by Pat Barker
28
The rules had changed. Once, not so long ago, Agamemnon’s women had been strictly confined to the huts; now, we were required to get out and cheer the Greek army as it set off for the battlefield.
An hour before dawn, the weaving sheds emptied; even women in the hospital tents had to go. I left it as late as I dared and then dragged myself to the mustering ground. I couldn’t think why Agamemnon insisted on our presence, since we raised, at best, only a few bedraggled cheers. Though I noticed that, on this occasion, men carrying spears were walking up and down the lines of women, encouraging more vociferous support.
But everything about that day was different. It was all over the camp that Achilles had relented, that he was going to fight at last. I didn’t believe it. I’d heard him unequivocally reject Agamemnon’s bribes. What could possibly have happened in the interim to make him change his mind? Unless, of course, there’d been another, secret, offer…A deal. And if there had, did it include me? Nobody would have bothered to tell me.
I looked around, trying to assess the mood. In the hospital, the rumour that Achilles had put aside his anger and was going to fight again had not been enough to lift the gloom. Too little, too late, was the general verdict, but those were sick men. Once I got away from the hospital, I saw nothing but joy and relief.
Nowhere more so than in Achilles’s own compound. Unable to stay away, I walked through the gates with a veil wound tight round my head and shoulders. Ritsa, I knew, would cover for me as long as she could. Already fully armed, the Myrmidons were circling the marshalling yard, as restless as a wolf pack that’s scented blood. Behind them, in the stables, I could see Achilles’s horses being groomed till their coats shone. And when Achilles himself came out of the hut and climbed into the stern of his ship to speak, there was a full-throated roar of approval—though it must have seemed strange to the men, as it did to me, to see him standing there, unarmed and alone. Why wasn’t he armed? Everybody else was. And I couldn’t see Patroclus anywhere, though by now he ought to have been in the chariot with the reins wrapped round his waist.
Then, as Achilles finished speaking, the door of the hut was thrown open—and Achilles came out. Dead silence; where there should have been cheers, silence. I don’t think the men were surprised, they knew what was happening—but that moment, when the two versions of Achilles met and stood face to face, was chilling, as if a shadow had passed over the sun. Oh, they made up for the silence later, with cheers, stamping feet, banging of swords on shields, drums, pipes, trumpets…but the first reaction was fear, that quite specific dread people feel in the presence of the uncanny. Standing there, identical to Achilles in every respect, Patroclus had become his fetch, the double that appears to herald a man’s death. Achilles felt it, I know he did, I saw his expression change, but he recovered quickly. In fact, he was the first to cheer, running up the steps to clasp Patroclus in his arms.
They crossed the yard together, the crowd parting to let them through. Patroclus even walked like Achilles. Perhaps the change was forced upon him by the armour, which was, after all, tailored to fit Achilles, or it may have been a deliberate attempt to mimic his movements, but I think it was more than either of those things. He’d become Achilles. Isn’t that love’s highest aim? Not the interchange of two free minds, but a single, fused identity? I remembered seeing them on the beach the night I’d followed Patroclus down to the sea. This was what I’d glimpsed then.
Automedon, who was taking Patroclus’s role as charioteer, braced himself to steady the chariot as Patroclus leapt on board. After a further brief conversation—Patroclus bending down to listen, Achilles looking up to speak—Automedon slapped the reins against the horses’ necks and the chariot rolled forward. Drums beat, trumpets blared—men kept time with the banging of their swords on their shields—and slowly the column moved off. The Myrmidons were to lead the attack, because they were fresh, and because everybody knew the sight of Achilles would strike terror into the Trojan ranks. Oh, I could imagine it, the consternation, the alarm, as Priam on the battlements and Hector in the field recognized the shining helmet with its dancing horsehair plumes. Hector was no coward, he wouldn’t hold back, he’d be carving his way towards that helmet. And every Trojan fighter with a reputation to make or defend would be trying to get there before him. The man who killed Achilles was guaranteed immortal glory.
But it wasn’t Achilles inside the armour; it was Patroclus. That morning, I found out what it was like to have divided loyalties. I didn’t dare pray, because I didn’t know what to pray for.
