The Anger of Achilles

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘The commanders King Euenos had briefed took their posts,’ said Briseis quietly. ‘But, lacking King Euenos’ direction, the defence was weak and ill-organised. My brothers each went to one of the most important defensive positions and tried to strengthen the resistance there. But one by one they were brought back to the palace with their throats cut.’

  ‘So that when we set fire to the main gate there was insufficient water ready to douse the flames,’ said Odysseus, nodding understandingly.

  ‘It was worse than that,’ said the princess. ‘Wherever someone tried to take decisive command, there were always priests on hand to undermine their authority, to tell them they were angering the god. Then defenders like my brothers started being struck down as I say…’

  ‘As though someone had been bribed to turn traitor and ensure the city fell,’ said Odysseus.

  ‘Covering their actions by assuring everyone that the great god Teshub was watching over them, ensuring their mighty victory.’ She concluded.

  ‘That didn’t work too well,’ I observed. ‘If this prophet Sutekh is still around, I wouldn’t trust him to predict the sunrise, let alone the outcome of a siege.’

  Gul-Ses’ face set as stonily as Briseis’. ‘Sutekh and his attendant priests may still be somewhere in the city,’ he answered. ‘I have not seen him or them recently.’

  ‘If he actually saw what his predictions had done,’ I said, ‘he’s either in hiding or running south with the rest. If he’s got any sense.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Odysseus. ‘I wonder…’ he clapped his hands and rubbed the palms together. ‘But, in the mean-time, let’s get on.’

  Some time later, after Odysseus had examined the bodies to his satisfaction, Briseis stood at Prince Mynes’ head looking down at the shell-white face. ‘It was never a love match,’ she said. She was talking to Odysseus but seemed to be addressing her dead husband. The six dead men on the altar were all dressed in their funeral robes now and liberally sprinkled with fragrant herbs whose aroma was at last strong enough to overcome the smell of gathering putrefaction and the strange odour of rodents that Odysseus had remarked upon. Gul-Ses and the other priests were standing silently by as we all waited for squads of Cephallenian and Myrmidon soldiers to come and carry them down to the platforms for the ceremony of the chariots. The princess was describing to my captain the truth of the matter. He and I both knew well enough, I guessed, that she was doing this because once the prince was laid on his ceremonial podium she would have to pretend a heartbreak she did not feel and it was important to her that someone beyond the ruined palace should know the truth. Someone, that is, other than the priests she did not trust and the king who no longer knew who he was.

  ‘My father, King Brises simply wanted to make strong links with Lyrnessus in the days when King Euenos was a force to be reckoned with and people spoke of this place in the same breath as Ilium, which you Achaeans call Troy. So I came as a bride and my brothers as my attendants in the hope that I would help found a dynasty and they would learn soldiering and statecraft. But my father’s plans and dreams came to nothing as you can see. It was all beginning to fall apart even before Euenos was struck down. Mynes was never really interested in me as a woman or as a companion. Certainly not as a helpmeet and equal. He and Ephistrophos were already under the spell of Teshub and what little my husband and I had in common was soon lost when he drifted further and further under the influence of the old gods. I might have returned home, I suppose, but my father died soon after my brothers and I arrived so I had nowhere to go in any case. I ache for the loss of what might have been but I cannot shed genuine tears for my husband.’

  ‘Or for your brothers?’ asked Odysseus.

  ‘Perhaps for them,’ said the princess. ‘But we also had little in common even before they accompanied me here and joined Mynes and Ephistrophos. My father’s court, like Euenos’ here at Lyrnessus, was strongly influenced by Anatolian and Cilician traditions. Women kept to their own quarters, went veiled and were forbidden to mix even with male relatives. I understand King Lycomedes’ court at Skyros is the same. As is King Priam’s at Ilium, except that he keeps a harem and has fathered fifty sons and more. At least there were no harems in Lyrnessus. Only a widowed king with a roving eye. And yet I stand here as the last of royal blood. I owe the place my loyalty, in spite of what you Achaeans might do to me in the end.’

