The Song of Achilles(50)
The words were loud in the silence of midnight. For a moment he was still. Then he said, “I do not think I will.”
“Never?”
He shook his head, just the barest shadow. “There is nothing he can do. It would only bring him grief.”
“What about your mother? Won’t she tell him?”
“No,” he said. “It was one of the things I asked her to promise me, that last day on Scyros.”
I frowned. He had not told me this before. “What were the other things?”
I saw him hesitate. But we did not lie to each other; we never had. “I asked her to protect you,” he said. “After.”
I stared at him, dry-mouthed. “What did she say?”
Another silence. Then, so quietly I could imagine the dull red shame of his cheeks, he answered, “She said no.”
Later, when he slept, and I lay wakeful and watching under the stars, I thought of this. Knowing that he had asked warmed me—it chased away some of the coldness of the days here in the palace, when he was wanted every moment and I was not.
As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.
SIX WEEKS PASSED—the six weeks that it took to organize soldiers, to equip a fleet, to pack up food and clothing to last the length of the war—a year perhaps, or two. Sieges were always long.
Peleus insisted that Achilles take only the best. He paid for a small fortune in armor, more than six men would need. There were hammered-bronze breastplates, graven with lions and a rising phoenix, stiff leather greaves with gold bands, horsehair plumed helms, a silver-forged sword, dozens of spearheads, and two light-wheeled chariots. With this came a four-horse team, including the pair given to Peleus by the gods at his wedding. Xanthos and Balios, they were called: Golden and Dapple, and their eyes rolled white with impatience whenever they were not free to run. He gave us also a charioteer, a boy younger than we were, but sturdily built and said to be skilled with headstrong horses. Automedon, his name was.
Finally, last of all: a long spear, ash sapling peeled of bark and polished until it glowed like gray flame. From Chiron, Peleus said, handing it to his son. We bent over it, our fingers trailing its surface as if to catch the centaur’s lingering presence. Such a fine gift would have taken weeks of Chiron’s deft shaping; he must have begun it almost the day that we left. Did he know, or only guess at Achilles’ destiny? As he lay alone in his rose-colored cave, had some glimmer of prophecy come to him? Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.
Yet this beautiful spear had been fashioned not in bitterness, but love. Its shape would fit no one’s hand but Achilles’, and its heft could suit no one’s strength but his. And though the point was keen and deadly, the wood itself slipped under our fingers like the slender oiled strut of a lyre.
AT LAST THE DAY for our departure came. Our ship was a beauty, finer even than Odysseus’—sleek and slim as a knifepoint, meant to cut the sea. It rode low in the water, heavy with stores of food and supplies.
And that was only the flagship. Beside it, forty-nine others, a city of wood, rolled gently in the waters of Phthia’s harbor. Their bright prow-pieces were a bestiary of animals and nymphs and creatures half in between, and their masts stood as tall as the trees they had been. At the front of each of these ships, one of our new-minted captains stood at attention, saluting as we walked up the ramp to our vessel.
Achilles went first, his purple cloak stirring in the breeze from the sea, then Phoinix, and me with a new cloak of my own, holding the old man’s arm to steady his steps. The people cheered for us and for our soldiers, filing onto their own ships. All around us final promises were shouted: of glory, of the gold that would be stripped and brought home from Priam’s rich city.
Peleus stood at the shore’s edge, one hand raised in farewell. True to his word, Achilles had not told him of the prophecy, merely hugged him tightly, as if to soak the old man into his skin. I had embraced him too, those thin, wiry limbs. I thought, This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.
The ship’s boards were still sticky with new resin. We leaned over the railing to wave our last farewell, the sun-warm wood pressed against our bellies. The sailors heaved up the anchor, square and chalky with barnacles, and loosened the sails. Then they took their seats at the oars that fringed the boat like eyelashes, waiting for the count. The drums began to beat, and the oars lifted and fell, taking us to Troy.
Chapter Seventeen
BUT FIRST, TO AULIS. AULIS, A JUTTING FINGER OF LAND with enough shoreline to beach all our ships at once. Agamemnon had wanted his mighty force assembled in a single place before it sailed. A symbol perhaps: the visible power of Greece Offended.
After five days churning through the rough waters of the Euboean coast, we came around the last hitch of the winding strait, and Aulis was there. It appeared all at once, as if a veil had been yanked off: shoreline thick with vessels in every size and color and shape, its beach covered in a shifting carpet of thousands upon thousands of men. Beyond them the canvas tops of tents stretched out to the horizon, bright pennants marking the kings’ pavilions. Our men strove at their oars, guiding us towards the last empty place on the crowded shore—big enough for our whole fleet. Anchors dropped from fifty sterns.