Hand of Fire

by Judith Starkston

  She stood beside Patroklos while Achilles called on the two heralds as his witnesses and declared, “If ever the Greeks need me to beat back destruction, they will not find me on the battlefield. I will be by my ships, and it will be on Agamemnon’s head that his men perish without me.” The trap tightened until none could breathe.

  Dazed, Briseis followed the heralds. The sun hung low on the horizon. The final line of the Myrmidon ships lay ahead—the end of Achilles’ camp. She saw grim-faced soldiers dragging buckets of seawater from the shore and scrubbing everything in their camp—purification now that the plague’s source had been undone, but at what cost to her? When they reached the last of the Myrmidon ships, she stopped and refused to move. She would not leave Achilles’ camp.

  Agamemnon’s chief herald took her arm, but she turned on him, possessed by rage. “Think what you are doing! You are bringing your own destruction. Do you think Lord Achilles will fight in Agamemnon’s war after that wretched king has taken me and stripped Achilles of his honor? What will happen when the best warrior does not fight for you? Think, before you drag me like a sheep to the slaughter.”

  The two heralds drew away from her in alarm. She knew the tales about her made the men fear her. Perhaps she could terrify them enough to let her go. They certainly had reason to fear what lay ahead if they did not.

  “Mark my words. You are the sheep sacrificed on fate’s altar. You will die if I am dragged to Agamemnon.”

  She ran toward Achilles’ shelter.

  The heralds froze. Then she heard the pounding of their footsteps as they chased her down. Her arm jerked back as one of them caught it. She rolled to the ground and they hauled her to her feet, forcing her along between the two of them. The guards at the stockade gates of Agamemnon’s camp drew back from them as they came through, and the heralds threw her into one of the women’s huts, tossing her to onto the floor as they might a rotted carcass. She heard them clamp a bar across the door.

  The last daylight came dimly through the smoke hole. She called softly for help to Agamemnon’s women. As the heralds dragged her in, she’d had no chance to see anyone, but Maira must be there. No one came. They’d put her in the hut furthest from the kitchen area. It had only a few pallets laid out in it. She called more loudly, but gave it up when no one answered. None of the huts were very far from Agamemnon’s shelter. He always held his possessions close. How could she expect captives to risk his anger?

  She lay down on a pallet and eventually slept. The old nightmares returned: burning streets, strangled babies, mangled bodies, and her brothers lying in pools of blood; then, as she watched them die, they changed into one form, Achilles, white, drained of life, unreachable. She awoke damp with sweat from her frantic dreams. Someone dragged at the door’s bar. It opened slowly.

  She sat up. Against the backdrop of a cook fire’s light, she saw Maira.

  Maira knelt by her. “I would have come sooner, but Agamemnon’s heralds kept watch. How are you? I’m so sorry.”

  Briseis clutched Maira to her. She sobbed in relief at hearing the gentleness of her friend’s voice.

  “What am I going to do?” Briseis buried her face in Maira’s shoulder and wept. Finally she pulled away and sat up. Maira poured her a cup of cool water from a pitcher she’d brought in.

  “What did you say to the heralds?” Maira asked. “I heard them warning the others to stay away from the seer prophesying evil. Are they fearful of some divination you’ve made?”

  Briseis shook her head. “I made no divination. Achilles believes the only way to force Agamemnon to give me back is to withdraw from the fight. It doesn’t take a seer to understand what will happen to them without Achilles fighting. I tried to frighten them into letting me return to Achilles, but here I am. You won’t get in trouble for coming to see me, will you?”

  Maira shrugged. “Agamemnon called the heralds into his shelter.” Through the open door, she indicated the grand wooden structure Agamemnon had ordered built for himself. “I don’t think Agamemnon means to keep you locked up, anyway. The heralds just panicked. I’m sure you can come out and sit with us now. You must be hungry. Those foolish heralds can’t expect you to starve.”

