by Pat Barker
Nobody in that state could possibly stop and turn back. And he suspects Patroclus has been in that state—or somewhere near it—all morning.
Nevertheless. Orders are orders and have to be obeyed. Oh, he’ll congratulate him, slap him on the back in front of the men, pour him a cup of the finest wine, serve him the best cuts of meat at dinner, sing his praises, give thanks to the gods—all that; but later, when they’re alone, he’ll really cut the little bastard down to size. Has to, he can’t possibly let this go. But obviously he’ll wait till he’s got him on his own and then he’ll say…What will he say?
Abruptly, Achilles stops pacing and stares into the bronze mirror, where his face, looking back at him, shows no anger at all, but only fear—the fear he’ll never say anything to Patroclus ever again. It breaks him. He curls up on the bed where the sheets still hold the smell of Patroclus’s skin and says his name over and over again, as if just saying it might be a charm against disaster. “Patroclus.” And again, louder: “Patroclus.”
* * *
——————
On the battlefield, Patroclus hears Achilles calling his name and for a second his concentration falters. A second, but long enough, because suddenly there’s Hector straight in front of him. He tries to raise Achilles’s sword but already it’s too late. Hector drives the spear hard into his side—it goes in so easily—and suddenly he’s on the ground, thrashing like a fish in a pool that’s drying out. Dark shapes of Trojan fighters crowd in, blocking off the light. “Achilles!” he shouts. And again, as the red blood spurts out of him and his spirit begins to slip away into the dark: “Achilles…”
* * *
——————
A mile away, Achilles lifts his head. Just for a moment there he’d thought he heard Patroclus calling his name. Patroclus? Well, no, it can’t be. A man’s voice, though, which is strange because the men are all out there fighting. There are only women left in the camp. The bitterness of that realization bites into him.
He knows whose voice it was, but he’s afraid to let himself think what that could mean. So he tells himself, No, it was a gull. Their cries sound amazingly human sometimes…
Lifting his gaze to the rafters, he tries to pray, but prayer never comes easily to him—he’s his mother’s son, he knows too much about the gods—and after a few stumbling words he abandons the attempt. No point sitting here. Time he was back on the ship, though if the advance continues at that rate, they’ll soon be out of sight.
He’s barely reached the door when he hears his name being called again, and this time there’s no mistaking it. So they are back! Somehow or other—god knows how—they’re back.
He throws the door open and steps onto the veranda, expecting to see the yard teeming with men and horses, but there’s nobody there. Only silence, and somewhere in the distance a door banging loose on its hinges.
Back onto the ship, see what’s happening. Halfway up the rope ladder, he stops, because something’s caught his eye. A movement. And then he sees it: a chariot being driven hard and fast, the horses emerging from a cloud of dust. Somehow—and he knows this immediately—he has to stop that chariot getting here, because when it does, he’s going to hear the worst words he’s ever heard. And so he exerts the full force of his will to push it back, but not even his power can stop time or solidify air.
He takes a deep breath, lets himself drop to the ground and walks into the centre of the yard to wait for what he knows is coming. Nothing moves in the huts around him. Not a breath of wind stirs.
* * *
——————
White sun. Black shadows, knife-edged. Silence.
30
All that long day I’d sat on the bench grinding herbs while the sound of battle, clamorous at first, moved steadily further away until, by mid-afternoon, it was no more than a muffled clash on the horizon. A few wounded men straggled in—none seriously hurt—and the news they brought back was good—good, if you were Greek. The Trojans had been pushed back, Patroclus and the Myrmidons had reached the gates of Troy. It even seemed possible the city would fall that night.
The news spread rapidly from tent to tent and soon all but the most seriously injured were laughing and singing. Marching songs, sentimental songs about mothers and home, romantic songs about wives and sweethearts and—increasingly, as the day wore on—songs about Helen.
The eyes, the hair, the tits, the lips
That launched a thousand battleships…
They all believed that Menelaus, her husband, Agamemnon’s brother, would kill her when he got her back—he’d said so, many times. Some of them were inclined to think that was a waste. Fuck her first, then kill her.
Fuck her standing,
Fuck her lying,
Cut her throat and fuck her dying.
When she’s dead but not forgotten
Dig her up and fuck her rotten.
They sang themselves hoarse, calling for jugs of stronger wine, which, on Machaon’s instructions, we had to refuse. Then came a lull. I took round jugs of water; the heat in the tent was stifling, the stench of stale blood from bandages and sheets a physical barrier you had to force your way through. By late afternoon, the sound of battle was starting to grow louder again. The men kept looking at each other. Why? Were the Greeks being forced back? Shortly afterwards, an influx of wounded men brought up-to-date and dreadful news. Patroclus was dead, killed by Hector. They were fighting over his body now, Trojans trying to drag him inside the walls of Troy, Greeks standing astride his body to hold them off. One man said he’d seen Hector grab Patroclus’s legs while Automedon and Alcimus hung on to his arms. “I thought they were going to tear him apart.”
