by Pat Barker
Patroclus sounded tired. I guessed they’d been going round and round that particular circle for a long time. I could see them both so clearly, in my mind’s eye, almost as if the wall between us had become transparent: Achilles pacing up and down, Patroclus sitting with clasped hands, outwardly calm, but with that muscle throbbing in his jaw.
“You might as well sit down,” Patroclus said, after a pause. “They won’t be here for hours yet.”
“Ha! He won’t be able to wait.”
“He’s got to get Chryseis back to her father first. And find a hundred bulls; I don’t suppose they’re just lying around. And then with any luck he might wait till the ship gets back. That’s what he ought to do.”
Listening, I felt myself begin to hope. The ship taking Chryseis home would have to stay overnight. The ritual slaughtering of a hundred bulls would take quite a long time and then there’d be prayers and hymns to Apollo followed by a great feast. That would go on all night—and then there was the journey back. They wouldn’t set off early, they’d all have hangovers…Given all that time to reflect, wasn’t it possible Agamemnon might change his mind? Was he really going to break up with Achilles and risk losing the war—for a girl?
More pacing from the next room. At last, I heard the creak of Achilles’s chair as he threw himself into it.
Patroclus cleared his throat. “Would you like me to send for Briseis?”
“What, for a farewell fuck? No, thanks.”
Silence. I imagined Achilles looking slightly ashamed.
“No, leave it,” he said, at last. “She’ll know soon enough.”
15
Freed from the apprehension of being sent for, I seized the opportunity to slip away. I wanted to say goodbye to Chryseis and wish her well, because I felt her good news had been unfairly overshadowed by what was going to happen to me.
It was beginning to get dark as I ran along the curve of the bay to where Agamemnon’s ships were being made ready to set sail. Small groups of women had already gathered on the shore and were watching the bulls swaying and lumbering on board. They were bellowing as they felt the ground shift and tilt beneath their feet and the decks were slippery with the green shit of their fear. The men driving them on board were singing hymns of praise to Apollo, though I thought there was a note of desperation in their singing. Suppose even this wasn’t enough?
At the last moment, when everything else was ready, Chryseis was brought out from Agamemnon’s hut. She was wearing a plain white mantle, no jewellery, her hair in tight braids round her head. She looked like a queen, pale, composed and suddenly a lot older. Agamemnon didn’t appear. It was Odysseus who took her by the hand and led her up the gangplank onto the ship, where she stood in the stern, staring back at Agamemnon’s compound and then along the bay at the rows of black ships. Her eyes, as she scanned the shore, were wide open, strained wide. I saw that underneath the surface composure she was terrified; terrified that at any moment Agamemnon would change his mind and all this would be snatched away.
We were jumping up and down shouting: “Good luck! Have a safe journey!”
At first, I thought she wasn’t going to respond—she was so tense, so determined to stay calm—but then one small hand came up and, with a barely perceptible movement of her fingers, she waved goodbye.
Gazing around, I was filled with warmth—with love, in fact—for all these women who’d come to see her off. They didn’t begrudge her her luck, though every one of us would’ve given her right arm to be allowed to go home—and to have a home to go to.
Suddenly, Odysseus appeared standing beside Chryseis in the stern. Immediately, everything was noise and bustle, sails hoisted, anchor weighed—and then the ship was pulling slowly away from the shore, her broad wake foaming brown with silt. To begin with, the men rowed—a drum beating time—but then as the ship moved further out the sails bellied and suddenly she was bounding away from us as if she shared Chryseis’s own eagerness to be gone. We watched the ship dwindle into the distance and a disconsolate silence fell. I can’t speak for the others but I know, at that moment, I was as desolate as I’d ever been.
As the crowd began to break up, I was aware of some of the other women glancing at me out of the corners of their eyes. By now, the news of what was going to happen to me would have spread all over the camp. One of them, a woman I didn’t much care for, looked at me and smirked. “I suppose it’ll be half a crown to speak to you now?”
I don’t think any of the other women envied my promotion—if that’s what it was.
