by Jackie Rose
I almost released her arm, until I remembered what Melantho had told me. And I remembered, too, Telemachus’ group gallows.
“He is going to kill us,” I shouted, frantically turning from one of the doomed women to the other, willing them to believe. “Telemachus will hang us on a gallows with five nooses. We have to get out of here now.”
The other women stood near their doorways, staring at me as though they were sure I was going mad. With a sinking heart, I saw that my friend Melantho was starting to join them, because she so much wanted to.
“You may be making too much of it,” she assured me. “He is only going to scold us, and who cares about that?” More reluctantly, she admitted, “All right, then, the queen once promised me a whipping when he gets home, but I suppose I deserve that, too, just because I was so cruel to that poor old beggar. Euryclea said it would be no worse than that. I might even benefit from it,” she said. She was willing herself to believe it, even as the tears ran down her face, and I knew I had no time to win her over again.
“Very well, then. Stay here and die,” I snapped and pushed past the old woman to the door. She was lifting the key to lock it behind me when Melantho shouted, “Wait, Briseis!” I shoved the old woman back again, letting her see Achilles’ rage in my eyes, while Melantho ran to join me.
“I am coming with you, Briseis,” she said. “I believe you. I saw his face. You are right about him and his son.”
As we ran, we heard the lock click shut behind us, shutting ten other girls in with their murderers. My hands covered my ears for a moment against the sound, then reached down again to hold up my skirts as I ran.
* * *
Like two madwomen, we raced down the back stairs that led from the women’s hall to the rear courtyard.
“But what about Antinoos and Eurymachus?” she gasped, as we ran. “We have to try to warn them.”
Before I could answer, I heard the door of the great hall clanging shut. Either the suitors were locking Odysseus out, or he was locking them in. Knowing him and his craftiness, I was sure it was the latter. Either way, it was much too late for a warning, but I did not tell her so.
“They will have a better chance to defend themselves if they don’t have to worry about us.”
Even as I said this, I felt sure that they had no chance at all. Odysseus, that cruel and crafty man, would make sure of that before he faced them: No doubt he had waited until the hall was empty and then taken their weapons away. And this king and his princely son would kill the unarmed men first, just as every common robber did, so they could not protect the women who had loved them. Melantho and I had been among those women, and saving us was all I could even pray for.
There was only one thing I knew for sure. If the time came, Melantho and I would both die by my own hand, under my own knife, as Polyxena had died by hers. Then I, too, could be Achilles’ worthy bride in the Elysian Fields, if there was any such place, as I had always wanted to believe. Right now, I believed only in a gallows that had been built to hang five kittens.
The courtyard held a shrine to Athena, but there was no time to stop there either, even to pray. Melantho asked if we should take sanctuary there.
“He dragged King Priam of Troy out of Athena’s sanctuary and killed him,” I answered. We kept racing on.
We stopped short for a moment as we heard the first screams. They came all too clearly through the windows that were open in the warm day. Then we heard the voices of Eurymachus and the other young men, promising to return everything they had taken, pleading for their lives.
Only one voice was not pleading. I was proud that the lover I had chosen, if only for a moment, would die fighting like a man, as though some of Achilles had gone into him through me and he had donned, for a moment, the armor of Achilles.
“Arrows, you sneaking cowards!” Antinoos shouted. “And you’ve locked all the javelins away. Why don’t you go get a javelin and give me one too, so we can fight like men!” His words gave way to a scream of agony, soon lost among so many other screams and groans. My impulse was to care for the wounded, but I knew there would be none left alive.
At the sound of her own lover’s pleading, Melantho had burst into tears.
“They are killing everyone,” she sobbed.
“No tears now,” I told her. “Only anger. Nothing else can help us. Keep running.” I grabbed her sleeve and pulled her after me.
“But where can we run to, Briseis?” she wailed.
Desperately, I looked around for the answer. I had thought vaguely of hiding in the woods, but I saw no trees along the path. There were only rocks with patches of grass between them where a few goats grazed. Seeing these rocks, I knew with fierce clarity just what had happened at Troy.
Living in this rocky land, the great kings of Argos could only maintain their state by piracy. This land had created all of them, both these casual killers and my own great pirate prince. Helen had been merely the excuse for their looting, although not even she knew it. And what would my Achilles do if he were here? There could be no question: He would stand before us and kill Odysseus and his son, most likely in one swift blow.
We could not stand and fight them, but then I remembered the name of another prince. The Egyptians had called him a renegade, but he was our only hope of salvation now. He and his god, who unlike all the others, stood against princes for slaves.
“We must get to the sea,” I told her.
“We will drown!” she wept.
“No, I don’t think so. And if we do, we will have died fighting for our lives.”
This prospect did not console her. But, having no other ideas, she reluctantly came after me as I raced towards the shore.
The men’s screaming stopped. Then we heard something even more horrible: the shrieking of women.
“They are mourning for their lovers,” Melantho pleaded. “Perhaps we should go back and mourn with them. No decent man would harm us then.”