  ***

  She no sooner finished speaking than the soldiers arrived. Each team of six carried a flat board a little longer and a little wider than a man. The priests helped them move the bodies from the altar and on to these. Then, with Gul-Ses in the lead, followed by Briseis, Odysseus and myself, we all moved off. The priests accompanied us – one pair to each corpse, singing strange Anatolian dirges, shaking sistra rattles and clashing tiny cymbals. When we reached the megaron, King Idas’ body joined us, carried by Aias’ Locrians. The warrior-priests of Apollo who accompanied him sang Mycenaean dirges and played on more familiar crotaia copper castanets and koudounia copper bells.

  As we wound our way through the ruins of the city, I was relieved to see that Odysseus had somehow found time to keep his word and delegate the clearing of the streets to his troops, supported no doubt by the Myrmidons. We were heading west towards the wide grass belt between the outer wall and the boat-filled beach. Away to the east behind us, between the far walls, the farms and the wooded hills, columns of thick, fat-filled smoke told of corpses being cremated, probably under the watchful eyes of the priests of Anu and Teshub. All the dogs and ravens had gone.

  We exited the lower city through the ruins of the West Gate which Gate Captain Theron and his doomed son Timaeus had fought so pointlessly to defend. Immediately in front of us, the grass sloped down a slight hill towards the beach and the bay. Seven skeletal stages had been erected there, each as high as a man’s shoulder. Tomorrow, if all went to plan, these simple structures would be stuffed with kindling and walled with wood to make pyres worthy of sending royal spirits to the realms of their various gods. For the moment, they were little more than legs and struts, topped with planks on which the dead men could be laid. Beyond these, all along the inland edge of the sand, stood the armies in rank after rank, the prows of the beached ships rearing behind them. Only those guarding the captives were absent, along with those holding the heads of the chariot teams. Each of the kings and princes and all of their generals had their chariots ready; more than twenty in all. Only Odysseus’ was empty, waiting for him to mount up. Only Aias’ was absent for he was going to stand by King Idas and mourn him. At the head of the procession, Patroclus held the reins of Xanthos and Balios, the thoroughbreds waiting eagerly to pull Achilles’ chariot. The prince of Phthia stood ready behind him, resplendent in his gilded cuireass.

  As the corpses were laid in place, Briseis went to stand by Mynes’, beside Ephistrophos, near her brothers. Aias came forward to stand by Idas. But then we realised there was no-one to mourn King Mnestheus. Odysseus didn’t hesitate. He went and stood by the good old king. I looked around, a little lost, then I crossed to where Thalassa was beached and stood beside her silent crew. There was a moment of utter stillness, then Achilles ordered, ‘Begin!’ and his horses paced regally forward.

  The ceremony of the chariots was lengthy and moving. As the stately horses walked in great circles round the corpse-laden platforms, first Aias, then Odysseus and finally Briseis spoke their eulogies. None of them was as heart-felt as they might have been; as, for instance, Achilles’ would have been speaking over the corpse of Patroclus. But the rituals were fulfilled. Each speaker cut off a lock of hair and laid it on the corpse they were addressing. Fortunately, Briseis was content to address only her husband so her hairstyle did not suffer too badly; one long sable strand laid on the still breast of the husband she never loved. Then each of the chariots’ powerful passengers also cut a lock of hair and laid it on Idas’ corpse – though the Cephallenians out of respect for their leader copied him and laid theirs on Mnestheus bec
ause Odysseus had spoken for him. Then, that part of the ceremony complete, the priests came forward with consecrated coverings and secured the bodies against desecration before tomorrow when the pyres would be completed and ignited.

  As the horses were led back to their various stable areas to be released from the chariot traces, Odysseus, Aias and Briseis stood, hesitating, each beside the platform bearing the corpse they had just eulogised. I walked forward from Thalassa, planning to approach Odysseus and broach a matter that had suddenly occupied my mind – whether he would wish me to perform at the formal feast tonight, and, if so, which of my epics he thought best suited to the occasion. But both he and I were distracted when one of Aias’ Locrians came hurrying forward, his face a mask of confusion and concern. The two men stood for a few moments, their heads close together, then Aias turned to Odysseus. ‘I want you to see this,’ he said.

  ‘Can I bring the princess and the boy? They have been helpful to me so far.’

  ‘I have no objection.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Briseis asked uneasily.

