Hand of Fire

by Judith Starkston

  One of the women in front of them hesitated, and a soldier took her by the hand and led her up behind him. Briseis hoped that would be enough for them also, but her legs felt shaky and the smoke from the pyre had taken away her breath. She stared at the plank.

  Achilles and Patroklos approached. Patroklos held out a hand to Eurome. “You’ve been working hard caring for your young lady. I worry you might be too tired for this steep walkway. May I help you?”

  Eurome looked at Briseis, clearly not wanting to abandon her. Briseis let go of her nurse’s arm and pushed her forward. She watched as Patroklos braced Eurome firmly in front of him with both hands. He commented on the beauty of the white puffy clouds above them and drew Eurome’s gaze upward while he guided her steps.

  Briseis’s turn came. Certainly she could walk up a plank. She didn’t glance at Achilles who stood next to her. She climbed part way up. Her shortness of breath made her head spin. She willed her foot to take another step but tipped backwards. A strong hand steadied her.

  “May I carry you up?” she heard Achilles ask, a searing undercurrent crackling in his voice. “It takes time for balance to return after a head injury.”

  She nodded. She would fall if he didn’t.

  He lifted her effortlessly as though he were not balancing on a plank barely wide enough for one. Her face rested against his chest and she breathed in the fresh saltiness of an ocean breeze. When she lifted away her head, she lost this pleasing scent. It emanated from his skin, as if he exuded a share of his mother’s seaborne immortality. She had not been carried in the shelter of arms since she was a little girl.

  Achilles carried her past the rowing benches on the main deck and placed her at the bow of the ship facing the bay. “You should rest here on the deck where the sea air will allow you to breathe freely.” He wrapped a length of stout rope around two pegs fixed on the side of the deck. “Have you sailed before?”

  She shook her head.

  “Some people feel ill when they sail, but you won’t.”

  How did he know that? He headed toward the stern to help the men take away the props and push the ship free of the shore. She noticed the other women were clustered in the center of the ship below the main deck, seated on a platform over the cargo.

  She felt the change underneath her as the men used their oars to work the ship out into the bay. She had often imagined what sailing would feel like.

  She looked at the shore. The foothills of Mount Ida rose from the beach. On the other side, out of sight, lay a valley rich with wheat and barley fields, orchards, and good pasturage. In the center of that valley was a hill, girdled by strong walls. The city those walls had once guarded lay in ashes. Below the walls, beside an abandoned camp, one last fire burned. She clutched the two satchels and turned toward the sea.

  Chapter Twenty

  Joined by Fire

  Achilles’ men set the sail, hauling high a wide crosspiece to which they had attached the heavy canvas. One group, their legs braced for the effort, grasped side ropes. At a shout from Achilles, they heaved, and the square sail unfolded. A moment later the rowers pulled in the oars. As the sail filled, Briseis felt the motion change to a gliding rhythm and the ship came alive, moving through the waves.

  From the foredeck, Briseis viewed the gulf and coastline. Their course through the lapis lazuli sea held close to the shore. Mount Ida’s steep slopes tumbled down to the rocky shoreline, a patchwork of granite outcroppings and tree clad heights. A steady breeze blew them toward the open Aegean beyond the gulf. She felt the wind rise up from the familiar landscape of home, carrying her away.

  The sea air bathed her lungs. She pictured each breath cleansing away the smoke, as salt water mends a wound. Achilles understood her—sailing did suit her.

  Briseis looked up the slopes of Mount Ida. She had never seen this side of her beloved mountain range: it was rockier, the trees shorter and scattered further apart. The mountain’s massive size reassured her; even Achilles looked small in its shadow. Lyrnessos was gone, but the Greeks had not touched the forests and crags. Kamrusepa’s sacred mountain stayed inviolate even though her temple had burned. The goddess would reside in her mountain haunts, content with the company of the mighty stags and refreshed by the libations of her springs, until someone remembered and made her offerings again.

  Sometime after midday Patroklos walked to her from where he was sitting with Achilles, past the rowing benches that filled much of the main deck. Since the wind did the work today, the men sprawled on the benches, relaxing. From supplies he had laid out on the deck by Achilles, he carried two wooden cups to her, one filled with fresh water, the other with cheese and olives.

