by Jackie Rose
“No, Patrocles, she’s exhausted, the poor girl,” Achilles answered, in a boastful tone. As I drifted back to sleep, I wondered what he was boasting about. I soon learned that it was a great point of honor among them to leave their women too sated with love to get out of bed before noon.
Hours later, coming fully awake, I felt sure that I must have been dreaming a wonderful dream, in which I had lain with the great Achilles himself. Then I became aware of the soft fleece blanket, dyed with costly purple, beneath my fingers, and of that wonderful strange aching in my legs, which had spread so wide to surround him.
It had been no dream, I really was here, in his log house, in his bed. What’s more, he intended me to stay there, because Aphrodite had answered my prayers.
I would have lain there thanking her until long after noon when the gathering heat would have driven me outside, had nature’s necessities not intruded long before then. Reluctantly, I pushed back the heavy cover and swung down my legs. My feet curled in painful anticipation of the cold-packed earth floor, which had always greeted them at home. Instead, they sank into the leopard’s luxurious hide.
As my toes caressed the soft fur, my fingers closed around themselves as I remembered how they had woven themselves through his red-gold lion’s mane. My glance fell on the magnificent suit of show armor hanging on the wall, encrusted with scenes of village life, dances and festivals. I imagined for a moment that he stood there, wearing it.
The working-women had left fennel, warm water and a square of linen on a stand in the necessary room for me. I marveled, again, that those things had appeared there without my having to fetch them from the well outside. It was yet another sign of Achilles’ power, which was now my own.
After chewing on the fragrant fennel stalks and washing my face in the basin, I returned to the main room. Wide awake by now, I was starting to wonder whether I should go out and ask the other women where I could find my breakfast or wait for this, too, to appear of its own accord.
I was spared the trouble of deciding when the door creaked open and the sun streamed in, making me wince and shade my eyes with my hand. I could barely make out Iphis, one of the women who had fed me, bathed me and put salve on my burns in preparation for Achilles the night before.
Carrying a wooden box under one arm, she stooped to pick up the sky-blue cotton Egyptian gown with her free hand. When I had pulled the dress over my head again, she asked me to sit and opened her box of combs, cosmetics, mirrors and ornaments on the table before me. She would have no easy task, I warned her, as she began piling up the unruly yellow curls, which were so much paler and less luxuriant than Achilles’ mane of golden bronze.
Dipping into the wooden box, she produced a silver headband set with pearls and kept trying to fasten my curls beneath it. As I had warned her, they kept springing free. “My hair always flies out that way,” I apologized. I jumped as she tugged a curl too hard in trying to arrange it.
“I am sorry that I have to work so quickly,” she said, “but he wants you to go out to the walls and watch him at work.” She had no need to say that 'he' was Achilles, any more than she needed to tell me what his 'work' was. She smiled as she added, “My lord Patrocles wants me to make you ready, because the men will be watching you watch him.”
At that I settled back obediently, determined not to jump no matter how hard she pulled. She was getting me ready to earn my place by reflecting his glory, and the least I could do was help her. At best, I realized, I made but a poor, dim reflection indeed.
“If you will look straight at me, mistress,” she said. After turning my head this way and that, she pulled two curls over my temples.
“You must not call me that,” I answered. “I am a captive, just as you are.”
“How did they come to capture you?” she asked, obviously resigned to the fact that she would be working here for a long time, fighting my rebel curls.
“I would not call it a capture,” I quickly replied. “He rescued me.”
I was silent, hoping she would change the subject. Instead, she asked, “How?”
“My husband, father and brothers had decided that death was better than dishonor, on my behalf,” I answered, anger making my voice rise. “They locked me in my house and took the key. I begged and begged them not to do it, but they assured me that one of them, at least, was sure to come back from the battle and free me. I pounded on the door, still pleading, but I only heard them running away.”
My voice shook with fury as I went on, “I prayed and prayed on my knees to every god on Olympus that they would send back at least one man to save me. Instead, I heard a neighbor shouting that everyone had to flee to Mount Ida because the Argives were burning the town. My house caught fire soon after that. All I could do was scream and scream, knowing that no one would find me.
“The fire reached the ceiling beams first, and one of them fell on me, pinning me beneath it as the flames came towards me. All I could do then was scream to all the gods, begging them to let the smoke suffocate me first so I would not burn alive. I had good hope of that at least: The smoke was so thick that I could hardly breathe or even see through it.
“Then I heard feet on the ground and an axe hitting the door and men shouting, ‘No, my lord, it’s too late, the whole house will fall down on top of you!’”
“’Whoever you are, help me!’ I screamed, hoping he would hear me above their voices. I kept on screaming until the smoke choked me with coughing.
“The door crashed in, and I saw that my rescuer was wearing the bronze Argive helmet that covered half his face. Then I did what I had never dreamed of doing before: I thanked all the gods that they had sent the pirates to me.”
“He lifted the beam as thought it had been a broomstick. Then he picked me up just as easily and threw me out the door. I remember how cool and bright the air seemed then, even in that hot afternoon. He ran out after me just as the house fell down behind him. It collapsed in a shower of sparks. They flew onto my shoulder, and I screamed again as he beat them out with his hands.”