  Over food, Maira and the other women reported what gossip they had gathered about the assembly—not much more than she already knew. One of the women, in horrified tones, described Achilles advancing on Agamemnon with his sword drawn, clearly about to kill the king. That part was satisfying—Agamemnon cowering as Achilles fought to keep her. Then, said the woman, no one knew what had happened—a mist, a cry of rage from Achilles, and then he sheathed his sword. The woman described how Agamemnon claimed a victory and reminded the assembly that he, the most powerful of the Greek kings, would take Achilles’ prize. Briseis could see Agamemnon’s swagger. No wonder the assembly had filled Achilles with uncontrollable anger.

  The others nodded when the woman said it was shameful for Achilles to attack the great king Agamemnon. They mourned their lost families, but if forced to choose sides among the hated Greeks, they already felt an allegiance to the lord who held them captive. The women understood they’d be loaded on ships by their captors whether the Greeks sailed away in victory or in retreat, so they were gradually accommodating the sorrow in their hearts to accept their new master. Briseis didn’t blame them, although she could not imagine feeling anything but hatred toward the greedy fool of a king.

  Agamemnon’s chief herald appeared outside the king’s shelter. He looked over at Briseis and hesitated. She sat up taller when he walked toward her. Despite his obvious fear, he told her to follow him. Maira laid her hand briefly on Briseis’s arm in support. Briseis’s knees buckled as she stood, but she locked them underneath her, unwilling to show her fear before this rat of Agamemnon’s.

  The massive pine timbers that formed the entryway of Agamemnon’s shelter glowered down at her as she followed the herald onto the porch. When she stepped inside, she was taken aback by the tapestries hanging on every wall, the elaborately carved chairs and tables, the conspicuous piles of gold and silver cups, pitchers and platters on shelves.

  Agamemnon sat alone. She was shoved forward until she stood directly in front of Agamemnon’s chair; then the herald slid outside. She heard the door shut. Agamemnon took a long drink of wine from a gold cup. His eyes moved over her body. He was slavering about his mouth and his hand rubbed slowly at the bulge in his lap. His eyes, when she held his gaze, revealed drunkenness and fear. He reminded her of Mynes.

  He leaned forward abruptly and grabbed for her arm. She stepped out of his reach. He lunged at her, grasping her in an iron grip.

  “You’re mine now.” He yanked her closer. She could smell his breath. “Do you hear that, Achilles?” he bawled. “I’m plowing your woman. How do you like that?” She saw his terror.

  He feared Achilles. Loathing seared her belly. He would fear her too.

  She could not stab him. He wasn’t that drunk, and his men would kill her if she did. She saw a vision of a priestess with arms uplifted, calling down a curse from the heavens, and she freed her arm from his grasp. He was a hollow king and she did not need to kill him, only terrify him. Straightening to her tallest, she lifted both arms to the sky and pulled down power as if grabbing hold of lightning. Her eyes blazed as she called down the curse of the wolf.

  “I am a sacred keeper of the divine power of the wolves. You have contemplated my violation and have called down upon yourself the ripping jaws and piercing teeth of the wolves’ unstoppable violence. Hunters in the pack, they will track you down no matter where you hide. Shiver with terror. The wolves have caught your scent. They speed to your doom.”

  Agamemnon shuddered and recoiled in his chair. “No!” he cried out. “They killed that priestess! Not you—”

  Howling as a wolf celebrating the kill, she loomed over him, drawing her outstretched arms powerfully in and out, their shadows entangling him in winding darkness.

  Her words darkened into a menacing grow
l. “You have offended Kamrusepa, the goddess of the mountain, by contemplating violence against her priestess. Fool, to think you can touch the goddess’s chosen one and live! The curse of her ravening wolves will consume you. Their claws will gouge your eyes. Their savage teeth will chew your throat, tear off your ears. In their hunger they will rip out your manhood by the roots and devour it.”

  He cowered, pulling his purple cloak over his face. The bulge under his tunic had disappeared. She hoped fear kept him a shriveled worm forever. Boast about that, great king.

  Briseis turned and left the shelter, not looking behind her. She began to shake. A figure came toward her in the darkness. Instinctively, she fled from it.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Howling in the Dark

  Maira caught Briseis around the shoulders. In the same women’s hut as before, Maira wrapped her in a blanket, rubbing her arms and back to sooth the shaking. Then Agamemnon’s voice rang out, bellowing for his herald. Briseis felt the bands tighten around her head. Lights flashed and collided in her sight, blinding her.

