“How long is such a journey by foot? Half a cycle of the moon?” Briseis nodded. “Do you think we can carry enough food? Life as a Greek lord’s captive is not what I would choose, but starving in the forest or being attacked by wild beasts is far worse.”
“It is early spring. The woods offer food for those who know what to look for—and I do. There is a great store of weapons that Achilles has stripped from those he vanquished in battle. I will look for two daggers and two light javelins that would suit us.”
“You’ve already proved your power with a sword. We two are not so helpless in the face of danger, are we?”
Briseis smiled at her friend. “No, we are strong. We’ll be safe enough from animals. I’ve wandered through Mount Ida’s woods many times without being attacked. I feel Kamrusepa bids me to go home. That sense may be my own wishes persuading me, but I do not fear the dangers of the mountains. I am more concerned that we may find no one when we reach Lyrnessos. What if the survivors were few and they abandoned the area?”
Maira shook her head. “People are living there. I know it. No one told the estates and farms to come into the city. The Greeks will have scoured the area for food, but they cannot have found all the farms hidden away in the side valleys and slopes. The estate where I worked with my sister is far from the city and high on the mountain.”
Briseis thought of her father’s estate, so close to the main road and in the midst of the richest farm land near Lyrnessos. She had to persuade herself it lay in ruins. She couldn’t create a false hope. But talking with Maira had not made her head ache nor did the usual bands of tension tug at her temples.
“Maira, there is one more thing I need to tell you before we decide. I know you will not tell anyone. I’m pregnant.”
Maira gasped. She squeezed Briseis’s hand. “I’m glad for you, even in these circumstances. Does Achilles know?”
“I haven’t told Achilles and I’m not going to. It’s a mark of how wedded he is to his impending death that he has not intuited something so important to both of us. He wants me to go to Phthia, but if I do I will always be a slave.”
Briseis pressed Maira’s hands in both of hers. “I’m not far along and even the sickness I felt in the morning is gone now. But it’s another reason to think carefully. We have ten more days during which the Greeks will honor the truce and stay inside the camp. If we go, we should be well away before it’s over. I do not think Achilles will come after me—especially during the truce. Agamemnon may want you back enough to send men after us, but he will fear to break the truce Achilles made and wake his anger once more. He’s learned that’s not worth a slave girl. We have some time, but not much.”
“It’s frightening to think of such a journey,” said Maira.
Briseis nodded. “I know. Can you meet me tomorrow morning at the spring?”
Maira nodded. “I can offer to bring the morning’s water.”
“Why don’t we both think about it overnight? If it doesn’t seem foolish by tomorrow when we see each other at the spring, we will have the day to gather what we need before nightfall.”
By the time the sun rose again, they had both found their resolve. One glance at each other as they filled their pitchers told them they had come to the same conclusion. They stood apart from the other women and quickly settled on what each would bring. The weapons, a small cooking pot and means to make a fire, two skin bags for water, their cloaks and other clothes, some food and Briseis’s satchels. She considered leaving behind Iatros’s to save the weight, but she couldn’t, and two well-stocked medicine bags would be an asset to her when she returned to Lyrnessos.
After Briseis finished bringing the water for the last time, it took her only a short while to gather everything she needed. She stowed her bundle and the javelins outside the courtyard behind a pile of firewood, covering it with some logs. The gate to the courtyard would be open for her—Maira would send a message at dusk that one of the women was near to delivery and Briseis might be called out during the night. With the truce’s quiet and safety, the guards would eagerly agree to leave the gates open so as not to be awakened for such things. It would also explain her departure if Achilles awoke.
The remainder of the day weighed heavily on her. She sought out Achilles’ company, but she felt guilty and miserable. How could she abandon him? She reminded herself that he had already abandoned her—first to Agamemnon and soon to widowhood with none of the protections of being his wife, however much he called her that. He would mourn for her loss, but not, she hoped, as much as he still mourned for Patroklos. He had told her to find her wellspring. She prayed he would understand.
Each familiar action, every routine reminded her that this was the last time she would do each of these things. She sat in her chair next to Achilles by the hearth. They ate a good meal together: a stew of mussels that one of the men, freed from fighting, had gathered from the rocks along the shore, roasted meats well spiced the way Achilles liked them and fresh bread just lifted from the hot stones in the cook fire. She could not imagine when she might eat as generous a meal again. She thought of the growing baby in her womb and prayed she had not made a tragic choice.
The message came from Maira about the anticipated delivery. She went out to discuss the opening of the gate with the guards. Maira had stayed sure enough to go ahead with their plan. She would hold fast also. When it grew dark, she would set out.
