by Pat Barker
On the veranda steps, he yells for Alcimus, who comes running, white-faced, breathless, clearly afraid he’s done something wrong, that something calamitous has happened, like Achilles finding a speck of dirt on the miraculous shield. He pours the lad a drink, sits him down—in the hall, because it wouldn’t be kind to do this in front of Briseis—and tries to explain. So great is Alcimus’s relief at not being in trouble, that he simply goggles at Achilles. It’s obvious he’s not taken in a word.
“If I die…” Achilles says, again.
At least that bit seems to get through, though at first Alcimus says nothing, just makes fending-off movements with both hands, as if these were the worst words he’s ever heard. Well, if I can face it, surely you can? Achilles thinks, beginning to lose patience. “If I die…I’m not saying I will, if…” Alcimus looks terrified. “Look, I haven’t had a premonition or anything like that…” It’s not a premonition, it’s knowledge. “I just want to make a few sensible plans for the future.”
Alcimus gapes at him.
“Briseis is pregnant.” Ah, that went in. “If I die, I want you to marry her and…” He holds up his hand. “If. If. I want you to take her to my father. I want the child to grow up in my father’s house.” Silence. “Is that all right?”
Alcimus says, miserably, “It’s an honour I don’t deserve.”
“But you’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“Swear?”
“Yes, of course. I swear.” And then: “Does she know?”
Achilles shakes his head. “No, there’s no need to tell her yet. As long as you and I know what’s happening.”
He says good night and goes back to his living quarters, where he finds Briseis sitting up in bed waiting for him. For a moment, he’s tempted to give in and join her, but his mood’s changed now, darkening as the shadows fall.
So he sits by the fire and picks up the lyre again, remembering the song he’d been working on before Patroclus died. It had been so much a part of their last evenings together, he’s not sure he can bear to play it, even now. And indeed the first few notes reduce him to tears. But after a few minutes, he tries again and this time plays it through to the end. Except there is no end. Yes, he remembers now, that was always the problem, wasn’t it? He has never been able to finish the bloody thing. And Patroclus was no help. “I don’t see what’s wrong with it—sounds all right to me.”
He plays it through again, aware of Briseis watching him, and aware too—undeniably, powerfully aware—of Patroclus sitting in his chair by the fire. Because Patroclus has relented in the last few days, really ever since Achilles started playing the lyre again, and comes now every evening. It’s really quite difficult not to ask him what he thinks—but he knows what Patroclus thinks. He’s always known. “For god’s sake, can’t you play something a bit more cheerful? It’s a bloody lament.”
Smiling at the memory, Achilles plays the song again only to arrive at the same tormenting sequence of notes. The aftermath of a great storm: raindrops dripping from an overhanging bough, pick-pocking into the swirling river underneath…Yes, yes, but what next?
And suddenly he knows: nothing, nothing comes next, because that’s it, that is the end—it’s been there all along, only he wasn’t ready to see it. Wanting to make sure—because all this seems a little bit too simple, too convenient—he plays the song again, right through from the beginning. No, he’s right, that’s it, that’s the ending. He looks across at Briseis. “That’s it,” he says, patting the still-vibrating strings. “Finished.”
47
The final notes faded into silence. Achilles wrapped the lyre back in its oiled cloth and set it gently to one side. It seemed in those few moments as if time had been suspended, that the wave curling over us might never break.
Pure delusion, of course. The future was hurtling towards us, Achilles’s life measured now in days not weeks.
On the morning of the day he went back to war, Achilles stood on the veranda steps and yelled for Alcimus, who came running as he always did, his round, honest face shining with sweat. He looked terrified. I was still in bed, gnawing on a piece of dry bread. Ritsa had told me that if you can manage to eat something before you even move your head, it stops the morning sickness developing. Well, it didn’t do that, but it did seem to help a bit, so now I kept a crust under the pillow. I didn’t think whatever Achilles wanted Alcimus for could possibly involve me, so I forced down the last mouthful and turned, cautiously, on my side, away from them.