I walked back along the shore, head down, seeing nothing but my own feet pressing moisture out of the damp sand. Once or twice I narrowly avoided bumping into people, so absorbed was I in my own thoughts, but then some instinct made me look up—and only just in time. Agamemnon was standing less than a hundred yards away watching his ship, with Chryseis on board, shrink to a black dot against the red glare of sunset.
I slipped into the space between two ships and waited. All along the shore, now, men were wading into the sea, scraping oil and dirt off their skins, plunging their heads beneath the waves, purifying themselves—and all of them, all without exception, chanting a hymn of praise to Apollo: I will remember Apollo who shoots from afar. When he bends his silver bow even the gods tremble before him…And prayers, countless prayers, all pleading with him to free them from the plague. Soon, the breaking waves were black with men, the land almost deserted. I knew I had witnessed something amazing: a whole army walking into the sea.
Some men, too sick to walk, had to be carried into the water on stretchers. Enough to kill them, you might think, that sudden immersion of heated bodies in the cold, salt, ravening sea. But, as far as I know, none of them died—and I did see one man, who looked desperately ill as he was carried in, walk back to shore.
The stars were beginning to prick through a greenish sky. All along the bay, cooking fires had been lit and, as the men came dripping wet out of the waves, cups of hot, mulled wine were pressed into their hands and every one of them poured a libation to Apollo before he drank. Soon, they were gathered, shivering, around the fires, passing jugs of strong wine from hand to hand. On Agamemnon’s orders, goats and sheep had been slaughtered and soon platters of roast meat were set in front of them, but there was none of the laughter and joking that normally accompany a feast. Until Apollo had accepted the safe return of Chryseis and the sacrifice of bulls, the camp still lay under his curse, and the knowledge of that weighed heavily on them all.
From the shadows, I watched Agamemnon, who was still standing on the shore, an isolated, silent figure. Surely, with all this going on, he’d forget about me? Do what everybody else seemed intent on doing: get plastered and try to forget? That’s what I told myself, though at the same time I knew he wouldn’t. Even though it made no sense, to me or to anybody else, that the two most powerful men in the Greek army should fall out over a girl.
* * *
——————
When I got back to Achilles’s hut I went at once to the cupboard where I sat alone, waiting to be sent for. Iphis didn’t appear. Perhaps Patroclus had told her to stay away.
An hour dragged past. I spent a lot of the time pleating the hem of my tunic and smoothing it out again. You see old women do that—I remember my grandmother doing it—it’s a sign they’re starting to wear out. And there I was, only nineteen and doing it already. I forced myself to stop.
A jug of wine was standing on a table to the right of the door. I knew nobody would mind if I poured myself a cup, so I did, my hands shaking so much I spilled some and had to find a cloth to mop it up. I was still mopping when I heard voices in the hall. I thought at first it was Agamemnon come to get me and immediately felt betrayed. I’d been counting on a delay and now there was no delay. Achilles was right: Agamemnon couldn’t wait to get his hands on me.
I stood up, smoothed my tunic and rubbed spit
around my lips so there’d be no purple staining from the wine. I wasn’t going to be dragged away, I’d keep my head up and not look back. I wouldn’t give Agamemnon the satisfaction of seeing my fear.
But then, I heard Patroclus announcing Lord Nestor and his son Antilochus. Nestor. I thought at once this must be some kind of peace mission, that Agamemnon had relented, because Nestor was exactly the go-between he’d have chosen. I opened the door a crack so I could hear more clearly and see at least a little of what was going on.
Nestor stepped into the room: tall, silver-haired, richly dressed, and behind him, gawky and painfully shy, his youngest son, Antilochus, a boy so besotted with love for Achilles he seemed to find it difficult to breathe in his presence. They were both wearing cloaks, for although the night was warm a moist wind was blowing off the sea. Flecks of rain like tiny pinpricks of light lay scattered across their shoulders. Achilles had risen to greet them. Nestor took off his cloak and handed it to Patroclus, then smoothed down his ruffled hair. As he took the seat Achilles offered, I saw he was beginning to thin on the crown; you could see patches of pink scalp between the white strands. After seeing him settled, Achilles asked Patroclus to fetch better wine. “Virgins’ pee, this stuff,” he said, with an awkward laugh. Meanwhile, Antilochus looked around for somewhere to sit, saw the bed and stumbled towards it. Because he knew, or rather imagined, that Achilles was watching, he tripped over a rug and nearly fell.