Dead. I couldn’t believe it, though I’d known from the moment he came out of the hut wearing Achilles’s armour that the day would end in his death. I felt I had to go to Iphis—it was easier to think about her grief than my own—but I saw no way of escaping from the hospital, now that so many wounded men were streaming in.
So I wasn’t there when Achilles got the news, but Iphis, watching from the doorway of one of the women’s huts, saw and heard it all. It was Antilochus, Nestor’s son, the boy who worshipped Achilles, who told him Patroclus was dead. As soon as the words were out, Achilles let out a great cry and fell to the ground, his hands clawing at the filthy sand, scooping it up and throwing it over his face and hair. Afraid he might draw his dagger and slash his throat, Antilochus caught and held his wrists. Hearing his cry, the women came pouring out of the huts and surrounded him, where he lay collapsed on the ground, powerless now for all his power.
Suddenly, a high wind started blowing. It came from nowhere, Iphis said, whistling under the doors, lifting horses’ manes and tails, creating little whirling dervishes of sand that subsided as quickly as they came. The sky darkened; thick black clouds extinguished the sun.
Antilochus stared from face to face. “What’s happening?”
And then they saw her, striding up the beach, silver-grey storm-light casting a metallic gleam over her face and hair. A whisper ran round the crowd. “Thetis.”
The name leapt from mouth to mouth and immediately they began to back away. Some knelt, foreheads touching the damp sand, while others cowered in doorways or ran inside the huts and slammed the doors. All of them, desperate to get away, desperate not to have to witness this meeting. Even Antilochus let go of Achilles’s wrists and crawled away into the shadow of a hut.
A silence fell as she approached. Those who were still out in the open covered their eyes or turned away, leaving the goddess alone with her son.
31
What’s wrong?
What’s the matter?
Where does it hurt?
* * *
——————
The old questions. The ones she used to ask whenever he came home crying with a scrape on his knee or a
bruise on his head. Every slight abrasion seemed to remind her of his mortality. Not that he didn’t lap it up, of course he did, her constant fussing, her murmurs of Mummy, kiss it better; but he resented it too, because what sort of mother starts to grieve for her son at the moment of his birth? He’d grown up saturated in her grief. He was strong, he was healthy—or at least he was until she left—but none of that mattered. Nothing could console her for his mortal birth.
What’s wrong?
That keening cry, the fishy smell of her fingertips as she cradles his head in her hands. And so it floods out of him: the death of Patroclus, his guilt—because none of this should have happened. It should have been him inside that armour—and even now, men far less skilled in the art of war than he is are fighting to stop Hector dragging Patroclus’s body inside the gates of Troy. Other men are dying to save his friend from mutilation and dishonour, while he still sits here, a useless weight on the good green earth.
But enough of that. That’s past, it can’t be changed. Now, all that matters is finding and killing Hector.
But if you kill Hector your own death follows at once.
“Do you think I care? It’s the only thing keeping me alive—the thought of killing him. Once he’s dead, my own death can’t come soon enough.”
You can’t fight without armour.
“Why not? If I’m going to die anyway?”
But she’s right, of course. Without armour he won’t live long enough to reach Hector.
Stay away from the battlefield for now. Tomorrow at dawn I’ll bring you armour fit for a god.
And so she walks back into the sea, sinking beneath a swelling wave, her black hair fanning out across the water, there for a second, then gone.
He waits for the familiar ache of loss, but this time nothing happens; perhaps the agony of losing Patroclus has swallowed every lesser grief.
* * *
——————
Mainly, in the next few hours, he feels numb. It’s a physical sensation. He looks at his hand lying on the tabletop and can’t tell where flesh ends and wood begins. Again and again, he half imagines, half hallucinates, the moment when he’ll thrust his sword into Hector’s throat. He hauls himself back into the present, shaking his head like a bewildered ox. He’s always had a good memory, right from childhood, but for the rest of his short life these first hours after Patroclus’s death will be a blank.
Without armour, he’s a snail without a shell. Useless. But then he thinks perhaps there is something he can do. And so he climbs onto the parapet above the trench and, standing there outlined against the sky, sends his terrible war cry ringing across the battlefield all the way up to the gates of Troy. Women at their looms stop to listen, wounded men lying in the hospital tents look at each other with renewed hope, and Briseis, sitting at the long table grinding herbs, shudders, remembering the first time she heard that cry, the day Lyrnessus fell.
On the battlefield, the Greeks fighting to save Patroclus’s corpse recognize the cry and turn towards it. What do they see? A tall man standing on a parapet with the golden light of early evening catching his hair? No, of course they don’t. They see the goddess Athena wrap her glittering aegis round his shoulders; they see flames thirty feet high springing from the top of his head. What the Trojans saw isn’t recorded. The defeated go down in history and disappear, and their stories die with them. Three times Achilles shouts and three times the Trojans fall back, the last time long enough for the Greeks to pull Patroclus’s body clear and carry it back to their camp.
