by Pat Barker
More shouting: “Achilles! Achilles!” Of all their names, the most hateful. Again, I saw him pause in the act of killing my brother and turn to look up at the citadel—straight at me, it seemed—leaving my brother lying there, pinned to the ground, before turning back to him and, in that poised, leisurely, elegant way of his, pulling the spear out of his neck.
No, I thought. And so I walked home from the market square down the cool, quiet streets, through the palace gates and into the darkness of the hall—the hall that I’d first entered on my marriage day. From there, I went at once to my favourite place. There was a tree in the inner courtyard, a tree with spreading branches that gave shade on even the hottest day. I used to sit there in the evenings, listening to music in the hall. The sound of lyres and flutes would drift out on the night air and all the cares of the day would fall away from me. I was there now, craning my neck to look up at the tree, seeing the moon caught like a glinting silver fish in the black net of its branches…
And then a hand, fingertips gritty with sand, seized hold of my chin and turned my head from side to side. I tried to open my eyes, but the sun hurt too much, and by the time I’d forced them open, he was already walking away.
At the centre of the arena he stopped and raised both hands above his head until the shouting died away.
“Cheers, lads,” he said. “She’ll do.”
And everyone, every single man in that vast arena, laughed.
3
Immediately, two guards appeared and took me to Achilles’s hut. “Hut” probably gives the wrong impression; it was a substantial building, with a veranda on two sides and steps leading up to the main door. I was taken through a large hall and into a poky little room at the back, hardly bigger than a cupboard and with no window onto the outside world. There, I was simply abandoned. Shaking with cold and shock, I sat down on a narrow bed. After a while, I noticed my hands were touching a woollen coverlet and I forced myself to examine it. The weaving was very fine, an intricate pattern of leaves and flowers, obviously Trojan workmanship—Greek textiles were nowhere near as good as ours—and I wondered from which city it had been looted.
Somewhere close at hand was a clattering of plates and dishes. A smell of roast beef crept into the room. My stomach heaved, I tasted bile and forced myself to swallow and take a succession of deep, steady breaths. My eyes were watering, my throat raw. Deep breaths. In, out, in, out. Deep, steady breaths…
I heard footsteps approaching and then the door latch began to lift. Dry-mouthed, I waited.
A tall man—not Achilles—came into the room carrying a tray with food and wine.
“Briseis?” he said.
I nodded. I didn’t feel like anything that might have a name.
“Patroclus.”
He was pointing to his chest as he spoke, as if he thought I mightn’t understand, and I could hardly blame him for that, since I was sitting there blank-eyed and dumb as an ox. But I recognized the name. The war had been going on a long time, we knew a lot about the enemy commanders. This was Achilles’s closest companion, his second in command, but that made no sense at all, for why would such a powerful man be waiting on a slave?
“Drink,” he said. “It’ll make you feel better.”
He poured a generous measure and held out the cup. I took it and made a show of raising it to my lips.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
I stared at him, taking in every detail of his appearance—his height, his floppy hair, his broken nose—but I couldn’t speak. After a while, he gave a lopsided grin, put the tray down on a small table beside the bed and left.
The food was a problem. I chewed a piece of meat for what felt like hours before spitting it out into the palm of my hand and concealing it under the rim of the plate. At first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to manage the wine either, but I forced it down. I don’t know whether it helped—perhaps it did. So much strong wine on an empty stomach made my nose and mouth feel numb; the rest of me was numb already.
From the hall came a rumble of men’s voices, that grating roar that drowns out every other sound. The smell of roast beef was stronger now. Our beef. They’d driven the cattle away three days ago, before the city fell. An hour limped past. More shouting, more laughter, songs, the singing always ending with banging on the table and a burst of applause. Somewhere outside in the darkness, I thought I heard a child cry.
