by Pat Barker
Now for Hector. His ankles are still roped together and fastened to the axle bar. He checks the knots, jerks them tighter and only then kicks the corpse over onto its back. Last night, he’d dumped a torn and bloody mess of broken bones into the filth of the stable yard; this morning, yet again, Hector looks like he’s asleep, a deep, calm, peaceful sleep—the sleep that every night eludes Achilles. He’d like to throw back his head and howl. Instead, he climbs into the chariot and begins to turn the horses round. Behind him, Hector’s body bumps over the rutted ground, slowly at first, then faster, as he drives out of the yard, out of the compound, away from the beach, away from the battlefield, up the stony track that leads to the promontory where the dead are burned.
How high the flames shot into the sky the night he burned Patroclus, how the blood of the Trojan captives jumped and sizzled on the burning logs. Twelve youths he’d promised Patroclus and twelve he got: tall, strong, young men, the pride of their families, but passive at the end, resigned, as bulls sometimes are before the sacrifice.
At the very last moment, before lighting the fire, he’d cut his own hair, hacking through the thick braids and twining them round Patroclus’s fingers. Before setting sail for Troy, he’d vowed not to cut his hair until he returned home. Standing on the windswept promontory, he watched the thick ropes of hair shrivel, seeming almost to melt before they vanished in a spurt of blue flame. With the breaking of that vow, he’d abandoned all hope of seeing his father again. Like his mother said, his death follows hard upon Hector’s. He feels it. He knows he won’t be going home. A few days, weeks at the most, and then—nothing.
The urn is invisible beneath the great mound the Myrmidons raised for Patroclus, though as clear and present to his mind as the day he placed Patroclus’s bones, one by one, inside it. Knuckle bones—recalling the games of dice they’d played as children; long thigh bones—bringing back other memories of summer nights on this beach, nine years ago, when they first came to Troy; and finally the skull. He’d run his scorched fingertips over the cranium and around the empty eye sockets, remembering flesh, remembering hair.
Now, with a great shout, he slaps the reins against the horses’ necks and sets off at full gallop round the grave.
Below him, in the camp, men polishing armour stop what they’re doing and look up, grooms glance at each other, thinking what state the horses will be in when they get back, focusing on that because they’re too frightened to think of anything else. Again and again, Achilles’s war cry drifts across the camp, as he drives his sweating horses faster and faster round the burial mound.
By the time he returns, Hector’s body has been reduced to a mass of red pulp and splintered bone. The face is flayed—beyond recognition. Achilles jumps to the ground, throws his reins at a tight-lipped groom and strides down the narrow passage that leads from the stables to his hut. Briseis is coming towards him—seeing her startles him, in the half-light she looks like Thetis. He smells her fear as she flattens herself against the wall.
Once inside his living quarters, he returns to the mirror. He does this every morning now, it’s become part of the routine. He knows what he’s going to see, but he needs to make himself see it, to prove he’s not afraid. Reflected back from the shining metal, the injuries he’s just inflicted on Hector lie like shadows on his own skin. Is this why they won’t look at him, the grooms who run to take his reins?
But then he moves a little to the right, the shadows lift and it’s his own face looking back at him again. They’re illusions, those marks on his skin, but he sees them every morning and every night and it’s difficult not to believe they’re real.
Shivering, he goes in search of the sun. Standing on the veranda steps, he looks around him at the waking camp. Fires are burning, the preparations for his dinner already well under way. Herbs are being ground to flavour his meat. Looms are clattering, making clothes for his back and covers for his bed. Round the corner in the stable yard, men are grooming his horses and polishing his chariot and soon Alcimus will arrive to put the finishing touches to his armour. He’s in control of everything he sees.
But every morning, he’s compelled to drive his chariot round and round Patroclus’s grave, to defile Hector’s body, and, in the process—as he understands perfectly well—to dishonour himself. And he has no idea how to make any of it stop.
40
After that disastrous night, I didn’t expect Achilles to send for me again, but he did. Only two nights later, in fact.
He came into the living quarters, having eaten scarcely anything at dinner, and called for more wine, only to sit staring into the fire, not drinking from the cup I’d poured. Automedon and Alcimus cleared their throats and shifted from side to side in their chairs. Patroclus’s empty chair continued to dominate the room.
Achilles let them go early, but he didn’t dismiss me. Dreading the night, I sat on the bed and waited. But when, eventually, he stood up it wasn’t to get undressed but to fetch a pair of scissors from a carved chest in the corner of the room. He turned his chair round and dragged it across to the mirror, handed me the scissors and held up the hacked-off ends of his hair. “Here,” he said. “See what you can do with that.”
This was unexpected. I took the scissors and looked about for something to wrap round his shoulders. He’d thrown his battle shirt on the floor by the bed so I used that. Then, pulling a strand of his hair straight between my fingers, I started to cut. A strange feeling, touching him like that; in a way, more intimate than sex. I didn’t like it, but after the first few fumbles I was making a pretty good job of his hair. It helped that the scissors were sharp. Very sharp. I ran my fingers through his hair to check that the ends were even, and suddenly—no warning—saw him lying on the floor in a pool of blood with the scissors sticking out of his neck. The vision, if that’s what it was, brought me to a halt. I just stood there, feeling slightly sick. When I raised my head, I saw him watching me.
