The Song of Achilles(49)

Chapter Sixteen

WE ARRIVED IN PHTHIA THE NEXT DAY. THE SUN WAS just over the meridian, and Achilles and I stood looking at the rail.

“Do you see that?”

“What?” As always, his eyes were sharper than mine.

“The shore. It looks strange.”

As we drew closer we saw why. It was thick with people, jostling impatiently, craning their necks towards us. And the sound: at first it seemed to come from the waves, or the ship as it cut them, a rushing roar. But it grew louder with each stroke of our oars, until we understood that it was voices, then words. Over and over, it came. Prince Achilles! Aristos Achaion!

As our ship touched the beach, hundreds of hands threw themselves into the air, and hundreds of throats opened in a cheer. All other noises, the wood of the gangplank banging down on rock, the sailors’ commands, were lost to it. We stared, in shock.

It was that moment, perhaps, that our lives changed. Not before in Scyros, nor before that still, on Pelion. But here, as we began to understand the grandness, now and always, that would follow him wherever he went. He had chosen to become a legend, and this was the beginning. He hesitated, and I touched my hand to his, where the crowd could not see it. “Go,” I urged him. “They are waiting for you.”

Achilles stepped forward onto the gangplank, his arm lifted in greeting, and the crowd screamed itself hoarse. I half-feared they would swarm onto the ship, but soldiers pushed forward and lined the gangway, making a path straight through the crush.

Achilles turned back to me, said something. I could not hear it, but I understood. Come with me. I nodded, and we began to walk. On either side of us, the crowd surged against the soldiers’ barrier. At the aisle’s end was Peleus, waiting for us. His face was wet, and he made no attempt to wipe aside the tears. He drew Achilles to him, held him long before he let him go.

“Our prince has returned!” His voice was deeper than I remembered, resonant and carrying far, over the noise of the crowd. They quieted, to hear the words of their king.

“Before you all I offer welcome to my most beloved son, sole heir to my kingdom. He will lead you to Troy in glory; he will return home in triumph.”

Even there beneath the bright sun, I felt my skin go cold. He will not come home at all. But Peleus did not know this, yet.

“He is a man grown, and god born. Aristos Achaion!”

There was no time to think of it now. The soldiers were beating on their shields with their spears; the women screamed; the men howled. I caught sight of Achilles’ face; the look on it was stunned, but not displeased. He was standing differently, I noticed, shoulders back and legs braced. He looked older, somehow, taller even. He leaned over to say something in his father’s ear, but I could not hear what he said. A chariot was waiting; we stepped into it and watched the crowd stream behind us up the beach.

Inside the palace, attendants and servants buzzed around us. We were given a moment to eat and drink what was pressed into our hands. Then we were led to the palace courtyard, where twenty-five hundred men waited for us. At our approach they lifted their square shields, shining like carapace, in salute to their new general. This, out of all of it, was perhaps the strangest: that he was their commander now. He would be expected to know them all, their names and armor and stories. He no longer belongs to me alone.

If he was nervous, even I could not tell. I watched as he greeted them, spoke ringing words that made them stand up straighter. They grinned, loving every inch of their miraculous prince: his gleaming hair, his deadly hands, his nimble feet. They leaned towards him, like flowers to the sun, drinking in his luster. It was as Odysseus had said: he had light enough to make heroes of them all.

WE WERE NEVER ALONE. Achilles was always needed for something— his eye on draft sheets and figures, his advice on food supplies and levy lists. Phoinix, his father’s old counselor, would be accompanying us, but there were still a thousand questions for Achilles to answer—how many? how much? who will be your captains? He did what he could, then announced, “I defer all the rest of such matters to the experience of Phoinix.” I heard a servant girl sigh behind me. Handsome and gracious, both.

He knew that I had little to do here. His face, when he turned to me, was increasingly apologetic. He was always sure to place the tablets where I could see them too, to ask my opinion. But I did not make it easy for him, standing in the back, listless and silent.

Even there, I could not escape. Through every window came the constant clatter of soldiers, bragging and drilling and sharpening their spears. The Myrmidons, they had begun calling themselves, ant-men, an old nickname of honor. Another thing Achilles had had to explain to me: the legend of Zeus creating the first Phthians from ants. I watched them marching, rank on cheerful rank. I saw them dreaming of the plunder they would bring home, and the triumph. There was no such dream for us.

I began to slip away. I would find a reason to linger behind as the attendants ushered him forward: an itch, or a loose strap of my shoe. Oblivious, they hurried on, turned a corner, and left me suddenly, blessedly, alone. I took the twisting corridors I had learned so many years ago and came gratefully to our empty room. There I lay on the cool stone of the floor and closed my eyes. I could not stop imagining how it would end—spear-tip or swordpoint, or smashed by a chariot. The rushing, unending blood of his heart.

One night in the second week, as we lay half-drowsing, I asked him: “How will you tell your father? About the prophecy?”