She shook her head and kissed his arm.
“The sea is as filled with light as I am at this moment,” he said. “I would have waited longer for you, but restraint—I struggle with it. Giving myself to you completely is far easier than waiting.”
“Are you mine completely?”
“Yes. I have no ability to hold any part of me back now that I have started.” He drew in a sharp breath. “Not all of my nature is easy to hold onto.”
“Not all of mine is either.”
He laughed gently. “That much I understand, but I promise to hold on anyway.”
“And I to you,” she said without reserve, although she knew she had agreed to hold onto fire.
She tipped her face up and his mouth found hers, hungry, devouring her as she remembered from her dreams. She turned her body so she could run her fingers through the cascades of his hair showering her face. Offspring of the sea, his movements, his body, even his hair, were fluid, balancing precariously between ocean and earth.
He reached for her waist and she felt her skirt loosen. She sought his mouth, sweet as honey. Under her tunic, the lightest touch up her belly, a pause and then his hands caressed her breasts. A delicious sensation surged through her and she forgot everything else in the delirium. Whose moan of pleasure was that?
He pulled off his tunic. His chest shone in the moonlight. She kissed the hollow of his neck and moved down his chest. She wanted to feel her skin against his and slipped her own tunic over her head. While her arms were raised, he caught one of her breasts in his mouth and she lost herself again.
He laid back. She tugged the last of her skirt off with one foot and spread herself over him. Heat vibrated off his body. He was made of fire and water. When they joined together, she was filled with feelings far beyond the capacity of her spirit and body to contain—pleasure and delight, pain and despair also, fiercest bonding, radiating out from her in dancing flames.
Satiated, they lay back together. She watched his chest rise and fall with his breath. She felt his need for her as tangibly as she felt the heat where their bodies touched.
They lay there until the cool night air made her shiver. Achilles reached for his cloak to cover her, and she sat up so he could wrap it around her, but she was overwhelmed with dizziness. Achilles cradled her against his chest.
“When I hold you,” he said, “I feel quiet. Most of the time the sea waves crash around me. I am torn and lonely. In the midst of that, you bring a stillness and I feel peaceful. How can you do that? No wonder you are unsteady from it.”
“How can I bring you steadiness?” she asked and held him tighter. Tears poured out. In this time together she had felt flooded with emotions, far from the calmness he described. If these ups and downs she felt, which he called sea waves, had passed from him to her, she did not mind. Her loneliness and sorrow had also washed away. Achilles rocked her until the tears stopped flowing and her breath grew even.
He kissed her. “I told you not all of my nature is easy to hold onto.”
She laughed. “Parts of you are very pleasant to hold onto.”
Achilles and Briseis returned from the ridge to his hut. She slept by his side and had no nightmares, awaking from what seemed at first one of the delicious dreams when Telipinu had come to her. Now he was real, coaxing her awake with caresses until the fire in both of them burned so hot that she floated in an updraft of pleasure.
When they lay still, she savored this flesh and blood man and her own eager body. To endure her marriage she had left her body behind. Achilles’ touch brought it back to her. But morning had arrived. She embraced Achilles, gently pushed aside his answering caresses, dressed and went out to bring the day’s water to the women.
Returning with the first jug, she watched the women’s reactions and was relieved at their usual cheerful greetings. She didn’t want her friendships with them to change. When Eurome saw her, she smiled happily. By her last trip to the spring, fresh bread lay fragrant in baskets, and she took one into Achilles’ hut.
He smiled as she came in. She handed the bread to Patroklos who had turned from the spits of meat he was tending on the fire to watch Achilles’ reaction to her entrance. He nodded as if his friend’s happy expression settled some doubt he had harbored.
She bent over Achilles to give him a kiss and see what he was doing. He held one of his leg greaves, inspecting the silver links that joined the front and back pieces at the ankle.
