The Anger of Achilles Read online

  The king’s throne remained vacant, as was fitting with the monarch still living but incapacitated. The guests were positioned in hierarchical order, the most important nearest either side of the throne, the least important farthest away. Briseis sat to the right of the empty place and Achilles to the left. Odysseus sat by the princess and Aias beside Achilles. Beside Odysseus was King Eremanthus of Zakynthos then four Cephallenian kings with four Locrian kings between them. The other four Locrian kings were on Achilles’ side, seated between four Myrmidon generals beginning with Patroclus and Peisander. Their position and importance seemed identical – until you took into account the fact that each Myrmidon leader commanded ten ships, each Locrian commanded five and each Cephallenian only two. Mnestheus the physician made up the numbers on Achilles’ side and I made them up on Odysseus’. The elderly physician was restless, ready to be called away at a moment’s notice. I was nervous, for I had been ordered to perform at the end of the meal.

  As feasts went, this was among the strangest I had ever attended. It was at once a beginning to the funeral rites and a show of strength. A formal feast in the throne room of a conquered king’s palace could hardly have spoken of victory more loudly. But it was also the first time since the fall of the city that the leaders had all gathered in one place, unarmoured as the ritual required, and armed with only the daggers they needed to cut up their food. Aias had chosen his best men to watch over us and doubled each unit just in case. Odysseus and Achilles had searched the megaron while the tables were being laid, the fire lit and the meal prepared. There appeared to be no secret tunnels leading into or out of the room, as there were on the level below and as there had been behind the hangings in the palace at Skyros. It seemed safe enough for the feast to proceed, therefore, even for those of us who might well be standing high on a murderer’s kill-list.

  The tables were piled with flat breads, cheeses and olives, jugs of oil and pots of honey; bowls contained early grapes, figs and bunches of fresh herbs which we all nibbled as we waited. I was amused to see that Patroclus still appeared to have the sweet tooth of a child. While Achilles munched pensively on olives and cheese, Patroclus pored honey on flatbreads and consumed one after another. There were also celery, fennel, cucumbers, carrots and such other raw Spring vegetables as the city’s farms and storehouses could supply. All were particularly bountiful, I calculated, because of stockpiling in the face of the threatened siege. But the siege had ended so swiftly that the store-houses had hardly been touched. This showed, I thought, that things had been well organised here to begin with; at least before the strangely sudden collapse. It was also the case, however, that there were unusual amounts of fruit and vegetables because of the limited time allowed for preparation of anything more substantial. At the formal feast tomorrow there would be oxen, bulls, boars, goats and rams, all of which would take much of the day to cook properly. Today, however, the cooked food mostly consisted of fish which varied in size from shark and tuna to bass and mackerel. There were lambs, kids and one young heifer whose meat near the bone remained almost raw, as I discovered to my cost. There were goblets of wine and water as well as a seemingly endless supply of the flat loaves of fresh bread Patroclus enjoyed so much.

  In the absence of the king, it was Achilles who filled the position of host, though the servants were careful to ensure that the food arrived in front of Odysseus at the same time as it arrived in front of the golden prince. Each man then chose a portion to be cut for him and gestured that the food be passed along to right or left. Odysseus himself served Briseis, of course, before the laden platter was passed on to Eremanthus and so on down the line of hungry monarchs until at last it reached me. He served her assiduously but she ate none of it. She was offered wine, especially to drink the toasts, but she preferred water. There were far fewer toasts than usual, not only because, with Briseis and Mnestheus present and Demir’s squad of servants in attendance, toasts to victory would have been in poor taste but also because of the nature of the ritual we were undertaking. There would have to be toasts to the dead tomorrow and much weeping; but precisely how this would be arranged when we would find ourselves toasting our dead enemies it was difficult to see. That was something, I suspected, that only Odysseus could negotiate.

  iv

  ‘Sing, Muses, of the anger of Hercules, black and murderous, costing the Trojans terrible sorrow, casting King Laomedon into Hades’ dark realm leaving his royal corpse for the dogs and the ravens. Begin with the bargain between the old king and Godlike Hercules. Strong promises the old king broke calling forth the rage of the son of Zeus…’ I sang.

  It was the most popular of my epics. I had been singing it when Odysseus first came across me in a dockside tavern in Aulis. The song and the singer both caught his attention because in it I told of an incident when the breaking of a king’s oath to the hero Hercules had led to the death of the monarch – the current king Priam’s father – and the sacking of the citadel at Troy by the self-styled son of Zeus and his pirates. The Achaeans should enjoy it. The Locrians should not be overly offended – or so I hoped. At least no-one interrupted as I sang; possibly because after the exertions of the day and the potency of the wine, everyone was half asleep. Noting this, I began judiciously to trim the length of my performance.

  The instant I finished, Odysseus rose. ‘I thank our rhapsode for making his epic so exciting. And so brief,’ he said. ‘We should go about our business now. There is still much to do before we sleep.’ The guests all rose and went about the various tasks needing completion before bed. As they dispersed, Odysseus came over to me and started speaking, though he did not take his eyes off Princess Briseis. ‘I admire your wisdom in the way you trimmed your song,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Because my audience would have fallen asleep otherwise?’ I asked.

