I sensed her impatience with me, but at the same time I thought it was important to keep some things clear. It would have been easier, in many ways, to slip into thinking we were all in this together, equally imprisoned on this narrow strip of land between the sand dunes and the sea; easier, but false. They were men, and free. I was a woman, and a slave. And that’s a chasm no amount of sentimental chit-chat about shared imprisonment should be allowed to obscure.
Every evening, before dinner, the kings and captains came to visit the wounded, walking from bed to bed, jollying the men along: Don’t worry, we’ll soon have you out of here. The men always laughed and cheered and went along with it, though as soon as the top brass departed the grumbling started up again. As far as I know, none of the kings ever visited the stink hut, and even in the main hospital tents they concentrated on the slightly wounded.
In spite of all this, I remember the days I spent in that hospital working alongside Ritsa as a happy time. Happy? Yes, it surprised me too. But the fact is, I loved the work, I loved everything about it. There’s a saying: If any man love the instruments of any craft, the gods have called him. Well, I loved that pestle and mortar, I loved the smooth hollow of the cup, I loved the way the pestle fitted into the palm of my hand as if it had always been there. I loved the jars and dishes on the table in front of me, I loved the smell of fresh herbs, I loved the laundry rack above my head with its scraggy little bunches of dried herbs swaying in the breeze. Hours would pass, and I couldn’t have told you where the time had gone. I lost myself in that work—and I found myself too. I was learning so much, from Ritsa, but also from Machaon who, once he saw I was interested and already had a little knowledge and skill, was generous with his time. I really started to think: I can do this. And that belief took me a step further away from being just Achilles’s bed-girl—or Agamemnon’s spittoon.
* * *
——————
A day came when the battle got so loud everybody in the hospital tent looked up, startled, thinking that at any moment the Trojans were going to burst in. There was an influx of wounded, followed almost immediately—only half an hour later—by another. I took pain-killing draughts from bed to bed and, as the pressure of work grew, helped wash and bandage wounds. Machaon made us bathe the wounds in salt water—not seawater, fresh water from the wells with salt added—and the process was extraordinarily painful, though the men always laughed and joked while we were doing it. It was a point of honour with them not to cry out. These were the lightly wounded, of course. Those brought in semi-conscious or on the point of death didn’t care what we did.
After their wounds had been dressed, those who could walk went to sit outside in the cool air. I passed round jugs of diluted wine and went from group to group handing out plates of cold meat and bread. All the talk was of defeat. They were angry with Achilles for refusing to fight, but they blamed Agamemnon for letting it happen. “He should give him the bloody girl back,” one man said, as I helped him pour his wine. “That’s what started it all.” “It’s all right for them,” another man said. “How many generals do you see in here?” A rumble of agreement. “No, they’re all too bloody busy leading from the rear.”
But that was about to change. First, Odysseus came in wounded, followed, almost immediately, by Ajax, and then, a couple of hours later, by Agamemnon himself. He might have avoided taking part in the raids, but he couldn’t avoid the fighting now. Too much was at stake. His own survival was at stake. Machaon himself cleaned and dressed his wound, though it was hardly more than a scratch. Strange, though, to see Agamemnon sitting there, looking pale and pinched under his tan; though, from a distance, he still cut an impressive figure. I realized, suddenly, what he reminded me of: the statue of Zeus in the arena (though I subsequently found out the statue had been modelled on him, which made the resemblance rather less surprising).
A lot of false cheeriness while he was there, but the minute he swept out, down the path that had been cleared for him between two rows of beds, the muttering started up again. You heard the same grumbling from men coming to visit their friends, but mainly from the wounded who had to lie there, hour after hour, tossing and turning in the heat, trying not to scratch at the itching skin underneath their bandages. Gradually, as I listened, the muttering began to resolve itself into a single name. From all ranks, foot soldiers, officers, right up to some of Agamemnon’s closest aides, you heard the same thing: Bribe him, plead with him, kiss his sodding arse if you’ve got to, but for god’s sake, make the bugger fight!
