“I will,” Achilles said. We always observed the festivals, dutifully slitting the throats and roasting the fat.
“You must,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on Achilles; they did not seem to see me at all. “A hecatomb.” Our grandest offering, a hundred head of sheep or cattle. Only the richest and most powerful men could afford such an extravagance of piety. “Whatever the others do, do this. The gods have chosen sides, and you must not draw their anger.”
It would take us most of the day to slaughter them all, and the camp would smell like a charnel house for a week. But Achilles nodded. “We will do it,” he promised.
Her lips were pressed together, two red slashes like the edge of a wound.
“There is more,” she said.
Even without her gaze upon me, she frightened me. She brought the whole urgent universe wherever she went, portents and angry deities and a thousand looming perils.
“What is it?”
She hesitated, and fear knotted my throat. What could make a goddess pause was terrifying indeed.
“A prophecy,” she said. “That the best of the Myrmidons will die before two more years have passed.”
Achilles’ face was still; utterly still. “We have known it was coming,” he said.
A curt shake of her head. “No. The prophecy says you will still be alive when it happens.”
Achilles frowned. “What do you think it means?”
“I do not know,” she said. Her eyes were very large; the black pools opened as if they would drink him, pull him back into her. “I fear a trick.” The Fates were well known for such riddles, unclear until the final piece had fallen. Then, bitterly clear.
“Be watchful,” she said. “You must take care.”
“I will,” he said.
She had not seemed to know I was there, but now her eyes found me, and her nose wrinkled, as if at a rising stench. She looked back to him. “He is not worthy of you,” she said. “He has never been.”
“We disagree on this,” Achilles answered. He said it as if he had said it many times before. Probably he had.
She made a low noise of contempt, then vanished. Achilles turned to me. “She is afraid.”
“I know,” I said. I cleared my throat, trying to release the clot of dread that had formed there.
“Who is the best of the Myrmidons, do you think? If I am excluded.”
I cast my mind through our captains. I thought of Automedon, who had become Achilles’ valuable second on the battlefield. But I would not call him best.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you think it means my father?” he asked.
Peleus, home in Phthia, who had fought with Heracles and Perseus. A legend in his own time for piety and courage, even if not in times to come. “Maybe,” I admitted.
We were silent a moment. Then he said, “I suppose we will know soon enough.”
“It is not you,” I said. “At least there is that.”
That afternoon we performed the sacrifice his mother had commanded. The Myrmidons built the altar fires high, and I held bowls for the blood while Achilles cut throat after throat. We burned the rich thigh-pieces with barley and pomegranate, poured our best wine over the coals. Apollo is angry, she had said. One of our most powerful gods, with his arrows that could stop a man’s heart, swift as rays of sun. I was not known for my piety, but that day I praised Apollo with an intensity that could have rivaled Peleus himself. And whoever the best of the Myrmidons was, I sent the gods a prayer for him as well.
BRISEIS ASKED ME to teach her medicine and promised in return a knowledge of the area’s herbs, indispensable to Machaon’s dwindling supply. I agreed, and passed many contented days with her in the forest, parting low-hanging branches, reaching underneath rotting logs for mushrooms as delicate and soft as the ear of a baby.
Sometimes on those days her hand would accidentally brush mine, and she would look up and smile, water drops hanging from her ears and hair like pearls. Her long skirt was tied practically around her knees, revealing feet that were sturdy and sure.
One of these days we had stopped for lunch. We feasted on cloth-wrapped bread and cheese, strips of dried meat, and water scooped with our hands from the stream. It was spring, and we were surrounded by the profusion of Anatolian fertility. For three weeks the earth would paint herself in every color, burst every bud, unfurl each rioting petal. Then, the wild flush of her excitement spent, she would settle down to the steady work of summer. It was my favorite time of year.
I should have seen it coming. Perhaps you will think me stupid that I did not. I was telling her a story—something about Chiron, I think—and she was listening, her eyes dark like the earth on which we sat. I finished, and she was quiet. This was nothing unusual; she was often quiet. We were sitting close to each other, heads together as if in conspiracy. I could smell the fruit she had eaten; I could smell the rose oils she pressed for the other girls, still staining her fingers. She was so dear to me, I thought. Her serious face and clever eyes. I imagined her as a girl, scraped with tree-climbing, skinny limbs flying as she ran. I wished that I had known her then, that she had been with me at my father’s house, had skipped stones with my mother. Almost, I could imagine her there, hovering just at the edge of my remembrance.
Her lips touched mine. I was so surprised I did not move. Her mouth was soft and a little hesitant. Her eyes were sweetly closed. Of habit, of its own accord, my mouth parted. A moment passed like this, the ground beneath us, the breeze sifting flower scents. Then she drew back, eyes down, waiting for judgment. My pulse sounded in my ears, but it was not as Achilles made it sound. It was something more like surprise, and fear that I would hurt her. I put my hand to hers.
She knew, then. She felt it in the way I took her hand, the way my gaze rested on her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I shook my head, but could not think of what more to say.
Her shoulders crept up, like folded wings. “I know that you love him,” she said, hesitating a little before each word. “I know. But I thought that—some men have wives and lovers both.”
Her face looked very small, and so sad that I could not be silent.
“Briseis,” I said. “If I ever wished to take a wife, it would be you.”
“But you do not wish to take a wife.”
“No,” I said, as gently as I could.
She nodded, and her eyes dropped again. I could hear her slow breaths, the faint tremor in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do you not ever want children?” she asked.
The question surprised me. I still felt half a child myself, though most my age were parents several times over.
“I don’t think I would be much of a parent,” I said.
“I do not believe that,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”
I asked it casually, but it seemed to strike deep, and she hesitated. “Maybe,” she said. And then I understood, too late, what she had really been asking me. I flushed, embarrassed at my thoughtlessness. And humbled, too. I opened my mouth to say something. To thank her, perhaps.
But she was already standing, brushing off her dress. “Shall we go?”
There was nothing to do but rise and join her.
THAT NIGHT I could not stop thinking of it: Briseis’ and my child. I saw stumbling legs, and dark hair and the mother’s big eyes. I saw us by the fire, Briseis and I, and the baby, playing with some bit of wood I had carved. Yet there was an emptiness to the scene, an ache of absence. Where was Achilles? Dead? Or had he never existed? I could not live in such a life. But Briseis had not asked me to. She had offered me all of it, herself and the child and Achilles, too.
I shifted to face Achilles. “Did you ever think of having children?” I asked.