by Pat Barker
“We-ell,” she said. “What did you make of that?”
I didn’t need to ask what she’d made of it: her pupils were so widely dilated her eyes looked black. I wondered how much she’d had to do with Calchas’s speech—which in many ways was uncharacteristic of him. No interpretation of dreams; no reference to the flight of birds—not a stranded sea eagle in sight. “How much of that was you?”
She shrugged. “Does it matter? I’ve learnt not to be too attached to my own prophecies. They’ve only ever been believed when I could get a man to deliver them.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “I’m still waiting to hear what you thought.”
“I don’t know. Of course, I want to see Priam buried…I just wish Calchas hadn’t mixed it up with personal revenge.”
“Personal…? Oh, you mean the horse.” She was staring at me, her yellow eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them. “It’s not enough, not nearly enough—but I’ll take it.”
Ritsa and Hecamede followed us in. Hecamede immediately began bustling around with preparations for dinner. Nestor would be back soon.
I stood up. “I think we should go.”
The crowd was thinning by the time we left the hall, but I decided to walk along the beach anyway. I knew there was no hurry. Alcimus would be in the hall with Pyrrhus and Automedon, trying to pick up the pieces. I didn’t envy him the task. Essentially, Pyrrhus had to be persuaded to obey the gods—and sacrifice the only creature he seemed capable of loving. Except himself. And I wasn’t even sure about the exception.
31
I dawdled along the beach and when I reached the compound went straight to the women’s hut. Most of the girls were in the yard at the back, where Maire was getting ready to give the baby a bath. Free from swaddling bands and nappy, he lay on a blanket, making little contented cooing sounds and kicking his legs. One of the girls was holding up a linen sheet to shield his eyes from the sun. We were so lucky in his temperament: he fell asleep at the breast, woke up, suckled, slept again. He never attracted attention by screaming with colic for hours on end as so many firstborn babies do. Mind you, we were a bit less lucky in his appearance. Most babies you see could be either sex, but not this one: he was a right little bruiser, even his curled fingers looked like fists.
Andromache came out and sat beside me, while I told her what had happened in the arena. We speculated about what Pyrrhus might do, and agreed we’d probably not be required to serve wine at dinner that night. The baby was no more than a few feet away from her, but she never once looked at him and shortly afterwards went back into the hut.
After a while, I lay back, closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun. The black clouds had vanished, though the wind still blew as fiercely as ever; still, it was more sheltered here than anywhere else in the camp. The chattering of the girls faded into the distance; I think I must have drifted off to sleep, but then suddenly I jerked awake, aware of a scrambling all around me as the girls struggled to their feet. Opening my eyes, I saw Pyrrhus towering over me, over everybody. And there was the baby, cooing and gurgling and trying to get his fist into his mouth. Pyrrhus glanced down at him, and I saw his expression change; though I doubt if he really took in what he was seeing—a naked, and very obviously male, child—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t remember it later. This was a disaster. Slowly, I got to my feet. He bowed, and asked if he could have a word. Of course, I agreed, and we went into the hut together. It was cool inside, but somehow that only served to underline how groggy and disoriented I was feeling. I should never have let myself go to sleep.
There were several girls sitting on their beds, talking, one girl brushing another’s hair. They turned as we came in, looking thoroughly alarmed at the sight of Pyrrhus. I jerked my head to one side and they ran outside.
Pyrrhus said: “Alcimus suggested I should talk to you.”
Then: silence. Nothing. I waited, desperately trying to think of something, anything, to distract him from what he’d just seen.
“Shall we go across to the hall?” Pathetic, but the best I could do. “It’s so crowded here.”
That was even less impressive, since we were standing together in an otherwise empty room, but he didn’t seem to question it, just moved automatically towards the door.
