Achilles (5 page)

*   *   * 

W
HEN THE
time for tears is past Achilles raises Priam to his feet and fetches him a fine, inlaid chair.

‘You're brave, to come here unguarded. My men are like wolves. I kept them out of the fight too long. Now they've tasted blood again.'

‘It's Hector's body I've come for. There was no question of fear.'

This irritates Achilles.

‘Don't give me that. It takes three young, strong men to knock back the bolt on my gate. I know you've been helped by a god. I've had my instructions too. It's Zeus' wish that I give you the body and that's why you'll get it.'

He turns away; the muscle in his cheek at work again.

He leaves Priam seated and takes two of his women (not Briseis – two others) to where he keeps Hector when he's not dragging him in the dust. He glares at Hector accusingly, as if a pact had been broken, then snaps into command, telling the women to wash the body and be sure to rinse away every grain of dirt. He is emphatic about this – as if the dirt he's dragged Hector through had actually clung, whereas Hector shines through it, shunning the dirt as oil shuns water.

When the body is clean the women are to anoint it.

Priam must be kept from seeing the body till it is time for him to take it. If he sees it now he will want to kill Achilles. Achilles knows how strong old men can be but it is his own strength he fears. If Priam's hands go for his throat he can buck him off. The hard thing is stopping there. He sees Priam crashing to the floor and the outrage in his eyes. He feels his own shame.

‘Mother,' he murmurs, ‘cool me down.'

And he feels Thetis' sea-cool hand pass over him.

He returns to Priam's gifts, noting their splendour with satisfaction.

He picks out one of the softest robes and goes out again. Priam half rises to follow; stops when he meets Achilles' gaze.

The women have oiled Hector and laid him out. The power that shines from him is nearly blinding. Achilles hands the garment to the women, hoping it will veil the brightness which tells him the gods love Hector, even in death.

He supports the great shoulders as Automedon and Alcimus help him bear Hector to the waggon. He looks on his conquered enemy for the last time.

Priam wants to rush out to the bier but Achilles restrains him.

‘There is a time for everything.

‘Whatever the occasion a man needs food and rest,' (
this
from Achilles!) ‘even Niobe needed to eat at last, though for ten days after her children's slaughter she neither ate nor slept. Tonight you're my guest. You must eat and I must serve you.'

He goes outside to his small flock – their meat and milk for his household use – and takes the finest and whitest-woolled and slaughters it. He slings the carcass over his neck and carries it into the hut where he works quickly and neatly, cutting flesh away from mantling fat. Then he and his men thread the meat onto spits which they thrust into the fire to sizzle and drop their juices. Baskets of bread are passed around and each man helps himself, Achilles helping Priam to the choicest pieces until he can take no more. Wine is drunk, the best of Achilles' store, most delicious to Achilles and Priam who have fasted and watched these twelve days.

Filled with the comfort of food and wine, Priam is at peace. The grief and hatred that have been driving him, step down. Pain slides off and his limbs relax and warm to being at rest. He looks at his host and finds him magnificent. He admires, though cannot like, Achilles' nerved face, each feature outlined clear. The huge hands that can fashion as well as place a spear.

Achilles too is soothed. The Fury that has gripped him, worried at him, gnawed him, thwacked him against her cavern's walls, has put him down. He looks at his guest and admires the breadth of the man; the stature which age has not shrunk up. He senses what real power those sceptre-wielding hands still hold.

But Priam is tired and craves a bed. Achilles' guard goes up.

‘You and your herald must sleep outside – you mustn't be seen here. But tell me, how many days will you need to prepare for Hector's funeral? I will lay off the troops for as long as you need.'

Priam asks for eleven days for Trojans to go safely into the mountains to collect wood for the pyre. For nine days they will mourn in their homes, on the tenth day they will hold the funeral and on the eleventh build the barrow. Achilles grasps Priam's wrist as a pledge of his faith, and the two men part to sleep.

The stars stick out like jewels.

Priam's sleep is deep and dreamless in the high bed prepared by Achilles' women. He is woken by Hermes.

