The Song of Achilles(61)

“Briseis?” I said. She nodded, shyly.

That was the beginning.

IT TURNED OUT that she did know a little Greek. A few words that her father had picked up and taught her when he heard the army was coming. Mercy was one. Yes and please and what do you want? A father, teaching his daughter how to be a slave.

During the days, the camp was nearly empty but for us. We would sit on the beach and halt through sentences with each other. I grew to understand her expressions first, the thoughtful quiet of her eyes, the flickering smiles she would hide behind her hand. We could not talk of much, in those early days, but I did not mind. There was a peace in sitting beside her, the waves rolling companionably over our feet. Almost, it reminded me of my mother, but Briseis’ eyes were bright with observation as hers had never been.

Sometimes in the afternoons we would walk together around the camp, pointing to each thing she did not know the name of yet. Words piled on each other so quickly that soon we needed elaborate pantomimes. Cook dinner, have a bad dream. Even when my sketches were clumsy, Briseis understood and translated it into a series of gestures so precise that I could smell the meat cooking. I laughed often at her ingenuity, and she would grant me her secret smile.

THE RAIDING CONTINUED. Every day Agamemnon would climb the dais amidst the day’s plunder and say, “No news.” No news meant no soldiers, no signals, no sounds from the city. It sat stubbornly on the horizon and made us wait.

The men consoled themselves in other ways. After Briseis there was a girl or two on the dais nearly every day. They were all farm girls with callused hands and burnt noses, used to hard work in the sun. Agamemnon took his share, and the other kings as well. You saw them everywhere now, weaving between tents, slopping buckets of water onto their long wrinkled dresses—what they had happened to be wearing the day they were taken. They served fruit and cheese and olives, carved meat, and filled wine-cups. They polished armor, wedging the carapaces between their legs as they sat on the sand. Some of them even wove, spinning threads from tangled clots of sheepswool, animals we had stolen in our raids.

At night they served in other ways, and I cringed at the cries that reached even our corner of the camp. I tried not to think of their burnt villages and dead fathers, but it was difficult to banish. The raids were stamped on every one of the girls’ faces, large smears of grief that kept their eyes as wobbling and sloppy as the buckets that swung into their legs. And bruises too, from fists or elbows, and sometimes perfect circles—spear butts, to the forehead or temple.

I could barely watch these girls as they stumbled into camp to be parceled off. I sent Achilles out to ask for them, to seek as many as he could, and the men teased him about his voraciousness, his endless priapism. “Didn’t even know you liked girls,” Diomedes joked.

Each new girl went first to Briseis, who would speak comfort to her in soft Anatolian. She would be allowed to bathe and be given new clothes, and then would join the others in the tent. We put up a new one, larger, to fit them all: eight, ten, eleven girls. Mostly it was Phoinix and I who spoke to them; Achilles stayed away. He knew that they had seen him killing their brothers and lovers and fathers. Some things could not be forgiven.

Slowly, they grew less frightened. They spun, and talked in their own language, sharing the words they picked up from us— helpful words, like cheese, or water, or wool. They were not as quick as Briseis was, but they patched together enough that they could speak to us.

It was Briseis’ idea for me to spend a few hours with them each day, teaching them. But the lessons were more difficult than I thought: the girls were wary, their eyes darting to each other; they were not sure what to make of my sudden appearance in their lives. It was Briseis again who eased their fears and let our lessons grow more elaborate, stepping in with a word of explanation or a clarifying gesture. Her Greek was quite good now, and more and more I simply deferred to her. She was a better teacher than I, and funnier too. Her mimes brought us all to laughter: a sleepy-eyed lizard, two dogs fighting. It was easy to stay with them long and late, until I heard the creaking of the chariot, and the distant banging of bronze, and returned to greet my Achilles.

It was easy, in those moments, to forget that the war had not yet really begun.





Chapter Twenty-Two

AS TRIUMPHANT AS THE RAIDS WERE, THEY WERE ONLY raids. The men who died were farmers, tradesmen, from the vast network of villages that supported the mighty city—not soldiers. In councils Agamemnon’s jaw grew increasingly tight, and the men were restive: where was the fight we were promised?

Close, Odysseus said. He pointed out the steady flood of refugees into Troy. The city must be near to bursting now. Hungry families would be spilling into the palace, makeshift tents would clog the city’s streets. It was only a matter of time, he told us.

As if conjured by his prophecy, a flag of parley flew above Troy’s walls the very next morning. The soldier on watch raced down the beach to tell Agamemnon: King Priam was willing to receive an embassy.

The camp was afire with the news. One way or another now, something would happen. They would return Helen, or we would get to fight for her properly, in the field.

The council of kings sent Menelaus and Odysseus, the obvious choices. The two men left at first light on their high-stepping horses, brushed to a shine and jingling with ornament. We watched them cross the grass of Troy’s wide plain, then vanish into the blur of the dark gray walls.