  A moment later the herald’s shadow darkened the doorway. “Keep her locked in there. She tried to curse Lord Agamemnon. She goes nowhere. Make the other women move out of that hut so she’s always alone. Never near the king at any time. She’s a menace. We should have left her cursing Achilles.”

  “Send her back,” Maira said. “I will take her—you needn’t fear that you will have to come near her.”

  “No. It’s past that. Lord Agamemnon’s honor is at stake. Keep her out of sight in this hut or one of the men will kill her.” His voice dropped low. “Then Achilles will never be persuaded to defend us. First Chryseis brings the plague, now this woman threatens us with wolves. At least you can kill a wolf with a sword.”

  “Not these wolves. I know,” said Maira. “I have watched them attack. No man can see them but the one they devour, and that one screams and writhes in agony.”

  The herald made a guttural sound of horror.

  She pulled the door shut, closing him out.

  Maira added wood to the fire. She lit an oil lamp and sat next to Briseis. “You don’t need to fear Agamemnon,” Maira said. “Whatever he did to you tonight, he will not repeat. Calm yourself and remember who you are.”

  Gradually the warmth stilled her body’s shaking. The lights no longer swam before her eyes, but her head throbbed. She wanted to say that Agamemnon hadn’t harmed her in the way Maira imagined. But she couldn’t speak; her throat and chest ached. She drifted into sleep.

  Fifteen days passed in dreary sameness locked inside the hut, broken only by Maira’s brief visits to bring her food. Briseis told Maira what occurred inside Agamemnon’s shelter. At first she tried to persuade Maira that she had used the wolf curse only as a trick, but Maira silenced her. Maira had seen the real effects of Hatepa’s fears, and in the same way, she told Briseis, the curse had overpowered Agamemnon. When Briseis had needed it, the power came to her from the gods. Perhaps Maira was right.

  The rest of Agamemnon’s women kept clear of her. The few women who had been living in that particular hut dragged out their pallets, grumbling about having to crowd in with the others. Before this fatal quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, Briseis had won goodwill among these women with her healing, but they forgot those feelings toward her now. They believed in the fear they saw in the men and did not trust her. Even without the story of the curse, the antagonism between Agamemnon and Achilles had seeped into these captives. They identified with Lord Agamemnon and saw her as hostile to them.

  Briseis had long hours to think.

  The wolf curse had spared her being violated by Agamemnon, but she worried that she had also cursed herself. Agamemnon’s terror cut her off from any contact with him, and so she had no way to persuade him to release her. She could have appealed to his greed by reminding him that the only way to gain Troy’s riches was to have Achilles fight for them. And the only way he would fight was if she were returned. Trapped in the hut, she could do nothing. If her solitude offered safety from Agamemnon, that safety seemed bound to doom both her and Achilles—as well as the Greek army.

  Sometimes in her despair, the recent horrors of the plague filled her mind with bleeding sores, blackened, rotting flesh. She wondered why the Trojans had not overtaken the Greeks while they were weakened with the plague. Had the plague struck the Trojans also? That made no sense. Apollo’s anger had been directed at Agamemnon’s offense. Perhaps the Trojans had welcomed a respite from the fighting, not realizing the source of their reprieve or the opportunity it presented.

  If the Trojans had not taken advantage of the plague’s damage to the Greek army, they clearly benefited from Achilles’ withdrawal from the battle. During her brief conversations with Maira, Maira reported the daily retreat of the Greek army and the massive losses despite occasional temporary successes by individual Greek kings. Such wearing defeat of the Greeks could not go on indefinitely.

  She hated her dark prison, but she worried even more for Achilles. The loss of his comrades’ lives, when he faced his responsibility for it, would destroy him, molten stone though he had become. He had never been willing to abandon them—not for the promise of a happy life in Phthia with her, not for anything. At some point the weight of his friends’ deaths would drive him back to the battle, no matter how much he longed for her return, for his honor. She accepted that—almost hoped for a speedy return to the fighting so that some part of Achilles the man could be left whole, even though that would leave her forever Agamemnon’s slave.