“Go on,” he said. “Why don’t you?”
We stared at each other, or rather we stared at each other’s reflections in the mirror. I wanted to say: Because your precious Myrmidons would torture me to death if I did. But I knew it would be dangerous to say anything, so I just lowered my head and went on cutting, and this time I was careful not to stop until I’d finished.
From that day, he told me to stay behind every evening after dinner, though he never again asked me to stay the night. Asked, I say. Force of habit—there was never any question of asking.
Usually, Automedon and Alcimus would be there too, though he never kept them long. At some point between their departure and bedtime, he’d pick up a torch, tell me to bring another and go out to where Hector’s body lay in the filth. Usually he’d kick it over onto its back, lower the torch and examine the face. In the twelve hours that had passed since the last time he’d dragged it round Patroclus’s grave, the features had been completely restored. Even the eyes were back in their sockets—he always pushed the lids up to make sure. When he straightened up—and this was the moment I feared most—the injuries he’d inflicted on Hector were stamped on his own face.
Sometimes, it ended there. At other times, he’d check the rope that tied Hector’s ankles to his chariot and set off again, driving round and round Patroclus’s burial mound in the dark. On those nights, I used to cower in the living quarters, listening for his return, in a state of absolute terror—not for myself, particularly, but because there seemed to be no humanity left in him at all. He’d become an object of…I was going to say of pity and terror. But he never inspired pity—and he certainly didn’t feel it. Terror, yes. I wasn’t the only one to feel that. Automedon and Alcimus, who loved him and would’ve helped him if they could, even they were afraid.
But they were as trapped as he was in a never-ending cycle of hatred and revenge. And if they couldn’t free themselves from it, with all the advantages they had, what hope was there for
me?
41
Every night at dinner he sits alone at the table he used to share with Patroclus. Mealtimes are difficult because nobody can eat anything until he does, and his appetite’s deserted him. But he does the best he can, forcing himself to chew away with apparent enthusiasm, though he doesn’t always manage to swallow what he chews. Instead, he spits little balls of mashed-up meat discreetly into the palm of his hand and secretes them under the edge of his plate. Alcimus and Automedon wait on him and have a drink with him afterwards, though he senses a little impatience as the evening drags on. No doubt they’re wanting to get it over with so they can have a drink with their friends or go to bed with a favourite girl. Do either of them have a favourite girl? He has no idea. Patroclus would have known.
Once the last dish has been served, he waves Automedon and Alcimus away. Their constant hovering’s beginning to get on his nerves, though to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with either of them, apart from the one great, irredeemable flaw of not being Patroclus. Alcimus, particularly, is a good lad, kind-hearted, loyal—brave too, a good fighter. A bit of a fool, perhaps, but then time could sort that out. Automedon’s a different matter: tall, lean, a first-rate charioteer, but thin-lipped, humourless, full of conscious rectitude. He was there when Patroclus died. He, not Achilles, held the dying man in his arms; he, not Achilles, witnessed the passing of his last breath. He, not Achilles, fought off the Trojans who were trying to drag the body back to Troy—and, because of this, Achilles must be eternally grateful to Automedon and not let him suspect, even for a second, how bitterly he resents him. Why him? Why not me? He asks the questions over and over, as if one day they might have a different answer, and the burden of guilt be lifted at last.
Alcimus and Automedon: they’re his closest companions now. Thanks to them, he’s never alone, and because they’re not Patroclus he’s never more alone than when he’s with them.
He clasps the carved arms of his chair—two snarling heads of mountain lions, finely wrought—and tries to snap out of his torpor, to force himself to rise and thereby give permission for everybody else to leave. But just as he’s about to stand up, he notices—not a commotion, exactly—a disturbance of some kind, at the far end of the hall. Somebody’s opened the outside door and let in a draught of night air. Torches gutter, smoke swirls, he feels cooler air on his eyelids—and there, suddenly, is an old man, white-haired but not stooped, leaning on a staff, walking towards him. Father, he thinks. Though why his father should brave a dangerous sea voyage to visit him here is beyond comprehension; he’s never done it before. And, anyway, as the old man comes closer, it’s obvious he’s nothing like Peleus.
Nobody else seems to have noticed him, which makes the moment feel strange, even a little uncanny—outside the normal order of things.
The old man takes a long time to reach him. It’s obvious who he’s come to see: his eyes are fixed on Achilles. A peasant farmer, judging by the coarse cloth of his tunic and the rough-hewn staff he’s leaning on, though he certainly doesn’t carry himself like a peasant. A suspicion’s already started to form at the back of Achilles’s mind, but faintly, because it’s even more improbable than the unheralded arrival of his father. No, not improbable. Impossible.