After the drums and shield-banging had faded into the distance, the camp fell eerily silent. Iphis, who’d also watched Patroclus leave, invited me to share a dish of wine with her, but I said no, I had to be getting back. And I did set off immediately, walking purposefully down a path between two rows of huts, but the minute I knew I wasn’t being observed, I slowed down.
I just wanted a few minutes to enjoy the silence. Nobody groaning, nobody crying out for water; no sound at all except for a door banging loose on its hinges and the cries of seagulls circling overhead. All the paths were deserted. The men gone, the women inside the huts, where a great chattering of looms had already begun. I closed my eyes for a moment, listening to the constant thrum of the wind in the ships’ rigging—that mind-at-the-end-of-its-tether sound I’d grown to hate—and when I opened them again, he was there.
He hadn’t seen me. He was standing at the corner between two rows of huts, looking inland towards the battlefield. For the first time since I’d heard his battle cry ringing round the walls of Lyrnessus, I thought he seemed vulnerable. I drew back into the shadows. I wondered how it felt to be the only unwounded man left in the camp, because he was the only one, everybody else had gone, even the older men who normally remained behind to guard the ships. I stayed still, hardly daring to breathe, and after a while he walked off in the direction of his hut.
Freed from the oppression of his presence, I slipped down onto the beach, where immediately I kicked off my sandals and started wandering along the shore, scuffling through mats of dry seaweed, my feet releasing clouds of tiny stinging sandflies. Now and then I stooped to pick up a razor shell, a mermaid’s purse, the partially articulated wing of a seagull: all the detritus the sea offloads onto the land. Occasionally, I’d pick up a pebble, but none was as beautiful as the sharp-edged, green stone I’d discovered on my first night in the camp. I was so absorbed I didn’t know where I was going until I felt a sudden chill and looked up to see the first of the black ships towering over me, her dark underbelly encrusted with grey barnacles. I walked along her side trying to prise one loose with my fingernails, but they were stuck fast. Deep shadow between the ships, a dank, green, underwater smell that after a while became unpleasant. Wanting to get away from it, I started to walk faster and, then, just as I reached the stern, there he was, coming full pelt round the corner.
We almost collided. Pulling up just in time, he took a step back. I noticed he’d gone very pale and at first I couldn’t think why, and then I realized that in this murky, submarine light he’d mistaken me for Thetis. Though why a meeting with his mother should have that effect on him, I didn’t know. I do know the shock made him angry, but that was no surprise. All Achilles’s emotions seemed to be varying shades of anger.
“You,” he said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Backing away from him, I said, “I came to see them off.” Angry though I knew he was, I had to ask, “Will he be all right?”
“If he does as he’s told, he will.”
“It was amazing, they’ll all think it’s you.”
“It should be me.”
I could see he was still angry. I tried to edge past him, but he caught my arm, his nails digging deep into my skin. “I wish I’d never met you.” Said very quietly. “I wish you’d died that day at Lyrnessus.”
He rammed me hard ag
ainst the side of the ship. I raised my arms to shield my face, but he just seized the end of a rope ladder and with a few powerful steps climbed onto the deck. I waited till I was sure he was gone, then ran towards the huts. When I turned to look back, there he was in the stern of the ship: a tall figure, black against moving grey clouds. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking straight over my head towards the battlefield.
With a sense of having escaped, I lowered my eyes and ran all the way back to the hospital, and Ritsa—and safety.
29
Putting his encounter with the girl behind him, Achilles concentrates his whole attention on the battlefield. The sun’s directly above his head now, hard and white, a spear point boring into his skull. He keeps having to brush sweat out of his stinging eyes. He’s trying to follow the progress of his own plumed helmet through knots of grappling men and it’s beginning to unsettle him, this unblinking focus on a distant figure who’s indistinguishable from himself.
