The Song of Achilles Read online

  This was well worded. Wealth and reputation were the things our people had always killed for.

  “They have asked me to send a delegation of men from Phthia, and I have agreed.” He waited for the murmuring to settle before adding, “Though I will not take any man who does not wish to go. And I will not lead the army myself.”

  “Who will lead it?” someone shouted.

  “That is not yet determined,” Peleus said. But I saw his eyes flicker to his son.

  No, I thought. My hand tightened on the edge of the chair. Not yet. Across from me Thetis’ face was cool and still, her eyes distant. She knew this was coming, I realized. She wants him to go. Chiron and the rose cave seemed impossibly far away; a childish idyll. I understood, suddenly, the weight of Chiron’s words: war was what the world would say Achilles was born for. That his hands and swift feet were fashioned for this alone—the cracking of Troy’s mighty walls. They would throw him among thousands of Trojan spears and watch with triumph as he stained his fair hands red.

  Peleus gestured to Phoinix, his oldest friend, at one of the first tables. “Lord Phoinix will note the names of all who wish to fight.”

  There was a movement at the benches, as men started to rise. But Peleus held up his hand.

  “There is more.” He lifted a piece of linen, dark with dense markings. “Before Helen’s betrothal to King Menelaus, she had many suitors. It seems these suitors swore an oath to protect her, whosoever might win her hand. Agamemnon and Menelaus now charge these men to fulfill their oath and bring her back to her rightful husband.” He handed the linen sheet to the herald.

  I stared. An oath. In my mind, the sudden image of a brazier, and the spill of blood from a white goat. A rich hall, filled with towering men.

  The herald lifted the list. The room seemed to tilt, and my eyes would not focus. He began to read.

  Antenor.

  Eurypylus.

  Machaon.

  I recognized many of the names; we all did. They were the heroes and kings of our time. But they were more to me than that. I had seen them, in a stone chamber heavy with fire-smoke.

  Agamemnon. A memory of a thick black beard; a brooding man with narrowed, watchful eyes.

  Odysseus. The scar that wrapped his calf, pink as gums.

  Ajax. Twice as large as any man in the room, with his huge shield behind him.

  Philoctetes, the bowman.

  Menoitiades.

  The herald paused a moment, and I heard the murmur: who? My father had not distinguished himself in the years since my exile. His fame had diminished; his name was forgotten. And those who did know him had never heard of a son. I sat frozen, afraid to move lest I give myself away. I am bound to this war.

  The herald cleared his throat.

  Idomeneus.

  Diomedes.

  “Is that you? You were there?” Achilles had turned back to face me. His voice was low, barely audible, but still I feared that someone might hear it.

  I nodded. My throat was too dry for words. I had thought only of Achilles’ danger, of how I would try to keep him here, if I could. I had not even considered myself.

  “Listen. It is not your name anymore. Say nothing. We will think what to do. We will ask Chiron.” Achilles never spoke like that, each word cutting off the next in haste. His urgency brought me back to myself, a little, and I took heart from his eyes on mine. I nodded again.

  The names kept coming, and memories came with them. Three women on a dais, and one of them Helen. A pile of treasure, and my father’s frown. The stone beneath my knees. I had thought I dreamt it. I had not.

  When the herald had finished, Peleus dismissed the men. They stood as one, benches scraping, eager to get to Phoinix to enlist. Peleus turned to us. “Come. I would speak further with you both.” I looked to Thetis, to see if she would come too, but she was gone.

  WE SAT BY PELEUS’ FIRESIDE; he had offered us wine, barely watered. Achilles refused it. I took a cup, but did not drink. The king was in his old chair, the one closest to the fire, with its cushions and high back. His eyes rested on Achilles.

  “I have called you home with the thought that you might wish to lead this army.”

  It was spoken. The fire popped; its wood was green.

  Achilles met his father’s gaze. “I have not finished yet with Chiron.”

  “You have stayed on Pelion longer than I did, than any hero before.”

