Achilles (3 page)

With these eyes still on him he burns. Senses his power.

These are the bodies Achilles knows:

1. Thetis'. Made of the sea. Cool hands that refresh him; wash pain away; wash away blood and dirt from his limbs. Her silent gowns are greens and blues and silver grey. This body is there whenever he seeks it but he does not caress it or know its contours – just the feel of it rinsing heat away.

 

2. Chiron's body. Wide horse back to straddle, vault and sometimes arc yourself across. Man's waist, chest and shoulders rising firm, sure as a prow. So many textures and smells in one body: close nap of horse hair, darker along the spine and set at a different angle; the sticky, resinous feel of this pelt if you run your hand against the grain; the silky, hairless flesh near the genitals – a place of comfort and burrowing. A hoof, knocking his cheek in reproof when he tries, exploring, to prise out the pouched, retracted member. The smells of man sweat and horse sweat; the mat of springy blonde curls on chest and beard that he'd tugged as a baby, still tugs sometimes now. This body taught him itself and nearly all else. The hoof that drew shapes in the dust showed him how stars moved.

 

3. His father's body: less intimately known than Chiron's but also loved and familiar. A stillness in Peleus like rock. Watching him sometimes you'd wonder if he'd ever move again. Then when he does move it is swift as a snake's tongue. A body smoother than Chiron's – you can trace where the flesh puckers and coarsens into scar. Each wound a story. When he was small Achilles would choose a scar and poke it with his finger, demanding a tale which ended
here;
testing to see if the story was the same as the last time. In his mind he cast a net over Peleus' body. Where the lines joined there were scars. He learned how to spin a story from link to link, from scar to scar. These, the stories of his father's body, were his first.

He also knows the body of his cousin Patroclus.

But the nearest he has got to a girl's body is his own, togged up like this.

Deidamia plays host. She goes up to Pyrrha and takes both hands as if to tug her into the circle of a game.

‘Come. I'll show you my favourite place.'

She leads Pyrrha out of the palace, past her father's stables to where there is open plain. Then she drops Pyrrha's hand and runs and Achilles – though he has to hold himself back so as not to overtake her – does not have to go as slowly as Thetis had told him to. They run to where the plain stops and woodland begins. Deidamia knows a path and leads her new friend through a maze of trees till the soft ground changes to rock. As the trees thin out you hear water. High slabbed boulders jut over a river in spate. Deidamia scrambles up the highest boulder and waves down to Pyrrha who follows.

‘Look how the water pounces on that rock. And there, where it sucks itself into a tunnel.'

Achilles breaks off a segment of pine cone and aims it at the funnel of water; they take it in turns to drop things in – a leaf, a twig, a berry – see how the water catches them.

‘Let's swim,' says Deidamia.

Achilles, suddenly bashful, hangs back while the princess races ahead to a clearing where the sun burns hot through the trees and smooth rocks frame a deep, hardly-moving pool. Where the river takes a breath.

As soon as she gets there she drags her shift off. The gesture is nothing like the one he's learnt girls use. He has never seen a naked girl before – the little puffs of breasts, the rounded stomach. It looks so soft compared with his. Like him she has some new silky hairs below her belly but no penis juts out of them. He feels for his prick through the cloth of his girl's tunic. Pats it to reassure himself; does something else entirely.

Deidamia is now bobbing around in the water.

‘Jump in Pyrrha. Can't you swim?'

Feeling stupid, trying to hold his tunic down across his thighs, Achilles slithers down between the cleft of two rocks; joins her in the heavenly cool water. Deidamia embraces him – or rather Pyrrha – with cold, fresh-watery kisses. She dives down and sees – in spite of his efforts – what he's been attempting to hide. She comes up laughing and kisses him again. They find the inside of each other's lips – smooth and hot and very unlike the water they bob in and keep swallowing as they struggle to keep afloat. Only when they have pulled themselves out of the water does Achilles take off his dress and spread it out across a wide flat rock to dry.

Later that day, when they have arrived back at the court, Deidamia announces to her friends that Pyrrha will be sharing her bed. Does Lycomedes know of these arrangements? He says nothing.