Patroclus was mixing Nestor’s wine; several shades of deep red swirling round the sides of a gold dish. When he’d finished, he walked across to the fire and poured a generous libation to Apollo; the fire irons sizzled and spat. Nestor raised his cup in a toast, then looked long and hard at Achilles. “I see you’re not loading your ships yet?”
“He hasn’t come for the girl. Yet.”
Nestor smiled and shook his head. “You won’t leave. Whatever else you are, you’re not a deserter.”
“I don’t see it as desertion. This isn’t my war.”
“You were keen enough to get into it.”
“I was seventeen.” Achilles leant forward. “Look, what he did today was totally outrageous, everybody knew it, and there wasn’t one voice raised against it.”
“Mine was. Then, and later.”
“So now, I just think: Fuck it. He wants Troy, he can take Troy—without me. Except we both know he can’t.”
Nestor was silent for a moment. Then: “I am usually listened to, Achilles.”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“You can’t let other men do the fighting while you sit here and sulk. Ye-es.” Nestor raised one hand. “Sulk.”
Achilles’s reply was surprisingly measured. “What he did today broke all the rules. I fought for that girl. The army gave her to me—he has no right to take her. Well, OK—but that’s it, I’m finished. I’m not going to risk my life, or my men’s lives, for a weak, greedy, incompetent and cowardly king.”
I was waiting for Nestor to leap to Agamemnon’s defence, but he just smiled.
“He may be all those things—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that you’re a better fighter, braver, stronger, whatever—that’s not what it’s about. He has more men than you, more ships than you, more land than you—and that’s why he’s commander-in-chief and you’re not.”
“None of that gives him the right to take another man’s prize of honour. It doesn’t belong to him; he hasn’t earnt it.”
There was a lot more, but I’d stopped listening. Honour, courage, loyalty, reputation—all those big words being bandied about—but for me there was only one word, one very small word: it. It doesn’t belong to him, he hasn’t earnt it.
When I was able to focus on the conversation again, Nestor was saying: “Well, I only hope—”
But we never did find out what Nestor hoped. There came a sound of running footsteps in the hall and, a second later, Alcimus, his pudgy face shining with sweat, burst into the room. “It’s Agamemnon’s heralds.”
The cup I was holding slipped from my fingers, splashing red wine down the skirt of my tunic.
“Is Agamemnon with them?” Achilles asked.
Alcimus shook his head. I saw Achilles glance sideways at Nestor and flare his eyes, but when he spoke it was to Patroclus. “See if Briseis is ready, will you?”
Nestor was looking embarrassed. “I didn’t know they were coming.”
Achilles touched his arm in acknowledgement.
Agamemnon’s heralds, resplendent in scarlet and black, with gold bands wound round their staffs of office, edged into the room. They were meant to look imposing, to stand tall and deliver Agamemnon’s message in loud, clear, ringing tones. Instead, the elder of the two walked forward and fell on his knees. Immediately, Achilles stood up and helped the old man gently to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to take it out on you. It’s not your fault.”
The cupboard door opened wide. Patroclus came in and tried to put his arm round my shoulders, but I brushed him off. “Do you still think you can make him marry me?”
He didn’t have time to reply. Achilles called, “Patroclus? Is she ready?”
Patroclus offered me his hand. I took it because I knew I had to, and let myself be led into the other room. The heralds were already backing out. I risked a glance at Achilles and to my amazement saw tears coursing down his cheeks. No sobs, nothing like that, just this silent stream that he wouldn’t acknowledge even to the extent of wiping it away.
Achilles cried as I was taken away. He cried; I didn’t. Now, years later, when none of it matters anymore, I’m still proud of that.