I hung around, listening, as long as I dared, but then I had to go back to the bench to make more poultices ready for the next influx of wounded. But even from that end of the tent, you heard the same name, whispered at first, but then, increasingly, spoken aloud. Over and over, as the day wore on and still more wounded men crammed into the already overcrowded tent, you heard it: Achilles, Achilles, and again: Achilles!
21
“No, no, and again, no!”
As he spun round to confront Nestor, Agamemnon’s sleeve caught a jug of wine, which toppled over, sending a dark red flood across the table. I crept up and began dabbing ineffectually only to be waved impatiently away. Wine dripped steadily over the edge of the table and formed a red puddle on the floor while the silence that had followed Agamemnon’s outburst lengthened and congealed.
Then, speaking with great precision, Agamemnon said, “I am not going to crawl on my hands and knees to that shitting bastard.”
“So send somebody else,” Nestor said. “Let them crawl. He won’t expect you to go yourself.”
“Oh, I think you underestimate his arrogance.”
Feet thumped on the boards of the veranda and, a second later, Odysseus half fell into the room, gasping for breath and with a strip of bloody rag tied round one arm.
“This had better not be bad news…” Agamemnon said.
“For god’s sake, man…” Nestor turned and beckoned me. “Give him some wine.”
I poured a cup and took it to Odysseus, who tossed it back. It was strong wine, the strongest Agamemnon had, and might well increase the bleeding, but it wasn’t my place to say so. I could see the rag was already sodden.
Nestor bent over him. “No hurry, take your time.”
“We don’t have time.” Agamemnon ground the word out.
Odysseus wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “It is bad news, I’m afraid. They’re camped just the other side of the trench, you can hear them talking. No, I mean actual conversations—that’s how close they are. Nine years, nine bloody years, and it ends like this.”
Nestor straightened up. “It hasn’t ended yet.”
“Good as.”
“Well, I’ll fight tomorrow.”
“Nestor, with respect, you’re too old. Sorry, but you are.”
Nestor looked affronted. “We need every man we can get.”
“No-o, we need one man.”
“Save your breath,” Agamemnon said. “Nestor’s said it all already.” He sat down heavily. “So—let’s get down to brass tacks. How much do you think it’ll take?”
Odysseus’s mouth twisted, whether with pain or distaste it was hard to tell. “He won’t come cheap.”
“If he comes at all,” Nestor said.
Agamemnon waved that aside. “Look, here’s what I’m prepared to do.” Checking off the items on his fingers, he began: “Seven tripods, never fired, ten bars of gold, twenty cauldrons, a dozen stallions—every one of them a winner—oh, and the seven women I got when we took Lesbos.” He pointed his finger at Odysseus. “My privilege—”
Nestor had taken a seat by the fire and was twisting the thumb ring on his left hand round and round. It was a ruby, I remember, big enough to cast a red light over his hand. He lifted his head. “And the girl?”
“Well, yes, obviously…The girl.”
They all tur
ned to look at me and I shrank back into the shadows.
“If he still wants her,” Odysseus said. He looked from one to the other. “Well, isn’t she a bit shop-soiled? I’d have thought she was.”
Agamemnon said, stiffly, “No more soiled than she was when she arrived. I’ve never laid a finger on her.”
Nestor and Odysseus glanced across at me. I felt the blood rush to my face, but went on staring stubbornly at the floor.
“And would you swear that under oath?” Nestor asked. His face was expressionless.
“Of course.”
In the silence that followed a log collapsed into the fire, sending a shower of sparks into the air.
“Good,” Nestor said.
“And wait, no, wait—that’s not all. If—no, no, not if, when—when we take Troy, he can choose whichever one of my daughters he wants, I’ll make him my son-in-law—equal in every respect to my own son. Now that’s generous, you can’t say that’s not generous. But of course there’s a price. In return, he has to acknowledge my authority as commander-in-chief. In the end, he has to obey me.”
“It is generous,” Odysseus said, carefully. “Will you go yourself?”