  ‘Because the sections you missed out were all the ones that showed how well you know the back-streets of Troy,’ he answered. ‘And given that at least part of your audience must be firmly allied to King Priam and his Trojan cause, you might well have saved yourself from going onto yet another death-list.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that!’ I said nervously as I slung the bag containing my lyre over my shoulder. Could it be true? I wondered, uneasily aware that the captain rarely got life-and-death situations like this wrong.

  ‘Well, I thought of it for you,’ he continued. ‘And talking of thinking – and thinking ahead – I’ve had all of your possessions transferred out of Thalassa and into rooms up here in the palace. If I stay, you stay. The princess isn’t the only one I want to keep an eye on.’

  And, I thought, I want to keep an eye on you and the princess too. So this is working out well as long as I haven’t actually managed to put myself on too many death-lists.

  The princess herself broke into my thoughts then. ‘I assume I will need to be escorted to my rooms,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose for a moment you want me running around the place unattended. Only the gods know where I might end up if you permitted that.’

  Odysseus and I both looked at her then, I certainly observed her more closely than I had during the feast. I was struck by the way that her make-up, simply emphasised the pallor of her untouched skin. Her face was adorned in an almost Egyptian style, with kohl emphasising her eyes and ochre dust bringing a blush to her cheeks. The reddened cheeks seemed to have collapsed into hollows and the kohl at her lashes seemed to fade into dark flesh towards her cheekbones, as though exhaustion could actually bruise her.

  ‘Allow me to escort you, Princess,’ Odysseus responded, gently. ‘As you say, I would hate to lose you.’

  Her lips twitched at the sally but it was quite clear that she was well past actually smiling. She walked at his shoulder as he set out for her private chamber, but it seemed to me that only the greatest effort of will was keeping her from stumbling. She seemed to ooze weariness and as I limped along just behind her, I felt my own energy waning so that the weight of the bag on my shoulder began to pull
me down.

  Achilles and Aias had followed Odysseus’ lead and moved into the palace. King Eremanthus, Odysseus’ second in command had done so too, in case his commander needed to call on him. Careful of their personal security, they all brought squads into the palace with them. These were not only tasked with guarding specific rooms and areas but also with patrolling corridors. Sub-units of the patrols were also tasked with keeping the flaming torches alight so that the common parts of the building were all flooded with unsteady, flickering brightness as well as the measured footfalls and the armoured bodies of the Achaean soldiers. Odysseus led Briseis unerringly through the restlessness to the doorway of her private chambers. These too were brightly lit, so I was able to see that they comprised a square reception area immediately within the doorway from the corridor with a couple of doorways opening off it to left and right before it opened further, straight ahead, into a larger room which was obviously a bed-chamber. Hepat and a group of handmaidens were waiting to welcome the princess. Both Odysseus and I stopped at the main doorway and turned away as soon as the princess arrived in her private chamber and seemed to wilt into the gentle grasp of her newly-appointed handmaidens.

  ***

  Odysseus strode on, past another doorway opening into another bright-lit set of rooms apparently identical to the princess’ except that there were no handmaidens in evidence. The next doorway opened into the king’s quarters where a combination of Hepat’s women and Demir’s men were ensuring King Euenos was as comfortable as possible. He seemed reluctant to move out of his throne and over towards his bed, but after a moment he acquiesced, pausing only to grab a handful of honey cakes from the little table on the way. Odysseus paused here and I copied him, as we both looked around the rooms from the outside before the king and his attendants vanished. Then we turned and returned to the set of rooms between the king’s and the princess’. ‘These are my quarters,’ he said as he entered. I hesitated at the doorway until he gestured at the side-rooms off the reception area. ‘Perimedes and Eudorus,’ he said pointing to the room on the right. ‘You,’ he added, pointing to the room on the left. I needed no further prompting but went straight through. I discovered a small lamp-lit chamber with plain walls and a bed which looked snug enough even though it was just a pile of coverings on a straw-stuffed sack on the floor. At least this makeshift mattress looked to be a good deal longer and wider than I was, which was a promising start. Such meagre possessions as I normally kept aboard Thalassa had all been brought here and to them I added my most expensive belonging, the lyre in its soft leather shoulder-bag. On a low table there stood a three-flame lamp, a water jug and beside them a pair of bowls with three pessoi stones. Beside the table was a chamber pot matching the stones which I used before washing, changing into a sleeping tunic and collapsing onto my new bed, too tired even to bother extinguishing the lamp.

  It seemed that my eyes had no sooner closed than they opened again. But as my mind cleared, I realised that this could not be true, for quite apart from anything else, the lamp in my room was burning very low – clearly almost out of oil. I lay there, blinking, as the shadows gathered around me, wondering what could have woken me. The answer came almost immediately. It was a low sobbing, a sound which seemed to me to encapsulate all the hopeless sorrow in the ruined city. My hair stirred. I suddenly found it hard to catch my breath. My heart seemed to be attempting an escape from its cage behind my ribs. It seemed to me that the dreadful noise must be somehow more than natural. The desolate cries of Echo mourning her lost Narcissus; of Semele burning at the sight of Zeus; of snake-haired Medusa at the instant she first saw her reflection. The nearest people to me were Odysseus and his crewmen – none of whom had cause to cry; all of whom had deep voices whereas this, it suddenly struck me, was the voice of a desolate woman.