Achilles’ caresses were the hardest part. How could they be the last? She pushed aside her worries and gave herself to their lovemaking with wild abandon. If it was to be their last, it would have to sustain them both. She wanted him to know she loved him; that her leaving did not diminish how she felt. She wished to make the blow of her departure as gentle as possible. He must know that she was going toward life. She smiled when it came to her how to say all that to him. She knew just what to leave behind.
In the meantime, she thirsted for this last drink of his body. She kissed his lips softly and then more deeply. She wrapped her legs around his hips and held him tightly on top of her.
“I do not ever want to let go,” she murmured in his ear. He laughed and smoothly turned them so that she lay on top of him.
“Choose another hold you know so well,” he whispered, “and I will be at your mercy.” She gave him his wish, guiding their movements with her hips until they lost time and place in pure sensation.
Afterwards, she lay in his arms and he did not fall asleep immediately. She was grateful for this delay and the short reprieve it gave her in this last embrace. Later he slept soundly, and she slipped out of bed to dress. Before she left, she kissed him softly on the cheek and placed her tapestry next to him, unrolled a little so that a meadow of flowers would be the first thing he looked at when he awoke instead of the empty place where she had been. She hoped he understood what it said. “I chose life.”
Maira was waiting where they had agreed. They went out of the camp along the ridge Achilles had shown her. He had taught her how to escape—it couldn’t have been an accident that he had shown her this route. She and Maira saw the guards below by the main gates, but they slipped away unnoticed.
They met no one as they crossed the plain in the dark and began to climb the foothills of Mount Ida side by side. When the first rays of light began to make the going easier, they reached a meadow hidden away on the slope. At one edge of it, a small spring gurgled up. Watercress and mint grew around its edge. They knelt to drink. Briseis looked up at the high peaks ahead, and as she cupped her hands and lifted the spring’s offering to her lips, she felt Mount Ida’s blessing.
The End
Author Notes
A reader of historical fiction has the right to expect accurate history and to be informed of any divergences from the known record that an author has taken. The case is somewhat complicated for this book because I have delved into both history and into the mythological tradition, primarily as presented in the Iliad of Homer. The two are not mutually exclusive by any
means—Homer is full of history—but the poem also presents a lot that we would call myth or legend. I have tried in every way possible to present an accurate picture of life in the Late Bronze Age in the area surrounding Troy in what is now Turkey, and to remain true to the Homeric tradition.
First a note about names in my novel. One known mythological “fact” I changed from the Homeric tradition: in the Iliad Briseis’s father’s name is Briseus. I have named him Glaukos purely for reasons of clarity. The names are already complicated enough in this book without two characters with almost the same name. My goal throughout has been to keep the names as simple as possible, although it may not feel that way to you, the reader. Whenever I named a purely fictional character, I picked the shortest names from the handy online list “Repertoire Onomastique,” compiled from the extant cuneiform tablets of the Hittites/Luwians, which gave me names that are accurate to the peoples living in this place and time. Occasionally I borrowed names from minor heroes in Homer or I used Greek words, which is reasonable given all the trade between these peoples. For example, Briseis’s youngest brother’s name, Iatros, means doctor in Greek. He was one of my first characters, and that seemed right for him. Other names, such as Briseis, Mynes, Euenos and Patroklos, are set by the tradition and I kept them, with the exception of changing Briseus to Glaukos. There are many variant spellings of Greek into English. The spellings I chose may differ from the ones you are most accustomed to but are all accepted transliterations.
While my goal has been to stay true to the Homeric tradition, including how the tradition presents these heroes and captives, the major proviso is that everyone has his or her own interpretation of the Iliad, and I have stayed true to mine. I, for example, see Achilles as an existential hero who questions the warrior code and, despite the destruction he causes, is a good man at heart, just incredibly conflicted and confused. Many people see him as a vicious, selfish killer with few redeeming qualities. I cannot see him that way and don’t in this book. So you may find yourself disagreeing with my presentation, but that is the joy of this fluid and grand Homeric tradition. We can all make it our own.
I will summarize the relevant “facts” that we do know from Homer and myth and how have I dealt with those. We learn very little about Briseis. She has a handful of lines in this patriarchal poem. In my interpretation of Homer, it seems clear that Achilles loves and respects her, and she returns these feelings. Over many years of teaching, this struck me as odd. Suggestions of some ancient version of Stockholm syndrome simply don’t work for the Achilles I know from Homer, so I went exploring to see who Briseis might be to explain her love for the man who destroyed her family and city. I ended up pulling largely from the archaeology of this time rather than from Homer because so little is mentioned about her in the epic.