“Course I bloody won’t, I’m not going to plead with the little prick. I’ll send…Oh, I don’t know…You, I suppose.”
“He needs that wound seen to,” Nestor said.
“Nah, it’s just a scratch. Course I’ll go.”
“Who else?” Agamemnon said. “You, Nestor?”
“No, I don’t think so. If I’m there he’ll feel he’s got to be polite—and I don’t think we want that. I think he’ll need to rant and rave a bit, before he gives in. If he gives in. What about Ajax?”
“Ajax?” Odysseus said. “He can barely string three words together.”
“No, but Achilles respects him. As a fighter, I mean. And they are cousins.”
“That’s true.”
Suddenly nervous, Agamemnon looked from face to face. “Is that settled, then?”
“He’s got to get that wound seen to,” Nestor insisted. “It’s still bleeding.”
“Good,” Agamemnon said. “If he gets a bit of blood on his carpet it might make him realize how bad things are.”
“He knows how bad they are,” Nestor said.
I could understand why Nestor didn’t want to be part of the embassy. He was too wily an old bird to risk association with failure—and it would fail. I didn’t dare let myself hope for any other outcome. The prospect of returning to Achilles’s compound was…I don’t know. Miraculous. I don’t think I’d ever known till then how much I missed the kindness of Patroclus.
“Oh, and the girl,” Agamemnon said. “Take her with you.” He cupped both hands against his chest and hoisted them up. “Show him what he’s been missing.”
Odysseus forced a smile. “All right. You never know, it might just make a difference.”
“And tell him I never…you know.”
“Fucked her?”
“But that’s as far as it goes, mind. No apology.” He pointed his finger. “No apology.”
Nestor turned to me. “Go and get your cloak.”
Dismissed, I ran across to the women’s huts, where I found Ritsa sitting on the floor with a blanket wrapped round her shoulders. I stopped on the threshold, so agitated I couldn’t remember what I’d come for, just staring stupidly around the hut. Rush lamps guttered in the draught from the open door, sending grey shadows wriggling across the floor.
Ritsa gazed up at me, pupils big and black as she strained to see my face. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s sending me back.” Even as I spoke, I was smoothing my hair, biting my lips, pinching my cheeks. I thrust my feet into a sturdier pair of sandals, more suited to a walk along the beach, then crawled on my hands and knees to a chest in the corner. I opened the lid and, trusting to touch alone, dragged out my best mantle.
Ritsa whispered, “What’s going on?”
Keeping my voice low, I said, “They’re trying to bribe Achilles, get him to start fighting again. The girls from Lesbos—” I nodded at the far corner. “They’re part of it too, but don’t tell them, it mightn’t come off.”
I wrapped the mantle round me, swaddling myself as tightly as mothers do their babies to stop them crying. I heard men’s voices, coming closer. Ritsa shoved me towards the door. “Go on, go.”
Ten or fifteen feet away, Ajax and Odysseus were standing side by side, Odysseus ferret-thin and dark; great, blond, raw-boned Ajax towering over him. Agamemnon’s heralds were there too, their ceremonial robes the colour of ox blood in the dim light. I heard Odysseus talking as I approached, laughing at the idea that Agamemnon hadn’t laid a finger on me. “It’s not his finger I’m worried about,” he sniggered. Then he caught sight of me and snapped, “Where’s your veil?”
Ritsa ran into the hut and returned, a minute later, carrying a long glistening white veil, which she threw over my head and shoulders. I shivered, remembering Helen. Surrounded, as I was, by men with blazing torches, I must have looked like a young girl leaving her father’s house for the last time. Instead, I felt like a corpse on its way to burial. I was still refusing to hope. I gazed round me, though I could see virtually nothing because of the veil, except, when I looked straight down, my feet.
Odysseus took something from inside his robe: “Here, put this on.”