The man reaches him—he’s only two or three feet away now—and then, with an audible clicking of arthritic joints, lowers himself to the floor and clasps Achilles’s knees—the position of a supplicant. For a moment, everything stays still, though one or two of the men have begun to exchange puzzled glances. And then the old man speaks, face to face, not raising his voice, as if there’s nobody else in the room except himself and Achilles, nobody else in the world, perhaps. Achilles feels the shorn hair at the nape of his neck rise. It’s as if he’s looking back from sometime in the unimaginably distant future and seeing himself seated in a throne-like chair with a tall, white-haired man kneeling at his feet. There they are, fixed, not for this moment only, but for all time.
A voice jerks him back to the present.
“Achilles.” The old man’s gasping for breath, as if saying the name exhausts him: “Achilles.”
Just the name, Achilles notices; no title. Despite this abject kneeling at his feet, there’s an assumption of equality here. He feels his hands bunch into fists, but it’s just a reflex—he doesn’t feel threatened. He could pull this old man apart with his bare hands, as easily as an overcooked chicken. And yet he is afraid…
“Priam.”
He whispers the name, so the men around him won’t hear, and somehow just saying the word hardens suspicion into fact. Instant rage. “How the bloody hell did you get in?”
By now, his closest aides are on their feet, guilt and consternation writ large on every face. They still don’t know who this is, but they know he shouldn’t be here. He should never have been able to get into the compound, let alone walk straight into the hall and reach Achilles, unchallenged, close enough to touch him, close enough to kill him, for that matter…
Achilles holds up his hand and reluctantly, grumbling like circling dogs, they fall back.
Priam’s weeping now, swift, silent tears coursing down his cheeks and disappearing into the white beard. “Achilles.”
“You don’t need to keep saying that. I know who I am.” Does he? He’s so thrown by this, he’s not sure he does anymore. “I asked you a question. How did you get in?”
“I don’t know. Guided, I suppose.”
“By a god?”
“I believe so.”
“Huh! Really? You didn’t bribe the guards?”
“No, nothing like that.” Priam sounds surprised he should even think it. “I heard what you said when I came in.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You did; you said: ‘Father.’ ”
Achilles tries to think, but his mind’s gone blank. He certainly thought, Father, but he’s virtually certain he didn’t say it aloud; and Priam’s reading of his mind only underlines the strangeness of this meeting.
“He’ll be an old man now, your father—he can’t be a lot younger than me.”
“He’s nothing like you, he’s…strong.”
“You’ve been away nine years, Achilles…You’ll see a difference when you get back.”
I’m not going back.
He has to stop himself speaking the words aloud, and, oddly, it’s not the presence of the old man, his enemy, that restrains him, but the faces crowding round them, red and sweaty in the torchlight: the faces of his friends. He can’t bring himself to tell the truth to them.
“He’ll be missing you. Though at least he’s got the consolation of knowing you’re still alive…My son’s dead.”
Achilles twists in his chair. “What do you want?”
“Hector. I want to take Hector’s body home.”
The words drop like stones into a well so deep you could spend the rest of your life listening for the plop as they hit the water. It’s not intentional; if Achilles could speak, he would.
“I’ve brought a ransom.” Priam’s visibly forcing himself to press on against the wall of Achilles’s silence. “You can see for yourself, it’s outside in the cart…or send one of your men…” Priam looks round the circle of hostile faces and for a moment his voice falters, but then he lifts his head. “Give me my son, Achilles. Think of your father, who’s an old man, like me. Honour the gods.”
Still, silence.
“You have a son, Achilles. How old is he?”
“Fifteen.”
“So, nearly old enough to fight, then?”
“Not yet—he’s at home with his mother’s father.”
“I bet he can’t wait to get to Troy. Fight beside his father, prove himself worthy…He’ll be here soon. How would you feel, Achilles, if it was your son’s body lying unburied inside my gates?”
Achilles shakes his head. Priam
grips his knees harder, his fingers digging in: “I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.”
Achilles feels the thin, dry lips brush the back of his hand and the sensation provokes an immediate burst of rage. He wants to lash out, to send this bag of old bones skittering across the floor. He’s twitching all over, every muscle tense, but he manages to keep his hands still. Only, when he looks down, he sees there’s something wrong with them. They’re big at the best of times, a fighter’s hands, trained from childhood to wield a sword and spear, but surely they’ve never been as big as this? He remembers the same thing happening the day Patroclus died. He tries flexing his fingers, but that only makes it worse. Every individual nail’s embedded in a red cuticle. Why won’t the blood wash out?
Then suddenly his hands belong to him again. He pushes Priam away, but gently, feeling the sharpness of the collarbones under the thin tunic. Then he covers his face and weeps for his father and for Patroclus, for the living and the dead. And Priam, still holding on to the arm of Achilles’s chair, weeps for Hector, and for all his other sons who’ve died in this interminable war.
They’re close, these men, so close they’re almost touching, but their griefs are parallel, not shared.
All around them, men shift their feet and cough. By now, it’s obvious to everybody who the old man is; obvious, but no less incredible for that. Automedon goes to the door, convinced he’ll find a contingent of Trojan guards outside, because it’s simply not possible that Priam’s here, unarmed and alone. The King of Troy driving under cover of darkness into the heart of the Greek camp? No flag of truce, no guaranteed safe passage? No, it’s not possible, he’ll have brought guards with him at least…