Below the stern of his ship, the compound’s deserted: women nattering away behind the closed doors of the weaving sheds, dogs—all lolling pink tongues and misery—sprawled in the shadows of the huts. He has a jug of water beside him, but it’s warm and tastes brackish, though the girl who brought it swore she’d got it straight from the well. He takes a gulp, swishes it round his mouth and spits it out onto the deck. Even that small break in concentration’s enough to disorientate him. When he looks back at the battlefield, he can’t immediately see the helmet and tenses up in expectation of the worst. But no, there it is—thank god. Patroclus is carving his way through the Trojan ranks on towards Troy and the inevitable meeting with Hector. What’s he doing? The ships have been safe for the last hour at least. “Turn back.”
He realizes he’s said it aloud. There’s nothing around him but the empty deck and the empty camp, nobody to hear, and yet the hot, affronted silence makes him feel self-conscious. Well, sod that…He yells at the top of his voice: “Turn back, you fucking idiot. For god’s sake!”
The fighting’s thick and fast around the helmet now. He can’t bear to watch, but neither can he bear to skulk in his hut and not know. Four hours, bareheaded in the hot sun, four, then five, and counting…
At first, it’s easy to ignore the strangeness, the not-rightness, till suddenly he’s inside the helmet, head bouncing off the bronze sides as blows from a sword come crashing down. For a moment the sky’s black, then he’s up again and running, yelling his great battle cry as he sees the gates of Troy. All around him the ground’s wormy with wounded men. And then, glimpsed through a wall of struggling backs, Hector. But the shield’s so heavy, it’s nearly wrenching his arm out of the socket, his body’s slick with sweat all over and when he tries to grip the spear his fingers slip and—
Achilles wipes his eyes, eases his shoulders back, turns his head cautiously from side to side, makes himself focus on details: the jug of water at his feet, the precise grain of the wood in the plank it’s standing on. He needs to reconnect with his surroundings, get back into the real world, adjust to a view not framed by the cheek irons of a helmet.
Gradually, his breathing steadies, but still he’s not fully present to himself. He keeps looking down at his hands, stealing furtive glances, as if he thought they belonged to somebody else. Surely they can’t be as big as that? He grasps the rail tighter, tighter again, trying to squeeze the delusion out of his brain, and slowly his hands return to their normal size. But it’s shaken him, no doubt about that. He needs a drink of cold water, really cold, not this tepid muck, or better still, perhaps, a cup of cool wine. Feeling weaker than he can ever remember feeling, he climbs halfway down the rope ladder and then lets himself drop to the ground. A few minutes out of the hot sun, he’ll soon be himself again.
He’ll be himself again. He notices, as if hearing it for the first time, the oddity of that expression. Spot on, though. He hasn’t been himself all day, not since early morning when he woke to find Patroclus standing, naked, in front of the bronze mirror. He’d already braided his hair and the long thick plait hanging down his back looked like a second spine.
Catching a movement in the mirror, he turned to Achilles and smiled.
“Did you sleep?” Achilles asked.
“Eventually.”
“Was I snoring?”
“What do you mean: ‘Was I snoring?’ After what you had to drink?”
“I didn’t drink a lot.” It’s true. He never drinks too much, never eats too much either—and he certainly never misses his run in full armour round the bay. He has all the minor virtues, and only one—colossal—vice. “How do you feel?”
Patroclus turned back to the mirror. “I’m fine.”
A tap on the door and Alcimus came in carrying greaves so highly polished it hurt your eyes to look at them. Achilles swung his legs over the side of the bed, telling Alcimus he wasn’t needed, that he’d help Patroclus fit the armour. He sounded confident, as if he and he alone knew how to adapt his armour for use by another man, though in fact the possibility of somebody else wearing his armour had never occurred to him before. The fact was, he needed these few minutes alone with Patroclus.
Working quickly and silently, he helped him buckle on the cuirass. Nothing could be done about the hinge, but at least the straps could be adjusted, though the all-important area under the right arm took a dozen attempts before they got it right. “There, how does that feel?”
Patroclus circled his arm again. “Fine.”
“Here, try the helmet.”
Staring at his reflection, Patroclus lowered the helmet gingerly onto his head, adjusted the cheek irons and only then turned away from the mirror to face Achilles. Now, with the bronze crest and horsehair plumes tossing around his head, he looked suddenly a foot taller. With forehead and nose covered and the cheek irons jutting out along the line of his jaw, his face had almost vanished.
