Agamemnon raised the scepter to silence the crowd. “We must welcome back Achilles and his men.” The men cheered enthusiastically and Agamemnon’s expression grew sour. Finally he could continue. “The herds of sheep and cattle you have seen as they went to the holding pastures. The captives, beautiful delights for men, are there.” As he pointed, Briseis and the other women shrank back. “The wealth of Thebes and Lyrnessos is heaped by my ships ready for distribution.”
The men shouted, “Achilles! Achilles! Achilles!” He bowed to them and they roared with delight. Achilles reached for the scepter. Agamemnon released it with a frown.
Achilles spoke with the roar of the waves in his voice. “My men and I have brought riches and an abundance of food back for you, sons of the Achaians, fierce fighters from all the lands of Greece. Now, through your might, we will bring down the walls of Troy and take these treasures to our homes far across the sea. To our victory.” He raised the scepter high, the bare skin of his arm shimmering more than the gold.
The tumult rose ever louder like the great wind of a storm at sea. Achilles’ eagerness to sack Troy sent an icy cold through Briseis. How these men love him! He fights for them; he feeds them. What would they do if they lost him? Patroklos was right. There was no restraint or limit either in Achilles or the reactions he caused in those around him. He frightened and thrilled her.
Agamemnon took back the scepter, but it was a long time before he could be heard. “Sons of the Achaians, shall I distribute this wealth to the forty kings who are your leaders, as I see fit, each according to his honor and the size of his fighting force so that they in turn may hand out what is needed to each of you?”
The men shouted their assent. Agamemnon continued, “I will be first to take what pleases me and brings me honor, as is my right, since I brought the most ships—one hundred in all—and hold the greatest power among the Achaians.” He spoke to four of his heralds who waited at the foot of the speaker’s mound. As the heralds dispersed toward the different areas of loot, Agamemnon’s henchmen prepared to carry their king’s portion to his shelters.
Briseis held her breath as one of the heralds came toward the group of women. He scanned the women and pointed to a fair-haired girl Briseis did not recognize.
The herald continued pointing, a second and third time. He acted with such speed that Briseis assumed the choices must have been agreed upon in advance of the assembly. Beautiful women stepped forward.
He pointed again, this time far back into the group of women. The others made way for this fourth choice. The tall figure moved slowly, her head held high, her dark hair glistening down her back. Like most of the captives, who had no cloaks with which to veil themselves, her head was bare. Briseis gasped as she recognized Maira. Maira caught Briseis’s eye. Her expression spoke of fear but also fierceness. Briseis tried to give her an encouraging look in return.
Briseis wondered if she too would be included in Agamemnon’s portion. She would be near Maira; she would escape Achilles, but even so, she hoped not. She looked at Agamemnon and imagined living in the glare of those eagle eyes. Her breath stopped at the thought of being crushed under his powerful girth.
Nine more women followed Agamemnon’s henchmen, and then his herald turned away and walked back toward the speakers’ mound. She felt her breath return.
The assembly waited while Agamemnon’s men finished removing quantities of treasures, amphorae of wine and grain, and many other things which Briseis did not attend to. She focused on Achilles. Would his choice be next?
Agamemnon turned to Achilles. “As the leader of this raid, I give to you the right to select next. You know the quantities I have allotted you.”
Achilles spoke to the crowd, his body turned away from Agamemnon. “My men and I seized these riches with our own hands from the cities of Thebes and Lyrnessos. Now from the store we won through hard fighting, I will receive my gifts, bestowed by the sons of the Achaians.”
He laid emphasis on his final words. It was not quite an open insult, Briseis thought, to interpret in this way the assent Agamemnon had received from the men—that Achilles received his portion from them and not from the king. But Agamemnon missed none of the force of the insult. His face went red. When one of his men came up a moment later to ask him a question, he struck the man and walked off in anger. She was glad she would never be his slave, even if it meant she had to face Achilles every day.
Achilles’ herald studied the women’s faces and said Asdu’s name. She blushed. The herald named three other lovely women. She noticed Achilles had chosen delicate beauties more suited for bed companions than camp work.
Next the herald came to Eurome. There were cries of derision from the men—an old woman.
Then he turned to go. Briseis felt her face flush with humiliation. So Achilles did not intend to claim her, he preferred those other women—but did he mean to punish her by separating her from her trusted companion? She had thought she did not want to go with Achilles, but now—whose slave would she be? She hugged her beloved nurse to her, but Eurome had to follow the herald.
Briseis thought of the men’s comments as she walked through the assembly. They would know she had been rejected. But she didn’t want Achilles—did she? Stricken, her face burning with shame, Briseis kept her eyes down, so she did not see Achilles leave the speakers’ mound and walk toward her, the men parting to make way. Only when he stood in front of her, did she feel him and look up. A wave of sensation struck her. He reached for her hand. Only as they walked back to his ships did she realize she had reached back.