At last, I got up and went to the door. It wasn’t locked. Well, of course it wasn’t locked, why would they bother? They knew I had nowhere to go. I opened it inch by careful inch and the noise of songs and laughter became suddenly much louder. I was afraid to venture out, and yet I felt I had to see. Had to know what was going on. The poky room had begun to feel like a grave. So I tiptoed along the short passage that led to the hall and peered into the half-darkness.
A long, narrow hall with a low, beamed ceiling, smelling of pine and resin and lit by rows of smoking lamps that hung from brackets on the walls. Two trestle tables with benches on either side ran the whole length of the floor. Men, crammed shoulder to shoulder, jostled each other as they reached out to impale hunks of red meat on their daggers’ points. I saw rows of shining faces with blood and juices running down the chins gleaming in the overlapping circles of light. Across the raftered ceiling, huge shadows met and grappled, dwarfing the men who cast them. Even from that distance I caught the stench of sweat, today’s sweat, still fresh, but under that the stale sweat of other days and other nights, receding into the far distance, the darkness, all the way back to the first year of this interminable war. I’d been a little girl playing with my dolls when first the black ships came.
Achilles and Patroclus sat at a small table, looking down the centre of the room towards the outside door. They had their backs to me, but I could see how frequently they glanced at each other. Everybody was in high good humour, boasting about their exploits at Lyrnessus. More songs, including one about Helen, every verse more obscene than the last. It ended in a burst of laughter. In the pause that followed, Achilles pushed his plate away and got to his feet. To begin with, nobody noticed, then, gradually, the hubbub began to die down. He raised his hands and said something in that thick, northern dialect of his—normally, I had no problem understanding Greek, but I found his accent very difficult for the first few days—he was saying something about not wanting to break up the party, but…
He was laughing as he spoke, it was a sort of joke against himself. There was a chorus of jeers and catcalls and then somebody at the back shouted, “We all know why you want an early night!”
They began thumping the tables. Somebody started a song and they bellowed it out in time with the rhythm of their clenched fists.
Why was he born so beautiful?
Why was he born at all?
He’s no fucking use to anyone!
He’s no fucking use at all!
He may be a joy to his mother,
But he’s a pain in the arsehole to me!
And so on. I crept back to the cupboard and closed the door, but then, as the singing went on, I opened it again, just a few inches, enough to be able to see into Achilles’s room. A glimpse of rich tapestries hanging from the walls, a bronze mirror and, pushed well back against the wall, a bed.
A minute or so later, heavy footsteps clumped along the passage. Men’s voices. I drew back, though I knew they couldn’t see me. Patroclus went into the other room, followed almost immediately by Achilles, who threw his arm across his friend’s shoulders, laughing in triumph and relief. Another successful raid, another city destroyed, men and boys killed, women and girls enslaved—all in all, a good day. And there was still the night to come.
They talked about having another drink—Patroclus had his hand on the jug handle ready to pour—but then Achilles nodded to the door where I was standing and flared his eyes.
Pat
roclus laughed. “Oh yes, she’s there.”
I stepped back and sat down on the narrow bed, pressing my hands together to stop them trembling. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. Seconds later, the door opened and Achilles’s huge shadow blotted out the light. He didn’t speak—perhaps he thought I wouldn’t be able to understand him—just jerked his thumb at the other room. Shaking, I got up and followed him.
4
What can I say? He wasn’t cruel. I waited for it—expected it, even—but there was nothing like that, and at least it was soon over. He fucked as quickly as he killed, and for me it was the same thing. Something in me died that night.
I lay there, hating him, though of course he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t have a perfect right to do. If his prize of honour had been the armour of a great lord he wouldn’t have rested till he’d tried it out: lifted the shield, picked up the sword, assessed its length and weight, slashed it a few times through the air. That’s what he did to me. He tried me out.