At that moment, the door opened and a priest walked in. No warning. No greater ceremony than that. There can hardly have been a scruffier or more badly dressed bride, standing there still dishevelled from Achilles’s bed, wrapped in a semen-stained sheet, with breadcrumbs in my hair. Alcimus, blotches of red all over his face and neck, kept darting agonized glances at me. Had he even been asked if he wanted this? When the brief ceremony was over, he backed out of the room, leaving me alone with Achilles, who said, brusquely, “It’s for the best. He’s a good man.” And then, perhaps noticing how shocked I was, he relented a little, taking my chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilting my head. “He’ll be kind to you. And he’ll take care of the child.”
* * *
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Hours later: news of Achilles’s death, and the great roar of absence in his empty rooms.
* * *
——————
Achilles would not have approved of the manner of his death: an arrow between the shoulder blades, shot by Paris, Helen’s husband, in revenge for the death of Hector. There’s an even nastier version of the story: that the arrow was poisoned. Others say Paris shot him in the heel, the only part of his body that was vulnerable to wounds. Pinned to the ground and helpless, he was hacked to death. Either way, a coward’s weapon in a coward’s hands: that’s the way Achilles would have seen it, though I suppose he might have taken some consolation from the fact that he died undefeated in hand-to-hand combat.
Achilles’s heel. Of all the legends that grew up around him that was by far the silliest. His mother, in a desperate attempt to make him immortal, is supposed to have dipped him in the waters of Lethe, but she held him by the heel, making that the only part of his body that was not invulnerable to mortal wounds. Invulnerable to wounds? His whole body was a mass of scars. Believe me, I do know.
Another legend: that his horses were immortal, a gift from the gods on the occasion of his mother’s marriage to Peleus—a guilt offering, you might say. The horses are supposed to have vanished after his death. I think about them sometimes, lazily cropping the grass in a green field, far away from the din of battle, being tended by a groom too fuddled in his wits to marvel why his horses never grow old. I like that story.
* * *
——————
I spent the first days after his death sitting in his living quarters listening to the shouts of spectators at his funeral games. The room was quiet, two unoccupied chairs facing each other across the empty grate. Without turning round, I was aware of the bronze mirror behind me; and aware, as you sometimes are, of being watched by a person you can’t see. There’s a belief that mirrors are a threshold between our world and the land of the dead. That’s why they’re usually kept covered between a death and the cremation. More than once, I was tempted to get up and throw a sheet over that mirror, because if ever a spirit was strong enough to make the journey back from Hades it was Achilles’s. But in the end I decided to leave it uncovered. Even if he did come back, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
* * *
——————
On the night they finally set fire to Troy—it had taken three whole days of looting to strip the city bare—Agamemnon gave a feast. One of the guests of honour was Achilles’s son, Pyrrhus, who’d killed Priam—or butchered him, rather. He’d arrived in the camp eager to fight alongside his father: the moment
he’d been training for ever since he was old enough to lift a sword, but by the time he reached Troy, Achilles was already dead. A burial mound, an empty hut, but no living father to greet him. At dinner in the hall, I watched him stagger across the floor, his fresh, young face slack with booze and shock, staring from one man to another, desperate for these men who’d known his father, who’d fought beside his father, to say how like Achilles he was. Oh, isn’t he like him? Honest to god, you’d think it was Achilles back again…But nobody did.
At the feast, Agamemnon got so drunk he fell over twice. The second fall seemed to shake something loose inside his fuddled brain. Alcimus, who’d been invited to sit at the top table—having done rather well in the fighting, whatever “doing well” in a sacked city means—heard him rambling on to Odysseus. “Achilles,” he kept saying. “Achilles.”
“What about him?” Odysseus was also drunk, but as sharp as ever.
“You know the time I sent you to see him?”
“Ye-es?”
“I promised him the twenty most beautiful women in Troy…”
Odysseus waited for clarification. “Ye-es?”
