The Song of Troy

by Colleen McCullough

  ‘Achilles!’ she cried, eyes shining like clear, brownish amber. ‘I saw you at Mykenai when I peeped through the door behind Father’s throne. Oh, I am so happy!’

  By this time I was on my feet, still gaping.

  She was not more than fifteen or sixteen, that I saw before she took off her cloak to show me skin like milky marble faintly veined and two plump breasts. Her mouth was softly pink and tenderly curved, her hair the colour of the heart of a fire. So alive she made the air around her brittle, she had laughter in her face and a hidden strength beneath her extreme youth.

  ‘My mother didn’t need to persuade me,’ she hurried on when I said nothing. ‘I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to tell you how happy I am! Iphigenia will marry you gladly!’

  I jumped. Iphigenia? The only Iphigenia I knew of was the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra! But what was she talking about? Whom could she have mistaken for me? I continued to stare at her like some shambling idiot, bereft of words.

  My silence, the amazement in my face, finally altered her expression from glowing pleasure to uncertain anxiety.

  ‘What are you doing in Aulis?’ I managed to ask.

  At which moment Patrokles walked in, saw, and propped. ‘A visitor, Achilles?’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I’ll go.’

  I crossed the space between us quickly to take him by the arm. ‘Patrokles, she says she is Iphigenia!’ I whispered. ‘She must be Agamemnon’s daughter! And from what she says, she thinks I sent to her mother at Mykenai and asked to marry her!’

  His amusement fled. ‘Ye Gods! Is it a plot to discredit you? Or a test of your loyalty?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Shall we take her back to her father?’

  Calmer now, I considered it. ‘No. Obviously she stole out to see me, no one knows she’s here. The best thing I can do is detain her while you try to get close enough to Agamemnon to learn what’s afoot. Be as quick as you can.’

  He disappeared.

  ‘Sit, lady,’ I said to my visitor, and sank into a chair. ‘Would you like some water? A cake?’

  The next thing she landed in my lap, wound her arms about my neck and pillowed her head on my shoulder with a soft sigh. Half inclined to tip her onto the floor, I looked down on her rioting curls and changed my mind. She was a child, and she was in love with me. To her I was immensely older, which was a novel sensation. It was half a year since I had seen Deidamia and this girl was arousing quite different emotions in me. My lazy, self-satisfied wife was seven years older than I, and she had done all the wooing. To a thirteen-year-old lad, just awakening to the sexual functions of his body, that had been marvellous. Now I found myself wondering what I would feel for Deidamia when I returned from Troy a battle-hardened man. It was very nice to hold Iphigenia, inhale not perfume but the sweet and natural smell of youth.

  Smiling and content, she lifted her head to look at me, then laid it back against my shoulder. I felt her lips caressing my throat, and the breast flattened against my chest burned like a hot poker. Patrokles, Patrokles, hurry back! Then she said words I couldn’t hear; I put my hand in her thick flame hair and pulled her head up until I could see her enchanting face.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  She blushed. ‘I only asked if you were going to kiss me.’

  I winced. ‘No. Look at my mouth, Iphigenia. It wasn’t made for kisses. The sensation for kissing is in the lips.’

  ‘Then let me kiss you all over.’

  A statement which ought to have made me push her away, but I could not. Instead I let her lips, soft as swan’s down, roam around my face, press against my lowered eyelids, nestle into the side of my neck, where the nerves set a man’s heart to hammering. Longing to fold her into me and crush her against me until she gasped for breath, I had to fight myself to free her, look down into her eyes sternly.

  ‘Enough, Iphigenia. Sit still.’ I held her so until at last Patrokles returned.

  He remained in the doorway, his derisive eyes quizzing me. I took my arms from about her and lifted them in the air, torn between laughter and annoyance. It was not like Patrokles to mock me. Then I touched her cheek, pushed her off my lap into the chair. The teasing look had faded from his face; he looked grim and very angry. Nor would he speak until he was sure she couldn’t hear.

  ‘They’ve hatched a pretty plot, Achilles.’

  ‘I never thought otherwise. What plot?’