‘Priam! Priam, get up. How can you sleep with your enemies all around! Hurry now. We must go while it's still dark.'

Priam and Idaeus scramble down from their beds. Quietly they untether the horses and harness them to the chariot. The horses are restive and eager to go – their snorts and pacings break the quiet, but the night is always full of sounds – the sheep bells clanking and the wind in the rigging of the great Achaean fleet. They yoke the mules to the bier and Idaeus climbs up to drive them while Priam takes his horses' reins. Hermes speeds ahead, slips back the bolt and climbs up next to Priam. The horses prick back their ears when the Olympian takes the reins.

This night – like every night – fires light the plain and from afar it looks another sky, mirroring the clearer heavenly one in its more muddied light. As they pass the trench and begin to cross the plain fire-light bruises the air with reddish smoke. They thread between the fires, feeling the heat from each in turn like a pulse. As they pass, Hermes puts each vigilant sentry to sleep.

But Cassandra stays vigilant. She has watched ever since her father set off; saw him and Idaeus wind their way across the scrubby plain and now (though she does not see Hermes slide down from his seat and head off) she's the first to see the laden bier return.

She runs down from the battlements and cries,

‘Hector has come home!'

And Achilles wakes from his sleep, face down, one arm slung over Briseis' back.

Cut Off

Listen. Achilles never wanted to die.

Don't think because Patroclus is dead he wants to die.

His hair has grown again. The thick auburn lock he cut and laid on Patroclus' corpse. (The other Myrmidons did the same till Patroclus looked like a great tawny eagle covered with soft plumes.) But that hank of hair which went down with his friend is a forerunner. Part of him, hostage in the underworld.

What does he love now, enough to hold him here?

He loves the light. Twice as much as before.

At times he seems almost merry. The Achaeans feel themselves renewed: they are fighting with the strength they had at first, before the ten years wore them down.

Achilles is now more mortal than ever. Knowing it, he fights like a god and Zeus is as proud of him as if he'd seeded him.

He and Patroclus once said they would bring down Troy alone. Troy and all her allies. Now as he fights he is like a fire in summer.

He has heard stories about the women fighters. Some say they have seen them. ‘Like Furies,' they say, ‘like she-wolves.' A pack will stalk, round up and set upon a victim, each taking a part in the kill, each – so they say – tasting the flesh of their prey and smearing herself with his blood.

What is it makes him know it's a woman he sees – that mounted figure looking out over the plain from the cliff? He knows, as surely as if he were next to her, breathing the scent of her flesh.

And he knows that he will meet her.

Not on horseback – though she is mounted – and not encased in his heavenly armour. When he goes to find her he is dressed lightly as if he were going to a wrestling bout, or a diver in search of pearls. He takes only a small dagger tucked into the band he wears at his waist.

He does not make for the promontory where he saw her looking out but a little way inland where the bushes grow tight and give good cover. She must ride this way, unless her horse can fly.

As he waits he listens. If it is true they hunt in packs there will be others.

This is a quiet place, away from the knots of fighting which form, collapse and reassemble hour after hour after hour. Here the only sounds are the shifting hum of the bees grazing among thyme and myrtle; the slight breath of the wind. Chiron taught him how to attend to its shiftings. He can lay his mind open like a bird and ride wide-winged upon the thermals.

He hears her horse – twigs snapping, bushes pressed, the quiet tearing of fibres as turf is crushed. Almost silently he climbs up into a strong tree – a chestnut – and waits.

Penthiseleia, Queen of the Amazons.

She was watching the sea which today is breaking and breaking in little white waves, each a gash in the sea's body, a wound which heals till the skin breaks open again somewhere else. She has no taste for this war of Priam's, no feel for its arbitrary rhythms. The battles she and her women excel in are concentrated and unremitting till the end. This war lacks definition; the allies don't know each other; there are too many languages. They cannot move as one. This morning she has ridden away from her warriors to rinse her mind clean.

