The Song of Achilles (23 page)
He paused, as if he hoped the men might shout
No! No!
But none did.
“King Agamemnon.” Achilles stepped forward. His voice was easy, almost amused. “I don’t think anyone has forgotten that you are leader of this host. But you do not seem to remember that we are kings in our own right, or princes, or heads of our families. We are allies, not slaves.” A few men nodded; more would have liked to.
“Now, while we die, you complain about the loss of a girl you should have ransomed long ago. You say nothing of the lives you have taken, or the plague you have started.”
Agamemnon made an inarticulate noise, his face purple with rage. Achilles held up a hand.
“I do not mean to dishonor you. I only wish to end the plague. Send the girl to her father and be done.”
Agamemnon’s cheeks were creased with fury. “I understand you, Achilles. You think because you’re the son of a sea-nymph you have the right to play high prince wherever you go. You have never learned your place among men.”
Achilles opened his mouth to answer.
“You will be silent,” Agamemnon said, words lashing like a whip. “You will not speak another word or you will be sorry.”
“Or I will be sorry?” Achilles’ face was very still. The words were quiet, but distinctly audible. “I do not think, High King, that you can afford to say such things to me.”
“Do you threaten me?” Agamemnon shouted. “Did you not hear him threaten me?”
“It is not a threat. What is your army without me?”
Agamemnon’s face was clotted with malice. “You have always thought too much of yourself,” he sneered. “We should have left you where we found you, hiding behind your mother’s skirts. In a skirt yourself.”
The men frowned in confusion, whispered to each other.
Achilles’ hands were fisted at his sides; he hung on to his composure, barely. “You say this to turn attention away from yourself. If I had not called this council, how long would you have let your men die? Can you answer that?”
Agamemnon was already roaring over him. “When all of these brave men came to Aulis, they knelt to offer me their loyalty. All of them but you. I think we have indulged your arrogance long enough. It is time, past time”—he mimicked Achilles—“that you swore the oath.”
“I do not need to prove myself to you. To any of you.” Achilles’ voice was cold, his chin lifted in disdain. “I am here of my own free will, and you are lucky that it is so. I am not the one who should kneel.”
It was too far. I felt the men shift around me. Agamemnon seized upon it, like a bird bolting a fish. “Do you hear his pride?” He turned to Achilles. “You will not kneel?”
Achilles’ face was like stone. “I will not.”
“Then you are a traitor to this army, and will be punished like one. Your war prizes are hostage, placed in my care until you offer your obedience and submission. Let us start with that girl. Briseis, is her name? She will do as penance for the girl you have forced me to return.”
The air died in my lungs.
“She is mine,” Achilles said. Each word fell sharp, like a butcher cutting meat. “Given to me by all the Greeks. You cannot take her. If you try, your life is forfeit. Think on that, King, before you bring harm to yourself.”
Agamemnon’s answer came quickly. He could never back down in front of a crowd. Never.
“I do not fear you. I will have her.” He turned to his Mycenaeans. “Bring the girl.”
Around me were the shocked faces of kings. Briseis was a war prize, a living embodiment of Achilles’ honor. In taking her, Agamemnon denied Achilles the full measure of his worth. The men muttered, and I hoped they might object. But no one spoke.
Because he was turned, Agamemnon did not see Achilles’ hand go to his sword. My breath caught. I knew that he was capable of this, a single thrust through Agamemnon’s cowardly heart. I saw the struggle on his face. I still do not know why he stopped himself; perhaps he wanted greater punishment for the king than death.
“Agamemnon,” he said. I flinched from the roughness of his voice. The king turned, and Achilles drove a finger into his chest. The high king could not stop the
huff
of surprise. “Your words today have caused your own death, and the death of your men. I will fight for you no longer. Without me, your army will fall. Hector will grind you to bones and bloody dust, and I will watch it and laugh. You will come, crying for mercy, but I will give none. They will all die, Agamemnon, for what you have done here.”