We walked across the yard and up the steps of the veranda into the brightly lit hall. Fresh rushes had already been laid and the tables set for dinner. Preparations would have been well advanced by the time Pyrrhus cancelled. He started walking down the middle aisle and, of course, I followed. I expected to be taken through into his living quarters, but at the last moment he seemed to change his mind. Instead, he sat at the top table in Achilles’s chair, curling his fingers into the lions’ snarling mouths. Beside his plate was the Thracian cup with its frieze of horses’ heads with flowing manes. He reached for it, entwining his thick fingers round the stem.
“Alcimus says you were there the night Priam came.”
“Yes,” I said. “I was there.”
He asked the same questions Calchas had asked. I gave the same answers. It was harder this time for me to remain detached, because I was sitting in the room where those events had happened. Then, I’d been standing behind Achilles’s chair—tired, my feet aching, longing for the evening to be over; but Achilles, though he’d given up pretending to eat, still sat slumped in his chair. Nobody could leave until he left, but he seemed almost torpid, as he so often did in the days after Patroclus’s death. Once a day, sometimes twice, he roused himself to fasten Hector’s corpse to his chariot and, yelling his great battle cry, dragged it three times round Patroclus’s burial mound, returning to the camp with lathered horses, his face caked in filth. There, he abandoned the body in the stable yard, flayed, every bone broken, scarcely identifiable as a man. Sometimes, when Achilles staggered back into the hall, his face was disfigured by the same injuries he’d inflicted on Hector. He saw them; I know he did—I watched as he peered into the mirror, lifting his hands uncertainly to touch his skin.
Pyrrhus was listening intently as I came to the end of the story. “Achilles said, ‘Oh, yes, I’d fight. I don’t need a Trojan to teach me my duty to a guest.’ ”
“You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“Exact words.”
“Yes, but do you think he’d really have done that? Fight the other kings—for Priam?”
“I think he would, yes. He wasn’t a man to say one thing and do another.”
“Well, then. I suppose I’ve got to accept it. They were guest-friends.” He was slapping the tabletop with both hands, an oddly restrained gesture that did nothing to conceal the violence within. “I’m just sorry for Ebony. Why does he have to die? He did nothing wrong.”
Did he actually expect me to sympathize with his horse? But the strange thing is, I did sympathize. I never, at any point, wanted to see Ebony destroyed.
“I have to be going,” I said.
He stood up at once. “I’ll see you back to your hut.”
“Oh, no need—it’s still light.”
He stood on the steps and watched me cross the yard. I was glad he hadn’t insisted on escorting me to my door. As it was, I waited for him to go inside and then slipped along to the women’s hut where I found the girls huddled around Maire, who was looking terrified, as well she might. I had a brief urgent conversation with Andromache and Helle. We agreed we had to get the baby out. It was good to talk to them. Left to myself, I think I might have been paralysed by a fear of overreacting, of creating one problem in the course of solving another. By running away, Maire would expose herself to all the punishments visited on runaway slaves—and they were savage. It was a relief to know that the others agreed on the dangers. Pyrrhus was an angry, vengeful man—capable of great generosity, yes, and brave, but brutal, too. Killing Andromache’s baby—that had been done in the immediate aftermath of battle, and under direct orders fro
m Agamemnon. The pressure to comply would have been immense. But Amina…? What excuse was there for that, really? No, we had no reason to trust him. If he was forced to sacrifice Ebony—and I couldn’t see how he was going to get out of it—his reaction would be to spread the pain around to as many people as possible. Having been publicly humiliated, he’d want to stamp his authority on his men—and on the slaves who’d lied to him, again, and defied him, again. I didn’t think we could expect any mercy from him at all. Somehow, we were going to have to get the baby out—and it had to be done tonight while everybody in the compound was preoccupied with the practicalities of burying Priam. So, we agreed and then parted. Helle went to break the news to Maire, and I went back home to wait, since nothing could be done before dark.