  That revelation led almost immediately to another. The room I was in shared a wall with the equivalent chamber in Princess Briseis’ quarters. No doubt one of her attendants was bedded down there. Bedded but too distraught to sleep. My heart stopped bounding. My breathing became a little easier. The princess and her handmaidens all had ample reason to sob as though their world was ending – because it was. It had, indeed ended, no-matter how gentle and honourable Odysseus and Achilles might be. Within an agonisingly short time, after all, Princess Briseis had seen her father-in-law the king struck down; had seen her husband die a horrible, mysterious death, stranger and more inexplicable even than that suffered by her brothers; had only escaped a brutal rape by becoming the chattel of a man she hated and despised. And, no-matter what assurances we gave her, she knew the rest of her life would be passed as a thing rather than a person – let alone a princess. A plaything, indeed, condemned by her beauty; she must be all too well aware that even in golden Achilles there might well lurk the dark, leaden spirit of a rampant Aias. I suddenly found myself recalling the broken, whimpering sounds Chriseis, daughter of Chrises, Priest of Apollo in Thebe, had made as Agamemnon publicly pawed and probed her in the fallen city’s agora before he selected her as his prize and bed-slave.

  But then, even as I registered the utter desolation of the sound, it stopped. The sobbing was immediately replaced by a whispering and then a secretive scurrying as if there were mice about. Intrigued, I rolled out of bed, taking action long before my reason started to work out what must be happening. I reached the doorway of my little room. Straight ahead was the utter darkness of the chamber where Elpenor and Perimedes were gently snoring. To my left a glimmer of brightness showed Odysseus’ quarters. I was tempted to tip-toe into his room and wake him, but the scurrying to my right distracted me; that and the fact that there were areas of brightness and shadow moving out in the corridor. Intrigued, I went to the doorway and peeped out. Two figures were hurrying almost silently away. They were oddly illuminated by the fact that they were carrying a lamp but the flaming torches along the walls were still giving some brightness even though they had burned low. Before my reason caught up with my body, my legs were in motion. Bare-footed as I was, I made no sound as I followed the women – though the price of my silence was ice-cold toes.

  The women had reached the opening into the megaron before I thought to wonder what had happened to the guard patrols Odysseus had ordered. They were certainly nowhere in evidence now. As the women turned left and vanished, I ran forward with the uneasy feeling that the three of us were utterly alone in the shadowy vastness of the place. Alone, except for some strange and threatening force which seemed to be lurking in the shadows; especially the shadows immediately at my back. Trying in vain to dismiss such childish fears, I hurried into the megaron just in time to see the lamplight disappear into the passageway I knew led down to the underground tunnel and, eventually, to the temple of Teshub.

  v

  As I stepped off the lowest step, the corridor loomed before me – a tunnel composed almost exclusively of chilly darkness. There had been no torches lit down here. No patrols ordered. The only thing to guide me was the tiny flame of the lamp that one of the two women was holding. That was largely obscured by their bodies and was hardly strong enough to brighten the walls or the ceiling they were hurrying past. I paused for an instant, tempted to go back and get Odysseus, but I suspected that if I did that, I would in all probability miss an opportunity to discover what was going on when the women thought themselves unobserved. That would be information well worth carrying to Odysseus, no matter what risks I might have to take to get it. I hurried forward once more, therefore, following that vanishing gleam like a sailor navigating by a star. To be fair I did not really need the brightness as a guide because I knew where they were going and the darkness behind them through which I was creeping was effectively total in any case. The sensitivity of my ears and cheeks seemed to tell me when I was passing doorways on either hand – little draughts and whispers sensible only in the near absolute silence and darkness. But, tiny though it was, that distant spark allowed me to orientate myself, saved me from the danger of wandering off line an
d losing myself in a maze of my own making as I blundered blindly from room to room.

  So when it vanished, the shock almost winded me. By the grace of the gods I was near enough to the temple door to be able to move forward with a good deal of confidence. Moreover, although I was wrapped in almost suffocating shadows, my hearing took over as my guide, for there were whispers, creaks and groans, as though of something being moved. A grating sound which made me think of a gate swinging open. With these noises filling my ears and these thoughts filling my mind I stepped wide-eyed into the Temple of Teshub. And caught my breath, choking a shout of surprise into silence. I froze in place as though I had become a living sculpture. The statue of the strange god loomed threateningly, lit from below with just enough illumination to define its outlines. Enough brightness to make it seem alive – alive and ready to strike me dead. The kilt that clothed it seemed edged in gold tight across its massive thighs, the ridges of its belly, the curves of its ribs with that strange sword clasped across them, the underside of its jaw, the curl of its lips, the flare of its nostrils, the ridges of its brows, the gleam of the band around its head and the great dark span of its wings, all edged in gilt. It seemed to hover there, caught mid-movement, ready at any moment to swoop into deadly action.