  “That does not mean I must run to help the sons of Atreus every time they lose their wives.”

  I thought Peleus might smile at that, but he did not. “I do not doubt that Menelaus rages at the loss of his wife, but the messenger came from Agamemnon. He has watched Troy grow rich and ripe for years, and now thinks to pluck her. The taking of Troy is a feat worthy of our greatest heroes. There may be much honor to be won from sailing with him.”

  Achilles’ mouth tightened. “There will be other wars.”

  Peleus did not nod, exactly. But I saw him register the truth of it. “What of Patroclus, then? He is called to serve.”

  “He is no longer the son of Menoitius. He is not bound by the oath.”

  Pious Peleus raised an eyebrow. “There is some shuffling there.”

  “I do not think so.” Achilles lifted his chin. “The oath was undone when his father disowned him.”

  “I do not wish to go,” I said, softly.

  Peleus regarded us both for a moment. Then he said, “Such a thing is not for me to decide. I will leave it to you.”

  I felt the tension slide from me a little. He would not expose me.

  “Achilles, men are coming here to speak with you, kings sent by Agamemnon.”

  Outside the window, I heard the ocean’s steady whisper against the sand. I could smell the salt.

  “They will ask me to fight,” Achilles said. It was not a question.

  “They will.”

  “You wish me to give them audience.”

  “I do.”

  There was quiet again. Then Achilles said, “I will not dishonor them, or you. I will hear their reasons. But I say to you that I do not think they will convince me.”

  I saw that Peleus was surprised, a little, by his son’s certainty, but not displeased. “That is also not for me to decide,” he said mildly.

  The fire popped again, spitting out its sap.

  Achilles knelt, and Peleus placed one hand on his head. I was used to seeing Chiron do this, and Peleus’ hand looked withered by comparison, threaded with trembling veins. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that he had been a warrior, that he had walked with gods.

  ACHILLES’ ROOM was as we had left it, except for the cot, which had been removed in our absence. I was glad; it was an easy excuse, in case anyone asked why we shared a bed. We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake in this room loving him in silence.

  Later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. “If you have to go, you know I will go with you.” We slept.

  Chapter Twelve

  I WOKE TO THE RED OF MY EYELIDS STRAINING OUT THE SUN. I was cold, my right shoulder exposed to the breezes of the window, the one that faced the sea. The space beside me on the bed was empty, but the pillow still held the shape of him, and the sheets smelled of us both.

  I had spent so many mornings alone in this room, as he visited his mother, I did not think it was strange to find him gone. My eyes closed, and I sank again into the trailing thoughts of dreams. Time passed, and the sun came hot over the windowsill. The birds were up, and the servants, and even the men. I heard their voices from the beach and the practice hall, the rattle and bang of chores. I sat up. His sandals were overturned beside the bed, forgotten. It was not unusual; he went barefoot most places.

  He had gone to breakfast, I guessed. He was letting me sleep. Half of me wanted to stay in the room until his return, but that was cowardice. I had a right to a place by his side now, and I would not let the eyes of the servants drive me away. I pulled on my tu
nic and left to find him.

  HE WAS NOT IN the great hall, busy with servants removing the same platters and bowls there had always been. He was not in Peleus’ council chamber, hung with purple tapestry and the weapons of former Phthian kings. And he was not in the room where we used to play the lyre. The trunk that had once kept our instruments sat forlorn in the room’s center.

  He was not outside, either, in the trees he and I had climbed. Or by the sea, on the jutting rocks where he waited for his mother. Nor on the practice field where men sweated through drills, clacking their wooden swords.

  I do not need to say that my panic swelled, that it became a live thing, slippery and deaf to reason. My steps grew hurried; the kitchen, the basement, the storerooms with their amphorae of oil and wine. And still I did not find him.

  It was midday when I sought out Peleus’ room. It was a sign of the size of my unease that I went at all: I had never spoken to the old man alone before. The guards outside stopped me when I tried to enter. The king was at rest, they said. He was alone and would see no one.