He spat, a huge wet smack between Agamemnon’s feet. And then he was before me, and past me, and I was dizzied as I turned to follow him, feeling the Myrmidons behind me—hundreds of men shouldering their way through the crowd, storming off to their tents.
P
OWERFUL STRIDES TOOK HIM
swiftly up the beach. His anger was incandescent, a fire under his skin. His muscles were pulled so taut I was afraid to touch him, fearing they would snap like bowstrings. He did not stop once we reached the camp. He did not turn and speak to the men. He seized the extra tent flap covering our door and ripped it free as he passed.
His mouth was twisted, ugly and tight as I had ever seen it. His eyes were wild. “I will kill him,” he swore. “I will kill him.” He grabbed a spear and broke it in half with an explosion of wood. The pieces fell to the floor.
“I almost did it there,” he said. “I should have done it. How
dare
he?” He flung a ewer aside, and it shattered against a chair. “The cowards! You saw how they bit their lips and did not dare to speak. I hope he takes all their prizes. I hope he swallows them one by one.”
A voice, tentative, outside. “Achilles?”
“Come in,” Achilles snarled.
Automedon was breathless and stuttering. “I am sorry to disturb you. Phoinix told me to stay, so I could listen and tell you what happened.”
“And?” Achilles demanded.
Automedon flinched. “Agamemnon asked why Hector still lived. He said that they do not need you. That perhaps you are not— what you say you are.” Another spear shaft shattered in Achilles’ fingers. Automedon swallowed. “They are coming, now, for Briseis.”
Achilles had his back to me; I could not see his face. “Leave us,” he told his charioteer. Automedon backed away, and we were alone.
They were coming for Briseis. I stood, my hands balled. I felt strong, unbending, like my feet pierced through the earth to the other side of the world.
“We must do something,” I said. “We can hide her. In the woods or—”
“He will pay, now,” Achilles said. There was fierce triumph in his voice. “Let him come for her. He has doomed himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I must speak to my mother.” He started from the tent.
I seized his arm. “We don’t have time. They will have taken her by the time you are back. We must do something now!”
He turned. His eyes looked strange, the pupils huge and dark, swallowing his face. He seemed to be looking a long way off. “What are you talking about?”
I stared at him. “Briseis.”
He stared back. I could not follow the flicker of emotion in his eyes. “I can do nothing for her,” he said at last. “If Agamemnon chooses this path, he must bear the consequences.”
A feeling, as if I were falling into ocean depths, weighted with stones.
“You are not going to let him take her.”
He turned away; he would not look at me. “It is his choice. I told him what would happen if he did.”
“You know what he will do to her.”
“It is his choice,” he repeated. “He would deprive me of my honor? He would punish me? I will let him.” His eyes were lit with an inner fire.
“You will not help her?”
“There is nothing I can do,” he said with finality.
A tilting vertigo, as if I were drunk. I could not speak, or think. I had never been angry with him before; I did not know how.
“She is one of us. How can you just let him take her? Where is your honor? How can you let him defile her?”
And then, suddenly, I understood. Nausea seized me. I turned to the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
My voice was scraped and savage. “I have to warn her. She has a right to know what you have chosen.”
I
STAND OUTSIDE
her tent. It is small, brown with hides, set back. “Briseis,” I hear myself say.
“Come in!” Her voice is warm and pleased. We have had no time to speak during the plague, beyond necessities.
Inside, she is seated on a stool, mortar and pestle in her lap. The air smells sharply of nutmeg. She is smiling.
I feel wrung dry with grief. How can I tell her what I know?
“I—” I try to speak, stop. She sees my face, and her smile vanishes. Swiftly, she is on her feet and by my side.
“What is it?” She presses the cool skin of her wrist to my forehead. “Are you ill? Is Achilles all right?” I am sick with shame. But there is no space for my self-pity. They are coming.
“Something has happened,” I say. My tongue thickens in my mouth; my words do not come out straight. “Achilles went today to speak to the men. The plague is Apollo’s.”
“We thought so.” She nods, her hand resting gently on mine, in comfort. I almost cannot go on.
