For the Most Beautiful (24 page)

Achilles glanced at him. ‘Can it wait, Patroclus?'

Patroclus shook his head. ‘No,' he said tensely. ‘It can't.'

Achilles leant over to kiss me, pushed back the covers and stood up. ‘So what is it?' he asked, throwing a tunic over his head, striding to the clay wash-jug and splashing his face with water. ‘Something important, I hope.'

‘There has been an outbreak of plague in the camp,' Patroclus said. ‘The soldiers are dying. Their bodies are heaped in piles on the beach, their skin marked all over with blistering red boils. They are burning them as fast as they can, but it is not fast enough. The healer Machaon says he has never seen a plague catch so quickly, and that it must have been sent by a god to cause so much destruction so fast.' He took a deep breath. ‘It seems the whole army will go down if we cannot stop it soon, and you know as well as I that King Agamemnon will be more afraid for himself than for the men.'

Achilles stood up straight, linen towel in hand. ‘The whole army?' he asked.

Patroclus capitalized on his advantage. ‘Even you cannot sack Troy alone, and you know it,' he said. Achilles frowned slightly, but Patroclus pushed on: ‘You need your men behind you. We must act, and quickly.'

Both were quiet for a moment. Then Achilles turned. ‘You are right,' he said. ‘Agamemnon is a coward, and if he will not act, I shall. I'll call the assembly. Patroclus, go to the heralds and tell them to summon the army.'

Patroclus strode to the door.

‘Briseis.' He walked to the bed where I was still lying. ‘I wish I did not have to leave you,' he said in a low voice.

‘I will be here when you return.'

The corners of his mouth turned up as he kissed me again.

‘Tell me one thing,' I said, as we broke apart. ‘Before you go.'

He crouched beside me and took my hand. ‘Anything.'

I took a deep breath. ‘If you had known, would it have made any difference?'

He gazed at me, silent. He did not need to ask what I meant.

‘Even if you had refused to go to Pedasus,' I continued slowly, ‘Agamemnon would still have sent his troops. My husband and father and brothers,' I struggled to control my voice, ‘would still have been killed.'

He bowed his head. ‘That is true.'

‘Why did you come to Troy?' I said, very softly.

Achilles was silent for a long time. ‘I am a man, and the son of a lord of Greece,' he said at last. ‘I was born to deeds of war. My destiny from the gods, and my orders from the king, have always been to fight.' He leant towards me and pressed my hand. ‘You should know, Briseis,' he said, ‘that if the scales of Zeus had landed another way, your father and brothers would have dealt the same fate to me.'

I looked into his face. I remembered the glint of war in Mynes' eyes the night that Lyrnessus had been sacked. I remembered my brothers playing with wooden swords in the sandy courtyard of Pedasus, taught to fight almost as soon as they had learnt to walk. My father had always been a warlike man, and I remembered how I had sat on his lap as a child and thrilled to hear his stories of armies marching over the plain with the dust rising at their feet, like a storm, and of warriors felled with sharp-tipped bronze.

But I had not thought that it could be real.

Now the realization that my father, my brothers, Mynes were warriors born – that, to some men, they had even been an
enemy
, as much as Achilles had been an enemy to them – crashed down upon me, like a wall of well-built stone.

And if things had been different, and the Trojans had invaded Greece, it would have been Greek mothers and wives mourning the men they loved, just as I mourned the men I had lost.

I gazed down at the coverlet, where a ray of sunlight was stitching the soft-woven wool with patches of gold. At last I thought I understood what Mynes had meant when he had made me promise to learn to live without him that fateful night.

We mortals were all the same: united by our anger and our grief, and, more than anything, our certainty that we were different.

But it did not have to be that way.

‘Can you forgive me, Briseis?'

I looked up into the face of Achilles, and I felt the last shred of my hatred and doubt dissolve in his eyes, which reflected mine.

‘Yes,' I said at last. ‘Yes. I forgive you.'