“These are not decent men,” I told her patiently. And then, worse than anything, their screaming stopped short, as though cut off by a rope. I remembered the dying kittens.
“He hanged them all on one gallows, five at a time,” I said. “Do you still want to go back there?”
“Oh, gods and goddess,” Melantho whimpered, falling to her knees.
“Aphrodite, in the name of your own great love, send the great Ares to protect us!”
I hauled her up beside me. “We will pray later. We have to protect ourselves now,” I said. “Keep running.”
“They killed everyone,” she repeated helplessly. “Everyone is dead.”
“Everyone but us.”
“Euryclea must have told him who to kill—and who had escaped. You should have killed the old bitch, Briseis.”
“Yes, I should, but there’s no sense thinking about that now.”
We had almost reached the shore when we heard another shriek, of rage this time. “Two of the nooses are empty,” Telemachus screamed, as he galloped after us. “But you won’t get away again.”
He was so close I could smell the sulfur he must have used to try to purify the house, as though he ever could. And rejoice, rejoice exceedingly—he was wearing armor.
Melantho turned towards him and started calling loudly on the gods to help us. But would any god stand for rebel slaves? I wondered. Yes, I remembered once again, there was one, and he had forced the sea itself to fight for them. My voice rose over Melantho’s screaming: “We must get into the sea!”
Telemachus had almost overtaken us when we splashed into the warm blue water and tasted the salt that splashed up to our lips. We stumbled over the rocks but always picked ourselves up and waded farther, farther into the sea, holding our gowns high even as the water started dragging them down.
So far, I had been helped by Moses and his god of rebel slaves, or at least by the story that Pharaoh and Iphis had told us about them. Now I prayed to my own Aphrodite to help me.
Melantho was waiting fo
r my lead, gaping at me in desperation. It turned to dismay as I laughed loudly, hauled up my wet skirts and threw them into the air, flaunting my secret parts at him. Surely, she must have decided now that I truly had gone mad.
“Come get me, boy,” I sneered, circling my lower body slowly, in the most vulgar invitation I could send. “Come take me, if you can make your little spear stand up for anything but killing women and cats. Come take me, the way every beggar in Ithaca took your mother before you were born, you misbegotten bastard son of a whore.”
Even Melantho seemed horrified at my words. She stayed silent, having finally grasped what I was trying to do.
“I killed all the others,” he shrieked back. “My father killed most of the men himself, but he left the women to me.”
A horrible smile spread over his lips as he tossed back his shaggy hair and went on, “He told me to stab them, but what fun would that have been. They would have fought back if they had known what we planned. With ten of them and two of us some might have gotten away, and at least they would have scalded us with their buckets of hot water. But my father was too smart for them. He did not tell them they were going to die, he only commanded them to wash their lovers’ blood off the floor. Then we trapped them in a corner.
You should have heard them then. Some begged for mercy, some called on their lovers to wait for them, and one even cried that she was innocent. Another one even spat in my face! No matter, I made them all forget Aphrodite before they died.”
Forget Aphrodite? That made no sense to me. Could he really have been so far gone in madness that he was killing people because they preferred a different goddess to his own? I shook my head: There were things that sane people could not believe, and I needed all my sanity now. I had to stay calm, while making sure that he did not.
“They died like birds in a snare,” he went on, obviously relishing the memory, “except that birds don’t die with their tongues hanging out. And they didn’t kick as long as the kittens. They didn’t suffer enough to please me, but you will. I’ll make sure that the rope doesn’t kill you too quickly. Perhaps I’ll cut you down a few times and hang you up again. It should last long enough that way.”
Melantho shrieked in terror and seemed about to run farther into the sea.
“Not yet,” I whispered urgently, as I grasped her wrist to stop her. “Don’t move. Stay calm.”
Raising my voice as high as I could, I shouted, “It is Aphrodite who has forgotten you, with your tiny baby spear. Come up and have me first, if you can, little boy—or would you rather have me there?” Turning, I waggled my hind parts at him.
Melantho and I splashed on together until we were standing where the water would reach his horse’s neck. As I turned to face him again, I saw, with a sinking heart, that he was hesitating for a moment, having sensed the trap. Then rejoice, rejoice exceedingly! he drove his horse splashing after us into the brine. The first time the horse stumbled on a rock, my embroidery knife sawed through his bridle. Telemachus grabbed for the horse’s mane, but I desperately slashed at his hand.
“Now!” I shouted. She joined me in pulling his skinny body down from his horse’s back, which was slick with water. We fell across his head, holding it firmly under water, where the bronze armor became an anchor, pulling him down. I saw the look of horror on his face as I forced it beneath the salty waves that I knew must be burning his eyes. Even in my deadly danger, this was a very happy moment for me.
And I, Briseis, who had been every man’s dream of an adoring slave girl—my voice was no sweet whisper now. Instead, I was shrieking at my master’s son, “Die, die, you murdering bastard son of a whore, die!” At that moment it was all that I wanted, having forgotten my plan to save us. And in that moment, I knew Achilles’ battle rage and was one with him at last.
