The Song of Achilles(78)

“In the camp.” I am not ready yet, to tell him. “How is your mother?”

“She is well. You are bleeding.”

The bandage has soaked through.

“I know,” I say.

“Let me look at it.” I follow him obediently into the tent. He takes my arm and unwraps the cloth. He brings water to rinse the wound clean and packs it with crushed yarrow and honey.

“A knife?” he asks.

“Yes.”

We know the storm is coming; we are waiting as long as we can. He binds the wound with clean bandages. He brings me watered wine, and food as well. I can tell by his face that I look ill and pale.

“Will you tell me who hurt you?”

I imagine saying, You. But that is nothing more than childishness.

“I did it to myself.”

“Why?”

“For an oath.” There is no waiting any longer. I look at him, full in the face. “I went to Agamemnon. I told him of your plan.”

“My plan?” His words are flat, almost detached.

“To let him rape Briseis, so that you might revenge yourself on him.” Saying it out loud is more shocking than I thought it would be.

He rises, half-turning so I cannot see his face. I read his shoulders instead, their set, the tension of his neck.

“So you warned him?”

“I did.”

“You know if he had done it, I could have killed him.” That same flat tone. “Or exiled him. Forced him from the throne. The men would have honored me like a god.”

“I know,” I say.

There is a silence, a dangerous one. I keep waiting for him to turn on me. To scream, or strike out. And he does turn, to face me, at last.

“Her safety for my honor. Are you happy with your trade?”

“There is no honor in betraying your friends.”

“It is strange,” he says, “that you would speak against betrayal.”

There is more pain in those words, almost, than I can bear. I force myself to think of Briseis. “It was the only way.”

“You chose her,” he says. “Over me.”

“Over your pride.” The word I use is hubris. Our word for arrogance that scrapes the stars, for violence and towering rage as ugly as the gods.

His fists tighten. Now, perhaps, the attack will come.

“My life is my reputation,” he says. His breath sounds ragged. “It is all I have. I will not live much longer. Memory is all I can hope for.” He swallows, thickly. “You know this. And would you let Agamemnon destroy it? Would you help him take it from me?”

“I would not,” I say. “But I would have the memory be worthy of the man. I would have you be yourself, not some tyrant remembered for his cruelty. There are other ways to make Agamemnon pay. We will do it. I will help you, I swear. But not like this. No fame is worth what you did today.”

He turns away again and is silent. I stare at his unspeaking back. I memorize each fold in his tunic, each bit of drying salt and sand stuck to his skin.

When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn’t know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won’t light.

“It is done then? She is safe? She must be. You would not have come back, otherwise.”

“Yes. She is safe.”

A tired breath. “You are a better man than I.”

The beginning of hope. We have given each other wounds, but they are not mortal. Briseis will not be harmed and Achilles will remember himself and my wrist will heal. There will be a moment after this, and another after that.

“No,” I say. I stand and walk to him. I put my hand to the warmth of his skin. “It is not true. You left yourself today. And now you are returned.”

His shoulders rise and fall on a long breath. “Do not say that,” he says, “until you have heard the rest of what I have done.”





Chapter Twenty-Seven

THERE ARE THREE SMALL STONES ON THE RUGS OF OUR tent, kicked in by our feet or crept in on their own. I pick them up. They are something to hold on to.

His weariness has faded as he speaks. “ . . . I will fight for him no longer. At every turn he seeks to rob me of my rightful glory. To cast me into shadow and doubt. He cannot bear another man to be honored over him. But he will learn. I will show him the worth of his army without Aristos Achaion.”

I do not speak. I can see the temper rising in him. It is like watching a storm come, when there is no shelter.

“The Greeks will fall without me to defend them. He will be forced to beg, or die.”

I remember how he looked when he went to see his mother. Wild, fevered, hard as granite. I imagine him kneeling before her, weeping with rage, beating his fists on the jagged sea rocks. They have insulted him, he says to her. They have dishonored him. They have ruined his immortal reputation.

She listens, her fingers pulling absently on her long white throat, supple as a seal, and begins to nod. She has an idea, a god’s idea, full of vengeance and wrath. She tells him, and his weeping stops.

“He will do it?” Achilles asks, in wonder. He means Zeus, king of the gods, whose head is wreathed in clouds, whose hands can hold the thunderbolt itself.

“He will do it,” Thetis says. “He is in my debt.”