“A few days ago Hector had a lucky throw,” he said, “and his spear nicked my left greave.” Briseis pictured the deadly spearhead so nearly missing Achilles’ calf and had to lean against his chair. Achilles pulled her onto his knee. “See here—the link twisted a little but I can’t see any other damage. The armor Hephaistos made for my father has served me well again.”
“It’s your father’s armor? How is it that it fits you? Are you the same size?”
“No. He was a great warrior, but no one matches my size. That came from my mother, whose forms are boundless.”
“Then how can you wear his armor?”
“Hephaistos’s immortal armor fits each warrior who wears it, although I sense when I lay my hands on it, that it must find a fire in the heart of the warrior that responds to the immortal flames in which it was forged. Perhaps if a coward like Agamemnon put it on, it would rattle about him like an oversized cage.”
Patroklos laughed. “Or squeeze the life out of him in disgust.”
She took the greave from Achilles and felt its weight in her hand. “What is it like to fight each day?”
“Each day? Not so different from a single fight against the mightiest Greek warrior in defense of one’s brother—” He dropped his voice. “—or against the worst of the Greeks.” He squeezed her against him. “It is both exhilarating and dreadful. I’m not sure I can explain what fills me when I fight. I think you have felt it—a fire and a strength that I yearn for. It’s only afterward when I’m cleansing a comrade’s wound or carrying the fallen off the field that I realize that I have taken men’s lives, and I shudder. But if I did not ward off death from my friends in battle, I could not live with myself.”
Patroklos nodded as if he understood. The individual confrontation made sense to her, but not this willingness to carry on the war month after month.
“The men talk about your fighting as if you alone could drive back the Trojans—win the war all by yourself. That seems true. The other day I watched as you entered the battle—your golden armor and chariot are easy enough to pick out from the masses—and the Trojans scattered before you like rabbits when a fox enters a meadow. If your strength and fighting prowess so far surpass all others, why does the war drag on so long?”
“What you cannot see are the gods fighting on the battlefield. Each time I reach for Troy’s citadel—there are moments when I can almost feel its stones crumbling under my hand—I feel the arm of Apollo or one of the other gods who favor Troy pulling me back. It is not fated that I should take Troy. Another will do that. So my mother tells me, although she says the glory of my brief life will be never-ending.”
Briseis twisted to face him. The immortal greave slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor.
“What do you mean?” And then she didn’t need him to explain—didn’t want him to. He would die before the walls of Troy—that was what he meant. A searing pain tore into her chest as if one of those same gods who pulled him back had struck her with his immortal fist. She panted in agony and saw her sorrow reflected in his eyes.
“If I left Troy and abandoned my men—my brothers—I might live longer, but I can’t, even for you.” He shrugged—he could do nothing about fate, his shoulders seem to say. She closed her eyes. She had promised to hold onto him, but fate would not grant them long for their love.
Achilles wrapped his arms gently around her. They sat in silence like that until after a time he spoke. “I have little to offer you during this wretched war except my love, but I promise when finally Troy fa
lls, you will return to Phthia as my wife and you will be welcomed by my father Peleus and honored in his household as a princess.”
He kissed her hands and then her lips, and as she kissed him back, she felt the shadow that lay between them—a shadow he needed her to understand. He had not said he would bring her to Phthia, only that she would go there.
Patroklos was taking the spits off the fire, and with a sigh, she rose to help him place the meat on platters and tried to shake off her melancholy. She wanted to be happy in her new love.
As Achilles and Patroklos ate with the necessary enthusiasm of two men who will fight all day, she pictured her brothers, whose appetites had similarly amazed her. The familiar gripping at her heart that held in her grief whenever she thought of her lost family did not come. Some force opened the wellsprings of memory and she traveled through vivid scenes, sensing her brothers as if they were alive with her. She felt dizzy and closed her eyes to quiet her mind.