32
After watching the woman, Briseis, walk across the yard, Pyrrhus turns back into the hall. Lamps and candles cast circles of light over empty plates…He ought to be hungry by now—in fact, he should be famished, he hasn’t had a bite to eat since breakfast; but he isn’t. If anything, he feels slightly sick. Move, he tells himself, but his feet have taken root. Peeling familiarity from his eyes, he notices shadows struggling in the rafters, the same battle they fight every night, creating a sense of conflict, however convivial the gathering going on below. Not that they always are convivial. He’s thinking these trivial, scum-on-the-surface thoughts so he doesn’t have to think about…
He must be standing almost exactly where Priam stood that night, gazing up the hall at a man who sits slumped in his chair, torpid as a lizard on a cold day. Still dangerous, though: lethargy to murderous rage in seconds. How much courage it must have taken to begin that walk up the aisle between the tables, a wall of muscular backs on either side.
Pyrrhus starts walking in Priam’s footsteps down the hall towards the empty chair at the end, though he doesn’t seem to be moving at all, it’s more as if the chair is coming towards him. He stops in front of it—contemplates the impossibility of kneeling as once Priam had knelt. He’d held Achilles knees—the position of a supplicant—and said: “I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.”
And that’s where Pyrrhus loses it. Totally. Up to that point, he thinks he understands. Priam had shown immense courage in driving, alone and unarmed, into the Greek camp—and Achilles would have responded to that. He would always have responded to courage. But are those really the words of a brave man? It sounds more like giving in. And yet, it’s at that point that Achilles’s behaviour begins to change. Suddenly, he’s inviting Priam into his private quarters, bringing out the best wine, waiting on him at dinner, apparently, like a common serving man. Why didn’t he call Alcimus and Automedon into the room—let them do it? It was their job to wait on a royal guest. And there it is, the word “guest.” He wasn’t a guest! He was an interloper—he’d just walked in off the yard. And yet Achilles himself had used the word “guest”…
That was one thing everybody seemed to agree on, that Achilles and Priam had begun the night as enemies and ended it as friends—guest-friends—to the point where Achilles had been prepared to fight his fellow Greeks to defend Priam. How could a single encounter send a man spinning off onto a different path from the one he’d been pursuing, with such undeviating resolution, up till then? Pyrrhus doesn’t get it. He’s talked to Alcimus, to Automedon, and now to Briseis: he knows exactly what happened that night, but he understands none of it. How could his father, who’d been the scourge of the Trojans for the last nine years, have made a friend of Priam? Even offering to help him when Troy fell. In the deepest, darkest corner of Pyrrhus’s mind is the thought that—if he’d lived—Achilles would have defended Priam on the altar steps.
Anyway, where is everybody? He looks round the empty hall, then remembers he cancelled dinner. Just as well…Tonight’s a time to be alone, because tomorrow…Tomorrow…Everybody says it’s what the gods require. No, it fucking isn’t. It’s what Agamemnon requires. Not even that—it’s what Calchas requires. Should’ve killed the bastard, not just kicked his arse. Ah, well, too late now…
The hall with its indecipherable echoes is intolerable, so he goes into his living quarters where, as usual, somebody has set out cheese and wine. He pours himself a cup, gulps it down, reaches for the jug—and feels the mirror stir into life behind him. Refusing to pay it any attention, he pours himself more wine, and—
Boring! Boring!
Slowly, he puts down the cup.
No, go on, go on, do what you always do!
He can’t ignore it any longer. So he turns and walks towards the mirror but, instead of his reflection becoming bigger as he approaches, it dwindles till it’s scarcely more than a point of light. Once, not so long ago either, he used to dress up in Achilles’s armour and stand in front of this mirror, narrowing his eyes until the image in front of him blurred and it was possible to believe the man standing there was Achilles himself. He’s the model of his father; everybody says he is. Now, though, what he sees is a taunting homunculus. He knows perfectly well this isn’t Achilles—or any other manifestation of the afterlife. It’s him—a sheared-off sliver of his own brain.
No running to Daddy now, is there?
There never was.
Oh, it must be tough, being an orphan. Of course, there aren’t any other fatherless children in Greece, are there? God’s sake, man, get a grip.
