“I must go,” I say.
“Wait.” She touches my arm. “The men—” She hesitates. “They are angry with Achilles. They blame him for their losses. Agamemnon sends his people among them to stir up talk. They have almost forgotten about the plague. The longer he does not fight, the more they will hate him.” It is my worst fear, Phoinix’s story come to life. “Will he not fight?”
“Not until Agamemnon apologizes.”
She bites her lip. “The Trojans, too. There is no one that they fear more, or hate more. They will kill him if they can tomorrow, and all who are dear to him. You must be careful.”
“He will protect me.”
“I know he will,” she says, “as long as he lives. But even Achilles may not be able to fight Hector and Sarpedon both.” She hesitates again. “If the camp falls, I will claim you as my husband. It may help some. You must not speak of what you were to him, though. It will be a death sentence.” Her hand has tightened on my arm. “Promise me.”
“Briseis,” I say, “if he is dead, I will not be far behind.”
She presses my hand to her cheek. “Then promise me something else,” she says. “Promise me that whatever happens, you will not leave Troy without me. I know that you cannot—” She breaks off. “I would rather live as your sister than remain here.”
“That is nothing that you have to bind me to,” I say. “I would not leave you, if you wished to come. It grieved me beyond measure to think of the war ending tomorrow, and never seeing you again.”
The smile is thick in her throat. “I am glad.” I do not say that I do not think I will ever leave Troy.
I draw her to me, fill my arms with her. She lays her head upon my chest. For a moment we do not think of Agamemnon and danger and dying Greeks. There is only her small hand on my stomach, and the softness of her cheek as I stroke it. It is strange how well she fits there. How easily I touch my lips to her hair, soft and smelling of lavender. She sighs a little, nestles closer. Almost, I can imagine that this is my life, held in the sweet circle of her arms. I would marry her, and we would have a child.
Perhaps if I had never known Achilles.
“I should go,” I say.
She draws down the blanket, releasing me into the air. She cups my face in her hands. “Be careful tomorrow,” she says. “Best of men. Best of the Myrmidons.” She places her fingers to my lips, stopping my objection. “It is truth,” she says. “Let it stand, for once.” Then she leads me to the side of her tent, helps me slip beneath the canvas. The last thing I feel is her hand, squeezing mine in farewell.
THAT NIGHT I LIE IN BED beside Achilles. His face is innocent, sleep-smoothed and sweetly boyish. I love to see it. This is his truest self, earnest and guileless, full of mischief but without malice. He is lost in Agamemnon and Odysseus’ wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin of his forehead. I would untie him if I could. If he would let me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
WE WAKE TO SHOUTS AND THUNDER, A STORM THAT has burst from the blue of the sky. There is no rain, only the gray air, crackling and dry, and jagged streaks that strike like the clap of giant hands. We hurry to the tent door to look out. Smoke, acrid and dark, is drifting up the beach towards us, carrying the smell of lightning-detonated earth. The attack has begun, and Zeus is keeping his bargain, punctuating the Trojans’ advance with celestial encouragement. We feel a pounding, deep in the ground—a charge of chariots, perhaps, led by huge Sarpedon.
Achilles’ hand grips mine, his face stilled. This is the first time in ten years that the Trojans have ever threatened the gate, have ever pushed so far across the plain. If they break through the wall, they will burn the ships—our only way of getting home, the only thing that makes us an army instead of refugees. This is the moment that Achilles and his mother have summoned: the Greeks, routed and desperate, without him. The sudden, incontrovertible proof of his worth. But when will it be enough? When will he intervene?
“Never,” he says, when I ask him. “Never until Agamemnon begs my forgiveness or Hector himself walks into my camp and threatens what is dear to me. I have sworn I will not.”
“What if Agamemnon is dead?”
“Bring me his body, and I will fight.” His face is carved and unmovable, like the statue of a stern god.
“Do you not fear that the men will hate you?”
“They should hate Agamemnon. It is his pride that kills them.”
And yours. But I know the look on his face, the dark recklessness of his eyes. He will not yield. He does not know how. I have lived eighteen years with him, and he has never backed down, never lost. What will happen if he is forced to? I am afraid for him, and for me, and for all of us.
We dress and eat, and Achilles speaks bravely of the future. He talks of tomorrow, when perhaps we will swim, or scramble up the bare trunks of sticky cypresses, or watch for the hatching of the sea-turtle eggs, even now incubating beneath the sun-warmed sand. But my mind keeps slipping from his words, dragged downwards by the seeping gray of the sky, by the sand chilled and pallid as a corpse, and the distant, dying shrieks of men whom I know. How many more by day’s end?
I watch him staring over the ocean. It is unnaturally still, as if Thetis is holding her breath. His eyes are dark and dilated by the dim overcast of the morning. The flame of his hair licks against his forehead.
“Who is that?” he asks, suddenly. Down the beach, a distant figure is being carried on a stretcher to the white tent. Someone important; there is a crowd around him.
I seize on the excuse for motion, distraction. “I will go see.”
Outside the remove of our camp, the sounds of battle grow louder: piercing screams of horses impaled on the stakes of the trench, the desperate shouts of the commanders, the clangor of metal on metal.
Podalerius shoulders past me into the white tent. The air is thick with the smell of herbs and blood, fear and sweat. Nestor looms up at me from my right, his hand clamping around my shoulder, chilling through my tunic. He screeches, “We are lost! The wall is breaking!”
Behind him Machaon lies panting on a pallet, his leg a spreading pool of blood from the ragged prick of an arrow. Podalerius is bent over him, already working.
Machaon sees me. “Patroclus,” he says, gasping a little.
I go to him. “Will you be all right?”
“Cannot tell yet. I think—” He breaks off, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Do not talk to him,” Podalerius says, sharply. His hands are covered in his brother’s blood.
Nestor’s voice rushes onward, listing woe after woe: the wall splintering, and the ships in danger, and so many wounded kings—Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, strewn about the camp like crumpled tunics.
Machaon’s eyes open. “Can you not speak to Achilles?” he says, hoarsely. “Please. For all of us.”
“Yes! Phthia must come to our aid, or we are lost!” Nestor’s fingers dig into my flesh, and my face is damp with the panicked spray of his lips.
My eyes close. I am remembering Phoinix’s story, the image of the Calydonians kneeling before Cleopatra, covering her hands and feet with their tears. In my imagination she does not look at them, only lends them her hands as if perhaps they were cloths to wipe their streaming eyes. She is watching her husband Meleager for his answer, the set of his mouth that tells her what she must say: “No.”
I yank myself from the old man’s clinging fingers. I am desperate to escape the sour smell of fear that has settled like ash over everything. I turn from Machaon’s pain-twisted face and the old man’s outstretched hands and flee from the tent.