They often go out to the bathing pool. The other girls respect their friendship. At court Pyrrha is thought quiet and modest. A better musician than any of them, but she will not sing; a tireless dancer; good at all their games.

For Achilles these days of girlhood complete the education Chiron began. Refine it; soften his burning impatience. He learns to listen, dawdle, play. Delighting in Deidamia he becomes adept as Pyrrha. He borrows Deidamia's dresses, wanting to feel how her body feels – not just to his hands but to herself – when her soft silks drift over it. He uses her sweetest oils on his skin and hair, lets her plait flowers into his curls.

But there are times when girlhood chafes and his underused limbs ache to be stretched. Then he slips off; takes another path into the woods to a cave he's found, removes his girl clothes and bracelets, binds his hands with strips of cloth and starts to box. He jabs the air, mapping its emptiness into a thousand precise locations.
Forward – over a little – now yield to the right. Cover. Cover. Now punch and get out.

He hears Chiron's commentary in his mind, urging him on. He makes a bag of a piece of hide, fills it with stones and suspends it from a tree. He uses this to test his hands and feet against.

He longs to be met. To find an opponent who will answer each move with countermove; who will weigh him up and see him. Daily as he trains he dreams of this opponent. Builds him in thought.

He finds a tall pine to climb from where he can look out over the island and across the sea. The number of ships is growing. In a hollowed-out tree nearby some bees have built a nest. He speaks to them, observes how they organise themselves. Steals their honey for Deidamia.

From his pine tree lookout he sees the ship with the rust-coloured sails. It is still a long way off but he senses it is aiming at him. He feels the circle tightening.

The air in the court alters when the three men arrive. Odysseus: stocky, legs a bit too short for his body. A sense of compressed power. Ajax like a god. Huge. Well-made – looks like he could eat you and three oxen for breakfast. Then Nestor: older than the other two, more contained, his face shadowed with thought. But built like a warrior too.

The men have licence to search the court. Achilles doesn't need Lycomedes to warn him they have come for him. He must now be only Pyrrha. But these men carry the smell of action. While Deidamia dresses his hair, he smoulders.

The search is over. Nestor and his companions have been through every corner of the palace, questioned every groom, stable-hand, man and boyservant in the place, examined their form and features – and particularly their hands – to see if any might be Peleus' famous son: the boy who kills lions with his hands; who can outrun a deer.

But no one has seen him.

And no one could be him.

Of course they have other business. Nestor invites Lycomedes to contribute some ships to their expedition. Lycomedes feasts the ambassadors with lamb and wine and honey.

The ambassadors in turn have gifts for the court: jars containing the best Achaean wine and promise of much more if a navy is sent.

‘We also have pretty gifts for the ladies,' says Odysseus, and word goes out that the women and girls of the court are to gather. Odysseus fetches in a small chest and begins to unpack:

bracelets,

necklaces,

rings,

lengths of fine fabric,

delicate sandals,

a little knife,

mirrors of polished bronze and among them, a shield;

embroidered girdles. A spear.

He lays them out around him.

‘There's something for everyone,' he says. ‘Don't hold back. Each one of you, choose something.'

Gradually they all move forward. Some at first are shy as does but soon all are engrossed, picking over the gifts, handling them, passing them between one another, trying things on. Deidamia has led her friend Pyrrha into the circle and Pyrrha too experiments with cloth and bracelets.

EEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIAAAAAEEEEEEAAAAGGGGHHH!!!!!

Outside: the aching ring of metal on metal and the unmistakeable sound of a man's breath fleeing his body for ever.

Achilles is there, the shield already on one arm, the little knife in the same hand, the spear – ready to fall wherever it is needed – balanced in the other.

‘There you are,' says Odysseus (who has forfeited the life of one of his men to this end).

‘I didn't think you could resist a fight. Come with us. There'll be a better one in Troy.'

 

Two destinies, Thetis said. You can choose.

Stay in the fight and be known – for ever – as the greatest warrior on earth, and your life will be short as the beat of that wing.

