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She was too visible at first, too present, and allowed what they did to hurt her. The baby ripped from her arms, the Achaean who used her body, the screams of the other women all about her - all these things caused her pain. When she was put into one of the black ships and taken across the sea she crouched down, her arms wrapped round herself, weeping as the Achaeans laughed at her. In Greece the Achaean women slapped her face and called her a whore, laughing that no one believed her nighttime tears.
If she stood up straight, she was mocked - did she still think herself a princess? If she bent her head, she was mocked - a queen of Troy brought low. If she spoke the slave children laughed and imitated her accent. If she was silent her owner did his best to make her scream.
It would be best, Andromache thought, to cast herself down from the cliff (Astyanax's sweet, small body in the air as if he flew, then crumpled and lifeless at her feet), or to seize a spear and throw herself upon the point (Hector, his proud eyes dimming as he looked up at the face of one as pitiless as any god's son). The Achaeans had already killed her, it was but an oversight that she still walked like one alive.
She was dragged back from the cliff and beaten, the spear was pulled from her hands and she was beaten. The only one who still called her queen was flung at her feet, a Trojan merchant's daughter, begging her to live, for if she killed herself the girl would be taken from the house, where only the men of the house used her, and given to the soldiers. The girl's hips were narrow and she was still as flat as a boy, her child's eyes begging Andromache for at least this much salvation. She was not a queen, she could save no one. She had not been able to save her own child's life and felt a sour defeat in looking into another child's eyes. She did not try to take her life again.
She understood all at once, her master thrusting into her, her husband's name in his foul mouth. He thought this had something to do with how she had been in Hector's arms, that he vanquished her husband's memory as his father had vanquished her husband in battle. She almost laughed. How like the Achaeans, to fight even the dead. This had nothing to do with her life with her husband, nothing. The Achaeans might think so, but she was not Achaean. She clutched this understanding to her and found the gods strengthened her, armoured her.
From that day, Andromache walked in the halls of her captor, sheathed in her mind in armour of the finest bronze. No hand touched her flesh, just the smooth cold metal. No voice reached her ears undimmed by the helmet. As warriors schooled in the dance of war do not show fear before their enemies so she did not show anything before the Achaeans. When she spoke her voice was distant, her eyes fixed beyond Achaea. She did not scream for her master, no matter how hard he worked.
At last, tiring of their sport seeming unnoticed, the Achaean women no longer slapped her or laughed at her. Her master no longer took her to his bed, unnerved by a captive woman who lay still and silent, her gaze beyond him as if seeing some other man. The slave children did not mock her, finding no joy in her smooth unblushing cheek. No longer was she brought out to serve the wine for the men, a glorious prize of war, for her warrior's gaze, as they said, spoiled their appetites. All day she sat in the women's quarters, as respectable women did, weaving as respectable women did. All the women, both slave and free, praised her skill and begged her to teach them. Her master wore her weaving and said no robe made by his Achaean wife pleased him more. Having made her a slave, they began to remember she had been a queen.
Neither their cruelty nor their praise touched her. The world stayed distant, safe behind the sheeting of bronze the gods in their mercy had given her. She worked, for it was not becoming for her hands to be idle, but it was not for the Achaeans that she worked. Year after year, as all around her the Achaeans in confusion treated her like a poor relative of her master, like an unfortunate to whom they had given kind refuge, Andromache sat weaving in her unseen armour of bronze, a loved hand on her shoulder, childish laughter in her ears. Although the Achaeans did not know it, every piece of cloth was a shroud. Far from home, the last Trojan queen made rich funeral garments for all her dead, lost people.