  ‘I was lucky. Agamemnon and Kalchas were alone in his tent, talking. I managed to lie unobserved in its lee and overhear most of what they said.’ He drew a breath, trembled. ‘Achilles, they’ve used your name to lure this child from her mother! They told Klytemnestra that you had asked to marry Iphigenia before the sailing in order to get the girl to Aulis. Tomorrow she’s to be sacrificed to Artemis to expiate some old wrong Agamemnon did the Goddess.’

  Anger is something every man experiences, though some men more than others. I had never thought of myself as an angry man, but now I shook with it, an anger so great it wiped out sense, ethics, principles, decency. The Gods on Olympos must have quailed. My mouth peeled back from my teeth, I shook as if the Spell had come upon me, and I would have gone out then and there into the rain to cut Agamemnon and the priest down with my axe had Patrokles not grasped my wrists with a strength I did not know he possessed.

  ‘Achilles, think!’ he whispered. ‘Think! What good will killing them do? Her blood is needed to allow the fleet to sail! From what passed between Agamemnon and Kalchas, it was plain to me that our High King has been cowed and badgered into this!’

  I clenched my fists so hard that I broke his hold. ‘Do you expect me to stand aside and applaud, then? They’ve used my name to perpetuate a crime forbidden by the New Religion! The thing is barbaric! It fouls the very air we breathe! And they used my name!’ I shook him until his teeth rattled. ‘Look at her, Patrokles! Can you stand by and watch her sacrificed like a lamb?’

  ‘No, you mistake me!’ he said urgently. ‘All I meant was that we should approach this with cool heads, not in blind rage! Achilles, think! Think!’

  I tried to. I fought to. The daimon of madness was boiling within me so violently that conquering it almost killed me. Grey in its wake, I found logic returning. Trick them! There had to be a way to trick them! I took his hands in mine.

  ‘Patrokles, would you do anything I asked of you?’

  ‘Anything, Achilles.’

  ‘Then go and find Automedon and Alkimos. We can trust them in any enterprise, they’re Myrmidons. Tell Alkimos he has to find a young deer, then paint its antlers gold. He must have the beast by morning! Take Automedon into your full confidence. Both of you must be hidden behind the altar tomorrow before the sacrifice is scheduled to begin. You’ll have the deer with you on a golden chain. Kalchas uses a great deal of smoke in his rituals. When Iphigenia is lying on the altar and the smoke billows – the priest wouldn’t dare cut her throat in full view of her father – snatch the girl away and leave the deer in her place. Kalchas will know, of course, but Kalchas likes living. He won’t say a thing beyond exclaiming at the miracle.’

  ‘Yes, it might work… But how do Automedon and I manage to get her away?’

  ‘There’s a little shelter behind the altar where they keep the victim. Hide her in there until after everyone leaves. Then bring her to my tent. I’ll send her back to Klytemnestra with a message explaining the plot. Can you see to all this?’

  ‘Yes, Achilles. What of you?’

  ‘I haven’t attended one of Kalchas’s auguries in many days, but tomorrow I’ll stroll up to headquarters just in time for the ceremony. For now, I’ll send her back to her tent. How she got here unobserved I’ll never know, but it’s just as important that she’s returned unobserved. I’ll take her myself.’

  ‘Perhaps she was seen coming here,’ Patrokles said.

  ‘No. They’d never permit her to spend enough time with me to deflower her. Artemis likes virgins.’

  He frowned. ‘Achilles
, wouldn’t it be better to send her back to her mother right now?’

  ‘I can’t, Patrokles. That would mean an open break with Agamemnon. If all goes well tomorrow at the sacrifice, we will have sailed before Klytemnestra knows.’

  ‘Then you believe that the death of Iphigenia is necessary to lift the weather?’ he asked, his tone peculiar.

  ‘No, I think the weather will lift of its own accord within the next day or two. Patrokles, I dare not risk an open break with Agamemnon, surely you can see that? I want to go to Troy!’

  ‘I see it.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I ought to go. Poor Alkimos will die of fright when he learns he has to find a young deer! I’ll stay with Automedon for the rest of the night. Unless I send word that our plan’s gone wrong, you may take it that we’re behind the altar at noon.’

  ‘Good.’

  He slipped out into the rain.

  Iphigenia had been watching us round-eyed. ‘Who was that?’ she asked, dying of curiosity.