Or – if you can be happy without this name – live long and peacefully, farming Peleus' land in Phthia alongside Neoptolemus, the son now growing in Deidamia's womb. Stay, and you will never meet him while you live.

Choose.

The Choice

Deidamia's slender boy-lover has grown into a man, his large body moulded by action.

On action.

On action.

For nine years he has followed the flame, not pausing to remember his mother's words.

He leads his Myrmidons – the ant-men – into battle, their shields scrumming to make flexible, impenetrable walls. He makes raids – alone or with Patroclus. Cattle, massing like storm to thunder down the slope as you close in.

Then reaction.

Agamemnon pulls rank (the only way he pulls anything) and takes Briseis – the girl who was Achilles' prize.

And Achilles remembers that he can choose. He lays off his men and folds his arms.

The fifty beached orange ships frame a village of soldiers at ease. The Myrmidons – those strong maquis fighters – are at play. They throw dice, wrestle, fish, tell stories. Patroclus and Achilles dance. The sight of this little village with its smoke and easy laughter offends Agamemnon more than he can say. He feels his army sinking deeper with each day that passes. He feels that they, not Troy, are under siege.

The Trojans feel so safe they come down to the beach and kill Greeks there. And Thetis purrs, satisfied that Zeus is avenging her son.

Agamemnon thinks of everything he can to win Achilles back. He will give him the woman now (swearing he hasn't touched her) along with seven more. And any one of his surviving daughters for a wife when they get home. Plus the usual bronze, gold, tripods etc.

Do they really think he is greedy?

The only child of Agamemnon he'd marry is the dead one – the one they offered, then killed. He is ready to sail home. To a long and nameless future.

It's not as if the wounded pride of a son of Atreus was ever his affair.

But Patroclus is tender-hearted. It hurts him to see the wounds of his fellows. He begs Achilles: ‘Let me go into battle, dressed in your armour.'

And Achilles lets him.

This armour fits three men and no one else:

Achilles, for whom it was made; Patroclus (who nevertheless cannot lift the great ash spear that goes with it) and … who else? What did you say?
WHO?

To a Trojan it's a fearful sight: Achilles' armour moving again. Though without the great ash spear.

But Hector – he is the third – is not afraid. He is only disappointed when he comes to peel the armour from Patroclus' body that the smashed flesh inside is not Achilles.

*   *   * 

HECTOR.

Before there was the name there was the shadow.

The shadow Achilles felt first at Skiros. It teased his own body on to growth. Cell by cell, calling him.

Body for body, each grew.

So that Achilles' armour, stripped from Patroclus, now fits Hector perfectly.

And Achilles no longer has a choice.

Ajax and Menelaus have rescued the poor, heavy, mangled body (they thought it would break as they heaved Patroclus by the armpits while Hector hung on to a foot). Achilles washes the dear flesh. He tells Patroclus he will not sleep till Hector is dead. Nor will he eat.

Achilles of the loud war cry lets out his war cry …

and the Achaeans regroup. Each man of them merry and agile for war.

The Trojans shit themselves.

*   *   * 

B
UT NOT
even he can go naked into battle and count on winning. Thetis, heavy-hearted, makes him wait; goes to Olympus to order new armour. When he straps it on he feels himself lifted on wings; when the sun strikes it men are blinded.

The metal is stamped with the future he won't see.

On this day he finds twelve Trojans for Patroclus' funeral pyre. He picks them off easily, before the sun has cleared the mist. His Myrmidons rope them together and drag them off alive. They'll keep.

He moves on towards the river. No Trojan has a chance. He on his own has the strength of one army; the Myrmidons – all their unused power unleashed – are another.

Up to his thighs in the River Scamander.

The River Scamander choking with blood and corpses. A thick, stinking soup; so full of bodies of men and horse, bits of limbs and pikes, mashed hide of shields, it can hardly move.

Scamander longs for the sea. So near he could smell it if it weren't for this stinking freight. If he could only flow to join it, this vile cargo would disperse. Then he could breathe again. But now he is so weighed down, so clogged. Like a dying man he cannot raise his head to meet the longed-for water near his mouth.