Pulling the veil away from my face, I saw he was holding a necklace of opals, five big stones, milky-looking at first, but with a fire in their depths that stirred whenever his hand moved. My heart thumped against my ribs, because this was my mother’s necklace, her bride-gift from my father on their wedding day. Agamemnon must have claimed it as his share of the plunder when Lyrnessus fell. I took it with trembling hands and put it round my neck; Ritsa hurried forward to help me with the catch. I felt sick with shock—this was worse, if anything, than seeing Myron in my father’s tunic—but then, as the necklace warmed against my skin, I started to feel better. The five stones felt like my mother’s fingers touching me.
We set off, the heralds with their gold staffs leading the way. I trailed along behind, adjusting the folds of my veil so that I could see where I was walking. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Ritsa standing on the steps to wave me goodbye, but she was dwindling fast into the dark. I turned and walked on.
In Agamemnon’s compound, the sand was black, impacted hard with the weight of trampling feet, but on the shoreline it was cleaner, softer and damp. I watched Odysseus and Ajax striding ahead of me, water oozing out of their footprints. Nobody turned to look at me, so after a few minutes I felt free to raise my veil and gaze out over the sea. Briefly, the moon appeared, just long enough to create a path of light over the water before racing black clouds gobbled it up again.
The heralds set a dignified and stately pace. I sensed Odysseus’s impatience; he wanted to be there, get it over with, whatever “it” might turn out to be. I don’t think he believed this mission stood much chance of success, but I don’t know, perhaps he did. He was talking to Ajax, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying—gusts of wind snatched the words from his mouth and carried them away. On my left, huge breakers crashed onto the rocks, sending clouds of white spray high into the air. On my right, drifting across the roofs, came the sound of Trojan voices singing. Amazingly close; they might almost have been inside the camp. I saw Odysseus and Ajax turn to look in that direction, their faces in the moonlight sharp and pale.
The walls of Achilles’s compound were higher than I remembered and surmounted by sharp stakes. This was no longer a mere convenient demarcation of the Myrmidon section of the beach, but a serious fortification—and it was not facing Troy. Odysseus flared his eyes at Ajax, as if to say: You see that? Guards had been posted at the gate, but there was no problem: Odysseus and Ajax were recognized immediately and waved through.
It was an emotional moment for me, walking through that gate. Music floated out onto the night air; Achilles singing and playing the lyre. And, as always, many of the captive women had come out onto the verandas to listen. I looked for Iphis, but I couldn’t see her.
When we reached Achilles’s hut, Odysseus told me to wait outside. There was some discussion over how they should enter. The heralds wanted a formal procession through the hall, but Odysseus overruled them. He wanted this to be a friendly, informal visit, two old friends happening to drop by…The heralds looked faintly scandalized, but Odysseus outranked them and they had to back down. So it was decided; they would all go to Achilles’s private entrance, the one that led directly into his living quarters, and then the heralds would leave. “Leave, or wait at the gate,” Odysseus said. “I really don’t mind. But you are not going in there.”
Not knowing what else to do, I sat on the steps to wait, putting my hands inside my sleeves to warm them. I heard Achilles’s voice, sounding surprised, I thought, but courteous, welcoming—perhaps a little bit wary, but I may have been imagining that. I listened for Patroclus’s voice, but I knew he’d be sitting there in silence, as he so often did. A cold wind whistled between the huts. I thought of trying to find Iphis, but I was afraid of being summoned. Presumably, I was going to be summoned, at some stage.
I looked along the veranda. Here and there, a few torches still burned, though they were near the guttering end of their lives. A smell of cold beef fat lay heavy on the air. Inside the hut, the rumble of voices went on. I’d have liked to go down to the sea, perhaps walk straight into it, as I used to do when I lived here, but of course I didn’t dare. I just sat there like a tethered goat, knowing my fate was being decided on the other side of that door. I put my hand on my mother’s necklace, cradling the opals delicately, one by one. They felt like eggs still warm from the laying. Deliberately, I went back to Lyrnessus, I sat on the bed in my mother’s room, watching her get ready for a feast. It must’ve been something special, my eldest brother’s wedding day, perhaps, because she was putting on the opal necklace. Sometimes, if she wasn’t in too much of a hurry, she let me brush her hair…