“Agamemnon did not—he was angry. He and Achilles quarreled. Agamemnon wants to punish him.”
“Punish him? How?”
Now she sees something in my eyes. Her face goes quiet, pulling into itself. Bracing. “What is it?”
“He is sending men. For you.”
I see the flare of panic, though she tries to hide it. Her fingers tighten on mine. “What will happen?”
My shame is caustic, searing every nerve. It is like a nightmare; I expect, each moment, to wake to relief. But there is no waking. It is true. He will not help.
“He—” I cannot say more.
It is enough. She knows. Her right hand clutches at her dress, chapped and raw from the rough work of the past nine days. I force out stuttering words meant to be a comfort, of how we will get her back, and how it will be all right. Lies, all of it. We both know what will happen to her in Agamemnon’s tent. Achilles knows, too, and sends her anyway.
My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse: I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood. Only that seems large enough to hold all of my rage and grief. I want the world overturned like a bowl of eggs, smashed at my feet.
A trumpet blows outside. Her hand goes to her cheek, swipes away tears. “Go,” she whispers. “Please.”
I
N THE DISTANCE TWO MEN ARE WALKING TOWARDS US UP
the long stretch of beach, wearing the bright purple of Agamemnon’s camp, stamped with the symbol of heralds. I know them—Talthybius and Eurybates, Agamemnon’s chief messengers, honored as men of discretion close to the high king’s ear. Hate knots my throat. I want them dead.
They are close now, passing the glaring Myrmidon guards, who rattle their armor threateningly. They stop ten paces from us—enough, perhaps they think, to be able to escape Achilles if he were to lose his temper. I indulge myself in vicious images: Achilles leaping up to snap their necks, leaving them limp as dead rabbits in a hunter’s hand.
They stutter out a greeting, feet shifting, eyes down. Then: “We have come to take custody of the girl.”
Achilles answers them—cold and bitter, but wryly so, his anger banked and shielded. He is giving a show, I know, of grace, of tolerance, and my teeth clench at the calmness in his tone. He likes this image of himself, the wronged young man, stoically accepting the theft of his prize, a martyrdom for the whole camp to see. I hear my name and see them looking at me. I am to get Briseis.
She is waiting for me. Her hands are empty; she is taking nothing with her. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. She does not say it is all right; it is not. She leans forward, and I can smell the warm sweetness of her breath. Her lips graze mine. Then she steps past me and is gone.
Talthybius takes one side of her, Eurybates the other. Their fingers press, not gently, into the skin of her arm. They tow her forward, eager to be away from us. She is forced to move, or fall. Her head turns back to look at us, and I want to break at the desperate hope in her eyes. I stare at him, will him to look up, to change his mind. He does not.
They are out of our camp now, moving quickly. After a moment I can barely distinguish them from the other dark figures that move against the sand—eating and walking and gossiping intently about their feuding kings. Anger sweeps through me like brushfire.
“How can you let her go?” I ask, my teeth hard against one another.
His face is blank and barren, like another language, impenetrable. He says, “I must speak with my mother.”
“Go then,” I snarl.
I watch him leave. My stomach feels burned to cinders; my palms ache where my nails have cut into them.
I do not know this man,
I think. He is no one I have ever seen before. My rage towards him is hot as blood. I will never forgive him. I imagine tearing down our tent, smashing the lyre, stabbing myself in the stomach and bleeding to death. I want to see his face broken with grief and regret. I want to shatter the cold mask of stone that has slipped down over the boy I knew. He has given her to Agamemnon knowing what will happen.
Now he expects that I will wait here, impotent and obedient. I have nothing to offer Agamemnon for her safety. I cannot bribe him, and I cannot beg him. The king of Mycenae has waited too long for this triumph. He will not let her go. I think of a wolf, guarding its bone. There were such wolves on Pelion, who would hunt men if they were hungry enough. “If one of them is stalking you,” Chiron said, “you must give it something it wants more than you.”
There is only one thing that Agamemnon wants more than Briseis. I yank the knife from my belt. I have never liked blood, but there is no help for that, now.