I had spent the night begging my father to allow me to remain in the camp of the Greeks as the Trojans' spy; or, at the very least, first to return to Troy and tell the king myself what I had heard. Nothing had worked. My father had returned from King Agamemnon's theft of his ransom all the more determined to deliver me to the temple in Larisa.

As night fell and the stars rose in the heavens, watching my plight, he had forced me to stand beside him as he prayed to the gods and asked for a plague on the Greeks to force them to send me home.

So there I was, the following day, walking behind my father, like a convict to their judgement, into the assembly-place of the Greek camp.

Soldiers streamed around us into the open space, asking each other what was happening. Beneath the noise, I could make out from the huts and tents surrounding us the muffled shouts and cries of the victims of the terrible plague that had unexpectedly struck the camp that night, all – as my father had told me with a dreadful smile – on my own behalf. Healers and slaves were running across the assembly-place, carrying towels and hot water, and in the distance, on the other side of the camp, a large fire burnt to consume the dead. Even now the bodies of the victims of the plague were rattling past us, their skin pockmarked, their eyes wide and staring, heaped on the carts that had carried treasure from the cities the Greeks sacked.

A long, single trumpet call sounded over the noise of the gathering army, and my father stopped, holding my wrist with one hand, as if I would run away, forgetting that I had nowhere to run to.

One of the generals, sitting on a podium at the other end of the assembly to the right of King Agamemnon, who was, as usual, couched upon his throne, had raised himself from his seat. I could just make out a lean, muscled frame, long blond hair, and armour so brilliant it seemed to be the sun itself, not merely its reflection. The name rippled through the crowd, like the wind through the leaves of an oak tree: ‘Achilles! It's Achilles!'

Achilles held out a hand, and the whispering died. All the soldiers were now gazing up at him with an expression of something approaching reverence on their scarred, leathery faces.

‘Brothers,' he said, and everyone fell quiet. ‘Last night a plague broke out in this camp.' He looked around the crowd, then to the carts that were trundling away from the assembly-place towards the fire. ‘It has already taken many of our men. If we let it continue, our army will be gone before we have even left the gates of the camp to attack Troy. Are we to be struck down after our journey across the ocean, through wind and rain, after we evaded the curse of the gods at Aulis, only to die here because we are too afraid to supplicate the gods?'

The men were shaking their heads and muttering. Some called, ‘We're not cowards!' or, ‘Tell us what to do, Achilles, we'll stand by your side!'

Most, however, were less convinced. ‘What if the gods are against us?' I heard some ask. ‘Troy cannot be sacked, and here's the proof!'

Achilles smiled in a self-assured way and waved his hand again for silence. ‘Men,' he said reprovingly, ‘brothers! Do not fear the gods!' He spread his arms wide. ‘The gods favour the Greeks,' he said. ‘They favour their chosen sons. What we need,' and he scanned the crowd, ‘is a priest, skilled in the arts of reading dreams, who can tell us why Apollo sent this plague upon us. Then, once we know what we have done to offend him, we can make a sacrifice and win his favour again. Do not be afraid, brothers: I, of all people, understand the gods.'

I frowned. Here was that Apollo again, the one Odysseus had talked of. Yet what kind of god was this? Why would the Greeks' own god, the one they seemed to worship as a prophecy-giver, punish them, and with such a terrible plague, when they did not even know what they had done wrong? I glanced at my father to see if he had noticed, but he was looking straight ahead.

‘One small error corrected,' Achilles continued, ‘whatever that error may be, and you will be back, fighting for Troy and all her treasures. And it is written in the stars that the city
will
fall – and that
you
will be the ones to take it!'

The men roared. They were shouting his name now in a rhythmic chant, shaking their spears up and down in the air.

Achilles was standing as still as a monument, holding his spear up against the sky.

Agamemnon, on the other hand, wore an expression of pure distaste. It seemed he was not enjoying himself as much as Achilles was.

But then something terrible happened. My father – my own father, who should have known that this was the last thing in all the world that I wished him to do – shouted over the crowd, his white priest's robes conspicuous amid the dark leather and bronze of the soldiers' armour and shields.

