The Song of Achilles Read online

  IT WAS THE NINTH NIGHT of this—of corpses, and burning, and our faces streaked with pus. We stood in our tent gasping with exhaustion, stripping off the tunics we had worn, throwing them aside for the fire. Our suspicions tumbled out, confirmed in a thousand ways, that this was not a natural plague, not the creeping spread of haphazard disease. It was something else, sudden and cataclysmic as the snuffing of Aulis’ winds. A god’s displeasure.

  We remembered Chryses and his righteous outrage at Agamemnon’s blasphemy, his disregard for the codes of war and fair ransom. And we remembered, too, which god he served. The divinity of light and medicine and plague.

  Achilles slipped out of the tent when the moon was high. He came back some time later, smelling of the sea.

  “What does she say?” I asked, sitting up in bed.

  “She says we are right.”

  ON THE TENTH DAY of the plague, with the Myrmidons at our backs, we strode up the beach to the agora. Achilles mounted the dais and cupped his hands to help his voice carry. Shouting over the roar of pyres and the weeping of women and the groans of the dying, he called for every man in camp to gather.

  Slowly, fearfully, men staggered forward, blinking in the sun. They looked pale and hunted, fearful of the plague arrows that sank in chests like stones into water, spreading their rot as ripples in a pond. Achilles watched them come, armor buckled around him, sword strapped to his side, his hair gleaming like water poured over bright bronze. It was not forbidden for someone other than the general to call a meeting, but it had never been done in our ten years at Troy.

  Agamemnon shouldered through the crowd with his Mycenaeans to mount the dais. “What is this?” he demanded.

  Achilles greeted him politely. “I have gathered the men to speak of the plague. Do I have your leave to address them?”

  Agamemnon’s shoulders were hunched forward with shame-sprung rage; he should have called this meeting himself long ago, and he knew it. He could hardly rebuke Achilles for doing it now, especially not with the men watching. The contrast between the two had never seemed more sharp: Achilles relaxed and in control, with an ease that denied the funeral pyres and sunken cheeks; Agamemnon with his face tight as a miser’s fist, louring over us all.

  Achilles waited until the men had assembled, kings and common both. Then he stepped forward and smiled. “Kings,” he said, “Lords, Men of the Greek Kingdoms, how can we fight a war when we are dying of plague? It’s time—past time—that we learn what we have done to deserve a god’s anger.”

  Swift whispers and murmurs; men had suspected the gods. Was not all great evil and good sent from their hands? But to hear Achilles say so openly was a relief. His mother was a goddess, and he would know.

  Agamemnon’s lips were pulled back to show his teeth. He stood too close to Achilles, as if he would crowd him off the dais. Achilles did not seem to notice. “We have a priest here, among us, a man close to the gods. Should we not ask him to speak?”

  A hopeful ripple of assent went through the men. I could hear the creaking of metal, Agamemnon’s grip on his own wrist, the slow strangle of his buckled gauntlet.

  Achilles turned to the king. “Is this not what you recommended to me, Agamemnon?”

  Agamemnon’s eyes narrowed. He did not trust generosity; he did not trust anything. He stared at Achilles a moment, waiting for the trap. At last, ungratefully, he said, “Yes. I did.” He gestured roughly to his Mycenaeans. “Bring me Calchas.”

  They towed the priest forward, out of the crowd. He was uglier than ever, with his beard that never quite filled in, his hair scraggly and rank with sour sweat. He had a habit of darting his tongue across cracked lips before he spoke.

  “High King and Prince Achilles, you catch me unprepared. I did not think that—” Those freakish blue eyes flickered between the two men. “That is, I did not expect I would be asked to speak here before so many.” His voice wheedled and ducked, like a weasel escaping the nest.

  “Speak,” Agamemnon commanded.

  Calchas seemed at a loss; his tongue swiped his lips again and again.

  Achilles’ clear voice prompted him. “You have done sacrifices surely? You have prayed?”

  “I—have, of course I have. But . . .” The priest’s voice trembled. “I am afraid that what I say might anger someone here. Someone who is powerful and does not forget insult easily.”