T
HE GUARDS SEE
me belatedly and are too surprised to lift their weapons. One has the presence of mind to seize me, but I dig my nails into his arm, and he lets go. Their faces are slow and stupid with shock. Am I not just Achilles’ pet rabbit? If I were a warrior, they would fight me, but I am not. By the time they think they should restrain me, I am inside the tent.
The first thing I see is Briseis. Her hands have been tied, and she is shrinking in a corner. Agamemnon stands with his back to the entrance, speaking to her.
He turns, scowling at the interruption. But when he sees me, his face goes slick with triumph. I have come to beg, he thinks. I am here to plead for mercy, as Achilles’ ambassador. Or perhaps I will rage impotently, for his entertainment.
I lift the knife, and Agamemnon’s eyes widen. His hand goes to the knife at his own belt, and his mouth opens to call the guards. He does not have time to speak. I slash the knife down at my left wrist. It scores the skin but does not bite deep enough. I slash again, and this time I find the vein. Blood spurts in the enclosed space. I hear Briseis’ noise of horror. Agamemnon’s face is spattered with drops.
“I swear that the news I bring is truth,” I say. “I swear it on my blood.”
Agamemnon is taken aback. The blood and the oath stay his hand; he has always been superstitious.
“Well,” he says curtly, trying for dignity, “speak your news then.”
I can feel the blood draining down my wrist, but I do not move to stanch it.
“You are in the gravest danger,” I say.
He sneers. “Are you threatening me? Is this why he has sent you?”
“No. He has not sent me at all.”
His eyes narrow, and I see his mind working, fitting tiles into the picture. “Surely you come with his blessing.”
“No,” I say.
He is listening, now.
“He knows what you intend towards the girl,” I say.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see Briseis following our conversation, but I do not dare to look at her directly. My wrist throbs dully, and I can feel the warm blood filling my hand, then emptying again. I drop the knife and press my thumb onto the vein to slow the steady draining of my heart.
“And?”
“Do you not wonder why he did not prevent you from taking her?” My voice is disdainful. “He could have killed your men, and all your army. Do you not think he could have held you off?”
Agamemnon’s face is red. But I do not allow him to speak.
“He let you take her. He knows you will not resist bedding her, and this will be your downfall. She is his, won through fair service. The men will turn on you if you violate her, and the gods as well.”
I speak slowly, deliberately, and the words land like arrows, each in its target. It is true what I say, though he has been too blinded by pride and lust to see it. She is in Agamemnon’s custody, but she is Achilles’ prize still. To violate her is a violation of Achilles himself, the gravest insult to his honor. Achilles could kill him for it, and even Menelaus would call it fair.
“You are at your power’s limit even in taking her. The men allowed it because he was too proud, but they will not allow more.” We obey our kings, but only within reason. If
Aristos Achaion
’s prize is not safe, none of ours are. Such a king will not be allowed to rule for long.
Agamemnon has not thought of any of this. The realizations come like waves, drowning him. Desperate, he says, “My counselors have said nothing of this.”
“Perhaps they do not know what you intend. Or perhaps it serves their own purposes.” I pause to let him consider this. “Who will rule if you fall?”
He knows the answer. Odysseus, and Diomedes, together, with Menelaus as figurehead. He begins to understand, at last, the size of the gift I have brought him. He has not come so far by being a fool.
“You betray him by warning me.”
It is true. Achilles has given Agamemnon a sword to fall upon, and I have stayed his hand. The words are thick and bitter. “I do.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because he is wrong,” I say. My throat feels raw and broken, as though I have drunk sand and salt.
Agamemnon considers me. I am known for my honesty, for my kindheartedness. There is no reason to disbelieve me. He smiles. “You have done well,” he says. “You show yourself loyal to your true master.” He pauses, savoring this, storing it up. “Does he know what you have done?”
“Not yet,” I say.
“Ah.” His eyes half-close, imagining it. I watch the bolt of his triumph sliding home. He is a connoisseur of pain. There is nothing that could cause Achilles greater anguish than this: being betrayed to his worst enemy by the man he holds closest to his heart.