Briseis could see Eurome and the other women with Achilles’ herald up ahead, but Achilles seemed in no hurry. He told her about the men who lived in each grouping of ships: the name of their king and which city in Greece he ruled over. The number of ships revealed each leader’s relative power.
Achilles did not release her hand. She did not try to take it back. Even as he told her about these kings dwelling all around them—names she had heard and wondered about, now brought to life—their joined hands never left her awareness, that point of contact, warm, alive, and gentle.
His ships, he told her, lay at the far end of the camp—nearest the Hellespont. He did not need to hide behind others for protection. She noticed Agamemnon’s huge contingent in the center, well protected. The terraced rows of ships and thatched shelters had seemed impressive from a distance. Now, in the midst of them, she saw the squalor. They walked around piles of rotted food scraps and worse that she did not want to identify. The stench of too many men living in close quarters assaulted her nose.
The camp splayed out with no plan to accommodate daily life for all these men. The Greeks had anticipated an easy victory, not a prolonged stay. Briseis knew that Troy held out only by means of her many allies.
“Let’s go the rest of the way on the summit of the ridge,” Achilles said. “At least there you breathe sea air.” He shrugged in apology. “I’d like to say you’ll grow accustomed to the smell, but you won’t. I never have. It’s even worse in the winter when the rains turn everything to mud. The spring has dried us out a little.”
They climbed a grassy slope above the camp. At the crest of the ridge, the dazzling blue of the sea spread out below. She took a deep breath. The sun hung low over the water, spinning gold and silver onto the rippling surface. The beauty of it made her ache inside, and her grief rose up and burst the hold she had tried to maintain. A tear ran down her cheek and she brushed it away, but more tears followed. She crumpled to the ground, taking her hand away from Achilles’. She pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her face.
After a while he sat next to her and said softly, “The grace of the sea’s shimmer can make life’s sorrows insufferable.”
She lifted her head in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“It makes us too aware of the distance between our mortal world that daily brings loss and that shining unchanging world of immortality—even as the sea moves and sways, thos
e changes are only on the surface. Tomorrow I will wake up and gaze on the same vast sea, which is like my mother, who can change form but remains unalterable. To be human is too painful in the face of this.”
“I’m not sure I understand, but I know my life is full of grief and pain—and the sea’s beauty has undone me.”
“I recognize your sadness. Perhaps it doesn’t always have to be thus. You have lost so much, but you are alive, and even in the midst of sorrow, simple joys bring healing if you let them. The beauty of the sea can also bring elation.”
His words seemed to cast a kind of spell again, but she shook her head. “How can I enjoy anything when my family and my city have been destroyed? How can I betray them?”
“Are you sure your brother would feel betrayed if you felt joy?”
Briseis buried her face again. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel the grief lighten—but then I remember.” She looked at him. “I do not want to forget the people and places I have lost.”
“You are right to remember. Memory is our only immortality. At the same time, we pay a heavy price in pain when we remember our lost. I have seen many good men sacrifice their lives. I understand some of the weight you feel. Perhaps my advice was too simple, and you cannot yet remember the good things in life while the dead demand your attention.”
Briseis half rose, pulling forward onto her knees. “How could my goddess have abandoned the city that worshipped her? Why didn’t she prevent our destruction? Someone said you had not planned to raid Lyrnessos. How hard would it have been to keep her people safe? We made all the proper sacrifices.”
“The gods and goddesses can do many things as suits them, but they cannot alter fate. Goddesses must bow before fate no matter how much it grieves them.”
Should she blame fate for Lyrnessos’s destruction, not her goddess, or worse, her dreams? Who else among men understood fate better? Briseis thought of his divine mother who had tried so hard to change his fate and make him deathless. If an immortal mother could not save her own child, why had she expected Kamrusepa to save her city? She thumped back onto the ground.
“What is it like to talk to your mother?”
He gave her a bemused look and leaned back on his elbows, sprawling his long legs in front of him. “It is like speaking to anyone else, except that she loves me beyond measure, and when I feel that love and the sadness that is the essential part of it, I feel a longing that I know will never be fulfilled. Did you know she tried to burn away my mortality so that I would never die?”
Briseis nodded.
“When I was a boy, I could still feel the searing that went through me when my father pulled me from those strange flames. Then Patroklos came. He became my closest friend. He had his own wound—he’d killed a friend accidentally in a fit of rage, a tragedy that haunted him. From the horror of the death he’d caused, he learned to control his passions, but he remained scarred by sadness for his friend’s loss. Our friendship cured his sorrow and he brings me back from the pain those flames left, the anger and confusion—I’ve never learned to control it on my own. He is like cool water on the flames that forever torment me.”
Patroklos’s description had been similar. She wrapped her arms around her knees, hoping he would continue. He pushed himself up to sit cross-legged, and she had to tip her head up to watch his face. Even seated he felt towering.