He stares at it, this gibing homunculus whose face is a caricature of his own. Abruptly, he remembers something horrible—it’s one of the things this creature does best, dredging up memories from the sediment at the bottom of your mind, and they are never good memories. After the first attempt at burying Priam, Helenus had been brought in for questioning. The man had been tortured before, by Odysseus; he was falling over himself to tell them everything he knew—which was nothing. And yet, Pyrrhus had still pulled out his dagger, and turned it thoughtfully over and over, the movement finding a blue light on the blade. He’d noticed—without appearing to notice—the fear on Helenus’s face, the tension in his muscles. There’d been no need to use force, but still he’d pressed the dagger into Helenus’s belly, only a little way in, just far enough to make a thin rivulet of blood trickle down. No real damage, minimal pain—but there’d been no need for it. He’s ashamed of the action now, ashamed of the excitement he’d felt—and feels again, remembering the involuntary sucking-in of Helenus’s breath. A small, mean-spirited thing to do, altogether unworthy of great Achilles’s son.
That’s you all over, though, isn’t it? Nasty little boy pulling wings off flies. Do you remember doing that?…
I don’t have to listen to you.
Oh, but you do listen, don’t you? And you always will.
Summoning up all his strength, he turns his back on the mirror, grabs his cloak and crashes out into the night.
* * *
——————
Outside, breathing the cool night air, he pauses. The stables? No, though he craves time with Ebony, he’s too afraid of the pain. Later, perhaps—or tomorrow morning, first thing, then he’ll go, oversee the making of the drugged mash—better still, make it himself—groom Ebony, plait his mane…But not now, not tonight. Tonight, he wants…
What does he want? Punishment. A surprising answer, since he doesn’t know what crime he’s supposed to have committed and doesn’t accept that he’s actually to blame. How was he supposed to know about the guest-friendship between Priam and Achilles? An offence committed in ignorance is still an offence. No excuses, no allowances, no mercy—the gods are nothing if not relentless. Punishment, then. But it should be for him—not for Ebony.
He doesn’t want company, and anyway, there aren’t many places in the camp he’d be welcome now. He’ll go to the sea. Setting off down the path through the dunes, he’s aware once again of following in Achilles’s footsteps, as he does wherever he goes in the camp. What would it be
like to choose his own path…? That’s never been possible. Coming out onto the beach, he sees a huge wave burst in thunder and clouds of spray—and beyond that, other waves already gathering. At the water’s edge, he kicks off his sandals, lets his tunic fall round his ankles and braces himself for a few minutes of extreme cold before the sea spews him back onto dry land. No dolphin-like cavorting with the waves for him. He wades a little way in, feels the shock of the rising swell against his knees and then as it retreats the slipping-away of sand between his toes. Would even great Achilles have swum in such a sea? Oh, yes, of course he bloody would—and enjoyed it too! Pyrrhus edges an inch or two further out, as the sea flexes its muscles for the next assault…
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
A cool, amused voice. Pyrrhus spins round and nearly topples over as the next wave catches him. Can’t see a bloody thing. Ridiculously, he raises a hand to his eyes as if shielding them from the sun—though it’s the moon that’s bleaching the wet pebbles at his feet. The shadowy figure looking down from the top of a steep bank of shingle seems to have absolutely gigantic feet. Pyrrhus shivers a little, though a second later, he realizes it’s only Helenus with his feet still bound in several layers of rags. It’s a strange coincidence seeing him so soon after remembering sticking a knife in his belly (though only a little way in—it can’t have hurt, or not very much) and the strangeness makes him go quiet. He waits for Helenus to speak, but Helenus, perhaps finding the silence threatening, is already backing away.
“No, don’t go,” he says. Instantly, Helenus stops. “What are you doing out here?” That sounds like the beginning of another interrogation—the last thing he intends.
“Actually, I came to wash my feet.”
“Really?”
“Yes, well, you know…Salt helps.”