I told myself I wouldn’t sleep. I was exhausted, but so tense, so frightened of everything around me and most of all of him that after he’d finished and rolled off me to sleep I just lay there, staring into the darkness, as rigid as a board. Whenever I blinked, my lids scraped painfully across dry eyes. And yet—somehow—I must’ve slept, because when I looked again the lamp had burned low. Achilles was lying with his face only an inch away from mine, snoring softly, his upper lip puckering on every breath. Desperate to escape the furnace heat of his body, I flattened myself against the wall and turned my head away so as not to have to look at him.
After a few minutes, I noticed a sound. Not a new sound—I’d been aware of it even in my half-dreaming state. His breathing, perhaps—but then I thought, No, it’s the sea. Had to be—we were only a few hundred yards away from the shore. I listened and let it soothe me, that ceaseless ebb and flow, the crash of the breaking waves, the grating sigh of its retreat. It was like lying on the chest of somebody who loves you, somebody you know you can trust—though the sea loves nobody and can never be trusted. I was immediately aware of a new desire, to be part of it, to dissolve into it: the sea that feels nothing and can never be hurt.
And then, I suppose, I must have slept again because when I woke up he was gone.
Immediately, I was anxious. Should I have been up before him, getting his breakfast, perhaps? I had no idea how, on this desolate beach, food was prepared or even whether preparing it would be one of my jobs. But then I thought Achilles would have many slaves, all with different functions: weaving, cooking, preparing his bath, washing bedlinen and clothes…I’d be told soon enough what was expected of me. It was possible that very little would be required beyond what I’d already done. When I thought about my father’s young concubine, the one he took after my mother’s death, most of her duties had been discharged on her back.
The bed was cold. Sitting up, I saw he’d left one of the doors open. I was still trying to get my bearings. There were three doors: one leading into the small room—I’d already started thinking of it as the cupboard; another leading down a short passage to the hall; and a third that opened directly onto the veranda and from there onto the beach. Evidently he’d gone out that way, because the door was ajar and creaking on its hinges.
Pulling my mantle close round my shoulders, I went to stand on the threshold. A breeze blowing straight off the sea lifted my hair and cooled the bed-sweat on my skin. It was still dark, though a nail-paring of moon gave just enough light for me to see the huts, hundreds of them it seemed, stretching away into the distance. Between their dark, huddled shapes I caught tormenting glimpses of the sea. Turning my head to look inland, I noticed a faint glow in the sky, which puzzled me at first, until I realized it must be Troy. Troy, whose palaces and temples and even streets are lit all night. Here, the paths between the huts were narrow, blood-black. I felt I’d come to a dreadful place, the exact opposite of a great city, a place where darkness and savagery reigned.
From where I stood, on the threshold of Achilles’s hut, the thunder of breaking waves sounded like a battle, the clash of swords on shields, but then to my exhausted mind everything sounded like a battle, just as there was no colour in the world but red. Cautiously, I ventured out onto the rough wood of the veranda and from there jumped down onto the sand. I stood for a moment, scrunching my toes in the gritty damp, relieved to be able to feel something, anything, after the numbness of the night. And then, barefoot and wearing only my mantle, I set off to find the sea.
Finding my way more by touch than sight, I stumbled upon a path that seemed to lead away from the huts, dribbling first along the edges of the dunes and then shelving steeply down onto the beach. For the last few yards the path became a tunnel, sand dunes topped with marram grass rising high on either side; I had to stop for a minute because the narrow space constricted my breath. At the back of my mind was the fear: suppose he comes back, suppose he wants me again and I’m not there? Moonlight shifted on blades of grass as they bent and swayed in the wind. I came out onto the beach beside a stream of brackish water that trickled between rocks and pebbles, widening as it reached the sea.
There was a new noise now, louder than the waves: a frenetic thrumming that sawed at your nerves. It took me a while to identify it as the sound of the ships’ rigging slapping against the mastheads. The ships, most of them hauled clear of the tideline and supported on cradles, were a dark mass on my left. There were other ships anchored offshore—but these were little, fat-bellied cargo vessels as different from the lean warships as ducks from fish eagles. I knew the warships would be guarded against the possibility of a Trojan attack, so I backed into the dunes again and cut across a spur of scrubby heathland to the open sea.