  “But is Achilles—” I gulped, trying not to make a spectacle of myself, to feed the curiosity I saw in their eyes. “Is the prince with him?”

  “He is alone,” one of them repeated.

  I went to Phoinix next, the old counselor who had looked after Achilles when he was a boy. I was almost choking with fear as I walked to his stateroom, a modest square chamber at the palace’s heart. He had clay tablets in front of him, and on them the men’s marks from the night before, angular and crisscrossing, pledging their arms to the war against Troy.

  “The prince Achilles—” I said. I spoke haltingly, my voice thick with panic. “I cannot find him.”

  He looked up with some surprise. He had not heard me come in the room; his hearing was poor, and his eyes when they met mine were rheumy and opaque with cataract.

  “Peleus did not tell you then.” His voice was soft.

  “No.” My tongue was like a stone in my mouth, so big I could barely speak around it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said kindly. “His mother has him. She took him last night as he was sleeping. They are gone, no one knows where.”

  Later I would see the red marks where my nails had dug through my palms. No one knows where. To Olympus perhaps, where I could never follow. To Africa, or India. To some village where I would not think to look.

  Phoinix’s gentle hands guided me back to my room. My mind twisted desperately from thought to thought. I would return to Chiron and seek counsel. I would walk the countryside, calling his name. She must have drugged him, or tricked him. He would not have gone willingly.

  As I huddled in our empty room, I imagined it: the goddess leaning over us, cold and white beside the warmth of our sleeping bodies. Her fingernails prick into his skin as she lifts him, her neck is silvery in the window’s moonlight. His body lolls on her shoulder, sleeping or spelled. She carries him from me as a soldier might carry a corpse. She is strong; it takes only one of her hands to keep him from falling.

  I did not wonder why she had taken him. I knew. She had wanted to separate us, the first chance she had, as soon as we were out of the mountains. I was angry at how foolish we had been. Of course she would do this; why had I thought we would be safe? That Chiron’s protection would extend here, where it never had before.

  She would take him to the caves of the sea and teach him contempt for mortals. She would feed him with the food of the gods and burn his human blood from his veins. She would shape him into a figure meant to be painted on vases, to be sung of in songs, to fight against Troy. I imagined him in black armor, a dark helmet that left him nothing but eyes, bronze greaves that covered his feet. He stands with a spear in each hand and does not know me.

  Time folded in on itself, closed over me, buried me. Outside my window, the moon moved through her shapes and came up full again. I slept little and ate less; grief pinned me to the bed like an anchor. It was only my pricking memory of Chiron that finally drove me forth. You do not give up so easily as you once did.

  I went to Peleus. I knelt before him on a wool rug, woven bright with purple. He started to speak, but I was too quick for him. One of my hands went to clasp his knees, the other reached upwards, to seize his chin with my hand. The pose of supplication. It was a gesture I had seen many times, but had never made myself. I was under his protection now; he was bound to treat me fairly, by the law of the gods.

  “Tell me where he is,” I said.

  He did not move. I could hear the muffled batter of his heart against his chest. I had not realized how intimate supplication was, how closely we would be pressed. His ribs were sharp beneath my cheek; the skin of his legs was soft and thin with age.

  “I do not know,” he said, and the words echoed down the chamber, stirring the guards. I felt their eyes on my back. Suppliants were rare in Phthia; Peleus was too good a king for such desperate measures.

  I pulled at his chin, tugging his face to mine. He did not resist.

  “I do not believe you,” I said.

  A moment passed.

  “Leave us,” he said. The words were for the guards. They shuffled their feet, but obeyed. We were alone.

  He leaned forward, down to my ear. He whispered, “Scyros.”

  A place, an island. Achilles.

  When I stood, my knees ached, as if I had been kneeling a long time. Perhaps I had. I do not know how many moments passed between us in that long hall of Phthian kings. Our eyes were level now, but he would not meet my gaze. He had answered me because he was a pious man, because I had asked him as a suppliant, because the gods demanded it. He would not have otherwise. There was a dullness in the air between us, and something heavy, like anger.

