The Song of Achilles(35)

“No more, Mother,” he said.

Something rippled beneath her features, a spasm of sorts. I was half afraid she would strike him down. But she only watched him with those restless black eyes.

Achilles turned then, to Lycomedes. “My mother and I have deceived you, for which I offer my apologies. I am the prince Achilles, son of Peleus. She did not wish me to go to war and hid me here, as one of your foster daughters.”

Lycomedes swallowed and did not speak.

“We will leave now,” Achilles said gently.

The words shook Deidameia from her trance. “No,” she said, voice rising again. “You cannot. Your mother said the words over us, and we are married. You are my husband.”

Lycomedes’ breath rasped loudly in the chamber; his eyes were for Thetis alone. “Is this true?” he asked.

“It is,” the goddess answered.

Something fell from a long height in my chest. Achilles turned to me, as if he would speak. But his mother was faster.

“You are bound to us now, King Lycomedes. You will continue to shelter Achilles here. You will say nothing of who he is. In return, your daughter will one day be able to claim a famous husband.” Her eyes went to a point above Deidameia’s head, then back. She added, “It is better than she would have done.”

Lycomedes rubbed at his neck, as if he would smooth its wrinkles. “I have no choice,” he said. “As you know.”

“What if I will not be silent?” Deidameia’s color was high. “You have ruined me, you and your son. I have lain with him, as you told me to, and my honor is gone. I will claim him now, before the court, as recompense.”

I have lain with him.

“You are a foolish girl,” Thetis said. Each word fell like an axe blade, sharp and severing. “Poor and ordinary, an expedient only. You do not deserve my son. You will keep your peace or I will keep it for you.”

Deidameia stepped backwards, her eyes wide, her lips gone white. Her hands were trembling. She lifted one to her stomach and clutched the fabric of her dress there, as if to steady herself. Outside the palace, beyond the cliffs, we could hear huge waves breaking on the rocks, dashing the shoreline to pieces.

“I am pregnant,” the princess whispered.

I was watching Achilles when she said it, and I saw the horror on his face. Lycomedes made a noise of pain.

My chest felt hollowed, and egg-shell thin. Enough. Perhaps I said it, perhaps I only thought it. I let go of Achilles’ hand and strode to the door. Thetis must have moved aside for me; I would have run into her if she had not. Alone, I stepped into the darkness.

“WAIT!” ACHILLES SHOUTED. It took him longer to reach me than it should have, I noted with detachment. The dress must be tangling his legs. He caught up to me, seized my arm.

“Let go,” I said.

“Please, wait. Please, let me explain. I did not want to do it. My mother—” He was breathless, almost panting. I had never seen him so upset.

“She led the girl to my room. She made me. I did not want to. My mother said—she said—” He was stumbling over his words. “She said that if I did as she said, she would tell you where I was.”

What had Deidameia thought would happen, I wondered, when she had her women dance for me? Had she really thought I would not know him? I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

“Patroclus.” He cupped my cheek with his hand. “Do you hear me? Please, say something.”

I could not stop imagining her skin beside his, her swelling breasts and curving hips. I remembered the long days I grieved for him, my hands empty and idle, plucking the air like birds peck at dry earth.

“Patroclus?”

“You did it for nothing.”

He flinched at the emptiness of my voice. But how else was I to sound?

“What do you mean?”

“Your mother did not tell me where you were. It was Peleus.”

His face had gone pale, bled dry. “She did not tell you?”

“No. Did you truly expect she would?” My voice cut harder than I meant it to.

“Yes,” he whispered.

There were a thousand things I might have said, to reproach him for his na?veté. He had always trusted too easily; he had had so little in his life to fear or suspect. In the days before our friendship, I had almost hated him for this, and some old spark of that flared in me, trying to relight. Anyone else would have known that Thetis acted for her own purposes only. How could he be so foolish? The angry words pricked in my mouth.

But when I tried to speak them, I found I could not. His cheeks were flushed with shame, and the skin beneath his eyes was weary. His trust was a part of him, as much as his hands or his miraculous feet. And despite my hurt, I would not wish to see it gone, to see him as uneasy and fearful as the rest of us, for any price.

He was watching me closely, reading my face over and over, like a priest searching the auguries for an answer. I could see the slight line in his forehead that meant utmost concentration.

Something shifted in me then, like the frozen surface of the Apidanos in spring. I had seen the way he looked at Deidameia; or rather the way he did not. It was the same way he had looked at the boys in Phthia, blank and unseeing. He had never, not once, looked at me that way.