  Achilles squatted to reach a hand out to the grimed shoulder of the flinching priest, clasping it genially. “Calchas, we are dying. This is not the time for such fears. What man among us would hold your words against you? I would not, even if you named me as the cause. Would any of you?” He looked at the men before him. They shook their heads.

  “You see? No sane man would ever harm a priest.”

  Agamemnon’s neck went taut as ship ropes. I was suddenly aware of how strange it was to see him standing alone. Always his brother or Odysseus or Diomedes was near him. But those men waited on the side, with the rest of the princes.

  Calchas cleared his throat. “The auguries have shown that it is the god Apollo who is angry.” Apollo. The name went through the host like wind in summer wheat.

  Calchas’ eyes flickered to Agamemnon, then back to Achilles. He swallowed. “He is offended, it seems, so the omens say, at the treatment of his dedicated servant. Chryses.”

  Agamemnon’s shoulders were rigid.

  Calchas stumbled on. “To appease him, the girl Chryseis must be returned without ransom, and High King Agamemnon must offer prayers and sacrifices.” He stopped, his last word gulped down suddenly, as if he had run out of air.

  Agamemnon’s face had broken into dark red blotches of shock. It seemed like the greatest arrogance or stupidity not to have guessed he might be at fault, but he had not. The silence was so profound I felt I could hear the grains of sand falling against each other at our feet.

  “Thank you, Calchas,” Agamemnon said, his voice splintering the air. “Thank you for always bringing good news. Last time it was my daughter. Kill her, you said, because you have angered the goddess. Now you seek to humiliate me before my army.”

  He wheeled on the men, his face twisted in rage. “Am I not your general? And do I not see you fed and clothed and honored? And are my Mycenaeans not the largest part of this army? The girl is mine, given to me as a prize, and I will not give her up. Have you forgotten who I am?”

  He paused, as if he hoped the men might shout No! No! But none did.

  “King Agamemnon.” Achilles stepped forward. His voice was easy, almost amused. “I don’t think anyone has forgotten that you are leader of this host. But you do not seem to remember that we are kings in our own right, or princes, or heads of our families. We are allies, not slaves.” A few men nodded; more would have liked to.

  “Now, while we die, you complain about the loss of a girl you should have ransomed long ago. You say nothing of the lives you have taken, or the plague you have started.”

  Agamemnon made an inarticulate noise, his face purple with rage. Achilles held up a hand.

  “I do not mean to dishonor you. I only wish to end the plague. Send the girl to her father and be done.”

  Agamemnon’s cheeks were creased with fury. “I understand you, Achilles. You think because you’re the son of a sea-nymph you have the right to play high prince wherever you go. You have never learned your place among men.”

  Achilles opened his mouth to answer.

  “You will be silent,” Agamemnon said, words lashing like a whip. “You will not speak another word or you will be sorry.”

  “Or I will be sorry?” Achilles’ face was very still. The words were quiet, but distinctly audible. “I do not think, High King, that you can afford to say such things to me.”

  “Do you threaten me?” Agamemnon shouted. “Did you not hear him threaten me?”

  “It is not a threat. What is your army without me?”

  Agamemnon’s face was clotted with malice. “You have always thought too much of yourself,” h
e sneered. “We should have left you where we found you, hiding behind your mother’s skirts. In a skirt yourself.”

  The men frowned in confusion, whispered to each other.

  Achilles’ hands were fisted at his sides; he hung on to his composure, barely. “You say this to turn attention away from yourself. If I had not called this council, how long would you have let your men die? Can you answer that?”

  Agamemnon was already roaring over him. “When all of these brave men came to Aulis, they knelt to offer me their loyalty. All of them but you. I think we have indulged your arrogance long enough. It is time, past time”—he mimicked Achilles—“that you swore the oath.”

  “I do not need to prove myself to you. To any of you.” Achilles’ voice was cold, his chin lifted in disdain. “I am here of my own free will, and you are lucky that it is so. I am not the one who should kneel.”