“Well, don’t you see, he’s got to have them, hasn’t he?”
“Hmm, no, not really, he is dead. He certainly doesn’t need twenty women—even one would be a bit of a waste.”
But Agamemnon was adamant: Achilles had to have his share. Of course, Agamemnon was frightened—and I could scarcely blame him for that. I’d sat with my back to the bronze mirror and felt how powerful a force Achilles could still be. But Agamemnon’s fear went beyond reason. He was leaning in towards Odysseus, shaking his shoulder. Look at the trouble Achilles caused over that girl. One girl, and he wouldn’t go on fighting because he couldn’t have her. “Bloody near lost us the war.”
Odysseus waved his hand, dismissively. “Well, he can’t lose you the war now, can he? You’ve won.”
“No, but he could stop us getting home.”
“I really don’t see how.” Odysseus was already looking forward to seeing his wife again. “All we need’s a change of wind. Then it’s three days, that’s all.”
But gradually, as the evening wore on, Agamemnon’s jitters hardened into certainty. Achilles had to have a girl, and not just any girl either. The absolute best—“the pick of the crop.”
And so Polyxena, Priam’s virgin daughter, fifteen years old, was selected for sacrifice. I remembered her from my time in Troy, a sturdy little girl, built like one of those mountain ponies, short legs, a mane of dark brown hair. She was the youngest of Hecuba’s large family, always running to keep up with her sisters, wailing the great cry of youngest children everywhere, “Wait for me! Wait for me!”
I kept waking up during that night, thinking about her. In the morning I dragged myself out of bed, feeling something of her dread of the coming day. But I certainly didn’t expect to be involved in her fate.
Before breakfast, the little girl who was Hecamede’s messenger came tearing into the yard. “Hecamede wants you,” she said, breathlessly. “She says, can you come at once?” I thought perhaps Hecamede had been taken ill, I couldn’t think what else it might be, and so I ran all the way to Nestor’s hut, or as close to running as I could get by then. My pregnancy was just beginning to show. None of the men I passed was properly awake, they were all still sleeping off the drunkenness of the night before and Nestor’s guards were no exception. Nestor himself, though, was up and dressed. Hecamede gestured to me to follow her into the hall.
“Have you heard about Polyxena?”
I nodded. I didn’t say anything more: there was no point, so we just stood in the half-darkness and looked at each other. Then Hecamede said: “Nestor wants me to go with her, he says her mother and sisters won’t be allowed to go and…well. She can’t go on her own.” She was twisting the end of her veil between her fingers. “Will you come with me?”
I stared at her. I saw how white and sick and terrified she looked—and this was a woman who’d been kind to me when it really mattered. I said: “Yes, of course I’ll come.”
She nodded. Then, turning to the table beside her, began arranging small honey cakes on a tray. “They’ve had nothing to eat.” Her voice was shaking, she was making herself keep busy so she wouldn’t have time to think. I helped her set out the cakes and she handed the trays to two of Nestor’s servants to take to the arena. I doubted very much if any of it would get eaten, but I could see she needed to be doing something. We finished loading a second batch of cakes and then braced ourselves for what we knew we had to face.
The women of the royal household—Priam’s widow, daughters and daughters-in-law—were being held in the same small hut I’d been put in, on the night I arrived. It was horribly overcrowded, worse now than it had been then, and some of the women had spilled out and were sitting or lying on the sand. Hair stringy, faces bruised, eyes bloodshot, tunics torn: their own families would have struggled to recognize them. Helen had been given a hut to herself. Probably just as well—if she’d been housed with the Trojan women, I doubt she’d have lasted the night. Menelaus was still saying he was going to kill her, though he’d amended the plan. Now, he was going to allow his fellow countrymen to kill her—by stoning, presumably—but only after he’d got her back home. Nobody believed a word of it. They all thought she’d worm her way into his bed again, long before then.