  Greatest of warriors, Achilles could not use his strength to free himself or her. Greatest of healers, he could not cure their pain. She hated Agamemnon for knowing too well how to trap Achilles and for being too stupid to see his trap harmed himself as much as Achilles. At times she even hated Achilles for allowing himself to be trapped.

  She also longed for him. Longed to hold him and drive back the black despair. Enclose him and feel alive again. Waves of desire flooded her and she ached with separation, but he didn’t even visit her dreams as he once had. That felt like a betrayal.

  She needed to escape this dark tomb, to be out doing things, busy with people, even if she could not be with Achilles. Instead, she stayed trapped in the dim light that came through the smoke hole without even stitchery to pass the time. Thank the gods the days had lengthened so that at least she had a long stretch of light. Sometimes she sat and stared up at that circle of sunshine. More often she paced back and forth in the tiny space over and over, keeping herself from screaming only by throwing herself on her pallet and pounding her fists until her arms ached.

  Eurome had kept her promise to come see her, but Agamemnon’s men refused to let her speak to Briseis. Maira relayed Eurome’s report. Achilles had spent hours weeping at the edge of the sea. The women guessed his mother must have come to him. When he returned to his shelter, he sat alone, grimly determined each day, not fighting. Patroklos could approach him, but no one else dared. Sometimes he played the lyre and sang tales so haunted that Eurome had to block her ears or spend the day weeping.

  On the sixteenth day of her captivity, the fighting grew so close that Briseis heard it clearly through the walls of the hut. Had the Trojans driven the Greeks to the camp? Such a total defeat of the Greeks would mean slaughter within the camp. With dread she realized neither she nor the other women would be safe in such chaos and confusion of loyalties. It wouldn’t be enough that amidst the incoming Trojans might be warriors from their own towns—more likely the Greeks would kill the women to prevent them from helping the Trojan troops. The captive women wouldn’t count for much when weighed against the Greek warriors’ own lives.

  Briseis could no longer hear the sound of women’s chores under the battle clamor. She pulled her tunic away from her clammy skin and rubbed her sweaty palms on her skirt. Were the Trojans already in their camp? She pounded on the door, begging to be let out, but no one answered.

  The screaming of the wo
unded and the cries of triumph rose to a crescendo. Then with painful slowness the battle noise receded. Had the Greeks managed to push them back?

  Suddenly a thunderbolt cracked and even the air in her hut smelled burnt. What was happening now? Achilles had told her the gods intervened in the battle. Was Zeus, the Thunderer, portending disaster for the Greeks? In answer, the air and earth shattered with three more cracks accompanied by lightning so bright and close it lit the hut through the smoke hole.

  Sulfur and ash, despair and death: she knew the king of the gods had declared doom for the Greeks. A moment later the divine thunder echoed in the rumble of hoof and boot as once more the Trojans pushed forward their attack. Horses, mortally struck, screamed. Men bellowed their death throes. The battle crashed against the ramparts that defended the Greek encampment.

  She sat alone amidst the terror, her head buried in her arms, through the long afternoon until even the dim light from the smoke hole vanished. With the dying light, the battle screams ceased and quiet fell around her like dew. Whatever cataclysmic forces had been at work, they had stopped when the sun dipped below the horizon.

  Into the welcome silence, women’s voices, roughly commanded by men, came to her. She stayed silent, unwilling to face those men if someone should respond to her knocking. A woman wailed in grief. Others joined the ululation. A gruff command silenced them. Familiar cooking sounds followed. The smell of roasting meat reminded her that she had not eaten since morning.

  The bar scraped across and the door opened. Maira beckoned. She whispered that the Greeks were so defeated and hard-pressed, they wouldn’t, she was willing to guess, concern themselves with Briseis and her wolf curse. No guard had been set that day on her hut, in any case. The women were short-handed with all the tasks and wouldn’t speak up if she made herself useful. Briseis didn’t care what happened as long as she could escape the hut.