* * *
——————
But I cried that night.
PART TWO
16
Ever since he came to Troy, he’s known—intermittently, at least—that he won’t be going home. Not for him the joyful greetings, the embraces, the feasts. Not for him the long, tedious aftermath, breeding dull children from a boring wife, spending long hours listening to peasant farmers complain about their neighbours, adjudicating in petty lawsuits, until with the passing of the years come physical weakness, old age, frailty and death. Death in a comfortable room with a fire blazing, children and grandchildren gathered round his bed. And then, for a few years more, his name on everybody’s lips, people who’d known him all his life, men who’d fought with him at Troy. But human memory doesn’t last long—three generations, at best—and then the slow, unnumbered centuries begin, grass growing tall on his burial mound, and people driving past in chariots he can’t imagine will pause and say: “What do you suppose that is? It looks man-made.”
None of that. And he really doesn’t mind; in fact, it’s actually easier to accept that soon there’ll come a time, whether at dawn or dusk or in the white heat of noon, when a sword or spear will cut him down, and he’ll die, as he’s lived, in a shadowless glare of light. There’ll be no end, then, to his story—because that’s it, that’s the bargain, that’s what the tricky gods have promised him: everlasting glory in return for an early death under the walls of Troy.
* * *
——————
He knows all the moods of this sea, or at least, until the past two weeks, he would have said he did, but the movement of the tides recently has been so strange—like nothing he’s ever experienced before. Every day under the sullen sky, the waves swelled and swelled, never breaking into foam, just a long, continuous, menacing bloat. He’d felt the god’s anger in the tightening of his skin, days before the first plague-arrows struck.
During the plague, there’d been no high tides, but now the sea’s reclaiming lost ground. Each wave, slavering up the beach, leaves a fan of dirty foam that seethes gently for a second before sinking into the sand, and then the next wave flings itself higher, and the next higher still. The tide’s reaching parts of the beach that have been dry for years
, lifting thick mats of bladderwrack, carrying broken shells and the white bones of seagulls high above the shore.
The night they took Briseis away, one of the anchored ships broke loose from her moorings. Patroclus shook him awake and together they raced down to the beach, shouting orders, organizing teams of men to haul the ship clear of the tide. When dawn came, she lay listing to one side, the pale barnacles on her hull giving her the look of an ancient, warty sea-monster. No tide since then has reached as high as that, but still, it was a warning. Since then, they’ve checked the moorings of every anchored ship and carried some of the cradled ships further inland.
He’s dwarfed by the immensity of sea and sky. The dunes rise up behind him, their tall, waving grasses casting spikes of black shadow on the pale sand. But now a mist’s beginning to roll in, as it often does around this time. Within minutes, it’s enveloped him and he doesn’t have to see anything, only listen to the crash of waves breaking, only feel the ripples of water trickling between his toes. As a child, he’d slept with his mother in a bedroom facing the sea. After she left, he used to wake up in the darkness and pretend the waves were her voice soothing him back to sleep.
Memory plays strange tricks. One of his most vivid memories is of standing at the bedroom window and watching his mother wade into the sea, her long black hair fanning out across the water like strands of seaweed before the next wave swallowed her up. And yet he knows he can’t possibly have seen that: the sea wasn’t visible from the room he slept in as a child. No later imaginings, though, can distort his memory of the lonely bedroom, the ache of her absence. His father had tried everything: tempting him to eat; buying him expensive toys; every night, at bedtime, offering his own arms for comfort, only to have him turn away or, worse, tolerate the embrace but, like his mother before him, lie stiff and unresponsive within it. Priests, soothsayers, female relations, nurses—all were consulted and none of them knew what to do. The sons of the nobility were ferried in to be his “friends”—though they recognized instantly, as children do, that he wasn’t “right,” and, after a few desultory attempts, played only with each other. He stopped growing. And then, one day, when he’d become a pallid, silver-haired little shrimp, every rib in his chest showing, Patroclus came. Patroclus, who’d killed another child, a boy two years older than himself, in a quarrel over a game of dice.