Now at last there’s something he can do. He can wash the body—the poor, ruined body, so slashed about with swords it’s a miracle it’s held together; he can pour oil into the wounds. Somebody binds up the jaw with a strip of linen and he doesn’t like that because it makes Patroclus look too dead; but he doesn’t protest. He knows it has to be done. He takes Patroclus in his arms and rocks him, feeling the last warmth deep in his chest and belly, though his arms and legs are already cold. A priest arrives and intones prayers; women cry and beat their breasts; his friends try to put their arms round him, but he pushes them away. None of it helps.
When he can bear it no longer, he walks down to the sea, but, for perhaps the first time in his life, doesn’t wade straight into it. He wants to preserve the filth that covers him. He won’t wash or comb his hair—he’s not even going to bury Patroclus—not until he sees Hector lying dead at his feet.
* * *
——————
That night he spends with Patroclus, curled up against his side, as he lies stretched out, cold and rigid, on the bed.
* * *
——————
Well before dawn, he’s up and waiting on the beach. He doesn’t recognize the burning in his eyes as tiredness, nor identify the aching underneath his ribs as hunger. This is the way it is now. He paces up and down. Sometimes she’s late, often very late; he’s never been able to rely on her coming. Sometimes, when he was a child, she promised and then didn’t come at all. Perhaps this will be one of those times.
But then, suddenly, there she is, striding out of the sea, carrying his new and glittering armour. Slung across one slender arm, there’s a shield that later in the day Alcimus and Automedon, both strong young men, will struggle to lift. For her sake, he pretends to admire the shield and all the other pieces, though in reality he scarcely sees them. He needs this armour to get onto the battlefield, that’s all. It means no more to him than that. Sobbing, she embraces him and he forces himself to return the pressure of her arms, but the truth is, he can’t wait to be shot of her. The tears of women—even the tears of a goddess—are of no use to him now.
War. Hector. That’s all he cares about. He won’t rest now till Hector’s dead.
32
I heard him before I saw him: his battle cry ringing around the camp as he strode along the beach summoning the men to war.
The wounded in their sweaty beds looked from one to another and those who could walk at all insisted on getting up and hobbling to the arena. I slipped through the open flap at the back of the tent and ran down to the sea, where already hundreds of men had gathered to watch Achilles as he walked towards them. The sun shone, the wind lifted that great mane of hair, and yes, he did look, for one brief moment, as if his head were on fire.
Soon, the entire camp was converging on the arena. Everybody went, even the men who normally stayed behind to guard the ships. Odysseus, who’d been wounded yet again, this time in the leg, limped in, leaning heavily on his spear. Last of all came Agamemnon, his wounded arm held stiffly by his side. As he entered, silence fell.
One of his heralds had seen me standing at the back among the other women and—presumably obeying orders—grabbed me by the arm and bundled me to the front. I stood there, shivering, for the dawn wind was cold, and gazed down at my sandals, trying to shut out awareness of the staring eyes. Somewhere close by, a horse whinnied. Suddenly, I understood what was happening: Agamemnon was trying to assemble, as best he could at such short notice, the goods he’d promised Achilles. That promise still had to be kept, though it was obvious to everybody that Achilles would have fought for nothing.
I tried not to hear their voices, but short of sticking my fingers in my ears it was impossible. These men had been trained in oratory from childhood; their voices carried—and with no apparent effort—to every part of the arena. I risked a glance behind and saw Hecamede watching from the steps of Nestor’s hut. I saw her raise her hand, but I didn’t dare wave back. I hardly dared breathe. I was under Agamemnon’s paw.
Achilles got up and stood at the centre of the ring. He felt nothing but shame, he said, that he and his dear comrade Agamemnon had quarrelled over a girl, had nearly come to blows over her for all the world like a couple of drunken sailors in a bar. Better the girl had died when he took her city, better if a stray arrow had caught her then and ended her
life. How much grief and suffering the Greeks would have been spared. How many brave men, now dead, would still be alive…
He was blaming me for Patroclus.
That’s when I knew there was no hope.
But enough of that, Achilles went on. That’s past. He was ready now, more than ready, to fight—and this time there’d be no stopping till he brought Hector’s head back to the camp on the point of his spear.
Uproar. Every man on his feet shouting. It was a long time before Agamemnon could make himself heard—and what he said was hardly worth the hearing. A long, rambling, self-justifying tirade followed by a recital of the goods he was still prepared to bestow upon Achilles—though now, of course, that wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary. I glanced at Achilles and saw him struggling to hide his impatience as Agamemnon went through the list. When, finally, he stopped speaking, Achilles’s reply was crisp. The goods Agamemnon had promised could be delivered now, or later, or not at all: Agamemnon’s choice. He couldn’t have said it more clearly: This isn’t about things; things don’t matter now.