  ‘My cousin Patrokles. There’s trouble with the men.’

  ‘Oh.’ She thought for a moment, then said, ‘He looks very like you, except that his eyes are blue and he’s smaller.’

  ‘And has lips.’

  She chuckled. ‘That reduces him to an ordinary man. I love your mouth the way it is, Achilles.’

  I hauled her to her feet. ‘Now I must get you back to your tent before someone discovers you’re not in it.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she cajoled, stroking my arm.

  ‘Yes, Iphigenia.’

  ‘We marry tomorrow. Why not let me stay the night?’

  ‘Because you’re the daughter of the High King of Mykenai, and the daughter of the High King of Mykenai must be a virgin on her wedding day. The priestesses will confirm it beforehand, and afterwards I must display the bridal sheet to prove I’m your husband in every way,’ I said firmly.

  She pouted. ‘I don’t want to go!’

  ‘Want or not, go you will, Iphigenia.’ I put my hands one on either side of her face. ‘Before I take you home, I require a promise of you.’

  ‘Anything,’ she said, bright and brilliant.

  ‘Don’t mention this visit to your father or to anyone else. If you do, your virginity will be suspect.’

  She smiled. ‘Only one more sleep, then! I can bear that. Take me back, Achilles.’

  No word came from Patrokles that our plans had gone wrong. Well before noon I put on my dress armour, the suit my father had given me from the Minos hoard, and made my way to the altar beneath the plane tree. Things looked quite normal; I breathed a sigh of relief. Patrokles and Automedon were in place.

  Oh, the looks on the Kings’ faces when they saw me! Odysseus took Agamemnon’s arm in a hard grasp immediately, Nestor shrank between Diomedes and Menelaos, while Idomeneus, the only other present, looked startled and uneasy. They were all in on it, then. Nodding a casual greeting to them, I ranged myself off to one side as if the impulse to attend today had been pure chance. Came the sound of footsteps in the sodden grass behind us; Odysseus shrugged, realising there was no time for them to persuade me to leave. Not that I saw his mind work. Being Odysseus, his very openness and normality were evidence of his subtlety. The most dangerous man in the world. Red-haired and left-handed. Omens of evil.

  As if mildly curious, I turned round to see Iphigenia approaching the altar slowly and proudly, chin up, an occasional quiver of her lips betraying her inward terror. When she saw me she flinched as if I had struck her; I gazed down through the windows of her eyes to see her last hope destroy itself. Her shock became anger, a sour and corroding emotion having nothing to do with the kind of anger I had felt when Patrokles told me of the plot. She hated me, she despised me, she stared at me as my mother had. While I stood looking stolidly at the altar, longing for the moment when I could explain.

  Odysseus had been joined by Diomedes. One on either side of him, their hands beneath his armpits, they held Agamemnon upright. His face was wrung out, ghastly. Kalchas pushed Iphigenia onwards with a finger in the small of her back. She wore no chains. I could imagine how she scorned them – she was daughter of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, whose pride was unassailable.

  At the foot of the altar she turned to look at us, eyes bright with contempt, then she ascended the few steps and lifted herself easily onto the table, lay with her hands clasped beneath her breasts, her profile etched against the grey, heaving sea. No rain had fallen that morning; her marble bed was dry.

  Kalchas threw various powders on the flames in three tripods ranged about the altar; smoke billowed green and bilious yellow, giving off a stench of sulphur and decay. Brandishing a long, jewelled knife, Kalchas flittered back and forth like some huge, obscene bat. As his arm lifted and the knife glinted, I remained rooted where I was, horrified yet spellbound. The blade flashed downwards; smoke rolled across the priest, blotted him out. Someone screamed, a shrill, gurgling shriek of despair that died away into a rattle. We stood like statues. Then a gust of wind roared down and swept the smoke away. Iphigenia lay still on the altar, her blood coursing along a channel in the stone to where a great gold cup sat between Kalchas’s hands, catching it.