  ‘To King Idas’ ship Posidaeia. Something unexpected has been discovered in his personal quarters while the crew were searching for items that could be placed on the funeral pyre tomorrow.’

  We followed the Locrian prince and his man silently, the possibilities far too wide to allow even the wildest speculation. But what we found when we had finally climbed aboard and descended to King Idas’ private quarters was something that I for one would never have guessed in my wildest dreams.

  It was a sizeable chest, fashioned of solid olive wood and bound in bronze. As we clustered around it, Aias opened the lid to reveal its gleaming contents. The chest was crammed with more gold than I had seen in one place in all my years - even as the son of the richest merchant in the trading city of Aulis.

  5: The Fire

  i

  ‘You lower gods, served by the numberless host of the dead,’ I sang, ‘into whose greedy coffers is paid the golden soul of every man that dies; you whose fields are bordered by the pale streams of the intertwining Styx, unfold for me now the mysteries of your sacred tales and the secrets of your world so far beneath the world of living men...’

  The song was the most apt in my repertoire for an occasion like this, telling as it did of the realms of Hades and Persephone – and, I had little doubt, those of the old gods Teshub and Jarri as well. It seemed apt enough also to be singing of the underworld when the Temple of Teshub itself lay so far beneath my feet. Gul-Ses and his fellow priests were under guard with the other citizens in Aias’ Locrian camp, now the ritual covering of the corpses was complete and the second, more formal, feast was under way. Tomorrow morning soon after dawn, teams of men would scour the nearest woodland in search of everything necessary to construct the funeral pyres which comprised the third section of the ritual, before the collection of the bones, the inurnment with the sacrificial fat and of course the burial itself. In the mean-time, my only reservation – too late to be addressed now - arose when I realised my reference to golden souls in Hades’ greedy coffers might be mistaken for a hint about the fortune in the chest hidden aboard King Idas’ ship.

  The feast had gone well, though Briseis’ description of the deaths of her husband and his brother re-emphasised to Odysseus the importance of ensuring that everything we ate and drank was extra-carefully scrutinised before it was allowed to pass our lips. ‘There seems no doubt to me,’ he said as we three returned from Idas’ ship several hours earlier, leaving Aias in charge of the vessel and the golden fortune that it contained, ‘that the princes were poisoned. That the motive was political rather than personal; perhaps even tactical in the face of the rapidly shifting situation as our Achaean army approached and began our siege.’

  ‘What thing were they of a mind to do that seemed dangerous enough to justify murder?’ I wondered.

  ‘To hand over the city without a fight. Such an act might well prompt such a murderous reaction. The odour I detected about them, the smell of rodents such as rats and mice, is one most often associated with hemlock. And hemlock is, perhaps, the most powerful poison of all, as well as being an effective medicine.’

  ‘Mnestheus used hemlock amongst his other preparations,’ said Briseis. ‘If you’re careful with it, it aids breathing, eases pain and reduces swelling, especially of damaged joints. I have never seen it used to kill rather than to heal.’

  ‘Until now’ I said. ‘But I thought hemlock had a strong taste as well as an individual odour, especially in lethal concentrations. How could it have been administered in such strength without anyone noticing?’

  It was, I thought, typical of Odysseus that he should wish to discuss something far removed from the problem currently occupying his mind, even though he was discussing reasons for the death of her husband in the presence of his widow. A widow, I noted, who still had not shown any particular signs of grief at his passing or those of her brothers, whose deaths presented Odysseus and me with another problem entirely. Perhaps, providentially, because she had not been invited to the fatal feast – pointedly, given her absolute disagreement with the princes’ decisions and the utter contempt she had for their proposals.

  In this case, of course, the problem really occupying his mind was what King Idas was doing with such a vast fortune in his private quarters. A treasure worth even more than his kingdom if I was any judge. And, as the son of the richest merchant in Achaea, I felt I was actually a pretty good judge. The only man amongst us who might be able to assemble such riches was Achilles, prince of the affluent land of Phthia. A fact that I feared had not escaped Briseis’ notice. It certainly did nothing to lessen her suspicion of craven double dealing on Achilles’ part, no matter how spineless her husband and brothers had seemed to her.