These feelings were like the deluge of emotion she had gone through yesterday—Achilles’ storms. The wild outpouring overwhelmed her at first but also felt healing. She welcomed it. She liked the intense images in her mind and she discovered she wanted to ride out the storm. Last night Achilles told her she brought him inner quiet. Perhaps Patroklos had been right—only she could heal Achilles now. Achilles gave her the power to weather her grief and she gave him peace. This was her place now.
When she opened her eyes, Patroklos was studying her. Achilles strapped on his greaves and then his breastplate. He reached to catch the shoulder strap of his armor. She stood on tiptoe and tied it for him.
With an eerie sensation she watched him transform from her lover into a warrior god. She touched the stars that glowed on the breastplate, studied the bronze layers topped with gold that seemed to meld to the contours of his chest. The workmanship mystified her.
He slid his sword belt over his head and across his chest, then grasped the silver-encrusted hilt to adjust the height to the correct angle. The bronze blade slid against its scabbard as he partly withdrew it, making a scraping sound that filled her mind with blood and her tongue with a metallic burn.
Achilles touched her cheek. “My beloved who admires armor. Is there some way in which you are not the perfect wife for me?”
“Hephaistos makes extraordinary armor, and I wish I could understand how he constructs such things, but its beauty does not lessen its terror,” she said.
Sadness shadowed his eyes. “I forgot. This is how I looked when I killed your brother.” He cradled her face in his hands. “This too is who I am.”
She kissed his lips.
He put on his helmet, which Hephaistos had also plated in shining gold. Achilles’ long hair flowed out below the helmet, covering his neck and shoulders, the lighter sheen of hard gold against his fluid gleam, reminding Briseis of both his unyielding strength and the deadly, immortal flame that even he could not contain.
He took his ash spear up from where it rested against the wall by the door and then shrugged and moved his torso and limbs to settle everything into place, the weight and heft of all of it, a second skin. He smiled at the feel of it and turned to her.
“I will introduce you to Xanthos and Balios.”
She looked up, puzzled. “Xanthos and Balios?”
He took her by the hand. “My horses.”
They went outside, and she saw a groom trying to yoke two elegant horses to Achilles’ chariot, one white, one tawny gold. They stamped, snorted and then reared in unison. The groom jumped out of the way. He saw Achilles and bowed.
“I’m sorry, Lord Achilles. They are usually cooperative, but today—”
Achilles walked up to them, Briseis close behind. The horses stood alertly looking at her. Their eyes were strange—almost human. Achilles chuckled and gave each of them a rub on their faces.
“I’m sorry for the trouble,” he told the groom. “I suspect they didn’t wish to be yoked when they met Lady Briseis. I can’t blame them. It’s best to have all your resources available when you first encounter her.”
He turned to her. “Lady Briseis, this is Xanthos, and this is Balios.” The horses lowered their heads until their streaming manes brushed the ground.
She found herself bowing in return. They raised their heads, and she saw pity and unspeakable sadness in their eyes. She stepped back, startled.
“They are immortal,” said Achilles softly. “They know my fate and pity you your love for me.” Xanthos laid his golden head over her shoulder and Balios nuzzled her hand. “They like you. I knew they would. Now under the yoke, my friends.”
His fate. Her chest ached again. She had lived in his love for such a short time and already she had been forewarned twice of his fate. How could she bear to love this man when fate would soon intervene? Why did death follow her every step?
Achilles laid his spear on the ground and walked to the other side of the chariot to adjust the horses’ head straps and thread the reins through the rings on the yoke.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Patroklos. “Do not despair. With Achilles you must live as much as possible as though he were an ordinary man. The immortals have special knowledge, but we cannot live with that awareness of the future always in our minds. Not even he can manage that. Uncertainty and hope are as essential to man as breath.” Patroklos took her by both shoulders and they stood silently for a moment. The grooms had brought out Patroklos’s horses and chariot. He turned from her and swung up behind his driver.
Achilles pulled a last strap tight by Balios’s shoulder and returned to Briseis’s side. He lifted her high into the air.