We threaded our way through the crowd of women. Here and there, you saw a girl baby being given the breast, or a small girl playing listlessly in the sand. From force of habit, I looked from face to face, though I no longer expected to find my sister. I’d searched for her among the women I’d seen being forced down the muddy track that led from the battlefield into the camp, slipping and slithering like cattle being driven to the slaughter. Those who fell were encouraged to stand up again by blows from the butt ends of spears. No pregnant women among them, I noticed. And no mothers leading small boys by the hand. Agamemnon had been as good as his word. I stared from one terrified face to the next, but fear made them look alike. It took me a long time to be certain she wasn’t there. Later, somebody told me a small group of women had thrown themselves from the citadel when they saw Greek fighters streaming through the gates. I’d no way of knowing, but I thought instantly my sister would have been among them. It was in Ianthe to do that—as it was not in me.
Inside the hut, we found Hecuba with Polyxena kneeling at her feet. Beside them, Andromache, Hector’s widow, sat staring into space. The woman standing next to me said Andromache had just been told she’d been allocated to Pyrrhus, Achilles’s son, the boy who’d killed Priam. Looking at her face, you could see how little it mattered to her. Less than an hour ago, Odysseus had picked up her small son by one of his chubby legs and hurled him from the battlements of Troy. Her only child dead, and tonight she was expected to spread her legs for her new owner, a pimply adolescent boy, the son of the man who’d killed her husband.
As I looked at her, I heard again, as I’d been hearing for months, the last notes of Achilles’s lament. The words seemed to have got trapped inside my brain, an infestation rather than a song, and I resented it. Yes, the death of young men in battle is a tragedy—I’d lost four brothers, I didn’t need anybody to tell me that. A tragedy worthy of any number of laments—but theirs is not the worst fate. I looked at Andromache, who’d have to live the rest of her amputated life as a slave, and I thought: We need a new song.
Nothing worse could happen to Andromache now, but there at Hecuba’s feet was Polyxena—fifteen years old, her whole life ahead of her—and she was actually trying to console her mother, begging her not to grieve. “Better to die on Achilles’s burial mound,” I heard her say, “than live and be a slave.”
Oh, these fierce young women.
Hecamede pushed her way to the front and spoke briefly to Hecuba, then we went to sit in the corner, in the shadows. We weren’t needed yet
.
Roaming around the fringes of the crowd, Cassandra, another daughter of Priam, grimaced and muttered and let out the occasional shriek. I thought perhaps one of her sisters might try to restrain her, but even her own relatives seemed to withdraw from her. She was a virgin priestess of Apollo, who’d once kissed her to give her the gift of true prophecy, and then, when she still refused to have sex with him, spat in her mouth to ensure her prophecies would never be believed. Incredibly, Agamemnon had chosen her as his prize. God knows why, perhaps he felt he hadn’t offended Apollo enough. She was a disruptive, jangling presence; still wearing the scarlet bands of the god, though the garlands round her neck were withered now, she ran up and down the hut, shoving aside anybody who got in her way. It was a relief when Agamemnon’s aides came to take her away. At the last, she clung to her mother, babbling something about nets and axes, prophesying that she and Agamemnon would die together, that in choosing her he’d chosen death. Nobody believed her. And so, still raving, she let herself be dragged away, the god’s curse pursuing her to the end.
As they passed me, I heard one of the guards say, “Bloody hell, I wouldn’t want that in my bed.” “Nah,” said the other, “you’d never dare sleep.”
Next, it was Andromache’s turn to be taken away. She was too dazed with grief to feel the parting, though it was a bad moment for me, because it was Alcimus who came to get her. I suppose I should have expected it—he’d served Achilles, now he served Achilles’s son—of course he’d be sent to fetch her. I hadn’t seen much of Alcimus recently. The truth is, in the last few days, I’d been avoiding him, as far as I could. I had to spend the rest of my life with this man, and that wouldn’t be made any easier by knowing what he’d done in the final days and hours of Troy. Now I did know, or at least I knew one thing: that he was the man who took Andromache away.