Here, the dominant sound was that sword-on-shield clash of waves. I walked down to the sea, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lyrnessus where I guessed the fires that had destroyed the city would still be burning, but the closer I got to the water the thicker the mist became. It seemed to have come from nowhere—a dense fog, cold and clammy as a dead man’s fingers, turning the black ships into spectral shapes that no longer seemed entirely real. It seemed odd that such a mist should form and linger on a night of high wind, but it freed me, making me invisible even to myself.
Out there, beyond the roiling waves, in the calm place where the sea forgets the land, were the souls of my dead brothers. They’d been denied funeral rites and so would be forbidden entry to Hades, condemned to haunt the living, not for a few days only but for all eternity. Again and again, behind my closed lids, I watched my youngest brother die. I grieved for all of them, but particularly for him. After our mother’s death, he’d crept into my bed every night, seeking the comfort he was ashamed of needing by day. There, on that windswept beach, I heard him calling me—as lost, as houseless and beyond help as I was myself.
With no idea in my head except to reach him, I began wading into the sea—ankles, calves, knees, thighs, and then the sudden, cold shock as a bulging wave slapped into my groin. Standing there, splay-footed, the sand shifting under my feet, I put my hand down and washed him out of me. And then, clean, or as clean as I would ever be again, I stood, waist-deep, feeling the swell of waves lift me onto my toes, and set me down again, so I rose and fell with the sea. One huge wave picked me up and threatened to sweep me out of my depth and I thought: Why not? I could feel my brothers waiting for me.
But then I heard a voice. I thought for a moment it might be my youngest brother’s voice. I listened, straining to hear above the roar of the waves, and it came again—definitely a man’s voice, though I couldn’t make out the words. And suddenly, I was afraid. I’d been frightened for days—I’d forgotten what it was like not to be frightened—but this was a different kind of fear. The skin at the back of my neck crawled as the hairs rose. I told myself the voice must be coming from the camp, somehow bouncing off the wall of mist so it seemed to be coming from the s
ea, but then I heard it again and this time I knew it was out there. Somebody, something, was churning up the water beyond the breaking waves. An animal—it had to be, couldn’t be anything else, a dolphin or a killer whale. They sometimes come in very close to land, even beaching themselves to snatch a seal pup from the rocks. But then the drifting veils of mist momentarily parted and I saw human arms and shoulders, the gleam of moonlight on wet skin. More heaving, more splashing—and then, abruptly, silence, as he turned and lay facedown on the water, drifting backwards and forwards with the tide.
Men on this coast don’t learn to swim. They’re sailors—they know swimming serves only to prolong a death that might otherwise be quick and relatively merciful. But this man had been playing with the sea like a dolphin or a porpoise, as if it were his real home. And now he lay spread-eagled on the surface, staying in that position for such a long time I began to think he could breathe water. But then, suddenly, he raised his head and shoulders and floated upright, like a bottling seal. Seeing his face came as a shock, though it shouldn’t have done, because I’d guessed already who it was.
I began to wade fast towards the shore, in a hurry now to get back to the hut and dry myself, because how on earth was I going to explain this? But in the shallows I was forced to slow down because I didn’t want to splash and attract his attention. As I stepped onto dry land, I felt a quick, sharp stab of pain in my right foot. Something—a stone or a fragment of broken shell—was sticking into the sole of my foot and I had to bend down and pull it out. When I looked up again, I saw Achilles, not swimming now, but wading knee-deep onto the shore. I squatted down, held my breath, but he passed by without seeing me, both hands raised to wipe salt spray from his eyes. I let myself breathe again, thinking it was over, that he’d go back to the camp, but he just stood on the tideline, facing out to sea.