‘I am the High Priest of the Great God Apulunas, god of the Trojans and protector of Troy. And it is the anger of our gods, the true gods of Ida, not yours, that has brought this plague upon you,' he called, his voice loud and clear. Everyone ceased their shouting and turned to look at him.

I could feel my face burning with anger by his side. How could he be doing this? How
could
he?

‘You must consider, before I speak,' my father went on, in a ringing voice, ‘that what I say may not be pleasing to all who hear it. I may anger a powerful ruler, and a king's anger is worse than that of a lesser man, since he has the power to fulfil his threats. Promise, then, that you will protect me, if I tell the secrets of our gods.'

Achilles bowed. ‘I will, old priest,' he said. ‘No one will lay his hands on you while I live – not even Agamemnon.'

My father bowed back, ignoring the glare of mixed rage and contempt that King Agamemnon was giving him. ‘Know, then, that the reason the Great God has sent this plague upon you is not for any error on your part or that of the army. It is because Agamemnon, King of the Greeks, dishonoured me.'

I buried my face in my hands, wishing I could shout aloud or weep – which, I did not know. I could not listen. I could not be forced to watch my father destroy my future and Troy's last hope before my very eyes.

‘You all must know,' he continued, into the hushed silence of the assembly, as the soldiers around him backed away from us, making a space around us in the crowd, ‘that I serve King Priam of Troy. There was a reason I came to the Greek camp last night with King Priam's ambassadors. It is my daughter.'

I flushed even more deeply and did not remove my hands from my face.

‘My daughter was captured by your men at the same time as they killed Prince Troilus. When I found out that she was still alive, naturally I wished to protect her. I therefore came to the Greek camp with twice her worth in gold, and offered it to King Agamemnon in exchange for her safety, and in the name of the Great God Apulunas, mightiest of our gods, whose priestess my daughter is destined to be. Your king took the gold but now refuses my daughter her freedom. In so doing he insults me and my god.'

I was looking into the darkness behind my fingers, trying to pretend this was not happening, but, still, my father's words bored into my ears, like a hoe digging into freshly ploughed earth.

‘And now you wonder that the Great God has sent a plague on your army,' my father finished in the confident tone that I knew so well. ‘He heard my appeal against the disrespect shown by your king for the proper dealings between kings and men. And he will continue to send his arrows down on the Greek camp until you right Agamemnon's wrong. Send my daughter back to her home in Larisa and make there a sacrifice of a hundred oxen in honour of our god. There is no other way to appease him.'

He finished speaking and there was silence around us. I peered from behind my hands, and saw King Agamemnon rise from his seat. ‘You speak, Polydamas, as if it were a great gift to the Greeks that you came to us with your pouch of paltry gold,' he sneered, as he paced around the podium. ‘But I do not see the benefit for us.' He waved his hand to the crowd. ‘And certainly,' he said, approaching the front of the podium, ‘I do not need to be accused by a jumped-up Trojan like you.'

My father's mouth was set in a firm line.

‘Now, as for your daughter, Krisayis,' King Agamemnon leered, ‘now that I understand. She's a pretty little thing. I've enjoyed having her with me. Enjoyed her even more than my wife Clytemnestra, in fact – if you know what I mean.'

The men guffawed and nudged each other, winking.

I stared hard at my feet, trying to ignore the men pointing at me, laughing.

‘But,' Agamemnon said, in a loud voice, holding up his hand to stop the men's whistles and cheers, ‘I have resolved to give her back, in spite of this. I will fit out a ship to escort her to her home in Larisa this very day. I will even,' he said, giving a mock bow to my father, ‘grant you safe passage back to Troy with my heralds, priest, to ensure you come to no harm. Let none of you say that Agamemnon is not a magnanimous king. I have one condition, however.' He paused and looked around at the gathered men before him. ‘It simply would not be right for me to be deprived of
my
prize when you all have yours,' he said, and his voice was as smooth as the finest first-pressed oil. ‘After all, I am your king.'

Most of the men in the crowd nodded. It was a simple equation. Kings had to have more because more things meant more glory, and glory was the stronghold of power. And the men knew they needed a powerful king if they were to succeed.