  ‘Not so,’ said Odysseus, his tone deeply preoccupied. ‘I understand hemlock can actually taste quite similar to parsnip. I have no idea whether the fatal feast included much in the way of vegetables, herbs and salad alongside the meat. All it would take, it seems to me, is hemlock mixed with honey in among actual parsnips – roasted, crushed into a mash, or made into a soup or a sauce…’

  ***

  Princess Briseis was not as indulgent with seemingly irrelevant conversations as I was, probably because on little more than a day’s acquaintance she had not yet learned much about the man and his methods. ‘So,’ she interrupted now, changing tack abruptly. ‘Why do you think King Idas had so much gold with him? Was he the sort of man to carry around a treasure like that?’

  ‘No.’ Odysseus was tempted away from discussion of poisons, robbing me of the chance to speculate that many if not all of the palace cooks could well have been conscripted into the city’s defence when the plan changed yet again, and consequently were probably dead now and so beyond questioning. And, indeed, of bringing to mind the corollary to that thought – if all the cooks were conscripted even though the plan was now to surrender, then who had cooked the fatal meal?

  ‘Kynos is not a rich city,’ Odysseus explained. ‘I doubt whether King Idas had ever seen such opulence in all his years.’

  ‘Then where did it come from?’ demanded Briseis. ‘And just as importantly, as I just asked, why was it there?’

  ‘Vital questions I agree, Princess. Ones that we will no doubt need to answer sometime soon. But let us think about the problem some more before we rush to a conclusion.’

  ‘Perhaps you would have found more answers more swiftly if you had examined it all more closely instead of simply glancing over it and bringing us away. Do you really trust King Aias to guard it properly? I’d not be at all surprised if it was to vanish now that you’ve put him and his men in charge of keeping it safe.’

  ‘One glance was enough to tell me a great deal, Princess, and I doubt that a closer examination would have told me very much more. Furthermore, I believe King Aias will have it guarded closely and carefully until he can be sure who it really belongs to and why it is on King Idas’ ship.’
<
br />   ‘The very questions I just asked! We are travelling in circles here.’

  ‘Indeed. But they are the crucial questions after all. Perhaps our circular conversation will allow us to examine them more than once.’

  ‘So, what was it that your one cursory glance told you?’

  ‘Something I am not inclined to share, Princess. At least, not yet.’

  Briseis was reduced to silence by that, though I could well imagine that her own nimble wits were trying to out-think him as we walked shoulder to shoulder away from Posidaeia through the Locrian camp, past the tents that housed the warriors and, away on our left, the paddocks where the king’s horses were hobbled, his chariots close-by, then equally far to the right, those in which prisoners were herded like cattle under apparently lackadaisical guard. I looked idly for Gul-Ses and his acolytes but couldn’t see them. Still silent, Odysseus strode onto the grassy area where the chariots had paraded and then past the skeletal stands with their sad burdens. Platforms that would be transformed into pyres tomorrow and set ablaze before nightfall. Then on we went, through the shattered, fire-scarred gate, through the wasteland of the lower city that still looked like Tartarus even though the fires were all out now; through the upper gate and into the citadel.

  I catalogued all this distantly for I was preoccupied. It had suddenly struck me that Odysseus was reluctant to discuss at least some matters with the princess because he suspected that she herself was deeply, perhaps dangerously, involved in what was going on. It is hard to overestimate, I thought, what a woman like this might do. A woman who, it seems, had actually been armed and armoured, leading the final defence of the palace in the face of her husband’s cowardice and her brothers’ mysterious deaths. Perhaps she was even guilty of murdering the husband she despised, his cowardly brother – fallen under the influence of the treacherous priests as they obviously had. It seemed clear that her actions before and during our siege of Lyrnessus had been in exact opposition to everything her menfolk were doing and planning to do. And, despite her protestations and her moving story of a forced and loveless marriage, the more I thought about it, the more forcefully I was struck by the fact that Princess Briseis, like Agamemnon’s queen Clytemnestra, was someone who would never stand idly by. And then, in combination with my earlier speculations, it occurred me that Briseis’ loud accusations against Achilles could even be designed to distract us from what was actually going on, and her part in it.