  “It isn’t much,” he said. “We won’t eat a proper meal until we camp on shore late in the day.”

  She thanked him. “And the others?” She looked toward the women sitting together below the main deck. Unlike her they could not see above the sides of the ship.

  “They have food and fresh water, although some are seasick and not hungry. It will pass when we are back on land for the night. Your Eurome does not enjoy the sea as you do, but I assured her I would take care of you.”

  “She’s sick?” Briseis started to get up.

  Patroklos stopped her. “Don’t worry. She fell asleep once I told her you were fine.”

  Briseis nodded. She watched Patroklos jump down from the raised foredeck and join Achilles on a rower’s bench where he lolled against the side of the ship, his long legs stretched in front of him. As Patroklos sat down, Achilles bent one leg so Patroklos could lean on it while they ate. With one hand Patroklos reached for cheese and olives, with the other he stroked the inner part of Achilles’ thigh. She had never seen this level of intimacy between two men. She knew from the women’s gossip that Achilles chose one of the captives as his bedmate each night. Patroklos did also. This friendship intrigued her with its many facets. Once she’d noticed Patroklos’s caress, she could not keep her eyes from straying to that smooth stretch of Achilles’ powerful thigh. She clenched her hand into a fist and forced herself instead to watch the cool blue water parting with a white furl as the ship cut through.

  Achilles stood up and stretched, looking out to sea. Suddenly he cried in delight and pointed. Briseis saw what caught Achilles’ attention: dolphins swimming together. They leapt into the air and chirped their songs.

  Achilles smiled up at her. “My mother sends a sweet omen.” Briseis did not know what to think. When the bards sang of Thetis, she had had no trouble believing his mother was immortal, but now, seeing Achilles before her, it seemed utterly strange. She remembered the scent of the sea that arose from his flesh. Not so strange, perhaps.

  When the sun hung low on the horizon, the wind died and men with burly arms brought down the sail. Oarsmen maneuvered the ship so that its stern faced a narrow strip of beach. Achilles and Patroklos jumped ashore first, both with bow and quiver. Two others jumped down, caught the stern lines thrown to them and secured them to boulders and trees. Then they dropped a gangplank so that they could unload the sheep and camp supplies for the night. Briseis thought there would be little pasturage or watering for the sheep on this rocky shore until she noticed a cleft in the slopes so filled with green there must be a creek. The Greeks apparently knew how to pick their night’s berth. She wondered how many times they had done this.

  The unloading of the sheep distracted her, and she almost missed the flash of movement in the narrow canyon and Achilles’ swift response. Had it been a deer? Patroklos raced after his friend. The men cheered, hoping for a venison feast.

  Her breath came freely as she moved to the rear of the ship and greeted Eurome.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Eurome groaned and held her stomach. “Oh my stars and fishes, if we was meant for seagoing, the gods would gave us fins and scales.”

  Briseis put her arm around Eurome. “You’ll feel better on the land.”

  “I was afeared this cursed sailing would do
you more harm,” said Eurome, “but Lord Patroklos promised you was doing as well as a fish in the sea. I told him I didn’t want to hear a word about any sea, not even to hear my Poppy’s fine. I must say you was a grand sight sitting on that deck high up, like a queen on a throne, your hair blowing around your head all golden in the sun. You were a sight, yes you were.”

  “Sailing agrees with me. It’s washed the smoke out of my breath.”

  They climbed down, and as Briseis gathered firewood, Patroklos returned alone and declared to no one in particular, “I lost him. I can never keep up. He’s after a huge stag. We’ll have a feast if he can catch it.”

  A man laughed. “When did any creature known to mortals outrun Lord Achilles?”

  After being alone all day on the foredeck, Briseis listened eagerly to the women’s talk. She squatted by one of the fires, and as she’d seen her cook do, she mixed flour, salt and water together into a workable dough for the night’s bread.

  “—I couldn’t have borne it so soon,” the stonecutter’s wife said. Her name, Briseis had learned, was Sumiri.