“Well? Do you think they’ll believe it’s you?”
“God, yes, even I believe it.”
Achilles laughed as he said it, but he knew his voice sounded shaky. Turning aside, he looked down at the remaining armour: shoulder guards, arm guards, neck guard, greaves…He pretended to find a speck of dirt on one of the greaves and started rubbing it with a soft cloth, pulling back to inspect the area, then breathing on it and rubbing again. With each sweep of the cloth, his face reappeared, features brutalized by the curve of metal. “Do you want my spear?”
“No, I’ll take my own, they won’t be looking at the spear. Well, not if it’s inside them, anyway.” He turned back to the mirror. He seemed to be mesmerized by his own reflection—or was it Achilles’s reflection he was looking at? “I’ll take your sword though.”
Achilles went to fetch it, but then, instead of handing it over, he started slicing the air, coming steadily closer and closer to Patroclus, the blade flashing so fast he seemed to be wielding half a dozen swords. Patroclus stood his ground, though he looked taken aback and Achilles could see the first faint glimmering of fear in his eyes. At last, laughing, Achilles lowered the sword and held it out, but even then couldn’t bring himself to relinquish it. Instead, he pointed it at Patroclus’s naked throat, a blade so sharp even resting it lightly against the skin could produce a cut. The tip was quivering with the pulse in Achilles’s hand. “Remember what I said? Doesn’t matter how well it’s going, you turn back the minute the ships are safe. And you do not fight Hector. Hector’s mine.”
“All right.” Patroclus smiled, though you could see him wanting the sword point to be lifted. “I’ve said: All right.”
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then, with a slight, self-mocking bow, Achilles handed the sword over. “And remember, I expect you back in time for lunch!”
Patroclus laughed, but he wasn’t paying much attention, he was too eager to be gone. Wearing Achilles’s armour had changed him, and changed the relationship between t
hem. He was Achilles’s equal now—in his own estimation, at least. The increased confidence showed in his walk, his gestures, even in the way he held his head—and it made him utterly convincing.
“You know,” Achilles said, “I’m beginning to think this might work.”
Patroclus was once again circling his right arm, only this time holding the sword. “It will.”
“You’re sure that’s all right?”
“It’s fine.”
“I wish you’d stop saying everything’s fine.”
Patroclus pulled him into an embrace. “But it is.”
“I’ll talk to the men first.”
Patroclus went ahead of him into the dark hall, but stopped just inside the door. They embraced again—a private embrace, more intimate than the public embrace that would follow it, though even then, Achilles could feel the tension in Patroclus’s shoulders, his eagerness to be gone.
Achilles shook him. “Just come back.”
And then, fixing a smile on his face, he stepped out into the blinding light.
* * *
——————
Hours later, stepping from light into the near-darkness of the hall, he pauses to get his bearings. When he can see again, he goes to the vat of water in the corner of the hall and plunges his head under the surface, running his fingers through his sweaty hair, staying under long enough for his lungs to start to hurt. Coming up, dripping wet, drops of water scattered like grey pearls across his skin, he finds himself shivering uncontrollably. Definitely caught the sun—but he does feel better. At least his mind’s clear.
Better, but livid. Stop the minute the ships are safe. Don’t press on to the gates. Don’t fight Hector. Hector’s mine. Could he have made it any clearer? Though, to be fair, Patroclus hasn’t fought Hector—not yet, at any rate—but the rest of it he’s just ignored. Achilles paces up and down, kicking anything that gets in his way, and everything does, of course—except the dogs, who know better and slink out into the yard. It’s not as if he doesn’t understand why Patroclus has disobeyed his orders. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, there’s a moment of calm, when time slows and the shouting and the clamour fade away and you see the red veins in the whites of an enemy’s eyes and you know—not believe, not hope—know you can’t miss. They’re rare, those moments. The other ninety-five percent of the time, war’s just a tedious, bloody grind, composed in equal parts of boredom and terror, but then it comes again, that shining moment, when the din of battle fades and your body’s a rod connecting earth and sky.
