He buried his face in his hands and did not speak. I held him and whispered all the bits of broken comfort I could find.
AFTER HE HAD WASHED his stained hands and changed his bloodied clothes, Agamemnon called us all back to the marketplace. Artemis, he said, had been displeased with the bloodshed this huge army intended. She demanded payment for it, in advance, in kind. Cows were not enough. A virgin priestess was required, human blood for human blood; the leader’s eldest daughter would be best.
Iphigenia had known, he said, had agreed to do it. Most men had not been close enough to see the startled panic in her eyes. Gratefully, they believed their general’s lie.
They burned her that night on cypress wood, the tree of our darkest gods. Agamemnon broached a hundred casks of wine for celebration; we were leaving for Troy on the morning’s tide. Inside our tent Achilles fell into exhausted sleep, his head in my lap. I stroked his forehead, watching the trembles of his dreaming face. In the corner lay his bloodied groom’s tunic. Looking at it, at him, my chest felt hot and tight. It was the first death he had ever witnessed. I eased his head off my lap and stood.
Outside, men sang and shouted, drunk and getting drunker. On the beach the pyre burned high, fed by the breeze. I strode past campfires, past lurching soldiers. I knew where I was going.
There were guards outside his tent, but they were slumping, half-asleep. “Who are you?” one asked, starting up. I stepped past him and threw open the tent’s door.
Odysseus turned. He had been standing at a small table, his finger to a map. There was a half-finished dinner plate beside it.
“Welcome, Patroclus. It’s all right, I know him,” he added to the guard stuttering apologies behind me. He waited until the man was gone. “I thought you might come.”
I made a noise of contempt. “You would say that whatever you thought.”
He half-smiled. “Sit, if you like. I’m just finishing my dinner.”
“You let them murder her.” I spat the words at him.
He drew a chair to the table. “What makes you think I could have stopped them?”
“You would have, if it had been your daughter.” I felt like my eyes were throwing off sparks. I wanted him burnt.
“I don’t have a daughter.” He tore a piece of bread, sopped it into gravy. Ate.
“Your wife then. What if it had been your wife?”
He looked up at me. “What do you wish me to say? That I would not have done it?”
“Yes.”
“I would not have. But perhaps that is why Agamemnon is king of Mycenae, and I rule only Ithaca.”
Too easily his answers came to him. His patience enraged me.
“Her death is on your head.”
A wry twist of his mouth. “You give me too much credit. I am a counselor only, Patroclus. Not a general.”
“You lied to us.”
“About the wedding? Yes. It was the only way Clytemnestra would let the girl come.” The mother, back in Argos. Questions rose in me, but I knew this trick of his. I would not let him divert me from my anger. My finger stabbed the air.
“You dishonored him.” Achilles had not thought of this yet— he was too grieved with the girl’s death. But I had. They had tainted him with their deceit.
Odysseus waved a hand. “The men have already forgotten he was part of it. They forgot it when the girl’s blood spilled.”
“It is convenient for you to think so.”
He poured himself a cup of wine, drank. “You are angry, and not without reason. But why come to me? I did not hold the knife, or the girl.”
“There was blood,” I snarled. “All over him, his face. In his mouth. Do you know what it did to him?”
“He grieves that he did not prevent it.”
“Of course,” I snapped. “He could barely speak.”
Odysseus shrugged. “He has a tender heart. An admirable quality, surely. If it helps his conscience, tell him I placed Diomedes where he was on purpose. So Achilles would see too late.”
I hated him so much I could not speak.
He leaned forward in his chair. “May I give you some advice? If you are truly his friend, you will help him leave this soft heart behind. He’s going to Troy to kill men, not rescue them.” His dark eyes held me like swift-running current. “He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”
The words drove breath from me, left me stuttering. “He is not—”
“But he is. The best the gods have ever made. And it is time he knew it, and you did too. If you hear nothing else I say, hear that. I do not say it in malice.”
I was no match for him and his words that lodged like quills and would not be shaken loose.
“You are wrong,” I said. He did not answer me, only watched me turn and flee from him in silence.
Chapter Nineteen
WE LEFT THE NEXT DAY, EARLY, WITH THE REST OF the fleet. From the stern of our ship, Aulis’s beach looked strangely bare. Only the gouges of the latrines and the ash-white ruins of the girl’s pyre were left to mark our passage. I had woken him this morning with Odysseus’ news—that he could not have seen Diomedes in time. He heard me out dully, his eyes bruised despite how long he had slept. Then he said, “She is dead, all the same.”
Now he paced the deck behind me. I tried to point things out to him—the dolphins that ran beside us, the rain-swelled clouds on the horizon—but he was listless and only half-listening. Later I caught him standing alone, practicing drill-steps and sword-swings and frowning to himself.
Each night we put in at a different port; our boats were not built for long journeys, for day after day of submersion. The only men we saw were our own Phthians, and Diomedes’ Argives. The fleet split so that each island would not be forced to give landfall to the entire army. I was sure it was no coincidence that the king of Argos was paired with us. Do they think we will run away? I did my best to ignore him, and he seemed content to leave us in peace.
The islands looked all the same to me—high cliffs bleached white, pebbled beaches that scratched the underside of our ships with their chalky fingernails. They were frequently scrubby, brush struggling up beside olives and cypresses. Achilles barely noticed any of it. He bent over his armor, polishing it till it shone bright as flame.
On the seventh day we came to Lemnos, just across from the Hellespont’s narrow mouth. It was lower than most of our islands, full of swamps and stagnant ponds choking with water lilies. We found a pool some distance from the camp and sat by it. Bugs shivered on its surface, and bulbous eyes peered from amidst the weeds. We were only two days from Troy.
“What was it like when you killed that boy?”
I looked up. His face was in shadow, the hair falling around his eyes.
“Like?” I asked.
He nodded, staring at the water, as if to read its depths.
“What did it look like?”
“It’s hard to describe.” He had taken me by surprise. I closed my eyes to conjure it. “The blood came quickly, I remember that. And I couldn’t believe how much there was. His head was split, and his brains showed a little.” I fought down the nausea that gripped me, even now. “I remember the sound his head made against the rock.”
“Did he twitch? Like animals do?”
“I did not stay long enough to watch.”
He was silent a moment. “My father told me once to think of them like animals. The men I kill.”
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again. He did not look up from his vigil over the water’s surface.
“I do not think I can do it,” he said. Simply, as was his way.
Odysseus’ words pressed in on me, weighed down my tongue. Good, I wanted to say. But what did I know? I did not have to win my immortality with war. I held my peace.
“I cannot stop seeing it,” he said softly. “Her death.” I could not either; the gaudy spray of blood, the shock and pain in her eyes.
“It will not always be like that,” I heard myself say. “She was a girl and innocent. These will be men that you fight, warriors who will kill you if you do not strike first.”