  It was too far. I felt the men shift around me. Agamemnon seized upon it, like a bird bolting a fish. “Do you hear his pride?” He turned to Achilles. “You will not kneel?”

  Achilles’ face was like stone. “I will not.”

  “Then you are a traitor to this army, and will be punished like one. Your war prizes are hostage, placed in my care until you offer your obedience and submission. Let us start with that girl. Briseis, is her name? She will do as penance for the girl you have forced me to return.”

  The air died in my lungs.

  “She is mine,” Achilles said. Each word fell sharp, like a butcher cutting meat. “Given to me by all the Greeks. You cannot take her. If you try, your life is forfeit. Think on that, King, before you bring harm to yourself.”

  Agamemnon’s answer came quickly. He could never back down in front of a crowd. Never.

  “I do not fear you. I will have her.” He turned to his Mycenaeans. “Bring the girl.”

  Around me were the shocked faces of kings. Briseis was a war prize, a living embodiment of Achilles’ honor. In taking her, Agamemnon denied Achilles the full measure of his worth. The men muttered, and I hoped they might object. But no one spoke.

  Because he was turned, Agamemnon did not see Achilles’ hand go to his sword. My breath caught. I knew that he was capable of this, a single thrust through Agamemnon’s cowardly heart. I saw the struggle on his face. I still do not know why he stopped himself; perhaps he wanted greater punishment for the king than death.

  “Agamemnon,” he said. I flinched from the roughness of his voice. The king turned, and Achilles drove a finger into his chest. The high king could not stop the huff of surprise. “Your words today have caused your own death, and the death of your men. I will fight for you no longer. Without me, your army will fall. Hector will grind you to bones and bloody dust, and I will watch it and laugh. You will come, crying for mercy, but I will give none. They will all die, Agamemnon, for what you have done here.”

  He spat, a huge wet smack between Agamemnon’s feet. And then he was before me, and past me, and I was dizzied as I turned to follow him, feeling the Myrmidons behind me—hundreds of men shouldering their way through the crowd, storming off to their tents.

  POWERFUL STRIDES TOOK HIM swiftly up the beach. His anger was incandescent, a fire under his skin. His muscles were pulled so taut I was afraid to touch him, fearing they would snap like bowstrings. He did not stop once we reached the camp. He did not turn and speak to the men. He seized the extra tent flap covering our door and ripped it free as he passed.

  His mouth was twisted, ugly and tight as I had ever seen it. His eyes were wild. “I will kill him,” he swore. “I will kill him.” He grabbed a spear and broke it in half with an explosion of wood. The pieces fell to the floor.

  “I almost did it there,” he said. “I should have done it. How dare he?” He flung a ewer aside, and it shattered against a chair. “The cowards! You saw how they bit their lips and did not dare to speak. I hope he takes all their prizes. I hope he swallows them one by one.”

  A voice, tentative, outside. “Achilles?”

  “Come in,” Achilles snarled.

  Automedon was breathless and stuttering. “I am sorry to disturb you. Phoinix told me to stay, so I could listen and tell you what happened.”

  “And?” Achilles demanded.

  Automedon flinched. “Agamemnon asked why Hector still lived. He said that they do not need you. That perhaps you are not— what you say you are.” Another spear shaft shattered in Achilles’ fingers. Automedon swallowed. “They are coming, now, for Briseis.”

  Achilles had his back to me; I could not see his face. “Leave us,” he told his charioteer. Automedon backed away, and we were alone.

  They were coming for Briseis. I stood, my hands balled. I felt strong, unbending, like my feet pierced through the earth to the other side of the world.

  “We must do something,” I said. “We can hide her. In the woods or—”

  “He will pay, now,” Achilles said. There was fierce triumph in his voice. “Let him come for her. He has doomed himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I must speak to my mother.” He started from the tent.

  I seized his arm. “We don’t have time. They will have taken her by the time you are back. We must do something now!”

  He turned. His eyes looked strange, the pupils huge and dark, swallowing his face. He seemed to be looking a long way off. “What are you talking about?”

  I stared at him. “Briseis.”