“As for speaking with my mother—her feelings are not different from mortal mothers, just more dangerous. Even the other gods and goddesses shuddered so at her strength they coerced her to marry a mortal. Any immortal child of hers would be so unseasonably great that the balance of power among the gods would be endangered.”
He looked at the sea. Briseis wondered about the mortal child of Thetis—what was the nature of his greatness? How powerful were his storms and that inner fire that never died? His beauty and strength did not feel mortal to her. When her father brought her down to the shore, she had seen places where the tides created whirlpools that pulled into their center anything that came near. She felt herself swirling in the whirlpool that his strength generated.
Achilles turned to her. “When my mother visits me, no one else can see her. We sit apart on our own shore.”
Briseis marveled at this intimacy. She had envied her mother’s closeness to Kamrusepa, but he described something she could not grasp. To love a goddess as your mother.
Briseis studied him. She remembered the intimacy and delight of her dreams. Images of happiness with him beckoned to her, but to accept Achilles’ love ignored the weight that pressed upon her. The dead demanded her attention. He had said that himself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Bard’s Tale
Achilles seemed to read Briseis’s thoughts and dropped the conversation. His lips turned down with a look of resignation. He glanced across the bay toward Troy and then down to the camp below them.
“Shall I show you where you will live? Patroklos will have reassured Eurome, but she will be waiting.”
“I don’t want her to worry.”
Before they started back down, she studied the distant view of Troy. Her father resided somewhere out there, if he had not been killed in battle.
She turned to Achilles. “Several months ago my father, Lord Glaukos, arrived at Troy with King Euenos of Lyrnessos and our other warriors. Do you know if he still lives, or have you heard of his death in some battle?”
“During the attack on Lyrnessos your father was here at Troy?”
She nodded, watching his face for bad news.
“I have never been challenged by a warrior named Glaukos, nor have I heard of his death.” Her shoulders dropped in relief.
He shook his head. “No, nothing worrisome comes to mind, but I will listen on the battlefield with care. You would be surprised at how much information we warriors exchange while trying to kill each other.”
She looked at him in surprise, struggling to imagine warriors conversing on the battlefield. They started walking down the ridge toward the camp.
“Can you describe his armor? I will avoid him on the battlefield. Not for anything would I spill more of your family’s blood.”
She held off the tears that she felt rising up by pressing her tongue hard against the top of her mouth. When she dared, she pulled in a deep breath and described her father’s armor in great detail.
Achilles’ eyebrows rose in astonishment. “A woman who knows armor. How is this possible?”
She told him about her father’s workshop, the metalworking she had grown up observing.
He replied, “I will remember what you have described. It is good that I know to avoid him, otherwise such fine armor would in itself have made him a worthy target.”
This comment would have been more reassuring if so many other Greeks wouldn’t seek to kill her father in order to take Milos’s workmanship for themselves, but as they climbed down the path, she concentrated on the likelihood that her father remained unharmed.
Achilles’ men had built him a shelter from hewn pine-timbers, and with close-set stakes they had enclosed a courtyard spacious enough to assemble his fighting troops, called the Myrmidons. His shelter, with its thatched roof and covered porch, stood at the center of the courtyard, and the women allotted to him had a hut to the side. Scattered among the Myrmidon ships, his men had built their own shelters. Some were not much more than the lean-to sheds she had seen in the sheep camps. Others would have made most farmers’ wives jealous.
Inside the women’s hut she found Eurome, Asdu and the three others settling in. Against the walls the women had placed several pallets cushioned with fleeces. A small hearth in the center provided warmth. The only other light came from the door and the smoke hole in the roof. Eurome had already set up Briseis’s bed.
Achilles’ captives told them that their main job was to cook for his men, but the soldiers saw to their own butchering and roasting of the meat by their shelters, so they had only to grind grain and make the bread, stews, porri
dges, and other foods. They also did mending and washing.
Eurome brimmed with news she had ferreted out in her brief time in Achilles’ camp. She pulled Briseis outside to a bench at the side of their shelter.
“There’s one of the captives that’s older like me—the one with the gray hair and squinty eyes—she told me ’bout Agamemnon—I knew as you’d be wondering for Maira’s sake. They say he’s got so many women they don’t never work overmuch—and for bedmates, well, he goes after small, fair-haired girls, poor things. Just keeps the others for show.”
“Maira’s not what he goes after. Good,” Briseis said, though she thought with a pang of the pale, delicate blonde who had been Agamemnon’s first choice. She looked barely more than a child.
“Yes, that’s one blessing for us to count. Seems Maira’ll be safer than some. Agamemnon’s men might want to go after her, but they’ll be afeared to offend Agamemnon.”
Briseis had seen how easily the king got offended.
“I almost forgot,” said Eurome after a moment. “I found out what happened to Hatepa. The crews on the other ships I hear were rougher, and Hatepa got herself the worst of it what with all her complaining. They stuck her down in the hold, next to the smelly sheep. How that must ha’ made her cough and wheeze. I never liked that mean, foolish woman, still…” Eurome shook her head.
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