  “Well, some be all too happy to bear it,” said a short woman with close-set eyes and lips that formed a thin line. She smirked knowingly at a pretty girl sitting next to Briseis. Sumiri shook her head to interrupt the direction of this conversation but the short woman ignored her. “Not just her—a lot of them think bedding down with those swine will make their lives easier. Witless fools.”

  “Hush. They’ve no choice, Nisa. None of us do. At least the men turn to those who seem more willing. They care that much for our feelings. Think about it, you owe those women thanks. If not for them, the men might have come after you or me.”

  “That’ll come soon enough. They’ll hand us over like so many sheep. They don’t care nothing about your feelings, Sumiri.”

  Briseis slapped a piece of dough into a flat circle and tossed it onto the stone they had heated in the coals. “If you think about it,” she said, “they have been strangely considerate of our feelings. First they destroy our lives, and then they ask us whether we are comfortable or hungry. It doesn’t make sense.” Briseis had wondered why Achilles singled her out for kindness, but it occurred to her that the rest of the captives, while not receiving the degree of deference she had, had not been roughly treated.

  The short woman named Nisa snorted. “Considerate! Ha! Don’t you be a fool also, Lady. That’s their way to get us in their beds and doing their work without a fuss—make you think y’ owe it them cause they’ve been kind. Kind? They’re killers, that’s what they are. You best remember.”

  “Many men fight in war,” Sumiri responded, her blue eyes narrowing in rebuke of Nisa. She pulled a finished bread off the stone with some tongs. Briseis threw another on. “They can’t be cruel all the time. Remember that good men from Lyrnessos trained as warriors. There are brutes among these men, but some of them see our grief and try to help—even though they made our sorrow to begin with.”

  Nisa shook her head. “These men love fighting. Do y’ know they’d already taken another city before they come upon us—and it weren’t enough. The Greeks are thieving wolves,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t overheard. She leaned closer to Briseis and Sumiri. “I’ll tell you something. Women like that one—” she tossed her chin in the direction of the pretty girl whom she had implied was happy to be bedded by some Greek soldier, “—at least catch good gossip, especially if they know that Greek jabber, what with their families doing trade with the swine.” Briseis laid her hand on Nisa’s arm to quiet her. The woman Nisa meant had flushed deeply and her hands pressed hard against each other in her lap.

  Nisa patted Briseis’s hand but continued with her gossip. “Anyways, I heard from her the swine never meant to raid Lyrnessos. It were all an accident. They’d filled most of their ships from the other city they took, but it weren’t enough to fill their bellies. That wolf Achilles wanted more cattle and he saw our pastures on the mountain.”

  “If there’s an army to feed,” said Sumiri, “they need meat. I wish they had only stolen our livestock and left our men and children alive.”

  “Them stop at livestock?” scoffed Nisa. “When they saw our city, they couldn’t stop their greed.”

  The younger woman sitting next to Briseis faced Nisa angrily. “You’re wrong. Lord Achilles hates King Agamemnon’s greed. He doesn’t mind stealing cattle and sheep to feed the men—like Sumiri said—but he’s tired of sacking cities which haven’t done any harm to him or his men.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” retorted Nisa. She stabbed her finger at the young woman. “That man’s good looks been knocking the sense right out of you. Don’t you remember what he did to us, Asdu? If he’s so tired of taking cities, why Lyrnessos? Agamemnon wouldn’t never know if they left us in peace.”

  “Nisa, we’ve had enough misery without fighting among ourselves,” said Briseis. Yet, she asked herself, why did Achilles choose to destroy us? Our flocks weren’t enough? Was it greed? Habit? Or was it Mynes riding out with his men to confront Achilles?

  Asdu’s face turned a deeper red. She tossed her sandy-colored hair away from her face in a defiant gesture. “If you like gossip so much, Nisa, surely you’ve heard the men complaining of Agamemnon’s greed and all the cities they’ve sacked for him with little to show for their work. Achilles told me he was going after our herds, but when he saw Lyrnessos from high on Mount Ida—with its fertile fields and great walls that promised wealth inside—he thought its plunder would silence Agamemnon’s greed until they could take Troy. Achilles only sacked Lyrnessos because he hoped he and his men would have no need for more raids, and they could finally finish the fight at Troy and go home.”

