A Thousand Ships(21)
‘I’ll have the one next to her,’ he said. He turned to the man who stood beside him, slightly shorter, slightly less muscular, a darker reflection of himself. The man nodded. ‘The yellow-haired one,’ Achilles confirmed. His men cheered again, and Briseis made the smallest sound. No one but Chryseis – her ears level with the woman’s lips – could have heard her. But she knew at once that the gods had shunned her prayers for her new friend. It was this man, Achilles, who had killed Briseis’ family as she watched. And now she belonged to him, and there was nothing either of them could do. Still, Chryseis would not cry. And nor would Briseis, although the two women were taut, like bowstrings. They would not snap.
The distribution of the rest of the women, and of a towering pile of gold and silver objects which had also been looted from their homes, took a long time. But Chryseis heard little of what was said. She pushed her fingers against the back of Briseis’ hand, and the two of them stood together in the blistering sun, metamorphosing from people into property. When it was all over, the guards shouted at her, taking pleasure in making her jump.
‘If you have anything in the tent, now’s the time to fetch it,’ one of them said. She was about to say she had nothing to collect when Briseis took her hand and nodded to the guards. The two of them walked back to the tent where they had spent the night.
‘I don’t have anything,’ Chryseis said.
‘You do. Here.’ Briseis dug into the cloak on which the two women had slept and produced a small leather bag. ‘Take these. You must put them in his wine when he asks you to pour it out for him.’ Chryseis looked at the bag dumbly. ‘Are you listening?’ Briseis said, reaching out and shaking her friend’s arm. ‘Put a pinch of them in his wine. He drinks it sweetened with so much honey, he won’t taste them. It’s important.’
‘What will happen?’ Chryseis whispered. ‘Will it poison him?’
Briseis shook her head. ‘It will leave him . . .’ She paused. ‘Leave him uninterested in you. Or unable. He may become angry when it happens. He might hit you. But he will still be incapable, do you understand?’ Chryseis nodded. Briseis knew her darkest fears before she knew them herself. A strand of hair fell in front of her face and Briseis reached out, unthinking, and tucked it behind her ear.
‘If he becomes very angry, you should ask him if he has a daughter,’ Briseis continued. ‘He becomes melancholy when he thinks about his daughter. It will make him less likely to hurt you.’
‘Thank you,’ Chryseis said. ‘But what will you do? Don’t you need these for yourself?’
Briseis shrugged. ‘I will manage,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘Will I see you again?’ Chryseis asked.
‘Of course. The camp is not as large as all that. The men will be away fighting many times, we will find each other then. In the mornings. By the water. Will you remember?’
Chryseis nodded again. She would never forget anything Briseis said to her.
*
Briseis walked five paces behind the man who had killed her family. She watched his smooth calves – impossibly unmarked after all these years of fighting – bulge as his feet touched the ground. He was tall, broad across the shoulders, narrow across the hips. His biceps were thick like the haunches of a bull. But he stepped so lightly that the leather of his boots did not even creak as he moved. The man who walked beside him was not quite so tall, or so broad, or so muscular. His hair was darker, a mousy brown, and his skin was covered in the small tattoos of war: the crimson lines of long-healed wounds. He had to extend his stride a little beyond its natural length to keep in step with Achilles. Briseis watched his hips twitch as he tried to maintain the pace. It was this man who looked back, every few steps, to check that she was behind them. He could not have thought she would run away: the Myrmidons – Achilles’ men – surrounded her. Yet still he turned to look at her, and then back to Achilles.
‘Pompous old fool,’ Achilles was saying. ‘His desperation disgusts me, I can smell it on him.’
‘Of course he’s desperate,’ the smaller man said. His tone was soothing, as though he were calming an anxious horse. ‘He knows what they all know: that you are the greatest of the Greeks. It sickens him, the envy. It bites at him from within.’
Achilles nodded. ‘How many more lives must I take?’ he asked, and suddenly he was plaintive, like a child. ‘Before they give me my due?’
‘The men give you your due,’ his friend replied. But he spoke slowly, his tone that of consolation rather than contradiction. ‘It is not surprising that Agamemnon will not acknowledge your superiority. What would that leave him with?’
‘His own shallow pride,’ Achilles snapped. ‘Which is everything he deserves. He is not the son of a goddess, he has nothing in his ancestry but cursed blood and good luck. Instead of which he walks around, puffed up with his misplaced sense of self-worth, taking first pick of the treasure won by my sword and mine alone.’ His friend said nothing, but Briseis still felt the tension spring up between them. ‘Not alone,’ Achilles corrected himself.
‘The majority of booty was won by your sword,’ his friend murmured.
‘By my Myrmidons, under my command,’ Achilles agreed.
Briseis had watched him scythe through her city, his sword swinging down from the back of his horse, culling anyone who could not move out of his way. Her elderly father, her strong husband, her young brothers, her demented mother, cut down one after another, with no pause to consider their worthiness as his opponents, their fitness to fight. He slaughtered the Lyrnessans as easily as drawing breath. His men had been needed for one thing and one thing only: gathering up the treasure, the women, the children that this one-man killing spree had won for them. Achilles was trying to console this man about his lesser martial prowess, Briseis realized, at the same time as his friend was trying to calm him down. How curious, she thought. Two warriors determined to be so kind to one another.