“If he will come and kneel for pardon, I swear I will release her. It is only his own pride that keeps his honor from him, not I. Tell him.”
I do not answer. I stand, and walk to Briseis. I cut the rope that binds her. Her eyes are full; she knows what this has cost me. “Your wrist,” she whispers. I cannot answer her. My head is a confusion of triumph and despair. The sand of the tent is red with my blood.
“Treat her well,” I say.
I turn and leave. She will be all right now, I tell myself. He is feasting fat on the gift I have given him. I tear a strip from my tunic to bind my wrist. I am dizzy, though I do not know if it is with loss of blood or what I have done. Slowly, I begin the long walk back up the beach.
H
E IS STANDING OUTSIDE
the tent when I return. His tunic is damp from where he knelt in the sea. His face is wrapped closed, but there is a weariness to its edges, like fraying cloth; it matches mine.
“Where have you been?”
“In the camp.” I am not ready yet, to tell him. “How is your mother?”
“She is well. You are bleeding.”
The bandage has soaked through.
“I know,” I say.
“Let me look at it.” I follow him obediently into the tent. He takes my arm and unwraps the cloth. He brings water to rinse the wound clean and packs it with crushed yarrow and honey.
“A knife?” he asks.
“Yes.”
We know the storm is coming; we are waiting as long as we can. He binds the wound with clean bandages. He brings me watered wine, and food as well. I can tell by his face that I look ill and pale.
“Will you tell me who hurt you?”
I imagine saying,
You.
But that is nothing more than childishness.
“I did it to myself.”
“Why?”
“For an oath.” There is no waiting any longer. I look at him, full in the face. “I went to Agamemnon. I told him of your plan.”
“My plan?” His words are flat, almost detached.
“To let him rape Briseis, so that you might revenge yourself on him.” Saying it out loud is more shocking than I thought it would be.
He rises, half-turning so I cannot see his face. I read his shoulders instead, their set, the tension of his neck.
“So you warned him?”
“I did.”
“You know if he had done it, I could have killed him.” That same flat tone. “Or exiled him. Forced him from the throne. The men would have honored me like a god.”
“I know,” I say.
There is a silence, a dangerous one. I keep waiting for him to turn on me. To scream, or strike out. And he does turn, to face me, at last.
“Her safety for my honor. Are you happy with your trade?”
“There is no honor in betraying your friends.”
“It is strange,” he says, “that you would speak against betrayal.”
There is more pain in those words, almost, than I can bear. I force myself to think of Briseis. “It was the only way.”
“You chose her,” he says. “Over me.”
“Over your pride.” The word I use is
hubris
. Our word for arrogance that scrapes the stars, for violence and towering rage as ugly as the gods.
His fists tighten. Now, perhaps, the attack will come.
“My life is my reputation,” he says. His breath sounds ragged. “It is all I have. I will not live much longer. Memory is all I can hope for.” He swallows, thickly. “You know this. And would you let Agamemnon destroy it? Would you help him take it from me?”
“I would not,” I say. “But I would have the memory be worthy of the man. I would have you be yourself, not some tyrant remembered for his cruelty. There are other ways to make Agamemnon pay. We will do it. I will help you, I swear. But not like this. No fame is worth what you did today.”
He turns away again and is silent. I stare at his unspeaking back. I memorize each fold in his tunic, each bit of drying salt and sand stuck to his skin.
When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn’t know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won’t light.
“It is done then? She is safe? She must be. You would not have come back, otherwise.”
“Yes. She is safe.”
A tired breath. “You are a better man than I.”
The beginning of hope. We have given each other wounds, but they are not mortal. Briseis will not be harmed and Achilles will remember himself and my wrist will heal. There will be a moment after this, and another after that.
“No,” I say. I stand and walk to him. I put my hand to the warmth of his skin. “It is not true. You left yourself today. And now you are returned.”
His shoulders rise and fall on a long breath. “Do not say that,” he says, “until you have heard the rest of what I have done.”