  Briseis noticed Asdu’s willingness to defend Achilles and his men. “If they are tired of raids,” she couldn’t help saying, “why don’t they leave? They aren’t chained to the plains of Troy.”

  Sumiri leaned forward. “You know men. These Greek kings no doubt boasted about destroying Troy, and they brought big armies with them. They are men, so they are chained by their pride. Our city’s burnt and gone, so I’m not sure it makes much difference now whether Agamemnon’s greedy or Achilles, but it may matter when we arrive at the Greek camp and they select whose servant each of us will be.”

  That comment silenced the group.

  What Sumiri said ran through Briseis’s mind as she tossed dough onto the stone. Which Greek would take her? She considered how different the life of the slaves in Euenos’s palace had been from slave life on her father’s estate. Eurome had been loved and respected. Briseis knew she didn’t have Maira’s inner restraint to bite back her words and deal patiently with insult.

  Did Achilles’ unwelcome deference mean he would claim her? She had welcomed him in her dreams as a lover, and even now, his presence ignited feelings she didn’t want to own. Achilles meant slaughter and betrayal to her. She had never had a protective god—only a delusion. Asdu said the flocks and Lyrnessos’s wealth drew Achilles to her city, but Briseis blamed herself, even if the waking Achilles never knew that he’d appeared in her dreams. The gods worked through dreams in incomprehensible ways. She did not understand how it had happened, but her guilt felt like poison flowing through her body.

  By the time the bread was done and the coals for the meat were burnt down to a good level, Achilles returned, the stag draped over his shoulders. No other man could have carried the beast alone. Achilles directed his men to prepare the innards, some thigh meat and fat to offer to Lord Zeus, father of the gods.

  “Can you tell me,” Achilles asked the huddle of women, “since you are native born to this area, what goddess or nymph claims as her sacred place the mountain and the spring which feeds this creek? I chased the stag up to the creek’s source. After my arrow struck down the buck, I noticed a nearby stone carved with a goddess standing on a stag for her throne. The markings are worn smooth by lichen and water, but her power emanates from it even so. She must be a str
ong goddess. When I make my offering to Lord Zeus, I would like to sanctify an offering to her in thanks for this gift from her forest, but I do not know her name or what she will find pleasing.”

  The women around the fire, alert but shy, looked at Briseis.

  Eurome spoke first, proud to identify Briseis’s role. “My Lady Briseis is the priestess of Kamrusepa. That’s the goddess you mean if she were standing on a stag.”

  Achilles turned to Briseis. “A healer and a priestess.” He bowed to her. “Your goddess must be sorrowing for her people, longing for offerings. I know how deeply a goddess mourns when mortals dear to her have lost what brief life was bestowed on them. Will you assist me in an offering?”

  Briseis could not deny Kamrusepa an offering, much as she wanted to stay away from Achilles. She prepared for the rite, hoping for one of those sustaining moments of clarity that the goddess had given her in the past, but she felt heavy with Achilles’ nearness. She didn’t think Kamrusepa would hear her.

  The main cook fire of their camp would serve as sacrificial altar for the burnt offerings. She and Achilles stood before it. She lifted her hands, recited an invocation for the well-being of the captive women, and scattered the barley Achilles had given her on the fire. By custom both the priestess and the king drank from the libation cup. After a moment of hesitation, she gave the cup to Achilles. The firelight reflected like dancing flames against their arms joined by the cup. The image from her vision at the Spring Festival was realized here, harmless flames dancing up and down her arm—she almost expected to taste the sweetness of his lips—except that neither of them laughed and her heart felt despair rather than delight. She poured the dark wine onto the ground and hoped the libation would serve as an offering not only to Kamrusepa but to her dead as well, that they might forgive her for having welcomed their killer into her dreams.

  The ritual completed, the men laid spits of meat on the fire. One of Achilles’ men called him to the ship about some problem Briseis did not understand. She brought more firewood to add to the supply of coals under the roasting venison. She’d have to get used to that now, carrying firewood, hauling water. Once they arrived, no telling what they’d have her do.