I smiled faintly as I remembered the next part. “The people in the street stopped fleeing long enough to cheer him, even more loudly than his own men cheered. The young man who was waiting in his chariot, holding his horses, cheered most loudly of all. I should have known then that my rescuer was the great pirate prince Achilles himself, but I could not believe that he would endanger his own life that way. I did not know it even when he lifted me to my feet and I bent to kiss his hand. All I could manage to say through my coughing was, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
I did not even realize who he was when he lifted me into the chariot. Coughing almost as hard as I was, he said to the driver, ‘Patrocles, tell Agamemnon that this lady is for the great Achilles, as his share of the spoils.’ No matter how great Achilles was, I would rather have stayed with the man who had saved me. I did not dream that they were one and the same: that the great pirate prince was hero enough to risk his own life in the flames.”
As I told the story, I saw no reason to add that Patrocles had tied my wrists in front of me. Well, what of it? I asked myself again. He had used supple willow strips, which did not cut or burn, and he had assured me that Achilles would cut them off as soon as he met me, so that no one would see me wearing them.
No one except for the entire Argive army, I thought with some embarrassment, but they were used to the sight. They barely looked up to see the dirty, disheveled new captive, who still smelled of smoke from her burning house, being taken to their prince’s house so his women could bathe her for him.
It was not, of course, a question of subduing me, as Patrocles had assured me while I rode beside him in the wooden chariot, keeping my bound hands for balance on the bronze rim. The great Achilles would never want a woman brought to him against her will: Too many came to him eagerly. I had been bound merely as a way of telling the other soldiers that must not try to take me for themselves. As I told Iphis how kind Patrocles had been, she
leaned forward eagerly to catch every word. Her fingers fell still, letting my curls fall where they may. That told me that the bond between them might be even stronger than the one between Achilles and me.
For her sake, I went on to describe Patrocles’ goodness in even greater detail. He had held his hand over my eyes, I said, so that I would not see the dead. I was grateful for that favor, because my brothers’ bodies might very well be among them, and I had no wish to see them there.
He had even assured me that Achilles was going to marry me as soon as we returned to his homeland. I had to smile at that, knowing that Achilles would do no such thing: he would take some great princess as his bride. “But in any event,” Patrocles had told me, “We Argives have a saying that any woman will forgive any man for anything after she spends one night with him.” That had made me smile too, at such unbridled arrogance.
And so Patrocles’ kindness had cheered me, I told her, even before Achilles had shown me how very much I had to be cheerful about.
“Then, best of all, I learned that Achilles was the man who had saved me. Even better, the bards had not exaggerated in saying how beautiful he was.”
Beautiful was not the word, I thought, for the excitement, the force, the radiant arrogance he carried with him.
“But what is your story?” I asked. “How did they capture you?”
“Nothing so exciting,” Iphis answered. “My former master bought me in Egypt to be his wife’s maid. Soon after that the Argives captured Skyros, where he lived.”
She smiled ruefully. “If I had stayed in Egypt just a bit longer, I could have gone free with Prince Moses, but I suppose it’s just as well I did not. I would never have met my lord Patrocles, then, and I don’t suppose Moses would have had much use for a ladies’ maid in the desert.” Her face brightened as she went on, “I can assure you that my lord Patrocles’ service is much lighter than Pharaoh’s.”
“And much more pleasant, too, I imagine.”
She could not help smiling as she answered, “Much. And I had never expected it. My job was adorning the captives for their new lords, as I had learned to adorn my old mistress on Skyros. Achilles brought Patrocles to the room where I was working on them and told him he could choose the prettiest for himself.” Her comb stopped briefly as she smiled at the memory. “Patrocles said that he wanted the one who was trying to make the others look as pretty as she was.”
He saw your kindness, I thought, as well as your beauty. For her sake I was glad of it, despite her disreputable ancestry. I had, of course, heard the scandalous report of the renegade prince who had led the Hebrew slaves in escaping. I should have known, without being told, that she been one of them. She proclaimed it by her exotic accent, her luminous olive skin and her lustrous black waterfall of hair, all perfectly set off by her simple, clinging white cotton gown. Even her name sounded suspiciously close to 'Isis', the Egyptian goddess’ name. Privately, I thought that Prince Moses would no doubt have found a use for her, just as Patrocles had done.
And I was glad, for her sake, that Patrocles had been the one to do so. This was not only because of his kindness, but because he seemed like a blurred copy of his great cousin, and even a blurred copy was beautiful enough. She deserved no less. He was obviously as generous as his famous cousin, too. Iphis wore a belt made of tiny golden leaves, extending from her waist to her hips. It was obviously his gift and would have been a very costly one, if he had not simply stolen it.
I was even happier that she had not fled with Prince Moses, as I assured her, because then I would have lost her skills as a lady’s maid. They were considerable, as I could see. She had rimmed her great black eyes with Egyptian kohl to make them seem even larger, but she had done it so subtly that I could only see the cosmetic when her face was close to mine. From any greater distance, I saw only that her eyes were beautiful.