From Homer and a few other references in later ancient sources, we know Briseis is married to the prince of Lyrnessos and thus presumably can become Lyrnessos’s queen. Her husband is called Mynes and he is referred to as the king of Lyrnessos at times. We know Briseis’s father survived the attack on Lyrnessos, but her three brothers, all born of the same mother, did not. One other mythological “fact” that I changed is that Briseis’s husband Mynes is said in a post-Homeric author to have a brother. In my book he doesn’t. To be honest, I totally forgot that this mythic brother is ever mentioned and by the time I realized my mistake, Mynes was so clearly an only child in my tale that I just left it. We know from Homer that Briseis mourned Patroklos’s death and that Patroklos told her early in her captivity that Achilles would marry her as his “legal” wife and take her back to Phthia with him. We know she particularly mourns her brothers. In various parts of the novel here and there, I include events from the Iliad as Homer gives them to us, but I have told them from Briseis’s point of view, so they often feel quite different from the Iliad. That’s pretty much everything we know about Briseis from Homer and myth, if such a person ever really lived and isn’t the product of a creative bard in the oral tradition of the ancient epics. The rest was up to me.
Even if no such person named Briseis ever truly walked the earth—and I like to believe she did—I have constructed a young woman who could have lived as I have described in this time and place. I created her carefully from the most current historical and archaeological understanding of the peoples living near the city of Troy during the Late Bronze Age. At no time did I consciously have Briseis do anything that a woman of that time and place and her social status wouldn’t have done. I’ve had this book read by excellent historians who are far more knowledgeable than I am and they concur. But, given the fragmentary record of this time and place, I have also had to imagine much of what is on the page. My mind is a modern one, so I’m sure that I have inadvertently included some inaccuracies and unlikely behavior for people of this place and time. I guide my imagination as tightly as I can by my research, but it’s still my imaginings. For example, in the first chapter, Briseis performs a rite to save her mother’s life. There are hundreds of such rites recorded on cuneiform tablets. This rite is not taken word for word from any of those. I know of no “Breath of Life” incantation. However, this rite that I “made up” is very similar in language, idea and intention to the many that do exist. I must admit that in “real” Hittite/Luwian life, most of the rites go on for a very long time. I have shortened them for the sake of good storytelling. The Spring Festival, for example, is modeled on many such that we have in the record, but the historical ones went on for days and often moved from place to place, etc. Taken directly from the tablets, they are incredibly repetitive. After the fiftieth identical sacrifice you would have thrown the book at the wall.
Briseis is bi-lingual in Greek and her native tongue. The best current scholarship believes that she would have spoken Luwian, but we may never know for certain. Like Greek, Luwian is an Indo-European language, a sister language to Hittite. Hittite is the language of the dominant empire to the east of Troy, an empire to which Troy was allied or subject in greater or lesser degrees over time. From Luwian’s structures etc, we can tell it is pretty closely related to Greek. Its written form, cuneiform, is borrowed from the Near Eastern world and applied to this language, so it looks utterly different from the Greek letters most people are familiar with, but that is merely the form used to represent the language in writing. The Greek alphabet is a much later invention than this time period. To the extent that the Mycenaean Greeks of the period portrayed in this book wrote anything down, they used a system called linear B. Linear B was a sort of accountants’ system used for keeping track of the royal wealth. It was not used for recording religious rites and sacred tales, or anything “literary,” such as we have in cuneiform both in Hittite and Luwian.
I have also drawn from the myths of the Hittites in creating Briseis’s tale. I believe the myth of Telipinu, a young warrior god who is famous for his sacred and cosmically disastrous fury over his insulted honor, probably served as a source or influence as the legends about Achilles formed up during the centuries of oral composition of the Iliad tradition. I used this connection to draw Briseis and Achilles together.
If you are wondering whether there ever was a Trojan War, or how the Hittites and the Trojans are related or how a woman would be literate and powerful in the ancient world, the best place to go is my website, www.judithstarkston.com, where under “history” you will find a wealth of information and an informal bibliography of books about Troy and the Hittites. I add to that bibliography as new books of interest to the general reader become available. Hittitology and the study of Troy are extremely active areas of archaeology and scholarship. The mammoth project of creating a dictionary of the Hittite language is still an ongoing project, for example, and the process of translating the vast clay libraries continues. Turkey has an extraordinary number of active archaeological digs with unimaginable treasures being found each season. So, if this world intrigues you, subscribe to my website and I’ll do my best to keep you informed of breaking news in a down-
to-earth way.
About The Author
Judith Starkston
Judith Starkston is a classicist (Greek and Latin literature and history), having received her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her M.A. from Cornell University. She taught high school English, Latin, and humanities for twenty-one years. Judith fell under the spell of Homer’s Iliad as an undergraduate; the ancient poem later became a perennial favorite among her students. Judith Starkston lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband and golden retriever, Socrates. She has two grown children.
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