Achilles waits till she has passed below, then swings his body forward to land exactly and neatly behind her. He has dropped like this in a hundred ambushes, dragging riders, sometimes galloping, to the ground. This one he clasps tight. He holds his dagger to her throat … but he does not pull her down.

The moment she knows this enemy behind her she jabs her elbows back into his ribs and would spin round to fight him were it not for the blade tightening at her throat. Defying it, she calls to her horse and drives her heels sharply into the stallion's flanks so he rears up whinnying, vertical as a pillar. Achilles is not shaken off and Penthiseleia calls out again. In spite of the bushes, in spite of the narrowness and difficulty of the path, they begin to gallop.

Careful not to slacken the closeness of knife to throat but not tightening it either, Achilles presses the Amazon's upper body with his own, down upon the horse's neck so he lies across her like a shield as they plunge through the thick growth of trees and bushes.

They come to open ground: the sun on his back again he straightens, drawing her with him. On surer ground the Amazon's horse gallops more freely, making for the camp where he has grazed, where the mare who foaled him grazes now.

Soon they will be visible to the other Amazons. Penthiseleia knows they will pick off the man with their arrows. Now as never before she must trust their skill. It is his neck they must hit – or his side, but neck is better. The slightest misjudgement could wound her or the horse.

Achilles knows he could pull her from the horse at any moment. On this open plain he could easily break their fall. He stays because there is a pleasure in galloping like this, holding her close. Two breasts – the rumours aren't true – and narrow hips. A waist, lean and flexible. He enjoys the smell of her strong sweat. No taint of fear in it.

He is eager to rip the life out of any man or woman who might have wished Hector more alive than Patroclus; but this strong-legged woman did not care for Hector. The Amazons, like most of Troy's allies, can have no more interest in Paris' quarrel with Menelaus than he and Patroclus once had. When he saw her, looking out to sea, he thought of Iphigeneia. Only this one is hot where the other – vowed to Artemis – was blade-cool.

For Penthiseleia too there is comfort in his belly meeting her back. She is as easy with his movements as she is with her horse whose limbs are almost her own.

But her mind tells her otherwise: tells her to oppose this man and kill him.

She must do it herself. Her sisters must not see her powerless like this, a man's arm pinning hers to her body while his other holds a knife to her throat – holds it so close he could trim her neck like a piece of wood.

If she could meet him head on she could fight him.

When she turns her head he withdraws the knife a fraction. Not much, not enough to prevent a fine necklace of blood pricking out around her throat. Riding behind her, pressing up close, has aroused him, and the sight of her face, cheekbones soaring like the wings of swallows, makes him want her more.

In turning she thought to shove him to the ground where she'd fall on him and quickly stab him, but it is he who drags her with him from the horse and grapples her close as they break their fall in the grass. She thrusts a hand into the roots to stay herself; finds a small sharp stone which she rapidly prises from the ground and palms.

Achilles has taken his knife from her throat. He holds her now to steady her, not to restrain her. He looks at her blazing, furious face and laughs, glad that she exists.

‘My Queen,' he says, pulling her to him.

The words are nonsense to her; a foreign babble. Though her back still sings with the memory of him pressing her she will not submit.

He draws her closer, puts his tongue to the wound at her throat; iron of blood mixed with salt of sweat. His tongue will scour it clean.

AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!

A sharp, dangerous pain flames up his spine. He twists to throw off whatever it is that attacks him, pushes her hands away with a force which might snap her forearms, sees the bloody little nose of flint she's been using to excavate the base of his spine.

Now he pins her down, all his hurt, unmet tenderness turned to indignation. He bends back her fingers to make her release the flint and she makes those fingers her weapons, tearing his face, stabbing at eyes. His knee bent across her ribs, holding her down, he covers her face with one hand, the heel of the other hand cradling the back of her skull, and pushes. He feels her body trying to arch beneath him, the resistance of her head as she struggles to free it. He pushes on. Pushes and then, with practised economy, twists. He holds her a little longer. Waiting for the turmoil of the body to quieten. Waiting for it to be over.