Machaon and I, and Achilles too, burned them as fast as they fell, ridding the camp of their bile-soaked bodies, their bones that rattled as we tossed them onto the pyres. When we went back to the camp that night, Achilles and I scrubbed ourselves in the harsh salt of the sea, and then with clean water from the stream in the forest. We did not use the Simois or the Scamander, the big meandering Trojan rivers that the other men washed in and drank from.
In bed, later, we speculated in hushed whispers, unable to help but listen for the hitch in our own breath, the gathering of mucus in our throats. But we heard nothing except our voices repeating the remedies Chiron had taught us like murmured prayers.
THE NEXT MORNING it was the men. Dozens pierced with illness, crumpling where they stood, their eyes bulging and wet, lips cracking open and bleeding fine red threads down their chins. Machaon and Achilles and Podalerius and I, and even, eventually, Briseis, ran to drag away each newly dropped man—downed as suddenly as if by a spear or arrow.
At the edge of the camp a field of sick men bloomed. Ten and twenty and then fifty of them, shuddering, calling for water, tearing off their clothes for respite from the fire they claimed raged in them. Finally, in the later hours, their skin broke apart, macerating like holes in a worn blanket, shredding to pus and pulpy blood. At last their violent trembling ceased, and they lay puddling in the swamp of their final torrent: the dark emptying of their bowels, clotted with blood.
Achilles and I built pyre after pyre, burning every scrap of wood we could find. Finally we abandoned dignity and ritual for necessity, throwing onto each fire not one, but a heap of bodies. We did not even have time to stand watch over them as their flesh and bone mingled and melted together.
Eventually most of the kings joined us—Menelaus first, then Ajax, who split whole trees with a single stroke, fuel for fire after fire. As we worked, Diomedes went among the men and discovered the few who still lay concealed in their tents, shaking with fever and vomit, hidden by their friends who did not want, yet, to send them to the death grounds. Agamemnon did not leave his tent.
Another day then, and another, and every company, every king, had lost dozens of soldiers. Although strangely, Achilles and I noted, our hands pulling closed eyelid after eyelid, none of them were kings. Only minor nobles and foot soldiers. None of them were women; this too we noticed. Our eyes found each other’s, full of suspicions that grew as men dropped suddenly with a cry, hands clutching their chests where the plague had struck them like the quick shaft of an arrow.
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.