I was screaming in rage at all of them, the men who were supposed to care for us but could kill us if they chose. And, yes, I was screaming at Achilles, too, because he had chosen to die out of vanity, and leave me alone with them. Did the world still speak of the anger of Achilles? I thought. Very well, let it know the anger of Briseis now.
This man at least would die with me, I vowed, even if I had to die by my own hand in the next moment. In the same battle rage, I slashed the strap of his helmet to expose his neck. Then I pulled my knife into my left hand as my right hand expertly sought for his big neck-vein. As desperate as his struggles became, Melantho managed to keep his skinny body pinned beneath her plump one. Woe, woe to the merciless man. And woe to the fool whose vanity had led him into the trap that Prince Moses had invented.
Then I saw that an older man and woman, who were not fools, were racing after us, just as I had hoped they would. For once, Odysseus did not lower his face to hide it or its naked terror.
“In the name of all the gods, Briseis, don’t kill him!” Odysseus pleaded.
“Why not?” I shouted back. “Give me one reason to spare your murdering bastard son.”
The insult actually struck at Penelope, but none of us cared at the time.
“You have taken an oath to do no harm,” he reminded me.
“I am doing none,” I said, as my fingers reached the vein. They probed firmly despite Telemachus’ desperate struggles, as the chief physician had taught them to do. Then my left hand laid the knife against the vein, as my right hand moved to grasp his hair.
“You need have no fear of death!” Odysseus cried desperately.
For a moment, but only a moment, I thought he had said the words I needed to hear. Then I remembered Chryseis’ warning that this was his favorite form of treachery. He would keep a vow to Athena, but only if there was no way out of it.”
“I have none,” I told him. “You can only send me to Achilles, where I want to be. But you will have to send me this way, fighting you to the end.”
“The blind bard!” he shouted, holding his hands up as though they could delay me, while yet another inspiration came to him. “I let him live, so he could tell my story as I wanted it told. You can write the ending of this song for us, and I promise that the ending will come true.”
A good answer, but, coming from this great trickster, it was not yet good enough. I could, indeed, write an ending that saved my life, but Odysseus could command the bard to add a further poem that would end it.
“Your bard will never be able to say that Achilles’ woman died like a bird in a snare,” I answered. “He will have to say that she died killing her enemies. And in any case, how long will the stories of a blind old bard be remembered?”
A war for love and a love for war, Cassandra had said. Fighting and fucking, the two things that most interest us all. But I could not worry now about how, or for how long, Odysseus or I or even Achilles would be remembered.
“Am I your enemy, Briseis?” Penelope’s desperate voice came to me. “Can’t you spare him for my sake?”
I almost lowered my knife for a moment. Then I said, “I only wish he were the son you deserve, mistress.”
“But he is!” she cried. “We have raised a race of feral children in this modern world, without their fathers, without honor or restraints—Orestes, Hermione, Telemachus, all of them who kill without thought. We are the ones to blame.”
And Neoptolemus, I thought. The son of Achilles, too.
“Perhaps you do deserve him, mistress,” Melantho asked her, in a voice that was suddenly as cold as mine. “Did you stand for the victims?”
“The menfolk waited until I was asleep before they killed my maids. I knew nothing about it,” she pleaded. “Otherwise I would have begged for your lives. I knew you all, remember. I gave you toys to play with.”
“You did not know me,” I reminded her. “Those merciless men would have killed me, too.”
“Not you!” Odysseus shouted. “Do you think I would let him punish the great Achilles’ woman like a common servant girl?”
“You killed Polyxena. ”
“She was not yet Achilles’ woman, and his son killed h
er, and let us not rake up the past!”
As always, he was splitting hairs. Hadn’t I played that game myself, to the very brink, when I had prayed for Achilles while staunchly refusing to pray against his enemies? Odysseus was close, so close, to saying the right words at last. But I had to drive him further before he would say them.
“Do you think that I care if you would let him kill me or not?” I shouted. “He will kill no more women, whoever they are.”
Then I realized that he had distracted me, so that my fingers had lost the vein. Telemachus was struggling desperately. At any moment, I knew, his head might come plunging out of the water, free. Quickly, I found the fatal spot again and placed my knife against it. His parents’ screams meant no more to me, at that moment, than the cries of a wounded man begging the physician to stop probing.
His lips emerged long enough to cry “Mercy!”
“I used to enjoy showing mercy, but not now!” The words came unbidden, because they had been Achilles’ words, as I was now Achilles and Achilles’ woman both.
“Briseis,” his father screamed as he held out both hands, a beggar now indeed. “I can give you what you want most of all.”
“What I want most of all, is to see the blood of your murdering bastard son spreading over the water.”
“No, it isn’t!” he cried.
My life and Melantho’s, I thought, gripping the blade even more tightly. He is ready to offer us our lives and swear to Athena to spare them.
He offered me even more.
“What you want most of all,” he told me, “is not my son dead, but your Achilles alive.”
Part IV: The White Island
Chapter Thirteen
Every few moments, Telemachus managed to pull his lips out of the water long enough to gasp for air. Melantho and I pushed him down again.
