The Song of Achilles(75)

“I do not fear you. I will have her.” He turned to his Mycenaeans. “Bring the girl.”

Around me were the shocked faces of kings. Briseis was a war prize, a living embodiment of Achilles’ honor. In taking her, Agamemnon denied Achilles the full measure of his worth. The men muttered, and I hoped they might object. But no one spoke.

Because he was turned, Agamemnon did not see Achilles’ hand go to his sword. My breath caught. I knew that he was capable of this, a single thrust through Agamemnon’s cowardly heart. I saw the struggle on his face. I still do not know why he stopped himself; perhaps he wanted greater punishment for the king than death.

“Agamemnon,” he said. I flinched from the roughness of his voice. The king turned, and Achilles drove a finger into his chest. The high king could not stop the huff of surprise. “Your words today have caused your own death, and the death of your men. I will fight for you no longer. Without me, your army will fall. Hector will grind you to bones and bloody dust, and I will watch it and laugh. You will come, crying for mercy, but I will give none. They will all die, Agamemnon, for what you have done here.”

He spat, a huge wet smack between Agamemnon’s feet. And then he was before me, and past me, and I was dizzied as I turned to follow him, feeling the Myrmidons behind me—hundreds of men shouldering their way through the crowd, storming off to their tents.

POWERFUL STRIDES TOOK HIM swiftly up the beach. His anger was incandescent, a fire under his skin. His muscles were pulled so taut I was afraid to touch him, fearing they would snap like bowstrings. He did not stop once we reached the camp. He did not turn and speak to the men. He seized the extra tent flap covering our door and ripped it free as he passed.

His mouth was twisted, ugly and tight as I had ever seen it. His eyes were wild. “I will kill him,” he swore. “I will kill him.” He grabbed a spear and broke it in half with an explosion of wood. The pieces fell to the floor.

“I almost did it there,” he said. “I should have done it. How dare he?” He flung a ewer aside, and it shattered against a chair. “The cowards! You saw how they bit their lips and did not dare to speak. I hope he takes all their prizes. I hope he swallows them one by one.”

A voice, tentative, outside. “Achilles?”

“Come in,” Achilles snarled.

Automedon was breathless and stuttering. “I am sorry to disturb you. Phoinix told me to stay, so I could listen and tell you what happened.”

“And?” Achilles demanded.

Automedon flinched. “Agamemnon asked why Hector still lived. He said that they do not need you. That perhaps you are not— what you say you are.” Another spear shaft shattered in Achilles’ fingers. Automedon swallowed. “They are coming, now, for Briseis.”

Achilles had his back to me; I could not see his face. “Leave us,” he told his charioteer. Automedon backed away, and we were alone.

They were coming for Briseis. I stood, my hands balled. I felt strong, unbending, like my feet pierced through the earth to the other side of the world.

“We must do something,” I said. “We can hide her. In the woods or—”

“He will pay, now,” Achilles said. There was fierce triumph in his voice. “Let him come for her. He has doomed himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I must speak to my mother.” He started from the tent.

I seized his arm. “We don’t have time. They will have taken her by the time you are back. We must do something now!”

He turned. His eyes looked strange, the pupils huge and dark, swallowing his face. He seemed to be looking a long way off. “What are you talking about?”

I stared at him. “Briseis.”

He stared back. I could not follow the flicker of emotion in his eyes. “I can do nothing for her,” he said at last. “If Agamemnon chooses this path, he must bear the consequences.”

A feeling, as if I were falling into ocean depths, weighted with stones.

“You are not going to let him take her.”

He turned away; he would not look at me. “It is his choice. I told him what would happen if he did.”

“You know what he will do to her.”

“It is his choice,” he repeated. “He would deprive me of my honor? He would punish me? I will let him.” His eyes were lit with an inner fire.

“You will not help her?”

“There is nothing I can do,” he said with finality.

A tilting vertigo, as if I were drunk. I could not speak, or think. I had never been angry with him before; I did not know how.

“She is one of us. How can you just let him take her? Where is your honor? How can you let him defile her?”

And then, suddenly, I understood. Nausea seized me. I turned to the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

My voice was scraped and savage. “I have to warn her. She has a right to know what you have chosen.”

I STAND OUTSIDE her tent. It is small, brown with hides, set back. “Briseis,” I hear myself say.

“Come in!” Her voice is warm and pleased. We have had no time to speak during the plague, beyond necessities.

Inside, she is seated on a stool, mortar and pestle in her lap. The air smells sharply of nutmeg. She is smiling.

I feel wrung dry with grief. How can I tell her what I know?