A Thousand Ships(20)
She focused instead on the camp, which extended on both sides and in front of her all the way to the sea, and the tall ships which had sailed to Troy all those years earlier. The tents were clustered together, dirty and weather-beaten, with hungry-looking cattle in small pens here and there. She turned to look behind her and saw the fortifications on the north edge of the camp, sharpened wooden stakes pointing at the city, at her city, like arrows. One of the men grabbed her arm and jerked her back to face the same way as the others. She did not cry out, and felt sure that Briseis was impressed with her self-control. If a woman who had lost so much could remain calm, Chryseis could too.
They stood in the line, waiting, as the sun broke through the early-morning cloud and caught them in its pitiless glare. Chryseis looked along the row of women and saw fear behind their eyes. Some were not even troubling to hide it: they wept openly, clawing at their skin and tugging out their hair. Chryseis almost wished she could do the same: wail for her absent father and for the loss of her poor shepherd boy. But she would not let these men, these enemies of Troy, see her afraid. She was her father’s daughter and no Greek would see her cry.
Finally, a herald raised his horn to his lips and sounded a call. The men did not appear all at once, but gradually, from every direction, they began to gather in front of Chryseis. The soldiers came in gangs with others who shared the same clothing, the same weaponry, the same home. Chryseis tried to remember the list of Greeks that her father had prayed to Apollo to curse: Boeotians, Myrmidons, Argives, Aetolians. They looked battle-weary, she thought, like the men of Troy. So many flaming scars across faces and arms. So many more limping from injuries she could not see.
She stared over the taunting faces of the Greek soldiers as they massed in front of the women. She looked up at their ships. Would she be bundled onto one of them and carried away to Greece? The idea seemed both absurd and inevitable. She knew she could not afford to think about the possibility of being taken from Troy and never seeing her home or anyone she knew again. She focused on the ship, and what it would be like to sail across the ocean. She had never been on water, had no memory of even touching the sea. Had her father brought her down to the shore when she was an infant? The idea of her father in his priestly robes standing over a child as she played in the shallows was preposterous. As he had told her many times, Chryseis had been born to disappoint him, and she had never let him down.
She heard a murmur rush across the crowd of men. The last of them were arriving now, the leaders of each tribe, she supposed. These men seemed taller than their soldiers; thick-necked and thick-armed. Perhaps they just carried themselves more confidently, she thought. And their clothes were fresher, not covered in so many patches and repairs. It must be one of these men who had killed Briseis’ family: the story she had told described a great warrior, a man of prodigious speed and cruelty. It could not have been an ordinary soldier. She scanned the crowd to see if she could guess which one. But as she looked, she remembered that every one of these leaders had killed a man she knew over the past nine years: a cousin, an uncle, the father of a friend. It came into her mind in a rush, that there was no sense wishing to be given to one man or another, when they were all equally bad. She would wish for Briseis instead, she thought. Wish that she would avoid the man who had taken everyone from her.
But if the gods were nearby, they were not minded to listen to Chryseis. The herald spoke more slowly than the other Greeks, shouting to make himself heard by those at the back of the crowd. The booty would now be awarded to the commanders who had excelled in the recent raids, he explained. The men cheered.
‘First to the king of Mycenae,’ cried the herald. ‘To Agamemnon.’
His words were lost in a sea of shouts, not all of which, Chryseis thought, were approving. A heavy-set man, his greying hair in a sharp widow’s peak, was standing directly in front of Chryseis. This was the most powerful of all the Greeks, she knew. The king of kings, and brother of Menelaus, whose wife was now ensconced in the citadel of Troy with her lover, Paris. Agamemnon was the one who had assembled the Greeks for their campaign against Troy. He quieted the roar from his Argive soldiers with a small wave of his hand, and stepped forward.
‘To Agamemnon,’ repeated the herald, ‘the Greeks award the first choice of the slaves.’
Agamemnon barely looked at the line of women in front of him.
‘I’ll take that one,’ he said, jerking his head at Chryseis. A man’s hand grabbed Chryseis from behind and thrust her at the Argive king. Men laughed as she stumbled but she managed to stay upright. She felt a jolt of pain in her foot, and she was grateful, because it distracted her briefly from looking at the fat old man who had just made her his own.
‘Come,’ said Agamemnon. ‘No, wait.’ He turned to the herald. ‘Allot all the women and then we shall take them to our quarters. I want to see what the others pick first.’ His men roared again. Chryseis stepped back into her place.
‘Second,’ cried the herald, ‘to the greatest warrior among us, Achilles.’
The noise was deafening. This was the man whom these soldiers loved the most. Chryseis watched Agamemnon’s expression as he too realized that the shouts for him had been cursory. His old man’s face – Agamemnon was older than Chryseis’ father, and she tried not to feel sick – was consumed with jealousy. Chryseis allowed her eyes to flicker to where the noise was loudest. That must be Achilles, scourge of the Trojans, stepping out of a line of black-clad warriors. Golden-haired and golden-skinned, like a god. The Trojans said he was the son of a goddess, a sea nymph, and now she could see why. He was beautiful, even with his mouth set in a cruel line. He did not bother to silence his cheering soldiers. He simply opened his mouth, knowing they would fall quiet of their own accord.