“You’ll need all our skills to help me,” I said, as she kept trying to bind my hair beneath the silver band, only to have one curl fly out as another was captured. Sighing, she pushed the strays beneath the band again. I realized how gentle her hands were, compared to my mother’s, when she had tried to same task. The same gentle hands had soothed me with scented oil in the bath. Remembering that, I was suddenly struck by a terrible thought: Had she lain in that bath in turn?
“Did Achilles have you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. If he had, then I could see myself in the future sharing her fate, bathing another woman in perfumed oil to prepare her for my lord. If that ever happened, I decided, I might very well find my way to the desert, to look for Prince Moses myself, for then I would truly be a slave.
To my relief, Iphis seemed offended by the question. “He gave me to my lord Patrocles,” she replied firmly. “And the first thing my lord told me is that we must always try to show our gratitude to the great Prince Achilles, for the kindness he had shown us.”
She was careful to follow Patrocles’ directions. When I had tried to thank her as she bathed me, she had answered that I must instead thank the great Achilles, who had taken me into his care. “You may thank him when he greets you personally,” she had said.
“And Patrocles knew that Achilles had not loved you?” I asked.
“Patrocles knew it,” she answered simply, “because he was my first.” She smiled again at the memory. “Not that that was any advantage for him. I knew he wanted me to hold him close at night, but I had never seen a man’s spear before. I almost screamed with terror when I saw his. So there he was, the great warrior, pointing to his spear and my sheath, and telling me how much pleasure they would bring us when we brought them together. He warned me that there would be a bit of pain and bleeding first, but I must not let them frighten me, because the pleasure would soon replace them. And I soon had reason to tell him that he had told the truth.”
“Then I envy you, Iphis,” I said, with a rueful smile, wishing that I had learned about the spear and sheath that way. Then my thoughts turned to a question that concerned me more.
“When Achilles did not have a household priestess, did you pray for both of them?” I asked.
“I would have done it happily, but I may only pray to our one Hebrew God. Patrocles was afraid that we would offend your own gods and goddesses if I did.”
Aphrodite might well be offended, I thought, considering how much she has given you. But I had no wish to insult my new friend by saying so, especially when I heard her next words.
“Achilles chose another before you named Chryseis, but the great king of kings Agamemnon soon took her for himself.”
Before I could ask about this other captive, Iphis quickly took a mirror from the table beside me and held it up for my approval, where the sun would strike it coming through the window.
“You look beautiful,” she assured me.
I tried to shove back the tendrils that were still creeping over the headband, especially the one long curl that hung down to my neck, but she gently pushed my hand away.
“You look better that way, without every hair in place,” she assured me. “It makes it seem as though your hair naturally fell this way.”
But still I was not satisfied with the reflection that stared back at me.
“I still need face paint, and layers of it,” I said. “My mother always told me that I looked good enough, if I used enough cosmetics.”
“Don’t you know yet that your mother was wrong?” Iphis demanded. “Achilles could have had any woman, captive or free, and he chose you without your face painted.”
“He felt kindly towards me because he had saved my life,” I told her.
“Nonsense,” she answered briskly. “You are a very beautiful girl. You have lovely round soft cheeks, and all you need is a bit of pink to play them up, with a bit more to brighten your lips.” Those lips were too small, my nose turned up and my eyes were too pale blue, as I knew only too well, but it was tactful of her not to say so.
“Almost, but not quite,” she said, after the cosmetics had bee
n applied. Turning my head this way and that again, she took a small razor from her toolbox. “Your eyebrows are too close together,” she decided. “I’ll shave the space between them, and then your eyes will seem larger.” She did, and they did.
After a few final deft strokes with her combs, she took the mirror from the table and invited me to examine her handiwork again. I could barely believe the results.
“You have made me look beautiful!”
“You are beautiful,” she replied firmly, “even if you are the only one who does not know it.”
“Then perhaps I can reflect his glory, after all. I am trying hard to do it.”
“Well, Briseis,” she answered, applying a last dot of pink to my lips. “Everyone around him is trying to do the same thing.”
As I walked towards the door, she stopped me, to show me once again how much I had to learn about my new role. “You must wait for one of the men to open it,” she said. “It is the sign of their respect for your lord.”
There was no need to tell me to wait when we came to the courtyard. Iphis and I together could not have budged that massive bar of wood and bronze that stood between the courtyard and the Argive camp outside. Three of the men hurried forward to raise it as I waited.
“Achilles could have lifted that by himself,” Iphis told me. “But as you can imagine, he is hard at work now.”
I wondered how long it would be until I, too, had started calling it 'hard work' instead of 'killing'.
* * *
Outside, the brilliant sun was making the blue sea shimmer like stars. It seemed an even brighter blue, in contrast to the black ships filling the harbor. The salty air from the sea mingled with the smells of wood and pitch, in an intoxicating brew. The sea slapped against the ships and the gulls cawed in rousing harmony. It all came together to remind me that I had entered a brand new world, made bright and warm by Achilles as the center of it.