  He stared back. I could not follow the flicker of emotion in his eyes. “I can do nothing for her,” he said at last. “If Agamemnon chooses this path, he must bear the consequences.”

  A feeling, as if I were falling into ocean depths, weighted with stones.

  “You are not going to let him take her.”

  He turned away; he would not look at me. “It is his choice. I told him what would happen if he did.”

  “You know what he will do to her.”

  “It is his choice,” he repeated. “He would deprive me of my honor? He would punish me? I will let him.” His eyes were lit with an inner fire.

  “You will not help her?”

  “There is nothing I can do,” he said with finality.

  A tilting vertigo, as if I were drunk. I could not speak, or think. I had never been angry with him before; I did not know how.

  “She is one of us. How can you just let him take her? Where is your honor? How can you let him defile her?”

  And then, suddenly, I understood. Nausea seized me. I turned to the door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  My voice was scraped and savage. “I have to warn her. She has a right to know what you have chosen.”

  I STAND OUTSIDE her tent. It is small, brown with hides, set back. “Briseis,” I hear myself say.

  “Come in!” Her voice is warm and pleased. We have had no time to speak during the plague, beyond necessities.

  Inside, she is seated on a stool, mortar and pestle in her lap. The air smells sharply of nutmeg. She is smiling.

  I feel wrung dry with grief. How can I tell her what I know?

  “I—” I try to speak, stop. She sees my face, and her smile vanishes. Swiftly, she is on her feet and by my side.

  “What is it?” She presses the cool skin of her wrist to my forehead. “Are you ill? Is Achilles all right?” I am sick with shame. But there is no space for my self-pity. They are coming.

  “Something has happened,” I say. My tongue thickens in my mouth; my words do not come out straight. “Achilles went today to speak to the men. The plague is Apollo’s.”

  “We thought so.” She nods, her hand resting gently on mine, in comfort. I almost cannot go on.

  “Agamemnon did not—he was angry. He and Achilles quarreled. Agamemnon wants to punish him.”

  “Punish him? How?”

  Now she sees something in my eyes. Her face goes quiet, pulling into itself. Bracing. “What is it?”

  “He is sending men. For you.”

  I see the f
lare of panic, though she tries to hide it. Her fingers tighten on mine. “What will happen?”

  My shame is caustic, searing every nerve. It is like a nightmare; I expect, each moment, to wake to relief. But there is no waking. It is true. He will not help.

  “He—” I cannot say more.

  It is enough. She knows. Her right hand clutches at her dress, chapped and raw from the rough work of the past nine days. I force out stuttering words meant to be a comfort, of how we will get her back, and how it will be all right. Lies, all of it. We both know what will happen to her in Agamemnon’s tent. Achilles knows, too, and sends her anyway.

  My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse: I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood. Only that seems large enough to hold all of my rage and grief. I want the world overturned like a bowl of eggs, smashed at my feet.

  A trumpet blows outside. Her hand goes to her cheek, swipes away tears. “Go,” she whispers. “Please.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IN THE DISTANCE TWO MEN ARE WALKING TOWARDS US UP the long stretch of beach, wearing the bright purple of Agamemnon’s camp, stamped with the symbol of heralds. I know them—Talthybius and Eurybates, Agamemnon’s chief messengers, honored as men of discretion close to the high king’s ear. Hate knots my throat. I want them dead.

  They are close now, passing the glaring Myrmidon guards, who rattle their armor threateningly. They stop ten paces from us—enough, perhaps they think, to be able to escape Achilles if he were to lose his temper. I indulge myself in vicious images: Achilles leaping up to snap their necks, leaving them limp as dead rabbits in a hunter’s hand.

  They stutter out a greeting, feet shifting, eyes down. Then: “We have come to take custody of the girl.”

  Achilles answers them—cold and bitter, but wryly so, his anger banked and shielded. He is giving a show, I know, of grace, of tolerance, and my teeth clench at the calmness in his tone. He likes this image of himself, the wronged young man, stoically accepting the theft of his prize, a martyrdom for the whole camp to see. I hear my name and see them looking at me. I am to get Briseis.