  “I will need money,” I told him. I do not know where these words came from. I had never spoken so before, to anyone. But I had nothing left to lose.

  “Speak to Phoinix. He will give it to you.”

  I nodded my head, barely. I should have done much more. I should have knelt again and thanked him, rubbed my forehead on his expensive rug. I didn’t. Peleus moved to stare out the open window; the sea was hidden by the house’s curve, but we could both hear it, the distant hiss of waves against sand.

  “You may go,” he told me. He meant it to be cold, I think, and dismissive; a displeased king to his subject. But all I heard was his weariness.

  I nodded once more and left.

  THE GOLD THAT Phoinix gave me would have carried me to Scyros and back twice over. The ship’s captain stared when I handed it to him. I saw his eyes flicking over it, weighing its worth, counting what it could buy him.

  “You will take me?”

  My eagerness displeased him. He did not like to see desperation in those who sought passage; haste and a free hand spoke of hidden crimes. But the gold was too much for him to object. He made a noise, grudging, of acceptance, and sent me to my berth.

  I had never been at sea before and was surprised at how slow it was. The boat was a big-bellied trader, making its lazy rounds of the islands, sharing the fleece, oil, and carved furniture of the mainland with the more isolated kingdoms. Every night we put in at a different port to refill our water pots and unload our stores. During the days I stood at the ship’s prow, watching the waves fall away from our black-tarred hull, waiting for the sight of land. At another time I would have been enchanted with it all: the names of the ship’s parts, halyard, mast, stern; the color of the water; the scrubbed-clean smell of the winds. But I barely noticed these things. I thought only of the small island flung out somewhere in front of me, and the fair-haired boy I hoped I would find there.

  THE BAY OF SCYROS was so small that I did not see it until we had swung around the rocky island’s southern rim and were almost upon it. Our ship narrowly squeezed between its extending arms, and the sailors leaned over the sides to watch the rocks slide by, holding their breath. Once we were inside, the water was utterly calm, and the men had to row us the rest of the way. The confines w
ere difficult to maneuver; I did not envy the captain’s voyage out.

  “We are here,” he told me, sullenly. I was already walking for the gangway.

  The cliff face rose sharply in front of me. There was a path of steps carved into the rock, coiling up to the palace, and I took them. At their top were scrubby trees and goats, and the palace, modest and dull, made half from stone and half from wood. If it had not been the only building in sight, I might not have known it for the king’s home. I went to the door and entered.

  The hall was narrow and dim, the air dingy with the smell of old dinners. At the far end two thrones sat empty. A few guards idled at tables, dicing. They looked up.

  “Well?” one asked me.

  “I am here to see King Lycomedes,” I said. I lifted my chin, so they would know I was a man of some importance. I had worn the finest tunic I could find—one of Achilles’.

  “I’ll go,” another one said to his fellows. He dropped his dice with a clatter and slumped out of the hall. Peleus would never have allowed such disaffection; he kept his men well and expected much from them in return. Everything about the room seemed threadbare and gray.

  The man reappeared. “Come,” he said. I followed him, and my heart picked up. I had thought long about what I would say. I was ready.

  “In here.” He gestured to an open door, then turned to go back to his dice.

  I stepped through the doorway. Inside, seated before the wispy remains of a fire, sat a young woman.

  “I am the princess Deidameia,” she announced. Her voice was bright and almost childishly loud, startling after the dullness of the hall. She had a tipped-up nose and a sharp face, like a fox. She was pretty, and she knew it.

  I summoned my manners and bowed. “I am a stranger, come for a kindness from your father.”

  “Why not a kindness from me?” She smiled, tilting her head. She was surprisingly small; I guessed she would barely be up to my chest if she stood. “My father is old and ill. You may address your petition to me, and I will answer it.” She affected a regal pose, carefully positioned so the window lit her from behind.