“Wish me well,” he said.
She looked down into his face, surrounded and intersected by the bronze helmet. She placed her hand on his armor. “Guard my love well, armor of Hephaistos.” Then she put her fingertips to his lips.
He placed her back on the earth and leaned close. “I will be thinking of tonight when I’m not wearing any armor.” Then he swept his ash spear from the ground and leapt into his chariot.
His charioteer held the horses with difficulty. Briseis watched the magnificent creatures. Xanthos and Balios cast aside their sorrow and leap toward the battle—how else can one live with Achilles?
As she joined the women working in the kitchen area, she thought about fate and living with immortal knowledge. Her mother and she had performed divinations to gain that divine understanding, and it had brought them no good. Her mother had died. Briseis’s divinations on behalf of Lyrnessos had failed to save her city—or her brothers. Immortal knowledge only brought sorrow.
Briseis felt heavy with these thoughts, and she wanted to be joyous in her newfound love. She slipped away from Achilles’ camp to visit Maira. It was difficult to find the words, even with the bonds they shared, but she described her attachment to Achilles, his respect for her, his offer to bring her home as his wife and the bewildering emotions that had thundered through her—a storm she savored. Maira listened but said little. Her gleaming eyes told Briseis she understood.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Freedom and Fetters
That evening Achilles returned, gladdened by his victories on the battlefield and joyous to see her. He removed his armor and let her douse him with buckets of water to wash off the slaughter of battle until, wet and naked, he laughingly beseeched her for his clothes, or better yet, their bed.
Later, the friends Achilles most valued gathered to eat together: Patroklos, Aias, and Phoenix. Aias said little, as usual, but Phoenix charmed her with stories about the infant Achilles. Because Phoenix could have no children, he had devoted himself to the little tyke. Briseis smiled at this expression applied to Achilles, but she guessed at what lay unspoken in Phoenix’s affectionate stories: that Thetis had returned to the sea when she had failed to make her son immortal. Her grief at knowing she would someday lose her son had prevented her from enjoying his childhood. Phoenix cared for the lonely baby like a mother. He rega
led them with stories of Achilles’ tantrums when anyone but Phoenix tried to feed him and how he burped on his shoulder. Achilles finally quieted the old man’s reminiscences with an arm around him and a promise not to burp on his shoulder. They all laughed.
As the discussion moved on to a review of the day’s fighting, she felt impatience at the continuing stalemate; then, with a sick feeling, she realized what the war’s end would mean—Achilles’ death, the fate his mother foretold. She felt Achilles’ intolerable bind: he fought for Troy’s fall, but with it, he would bring his sure death.
She shook off this thought. “Please sing a tale.”
He lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes lit with a mischievous flicker.
His song celebrated Prometheus’s clever stratagems on behalf of man over Zeus, the selfish king of the gods. Briseis had never heard this story. The Greek bards in her father’s hall had sung of mortal heroes for the most part, since their gods differed from hers.
Achilles’ Zeus became tricked by his own greed, picking the sacrifice of barren bones wrapped deceptively in juicy fat. No one missed the reference to Agamemnon. Achilles, the half-immortal, described a comic scene of gods and goddesses jostling each other to better sniff the offering. Even while Briseis laughed, she trembled at the familiarity her lover felt in the world of gods, his ability to insult them without fear of reprisal. Her telling of sacred tales, even when visions filled her, had been bound by mortal limitations that Achilles could never understand.
The tale shifted to Prometheus’s courage against Zeus’s cruelty—when he lay chained to a mountain while eagles ate his innards. Was that how Achilles felt when he acceded to Agamemnon’s demands? Briseis froze with tension until at last Achilles described Prometheus breaking free with Heracles’ help.
After the feast ended, Briseis and Achilles sat talking by the fire.
“Prometheus freed himself of Zeus’s shackles,” Briseis said. “Can’t you refuse to follow Agamemnon when he acts only from greed?”
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