again...

Neoptolemus: No, that would endanger him! The Greeks would not let Hector’s son live...

Chorus: Ah Andromache! Neoptolemus was not a bad man. You should have married him and been happy....

Andromache: Marry a wolf after a lion? Did you not know that I was Hector’s wife? Crown Princess of Troy? Why would I be queen of Epirus? Scamander still runs in my blood not the waters of the river Thyamis.. It does not make me happy...though I have lived here in exile for so many years...I have never got used to this strange land...

Chorus: And then Neoptolemus married Hermoine daughter of Helen of Sparta. The new queen hated you because you had three sons and she had none. She plotted to kill you and your children when Neoptolemus was away and you took refuge in the temple of Thetis where you were saved....

Andromache: Hush! What need do you have to retell the story of my life? The ghost of Neoptolemus, my children’s’ father, whispers pleadingly beside my bed but I turn away...

Love, that much maligned word came early to me and was destroyed in the dusty battlefield of Troy....lying in the ground by Hector’s helmet, dipped in his blood...

So many years have I lived and yet the scent of amaranth in the spring moves my heart to become young again...amaranth, the flower that never withers...the garland that does not die...

Three sons have I borne again... and yet it is Astyanax’s sweet face which lives on in my memory...

My sons reign....let it be...it is well...

The windows open and my spirit yearns to go home after so many weary years in exile...I am dying but my heart rejoices...for it is to Hector that I will go...a safe homecoming (nostos) which every warrior yearns for...a longing to be home by his own hearth...No less a warrior was I, no less than all the princes who fell at Troy...I hear the swift sound of Hector’s footsteps striding to meet me...I run, I fly...amaranth flowers shower the ground....I am free...