  Agamemnon vomited. Even Odysseus gagged. But I could look nowhere except at Iphigenia, dying away into ashes, my mouth gaping open on a single howl of torment. Madness flooded my veins. My sword was in my hand as I sprang; if it had not been Odysseus and Diomedes who held Agamemnon I would have beheaded him as he hung between them with the sick dripping off his pampered beard. They dropped him like a stone to take hold of me, struggling desperately to wrench my sword off me while I flung them about like dolls. Idomeneus and Menelaos leaped to help them; even old Nestor waded into the fray. The five of them bore me to the ground, where I lay with my face not a handspan from Agamemnon’s, cursing him until my voice rose to a scream. Suddenly my strength drained away and I began to weep. Then they prised my fingers from my sword and lifted both of us to our feet.

  ‘You used my name to do this vile thing, Agamemnon,’ I said through my tears, the anger gone, the hatred remaining. ‘You allowed your daughter to be sacrificed to feed your pride. From this day forward you are less to me than the meanest slave. You are no better than I. Yet I am worse. If I had not yielded to my ambition, I could have prevented this. But this much I tell you, King of Kings! I’m going to send a message to Klytemnestra to tell her what’s happened here today. I’ll spare no one – not you, not the others here, and least of all myself. Our honour is stained beyond cleansing. We are accursed.’

  ‘I tried to stop it,’ he protested listlessly. ‘I sent a message to Klytemnestra to warn her, but the man was murdered. I did try, I did try… For sixteen years I’ve tried to avert this day. Blame it on the Gods. They tricked us all.’

  I spat at his feet. ‘Don’t blame the Gods for your own failings, High King! The weakness lies in us. We are mortal.’

  Somehow I reached my tent; the first thing I saw was the chair in which I had held her. Patrokles sat in another, weeping. When he heard me he took a sword from where it lay on the rug at his feet and knelt before me, the sword extended.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked, not knowing how to take more anguish.

  The tip of the weapon went to his throat, he offered me its hilt. ‘Kill me! I failed you, Achilles. I took away your honour.’

  ‘I failed myself, Patrokles. I took away my honour.’

  ‘Kill me!’ he implored.

  I took the sword and flung it away. ‘No.’

  ‘I deserve to die!’

  ‘We all deserve to die, but that won’t be our fate,’ I said, fingers busy with the buckles on my cuirass.

  He began to help me; habits are ineradicable, even in pain.

  ‘I’m to blame, Patrokles. My pride and my ambition! How could I leave her fate hanging on such thin, flimsy strands? I was learning to love her, I would have married her gladly. No shame in it to divorce Deidamia – she was a shrewd plot between my father and Lykomedes to keep me out of tro
uble. You told me to send Iphigenia straight back to her mother, and that was sound advice. I said no because I couldn’t bear to imperil my position in the army. I listened to pride and ambition, and I fell.’

  The armour was off. Patrokles began to stow it away in its chest. Always acting as my servant.

  ‘What happened then?’ I asked him as he poured wine for us.

  ‘It looked good,’ he said, coming to sit opposite me. ‘We got the deer.’ His eyes darkened, gathered tears. ‘But I decided not to share the glory with Automedon. I wanted all your praise for myself alone. So I went with the deer and hid behind the altar on my own. Then the creature grew agitated, began to bleat. I had forgotten to drug it! Had Automedon been with me, we could have muzzled it. But on my own – impossible. Kalchas found me. He’s a warrior, Achilles! One moment I was staring up at him, the next he had taken hold of the chalice and struck me with it. When I came to I was bound hand and foot, a cloth in my mouth. That is why I beg you to kill me. Had I taken Automedon, all would have gone as planned.’

  ‘To kill you, Patrokles, would mean I’d have to kill myself. Too easy. Only as living men can we eke out our punishment. As dead men we feel nothing, shades knowing neither joy nor pain. No fitting retribution,’ I said, the wine sour on my tongue.

  He swallowed, nodded. ‘Yes, I understand. While I live I must remember my jealousy. While you live you must remember your ambition. A worse fate than death by far.’

  But Patrokles did not have to remember the look in her eyes, the contempt. What must have passed through her mind between the time they told her the truth and the moment Kalchas’s knife found her throat? How must she have thought of me, who had acted like her well beloved, then heartlessly abandoned her? Her shade would haunt me for the rest of my life. Short and glorious, then! Let my life be short and glorious.